The inauguration

I noticed that a popular crossover (pop and classical) singer, Jackie Evancho, will be singing at the Trump inauguration. I gather that she is very popular in America but I had never heard of her.  So I listened to her singing quite a bit on YouTube.  And there is no doubt she is a sweet little singer.  Her voice lacks power, however.  If you want to hear what a real operatic soprano can do, see the video below where Anna Netrebko sings before 10,000 Berliners.  Netrebko is a great gift from Russia to us all



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Why Obamacare’s ‘20 Million’ Number Is Fake

Liberals are notorious for caring about “groups” of people, but when it gets down to individual persons, not so much. You’re about to see this play out in spades as Democrats cry crocodile tears over the coming repeal of Obamacare.

You hear it over and over again: “This will be catastrophic for the 20 million people who were previously uninsured but now have coverage! You can’t take away their health care!”

First of all, no one is talking about doing that. Any repeal legislation will have a transition period for those who got coverage through Obamacare to move to new plans. And second, they will have more choices and better options. Win. Win.

But liberals would rather focus on quantity, how many millions we’ve given something to, versus quality, what does that “gift” mean for individual people.

The Obama administration claims 20 million more Americans today have health care due to Obamacare. The reality is that when you look at the actual net gains over the past two years since the program was fully implemented, the number is 14 million, and of that, 11.8 million (84 percent) were people given the “gift” of Medicaid.

And new research shows that even fewer people will be left without insurance after the repeal of Obamacare. Numbers are still being crunched, but between statistics released by the Congressional Budget Office and one of the infamous architects of Obamacare, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jonathan Gruber, it’s estimated that anywhere from 2 to 7 million people now on Medicaid would have qualified for the program even without Obamacare.

That further discredits the administration’s claim of 20 million more Americans having health insurance because of Obamacare.

Multiple studies have also shown that even those who are uninsured often have better outcomes than those with Medicaid. A University of Virginia study found that for eight different surgical procedures, Medicaid patients were more likely to die than privately insured or uninsured patients. They were also more likely to suffer complications.

And it is important to note that this study focused on procedures done from 2003-2007, prior to the geniuses in Washington deciding it was a good idea to put even more people on the already overburdened Medicaid system.

Additionally, despite what proponents of the law promised, there is little evidence to show that the use of emergency rooms, which have a higher level of medical errors, has decreased due to Obamacare.

Then there is this reality: While Obamacare has handed out millions of new Medicaid cards, that does not mean the recipients now have quality health care. In fact, it doesn’t ensure they have health care at all. That’s because increasing numbers of doctors aren’t accepting Medicaid.

As a Louisiana woman told The New York Times, “My Medicaid card is useless for me right now. It’s a useless piece of plastic. I can’t find an orthopedic surgeon or a pain management doctor who will accept Medicaid.”

Keep that in mind every time liberal Democratic senators pull out the Kleenex boxes bemoaning the fact Republicans are the ones trying to take people’s health care away.

Speaking of which, a much underreported fact of Obamacare is how many truly needy and disabled Americans are NOT getting the services they need because of the expansion of Medicaid for able-bodied adults (aka healthy) of prime working age, 19-54.

So while the left talks about all the new people Obamacare is helping, it neglects to mention that over half a million disabled people, from those with developmental disabilities to traumatic brain injuries, are on waiting lists for care.

And many of them are on waiting lists because Obamacare gives states more money to enroll able-bodied adults than it does to take care of disabled children and adults who qualified for Medicaid prior to Obamacare.

If you think that doesn’t have a real-world perverse impact, note this. Since Arkansas expanded its Medicaid program under Obamacare, it’s rolls have grown by 25 percent. During that same time, 79 people on the Medicaid waiting list who suffered from developmental disabilities have died. I would encourage you to read my former Heritage Foundation colleague Chris Jacob’s full piece on this.

SOURCE

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How One Nebraska Woman Lost Her Health Insurance Three Times Under Obamacare



Strike One

In the months leading up to the Affordable Care Act’s implementation on Oct. 1, 2013, millions of Americans began receiving notices from their health insurance companies informing them their policies had been cancelled.

Weldin was one of them. The Nebraska woman, who was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome 15 years ago, had purchased catastrophic coverage through Humana after moving from San Diego, Calif., which she kept until 2013—right before Obamacare’s implementation.

By the start of 2014, Weldin would be left without insurance.

Like millions of other Americans who also received cancellation notices, she logged on to HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1, 2013, to browse and purchase new health insurance. But, like millions of other Americans who attempted to sign on to the site, she was a victim of its disastrous launch.

For two months, Weldin attempted to complete her application and was successful by mid-December.

Through CoOportunity, Weldin purchased a platinum level plan with premiums costing $307 a month.

Strike Two

Weldin’s insurance with CoOportunity went into effect Jan. 1, 2014, and she had the insurance for most of that year.

Like some consumers, Weldin had issues with the coverage she received through the law. Her original doctor, located seven hours away in Colorado, was no longer in network, and Weldin’s plan included services she would never need. At 58 years old, the former dental hygienist had a difficult time understanding why she would need maternity coverage, but it was included in her plan.

Her new platinum plan included a $2,500 deductible, and Weldin qualified for the tax credits touted by the administration.

Then, in November 2014, CoOportunity notified Weldin that they would no longer be offering platinum plans.

For the second time, Weldin “muddled through” HealthCare.gov to purchase a new health insurance plan. Again, she encountered issues with the website and had to wait until December before securing coverage with CoOportunity. Weldin ultimately selected a silver-level plan for $165 a month.

“Here you are, trying to do the right thing, trying to be responsible and have coverage and be diligent,” she said. “And still, I have all these problems and glitches and everything.”

Strike Three

It wasn’t long after purchasing her new insurance with the co-op that Weldin learned CoOportunity was in financial trouble.

One day after Christmas, she read that Iowa state regulators had taken over the nonprofit insurance company, and officials warned it could go under.

CoOportunity originally expected just 12,000 consumers to purchase coverage through the nonprofit. They ended up enrolling 120,000, many of whom were sicker and had costly health issues.

As a result, CoOportunity’s expenses and medical claims exceeded their revenue from monthly premiums, which were priced too low.

The state asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for additional money, but the agency denied its request.

“You had a perfect storm happen here,” Gerhart said.

For Weldin, the new year brought grim news. She learned that CoOportunity would be liquidated. She would be out of health insurance yet again.

For the third time in less than two years, Weldin had lost her health insurance. And for the third time, she went to HealthCare.gov to select a new plan from a new company.

Now, Weldin has health insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield. The “silver lining,” she said, is that Weldin is able to see her original doctor and nurse practitioner in Colorado. But the cost of her monthly premiums increased to $235.

“We have a president who said, If you like your plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep it. You will have choices,’” Weldin said. “All three things were an outright lie.”

SOURCE

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DIAMOND AND SILK CALL OUT JOHN LEWIS

If you don’t know Diamond and Silk of “The Viewer’s View” YouTube channel, you’re about to be introduced.

Last week, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) proclaimed he doesn’t consider Donald Trump to be a “legitimate president.” Well, Diamond and Silk have a message for Lewis: if he doesn’t want to work for the American people, who legitimately voted Trump into office on Nov. 8, then he can pack up and leave Washington with Obama.

Watch their video below:



SOURCE

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Another Leftist flight from reality

Rep. Cardenas: Repealing Obamacare Like Going Back to When We ‘Lived in Caves’

So it was Obama who invented housing?

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Left’s Siren Song of Coerced Equality

Dan Mitchell

Since I can’t even keep track of schools of thought on the right (libertarians, traditional conservatives, neocons, reform conservatives, compassionate conservatives, Trump-style populists, etc), I’m not going to pretend to know what’s happening on the left.

But it does appear that something significant – and bad – is happening in the statist community.

Traditionally, folks on the left favored a conventional welfare state, which revolved around two components.

Means-tested programs for the ostensible purpose of alleviating poverty (e.g.., Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, etc).
Social-insurance programs for the ostensible purpose of alleviating sickness, unemployment, and aging (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc).

This agenda was always a bad idea for both macro and micro reasons, and has become a very bad idea because of demographic changes.

But now the left has expanded its goals to policies that are far more radical. Instead of a well-meaning (albeit misguided) desire to protect people from risk, they now want coerced equality.

And this agenda also has two components.

* A guaranteed and universal basic income for everyone.

* Taxes and/or earnings caps to limit the income of the rich.

Taking a closer look at the idea of basic income, there actually is a reasonable argument that the current welfare state is so dysfunctional that it would be better to simply give everyone a check instead.

But as I’ve argued before, this approach would also create an incentive for people to simply live off taxpayers. Especially if the basic income is super-generous, as was proposed (but fortunately rejected by an overwhelming margin) in Switzerland.

Another thing I fear is that politicians would create a basic income but then not fully repeal the existing welfare state (very similar to my concern that politicians would like to have a national sales tax or value-added tax without fully eliminating the IRS and all taxes on income).

Now let’s shift to the left’s class-warfare fixation about penalizing those with high incomes.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. We’ve had ideologues such as Bernie Sanders, Thomas Piketty, and Matt Yglesias arguing  in recent years for confiscatory tax rates. It appears some modern leftists actually think the economy is a fixed pie and that high incomes for some people necessitate lower incomes for the rest of us.

And because of their fetish for coerced equality, some of them even want to explicitly cap incomes for very valuable people.

The nutcase leader of the U.K. Labour Party, for instance, recently floated that notion. Here are some excerpts from a report in the Guardian.

Jeremy Corbyn has called for a maximum wage for the highest earners… The Labour leader would not give specific figures, but said radical action was needed to address inequality. “I would like there to be some kind of high earnings cap, quite honestly,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday.

When asked at what level the cap should be set, he replied: “I can’t put a figure on it… It is getting worse. And corporate taxation is a part of it. If we want to live in a more egalitarian society, and fund our public services, we cannot go on creating worse levels of inequality.”

Corbyn, who earns about £138,000 a year, later told Sky News he anticipated any maximum wage would be “somewhat higher than that”. “I think the salaries paid to some footballers are simply ridiculous, some salaries to very high earning top executives are utterly ridiculous. Why would someone need to earn more than £50m a year?”

This is so radical that even other members of the Labour Party have rejected the idea.

Danny Blanchflower, a former member of Corbyn’s economic advisory committee, said he would have advised the Labour leader against the scheme. In a tweet, the former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee said it was a “totally idiotic, unworkable idea”. …Labour MPs expressed reservations… Reynolds also expressed some uncertainty. “I’m not sure that I would support that,” she told BBC News. “I would like to see the detail. I think there are other ways that you can go about tackling income inequality… Instinctively, I don’t think [a cap] probably the best way to go.”

The good news, relatively speaking, is that Crazy Corbyn has been forced to backtrack.

Not because he’s changed his mind, I’m sure, but simply for political reasons. Here’s some of what the U.K.-based Times wrote.

Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to relaunch his Labour leadership descended into disarray yesterday as he backtracked on a wage cap… The climbdown came after members of the shadow cabinet refused to back the idea of a maximum income while former economic advisers to Mr Corbyn criticised it as absurd.
There don’t seem to be many leftists in the United States who have directly embraced this approach, though it is worth noting that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike included a provision disallowing deductibility for corporate pay over $1 million.

And that policy was justified using the same ideology that politicians should have the right to decide whether some people are paid too much.

In closing, I can’t help but wonder whether my statist friends have thought about the implications of their policies. They want the government to give everyone a guaranteed basic income, yet they want to wipe out high-income taxpayers who finance the lion’s share of redistribution.

I’m sure that work marvelously in the United States. Just like it’s producing great outcomes in place like Greece and Venezuela.

More HERE

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Cory Booker and the Lawless Left


He was the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow senator at a hearing to approve a member of the president's cabinet

To Democrats, "justice" requires their favored prejudice.

Never mind that New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker was deified on the Left for testifying against a fellow member of the chamber considered for a cabinet post.

Booker was the Left’s posterchild in the attempt to personally destroy his Senate colleague and nominee for attorney general, Alabama’s Jeff Sessions. Despite glowing remarks and working directly with Sessions, Booker turned his fire on a qualified public servant.

The content of Booker’s comments was largely ignored because he’s a sympathetic minority some view as the next Barack Obama. But Booker unloaded on his fellow senator, painting him as a dangerous man who’ll allegedly target minorities. And he described the job of the attorney general as more or less the opposite of what it should be.

We’re not going to ignore Booker’s comments. Instead, they should be bookmarked for years to come as this ambitious man chooses to ignore his current oath of office. Booker clearly wants an arbitrary approach to the law that’s rooted in prejudice and, thus, has demonstrated he should not be trusted with a promotion.

Sessions is the clear antithesis to his two predecessors: Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder and Loretta “Let’s talk about our grandbabies on the tarmac” Lynch. While these two AGs, according to Obama, supposedly served without scandal or corruption, time and factual history will show them to have politicized and even weaponized the Department of Justice to advance a lawless agenda.

In stark contrast, Sessions, who also served as Alabama attorney general, has always approached the law with respect and the determination to enforce it. For example, not only did Sessions work to ensure racial integration in public schools in his southern state, but he legally pursued the Ku Klux Klan, even prosecuting a leader who was later put to death for his racial crimes. A $7 million successful civil suit resulted against the KKK, bankrupting the hate group, while Sessions lead as chief law enforcement officer in Alabama.

And, there, friends, is the problem that Booker and every other Democrat has with Sessions: As U.S. attorney general, Sessions might actually keep his pledge to enforce the law without fear, favor or affection, malice or partiality. Horrors!

Booker’s statements were purely political, assigning powers outside the office of AG. “He will be expected to defend the rights of immigrants and affirm their human dignity,” Booker lectured. Please don’t misread this to be Booker’s concern with impartial law enforcement of immigration statutes. Instead, the senator assigns a power outside the Rule of Law in concern for illegal immigrants, who he says should be shielded from the consequence of lawless activity — like the sanctuary city status honored by Booker as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

Booker continued, “The next attorney general must bring hope and healing to our country, and this demands a more courageous empathy than Senator Sessions' record demonstrates.” This soaring rhetoric was made in context of Booker claiming that Sessions has a racial bias against minorities. And, Booker warned, “Persistent biases cannot be defeated unless we combat them.”

Mr. Booker, why is the statue of Lady Justice always depicted with a blindfold hiding her eyes while she’s holding a balance in her right hand and a sword in her left? The blindfolded goddess personifies that authentic justice is blind to extraneous factors. She employs the scales to balance truth and fact, not feeling and empathy, in her determinations. And the downward pointed sword represents that justice includes punishment for those who are unlawful.

Thus the Left fiercely works to redefine justice, the law and all that would be within the job description of the attorney general. That’s because Rule of Law impedes their political agenda.

But back to a disgusting implication made by Booker and the Left. They issue a call to first prejudge the situation based on minority status, sexual preference or identity, immigration status or any other certified aggrieved person or group on the Left. But, to prejudge is to practice prejudice, the Latin word praejudicium. Essentially, remove the blindfold from Lady Justice and place a thumb on the scales depending on factors identified as “triggers,” “privileges” or any other subjective aspect outside of fact.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it’s worth noting again that Cory Booker and the Democrats clearly illustrate their devotion to politics, even by lawless means, instead of the call of an American icon who prayed that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

SOURCE

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Fascism creep in America! Send death threats to a blind opera singer so he doesn't sing at the inauguration

Opera star Andrea Bocelli backed out of singing at Donald Trump's inauguration after receiving death threats, The Mail on Sunday has learnt.

The revelation came as another singer – Broadway legend Jennifer Holliday – last night pulled out of the President-elect's festivities after being threatened and branded an 'Uncle Tom'.

When blind tenor Bocelli announced he would not sing at this Friday's celebration, it was widely reported it was because fans had said they would boycott his concerts and records.

But a source said the 58-year-old had been determined to 'press ahead' and sing but had pulled out on the advice of his security team after receiving threats to his life.

A source close to Bocelli, a friend of Trump's, said: 'Andrea is very sad to be missing the chance to sing at such a huge global event but he has been advised it is simply not worth the risk.'

SOURCE

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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As Congress Plots Repeal, Former Pennsylvania Democrat Faces $784 in Monthly Premiums Under Obamacare

Before President Barack Obama signed the "Affordable" Care Act into law, he promised Americans they would have quality, affordable health care, and would be able to keep their same health insurance plans and doctors.

But in the three years since Obamacare’s exchanges opened for business, Ross Schriftman, 64, said none of those promises have come to fruition for him.

Before the health care law was implemented, Schriftman was paying $218 per month for coverage from Independence Blue Cross with a $5,000 deductible. In 1974, long before the Obamacare seed was planted, Schriftman recalled paying just $12 per month for his very first health insurance plan.

This year, though, Schriftman’s policy with Independence Blue Cross is costing him $784 per month with a $6,500 deductible. Schriftman, an insurance agent, doesn’t qualify for a subsidy.

Before the health care law was implemented and into Obamacare’s first years of existence, Schriftman, a former Democrat, deposited money throughout the year into his health savings account, or a medical savings account.

But now that his premiums have increased so substantially, the health insurance agent said he can no longer afford to put away the extra money.

And before the implementation of the health care law, Schriftman, like millions of other Americans, was told he would be able to keep his plan once Obamacare took effect.

But, also like millions of other Americans, his original $218-per-month policy with Independence Blue Cross was canceled.

Schriftman picked a new plan through Aetna, but history repeated itself, and the insurer canceled his plan. “Talk about choice,” he told The Daily Signal. “Talk about losing.”

Now, Schriftman is back where he was before Obamacare’s implementation, with a policy from Independence Blue Cross.

This time, though, some things are different. “I’m paying higher premiums. I’m paying higher taxes, and I have worse coverage,” he said.

In a statement to The Daily Signal, Paula Sunshine, chief marketing officer for Independence Blue Cross, said the insurer is working with consumers to “find the benefits that are right for them and the care they need,” but said the company also needs to “ensure a sustainable market.”

“Our rates reflect the changing market trends impacting insurers here and across the country,” Sunshine said.

Taking Action

Like so many Americans on both sides of the debate over Obamacare, Schriftman is watching the Republican-led Congress closely as it works on a plan to repeal and replace the health care law.

Since Obama signed Obamacare into law in 2010, GOP lawmakers have been talking about repealing it, and have voted to do so more than 60 times. But with Obama in the White House, their efforts were unsuccessful.

That changed Nov. 8, when voters elected Republican businessman Donald Trump to the White House, and the GOP retained control of both the House and the Senate.

Trump, along with many Republicans on the ballot, campaigned on repealing Obamacare. This year, they’ll finally have their shot.

GOP lawmakers have agreed to roll back much of the health care law using reconciliation, a budget tool that is especially powerful in the Senate.

There, reconciliation bills need just 51 votes to pass, and Republicans hold 52 seats in the upper chamber.

But while the GOP has come to an agreement on how to repeal Obamacare, the party is split over when to vote on its replacement—and hasn’t yet agreed on a replacement—and whether to get rid of Obamacare’s taxes immediately.

Democrats and the White House, meanwhile, are warning that repealing the law would cause 20 million Americans who gained health insurance under Obamacare to lose coverage.

And it’s a concern that has some Republicans rethinking whether repeal first, replace later is a viable strategy.

“I think it’s important that we move sooner on a replacement than later,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told The Daily Signal, “just to alleviate some of the concerns of those that may be fearful of losing their health insurance.”

Meadows said he would like to see the House move Obamacare’s repeal on a “parallel track” as a replacement, though he contends Congress will have to act on its repeal first.

“It’s important for us in the House to at least start debating the merits of a replacement plan sooner than later,” he said. “Part of that is hearing from constituents who definitely want it repealed, but there’s also a group who say they definitely want to know what they can count on when repeal takes place.”

Republican leaders said they want to have a bill repealing Obamacare on the president-elect’s desk not long after his Jan. 20 inauguration, and the Senate has already taken the first step toward dismantling the health care law through reconciliation.

But their plan has been disrupted by a group of five GOP senators attempting to delay repeal until March.

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rob Portman of Ohio offered an amendment to the budget resolution that would give House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over Obamacare until March 23 to write the legislation that would roll back the health care law.

House Republican leaders, though, are committed to moving forward with repeal.

“Without delay, we are taking action,” Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Tuesday. “We are putting in place the tools necessary to keep our promise on this law.”

Gun-shy

Schriftman, who lives in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, has been active in Democratic politics since the 1970s.

In 1974, 1976, and 2004, he ran for the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, but ultimately decided to leave the party.

Now, Schriftman is calling on congressional Democrats to work with Republicans to craft a replacement for Obamacare, or face a continued loss of support from constituents.

“You can help craft legislation that provides real reform or you can stubbornly cling to your failed programs and force your constituents to continue suffering with high premiums, high deductibles, lack of choices, and high taxes to pay for it,” Schriftman wrote in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

He fears that if Republicans don’t repeal and replace the law, the future of health insurance under Obamacare will continue on a downhill slide.

“They’re not going to do better in 2018 if they stand in the way of reform,” Schriftman said of congressional Democrats. “If nothing changes and all they do is a little fix and keep the basic structure of Obamacare in place, where are the American people going to be in two years? What are the premiums going to be in two years? How many carriers are going to be left in two years? How many doctors are going to be really happy?”

And though he believes Republicans in Congress now have a real opportunity to repeal the law, Schriftman said he’s “anxious about some of the Republicans getting gun-shy.”

“This is their opportunity. This is it,” he said. “They either get behind fixing it, or they’re going to have even worse problems with the public. People are just so fed up.”

SOURCE

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Did Hollywood abuse of Trump backfire?

IT ISN’T an opinion heard frequently in the famously liberal Hollywood, but sci-fi queen Zoe Saldana has spoken out against the acting community for bullying abrasive Donald Trump.

The Star Trek, Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy star — who is not a supporter of the Republican president-elect — believes insults flung at him during the race for the White House turned off much of middle America.

“We got cocky and became arrogant and we also became bullies,” the 38-year-old actress said of Trump, who has been frequently berated himself for bullying tactics, including seemingly mocking a reporter with disabilities.

“We were trying to single out a man for all these things he was doing wrong ... and that created empathy in a big group of people in America that felt bad for him and that are believing in his promises.”

SOURCE

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Like a fish needs a treadmill

by Jeff Jacoby

ARIZONA'S JEFF FLAKE, who occupies the US Senate seat once held by Barry Goldwater, shares his famous predecessor's dismay for profligate government spending. "Let us be honest with ourselves," Goldwater wrote in 1960, when federal spending totaled $92 billion. "Broken promises are not the major cause of our trouble. Kept promises are."

That hasn't changed, as Flake points out in the introduction to "PORKémon Go," the latest in his annual Wastebook series, which each year compiles scores of examples of preposterous and wasteful federal outlays.

In 2016, federal outlays were $3.87 trillion — a budgetary metastasis that must have Goldwater spinning in his grave — yet Washington, as always, is promising to spend more.

"Politicians in both parties are pushing to further loosen bipartisan budget caps and revive the corrupt practice of earmarking tax dollars for pork projects," writes Flake. "The incoming president's agenda includes $1 trillion for infrastructure, $5 trillion in tax cuts, and nearly $500 billion more for defense."

It can be hard for taxpayers to wrap their minds around sums so vast, which is why Flake's yearly anthology of outrageous spending focuses on small but vivid illustrations of how easy it is to squander other people's money. The new Wastebook rounds up 50 fresh examples of egregious projects funded with federal dollars, and describes them with good humor, bad puns — and nearly 1,100 detailed footnotes.

Flake's cases read like excerpts from The Onion.

 *  At the University of California San Diego, a $560,000 stimulus grant from the National Science Foundation funded a study measuring the endurance of fish on a treadmill. The fish in question were mudskippers — amphibious creatures that can use their flippers as legs — and the researchers forced them to run on a specially designed enclosed treadmill until they collapsed from exhaustion. The study found that with higher levels of oxygen in the chamber, the mudskippers could "exercise longer and recover quicker."

 *  A $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health was used, in part, to analyze the partying habits of fraternity and sorority members on college campuses. The researchers' conclusions were not exactly jaw-droppers: "Members of Greek letter organizations consume higher quantities of alcohol, report more frequent drinking, and experience more alcohol-related consequences" than other students. Students at fraternity/sorority parties view drinking games "as a means to get drunk quickly and to socialize." And more alcohol is drunk on days with "high-profile athletic events."

 *  The Colorado Department of Transportation installed a 28-foot-tall replica of a marijuana joint on the side of a hotel in downtown Denver. The huge joint, which was made from the wreckage of a mangled car, cost $35,000. Uncle Sam picked up the tab, via funding through National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

 *  A barely used airport in Mascoutah, Ill. — it handles just 20 flights a week and is so deserted that its few passengers can park for free — undertook $835,000 in renovations last year. Ninety percent of the costs were absorbed by the Federal Aviation Administration. That's on top of the airport's original $313 million construction — most of which was also paid out of the federal treasury. Mascoutah, meanwhile, has never come close to making a profit: It lost $12 million in 2014.

The other 46 examples are just as fatuous, dubious, or ludicrous. Which is not to say that none of the projects has merit, nor that those who lobby for them are charlatans. The developers of a museum featuring holograms of dead comedians (Chapter 2), the investigators comparing men's and women's ability to identify different Barbie dolls (Chapter 20), and the researchers studying monkey drool (Chapter 48) can no doubt make a plausible case that what they do is beneficial in some way. Indeed, each year's Wastebook release triggers indignant protests from scientists who point out that what may seem goofy or purposeless can lead to unexpected discoveries and insights. Who knows what breakthroughs may eventually be derived from examining fish on a treadmill or how boys and girls relate to dolls?

Why can't Colorado pay for its own giant marijuana sculptures?
But that isn't the litmus test. For responsible budgeteers in Congress and the White House, the threshold issue should never be whether a given expenditure might lead to something good. It is whether the government of the United States should be the one spending the money.

Why must federal, rather than Colorado, tax dollars subsidize a gigantic sculpture of a doobie in Denver — even to promote safe driving? Why should the money to examine monkey saliva come from Washington, rather than a university endowment fund or a corporate research budget? America's national debt is about to reach a staggering milestone: Twenty. Trillion. Dollars. If even that can't persuade Congress to stop funding comedy museums and comatose airports, what can?

Flake took over the Wastebook project from Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, who retired after the 2014 election. Coburn's inspiration, in turn, was the late Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin, who used to issue monthly Golden Fleece Awards to dumb or risible expenditures of federal money.

Proxmire, bless him, was a Democrat; Coburn and Flake are Republicans. Just as big-spending wastrels can be found in both parties, so can principled spending hawks. If only the former weren't so common, and the latter so rare.

SOURCE

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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'Liberal snowflake' Hollywood stars come under fire for 'pathetic' video which shows them singing 'I Will Survive' about Trump's inauguration

How would they survive a war?  Would they just melt?

Donald Trump's supporters have hit out at Hollywood once again, this time over a video of some of the biggest celebrities defiantly singing before his inauguration.

A new clip by W Magazine and Conde Nast Entertainment shows the likes of Emma Stone, Natalie Portman and Amy Adams reciting the disco classic I Will Survive.

The star-studded cast is seen participating in a 'lyrical improv' reading of the Gloria Gaynor song in the video, released just days before Trump will be sworn in.

It's already racked up more than a million views, but many of Trump's most fervent fans found the video to be 'pathetic', 'out of touch' and even 'uncool'.

'Unbelievable. The liberal Hollywood snowflakes made ANOTHER pathetic video called, I Will Survive,' tweeted one user named Billy.  'They're so defiant of Trump. Terrible!' he added, taking a page from his idol.

'Butt hurt, tolerant left. So glad to hear the little snowflakes will survive,' wrote Catherine. 'But, with all their Trump-bashing, will their careers?'

The video was stacked with many celebrities who may earn Academy Award nominations this month, including Stone, Portman and Taraji P Henson.

Also featured in the video is Andrew Garfield, Chris Pine, Hailee Steinfeld, and Matthew McConaughey, the latter disappointing at least one former fan. 'I seriously cannot believe @McConaughey was involved in something this uncool,' tweeted one user.

The A-listers will likely survive without their critics' support, but the clash over the video highlights the increasing debate over Hollywood activism.

It came to a head during the Golden Globes last Sunday, when Meryl Streep gave a powerful speech condemning the president-elect without ever speaking his name.

While many praised Streep's 'bravery' for the speech, others tweeted at the actress to stick to movies and said she was out of touch with average Americans.

Many of Trump's supporters joked he would never care what celebrities think about him, but the president-elect took to Twitter to attack Streep despite never seeing the speech.

'Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes,' he wrote. 'She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.'

It remains to be seen if Trump will comment on the I Will Survive video, which begins with Garfield telling the filmmakers: 'It may get too real.'  

The star chosen to belt out the famous first line of the song is Star Trek actor Chris Pine, followed by Steinfeld, who sings the second line with an appropriately 'petrified' expression.

But the real star of the show is Henson, who waves an indignant finger at the camera at one point before taking it all home with a wail and dancing off into the background.

SOURCE

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How dare Mr. Trump win the election!

I have never seen such blatant snarkiness, lies, unabashed whining, hatred and outright foolishness surrounding an American election in my life.  I watched as the smears and lunacy from the Left blasted President Ronald Reagan.  But, this latest verbal assassination of President Elect Donald J. Trump is even worse than that. The Left is not only pulling out all the stops in its attempt to remove President-Elect Trump from office before he's even inaugurated but, they are lying about what he's already done since his election.

No surprise regarding the lies but, it's as if the leftists' now almost lethal insanity has finally begun to infect their entire bodies and minds...or what's left of them.  Trump Derangement Syndrome (remember when it was Bush?) is in full flower and appears to have no intention of withering.  The leftist business community is, also. Now denigrating and unequivocally trashing US citizens who voted for P.E. Trump.  CEO of Timeshare CMO Melinda Byerley said and 1776 Coalition writes: "No educated person wants to live in a sh**hole with stupid people."

Particularly, in a "sh**hole" [Yikes!  What a nasty mouth and from a "CEO" no less] filled with people who are "violent, racist, and/or misogynistic" and "big corporations," do not consider moving to the heart of America because "those towns have nothing going for them."  In other words: "All of you stupid, uneducated people who voted for Trump are going to be blackballed from ever having new jobs in your idiotic towns and cities because you exposed our globalist game to take you over and make you our slaves to the world at large!"

Note:  I suspect they will never get over it.  Another interesting fact is that Mr. Trump has, already, done more for the country than Obama did in 8 years.  Globalists want US presidents to work against their country not for it!

I suspect the leftist globalists in both parties want to "tame Trump" so that their own very lucrative lifetime jobs will be secured.  The American people want just the opposite.  We want elected representatives who will put We-the-People and our country first...not themselves, their petty ambitions and their own fortunes acquired via taxpayer monies.  It's time to drain this swamp and swamp-dwellers on both sides of the aisle and it's now time that the leftists started quieting down and accepting the fact that Mr. Trump won the presidency fairly and squarely.

Oh and by the way...that John Brennan CIA-inspired "Russian Hacking Report" appears to have used information from a 2012 report.  And former CIA Agent Larry C. Johnson says this latest "intelligence report" is "a farce and a charade."  Also, consider that no evidence-whatsoever--has been presented to prove the case.  Said case began and, in my opinion, was manufactured by Obama and Clinton operative John Brennan (who announced in August 2016 that he had no intention of leaving his CIA position and wanted to work for Hillary after she was elected POTUS) and, likely, James Clapper who told to Congressional committees about both Benghazi and the NSA [not spying on Americans].

It's more likely than ever that we have been and are continuing to be duped by the leftist globalists who have invaded and infested virtually every aspect of our federal government.  All of our intelligence agencies seem to have been politicized by the globalist Left; which means...in their current condition... that they may be useless to the protection of the United States of America.  Indeed-this swamp needs draining immediately!

We won the first battle...that of the Presidency of the USA.  But, it was only the first.  The war against us wages daily.  The Democrats have already announced that they plan to challenge every one of Trump's Cabinet appointments.  They have also said that they will try to greatly slow down the confirmation process so that President Trump will not be able to conduct the people's business for a long time.

It becomes more and more obvious every day that these "representatives" and "senators" have no care for anyone but, themselves and their totalitarian agenda.  But, one of the things which occurred recently comforts me.  California has been touted as having had the worst 6-year drought in its history.  That drought broke shortly after Trump won the 2016 General Election and meteorologists are now saying the current storm could place its water supply into pre-drought conditions.  God-as always-is in charge!

SOURCE

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Donald Trump: Kremlin Employee of the Month?.  That's a recent NYT headline.  How frantic they are!

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Drain the FCC swamp

This obsolete vestige of the New Deal should be dissolved

By Eric Steinmann (Eric Steinmann is an executive with Clear Talk Wireless)

President-Elect Donald Trump is looking for bold actions to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC and free America’s economy, so that it can once again become the global leader and innovator. A great place to start would be abolishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

President Ronald Reagan ended his first term by abolishing the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB determined air passenger routes, airline slots at airports and ticket prices. The agency was an obsolete relic from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Its elimination freed the airline industry for unprecedented growth and expanding service to nearly a billion airline passengers a year.

The FCC is another obsolete vestige of the New Deal. It is what happens in Washington when people with little or no experience in actual business dream up regulations and schemes to expand their influence as they see fit, with a virtually unlimited budget and few or no checks and balances.

FCC Commissioners have their own funding source, they answer to no one, the courts defer to them for some unknown reason, and they dream up new and different perceived problems that they can “solve” with more rules – in the process destroying honest American-style competition, time and again.

The wireless communications industry, once an example of American technological prowess, creativity and beneficial competition, has been largely relegated to four big companies and many small FCC-subsidized companies. Instead of competing for the good will and business of American consumers, they often line up to seek more FCC favors.

So what is the FCC doing right now?

* It is spending a purported quarter-billion dollars to auction a radio spectrum that rightfully belongs to the American public. It did so in a manner devised by highly paid thought leaders and game theorists, causing small businesses which wanted to participate to run afoul of its overly complex rules and have to withdraw in the first week.

* It’s crafting programs to further subsidize rural telephone companies under a 1930s era Universal Service landline concept that the commissioners have never relinquished – supposedly to provide broadband in rural areas where very serviceable broadband already exists. Worse, they plan to subsidize competition against small businesses that are providing that broadband and cannot afford the lawyers and hassles to go through cumbersome approval processes and become additional FCC sycophants.

* The FCC still refuses to end subsidies to rural phone companies that are part of a 70-year-old program that charges hundreds or even thousands of dollars to companies that want to compete with established entities. Would-be newcomers are compelled to interconnect with existing companies, many of which are notorious for setting up free sex chat lines and conference calling, and for extorting fees per call-minute from those upstart newcomers – while the established companies have their operating costs essentially paid for by the FCC.

* The agency continues to sit on rulings that have been pending for well over 13 years, to effectively punish companies it doesn’t favor or preclude them from getting any legal determination of their rights. In the process, the FCC violates its own rules, which require that such rulings be issued in five months.

* It continues to take every opportunity to further the interests of certain wealthy foreign monopolists who have donated to the commissioners’ affiliated causes, at the expense of American businesses that are trying to compete. In so doing, the FCC employs perverse policy actions or interpretations, to punish or largely put out of business any competitors that are not participating in one of its tentacle programs.

* The FCC is also preventing the full utilization of existing broadcast spectrum and putting wholly unreasonable burdens on companies that are trying to construct new and improved infrastructure on which our nation’s networks operate. It is doing this by suspending all such construction, until Indian tribes with no historical connection to a region have given the go-ahead at a snail’s pace and at a permit cost that has no upper FCC limit, but which often exceeds the cost of constructing the actual towers.

Adding insult to injury, the FCC has decreed that American businesses must pay whatever the tribes ask, and that only the FCC may communicate with the tribes. The agency has hired a number of additional personnel to conduct these sovereign-to-sovereign discussions, one tribe at a time. But in the many months since this untenable situation has been brought to the agency’s attention, it has not (to the best of our knowledge) had even one discussion or addressed one case of price gouging – nor has it provided any valid or convincing reason for its inaction.

The communications industry can largely self-regulate and can certainly negotiate and settle any disputes over construction and other infrastructure matters. If they reach an impasse, the courts or other government agencies can be asked to intervene.

There is no need to issue more broadband spectrum at this time. If a need can be demonstrated, the Department of Commerce’s Patent & Trademark Administration or the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) could handle any needed registration.

President Trump should shut down the FCC and its inane government make-work programs. This would save the American People billions of dollars annually and allow competition to flourish.

It is not too late to open the marketplace and allow America’s communications industry to new ways to benefit our nation’s consumers, in an era when they deserve to reap the blessings of the numerous incredible technological breakthroughs of recent years.

Via email

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Trump strikes back on L.L. Bean

This is a warning to Leftist haters.  Trump has got a bigger megaphone so can cancel out or even reverse Leftist boycotts.  Everything Trump tweets is big news in all the papers the next day and no Leftist group can compete with that.  Bean will probably now sell more stuff than ever before -- even to people who have simply had their curiosity aroused and want to find out what all the fuss is about

Donald Trump on Thursday tweeted his support of Maine catalog retailer L.L. Bean after an activist group opposed to the U.S. president-elect called for a boycott of the company.

The boycott call began online last week after reports that a member of the Bean family that owns the company, best known for its rubber-bottomed hunting boots, had donated money to Trump's candidacy.

"Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L. Bean for your great support and courage," Trump said in a tweet early on Thursday. "People will support you even more now. Buy L.L. Bean."

The "Grab Your Wallet" website added L.L. Bean, based in Freeport, Maine, to a lengthy list of retailers it is urging Trump opponents to boycott because of their ties Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20.

L.L. Bean scrambled to distance itself from Linda Bean's donations, noting that she was one of more than 50 members of the founding family associated with the 105-year-old company, which described itself as politically neutral.

SOURCE

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Ted Cruz on the lawless Obama administration



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The Amusement Elite and Their Lesson for You

Yaacov Ben Moshe nails it

Meryl Streep, Charlie Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell and a legion of their fellow Hollywood illusionists, Popinjays and freaks have taken their stand against Donald Trump. Standing on their credentials as Artists, they want to tell us what is good for us politically. As in all artistic endeavors they are approaching a truth. The irony is, the truth they are exposing is their own moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

How fitting, really! This self-important clown troupe of make-believe professionals, practitioners of exaggeration and village idiot jesters who pretend to be someone other than themselves for a living take themselves seriously, and have arrayed themselves alongside the purveyors of fake news in the mass media as a pathetic Maginot Line against the guy who couldn't pretend to be someone else if he wanted to (and he assuredly does not!) who only wants to deal head-on with the real problems we face without the shackles of political correctness.

Here is the core lesson I take from this: These moonbeams, as do all liberals, start from a false premise at the most basic level. The left is predicated on the assumption that human nature is basically good and that “people” can be “changed”. All leftist systems posit (at least implicitly) that the evil that people do and the flaws in human character are due to “outside" influences such as, bad economic systems or established religions or faulty laws and that all that is needed is a progressive approach and a new system and the innate good can be realized or the human material will become entrained and the world will be healed - or at least much improved. This has proven out in every case history. Nazism (National Socialism!), Chinese Communism, Russian Communism and Chavez in Venezuela were all collectivist systems that not only claimed to aim at a more egalitarian society but also promised some form of “new man” who would be of a higher and more selfless character.

They particularly resent The Constitution of the United States because, explicit in its conception and structure, is the assumption that human beings are not necessarily good or bad but are creatures with both potentialities. With that as a founding principal, the constitution has exquisitely balanced safeguards that enable the enterprise and ambition of all while, at the same time, keeping balance, opportunity and order through competing branches with equal but countervailing powers. Its less pure and noble sounding that the leftist view, but it is reality.

Just as they can imagine that human nature is exclusively good, they “reason” that, left to their own devices, people will be happy and content in a “natural” state. They ascribe all that is painful and even evil in life to flaws in “society”, “organized religion”, “morality”, “the culture” or any other target that exerts control over human behavior. This blameless image of the individual seems soothing and comfortable but the result is, anything but comfort.

It leads to the idea that “freeing” the sweet angel of the human spirit from those controlling institutions and forces is the way to achieve peace, health, enlightenment and happiness. Wishing only to make life better and more equal for all, they set about dismantling (or, at least, arbitrarily refashioning) all the structures and values that have evolved to maintain health, peace and equilibrium- effectively freeing the dark jinn of evil which also resides in the human heart.

That is why they despise you, working people in America. That is why they feel it their duty to “educate” and “uplift” you. You know that you need to work at being good. You know that your church or synagogue has played a role in making you honorable and open. You thank god and the founders of America for the liberty and opportunity to work, live and thrive here. You are aware that the responsibility for protecting your self can never be fully entrusted to anyone else (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away!). You know that life is not balloon parties, unicorn festivals and trophies for showing up- and you know a bullshit fantasy when you see it.

But that is not “liberal” to them; they want to tear away the proven culture and safeguards and replace them with a socialism that supplants equality of opportunity with equality of outcome- otherwise known as universal misery. In the name of equality, and protecting the planet they want to bring all economic development to a standstill, redistributing wealth so that industrious and clever people earn no more than the most indolent and incapable. They call it Progress but it is really a corrupt ideology called Progressivism.

The zeal of “Progressives” springs from their “feeling” they know what is correct and needed. So sure are they that they are willing to force people to agree to their view of things- whether they like it or not. When reality becomes impossible to ignore and their “progress” leads to conflict, chaos and inequality (as it inevitably  does in the real world), it is never blamed on Progressivism, it is blamed on whatever system was formerly of is still in place. Revolution, suppression and barbarity often ensue.

Any idea that contradicts the romantic egalitarian principles is punishable. In Nazi Germany they were known as crimes against The Reich in Soviet Russia, Red China and Castro’s Cuba they were called counter-revolutionary. If you were imprisoned or exiled for those things, you were getting off lucky! And now, led by the brilliant pretenders and charlatans of the amusement and infotainment aristocracy, we are being urged to euthanize the constitutional system of government that created the finest, richest and most just nation in the history of the human race.

And for what- collectivist government led by people who are so sure that they are correct in everything that lawlessness, fiat and intentional ignorance are acceptable tools for wielding political power?

So, lets have a big round of applause for the puffy faced, pretentious aristocrats who have made it so plain what we really should fear. They lay bare the arrogance and febrile imagination of Progressivism and what it is trying to do to our culture and constitutional politics. When one side proclaims itself inviolably correct and there are no safeguards for those who disagree, you have totalitarianism.

Only imagine, if you dare, the murderous, totalitarian and nihilistic rage that would prevail if the amusement elite had their way. Ruthless totalitarianism always ends up requiring re-education camps, the punishment of retrograde (counter-revolutionary) ideas and assassination and those dangers lurk just behind their smug, superior smiles.  They are, after all, so convinced of their righteousness.

So, thanks, Meryl et al for the reminder of who you are and, more important, who Donald (Make America Great Again)  Trump is. To repurpose the defunct Hillary slogan, I’m with Him!

SOURCE

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Nicole Kidman: Americans need to support Trump

I take zero notice of celebrities usually but this is exceptional

US-based Australian actor Nicole Kidman has called for Americans to throw their support behind President-elect Donald Trump.

In a red carpet interview at the UK premiere of her latest film Lion, Kidman told TV reporter Victoria Derbyshire that “[Trump is] now elected and we, as a country, need to support whoever is the president.”

“That is what the country is based on. And however that happened, it happened, and let’s go.”

While she grew up in Australia, the 49-year-old actor was born in Hawaii and now resides in Nashville with husband Keith Urban and their two children. She holds dual US / Australian citizenship

SOURCE

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Russian Hacking and Glass Houses

Many top U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a secret intelligence operation for the purpose of discrediting Hillary Clinton, thereby helping Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

While Democrats and some Republicans are blasting Russia, they should recall dubious actions by the United States. Presidents from both parties have a long history of lying and attempting to dictate who should rule other nations.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website reminds: “…on November 1, 1963, the South Vietnamese government was overthrown. The coup had the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. President Diem was assassinated, after refusing an American offer of safety if he agreed to resign.”

President Obama undermined the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, which led to the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a leader in the radical Muslim Brotherhood. He was replaced by the current government, installed by Egyptians displeased with the radicals, despite opposition from the Obama administration.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton advocated for the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, which created a vacuum filled by terrorists who murdered the U.S. ambassador and two other Americans in Benghazi.

The flipside of wrong-headed action is wrong-headed inaction. In Iran, during the 2009 peaceful protests by those who claimed that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen the presidential election from Mir Hussein Moussavi, the top challenger, the Obama administration offered condemnation, but little else, when action might have had a positive influence. Peaceful protestors were shot in the streets, arrested, tortured and imprisoned without trial (not that any trial in Iran would have been fair) and the Ayatollahs tightened their grip. Iran is now on a course that will likely end with the development of nuclear weapons.

President Obama also urged Britons to vote against Brexit and remain with the European Union.

Is any of this morally different from what Putin allegedly orchestrated to influence the American election?

“Officials from the United States Central Command altered intelligence reports to portray a more optimistic picture of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” writes The New York Times. And as The New York Post reported in September 2015, “An open revolt is underway within the U.S. intelligence establishment, with more than 50 veteran analysts charging their reports on ISIS were systematically changed to reflect the White House line.”

Any Russian involvement in the November election appears to have uncovered information that Democrats were trying to hide and that reporters missed or ignored. What’s worse, the deeds or the way the deeds were discovered?

SOURCE

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Right-wing people are better looking than those on the left, study claims

The explanation offered below is reasonable enough but may not be true. I suspect that conservatives are better balanced emotionally and that shows up in how attractive you are. The angry people of the Left may look angry -- and that is never attractive.  Whereas contented, peaceful people look good -- probably smile more etc

From improving your salary to making you more popular, being attractive has benefits in a wide range of areas. And a new study suggests that attractiveness of a candidate also correlates with their politics.

The findings indicates that people in Europe, the US and Australia find right-wing politicians better looking than those on the left.

Research suggests that people in Europe, the US and Australia find right-wing politicians, such as Donald Trump, better looking than those on the left, such as Barack Obama

The researchers suggest that being better looking makes you more likely to earn more, and that richer people are typically more opposed to policies favoured by the left, such as progressive taxes and welfare programmes.

Good-looking people also tend to be treated better, and therefore see the world as a more just place.

Previous studies have found that the more attractive people perceive themselves to be, the lower their preference for egalitarianism – a value associated with the political left.

An international team of researchers, led by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Sweden, looked at the correlation between attractiveness and political belief in candidates.

They suggest that being better looking makes you more likely to earn more, and that richer people are typically more opposed to policies favoured by the left, such as progressive taxes and welfare programmes.

In their paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics, the researchers, led by Niclas Berggren, wrote: 'Politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia.

'Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution.'

The researchers also suggest that good-looking people tend to be treated better, and so see the world as a more just place.

Previous studies have found that the more attractive people perceive themselves to be, the lower their preference for egalitarianism – a value associated with the political left.

To assess the link between attractiveness and political values, the researchers showed people pictures of political candidates in Finland, the US and Australia, and asked them to rate them on attractiveness.

The results showed that right-wing politicians were seen as more attractive than left-wingers.

They also looked at the Finnish elections in more detail, and found that Republican voters care more about appearance in a candidate than Democratic voters.

In the study, voters who didn't know much about candidates tended to see candidates who were better looking as more likely to be conservative. Pictured left is Jeremy Corbyn, head of the labour party, and pictured right is Theresa May, head of the conservative party

And when voters didn't know much about candidates, they tended to see candidates who were better looking as more likely to be conservative.

The researchers added: 'Our model of within-party competition predicts that voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism when they do not know much about candidates and that politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections.'

SOURCE

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America’s reality divide



The dying throes of the Obama Administration have exposed the real challenge in America — we don’t know the same things to be true.  And it isn’t because of the latest fad of the left, so-called “fake” news, but instead due to the information flows that we choose to read, view or listen to and the editorial choices they make.

How else can one explain President Barack Obama stating on Nov. 20, 2016 in Lima, Peru the following, “I’m extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we haven’t had the kind of scandals that have plagued other administrations.”

The context of Obama’s almost insane remark was a question about whether President-elect Donald Trump should put all of his assets in a blind trust or not to avoid conflicts of interest.  In an interview with CNN, Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, who many believe was the power behind the throne, unabashedly took the claim a gigantic leap further saying, “The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself.”

There are real, honest and good people who actually believe this and cannot be dissuaded by facts in spite of the 663 scandals of the Obama Administration ranging from “Fast and Furious” to “Benghazi” to the “IRS targeting conservative groups” and beyond.

These same people have spent the past week posting Meryl Streep’s Golden Globe speech attacking Donald Trump and casting Hollywood as dissident, aggrieved outsiders. Of course George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and others, who somehow remain in the United States in spite of their pledge to leave, weighed in supporting Streep demonstrating the chasm between how they view the world, and how those who voted for Trump view it.

Meryl Streep is a great actress, able to display a vast array of fake emotions to meet the needs of a variety of roles.  Her performance in Sophie’s Choice was perhaps one of the most compelling in the history of cinema. And it should not be surprising that when she stood on the stage being honored by her peers that she would animate words that either she or someone else wrote.

While it is normal for people who just lost an election to feel as if they are out in the cold, it requires a special kind of self-absorption for the wealthiest, best looking and most famous in the world to cast themselves in this role. Yet, there are millions of Americans who will look at these professional fakes who take private jets to conferences on global warming and feel sorry for them.

These same people find it hard to understand that there is no difference between a baker or florist who turn away the business of a homosexual wedding and a performer who declines to perform for an Inaugural function.

But perhaps the most stunning delusional statement of them all was President Obama’s contention to George Stephanopolous on ABC News last week that race relations are better today than when he took office. When pushed by Stephanopolous about the horrific video of four blacks torturing a white disabled man, Obama expressed disgust over the actions, but dismissed it as an insignificant indicator of race relations.

CNN anchor Don Lemon perhaps best demonstrated the true racial divide that has either been exposed or further opened during the Obama Administration when he reacted to the above video stating, “I don’t think it’s evil. I don’t think it’s evil. I think these are young people, and I think they have bad home training… I have no idea who is raising these young people because no one I know on earth who is 17-years-old, or is 70-years-old, would ever think of treating another person like that. It is inhumane, and you wonder, at 18 years old, where is your parent? Where is your guardian?”

And that is the ultimate delusion facing America. The South Carolina shooter who killed nine black Christians in their prayer group is evil just as torturing a special needs white person live on Facebook is evil.

Post-Obama, America is more divided than ever, however the divide is not racial, but rather a reality divide.  This is a divide where half of the country believes that President Obama was scandal-free and the other half has been outraged by the abject abuse of power by the outgoing Administration. It is a divide where the beautiful, wealthy cultural opinion makers in Hollywood feel put upon by the rest of us, and news anchors who are supposed to tell us what is happening cannot see evil even when it is right before their eyes.

Before he was president, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln made what was seen as a politically incorrect, radical speech stating, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“The complete works of Abraham Lincoln” which was edited by Roy Bastrop puts this speech into context reported Lincoln saying this to his friends who urged him to calm his “house divided” language, “The proposition is indisputably true … and I will deliver it as written. I want to use some universally known figure, expressed in simple language as universally known, that it may strike home to the minds of men in order to rouse them to the peril of the times.”

Just as Lincoln worried about the future of his nation, it is fair to ask 159 years later if the current reality divide is the modern equivalent of Lincoln’s “house divided” and if so, can our nation stand in light of it.

SOURCE

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Kentucky passes right-to-work, Missouri, New Hampshire on its heels

For the first time in nearly a century, Kentucky’s congress is dominated by the Republican Party, and they have already begun passing policy to empower workers. Kentucky has joined the rest of the South in passing a right-to-work law, allowing workers to opt out of joining labor unions.

The legislation acts as the first victory in what The Hill’s Reid Wilson on Jan. 8 called an assault on core pillars of the Democratic coalition. But this right to work legislation means more than a successful fight against Democrats, it is hopefully the first in a long line of policy which will prioritize economic successful and individual freedoms.

Right-to-work laws provide new economic opportunity to the 27 states they currently exist in. By removing barriers to employment such as mandated union membership, right-to-work law adds jobs to the economy and makes companies more competitive.

These states not only experience economic growth, they experience this growth in crucial sectors of the American economy. As  Luke Hilgemann and David Fladeboe explained in the Wall Street Journal of March 2015 explains, in states with right-to-work legislation, personal incomes grew 12 percent more than in state without these laws. Once cost of living is considered, right-to-work states still maintain a 4.1 percent higher per capita person income than non-right-to-work states.

The Democratic Party policy of forced unionization does not just force Americans to comply with union law, it forces them to remain uncompetitive in the national economy.

As the Washington Examiner’s Sean Higgins on Jan. 9 furthers, Kentucky was just the first.  The Missouri legislature, one of few states to go red in the 2016 election to not yet have right to work legislation in place, has already begun discussions to put right-to-work legislation on the books. Patrick Semmens, spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee predicts 2017 will be a historic year against forced unionism, with New Hampshire expected to pass right-to-work law this year as well.

Despite Republican control, labor unions across the country are preparing for a strong defensive. Even in Iowa, a proud right-to-work state, unions on the defensive are eager to regain control.

In Wisconsin, Michigan, and West Virginia, lawsuits have already been filed challenging the constitutionality of the new laws. These group argue that non-union members still receive benefits from unions, even without membership. These individuals would then be “taking” from the unions.

While this argument has had wavering success within district courts, no federal court has agreed. The National Right to Work Foundation cites Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, Communications Workers of America v. Beck, and Air Line Pilots Association v. Miller as only a few of the key Supreme Court case ruling that individuals cannot be forced to comply with union membership that they do not consent to.

While Democratic controlled states continue to fight against right-to-work law nationally, more than half of the states in the country have decided to free their workers of forced unionism. As states like Kentucky experience the economic success to push workers into high wages and better standards of living, the rest of the nation could be in their heels.

SOURCE

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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I’m a Lifelong Democrat. Here Are 3 Reasons I Pulled the Lever for Trump

Michael Reeb tells a story from the heart

Asking with a terseness normally associated with changing religions or declaring a new nationality, many people that know me have politely cornered me and demanded: “How could you—a lifelong, left-leaning, Obama-believing, Indy-Dem voter—vote for Donald Trump?”

My answer to them is simple: Our nation is in the middle of a crisis. We are stuck at the crossroad of hometown humiliation, job fabrication, and cultural mutation. Here’s what I mean by that.

Hometown Humiliation

My reasons for going Trump this election cycle weren’t a surprise to my hometown friends in Rust Belt Butler, Pennsylvania, home of the world’s first Jeep.

In Butler, we’ve seen the destruction of our middle class, the loss of our factories, and the pollution of our clean water (Butler is now also home to the nation’s second most polluted waterway, the Connoquenessing). At the same time, we’ve had record-high heroin use and juvenile jailing rates, and the population has shrunk nearly every year since the 1970s.

Butler is my hometown, and Butler is in trouble. My hometown friends and I understand this plain as day, but the nation hasn’t been listening to the decades-old problem of hometown humiliation.

Trump proved to be different, and unpredictably so. Fate would have it that the very last person I would have predicted to show love for the common man would be one of the world’s richest men. A businessman who seems to have been hurt the least by our nation’s outsourcing has become a champion of the working class.

While Hillary Clinton was hiding from press conferences and startling the world with her hard-left policy dash to catch her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Trump was out visiting Pittsburgh.

While he was out building bridges with working America on any given day, Clinton could be found ducking reporters, recovering from her husband’s latest gaffe about Black Lives Matter. This was but one of many “blunder-then-bunker” examples that came to define the Clinton campaign.

Did Trump blunder? Daily! But his ultimate atonement was that he showed love for the American people and is a patriot. It’s a lot easier to forgive a blundering candidate hugging the American flag in a room full of blue-collar Americans, than one hiding in the back of a 737 dodging press questions.

The trust between small-town America and her political representatives had been broken. As with all great relationships in turmoil, Trump knew he needed to put in quality time and a true love for the small-town cause in order to kick-start the healing process between Rust-Belt America and the national leadership.

Trump unapologetically did just that. His candidacy was the beginning of the healing process for humiliated hometown America, which had been desperate to find a champion.

Job Fabrication

Statistically, Trump was up against a hard economic game. On paper, President Barack Obama has created jobs every month for years and broken many “records” numerically. There’s just one problem—jobs are not just numbers.

In the wake of the promised tidal wave of more and more jobs, somehow fewer jobs appeared. Not fewer in number, necessarily, but in quality.

Butler lost its factories when I was living there in my teens, and they never returned. Some of my most vivid family memories regarding work consist of suffering the humiliation of my uncle being flown to Mexico to train his factory “replacement,” with the threat of no severance pay if he objected.

When you take a man’s craft away from him, no numeric of fast food, retail, or administrative work positions can ever replace that feeling of seeing something of value that you created move down the line and into America’s homes. As we’ve heard it said a thousand times: “Not everything valuable is numeric, and not everything numeric is valuable.”

Our economy had sold us out, and not just in terms of income or the American dream. The corporate and elite classes of America took the craft away from the men and women who built the Jeeps of Butler County that beat Hitler in World War II. Their new “jobs” weren’t jobs at all; we were the victims of job fabrication.

When Trump descended from his golden tower in New York City, I expected a much different presidential announcement. Maybe something witty about how the other side doesn’t understand “real” economics, or perhaps a Ronald Reagan quote from a “gotcha” debate moment.

I was prepared for another in a long line of Republican gaffes about women’s anatomical health, another canned attempt at communicating political ideology, or at the very least something reminiscent of the dehydrated Florida politician that I had on YouTube repeat not so long ago.

In place of that, I was shocked to find a Trump openly criticizing the economic policies that have led to America’s economic decline. He spoke of jobs being lost to China and Mexico, and asked one of the most biting economic questions I’ve ever heard in my life: “When was the last time you saw a Chevy car in Tokyo?”

Somehow, up in a multimillion-dollar New York tower overlooking what seemed like the whole world, Trump heard that our jobs had been fabricated—and he sounded like the only one who had heard.

So we heard him out. And when he unloaded a mouthful of rage on his political opponents about the issue, it left many of them speechless. And it left many of his Rust Belt critics speechless, too.

I don’t know a soul back home who would stand 100 percent behind every single comment Trump has made—but I know many that still trust him despite his gaffes.

We’ve all had that mean-spirited co-worker or boss who had the sole saving grace of being amazingly skilled at their job. That is Trump. You may hate him for his thin skin and explosive “tweet-punches,” but I knew that from the vantage point of my hometown, considering the other candidates, we had no other choice.

With no other boxer to bet on in America’s most dislikable election, and as a last-ditch message of desperation to the political establishment that had sold us out for years, we simply had to believe that Trump could rise to the occasion for us.

A Cultural Mutation

Hypocrisy was as rank as always in this political cycle, but the sources of it were most surprising. Some in the media criticized Trump’s tendency to rate women numerically. This is quite easy to criticize, until we ask ourselves why over 7 million Americans watch women rated numerically every year in our very own swimsuit-laden Miss America pageants.

Should we really be outraged at one and OK with the other?

Ironically, it was not priests and holy men that were castigating Trump’s comments, but a hypocritical media that had done or reported on the exact same things they accused Trump of doing.

Rust Belt America had already been bruised from the last self-righteous political campaign victory in 2012, which played it neutral on moral issues, but ended up trying to legislate men into children’s bathrooms by 2016.

Hometown Americans understood this hypocrisy and, unlike the “tender” millennial generation, didn’t seem to mind a little rough talk. Upon reflection, the American people knew that they had said worse things, or viewed worse things, felt worse things, and even heard the same things from other political leaders (think President Richard Nixon).

The final straw for hometown Americans was Clinton herself—shiftlessly avoiding any hard commitment to a policy, and attempting to mount a cultural attack against a man who is enormously versed in pop culture.

Criticizing Trump’s use of celebrities turned out to be a catastrophic and costly move for Clinton. Her accusations of sexism against Trump followed by her complete, open-armed endorsement of Miley Cyrus and the hardly-PC Jay-Z revealed her selective moralism.

Those paying attention saw that Clinton’s posture of indignation was simply that: a posture.

In the end, my once go-to party had morphed into a party of unrecognizably veiled actors, much like the Hypokrinesthai—ancient actors wearing masks, from whom we derive the English word “hypocrite.” But whereas those once-famous masked actors would play one character, only to pull back the mask to reveal the real hero underneath, this Democratic “hero” was much different.

The Democratic Party did not yield a heroic protagonist this election cycle, but a cultural mutation, constantly in flux and fearful of definition. To many lifelong Democratic voters, Clinton was morally unrecognizable. In political terms, she was the epitome of lukewarm—which, if anything, meant she would not stand up for hometown America.

Given all these factors, many like myself from small-town, Rust Belt America could no longer afford to take the establishment’s candidate by faith. Trump saw the true state of our hometowns, our fake jobs, and the hypocritical elite, and was willing to break every political norm in the book to address these critical issues.

So we voted for Trump. And he won—big league.

SOURCE

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Disgusting racist liberals target Jeff Sessions’ baby granddaughter

Leftists are so sure that conservatives are racist -- when it is in fact they who are obsessed with race

The confirmation hearing of Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions started as expected, with a torrent of psychotic, racist abuse from liberal reporters and activists.

Shockingly, the most disgusting comments weren’t directed at Sessions, but his baby granddaughter, who is Asian.

When cameras panned to the toddler sitting in her grandfather’s lap, MTV “culture writer” Ira Madison exploded with racist rage.

“Sessions, sir, kindly return this Asian baby to the Toys “R” Us you stole her from,” he tweeted.

Because non-white children aren’t human, but toys?

Session’s daughter Ruth is married to an Asian man.

Thousands of Twitter users immediately blasted Madison, who instead of apologizing, doubled down on his belief that whites can’t have grandchildren of another race unless it’s a political stunt.

He continued to taunt Sessions, accusing him of somehow planning years in advance to have an Asian granddaughter as a political ploy.

Madison defended the tweets by claiming that Sessions supported laws in the 1800s discriminating against Asians. Not only was Sessions not an elected official in the 1800s, he was not born until 1946.

Madison eventually deleted the tweets after users began pressuring MTV to fire him.

Other liberals tried to stop the hearings by throwing physical temper tantrums in the Senate room. Capitol Police had to escort out several protesters who began shrieking while dressed as Ku Klux Klan members.

SOURCE

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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.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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