It’s still true. Donald J. Trump really really happened.
Every morning faithful conservatives wake up and for a brief, fleeting moment believe life is normal. We are still in the throes of the primary. Conservatives still have a chance. And then, reality comes crashing down. Donald Trump, the ethics-free extraordinaire, is our party’s nominee. Oh, and our other choice is Hillary Clinton.
But, despondent and downtrodden is no way to go through life. On the bright side, the eye-poppingly disgusting comments from Trump’s former butler (#richpeopleproblems) about wanting to kill President Obama is the latest of your daily reminders why it was never a wise idea to hop aboard the Trump train.
(The ol’ quote about Trump hiring the “best people” never gets old, does it?)
Gallows humor. We’re going to need it this year.
Coming to terms with Trump doesn’t mean endorsing, enabling, or supporting his, or his surrogates, or former employees behavior. Like a wild dog off the leash, perhaps a treat could be thrown his way when he does something good, but defensive, cautious posture at a far away distance is best.
And while safely away from danger, some introspective thinking needs to be done. Conservatives should be honest with themselves about what went wrong. Without blaming it all on party leaders, or the poorly devised and accelerated primary process, or something beyond our control, although those are major contributing factors.
Something happened yesterday that clicked this into focus.
The Washington Post announced that Clinton has a plan, without any announced funding mechanism mind you, to provide “affordable child care,” which comes in addition to universal pre-school and paid family leave. (And, if Bernie Sanders is successful in pushing her further left, tuition-free college.)
Of course all of these policy ideas will require massive amounts of government intervention and intrusion into deeply personal areas of our lives. The policy ideas are wrong, but it is unwise to completely ignore the issues Clinton is raising.
Finding affordable child care is a very real problem working families face. In many areas of the country, child care is more expensive than college. There isn’t any financial aid available for child care, either. And, while it may be ideal for one parent to stay at home with the children, that isn’t an option for many for any number of reasons.
When I amicably asked on Twitter yesterday what Republicans would say to counter Clinton’s plan, I was met with derision by some friends, as if I were asking for my own special handout. If doing things such as ending the marriage penalty is a handout, however, sign me up.
(For what it’s worth, Mike Lee and Marco Rubio have worked on alternative reform ideas, which have been met with tepid reaction.)
But, this is the same old story.
Democrats announce a big, terrible idea that has great polling. Some Republican say, let’s do something half as bad so we don’t get beat. Conservatives say that’s unconstitutional. And Democrats win. That’s what happened with Obamacare. And immigration. And well, you name it.
Somewhere along the line, it seems many conservatives forgot how to just talk normally and help people.
“Because, Constitution! Because, principles! Because, free markets!” are ineffective and cheap arguments for or against anything. These arguments didn’t win in a GOP primary. Let that sink in.
Even self-evidently good policy requires salesmanship.
Enter Trump: Build the wall. Make America Great Again. With a no apologies, media accessible attitude.
Enter Clinton: Free stuff! Make history, elect me!
It’s sort of ironic. Trump is a remarkable salesman without any ideology. Clinton is a pretty ideologically driven candidate who lacks salesmanship. Judging from the GOP primary, in this sort of competition, the odds are in Trump’s favor.
Running on ideological will always differences be important. But, as Trump’s success demonstrates it ain’t everything. Ideology should be the underpinning of a campaign; not the alpha and the omega. Ideology should be compatible with solutions, but never divorced.
The presidential candidacies of Trump and Clinton may be a nightmare, but if it helps wake up conservatives from their tired old conversations perhaps it won’t be entirely traumatic. (For more from the author of “Making the Best out of Trump Versus Clinton” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Trump__Clinton.jpg14532115Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-13 20:25:472016-05-13 20:25:47Making the Best out of Trump Versus Clinton
During the 2016 Republican primary season, the Conservative Review presidential profiles became a go-to place for conservatives looking to vet the Republican candidates. As the calendar turns towards the general election, CR has added a profile of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Here’s a sample:
Clinton has been a partner, with her husband, in political life for close over forty years. Together they are one of the most powerful couples in American History. They have completed almost twelve years in the governor’s mansion in Arkansas, two terms as president, eight years in the Senate, and four as Secretary of State. They have successfully pushed the country leftward in their time in public life.
Clinton herself, is to the left of her former husband’s governing record. As she has gained power she has shed any veil of being a centrist. This is most evident in her stance on social issues. When it was the safe political play to be against gay marriage she was, now that the mainstream media has changed tune so has Clinton. In the past she said she was for making abortion “rare” she now espouses an abortion on demand position.
When given access to power, Clinton has often used it to benefit herself and her cronies and places herself above the law. When her husband became president she was central to the professional travel staff in the White House Travel office being replaced with her Arkansas associates. Her use of a private email server to exchange classified information is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
CR has looked into Clinton’s positions on a wide range of issues, including the budget, spending, debt, civil liberties, education, energy and environment, foreign policy and defense, the free market, health care and entitlements, immigration, moral issues, the second amendment, and taxes, economy and trade.
As with our primary season coverage, CR will update the profiles of Clinton and Trump as the election season progresses. CR will also write a profile of the libertarian nominee for president when the Libertarian Party selects him or her at the end of May. (For more from the author of “How Liberal Is Hillary Clinton?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/3177408973_31af61c3ab_b.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-13 01:34:282016-05-13 01:46:53How Liberal Is Hillary Clinton?
#12 “We just can’t trust the American people to make those types of choices … Government has to make those choices for people.” [to Dennis Hastert regarding Americans selecting their own health insurance policies when she was pushing for HillaryCare]
#11 “This is the great story here, for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
#10 “We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
#9 “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.”
#8 “Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody’s going to believe them.” [on a series of women accusing Bill Clinton of sexual assault]
#7 “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.”
#6 “He ran a gas station down in St. Louis… No, Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader of the 20th century.”
#5 “Come on Bill, put your d*** up! You can’t f*** her here!” [to Gov. Clinton when she saw him talking with an attractive female]
#4 “God bless the America we are trying to create.”
#3 “F*** off! It’s enough I have to see you s***-kickers every day, I’m not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G***amn job and keep your mouth shut.” [to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with “Good Morning”]
#2 “With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”
#1 “And don’t let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you that, umm, you know, that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
(For more from the author of “12 Funniest (and Most Diabolical) Hillary Clinton Quotes” please click HERE)
I agree with Bernie Sanders. That’s right. I said it. Never thought I would, did you?
I agree with Bernie Sanders when he rails against the corruption of big banks. I, like Bernie, opposed the government bailout of politically-connected Wall Street investment banks in 2008. At the time, it was a lonely and brave stance to take inside the Washington Beltway.
I also agree with Bernie Sanders that these politically-juiced banks are too big to fail; that TARP made the risky, over-leveraged ones bigger still. I agree with Bernie when he says that these banks pose a major threat to our economy.
I agree with Bernie Sanders’ demand that we audit the Federal Reserve, and I applaud his work with Rand Paul to demand accountability from this quasi-government, big bank slush fund. Bloomberg News reports that the Fed floated some $1.2 trillion to banks and other businesses from 2007 to 2010. That’s T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N. (And we wonder why Millennial Berners are now looking for a student loan bailout?) The manipulation of the value of the dollar and interest rates by the Federal Reserve is the most insidious kind of tax, transferring purchasing power from the working class to the most moneyed, politically-connected Americans.
I, like Bernie, worry about the political influence of big corporations. I am opposed to crony capitalism, the growing collusion of big businesses with big government. There’s nothing “free enterprise” about using politics to divide and reallocate taxpayer spoils to the benefit of particular corporations. We should always oppose regulatory favors, spending earmarks, and special access used to gain advantage over other business competitors.
I agree with Bernie Sanders’ critique of Hillary Clinton. I too worry about her cozy relationship with the well-heeled donors to the Clinton Foundation. What exactly did she and Bill promise them in return? What is the quid pro quo for, say, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
Like Bernie Sanders, I oppose Hillary Clinton’s naive, bellicose, neoconservative approach to foreign intervention and nation-building. As a senator, Hillary voted to invade Iraq in 2002. I, like Bernie, opposed invading Iraq then, in the heat of the moment, believing that regime change there would be bad for American security. More recently, Hillary’s war in Libya has absolutely, unequivocally created more chaos in the region. Taking out Muammar Gaddafi, dirt bag that he was, has destabilized Libya, empowered our enemies, and made America less safe.
I absolutely agree with Bernie Sanders on the question of mass incarceration. Like Bernie, I know that federal meddling in our justice system, particularly imposing mandatory minimum prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, has been a disaster. Federal prison populations have exploded, fueled in large part by Bill (and Hillary) Clinton’s “tough on crime” bill in 1994. It was political posturing, not real justice reform, and now the United States jails more people per capita than any nation, save communist hell hole North Korea.
I agree with Bernie Sanders on all of these things, but he loses me when he moves beyond symptoms to solutions. The above listed problems are all examples of the unintended consequences of a political process that concentrates too much power and money in Washington, D.C. And yet Bernie consistently says the solution to virtually every real or perceived social problem can be achieved by giving politicians more power and more of your hard earned money.
Wait. What?
The answer to problems created by the abuse of government power is… more concentrated government power? This is where I part ways with Bernie Sanders. Every single flavor of socialism involves more government ownership, more government control. Figuring out how to expand political power without abusing it—without the disastrous unintended consequences that are inevitable whenever government designers try to rearrange complex social interactions from the top, down—has always been the fantasy unicorn of democratic socialism.
There’s no good way to wield unlimited power. When dividing the spoils of politics, the insiders—the crony capitalists, the defense contractors, the prison and police unions, the politically-connected investment bankers and their lobbyists will always get a seat at the table first.
Respectfully, I say to Bernie Sanders: the only way to achieve your best intentions is through liberty, not government power. The answers to America’s many problems will be solved by voluntary cooperation, and individual entrepreneurship, and free market competition, and communities working together locally to solve problems that no planner in Washington ever could. (For more from the author of “Just Like Unicorns, Sanders’ Policy Solutions Aren’t Real” please click HERE)
North Carolina has sustained unrelenting and coordinated attacks from big business, the entertainment industry, the American Civil Liberties Union, and now the federal government over its commonsense bathroom policies.
Gov. Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature have had enough of this bullying and filed separate lawsuits against the Department of Justice Monday in the reasonable expectation that a federal judge will order the ideologues at the Department of Justice to back off.
The Department of Justice filed its own suit in response hours later. At stake is up to $4.5 billion in federal education funding under a 1972 law known as Title IX, and a sea change in employment relations if the Department of Justice prevails under a 1964 law known as Title VII.
I must say, I’m very disappointed in my former colleagues at the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. They know very well that when Congress banned discrimination “on the basis of sex” in 1964 and 1972, it did not mean “gender identity.”
It disrespects the very notion of the rule of law for them to hold otherwise, but that is exactly what they have done by threatening North Carolina with lawsuits, fines, and revocation of federal funds because they dared to write in law what most people consider simple common sense—that biological men should not be given unfettered access to public bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms set aside for the needs, safety, and privacy of biological women.
But if you thought the latest front in the bathroom wars was limited to North Carolina, you’d be mistaken.
Laws from the 1960s and 70s designed mostly to protect girls and women from rampant sexism and harassment at work and in schools are now being used by the Department of Justice to cow school districts to grant boys the right to undress in the girls’ locker room (and vice versa), all in the name of psychological comfort and acceptance. When President Barack Obama said he still has a pen and a phone this is apparently what he meant.
These developments prove that same-sex marriage was merely the start, not end, of the left’s LGBT agenda. The radical left is using government power to coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology over and above their right to privacy, safety, and religious freedom.
The people of North Carolina did not pick this fight. It was thrust upon them by the city of Charlotte after it passed an ordinance requiring private businesses and schools to change their bathroom policies to allow men in the women’s bathrooms. Charlotte was the aggressor and North Carolina restored the status quo that let businesses decide their own bathroom policies.
To see how radical the left’s agenda is, consider that North Carolina law allows accommodation of people who identify as transgender with single-occupancy facilities in government facilities, so people who identify as transgender will have more options than those who don’t. But the left and the Department of Justice have rejected this reasonable approach, and insist on nothing less than total victory by total affirmation.
To add to the problems, the definition of gender identity changes about every three months, so the rules we are supposed to live by are constantly moving. Under proposed rules from the Department of Health and Human Services, sex would mean not just male or female, but also “neither, both, or a combination of male and female.”
Indeed, a few months after the federal government forced a neighboring school district to allow boys into the girls’ locker rooms or lose federal education funds, Chicago Public Schools discovered that sex is merely “a label a person is assigned at birth” and that the reality lies in one’s internal “psychological knowledge” of their own gender “regardless of the[ir] biological sex.”
This includes “male/man/boy, female/woman/girl, trans/transgender, gender variant, gender nonconforming, agender, gender non-binary, or any combination of these terms.” According to the left and some corporations, there are 60 possible gender identities.
The people of North Carolina should not be blamed for resisting such radical changes when there are real victims on the other side. Students in school districts facing these novel bathroom policies have spoken out against them and in favor of privacy.
Female victims of sexual abuse have explained that, while they are careful not to associate transgender people with predatory behavior, they cannot deny that seeing any stranger of the opposite sex undressing in intimate settings can be traumatizing and trigger memories of past abuse. Their voices deserve to be heard, too. And we are already seeing allegations of men not even identifying as women taking advantage of laws that have mandated access to locker rooms and bathrooms based on gender identity. That these laws will be abused are not unfounded fears:
-Virginia, Nov. 17, 2015, a man dressed as a woman arrested for spying into mall bathroom stall.
-California, April 2016, Fullerton man arrested on suspicion of filming people in a Chapman University bathroom.
-Maryland, Feb. 10, 2016, Maryland teacher charged with filming sex videos in school bathroom.
-Ohio, March 22, 2016, teen arrested after videotaping a 13-year-old girl in the bathroom and forwarding the video to other students.
-Iowa, Feb. 16, 2016, University of Iowa Police locate suspect videotaping in women’s shower.
-Pennsylvania, April 21, 2016, Pennsylvania man arrested for taking photos of a 10-year-old girl in a public restroom.
These are a sampling of examples found here and here.
But whatever one thinks about gender identity, safety, and modesty, it is not the Department of Justice’s role to make up the law on this issue simply because it thinks it is lacking. Can we really still speak of it as “law” when one administration’s ideologically driven “guidance” and reinterpretations can potentially lead to overruling duly-enacted state laws?
If the next administration revokes the Department of Justice’s guidance, will the allegedly unlawful behavior instantly become lawful?
Our Constitution was designed to prevent this sort of arbitrary concentration of power and North Carolina was right to push back against the federal government’s unprecedented overreach. (For more from the author of “DOJ’s Lawsuit Against North Carolina Is Abuse of Power” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-9.jpg14112267Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-09 23:01:512016-05-09 23:01:51DOJ’s Lawsuit Against North Carolina Is Abuse of Power
If you want to know how Democrats will go about trying to destroy Donald Trump if he is the Republican presidential nominee, look no further than a campaign ad recently released by Conor Eldridge, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas running as a Democrat against Republican Senator John Boozman.
One suspects that we will see a flurry of such campaign commercials in districts across the country in races up and down ballots during the 2016 general election if Trump is to triumph in the GOP primary.
As President Barack Obama did with Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton and a media that has to this point enabled Donald Trump’s rise with $2 billion in free messaging will seek to define Trump so damningly that Clinton will look comparatively angelic — which is saying something — ensuring his fall.
The Donald will be cast as a bigoted, misogynistic, unscrupulous oligarch with no principles except a lust for power. When Trump comes out swinging directly at Hillary, she will become just another one of Trump’s victims.
To his discredit, the New York businessman has provided the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) with a target-rich environment for making this case over his decades in the public eye. And best of all for Democrats, their attacks will not only be powerful, but have the benefit in some instances of being true.
One suspects that the opposition research file will be rich with examples of, among other things:
Individuals burned by Trump’s business dealings
Duped Trump University students
Disgruntled ex-Trump employees
Homeowners squelched by Trump’s use of eminent domain for personal gain
Trump supporters who have partaken in acts of violence, threatened journalists and others and/or exhibited an animating ideology of neo-Nazism and white supremacism
The worst or most ill-conceived of Trump’s words, a la the Eldridge ad, but also with respect to Hispanics and others, which can be easily juxtaposed with the words of sympathetic women, Hispanics and others
The ads write themselves.
And as with Sen. John McCain in 2008, a media that to this point has served effectively as a friend, thanks to its hours of free airtime, will instantly become a foe. Recall that Sen. McCain was labeled a “maverick” by mainstream media outlets, and embraced by Democrats for his willingness to take Leftist positions against his party. The day he won the Republican presidential nomination, the formerly fawning press turned their guns on him unmercifully.
While the media has certainly proven more hostile to Trump than McCain during this election cycle, mainly in response to his rhetoric and lack of decorum (note: less so his “heterodox” ideology), its efforts to date have had the effect of providing Trump with a reliable enemy to rail against which resonates with his supporters, all while constantly keeping him in the news cycle.
The media in fact has had good reason not to seek to destroy Trump outright to date. First, Trump is good for ratings, which means he is good for business. Second, by enabling Trump’s rise, the media has created a candidate that they believe is incredibly weak given his unfavorable ratings and the aforementioned devastating charges that can be leveled against him. While the media may have underestimated Trump’s political acumen, and the mood of the American electorate to date, nevertheless they know that a concerted effort can be used to break him down just as they built him up. If Mitt Romney, a decent man and moderate Republican with a stellar business record, could have his image utterly sullied, imagine what the media can do with The Donald. Third, especially as more Establishment Republicans signal their approval, even if tacit, of Trump, he will be used as the representative of the party generally and conservatism in particular. The goal? To toxify those with an “R” next to their name in a bid to take back Congress. Trump may very well have the blood on his hands of real conservatives, few though they may be in Washington.
“Electability” is hard to evaluate, especially given Trump’s unpredictability and the Teflon nature of his candidacy to date. But what is undeniable is that negative and devastating Trump ads will be ubiquitous and likely highly effective come the general election season if Trump is the nominee, as reflected in the aforementioned ad already being run in Arkansas. (For more from the author of “This Is How Democrats Will Absolutely Destroy Donald Trump If He’s the Nominee” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-118.jpg7201280Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 23:03:592016-05-07 23:22:36This Is How Democrats Will Absolutely Destroy Donald Trump If He’s the Nominee
Is the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet headed for an apocalypse which will bring it to its knees? We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and apocalyptic themes have become very common in books, movies, television shows and video games. It is almost as if there is an unconscious understanding on a societal level that something very big and very bad is coming, even if the vast majority of the population cannot specifically identify what that is going to be. Last week, the Global Challenges Foundation released a new report entitled “Global Catastrophic Risks 2016” in which they discussed various apocalyptic events that they believe could wipe out more than 10 percent of the population of our planet, and they warned that these types of events “are more likely than we intuitively think”…
Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: “There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won’t happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way.
“History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks.”
According to this new report, we are five times more likely to die from the various apocalyptic catastrophes that they analyzed than we are from a car accident.
In this article, I want to discuss some of the most important threats that they analyzed, in addition to adding some of my own to the list. But first I want to mention that I do not believe that the Global Challenges Foundation is correct to identify climate change as one of the most significant catastrophic threats that humanity is facing. Our climate has always been changing, and I do believe that we will see wild climate shifts in the years ahead. However, human activity plays an exceedingly small role in all of this, and there is not very much that we can do to prevent what is going to happen either. Most of the climate change that we are going to see in our future is going to be as a result of other catastrophes in this list, so I have not included it as a separate item.
With that being said, let’s quickly examine some of the potential threats identified by the Global Challenges Foundation…
Supervolcanoes
In various locations around the globe, there are gigantic supervolcanoes which could dramatically change the course of human history in a single moment by erupting. In the United States, the Yellowstone supervolcano is becoming increasingly active, and a full-blown eruption could potentially be up to 2,000 times more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980. As I mentioned the other day, major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City and Denver would be essentially destroyed, food production in this country would be virtually wiped out, and a “volcanic winter” would cool global temperatures by up to 20 degrees for up to several years.
Asteroids And Comets
This is something that the Obama administration is actually quite concerned about. During his tenure, NASA has established a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” that is in charge of tracking giant space rocks, and NASA is working to develop a method to destroy incoming asteroids using nuclear weapons.
Scientists admit that they only know about a small fraction of the near-Earth objects that are actually out there, and we get hit “by surprise” all the time. If we were to get hit at just the right place by a very large object, like say just off the east coast of the United States, the consequences would almost be too horrible for words.
Today, 39 percent of all Americans live in counties that directly border a shoreline, and most of those people are along the east coast. According to the University of California at Santa Cruz website, if a huge asteroid did slam into the Atlantic Ocean, it could potentially produce a 400 foot high tsunami that would sweep inland for many, many miles and kill millions upon millions of Americans in the process.
Natural Pandemics
The flu pandemic of 1918 killed approximately 50,000,000 people worldwide, and scientists assure us that it will happen again one day.
Yes, we have come a long way in fighting disease, but as we learned during the recent Ebola outbreak, a really nasty virus can grip the entire world with fear in a very short period of time.
Engineered Pandemics
This is probably even a bigger threat than natural pandemics, because now we have the technology to genetically alter naturally occurring diseases and make them even stronger.
Whether it is on purpose or by accident, it is only a matter of time before a genetically-modified superbug gets released into the general population, and when that day arrives it may make all previous pandemics look like a Sunday picnic.
Artificial Intelligence
Could someday entities that we have created turn on us and start killing us?
Some might refer to this as “the Terminator scenario”, and it is becoming more realistic with each passing day as our technological capabilities continue to increase at an exponential rate.
Geoengineering
The human race now has the capability to purposely modify the weather, and this means that we also have the capability to do a tremendous amount of damage.
Have you ever looked up and noticed long white trails criss-crossing the sky? This is being done on purpose, and when they spray chemicals into our atmosphere it could have some very severe long-term consequences that the authorities may not be anticipating.
Nuclear War
Back during the Cold War, most Americans would have probably named this as the number one catastrophic threat facing America, but these days most people tend to believe that “the Cold War” is over.
So nobody has really objected while the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal has been reduced by about 95 percent, and Barack Obama insists that he would like to reduce it even further.
Meanwhile, both the Russians and the Chinese are rapidly modernizing their nuclear forces, and they both have developed hypersonic glide vehicles that can defeat any missile defense system that the U.S. can put up.
Our relationship with Russia has already gone down the tubes, and our relationship with China is rapidly deteriorating. In fact, China just rejected a request for the USS John C. Stennis to make a routine port call at Hong Kong. Most Americans assume that a war with either one of them is impossible, but the truth is that we may find ourselves in a conflict with both of them at the same time eventually.
The catastrophic threats above were ones that were mentioned in the report from the Global Challenges Foundation. Below are some additional items that I would like to add to the list…
Islamic Terror
It isn’t just ISIS that we need to be concerned about. Islamic terror is exploding all over the planet, and according to Wikipedia there have already been 95 such attacks globally so far in 2016.
Up until now, they have been killing us with guns and bombs, but what happens when they inevitably get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons?
Terror attacks using weapons of mass destruction could literally turn our society completely upside down virtually overnight, and it is only a matter of time until this starts happening.
Power Grid Failure
Someday you may wake up and discover that the power grid has totally failed. Just try to imagine a world without any lights, cell phones, computers, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators or hospital equipment. A massive electromagnetic pulse, either from the sun or as the result of a nuclear blast, could instantly plunge society back into the 1800s.
The EMP Commission spent years studying this, and they told Congress back in 20o8 that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could be dead within one year of such an event due to starvation, disease and the breakdown of society. So this is a threat that people better start taking seriously.
Cyberwar
World War III will not be fought like previous wars, and the Internet is one area where we are particularly vulnerable. The Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans have all been working very hard to develop their cyberwarfare capabilities, and I was recently told by someone that has deep connections inside the U.S. intelligence community that our power grid could be taken down with just the push of a button. That is how easy it would be.
With each passing year, we are all becoming more and more dependent on the Internet. So what would our lives be like if it was suddenly gone?
That is something to think about.
Economic Collapse
If you want to watch society melt down right in front of your eyes, just take away all of the goodies. On The Economic Collapse Blog I have written more than a million words about the coming economic problems in this country. We got a very small taste of what is approaching in 2008 and 2009, and yet most people do not seem to have taken that warning seriously. Since that time, our long-term economic and financial problems have grown far more dire, and now the early chapters of a new economic crisis are unfolding right in front of our eyes, and yet still most people don’t seem to be alarmed.
If you want to see how devastating an economic collapse can be on a nation, just pick up a history book and start reading about the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unfortunately, what we are heading for is going to be a whole lot worse than that.
Civil Unrest & Martial Law
As the economy collapses and other things on this list start happening, people are going to be absolutely freaking out. A whole host of polls and surveys have shown that anger and frustration have been building up to unprecedented levels in this country, and at some point there is going to be a huge explosion.
Desperate people do desperate things, and we got small previews of what is coming in Ferguson and in Baltimore. Violent crime rates are already rising in our major cities, and many among the elite are getting out while the getting is good. In fact, 3,000 millionaires left the city of Chicago last year alone.
Of course whenever civil unrest erupts, the government responds by trying to regain control, and eventually things are going to get so bad in this nation that we will start to see martial law imposed in various areas. We saw a little bit of this in Ferguson and in Baltimore, but that was nothing compared to what we will eventually experience.
Catastrophic Earthquakes
A historic earthquake along the New Madrid fault seismic zone, the Cascadia Subduction zone or any of the major faults in California could affect millions of lives, cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and literally change the geography of our continent.
Personally, I believe that those of us that are fortunate enough to live long enough will witness historic earthquakes in all of those areas, and scientists assure us that all three zones are way overdue for major seismic events.
Even if just one of the catastrophic events that I have discussed above were to take place, it would completely change society.
Unfortunately, I believe that we are entering an era of history in which a “perfect storm” that consists of a confluence of these catastrophic events will shake this nation to the core.
So what do you think?
Do you agree or disagree? (For more from the author of “The End of America? 13 Catastrophic Events Which Could Soon Lead to an American Apocalypse” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-114.jpg9001600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 23:01:562016-05-07 23:26:10The End of America? 13 Catastrophic Events Which Could Soon Lead to an American Apocalypse
In 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder invited attorneys-general across America to not defend laws banning same-sex “marriage” if they could not do so in good conscience, stating that he would not have defended segregation laws in the past if he had been required to.
This pattern continued when the DOJ petitioned the Supreme Court to redefine marriage in the Obergefell v. Hodges case last year to the point that current Attorney General Loretta Lynch issued a congratulatory statement on June 26, 2015, after the Court took it upon itself to change the very definition of marriage.
Lynch closed her statement with these words: “The Justice Department is proud to have been a part of this journey, from Attorney General Eric Holder’s unwavering leadership in advancing the cause of equality to the groundbreaking progress we have witnessed today. Going forward, we are committed to standing on the side of equality — and standing with the LGBT community — to keep up the fight for safety, opportunity, dignity and justice for all.”
What the DOJ has now made clear is that in its aggressive solidarity with the LGBT community, it will wage war against the rights of everyone else. Be aware and be on guard, conservative Americans and people of faith. The DOJ might soon be targeting you.
This past Wednesday, May 4th, “U.S. Justice Department officials repudiated North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on Wednesday, telling Gov. Pat McCrory that the law violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Title IX — a finding that could jeopardize billions in federal education funding.” In the typical fashion of bullies, the DOJ’s letter gave North Carolina five days to respond “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.”
Should North Carolina refuse to bow to this pressure, it could risk losing $4.5 billion in federal aid to its 17 universities, all because the state ruled that men should not be able to use women’s locker rooms and bathrooms in public facilities.
Talk about an outrageous example of government overreach. Talk about Big Brother in action.
In response, Gov. Pat McCrory said to North Carolina business leaders that the DOJ letter is “something we’ve never seen regarding Washington overreach in my lifetime. “This is no longer just a N.C. issue. This impacts every state, every university and almost every employee in the United States of America. All those will have to comply with new definitions of requirements by the federal government regarding restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities in both the private and public sector.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest had even stronger words for the Obama administration, saying, “To use our children and their educational futures as pawns to advance an agenda that will ultimately open those same children up to exploitation at the hands of sexual predators is, by far, the sickest example of the depths the … administration will stoop to (to) ‘fundamentally transform our nation.’”
As for Title IX, which the Department of Education (DOE) claims requires schools to allow transgender-identified students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity rather than their biological sex, a new lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Thomas More Society demolishes this faulty reasoning — the very reasoning that is behind the DOJ’s attack on North Carolina.
The suit has been filed “in federal court against School District 211 and the Department of Education (DOE) on behalf of 51 district families who rightly claim that the district and the Department of Education ‘trample students’ privacy’ rights and create an ‘intimidating and hostile environment’ for girls who are being forced to share the girls locker room and restrooms with a boy who wishes he were a girl.”
In the words of ADF Legal Counsel Matt Sharp, “No government agency can unilaterally redefine the meaning of a federal law to serve its own political ends. The Department of Education is exceeding what it is legally and constitutionally allowed to do. In fact, at least five other federal and state courts have rejected the DOE’s interpretation of Title IX.”
It is critical that these matters be pressed in the courts, and we need to publicize this new lawsuit as loudly and widely as we can. Justice and sanity and common sense and fairness must prevail, otherwise the nation will completely unravel. And while these cases are being litigated, it is imperative that families, schools, churches, businesses, cities, and states stand up to the bullies and expose their illicit tactics. Only then will the bullies back down.
In my 2011 book A Queer Thing Happened to America, I devoted more than 50 pages and 138 endnotes to the topic of “Big Brother Is Watching and He Really Is Gay,” noting that, “The really frightening thing is that it would be easy to write an entire book focusing on the subject matter of this chapter alone, and the book could be much longer than this present book — and this is one long [700 page] book!”
Just four years later, in Outlasting the Gay Revolution, I cited scores more examples, noting that here too I was only scratching the surface. What is coming next?
This much is sure. With the DOJ’s latest actions, we can safely say that we have moved from “Big Brother Is Watching and He Really Is Gay” to “Big Brother Is Taking Action, He’s Radically Pro-Gay, and He’s Coming Your Way.”
To be forewarned is to be fore-equipped. (For more from the author of “When the DOJ (Department of Justice) Became the DOGA (Department of Gay Activism)” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Rainbow_flag_and_blue_skies.jpg20003008Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-07 01:43:542016-05-07 03:11:43When the DOJ (Department of Justice) Became the DOGA (Department of Gay Activism)
Hold your horses, Trump supporters. Hold your horses. When I say, “We’ll examine what went wrong,” come on. You know exactly what I’m talking about, from the standpoint of Cruz supporters. They’re the ones trying to figure out what went wrong today. They are looking for explanations, and I’m sure they have their own at the same time. But we’ll get into all that. Let me give you one little thing: My instinctive feeling right now is that Trump is gonna win, beat Hillary badly, that it could be landslide proportions.
I still don’t think people understand why Trump won this. I don’t think they understand at all the reason people support Trump. And the deeper people are entrenched in politics, and the more they are accustomed to the templates and the handbooks and the theories and the playbooks, the less they’re gonna understand it. The more they try to plug Donald Trump and his campaign and his personality into the professional politician candidate playbook that they use, the farther and farther from the truth they are going to get.
I’ve tried to help. During the course of this entire campaign, I’ve gone to great lengths to try to explain to people what it is about Trump, why he has his supporters, why they support him, and what you have to do to separate them from Trump. Basically, you can’t. That’s the bottom line. There’s nothing any professional politician can do. They’ve done everything that they knew how to beat a candidate. They threw everything they had at Trump. I mean, the negative ads that they ran against him, these #NeverTrump guys and their PACs in all these states?
In indiana alone the amount of money spent on negative ads against Trump? And it didn’t work. And in their world, negative ads always work. So they’re out there scratching their heads today. You’ve got #NeverTrump people saying, “I said I was never gonna vote for Trump, and I’m never gonna vote for Trump — and I mean it.” You’ve got some people thinking about looking for third-party candidate. Others, it’s a matter of honor, a matter of principle, to never vote for Trump. But they’re caught between that and Hillary Clinton becoming president. (Read more from “My Gut: Trump Beats Hillary in Landslide” HERE)
Is there an increasing hostility to Christian values and religious freedoms in our country today? Here are seven representative examples, all from the last few weeks. Judge for yourself.
1. The NCAA announced that it will not hold any men’s and women’s Final Four basketball events in a city that “discriminates” against anyone based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
In its official statement, the NCAA declared, “The board’s decision follows the recent actions of legislatures in several states, which have passed laws allowing residents to refuse to provide services to some people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. While proponents of the laws focus on how they protect religious beliefs, critics have voiced concerns that they create an environment of sanctioned discrimination.”
Not only, then, has the NCAA grossly mischaracterized these recent laws, but it is now guilty of discriminating against biblically based beliefs and declaring that no Final Four game will be held in any city that does not allow men to use women’s bathrooms or that protects a Christian photographer from being forced to shoot a same-sex “wedding.”
2. The Colorado Supreme Court has chosen not to hear the case of Christian baker Jack Phillips who was previously ordered by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission “to create cakes for same-sex celebrations, re-educate his staff, and file quarterly ‘compliance’ reports for two years.”
According to Jeremy Tedesco, Senior Counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, “We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living. Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees, and that freedom shouldn’t be placed in jeopardy for anyone.”
The Court declined to hear the case, meaning that the state’s Civil Rights Commission not only has the power to require a bakery to make same-sex “wedding” cakes but also to require that baker to “reeducate” his staff and file regular reports proving that he is baking those cakes.
Chairman Mao would be proud of state-mandated “reeducation” like this.
3. Dr. Eric Walsh, the highly qualified, newly hired District Health Director with the Georgia Department of Public Health was fired because of the content of his sermons as a Seventh Day Adventist.
As expressed by Jeremy Dys, an attorney with First Liberty, which has taken on Walsh’s case, “No one in this country should be fired from their job for something that was said in a church or from a pulpit during a sermon.” And as noted by attorney David French, “Working for former president Bush and President Obama to combat AIDS, serving as a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and starting California’s first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with HIV/AIDS wasn’t sufficient to overcome the horror at Walsh’s Christian views.”
How dare he preach what the Bible says and try to serve his country at the same time.
4. Several senators have introduced a bill that would deem “all efforts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity an ‘unfair or deceptive act or practice’ under the Federal Trade Commission Act.”
That’s right. It would be illegal — a form of “medical malpractice” — to counsel someone struggling with same-sex attraction or gender identify confusion, but it would be perfectly legal to encourage someone to embrace those attractions or act on that confusion.
Already in 2009, conservative journalist Matthew Cullinan Hoffman wryly observed:
A man goes to a psychologist with a problem. “Doctor,” he says, “I’m suffering terribly. I feel like a woman trapped inside the body of a man. I want to become a woman.”
The psychologist responds: “No problem. We can discuss this idea for a couple of years, and if you’re still sure you want to be a woman, we can have a surgeon remove your penis, give you hormones for breast enlargement and make other changes to your body. Problem solved.”
Gratified, the first patient leaves, followed by a second. “Doctor,” he says, “I feel terrible. I’m a man but I feel attracted to other men. I want to change my sexual preference. I want to become heterosexual.”
The psychologist responds: “Oh no, absolutely not! That would be unethical. Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic!”
Family therapist Adam Jessel offered a similar observation: “In today’s climate, if Bill tells me that he is attracted to his neighbor Fred’s young child and he wants to reduce these attractions, I, as a therapist, can try to help him. If Bill has an unwanted attraction to Fred’s wife, this too is something I am permitted to help him with. But if Bill has an unwanted attraction to Fred himself, then it’s regarded as unethical for me to help.”
If this new bill becomes law, it would not only be considered unethical to help Bill deal with his same-sex attractions, it would be illegal.
It would also be illegal to help a person get to the root of his or her gender confusion, but it would be perfectly legal for a counselor to recommend hormone blockers for a 10-year-old to stop the onset of puberty and then to prepare that child for sex-change surgery as soon as they were old enough.
Here are a few more examples, in shorter form, all from recent weeks.
5. The NBA announced that it will not hold next year’s All-Star game in Charlotte, North Carolina unless the state changes HB2, the Bathroom Privacy Act.
So, unless North Carolina agrees to let grown men use women’s locker rooms and changing facilities, and unless it removes protections for religious liberties, it will be punished.
6. The Department of Education has decided, “Religious schools that receive federal money yet obtain federal exemptions to [allegedly!] discriminate against LGBT students and employees will have their waivers posted online for public view.”
This means that any Christian institution receiving federal money and at the same time holding to biblical morality and sexuality could suffer adverse consequences.
“Led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the lawmakers said in December, ‘We are concerned these waivers allow for discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.’”
Oh, those terrible religious freedoms!
7. As reported on Breitbart News, “A federal court sided with a transgender student who insisted that the Obama administration’s reading of federal Title IX rules would allow her to choose her own bathroom at her Virginia high school.”
According to the exultant Virginia ACLU, “With this decision, we hope that schools and legislators will finally get the message that excluding transgender kids from the restrooms is unlawful sex discrimination.”
In other words, no matter of what kind of hardship or inconvenience this puts on the rest of the students, and without any type of scientific proof that a child is actually “transgender,” the perceived needs of the one or two struggling children will be imposed on the other 1,000, and the Obama administration will come after your school if you fail to comply.
What’s scary is that I could have listed quite a few more examples, all from the month of April.
Believers in America, if somehow you are still sleeping, it is high time you woke up. (For more from the author of “7 Sure Signs America Has Declared War on Our Faith” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/cross-1367851869dD1.jpg407615Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-05-03 01:01:242016-05-03 01:01:247 Sure Signs America Has Declared War on Our Faith
Is there an increasing hostility to Christian values and religious freedoms in our country today? Here are seven representative examples, all from the last few weeks. Judge for yourself.