By WND. The polls may show Donald Trump is the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, but one of his fellow GOP candidates says the billionaire businessman and reality-TV star will never become the next president of the United States because “he’s a birther.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., doubled down on his criticism of Trump during an interview Thursday on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show.”
Graham, who will not make it onto the main Fox News debate stage next Thursday night due to low poll numbers, argues Trump isn’t “marketable” and would be the end of the GOP’s chances in 2016.
“I don’t think you’re going to elect a man president of the United States who is a birther,” Graham said. “I don’t believe you’re going to elect a man president of the United States who spent thousands of his own dollars, he claims, trying to find out if Obama was born in Kenya. I don’t think you’re going to elect a man president of the United States who basically said most illegal immigrants are drug dealers and rapists (and) who slandered veterans like John McCain.”
As WND reported, Trump recently expressed doubts once again about the site of President Obama’s birth, while answering a question from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Trump said, when asked if he thought Obama had been born in America. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t release his records.” (Read more from “Trump Smacked: America Won’t Elect ‘Birther’ Prez” HERE)
Trump Just Scored Two Huge Wins in a Way That Could Redefine the Race
By Norvell Rose. When the home team suffers an unexpected and startling defeat on its own field, fans and commentators will most likely take notice. And that’s just what’s happening today as the GOP front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination, Donald Trump, scores a big win in a state where a rival or two could certainly be considered favorite sons.
The website Florida Politics reports on what it calls the “shock poll” that finds Trump leading Jeb Bush by a significant margin in Florida, the state where George W.’s younger brother served as a very popular governor from 1999-2007.
According to the just-released St. Pete Polls survey of more than 1900 likely GOP primary voters in the Sunshine State:
And what about Marco Rubio’s standing in the newly released survey of GOP voters? The senator from Florida is also found to be trailing Trump. Rubio places fourth in the new poll with 10 percent of the respondents backing him. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker came in third with 12 percent.
What many observers and analysts of presidential politics might find equally if not more surprising are the results of a different voter poll — one conducted by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP). In this national survey, Donald Trump has a higher favorability rating than any of his GOP competitors among Latinos who were questioned July 20-21 about their candidate preferences. (Read more from this story HERE)
About 70 percent of the roughly 100,000 U.S. Boy Scout units are sponsored by religious institutions, and many said the Monday decision runs counter to the moral standards set by the 105-year-old youth organization.
“We express consummate sadness that this once vibrant organization continues to cave to social pressure, compromising its long-held, constitutionally protected tenets,” said Roger “Sing” Oldham, a spokesman for the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention.
Even though the decision permits religious organizations to exclude gay adults in keeping with their beliefs, other major conservative church groups also criticized the change, which took effect with the vote Monday by the National Executive Board.
The largest sponsor of Boy Scout units, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has said it was “deeply troubled” by the move, adding the Mormons’ “century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined.”
The church was unable to make a decision quickly on whether to remain with the Boy Scouts because its top leaders — including the president, his two counselors and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — were off with their families in July, Dane O. Leavitt, a Mormon leader who serves as the liaison with the Boy Scouts, told The New York Times. (Read more from “Baptists, Mormons Both Slam Boy Scouts Over Gay Leadership” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-31 02:34:252016-04-11 10:58:16Baptists, Mormons Both Slam Boy Scouts Over Gay Leadership
Last fall we wrote about leaders of ISIS encouraging their followers and supporters to attack American servicemen here at home, and that it was imperative that a national concealed carry reciprocity bill be passed to allow members of the military and members public to carry concealed weapons legally from state to state.
“Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers. Both of them are considered to be waging war,” said the leader of ISIS in a radio speech.
Well, the recent attack that killed four Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tenn. was unfortunate proof that we were right. At the time officials at the Department of Defense issued warnings to service members, veterans and their families that they might be targets and to be aware of potential dangers and practice situational awareness when off base, as well as monitor their social media accounts.
Unfortunately while DOD warned them, they didn’t give them a means to defend themselves. Military recruiters are never issued arms and even on base stateside only a limited number of service members carry weapons with ammunition and that is generally limited to military police and those on guard or security duties.
This is a long-standing policy going back many decades, though it has nothing to do with a Clinton era directive, as many have claimed. The policy is much older.
As a Marine in an infantry battalion on Camp Pendleton in the 1980s the only time we had our issue weapons was for training, inspections, cleaning, or guard duty and the only time we had ammunition was at the rifle range, live fire exercises or guard duty, and only a tiny percentage of Marines in the regimental area were on guard at any one time. I have spoken to Marines and soldiers who served in the 1970s and 1960s who confirmed the policy was the same then.
The same went for privately owned weapons. If you owned one it had to be kept off base or the unit armory, not in your barracks. Even married Marines living in on base houses couldn’t keep weapons at home. The policy also went back to at least the 1960s.
Regardless of when the policies started, it is time they were changed. They date back to the Cold War, when the homeland was comparatively safe, at least on an individual level. We may have been preparing for all-out war with the Soviet Union but we did not have to face terrorist attacks on our military here on our own soil. The situation we face today is more akin to what the Israelis have combatted for years, when an attack can come at any place or any time and soldiers are armed at all times—even off base and in urban areas.
There has to be a way to allow some of our recruiters at recruiting stations to be armed, to allow soldiers and Marines who wish to carry concealed to do so—especially going to and from base— and to expand the definition of who can be armed on base. The Israelis with a conscripted military manage it; it assumes that our all-volunteer, highly trained, and professional force cannot. If we trust our military with live weapons overseas, we should be able to trust them with them here.
There is a one small consolation that came out of the attack in Chattanooga and it is that is that two of those under attack were able to shoot back against their attacker, apparently with privately owned and not issue weapons. One of them, a Marine, was killed. His Glock was found near him. The other, a naval officer, Lt. Commander Timothy Smith, shot back and lived. Federal agents investigating the attack said these two men saved countless lives.
Of course the great fear now is that that Smith will be prosecuted by the military for his heroism because he may have violated federal law by having a weapon at all. Members of the military cannot pick and choose which orders to obey. He may be given a medal with one hand and a reprimand with the other.
If that happens it would ignite a public relations disaster for the administration. It would be better that this be recognized as a watershed moment and that Smith disobeyed a stupid and dangerous regulation and any necessary punishment be light and symbolic. Honor Smith for showing the way forward and find a way for members of the military to legally protect themselves. (Re-posted with permission, “The New Military: Guns Aren’t Welcome Here”, originally appeared HERE)
A growing body of science reveals an undisputable fact: unborn babies can feel pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization, and most likely even earlier. As the medical community continues to increase its understanding of fetal pain, there have also been increasing legislative efforts to protect the unborn child from cruel suffering.
Unborn babies 20 weeks post-fertilization not only have the anatomy to process pain but also the neurobiology to transmit painful sensations to the brain and perceive pain. Dr. Jean A. Wright, testifying at a Congressional subcommittee hearing summarized it best:
After 20 weeks of gestation [18 weeks post-fertilization], an unborn child has all the prerequisite anatomy, physiology, hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical current to close the loop and create the conditions needed to perceive pain. The development of the perception of pain begins at the sixth week of life. By 20 weeks [18 weeks post-fertilization], and perhaps even earlier, all the essential components of anatomy, physiology, and neurobiology exist to transmit painful sensations from the skin to the spinal cord and to the brain.
[The author, Arina Grossu, discusses fetal pain in the second half of the below podcast; during the first half, she discusses the Planned Parenthood videos]
There is no question, biologically speaking, about whether an unborn child can feel pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization. By 18 weeks post-fertilization, nerves link pain receptors to the brain s thalamus (the pain processing center). By 18 weeks post-fertilization, the cerebral cortex (the region of the brain associated with higher mental functions) has acquired a full complement of neurons, meaning all of the neurons are present, though not all the connections in the cortex are fully developed until later. EEG activity, a recording of electrical activity in the brain, appears for the first time at 18 weeks post-fertilization, showing the integrity of the circuitries of the cortex and the thalamus.
Some scientists take an agnostic position on whether the unborn child consciously experiences pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization and they argue this based on a theory that a mature cerebral cortex is necessary for the conscious perception of pain. However, a mature cerebral cortex is not necessary in order for the unborn child to feel pain, as evidenced by scientific studies and observations that both children and adults who are born with no or minimal cerebral cortex, do in fact still perceive pain.
The instruction of medical textbooks and accepted common medical practice is to administer fetal anesthesia before an in-utero surgery on the unborn child around 20 weeks post-fertilization. The common practice is based on the science of fetal development and the observation that unborn children who are not given anesthesia elicit a hormonal stress response to painful stimuli, which is alleviated by the effects of anesthesia as it is in adults.
Legislation that addresses fetal pain must be based on the indisputable biology, scientific data, and physical evidence of fetal pain and not on political, religious, theoretical, or philosophical ideas about self-consciousness or self-awareness. The bottom line is that an unborn child can and does feel pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization. Fetal pain mechanisms are in place at that time.
Polling shows that the majority of Americans agree on setting abortion bans, such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, to protect the almost 13,000 American pain-capable unborn children who die from late abortion each year. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “What Science Reveals About Fetal Pain”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-31 02:33:462016-04-11 10:58:17The Science is Conclusive: Fetal Pain is Real AND Extreme
The economic expansion—already the worst on record since World War II—is weaker than previously thought, according to newly revised data.
From 2012 through 2014, the economy grew at an all-too-familiar rate of 2% annually, according to three years of revised figures the Commerce Department released Thursday. That’s a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from prior estimates.
The revisions were released concurrently with the government’s first estimate of second-quarter output.
Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has advanced at a 2.2% annual pace through the end of last year. That’s more than a half-percentage point worse than the next-weakest expansion of the past 70 years, the one from 2001 through 2007. While there have been highs and lows in individual quarters, overall the economy has failed to break out of its roughly 2% pattern for six years . . .
The output reading for the first quarter of last year was recast to a 0.9% contraction instead of a 2.1% annualized drop. The prior figure represented the worst contraction on record outside of a recession. The new number isn’t even the worst quarterly contraction of the expansion. GDP declined at a 1.5% annual pace in the first quarter of 2011. (Read more from “The Worst Expansion Since World War II Was Even Weaker” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-31 02:30:492016-04-11 10:58:17The Worst Expansion Since World War II Was Even Weaker
By Daniel Horowitz. Yesterday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), embarked on the most important mission any self-described conservative representative can undertake as a member of this Congress.
He filed a motion to vacate the chair, which commences the process through which a group of roughly 30 conservatives can remove John Boehner from the Speaker’s chair and restore some measure of deterrent against Obama’s impending transformational agenda during his last 18 months in office. In other words, Meadows pulled the trigger on the one thing that actually matters.
We live in an unprecedented time with a president that is hell-bent on dismantling our values, borders, economy, criminal justice system, and national security. At the same time, there has been absolutely no opposition to any of Obama’s policies from the GOP leadership. It is obvious Obama knows it. There’s a sense of desperation and hopelessness among Republicans across the nation. Mark Meadows has finally given those people a voice.
As long as both houses of Congress are controlled by those who are given to every whim of this imperial president, there will be no deterrent against his malfeasance – no matter how unlawful, no matter how toxic to the fabric of this nation. There is nothing stopping Obama from commuting sentences and pardoning criminals, essentially emptying the federal prisons in his final year. There is nothing stopping him from abusing his executive waiver authority to let in even more illegal immigrants. There is nothing to deter him from embracing even more of our nation’s enemies in his final months. Boehner and McConnell have ruled out using the one deterrent against such behavior – the power of the purse.
Conservatives have many good ideas to use Congress as both a check on Obama’s power and an effective messaging tool as it relates to Iran, illegal immigration, religious liberty, and a host of other fundamental issues. However, not a single one of those issues will be fought even half-heartedly until conservatives reassert a modicum of control over at least one house of Congress. And that will not happen as long as John Boehner is occupying the Speaker’s chair.
This is where Mark Meadows comes in, by introducing a resolution to vacate the chair.
According to House rules, any member can offer a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair and force a de facto ‘vote of no confidence’ in the Speaker. Under normal circumstances, an individual member has no power to force a vote on any bill or resolution, but the motion to vacate is “privileged.” Meadows, however, filed his motion in a “non-privileged form,” which means the motion does not require immediate consideration. There is nothing Boehner can do to block the motion.
The genius of this strategy is that there is no pressure on the conservative side like there was in January when they had to muster the 30 votes at a specific date – the day of the Speaker’s election. Meadows intends for this resolution to hang over Boehner’s head for as long or as short as needed to gather the votes. This will place enormous pressure on members headed into the August recess to declare their support or opposition for John Boehner.
Remember the tens of thousands of phone calls that flooded the capitol switchboard in January? And that was before the series of great betrayals over the past few months.
Some members will attempt to weasel their way out of their responsibility by claiming that there is no alternative. But that is nonsense. As soon as Boehner is deposed, there will be plenty of options on the table. Last time, Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), tossed his hat into the ring for the Speaker nomination. While Webster is not necessarily a member who is well-established in the conservative movement, he respects regular order and would at least give conservatives a seat at the table in setting the agenda. There’s no reason that someone like him won’t toss his hat into the ring this time.
More importantly, Boehner must be removed from his position of power because he (along with McConnell) is seriously jeopardizing the chance to win back the White House. By obfuscating the party divide and ignoring every harmful and unpopular action of this president, Republican leaders are artificially inflating Obama’s popularity and depressing potential conservative turnout in the upcoming election.
Every GOP representative will go home this August to his or her district and extol the virtues of their service and how they oppose illegal immigration, the Iran alliance, Planned Parenthood, and are deeply concerned about the growing threats to religious liberty. They will also tout some legislation they have introduced to tackle these important issues. But none of this will matter if they fail to categorically commit to dethroning John Boehner. Unless he is removed from the Speaker’s office, not a single conservative priority will be championed nor will a single imperial act of Obama’s be countermanded in a meaningful way. Nothing else matters other than the Speaker’s vote.
Yesterday was Mark Meadows’s Moses moment, when Moses went to the gate of the camp and declared, “Whoever is for the Lord, [let him come] to me!” [Exodus 32:26].
It will soon become apparent who the Levites of our generation are, and we will be keeping track. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Mark Meadows Stands up to Boehner”, originally appeared HERE)
Natalie Johnson of the Daily Signal provides some insight into Rep. Mark Meadows’ quality personality and unique experiences:
1. Meadows’ attempt to unseat Speaker Boehner is not the first time he has rebelled against Washington’s power players. Last month, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, temporarily removed Meadows from his subcommittee chairmanship for voting against a motion to advance President Obama’s trade bill.
2. Meadows was a key player in the 2013 government shutdown, sending a letter to Boehner just eight months after taking office encouraging him to halt any appropriations bill including Obamacare funding. CNN went as far as to call Meadows the “architect” of and “man behind” the shutdown.
3. He has a cordial reputation on Capitol Hill. Both Democrats and Republicans call him one of the “nicest guys” in D.C., Politico reports, and The Washington Post dubbed him the “friendliest guy in the House.”
4. His affable personality shows in interviews. Just days after Chaffetz stripped his chairmanship, Meadows told The Washington Post, “I love people.” “Every single week, I try to find at least seven different people with something unique and admirable about them, and I share that with them. D.C. is not going to change me on that, even today.”
5. Meadows was first elected to Congress in 2012 following redistricting in North Carolina, which shifted his district from “slightly” Republican to solid.
6. His seat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee allowed him to play a lead role in pushing Congress to investigate the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative groups.
7. His position also launched him as central in forcing the resignation of Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta in July following the department’s massive data breach exposing 21.5 million Social Security numbers.
8. He grew up in Tampa Bay, Florida, describing himself as a “fat nerd” during his early years. He decided to lose weight after he attempted to ask a girl out only to be shot down. “I went home and looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re fat.’ So, I started almost immediately to run a mile to lose weight,” Meadows recalled.
9. He caught the attention of his wife, Debbie, in high school after he lost weight, becoming “unrecognizable” even to her—she thought he was a new student. They both graduated from the University of South Florida.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-30 14:35:072016-04-11 10:58:18Mark Meadows Stands up to Boehner
A new undercover video of Planned Parenthood was released this morning, and it brings home in brutal detail how the organization profits by carefully dismembering unborn children (many of them, we now know, in their second or third trimester) so they can sell them to bidders in the abortion aftermarket. The newest video goes into more depth with a new eyewitness source describing the gruesome body-parts industry from the inside.
The first, second and now third video from the Center for Medical Progress presents the Republican party with both a moral imperative and a unique opportunity: Claim the undisputed moral high ground in the run-up to the next election, touch America’s heartstrings, and appeal to all that is decent while doing what is unquestionably right. It can shine a surgical light on the dishonesty, bone-deep ghoulish cynicism and moral squalor defended by leading Democrats. And having done so, it can defund and cripple an abortion business founded on racism and eugenics, one that gobbles up half a billion in taxpayer dollars, billions more in tax-exempt donations, and is still not sated.
No, Planned Parenthood cannot rest at using taxpayer money to target the poor, the black, the disadvantaged unborn in America and simply leave it at that. Whatever spirits are guiding it, they goad it to go even further, and profit from the tiny dismembered bodies of its victims by taking them for parts. The sheer horror of the act makes us unwilling to face it, as Allied generals refused at first to believe what they saw when they liberated Nazi camps. But how else to explain those piles of carefully counted gold teeth, those shoes all neatly piled, lest anything go to waste?
My father served under General Patton in 1945, and he remembered how Patton reacted: He rounded up all the law-abiding, deferential German citizens of the nearest town, and forced them to walk through the camps, to see up close and personal what their Fuhrer had accomplished.
The Center for Medical Progress is emulating Patton, marching the flinching media through the medical waste bins and organ markets of America’s abortion industry. And Americans are following, tentatively, hoping that some rational explanation will be offered, so they don’t have to face the truth.
The Republican Senate leadership is actively trying to cover up the truth, to throw procedural roadblocks in the path of pro-life legislators such as Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul who want to defund Planned Parenthood. Men like Mitch McConnell seem to hope this ugly issue will go away so they can get back to the real business of the Senate: passing empty symbolic votes opposing Obamacare, and greasing the tracks for that much beloved tool of government/corporate cronyism, the Export/Import Bank.
You can always count on Congress’s Republican leadership to recognize an opportunity. They spot it with eagle eyes, then plunge their heads straight into the sand.
But good men like Ted Cruz are grabbing the ostrich by the neck. He is holding his own party’s leadership accountable for the scandal of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, and the truth is on his side. Even better, the truth is leaking out slowly, one nightmarish video at a time, and will go on leaking out over the coming days and weeks. And there’s nothing that the Democrats, or Mitch McConnell, or the mainstream media, can do to silence it.
The truth about Planned Parenthood’s baby parts side business will lead to other truths, such as the truth about Margaret Sanger’s model eugenics laws, passed in 13 American states, which inflicted forced sterilization or castration on Americans who failed culturally-biased IQ tests. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s well-documented and regarded as settled fact among historians of the period, one conveniently left out of many high school and college American history textbooks.
Those eugenics laws were used by the Nazis to plan their own eugenics program — with the help of Margaret Sanger’s good friend Harry Laughlin, whom the Nazis consulted to learn about how Sanger and Laughlin had sold Americans on “racial hygiene.”
After the Nazi concentration camps were liberated, there was a war criminal, named Dr. Josef Mengele, who escaped justice at Nuremburg, fled to greener pastures and, as The New York Times has reported, prospered as an abortionist.
That’s called coming full circle.
Soon half of America will see Planned Parenthood not as a triage clinic for impoverished victims of the sexual revolution, but for what it really is: a spectacularly successful eugenics organization, one that has managed to camouflage itself for decades and now profiteers off the organs of our most vulnerable and innocent.
The question of the hour is whether Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and the U.S. Congress will respond with even the most modest of steps: merely ceasing to take dollars from the pockets of an outraged America and sending them to the abortion body shops of Sanger’s organizational descendants. (Posted with permission of the author, “The Third Undercover Video of Planned Parenthood: Outrage Is Insufficient”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-30 03:58:382016-04-11 10:58:18The Third Undercover Video of Planned Parenthood: Outrage Is Insufficient [+videos]
Photo Credit: CNN By Chad Pergram. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., sure knows how to party.
Meadows marked his 56th birthday Tuesday, by scheduling to move with his wife Debbie from one apartment to another in Washington, D.C. And somewhere in between packing dishes into corrugated boxes, Meadows filed an unprecedented resolution to oust House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
In a single stroke, the rebellious congressman has not only infuriated the GOP leadership but scrambled their plans of using the August recess to focus on the Iran deal and a web of other issues. Now, the House goes into recess with this debate churning, even if the push stands little chance of succeeding.
“We will be getting bogged down on who is speaker over the August recess,” seethed Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y. “We could end up like a European parliament. We should be talking about Iran. It’s terrible.”
Incidentally, the resolution also had to do with moving furniture. It seeks to compel Boehner to give up the speaker’s suite, with a parliamentary motion known as “vacating the chair.” (Read more from “‘People Are Stunned’: Resolution to Oust Boehner Scrambles Party’s August Recess Plans” HERE)
Boehner Brushes off Conservative Effort to Oust Him
By Deirdre Walsh. House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday brushed off the effort by one House conservative to oust him as “no big deal.”
“This is one member. I’ve got broad support amongst my colleagues,” Boehner insisted at his weekly press conference.
Blindsiding fellow Republicans and House GOP leaders, conservative Rep. Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, launched an effort on Tuesday to remove Boehner as speaker.
On Wednesday, Boehner downplayed the idea of a revolt by the right, evidenced by the resolution that would strip him of his speakership and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s criticism of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this week.
“You’ve got a member here and a member there who are off the reservation — no big deal,” Boehner said. (Read more from this story HERE)
A temporary restraining order has been issued preventing an anti-abortion group from releasing any video of leaders of a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. The group is the same one that previously released three covertly shot videos of a Planned Parenthood leader discussing the sale of aborted fetuses for research.
The Los Angeles Superior Court order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of three high-ranking StemExpress officials taken at a restaurant in May. It appears to be the first legal action prohibiting the release of a video from the organization.
The Center for Medical Progress has released three surreptitiously recorded videos to date that have riled anti-abortion activists. The Senate is expected to vote before its August recess on a Republican effort to bar federal aid to Planned Parenthood in the aftermath of the videos’ release. (Read more from “Disgusting Judicial Cover-Up: Courts Bans Playing of Horrific Planned Parenthood Videos” HERE)
Since the day President Obama was elected, gun owners have been on an unprecedented buying spree, purchasing everything from .22 ammunition to every kind of semi-automatic firearm available.
Their fears are not unwarranted — especially because, for a while, the federal government seemed to be racing private owners to buy the ammo first.
Closer examination shows that some fears of federal activity on this front are overblown. Others, though, are deeply rooted in legitimate concerns.
While Obama claims to support “common-sense” gun laws, he has made high-profile public announcements telegraphing his anti-gun intentions and engaged in behind-the-scenes gun control — tweaking government regulations to deny gun rights to veterans, seeking the same for Social Security recipients, and using the ATF to ban certain types of popular ammo. Calling guns more dangerous than terrorism, Obama recently indicated he’ll devote the rest of his time as president to gun control.
But one event in particular fed fears of back-door government gun control: the unprecedented purchase of ammunition by the feds.
In early 2013, the Internet blazed with news that the Department of Homeland Security intended to purchase over 1.6 billion rounds of pistol and rifle ammunition. The order would fulfill DHS requirements for five years, reportedly. DHS has 55,471 employees authorized to carry firearms, which comes to about 5,800 rounds per year, per employee.
For perspective, during the first year of the war on terror, approximately 72 million rounds were expended in Iraq and another 21 million in Afghanistan — about 2,000 rounds per war fighter. Thus, giving DHS agents a much larger quota of 5,000 rounds did seem extreme.
Some people asserted the feds deliberately intended to dry up the private market for ammunition. Lawmakers demanded answers. Yet the overall requisition, in context, may not have been unreasonable.
[Listen to a recent interview with the author below:]
The largest order, 750 million rounds, came from DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) for instruction purposes. Another 650 million rounds were slated for Inspections and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. FLETC public affairs director Peggy Dixon said at the time that the purchase request was “a ceiling. It does not mean that we will buy, or require, the full amounts of either contract.” FLETC in fact uses approximately 20 million training rounds per year, and overall, actual DHS purchases have declined continually since 2009. In 2014, DHS-planned purchases were 75.1 million rounds, down from 84.4 million in 2013.
But there was more. In 2012, the Social Security Administration published a requisition for 174,000 rounds of hollow point pistol ammo — a particularly lethal type and certainly not suited for target shooting. Why on earth would the SSA need it? For that matter, why does SSA need a police force, much less highly trained SWAT teams? Do they anticipate an armed revolt by elderly Social Security recipients upset with their latest cost of living increases? Do they fear an anti-government conspiracy launched over tepid coffee in the reading lounges of retirement communities across the country? Given Obama’s attitude toward the elderly (e.g. “Granny, take the pill”) they may have reason to fear.
Again, though, many such purchases are based on a justifiable rationale — or at least justifiable for the size of the government we have. (Whether it should be that large in the first place is a very different question.)
An unfortunate consequence of massive government growth and expansion is the requirement for a law enforcement presence to oversee it all. One would not think the Social Security Administration or the Department of Agriculture, for example, would need a large law enforcement presence.
But welfare and food stamp fraud is epidemic. Some gangsters engaged in these activities are as dangerous as drug traffickers – and are involved, often, in both. Determined welfare fraud rings connected to organized crime are ripping off billions of taxpayer dollars. One of the most dangerous federal law enforcement jobs is — believe it or not — ole’ Smokey Bear, the National Park Service rangers, since a great deal of criminal activity takes place within the peaceful aura of life in the woods. (Marijuana fields, for example, are guarded by trigger-happy, AK-47 toting goons.)
At the same time, fears of an omnipresent federal law enforcement infrastructure are justified. The growing federal police force contains the potential to evolve into a police state.
The increasing use of SWAT-type raids against established businesses like Gibson Guitar, Duncan Outdoors and Mountain Pure Water Co., and countless smaller raids against other non-threatening targets for essentially routine administrative matters reinforce the belief among many that such a police state is just around the corner, if not here already. Innocent people have been killed in some of these unwarranted raids.
It is not the amount of ammunition purchases posing the threat. Instead, it is the ominous growth of federal law enforcement under a president who abuses power and ignores the constitutional limits of his office.
Obama has done his best to induce panic among gun owners. This, more than anything else, has created the shortages – driven by an unprecedented increase in private market demand. At the height of the frenzy, the NRA provided a good analysis in its American Rifleman magazine. While ammunition manufacturers are loath to admit exact production numbers, the NRA found that between 2007 and 2012, excise taxes on ammunition purchases doubled.
Many other reports tell a similar story, but it is easy to understand with a simple example. There are over 80 million gun owners in the U.S. If every single one went out and bought just 100 rounds – barely enough for one afternoon on the range – it would require 8 billion rounds of ammo. But many gun owners have been stockpiling, and retailers seek to purchase large quantities to capitalize on higher demand and prices. The shooting sports, meanwhile, have enjoyed a revival, even on college campuses.
Despite the unprecedented explosion in demand, the shortage is now largely past. After producing round the clock for years, ammunition manufacturers are now able to fulfill orders for most of the popular calibers, albeit at higher prices. Even the popular .22, long unavailable after supplies of other ammo reappeared, is finally coming back on the shelves.
While the ammo shortage was not caused by excessive government purchases, Obama can nonetheless take credit for creating justifiable panic among private citizens that prompted an unprecedented ammo buying spree that cleared retailer shelves for years. It would not be at all surprising to see another uptick in demand if Obama makes good on his threat to push more gun control.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-07-30 03:57:482016-04-11 10:58:19Where Have All the Bullets Gone?
