Tag: oppression

A good summary of the Wikileaks DNC emails

10:09 am

Link here. This Reddit post essential lists several dozen links to specific DNC emails at the Wikileaks site, all illustrating some pretty unsavory behavior by Democratic Party officials and politicians as well as a number of so-called journalists.

Many of these stories are simply the ordinary dirty business of politics, laid bare to see. Others though reveal the significant levels of corruption that permeate the Democratic Party, levels I think that far worse than anything one could find among the Republicans, bad as that party’s leadership happens to be.

Above all, the emails that document the close teamwork between the press and the Democratic Party are probably the most important. It is not that this is surprising. The emails merely prove it beyond a shadow of doubt. MSNBC and its head Phil Griffin especially are revealed to be nothing more than Democratic operatives, working closely with the DNC to push its agenda.

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More speculations about Trump’s cabinet

8:43 pm

This article gives a nice overview of the people who it appears are being considered for positions in a Trump presidency, should he win.

Unfortunately, it does not give a lot of background about the people mentioned. Many, like Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich, are well known. Others, like businessman Donald McGahn, are unknown. Some, like Senator Bob Corker, suggested as potential Secretary of State, would be a disaster, based on his past history of getting the Iran deal approved.
Some. like Harold Hamm and Steve Mnuchin, have been described here at BtB at the links behind their names, Hamm positively and Mnuchin negatively..

There is more at the link. Read it all. This list is a start. It will require vetting to get a sense of what we can expect from a Trump administration.

Note that there is a reason I am so focused on Trump and not Clinton. Trump remains an unknown, who might be worth voting for if it appears his plans as President are reasonable, something that might still be possible, despite all the negative reports I’ve given him. Moreover, there is a chance that Trump can be positively influenced. Learning as much about him as possible increases that possibility.

Clinton however is not an unknown. She is corrupt, a liar, and an avowed socialist who believes strongly in increasing the size and power of the federal government, as does the entire political party that supports her. To deny any of this is to live with your head in the sand. She thus needs no vetting.

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Trump considers funding super-PACs to defeat Cruz and Kasich in later elections

4:48 pm

Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump is considering creating two super-pacs expressly focused at destroying the political careers of Ohio Governor John Kasich and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

During an event in Cleveland on Friday, Trump hinted at the prospect of funding an outside group against Cruz in the future.“Maybe I’ll set up a super-PAC if he decides to run,” Trump said of Cruz. Turning to his running mate Mike Pence he asked rhetorically, “Are you allowed to set up a super-PAC…if you are the president, to fight someone?”

The source close to Trump’s thinking indicated that Trump would consider forming the super-PAC whether or not he wins the presidential election in November.

This sure doesn’t sound like the actions of a Republican and conservative looking for allies within his party. Instead, it sounds like a Democrat who, having gotten the Republican nomination for President, can now stop pretending and begin the process of using his position to destroy the conservative movement in the United States in order to make it easier to impose liberal policies.

Trump’s supporters keep screaming that Cruz should have endorsed Trump for party unity. Well, the same applies to Trump — to bring the party together — only more so, since he has the nomination for president and as such is the de facto leader of the party. Moreover, while Cruz’s speech could have been more carefully worded, it nonetheless laid out the arguments for voting against Hillary Clinton and supporting all Republicans nationwide, even Trump (though unstated). Trump however is clearly doing the exact opposite, considering the investment of millions of his own money to actively work to defeat two of the party’s more conservative Republicans.

But hey, Trump can win! Who cares what he stands for!

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Black Lives Matter rejects good will gesture by police

10:36 am

Hateful bigots: The Oakland Black Lives Matter group bluntly rejected an offer from the city police department for a joint barbecue to foster communications.

[T]he police were met with flat-out rejection by a spokesperson who referred to law enforcement as “pigs.”

“A BBQ is definitely not going to stop this blockade,” Karissa Lewis, a self-described “radical black farmer from East Oakland,” told local Fox affiliate KTVU. “And as a radical-black farmer from East Oakland, I eat pigs, I don’t eat with them,” she said.

But hey, this is the new standard for today’s politics: slander your opponent and foster ill will between people. It’s what we want!

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Half of TSA employees cited for misconduct

3:19 pm

Does this make you feel safer? Almost half of all TSA employees have been cited for misconduct, and the citations have increased by almost 30 percent since 2013.

Of the total allegations filed, 90.8 percent were against TSA officers, while 4.8 percent were filed against managers or administrators. Of the areas of misconduct, “Attendance & Leave” sees the highest number of offenders, while “Failure to Follow Instructions,” “Screening & Security,” “Neglect of Duty,” and “Disruptive Behavior” round out the top five.

It also appears that the TSA has been reducing the sanctions it has been giving out for this bad behavior.

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EPA’s gasoline efficiency tests are garbage

9:07 am

Our government in action: The tests the EPA uses to establish the fuel efficiency of cars are unreliable, and likely provide no valid information at all about the fuel efficiency of the cars tested.

The law requiring cars to meet these fuel efficiency tests was written in the 1970s, and specifically sets standards based on the technology then. Worse,

[T]he EPA doesn’t know exactly how its CAFE testing correlates with actual results, because it has never done a comprehensive study of real-world fuel economy. Nor does anyone else. The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT—hardly a scientific sampling.

Other than that, everything is fine. Companies are forced to spend billions on this regulation, the costs of which they immediately pass on to consumers, all based on fantasy and a badly-written law. Gee, I’m sure glad we never tried this with healthcare!

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Trump Treasury Secretary to be former Clinton donor and Goldman Sachs banker?

8:52 am

According to one Trump fund-raiser, should Donald Trump win the presidency he plans to nominate for his Treasury Secretary a former Clinton donor and Goldman Sachs banker.

[Steve] Mnuchin, who is a former donor to Hillary Clinton, spent 17 years with Goldman Sachs, where his father also had been a prominent executive. He later worked with investment groups affiliated with George Soros, including as chairman of controversial mortgage lender OneWest Bank Group (which would later be acquired by CIT Group). He also has spent time as both an art dealer and film producer.

Heh. I seem to remember how Ted Cruz was attacked because his wife worked for Goldman Sachs. Trump was going to save us from the big bankers!

I myself am not really bothered by this man’s connections with Goldman Sachs. What worries me is that Mnuchin previously supported Hillary Clinton and also has ties to the very leftwing money-man George Soros. Thus, this story once again underlines the need for voters to elect as many conservatives to Congress as possible, in order to limit the influence of Trump’s liberal friends.

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Trump will ask Congress to ease the firing of government workers

7:31 pm

Good if true: According to New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is in charge of Donald Trump’s transition team, should he win the presidency he will ask Congress to pass laws making it easier from him to fire government workers.

Trump’s transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said. “It’s called burrowing,” Christie said. “You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up … roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.”

Originally these laws were passed to reduce the spoils system, whereby new presidents got to hand out lots of jobs to friends once elected. Now, these laws merely act to prevent elected officials from having any supervisory oversight over the employees they manage.

The article also noted that the Trump campaign is beginning to assemble a list of government workers they want to fire should they win. This is also encouraging, considering the overall incompetence we’ve seen in the federal government these past few years. (I would especially like to see the entire management of the National Park Service fired for the part they played in helping Obama during the government shutdown.) It is time for a purge. If Trump follows through with this, it will be a very positive thing.

Expect a lot of squealing however from the usual suspects in Washington. The key will be whether Trump will have the courage to follow through despite those squeals.

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Health insurance rates in California to rise

1:46 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance rates on the Obamacare exchange in California will rise 13% next year.

Large increases on Obamacare exchanges have been par for the course throughout the country this year, which is not really a surprise for anyone who was willing to read more than one sentence of a plethora of predictions made by conservatives in 2010 before Obamacare was passed. They predicted then, as this article notes is now happening, that

Fewer people are signing up through the exchanges than anticipated, and they’re using more health care services than anticipated. That’s left insurers with fewer customers to share the overall cost.

Obviously, according to Obama and Clinton and the entire Democratic Party, the solution to this failed government health program is an even bigger government health program! Won’t that just be peachy-keen!

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North Korea fires three more missiles

9:51 pm

Does this make you feel safer? North Korea fired three ballistic missiles early Tuesday,

North Korea fired three ballistic missiles early on Tuesday which flew between 500 and 600 kms (300 and 360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country.

The U.S. military said it detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology. North Korea has fired both types numerous times in recent years, an indication that unlike recent launches that were seen as efforts by the North to improve its missile capability, Tuesday’s were meant as a show of force.

I am sure the Obama administration is monitoring this closely!

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BLM demands removal of police float from gay parade

5:27 pm

Bigots: Black Lives Matter is demanding the removal of a police float during a homosexual pride march in Vancouver.

BLM are making this demand for one reason: They are bigots, and to their bigoted view of life, all cops must be racists, even those who, with good will, want to get together to build a float and want to march in a gay pride parade.

I should add that in general, I find gay pride parades bigoted in their own way, as they also celebrate group rights rather than individual rights. All you have to do to understand what I mean is to imagine this being a White Pride or a Heterosexual Pride march, and you will immediately see what I mean. Such marches would be considered quite offensive. Yet, they really are no different than a gay pride march.

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Trump rally attendees sue San Jose

5:00 pm

Fourteen attendees of a San Jose Trump rally on June 2 have filed a class-action suit against the city, the mayor, and the police chief for their failure to protect them from rioters.

“Law-abiding citizens leaving the Trump rally were victimized by being forced by armed police to walk into a riot in full swing where many were assaulted while police looked on,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Harmeet K. Dhillon, who is also the vice chair of the California Republican Party.

Dhillon says her clients range from a 14-year-old who was assaulted by two different individuals and denied assistance by the San Jose Fire Department to a 71-year-old woman whose glasses were ripped off and destroyed by three rioters. She said it was made clear that the “inaction” of 250 San Jose police officers “was colored by political viewpoint considerations.”

As documented at the time, the San Jose police actually arranged things so that the Trump supporters were forced to take a detour that would put them directly in the path of the violent protesters, and then stood down and watched them get attacked.

I hope they win big, and bankrupt the mayor and the police chief.

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Freedom caucus demands impeachment vote on IRS head

11:04 am

Good news: Despite the opposition of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House is demanding a vote on the House floor on the impeachment of IRS head John Koskinen.

Two points: First, the vote is not guaranteed, as the motion put forth now will expire during the summer recess. The caucus will have to re-introduce it when Congress reconvenes in September, something they say they will do.

Second, Ryan’s resistance to having this vote does not speak well for him, considering the outrageous stonewalling by Koskinen in connection with IRS scandal, including lying to Congress and participating in the destruction of evidence that had been specifically requested by Congress. It also helps confirm the accusations of Ryan’s opponent in the August 9 Republican primary, Paul Nehlen, that Ryan is not the conservative he claims to be.

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Trump picks Pence

10:35 am

It appears that Donald Trump has chosen Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.

This article provides a detailed look at Pence’s background, which is decidedly conservative and tightly linked with tea party philosophy.

Trump’s choice here is definitely encouraging. It suggests that his claimed conversion to conservative values might actually be sincere (though clearly shallow), because it suggests he is looking for conservatives to help him figure out how to be a conservative. As I’ve said repeatedly, the best way to make sure Trump governs as a constitutional conservative is to surround him with constitutional conservatives. This choice indicates that he is not going to resist that possibility.

Let me add that picking Pence could help Trump significantly in garnering support from the status quo Republicans that have been resisting him, since these same people respect Pence highly.

Let me also add one cautionary note. I have a memory of Pence at one point waffling on conservative principles for political gain, but I cannot at all remember the context or situation. Thus, it is important to remind ourselves repeatedly that these are all politicians, and that their interest is not necessarily that of the nation’s but of their own self-interest, which means getting elected. At any time they could toss the Constitution in the trash heap if that is what they think will get them votes. UPDATE: This article outlines Pence’s waffling as governor in Indiana, confirming my reservations about him.

It is therefore very important to not only surround Trump with conservatives, all politicians must be surrounded by voters who demand they defend our rights and our freedoms, as defined by the Constitution. Only then can we be reasonably assured that those rights will be defended.

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Trump doesn’t care if Republicans hold Senate

12:51 pm

Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump was quoted in a news article today that he really doesn’t care that much it the Republicans retain their majority in the Senate.

When I asked him recently whether the party’s maintaining its majority in the Senate meant anything to him, he replied: “Well, I’d like them to do that. But I don’t mind being a free agent, either.” Trump has shown similarly little interest in helping his party’s committees build the sort of war chests typically required in a campaign year. After winning the presidential nomination on a shoestring budget and with fewer paid staff members than the average candidate for governor, he has been visibly reluctant to help build much in the way of national campaign infrastructure, sending a clear message to his fellow Republicans: This fall, you’re on your own. [emphasis in original]

I strongly advice all my readers to read the analysis at the link. From all accounts, Trump’s campaign effort sure does look like he is a Democratic wolf in Republican sheep’s clothing, and that this prediction describing an actual Trump administration will prove amazingly accurate.

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Another Obamacare co-op fails

11:34 am

Finding out what’s in it: The third Obamacare co-op in the past two weeks has failed. .

Illinois regulators took steps Tuesday to shut down Land of Lincoln Health, a 3-year-old startup that lost $90 million in 2015 and more than $17 million through May 31. Illinois Department of Insurance officials announced they are seeking a court order allowing the state to take over Land of Lincoln Health and prepare the company for liquidation. The department’s acting director, Anne Melissa Dowling, will work with the federal government to establish a 60-day special enrollment period for Land of Lincoln policyholders to find and purchase new health coverage.

This leaves the count at 16 failures out of 23 Obamacare co-ops. And there will be more. The economics of the co-ops never made sense, dependent as they were on gigantic and unaffordable subsidizes from the government. In fact, none of the economics of any of Obamacare make sense, which is why the whole monstrous law has raised costs for everyone and made being a doctor a far worse bureaucratic nightmare than it was before the law was passed.

It is a good thing the American people have woken up and decided to nominate candidates for President who are avowed conservatives with proven track records for limiting the power of government. Oh wait…

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Why no one should be surprised by AG Lynch’s failure to uphold the law

10:11 am

This story, about how Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused during testimony to Congress this week to admit the clear illegality of giving classified information to people without clearance, should not surprise anyone. Nor should her partisan willingness to protect Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton.

Before she was even ratified by the Republican-led Senate in 2015, she was exposed as someone who was easily willing to ignore the law during her nomination hearings. As I wrote then,

The video of Lynch’s non-answer to Cruz’s question is quite shocking. I dare you to watch it and tell me afterward that this administration and Democratic Party is not a threat to your freedom and rights.

Cruz was not afraid to buck the trend and vote against her. The majority of the Republicans in Congress however were, as always, wimps, and let the Democrats get her approved. We are paying for this now.

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New Mexico insurance company abandoning Obamacare exchange

5:52 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A major New Mexico health insurance company has decided to stop selling individual insurance policies through the Obamacare exchange.

Apparently, people who got insurance through the exchange were generally sicker to begin with, and were poorer (80% required subsidies). The company decided the cost was too much.

Meanwhile, Obama has declared that the solution to this very bad government-run health care system is more government!

President Barack Obama, reviewing his signature health law six years into its implementation, is suggesting Congress and his White House successor add a government-run, or public, insurance option to the Affordable Care Act and increase federal financial assistance for people to buy coverage.

The problem with this proposal is this is exactly what the Obamacare exchanges were, except that the health insurance itself was provided by private companies. Obama is suggesting we expand the exchanges (which have failed miserably), but augment that failure with a system kind of like the Veterans Administration, where the government provides the healthcare. That should work just great, assuming we lived in a fantasyland invented by progressive leftists who pay no attention to reality.

But then, I think we do, considering how many people seem willing to vote for Hillary Clinton, a big supporter of Obamacare and a long time proponent of it.

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Ban AC for DC

10:42 am

Link here. As Glenn Reynolds notes

I’m inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., who noticed something peculiar recently. It seems that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who spends a lot of time telling Americans that they need to drive less, fly less, and in general reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, also flies home to see her family in Boston “almost every weekend”; the head of the Clean Air Division, Janet McCabe, does the same, but she heads to Indianapolis. In air mileage alone, the Daily Caller News Foundation estimates that McCarthy surpasses the carbon footprint of an ordinary American. Smith has introduced a bill that wouldn’t target the EPA honchos’ personal travel, though: It provides, simply, that “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the cost of any officer or employee of the Environmental Protection Agency for official travel by airplane.”

This makes sense to me. We’re constantly told by the administration that “climate change” is a bigger threat than terrorism. And as even President Obama has noted, there’s a great power in setting an example: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

Likewise, it’s hard to expect Americans to accept changes to their own lifestyles when the very people who are telling them that it’s a crisis aren’t acting like it’s a crisis. So I have a few suggestions to help bring home the importance of reduced carbon footprints at home and abroad:

Reynolds than goes on to suggest further restrictions on the fossil fuel use of the hoi poloi in Washington, including heavy taxes on fuel used by private jets, heavy taxes on coastal regions like liberal cities like New York, Boston, and Washington to prepare for sea rise, and the banning air-conditioning in the District of Columbia.

Obama makes a great point about setting the thermostat at 72 degrees. We should ban air conditioning in federal buildings. We won two world wars without air conditioning our federal employees. Nothing in their performance over the last 50 or 60 years suggests that A/C has improved things. Besides, The Washington Post informs us that A/C is sexist, and that Europeans think it’s stupid.

Makes sense to me!

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