Hillary’s ‘Hunger Games’: May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

/0 Comments/in , /by

During her Tuesday night remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia actress Elizabeth Banks made a brief reference to her role in The Hunger Games series, but a far more substantive one developed over the course of the night.

Tuesday night’s theme at the convention was “Fights of Her Life,” meant to highlight the issues that Clinton has championed throughout her political career. Two sections to this theme were “kids and families” and “women and families.” What this essentially panned out to was a laundry list of child advocates shilling for the Democrat nominee followed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund CEO Cecile Richards doing the same thing.

What this equated two was an odd juxtaposition of policies that offer nine months of existential uncertainty for children, while lauding policies that direct huge amounts of public funding into programs meant to supplement and supplant the role of their parents.

Richards, whose organization made its first-ever primary endorsement for Hillary Clinton earlier this year, told the crowd that the former Secretary of State “will always stand up for the rights of every woman to access a full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, no matter her reproductive status.”

She then went on to add that Donald Trump’s statements about banning abortion, defunding her organization, and nominate pro-life judges to the Supreme Court are rooted in a “deeply disturbing worldview.”

Want and even more disturbing worldview? How about one that promises kids the world, so long as their mothers choose not to kill them.

It’s kind of like The Hunger Games, only instead of kids dying in mortal combat on state television, they die at the hands of an abortionist discreetly tucked away from the public eye.

In the dystopian world of Panem, described in the young adult fiction series by Suzanne Collins, children are pitted against each other by a totalitarian state in a massive annual fight to the death, but the surviving champions get to live out the rest of their days in state-furnished luxury.

In 2016 America, the kind of world that Clinton and Richards are pushing for (since safe, legal, and rare is apparently out the window now) is one where the state will fund a system where unborn children can be killed at any point, even up to birth, where they will then enter a statist’s paradise where — instead of eating lavish dinners off of mahogany tables — every aspect of their development is funded and scrutinized at every stage of development by an all-controlling federal government in the form of increased education budgets for state schools, more powerful teachers unions and more federal programs.

What other message could the Democrat Party possibly be sending to America’s children when Donna Brazile says that kids “have a champion” in Hillary Clinton before handing the limelight over to a woman who makes a living as the head of an organization that kills over 300,000 of them in utero every single year?

This contradiction — standing up for ostensibly pro-child policies while also calling for allowing their murder — isn’t the only parallel between a statist, pro-abortion Democrat vision and Collins’ Panem, but it’s one that the DNC has no problem putting it on national television.

To any children conceived under a Hillary Clinton presidency, may the odds be ever in your favor. (For more from the author of “Hillary’s ‘Hunger Games’: May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Donald Trump Would Most Likely Win the Election If It Were Held Today

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Allan Smith. If the election were held today, Donald Trump would likely win.

That’s what renowned statistician Nate Silver projected on Monday for his data journalism outlet FiveThirtyEight.

In his “Now-cast” election model for who would win if ballots were cast Monday, Silver gave the Republican nominee a 57.5% chance of winning the presidency.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had a 42.5% chance of securing the nation’s highest office if voters were to take to the polls Monday.

Silver’s model had Trump winning in the swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. He would win 285 electoral votes in Silver’s model. (Read more from “Donald Trump Would Most Likely Win the Election If It Were Held Today” HERE)

_________________________________

Polls: Trump Now Tied With Hillary After Convention and DNC Email Scandal

By Dustin Siggins. A series of new polls show GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in a statistical tie with presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — a dramatic reversal from just days ago, when Clinton was well ahead.

According to the newest Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of recent polls, Trump leads Clinton by 0.2 percentage points, 44.1 percent to 43.9 percent in a head-to-head race. While this means the candidates are in a statistically dead heat, this is a significant change from most recent polls, where Trump was several points behind.

Trump is closing the gap in other theoretical poll combinations, as well. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson’s inclusion in the polling has Clinton up by 0.4 points, and Clinton leads Trump by 0.6 points when Green Party nominee Jill Stein is included in the polling.

The new numbers look at most of the major polls conducted in the last two weeks. However, they come at an opportune time for Trump — days after a raucous Republican Convention where a prominent Senator refused to endorse his candidacy, and a day after Democrats saw an email scandal verify liberal concerns that the Democratic National Committee worked with the Clinton campaign to stop insurgent Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

RCP is not the only top polling group showing Trump reversing months of losing in the polls. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight shows the media mogul with nearly 60 percent odds of winning the White House in November compared to approximately 20 percent in late June. A CNN poll out Monday put Trump’s convention “bounce” at 6 points, enough to push him to a 3 point lead nationally.

If tradition holds, Clinton could expect at least some bounce herself from this week’s Democratic Convention. The four-day event, starring the former First Lady, her VP pick Senator Tim Kaine (R-VA), Sanders and President Barack Obama — among many others — gets underway today. (For more from the author of “Polls: Trump Now Tied With Hillary After Convention and DNC Email Scandal” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump and Bernie: Where have the ‘outsiders’ gone?

/0 Comments/in , /by

After Monday night the outsider narratives pushed by the Sanders and Trump campaigns during the primaries have finally both fizzled out into establishment coziness.

After months of railing against their respective party establishments, both populists have now started working together with those same establishments in order to forge something resembling party unity going into the election.

After thanking the bare minority of his supporters in attendance, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-V.T.), made it very clear that it’s time for everyone to get in line behind the presumptive Democrat nominee.

“Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency,” the former Democratic candidate at the party’s national convention in Philadelphia Monday night.

“This election is about which candidate understands the real problems facing this country and has offered real solutions … By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that – based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States.”

At a convention that already looks more divided than the RNC could have ever appeared on national television, the Democrat elite are already running around with their hair on fire in order to keep calm among a still-tremendously fractured base.

The protests are already bigger in Philadelphia than in Cleveland, and a few days after her cheeky tweet to RNC Chair Reince Priebus, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was booted from party leadership position after a slew of emails from inside the DNC revealed, among several other things, an internal plot to sink the Sanders campaign, despite the façade of neutrality that the party tried to put up for months.

But it doesn’t look like the Clinton Sanders rift is going to heal up that quickly, at least on the convention floor, as Sanders’ endorsement seemed to be the first mention of the former Secretary of State that didn’t draw an audible mix of boos and cheers.

At several points during the night, the mention of the presumptive nominee and her selected running mate drew loud, sustained boos from Sanders supporters throughout the program. During Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) speech, Bernie supporters chanted “war hawk, and they also shouted “we trusted you” and eventually erupted into long, sustained boos at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) after she endorsed Clinton onstage.

Bernie even tried to quell his still-devout followers on Monday afternoon. Against the chants of protestors saying “we want Bernie,” the senator raised his hand in the air and said to the crowd, “brothers and sisters, this is, this is the real world that we live in.”

“Trump is a danger for the future of our country and must be defeated … And I intend to do everything that I can to see that he is defeated.”

On the GOP side, unity seems more of a demand than an appeal. The past two weeks in Cleveland put Donald Trump’s current collusion with the Republican establishment on full display as well. As evidenced by everything from the combined whipping efforts on the rules committee that eventually ensured that there would be no roll call vote and that the RNC would retain its current level of authority over the grassroots, or having whips tell delegates to boo Ted Cruz onstage, the New York real estate developer’s outsider narrative from the Republican party now seems like a distant memory from the primary election.

In this context, Ted Cruz is the only “outsider” candidate from the primary season who can still claim a scrap of street cred at this point in the cycle. By refusing to endorse Donald Trump in Cleveland last week and encouraging voters to vote their conscience, the Texas Senator managed to earn the respect of grassroots conservatives and those conscionably incapable of supporting the Republican nominee, as well as the seemingly unforgiving ire of those demanding party unity solely for the sake of beating Hillary Clinton.

And the backlash for the Texas Senator is still rolling out days after his Wednesday speech. In addition to short term damage to his image in the polls among Republicans, he’s now having to deal with allegations against his father on an even grander scale than before.

Donald Trump doubled and tripled down on his comments about the Senator’s father two days after the conscience speech, and even the RNC Chair Priebus and DNC communications director Luis Miranda have gotten in on the fun, both, in some way, defending Trump’s speculation on the subject.

And now even some of Cruz’s donors are distancing themselves in light of the convention speech.

The establishment strikes back, hard; stay in line, or else.

But this is the realm of party politics, where yesterday’s outsider is tomorrow’s company man, yesterday’s insurgency is tomorrow’s game of “rally ‘round the candidate,” and the establishment duopoly still reigns supreme. (For more from the author of “Trump and Bernie: Where have the ‘outsiders’ gone?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama’s War on the Police Is Real

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Obama administration has been using the controversial practice of sue and settle to engage in a federal takeover of local police and corrections departments.

The way the regime works is the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ) files a suit against a city, county or state, alleging constitutional and civil rights violations by the police or at the prison, and the local government simply agrees, resulting in wide-reaching policy changes being imposed on local police and corrections departments via the federal court order.

An Americans for Limited Government review of Department of Justice reported court documents and public statements has revealed a number of cases being brought against major city police departments — and settled without contest.

For example, a 77-page March 30 consent decree between the Department and the City of Newark, N.J. that resulted from a 2011 investigation, a 2014 series of findings by the Civil Rights Division and then finally a federal lawsuit alleging police misconduct in the U.S. District Court in the District of New Jersey.

The original complaint alleged that the Newark Police Department (NPD) “has engaged in a pattern or practice of constitutional violations in its stop and arrest practices, responses to individuals’ exercise of their rights under the First Amendment, uses of force, and theft by officers. The investigation also revealed that the pattern or practice of constitutional violations stems in part from deficiencies in NPD’s systems that are designed to prevent and detect misconduct, including its systems for reviewing force and investigating complaints regarding officer conduct.” (Read more from “Obama’s War on the Police Is Real” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Ivanka Channels Ted Cruz, Says She Votes Her Conscience

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ivanka Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention Thursday night was met with rave reviews from those who tuned in.

But one Twitter user noticed something the pundits weren’t picking up on.

Lest you forget, the Trump supporters at the RNC booed Cruz during his speech when he said:

How is that different from what Ivaka Trump said? (It isn’t.)

And also note, when Ms. Trump wasn’t confirming Ted Cruz’s point, she was reiterating Hillary Clinton’s. (For more from the author of “Ivanka Channels Ted Cruz, Says She Votes Her Conscience” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Faith, Politics and Mike Pence

/0 Comments/in , /by

GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence makes no bones about the role of faith in his life. “I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” he is fond of saying.

As Pence takes to the stage Wednesday night in Cleveland, the time is ripe to look closer at the faith walk of the man who may well end up a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Early Years

Mike Pence grew up in a devout Catholic family that, according to the Indy Star, didn’t talk politics at the table. Sundays meant Mass at St. Columba, and like his three brothers, Pence served as an altar boy.

“Our life revolved around the church,” Gregory Pence, one of Mr. Pence’s two older brothers, told The New York Times.

When Pence went off to college at Hanover College in Indiana, he didn’t leave religion behind. Instead, he found fellowship with believers in other branches of the church body.

“I began to meet young men and women who talked about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” he would tell the Christian Broadcasting Network years later. He began seeking a deeper relationship with the Lord.

While attending law school at Indiana University, he spotted a girl playing a guitar in a church choir. Her name was Karen. As The New York Times tells it, “After they started dating, she bought a gold cross with the word ‘Yes’ engraved on it, and kept it stashed away in her purse until he proposed.”

Karen Pence “has been very much a part of his faith journey,” friend Mark Bailey told the Times, “He would refer to his wife as the prayer warrior of the family.”

At a Christian music concert in 1978, Mike Pence gave his life to Christ.

Faith in Action

“I think he will tell you very openly he made a commitment to Christ as a young adult,” the Indy Star quotes law school pal Bill Stephan as saying, “I think he’s pretty serious about his prayer life, and his actions and deeds reflect his faith. That’s part of what motivates him to public service.”

Inspired originally by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Kennedy, and later by Ronald Reagan, Pence’s political career has been particularly noted for his stance as a social conservative guided by his evangelical Christian beliefs.

As Indiana governor, Pence signed into law one of the most stringent abortion laws in the U.S., banning abortions when a fetus has a disability. Said Pence, “I sign this legislation with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers and families.” He’s fought to end federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

A strong believer in traditional marriage and religious rights, he championed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana, declaring in his 2015 State of the Union address:

I will not support any bill that diminished the religious freedom of Hoosiers or that interferes with the constitutional rights of our citizens to live out their beliefs in worship, service or work. … No one should ever fear persecution because of their deeply held religious beliefs.”

After intense pressure from LGBT activists, businesses and potshots from the President, Pence agreed to amend the act, but continues defending its core principle of religious liberty.

He also cited his faith in his defense of Israel, as the Religious News Service noted, telling AIPAC in 2009, “Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel.”

When Political Ambition Collided with Christian Conviction

Pence’s faith plays out in the political arena beyond just policies. He never dines alone with a woman who is not his wife, and while in Congress was known for avoiding booze-filled events if Karen was not present. “If there’s alcohol being served and people are being loose,” he told The Hill in 2001, “I want to have the best-looking brunette in the room standing next to me.” As the Times reports, “Fellow representatives sometimes joked about the need to clean up their language when he was approaching them in the halls of Congress.”

Pence had run for Congress before, but his religious convictions got steamrolled by his political ambitions.

In 1988 and 1990, Pence ran against incumbent Democrat Phil Sharp. Both times, Pence went negative. Very negative. A million advertising dollars worth of negative. In one ad, which the IndyStar said had been considered the most negative ad in Indiana history, Pence had an actor dressed as a Sheikh thanking Sharp for the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Pence lost both races. But crucially, he came to see his approach as un-Christianlike. “I really screwed up on this,” he told a colleague, “It’s not me.” He would publicly apologize to Sharp and publish an essay in 1991 titled “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner.”

“He vowed he would never run a negative campaign again,” political science professor Brian Vargus said in 2012, “And if you look, he has not.”

“It’s wrong,” Pence said that same year, “to use one’s brief moment in a political debate to talk about what’s wrong with your opponent, as opposed to what’s right with your ideas.”

Already the questions are mounting as to how Pence’s vow will play as he partners with a twice-divorced candidate who shoots out insults like a Gatling gun. Donald Trump, for his part, says he’s not expecting Pence to play the traditional V.P. attack dog roll. “I call her ‘Crooked Hillary’, he told 60 Minutes, “but I don’t think he should do it, because it’s different for him. … He’s not that kind of person.” When asked about it by The New York Times, Pence’s brother Gregory simply said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Pence is expected to bring his irenic, gentlemanly manner to the campaign. “I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it,” he says. “Let’s be cheerful partisans and happy warriors.”

His faith is expected to be front and center as he seeks the second highest office in the land. And he can expect comments like this once uttered by a political columnist in Indiana and quoted by the Times, “Pence doesn’t simply wear his faith on his sleeve, he wears the entire Jesus jersey.”

But he can also be expected to express how crucial traditional values are the governance of our nation. As he told the Family Research Council’s Value Voters Summit in 2010, “Those who would have us ignore the battle being fought over life, marriage and religious liberty have forgotten the lessons of history. America’s darkest moments have come when economic arguments trumped moral principles.” (For more from the author of “Faith, Politics and Mike Pence” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

It’s Time for the GOP to Demand A “McCexit”

/0 Comments/in , /by

The world has been transfixed with an anti-establishment frenzy against aristocratic politicians and governments that have failed to listen to the voice and will of their people.

That anti-establishment battle is currently underway in the United States, where a vitriolic populace has given rise to Donald Trump. Across the ocean, in the United Kingdom (UK), British citizens implemented “Brexit,” a referendum to return sovereignty, formerly given to the European Union (EU), back to Britain.

Temperaments among the American people are similar, but the statesmen-like reaction to the public unrest in the U.K. is starkly different than what America is experiencing with our own politicians here at home. The success of the controversial “Brexit” campaign led to U.K.’s Prime Minister, David Cameron (a strong advocate for staying in the EU), to accept the wishes of the nation; in doing so, he stepped down, paving the way for fresh leadership, saying:

“[the country needs] fresh leadership” and “I love this country and feel honored to have served it … the will of British people must be respected.”

Those who led the Brexit campaign, like London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, and United Kingdom Independence Party leader (UKIP), Nigel Farage, were both positioned to surge in popularity and power. Yet, they also stepped away from the podium. Johnson, assumed to become Prime Minister, took his name out of contention; Farage retired.

There are certainly some who feel those politicians abandoned their objective to see Brexit through to fruition. However, it is also remarkable to contemplate that true statesmen might put country before careers; tough choices before lucrative ones.

Imagine, for a moment, if Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 42%) surveyed the deteriorating landscape of the Republican party and determined that the GOP required fresh leadership.

According to Gallup polls, McConnell is far more unpopular than even President Obama. President Obama has a national favorability rating just under 50 percent. McConnell’s favorability rating, however, is only 11 percent nationally.

There also appears to be a strong correlation between the Republican Party’s general popularity and McConnell taking over the Senate. In May, Pew Research showed that the Republican Party was more unpopular than it had been in the past two decades.

Why does this matter? There is a tremendous amount at stake if Republicans lose the Senate. Perhaps nothing is more important than how the Senate decides to handle the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. If the Senate shifts to the Democrats in 2017, the Supreme Court (and our nation) will appoint a progressive to the bench, and the Court will, for the first time in 45 years, shift from conservative to liberal.

Among all the issues McConnell should seek to protect, the first is the Senate’s majority, and with it, the authority to confirm a new Supreme Court Justice, and protect the Court’s conservative majority. Yet, McConnell is the very person placing the Senate in jeopardy merely out of selfish desire for power and prestige.

McConnell is a liability to the Republican Party – and more and more people are beginning to realize this. (After all, he showed up to the GOPs largest event – the Republican National Convention – and was nearly booed off stage.)

McConnell’s colleagues are worried too. The Public Policy Polling organization concluded in a analysis of the Senate in May:

Mitch McConnell’s unpopularity continues to be a huge drag on the brand of Senate Republicans. Only 11 percent of voters nationally approve of the job he’s doing as Senate Majority Leader, to 61 who disapprove. Incumbents running for reelection across the country this year will be hurt by their association with him.

Whether you like McConnell or not, everyone can agree that the vulnerability in losing the Supreme Court will have an immense impact on all of our lives. McConnell has clearly become a burden on the party. A true statesman that cared for his constituency and country would step aside and allow new leadership to step in. But not McConnell.

The time has come for McConnell to exit. The time for America’s politicians to imitate British politicians is now; it’s time for the Republican Party to have a referendum on McConnell’s leadership. It’s time for America to have its “McCexit.” (For more from the author of “It’s Time for the GOP to Demand A “McCexit” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

POOR, INNOCENT, NAIVE SHEPARD SMITH: Completely Clueless as to Why Cops Are Being Slaughtered

/0 Comments/in , , /by

In the wake of another horrific ambush of police officers earlier today in Baton Rouge, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was actually arguing with the Governor of Louisiana a few minutes ago.

He was saying, in essence, that no one has a clue as to how to stop this madness.

I beg to differ, Shmuckard, I mean, Shepard. How about electing a President who actually treats people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin? Who waits until facts emerge before opining on law enforcement issues?

The President of the Cleveland Police Union put it bluntly today, stating that “President Obama has blood on his hands.”

Detective Steve Loomis, President of the Cleveland Police Union, was interviewed on Sunday on Fox News. He described the situation that began with Alton Sterling. The president of the United States validated the nonsense and false narrative that the Black Lives Matter and the media spewed with his divisiveness, he said.

The detective called for someone to put an end to this.

It’s “insane” that a governor of Minnesota and a president of the United States made the statements they made one day after the police-involved shootings, the union chief said. They absolutely and directly triggered these senseless murders of law enforcement officers throughout this country. “It’s reprehensible”, he added.

They have politicized the false narrative and the president has “blood on his hands” and it “will not be washed off”, Officer Loomis said.

Officer Loomis wants to know how police officers became the bad guys. We have celebrities and athletes spewing venom at them.

A false narrative has been handed down from the White House all the way down the offices of government to inflame racial tension.

From the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, to “the police acted stupidly”, to calling America “a nation of cowards”, this president and his administration have done their very best to sow racial division, discord, and civil unrest.

All is proceeding as they have planned. (For more from the author of “POOR, INNOCENT, NAIVE SHEPARD SMITH: Completely Clueless as to Why Cops Are Being Slaughtered” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What Happened to Trump’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric?

/0 Comments/in , /by

Donald Trump largely built his candidacy on three things:

1. Unprecedented free, unfettered media coverage. Far greater than all his primary competitors combined, in fact.

2. His own bravado, which was manna from heaven for a populace starving for anything other than the consultant-driven drivel typically served up.

3. Cynical manipulation of racial/religious identity politics.

It is that third item that it’s time to revisit in light of day two of the GOP convention, which closed with a Muslim prayer. See, much of Trump’s base really believed all that anti-Muslim rhetoric. In fact, his so-called “Muslim ban” was his most popular policy initiative according to all the exit polls nationwide.

But if there was ever any further confirmation needed this was all for show, and a con all along, tonight’s closing prayer was it. Not because it displayed religious pluralism. I don’t believe in Allah, which is why I’m not a Muslim. But I understand not everyone in America believes as I do.

Rather, because the pluralism on parade tonight is a complete and total repudiation of the canard Trump sold his base for months. As he cynically capitalized on liberal stereotypes of Republicans, because he’s a New York City liberal, too.

So all of you who overlooked the fact Trump is not and never has been with us on the issues, simply because you believed he shared your nationalist frustrations, you are now part of a select group of people. Those swindled by Donald Trump.

Now who’s the cuck? (For more from the author of “What Happened to Trump’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Baton Rouge Cop Shootings Epitomize Obama’s Failed Legacy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Here we are again mourning the deaths of three more police officers, this time in Baton Rouge, who were executed by the mass movement of inner city insurrection legitimized by the media and political class, starting with the president himself. Much like the real possibility of weekly Islamic terror attacks has become the new normal, so have attacks on police officers by domestic terrorists.

One of Obama’s enduring legacies will be the collapse of law and order at three levels: 1) on an international level with the mass Muslim Brotherhood uprisings throughout the Middle East, leading to the proliferation of Islamic terrorism 2) the collapse of our sovereignty with the entrance and release of tens of thousands of dangerous criminal aliens into our communities and 3) the rise of domestic insurrection against the civil society under the cloak of battling the police, which has jeopardized law enforcement throughout the country and those they are supposed to protect.

And let there be no misunderstanding, this is not a conflict between the “Black Lives Matter” movement and the police; this is a war against the civil society itself. The cops are an easy scapegoat. They have no major lobby or constituency. They have no uniform and personal agenda or vendetta other than carrying out the law of their local governments duly elected by the people. It would be much easier for them to not enforce law and order. Who needs the headaches? Who needs the constant target on their backs? Who needs to be caught refereeing a riot in middle of the night with war-like risks and dangers but without the tools and rules of war?

This is the lesson of the Baltimore basket case. I’ve lived near the Baltimore City/Baltimore County border all my life and have never seen crime this bad, even during the pre-Giuliani era. After seeing fellow officers accused and charged with murder for doing basic police work, city cops have simply made the decision that it is easier to not do their jobs than risk being punished for doing so. Baltimore experienced the sharpest increase in murders per capita of any city in 2015. Even in the middle class neighborhoods, there are endless burglaries, often at night. A man was stabbed in his home at night during a home invasion about a mile from me last month. It is a well-known secret in the area that if a crime occurs on the city side of the border, the Baltimore police will often give the case over to the county cops because they know city cops are de facto prohibited from taking action.

Thus, what some in the media believe is a conflict with cops is ultimately a conflict with the broader society officers are charged to protect. As targeted murder of police becomes the new normal, so too does rising crime in major metropolitan areas.

This is all rooted in a lack of moral clarity. Out of hundreds of thousands of law enforcement operations every day, one can always find a YouTube video of a handful of incidents in which the cops made questionable moves or where one individual officer downright buckled under pressure and wrongly shot a suspect. Buoyed by social media and an already-existing anarchist-minded political party, movement, and media, it’s easy to portray this as a systemic problem – part of an agenda to just randomly kill people, particularly blacks. It has led to a phony narrative, even from many Republicans, to promote “criminal justice reform” as if there is a valid premise of an out-of-control police culture in the country. Paul Ryan recently set up a Congressional panel to study the problems between cops and black citizens, implying there is some inherent problem with police across the country.

In reality, the root of the problem is an out-of-control society particularly in inner cities that has led to a culture of violence. Sure, under increasing stress from protecting the broader society from this violence, one can find individual cops who make mistakes in reacting to the problem. But they are not the source of the problem.

There is no moral equivalence here. The moral relativists are always determined to manufacture two morally equal sides in a conflict and often repeat the empty mantra of “both sides need to stop the cycle of violence.”. This is the same nonsense we hear between Israel and the Palestinian terrorists. Sure, moral relativists will always have an incident or two or a YouTube clip or two at the ready to show an Israeli genuinely doing something wrong in reaction to the systemic terror. But for every one of those incidents there are dozens more in which Israelis act excessively restrained and endanger their society in order not to pursue the terrorists with vigor. Moreover, these individuals are not the source of the problem, even if one disagrees with their reaction or tactics at a given moment. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likes to say, as a way of cutting through the man-made moral fog, “if Palestinians were to lay down their guns tomorrow, there would be no war. If Israel were to lay down theirs, there would be no Israel.”

The same truism applies domestically between the cops and predominantly young black male criminals. For every instance in which a cop is found to use excessive or inexcusable force, there are countless cases where they endanger themselves and others by declining to use force, particularly with black suspects because they are scared of the blow back. For every young black male that some might feel is sitting in prison for too long, there are countless others that are never caught or never convicted. The source of the problem is the leadership and values in these communities, not the reaction to it. If people were to look inward as a community and reform their entire lifestyle, there would be safety and security in our cities, and most importantly, in their own neighborhoods. If the cops just decided to lay down their weapons … well … America would look just like Baltimore. And unfortunately, with Obama downright validating the civil insurrection that places cops in untenable situations, we might not have to wait too long for that to happen. (For more from the author of “Baton Rouge Cop Shootings Epitomize Obama’s Failed Legacy” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.