Kim Jong Out? Some See Signs of Collapse

/0 Comments/in , , /by

One month ago, when a North Korean soldier fled through the ultra-high security Demilitarized Zone amid a hail of gunfire from his comrades, he arrived in South Korea severely wounded. But Thursday, when another soldier of the communist dictatorship made a run for freedom, no shots were fired by North Korea’s elite guards.

Could the world be witnessing a repeat of 1989, when East Germans began crossing the border into Hungary and then to freedom in Austria, leading to the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes and, eventually, the Soviet Union?

That’s a question American Spectator writer and blogger Don Surber is posing amid other major developments that threaten the third generation of the Kim dynasty.

“I ask this because it seems like Kim Jong Un’s most elite troops – the ones he places along the border with South Korea – no longer protect that border,” Surber wrote. “If people figure that out, they will start walking south by the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.”

The optimism may be premature, but the Daily Telegraph of London reported this week, citing an unnamed source within the Trump administration and two former officials, that the U.S. is drawing up plans for a “bloody nose” military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program. In addition, foreign military forces told FoxNews.com that U.S. military forces trained earlier this month for a mission that would put them on North Korean soil with the aim of “infiltrating” and “removing weapons of mass destruction.” (Read more from “Kim Jong Out? Some See Signs of Collapse” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Conservative Christmas List: Which Wish-List Items Did Trump Accomplish?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Last year, following Donald Trump’s historic and unexpected election to the presidency, I put together a conservative Christmas 2017 policy wish-list. With full control of Congress and the White House, Republicans were in a unique position to implement the conservative agenda following the disastrous presidency of Barack Obama.

One year later, President Trump and the Republicans can claim several promises fulfilled, but too many are left unfinished. The Republicans still have one year to deliver on their campaign promises before the 2018 midterm elections. Failure to do so may sweep them out of power.

Which promises were kept? Which are still waiting? Let’s review.

Full repeal of Obamacare

Though Republicans considered several versions of health care reform legislation, they never attempted to pass a true full repeal of Obamacare. The core elements of Obamacare have become enshrined by the Republican Congress. The regulations, spending, mandates, and cost-sharing subsidies have become an untouchable third rail in American politics, as Obamacare has gone the way of other entitlement programs.

For now, the only meaningful action Republicans have taken to even partially repeal Obamacare is the inclusion of a provision to reduce the individual mandate penalty to zero, essentially eliminating the individual mandate.

Though Americans will no longer be forced to buy insurance plans they cannot afford, premiums are still set to increase, insurance markets still face a death spiral, and insurance companies continue to demand bailouts from the federal government as they are crushed by the weight of the Obamacare system.

The promise to repeal Obamacare was not kept. Health care remains the most important domestic policy challenge facing this country, and the American people should demand that Congress take up true health care reform immediately.

Border security and the wall

Though the federal government has built several prototypes for a border wall during the Trump administration, actual construction on the oft-promised wall has not begun. The White House Office of Management and Budget recently told the Department of Homeland Security to adjust its projected spending for the 2019 fiscal year to $1.6 billion to fund construction of the wall.

This funding needs to come from Congress. There is a Dec. 22 deadline for the legislature to agree on a spending bill for the next year, and the status of funding for the wall remains in question. President Trump has previously suggested that a government shutdown may be necessary if Democrats refuse to vote for a spending bill that includes wall funding, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has repeatedly insisted that a shutdown is out of the question.

Congress has failed to pass funding for the wall. President Trump must draw a red line in the spending bill and be willing to fulfill his pledge to shut down the government, if necessary, to build that wall.

Government lobbying ban

On the campaign trail, President Trump promised to help “drain the Swamp” by issuing an executive order to create a five-year lobbying ban for former administration officials after they leave the White House or Congress. Trump also pledged to create a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.

In one of his first acts as president last January, President Trump signed an executive order putting these lobbying bans into effect. This promise was kept.

Repeal Dodd-Frank

The House of Representatives voted to repeal the “Obamacare of financial markets” with a party-line vote back in June. Besides creating a massive and costly regulatory regime, Dodd-Frank created the unconstitutional Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is estimated to have a $1 trillion negative impact on the American economy.

The U.S. Senate killed the House bill. A new bipartisan agreement to roll back some aspects of Dodd-Frank was introduced, but this compromise legislation keeps many regulations and only partially repeals the unconstitutional CFPB. President Trump stands ready to sign repeal legislation … if only Congress would send him a bill. So far, they haven’t.

Nominate a pro-life justice to the Supreme Court

President Trump’s appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court received nearly universal acclaim from conservatives. Gorsuch is pro-life, and this promise was kept.

Pain-capable abortion ban

The federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks of gestation has passed the House of Representatives. Mitch McConnell claims the bill is supported by “virtually all” Republicans in the Senate, but he has not yet announced a date for the vote.

President Trump has formally backed this legislation, but the promise is not kept until he signs the bill.

Defund Planned Parenthood and make the Hyde Amendment permanent

Language to defund Planned Parenthood for one year was included in some versions of Obamacare partial repeal, but since those bills failed, there has been no congressional action on defunding Planned Parenthood. As Congress considers legislation to bail out health insurance companies, the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group, has warned that it would oppose any effort that includes Obamacare insurer payments that aren’t protected by the Hyde Amendment. The amendment is a spending requirement that prevents federal funding from going toward abortions.

So far, Congress has refused to defund Planned Parenthood and permanently extend the Hyde Amendment.

First Amendment Defense Act

A federal version of laws designed to protect religious liberty by preventing the government from penalizing Americans for affirming that marriage is only the union between a man and a woman has been introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in the Senate and by Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, in the House.

The president supports this legislation. “If Congress considers the First Amendment Defense Act a priority, then I will do all I can to make sure it comes to my desk for signatures and enactment,” Trump wrote in a letter last year.

Congress hasn’t moved on it.

Fix the Fed

So far in this presidency, President Trump seems to be intent on keeping the status quo for the Federal Reserve. Trump recently nominated Jerome Powell to be the next chairman of the Fed when Janet Yellen’s term expires in February. Powell is an uncontroversial pick for the powerful institution that controls monetary policy in the United States — and thus has influence on global markets.

Conservatives and libertarians who subscribe to the Austrian school of economics believe that the Federal Reserve is largely responsible for artificially creating booms and busts via false market signals. The Fed’s control over interest rates is a powerful tool, and its misuse can have disastrous consequences such as inflation, which reduces the purchasing power of your dollars. At other times, the Fed artificially keeps the interest rate too low, which can cause serious inflationary consequences down the line.

Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., has introduced legislation to audit the Fed to ensure accountability, but Trump’s nominee Powell has previously criticized this legislation, arguing that congressional policy audits are “misguided” and would submit the independent federal reserve to political pressure, which could exacerbate financial crises.

President Trump made a campaign promise to audit the Fed, and in 2015 he expressed a desire to abandon fiat currency and go back to a gold standard. Yet for the time being, the Trump administration is missing a great opportunity to make good on this campaign promise.

Tax reform

The Republicans in Congress have put together a tax reform plan that, while short of a fundamental restructuring of the American tax system, will give most Americans a solid tax cut and give American businesses a huge competitive edge. After several weeks of drama, the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate passed the bill, and President Trump will sign tax reform into law before the year ends.

Even the Left is being forced to admit that 80 percent of Americans are getting a tax cut under the Republican plan and the average tax cut will be $1,600. The tax cuts kick in in February.

Scrap Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders (DACA to start)

In September, President Trump cancelled Obama’s illegal DACA order granting amnesty to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. In doing so, the president announced a six-month delay in the enforcement of his new policy to give Congress time to develop a legislative solution for so-called “Dreamers.”

Strictly speaking, the president kept his promise to repeal the unconstitutional executive order. But his championing of Congress to pass legal DACA amnesty betrays the spirit of his America First campaign by prioritizing the needs of illegal immigrants before Congress has acted to secure the border, build a wall, and tighten enforcement of our immigration laws so that America is benefited by the immigrants who come here.

Repeal the EPA “Waters of the United States” rule

President Trump promised to rescind the unbelievably tyrannical Obama-era regulation that put the federal government in control of the puddle in your back yard.

In June, the Environmental Protection Agency formally began the process of repealing the “waters of the United States” rule and replacing it with a more limited regulation. This promise was kept.

National Right to Carry

President Trump was a strong advocate for the Second Amendment on the campaign trail and remains so in office.

“A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving — which is a privilege, not a right — then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege,” Trump said.

The House of Representatives recently passed “The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 8),” but CR’s Daniel Horowitz was one of few to sound the alarm on hidden gun control legislation attached to the bill. Horowitz notes that there is no commitment from the U.S. Senate to pass the concealed carry reciprocity portion of the legislation, while Republican leaders are prioritizing the gun control bill.

Almost every Republican in Congress claims to be pro-gun rights, but their actions don’t agree.

The first year of Trump’s presidency is drawing to a close, and the Republicans in Congress have demonstrated there is still far too much work to do to pass a conservative agenda. At this rate, it will be a miracle if Congress can achieve these remaining goals by the end of Trump’s presidency, let alone by next Christmas. (For more from the author of “Conservative Christmas List: Which Wish-List Items Did Trump Accomplish?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

BEYOND INSANE: CIA Now Alleging That Third Party Presidential Candidates are Evidence of Russian Collusion

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A U.S. Army Veteran’s Russian Election Interference

By Zak Carter. In 2012 I worked as communications director for the Free And Equal Elections Foundation. We produced a series of two presidential debates that year, both attended by Jill Stein. The CIA lists those debates as evidence of Russian interference in our elections.

As F&E’s communication director, I was tasked with increasing viewership of those debates. In 2008 F&E hosted a presidential debate that was moderated by F&E’s chairwoman and broadcast by CSPAN 2. Nobody knew about it, and nobody watched it. So I reached out to Larry King’s producer at ORA TV and got the ball rolling on Mr. King moderating one of our debates. I then started contacting other television networks to ask them to broadcast, and having Larry King attached to the debates did help open a few doors. We managed to get broadcast commitments from Link TV, Free Speech TV, CSPAN, along with ORA TV as would be expected since their host would be moderating. Missing from that list though were any of the major networks. When contacting FOX, CNN, ABC, CBS and ABC etc, I was either met with silence or told that this was something that they couldn’t broadcast due to their relationship with The Commission on Presidential Debates.

We wanted as many people watching as possible though, so I went to the international media. I managed to get commitments from both Al Jazeera and Russia Today. Other international media ran stories on the debates but did not broadcast. Thanks to Al Jazeera and Russia Today broadcasting the debates, we were inundated with interview requests for weeks by journalists all over the globe, from Switzerland to New Zealand, who had no idea that there was a Green or Libertarian Party in America till then. They thought there was nothing but Republicans and Democrats here.

After that first debate at the Chicago Hilton on October 23rd, 2012, F&E was close to broke (I believe we spent close to $150k on that night) and on a shoestring budget. Russia Today offered to put us up in their studio in DC and have Thom Hartmann moderate, and being broke, we accepted. We drove from Chicago to DC, and thanks to Superstorm Sandy, we delayed the debate till November 5th, the night before the election. After the debate we had dinner with Misha Solodovnikov, Russia Today’s DC bureau chief, so I really must be guilty of something.

What I’d like to know is if the CIA called those debates evidence of Russian meddling in our elections, what else is questionable in that report? And if Jill Stein and I are guilty of anything, clearly Larry King, an icon of our media, along with Thom Hartmann, darling of mainstream liberal talk radio, must be complicit as well, right along with CSPAN and the other American networks that broadcast our debates. Lawrence O’Donnell at MSNBC did a very positive segment on the first debate and should likely be questioned too while we’re at it.

Bottom line for me is, if The Commission on Presidential Debates didn’t block participation from independent and 3rd party candidates, I never would have called Russia Today. Open the presidential debates and I promise I won’t do it again.

______________________________________________

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Criticize Russia Today TV for Hosting Minor-Party Presidential Debates

By Richard Winger. Intelligence agencies of the United States have just published a booklet, “Intelligence Community Assessment”, which sets forth evidence that Russia, and the television network Russia Today (RT), intervened in the United States presidential elections of 2012 and 2016. The publication is from the “Intelligence Community”, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Here is a link to the booklet.

Annex A, in the second half of the report, on page six, says, “In an effort to highlight the alleged ‘lack of democracy’ in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the U.S. two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.’”

In 2012 RT carried the general election presidential debate between Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Virgil Goode, and Rocky Anderson. In 2016, during the primary season in the first half of the year, RT broadcast a debate between various candidates for the Green Party nomination. It also carried a debate between some of the candidates for the Libertarian nomination. Thanks to antiwar.com for the link. See this antiwar commentary about the report. (For more from the author of “U.S. Intelligence Agencies Criticize Russia Today TV for Hosting Minor-Party Presidential Debates” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s Worst Nomination So Far

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Liberal states and liberal judges are attacking the foundations of property, conscience, and religious liberty rights. More than ever before, we need the two political branches of the federal government to stand up against the “bake the cake” fascism being deployed against employers, business owners, private institutions, and individuals. Yet, Trump just re-nominated Chai Feldblum, Obama’s most radical sexual identity movement leader, for another term as commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is a powerful and dangerous “independent agency” hurting our society.

The EEOC is perhaps one of the worst of the independent “fourth branch of government” agencies within the Executive Branch. The same power the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) wields over financial institutions, the EEOC wields over property rights, societal norms, and discrimination laws. It holds unconstitutional quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial powers to trump up and adjudicate charges against businesses and colleges over quotas and discrimination.

Unfortunately, like many civil rights-era laws and agencies that were originally designed to protect inalienable rights, the EEOC has become a tool for infringing on inalienable rights in service of phantom rights. They are the tip of the spear of the radical racial and sexual identity movements, creating super classes of Americans and unequal rights under the guise of promoting equality. Whether it’s quotas, contracting, or forced service for gay weddings, they apply the laws unequally for classes of citizens loved by the American Left at the expense of the classes out of favor with the political elites. Thus, they will force Christian business owners to serve gay weddings with their own property but then assert religious liberty privileges on behalf of Muslim employees seeking to force unreasonable accommodations (such as Muslim truck drivers refusing to deliver beer) on other people’s private property.

The EEOC has five commissioners and is the type of agency for which, if we will not abolish it, we need someone like Scott Garrett at the Export-Import Bank or Scott Pruitt at EPA to run it. In other words, we need someone who opposes the agency’s entire agenda from top to bottom. Instead, Trump re-nominated Chai Feldblum for another term. Feldblum was appointed to the EEOC by Obama in 2009 and re-nominated in 2013. Almost every Republican opposed her nomination in 2013, and conservative groups were up in arms. She is the lead architect of Obama’s transgender agenda, mandating that schools and states bring one gender into private dressing rooms of the opposite gender. Under her tenure, the EEOC has codified the entire sexual alphabet soup agenda, including “sex stereotyping,” into the Civil Rights Act without approval from Congress. An “independent” agency, indeed!

Feldblum believes that every time the sexual identity and homosexual movements come into conflict with private property rights and religious liberty, property rights and religious liberty lose. This comes at a particularly dangerous time, as the EEOC is bringing a number of lawsuits encouraging the courts to enshrine the sexual identity agenda into Title IX of the Education Amendments and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

We need a conservative, now, to lead the EEOC and push back against the radical courts, not maintain Obama’s personnel to encourage the courts to be even more radical.

It is unclear if the president himself is aware of this nomination, but clearly some staffers in the White House are rushing this nomination as part of a deal to get their people on the commission, as first reported by Paul Mirengoff of Powerline.

Defenders of this move are asserting that the re-nomination of Feldblum is in exchange for the nomination of two Republicans to the commission, Janet Dhillon and Daniel Gade. They assert that because there must be at least two Democrats on the five-member panel anyway, they’d have to nominate a Democrat for Feldblum’s seat, and at least this way, they get a 3-2 majority.

This overlooks the fact that Republicans control the Senate. They will get their people confirmed anyway, especially because there is nothing controversial about the GOP nominees. This also overlooks the fact that the ability and desire of GOP commissioners to aggressively promote good policies are not equal to someone as skilled and extreme as Feldblum on the other side. It would be better to appoint a random Democrat in her place. Nothing personal to Dhillon and Gade, but nothing suggests that they are conservative culture warriors to the degree that Feldblum is a liberal cultural warrior. This is neither an equal nor a necessary trade. As Christian Adams notes, Feldblum is worth three Republicans to the Left.

Feldblum’s nomination has already been fast-tracked through the process. The relevant committee, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, will likely approve her because RINO Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski sit on the panel.

The president should be made aware of this nomination. He should already be sensitive to the problems of retaining administration officials who thwart his agenda. The last thing he should do is re-nominate any Obama appointee for dog catcher, much less for a position that so gravely affects the fabric of our society. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Worst Nomination So Far” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

86-Year-Old Woman With Dementia Warms up to Santa ─ and Makes Him Cry

/0 Comments/in , /by

An 86-year-old woman deep in the throes of dementia came out to the surface briefly when she encountered her beloved Santa in a photo studio in a New Mexico mall.

“Every time Santa got close to her, she would nuzzle in and close her eyes as if there was no place she would rather be,” the studio wrote on its Facebook page.

“It was so sweet and emotional for Santa and our whole staff.”

The photography studio, Hartsocks’ Photography, said Santa cried when the woman left.

Karen Rangel was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014 and was recently put on hospice care. (Read more from “86-Year-Old Woman With Dementia Warms up to Santa ─ and Makes Him Cry” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

California’s Wildfire Now Largest in State History

/0 Comments/in , /by

The blaze known as the Thomas fire in Southern California is now the largest in the state’s recorded history, fire officials said Saturday evening.

The Thomas fire has scorched 273,400 acres, or about 427 square miles of coastal foothills and national forest.

That makes the Thomas fire 154 acres larger than the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego that killed 15 people, officials said.

Thousands of firefighters and fleets of aircraft have been battling the Thomas blaze since Dec. 4. A firefighter and a woman fleeing the blaze died.

Days of unrelenting hot, gusty winds drive it through Ventura neighborhoods, incinerating entire blocks, and threatened the wealthy enclave of Montecito. (Read more from “California’s Wildfire Now Largest in State History” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

It’s Not Over Yet: Two More Accusers Come out Against Bill O’Reilly

/0 Comments/in , /by

Two more former associates of Bill O’Reilly have joined a defamation lawsuit filed by a fellow O’Reilly accuser.

Andrea Mackris, Rebecca Gomez Diamond and Rachel Witlieb Bernstein have come together in a defamation suit after O’Reilly claimed that they were political operatives trying to take him down and liars with the goal of extortion, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.

Mackris is a former producer on O’Reilly’s show who claimed she had been sexually harassed by O’Reilly. According to her complaint, the Fox News host would call and engage in phone sex fantasies with her.

According to a New York Times article, the 2004 suit also said that O’Reilly had threatened her and told her that anyone who complained about his behavior would “pay so dearly that she’ll wish she’d never been born.”

The narrative was shaped to depict Mackris as promiscuous, but eventually O’Reilly payed $9 million to settle the suit, according to The Times.

Diamond is a former Fox Business Network host who asserted that O’Reilly had also sexually harassed her over the phone. She had recordings of the conversations and in 2011 when she was told her contract would not be renewed, her lawyers brought her complaints to the company.

According to The Times, she left Fox with a confidentiality agreement and the paid settlement.

Bernstein complained about O’Reilly’s harassment in 2002, though the alleged harassment was not sexual, the Daily Mail reported, and received a small payout.

In response to the defamation claims, O’Reilly’s lawyer Fredric S. Newman said that his client hadn’t named one of his accusers when he said that certain individuals were out to take him down.

“Bill O’Reilly has never mentioned the plaintiff’s name publicly in any context,” he said in a statement, according to the Daily Beast.

Nancy Erika Smith who represents Mackris, Diamond and Bernstein also represented Gretchen Carlson in her lawsuit against Fox News, who is also a defendant on this defamation suit.

“They are tired of being smeared with lies by a bully who thinks that his victims are afraid to answer to them,” she said about her clients. “They are standing up for the truth, joining the many voices of brave women who are no longer tolerating abuse or being silenced.”

After O’Reilly was fired from Fox, he told Matt Lauer on the Today Show, “If you look at the totality, this was a hit job — a political and financial hit job,” Deadline reported.

According to the Daily Mail, O’Reilly has paid over $45 million to six women over allegations of misconduct.

He has said in the past that he settled these cases so that they would not come out in public and put stress on his teenage son and daughter.

“There is ample evidence that Fox News, with the complicity of top executives, enabled the abuse of women for many years than silenced them with non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses,” Smith said in a media release.

Smith’s law partner Neil Mullin expanded, saying that Fox “should release all victims from their NDAs and let the truth out. It is cowardly to publicly attack these women knowing they have been subjected to contractual provisions requiring absolute silence.” (For more from the author of “It’s Not Over Yet: Two More Accusers Come out Against Bill O’Reilly” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Fire Chief Was Wrongly Fired for Supporting Biblical Marriage

/0 Comments/in , /by

This time last year A Charlie Brown Christmas was being censored in schools and former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran was still waiting for justice after being wrongly fired for expressing his religious beliefs about marriage.

But this year is looking up – both for the Christmas classic and for Chief Cochran.

Chief Cochran was fired by the city in 2015 in violation of his constitutional rights. He brought a federal civil rights suit against the city of Atlanta for his unjust termination.

I had the privilege of representing Chief Cochran before a federal district court last month, asking that it uphold his right to free speech. The government cannot force its employees to get permission before engaging in free speech. After all, free speech is not really free if you have to get City permission for it.

Thankfully, the court ruled December 20 that the City of Atlanta’s actions were unconstitutional. (Read more from “Fire Chief Was Wrongly Fired for Supporting Biblical Marriage” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

List: These 32 Senators Voted to Shut Down the Government Before Christmas

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Senate approved a short-term spending plan to keep the government open Thursday but not without nearly a third of the chamber dissenting for various reasons.

The funding bill, called a continuing resolution, keeps the government open through mid-January.

The legislation needed at least 60 votes and passed by 66 votes, with 32 nays and two senators not voting. That’s double the 14 Democrats who dissented against the temporary spending bill two weeks ago.

Most of the nay votes were from Democrats who are desperate to deal with immigration issues.

During a caucus meeting Thursday, Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois criticized Schumer for not caring about the future of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals, and for “throwing them under the bus,” The Washington Post reports.

Schumer, who voted no on the spending bill, issued an ultimatum to the GOP that his party would not vote for anything more than a short term bill until Congress addresses immigration and wider domestic spending issues.

He also mentioned that the $81 billion emergency spending bill the House passed Thursday would not go forward until the Senate addressed other issues.

“We’re not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about,” Schumer said. “We have to solve these issues together.”

Two Republican senators — Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined the dissenting votes for the spending bill.

The spending bill again waived rules that would have mandated steep cuts to Medicare and other entitlement programs, which Paul didn’t want to see happen.

“Do federal deficits matter?” Paul asked.

Here are all the “nay” votes:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Nay

Michael Bennet (D-CO), Nay

Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Nay

Cory Booker (D-NJ), Nay

Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Nay

Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Nay

Ben Cardin (D-MD), Nay

Bob Casey (D-PA), Nay

Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Nay

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Nay

Dick Durbin (D-IL), Nay

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Nay

Al Franken (D-MN), Nay

Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Nay

Kamala Harris (D-CA), Nay

Maise Hirono (D-HI), Nay

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay

Mike Lee (R-UT), Nay

Ed Markey (D-MA), Nay

Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Nay

Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Nay

Chris Murphy (D-CT), Nay

Patty Murray (D-WA), Nay

Rand Paul (R-KY), Nay

Jack Reed (D-RI), Nay

Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Nay

Brian Schatz (D-HI), Nay

Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Nay

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Nay

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Nay

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay

Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nay

(For more from the author of “List: These 32 Senators Voted to Shut Down the Government Before Christmas” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Top Marine General Announces Prediction to Troops: ‘There’s a War Coming’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Concerns about rising global tensions were not eased when recent remarks by the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps became public this week.

As The Hill reported, Gen. Robert Neller was in Norway addressing Marines stationed there when he delivered a grim forecast of the international climate.

“I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming,” he said.

Neller was stressing the geopolitical importance of a presence in Norway during his visit, according to Military.com.

He indirectly pointed to Russia, among other global actors, as possible threats in the near future. That would possibly put any battalion stationed in Norway, a recently introduced rotation for the Marines, in position to respond to the “big-a– fight” Neller believes is coming.

While he also mentioned the Pacific theater as a likely global hot spot, much of his rhetoric seemed to reference Russia.

That narrative was continued by Marine Corps Sergeant Major Ronald Green, who said the situation on the ground for those stationed in Norway could change without notice.

“Just remember why you’re here,” he said. “They’re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you.”

The small Marine footprint in the nation could easily increase should circumstances warrant it, Green said.

“We could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight,” he said. “We could raise the bar.”

Video footage shows the training exercises Marines in the battalion are using to remain ready.

The notable avoidance of directly referencing Russia continues a trend Military.com first identified in previous conversations with the Marines in the Norway rotation. They reported being instructed not to mention Russia by name in any public statements.

In addition to permitting the Marine Corps unit to be stationed in the country, the Norwegian government also has deep economic ties to neighboring Russia. Some officials in Norway have expressed concern about the scope of the American mission in their country, though the arrangement has generally been met with approval.

As for Russian officials, there has been overwhelming rejection of U.S. presence on the Norwegian side of the border.

“They don’t like the fact that we oppose them, and we like the fact that they don’t like the fact that we oppose them,” Green said, again avoiding use of the word “Russia.”

He went on to say that, despite the size of the force on the ground in Norway, he likes their odds.

“Three hundred of us, surrounded by them, we’ve got them right where we wanted, right?” he said. “We’ve done this before.” (For more from the author of “Top Marine General Announces Prediction to Troops: ‘There’s a War Coming'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.