China ‘Will Stop’ U.S. From Toppling North Korean Regime

/0 Comments/in , /by

If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them, a Chinese state-run newspaper said on Friday.

President Donald Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric toward North Korea and its leader on Thursday, warning Pyongyang against attacking Guam or U.S. allies after it disclosed plans to fire missiles over Japan to land near the U.S. Pacific territory.

China, North Korea’s most important ally and trading partner, has reiterated calls for calm during the current crisis. It has expressed frustration with both Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear and missile tests and with behavior from South Korea and the United States that it sees as escalating tensions.

The widely read state-run Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, wrote in an editorial that Beijing is not able to persuade either Washington or Pyongyang to back down. (Read more from “China ‘Will Stop’ U.S. From Toppling North Korean Regime” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Judge Orders New Searches of Hillary’s Benghazi Emails

/0 Comments/in , /by

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to search government email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s aides for information concerning the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks that took the lives of four Americans.

Washington D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ordered the State Department on Tuesday to search government email accounts belonging to Clinton former deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and former director of policy planning Jake Sullivan. The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit filed by government watchdog Judicial Watch.

The accounts are expected to contain communications between Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, and her staff.

“The court finds that State’s search was inadequate insofar as it did not search the official state.gov e-mail accounts of Secretary Clinton’s three aides, and orders State to conduct a supplemental search of those accounts,” the ruling stated.

Judge Mehta, an Obama appointee, explained that the State Department is unlikely able to “adequately” access emails sent from Clinton’s private server. However, he said, the department “has an obligation to search its own server for responsive records.” (Read more from “Judge Orders New Searches of Hillary’s Benghazi Emails” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘Easy Meat’: Muslim Mass-Rape of White Girls

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Seventeen men and one woman were found guilty of a host of sexual crimes against young women – many of them children – after a massive “grooming gang” was uncovered in Newcastle, England.

The gang, made up of mostly Muslim Middle Easterners and South Asians (commonly referred to as just “Asian” in the U.K.) preyed upon white British girls, plying them with alcohol, marijuana, mephedrone and other drugs.

The victims of sexual abuse were between the ages of 13 and 25. They were drugged unconscious and then raped or pressured into sex through physical or emotional abuse.

According to the London Guardian, one of the gang members, Badrul Hussian, allegedly yelled at a female ticket inspector on public transit: “All white women are only good for one thing. For men like me to f— and use like trash. That’s all women like you are worth.”

Peter McLaughlin, author of “Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal,” noted Muslims make up 5 percent of the population of the U.K. but account for 90 percent of “grooming gang” convictions. (Read more from “‘Easy Meat’: Muslim Mass-Rape of White Girls” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Child Miners Aged Four Living a Hell on Earth So YOU Can Drive an Electric Car

/0 Comments/in , /by

Picking through a mountain of huge rocks with his tiny bare hands, the exhausted little boy makes a pitiful sight.

His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and a deadly lung condition. Here, for a wage of just 8p a day, the children are made to check the rocks for the tell-tale chocolate-brown streaks of cobalt – the prized ingredient essential for the batteries that power electric cars.

And it’s feared that thousands more children could be about to be dragged into this hellish daily existence – after the historic pledge made by Britain to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 and switch to electric vehicles.

It heralds a future of clean energy, free from pollution but – though there can be no doubting the good intentions behind Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s announcement last month – such ideals mean nothing for the children condemned to a life of hellish misery in the race to achieve his target.

Dorsen, just eight, is one of 40,000 children working daily in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The terrible price they will pay for our clean air is ruined health and a likely early death. (Read more from “Child Miners Aged Four Living a Hell on Earth So YOU Can Drive an Electric Car” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Doctor: Playing Field Simply Not Level When ‘Trans’ Men Compete Against Women

/0 Comments/in , /by

An endocrinologist said Tuesday that biologically male athletes who compete as “women” are really “feminized males rather than true females,” despite going through medical procedures to have their testosterone levels artificially reduced.

“It’s really important to know that while hormones [certainly] play a role in athletic performance, by giving a male estrogen [a female hormone] in suppressing their normal testosterone, there are many aspects of fundamental biology that don’t change,“ said Dr. Paul Hruz, appearing on the FOX News’ “Tucker Carlson Show,” with conservative talker Laura Ingraham subbing for Carlson . . .

Ingraham introduced the topic by highlighting the case of “transgender” “woman” Jillian (formerly John) Bearden, a “male-to-female” trans athlete competing in professional women’s cycling events.

“The study of individuals that have had artificial manipulation of their hormone levels — and how that influences, long term, their performance in athletics and other areas — really is largely unknown, and that includes the imprinting that occurs at the genetic level in every cell and every tissue in the body,” Dr. Hruz said. “And many of these changes are not accounted for by the hormones alone.” (Read more from “Doctor: Playing Field Simply Not Level When ‘Trans’ Men Compete Against Women” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Insurance Cartel Making RECORD Profit. WHY More Illegal Bailouts?

/1 Comment/in , /by

The medical insurance industry subsists on more government favors than any other industry. Between the requirement to purchase insurance, the requirement that companies offer the insurance industry’s product, and the $275 billion tax exemption to offer their product (four times the size of mortgage interest deductions!), the insurance cartel is essentially a government-sponsored entity or public utility. It has done nothing for society, but has destroyed the patient-doctor relationship, prevented medical innovation, and raised costs astronomically.

Now that same medical insurance industry is asking for a bailout.

The answer must be a resounding “No!”

Last week, the top six health insurance companies (UnitedHealth Group, Anthem, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, and Centene) reported $6 billion in combined adjusted profits for the second quarter of this year. According to CNBC, that’s up “29 percent from the same quarter a year ago — far outpacing the overall S&P 500 health care sector’s growth of 8.5 percent for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data.”

As an unapologetic capitalist, I have no problem with the earning of record profits built off of free markets, innovation, and competition. Nobody begrudges the success of Apple and Amazon. But in medical insurance, prices are at a record high and the quality of the actual care is in the toilet — all thanks to venture socialism, not free markets. To quote Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, “You didn’t build that.”

What is the source of their profit? You got it: taxpayers and public debt!

“The core business, which is providing coverage to large and mid-sized employers… and the established government programs, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care, have all done well.”

Many people forget that most of Medicare and Medicaid are not purely “public.” These programs are managed by “private” companies that line their pockets with unconstitutional government interventions and then use their rent-seeking status in the market to demand more subsidies lest they threaten higher prices. As CNBC explains:

Aetna now derives more than half of its revenue from government plans, and after abandoning its merger deal with Humana, the insurer is focused on growing its Medicare Advantage market share on its own in 2018 and 2019.

“The general trend is growing the portion of health care claims that are directly or indirectly paid by the federal government,” said health care ratings analyst Deep Banerjee, a director at S&P Global Ratings.

This is the literal meaning of venture socialism, when private companies earn their entire market share based on government capital, leaving the consumer in the lurch. They no longer need to compete for consumer satisfaction when government is the true consumer.

And let’s not forget the ill-conceived concept of employer-sponsored medical insurance, driven by $275 billion tax pork. Yes, $275 billion worth of lost wages — doing nothing but lining the pockets of the insurance cartel.

Imagine what would happen if the government mandated that everyone not only own a firearm, but purchase a specific type of firearm produced only by a few companies. Then employers would be required to purchase them for employees, and they’d get a collective $275 billion tax cut for doing so. In addition, the entire personal security for all the elderly and poor would be managed by those companies and their services, through $1.6 trillion in combined federal and state spending! They’d be pretty darn wealthy and have all the power in the world to lobby for endless subsidies. That, in a nutshell, is the exact situation in our critically ill health care system.

In addition, these same companies had the nerve to lobby for the insolvent Obamacare regulations and vociferously blocked any effort to repeal them. They are willing to go along with the regulations because 1) They keep new competitors from entering the market; 2) They have a vested interest in keeping the price of health care and insurance high; 3) They have a guaranteed flow of government subsidies to some consumers, states, and insurers to sugar-coat their price inflation; and 4) Unlike any other industry, they get to engage in price fixing — all enabled and sponsored by government tilting the playing field away from direct primary care and toward the insurance cartel.

In many respects, our system of venture socialism is worse than single-payer, because it combines socialism with the greed of capitalism. However, unlike capitalism, in venture socialism, government shields the private entities from market forces. It guarantees them an endless flow of public funds, consumer mandates, and regulatory favors (no anti-trust laws, but onerous coverage burdens to keep out new competitors) to remove any need to innovate and compete. Health care ratings analyst Deep Banerjee, as reported by CNBC, put it best:

“Even with a single payer in a public-private partnership, insurance companies are very involved in managing the costs, and actually running the program for the state or the federal government.”

The government has essentially handed the entire medical care field to the insurance and Big Health Care administration cartels. They would have never amassed their monopoly without government favors at every turn.

That is why the worst thing we can do is give into their tantrums and offer them more cost-sharing subsidies. We must move in the opposite direction entirely: Cut out insurance altogether from any special government favors and make insurance companies compete in the market like any other industry.

Even without fully or partially repealing Obamacare, there are a number of ways we can repair health care in this country and sever the stranglehold of the government-sponsored cartel on our health. We must place direct primary care and alternatives to insurance on an equal playing field. President Trump should explore the following reforms and put the insurance cartel on notice that he will no longer treat them as wards of the state:

Allow health-sharing associations to prosper and compete with insurance as a fully viable alternative. This model has proven extremely successful with health-sharing ministries. All we need to do is expand Section 5000A(d) of the ACA and exempt all new associations and non-religious sharing associations from the individual mandate penalty. Additionally, they should be afforded equal tax treatment through HSAs and the employer tax exclusion. This must be a centerpiece of any tax reform proposal. Watch the insurance cartel be forced to compete or die. (For more details, listen to podcast 130.)

Marshal true market forces by encouraging price transparency and ending price fixing. The reason health care is so expensive is because the insurance cartel is allowed to price-fix. Given that more than half of their revenue is from government and the other half is indirectly sponsored by government, there is no reason Congress could not prohibit any insurance contracts that inhibit providers from offering self-pay discounts to patients. Under current practice, given that the Medicaid and Medicare contracts are funneled through the insurance cartel, insurers prevent providers from offering discounts to those who self-pay. It is fundamentally unfair for the government programs to hurt private citizens who want to shop around like a regular market. Ending the price fixing would naturally lead to price transparency, which is the lynchpin of reducing charges and fostering competition. (For more details, listen to podcast 135.)

Cut out the cartel entirely from Medicaid and give the money directly to poor consumers in the form of regulated HSA accounts. This way we could provide them with better quality, more choices, and less stigma — all without self-perpetuating a death spiral of eye-popping debt and price increases that destroy the market for everyone else.

By enacting these true health care reforms, much of the debate over Obamacare and the repeal of Obamacare will become moot. We only have a health care problem because the federal government has elevated the insurance cartel to a status it would never have attained on its own. The Freedom Caucus should demand real health care reform in return for any debt ceiling increase, because the government focus on lining the pockets of the insurance cartel is the biggest driver of personal and national debt. Let’s level the playing field and see if a true free market would actually sustain the insurance companies’ Solyndra-style business model. (For more from the author of “Insurance Cartel Making RECORD Profit. WHY More Illegal Bailouts?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

WATCH: 90s Donald Trump vs. 90s Bill Clinton on North Korea

/0 Comments/in , , /by

President Trump has come under fire for his response to the growing threat from North Korea, but in the context of Washington’s repeated failures with the North Koreans, the criticisms of the president seem overblown.

Responding to reports that North Korea has developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, President Trump announced Tuesday that further threats from the rogue regime would be met with “fire and fury.”

“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” President Trump declared. “They will be met with the fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state, and as I said, they will be met with the fire and fury and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

The common criticism seems to be that the president is overturning decades of U.S. strategy towards North Korea with his aggressive rhetoric. The fear is that the president is bringing us closer to nuclear war. But how exactly has the status quo policy deterred the North Koreans from pursuing nuclear weapons and kept America safe?

The “strategic patience” of the D.C. foreign policy establishment has failed to stop the North Koreans. For decades, the policy in Washington was to engage in diplomacy with the regime, make agreements to ease sanctions in return for guarantees that Norks would halt their pursuit of nuclear weapons, and watch helplessly as they violated the terms of the agreements repeatedly.

Consider how President Bill Clinton reached an agreement in the 1990s that he thought would end North Korean nuclear ambitions and make the world safer. The U.S. would provide oil, two light water reactors, and an electric grid, all worth billions of dollars, in exchange for promises that the regime would cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“This is a good deal for the United States,” Clinton said in 1994. “North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons.”

Fast-forward to 2017, and President Clinton’s assurances seem laughably naïve. The North Koreans deceived the U.S., advancing their nuclear program and conducting their first nuclear test just over a decade after this deal. Two decades later, they reportedly have a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile and a stockpile of as many as 60 nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, in 1999, Donald Trump pointed out the weaknesses of Clinton’s 1994 deal with the North Koreans, negotiated by former President Jimmy Carter, in an interview with NBC’s Tim Russert that resurfaced Wednesday morning.

At the time, Trump was mulling a bid for president on the Reform Party ticket. His criticisms of Clinton’s negotiations and appreciation for the gravity of the North Korea situation are striking in hindsight.

RUSSERT: You say … as president, you would be willing to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear capability.

TRUMP: First I’d negotiate. I would negotiate like crazy. And I’d make sure that we tried to get the best deal possible. Look, Tim. If a man walks up to you on a street in Washington, because this doesn’t happen, of course, in New York … and puts a gun to your head and says give me your money, wouldn’t you rather know where he’s coming from before he had the gun in his hand?

And these people, in three or four years, are going to be having nuclear weapons, they’re going to have those weapons pointed all over the world, and specifically at the United States, and wouldn’t you be better off solving this really, potentially, unbelievable — and the biggest problem, I mean we can talk about the economy, we can talk about social security, the biggest problem this world has is nuclear proliferation. … If that negotiation doesn’t work, you better solve the problem now than solve it later, Tim, and you know it and every politician knows it, and nobody wants to talk about it. Jimmy Carter, who I really like, he went over there, it was so soft, these people are laughing at us.

[…]

RUSSERT: Taking out their nuclear potential would create a fallout.

TRUMP: Tim, do you know that this country went out and gave them nuclear reactors[,] free fuel for 10 years? We virtually tried to bribe them into stopping and they’re continuing to [do] what they’re doing. And they’re laughing at us, they think we’re a bunch of dummies. I’m saying that we have to do something to stop.

RUSSERT: But if the military told you, ‘Mr. Trump, you can’t do this’ …

TRUMP: You’re giving me two names. I don’t know. You want to do it in five years when they have warheads all over the place, every one of them pointing to New York City, to Washington and every one of our — is that when you want to do it? Or do you want to do something now?

Recall that in 1999, Clinton had struck another deal with the North Koreans to ease economic sanctions in exchange for a moratorium on long-range missile tests. The sanctions were lifted in June 2000.

Trump’s point was the tepid negotiations by President Clinton, the 1994 attempt to pay off the North Koreans with billions of dollars in aid in exchange for freezing their nuclear program, was a bad deal that failed to address the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Ultimately, Donald Trump was right about the weakness of Clinton’s diplomacy, as North Korea now has nuclear ICBMs and is threatening to point them at the U.S. The question is, what is President Trump planning to do to avoid the mistakes of the past and keep America safe from the threat of nuclear war? (For more from the author of “WATCH: 90s Donald Trump vs. 90s Bill Clinton on North Korea” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Starbucks Facing Major Backlash Over Absurd Reason They Banned This Man for Life

/0 Comments/in , /by

Coffee fanatics hold their morning (or afternoon) cup o’ Joe in high esteem. Whenever they need a quick pick-me-up at the aesthetically pleasing and mainstream coffee franchise known as Starbucks, they’re hoping to be in and out in minutes.

Many on-the-go patrons opt for the drive-thru, but others seem to have time to run inside and then dash back to their parked vehicles. Unfortunately, some patrons at a Starbucks in Florida have been illegally parking in handicap spots to grab their favorite beverage in record time.

This really irked one loyal patron. Rob Rowen decided to take matters into his own hands.

Rowen’s son-in-law has muscular dystrophy and uses a power wheelchair to get around. Rowen was tired of seeing able-bodied patrons take up handicap spots for the sheer sake of convenience.

He began telling illegally parked patrons to move. “I threatened to embarrass him by telling everybody he was parked illegally,” said Rowen, referring to one particular gentleman he had confronted.

Patrons did not respond positively to being scolded. One woman threatened to call the police and say Rowen was harassing her.

But after calling the police, the woman was the one who was served justice. She received a ticket for her illegal parking job.

Other patrons complained about Rowen’s tactics, prompting Starbucks to take action against him. He was kicked out of the South Dale Mabry, Tampa, location by the manager.

A few days later he received a letter in the mail, which he hoped was an apology. Instead, it was a letter banning him from Starbucks for life.

Starbucks said they made this decision in order to protect other patrons and employees. In a statement, they claimed Rowen had been “confrontational” and that they expect all patrons to act respectfully toward one another and Starbucks employees.

Rowen was disappointed by Starbucks’ actions, as he had been a faithful customer. However, perhaps Rowen’s commitment to his cause will serve as a reminder to all that a quick coffee fix is not worth inconveniencing those who are disabled.

Florida law took Rowen’s side, enforcing the appropriate fines for those who violated the handicapped parking accessibility. After the story was posted online, Starbucks lifted Rowen’s ban — but not before Rowan was able to bring more awareness to this issue that is so close to his heart. (For more from the author of “Starbucks Facing Major Backlash Over Absurd Reason They Banned This Man for Life” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama’s Legacy: A Nuclear North Korea. Will Trump Channel Reagan?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Your dog is hungry and has decided to employ the often-used strategy to get what he wants. He’s going to bark, for hours if necessary, until you finally relent and give him a biscuit. The yapping drives you crazy, so you figure the easiest thing to do to quiet your canine friend is to continue to reward him with treats. You probably realize that from the beginning, you should simply have ignored the dog’s howls, and he would likely have given up on the tactic long ago. But you didn’t want to have to deal with him. Now, instead of having trained the dog, the dog has trained you.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is the dog, and he’s barking louder than ever. He’s relying on past precedent, knowing that over the years, America has eventually given Pyongyang the biscuit, in the form of billions of dollars in assistance.

Through the past several administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike have rewarded North Korean saber-rattling with generous sums of financial aid. And time and time again, North Korea goes back to the well, using its nuclear program as a bargaining chip to receive massive amounts of cash. Since the 1990s, the United States government has sent the North Korean regime billions of dollars in exchange for the promise of dismantling its nuclear program.

Though humanitarian in principle, this aid allows the North Korean regime to continue allocating resources toward its military — in particular, to advance its nuclear weapons program.

It started with the “North Korea deal,” which was negotiated by at least one of the same individuals who bargained over the nuclear deal with the terrorist regime in Iran. In October 1994, President Bill Clinton approved a deal to send $4 billion in “energy aid” to North Korea. In return, the Stalinist regime was supposed to “dismantle its nuclear weapons development program,” the New York Times reported at the time.

What Clinton officials naively overlooked was that they were creating an incentive for North Korea to continue, not halt, its nuke program, seeing billions more in potential aid over the horizon.

In 2007, the Bush administration celebrated a “deal” that delivered millions in “economic aid” to North Korea in exchange for Pyongyang’s agreement to “dismantle all of its nuclear facilities.”

Not all were convinced that it was the right play, including Donald Trump. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton warned at the time:

“This is like Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. How many times are we going to go through this with them?”

But the aid continued into the Obama administration.

In 2012, under President Barack Obama, White House officials again rejoiced that the North Koreans were “suspending nuclear activities.” In exchange for 240,000 metric tons of food aid, North Korea “agreed” to suspend its nuclear programs. That program was cut short, but the Obama administration continued to send aid to North Korea up until the week Donald Trump was elected president.

Now, North Korea is back at it again, rattling the saber as usual under the Millennial leader Kim Jong Un.

On Tuesday, President Trump warned Pyongyang against more threats against the U.S., saying the regime would be met with “fire and fury.” Kim then threatened to bomb the U.S. territory of Guam. It’s difficult to determine whether the threat from Kim is serious. But what history does tells us is that Kim is engaging in the time-tested, proven strategy employed by his predecessors.

Due to the 20+ years of misguided capitulation by previous administrations, President Trump has a serious inherited challenge on his hands. Pyongyang is reportedly producing missile-ready nuclear weapons. Will this induce the Trump administration to deliver to North Korea what it wants, continuing to bolster the regime? Or instead, will Trump chart his own path and embrace the time-tested principles of “peace through strength” articulated by President Ronald Reagan? (For more from the author of “Obama’s Legacy: A Nuclear North Korea. Will Trump Channel Reagan?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Transgender Military Personnel Sue Trump

/0 Comments/in , /by

Five transgender members of the U.S. military including Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sued President Donald Trump on Wednesday, challenging his ban on transgender people serving in the armed forces.

Trump said on Twitter on July 26 that the U.S. government “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity” in the military, a reversal of Pentagon policy that the lawsuit said was made without consulting senior military commanders.

The surprise announcement, citing healthcare costs and unit disruption, appealed to some in Trump’s conservative political base but created uncertainty for thousands of transgender service members, many of whom came out after the Pentagon said in 2016 it would allow transgender people to serve openly.

Trump’s tweets appeared to dismiss findings from a RAND Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon that found allowing transgender people to serve would “cost little and have no significant impact on unit readiness.”

The White House and the Pentagon said they do not comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (Read more from “Transgender Military Personnel Sue Trump” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.