eddessaknight's Blog

From The American Thinker

November 17, 2019

The Bidens and Burisma

By  John Leonard

 

Mykola Zlochevsky is the (allegedly) corrupt owner of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas provider.  Hunter Biden accepted a position on the board of directors with Burisma in April of 2014.  By August of the same year, Vitaly Yurema, prosecutor general of Ukraine at the time, opened an official investigation of Zlochevsky and Burisma.  By February 2015, Yurema had been replaced by a man named Viktor Shokin.  Only four months later, U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt allegedly warned Shokin to "handle the Biden investigation with kid gloves."

 

Apparently Shokin didn't listen so good, or maybe Pyatt didn't tell him eight or nine times that he was supposed to clear Burisma and Hunter Biden of any potential wrongdoing.  In either event, Joe Biden wasn't happy, because in March of 2016, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was fired within the next six hours.  How do we know this?  Why, Joe told us himself.

 

Biden had  the audacity to brag about it during a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.  He boasted, "[I told the Ukrainians,] 'You're not getting the billion.  I'm gonna be leaving here in six hours, and if the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you're not getting the money.  Well, son of a b----, he got fired.  And they put in place someone who was solid."

 

Who was Shokin's "solid" replacement?  Yuriy Lutsenko, who subsequently declared there was "no evidence of wrongdoing" by the Bidens and closed the investigation only ten months after taking over the job.  According to Lutsenko, there isn't a law against a company paying a board member more than fifty thousand dollars a month (CNBC claims that it was $83,000 per month) to a man who knew nothing about the energy business, doesn't speak the language, and never even set foot in the country to attend a couple of board meetings in Europe each year.

 

The evidence is indisputably clear and incontrovertible, in the form of a  videotaped confession to an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations.  One billion dollars in U.S. aid (quid) was offered on condition (pro) that Shokin, the prosecutor allegedly investigating Burisma, be fired (quo).  The replacement clears the case.

 

Cui bono?  Who benefits?  Lutsenko gets a plum job.  The Ukrainian government gets another billion dollars in U.S. foreign aid.  Hunter Biden gets three million bucks for about a week's worth of work spread over five years.  Joe Biden gets the benefit of having Hunter's corrupt business deal swept under the rug.  Everybody wins...except the U.S. taxpayer, of course.

 

The American people have been asked to believe that Joe Biden demanded that Shokin be fired because he wasn't aggressively investigating Burisma.  We have been told there is nothing wrong or unusual about an American citizen who happens to be the son of a powerful politician being paid millions of dollars by a foreign business with economic and political interests directly related to the United States for essentially a "do-nothing" job.  We the people are expected to believe that the actions (and specific threats) of Hunter Biden's influential and politically connected father had nothing at all to do with shutting down the investigation of Burisma.

 

Frankly, it is ludicrous even to suggest that Joe Biden wanted Burisma investigated more thoroughly, because if that was true, why didn't he complain when Lutsenko shut down the investigation only ten months after Shokin had been fired?

 

How stupid do the liberal media elitists think we are?  Laughably, the  legal eagles at the NYU School of Law would have us believe that Biden was on an "anti-corruption" campaign against Ukraine that may have harmed his son's company.

 

   Try this thought experiment: change the name of the people involved from "Biden" to "Trump," and simply imagine what the headlines would be if Donald Trump had threatened to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine to keep Eric Trump from being investigated for corruption.  Pundits wouldn't just be clamoring for Trump's impeachment; they would probably be calling for his public execution, clamoring to hang him for treason or perhaps even to burn him at the stake.

 

Yet the media have been working overtime to convince the American public that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Hunter Biden "earning" millions of dollars from a Ukrainian company without even setting foot in Ukraine.  Reuters reported that "[Rudy] Giuliani has alleged,  without providing evidence, that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine's top prosecutor to end an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky in order to protect his son."  FactCheck.org, Bloomberg, and pretty much all the other lamestream media outlets all reported that there was nothing illegal, wrong, or improper about Hunter Biden getting paid $83,000 per month to do nothing by a foreign company being investigated for corruption that involves the theft of U.S. foreign aid money.  Nothing to see here; move along.

Which part of the allegation was not supported by evidence?  Joe Biden claimed that he not only pushed for the firing of Shokin, but absolutely insisted upon it and threatened to withhold U.S. foreign aid unless his demands were immediately met.  Biden didn't specifically give a reason for why he wanted the prosecutor fired, but is it easier to believe that he was trying to find corruption in the company paying his son millions of dollars to do nothing or that he wanted to protect his son and the income stream produced by that corrupt company?  Biden's defenders have claimed that Shokin himself was corrupt and not investigating Burisma, but the fact is that Joe Biden's preferred choice, Yuriy Lutsenko, shut down the investigation and cleared everybody involved without solving the mystery of the missing foreign aid money.

 

Why does Burisma need to be investigated?  Deputy assistant secretary of state George Kent just testified in the so-called impeachment hearings that Zlochevsky and Burisma need to be investigated because they had stolen billions of dollars and possibly bribed a prosecutor to shut down the investigation that dated back to the period when Zlochevsky served as minister of ecology and natural resources and gave his own business government licenses and contracts.

 

Yet, astonishingly, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of an alleged Ukrainian "Anti-Corruption Action Center," made an  extraordinary claim to Radio Free Europe: "ironically, Joe Biden asked Shokin to leave because the prosecutor failed to pursue the Burisma investigation, not because Shokin was tough and active with the case."

 

Okay, so everybody wants us to believe that Shokin wasn't tough enough or doing the job...but who in his right mind would claim that Lutsenko is any tougher?

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE: An  article written by John Solomon published in  The Hill reported that Daria Kaleniuk and her organization AntAC were funded by Barack Obama’s State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization. It makes sense Kaleniuk would claim Biden was getting tougher on corruption by replacing Shokin when the opposite appears to be true. It isn’t clear that Lutsenko is corrupt, however, because he complained that Ambassador Yovanovich verbally issued a "do not prosecute" list included Hunter Biden and Burisma that apparently came indirectly from Barack Obama himself.

 

John Leonard writes novels, books, and the occasional article for American Thinker.  John also blogs at his website southernprose.com, where he may be contacted.

NINE    ENIGMAS   (1) Isn't it weird that in America our flag and our culture offend so many people,  but our benefits don't?  (2) How can the federal government ask U.S. citizens to pay back student loans,  when illegal aliens are receiving a free education?  (3) Only in America are legal citizens labeled "racists" and "Nazis," but  illegal aliens are called "Dreamers."  (4) Liberals say, "If confiscating all guns saves just one life, it's worth it." Well then, if deporting all illegals saves just one life, wouldn't that be worth it?  (5) I can't quite figure out how you can proudly wave the flag of another country  but consider it punishment to be sent back there  (6) The Constitution: It doesn't need to be rewritten;  it needs to be reread  (7) William F. Buckley said: "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other points of view and are then shocked and offended when they discover there are other points of view."  (8) Joseph Sobran said, ‘Need’ now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer."  (9) Florida has had 119 hurricanes since 1850, but  some people still insist the last one was due to climate change.   You can't fix stupid, no matter how much duct tape you use!

Fast times at Capitalism High — what young people need to thrive   

By Anne Wicks,  Published 3:19 pm EST, Tuesday, November 12, 2019

 

 

InsideSources

The United States was founded by people seeking relief from an oppressive political and economic system. Three stunningly prescient documents — the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights — made it clear that newly minted Americans valued the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of wealth, should that be desired. Ownership was no longer relegated to the state or landed class.

The Founding Fathers had a vision of country that valued personal liberty,  free enterprise, but they would be gobsmacked by the pace of today’s change, the scope of geopolitics and the scale of trade. What would the Continental Congress make of the spiraling market disruptions caused by a basketball executive’s tweet about Hong Kong’s political protests? How would they reconcile freedom of speech, a foreign fight for democracy, and a massive economic opportunity overseas?

Young Americans will spend their lives steeped in this complexity. What do they need to fully participate in our capitalist democracy? What will prepare them to lead prosperous, self-determined lives in our fast-moving American capitalist democracy?

—Discernment: Navigating a rapid-fire world of news and analysis breaking across multiple platforms challenges everyone. Young people need strong reading and comprehension skills to develop discernment and solid judgment. What is a primary source? What is secondary analysis? What makes someone an expert? What is the difference between reporting and opinion? What does this action cost — and what is the benefit? What is the risk of a decision?

According to the 2019 NAEP scores, only 34 percent of eighth graders in our country are on track in reading. Are we preparing young Americans to seek information and think carefully for themselves? Or will they be more likely to retweet bot farms and follow shiny objects?

 

—Contribution: American capitalism moves quickly. Industries, jobs, companies, organizations emerge and fade with regularity. Successfully navigating this kind of dynamic opportunism means preparing for change and being clear-eyed about value. No one is owed a job or a salary; it is earned by adding value to an organization. There is value in being a cashier in a small business. There is value in being a sheriff. There is value in being an entrepreneur. There is value in working in a corporate headquarters.

Whether young people aspire to sign the front of payroll checks or the back of them, it is critical to help them consider how he or she adds value to an organization. The value of humans is not solely aligned to economic productivity, but our economic system depends upon collective productivity. Anyone who needs or wants to earn a salary to support themselves and their family must expect to contribute to earn.

 

—Curiosity (and its kissing cousin, Humility): A dynamic system like capitalism requires all of us to continually learn, get better, expand our knowledge and adapt. All of that is impossible without curiosity and humility. Your job may disappear — what will you do instead? Your point of view will be challenged — how will you strengthen or adapt your position? The antidote to polarization is increased curiosity and humility. You don’t have to agree with everything others say, but you should be curious to understand why they say it.

 

Young people are well served to learn this early and often. One of the primary outcomes of school is to help young people become outstanding learners — not to create fully finished experts who can leave knowledge building behind.

Outstanding learners become outstanding adapters. Outstanding learners assume that there may be more to a story that is worth knowing. Outstanding learners will have the ability to lead our country through complexity.

 

—Engagement: America’s democratic capitalism only works when its citizens show up and engage. That includes running for office and voting, but it also includes serving on a town’s zoning committee or as commissioner of the municipal youth sports league. It means showing up for work. Showing up to volunteer. Enlisting in the military. Serving as a first responder. Paying parking tickets and taxes. Showing up for others in ways both big and small. Young people learn to value engagement by watching the adults around them do it.

 

The educators who staff and lead our schools can help young people build these muscles. What is our collective responsibility? To support schools that embrace rigor, accountability and leadership. To insist on schools that ensure that students can read, write and do math. To commit to schools that ensure rigorous content for all students so that they can make meaning of democracy, capitalism, and our complex world.

As President George W. Bush once said: “Education provides the skills necessary to expand horizons and allow for economic success. Education also exposes young men and women to the great ideals of our heritage — liberty and responsibility, participation,

 and patriotism. And in doing so we secure our democratic way of life.”

 

Author Bio:.

Anne Wicks is the Ann Kimball Johnson director of the Education Reform Initiative, George W. Bush Institute. A longer version of their essay appears in “The Catalyst: A Journal of Ideas from the Bush Institute.” This is distributed by InsideSources.com.

Will 'Sexist' White Males Derail Warren?

A Commentary By Patrick J. Buchanan

 

Friday, November 08, 2019

After celebrating Tuesday's takeover of Virginia's legislature and the Kentucky governorship, the liberal establishment appears poised to crush its biggest threat: the surging candidacy of Elizabeth Warren.

From the tempo and tenor of the attacks, establishment fears of Warren's success are real -- and understandably so.

Two Wednesday polls show Warren running even with Joe Biden nationally. And a new Iowa poll shows Warren in front of the field with 20%, and Biden falling into fourth place with 15%.

 

The danger for Democrats: While Warren is now the party's front-runner, they fear she's a sure loser to Donald Trump in 2020.

 

And, again, with reason. A recent poll of six battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, showed Trump beating or tying Warren in all of them except for Arizona.

 

Nightmare scenario: Warren wins the nomination, but when her neo-Marxist agenda is exposed, Middle America recoils in horror.

 

The economic elite is already sounding the alarm.

 

Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase says Warren "vilifies successful people." Microsoft founder Bill Gates says her proposals would imperil "innovation" and "capital formation."

 

Writing in The New York Times, Obama adviser Steven Rattner describes a Warren presidency as "a terrifying prospect."

Warren would "extend the reach and weight of the federal government far further into the economy than anything even Franklin Roosevelt dreamed of (and) ... turn America's uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste European-style system."

 

"If you want to live in France" -- where half the GDP is controlled by the regime -- says Rattner, "Warren should be your candidate."

 

What finally shocked anti-Warren liberals into action was her recent revelation of how she intends to pay for her "Medicare for all" plan.

 

Warren's plan would require at least $23 trillion more in federal spending over a decade. Other experts say the added costs could run to $32 trillion, raising the U.S. government's share of the GDP by one-half and abolishing the private health insurance plans of 156 million Americans.

 

"Many of America's global champions, like banks and tech giants, would be dismembered," writes Rattner, "Shale fracking would be banned, which would send oil and natural gas prices soaring and cost millions of Americans their jobs."

 

Beyond "Medicare for All," Warren has other plans. Universal child care and free schooling from pre-kindergarten through college and the cancelation of student loans, plus a new look at reparations for slavery.

 

How would President Warren pay for all her "plans"?

 

She would raise the corporate rate to 35% from 21%, and slam a 40% tax on the profits of companies that try to flee the country.

 

She would raise the capital gains tax, impose new estate taxes, raise Social Security taxes on folks with higher incomes, and confiscate 2% of the wealth of those with $50 million in assets and 3% of the wealth of those with $1 billion, every year.

 

Writes Politifact: "All told, we counted $7 trillion in new spending over a 10-year period, and that's without Medicare for All. On the flip side, Warren offered specific tax proposals that came to $4.55 trillion."

 

Still, Warren's socialism is not what her main rivals, all white men, are zeroing in on. They've decided to play hardball.

Thursday, under a headline, "Warren Faces Accusations that She's 'Angry,' Which Supporters Say is Sexist," The Washington Post reported:

 

"Two of the leading male candidates in the Democratic presidential primary race -- Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg -- have escalated separate lines of attack as they attempt to counter the field's most prominent woman: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is antagonistic and angry."

Warren has a "my way or the highway" approach, said Buttigieg, she is "so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose."

Biden says Warren, who has a real shot at taking the nomination, reflects "an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics."

 

This is "treacherous," warns the Post, "given that many Democrats remain upset over what they view as the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton, the party's last nominee."

 

The Democratic Party today defines itself as an inclusive party of women, gays, Hispanics, African Americans and other people of color.

 

Yet three months out from the decisive early contests of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the party is going into the semifinals of its contest for a leader and future president without a single person of color in the final four.

Moreover, the three white males are denigrating and piling on the woman who is the front-runner with attacks on her personality for which conservatives, if they used such tactics, would be charged with "dog-whistling"  white working class.

When one looks at the approval-disapproval rating of the president, re-election appears problematic. When one looks at the Democrats' agenda and field of candidates, the odds of Trump's re-election seem a good deal better.

This thing is by no means over.

 

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at  www.creators.com.

Most Say Media Working With Democrats to Impeach Trump

Thursday, November 14, 2019

 

Most voters don’t expect fair play from the media when it comes to news coverage of the Democrats’ impeachment attempt.

 

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Likely U.S. Voters think most reporters are trying to help impeach President Trump when they write or talk about the impeachment effort. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 32% believe most reporters are simply interested in reporting the news in an unbiased manner. Eight percent (8%) say most are trying to block Trump’s impeachment. (To see survey question wording,  click here.)

Seventy-six percent (76%) of Republicans and a plurality (48%) of voters not affiliated with either major political party say most reporters are trying to help impeach Trump, a view shared by only 36% of Democrats.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of all voters say they have closely followed news reports about House Democrats’ efforts to impeach the president, with 54% who have been following Very Closely.

 

Among voters who have been following impeachment news Very Closely, 58% think most reporters are trying to help impeach Trump; 34% say they are simply interested in reporting the news in an unbiased manner.

(Want a  free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on  Twitter or  Facebook.

 

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted November 12-13, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by  Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See  methodology.

 

Trump’s voter approval stands at 48% following the first day of the House impeachment hearings.

Men and those 40 and over are following impeachment news more closely than women and younger voters. Men and middle-aged voters are the most skeptical of the media’s motivation.

 

Unaffiliated voters are less interested than Republicans and Democrats.

 

Other minority voters (60%) believe even more strongly than whites (51%) and blacks (53%) that most reporters are trying to help impeach Trump.

 

Ninety percent (90%) of voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing think most reporters are trying to help impeach the president. Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of Trump’s job performance, only 16% agree; 64% of these voters say most reporters are trying to do an unbiased job.

 

Voters are mad at Trump and his political opponents, but  they’re angriest at the media these days.

Distrust of political news reporting remains at a record high, with just over half of voters now convinced that most in the media are out to get Trump. By contrast, 48% thought  most reporters were trying to help Obama pass his agenda.

America’s First Third-World State

By Victor Davis Hanson 

 

 

A man who said he is homeless stands outside his makeshift home near a housing construction project in San Francisco, Calif., in 2015. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Medieval diseases, gangs, corruption, crime, crumbling infrastructure, out-of-touch wealthy elites …

 

‘Third World” is now an anachronistic geographical term of the old Cold War. But after 1989, “Third World” was reinvented from a political noun into an adjective to mean more than just Asian, African, and Latin American nations nonaligned with either the West or the Soviet bloc.

 

Rather, the current modifier “Third World” has come to transcend geography, politics, and ethnicity. It simply denotes poor failed states all over the globe of all races and religions.

 

Third World symptomologies are predictably corrupt government, unequal or nonexistent applicability of the law, two rather than three classes, and the return of medieval diseases. Third World nations suffer from high taxes and poor social services, premodern infrastructure and utilities, poor transportation, tribalism, gangs, and lack of security.

 

Another chief characteristic of a Third World society is the official denial of all of the above, and a vindictive, almost hysterical state response to anyone who points out those obvious tragedies. Another is massive out-migration. Residents prefer almost any country other than their own. Think Somalia, Venezuela, Cuba, Libya, or Guatemala.

 

Does 21st-century California increasingly fit that definition — despite having the nation’s most amenable climate and most beautiful and diverse geography, with major natural ports facing the dynamic Asian economies, and being naturally rich in timber, agriculture, mining, and energy, and blessed with a prior century’s inheritance of effective local and state government?

 

The California Manor

 

By many criteria, 21st-century California is both the poorest and the richest state in the union. Almost a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Another fifth is categorized as near the poverty level — facts not true during the latter 20th century. A third of the nation’s welfare recipients now live in California. The state has the highest homeless population in the nation (135,000). About 22 percent of the nation’s total homeless population reside in the state — whose economy is the largest in the U.S., fueling the greatest numbers of American billionaires and high-income zip codes.

 

But by some indicators, the California middle class is shrinking — because of massive regulation, high taxation, green zoning, and accompanying high housing prices. Out-migration from the state remains largely a phenomenon of the middle and upper-middle classes. Millions have left California in the past 30 years, replaced by indigent and often illegal immigrants, often along with the young, affluent, and single.

 

If someone predicted half a century ago that a Los Angeles police station or indeed L.A. City Hall would be in danger of periodic, flea-borne infectious typhus outbreaks, he would have been considered unhinged. After all, the city that gave us the modern freeway system is not supposed to resemble Justinian’s sixth-century Constantinople. Yet typhus, along with outbreaks of infectious hepatitis A, are in the news on California streets. The sidewalks of the state’s major cities are homes to piles of used needles, feces, and refuse. Hygienists warn that permissive municipal governments are setting the stage — through spiking populations of history’s banes of fleas, lice, and rats — for possible dark-age outbreaks of plague or worse.

 

High tech does its part not to clean the streets but to create defecation apps that electronically warn tourists and hoi polloi how to avoid walking blindly into piles of sidewalk excrement. In Californian logic, public defecation butts up against progressive tolerance, so it is exempt from the law. Yet for a suburbanite to build a patio without a permit, for example, costs one dearly in fines. Indeed, a new patio without a permit can be deemed more dangerous to the public health than piles of excrement in the public workplace.

 

One out of three Californians who enters a hospital for any cause is now found to be suffering from either diabetes or pre-diabetes, an epidemic that hits the Hispanic community especially hard but for a variety of reasons has not led to effective public-health efforts and sufficient publicity. State-run dialysis clinics now dot the towns and communities of the Central Valley — a tragic symptom of dietary culture, massive illegal immigration, and poor public-health education.

 

Infrastructure Is for the Unwoke

 

California’s transportation system, to be honest, remains in near ruins. Despite the highest gas taxes in the nation, none of its major trans-state freeways — not the 99, not I-5, not the 101 — after 70 years off use, are yet completed with six lanes, resulting in dangerous bottlenecks and wrecks. Driving the 99 south of Visalia, or the 101 near Paso Robles, or the 5 north of Coalinga is right out of Road Warrior — but not as dangerous as the fossilized two-line feeder lines such as 152 into Gilroy, or the 41 west of Kettleman City. The unspoken transportation credo of Jerry Brown’s aggregate 16 years as governor apparently was “If you don’t build it, maybe they won’t need it.”

 

Meanwhile the concrete carcass of the recently cancelled multibillion-dollar high-speed rail system dots the skyline over Fresno. Bureaucrats now insist that more billions must be spent to ensure that a short segment of the least traveled route will be finished, though they obviously do not anticipate spurring a new tourist or commercial corridor between Merced and Bakersfield.

 

High-speed-rail gurus insist on salvaging something of the boondoggle not because they have an economic rationale justifying more dollars — they would be far better invested in improving freeways, airports, and rails — but largely out of pride and shame that demand some small token rescued from a very bad pipe dream.

 

In 1973, when I first visited and lived in Greece, the roads were medieval. The old Hellinikon Airport was dysfunctional, if not creepy. Highway rest stops were filthy. I have lived in or visited Greece in the ensuing 45 years since, including occasionally after the 2008 meltdown and European Union standoff. And yet today, the freeways, chief airport, and rest stops of relatively poor Greece are in far better shape than are California’s. LAX’s poor road access, traffic, uncleanness, crowds, and chaos seem premodern compared with the current Athenian airport.

 

It is an eerie experience to see America’s once premier state, currently at its supposed acme, now resemble Greece of the colonels a half-century ago, while 2019 Greece seems more like a functioning 1973 California. Athens and Thessaloniki are still dirty in a few places, and there are homeless and illegal immigrants. But one does not see needles and feces on the sidewalks, and it is safe to walk in the evening. Greek public restrooms, once notorious, are far more sanitary than those at rest stops in Fresno, San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

 

Power outrages are characteristic of Third World countries. Here in California we are advised to brace for lots of them, given that our antiquated grid apparently contributes to brush fires on hot days. As a native, I do not remember a single instance of our 20th-century state utilities shutting down service in the manner that they now routinely promise.

 

 

California for Others

 

Crime the last three years has increased. It is epidemic in local jails. San Francisco has the highest property-crime rate per capita of any major city. The California prison system is a mess, and sanctuary cities ensure that illegal aliens charged with crimes will not be deported. Pick up a McClatchy paper and you’ll see that the day’s fare of Central Valley criminality, even after sanitization and editorialization, is mind-boggling.

 

California’s cycles of wet boom years and dry bust years continue because the state refuses to build three or four additional large reservoirs that have been planned for more than a half-century, and that would store enough water to keep California functional through even the worst drought. The rationale is either that it is more sophisticated to allow millions of acre-feet of melted snow to run into the sea, or it is better to have a high-speed-rail line from Merced to Bakersfield than an additional 10 million acre-feet of water storage, or droughts ensure more state control through rationing and green social-policy remedies.

 

Twenty-seven percent of Californians were not born in the United States, a large minority of them residing in the United States illegally. Yet California’s universities and popular culture are at the forefront of salad-bowl and identity-politics policies that obstruct assimilation, integration, and intermarriage — the historical remedies for the natural tensions that arise within multiracial and multiethnic societies. In this perfect storm, at the very moment the world’s poorest citizens from Oaxaca and Central America flooded into America, de facto rejecting the protocols of their home, their hosts’ messaging to them was that they should lodge complaints about the social injustice of their new home and romanticize the culture that they had just forsaken for good cause.

 

California schools are usually in the bottom decile of national rankings. No one in polite conversation asks why that is so, given that the state’s K–12 schools used to be among the most competitive in the United States.

 

Yet, again in medieval fashion, the professional schools and science and technology departments of California’s premier research universities — Cal Tech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC — are among the highest-rated in the world. Imagine something like the scribal oases of Padua, Oxford, or Paris in an otherwise frightening 13th century. If one wishes to be schooled as an electrical engineer or cancer researcher, California is an attractive place; if one wishes to be a knowledgeable graduate of a public elementary and high school, it most certainly is not.

 

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is perhaps the worst public-service entity in the United States. To enter any branch office is to venture into a Dante’s Inferno of huge lines, chaos, unkept rest rooms, and rude and often incompetent unionized employees. The only efficient DMV office in the state is the unmarked and secret branch in Sacramento reserved for state legislators and grandee insiders who oversee the DMV for the rest of the population. For a fee, concierge private auto clubs and firms often duplicate some DMV services, a de facto admission that the state needs something else besides itself to offer basic services. I once asked a DMV clerk, after a long wait in line, if it was right to be wearing a purple SEIU organizing T-shirt; she replied, “Do you still want to be served?”

 

The DMV scandals are multifarious: Thousands of motor-voter registrations sent to the wrong people, including illegal aliens supposedly ineligible to vote; corrupt employees who sell commercial truck driver’s licenses to the unqualified; and private corporations and occasionally individuals selling hard-to-obtain reservations and appointments.

 

California now has the nation’s highest basket of sales, gas, and income taxes. With a state surplus, and a slowing economy, one would think that the legislature and governor would pause before even considering raising more taxes. After all, new federal tax law limits write-offs of state and local taxes to $10,000 — radically spiking upper-bracket Californians’ federal tax liabilities.

 

Yet the rule in California is to punish the upper middle class while pandering to the rich and romanticizing the poor. Thus, the legislature is now considering a punitive new inheritance tax, and it just imposed an Internet sales tax.

 

Again, the message is that if Californians can survive a recent 13.3 percent top state-income-tax rate, and a vast increase in their federal tax liability, then certainly they can be easily squeezed further after death to pony up 40 percent of their already taxed estates that are over $3 million in value. Translated, that can mean that a tract house in Los Angeles or the Bay Area and a modest 401K are proof that you did not build your wealth on your own, so the state has a second shot at appropriating your postmortem capital, to ensure that your children will see no benefit from your parsimony and thrift.

 

California’s apocalyptic present has created an alternate universe, in good Third World style, of pay-for-play services. To avoid the emergency room (the last time I used one, two gangs squared off in the waiting room, to continue what their wounded members were under treatment for), progressive Californians often pay for concierge medicine and anything private to avoid at all costs using any state services.

 

The coastal corridor elite often put their kids in tony prep schools that have sprung up or vastly expanded, in the fashion of the 1960s white Southern academies that were designed to circumvent federal desegregation edicts. Elite progressives mimic old-style, 1960s segregationists but feel that their children’s green and multicultural curricula offer enough penance to assuage their guilt over abandoning the state’s much praised “diverse” schools.

A couple, both age 78, went to a sex therapist’s office.  The doctor asked, “What can I do for you?”

 

The man said, “Will you watch us have sex?”

 

The doctor looked puzzled, but agreed.

 

When the couple finished, the doctor said, “There’s nothing wrong with the way you have sex”, and charged them $50.

 

This happened several weeks in a row. The couple would make an appointment, have sex with no problems, pay the doctor, then leave.

 

Finally, the doctor asked, “Just exactly what are you trying to find out?”

 

“We’re not trying to find out anything”, the man replied.

“She’s married and we can’t go to her house. I’m married and we can’t go to my house. The Holiday Inn charges $90. The Hilton charges $108. We do it here for $50… and I get $43 back from Medicare.

 

 

When you're over seventy . . . who cares?

I was standing at the bar at the VFW one night minding my own business.

 

A fat ugly chick came up behind me, grabbed my behind and said,

 

"You're kinda cute.   You gotta phone number?"

 

I said,

"Yeah, you gotta pen?"

 

She said,

"Yeah, I got a pen."

 

I said,

"You better get back in it before the farmer misses you."

 

Cost me 6 stitches.

 

 

I went to our VFW last night and saw a big woman dancing on a table.

 

I said,

"Good legs."

 

The girl giggled and said,

"Do you really think so?"

 

I said,

"Definitely!   Most tables would have collapsed by now."

 

 

I was talking to a young woman in the VFW last night.

 

She said,

"If you lost a few pounds, had a shave and got your hair cut, you'd look all right."

 

I said,

"If I did that, I'd be talking to your friends over there instead of you."

 

 

I was telling a woman in the Club about my ability to guess what day a woman was born just by feeling her breasts.

 

She said,

"Really.   "Go on then ... try."

 

After about thirty seconds of fondling she began to lose patience and said,

"Come on, what day was I born?"

 

I said,

"Yesterday."

 

 

I went to the drug store and told the clerk,

"Give me 3 packets of condoms, please."

 

Lady clerk,

"Do you need a paper bag with that, sir?”

 

I said,

"Nah ... She's purty good lookin'."

 

 

I got caught taking a pee in the swimming pool today.

 

The lifeguard shouted at me so loud, I nearly fell in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P

Okay folks, just in case many of you think I have been unfair to Obama in the past, here is a list of his many accomplishments...just want to be fair and balanced... And yes this has been around before but it's worth reminding us of why we will never forget OBAMA's legacy.....

 

 

Quit Bashing Obama! 

By COL. ROBERT F. CUNNINGHAM and PATRICK RISHOR,  The Gilmer Mirror (Northeast Texas Newspaper)

 

Quit trashing Obama's accomplishments. He has done more than any other President before him. Here is a list of his impressive accomplishments:

    1.   First President to be photographed smoking a joint.

    2.   First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.

    3.   First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.

    4.   First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.

    5.   First President to violate the War Powers Act.

    6.   First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

    7.   First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.   Forced people to purchase health insurance or be fined (taxed) and forced to pay the fine through their income tax. (obamacare)

    8.   First President to spend a trillion dollars on "shovel-ready" jobs when there was no such thing as "shovel-ready" jobs.  (Stimulus Bill)

    9.   First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

    10.   First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat, allowing many illegals to stay in America.

    11.   First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

    12.   First President to demand a company hand-over $20 million to one of his political appointees.    ???????

    13.   First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (General Motors - Rick Wagoner) to resign.

    14.   First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space and to turn NASA into a Muslim reachout organization.

    15.   First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian  nation.

    16.   First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.

    17.   First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.  (Immigration in Arizona)

    18.   First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke out on the reasons for their rate increases.  (Obamacare)

    19.   First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.  (Boeing)

    20.   First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

    21.   First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

    22.   First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal).

    23.   First President to fire an inspector general of AmeriCorps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.

    24.   First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.

    25.   First President to surround himself with radical left wing anarchists.

    26.   First President to golf more than 250 separate times in his years in office.

    27.   First President to hide his birth, medical, educational and travel records.

    28.   First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.

    29.   First President to go on multiple "global apology tours" and concurrent "insult our friends" tours.

    30.   First President to go on over 17 lavish vacations, in addition to date nights and Wednesday evening  White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayers.

    31.   First President to have personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.

    32.   First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.

    33.   First President to fly in a personal trainer from Chicago at least once a week at taxpayer expense.

    34.   First President to repeat the Quran and tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.

    35.   First President to side with a foreign nation over one of the American 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona).

    36.   First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance because they "volunteered to go to war and knew the consequences."

    37.   Then he was the First President to tell the members of the military that THEY were UNPATRIOTIC for balking at the last suggestion.

     38.   First President that did not know how many states in the union.

    39.   First President who had a father who was a professed communist, a step-father who was a professed communist and a mentor who was a professed communist - Frank Davis.   It was never reported when he turned into a Capitalist!

    40.  The first president who had a minister who hated America and preached about that hate in his sermon while obama and his wife sat in the pews for 20 years.  (Reverend Wright)

    41.  The first president who gave $5 billion taxpayer money to a company which then proceeded to go bankrupt within 6 months after never building a single solar panel --  Solendra -- there was never an accounting for the taxpayer funds given to them.

    42.  The first president to secretly ship billions of dollars in cash (loaded on pallets) to a foreign country and receive nothing in return.  (Iran nuke deal)

    43.  The first president to have Air Force One flown over New York under approved air space -- thereby scaring the b-g-ees out of the residents who experienced 911

Clara the Magical Halloween Healer

 

RED SKELTON'S RECIPE FOR THE PERFECT MARRIAGE

 

1. Two times a week we go to a nice restaurant, have a little beverage, good food and companionship. She goes on Tuesdays, I go on Fridays.

 

2. We also sleep in separate beds. Hers is in California and mine is in Texas.

 

3. I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

 

4. I asked my wife where she wanted to go for our anniversary. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said. So I suggested the kitchen.

 

5. We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.

 

6. She has an electric blender, electric toaster and electric bread maker. She said "There are too many gadgets, and no place to sit down!" So I bought her an electric chair.

 

7. My wife told me the car wasn't running well because there was water in the carburetor. I asked where the car was. She told me, "In the lake."

 

8. She got a mud pack and looked great for two days. Then the mud fell off.

 

9. She ran after the garbage truck, yelling, "Am I too late for the garbage?" The driver said, "No, jump in!".

 

10. Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.

 

11. I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was 'Always'.

 

12. I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months. I don't like to interrupt her.

 

13. The last fight was my fault though. My wife asked, "What's on the TV?"

I said, "Dust!".

 

Can't you just hear him say all of these?  I sure can! :-)

I love it. These were the good old days when humor didn't have to start with a four letter word. It was just clean and simple fun. And he always ended his programs with the words, "And May God Bless" with a big smile on his face.

Elizabeth Warren warns she may cut off US aid to  Israel if elected

October 21, 2019 

 

Did Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., just touch one of the third rails of American politics?

 

Speaking with reporters in Iowa, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate stated that if she becomes president, cutting off U.S. aid to Israel is a very real possibility if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not stop building settlements in the West Bank.

 

Warren was asked if she would make U.S. aid conditional on settlement building and she was unequivocal in saying that “everything is on the table.”

 

Democrats are searching for quid pro quo, how’s that fit the bill?

 

“Right now Netanyahu says that he’s going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements,” she said. “That does not move us toward a two-state solution.”

 

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table,” said the hard-left progressive.

 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has also expressed support for using U.S. aid to pressure the Israeli government.

 

During an interview for the popular podcast “Pod Save America,” Sanders was asked if he would consider using American aid as leverage to get the Israeli government to act differently, Haaretz reported.

 

“Absolutely,” Sanders replied in the July interview.

 

Another hard-left progressive candidate running for president, Sanders tied U.S. aid to Israel with Netanyahu denying entry to Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

 

Omar and Tlaib, the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, have a rich history of antisemitism.

 

“But the idea that a member of the United States Congress cannot visit a nation which, by the way, we support to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, is clearly an outrage,” Sanders said. “And if Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country to get a firsthand look at what’s going on — and I’ve been there many, many times — but if he doesn’t want members to visit, maybe he can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel.”

 

Social media users see Warren’s remarks on Israel as a deal breaker if she seriously hopes to be elected president.

Fellow Citizen ---   

D+26… D+29… D+32…

 

This isn’t bingo...... 

 

These numbers show just how lopsided the districts that belong to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Queens, NY), Ilhan Omar (Minneapolis, MN) and Rashida Tlaib (Detroit, MI) are --- three of the most extreme liberals in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

 

These are some of the most lopsided congressional districts in America -- which means this trio could be in Congress for decades, just like …

 

Nancy Pelosi (D+37 – 32 years in office)

Maxine Waters (D+29 – 28 years in office)

Adam Schiff (D+23 – 18 years in office)

 

Our Founders never intended to have lifetime elected officials. 

 

Our first president, George Washington, had the foresight, respect, and humility to term-limit himself!

 

But that same foresight, respect, and humility is rare in politicians and Washington insiders today.

 

They think they know better than folks like you and me – and they think it’s their job to TELL US what to do instead of the other way around. But we don’t work for them – they work for us.

And it’s up to patriots like you and me to hold our elected officials accountable – which is why we need an amendment to the Constitution to establish 

 

TERM LIMITS NOW.

 

Thank you,

 

It was barely Thursday when someone in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago called 911 to report a person asleep in an SUV at a stop sign.

When police officers arrived around 12:30 a.m., they found their boss, Superintendent Eddie Johnson, “slumped over” in his city-issued Chevrolet Tahoe, according to officials and news reports.

Officers did not see any signs of impairment, and Johnson, who reported parking his car after feeling lightheaded, was allowed to drive himself home, the police said.

Later that day, the superintendent called for an internal investigation into what happened, citing the need for transparency. Speaking to reporters Thursday night, he blamed blood pressure medication for the episode.

The superintendent called for an investigation because “whether you are police officer or a superintendent, all officers ought to be held to the highest standard,” a Police Department spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said in a statement Thursday.

But the episode took a turn on Friday after Mayor Lori Lightfoot told The Chicago Sun-Times that Superintendent Johnson disclosed to her that he had “a couple of drinks with dinner” before being found asleep in his vehicle.

He was not given a sobriety test after officers roused him, and Lightfoot told The Sun-Times that she was awaiting the outcome of the internal investigation to determine if the responding officers skirted rules to protect their boss, and whether Johnson should be held responsible.

In a separate statement Friday, Guglielmi said the police “have no indication of impropriety at this time,” adding that “this question can only be answered by the internal affairs investigation,” which he said was continuing.

The mayor declined to say whether the superintendent should have been driving or given a field sobriety test, The Sun-Times reported. The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday, and the superintendent could not be reached.

The police said Johnson complained of feeling exhausted Wednesday. He sent his driver home that day, but said he should have had one with him.

Johnson told reporters that he did not take his blood pressure medication after his doctor changed it this week. He said he threw out his old medication, but “failed to put the new medication in.”

The superintendent had a blood clot this past summer, The Tribune reported, and in 2017, he underwent a kidney transplant.

This episode with the superintendent was the latest to draw attention to the Police Department. In 2018, an officer was convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and, more recently, 63 men and women were exonerated after having been convicted on drug charges in arrests by two corrupt police officers.

Johnson was named to the post in 2016. His predecessor, Garry F. McCarthy, was fired days after the release of the video of McDonald’s shooting.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

--------------

People are pictured after being rescued by police in Sabon Garin, in Daura local government area of Katsina state

By Ahmed Kingimi

MAIDUGUIRI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Police in northern Nigeria rescued nearly 70 men and boys from a second purported Islamic school where they were shackled and subjected to "inhuman and degrading treatments."

The raid in Katsina, the northwestern home state of President Muhammadu Buhari, came less than a month after about 300 men and boys were freed from another supposed Islamic school in neighboring Kaduna state where they were allegedly tortured and sexually abused.

"In the course of investigation, sixty-seven persons from the ages of 7 to 40 years were found shackled with chains," Katsina police spokesman Sanusi Buba said in a statement. "Victims were also found to have been subjected to various inhuman and degrading treatments."

The raid occurred on October 12 in Sabon Garin in the Daura local government area of Katsina state. Police issued a statement on Monday and said they were working to reunite the victims with their families.

Lawal Ahmad, a 33-year-old who was held captive, said he witnessed sexual assault, beatings and the death of other captives during his two years there.

"They were just beating, abusing and punishing us every day with the name of teaching us," he said through tears, addin "they are not teaching us for the sake of God."

Police arrested one man, 78-year-old Mallam Bello Abdullahi Umar, for running what they called an "illegal detention/remand home."

Lawai Musa, a trader who lived near the center, told Reuters by phone that families sent unruly men and boys there believing it was an Islamic teaching facility that would straighten them out and teach them Islamic beliefs.

"The way he is treating the children is un-Islamic" he said. "We are not happy, they were treated illegally."

Islamic schools, known as Almajiris, are common across the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), a local organization, estimates about 10 million children attend them.

In June, President Buhari, himself a Muslim, said the government planned to ban the schools, but would not do so immediately. After the incident in Kaduna, the president issued a statement calling on traditional authorities to work with government to expose "unwanted cultural practices that amount to the abuse of children."

Buhari's office declined to immediately comment on the Katsina raid, saying it would issue a statement after a full briefing from police.

"The command enjoins parents to desist from taking their children/wards to illegal, unauthorized or unapproved remand/rehabilitation centers," the police statement said.

(Reporting By Ahmed Kingimi, additional reporting by Mallam Abdullahi Inuwa in Daura and Felix Onuah in Abuja; Writing by Libby George; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

MAIDUGUIRI, Nigeria - Police in northern Nigeria rescued nearly 70 men and boys from a second purported Islamic school where they were shackled and subjected to "inhuman and degrading treatments."