Bad Karma for the Clintons at Last?

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Hold on; we may finally be getting some fireworks in this lackluster presidential campaign — as the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be gathering steam.

Could the Clintons finally have to face the music for their adult-lifetime of corruption? Is it possible that Hillary Clinton’s lifelong scheme to be America’s first female president could be derailed by this power couple’s wanton venality?

I’ve watched closely through the years the Clintons’ uncanny agility at hurdling real scandals and coming out almost unscathed. Yes, Bill Clinton was impeached, but what a dud that turned out to be, with Clinton rising to the figure of beloved statesman among Democrats and his accusers being painted as petty partisans.

There has been no justice, and they have made off like bandits ever since. One might argue that it’s unfair to impute Bill Clinton’s misdeeds to his wife, but it’s not a matter of imputation. Hillary Clinton has been integrally involved every step of the way — from enabler to enforcer to joint participant. Don’t ever forget her complicity, such as her leading role in destroying the train of women who dared to blow the whistle on him.

From the beginning, these two have stepped all over people (Travelgate) and mutually abused and destroyed Bill’s harassment victims. But do you remember the grating mantra of the Clinton-guarding media? “These are private matters that have nothing to do with his public life. Private conduct is irrelevant to one’s fitness for public office.”

Well, these disgraceful hacks don’t have that excuse in their arsenal of dodges this time. There is no way even a journalism school valedictorian could credibly argue that the Clinton Foundation graft didn’t directly involve the public interest.

The media and Democratic Party’s joint alibis for the Clintons through the years have puffed the Clintons up with a sense of invincibility. The couple have to believe there is nothing they could do that would bring them down.

When I first heard about the foundation’s influence peddling, I had little doubt there was truth to it, but I had no expectation that anything would come of it. In a sense, the Clintons have benefited from the plethora of charges leveled against them over the years. After a while, these allegations — no matter how credible — become just noise and are easily characterized as another chapter in a decades-long partisan witch hunt.

It’s awfully convenient for the Clintons and their liberal hatchet men to paint every scandal as a politically motivated slander, but when the media and the Democratic Party themselves always refuse to put truth above their own ideological and political interests, it’s inevitable that only Republicans would bring these charges.

But the Clinton Foundation scandal seems to be different. It is objectively true that the Clintons have become mega-millionaires since the close of Bill’s second term — and they’ve done it through exorbitant speaking fees, which, absent other consideration, couldn’t possibly benefit the payers commensurate to their payments, and bizarre contributions to their foundation by foreign interests that had unusual access to Hillary’s State Department.

Bill Clinton flippantly dismissed the suggestion of any quid pro quo, saying there is no evidence that any of the donors received anything for their donations. When asked whether there is at least an appearance of impropriety, he said, “I’m not responsible for anybody else’s perception.” It couldn’t be more fitting that he was the first postmodern president. He lent Oval Office credence to the demonic lie that words have no meaning apart from what people choose individually to assign to them. He’s unctuously transitioned from “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” to “I can’t be held accountable for your accurate perception that my wife and I are wholly corrupt and have not only used our public positions to financially profit but also compromised and damaged the nation’s interests in the process.”

Just think about the charge that Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain secured a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that led to her approval of certain extremely controversial arms sales to Bahrain after his kingdom donated up to $150,000 directly to the Clinton Foundation and some $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative. This alone would be enough to bring down a deified Roman emperor.

The Associated Press reported that more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state donated to the Clinton Foundation either individually or through related entities. Clinton apologists are already trying to tell us there’s nothing to see here, but sentient human beings know better.

No president in modern history, including Richard Nixon, has been the scandal virtuoso that both of the Clintons are in their own right. The jig just may be up.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange promises more email dumps that will bring Hillary Clinton down. Wouldn’t it be the profoundest poetic justice if the Clintons were done in by the very emails Hillary thought she had deep-sixed months ago? (For more from the author of “Bad Karma for the Clintons at Last?” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Making America Safer? Sure Thing! Just Ask These Former Gitmo Detainees

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As the number of Guantanamo military detention facility detainees continues to shrink, some may wonder, “Who exactly is being released from Guantanamo, and where are they going?”

In keeping with President Obama’s agenda, the administration is continuing to forge ahead with the goal to shut down Guantanamo’s military detention facility in Cuba, and Vice President Biden said Thursday the facility would likely be terminated by the end of Obama’s term.

At the rate Obama is releasing detainees from the facility, it appears very likely he will reach his goal, and detainees will be interspersed throughout the world.

“Keeping this facility open is contrary to our values,” Obama said earlier this year. “It undermines our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law.”

But is he jeopardizing the safety of Americans?

Since Obama took office in 2009, he has released 177 detainees — 46 in this year alone. Many of these are from Yemen and connected to al Qaeda in some way.

One of the conditions that must be met to release a detainee is that the individual no longer poses a threat to the U.S., its interests, or its allies. Sounds legit. However, the screening process for this is not 100 percent fool-proof.

Just last month, Congress raised concerns about the process for transferring detainees, due to the fact Obama administration officials could not track some of the detainees and who may still be dangerous to the U.S.

After a prisoner affiliated with al Qaeda was released to Uruguay, he disappeared in June. Previously, Congress had been told that Uruguay was an acceptable location to release detainees. But in actuality, Uruguay doesn’t view detainees as former terrorists, but rather as “refugees.” As a result, the Uruguayan government doesn’t restrict their travel or check up on them.

Furthermore, the Obama administration earlier this month released a whopping 15 detainees — the most the administration has ever released. All 15 are affiliated with al Qaeda and were sent to the United Arab Emirates.

One of those 15 Mahmoud Abd al Aziz Abd al Mujahid had knowledge of planned terrorist attacks and is listed on al Qaeda documents. Another, Mohammed Ahmad Said al Edah, was a supervisor in Osama bin Laden’s security force. And then there’s Abdel Qadir Hussein al Mudhaffari, who happened to be the former bodyguard to bin Laden.

Not only do the Department of Defense memorandums from 2008 recommended the continued detention of all 15 men, but they also listed them as “high risk” and that they were likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests, and its allies.

So with this in mind, do you feel safer with these terrorists back on the loose? (For more from the author of “Obama’s Making America Safer? Sure Thing! Just Ask These Former Gitmo Detainees” please click HERE)

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The Earth’s Crust Will Be Shaken by More Than 100,000 Earthquakes That Humans Can Feel in 2016

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Did you know that our planet will be hit by more than 100,000 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater this year alone? Earlier today, I came across a report that contained this amazing fact, but it was so incredible that I felt that I had to go and verify it myself. So I went to the official USGS website, and I found out that this is actually true. Overall, there are about half a million earthquakes around the globe each year, but it is only when a quake is of about magnitude 3.0 or greater that humans actually feel them. As the very large earthquakes in Italy and Myanmar within the last 24 hours have demonstrated, the shaking of our planet is getting worse, and this is something that I have written about over and over again. So why is this happening? Why does the crust of our planet seemingly become more and more unstable with each passing year?

We need to start addressing those questions, because there aren’t too many things that can do more damage to a community than a major earthquake. Very early Wednesday morning, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck central Italy. It is being reported that it sounded “like a bomb” went off, and it looks like this is going to end up being the worst natural disaster to hit Italy in many years.

This earthquake rattled buildings in Rome, it could be felt in Naples to the south, and it is even being claimed that it could be felt all the way up in Bologna in the north.

The epicenter of the quake was a charming little Italian town known as Amatrice. According to Mayor Sergio Pirozzi, “the town is no more” at this point. You can see some amazing photographs of the destruction for yourself right here. Homes, churches and businesses collapsed in heaps of rubble, and at this moment rescuers are engaged in a frantic race against time to pull survivors from the wreckage…

Rescue teams using bulldozers, and aided by townspeople with their bare hands, were still poring through the piles of rock, metal and wood late Wednesday looking for possible survivors. Police near the town of Ascoli said they could hear cries for help from under the rubble but lacked the heavy equipment to move the rocks, according the RAI radio.

“We need chain saws, shears to cut iron bars, and jacks to remove beams: everything, we need everything,” civil protection worker Andrea Gentili told the Associated Press.

So far, the death toll stands at 159 people, but that number is going to go way up as more bodies are discovered. The following was reported by Reuters…

One hotel that collapsed in the small town of Amatrice probably had about 70 guests, and only seven bodies had so far been recovered, said the mayor of the town that was one of the worst hit by the quake.

But as destructive as the Italian quake was, it wasn’t even the largest earthquake on the globe on Wednesday. A huge magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Myanmar, but because that earthquake was much deeper it didn’t do the same level of damage as the quake in Italy did…

A powerful earthquake shook Myanmar on Wednesday, killing at least three people and damaging nearly a hundred ancient Buddhist pagodas in the former capital of Bagan, a major tourist site, officials said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 6.8 quake was centered about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Chauk, a town south of Bagan. It was located fairly far below the Earth’s surface at a depth of about 84 kilometers (52 miles), it said.

Sadly, most Americans couldn’t care less about what goes on in places like Italy or Myanmar. I know that may sound terrible, but it is true.

However, Americans should care, because this global rise in earthquake activity is affecting us as well. In fact, the USGS now says that human activity may at least be partially to blame for the “dramatic increase in seismicity” that we have been witnessing in the United States in recent years…

On Monday, for the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey has released an analysis of the magnitude of “human-induced” earthquakes. That such a thing as human-induced earthquakes can exist is scary enough, but the “dramatic increase in seismicity” in places such as Oklahoma has forced the USGS to consider the threat more broadly.

“By including human-induced events, our assessment of earthquake hazards has significantly increased in parts of the U.S.,” said Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, in a statement. “This research also shows that much more of the nation faces a significant chance of having damaging earthquakes over the next year, whether natural or human-induced.”

And I wanted to note that there was a magnitude 3.9 earthquake in Colorado on Tuesday. We have started to see sizable earthquakes in many portions of the country where they are not expected, and this is going to continue to get worse as the shaking of our planet intensifies.

There is one more thing that I wanted to share with you all today. I don’t know if this is related to anything, but a blood red moon was photographed directly behind the new World Trade Center tower last night. To some people this is just a meaningless coincidence, but there are others that consider it to be a very ominous sign.

This summer, things have been relatively calm and peaceful in America. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have dominated the headlines, but other than the election there really hasn’t been a major crisis that has grabbed the attention of the nation.

But of course all of that could change in a moment. Despite all of our advanced technology, the truth is that we are still virtually defenseless against a major natural disaster.

Scientists tell us that it is inevitable that a great New Madrid earthquake will shake the center of the country. They also tell us that it is inevitable that there will be a major earthquake in southern California, that volcanoes on the west coast will erupt again, and that the Yellowstone supervolcano could wipe out much of the country in a single day.

As global seismic activity continues to rise, it is just a matter of time before a string of historic disasters hits this nation.

Unfortunately, I am convinced that this could happen a lot sooner than most people would dare to imagine. (For more from the author of “The Earth’s Crust Will Be Shaken by More Than 100,000 Earthquakes That Humans Can Feel in 2016” please click HERE)

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Alaska’s Head of Division of Elections Co-Chaired Murkowski’s Corrupt 2010 Write-In Vote, Now Facilitating Vote Fraud and Illegal Land Grabs

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As many Alaskans already know, the recent primary election had substantial discrepancies in District 40 where incumbent Benjamin Nageak was running for reelection. It is no secret that the present Walker administration had targeted Benjamin because, as a Democrat, he lined up and caucused with the majority Republicans.

Director of Elections, Josephine Bahnke, in reference to one of the biggest Election Day glitches (both party ballots being handed to voters), dismissed it as no big deal since voters still used only one ballot. But how about the idea that it is against the law to hand a registered Democrat a Republican ballot? And then, most strange of all is Lt. Governor Byron Mallott’s dismissal of the entire mess, with flippant statements, even though his main responsibility is to preside over and ensure the integrity of Alaska elections.

So , let’s dig a little into the Lt. Governor’s background for answers. In recent years, Byron Mallott has worked closely with our senior Senator Lisa Murkowski to violate the terms of ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act). The Lt. Governor, a former Sealaska Native Corporation CEO, supported legislation with Murkowski that would move more public land into the jurisdiction of Sealaska Native Corporation, a direct violation of ANILCA.

ANILCA defines the relationship of the federal government and the State of Alaska regarding land use and Alaska sovereign rights. This has been the mutual agreement since 1980. The only state agency that could bring public focus to these violations was CACFA, or the Citizens Advisory Council for Federal Areas. Unsurprisingly, Byron Mallott was not a fan of CACFA.

Looking the Governor’s recent line item vetoes, one must ask why of 120 boards and commissions, Governor Walker chose to defund only one, CACFA. I would suggest it is the close relationship he enjoys with Byron Mallot. I will also suggest that if Lisa Murkowski retains her senate seat, we will see legislation from her which will attempt to advance land holdings for Sealaska Native Corporation, again, in violation of ANILCA but without the strong oversight of CACFA.

And, on this subject, how can any reasonable person think that Lt. Governor Byron Mallott will preside over the November election in a fair and impartial manner when he was the co-Chair for Lisa Murkowski’s write-in campaign in 2010? Are we to assume that all is well in the Division of Election hen house with the fox presiding over the outcome?

This is the fodder of third-world countries. We must demand that our State government function with integrity and respect for the will of the people. We must demand election integrity if we intend to secure a quality legislature, both State and national, to represent “We the People” in a manner which operates within the rule of law. It is past time, Alaska.

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Billionaire George Soros Tries to Mastermind the Leftward Slide of Catholics

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Writing about billionaire currency speculator and international leftist moneyman George Soros is always risky. Just coolly describing who the man is and what he does can make a writer sound like a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Soros is an obscenely successful capitalist who wants to destroy capitalism; a Jewish Holocaust survivor who funds Israel’s harshest, most unjust critics; an irreligious Hungarian citizen who wants to manipulate churches in America.

Just a few of the organizations Soros underwrites, according to Discover the Networks, include:

Al-Haq: This NGO produces highly politicized reports, papers, books and legal analyses regarding alleged Israeli human-rights abuses committed against Palestinians.

Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as “extremists.”

American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.

Catholics for Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women’s right to abortion-on-demand.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: This political nonprofit group is dedicated to generating support from the Catholic community for leftwing candidates, causes and legislation.

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks. It seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States, and demands reparations for slavery.

NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.

Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics.

Soros Spent $650,000 Trying to Hijack Pope Francis’ U.S. Visit

New documents from Wikileaks reveal that Soros has tried to suborn the political sympathies of Catholics in America. To do so, he hoped to tap into Pope Francis’ perceived political and economic views, via a leftist Central American cardinal who has made harshly anti-American and anti-Semitic statements, and aligned himself with allies of Fidel Castro.

All that sounds more like an episode of NBC’s The Blacklist than a sober headline in black and white, so look at the facts for yourself. As the reliable pro-life news source LifeSiteNews has reported:

Leaked emails through WikiLeaks reveal that billionaire globalist George Soros — one of Hillary Clinton’s top donors — paid $650,000 to influence Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit to the USA with a view to “shift[ing] national paradigms and priorities in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign.” The funds were allocated in April 2015 and the report on their effectiveness suggests that successful achievements included, “Buy-in of individual bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages in order to begin to create a critical mass of bishops who are aligned with the Pope.”

The monies were granted to two US entities that have been engaged in a long-term project, according to the report, of shifting “the priorities of the US Catholic church.” Grantees were PICO, a faith-based community organizing group, and Faith in Public Life (FPL), a progressive group working in media to promote left-leaning ‘social justice’ causes. Soros has funded left-wing causes the world over and was just found to have been funding an effort to eliminate pro-life laws around the globe.

Board Minutes from the May 2015 meeting of Soros’ Open Society Foundation in New York reveal that in the planning stages of the papal visit initiative, the group planned to work through one of the Pope’s key advisors, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, naming him specifically in the report. In order to seize on the opportunity provided by the Pope’s visit to the US, says the report, “we will support PICO’s organizing activities to engage the Pope on economic and racial justice issues, including using the influence of Cardinal Rodriguez, the Pope’s senior advisor, and sending a delegation to visit the Vatican in the spring or summer to allow him to hear directly from low-income Catholics in America.”

LifeSiteNews links to a Spanish-language 2013 video in which “Cardinal Rodriguez endorsed PICO’s work … during a visit from PICO representatives to the cardinal’s diocese. ‘I want to endorse all the efforts they are doing to promote communities of faith,’ he said, ‘… Please, keep helping PICO.’”

Castro’s Cardinal?

In case you haven’t heard of Cardinal Rodriguez-Maradiaga, he is one of Pope Francis’ chosen “Gang of Eight” tasked with fundamental reform of the governance of the Catholic Church. In October 2013, while visiting the University of Dallas, the cardinal gave a major address purporting to explain Pope Francis’ economic views, as found in the document Evangelii Gaudium. As The Catholic Thing reported, attendees might have been shocked when Rodriguez-Maradiaga quoted “as an authority on the morality of international investment the Swiss radical Jean Ziegler – a longtime defender of Fidel Castro, who has called the United States an ‘imperialist dictatorship.’” The cardinal repeated and endorsed Ziegler’s charge:

The globalization of the exchange of services, capital and patents has led over the past ten years to establish a world dictatorship of finance capital. … The lords of financial capital wield over billions of human beings a power of life and death. Through their investment strategies, their stock market speculations, their alliances, they decide day to day who has the right to live on this planet and who is doomed to die.

The cardinal elaborated on Ziegler’s attack on the U.S., asserting:

The effects and consequences of the neoliberal dictatorships that rule democracies are not hard to uncover: they invade us with the industry of entertainment, they make us forget about human rights, they convince us that nothing can be done, that there is no possible alternative. To change the system, it would be necessary to destroy the power of the new feudal lords. Chimerical? Utopian?

The Church decidedly bets on living the globalization of mercy and solidarity.

As one of us observed about this speech:

So democracies like ours are ‘neoliberal dictatorships,’ which the Church will help reform through the ‘globalization of mercy and solidarity,’ that is, by helping governments to seize wealth from some people, skim its own share off the top, and distribute that wealth to others. Those ‘others’ will doubtless be grateful, as Hugo Chavez’s supporters were in Venezuela; indeed, they will form powerful voting blocs dependent on state redistribution of wealth, as directed by humble clergymen.

Cardinal Rodriguez-Maradiaga is no stranger to conspiracy theories. In May 2002, as the clerical sex abuse scandal was erupting all around the world, the cardinal dismissed it as an invention of Jews in the media who resented the Catholic Church for defending the rights of Palestinians — earning a condemnation in the Jewish Journal by Alan Dershowitz, who called Rodriguez-Maradiaga an “overt anti-Semite.”

Not So Much a Conspiracy as a Tsunami

It is unclear what concrete effects George Soros’s expenditures had on the progress of Pope Francis’ visit to America. We have no reason to think that Pope Francis, or even Cardinal Rodriguez-Maradiaga, had any knowledge of the financier’s involvement. But you don’t have to think very hard to wonder why Soros would consider Rodriguez-Maradiaga the ideal entry point for an effort to skew American bishops toward the political left. The two men have a great many views in common.

Even if neither Rodriguez-Maradiaga nor George Soros existed, the leftward slide among many Catholics would still be a problem. There is ample home-grown support among Americans for the “Seamless Garment” doctrine that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin invented, which leftists have used ever since as a poison pill to kill off the pro-life movement. Leave aside elderly bankers and aging Liberation Theologians; there are Joe Biden and Tim Kaine-style Catholics honeycombed through Catholic universities and bureaucracies who wish to submerge our concern for unborn life and religious freedom in a sea of Progressive platitudes. There are leading U.S. bishops eager to carry their banner, like Chicago’s Archbishop Blaise Cupich.

American Catholics who hold to the Church’s traditional social teaching, which elevates innocent life and human freedom, face a long and determined battle against the utopian forces who will ally with the pro-choice left to further their “long march” through Catholic institutions. (For more from the author of “Billionaire George Soros Tries to Mastermind the Leftward Slide of Catholics” please click HERE)

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VIDEO: Nine-Year Old Boy Says New Hands Make His Life ‘Complete’

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Zion Harvey is nine years old. Like most boys his age, he enjoys baseball and football, does push-ups and loves his mother.

Unlike every other child his age, however, Harvey’s hands belonged to someone else until last year.

According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s website, Harvey lost his hands at the age of two, thanks to a life-threatening infection. Doctors were forced to amputate “his legs below the knee,” as well, and at the age of four his damaged kidneys were replaced with one from his mother, Pattie Ray.

Harvey now has full use of his legs, and thanks to prosthetics, and in NBC’s video above can be seen with a football, swinging a bat and telling his mother how much he loves her.

“When I got my hands, it’s like, here’s the piece of my life that was missing. Now it’s here. Now my life is complete,” said Harvey, who told his mother in 2015 that “if [the hand surgery] gets messed up, I don’t care, because I have my family.”

“Without my mom, I would not be here right now,” Harvey, who is the first child to ever receive hand transplants, told NBC.

More of Harvey’s amazing story is here, via NBC. (For more from the author of “VIDEO: Nine-Year Old Boy Says New Hands Make His Life ‘Complete'” please click HERE)

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3 Ways Obama’s New Overtime Rule Will Hurt Employees

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In an alleged attempt to increase the income of certain salaried employees, the Obama administration issued a new overtime rule, set to take effect Dec. 1., that will almost certainly do more harm than good for the employees it seeks to help.

Currently, employers only have to pay the overtime time-and-a-half rate to salaried employees who make less than $23,660 per year (as well as some who make more but don’t have sufficiently advanced job duties). The new rule more than doubles the pay level subject to overtime to $47,476.

This effectively means that many salaried employees can’t be paid to get a job done, but must instead be paid based on their hours.

Beginning in December, employees who make less than $47,767 a year must keep track of their hours and their employer must pay them time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours per week.

Seems like it could benefit employees through higher pay, right? That’s what the Obama administration thinks. It claimed the rule will increase pay by an average of $1.2 billion per year across roughly 4.2 million workers (an extra $285 per worker).

But that assumption defies the economic literature. It effectively assumes employers have an extra $1.2 billion in spare change that they can dole out to employees without consequence.

Even left-leaning economists Jared Bernstein and Ross Eisenbrey acknowledge that’s not the case. They write that additional overtime costs “would ultimately be borne by workers as employers set base wages taking expected overtime pay into account.”

Another option for keeping total costs constant is to shift employees to hourly rates.

In the end, employees are likely to lose desired job flexibility and income dependability, and will likely have no additional income (maybe even less) to show for it:

1. Lost Flexibility. In today’s more service-oriented economy, the previous eight-hour work day has become less common as employees shift hours between days and weeks, and often perform work—such as responding to emails—outside the office and outside normal business hours. This flexibility gives employees greater autonomy and a better work-family balance. If employers must keep track of their employees’ hours and pay them time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours in a given week, employers will limit employees’ flexibility. No more staying late a few nights one week in exchange for leaving early the following week, no more working from home where hours are more difficult to track, no more logging extra hours to cover for a co-worker (who would do the same in exchange), and potentially no more—or fewer—paid vacation days.

2. Less Stable Incomes. Salaries are beneficial for employees and employers alike. Salaries provide certainty of cost for employers and certainty of income for employees, allowing both to properly budget their resources. Salaries also allow employees to be paid to get a job done as opposed to having to log a certain number of hours. Many workers log fewer than 40 hours during less busy weeks or seasons and more than 40 hours in busy periods. Because most employers can’t afford—at least not without consequence—to pay employees with variable hours their existing base salaries as well as time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours, they will likely shift those employees to an hourly rate that results in roughly the same income for the year. But most employees prefer a regular paycheck over variable ones. After all, their mortgage or rent and most other expenses don’t vary from month-to-month.

3. Excessive Compliance Costs Likely to Reduce Wages. The Obama administration estimated employers will spend $295 million per year complying with the new regulation. The rule is unlikely to raise average wages as employers will reduce base pay or shift employees to hourly pay. But even if the rule raises wages by the administration’s unlikely estimate of $1.2 billion per year, $295 million in compliance costs amounts to an outrageously high 25 percent administrative fee. Those compliance costs will almost certainly be passed onto employees through lower wages.

Rather than intervene in mutually advantageous salary arrangements between employers and employees, the government should let employees agree to be paid to get a job done. The Obama administration’s paternalistic approach will ultimately hurt the employees it aims to help by limiting job flexibility, reducing income certainty, and potentially reducing incomes through excessive compliance costs. (For more from the author of “3 Ways Obama’s New Overtime Rule Will Hurt Employees” please click HERE)

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Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.

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American policy in Syria has been marked by a long list of flip-flops and failures. Remember Obama’s “red line” meant to stop the Assad regime from using chemical weapons? That was quickly erased when Congress made it clear there was little public support for using U.S. forces to topple another secular dictator in favor of rebel groups whose radical Islamist views made them no less dangerous to our interests. The “moderate” rebels to whom the U.S. was airdropping weapons proved to be virtually mythical creatures, and those weapons ended up in the hands of al Qaeda’s allies. Then we learned that a rebel group the Pentagon had backed was fighting another that the CIA had armed.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has executed on Russia’s behalf a clear and consistent policy, which has helped keep Assad in power — to the benefit of Russia’s Mediterranean influence, and to the benefit of the beleaguered Christian minority in Syria, who find him less of a threat than the Islamist alternatives.

There was one policy, just one, that the U.S. had engaged in which seemed to be working out well: Our government’s backing of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-led militias that are allied with local Christians (the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Force), that with growing success are taking territory away from ISIS. In those liberated regions, the SDF has established enclaves where Christians have religious freedom and their own armed militias, and women take part in government (unlike in most of the Middle East). As religious freedom activist Johannes de Jong reported here at The Stream:

The successes of the Syriac Military Council and the Nineveh Plain Forces changes the picture we may have of the Syriac-Assyrian Christians in Iraq and Syria. It also challenges us to rethink our strategy to support them. No more than you or I do these Christians aspire to live in refugee camps on care packages. They ask for our assistance in standing up and defending themselves in their own country, where their families have kept the Faith for almost 2,000 years.

But now the U.S. government has decided to abandon the Kurds and their Christian allies, as Michael Horowitz reported in the International Business Times:

Five days ago, US jets were scrambled to protect Kurdish forces in their self-declared Northern Syria Federation from Assad’s air force in the eastern city of Hasakah.

Today, in the aftermath of a limited Turkish intervention on Syrian soil, the US is demanding the Kurds leave the northern city of Manbij, which the Kurds fought and died to capture during the past two months – backed by US warplanes.

That these two events happened less than a week from another is astonishing, even in such an unpredictable and volatile environment as the Syrian civil war. That the US is letting down its only remaining ally in Syria, at a time when other powers, namely Russia and Iran, have acted aggressively to protect theirs, is damaging to the overall US position in the region. …

By demanding the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) leave Manbij, the US took the strategy it itself initiated, nurtured and supported, and dumped it into the trash.

Why?

What motivation does the Obama administration have for turning against its erstwhile allies, the best hope in a desolate region for establishing something like a free and pluralist government? According to Horowitz, we are currying favor with Turkey — the former secular democracy which is morphing before our eyes into an Islamist dictatorship, in the wake of a failed coup that has proved a pretext for a massive purge of secular-minded dissidents.

This is the same Turkey that has gone from provoking Russia (by shooting down a plane that was fighting ISIS) to cozying up to Putin. Turkey is also blackmailing the European Union for huge cash payments and visa-free travel throughout the continent, with the threat that if these demands are not granted, Turkey will dump hundreds of thousands more Syrian migrants across the EU border into Greece and Bulgaria.

So concerned are U.S. generals over Turkey’s untrustworthiness that they have pulled U.S. nuclear weapons out of their longtime Turkish base of Incirlik.

Turkey has for decades savagely repressed its large and growing Kurdish minority, and its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, would rather see ISIS prevail in Syria than the creation of a free, democratic Kurdish region that might serve as a magnet for armed Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

To patch up relations with that regime, the Obama administration has apparently decided to throw its Kurdish and Christian allies to the wolves — and embark on a campaign of flattery aimed at Erdoğan. On August 24, Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ankara and told Erdoğan:

The attempted coup went to the heart of who your people are — principled, courageous and committed. And for a people who have struggled so long to establish a true democracy, this was, from my perspective and the president’s perspective, the ultimate affront. So my heart goes out to not just the government, but to the Turkish people.

Biden gushed that “the American people … stand in awe” of Erdoğan and his supporters for beating back the bungled coup. Biden did not mention the ugly crackdown that was taking place all around him as he spoke. As Bridget Johnson reported on PJ Media:

Erdoğan’s purge since the coup attempt has included basically any secular opponent to his Islamist government: more than 40,000 people have been rounded up, from soldiers to jurists to bankers and even teachers and a comedian. Human rights groups have charged that the rule of law has gone out the window as detainees have been kept in makeshift facilities without proper access to legal representation and suffering beatings, rapes and starvation. Erdoğan has also intensified his battle against the free press.

Meanwhile, religious freedom activists concerned for Christians in the region are profoundly worried about the implications of this U.S. flip-flop. Johannes de Jong, who works closely with Syrian Christian leaders, told The Stream:

It is clear that the Turkish push against the [Kurdish-led] SDF is very worrying for the Syriac Assyrian Christians of the area, and even more for the growing number of Kurdish Christians of Rojava. It shows how much influence Turkey can have and it’s obvious that Turkey is the oppressor of Christians and Kurds. Turkey still denies the [1915-21] genocide against Armenians and Assyrians. One major way for the U.S. to restore trust among the Christians is to properly arm the Syriac Military Council. And, obviously, the U.S. needs to make substantial steps to show that it indeed continues to support the SDF. The U.S. needs to stop the ongoing attacks on the SDF and to investigate the claim that Turkey used chemical weapons against the SDF and the civilian population the SDF protects. [emphasis added]

(For more from the author of “Did Obama Just Betray Syrian Christians to Please the Turks? Seems So.” please click HERE)

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50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God

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Most Americans know that 50 percent of the population doesn’t go to church on Sunday. Most probably think that people who don’t go to church are staying away because they don’t believe in God.

But, a large majority of Americans — 89 percent — still believe in God, and a new Pew Research Center study released this week found that a significant portion of people who don’t go to church are actually staying away for practical or social reasons, while others admit they are simply too lazy to make the effort.

Pew found that among Americans who hardly ever go to church, one-in-five claim they are too busy, and one-in-ten claim they are “too lazy” and have “gotten out of the habit.” Another 17 percent claim social concerns as the reason to stay away from church, including that they used to go to church with a friend or family member but don’t anymore.

There is good news though: Pew found that among people who go to church at least semi-frequently, 27 percent are actually going more regularly than they used to. One-in-five of those people told Pew that they have become more religious, while “Others found themselves desiring God or religion in their life or realized religion was important as they got older or grew more mature.”

The common liberal narrative on shifts in American church attendance attributes the decline in worship on unbelief — in the eyes of liberals, a good move toward a secular, post-religious America. But these new Pew numbers show the liberal narrative is wrong. And what’s even more reassuring is that the belief in God and desire for religion in some Americans is getting even stronger. (For more from the author of “50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God” please click HERE)

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Extreme Position of Pro-Choice Politicians Contradicts American Consensus

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Lurking behind the annual split among Americans over the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice” is a new reality. The fact is that today, whatever label they choose, Americans overwhelmingly support abortion restrictions.

Pro-choice politicians who typically support unrestricted, or almost unrestricted, abortion share the extreme view of a tiny minority of the American people.

Consider this. A majority of Americans who identify as pro-choice (62 percent) say that abortion should be restricted to—at most—the first trimester of pregnancy. Less than a quarter of them (22 percent) want unrestricted abortion.

Among Americans as a whole, the number who want such abortion restrictions is about eight in 10 (78 percent). Only about one in 10 of this group (13 percent) would leave it unrestricted.

Almost twice as many American voters would limit abortion to—at most—saving the life of the mother (24 percent) as would allow it any time.

It’s not a partisan issue either. Strong majorities regardless of political identity would restrict abortion to the first trimester, at most. This includes about two-thirds of Democrats (65 percent), as well as eight in 10 independents (80 percent), and nine in 10 Republicans (93 percent). There are few issues in our country on which you find such a strong consensus from across the political spectrum.

The polling we commissioned on this issue was done by the gold standard in public opinion research: Marist. That’s the same pollster used by NBC News, McClatchy, and The Wall Street Journal.

The numbers have been consistent on this for nearly a decade. Americans overwhelmingly support substantial restrictions on abortion. “Pro-life” politicians typically support bills consistent with this national consensus.

Nevertheless, self-identified “pro-choice” politicians generally hew to a policy orthodoxy that allows for no restrictions at all on abortion—even though it’s a view hardly ever shared by their constituents.

The typical “pro-choice” politician today represents the most radical view of abortion in the country—a view they share with only about one in 10 Americans (13 percent).

Some of these politicians celebrate abortion as a right that should not be restricted in any way. That’s the same line taken by the abortion industry, whose livelihood depends on performing this destructive procedure.

Other politicians hide behind the idea that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, but cannot impose their will on the majority. What majority are they talking about? Nearly everyone in the country wants solid restrictions on abortion, making such a position either ignorant or dishonest.

If a politician is really “personally opposed,” he should have the decency to follow his conscience and not block the vast consensus on this issue.

Better yet, he could take John F. Kennedy’s advice, who said when running for president in 1960 that he would resign if his conscience came into conflict with what he saw as the public interest. Kennedy said he hoped “any conscientious public servant would do the same.” That’s still good advice, and a worthy wish, five decades later.

Instead, the opposite is occurring.

Despite the American consensus on this issue, more and more extreme positions are being proposed by pro-abortion politicians.

Some are pledging to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which bans tax dollars from being used to pay for abortions—contrary to Americans’ view that tax dollars should not be used this way.

Nearly two in three Americans would prohibit the use of tax dollars for abortion (62 percent). This includes more than four in 10 Democrats (44 percent), more than six in 10 independents (61 percent), and more than eight in 10 Republicans (84 percent).

Those who identify as pro-choice are split too, with 45 percent saying tax dollars should not be used for abortion.

Abortion is now the number one cause of death in America. With more than 50 million abortions since the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, no other issue comes close in scale. And yet, each year, another million abortions are allowed to occur by politicians who turn a deaf ear to the will of the people and oppose restrictions.

It’s time for the abortion extremism among these politicians to end. It’s time for “pro-choice” politicians to begin supporting policy proposals that restrict abortion consistent with our national consensus. (For more from the author of “Extreme Position of Pro-Choice Politicians Contradicts American Consensus” please click HERE)

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