Success of Trump-Putin summit to prevent nuclear war between U.S. and Russia missed by establishment amid hysteria over hacking

By Robert Romano

If one did not know any better, he or she might conclude that the single most important function of the President of the United States is to secure the computer email systems of the nation’s privately run major political parties against intrusion by foreign intelligence agencies.

Or, that the only topic of importance that was discussed at the Helsinki, Finland summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16 was charges brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against Russia’s GRU for hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta emails and publishing them on Wikileaks on 2016.

Such is the hysterical world that we live in today. Believe it or not, however, the President, whoever occupies the office, really does have even more important issues to contend with. Don’t believe me?

When it comes to U.S.-Russian relations, there are very real geopolitical issues between the two countries, the world’s foremost nuclear powers, where cooperation between the two presidents could bring about better outcomes than conflict.

That is the major reason to have a summit. In short, to prevent war, but more broadly, to address differences and, if possible, to find areas of agreement.

Fortunately for everyone, President Trump did find those areas of agreement.

On nuclear proliferation, current disagreements between the two powers over the implementation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned all nuclear weapons with ranges from 310 and 3,420 miles, were reportedly addressed. Both the U.S. and Russia have said each side is in violation of the treaty with the development of ground-based missile systems banned by the treaty.

For the uninitiated, the INF Treaty is the bedrock of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control regime. It was Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s crowning diplomatic achievement and signaled the coming end of the Cold War. It set the stage for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991. These two treaties were the first ever reductions of nuclear weapons.

So, the fact that the agreements are now failing would be a matter of concern for not just the U.S. and Russia, but for the entire world, because they threaten world peace. A new nuclear arms race would be a catastrophe. It would also be an urgent matter for the U.S. and Russian presidents to address, which, thankfully, they did when they met on July 16.

Now, it will be up to the national security councils of both nations to follow up and see about bringing each side into compliance with the INF Treaty. No new agreement is needed. Simply implementation of the existing treaty, which calls for monitors, analysis and demonstrations to test the ranges of the missile systems.

Other areas of agreement came, again on the nuclear front, where Putin was said by Trump to support the President’s agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Being a nearby neighbor of North Korea — the two countries share a border of 11 miles — Russia is in a position to apply both pressure and give encouragement to North Korea to make good on its agreement. Russia, a net exporter of petroleum and natural gas, is also in a position to factor into the sanctions regime.

Again, achieving agreement here on Korean denuclearization is better than not having agreement. This is something that both sides can play a role in facilitating, along with China, and keeping everyone on the same page. It’s helpful to have Russia involved as a positive force. It’s certainly better than if they were actively undermining the agreement.

In Ukraine, the Trump and Putin discussed the implementation of the 2014 Minsk Accords, which is a Russian-Ukrainian agreement to help settle the civil war there. Since that is a location where U.S. and Russian forces could realistically and potentially wind up in armed conflict, it is extremely important that the U.S. and Russia be on the same page.

Elsewhere, the U.S. and Russia via Trump and Putin agreed to work towards the security of Israel’s borders. This follows on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to Moscow to discuss Russia helping to keep Iranian forces operating in Syria away from the Syrian-Israeli border.

Obviously, there are many complexities to the situation on the ground in Syria presently, but again, this is an area where Russia could help a lot to defuse the situation and prevent a wider war in the region, which again, could involve the U.S. and Russia at opposite ends. With both U.S. and Russian forces operating in theater, getting deconfliction right is critical. The two sides must be talking.

By the way, there are no guarantees the cooperation between the U.S. and Russia will work out in everyone or even any one of these areas. That really depends a lot on the relationship Trump manages to establish with Putin and how well they can work together.

Scoff if you will, but these talks are utterly necessary. We don’t boycott U.S.-Russian relations just because Hillary Clinton lost an election. Sorry. There’s more at stake than partisan politics.

As President Trump said at the summit, “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

Yes, the issue of the 2016 hacking was also addressed at the summit by Trump and Putin, but quite honestly, it pales in comparison to the threat of war. Which is more important? Preventing an accidental nuclear war or finding out who sent the spear phishing messages that enabled hackers to access John Podesta’s emails? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

Now more than ever, we need to have a president who can initiate a direct, one-on-one conversation with Russia to defuse these conflicts and set the world on a path towards peace and security, not take us to the brink. Right now, that is President Trump. And thank goodness he is doing his job. In the nuclear age, every day we wake up is a gift. Never forget it.

SOURCE 

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Loonies from the Left

by Ryan Messano

Since the left is full of those who have issues with drug use, and can't contain sex in marriage between a man and a woman, combined with a huge problem with learning and comprehending history, they simply don't understand that their mistakes have been repeated before, and were and always will be, disasters.  In their personal lives, they sacrifice the future on the altar of the immediate, and their policies do the same to societies.  They are termites, eating incessantly away at the home of the American body politic, frantically trying to destroy it from within.

The Peter Strzok hearings were remarkable for showing just how corrupt Democrats are the Praetorian Guard, along with their media and academia, to protect corruption in our nation.  Peter Strzok is about the only person in the world who doesn't know he's biased.  He even stated the definition of bias in response to GOP representative Raul Labrador.   However, he couldn't understand how his own actions were biased.  It's one of the greatest examples I've ever seen of a person being unaware of their own faults when everyone else could see it.  Leftists can't see their own corruption so they naturally defend his corruption. 

Louie Gohmert unloaded on Strzok by going after his smirking and nearly succeeding in wiping his arrogant smirk from his face by wondering aloud how his face looked when he lied to his wife about having an affair with Lisa Page.  Of course, the Democrats were instantly up in arms, squawking about, 'have you no decency', and, 'you need to take your meds'. 

You would think both sides would agree on an egregious case of bias, but the Democrats keep digging their grave even deeper, by frantically ob-Strzok-ting justice.  Trey Gowdy ripped Strzok, rightly so, but Strzok thought he was the injured party.    Peter Strzok also complained about being maligned, and said he did what he did out of honor to America, to defend the honor of Khizr Khan, the Muslim father of a deceased American war Hero, who tried to defend Islam, by pretending it is just like every other religion. 

Islam is definitely not like other religions.  Democrat representative Steve Cohen gave proof that his cheese has slid well off his cracker, by saying that Strzok deserved a Purple Heart for his malfeasance and corruption.  It was a dizzying display that the Democrats are a menace to our society, and everyone who votes Democrat is historically inept and corrupt.

 Dear Reader, the WB liberals are in a bad way, and though they think the opposite is true, they need our sympathy and commiseration, that they can one day awake from the hallucination sensation they are currently experiencing.  Some of them have had some pretty strong drugs, so the delusion is quite strong in more than a few.  They rely on their 'experts', 'popularity', 'anecdotes', 'studies', academic background, and other bogus evaluative techniques to prop up their deceived view of the world.

When Trump met with Putin, he opened by saying whatever happened, he would be criticized for it.  Boy, was he ever right.  The left was naturally up in arms.  I went to the Huffy Puffy and it was completely full of the usual nonsense that we were now Russian puppets.  Whoever pays for these liberal messages believes the Americans are stupid and dumb, and they aren't far off the mark.  John Brennan, the corrupt former CIA head, came out and lectured us that this was treason.

Democrats were gulping their medications frantically.  The fake news media was hysterically losing it's mind.  God forbid Donald Trump actually call out our corrupt intelligence agencies, which still has yet to uncover a shred of Russian collusion in our election, and attempt to make peace with Vladimir Putin, who is actually closer to America's Founding Ideals than that Marxist Snake Barack Obama was. 

America did Russia a huge favor and helped rid it of Communism.  Russia is doing us a favor and delivered us from the near Communist Hillary Clinton, if in fact they did hack the DNC's e-mails, which fact has never been verified. 

Putin has issues encroaching on other nation's, and America still has sanctions on Russia.  But the weakness of Obama invited aggression, as shrinking the American military was a very bad idea.   Leftists think the gubmint is to be Big Daddy to everyone who wants a handout.  These leftists live privileged lives and hate to ever be bothered with the poor, but they will demand Joe Taxpayer be taxed to the hilt to pay for anyone who likes things free.

It has been an eventful past few days, and it will get worse.  The left is raging to get back in power, as power, money, and pleasure are all that matter to them. Their lives, without these three things, mean absolutely  nothing, and so they literally die when deprived of them.

They cloak their greed, lust, and evil with lying pretenses of  helping the poor and punishing the greedy, but deep down, they are every bit as wicked and even more so, than every last wicked deed they try to condemn.  Just examine, dear reader, the language of the WB liberal.  They claim they care about the poor, but they use the filthiest ideas and words to attack those they disagree with.  They use language no sane adult would ever use, especially not in the presence of children.  Then, they and their cohorts, criticize conservatives and give this filthy language a pass.  They are world class hypocrites, and if it weren't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all.   

Just remember, when the left's ideals rule a nation, the French Revolution happens.  When conservative Christians rule, the American Revolution occurs.

SOURCE 

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Stare Decisis is Like a Street Sign: "Drive Only On the Left!"

By Rich Kozlovich

I just read Bastasch’s article, "Brett Kavanaugh put a serious damper on EPA power grabs", which gave me more confidence in this man, at least until he ended the article saying this about overturning the Endangerment Finding. He says:

"However, Adler (a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law) said it’s unlikely the court overturn Massachusetts v. EPA because of its strong tradition of “stare decisis” — latin for “to stand by things decided.” “It’s one thing to overturn a bad constitutional decision because Congress can’t fix that,” Adler said, though he added a Kennedy-less court could narrow the application of Massachusetts v. EPA. “It’s not going to be overturned,” he said."

For a law professor to say such a thing on such an issue is clearly demonstrating his bias in my opinion, especially since the adoration to "stare decisis" is a one way street for leftists.

I’m not sure how Kavanaugh would vote on a new Endangerment Finding case, but we need to get rid of this idea of “stare decisis” as the deciding factor.

These leftist justices have overturned “stare decisis” over and over again, and have been lauded by the very leftists who claim to adore the concept. Let's try and get this right - "stare decisis" - is not written in stone and the only reason to openly support it as something that’s “sacred” is nothing more than a public relations scam by anyone involved in politics or law. The left only 'adores' the concept if someone supports any of the leftist decisions that overturned "stare decisis" decisions of the past. Any effort to overturn leftist decisions that have no Constitutional basis other than what's called the "penumbra of the Constitution" is sacrilege to the law and the Constitution according to the left.

"In United States constitutional law, the penumbra includes a group of rights derived, by implication, from other rights explicitly protected in the Bill of Rights. These rights have been identified through a process of "reasoning-by-interpolation", where specific principles are recognized from "general idea" that are explicitly expressed in other constitutional provisions......."

An open ended concept that allows for abuse!

The word penumbra originally was a scientific term "created to describe the shadows that occur during eclipses." And I think the word shadows is more than appropriate when its used in relationship with the Constitution.   The "penumbra" of the Constitution "implies" rights not actually written in the Constitution, and in fact the concept allows for the ability to define, redefine and even ignore the actual and simple language of the Constitution, all of which has been done by the federal judiciary at every level. All in an effort to make the Constitution a "Living Document".

The problem with that is all the "living" changes are determined by the wrong branch of government. The Constitution never gave the federal judiciary to right to "legislate" via some indefinable term that's been adopted by those whose one desire is to destroy the Constitution. The unelected Judiciary have overstepped their Constitutional bounds into the territory the Constitution assigns to the Legislature.

It's always amazing how devoted progressives, socialists, leftists and liberals are to the Constitution, when it's convenient. But in reality, this is the document they've called a dusty old document and many early Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson considered an "impediment to human progress".  Nothing has changed!  Any concerns they express about devotion to "stare decisis" is strictly politics.

Now, that brings me back to green issues, Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court. Here’s one thing I don’t think many know and I think could be a big factor in deciding any green issue that comes before SCOTUS.

Who was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother?

Ann Burford Gorsuch, a one time head of the EPA during the Reagan administration who was eviscerated by the left and the green movement in and out of government, and those she called "pack journalists." I have no doubt about his view of the leftist swamp Sand their green misanthropic allies.

Will that have an impact on Kavanaugh?    I don't know, except I have no doubt Gorsuch has a much clearer understanding of all these green issues and the people involved than any of the rest.  And I'm confident he has the ability to explain them properly.

As for Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor? They're hopeless. They couldn't be convinced day was light or night was dark if it wasn't supportive of some kind of leftist clabber or other.  Not a one of them pass the test of unbiased open mindedness the left demands of Trump's appointments or a rational understanding of what the Constitution really says, often times creating policies that have shattered generations of Americans. 

SOURCE 

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Summit Smackdown

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that administration officials are communicating with Russian leaders about a follow-up summit this fall in Washington, DC. Needless to say, the left-wing media went nuts.

What other president would have the courage to do that after the fallout from the Helsinki summit? Donald Trump is fearless and a natural fighter.

Throughout the campaign and much of his presidency, we were told that Trump was stupid and erratic and would get us into a nuclear war. (We heard the same things about Ronald Reagan too.) Now they are attacking Trump because he is trying “too hard” to make peace.

Rush Limbaugh asked a key question. He noted that Trump’s critics keep saying it was outrageous that he did not confront Vladimir Putin during the Helsinki press conference. They have no idea what he said behind closed doors.

But can any of the critics name the date and place of any summit when a U.S. president attacked a foreign leader with whom he was trying to negotiate? They can’t because summits aren’t meant for smackdowns but diplomacy.

The left-wing media keeps saying that Trump won’t follow the rules. But it is the Left that is constantly changing the rules, moving the goal posts, and demanding something that has never happened.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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New Scientist "gets" IQ

"New" is an old Leftist code-word for "Leftist" but is rarely used that way these days. But some names originating in the first half of C20 carry on into the present:  "New Statesman","New School", "New Theatre" etc.  And "New Scientist" magazine is part of that.  And it still does have a Leftist slant. They are apostles of global warming, for instance.  So it is a surprise that they seem now to have largely thrown off the Leftist phobia about IQ. Some excerpts below from their current issue which are entirely reasonable

Far from being an indefinable concept, a single measure of intelligence underpins our problem-solving, musicality and even creativity and emotional skills

When researchers talk about intelligence, they are referring to a specific set of skills that includes the abilities to reason, learn, plan and solve problems. The interesting thing is that people who are good at one of them tend to be good at all of them. These skills seem to reflect a broad mental capability, which has been dubbed general intelligence or g.

That’s not to say people don’t specialise in different areas. Some will be particularly good at solving mathematical problems, others will have particularly strong verbal or spatial abilities, and so on. When it comes to intelligence tests, although these specific skills account for about half of the variation between people’s performance, the other half is down to g. “If you took a sample of 1000 people and gave them all IQ tests, the people who do better on the vocabulary test will also do better, on average, on the reaction speed test, and so on,” says Stuart Ritchie, an intelligence researcher at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

This seems to fly in the face of old ideas. In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued for the existence of multiple intelligences, including “bodily-kinaesthetic”, “logical-mathematical” and “musical”. However, most researchers now believe these categories reflect different blends of abilities, skills and personality traits, not all of which are related to cognitive ability.

SOURCE 

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Trump not hurt by controversies about Russia, immigration

Trump’s overall job-approval rating in the poll stands at 45 percent among registered voters — up 1 point from June — while 52 percent of voters disapprove of his job.

That stability in Trump’s numbers stands out given the controversies and news over the past month — the separated families at the border, Trump’s contentious NATO meetings, his less contentious meeting with Russia’s Vladimir

Indeed, the new NBC/WSJ poll finds the president’s approval rating among Republican voters at 88 percent — the highest of his presidency — and 29 percent of all voters strongly approve of his job, which is another high for Trump in the poll.

“The more Trump gets criticized by the media, the more his base seems to rally behind him,” says Yang, the Democratic pollster.

SOURCE 

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We should IGNORE Leftist accusations

At most, dismiss their accusations in a few words as "Fake news" and leave it at that

It’s time we took a hard look at what we’ve been doing, that we might stop doing what’s not working and striven to better understand where we’ve made gains.

Our adversary, the political Left, does what it does always for strategic or tactical reasons. Continuous awareness of that core precept is vital if we’re to triumph over it.

The multitudinous, unending “accusations” Leftists have leveled at Trump Administration officials have had little to do with the facts, and far more with the prospect of gain for the Left. Their allies in the media march in lockstep with their tactics.

Allow me to repeat an old parable that has great relevance to media relations:

Some years ago, a theater impresario whom we shall call Smith, whose current production Hoity-Toity was, shall we say, not repaying its production costs received a phone call from Jones, a well-known reporter for the prestigious publication Theater Life. Their conversation ran as follows:

     "Mr. Smith," Jones said, "I'm calling to ask a few questions about Hoity-Toity."

     "Go right ahead," Smith said.

     "Well, first of all," Jones said, "the talk is that Hoity-Toity is falling deeply into arrears and will soon be closed. Is that the case?"

     Smith, a careful and experienced man, counted to ten before answering. "I would imagine that if I were to say no, your story in tomorrow's edition would be headlined 'Smith Denies Hoity-Toity Near To Closing.' Am I correct?"

     "Well, yes," Jones said. "Something like that, anyway."

     "Well, then," Smith said, "I'll answer your question if you'll answer one for me. How's that sound?"

     "Fair enough," Jones said warily. "What's your question?"

     "Mr. Jones, is it true that your wife has syphilis?"

     "What?" Jones shrieked. "Why are you asking me that? What put such an idea into your head?"

     "Oh, you know how the rumor mill churns," Smith said breezily. "But, as it happens, you're on speakerphone and Davis is here from Variety. If you were to answer no, he might have a story in tomorrow's edition headlined 'Jones Denies Wife Has Syphilis.' What would you think of a story like that?"

     There was a long silence on the line. Finally, Jones said, "All right, Smith. I take your point."

What would be the effect of a story headlined “Smith Denies Hoity-Toity Near To Closing” – ? It would be to reinforce in the reader’s mind two key elements: “Hoity-Toity” and “closing.” It would suggest that the show is a failure. It would discourage potential patrons of the show. There’s a strong presumption in the human mind that “my fellow humans, when they move or act en masse, are usually right.” We might deplore it. We might call it “the behavior of lemmings,” but it’s there...and you respond to it too.

That suggests that it’s a mistake to reply to, or to attempt to refute, those “accusations.” Every time we do so, we reinforce the key elements of the accusation and thus compound the losses it inflicts on us. Worse, we give the Left a particle of respectability it doesn’t deserve and should not get. Note that this does not imply answering with Left-like vitriol, but rather ignoring them, including their media handmaidens.

There are no gains to be had by responding. Not even minor ones.

Just now, for example, the Trump Administration is racking up the successes in economics and international relations. Those who are paying attention are aware of this – Right and Left. The Left’s denigrations, accusations, and insults are intended to distract the public from Trump’s successes. To the extent that it’s making any gains in that fashion, the credit must go to those who’ve managed to obstruct the real news – that is, reportage about what’s really happening. For among Americans aware of the gains the Administration is accumulating, Trump’s popularity and overall approval are advancing. Therefore it behooves the Left that those gains either go unreported, or are displaced from public attention by its attacks.

The only countermeasure is to keep our focus on what the Administration has achieved, and to talk it up without pausing to respond to the Left’s stream of distractive emissions.

More HERE

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What The Heck Is Hillary Wearing? “She looks like she’s in a hospital.”



Hospital shoes too?

Two Times Presidential Hopeful Loser Hilary Clinton took to the stage to bash President Trump and she looked like hell.  With disheveled hair and wearing what looked like a hospital gown, Clinton got more attention for how she looked that from what she said.

Hillary Clinton spoke at Ozyfest, a two-day festival in Central Park, on Saturday where she complained about Russia and Vladimir Putin for almost 45 minutes straight during a Q&A session with Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collection.

During her diatribe, Clinton claimed that the Russians are still trying to hack into our computer systems  and may actually hack into the voting machines and servers that count the votes during the 2018 midterm election.

SOURCE 

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Trump Names 'The Real Enemy of the People'

Pushing back against the liberal media on Thursday, President Donald Trump declared them to be "the real enemy of the people."

"The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media," Trump tweeted at 9:30 a.m. "I look forward to our second meeting [with Putin] so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more. There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems...but they can ALL be solved!" the president wrote.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump tweeted that the "fake news media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin. We are doing MUCH better than any other country!"

And: "The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They make up stories without any backup, sources or proof. Many of the stories written about me, and the good people surrounding me, are total fiction. Problem is, when you complain you just give them more publicity. But I’ll complain anyway!"

Trump's comments on Monday at a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin produced scathing reviews from current and former government officials; scorn from liberal cable networks; and even admonishment from a few conservative outlets.

One of the main criticisms was President Trump's tough talk to allies and his apparent deference to an adversary.

In an interview with CBS's Jeff Glor following the NATO summit, Trump was asked to name his biggest global foes:

"I think we have a lot of foes," Trump said. "I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe." He also named China and Russia.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted a "told-you-so." "I told you so! The European Union just slapped a Five Billion Dollar fine on one of our great companies, Google. They truly have taken advantage of the U.S., but not for long!"

In another tweet, the president also thanked "Fox & Friends" for playing video clips of the "many times" Trump has recognized Russian meddling.

SOURCE 

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Why Trump doesn’t hate Russia

The president’s refusal to embrace Russophobia is no bad thing

US president Donald Trump is in Helsinki for a one-on-one (plus translators), no-advisers-allowed meeting with Russian premier Vladimir Putin. And seemingly everyone is convinced that Russia is undermining liberal democracy, indulging in nefarious interventions around the world, and even dead-set on reviving some larger Russia, for which the annexation of Crimea was only the start. Everyone, that is, except Trump.

So, on the eve of this most black-boxed of presidential tête-à-têtes, his own Justice Department issued an indictment of 12 Russian intelligence agents for hacking the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Senators and 18 Democratic members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs have called on Trump to abort the meeting. And, perhaps most remarkable of all, Trump’s own team constantly expressed a fear of Russian aggression.

Just this past week, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, compared the danger of Russian cyberattacks to the terrorist threat posed to the US in the run-up to 9/11. In his trepidation, Coats was merely following Trump’s former national security adviser, General HR McMaster, who warned last year: ‘Russia and China are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.’ Likewise, defence secretary Jim Mattis, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and current national security adviser John Bolton have all been sounding the alarm about Russia’s intentions, and urging Trump to go in hard on Russia’s electoral meddling.

Yet Trump seemingly refuses to toe his team’s line, let alone that of Congress or the Justice Department. Instead, he seems content to accept the Kremlin’s contention that ‘the meddling never happened’, or, as he put it in November, ‘Every time [Putin] sees me, he says, “I didn’t do that”, and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it’. More striking still, some worry that Trump may even recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2015 as legitimate, despite the US, the EU and NATO all condemning it as a violation of international law and subsequently imposing sanctions. Trump, however, has said that Crimea ought to be part of Russia, given that the majority of Crimeans speak Russian. ‘That is not the position of the United States’, countered Bolton.

And that’s the problem. Regarding Russia, Trump’s administration, which is meant to be articulating the ‘position of the United States’, seems torn in two, with Trump on one side, and everybody else on the other. It is as if there are in fact two positions of the United States on Russia. Trump says simply ‘if we can get along with Russia, that’s a good thing’. Everybody else says you can’t trust Russia, because they’re the bad guys, usually with a reference to Putin’s past as a KGB agent. Trump will be having a spectacularly private chat with Putin. Everybody else will be working on possibly public agreements and disagreements with Moscow. As the New York Times puts it, ‘Trump is wholly untethered from his administration when it comes to dealing with Moscow’.

But too many seem to misunderstand the reasons for this untethering. They seem to think that it has something to do with Trump the person. So they psychoanalyse him, speculating on his attraction to Putin’s machismo, his desire to see reflected in the Russian president some of the qualities – strength, cunning, and sheer butchness – that he himself would like to have. Others go deeper into more conspiratorial territory, either outright turning Trump into some lurid parody of the Manchurian Candidate, or alluding to the Kremlin’s possession of a recording of some tawdry hookers-and-hotel escapade which it might or might not be using to blackmail him.

Yet perhaps it is not Trump who has the Russia problem. Perhaps it is not Trump who has the Putin fixation. In fact, it is the American political class, indeed the political and media classes of much of the West, which has developed – or rather revived – an obsession with Russia as The Enemy. Have they not turned it into an object of evil, determined to undermine and corrode the institutions of the West? Hence Russia is blamed for the bloodshed in Syria, despite the West’s considerably larger role in the unravelling of the entire Middle East. It is condemned for the conflict in Ukraine, despite NATO and the EU’s longstanding provocations. And, above all, it is held responsible, in some distant behind-the-scenes way, for the election of Trump, Brexit and every other Western popular revolt of recent years. That is why Russian meddling in the US presidential election has become such a crusade for the US political establishment. It explains away the very real estrangement of the political class from those they have for too long failed to represent. It explains away their failure to speak for the whole of society, rather than just a professional, middle-class coastal stratum. It explains away the domestic reasons for the erosion of the political establishment’s grip on power.

Trump is no political visionary. But neither is he part of the political establishment. After all, he was the beneficiary of people’s turn against the establishment. And, as such, he is not overdetermined to see Russia as the enemy, the baleful power upturning the world. He stands apart from almost everybody else in Washington DC and in Western foreign-policymaking circles in approaching Russia and Putin as a state entity that it might be possible to deal with.

And that is too much for too many to bear. Domestically it is too much for those politicians, and their cheerleaders, who have found in the spectre of Russian electoral meddling a readymade excuse for their own political fall. And internationally, it is too much to bear for those Western political elites, seeking refuge in NATO and the EU, which have found, in facing down the spectre of Russian military malignity, a raison d’être. The split in Trump’s administration reflects the deeper split between those who have a need to conjure Russia up as an existential threat, and those who, in Trump’s case, clearly do not.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Trump Haters Take To Twitter In Vile, Sexist Attacks On Kimberley Guilfoyle Following Rumors Of Her Exit From Fox News

The rumors have barely been out about Kimberly Guilfoyle leaving Fox News and already the disgusting attacks have begun on social media.

Rumors surfaced this week that Guilfoyle will be leaving to join the pro-Trump super PAC, America First.

But the hatred and nastiness on social media against Guilfoyle, who is currently dating Donald Trump Jr., was immediate.

Amazingly, the same left that is aghast at President Trump supposedly lacking all civility painted a very telling self-portrait.

The unconfirmed report unleashed stunning responses on Twitter that were nothing short of shameful, vulgar and sexist.

SOURCE 

The insults were too unpleasant for me to reproduce here -- JR

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‘Trump is a Russian plant’: birtherism for liberals

The idea that Trump is in Putin’s pocket is a feverish conspiracy theory

The cultural and political set has lost its mind. That’s the most striking thing to come out of Donald Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki yesterday. Not Trump’s refusal to believe the US intelligence agencies that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 election, by hacking into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign. This we already knew. Trump said as much after he met Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific summit in November. No, what was far more surprising, and worrying, was the readiness of not just Cold Warrior Republicans but also supposedly level-headed liberals to say that Trump’s performance proves he is ‘treasonous’, a ‘traitor’, a Russian plant, an unabashed colluder with Vlad in the downfall of American democracy. It was nothing short of hysterical.

There’s no doubting that Helsinki was remarkable, and further proof of Trump’s vanity. At the afternoon press conference, following two hours of private talks between the two leaders, Trump effectively sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies and Justice Department, which had indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking into Democrats’ emails just days before the summit. Putin also admitted that he had wanted Trump to win the election, because of his pledge to reset relations with Russia. It is hard to think of a recent precedent. But did Trump’s performance constitute ‘treason’, as former former CIA director John Brennan and the entirety of DC Twitter allege? Did it suggest that Trump is an ‘asset of Russian intelligence’, as one New York Times columnist pondered? Of course not. And it’s dangerous to suggest otherwise.

The gap between what happened at that press conference and the histrionics on Twitter yesterday was remarkable. You’d be forgiven for thinking Trump dropped his FSB fob on the rug on his way out. When asked about Russian meddling, Trump said ‘I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today’, repeating what he has been saying for months. Yesterday, as ever, the reason for Trump’s denials are obvious: not that he is in Putin’s pocket, or that he’s being blackmailed by the Kremlin, as some still allege, but that he thinks even conceding that Russian elements might have tried to meddle in 2016, however unsuccessfully, would call his victory into question. It stems from his insecurity, his narcissism, but also the commitment of many Democrats to use any whiff of Russian interference to do just that.

The hottakes on Twitter told a very different story. Esquire’s Ryan Lizza tweeted, ‘The president of the United States openly colluded with Putin to undermine our democracy’. ‘I’m calling this treason. Point. Blank. Period. TREASON’, wrote the NYT’s Charles Blow. The caps say it all. These spittle-flecked claims are the product of conspiratorial thinking. Not even the intelligence agencies (who are suddenly entirely trustworthy in liberals’ eyes) are claiming that there is proof that Trump colluded with Russia. But yesterday even the much-derided theory that the Kremlin is blackmailing Trump with a tape of him cavorting with urinating prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013 made a comeback. In response to a question about whether he had such ‘kompromat’ on The Donald, Putin said that he didn’t even know Trump was in Moscow in 2013. ‘A non sequitur’, declared the Guardian’s Luke Harding. ‘Conclusion: there is a tape.’

This is madness – dot-connecting and wild claims of McCarthyite intensity. And it is incredibly revealing. For all the coastal-elite talk of Trump ushering in an age of fake news, post-truth and mudslinging, in which faith in democratic institutions is being undermined and once important principles are being compromised by partisan prejudice and weaponised bullshit, this is precisely what some liberals are doing with the Russia issue. They are peddling hyperbole and dodgy theories to try to undermine a democratically elected president. And in doing so, many Trump-hysterics on the liberal-left are becoming the very thing they once claimed to hate. Where once they derided Republicans for clutching to Cold War thinking, where once they decried wingnut conservative conspiracy theories about Obama being a Muslim Brotherhood plant who wasn’t born in the US, now they’re insisting Trump is a Moscow-controlled Manchurian candidate, without a shred of evidence. Whatever else we learned yesterday, one thing is now clear: the ‘Trump is a traitor’ claim is birtherism for liberals.

SOURCE 

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Why liberals bash Trump but ignore dictators

Racist protesters expect only white rulers to be civilised

Although the first episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest outing, Who Is America?, was enjoyable, especially the absurd liberal Dr Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, the programme is based on that most feeble and lazy of premises: that Americans are crass and stupid. Ha ha! Let’s all laugh at a country that has seven entries in the world’s top ten university rankings.

Anti-Americanism was in full voice at the weekend with the visit to Britain of President Donald Trump, as thousands took to the streets around the country to protest against – so the consensus goes – this unbelievably evil, crass and thick man. The slogans on the placards vomited with rage – ‘World’s #1 Racist’, ‘Trump is a fascist’, ‘Stupid, callous, fragile, racist, narcissistic POTUS’ – while one protester in London, an Anglican vicar, summed up both the mood of the protesters and the anti-Trump narrative. ‘The way that he’s spoken about Islamic people, the way he’s spoken about Mexicans crossing the border, his attitudes towards women and gay people – it’s all so totally offensive. He’s broadcasting poisonous attitudes towards the community, so I think we all have felt we needed to organise to keep idealism alive and to make sure that message of hate isn’t embraced by people’, he said.

You might argue that the protests were directed at the man, not the American people. But it is more than a coincidence that Trump conforms to a negative American stereotype beloved of the infantile left and BBC radio and television comedians: the crass, philistine, insular, vulgar, money-obsessed oaf. The idiotic cacophony we heard at the weekend had all the hallmarks of cheap, uninformed students’-union anti-Americanism, a moronic inferno against a man with similar politics to his predecessor, but with terrible manners.

More to the point, it is always America that Britain and other European countries get outraged by. There were no comparable protests by British people when the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, came to visit in 2015, despite the fact that China executes an estimated 3,000 people a year, more than the rest of the world combined. By comparison, last year America executed 23 people.

Where were the protests when the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to visit in Britain this May? According to an Amnesty International report on 2017/2018, in Turkey: ‘Dissent was ruthlessly suppressed, with journalists, political activists and human-rights defenders among those targeted. Instances of torture continued to be reported… Any effective investigation of human-rights violations by state officials was prevented by pervasive impunity. Abuses by armed groups continued.’ In Turkey these days, even political protests are banned.

While we are familiar with the anti-Trump narrative, where are the jokes and the invective directed at the leaders of Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, countries with appalling human-rights records? Where are the displays of solidarity for the oppressed women of Iran, struggling against their regime for the right not to wear a veil in public?

More glaringly, considering that so many anti-Trump protesters take umbrage against him as women and feminists, sporting pink vagina hats (so racist!) on protests, their silence on a matter closer to home, namely the rape gangs unmasked in Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford, Newcastle and elsewhere, has been deafening. Molesting a woman is an awful thing to do, but the sexual abuse of thousands of teenage girls – 1,400 in Rotherham alone – is an unspeakable crime. Yet no one has spoken out in anger about this in the name of feminism.

From this we can only conclude that self-styled feminists, and anti-Americans in general, only expect and demand civilised behaviour from white people or mostly white, Western countries (again, so racist!). They fear being labelled Islamophobic, ‘right-wing’ or racist if they speak out against the Chinese or Muslimmgangs. It wouldn’t look cool. They would lose face among their liberal friends and peers, or even – most catastrophically – lose some Twitter followers. Far safer to castigate and condemn a white, male American.

It is always the same story. It is always the nominally compassionate and altruistic left who are the most egotistic and self-centred, and obsessed with their precious public image.

SOURCE 

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With NATO and Putin, Trump’s cleaning up after Obama

Henry Ergas

In a widely acclaimed column in last weekend’s The New York Times, Bret Stephens argued that Donald Trump’s foreign policy aimed at one result and one result only: “The collapse of the liberal international order”, even at the cost of leaving America hated, feared and alone.

That outcome would “be gratifying to Trump’s sense of his historical importance”, and it would also suit Russian President Vladimir Putin, “who knows that an America that stands for its own interests first also stands, and falls, alone”. But it would be a “historical disaster”, demeaning “the democratic ideals that America once embodied”, and reducing the US to a mere bully.

Stephens’s is no voice in the wilderness. On the contrary, during the course of the past week the invective hurled at Trump became a torrent of abuse, in a crescendo that reached a peak after his press conference with Putin.

Yet there is one thing none of his critics has been able to say: that the US President’s view of the situation America and its friends and allies confront is fundamentally incorrect.

Nor could they. For it is an undeniable reality that by the time Trump came to office, the “liberal international order” was not even a shadow of its former self — it was a ghost whose death was barely disguised by the din of its rattling chains.

No purpose would be served by recounting its downfall. Suffice it to note that the final blow was ­delivered by Trump’s predecessor, who will be remembered as one of the few US presidents whose foreign policy left every region of the world in worse shape than it was when he came to office. Exuding an air of Olympian ­superiority, Barack Obama allowed much of the Middle East to be ­reduced to rubble, while framing a nuclear treaty with Iran whose flaws are recognised by even its staunchest supporters.

Paralysed by his failure to follow through on the “red line” he set for Bashar al-Assad, he created a vacuum that invited Russia’s resurgence as a ­regional military power, while standing impotently by as the ­Syrian tragedy unfolded.

Nor did Obama rise above indecision in dealing with China. And on international trade he was scarcely better. Placing greater priority on climate change, he steadfastly refused to spend political capital on rebuilding support in his own party for an open trading system or on preventing the Doha Round from becoming the first multilateral trade ­negoti­ations to crumble, as they did in 2016.

But no one could dispute Obama’s skills when sanctimonious rhetoric was required. While struggling to communicate with the Democrats’ traditional blue-collar constituency, he had a natural rapport with Europe’s political elite, who have elevated euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness to an art form.

Little wonder then that during his presidency the US and the EU formed such a powerful choir lauding the “liberal international order” they were doing so much to discredit.

That Trump is cut from a different cloth is obvious. Temperamentally, his attraction is to the strongmen — be it Russia’s Putin, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, or Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu — who, in nurturing a direct relationship with their base, make bluntness a crucial feature of their persona.

Their objectionable features are apparent, as is their hostility to democracy; but if they are such successful politicians it is at least partly because their message has the ring of truth. So too with Trump. Who, for example, could dispute Trump’s claim that the Europeans “free ride” on America’s defence spending? After all, since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1966, every US president has deplored Europe’s refusal to shoulder its share of the military burden.

The difference is that Trump has convinced the Europeans that his threats are credible, with the result that the latest opinion polls show rising public support for greater defence spending, even in Germany.

Equally with China. When the Clinton administration approved China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation, it claimed China would speedily and permanently liberalise its trade and investment regime. Instead, under President Xi Jinping, China has veered into mercantilism, repeatedly breaching the rules it committed to in 2001.

As those breaches occurred, Obama filed the right complaints, as did the EU; but it is only now, in the face of Trump’s punitive tariffs, that China’s ruling caste has shown even the slightest willingness to consider changing course.

And so finally with Russia. As of December, Putin will be the second longest lasting ruler of Russia since the fall of the tsars, and he seems likely to remain in power for years to come; to believe global ­issues can be resolved without ­engaging with him is an infantile delusion.

Yes, Putin meddled in the US presidential election, just as the US was, and remains, heavily involved in the domestic politics of Russia’s immediate neighbours.

And yes, the Democrats’ incessant focus on those ham-fisted efforts riles Trump, who believes — quite understandably — that their main goal is to undermine his legitimacy. Smouldering with rage, he readily allows himself to be provoked into foolish denials.

That Trump’s denials, the howls of protest they unleash and his subsequent backdowns are cringe-worthy hardly needs to be said. But it is equally certain that they are a sideshow. Ultimately, what matters is whether a working relationship is restored between the two countries, as Trump has sought to do.

Trump’s instincts on those basic issues have therefore been vastly superior to those of his critics, who focus on his every slip with the spot-beam of pure hatred. To say that is not to excuse his many errors of judgment, including his misconceptions about international trade. Nor is it to minimise the myriad dangers his approach involves.

But Machiavelli was right that politics holds no safe options — only ones that are more and less unsafe. And Machiavelli was also right that the prince, if he is to protect liberty from its foes, may have to choose being feared over being loved, as love is fickle while fear endures.

That fear, however, should not be the terror of unpredictability and arbitrariness. Rather, as Machiavelli stressed, its handling demands leavening the ferocity of the lion with the cunning and ­intellect of the fox.

So far, Trump has shown that he knows how to be a lion. Now, as the consequences begin to be felt, he must show more of the artfulness of the fox.

The world he inherited offers him few pathways to success and many roads to failure; whether he can find the wisdom to navigate the risks that creates will determine his legacy, and our future.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Hillary sued at last

The Coolidge Reagan Foundation, a non-profit organization, has filed a 22-page federal election complaint today with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and their law firm Perkins Coie. Another target of their legal complaint is against Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy that authored the infamous, false dossier on President Trump.

The foundation is focused on Hillary Clinton and Democrat insiders’ illegal use of money transfers and payments to and from Fusion GPS, which is the firm hired by Steele to compile the dossier. The brazen money transfers are in violation of campaign finance laws, shifting tens of millions of dollars in different accounts via donors and different party entities.

While Democrats and the liberal media continue to attack President Trump for alleged collusion, the non-profit is certain that it was actually the Democrats colluding with foreigners.

As Breitbart News first reported, the Coolidge Reagan Foundation said in the complaint: “For over a year, Democratic officials have accused the Trump Administration of collaborating with foreign interlopers to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. In reality, it was the Clinton-backed Democratic machine that conspired with foreigners in violation of both federal campaign finance law and basic decency to manipulate the election.”

The foundation added, “The Clinton campaign weaponized American intelligence and law enforcement communities — led by Democratic appointees of President Barack Obama —through false, malicious, wholly manufactured lies about the Republican nominee, now President, Donald J. Trump.”

The complaint notes that while the Clinton campaign reported all legal expenses to Perkins Coie from January 2016 through December 2017, Fusion GPS was never mentioned.

Where was the itemized expense for opposition research against President Donald Trump? That’s what the foundation would like to know, which, includes questions about: “False Specification of Expenditure Purpose; False Identification of Expenditure Recipient; False Identification of Expenditures’ Purpose and Recipient; Solicitation of Donations (or Contributions) from Foreign Nationals; Substantially Assisting Solicitation of Donations from Foreign Nationals; Donation or Expenditure by a Foreign National; and Foreign National Participation in Political Committees’ Decisionmaking Processes Concerning Expenditures.”

If this type of money laundering scheme happened on a Republican presidential campaign, the mainstream media would be asking the questions. But since this involves DNC and Hillary Clinton, it will take litigation and hopeful cooperation with the Justice Department to get to the truth.

The College Reagan Foundation is a charitable non-profit organization, with a mission to “defend, protect, and advance liberty, and particularly the principles of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

SOURCE

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Poll: Republicans Overwhelmingly Support Trump’s Putin Press Conference

An overwhelming majority of self-identified Republicans support the way President Trump handled his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, according to an Axios poll that was released Thursday morning.

Of the Republicans who voted, 79 percent said they are supportive of Trump’s handling of the conference. Conversely, only 18 percent of Republicans said they did not approve of it. That leaves only 3 percent of Republicans undecided on the president’s performance at the conference.

While this poll shows many Republicans being supportive of the president, there were many conservative lawmakers that did not enjoy the way Trump handled himself.

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in recent memory,” Sen.John McCain said in a statement Monday. (McCain: Trump Putin Presser Was ‘One Of The Most Disgraceful Performances By An American President In History’)

The online poll was conducted by SurveyMonkey on July 16-17. They surveyed 2,100 adults living in the United States. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

SOURCE

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Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing Apprenticeship Programs with U.S. Companies for 3.8 Million Workers

This will be one of the best things Trump has done

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday establishing a workforce initiative to establish apprenticeships with U.S. companies and on-the-job training for American workers.

“I will be signing an executive order to establish the National Council for the American Worker. That's a first. This Council will be made up of top officials across the government. We're also establishing an outside advisory board of industry leaders and experts, which we will announce in the coming weeks, very shortly. A lot of people want to be on that board very badly. I have some great people going on that board,” he said.

“Together, their task will be to develop a national workforce and strategy to equip Americans of all ages and at all stages of their career with the skills they need to thrive in the modern economy. Whether it’s a high school student looking to land their first job -- first job ever,” the president said.

“They've got a lot of enthusiasm, and they lose that enthusiasm when they don't land that job, but now they're all landing jobs. Or a late-career worker who wants to learn a new trade, we want every American to have the chance to earn a great living doing a great job that they love, where they wake up in the morning and they can't get to work fast enough. A lot of these people know that feeling. That's why they're in the position they're in,” he said.

“In that spirit, I'm proud to announce an exciting new challenge and the beginning of a new national movement. We're asking businesses and organizations across the country to sign our new pledge to America’s workers,” Trump said.

“Today, 23 companies and associations are pledging to expand apprenticeships. That's an interesting word for me to be saying, right? ‘The Apprentice.’ I never actually put that together until just now. That was a good experience, I will tell you that. Isn't that strange? Ivanka, I never associated -- but here we are. Can't get away from that word. That's a great word for on the job training and vocational education,” he said.

On hand were executives from the following companies: Aerospace Industries Association, American Hotel and Lodging Association, American Trucking Associations, Associated Builders and Contractors, Associated General Contractors of America, FedEx, Foxconn, General Motors, Home Depot, IBM, Internet Association, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, National Association of Homebuilders, National Restaurant Association, National Retail Federation, North America's Building Trades Unions, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Society for Human Resource Management, Signatory Wall and Ceiling Contractors Alliance, UPS, and Wal-Mart.

Altogether, they committed to training more than 3.8 million students and workers for new careers, the president said.

“This is only day one, and we far exceeded our initial goal of 500,000 students and workers. We thought it was going to be 500,000, and it's close to 4 million. And by the time the day ends, it will probably be well over 4 million,” Trump said. “In the days and months ahead, we hope that hundreds of companies and organizations will join us in this effort.”

The president touted the economic success of his administration thus far, including the creation of 3.7 million jobs since the 2016 election.

“In the month of June alone, we grew the workforce by more than 600,000 workers,” he said.

“We're in the longest positive job growth streak in American history. African American unemployment has reached its lowest level in American history. Hispanic unemployment is at its lowest level in American history. Asian unemployment has reached its lowest level in American history,” Trump said.

Even women’s unemployment is at its lowest level in 65 years, he said. “But within about two weeks, I think we'll be able to say ‘in American history,’ because it's moving quickly.”

Trump said his administration has already lifted “forgotten Americans” like ex-cons, “off the sidelines, out of the margins, and back into the workforce.”

“We are giving a second chance at life to the 620,000 former inmates who reenter society each year. There's nothing like a great, great jobs market to take care of that situation. It's incredible what's happened with people that were in prison that, previous to this, could not get themselves a job, and now they're being hired, and people are loving them. It's been really incredible to see,” he said.

SOURCE

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Who's Really 'For the People'?

Democrats trot out their latest campaign slogan. Let's count the ways it's false advertising

House Democrats this week revealed their latest campaign slogan for the midterms. And it is (drum roll…) “For the People.” With the overly generic motto, Democrat leaders stated, “We basically put it all on paper to say here are our top issues — they’re simple, they’re easy to understand.” That raises two questions: First, just what are the Dems’ top issues that demonstrate they are “for the people”? Second, and more salient given Democrat identity politics, which people are they for? Let’s look at a few key issues:

Illegal immigration: Democrats advocate open borders and sanctuary cities. Clearly, they stand with illegal aliens over and against American citizens by rejecting the enforcement of America’s borders and our nation’s laws.

Tax cuts and the economy: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi infamously described Republican tax reform as both “Armageddon” and “crumbs.” Yet the GOP significantly cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans, and it’s proving to jump-start an eight-year-long stagnant economy. Yet Pelosi promises to roll back the tax legislation, which not a single Democrat voted for, once again reinforcing the fact that Democrats simply don’t trust Americans to spend their own money as they best see fit. Evidently, Democrats see record-low unemployment levels, especially within minority communities, as a problem “for the people” rather than a benefit. That’s why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are running around telling lies about the unemployment rate to talk down a good economy. Democrats can’t win if the economy is good.

Abortion: Democrats advocate for the “right” to end lives before birth, under the dubious notion of supporting women. They’re hyperventilating over the possibility of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick overturning Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, a millionaire Democrat candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania has spent millions supporting groups that advocate population control; groups that have called for taxing parents who have more than two children “to the hilt” and see abortion as “a highly effective weapon” to combat overpopulation. That rhetoric sounds like the policies of communist China. For the people, indeed. More like for the people’s republic.

Speaking of the people’s republic, Democrats are fast embracing the anti-capitalist ethic of Karl Marx. Look no further than the Democrats’ latest star, Ocasio-Cortez, an avowed socialist who seeks to sell her ideology by advocating free college and free health care, while blaming capitalism for our problems. She recently opined, “Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world.”

When it comes down to it, Democrats love to talk about how much they are for the people, but their policies are clearly opposed to the American ideals of individual freedom, limited government, and Rule of Law. When stacked up against the policies and accomplishments of President Donald Trump and Republicans, it becomes quite clear which party is truly for the American people and which party isn’t.

SOURCE

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Here’s an Indisputable Fact: Immigrants Bring Cultural Change

Dennis Prager

The most frequently used description of America by those who advocate for large numbers of immigrants—those here legally or illegally—is “America is a nation of immigrants.”

The statement sounds meaningful. But in reality, it’s meaningless.

What else could America be? If no one had come to America from elsewhere, the North American continent would have remained populated only by its indigenous people—which is what many on the left wish had happened. As the late Howard Zinn, author of “A People’s History of the United States,” the most widely used American history text in high schools and universities, said to me, the world was not better off thanks to the founding of America.

So, the statement “America is a nation of immigrants” tells us nothing about the only questions that matter: Should there be any limits to immigration? And what should we do about illegal immigration?

Regarding the first question, an increasing number of Americans on the left do not believe in any limits: We should allow all those escaping poverty or violence into the United States. As Hillary Clinton was caught on tape saying, she doesn’t believe in borders. She speaks for the American left: In the past few weeks, leftists have marched in American streets demanding the abolition of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Therefore, for the left, the second question, “What should we do about immigration?” is essentially irrelevant. Their answer is “Nothing. All migrants are welcome.”

However, for those of us—liberals, conservatives, and independents—who do believe in borders, the second question is critical. And the reason has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with race or ethnicity.

The reason we worry so much about vast numbers of immigrants is that too many immigrants in too short a period of time will change American culture and values. Our concern is not rooted in xenophobia; it is rooted in values-phobia.

Why is this an issue now? Because the vast majority of past immigrants changed their values, not America’s, when they came to this country. They came here to become American, not only in terms of language, citizenship, and national identity, but also in terms of values.

But while some immigrants still do, the majority does not. They want to become American citizens in order to better their lives—a completely understandable motivation—not to embrace American values and identity. The majority of today’s immigrants from Latin America, for example, wish to become wealthier Latin Americans.

Tens of millions of people have been coming to America with non-American values—essentially, values of the left such as big government and a welfare state. And thanks to the Democratic Party and the left, they don’t jettison these non-American values at the border and are encouraged to hold on to them.

Again, the concern many have over the issue of immigration has absolutely nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Pope Francis is a good example. He looks like a white European, but he has brought the left-wing Latin American values of his native Argentina into the papacy.

One more proof that opposition to vast numbers of immigrants has nothing to with xenophobia, racism, or nativism and everything to do with values is the effect of American immigrants going from northern states to southern states. The large number of (white) American internal “immigrants” from northeastern states has changed Florida’s values. Once a rock-solid conservative state, Florida has become more and more liberal and leftist because of the influx of people from New York and the Northeast.

Is noting the values effect of New Yorkers immigrating to Florida—or Californians to Arizona and Oregon—xenophobic, racist, or nativist? Of course not.

That’s why opposition to large-scale Muslim immigration into Europe (or America) also has little or nothing to do with xenophobia, racism (Muslim is not a race anyway), or nativism. It has to do with changing European values. Large-scale Muslim immigration to Europe will do to Europe’s values what large-scale northern-state immigration has done to Florida and what large-scale European immigration did to the native culture of North America.

So, while the issue appears to be whether one is for or against large-scale immigration into America, the real issue is whether one wants to preserve American values or see them changed.

The left wants them changed. Conservatives don’t.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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5 Billion in Border Funding Proposed for 2019 Budget

The cost estimates to build President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” wall range from $15-25 billion, and a new fiscal 2019 spending measure was just introduced to fund $5 billion of that.

That $5 billion provides additional funding for the southern border wall and other border security measures. Part of the $5 billion would be allocated with the specific goal of achieving “100 percent scanning” of the border within five years. That would be achieved by adding 375 new border patrol agents, and 140 canine teams.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 200 miles of border wall could be built with this funding. The U.S. Mexico border is 2,000 miles in length, of which 1300 miles are exposed. The 700 miles of protected border that does exist stems from the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed with votes from Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Diane Feinstein, and Chuck Schumer, back before the Left made being against illegal immigration a “Nazi” position.

Still, this $5 billion only would construct enough border to cover approximately 15% of the exposed border. Aside from this proposed measure, the 2019 budget included $3 billion in funding for a border, which has been referred to as a mere “down payment” on the border.

The Administration said it expects only 60 miles of fencing to be built with the $3 billion, which is more conservative than the DHS’s estimates of how much wall can be built per dollar of funding.

This proposed $5 billion in new border spending will be met with fierce opposition by Congressional Democrats, but that’ll prove irrelevant given the Republican majority in Congress. And if Democrat opposition can’t stop border funding, what’s the point at stopping at $5 billion? Why not just fund the entire thing, like Republicans have been arguing we should do for decades?

The cost of illegal immigration to the American economy tops $100 billion a year, so as expensive as building a border is, the return on investment is tremendous.

While Democrats are running around calling for the dismantling of ICE, President Trump is committed to securing our border and keeping the American public safe.

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Lying Is a Time-Honored Leftist Tradition,/b>

The left wing’s nonstop lying for dramatic effect didn’t just begin when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency — they’ve been telling whoppers for decades without even the slightest hint of shame or remorse, let alone an “I’m sorry.”

The left’s histrionics over any alleged Trump/Russia collusion or about Trump’s historical meeting with Putin is nothing more than a farcical sideshow. Our nation’s liberals couldn’t care less about the potential threat that Russia poses to the United States.

If those on the left were truly concerned about Moscow, they never would have turned a blind eye to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of the Uranium One deal in 2010 that could have potentially handed over up to 20 percent of our nation’s uranium supply to Russian-controlled companies.

Don’t be fooled by the overwrought displays of liberal outrage.

The left’s foremost concern has absolutely nothing to do with Trump, Russia or even our national security. The left only cares about one thing — control. And just like Malcolm X, they are prepared to gain it “by any means necessary,” no matter who gets hurt in the process.

A short walk down memory lane will highlight these inconvenient truths about the left.

Slandering of Ayn Rand

The left has been calling the late Ayn Rand a fascist for over 75 years now, despite her penning such irrefutably anti-fascist literature as “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” Liberals desperately don’t want Rand’s works to be read because those books are in direct opposition to fascism, socialism and communism — all of which give the government tremendous power over the individual, which is precisely what the left is hoping to achieve.

Rand’s philosophy, called objectivism, champions individual liberties. She strongly advocated for the complete separation of the government from the markets and didn’t believe the government (or any individual) had the right to claim one precious second of anyone’s life. Calling Rand a fascist isn’t just a lie; it’s tantamount to slander.

Destroying Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential Bid

In 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, a Republican, was running for the presidency against incumbent Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson. Approximately two months before Election Day, the Democrat machine rolled out the most incendiary television ad in presidential election history.

The commercial was known as the “Daisy ad” because it showed a little girl picking the petals off of a daisy, when all of a sudden a strong male voice begins an ominous countdown to zero, after which an atomic explosion with a huge mushroom cloud covered the screen.

The disingenuous implication was either you vote for LBJ, or you’ll be voting for the death of your nation’s children. President Lyndon Johnson won in a landslide … by any means necessary.

Resisting Donald Trump

The leftists’ all-out assault against Trump began on June 16, 2015, when Trump announced he was running for the presidency of the United States. Within minutes, almost every major news network was declaring that Trump had called every Mexican coming into the United States illegally drug smugglers, rapists and criminals, even though Trump had clearly added, “And some, I assume, are good people.”

The torrent of lies and displays of verbal violence against Trump haven’t been confined to the news networks or his political opponents — famous left-wing celebrities have come looking for their pound of flesh as well.

Pop rock star Madonna said, “Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Talk show host and comedian Bill Maher recently stated that “one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So, please, bring on the recession.”

And Monday after Trump’s historic meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hollywood’s largest director of alleged documentaries Michael Moore tweeted to the world: “Arrest Trump when Air Force One lands. I want to see him in chains.”

Now why would these celebrity leftists possibly desire to bomb the White House, crash our economy and see a U.S. president taken away in chains? It’s because leftists do not respect our nation’s capital or the office of the presidency, and they have less than zero concern for those in America who are struggling from paycheck to paycheck to survive.

The hardened left’s only ambition has always been to achieve maximum power and full control over our lives. The left desires to dictate precisely how much money we will be able to keep from what we have worked to earn, what politically correct social propaganda our children will study in school and what words and ideas we will be allowed to express.

If current trends continue, we will even need federal governmental approval to place plastic straws in our ice-filled drinks.

Make no mistake about it: The left aims to take total control over America and our lives through their steady stream of lies … and by any means necessary.

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Lib Asks Man ‘When Was America Great,’ Gets 1 of Best Answers We’ve Ever Heard

When President Donald Trump announced on Monday evening that he had nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court, protests and counter-protests quickly broke out both in opposition and support of the nominee on the steps of our nation’s highest court.

One of the counter-protesters was a black man named Ricardo Caldwell who spoke with a reporter for Breitbart News about an interaction and conversation he’d had with one of the protesters who opposed Kavanaugh, President Trump and seemingly the nation of America as a whole.

Caldwell, who was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap, related how the woman he spoke with had asked pointedly “when was America great,” implying that the nation has never truly been “great” — typical tripe put forward by anti-American leftists.

The man’s answer to the protester’s snarky query was quite possibly better and of deeper substance than any heard by most of the supposed intellectuals and highly intelligent pundits commonly seen pontificating on cable news.

Caldwell first described how the protester barely even gave him an opportunity to answer her question about the message on his hat and instead seemed intent on provoking an emotional response instead of an actual dialogue.

“What she was talking about was slavery — I guess she feels that since I’m black I have to relate to slavery and that’s gotta be a ‘hot button issue,'” he stated.

“Nevermind the fact that we have never been a slave, don’t know anyone (who’s been a slave) and I’m not a slave, of course,” he continued.

He pointed to his hat as he noted that she had asked “when was America great” and recalled that his answer had been: “America has been great from the very start because this nation was founded on the principles of freeing us from tyranny.”

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“OK, there was slaves and so forth, but there were a lot of all colors — let’s say white — in this nation that did not feel like that was correct and this nation from that time has been moving out of tyranny, from bondage in one way or another, whether it be from Britain or whether it be from slavery as a whole,” he continued.

“In case she doesn’t know, there was a civil war, and in part … a whole lot of white people, if you look at history, died because they wanted this nation and people like myself to be free,” he added.

After taking a moment to compose himself as he spoke about his great love of this country, Caldwell stated, “Because this nation gives you the right to move yourself up out of any poor, bad position that you’re in like no other nation.”

“While some nations might step on you and say ‘hey, you’re gonna stay like that,’ or have the classism, we don’t,” he continued.

“What she’s saying about ‘this nation is horrible,’ basically saying ‘this nation is full of racists’ and I should be stupid enough to believe that when I’m sitting right here and see people who are nice of all colors that do things and work together, and this fool wants to take us back to a time when everybody hated each other,” he added.

This patriotic man hit the nail on the head with his response.

It’d be great if the so-called intellectuals and pundits who pontificate on all manner of America and America’s history would take note of this man’s answer and spend some time expounding on how our nation has always been great, and despite obvious and admitted shortcomings, we have continued to move past those issues and continue to make our nation greater all the time.

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WOW: Huge California City Allowing ‘Non-Citizen’ Voter Registrations

Democrat officials in San Francisco, California are allowing “non-citizens” to register to vote for the upcoming election in November for the city’s Board of Education.

According to The Daily Wire, liberal city officials admitted on Monday that they have been helping illegal aliens register to vote ahead of the city’s elections.

City Supervisor Norman Yee said, “We want to give immigrants the right to vote,” endorsing the idea of all citizens have the right to vote, even if they broke the law to enter a country they are not authorized or permitted to be in.

During an interview with ABC-7, Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who represents District 1, said city leaders and community organizers believe illegal aliens should be allowed to register to vote.


In order to vote, illegal immigrants must live in San Francisco, be at least 18-years-old, and be the parents, legal guardians, or caregivers of children who live in the city and are under the age of nineteen.

Thankfully, not everyone in California believes this resolution is a good idea.

California Republican National Committee member Harmeet Dhillon said she voted against the measure in 2016 and thinks something must be done now before it could become a state-wide measure.

“The reason I voted against it is that I think the right to vote is something that goes along with citizenship and should be.”

“I don’t think that people who have otherwise tenuous ties to San Francisco given their lack of legal residence should be making long-term decisions about that structure and process.”

When will the state learn that it should be prioritizing legal citizens, not those who broke the law to infiltrate the nation?

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Trump says Europe to discuss auto tariffs

US President Donald Trump has said European leaders are coming to Washington next week to try to hammer out a deal focused largely on car tariffs, while his top economic adviser has accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of holding up a US-China trade deal.

Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's visit will discuss car tariffs, which he cited as "the big one" among US-EU trade irritants.

Trump considers the EU's 10 per cent tariff on cars to be unfair compared to the US' 2.5 per cent tariff, although the United States maintains a 25 per cent tariff on pickup trucks.

"They're going to be coming on July 25th to negotiate with us. We said if we don't negotiate something fair, then we have tremendous retribution. Which we don't want to use, but we have tremendous powers," Trump said.

Trump has threatened to levy higher tariffs, as much as 25 per cent on imported cars, and his Commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is conducting a study on whether vehicle and parts imports threaten national security.

Larry Kudlow, who heads the White House Economic Council, said separately at an investment forum in New York that he has been told that Juncker would be "bringing a very important free trade offer" to Trump on his visit.

Kudlow said he believed Xi has blocked progress on a deal to end duelling US and Chinese tariffs. He added that lower-ranking officials want a deal, including Xi's top economic adviser Liu He, but Xi has refused to make changes to China's technology transfer and other trade policies.

"So far as we know, President Xi, at the moment, does not want to make a deal," Kudlow said at the Delivering Alpha conference.

China could end US tariffs "this afternoon by providing a more satisfactory approach" and taking steps that other countries are also calling for, he said.

These included cutting tariff and non-tariff barriers to imports, ending the "theft" of intellectual property and allowing full foreign ownership of companies operating in China, Kudlow said.

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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Terror Expert on What He Saw Going into Summit: Media Is Completely Off-Base

There was great consternation and outrage among the media and Democrats — as well as some Republicans — following President Donald Trump’s summit in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While the harsh criticisms and shouts of “treason” from the hard left and NeverTrump right are more than a little disconcerting, they are not the least bit surprising as that sort of reaction has become rather predictable in this day and age.

Indeed, the stage was set ahead of the summit for just such a reaction by the media and Democrats, who displayed their “glaring hypocrisy” with regard to their coverage of Trump’s diplomatic meeting as opposed to the diplomatic meetings held by former President Barack Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That was the message delivered on “Fox & Friends” on Sunday morning by former U.S. Army Special Forces member and anti-terrorism expert Jim Hanson, who pointed out the disparate ways in which Trump, Obama and Clinton were treated by the establishment and media following their particular dealings with Russia.

Co-host Pete Hegseth began the segment by recalling Clinton’s embarrassing attempt in 2009 to hit the “reset” button with Russia, using a hokey red plastic button that actually had the wrong Russian word printed on it to symbolize the development in U.S./Russian relations.

“And Hillary walks into that meeting asking for nothing with her giant button that actually said ‘overcharge’ in Russian, and she’s telling them, ‘ok, you can have whatever you want from us,'” Hanson said.

“Even a more glaring example was when President Obama was talking to (then-President) Medvedev of the Russian Republic and tells him, ‘after my next election I’ll have more flexibility,'” he continued.

“Now that is him admitting that he was lying to the American public during that election cycle, and afterwards he would give Russia what they wanted. But yet, where is the outrage? Where is the press saying we should investigate that?” Hanson asked.

Hegseth asked what sort of “flexibility” Obama was referring to in that particular remark, and if it meant allowing Russia to annex Crimea, invade Ukraine or even meddle in our elections.

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“All of it, and that’s the problem Pete,” Hanson replied. “You know the entire focus and entire stature of the Obama foreign policy was cringing capitulation, it was ‘America last’ — ‘what do you guys want, what can we give you’ — and it ended up making the world a much more dangerous place.”

“In that case they were actually talking about missile defense, so the security of the entire free world for any attack by any crazed person with missiles — which could have included the Russians — is being put at risk because Obama was willing to go ahead and bow down,” Hanson said.

“And now, the media at that point in time had nothing to say, now President Trump wants to have a less antagonistic relationship with the Russians, maybe get them to stop hurting us with North Korea, stop hurting us in Syria, and all of the sudden it’s the worst thing that ever happened,” he continued.

“It’s glaring hypocrisy,” Hanson concluded, to which Hegseth could only reply, “Absolutely it is, every single day of the week.”

When Obama and Clinton reached out and tried to make nice with Russia, they were applauded by the liberal media and establishment politicians on both sides of the aisle, even as Putin and Russia took full advantage of the naive good faith extended by Obama and Clinton.

Now Trump is seeking to tone down the harsh rhetoric and smooth out the rough relationship between the U.S. and Russia and he has been attacked and smeared as some sort of Putin puppet that has sold out his own nation by the same folks who cheered similar efforts by Trump’s predecessors.

If that isn’t glaring hypocrisy, nothing is.

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How Expanding Medicaid To Able-Bodied Adults Is Stripping Care For Disabled People

Over the last several years, states that expanded Medicaid to able-bodied adults have seen costs skyrocket and patients lose access to critical medical care. Yet despite this disastrous track record, many are recklessly rushing to expand Medicaid in their states.

On July 6, Medicaid expansion advocates delivered boxes full of signatures to Idaho’s secretary of state to place the issue on the state’s ballot in November. Just one day earlier, another ballot drive collected enough signatures to expand Medicaid in Nebraska. In Maine, pro-Medicaid lawmakers are preparing to raise fresh new taxes to grow the program.

The leaders of these campaigns argue that expanding Medicaid will provide health care access to the needy. Unfortunately, expanding coverage to able-bodied adults imposes enormous harm on Medicaid’s traditional enrollees, which include individuals with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities, spinal cord injuries, and traumatic brain injuries. When a state expands Medicaid, the federal government covers 95 percent of the cost of treating every able-bodied patient. However, the federal government only covers 30 to 50 percent of the cost of treating Medicaid’s sicker patient populations.

In response to these federal incentives, 33 states and the District of Columbia opted to spend billions on millions of new able-bodied Medicaid enrollees and subsequently spend less on Medicaid’s sicker patients. A common tactic states use to limit health care access to disabled Medicaid patients is to place them on waitlists. Nearly 250,000 disabled children and adults are stuck on waiting lists for home and community-based services in states that expanded Medicaid to able-bodied adults. In Maryland, more than 36,000 sick individuals must wait on average for seven years and six months before they can receive services.

Tragically, many never receive the care they need. Since 2014, an estimated 22,000 sick patients have died on waiting lists in states that expanded Medicaid. After Arkansas expanded Medicaid, the state’s waiting lists increased 25 percent while 74 children and adults suffering from physical and mental impairments died waiting for care. There is no question that poor able-bodied Americans need reliable coverage, but states should not expand Medicaid to these individuals at the expense of society’s most vulnerable patients.

Fortunately, the Trump administration recognizes there are more effective ways to expand health insurance to low-income people and is developing a series of reforms to make health insurance more affordable. For starters, the Department of Labor recently finalized new regulations to let small businesses band together and offer workers less expensive insurance through association health plans (AHPs).

By pooling workers from multiple employers into a larger risk pool, AHPs would allow small businesses to provide lower cost insurance. The health care consulting firm Avelere estimates AHPs would offer coverage that is nearly $3,000 less expensive than insurance currently provided by small businesses and $10,000 less than insurance found in the individual market.

The Trump administration is also developing rules to make health insurance more affordable for individuals without access to employer-based coverage. In early 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services introduced new regulations to allow individuals to purchase short-term insurance for up to 364 days. These types of insurance products are exempt from Obamacare’s costly insurance regulations, which allows insurers to charge 70 percent lower premiums on short-term insurance than conventional insurance.

Prior to Trump, President Obama limited the duration of short-term plans to just 90 days, which reduced their appeal to low-income consumers who can’t afford Obamacare’s expensive insurance options. Fortunately, the Trump administration expanded the duration of these plans, which will offer relief to millions of Americans who lack health insurance. But these bits of relief are temporary and only patches on a government-centered health care system that Congress needs to decentralize to ensure better services for those who most need them.

Medicaid’s proponents may claim that expanding this bloated government program is the only way to deliver health insurance to uninsured families. But the reality is state and federal policymakers have a range of tools to remove government barriers to affordable coverage. Also, unlike Medicaid expansion, these reforms won’t endanger the health of America’s most vulnerable patients. The time for Congress to address these problems with an Obamacare replacement is overdue.

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VA Nursing Home Scandal Exposes Substandard Government Health Care

It seems like every time there’s a full moon, there’s a new scandal at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. This time it has to do with the VA’s operation of nursing home facilities for America’s veterans. The troubled agency has been hiding the poor quality of the care it provides at its veterans homes compared to similar facilities in the private sector.

A recent editorial at USA Today summarizes the findings of its investigative reporting with The Boston Globe:

Most Americans, when they think of the VA, envision a vast bureaucracy of care centers for millions of the nation’s veterans. That it is. But who knew the agency also runs a network of nursing homes?

Well, it does, and it turns out—thanks to recent coverage by USA TODAY and The Boston Globe—that many of those nursing homes suffer from health delivery concerns similar to those that plague some VA hospitals and clinics.

About 46,000 veterans annually are cared for in 133 of these homes nationwide. Some are located on Department of Veterans Affairs hospital campuses, and some are separate facilities.

The VA rates these nursing homes for quality, but internal appraisals showing that 60 homes with the lowest ratings were kept secret from the public until reporters pressed. Moreover, in some crucial measurement standards, including reports of pain, VA homes performed substantially worse than private-sector alternatives....

It’s a problem that exists because politicians have exempted the VA’s bureaucrats from the transparency requirements imposed upon private-sector nursing home facilities.

Under federal regulations, private nursing homes are required to disclose voluminous data on the care they provide. The federal government uses the data to calculate quality measures and posts them on a federal website, along with inspection results and staffing information. The regulations do not apply to the VA.

The VA has “got this whole sort of parallel world out there that’s hidden,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “I still can’t get over that this information is not available to people who are looking for a veteran’s home. That’s just unacceptable.”

That doesn’t mean that the VA’s bureaucrats don’t know how bad the care provided at its nursing home facilities has been. Not only do they know, they’ve been hiding the problem from the public since the beginning of the Obama administration:

The VA has relied for more than a decade on an outside company, Wisconsin-based Long Term Care Institute, to conduct inspections of VA nursing homes and report back to the agency.

The VA banned the public release of institute reports after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2009 published the findings from one report detailing “significant issues” at the VA nursing home in Philadelphia, including poor resident grooming and pest control. In one case, a patient’s leg had to be amputated after an infection in his foot went untreated for so long his toes turned black and attracted maggots.

The VA said the reports are internal quality assurance documents “protected” from disclosure under federal law. However, in their announcement last Tuesday releasing the nursing homes’ star ratings, VA officials said they would also release the long-term care reports. They didn’t say when.

Not that the VA’s internal ratings of its care match up well with private sector nursing home facilities. The VA’s bureaucrats appear to be systematically overrating their performance.

Even higher-ranking VA nursing homes scored below private nursing homes on individual quality measures last year, the internal documents show.

The VA assigned three stars to its nursing home in Livermore, California, even though the facility scored worse on average than private facilities on six of 11 criteria. Residents reported being in pain at dramatically higher rates and experienced general declines and developed sores at slightly higher rates.

There’s much more to the story, especially about the personal dimensions of how the VA’s substandard care at its nursing homes has harmed a number of veterans.

From a public-policy perspective, however, the story illustrates how government-provided health care is not only failing the Americans who are dependent upon it, but also how poorly the health care provided by the agency at its 133 nursing home facilities compares with the nearly 16,000 nursing homes that operate in the private sector outside of the VA system.

At a minimum, the VA’s role in operating nursing homes should be reduced, so that veterans not requiring specialized care unique to their health status as veterans are free to choose nursing homes in the private sector, with the VA contributing funds to their care at those higher-quality facilities.

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Hater Arrested For Stealing Campaign Signs That Had a GPS Tracking Device

Congressman Tom Reed, a Republican representative seeking re-election in New York’s 23rd District, grew a little weary of having his campaign signs stolen.

The signs feature the phrase “Extreme Ithaca Liberal,” a shot at the opposition party in the area who have resorted to extreme platforms and now extreme measures to combat Republicans.

And it’s not the first time they’ve disappeared. Volunteers for a Democrat opponent were caught removing signs while still wearing their campaign stickers in 2018. Another woman admitted taking them down because they were “rude” earlier this month.

With a pattern firmly established, Reed’s campaign got clever and installed a GPS tracking device in one of their signs.

Sure enough, an activist from a prominent “resistance” group in the area was tracked down and confronted when the sign disappeared.

Reed’s campaign manager Nick Weinstein showed up on the doorstep of Gary McCaslin, to which the accused took exception to being tracked down.

“I can’t believe this, Nick. You tracked this sign to my house?” an exasperated McCaslin asked. “Is Tom Reed that desperate that he has to put little thing like that inside of a sign and track it?”

Weinstein was able to get the sign returned but McCaslin refused to return the tracker, instead suggesting they call the police.

“So we did,” the campaign wrote on their website. “And, after law enforcement reviewed our videos, Gary McCaslin was charged with petit larceny, punishable by up to a year in jail and a one thousand dollar fine.”

Weinstein accused Reed’s opponents of being “willing to go to criminal lengths to try and hide their Extreme Ithaca Liberal agenda from the public.”

McCaslin, who is scheduled to appear in court on July 19th, had his lawyer argue that he was simply a citizen acting “out of decency” by picking up the signs, or as he called it, “taking out the trash.”

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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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

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