“A revolution,” Wikipedia says, “is a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that take place in a relatively short period of time when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities.”
In Europe and America, revolutions are brewing. They are peaceful and democratic, but they are going to send the elites home that are running our nations into the ground.
I have just reread Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Westminster speech, in which he predicted that freedom and democracy would soon send the communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe and Russia to “the ash heap of history.”
Reagan spoke of “Poland’s struggle to be Poland.” And today, three decades later, history is about to repeat itself in the United States and in several West European countries. Of course, I am not comparing our current political elite with the Communist dictatorships with their prison cells for dissidents, but the fight of a nation to be itself, remain itself and defend its identity, that fight is also being waged today.
We are witnessing America’s struggle to be America, and the struggle of several European nations, among them the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany and many others to preserve their identity and liberty, to remain the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany. Everywhere, patriots are on the march. We are living the Patriot Spring. (Read more from “Geert Wilders: The Patriot Spring” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-26 23:45:042016-04-11 10:53:25Geert Wilders: The Patriot Spring
We are either a representative republic or we are ruled by a judicial oligarchy. It’s time to choose once and for all.
Once again, we mark another grim anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which paved the road for over 58 million abortions since 1973. This year, in particular, marks a poignant milestone in the fight for the unborn, as the agenda of the abortionist movement has been exposed as one that, far from limiting the practice to being “safe and rare,” champions butchery in the mold of the ancient Moloch. The entire panoply of perverted liberal intellectualism on other issues stems from the moral decadence rooted in the death cult of abortion.
However, aside from the 58 million souls that were deemed unfit for protection in the few dozen pages of that court opinion, our constitutional republic and entire system of governance became threatened as well. From that point onward, the courts have been legitimized as the final arbiter of the most important political and societal questions of a given generation, the very decisions that were supposed to be left to the people’s representatives. It was from that decision that the courts not only became the supreme authority of the land, but completely countermanded the Constitution as was originally written and intended: to be used as a guide for acting as the supreme authority. As William Brennan used to tell his law clerks, “With five votes you can do anything around here.”
From Roe onward, the courts have been able to concoct “fundamental rights” that are not only omitted from the Constitution, they are antithetical to our founding values. At the same time, they infringe upon our unalienable rights or green light the other branches of government to do so. Thus, our Constitution was ruled unconstitutional.
It was through the Roe decision (among other Warren-era decisions) that the 14th Amendment, which was intended to do nothing more than guarantee freed black citizens the life, liberty, and property rights of every other citizen, was perverted into a mandate for “rights” that would have shocked the consciousness of the Reconstruction-era Congress.
At the time of the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868, 36 states and territories had laws on the books banning abortions. Yet, we are told that the Constitution, and even the 14th Amendment as originally conceived, is unconstitutional and preempted by the evolving interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which is rooted in nothing but the political imagination of the judges. And unlike politicians who must stand for reelection, these judges now get to engage in political issues, serve as the final authority, and never stand before the people for reelection.
That we tolerated this coup d’etat for even one year is astounding, yet we’ve sat passively for over 40 years watching the courts build precedent upon precedent of anti-constitutional legal fog to destroy our Constitution even further. It represents a colossal failure of the professional “conservative movement.” It has led to the pro-live issue being used as ceremonial window dressing to elect more Republicans whose modus operandi has saddled us with the judicial tyranny we have today.
For quite some time, a number of legal theorists on the right figured that we’d benefit from a strong judiciary at least when we needed them to strike down liberal laws passed by Congress or state legislatures when they are legitimately unconstitutional. Yet, as witnessed by Obamacare, state gun laws, and many of Obama’s immigration acts, these strong judges are nowhere to be found.
The core job of the judiciary is to interpret the statutes passed by Congress, yet they refused to hear a case against Obama’s DACA, which flagrantly violates immigration statues. Just yesterday they refused to hear a case against Obama’s lawless EPA carbon emissions rule, which violates executive authority under the Clean Air Act. And while judicial review of laws passed by legislatures is controversial, if we are going to abide by an all-powerful judiciary that invalidates state marriage laws dealing with the building blocks of civilization, how could they not toss out state gun laws violating the plain language of the Constitution?
The answer, of course, is that the Constitution the courts use is the Democratic Party playbook or the pagan gospel of the legal profession that has roped in a number of Republican judges as well. As such, property rights, gun rights, and religious liberty are stripped out of the Constitution and abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, and immigration are inserted in.
There is no greater threat to our democratic republic than the court system as it is currently and illegally constituted. Part of my upcoming book will be dedicated to the imperative of stripping the courts down to size and how that can be accomplished. There are endless reasons why this is among the most important priorities of our time. But for now, on this 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, let’s remember there are also 58 million other reasons to reclaim our system of governance from the courts. (For more from the author of “58 Million Reasons to Reclaim America From the Courts” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-22 23:42:372016-04-11 10:53:3158 Million Reasons to Reclaim America From the Courts
Like clockwork, political campaigns degrade to low-rung rhetoric for some candidates. They also bring old acquaintances out of the woodwork who didn’t like you then and don’t like you now.
Such is the reported case for Conservative Presidential candidate Ted Cruz and a film writer in Hollywood. Conflicts in principles and ideas appear immediately apparent in any sentence that mentions Conservative and Hollywood. The Senator and the writer, Craig Mazin, have a very brief history. They were reportedly on the same dorm at Princeton during Freshman year. Mazin has been dogging Ted Cruz with attacks that surfaced nationally during the Conservative’s 2012 run for the Senate.
A skilled trash-talker, who weaponizes Twitter, screenwriter Mazin resorts to schoolyard taunts and name-calling worthy of a bully who enjoys attacking someone who rises above the ugly fray and chooses to walk away. Say, a Christian, perhaps. In a less profanity tinged missive about Cruz, Mazin recently tweeted: “Getting emails blaming me for not smothering Ted Cruz in his sleep in 1988. What kind of monster do you think I am? A really prescient one?”
What is really going on here? What would possess an adult film writer to resort to the pettiness and mean-spirited jargon of a pubescent adolescent? What could a Hollywood screenwriter have against a Senator who runs for office in the defense of faith, freedom and patriotism? The question likely answers itself.
Assuming that Mazin is for freedom and patriotism, possibly it is the issue of faith that so sticks in his craw. It is well reported that the young Ted Cruz was principled in prayer in his college days. Senator Ted Cruz hides his Christianity from no one. It is safe to say that his faith is an irritant at best for a writer of scripts that the Motion Picture Rating (MPAA) assigns an R-Rating for “graphic nudity, violent images and drug use.” It can be said for Mr. Mazin that he stands by his “graphic nudity, violent images and drug use” in his films and his juvenile, low-grade tweets.
There are others with differing opinions. Famed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz (a renowned Liberal) calls Ted Cruz “off-the-chart brilliant”. Now, that’s got to hurt a guy like Mazin whose tweeted claim to fame is: “In 1988, I puked all over Ted Cruz’s textbooks.”
A closer look at Senator Ted Cruz and his support of the faith may only give Mazin fuel for his Twitter fire. Possibly, however, there may be a lesson in it for who Ted Cruz is today as opposed to how Mr. Mazin chooses to conjure him up during the college years. Assuming that it is the Christian faith that has Mazin all rankled, he may find the following highly disturbing. That Cruz put his years of law school to work and prevented a “takeover” of churches by the Obama administration could create a full-on, tweet blast from Mr. Mazin.
While Mr. Mazin was writing Hollywood films which can have great cultural impact, both good and bad, Ted Cruz was already protecting faith and freedom of religion before ever announcing a run for the Presidency.
In 2013, Senator Ted Cruz (TX-R) exposed unprecedented power grabs by the Obama administration in multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Cruz stood firm against Obama’s Justice Department in these cases and successfully helped block an attack on the faith and its pastors:
“If the Department of Justice had won these cases, the federal government would be able to… “dictate who churches choose as ministers…” — Ted Cruz (The Legal Limit: The Obama Administration’s Attempts To Expand Federal Power)
On the Obama Justice Department’s hit list was freedom of religion with Christianity as the primary target. Long a bane to the Progressive Left (that rejected God from it 2012 Presidential convention) is that the Ten Commandments – that are foundational to the Judeo-Christian faith – served as the biblical inspiration for both the U.S. Constitution and Capitalism. True Christians stand with Israel much to the disdain of Democrat Presidents from FDR, to Jimmy Carter, to Barack Obama. True Christianity is a blockade to bigotry and tyrannical aspirations.
In an outrageous attempt to increase its power, the Obama administration attempted to usurp the right of a church to choose its own pastors. In the case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the Justice Department reportedly argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it “had the right to oversee a church’s choosing of ministers.” The Supreme Court foiled Obama’s egregious attempt to curtail a fundamental right of churches. In a 9-0 opinion, the justices sided in favor of the Lutheran Church.
The day Barack Obama swore on the Bible to uphold the U.S. Constitution – which includes the freedoms of speech and religion – the assault began. Obama’s gibes at Judeo-Christian belief and scripture are well documented. Gaining control of who preaches in Christian churches would have given the Obama administration control of the message. Obama acolytes in the pulpit would be in position to convolute the scripture to serve their political ideologies.
Socialist-Progressives in the Democrat Party are going to great lengths to escape the authority of God, preferring to live by their own countenance and self-devised morality while attempting to subjugate or eliminate God out of society. In a head-fake to voters, many assume the role as pretenders of faith. Those who outsmart themselves in matters eternal, including those in Washington and Hollywood, go so far as to cherry-pick the Bible and mismatch or purposely convolute scriptural intent to serve their political agenda.
That Ted Cruz professes the Christian faith may cause any number of Hollywood screenwriters angst. If so, that explains it. Though just being conservative, or simply independent in thought, has always been enough to tee-off any Hollywood liberal worthy of their far-Left credentials. Third-grade name calling or vitriolic rhetoric, whether from the Left or from the Right, that does not promote serious discussions — does the country no service. The message to Mr. Mazin is that the pillars of faith on which Ted Cruz professes to firmly stand cannot be knocked down. Whether a bitter sounding, former acquaintance can cheapen the national dialogue, that is a whole other matter entirely. (For more from the author of “Ted Cruz, Hollywood and Faith” please click HERE)
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Sharon Sebastian, author of the book, “AGING: WARNING– Navigating Life’s Medical, Mental & Financial Minefields,” is a columnist, commentator, and contributor in print and on nationwide broadcasts on topics ranging from healthcare, culture, religion, and politics to domestic and global policy. Sebastian’s political and cultural analyses are published nationally and internationally.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-22 23:38:362016-04-11 10:53:31Ted Cruz, Hollywood and Faith
Looking ahead to the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday, February 1, IVN predicts that Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders will win their respective caucuses. However, IVN further predicts that the parties will find a way to take these wins away from them.
Every election year, IVN makes at least one prediction about the outcome of a major race. In 2012, IVN called Florida for Barack Obama before any other news outlet. In 2014, IVN projected that U.S. Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) was going to keep his seat in a hotly contested race against Republican Carl DeMaio.
This year, though the media reports a tight race going into the Republican and Democratic caucuses, IVN predicts that Trump and Sanders will take the most votes from caucus participants and win their respective contests.
Both Trump and Sanders have strong support, not only from members of the Republican and Democratic parties, but from voters who are fed up with the status quo and feel disenchanted or disenfranchised by the current political system or cannot find a home in any political party.
The Republican leadership has frequently rebuked the candidacy of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is often at odds with the Democratic National Committee, which briefly denied him access to the party’s voter database in December and scheduled a limited number of debates on the weekend, an inconvenient time for a presidential primary debate. (Read more from “Prediction: Sanders, Trump Will Win Iowa” HERE)
I went to see 13 Hours on opening night in Dallas. It’s a visually beautiful and deeply moving film that tells the truth on a topic of urgent importance. It depicts the effects on the ground of America’s feckless foreign policy under Barack Obama, as Hillary Clinton implemented it — the same foreign policy which she will carry on if elected president. Liberal internationalism, as practiced by jaundiced, pro-Muslim elites, has only one likely outcome: Americans spending their courage, treasure, blood and tears in the bottomless sands of the desert.
It’s possible to find 13 Hours disappointing, if what you were hoping for was campaign agitprop that would fix the blame where it squarely belongs — on Obama and Clinton. I would have enjoyed seeing some solid finger-pointing at the deeply guilty parties, but as a lover of cinematic art, I am glad this film didn’t do that. Those Americans who died deserve a better epitaph, a film whose politics are decently draped, left for the intelligent viewer to work out on his own. Had Steven Spielberg made this movie, he would have done exactly what he did in Saving Private Ryan: spell out for the moviegoer exactly what he should think and feel at any given moment — doing all but flashing titles cards that read “OK, cry now,” “Please pound your armrests with frustration,” and “Now squeeze your spouse’s hand affectionately.”
I’m also glad as a citizen that Michael Bay chose to make subtler movie than Spielberg’s. The deadly farce of Benghazi, unlike the Normandy Invasion, is too little known by the public, and a film that connected all the dots that led to the Oval Office would have found a much smaller audience. Its release would have been restricted, and it would have played like one of Dinesh D’Souza’s worthy films to theaters full of activists. Benghazi is bigger than that, and the movie that tells its story of courage and sacrifice deserves a solid, commercial success — as 13 Hours is proving, I’m glad to say.
Scathing agitprop is much needed, and it will come later, once this film has reminded Americans exactly what happened and why it matters. I am confident that superpacs supporting the Republican nominee will purchase footage from 13 Hours, and use it with devastating effect against Hillary Clinton, one architect of this tragedy. I look forward to seeing those ads turn up on Youtube, and forwarding them widely. But first let us mourn the dead.
Make no mistake, if Benghazi had happened on George Bush’s watch, we would have seen a very different film. A careless intervention to promote “democracy” in a godforsaken Muslim hellhole that ended in bloody anarchy, and led to the murders of four Americans, including a serving U.S. ambassador. … Just imagine if Michael Moore had gotten his digits on something like that. He would have intercut footage of Bush playing golf or chuckling at a joke with stills of dead Americans and terrified Arab civilians. He’d have taken the persistent rumors that Stevens was raped by an Arab mob and run with them, leaping from high moral dudgeon to low, vulgar “prison film” humor as it suited him. Moore would have treated the movie’s viewers as like-minded sophomores gathered around the bong in an Oberlin dorm for two hours of tut-tutting, sneering, and slapping themselves on the back. By the end, no one would have learned a thing, but they would walk out feeling fantastic.
Instead, this movie sends you out with damp eyes and heavy heart, and the firm resolve as a citizen to think more deeply about what our country is called to do in this fallen world. No, you don’t get a chance to understand the enemy. The film makes no pretense of opening up for us a culture that praises child suicide bombers, and traffics in captured sex slaves. The Islamists in this film who wave ISIS flags and recklessly pour out their lives in the face of American firepower are not amenable to our empathy. Nor are their countries liberal democracies-in-waiting, which just need a strong push from U.S. soldiers to get back on track. They are on a dark, doomed track all their own, which began in the seventh century and cannot be changed by our efforts — except our prayers. (For more from the author of “13 Hours Could Be More Politically Significant Because It Doesn’t Politicize Benghazi” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-21 23:02:282016-04-11 10:53:3413 Hours Could Be More Politically Significant Because It Doesn’t Politicize Benghazi
As we approach the Iowa caucuses the fight is heating up about which Republican candidate deserves the support of committed Christians. A core of long-time Evangelical activists has strongly endorsed Ted Cruz — and been answered by fervent counterblasts. In the New York Times, David Brooks claimed that Cruz is a vindictive Pharisee, possessed of a pagan “brutalism,” a charge ably answered by The Stream’s own Jay Richards, and by Hunter Baker over at The Federalist, who delves into Brooks’ own recent book to show how Brooks misreads Cruz’s character. Again at The Federalist, Paul David Miller (a Rubio supporter) accuses Cruz of reducing Christian witness to a form of “identity politics,” a question I’ll address in depth in my next column.
We can differ on many issues, on prudential questions such as whether it’s more authentically Christian to favor installing democracy in majority Muslim nations such as Syria, or whether that will end up (as it did in Iraq) enabling genocidal Islamists. (For my take, see the recent column “49% Vegetarian, 51% Cannibal: Democracy Is Not Good.”) But when we choose a candidate, we aren’t just ticking off issues. We are also weighing character, and asking ourselves whether this person is someone we trust with the ultimate earthly power, the “Sword of Caesar.” So let’s step back for a moment and think about character in the classical Christian fashion, using the categories that arose in the early church and have shaped our moral discourse ever since: the Seven Deadly Sins. At the end, I will leave it to you to apply these tests to the candidates, since The Stream offers no endorsements.
As I learned while researching The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins, the worst of those vices is envy. It’s the sin that stirred in Satan while he spied on Adam and Eve, as Milton painted so powerfully in Paradise Lost. It’s that ache we might feel when we see someone enjoying good things that are out of our reach, but we don’t merely want to gain the same thing for ourselves. (That’s simple jealousy.) What really scratches our itch is to smash what the person has, then gloat over them in the ruins — as Satan did, at the whole human race, until Christ opened heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas set Envy as the lowest and darkest sin, since it does not even aim at anything good — but at the suffering of others. It’s Envy that drives us to take delight when gorgeous celebrities have ugly divorces, get bad plastic surgery, or go to prison. Roughly half of the “click-bait” on the Internet traffics in Envy; the other half is bikini pics.
The opposite of a deadly sin, you might be surprised to learn, is not a virtue. Instead it’s another, mirror-image sin. So if envy wants evil things for others, its mirror image is pusillanimity (pettiness of soul), which doesn’t dare to want good things for ourselves and for those we love — really, really good things, such as life, liberty, and happiness — in this world and in the next. A pusillanimous person might kind of vaguely hope that things like that will come his way, but deep down he isn’t convinced they are possible, or worth the strife. So what does he do? Jesus told us: He takes the talents his Master gave him, and buries them in the yard. Or with Pilate he washes his hands. It’s their tiny souls that make European leaders submit to Islamic colonization: If you don’t love what’s really great about your country or treasure its spiritual heritage, and you’re not willing to sacrifice for the next generation, why not turn the place over to the jihadists who envy it? It’s not as if you’re using it. …
In between these icy poles is the fertile golden mean, the virtue we’re meant to practice: magnanimity, or “greatness of soul.” The great-souled person (like Edmund Campion or William Wilberforce) will fight like a tiger against his own worst impulses, and unjust actions by others, to obtain a truly good thing for himself or his family. When he sees someone else enjoying such things, he is glad on their behalf. He doesn’t view the world as a zero-sum squabble over a fixed quantity of happiness. In fact, it increases his sense of well-being and hope when he sees others prosper, even in areas where he might be lacking himself. The squat and the sedentary, the homely and halting, ought to look at the lithe and athletic with calm admiration; likewise, simple folk should be grateful that the wise are out there — so long as the brainy don’t also turn out to be bullies. When the wise are also humble, we look to them with thanks, as to wise pastors and teachers.
A great soul is what we need in a leader, especially in times as evil as these: someone who dares to hope for great things for America, but not at the unjust expense of other nations. Someone who wishes to lift up the poor, without tearing down the prosperous, to gain justice for minorities but not by maiming the majority. And of course, we need someone whose “great soul” expresses itself in smart and principled political action — someone who is brave, prudent, measured, and fair. (For you pointy-heads out there, I just rattled off Aristotle’s four Cardinal Virtues.)
The Seven Deadly Sins and the 2016 Election
With these things in mind, the 2016 presidential race comes into painfully sharp focus. The Democrats are simply and crudely trafficking in envy, though it masquerades as justice. When the thugs of #BlacklivesMatter terrorize a shopping mall, or the social engineers at HUD seed the suburbs with future crack houses, they aren’t really aiming at undoing any injustice. They’re just smashing things for the sake of it. Wasting millions that could have clothed and fed countless refugees close to their homes, and instead flying them across an ocean to collect American welfare benefits and throng American mosques — that’s not about saving lives. It’s a piece of moral grandstanding whose real intent is to “stick it” to frightened American Christians. Not settling for the Supreme Court’s power grab over marriage, gay activists have moved to bankrupt Christian bakers and florists who won’t cater their weddings — one could go on all day, all week, offering more depressing examples of what could be summed up best in a hashtag: #thelefttwiststheknife.
The Republican race is of far greater moral interest. What we’re seeing in the rise of insurgent candidates is an upsurge of anger at the apparent pusillanimity of the GOP establishment. The Republican Congress won majorities in both houses on promises of fighting the Democrats’ envious policies tooth and nail — as the Democrat House fought Ronald Reagan. Instead, we see in the latest omnibus budget deal an unconditional surrender of the “power of the purse,” the most crucial weapon for reigning in tyrants since the Magna Carta. (Franklin Graham was so disgusted by this deal that he quit the GOP.) For all the bluster and bravado, we are indeed funding the organ traffickers of Planned Parenthood, and the resettlement of unvetted Muslim refugees, and Obamacare, and the new embassy in Havana, and a long list of other radical Democrat policies, any one of which might have precipitated a government shutdown fight. Effectively we have no separation of powers, since every policy and priority is dictated by the president. When he’s a Democrat.
After dozens of such one-sided “compromises” over eight years, we are seeing a backlash against any candidate whom conservative voters consider pussilanimous. Competent managers like Jeb Bush, who in less radical times might have made persuasive runs for the White House, are rejected because they are “low energy,” and palpably not angry, not outraged at the left’s radical power grabs. Even when they differ with Democrats, it seems to be with a shrug, as if they were quibbling over details of policies that are fundamentally sound. When one side is thundering forward with savage self-righteous vigor, the other side cannot respond with halting, tentative efforts — or it will get steamrollered, as happened in the omnibus budget. Voters fear that the oncoming leftist juggernaut would flatten a pussilanimous candidate, and so they are not taking chances.
And many voters are going too far. Because it’s perfectly possible for conservatives to play the envy game. We can crave the cultural privileges that the left has seized for itself and its pet victim groups: the right to be thin-skinned, to sneer with contempt not just at the policies but the persons we disagree with, to fancy ourselves victims on trivial pretexts, to be tribalist and intolerant. We can indulge these malicious hobbies, on the pretext that it is “payback.” But the answer to a long run of pussilanimous leaders is not to find one who can harness the power of envy to our agenda. It’s to search out a great-souled man, who is strong enough to be angry when the good is gravely threatened, but can laugh off his enemy’s insults and remain the happy warrior. Let us pray for the gift of discernment, and for the grace to really want what is good. (For more from the author of “The GOP Needs a Candidate With a Huge Soul” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-19 00:16:122016-04-11 10:53:42The GOP Needs a Candidate With a Huge Soul
Just a few days after Iran committed an act of war and seized a U.S. navy boat and its crew, Obama has announced the first $1.7 billion in direct payments to Iran. Concurrently, he has announced a deal in which Iran will return the four American captives. They will not be returned in exchange for all the money Obama is giving them and the control over the seas he has evidently surrendered to them. No, the Iranians get that for free. The release of the four hostages was in return for a major prisoner swap that could include as many as 21 Iranians.
Consider the following:
Over the weekend, the administration announced a settlement in which they will pay Iran $1.7 billion for assets our government froze in 1979 when the mad mullahs conquered Iran. Thus, in addition to the $150 billion in assets granted to Iran pursuant to the terms of the nuclear deal, the regime is now squeezing every penny from the original sanctions as far back as 36 years ago.
Obama purposely ignored the plight of the four American hostages as part of the nuclear deal so that he could allow Iran to force future concessions in return for their release. We now know which concession the Iranians were demanding. Obama is releasing seven Iranian prisoners and has agreed not to prosecute 14 others, some of whom are high valued supporters of Iran’s terror network.
While the details are still murky, at least “several” Americans were captured around Baghdad by local “militias.” Now, it doesn’t take a genius to know that the only militias that operate around Baghdad are the ones affiliated with the Iranian Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.. If this turns out to be the case, it would represent another failure of our ridiculous Iraq policy in which we are serving as the Shiite military on behalf of Iran while Iran continues to humiliate us. This is a repeat of the entire Iraq war in which our military basically protected Iran from Saddam Hussein and the Sunnis only to helplessly watch them blow up hundreds of our soldiers with IEDs.
When criticizing Obama’s Iran policy, too many people are using the wrong ”a” word. This is not appeasement. Obama has formed an alliance with Iran against his own country. He is allowing them to engage in one act of war after another without any commensurate response so that they can use each event to extract more concessions.
On a side note, remember when Mitt Romney criticized Cruz for saying the U.S. would become the biggest state sponsor of terror with the Iran alliance?
Will Romney crawl out of the Mittness protection program to apologize? More likely, he’ll join the chorus defending #NewYorkValues. But I digress.
In a sane world with an authentic opposition party, we would not have surrendered the power of the purse. We would not have passed the Corker-Cardin bill, which legitimized the Iran deal.
Where do we go from here?
The Palestinians are one of the biggest proxies of the Iranian regime and likewise are among Obama’s chosen people. Republicans should immediately pass legislation being pushed by Ted Cruz and Rep. Mark Meadows to shut down all Palestine Liberation Organization offices in our country and suspend the $500 million in annual aid to Iran’s proxy.
Congress must refuse to confirm any more judicial nominees until Obama comes clean on all his side agreements with Iran and abides by the terms of his own deal [Iran has already violated the deal with multiple ballistic missile tests]. Of course, Republicans should already be blocking nominees for a host of other reasons.
In addition to blocking judicial nominees, Republicans should leverage executive nominees against Obama’s Iran policy. Next week, the Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold a confirmation hearing on Eric Fanning to become the next Secretary of the Army. At a time when our military is being humiliated by Iran, Republicans must extract concessions from the next army secretary. In addition, we need answers about the terrible morale in the Army as well as the Obama administration’s social engineering of the military, which includes integrating women in direct ground combat, mixed boot camps, and the transgender agenda. Confirming nominees to serve in positions where Obama is perpetrating lawless or harmful transformations would represent yet another betrayal by Senate Republicans.
Congress should use must-pass bills, such as the upcoming Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill to shut down Obama’s Iran deal.
Yes, we will have a new president in 367 days, but we cannot afford another year with Obama humiliating our military and committing acts of treason with Iran. That is an eternity. Just last week, Iran’s army chief said they seized the American boat to send a message to Republicans in Congress to back off sanctions. Well, Republicans, did you get the message?
Our forefathers wouldn’t tolerate appeasement for a moment. They proclaimed, “millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” Why should we tolerate treasonous funding of terror for one more day? (For more from the author of “Will GOP Allow U.S. To Become Iranian Proxy?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-19 00:11:082016-04-11 10:53:42Will GOP Allow U.S. To Become Iranian Proxy?
By David Catanese. The Associated Press has just called the Granite State Democratic primary for Bernie Sanders – and it’s a 15-point rout. It’s the second loss for Hillary Clinton in the presidential nominating contest after she narrowly dropped the Iowa caucuses to Sanders seven days prior.
Sanders’ crowd is beside themselves. The commentators on cable news are fanning doomsday scenarios. There are calls for a Clinton campaign leadership shake-up not only from talking heads, but from longtime family loyalists as well. Is it happening again? Could Clinton be upended in the Democratic primary for the second time in eight years?
This scenario is hypothetical. But given the polling that’s dribbled out over the last week, it now looks far from implausible. Sanders appears to be padding a lead in New Hampshire while beginning to threaten Clinton in Iowa – two polls even showed him tracking narrowly ahead in the first caucus state. The Vermont senator is also closing the national gap, slicing Clinton’s advantage to just 7 points in a new CBS/New York Times survey.
So if Clinton drops the first pair of early states to Sanders, is she cooked?
Not even close. (Read more from “Yes, Hillary’s Still the Inevitable Democratic Nominee” HERE)
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NBC’s Todd to Hillary Clinton: ‘43% of Likely Democratic Caucus Goers Identify as Socialist’
By CNSNews.com Staff. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, anchor Chuck Todd asked former Secretary State Hillary Clinton about a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll in which 43 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers described themselves as “socialist” while only 38 percent described themselves as “capitalist” . . .
Here is the exchange Todd and Clinton had about the result that indicated 43 percent of likely Democratic caucus goers described themselves as “socialist:”
Chuck Todd: “You know, another problem you may be having in Iowa is that you don’t ideologically fit. This was in the Des Moines Register poll this week: 43 percent of likely Democratic caucus goers identify as socialist. Only 38 percent of likely Democratic caucus goers identified themselves as a capitalist. You, in the last debate, said you were a capitalist. Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic socialist. If you don`t win Iowa, do you think that`s the reason?
Hillary Clinton: “Oh, I don’t know how people take all this information, but I support a free market economy. I support the competitiveness that has created the greatest economic engine in the history of the world. What I’m worried about is that it’s not continuing to do what it used to do, which is to give the vast majority of Americans the chance to get ahead and stay ahead.
(Read more from “NBC’s Todd to Hillary Clinton: ‘43% of Likely Democratic Caucus Goers Identify as Socialist'” HERE)
It started off as a throwaway line, what Ted Cruz said about “New York values”— an echo of old political shorthand like “San Francisco values,” a phrase which encodes as much or as little as the audience that hears it chooses. But Donald Trump took public umbrage at this remark, and blew it sky high at the GOP debate by invoking the heroism of cops and firemen on 9/11, to the roaring approval of the Charleston, S.C. audience — and even of Sen. Cruz, an expert debater, who applauded Trump’s brilliant chess move.
Online, pundits at conservative venues such as National Review and Commentary (both New York City-based) grumbled at Cruz and reluctantly sided with Trump. The normally sensible Texan Kevin Williamson warned in a Tweet that in bashing New York, Cruz risked offending “everyone who lives in a city.” Cruz quickly backed off, and on his face you could almost see a red line striking three words out of a printed speech forever.
Not so fast, Republicans. Granted, the line itself may be more liability than asset in a national election, but as a native New Yorker who loves the place, who worked and scraped to live there for most of his life, I can tell you that New York City, no less than Detroit, is a rich mine of insights on how not to govern anyplace, anywhere, ever. The ideology that rules the Five Boroughs is a laundry list of toxic political correctness. If you’re not willing to criticize the “values” that prevail in New York City, which America’s elite (who mostly live there) are busily stuffing down the throats of the rest of the country, then you have no business running for office as a Republican. It’s time to go Texan or go home.
What do we mean by “New York values”? Not the courage of first responders and stoicism of stunned civilians, that got us through the day of burning towers and the months of the smell of death in 2001. Public servants are equally brave in every city in America, and citizens from Sandy Hook to San Bernardino pull together after disasters.
We don’t mean the grudging, good-humored tolerance that keeps us from strangling each other on crowded subways, or even the crackpot determination to live without a driver’s license, whatever the cost in rent, taxes, or troubles. (I got my license at age 36, and still prefer using Uber, even in Dallas.)
We don’t mean the courage and civic-mindedness of recent Chinese immigrants, who gathered in Queens last year to protest loudly and mostly in Mandarin against Mayor de Blasio’s placement of a homeless center for drug addicts smack-dab in their working class neighborhood.
We don’t mean Archbishop Fulton Sheen, or Tony Bennett or William F. Buckley or Norman Podhoretz. We don’t mean Wall Street, or Broadway.
We mean the policies and politicians that New Yorkers inflict on themselves, and the social attitudes that they use their vast influence to impose on the rest of America. A city as naturally rich, with as many inbuilt advantages as New York, has only just barely survived collapse several times (in the mid-70s, then again in the early 90s) thanks to those policies. They would break any lesser city and if they are not contained they will devastate America, leaving only a few wealthy enclaves intact — including, no doubt, Manhattan. The rich we will have always with us.
The mayor of New York City is radical leftist Bill de Blasio, who in the 1980s went to Nicaragua to help the Sandinistas impose their totalitarian system on that hapless country. Imagine if some conservative city elected a former volunteer for South Africa’s apartheid government… you can’t, can you? We don’t do that sort of thing, but New York liberals do, with a blasé chuckle. It’s par for the course. New York is a city where:
More black babies are aborted than are born. In fact, its abortion rate is one of the highest in America.
Pro-life pregnancy centers are targeted by the city and the state, constantly harassed, and always fighting in court to keep their doors open.
It’s illegal even to ask a potential employee if he has a criminal record.
Police are no longer permitted to stop and frisk potential suspects — a practice that helped slash New York’s once staggering murder rate, and saved thousands of black and Latino lives.
Al Sharpton is taken seriously as a “community leader.”
The authorities will no longer focus on mosques as potential terror centers.
Refusing to accept an employee’s “transgender” fantasies, and let him use the ladies’ locker room, can earn you a $250,000 fine.
The teachers unions which elected De Blasio won’t let the city remove abusive instructors from public schools, sometimes for years. Instead, such teachers collect their full salaries while sitting in “rubber rooms,” doing crossword puzzles or surfing the Internet.
There is a state income tax, a city income tax, and a special “unincorporated business tax” that targets hard-pressed freelancers.
The gay lobby is so powerful that the Catholic archbishop threw in the towel, and let sex activists march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, which marks the conversion of Ireland to Christianity.
Let me clue you in on a secret about New York: There aren’t so many New Yorkers there — not natives, anyway. Every year the place is flooded by ambitious valedictorians from all across the country who are fleeing their “small-minded” home towns or want to make it big in “The City.” That limitless demand for housing, which remains in fixed supply, has exactly the effect on its price that you might expect.
With a few elite exceptions, the public schools are outright unusable — chaotic holding tanks for juvie and Riker’s Island. So for each child you hope to raise in your small house or apartment, figure in the cost of 12 years of private school. The nuns are mostly gone, so Catholic schools aren’t as cheap as they used to be, but their underpaid, hard-working teachers are still the backbone of education in New York City.
The city is run by the renters, so landlords and home builders are harried by outdated rules such as rent control and “stabilization,” and a truly crackpot law grants “squatters’ rights” to anyone who stays on your couch for more than a couple weeks — so be careful in your choice of house guests.
Kennedy Airport makes New York City a border town as much as Brownsville, TX, and our country’s refusal to deport illegals or even check immigrants’ visas means that New York’s welfare rolls and hospitals are constantly flooded with recent arrivals from Afghanistan and Honduras. Who foots the bill to deliver their anchor babies? The hapless taxpayers of New York.
Those of who grew up there get squeezed out, priced out, taxed out, and at the first chance flee to the suburbs, as both of my sisters did. The middle and working class whites who elected Mayor Rudolph Giuliani just in time to save the City from David Dinkin’s Democrat crime wave have largely relocated to Long Island. Left behind are the valedictorians; the middle class who bought their homes back before a one-family house in an ugly, distant neighborhood cost $1 million; the people in rent-fixed apartments who’d be crazy ever to move; and the millions in public housing who largely live on the dole.
This is not the model our Founders had in mind for a sustainable republic, and it’s not the place that ought to be setting the trend for America. It’s a wonderful, unique city that can only survive in a weird symbiosis with a stodgier, saner hinterland that reins in its excesses. Republicans who emerge from the New York milieu, such as Nelson Rockefeller, John Lindsay, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg (now an independent), and New Jersey’s Chris Christie, ought not to set the tone for the national party. Even New Yorkers know that. We count on the rest of the country to save us from ourselves. (For more from the author of “GOP Hopefuls: Confronting ‘New York Values’ Is Key to Saving the USA” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-15 22:36:122016-04-11 10:53:46GOP Hopefuls: Confronting ‘New York Values’ Is Key to Saving the USA
By Jim Newell. Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign bets big on straightforwardness, or “telling it like it is.” During Thursday night’s debate, the Christie press operation sent out one press release after another highlighting how Christie was “telling it like it is” on any given subject he happened to be addressing: “Telling It Like It Is On America’s Role In The World,” “Telling It Like It Is On Entitlements,” “Telling It Like It Is On Criminal Justice Reform.” He’s the tough dad who’s going to make you eat the meatloaf your mother put so much effort into cooking, damnit, unless you want to be sent to bed early. He will talk about difficult things, like cutting Medicare and Social Security, and you won’t like it, but the sheer force of his honest appraisals of the fiscal outlook will necessitate your submission.
The problem with this self-presentation is that Christie, right now, may be the least honest candidate in the race.
Christie is an exceptional performer. But as he’s risen in New Hampshire polls, he’s made himself a target for his fellow “establishment” rivals, each of whom is jockeying for that third ticket out of the Granite State. During the past couple of weeks, Christie rivals such as Sen. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have made hay over some of the more moderate positions Christie has taken to fuel his rise as a Republican leader in a blue state. Christie’s responses have either been to obfuscate or, as he did Thursday night before millions of viewers, claim that he did not do what the public record makes clear he absolutely did, over and over. Christie’s natural skills as a debater kept him afloat, but his mischaracterizations about his past will do far more damage in the long run—to whatever extent there is a long run for Christie’s presidential campaign. (Read more from “Chris Christie Says He’s a Straight Shooter – That’s a Lie” HERE)
Watch this revealing interview with Fox News last night where Chris Christie’s deception is transparent:
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Fact Check: Is Common Core “Eliminated” in New Jersey?
By Reena Flores. During Thursday night’s Republican debate in South Carolina, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was attacked on several fronts for an allegedly left-leaning past, including his supposed support for Common Core education standards, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Planned Parenthood.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called out his rival for propping up Common Core, the reading and math standards implemented in 42 states, plus the District of Columbia, and widely reviled by conservatives as acts of federal overreach . . .
Christie refuted that: “Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey” . . .
In May, the governor asked New Jersey’s department of education to review the implementation of Common Core in the state’s school system.
But according to NJ.com, earlier this week, the panel charged with reviewing the standards recommended that 84 percent of them remain in place, with slight revisions to the rest. Common Core, the news site reported, does “still have a place in New Jersey classrooms.” (Read more from “Fact Check: Is Common Core “Eliminated” in New Jersey?” HERE)
