WikiLeaks: Podesta Lamented That a Muslim, Not a White Man, Named as Killer in 2015 Massacre

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Top Hillary Clinton aides were upset a Muslim man was publicly named as the shooter in a 2015 massacre that left 14 people dead, and a longtime Clinton confidant even expressed regret that the terrorist wasn’t a white man, according to purported emails released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.

The emails were part of a trove of messages stolen from the gmail account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who has had a long association with the Democratic presidential nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The email chain began on Dec. 2, when digital operative Matt Ortega forwarded a tweet from MSNBC host Christopher Hayes that named one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., attack as Sayeed Farook. Consultant Karen Finney forwarded the email to Podesta, commenting, “Damn.”

Podesta responded: “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk [sic] was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, gunned down 14 people and injured 22 in a terror attack during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 2. The attackers pledged their allegiance to ISIS before dying in a shootout with police later in the day.

But Podesta’s written lament of the shooter’s ethnicity underscores a long-running aversion in the Clinton campaign – and many in the Democratic party at large – to associating terrorist acts with any aspect of the Islamic religion. (Read more from “WikiLeaks: Podesta Lamented That a Muslim, Not a White Man, Named as Killer in 2015 Massacre” HERE)

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Trump’s Butler Says Magazine Writer’s Allegations ‘Never Happened’

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The man who knew everything about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump when the billionaire stayed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida knows nothing at all about the allegations whipped up in recent days that Trump tried to grope a writer from People magazine.

“No, that never happened. Come on, that’s just bull crap,” said former Trump butler Anthony “Tony” Senecal when asked about the claim of Natasha Stoynoff that in 2005, Trump shoved her against a wall and tried to kiss her.

“As I remember, it was Mrs. Post’s (Marjorie Merriweather Post) old massage room, which has got windows all the way around — that would be the worst room to go grope somebody, unless you want the whole world to know about it,” said Senecal.

Stoynoff claimed Seneeal burst in on Trump, a claim Senecal ridiculed.

“I don’t burst in. I knock, then I go in, usually after someone says ‘come in,’” Senecal said. “And when I went in, there was nothing strange about where she was standing.”

Senecal said he did not recall Stoynoff appearing to be angry, flustered or upset.

Senecal, 85, said he never saw Trump trying to seduce women even during the years when Trump was between marriages.

“Everybody is just jumping on the train,” he said. “I think you’re going to see even more of it between now and the election. But these incidents never happened.”

Senecal fingered the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as the source of the attacks against Trump, but said he has confidence Trump will prevail.

“These guys are pushing his back against the wall. But he’s a fighter. He’ll take them on. He’ll take all of them on,” Senecal said.

Senecal’s comments add to the number of allegations against Trump that have been disputed. Trump has denied all acusations of behaving improperly to the women who say he groped or kissed them.

As reported by Western Journalism, a man who witnessed the interplay between Trump and accuser Jessica Leeds aboard a 2000 flight has come forward to rebut her claim that Trump groped her.

Further, a family member of one of Trump’s recent accusers — Summer Zevos — said she had been highly supportive of Trump until he refused a request for visit her restaurant this spring.

Also, part of Stoynoff’s acocunt that included a mention of Melania Trump has been denied by Trump’s wife, who has said she will file suit against People magazine over the comments. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Butler Says Magazine Writer’s Allegations ‘Never Happened'” please click HERE)

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Huckabee Warns How Clinton Would Ravage America If She Is Elected

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee offered a stark portrayal Friday of the political landscape that would greet Americans if Republican Donald Trump loses the presidential election to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

After a week of allegations from WikiLeaks about the Clinton campaign’s denigration of Catholics, its opposition to gun rights, and Clinton’s private embrace of open trade and open borders, Huckabee said the public needs to wake up and end its fixation with the parade of allegations besmirching Trump’s candidacy.

“We can’t verify a lot of these allegations, but let me tell you what we can verify … we can verify that if Hillary Clinton is elected, we have a real good shot at losing religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the Fourth and the Fifth, having open borders, leaving Israel to blow in the wind,” Huckabee said on Fox News.

“We can verify that this country is going to take a very, very negative direction and that’s what we need to be focused on,” he added.

Appearing Saturday on Fox and Friends, Huckabee repeated his concern for the nation if Clinton is elected.

“Our world is in a very dangerous place if she does,” he said. “Our economic continues to just deteriorate. People do not have strong jobs. Unborn babies will not be safer.

“Two sets of rules will be applied to America. One for Hillary and her pals that they will always get off. and the rest of us will go to jail if we do what they’re doing.”

Huckabee said that the avalanche of allegations against Trump is part of the Clinton playbook.

“The Clintons play to win. Everything is on the table … private investigators … whatever it takes to find something,” he said

“If they don’t find it they will fabricate it.”

Huckabee also urged Trump to pivot away from the claims being thrown at him and help voters focus on the critical issues.

“We could go through a litany. Focus on those things and remind people that this election is not about something Donald Trump said 11 years ago,” he said. “This is about the future of the country.”

Huckabee also noted that Trump faces unprecedented opposition from the media.

“He is on to something in that the media is in an absolute frenzy to try to destroy the man. They sat on this stuff for years and they waited until just before the election release it,” said Huckabee.

“They hate his guts. This is not a ‘mild sort of, gee, we don’t really like him’ as we may have seen with other Republicans. They absolutely loathe Donald Trump,” he said. (For more from the author of “Huckabee Warns How Clinton Would Ravage America If She Is Elected” please click HERE)

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New Study: Human Heartbeat Detectable at 16 Days

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A new British study says a human heartbeat may be detectable 16 days after a baby’s fertilization, based upon an analysis of fetal mice.

Published on October 11 and conducted by Oxford University, the study utilized high-resolution live imaging to examine fetal mice. In their summary, the authors note that “The heart is the first organ to form and to begin working in an embryo during pregnancy. It must begin pumping early to supply oxygen and nutrients to the developing embryo.”

Coordinated contractions of specialised muscle cells in the heart, called cardiomyocytes, generate the force needed to pump blood. The flow of calcium ions into and out of the cardiomyocytes triggers these heartbeats. In addition to triggering heart contractions, calcium ions also act as a messenger that drives changes in which genes are active in the cardiomyocytes and how these cells behave.

By manipulating the calcium ions, the study’s authors were able to discern more information for the study, which was intended to better understand birth defects of the heart. Pro-life advocates, however, are highlighting the study’s finding that heartbeats were detected in mice at 7.5 days after conception, which is equivalent to 16 days after conception for humans.

Mary Ellen Douglas of the Campaign Life Coalition of Canada told LifeSiteNews that “science is catching up with what we always have known, that life begins with union of the sperm and ovum and what is in the womb after that is a human being with its own DNA, and with its own heart pumping its own blood.”

“It won’t change the thinking of pro-abortion people,” she added. “None is so blind as those who will not see. But this reinforces the fact that there is a human being in the womb directing its own growth and development. And that’s true even before the heart starts beating, from conception.”

Sidewalk activist Lauren Handy used the new study as part of her protests and prayer in front of Planned Parenthood’s new Washington, D.C. headquarters. “This is very helpful for sidewalk counseling,” she said, “The humanity of the baby begins at conception, but it touches the mother to know when her baby’s heartbeat can be detected.”

Carol Tobias of U.S. National Right to Life said, according to LifeSiteNews, “This will make it much more difficult [for abortion advocates] to pass off the unborn child as a ‘blob of cells’ if the heart is already beating.”

A number of bills have been introduced in state legislatures to ban abortions after a heartbeat is detected. One measure that became law in North Dakota was knocked down last year. (For more from the author of “New Study: Human Heartbeat Detectable at 16 Days” please click HERE)

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Fact-Checking Clinton’s Climate Change Speech

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In Florida earlier this week, appearing with climate evangelist Al Gore, Hillary Clinton demonstrated the extent to which she is prepared to embrace the post-Christian faith of climatism. The mainstream media revel in fact-checking the claims of her opponent, so let’s see how she does on this issue. The young people at whom she aims much of this claptrap are particularly vulnerable, having been nurtured on climatism since their first day at school.

Mrs. Clinton is right when she asserts that climate change is real. If nothing else can be said about climate, it is the reality that it changes on all spatial and temporal scales, going back billions of years.

Over that time, our planet has experienced a wide range of climatic conditions — from hothouse to snowball — and has survived. The idea of a planetary emergency is little more than opportunistic political posturing.

The science that she claims to support has clearly established that changes in the planet’s temperature are cyclical. And, taken over a long enough time frame, the direction of change is that of cooling. Against that background, the mild warming experienced over the last quarter of the 20th century does not show up except on a scale measured in tenths of a degree.

Mrs. Clinton claims that the mild warming from 1977–1997 (there was no net warming from 1998-2015) is responsible for the destructive power of Hurricane Matthew — a surprising claim since Matthew, making landfall at Category 2, didn’t break the 11-year spate of having no major (Category 3 or higher) hurricane strike the US despite all the alleged warming. The net impact of the current el Niño-la Niña cycle cannot be assessed until at least 2018. On a centennial scale, Matthew failed to reach the top ten by a wide margin. Neither its wind strength nor its rainfall fell outside well-established parameters.

She claims that ocean flooding has become a daily nightmare in Miami. Really? Tide gauge and GPS data for the Miami area show that the ocean’s level varies from one location to another, consistent with different rates of land subsidence, not with rising oceans. In any event, scientists measure the extent of change in ocean levels in millimeters, with the total rise for the global oceans during the 20th century estimated to have been about 18 centimeters, or 7 inches, and at most an inch since then, hardly an existential threat. If Miami has a problem, it is local and should be addressed at that level.

California droughts, raging wildfires, and flooding rivers are all wholly consistent with normal climatic cycles. Their impacts, however, have become more problematic because of increased population and the growth of urbanization. The Central Valley in California, for example, is a natural desert. Modern farming in the valley is possible thanks to the massive irrigation projects built in the 1930s. Since then, California’s population has increased by a factor of six, and water projects have not kept up. Again, this is a local problem requiring a local solution. Blaming climate change is just a poor excuse for lack of appropriate local action.

Political Power is the Real Issue

Mrs. Clinton’s real goal, one she shares with Al Gore and all the other climate alarmists, is power. They see alarm over climate change as a convenient way to advance their control over people’s lives.

For politicians, from the UN to local, no issue has proven more useful in justifying increased government intervention at every level. For them, it is imperative that climate change be characterized as an alarming, all-pervasive problem, one that can only be tackled through massive increases in taxes, burdensome regulations, and an all-out attack on the many benefits of fossil fuels. Sadly, every jurisdiction that has embraced the green energy dream has learned that it is a mirage. The costs are high, the delivery anemic, the green jobs are nowhere to be found, and the poor suffer more from the policies than from climate.

One final note. Mrs. Clinton herself does not believe much of what she says on the campaign trail, including on climate change. As she indicated to her press secretary in a leaked 2015 e-mail, she needed to outflank Bernie Sanders but wanted to avoid being too clear about such remedies as a carbon tax, knowing how toxic that would be. Her Wall Street speeches are equally revealing. She is biding her time until next January, when the full panoply of interventionist ideas emanating from her in-house think tank will become her agenda, and she will shamelessly continue to invoke climate change to justify it. More than with most politicians, deceit is integral to her political persona.

The good news is that most Americans do not support Hillary’s approach. They do not think that climate change is a major problem, and they are not looking for a planetary savior ready to impose upon them the nightmare of “clean” energy.

A 2016 Chapman University survey indicates that climate change is not included among the top ten fears of the American people. They are not buying the hype.

Rather, their principal concern is the rise in corruption among government officials. Voters are fed up with the nonsense that career politicians feed them on a daily basis. A Pew University survey released last week indicates that Americans are losing their faith in both scientists and the media reporting on science issues. Among scientists, climate scientists are now considered the least credible, and barely one in ten Americans is closely following the issue.

We will see in November which direction the American people want to take, but it is unlikely that climate change will be the principal issue influencing their votes. (For more from the author of “Fact-Checking Clinton’s Climate Change Speech” please click HERE)

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Why Conservatives Will Need a New Party If/When Hillary Wins

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When John Quincy Adams entered office in March, 1825, he had lofty ideas both domestically and on the global front. The younger Adams had one of the most impressive resumes of a new president. He was widely regarded as one of the most successful secretaries of state in our history, and presided over the tranquil years of the Monroe presidency. Yet, the Jacksonian Democrats who dominated Congress, buoyed by the voting bloc of the southern states, absolutely decimated Quincy’s agenda and rendered his entire presidency an utter failure. There is no reason the same dynamic cannot occur during a potential Hillary presidency. Sadly, it won’t until a true alternative party is conceived.

Whether you love, hate, or tolerate the current GOP nominee, the reality is that unless something cathartic occurs before the critical mass of early voting begins, Hillary Clinton will be elected president on November 8. Don’t shoot the messenger. Just three weeks out from the election (and much less when mass early voting is factored in), it’s time conservatives of all stripes at least give some thought as to a game-plan past the sensational news of the day in the media.

Republicans like Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas. (F, 42%) already have a game plan in place if and when Hillary is elected: make Hillary’s presidency a great success. In other words, nothing too different from the GOP’s modus operandi during the Obama presidency.

Here is a revealing tweet from an Austin Statesman reporter covering John Cornyn’s speech to a local Chamber of Commerce this week:

Thus, Cornyn’s biggest agenda item for a Hillary presidency is to grant her George Soros’s top policy agenda — jailbreak — which will help create a permanent Democrat majority. These people have no sense of the fact that even if Hillary wins she will have no mandate, Republicans will control the majority of state governments, the House, and very possibly the Senate. In a constitutional system that is working properly — with a party that cares to exercise its power appropriately — Hillary’s presidency should be dead on arrival. Yet, GOP leaders are already planning to greet her with tailwinds instead of headwinds.

Although Quincy Adams was a brilliant, honorable, and patriotic son of a Founding Father, the political adversity in which he found himself was insuperable, exactly what should be confronting Hillary if she wins … if only there was a true opposition party. She would have won only because of the dumpster fire in the Republican Party, not based on popular support for a single policy. Nobody wants a flood of refugees, Obamacare is spiraling out of control, and nobody likes her personality or has any trust in her leadership. She holds all of the policies of Obama that the electorate has already repudiated, albeit lacks the personal charm that has kept the lame duck president afloat. In fact, she would come in as the most hated president to begin their term in office since … well … John Quincy Adams.

Congress, together with the states, can completely cripple Hillary’s agenda if they actually cared to do so. Sure, Hillary would never do anything positive and would still have some latitude to implement some very dangerous things on the foreign policy front, but the fact that people regard a pending third term of Obama as the death of humanity reflects the reality that there is NO Republican Party left.

Not only will Republicans decline to use the power of the purse to block Hillary’s radical agenda or encourage allies in the state to thwart implementation of her policies, they will seek ways to look like they are “governing.” Every Republican will run for office as outraged against her agenda, and 2018 will be a repeat of 2010 when everyone was a “Tea Party candidate.” 2020 will be a repeat of 2012 in which the candidate with the most name recognition and promoted by Fox News will be the GOP nominee. By that point, we will have mandated sex change operations. Heck, our own military during a time of war and internal morale crisis has already published a handbook on sex changes. We simply don’t have the time to continue down this failed path. We’ve already been in the wilderness for 27 years.

The entire shelf-life of the Whig Party, which Quincy Adams helped found, was shorter than the 27 years the GOP has been around as a fake opposition party since 1989. Immediately after it became apparent that the Whigs stood for nothing as it related to the issue of the time, it was ditched for, ironically, the creation of the Republican Party. We’ve come full circle.

The modern-day Republican Party has controlled the House of Representatives, the body closest to the people and the branch controlled fully with a simple majority, for 18 of the past 22 years. Despite the unmitigated disaster of the presidential election, and the banality of the array of GOP senators running for reelection, Republicans are still better than even odds at keeping the Senate, even if Trump loses in a landslide. The bottom line is that the people don’t want the fundamental transformation. There is no popular mandate for Democrat polices. Outside of their impervious demographic firewall of support, there is a reverse mandate against their policies. Americans don’t want to give all of government to Democrats, yet this false flag operation of Republicans has allowed the worst cultural and fiscal transformation in our history on their watch, even though Democrats controlled the trifecta of the federal government for only two years.

Moreover, in the state, Democrats have held only a minority of state governments for most of the past two decades. Republicans, on the other hand, now control two-thirds of the state legislative bodies and in 23 states they control the trifecta of state government. Democrats enjoy full control in just seven states. Yet, little has changed to thwart the agenda of the far-left on most issues. On the seminal issues of our item, such as Obamacare, Islamic refugee resettlement, and funding for Planned Parenthood — which should be slam dunk policy — Republicans have been impotent if not complicit in the problem.

The biggest question that conservatives must answer the day after the election is: for how much longer will they continue doing the same things and expecting different results? The sooner that question is resolved, the quicker we can chart a new course that will be embraced by a majority of the country, which is clamoring for something different. The imperative to act and the opportunity for a clean break from the past were never stronger. At this point, it’s all a matter of initiative. (For more from the author of “Why Conservatives Will Need a New Party If/When Hillary Wins” please click HERE)

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The Only Birthday Planned Parenthood Cares About

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One hundred years ago this month, eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger founded the organization today known as Planned Parenthood. While many on the Left will celebrate this anniversary, Planned Parenthood’s “birthday” — an irony given its grim business of preventing actual birthdays — deserves no such distinction. So rather than celebrate, we should mourn the millions of unborn children who have been denied the chance to live. Today, Americans should ask how did we get here? How did a nation that prizes life above all other rights become a massive supporter and taxpayer-funded enabler of ending that basic right? And what can we do to turn the tide and make unlimited abortion a thing of the past?

Since its inception, Planned Parenthood has been directly responsible for the deaths of nearly seven million unborn children. It was founded upon Margaret Sanger’s reprehensible belief that the human race could somehow be “improved” by ridding the world of less fortunate minorities. Never heard that? The media don’t report it

.But take a look at Sanger’s own words. In a 1923 New York Times article, Sanger explained that her goal was the “release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stock — those human weeds which threaten the blossoming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

“Defective stock.” “Human weeds.” That’s how Sanger viewed minorities, immigrants, the disabled, and the “feeble-minded,” as her cruel determinism labeled it. All, according to Planned Parenthood’s founder, were to be marked for segregation and sterilization.

No sentiment could be further from the universal principles on which our nation was founded. Sanger rejected the very premise of our Declaration of Independence, that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” And so does the organization she founded.

Over the years, Planned Parenthood has cunningly and deceptively marketed itself as an organization that exists to champion women’s health. It has tried to cloud the true mission of its business by also providing routine services that nearly any other clinic or medical provider can offer. But, unlike most other clinics, Planned Parenthood draws its main profits — not from women’s health — but from abortion on a massive scale, funded by the American taxpayer. No one should be fooled by their modern rhetoric; one hundred years later Planned Parenthood continues to operate on the principle that an unborn child — which the abortion lobby now calls a “clump of cells” or a “fetus” rather than their previous terminology of a “human weed” — is not equal to other human beings and should be eliminated.

Even more troubling, Planned Parenthood’s abortion business is growing at a ghastly rate. In 1973, Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates of industrialized abortion, and from 2012 through 2014 alone, Planned Parenthood took the lives of 978,818 children. That is almost a million unborn babies in three years. By itself, Planned Parenthood now accounts for nearly one-third of all abortions in the United States.

Planned Parenthood has profited mightily from its life-ending practices, growing into a billion-dollar behemoth that generates up to 40 percent of its clinic revenues from the hundreds of thousands of abortions it performs every year. In Planned Parenthood’s 2015 Annual Report, the group listed a total revenue of nearly $1.3 billion. And although nearly half of its funding comes from American taxpayers, Planned Parenthood nevertheless generously compensates its top officers. And it spends millions on political advertising and lobbying. In a just society, no one should profit, much less get rich, from taking innocent life. Nor should any organization engaged in the abortion business get a dime of taxpayer money.

Liberals may continue to contend that abortion and women’s health care are synonymous — look no further than the Democrat nominee who has long supported abortion without limits. But the pro-life movement’s years of work promoting a culture of life in the decades since Roe has begun to change hearts and minds. Thankfully, our nation’s younger generations are becoming more pro-life than ever before. A Gallup poll found that when compared to all other age groups, young adults were the most likely to say abortion should be illegal. More women are also turning to adoption instead of abortion, granting families who cannot have children their wish of becoming caring, loving parents.

Pro-lifers are not only changing hearts and minds, they’re also successfully encouraging states to pass laws that limit and discourage abortion, such as bans on partial birth and late-term abortion, requirements that mothers be provided with sonograms, parental notification requirements, and incentives to encourage adoption. But our work is not done. We must continue our efforts to expose the abhorrent practices of the abortion industry, and we must not stop until the culture of abortion becomes a thing of the past.

While anti-life advocates may choose to celebrate Planned Parenthood’s founding, we will instead mark this day as one of remembrance for an entire generation who never reached their first birthdays. We will recommit to building a culture of life that cares for mothers, nurtures their children at every stage of development, and rejects the destructive culture of organizations like Planned Parenthood and all those who would permit the taking of human life. (For more from the author of “The Only Birthday Planned Parenthood Cares About” please click HERE)

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Cuban Dictatorship Governed More Severely During 2 Years of US Engagement

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In the waning months of his presidency, President Barack Obama issued a directive he called “irreversible,” expanding transactions related to Cuban pharmaceuticals, increasing transportation, and greater commercial opportunities between the United States and the communist dictatorship.

Part of the expanded cooperation will include doing business with state-owned enterprises on property confiscated from Americans during the revolution, said Jason I. Problete, an attorney representing American families who saw their homes and businesses taken by the Cuban government.

“Access to U.S. markets is a privilege, not a right,” Problete told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The U.S. will be authorizing engaging with businesses stolen from Americans.”

Obama’s directive marks an expansion on his December 2014 move to normalize relations with Cuba. Notably, the directive will lift rules to make it easier to import Cuban cigars and rum by removing the monetary value restrictions on what people can bring to the U.S. when returning from Cuba.

Americans have made 5,913 certified claims against the Cuban government regarding confiscated property from the 5-decade-old revolution. Of those, about 5,000 are from families, while the rest are corporations that operated in Cuba, Problete said.

Taking steps to return property is one condition the United States placed on Cuba in order to lift the embargo. Other requirements include taking steps toward democracy and a free press. Critics complain that the Cuban government not only made no concessions, but has tightened its power grip since the Obama administration normalized relations.

“Almost two years after a policy should be enough to know what the behavior of the regime is going to be,” Cuban dissident leader Antonio Rodiles, who met with Obama in the Cuban capital of Havana this year, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “The Obama administration is moving ahead even though the regime has become more aggressive.”

On Friday, Obama touted his directive as building on the success.

“This directive takes a comprehensive and whole-of-government approach to promote engagement with the Cuban government and people, and make our opening to Cuba irreversible,” Obama said in a statement Friday. “These changes are representative of the progress I saw firsthand when I visited Havana to personally extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people.”

It was during Obama’s visit in March to Cuba that the communist government made 498 politically motivated arrests, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights.

In the time since Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to normalize relations, the Cuban government made 8,616 politically motivated arrests in 2015, and 7,418 in the first six months of 2016, according to the human rights group. The Cuban government increased its violations of religious freedom “tenfold” according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, with 2,300 violations in 2015, up from 220 in 2014.

“There is no such thing as dictator-down economics,” said Ana Quintana, policy analyst for Latin America and the Western Hemisphere at The Heritage Foundation.

“There is no evidence this will help the Cuban people. It will help the Cuban government and Communist Party elite.”

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew insisted the directive would be a benefit for bringing prosperity to Cubans.

“The Treasury Department has worked to break down economic barriers in areas such as travel, trade and commerce, banking, and telecommunications,” Lew said in a statement. “Today’s action builds on this progress by enabling more scientific collaboration, grants and scholarships, people-to-people contact, and private sector growth.”

Lew’s comments illustrate another problem in the upbeat scenario framed by the Obama administration, Quintana said.

“There is no such thing as a private sector in Cuba,” Quintana said. “If it isn’t state-owned, what you have is the black market. The Cuban government owns and operates the rum and the cigar manufacturing.”

Under the new directive, the Treasury Department will allow Americans and Cubans to engage in joint medical research. Certain Cuban-made pharmaceuticals will be imported into the United States.

The Treasury is also authorizing American companies to award grants and scholarships to Cuban nationals, while also allowing U.S. entities to spend money on Cuban infrastructure. New Commerce Department rules also lift numerous trade restrictions even though the Cuban embargo is still in place.

It would take an act of Congress to lift the Cuban embargo.

Rodiles said even if the 50-year-old embargo wasn’t deemed effective, the current policy is not a sufficient substitute.

“If the previous policy was not working, don’t just change the policy to something that is not gaining the results you are seeking,” Rodiles said. “There were no commitments made by the regime. They can still do whatever they want to do.” (For more from the author of “Cuban Dictatorship Governed More Severely During 2 Years of US Engagement” please click HERE)

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3 Ways to Expose the Truth About Planned Parenthood

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Usually the century mark for a person, place, or thing is a momentous and joyous occasion. Not so this time.

On Sunday, Planned Parenthood turned 100. Both pro-lifers and pro-choicers are marking the organization’s birthday in hashtags: #100YearsOfAbuse and #100YearsStrong, respectively.

But the statistics that have emerged from that 100-year reign are staggering. The award for “most notable” goes to—more than 7 million abortions.

And Cecile Richards has claimed: “We’ve made incredible gains during our first century and we’re just getting started. We will build on our proud legacy and launch our second century with as much passion, courage, and conviction as our first.”

Planned Parenthood is likely here to stay (at least for the foreseeable future), but that doesn’t mean we stop having conversations about the organization and the truth behind its practices.

Here are three ways to talk to someone in your life about Planned Parenthood.

Common Ground

Whether pro-life or pro-choice, it’s safe to assume you want women to have access to quality health care.

The definition of “quality health care” is where the two sides diverge. It seems reasonable to claim that quality health care should include a safe and clean environment where nurses and doctors provide all the information to a patient. And if that patient is pregnant, the information provided includes an ultrasound with a detectable heartbeat.

But to start with common ground means to establish the low bar of quality health care as a right we can all support. Don’t wade into the bothersome details just yet.

Examples

Though Planned Parenthood has escaped the restriction of federal funds, the facts don’t lie and are hard to deny. It’s very important to cite the numerous other health care providers, what services they perform, and their accessibility.

First, there are 20 times as many federally qualified health care centers that serve women as Planned Parenthoods. The argument that closing Planned Parenthood clinics or restricting their funds will inhibit access to quality health care for women is ridiculous. Don’t we want women to have access to a health care provider in their neighborhood? Doesn’t proximity matter?

Second, The Daily Signal cited a few interesting numbers. Planned Parenthood claims about 30 percent of all abortions in the United States every year. Compare this outrageous number to the percentage of Pap tests performed (less than 1 percent) and breast exams (less than 2 percent).

If a woman needs a mammogram (which Planned Parenthood is not licensed to perform), why not remove the middleman that Planned Parenthood has become? Don’t we want clinics that offer access to every health service instead of just a few?

Third, we’re all aware of the horrifying videos released by David Daleiden that rasied questions about the selling of baby parts by Planned Parenthood for profit. (Planned Parenthood had denied any illegal activity.) Though the organization has avoided suffering any major consequences, the videos exist and those conversations are difficult to forget.

If we care about women, it’s important to point out that altering abortions (therefore putting a woman’s health in danger) in order to make a profit is not only illegal, but heartbreaking. Women deserve the truth, and they deserve better.

Words

Words are one of the best defenses you have in this conversation. It’s “baby” vs. “fetus,” and neither side can change what terms they use because both risk losing the argument. So, stick with “unborn baby/child.” Humanize the life the other side refuses to.

Also, talk about rights. Pro-choicers love to talk about the human right to do with your body what you want. But their opinion of when the same rights do/don’t apply to an unborn child are loose (at best), and are usually defined by convenience. So, fight back.

Steal the word “rights” to talk about the unborn child and their right to dignity and respect. As medical advances show more clearly when life begins, the battle for the word “rights” becomes more important.

Just make sure that when talking about Planned Parenthood and abortion you don’t demonize the women who’ve chosen this option. Many have been lied to and felt like they had no choice. To win this argument is to show compassion—for the mother and for the baby growing inside her.

Planned Parenthood has been around for 100 years, but that doesn’t mean the organization will celebrate another century of “success”—especially with the rise of health care technology, social media, and your willingness to have a conversation about the true nature of its practice.

Gather your facts, establish common ground (remember: this is a conversation, not a shouting match), cite examples, and choose your words wisely. (For more from the author of “3 Ways to Expose the Truth About Planned Parenthood” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Hillary Poll-Tested Obama’s Muslim Roots in 2008

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Hillary Clinton made it clear where she stood during the second presidential debate.

The Democratic presidential candidate blasted Republican rival Donald Trump, because, he “never apologized for the racist lie that President Obama was not born in the United States of America.”

Whether it was actually her 2008 campaign who began that “racist lie” has been a matter of considerable debate . . .

Her 2008 presidential campaign wanted to know how voters would react to the fact that then-candidate Barack Obama’s “father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country.”

That bombshell was contained in the Wikileaks revelations released Friday, in the form of an email chain sent in January of 2008 that cc’d current Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and longtime Clinton adviser Paul Begala. (Read more from “Hillary Poll-Tested Obama’s Muslim Roots in 2008” HERE)

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