FOUND! Joe Miller Volunteers in Alaska Locate HEROIC Homeless Trump #StarProtector

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On an Alaskan island over 2,200 miles north of Los Angeles, Eric and Vickie Weaver answered the phone to hear the voice of a homeless woman in California they’d never met, a voice bubbling over with happiness at the caring of strangers and expressing her unwavering support for Presidential candidate Donald Trump. It was an emotional moment for the Weavers as well.

This call was the finale to an intense quest that was triggered by the shocking video of an attack by leftist thugs on a homeless woman who had courageously “guarded” the Trump Star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame after a Hillary supporter had vandalized the star. Immediately following the attack, the homeless lady, whose identity was yet unknown, disappeared from sight. Despite many social media announcements issued by the Trump campaign asking for assistance in locating her, she had simply vanished.

Well, that is until two Alaskans from the island town of Ketchikan got involved. Eric Weaver, a Systems Administrator for the City of Ketchikan, and his wife Vickie, who is working on an Information Technology degree, responded to the call to action issued by Donald Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen.

The Weavers, who are involved in politics working to elect Trump and actively volunteering in Alaska on Joe Miller’s campaign for U.S. Senate, had followed the story from the outset and were alarmed at the aggressive response of the leftist thugs. The Weavers worried that if the wrong people found her first, they might harm her again. But Eric and Vickie were thousands of miles away in Alaska and no one, not even the Trump campaign, knew the name of the homeless woman who had vanished back into the streets of Los Angeles.

Fortunately Alaskans are tenacious – Eric and Vickie unleashed a marathon of online searches, data sorting and cold-calling that resulted in the discovery of her identity and garnered the involvement of an outreach worker that Eric characterizes as a “long-time street warrior” who does phenomenal work with the homeless in Los Angeles. The first real break in the search came Monday morning after many hours of online work, when Vickie discovered an article from 2013 that included a photo of the homeless lady she was looking for, identified in the article as Denise Scott and who was speaking to an outreach worker, Chris Mack.

When Eric related the story to his fellow volunteers on Joe Miller’s U.S. Senate campaign, he recounted that once a trusted working relationship was established, Chris responded immediately to Eric’s request for assistance on the streets of Los Angeles.

So when Chris and Denise’s call came in Wednesday afternoon, Eric and Vickie were elated. The search was over and the team immediately contacted Brunell Kyei, Trump’s Vice Chair of Diversity Outreach and Justin Best, the reporter who set up a GoFundMe account for Denise, that, as of this writing, had raised over $25,000 and was trending.

After notifying the Trump team, the Weaver’s broke the story on their Facebook page “Reload” which is a source for “conservative news and all things Trump and Alaska politics.”

Volunteers with the Joe Miller campaign contacted Jerry Ward, the Trump Campaign’s State Director for Alaska to share the breaking news. Mr. Ward was excited to hear that Denise Scott had been found saying “It is great Alaskans were able to find her!” and he condemned the “disgusting attack by thug bullies on the lady protecting the Donald Trump star in Hollywood.”

Disgusting indeed. During the attack, the thugs involved can be heard taunting 63-year old and homeless Denise Scott with “where is Donald Trump to protect you now?!” It goes without saying at this point that Denise Scott will enjoy the last laugh with The Donald by her side.

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Abortion by Pill on the Rise, Putting Women’s Health at Greater Risk

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A new study by Reuters found that the rate of women aborting their children by medication has greatly increased, citing “innovative dispensing efforts in some states,” including abortion prescriptions by webcam or over the phone.

Medication abortions rose from 35 percent of Planned Parenthood’s abortions in 2010 to 43 percent of their abortions in 2014. Reuters speculates that new federal prescribing guidelines for the abortion pill Mifeprex will make that rate even higher now. In the last few months, demand for medication abortions tripled in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota, the three states most affected by that change, with some clinics reporting that almost one-third of abortions are now performed with the drugs, the news service reported.

Abortion proponents tout the switch as a boon to women’s health and safety. Pro-life doctors are concerned that this is willful ignorance of the dangers women face when they abort without medical supervision.

“Women who have had these abortions describe them far more difficult, painful, and bloody than the abortion industry led them to believe,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., Director of Education & Research at National Right to Life, in an email to The Stream. “These abortions are not only bloody and painful, but dangerous. We already know of more than a dozen women, several of them by name, who have died after using these drugs to induce their abortions. Some have bled to death, some have had undiscovered ectopic pregnancies rupture and others have died from aggressive rare infections. The more it is used, the more women will be exposed to these dangers.”

While more clinics are advertising the pills as an easy way to end a pregnancy — one poster reads: “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.” — doctors warn that abortion by pill is more traumatic than these women are prepared for. “It isn’t just the shock and betrayal that they’ll feel when they begin to cramp and bleed, when the process and the pain drag on and on, but when they encounter their aborted babies, when they see with their own eyes the bodies of their children, their eyes, their tiny fists, when they realize the lies that they have been told and the enormous loss that has really taken place,” O’Bannon said.

Having these abortions by web-cam or by mail won’t make them any better, just more dangerous as women scramble to find medical help who understand and can treat the unique problems associated with chemical abortions. They act as if having this at home will make the process comfortable and cozy, but the reality is that a woman is more likely to feel alone and abandoned at precisely the time when she is most vulnerable, when she is in the most pain and the most danger, trying to figure out if what she’s going through is just ordinary bodily assault of the abortion or something even worse.

Donna Harrison, MD, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The Stream in an email, “The continuous fantasy that drug induced abortions are simple is the oft repeated mantra of the abortion industry. Drug-induced abortions are neither safe nor easy.”

Pro-life groups concerned for women’s safety warn that the new FDA guidelines mean the procedure will be riskier as doctors are not required to be physically present to the women to whom they prescribe the abortion pill. Abortion performed in an abortion facility by a doctor had its risks, O’Bannon noted, but the doctor knew them and how to treat them. “With web-cam abortions and abortions by mail, with abortionists getting less and less involved with their patients, it isn’t clear that any of this remains any more.”

Harrison cited a recent study in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, which found that “the most common presentation was excessive bleeding (77.5%). Severe anemia was found in 12.5% of the patients and 5% of patients presented with shock…62.5% of the patients were found to have incomplete abortion, 22.5% had failed abortion and 7.5% of patients had incomplete abortion with sepsis. Surgical evacuation was performed in 67.5% of the patients, whereas 12.5% of the patients required surgical evacuation with blood transfusion.”

The study recommended against unsupervised medical abortion. “The abortion industry wants to minimize knowledge about these risks, and minimize involvement of physicians, in order to keep down their costs and boost their income,” Harrison said. “It is tragic that women are misled about the serious complications, including at least a ten-times increased risk of death from drug-induced abortion as compared with surgical abortion.”

“All of this suffering for women is for the convenience and profit of the abortionist,” Harrison concluded. (For more from the author of “Abortion by Pill on the Rise, Putting Women’s Health at Greater Risk” please click HERE)

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Mystery Woman Huma Abedin: Wronged Wife or Stealth Islamist?

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One of the many bizarre and unsettling aspects of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as president is her close advisor Huma Abedin. It’s easy to get lost in the squalid and sordid details, so let’s get those out of the way right at the outset. The reason that Hillary Clinton is sinking in the polls right now — and even if she wins might need a pardon from Obama to stay out of prison — is that she seems to have broken the law and lied about it to Congress and the FBI, then tried to destroy the evidence.

Evidence of what? Of the fact that she’d been breaking State Department policy by hoarding classified official government emails on an insecure private server, created to let her evade Freedom of Information Act requests. (Iraq war hero General David Petraeus was threatened with prison for doing much less.) Reporters might have liked to inquire about the huge cash payments which Bill Clinton was raking in via the Clinton Foundation. Did they result in Hillary granting State Department access or favors to foreign governments (like the Russian or Saudi regimes) that coughed up the money? Last summer it seemed we might never know. Under pressure from the White House, and after a private tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and the attorney general, the Justice Department pressured the FBI to stop the investigation into Clinton. But now that investigation has started up again, thanks to Huma Abedin. And her lousy taste in men.

Send Lawyers Guns and Money

You really should watch the hilarious documentary Weiner for the full story slow-motion train wreck, but it boils down to this: Huma’s now-estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Wiener, is apparently addicted to sexting. Exposure of his behavior forced him out of Congress. He apologized, got forgiveness, and ran for mayor of New York City. Then it turned out he hadn’t stopped doing it. It seemed he was still sending naked selfies to strangers. He apologized again, but came in last in the mayoral race.

Now it emerges that Weiner can’t stop himself, and that one of his recent online “partners” was a 15-year-old girl. As the Daily Mail reports, citing Wikileaks documents, the Clinton campaign apparently knew as long ago as 2011 that Weiner was sexting with women under age 18, but took no action — such as, you know, calling the police. It is unclear whether Clinton’s team informed Abedin.

When Weiner’s online child molestation became public, the FBI had no choice but to look into that, and when they did — and perhaps when Weiner decided to cut a deal — they found on Weiner’s laptop hundreds of thousands of emails, including ones to and from Hillary Clinton dealing with State Department business. Which might be the very evidence which she’d thought safely destroyed. God is just, and he has a dark sense of humor.

Tammy Wynette, or Mata Hari?

But what about Huma? Ms. Abedin stood by her man through the first two scandals, but the third time crossed the line, and she moved out with their son. So she’s a tragic wronged wife, right? A bright-eyed, glamorous wunderkind child of immigrants, who married the wrong man and tried to save her marriage? Well, maybe. But there’s much more to the story.

America once believed that Huma’s mentor Hillary was precisely such a wounded but loyal wife. We have since learned — thanks to films such as Clinton, Inc. — that Hillary’s public willingness to back up her husband’s stories against one female accuser after another was part of a cynical political arrangement. She traded televised “forgiveness” for tangible political favors — such as the Democratic Party’s nomination for Senate in a state where she’d never lived, New York. What did Huma get in return for sticking with Anthony Weiner — a once up-and-coming, famously caustic far left-wing congressman from Brooklyn? We may never know.

What we do know of Huma Abedin — beyond the facts revealed in Weiner, such as that she won’t cook breakfast except in a $10,000 dress — can be listed as follows.

Huma Abedin defended Hillary Clinton’s use of the illegal private server against State Department officials who suggested otherwise — perhaps to keep secret the concrete paybacks in State Department policy for massive Clinton Foundation gifts from nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Abedin was born in the U.S., but raised in Saudi Arabia from the age of 2 by hard-line Islamist parents.

Abedin’s first job, while still in college, was serving as Hillary Clinton’s White House intern in 1996. At the same time, she served as an editor of her family’s radical Islamic journal whose mission was to keep Muslims in non-Muslim countries from assimilating, or abandoning the puritanical Islamist faith preached in Saudi Arabia, whose royal family funded the journal.

The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs was founded by her father, Syed Z. Abedin, who denounced the American system and wrote that the U.S. should have started paying tribute money to Muslims in 1801, rather than fight the Barbary Pirates. Huma served as an editor on the journal for 12 years.

The funding for this journal came from Saudi sheik Omar Naseef, whom the U.S State Department named as one of al Qaeda’s most generous supporters — and a backer of the hard-core pro-sharia Muslim World League, which shares a London office with Abedin’s family journal.

As editor, Abedin published articles penned by her mother that argued that women are to blame for most domestic violence, that Islamic law (sharia) is more just to women than Western law, and that the U.S. brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself. Abedin’s mother and brother still work at the journal.

As the video linked below documents, Huma Abedin served for three years on the Executive Board of George Washington University’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), which is linked closely to the Muslim Brotherhood, the international jihadist conspiracy that avowed in 2001 that its mission is a “grand jihad” devoted to “destroying Western Civilization from within.” How radical is the MSA? Two years after Abedin graduated, her chapter of the group invited Anwar al Awlaki to serve as official chaplain. He was later revealed as a member of al Qaeda, a man whom the New York Times called the “terrorist network’s leading English-language propagandist,” before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011. He also served “as a hands-on trainer who taught recruits how to make bombs, gave them money for missions and offered suggestions about how to carry out suicide attacks.”

Counterjihad cited further Wikileaks information showing the deep financial debt which the Clinton campaign has incurred to radical Islamists:

Huma Abedin has never publicly renounced or condemned any of the views which she helped disseminate through her family’s journal — although Donald Trump was pressured to condemn the extremist Tweets of fringe supporters whom he has never met or been in any contact with. Since Abedin is Clinton’s closest advisor, and seen as a likely pick for White House Chief of Staff, these questions about her deep, lifelong connections to America’s most dangerous enemies must be answered. (For more from the author of “Mystery Woman Huma Abedin: Wronged Wife or Stealth Islamist?” please click HERE)

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Top U.S. Security Official Makes Speech on … the LGBT Agenda?

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Last week, the Obama administration enacted a rule that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from contracting with groups that engage in “discrimination” against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a speech on Wednesday:

This rule means that any organization that contracts with USAID must ensure that all people can benefit from its federally-funded programs, regardless of race, religion, disability — or sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s a major step towards ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

But “fair and equitable” have a specific meaning for the Obama administration. It doesn’t include the unborn. “Discrimination” is still permitted against the unborn — USAID has given tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, and engaged in other anti-life policies.

It does include LGBT people. As Rice notes elsewhere in the talk, some countries punish homosexual acts with death, and a death penalty law was narrowly defeated in Uganda a few years ago. Her speech suggested that supporting the LGBT agenda is more important to the Obama administration than stopping the Syrian slaughter, preventing Russia’s advance internationally and protecting Christian refugees.

The Administration’s LBGT Pressure

Rice’s speech reflects how the administration has spent years blackmailing African nations over the LGBT agenda, demanding acquiescence in exchange for basic humanitarian aid. Many Christian leaders have refused to bow to the administration, but the pressure has continued. While some nations certainly have deplorable and inhuman policies, many times the administration has prioritized the LGBT agenda over fighting terrorism and stopping starvation.

She thanked the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and another group “who fight so admirably to promote equal rights and dignity for all.” Co-founded by Terrence Bean — who squirreled out of being found guilty in the alleged sexual abuse of a minor — HRC has targeted pro-marriage advocates to such a degree that a college professor told me he’s never sure if his family is safe.

HRC has also attempted to bully Johns Hopkins University into denouncing a much-cited study that debunks LGBT talking points about sexuality, and has led the dishonest-yet-successful effort to tar North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom” law as bigoted and hateful. (The Obama administration has also contributed to this misleading state of affairs, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch comparing the very modest bathroom law to racist Jim Crow laws.)

Finally, after referencing the Pulse nightclub shooting this summer, Rice compared HB2 and state-based religious liberty laws to unfair and sometimes inhumane treatment of people who identify as LGBT in other nations. She briefly mentioned the cultural and legal LGBT fight in Indonesia, “governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe” that are passing anti-homosexual laws and how that “in as many as ten countries, same-sex acts are punishable by death.” She then said:

And, in Syria and Iraq, ISIL has unleashed a unique brutality on LGBT people — dragging gay men behind trucks, stoning them, and burning them alive. ISIL works with chilling efficiency, often going through the cell phones and social media accounts of their victims to identify more LGBT individuals for slaughter. As we speak, the United States is supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces as they push to liberate Mosul, where ISIL fighters were taped hurling gay men off of buildings. As one Iraqi man testified before the UN: “In my society, being gay means death.”

Again, some of these laws are downright horrifying, and ISIS’ actions are the same. The Obama administration is right to condemn them, and put pressure on nations to change those practices and laws. But Rice’s speech shows that the Obama administration’s ideology on LGBT “rights” continues to go above and beyond what is right and just, instead giving state-sanctioned preference to the LGBT agenda over the rights of business owners, women and children. (For more from the author of “Top U.S. Security Official Makes Speech on … the LGBT Agenda?” please click HERE)

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Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression

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Countries across Eastern Europe are militarizing to defend themselves from Russia, underscoring how Kremlin brinkmanship could spark a regional conflict.

“If you’re in Estonia, or Latvia, and Russia’s sitting there on your border, it’s scary,” Jill Russell, teaching fellow in the Defense Studies Department at King’s College London, told The Daily Signal. “And those countries want a capability to defend themselves.”

And by going outside the protective umbrella of NATO and U.S. security guarantees, the military buildup in post-Soviet Europe highlights a budding rift in security priorities across the Continent.

“The states of Eastern Europe inevitably see their security focus as being the need to deter an increasingly antagonistic Russia,” said Ben Wheatley, honorary research fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. “Therefore, the Eastern European states concentrate on building up their conventional armed forces to meet this threat.”

“The closer you are to Russia, the more you don’t care about terrorism,” Russell said.

Recent media headlines have painted modern East-West tensions as a new Cold War. However, some experts say the military buildup among post-Soviet countries across what the Kremlin considers its “near abroad” (essentially the former territory of the Soviet Union) might be the early stages of a regional arms race, and a reflection of centuries-old power struggles.

“Russia’s near abroad has once again become a flashpoint,” Russell said, adding:

But there’s not an ideological component, that is what defined the Cold War. Russia wants to show it’s still a great power … This isn’t at all like the Cold War.

What we are really in is a standard power struggle over frontiers. What’s unfortunate is that the frontier countries are peopled with those not necessarily interested in being pawns in a great power struggle—and are wanting to break free from Russian dominion.

“There is no doubt the conflict in the East is a localized affair rather than a new Cold War,” Wheatley told The Daily Signal.

Ready for War

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—NATO’s three Baltic member countries—increased their collective spending on new military equipment from $210 million in 2014 to $390 million in 2016, according to a report by IHS Jane’s, a commercial British defense analysis and intelligence firm.

By 2018, the three Baltic countries are expected to spend around $670 million a year on new military equipment. By 2020, the region’s defense budget will be $2.1 billion, up from $930 million in 2005.

Latvia and Lithuania have had the two fastest-growing military budgets in the world since 2014, according to IHS Jane’s.

“This growth is faster than any other region globally,” Craig Caffrey, principal analyst at IHS Jane’s, said in the report.

“The increase in defense spending in the Baltics is largely linked to the growing confrontation between Russia and the West, often described as the ‘new Cold War,’” said Alex Kokcharov, principal analyst at IHS Country Risk. “We have seen political confrontation between Russia and the West in the past two and a half years escalate to military assertiveness, and we don’t see this ending anytime soon.”

Poland, also a NATO member, has doubled its military spending since 2006, reaching $9.2 billion in 2016. Polish military spending has increased in eight of the past 10 years, with an 18 percent jump in 2015 alone.

For its part, the Kremlin also boosted its military spending by 28.6 percent in 2015—Russia’s largest defense budget increase since 2002.

This combination of escalating military firepower and the will to use it has some worried that a miscalculated act of brinkmanship, or nationalistic fervor run awry, could spark a broader regional conflict.

“It’s a regional war—and something more,” Tarik Cyril Amar, associate professor of history at Columbia University, told The Daily Signal. “It’s not merely a regional conflict. I think it’s connected to many larger processes.”

“They [Russia] are operating where they were always operating, in their near abroad,” Russell said. “Everything is about taking back territory that was historically Soviet.”

Breakdown

Tensions with Russia have been spiraling toward a nadir since the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and followed up with military operations in eastern Ukraine.

Russian military brinksmanship has taken many forms across the region, including the buzzing of NATO ships and aircraft by Russian warplanes, subversive propaganda campaigns, cyberattacks, and covert efforts to stir up separatism among minority Russian populations.

Contributing, more broadly, to the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West are accusations of Russian cyberattacks to affect the U.S. presidential election, and Moscow’s financial support for far-right political parties in Western Europe.

The deployment of military hardware and troops to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and occupied Crimea (including bombers and missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons) and Russia’s scorched-earth bombing campaign in Syria also have the West on edge.

For the time being, the Baltic states and Poland haven’t given up on NATO. In fact, the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe is set to expand dramatically.

To reassure its eastern members and to send a message of deterrence to Moscow, NATO has announced plans to deploy military units to Eastern Europe in numbers unmatched since the Cold War.

At the NATO summit in July in Warsaw, Poland, alliance leaders formally announced the planned deployment of four combat battalions to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis beginning next year.

The battalions will be fielded by Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.K. announced last week that it was bolstering its planned force to be stationed in Estonia from 500 to 800 troops.

These deployments are in addition to a previously announced U.S. plan to deploy about 3,500 troops to Eastern Europe on a rotational basis.

The deployments are considered “tripwire forces,” presumably meant to deter Russia from an attack due to the risk of spurring a massive NATO response to defend forward units.

“They’re really just notional forces,” Russell said, referring to the NATO units. “They’re not at all capable of doing anything offensive into Russia.”

The rotational NATO units planned for the Baltics and Poland are not a realistic threat to Russian forces, Wheatley said, but they have a deterrence value.

“Their installment in reality guarantees peace in the Baltic region and Poland, as Russia would never attack NATO units in open conflict,” the U.K. research fellow said.

U.S. warplanes and land units constantly cycle through Eastern European countries in an ongoing series of exercises. The U.K. also has announced it will send Typhoon fighters to Romania as part of an air policing mission.

Grassroots Defense

Paralleling the rise in defense budgets, the ranks of civilian volunteer militias in the Baltic countries have swelled since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014. The change reflects the deadly seriousness with which politicians and populations in the region consider the possibility of war with Russia.

Conscription has been reinstated in Lithuania, where the government also recently issued a guerrilla warfare manual for the country’s 3 million citizens.

Estonia’s standing army comprises about 6,000 troops out of an overall national population of 1.3 million. Meanwhile, the country’s Defense League—a civilian paramilitary group—holds weekend partisan warfare training events for its 25,400 volunteers.

Civilians of all stripes spend their weekends tramping through forests with heavy rucksacks, training in military skills such as how to lay landmines and plant booby traps.

Like many post-Soviet countries, the legacy of World War II paramilitary units runs deep in the Baltic states and Poland, where citizens fought against both Nazi and Red Army invaders.

Tensions with Russia also have rattled longtime NATO holdouts Sweden and Finland. The two Scandinavian countries, which claimed to be neutral interlocutors between NATO and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, have forged closer ties with the Western military alliance since 2014.

“Sweden is no longer part of any buffer zone,” former Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s an idea from the old days.”

Brothers at Arms

Ukraine is the epicenter of modern East-West tensions, and could be a flashpoint for future conflicts.

A war between Ukraine’s armed forces and a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars has killed 10,000 people and displaced about 1.7 million from their homes in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Despite a 17-month-old cease-fire, heavy artillery, rocket attacks, and tank shots still occur daily along the front lines in the Donbas. So do military and civilian casualties.

The war in Ukraine has not spilled over into a broader conflict involving NATO countries as many feared it would in 2014.

Today, NATO members such as the U.S., Canada, and Poland have military training missions ongoing in Ukraine, but NATO troops are not directly involved in combat operations in the Donbas.

“There was never any possibility of NATO combat troops being stationed in Ukraine,” Wheatley said.

The Ukrainian military was a ragtag force in the opening days of the conflict. Its soldiers were not prepared for combat, and reserves of weapons and ammunition had been depleted by decades of plundering by corrupt oligarchs and arms dealers.

In a speech at a military parade on Ukrainian Independence Day, Aug. 24, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signaled a long-term plan to build up the nation’s military to counter the Russian threat.

Even though Ukraine has a long way to go to match Russian firepower, some fear the current conflict could spark an arms race between the two former Soviet states.

Since the war in the Donbas began in 2014, Ukraine has fielded more than 300,000 soldiers, both recruits and draftees.

Ukraine increased its military budget by 23 percent in the year after the war began, and military spending is set to increase by 10 percent each year going forward.

Ukraine’s overall military strength went up by 25 percent—from 200,000 to 250,000 troops—in the two years since the war began in 2014. Ukraine currently has a reserve force of more than 80,000 men and women.

The composition of Ukraine’s armed forces also has evolved during the past two years.

About 17,000 women currently serve in the Ukrainian military, 10,000 of them in combat units. On June 3, Ukrainian women were officially allowed to serve in combat units, although many women already had served unofficially in combat roles within civilian volunteer battalions. Ukrainian women are also eligible to be drafted as officers.

Ukraine’s military now comprises 70 percent contract soldiers, a jump from 60 percent before the war began. An average of 6,000 servicemen signed contracts to join Ukraine’s armed forces each month this year. Ukrainian officials expect 65,000 new contract military personnel in 2016.

To boost recruitment, military officials bumped up the salary for active duty volunteers to about $275 a month—well above Ukraine’s monthly minimum wage of about $54.

Ukraine also reconstituted its National Guard, folding into its ranks the myriad civilian volunteer battalions that formed in the early days of the war when the regular army was caught on its back foot.

Russia’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has hardened Ukrainians’ attitude toward their eastern neighbors.

In 2011, 84 percent of Ukrainians had a favorable opinion toward Russia. Today, 72 percent of Ukrainians have an unfavorable opinion about Russia, and 77 percent consider Russia to be a threat to its neighbors, according to the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Ukrainian think tank.

After more than two years of war, there also has been a turnaround in Ukrainians’ attitudes toward military service. In the post-Soviet period, military service was not held in high regard in Ukraine, and often was considered a life path for those with limited options.

Today, soldiers in uniform are a common sight on the streets and train stations of any Ukrainian city or town. Veterans groups have sprouted up, and a subculture of bearded war veterans wearing stylized T-shirts—much in the model of America’s post-9/11 veteran generation—has emerged.

“Soldiers and officers will feel once again not only their social responsibility, but also society’s respect and esteem to their defenders,” Poroshenko said at the Independence Day parade.

“This parade will signal to our international partners that Ukraine is capable of defending itself, but requires further support,” Poroshenko said. “Finally, our parade is a signal to our enemy as well. Ukrainians are ready to carry on the fight for their independence.” (For more from the author of “Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression” please click HERE)

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Insurers Lobby for Changes to Obamacare ‘Bailouts’

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Insurance companies continue to put pressure on members of Congress over two Obamacare programs set to expire at the end of the year.

Lawmakers and outside groups expect a fight over the risk corridor and reinsurance programs—referred to as insurer “bailouts” by conservatives—during the lame-duck session, the period after the Nov. 8 election and before the start of the next Congress.

Members of the House and the Senate have spent the past few weeks back in their districts ahead of the election. But insurance companies and trade groups representing insurers have not stopped pressing Congress on the two programs, according to the latest lobbying disclosures filed with both chambers.

From July 1 to Sept. 30, insurers and associated groups spent nearly $10.5 million on lobbying efforts for the risk corridor and reinsurance programs, among other issues related to health care.

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group representing insurers, spent more than $1.8 million on lobbying efforts related to the risk corridor and reinsurance programs.

So far this year, the organization has spent $5.6 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Not all of that money was related to efforts involving the Obamacare provisions.

The trade group hasn’t shied away from publicly advocating for tweaks to the risk corridor and reinsurance programs.

In an interview with Morning Consult last month, Marilyn Tavenner, America’s Health Insurance Plans CEO and former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare, said changes need to be made to the two programs.

“I know ‘risk corridors’ is a bad word. ‘Reinsurance’ is a bad word. But the fact of the matter is, it’s probably taking longer than three years to stabilize,” Tavenner said. “So I think Congress, after the election, is going to have to take a look at this and decide, ‘How do you stabilize this market?’”

Only the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a trade group representing 36 plans nationwide, outspent America’s Health Insurance Plans on lobbying efforts for the risk corridor and reinsurance programs from July 1 to Sept. 30.

The organization spent $4.6 million on efforts involving the two Obamacare provisions, according to lobbying disclosures.

So far this year, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association spent $19 million on lobbying, though not all of it was devoted to the risk corridor and reinsurance programs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

A combined $1 million on lobbying was spent from July 1 to Sept. 30 by insurance companies such as Anthem, Moda Health, Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Centene, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Michigan, Florida, Kansas, Tennessee, Arizona, and Minnesota.

Though not all of the money went toward lobbying for the risk corridor and reinsurance programs, insurance companies have been pressing Congress to make changes to them over the past few months.

In filings with state regulators, insurers attributed rising premiums, in part, to the end of the reinsurance program.

The risk corridor and reinsurance programs, written into the Affordable Care Act, are set to expire at the end of the year.

The two programs, along with a third, the permanent risk adjustment program, were designed to help mitigate insurers’ risks in enrolling populations that potentially were sicker and costlier than in previous years.

In 2014 and 2015, Republican lawmakers included language in government spending bills requiring the Department of Health and Human Services to use only money it received from insurance companies with lower-than-expected costs through the risk corridor program to pay out insurers with higher-than-expected costs.

As a result, insurance companies received 12.6 percent of the money they requested from the risk corridor program.

Now, several insurance companies including Moda Health and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina are suing the Obama administration for the rest of the money.

Republicans in Congress worry that, in order to settle with insurers, the Justice Department will tap into the Judgment Fund, an indefinite appropriation created by Congress and administered by the Treasury Department.

Doing so would provide the White House with a way to pay the full risk corridor payments to insurers, effectively circumventing Congress, they warn.

But in motions to dismiss filed by the Justice Department in response to the lawsuits, the government argued insurers weren’t entitled to the full payments under the risk corridor program.

According to lobbying disclosures, insurance companies want Congress to appropriate more money for the program and combat Republican-led efforts to limit the money available through it.

As with the risk corridor program, insurance companies and related organizations have pushed lawmakers to extend the lifespan of the reinsurance program.

Under the reinsurance program, the Obama administration diverted $5 billion intended for the Treasury to insurers. A legal decision from the Government Accountability Office issued in September found that the Department of Health and Human Services acted illegally in prioritizing giving this money to insurers over the Treasury.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Obamacare’s supporters from encouraging Congress to extend the reinsurance program.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., introduced legislation earlier this year requiring the Obama administration to repay the $5 billion owed to the Treasury, or face steep cuts to the Health and Human Services management fund this year and next year. Both House and Senate versions of this legislation have been referred to their respective committees.

It is called the Taxpayers Before Insurers Act, and insurers and groups such as America’s Health Insurance Plans are lobbying members to oppose it.

Conservative groups have issued warnings that health insurance industry giants would look to the lame-duck session as the time to push for changes to the program.

And they, too, lobbied members to oppose any changes.

According to lobbying disclosures, Heritage Action for America, the sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, spent $110,000 from July 1 to Sept. 30 lobbying, in part, for Sasse and Walker’s bill. (For more from the author of “Insurers Lobby for Changes to Obamacare ‘Bailouts'” please click HERE)

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Murkowski and AK GOP Leadership Continue Deceitful Ways; Party Members File FEC, Ethics Complaints

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The Joe Miller campaign today charged Lisa Murkowski with trying to deceive the voters of Alaska following the transfer of another $100,000 in campaign cash to the Alaska Republican Party (ARP). The transfer appears solely for the purpose of attacking Miller, while hiding the true identity of the assailant. The total is now a quarter of a million dollars since Miller’s entry into the race.

The Miller campaign also discussed a complaint filed by Republican District 11 precinct leader Julie Hamm against the ARP and its chairman Tuckerman Babcock with the Federal Election Commission regarding multiple alleged violations of FEC rules.

Further, District 9 chair Carol Carman filed an ethics complaint with the State Central Committee regarding Babcock’s conduct.

In a release last week, the Miller campaign noted that Murkowski had transferred $150,300 since Miller’s decision to enter the U.S. Senate race on Sept. 6. This total is well over the $96,100 FEC limit allowed in coordinated campaign expenditures for the Alaska senate race.

The latest FEC filings show that Murkowski has doubled down by transferring an additional $100,000. The six cash transfers to the party include: Sept. 20 – $50,000; Sept. 23 – $67,000; Sept. 30 – $25,500; Oct. 7 – $7,000; Oct. 10 – $35,300; and Oct. 18 – $64,000, with a grand total of $249,600.

These transfers from Murkowski are listed as “Surplus Campaign Funds,” by the ARP, while Murkowski has listed them as “other” in her third quarter filing, with the October transfers not available yet to review.

The funds are being used to level false personal attacks against Joe Miller through statewide mailers. Lisa Murkowski is clearly trying to hide her sleazy attacks by listing them as “other.” This violates every principle of transparency and the whole objective of campaign finance laws. Alaskans have a right to know who is perpetrating the attacks.

“If Lisa Murkowski has something to say about Joe Miller, she needs to have the courage and the integrity to say it herself and not rent out the Alaska Republican Party to do her dirty work,” said campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto.

“These multiple, frantic transfers of cash are clearly acts of desperation. They know the momentum is with Joe Miller, and he is once again in a position to defeat Lisa Murkowski,” said DeSoto. “All Alaska Republicans should be outraged by the unethical conduct of the party’s leadership.”

Meanwhile Julie Hamm, a GOP precinct leader, filed an FEC complaint last week against the Alaska GOP and its chairman Tuckerman Babcock.

The complaint hits Babcock and the Alaska Republican Party leadership on multiple issues including:

1. Failing to account for all the party’s funds.

2. Failing to file a proper FEC Form 1 – Statement of Organization within the required timeframe showing a new Treasurer as well as new address of the Alaska Republican Party.

3. Filing FEC reports listing the wrong person as Treasurer.

A Miller campaign release from last week also highlighted that the Alaska GOP is currently being investigated by the FEC for failing to properly disclose expenditures made during the primary campaign.

Alaska Republican Party District 9 chair Carol Carman has also filed an ethics complaint with the State Central Committee regarding Tuckerman Babcock’s unethical conduct in circulating the Murkowski flyers.

The Alaska GOP seems more than willing to play fast and loose with the rules.

“What is becoming apparent through all these revelations- Murkowski’s money laundering with the AK GOP, missing cash, failure to disclose–is a willingness to throw ethical, even apparently legal conduct to the wind in hopes of pulling the wool over Alaskans’ eyes,” said DeSoto. “Voters are smarter than that and will show it on November 8th, when they elect Joe Miller to the U.S. Senate.”

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

No Ties Between Trump and Russia, New York Times Reports

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The FBI has found no direct links between Donald Trump and the Russian government, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The report came shortly after Mother Jones cited an anonymous “former spy,” who claimed that “there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.”

Unnamed senior FBI officials quoted in the Times indicated otherwise.

What Do Comey, Russia and Harry Reid Have to Do With Each Other?

Over the weekend, Democrats hurled criticism toward FBI Director James Comey for announcing Friday the discovery of more emails related to the federal investigation of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Amid the firestorm of condemnation came one particularly harsh letter from Sen. Harry Reid, who accused Comey of a “double standard” for going public with information related to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s emails, but not the FBI investigation of Trump’s possible connections to Russia.

Earlier this month, Comey did not sign the statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security and The Office of the Director of National Intelligence claiming Russia guided the Wikileaks hacks, because he said it was too close to the election.

A former FBI official suggested that Comey chose to break that protocol and announce the discovery of the new emails since he had already testified publicly about the matter in July, unlike the ongoing Russia investigation.

In Reid’s letter to Comey Saturday, he demanded more information:

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government. … The public has a right to know this information.

What Was the Trump-Russia Investigation All About?

The officials cited in the Times noted that Trump himself has not been the subject of any FBI investigation.

Some of Trump’s acquaintances have been investigated, the Times reported. One was Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. The investigation centered on his personal business ties, and “not necessarily on any Russian influence over Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the Times reported.

Others targeted by the FBI investigations have been Carter Page, an early campaign adviser, and Roger Stone, “Republican strategist and Trump confidant.” The Times reported that Page called the allegations against him a “witch hunt,” and Stone denied the implied Russia connection in a Breitbart op-ed earlier this month.

Federal investigations of people close to the Republican presidential nominee began earlier this year, with Democrats accusing Trump and his campaign of cahoots with Russia to tip Election Day results.

It didn’t help that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly praised each other. The blame intensified as Wikileaks, evidently linked to Russian hackers, continued to release batches of emails stolen from Democrats.

But a senior official at the FBI told the Times they don’t believe the Russians are attempting to get Trump elected through the Wikileaks hacks.

“It isn’t about the election,” he said, “It’s about a threat to democracy.” (For more from the author of “No Ties Between Trump and Russia, New York Times Reports” please click HERE)

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Black Leaders Warn of Clinton Threat to Religious Liberty in Blistering Letter

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Black leaders slammed Hillary Clinton’s position toward the poor in a letter delivered to her campaign Monday, saying her economic ideas won’t help black communities in crisis and that her social views pose a threat to their religious liberty.

“Today in the United States more than ten million people of African descent face a crisis of catastrophic proportions,” the letter begins. “Life in our major post-industrial centers can be poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

More than 20 black leaders of the popular Pentecostal-Charismatic wing of the black church signed onto the letter, requesting a meeting with Clinton to discuss their concerns about her views on the economy, abortion and other issues. “We know that you will not make the political mistake of taking the 69,000 black churches in the US for granted,” they write.

First on economics, the signers outline their concern about Clinton’s motivations and policy ideas, all but accusing her of pandering for black votes. Federal programs have often “failed” the poor black communities they’re intended to help, they note. “It is not enough to make obligatory appearances at black churches, we need you to articulate a coherent policy for the black poor.”

The leaders then turn to the subject of abortion. “Abortion in the black community has had a catastrophic impact,” they write, saying they are “very concerned” about Clinton’s position on unborn children, particularly as it relates to religious liberty. (Read more from “Black Leaders Warn of Clinton Threat to Religious Liberty in Blistering Letter” HERE)

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To Those Christians (and Others) Who Can’t Vote for Trump or Clinton

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There’s a new bumper sticker that says, “I already hate our next president!”

Indeed, many folks can’t see enough good reasons to vote for either Trump or Clinton. While I don’t endorse candidates (because people then think you agree with everything the person says or does), I do endorse the ideas and policies that certain candidates advocate. With that in mind, there are actually several good reasons — maybe even thousands — to vote for or against one of them.

While both candidates have undeniable character issues, please consider that you are not voting for just Trump or Clinton when you vote for president (for those thinking third party, I’ll get to that in a minute). In fact, if it helps you, don’t even think about voting for that person — think about voting for an administration and the platform behind that person.

You’re Really Voting for an Administration

When you vote for President, you are literally voting for thousands of people that come along with the top of the ticket and the party platform that they will implement. This year the party platforms are virtually opposites of one another and will take this country in radically different directions (click here for a succinct summary of the platforms in their own words). So our country’s future is not so much tied up in one person, but in the ideas that an administration of thousands will implement. That’s how our government works.

Here is how Mariam Bell — who has worked at all levels of government for over thirty years — puts it in a recent column: “We vote FOR the 4,000+ political appointees who will run all the agencies, departments and programs. We vote FOR the 3,000+ appointments to boards and commissions the next president will make. We vote FOR all those 300+ who will be appointed to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court — whose rulings will impact our country for the next fifty years, not just four. The next president will appoint a cabinet and has already selected a vice president.”

Ms. Bell rings a bell — a liberty bell. Most of the liberty-stifling and dangerous policies that have been imposed on America over the past eight years were put in place by unelected political appointees in direct opposition to the will of the people.

This long list of political appointee offenses includes: the corrupting politicization of the IRS and the Justice Department; taxpayer funding of the abortion-and-baby-parts-selling Planned Parenthood; turning the military into a sexual social experiment, even to the point of paying for transgender surgery; federally imposed same-sex marriage; fining religious people for refusing to participate in same-sex ceremonies; forcing nuns to pay for contraception and abortion; forcing public schools to allow boys into girls showers and restrooms; lax border security; failure to enforce immigration laws; pay-to-play at the State Department by a political appointee now running for President (who is again under investigation by the FBI), etc.

Want more of that? Vote for Hillary Clinton’s administration who will continue the march of the liberal elites. Want a change? Vote for Donald Trump’s administration who will go in a more constitutional direction.

You’d rather issue a protest to both candidates by voting third party? I understand the sentiment, but sentiment can’t change policies or save lives. Only voting for an administration that actually has a chance to win can. As Dennis Prager points out, Christians in the U.S. agreed to align with Stalin to defeat Hitler in WWII. If we had refused to work with the Soviet Union and instead elected to work with an impotent third party (like, say, Lichtenstein), we wouldn’t have stopped Hitler. (Prager is not implying that Trump is Stalin, or that Clinton is Hitler — only that if Christians could ally themselves with Stalin to defeat a more dangerous foe, Christians could support Trump to defeat Clinton and her policies.)

“More Important Matters of the Law”

What guidance does Jesus give us about politics? Some say, “Jesus wasn’t involved in politics.”

Nonsense. He spent much of his time on, and saved his harshest condemnation for, the Pharisees who were religious and political leaders in Israel. (As members of the Sanhedrin, they were some of Israel’s most prominent politicians.) Jesus excoriated them for tithing their spices but “neglecting the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23). In a reference to straining out debris from drinking water, Jesus charged them with a “straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel!”

What are “the more important matters of the law” today?

The primary responsibility for government is to protect innocent people from harm. That’s Paul’s very sensible claim in Romans 13, echoed by the Founders (James Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”). The second most important responsibility for government is to not do harm itself.

Practically, that means the government must first protect life because life is the most precious thing we have. Indeed, the right to life is the right to all other rights — if you don’t have life you don’t have anything. That’s why we have the military and police and laws to protect innocent people. It’s also why we should have laws to protect the unborn.

Second, the government must not hurt innocent people itself by advocating or promoting harmful policies (like the one’s I’ve listed above). Unfortunately, our government is not only neglecting its first responsibility to protect innocent life; it’s actually advocating the taking of innocent life by paying for it! It’s also stifling religious freedom by coercing religious people to pay for abortion and to participate in same-sex ceremonies. (We rightfully allow conscientious objectors to opt out of defending the country in war. Yet Mrs. Clinton has promised to use political will and the law to change our religious and moral beliefs. So she won’t allow conscientious objectors to opt of financing abortions or performing same sex ceremonies. Talk about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!)

Voting by the Issues

If we are going to follow the teachings of Jesus and Paul — if life, justice, mercy and faithfulness are the most important matters of the law — then we should vote these issues above all others: life, national security, marriage, judges and religious freedom. Life and national security because they involve the protection of innocent people. Marriage because it involves the protection and well-being of children who deserve both a mom and a dad. Judges because they can do great justice or injustice on every issue. Religious freedom because innocent people and the gospel are harmed when faithfulness is outlawed.

In fact, without religious freedom our ability as Christians to accomplish our primary mission — to know God and to make him known — is severely hampered. If the government continues to move in the direction it’s been going, we soon won’t be able to preach the Gospel freely. If for no other reason, Christians have to be involved in politics to prevent the government from harming our ability to live how Jesus commanded us to live and to spread the good news we were put here to spread.

You say, “We can’t completely trust Trump to govern the right way.” You might be right. But the thousands in a Trump administration will certainly conserve more of our freedoms than the thousands in a Clinton administration who are promising to end them.

So you may already hate our next President no matter who that is. But one of them has virtually promised to lead an administration that will continue to fund the destruction of innocent human beings, open the borders, appoint liberal judges, and declare your religious beliefs and actions “hate.” There are thousands of reasons to cast an effectual vote against that — millions if you count those targeted for death. (For more from the author of “To Those Christians (and Others) Who Can’t Vote for Trump or Clinton” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.