Sobering Thoughts Magnified by Extreme Statistics

Debt and Taxes and Perdition

11/23/2017 - Judge Andrew Napolitano Townhall.com

Should the government borrow against the future? Should it guarantee higher taxes for your children and grandchildren in return for lower taxes for you?

If government's moral legitimacy depends on the consent of the governed, as Thomas Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence, can the federal government morally compel those who haven't consented to its financial profligacy -- because they are not yet born -- to pay higher taxes?

These questions are at the base of the debate -- such as it is -- in Congress these days over the so-called Republican tax reform plan. But you will not hear these questions even asked, much less answered, on Capitol Hill because the Republican leadership of the House and Senate is afraid that the answers might drive them from power. The same can be said for Democratic leaders when their party controls Congress.

In fact, with the exception of a few courageous senators, such as Rand Paul of Kentucky, and representatives, such as Justin Amash of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, most in Congress in both parties think the only limit on the government's taxing power is what it can politically get away with at any given moment.

And it gets away with a great deal because vast majorities in both major political parties recognize no moral limits to the government's sordid pattern of tax, borrow and spend.

The numbers are chilling.

The federal government collects about $2.5 trillion in revenue and spends about $4 trillion, annually. The difference between what it collects and what it spends is made up in borrowing. But it doesn't borrow money as you or I do or any business does -- with a planned schedule to pay back the principal it owes plus interest. Rather, it goes deeper into debt to pay its debts.

Though the federal government has been in debt since day one, when it borrowed millions to pay the debts that the states had amassed in fighting the American Revolution (who knows whether the states would have formed a central government without its promise of assuming their war debts?), but from time to time, it has paid back the principal that it borrowed.

Since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson 100 years ago, however, with two then-novel revenue-generating tools -- the personal income tax to produce cash and the Federal Reserve to print cash -- the federal government has rolled over debt but has never retired it. Stated differently, the feds have always made timely interest payments, but when principal has come due, they have simply borrowed more money to pay the principal and of course thereby incurred more debt.

For example, the federal government still owes the $30 billion Wilson borrowed to finance the useless and fruitless World War I, but the lenders it owes it to are different from those from which it originally borrowed that money. It has paid more than $15 billion in interest on this rolled-over and still owed $30 billion principal in the past 100 years.

No household, no business, no bank, no government can long survive by doing this.

Since Wilson began this process, all of his successors have added to it, so that the federal government's debt has swelled in 100 years from $30 billion to $20.5 trillion. Of the $4 trillion the feds spend annually, more than $850 billion of it is interest payments to its current creditors on its debts.

The Republican House tax changes -- they cannot be called a "reform," because they reform nothing; they just redistribute wealth and add debt -- would lower taxes for some and raise taxes for many and add $1.5 trillion in debt for all.

If the feds follow their 100-year consistent pattern, this debt will never be retired, will be rolled over hundreds of times and will cause the taxes on generations of unborn Americans -- where is their consent? -- to rise without benefit to them and without popular or legislative approval.

But you won't hear any of this debated in Congress because there -- and in the White House, as well -- we have insufficient political courage to address this problem prudently.

This is now so severe and so consistently an accepted method of operation for the federal government that one can only surmise that those who can address it today must expect that they will no longer be on earth when the bubble bursts.

The bubble, soon to consist of $1 trillion in annual federal government interest payments on $25 trillion in debt, has been characterized by no less a warrior than the current secretary of defense and by his colleague the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the greatest contemporary threat to national security America faces -- greater than Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea and all the terrorist crazies who wish us ill combined.

The threat is that people will stop paying taxes because nearly half of revenue will soon go to debt service and nearly half to fixed transfer payments and the productive earners will get little or nothing for their taxes. Then the government's creditors will not be paid, and the government will not be able to borrow money. Then America as we have known it will cease to exist, and individuals and groups will be on their own to protect life, liberty and property.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Call me the skunk at the garden party if you will, but we need these sober thoughts on this Thanksgiving holiday, lest the blind continue to lead us into a pit with false claims of tax reform that really are part of our government-induced march to perdition.

At some point, the bribing of the poor with welfare and the middle class with temporary tax cuts and the rich with bailouts will come crashing down -- unless we change the direction of the government before it is too late.

Multiculturalism - National Suicide

Islam Has Transformed My State

Michelle Bachmann, former Minnesota Representative to Congress

Minnesota was a cozy, quiet environment before the introduction of massive Third World immigration, but that has changed with the arrival Somali refugees, according to former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“Minnesota is no longer the state I moved to in the mid 1960s,” Bachmann told WND in an exclusive interview. “Then, we were a well-ordered society with a high-functioning population.”

Now Minnesota has the largest Somali [mostly Muslim] community in the United States, with Census numbers putting the population around 40,000.

“It’s the biggest Somali community in North America, possibly in the world outside of East Africa,” Arthur Nazaryan, a freelance photojournalist told CNN. “It’s like the cultural hub of the Somali diaspora, you could say.”

“Minnesota is a super liberal state. … They have that whole history of accepting refugees from I think initially Vietnam and then the Hmong and then the Bosnian crisis. So they have this whole infrastructure set up already, in terms of nonprofit agencies and NGOs, where their primary purpose is resettling refugees,” Nazaryan continued.

But this community of Somali refugees has effectively disengaged from American society, according to Bachmann, leading to the denigration of the culture of Minnesota as well as a host of other social problems.

“This is a failed multicultural experiment that is killing people and destroying the future of the West,” Bachmann added.

“Parallel societies kill assimilation from the Third World and create havoc in American societies,” Bachmann said, noting that the Somali population in Minnesota has chosen to largely ignore assimilation into American culture, seeking instead to live in completely Somali communities.

The recent shooting of Justine Damond by a Somali-refugee cop Mohamed Noor, an officer hired during a campaign for a diverse police force, demonstrates the “havoc” Third World immigration can bring to the United States, Bachmann believes.

“Somali women in Minnesota are almost always covered with clothing from head to toe,” Bachmann claims. “There is very little evidence in Minnesota of Somali women adopting Western dress and Western ways. In fact, Mohammad Noor was photographed with three females from his family, all of whom were covered with traditional Somali clothing.”

Bachmann said this drastic cultural rift could have contributed to Noor’s decision to shoot Justine, positing, “Was Noor acting like the Muslim religious police, maintaining strict adherence to keeping women’s bodies covered when he shot Justine? Was he acting from a cultural instinct?”

The facts remain unclear because the officer hasn’t cooperated with investigators, but apparently, as Damond approached the police car she called for because she heard what sounded like an assault going on, he drew his gun, fired across his partner, through a car door. His bullet killed Damond.

The possibility is there, according to Bachmann, and she believes “it’s prudent to ask whether police officer Noor shot Justine due to a Somali/Shariah mindset.”

The “Shariah mindset” is rife among Somalis in Minnesota, as evidenced by a history of female genital mutilation, Shariah enforcement groups and Islamic terrorism.

A Michigan doctor was charged with the genital mutilation of two Minneapolis girls this year, and the investigation suggests there were “multiple” other victims, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

WND previously reported on “Shariah cops” in Minneapolis, a group called the General Presidency of the Religious Affairs and Welfare of the Ummah that pays regular visits to Somali households to enforce Shariah law, including prohibition on the use of alcohol and restrictions on dress for women.

The group’s leader, Abdullah Rashid, is a convert to Islam who married a Somali woman and moved to Minnesota. Rashid has said he wants to turn a Muslim enclave of Minneapolis into a “Shariah-controlled zone,” where Muslims are required to submit to Shariah law and non-Muslims are “asked to respect” it.

“In Minnesota, Somali households live as they do in Somalia, only with improved living standards,” said Bachmann, noting that these living standards come from subsidies funded by taxpayers. “There is evidence of continued practice of [female genital mutilation], of domestic abuse of women, and of polygamy.”

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a stabbing attack on a Minnesota mall in 2016, in which a 20-year-old Somali refugee injured 10 people.

FBI Special Agent Richard Thornton in charge of the investigation told reporters that “one could reasonably conclude his actions were consistent with the philosophies of violent, radical Islamic groups,” adding that he may have been “radicalized,” possibly with the help of others.

Problems such as this were unheard of before the large-scale resettlement of Somali refugees.

“As people from Third World, impoverished, dysfunctional, war-torn countries establish communities anywhere in the world, from the tiny island nation of Nauru, to Minnesota, we see that transplanting the followers of Islamic Shariah law brings with it the continual problems of Islamic Shariah,” Bachmann opined.

“There are no success stories of mass Islamic migration anywhere in the world.”

In order to prevent the continued existence of “parallel societies” such as with the Somali population of Minnesota, Bachmann believes immigrants must assimilate completely into American culture.

“Immigrants must know it is a condition of entry to the U.S. to assimilate into Western society by adopting allegiance to Western law,” Bachmann said. “Immigrants should also be required to adopt Western dress, and be informed they must abandon the illegal aspects of following Shariah law.”

Border With Mexico is a WAR Zone

Dumb Sensors, Deadly Consequences

11/22/2017 - Michelle Malkin Townhall.com

The circumstances of U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez's death this week remain murkier than the Rio Grande River.

Agent Martinez succumbed to critical head injuries early Sunday morning. An unnamed partner, who came to Martinez's aid after he radioed for help from a remote area of the Big Bend sector in Texas, also suffered serious wounds. Whether by deliberate ambush or accident, one of our border enforcers is dead and the other hospitalized.

This much is clear: Dumb sensors + depleted forces = deadly border disorder.

Agent Martinez had ventured out alone to check on a ground sensor to determine who or what had set it off. He confirmed to his colleagues that human activity had activated the alarm before he died.

Here's the scandal: Our federal government has been squandering billions of dollars on inferior border technology for years. It's a monumental waste of taxpayer funds and a dangerous redistribution of wealth to crony contractors, whose ineffective pet projects are putting our men and women on the front lines at risk.

Nearly 14,000 ground sensors have been littered along the southern border over the past several decades -- some dating back to the Vietnam War era. Untold numbers have simply been buried and lost by federal workers who failed to record where they put them. Twelve years ago, a Department of Homeland Security inspector general's report found that agents couldn't determine the cause of 62 percent of the sensor alerts because they were "unable to respond to the dispatch, or it took the agent too long to get to the sensor location."

Compounding staff shortages are outdated sensors unable to distinguish between humans, vehicles and animals. They can't tell cows from criminals or wild boars from dirty bombers. Thirty-four percent of alerts were confirmed false alarms in the 2005 review. Only 2 percent resulted in apprehensions of immigrants in this country illegally, the feds admitted.

The Arizona Republic reported that "a possible false alarm from a ground sensor, and faulty radio communications, may have contributed to the death of Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Ivie in a friendly-fire incident" in 2012. "(A)gents didn't detect anyone but each other when they arrived. Ivie, responding separately, apparently mistook the other agents for smugglers and opened fire. One of the agents shot and killed him."

A $1 billion integrated fixed tower project, fronted by Boeing, was supposed to remedy the flaws of the ground sensor system. A surveillance program along the southwest border in Arizona, the IFT systems "are fixed surveillance assets that provide long-range persistent surveillance" using radars that send pictures back to a central hub to monitor illegal crossings and criminal activity.

But the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general reported this summer that the towers had never been properly tested for suitability and operational effectiveness. Its successors haven't fared much better.

On a trip to the Sierra Vista, Arizona, region earlier this summer for my CRTV.com show, "Michelle Malkin Investigates," I talked to ranchers who pointed out fancy new towers with fatal blind spots, out of reach of deep washes and heavy forests where illegal immigrants and drug smugglers travel.

"We have $50 million of infrastructure on this ranch now," fourth-generation Arizona rancher John Ladd told me during a tour of his property, "and none of it has worked. Camera towers, radar, fence, roads, street lights." All the technology in the world is useless, he has long pointed out to politicians and bureaucrats, without boots on the ground. And Border Patrol agents parked in air-conditioned cubicles hours from the border don't count.

"You got 600 (agents) in Tucson" who "take 6 hours to get to the border. Move them down! You got Nogales ... and Naco and Douglas that are within a mile of the border," Ladd points out. "All the rest of them are more than 50 miles north. Why do we have that? What good is that?"

Longtime illegal immigration activist and systems engineer Glenn Spencer, who I first met in California in the 1990s, has lived and worked on the Arizona border for more than decade. He patented and tested a pilot system of seismic detection and ranging on 1.5 miles of his friend John Ladd's property called Seidarm and paired it with a drone, dubbed Hermes, which automatically launches when border activity is detected within 500 feet of the smart sensors. It can be manufactured and built at a fraction of the cost of the big defense contractors' systems. Unlike much of the government's gold-plated technology, Ladd said: "It worked."

"If they had SEIDARM/HERMES installed, they could have checked out the ground sensor without putting the agent in jeopardy," Spencer told me after Agent Martinez's death hit the news this week.

But politicians in both parties have spurned Ladd's pleas and Spencer's proposals. Special interests have raided public coffers to fund border security Kabuki theater and stave off meaningful assessments. Spencer doesn't mince words:

"They don't want to measure it; they don't want to secure the border; they want to make it LOOK like they are."

Beltway business as usual. Another agent's life sacrificed. President Trump, the clock is ticking.

E-Verify Stops Illegal Alien Employment

End the Root Cause of Illegal Immigration

11/21/2017 - Ken Blackwell Townhall.com

The recent passage of mandatory E-Verify by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee brings us one step closer to ending the root cause of most illegal immigration into the United States – outlaw businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Illegal border crossings, visa overstays, and children born in the United States to parents here illegally would all be dramatically reduced or eliminated if we ended the ability for outlaw employers to take advantage of those that arrive here illegally.

There are hundreds of thousands of young adult children of undocumented immigrants that have been here since childhood because we have allowed outlaw employers to hire and employ their parents illegally for decades. Roughly one-half of the nation's undocumented immigrant population results from visitors who entered legally but who do not leave when their time is up because Congress continues to refuse to mandate the well-tested and widely-used E-Verify system. When visitors sense that illegal employment is widespread, the temptation to break their visa agreements grows stronger.

E-Verify would greatly reduce the magnet for illegal labor. Worldwide, at this very moment, people are enticed to illegally cross borders and overstay their visas in search of jobs that should belong to an American or someone who came here legally. Fewer people from around the world would make the attempt if we could ensure employers hire only those here lawfully and have work authorization.

The bill introduced by U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Ken Calvert (R-CA) is called the Legal Workforce Act of 2017, H.R. 3711, and it would require every employer in the U.S. to use E-Verify to determine whether new hires are authorized to work.

The law now requires companies to employ only individuals who may legally work in the United States – either U.S. citizens, or foreign citizens who have the necessary authorization. E-Verify is a free, fast and easy internet-based system that allows employers to determine one thing and one thing only: the eligibility of their new hires to work in the United States.

One of the claims put forward by E-Verify detractors is the false charge that it would create a massive federal database.  E-Verify is not a database at all but a system that takes the same information every new hire already puts on an I-9 paper form and via the internet confirms, usually within a matter of a few seconds, whether that information is accurate and the employee is authorized to work in the United States. Because E-Verify itself deters undocumented immigrants from applying for jobs they aren't authorized for, new hires of employers who use E-Verify are immediately authorized nearly 99 percent of the time.

If a new hire receives a “tentative non-confirmation,” that employee continues to work while correcting any inaccurate information on files – inaccuracies that could prevent the individual from receiving government benefits, such as future Social Security payouts.

Employees also can protect themselves from identity theft with E-Verify "Self-Lock" which allows workers to proactively protect themselves against ID theft while confirming that their vital personal information is accurate and up-to-date.

For law-abiding employers, E-Verify offers instant verification of employment eligibility and peace of mind that their workforce is comprised of legal workers. E-Verify is free, fast, and takes the guesswork out of determining employment eligibility. The Legal Workforce Act would also grant employers who use E-Verify in good faith safe harbor from prosecution should an unauthorized worker be wrongly authorized by the system.

We have looked the other way for decades as outlaw employers have depressed incomes for Americans and those here legally.  Most Americans want citizens and legal immigrants already here to get priority for U.S. jobs over citizens from other countries who are in the U.S. illegally. E-Verify helps accomplish that.

Questions Deserving Intelligent Answers

Do Conservatives And Liberals Have Enough in Common to Keep A Country Together Anymore?

11/18/2017 - John Hawkins Townhall.com

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” – The Declaration of Independence

Remember the woman who was fired for flipping off Trump’s motorcade? Well, she has been deluged with job offers from liberals and a Gofundme set up in her name has raised 117k dollars and counting. This seems like a small thing, but it’s indicative of where we are as a society.

There was a time when doing something trashy like flipping off a presidential motorcade would be frowned upon -- not because everyone loves the President, but because no one with class would do anything like that. Those days are gone and they’ve been replaced by non-stop trolling, outright hatred of people with differing opinions and grotesque tribalism. Gridlock has become the rule of the day in Congress for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that the Right and Left simply don’t agree on much anymore.

Just as an example, ask yourself this question:  how many of the fundamental questions about American life do you agree with Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi on? Think about the basic questions of American life.

The Constitution? Conservatives believe in it. Liberals believe in a “living Constitution” which is fundamentally no different than having no Constitution at all.

Religion? Conservatives tend to believe in Judeo-Christian values. Even atheists who are conservative tend to at least be friendly to those values. Liberals mock Judeo-Christian values.

What about patriotism? Conservatives tend to love their country. Liberals love this country like a wife-beater loves his spouse.

Conservatives tend to be capitalists. Liberals tend to be socialists. Conservatives believe people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Liberals believe your race defines you. Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity. Liberals believe in equality of results. Conservatives believe in freedom of speech. Liberals are fine with silencing people that disagree with them. Conservatives believe in small government. Liberals believe in a frighteningly powerful central government dictating your every move.

That last one is perhaps the most significant because if liberals could live the way they want in California, New York and Connecticut while conservatives could live as they please in Texas, South Carolina and Utah, we could shrug off our differences. As the government in Washington becomes ever more powerful, that is no longer allowed.

Getting back to that central question, what do you agree with Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama on? There are certainly some things. For example, Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco and presumably likes the city. I’ve visited and certainly liked it as well. Barack Obama likes golf and basketball. Certainly there are plenty of conservatives who feel the same way. If we got right down to it, there are probably plenty of conservatives who like the same clothes, restaurants and TV shows that Obama and Pelosi do…but, is that enough to hold together a nation over the long haul?

America is going to be testing that proposition over the next few decades.

Recently, a Republican group in North Carolina asked me to come out and speak. After my speech, there was a Q&A session and someone there asked me, “Is it time for people who love their country to get their guns, head to D.C. and do something about what’s happening in our country?”

Just to be clear, he wasn’t advocating a terrorist attack or a random shooting; he was asking if it is time for patriots who love this country to attempt to overthrow the government to help bring our nation back to Constitutional governance.

What DIDN’T happen is worth noting. Nobody laughed. Nobody shouted, “Oh, come on!” Nobody said, “Oh, that’s just crazy, Dave. You’ll have to excuse him and his wild questions.” Instead, people sat quietly and listened for my response.

The short version of what I told him was “no.” It is not time to split the country apart and have a revolution. That’s a very extreme step and it should only be taken in the direst of circumstances

The longer version of what I told him is that he’s right to be concerned about the country and that, yes, it is entirely possible we won’t hold together long term. What happens when we – almost inevitably at this point – have a debt-driven economic crash which causes Social Security and Medicare to be gutted? Other than wanting to get those checks, what do we have holding us together anymore? Eating lunch at McDonald’s? Watching The Walking Dead? NFL games….oh wait, sorry. We don’t even have that anymore.

We have broken bonds as a nation before:  first, with the British, then during the Civil War. Regrettably, we may be headed toward another break down the road. That’s not something anyone should welcome, but when large percentages of the population are forced to live under grating rules they disagree with in the strongest of terms, paid for with increasingly large amounts of tax money they didn’t want to give up and implemented by people they don’t like, respect or feel bound to as a people, no wise person should assume that will continue indefinitely.

California a Medieval Manor of Knights & Peasants

Is California Cracking Up?

8/10/2017 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

Corporate profits at California-based transnational corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google are hitting record highs.

California housing prices from La Jolla to Berkeley along the Pacific Coast can top $1,000 a square foot.

It seems as if all of China is willing to pay premium prices to get their children degreed at Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA or USC.

Yet California -- after raising its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent and receiving record revenues -- is still facing a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. There is a much more foreboding state crisis of unfunded liabilities and pension obligations of nearly $1 trillion.

Soon, new gas tax hikes, on top of green mandates, might make California gas the most expensive in the nation, despite the state's huge reserves of untapped oil.

Where does the money go, given that the state's schools and infrastructure rank among America's worst in national surveys?

Illegal immigration over the last 30 years, the exodus of millions of middle-class Californians, and huge wealth concentrated in the L.A. basin and Silicon Valley have turned the state into a medieval manor of knights and peasants, with ever fewer in between.

The strapped middle class continues to flee bad schools, high taxes, rampant crime and poor state services. About one-third of the nation's welfare recipients reside in California. Approximately one-fifth of the state lives below the poverty line. More than a quarter of Californians were not born in the United States.

Many of the state's wealthiest residents support high taxes, no-growth green policies and subsidies for the poor. They do so because they reside in apartheid neighborhoods and have the material and political wherewithal to become exempt from the consequences of their own utopian bromides.

Blue California has no two-party politics anymore. Its campuses, from Berkeley to Claremont, have proven among the most hostile to free speech in the nation.

A few things keep California going. Its natural bounty, beauty and weather draw in people eager to play California roulette. The state is naturally rich in minerals, oil and natural gas, timber and farmland. The world pays dearly for whatever techies based in California's universities can dream up.

That said, the status quo is failing.

The skeletons of half-built bridges and overpasses for a $100 billion high-speed-rail dinosaur remind residents of the ongoing boondoggle. Meantime, outdated roads and highways -- mostly unchanged from the 1960s -- make driving for 40 million both slow and dangerous. Each mile of track for high-speed rail represents millions of dollars that were not spent on repairing and expanding stretches of the state's decrepit freeways -- and hundreds of lives needlessly lost each year.

The future of state transportation is not updated versions of 19th-century ideas of railways and locomotives, but instead will include electric-powered and automatically piloted cars -- all impossible without good roads.

Less than 40 percent of California residents identify themselves as conservative. But red-county California represents some 75 percent of California's geographical area. It's as if large, rural Mississippi and tiny urban Massachusetts were one combined state -- all ruled by liberal Boston.

Now, a third of the state thinks it can pull off a "Calexit" and leave the United States. Calexit's unhinged proponents have no idea that they are mimicking the right-wing arguments of the Confederate states that prompted the Civil War. Like South Carolina residents in 1861, Calexit advocates seem to assume that federal law should apply everywhere else except in California. Many of these California residents also believe that the federal Environmental Protection Agency should always override local ordinances, but not so with another federal bureau, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

South Carolina started the Civil War by shelling and capturing federal property at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay. Calexit wannabe secessionists similarly assume that thousands of square miles of federal property -- from California federal courtrooms and post offices to national parks such as Yosemite to huge military bases such as Camp Pendleton -- belong to the state and could simply be confiscated from the federal government.

Calexit proponents assume California can leave the union without an authorizing amendment to the Constitution, ratified by three-fourths of all the states. And they fail to see that should California ever secede, it would immediately split in two. The coastal strip would go the way of secessionist Virginia. The other three-quarters of the state's geography would remain loyal to the union and become a new version of loyalist West Virginia.

Buying a home on the California coast is nearly impossible. The state budget can only be balanced through constant tax hikes. Finding a good, safe public school is difficult. Building a single new dam during the California drought to capture record runoff water in subsequent wet years proved politically impossible.

No matter. Many Californians consider those existential problems to be a premodern drag, while they dream of postmodern trains, the legalization of pot-growing -- and seceding from the United States of America.

Ann Hits The Nail On The Head!

New Democratic Spin Cycle: Launders Money, Gets Out The Toughest Sleaze!

11/8/2017 - Ann Coulter Townhall.com

The Democrats have two very different profiles. One is their public face of absolute moral purity. They're just better people than Republicans.

That's what you're buying when you walk into the Democratic store: pure virtue. They've got nothing else on the shelves. No beef jerky, no wiper fluid, no Gatorade.

The other profile is reality: In the backroom, where the employees eat lunch, the Democrats and their fat-cat donors are committing unspeakably sleazy and immoral acts.

Everyone on the left knows this. That's why, the moment Harvey Weinstein was exposed as a sexual predator, his reflexive response was not to apologize. Accused of the kind of rapes you'd usually need a gang to commit, he put up a virtue shield by attacking the National Rifle Association.

As we recently discovered, first with Weinstein and then with the Hillary campaign paying for the Russian dossier, the left has an all-new trick that exponentially multiplies the Democrats' sleaze factor.

It used to be that Democrats like Bill Clinton would deploy FOBs -- Friends of Bill -- like James Carville and Sidney Blumenthal to smear his victims. Now, they run their Watergate-style "ratf---ing" through law firms.

Ronan Farrow writes in this week's New Yorker that Weinstein deployed a raft of spies to befriend and deceive his accusers in order to collect information that could be used against them.

A spy with the Israeli private investigations firm Black Cube used a fake name and fake foundation to meet actress Rose McGowan. Then, pretending to be a deeply sympathetic women's rights advocate, the agent secretly tape-recorded the actress, hoping to get incriminating evidence against her.

At a minimum, this is unspeakably repellent and possibly illegal.

And who hired the spies? Not Weinstein! The law firm of David Boies, prominent Democratic attorney.

Using a law firm as a cut-out between the client -- an alleged sexual predator -- and the people stealthily recording his accusers has one very useful purpose: It places the spy agency's work behind the protection of attorney-client privilege.

Boies pretends to be steeped in the ethics of his profession, flying to California to argue against the "hate" of Proposition 8 and rushing to Florida after the 2000 election to defend Al Gore's rightful claim to the presidency.

But now we find out he's been harassing and intimidating a rape victim on behalf of his client (the rapist) with private eyes who lie about their identity and motives, wasting hours of the victim's time with false promises of support for her cause -- a cause she has taken up precisely because of her alleged rape by the lawyer's client.

Whether or not this violates any bar association ethical canons, it's certainly despicable.

Two weeks ago, we found out that the law firm cut-out maneuver was the exact same technique used by Hillary's campaign to obtain damaging information on Donald Trump from the Kremlin -- the infamous Russian dossier. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee shelled out $12 million seeking incriminating information on Trump from Russian government officials.

Just like Weinstein, the Democrats funneled money for a nefarious purpose through a law firm. To wit: The Democrats paid a law firm (Perkins Coie), which paid a private investigations firm (Fusion GPS), which in turn paid a spy (Christopher Steele), and Steele paid Russian government officials for dirt on Trump.

When the media found out that Donald Trump Jr. had taken a meeting with a friend of a friend, because she claimed to have incriminating information from Russia on Hillary, the word "treason" filled the airwaves. Hillary's vice presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine (D- Va.), called Don Jr.'s pointless meeting "potentially treason."

MSNBC's favorite former Bush official, lunatic Richard Painter, said anyone who "wanted to help the Russians (disrupt our election process) engaged in treasonous conduct." Al Sharpton said that the willingness to accept "information to discredit your potential opponent in an American election from Russia -- from what is supposed to be an enemy state" -- raised the prospect of treason.

If that's "treason," then what is it when the Democrats reach out to the Russians and pass them money for dirt on Hillary's opponent in a presidential election? Wasn't that dossier an attempt to discredit her opponent and disrupt the election?

Remember: Don Jr. didn't seek a meeting with any Russians to get compromising information on Hillary, nor did he receive any. The Russian woman was using the pretense of having dirt on Hillary as a ruse to get a meeting, so that she could lobby Don Jr. on the Magnitsky Act.

Unlike Don Jr., the Democrats didn't wait to be asked! They paid $12 million, funneled through a law firm, seeking information on Trump from Russian government officials.

But we're not allowed to mention it because the Clinton campaign and DNC used Weinstein's money laundering technique.

The attorney-client privilege is intended to ensure that people are completely truthful with their attorneys. It is not supposed to be a shelter for any sordid, and possibly illegal, behavior by liberals. 

Awaken! To Our Awful Situation

Has America Passed the Point of No Return?

7/4/2017 - Michael Brown Townhall.com

Is it too late for America? Are the nation’s best days behind us? Can our sickly country be saved?

On July 1, 2016, conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza sent out an email titled, “On The Brink Of Losing America Forever,” and it certainly feels that we are that close. But have we passed the point of no return?

We could all point to a virtual mountain of sins and crimes that are rampant in our country, including the killing of more than 55 million babies in the womb. We could all indict America on many fronts. That is easy to do. But has Almighty God written us off forever?

As we celebrate the 241st anniversary of our nation this July 4th, this is the most important question we can ask. Everything else is secondary. Can America be saved?

In my first book on revival, written in 1989, I asked, “Is God through with America? Is He ready to spew us out of His mouth? Is it too late for revival? Is our country ready to die?”

Now, almost 30 years later, these questions are much more urgent. Do we realize how much farther we have fallen?

I have asked these questions again in my newest book, Saving a Sick America: A Prescription for Moral and Cultural Reformation, due out in September. It is a book filled with great hope for our future. But it is a hope based in realism, since we will never get healthy unless we realize just how sick we are.

To use a physical analogy, America has cancer, and without radical treatment, that cancer will soon be terminal. But with major medical intervention and a total change of lifestyle, the prognosis is promising. How will we respond? Taking a pill and taking a nap will not cure our condition. Trying to eat a little better won’t reverse a mortal disease.

In the same way, a nice church service won’t turn the tide, a lovely sermon won’t awaken us, and a casual prayer meeting won’t stir us from our stupor. We need a sense of desperation and urgency. Do we have it? Are we praying and crying out and making changes in our own lives as if America hung in the balance?

We need another great awakening – a massive, spiritual revival – but a national awakening will not come up without national desperation. How hungry are we? How urgent are our prayers? How intense is our desire for God to visit our nation? Do we realize how sick we are?

In the introductory chapter to Saving a Sick America, I wanted to paint a picture of just how far we had fallen, and do so in just a few pages. How could I drive this home? While giving this prayerful consideration one day, everything became clear. I would tell the story of an all-American dad who fell asleep while watching Leave It to Beaver with his family in 1961, only to wake up in 2017. The changes are stark and shocking and disturbing. How did we get from there to here?

But my goal in that chapter (and in the book as a whole) was not to depress us or discourage us. Instead, my goal was to awaken us to the urgency of the hour so that we will turn to God with urgency and make urgent changes in our lives.

It is not too late for America unless we make it too late by our complacency and carnality and indifference. But if we will turn to God with all our heart and soul, our best days could be ahead, as preposterous as that may sound.

That’s why the last chapter of the book is called, “The Church’s Great Opportunity.”  There I tell the story of an American shoe company that decided to expand overseas, sending their best salesman to start a new branch in Africa. Before he arrived, the company spent years in strategic planning, targeting this particular region as ideal for their global expansion and shipping thousands of boxes of shoes to their huge new warehouse. But within hours of the salesman’s arrival, he called the company headquarters in a panic. “Get me out of here!” he exclaimed. “No one here wears shoes!”

They flew him home immediately, temporarily halting their plans, then met as leaders to reevaluate their strategy. After lengthy discussion, they decided that their plan was sound, sending their second-best salesman.

Once again, within hours of his arrival, the salesman called headquarters with an urgent message, but this time his tone was very different. “We need thousands more boxes of shoes!” he exclaimed. “Nobody here has any shoes!” That is the mentality we must embrace here in the USA today in the midst of massive societal decline. Everyone needs what we have to offer.

As I wrote in Saving a Sick America, “Without a doubt, our nation is desperately sick, on the edge of spiraling into moral and cultural chaos. And without a doubt, much of the church is backslidden, having been seduced into apathy, lethargy, and carnality by a compromised, watered down ‘gospel’ and by the endless temptations of the age. In many ways, these are dark days for our country spiritually and morally, and we must not minimize the urgency of the hour. But rather than throw our hands up in despair, we should recognize that this is the perfect opportunity for the church of Jesus to rise up in the truth and power of the Spirit, bringing the message of life and transformation to our very sick country. This is the church’s great opportunity. This is our time to stand.”

By God’s grace, I’m determined to stand strong, to speak the truth and live the truth, regardless of cost or consequence, and to turn to God will all my heart. Can we stand together? Do we really have a choice?

I truly believe that America can still be saved, but only if we do not minimize the urgency of the hour.