Like the Visitors in V, The New York Times Wants to Shape Your Mind!

The New York Times posted an article on Donald Trump to its website today, Saturday, Dec. 10, about 1 p.m. It’s headlined “Trump, Mocking Claim That Russia Hacked Election, at Odds with GOP” and is written by David Sanger accompanied with a photo of Trump at a Grand Rapids, Michigan, rally yesterday by Doug Mills.

Below lies the link to the version curated by MSN:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-mocking-claim-that-russia-hacked-election-at-odds-with-gop/ar-AAloKpW?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

Several problems raise their ugly heads in the headline and the article. First, let me deal with a few points of what I think is reasonable agreement.

I do not want any country to be able to hack our public or private computers or to affect our lives, including our electoral lives. Don’t want anybody messing with my vote!

I doubt President-Elect Trump wants Russian President Vladimir Putin or his intelligence/cyberwarfare agencies to be able to hack the U.S. That would be inconsistent with his message of America First and his desire to win at everything.

Thirdly, at least at this point, the intelligence assessment seems to be, if we can rely on The Times article, that despite the alleged Russian hacks, the electoral process itself, and thus the election, was not tampered with.

The principal claim appears to be that a hack or hacks of the Democratic National Committee emails occurred, the hacker(s) sent many of them to Wikileaks, who in turn released them to the public.

The emails from the DNC that Wikileaks released contained material that cast several Democrats, including their candidate, Hillary Clinton, in a dark light by showing their true, but negative, opinions of several groups, including blacks, Muslims, and Catholics, showing collusion with the press that was cheating, and revealing Clinton’s self-described “private” and “public” selves, as she showed Wall Street high rollers her “private” self in confidence. Think of “private” and “public” selves as two faces.

We don’t know whether the revelations that sprang from the hack(s) changed any votes, and if so, how many. It is reasonable to assume that at least some people changed their votes. Whether the revelations changed the outcome of the election may never be known. Again, if I read The Times correctly, the groups of officials mentioned seem to think not, but they do take the Russian threat seriously.

The flip side to that is the concern I have as a voter about the ability of candidates and their campaigns to utterly lie and deceive us about who they are and what they stand for, and the ability of the press to aid and abet the side of its choosing, as it did raucously for Hillary in this 2016 presidential campaign, chief among them The New York Times.

That conjunction of candidate deception backed by press partiality also destroys the electoral process and our republican democracy. In that light, release of material from the hack(s), while illegal, did help voters. The help was incomplete because no hack(s) of the other party’s computers with subsequent revelations happened.

Reasonably, we must say that with the election over we are facing more imminent dangers to our cybersecurity and national security than the hack of the DNC. As a body of citizens and as freedom-loving individuals, we must improve our cybersecurity all around. However, our country’s defense and intelligence agencies need to focus on the hydra-headed national security threats from despotic nuclear powers, like Russia and Red China, nuclear power aspirants under autocratic or theocratic tyranny, like Iran and North Korea, and maniacal Muslim terrorist organizations, like ISIS, that seek to arm themselves with the deadliest weapons possible to murder civilians and destroy everyday life in the Middle East and in the West.

Trump reflects the desire to make our intelligence agencies the best and to give them the most effective and technologically advanced tools to be the best. He challenges them to be better than they have been.

Most Americans want to win the economic and political wars we fight to sustain our own liberty and to offer it around the world to those who want the same.

With all that said, let’s analyze The Times article. First we have the headline, “Trump, Mocking Claim That Russia Hacked Election, at Odds with GOP”. The first thing to correct The Times on is that no one hacked the “election”. You can’t hack elections. You can hack computers. No election computers were hacked, at least no reports have stated such that I’ve heard. A DNC server or computer was hacked, or perhaps more than one. By Sanger’s own reporting, intelligence agencies did not and still do not think the outcome was affected. So no “election” has been hacked and no one was saying it was for the story.

Second, The Times declares in the headline that Trump is “at odds” with the GOP. Really? Is Trump at odds with the entire GOP, all registered GOP voters, all party and elected officials? If not, do we know what percentage of the GOP with which he is at odds? The Times article mentions two important House Republicans and Senator John McCain, who’s had an acrimonious relationship with Mr. Trump. The two House Republicans want deep investigations and a detailed report into what happened.

The problem for us as voters is that we can only get a sense of the disagreement among Trump, the intelligence agencies, and two members of the House GOP. Getting a grip on what the facts are is more difficult. With cybersecurity, answers may not always be clear. Does the CIA, for example, know that the DNC was hacked (one must keep an open mind – a renegade Dem may have provided the emails or copies thereof to Wikileaks)? If so, does it know who did it? What is the answer to “how” in both cases? Does the CIA offer levels of certainty or probability? If the hackers were Russian, can we tell whether they were government hackers or private hackers?

Sanger writes about the “national security establishment”, but what is that and who belongs to it? How many agencies have examined the hack of the DNC? Is it just the CIA, or did the FBI’s cybersecurity division look at it, or the DIA’s, or the NSA, etc. The Trump transition team members and the many advisors to them have tons of national security experience. Why do they disagree with the vaguely termed “national security establishment”. The Times tried to paint General Mattis as biased because he appeared on Russian television, but that’s flimsy. Mattis wants America and her capabilities to be better than Russia’s. He’s not going to tolerate cybersecurity weakness.

Leaders pick their fights, too, and it may be useless to pick the DNC hack for lengthy and arduous investigation by members of a feckless Congress who have much, much, much work to start and finish. Moreover, better to do it quietly than noisily like The Times and others seem to want. Lots of noise usually means its PR and a tool to achieve something else.

The Times wrote the article to highlight what it claimed was “an extraordinary breach” between Trump and the GOP and between Trump and the “national security establishment”. I’m not sure what’s extraordinary about it. Yet Sanger wrote the article that way, and he wrote it to downplay the obvious “breaches” that have occurred over and over in the past. Sanger’s article mentioned the case of Tunisia and Egypt and the bad estimate the intelligence community gave to Obama. It did not but could have mentioned the shaping of intelligence reports to suit the Obama administration’s tastes. It did not but could have mentioned Benghazi, in which the Obama/Clinton State Department ignored intelligence assessments about the growing danger in that Libyan city. Sanger’s article did mention the situation which gave rise to Trump’s described mockery: the Bush Administration’s contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that compelled the U.S. to invade it in 2003.

It’s particularly galling of The Times to write about that botched assessment because the newspaper has lashed former President Bush and his national security team for it.

Consider, too, that The Times downplayed the botched assessment by Bush’s national security team in Sanger’s article (only when Trump played that card, not itself) by stating the existence of a running debate about whether the intel itself was bad or whether it was read “selectively”, whatever that means, to reach a desired conclusion.

Funny, but I remember General Colin Powell going to the United Nations and submitting several photos detailed with lines and with arrows from caption boxes pointing to trucks and buildings, etc. Search for them online. You’ll find one of “Chemical Munitions Stored at Taji”, another titled “Terrorist Poison and Explosives Factory, Khumai”, and another depicting a chemical munitions bunker with a decontamination vehicle alongside it, etc.

It would seem either someone from Bush’s national security team created those exhibits or someone from one of the intelligence agencies did. Either way, would they not be members of “the national security establishment”? Breaches are in the eye of the beholder.

If The Times calls Trump’s statement against the claim of Russian interference mockery, what does it call its own statement about the Bush administration’s conclusions, which the article’s author, Sanger, labeled “the disastrously mistaken assessments of Iraq”.

Further, The Times lets Michael Hayden take a shot at Trump in Sanger’s article, the same Michael Hayden who directed the National Security Agency (NSA) under Bush during the Iraq assessments and who oversaw that agency’s warrantless collection of Americans’ electronic communications. Is he part of our “national security establishment”. If so, I’m fearful of him, not Trump.

What we have to understand as citizens is that the purpose of this New York Times article, as with many of its articles and the articles and reports from other media, is not to provide news or information that voters can use intelligently; rather, it is to hold and continue to emit an unrelenting laser beam of criticism at Trump to foster discord and strife among all voters, to shape the way we perceive and think about events so that we will reach the same conclusion that The Times wants everyone to reach about Trump and his administration.

Sometimes The Times articles will feature truth and sometimes they won’t. It doesn’t make much difference. In the end, the articles are calculated to have an effect on you, the effect The Times wants. The only way to avoid that, if you read them, is to be discerning and discriminating. Ask questions about every statement The Times makes. Compare what it writes internally to itself and externally to previously established facts. Do not assume anything, such as the significance of “the national security establishment”.

Keep in mind, too, that other motivations may be in play. The grandstanding by House Republicans sounds, uh, grand. I sure want my democracy and my electoral process to be left untampered. But is that really on the minds of some House Republicans, or are they jockeying for position and leverage against their party’s president, Trump, so they can limit the enactment of his policy proposals while promoting and enabling their own?

How cute of The Times and Mr. Sanger to use Republicans against themselves. Clever and sophisticated.

Bear in mind, House and Senate Republicans, that many, perhaps a majority, of us, voted you in not because of you, but because we needed you to support Mr. Trump. Fail to do that? Get in his way? Watch how we pull the voting lever down against you. You are a constitutional necessity, but in poll after poll we have judged you virtually worthless and shockingly ineffective compared to even the current president.

You got used to being establishment bootlickers, so don’t puff your chests out because a Republican won the presidency. He didn’t run on your ideology or mandate. He ran on the people’s mandate. So make Mr. Trump’s path smooth, then get the hell out of the way!

 

Divorce and Holy Communion

This post delivers a response to an article and comments that appear on The American Conservative website. The link is below:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/vatican-bombshell-pope-francis/

The church leadership and faithful may want to humbly pray about this issue of communion. Worshiping in spirit and truth remains the vital principle of church life.

The Christian church has struggled for two millennia to maintain a balance between identifying and making understandable God’s truth and practicing that truth in love. In the early years of the church and beyond, identifying and defining what we as Christians believed and practiced assumed the greatest importance. What was the difference between Jews who believed Jesus was the messiah and those Jews who did not? Was believing in Jesus more important than obeying the Mosaic law? Must Christians continue to follow the Mosaic law to be saved? If not, how were we saved? What do Christians believe vis-a-vis the pagans and what in pagan philosophy still held as true within a Christian context?

In its desire to see the faithful take seriously and live the faith presented to them, the church often established rules for, and limitations to, Christian thinking and behavior. One of these limitations has been the right to participate in eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ from which are received God’s grace for sanctification and salvation. One was not allowed to deliberately abide in unabsolved sin or an unrepented pattern of living and yet enjoy the refuge and strength of the sacrament. In fact, the church determined that such a conjunction could earn damnation.

Because the church wanted to be faithful to Christ, it has been emphasizing this former consideration of identity and definition. Thus, those persons who did not conform to the strict definitions laid down by the church were often shunned and denied participation in the sacraments. If the rebellion became hardened, those persons were excommunicated.

Unfortunately, it neglected the latter consideration, practicing truth in love, and infringed too much on God’s sovereign judgment. It lost sight of the reality of our human state and the abiding grace and mercy through Christ by which we “stride boldly up to God’s throne, the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:12).”

As Paul says, “No one is righteous, not even one.”

Now we can deal with the question at hand: May a divorced or remarried person receive holy communion? In the past, the Catholic Church has said, no.

Clearly, if a priest has absolved a person’s sin, the answer would have to change to, yes. By what right would communion be withheld?

We can focus: is a person still committing a sin or stuck in unrepentance if he or she remains divorced or, worse, if he or she remains remarried after having obtained a divorce? Does a person have to partner again with his or her former spouse? Does a person who remarried have to divorce his or her second wife (or third, etc.) and return to the first spouse to be out of a state of sin?

The realities of human living have complicated the resolution of that question. Does the church demand that a man or woman leave his or her new family? Can God’s will be accomplished in that fashion? Does a man’s or woman’s lone sin, divorce, negate what may be the Christian character of the rest of his or her life? Is someone who sins frequently, confesses it and is absolved, never masters his bad habits, but who does not commit adultery of any kind, in a better state than the person whose only sin is divorce and remarriage? I speak in the ideal to make an example.

Is it the church’s place to make these all these decisions to have an ironclad faith, or shall it leave at least some resolutions and outcomes to the Most High God who sees every person’s heart and who knows all but from a position of goodwill and justice.

I know about the scriptures, what we loose here, etc. I get it. Were those words meant to push us to create a vast body of new law like Moses’ and judgments therefrom, or were they meant to humble us and infuse within us caution and care as we exercised liberty, lest we sinners be the first to cast stones, each one of us, and we be no better than the blind Pharisees?

One must believe in God and his Christ to participate in the Christian life, of which the sacraments are key. Does one have to live perfectly? If not, how much imperfection is tolerable? Isn’t the purpose of participation in the sacraments to receive the grace needed to be sanctified and secured in one’s salvation? If so, why do we deny them to anyone? Will not God deal with the unrepentant sinner? Most of the time we don’t know what the exact spiritual state of a person is. People are great actors. We may think them great and eulogize them loftily at their funerals, yet they might be burning in hell.

How many of the church’s annulments of marriages are bogus and bought?

Do we want to refuse the sacrament to folks who are doing their best to honor God with the realization that they fell quite short the first time they spoke their vows? Or do we make it so that their confessed and repented sin survives and thrives and continues to besmirch them, disqualifying them from the sacrament?

Granted, in some sense we should be cooperating with God in the work he does; but how do we require that a person “earn” the sacrament in whatever fashion when what is “earned” is grace, an unmerited gift freely given to all of us, we the needy, already mired in our trespasses and sins?

Jesus explicitly forgave the adulteress without her asking while he exhorted her spiritual improvement in John 8.

Jesus did not say he forgave the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, but he did not reject her. He praised her for what was truthful in her reply to him about not having a husband, and, in a rare deviation from his usual pattern, presented himself as the ultimate reality which she understood her people had been waiting for, even though she had been married five times and at that time had a lover!

Christian liberty is an awesome gift. Like any liberty, it can be misused. Sometimes it needs to rest rather than to be exercised. The church and faithful should be aware of what Christ taught about marriage and divorce and they should pass it on energetically. They should not be energetic about denying someone grace or the means to grace, if that is even possible in God’s universe. The Most High will deal with the person who wastes or perverts his grace.

How Fragrant and Musical Is Victory!

 

Ah! The sweet sounds of Victory! The sweet smells of Victory!

Small, angry protests have been breaking out across the country, the lamentations of the losers, usually in fairly liberal cities, sparked by the ultra left wing extremists of community organization.

Rock and bottle throwing and some setting of fires have been accompanying the dithyrambic displays. Some 225 persons have been arrested, according to one report.

Their complaint: Mr. Donald Trump won the presidency, fair and square, and that is unacceptable. That is to them, mind you.

The smoke rising from the burning effigies of Mr. Trump emit such a sweet, incensial fragrance! Likewise, the polyphony of wailing and shouting by those who did not get their errant way seems like a symphony! The wild policies of de facto open borders, illegal immigration and an invitation to terrorism, benefits for the illegals, refugees, and the shiftless, are about to be dismantled, stacked high on a rubbish heap, and disintegrated in a firestorm of renewal, if Mr. Trump keeps his promises.

So, so sweet! We can begin to breathe again!

The people who are NOT Americans, and their allies among deluded citizens, do not want Mr. Trump as their president. Of course, he cannot be, because they are not Americans. Mrs. Clinton could not have been their president, either, even though they may have slipped in more than a few votes for her.

Therefore, we shout in agreement with them: “Mr. Trump is not your president!” We would just add that he is OUR president, and that they can “Get out!”

Yes, return to your own countries, illegal immigrants and refugees, and compel THEM to fulfill their duty to you, which is to provide political, economic, and security services to you. Such is NOT the burden of the government of these United States. We are not merely weary of assuming that burden, we are angry that it was imposed on us by oily leaders who sought the benefit only of the elites.

Mr. Trump should worry about the only protests that matter: those of we the people who voted for him, if he fails to deliver on the reasons we voted for him.

Now that could get ugly, if it were to happen, and it is the danger that lurks as Mr. Trump seeks counsel and cabinet members from among those who hail from the very establishment we voted to throw out.

Choose wisely, Mr. Trump, and be the man you said you were and would be.

Elites and Media Don’t Get It

A vital block of Americans cast off the chains of anti-Americanism, elitism, political correctness, and media dishonesty to drive 70-year-old Donald Trump to triumph in the 2016 presidential election Tuesday night.

With votes still being counted and confirmed, Trump had earned at least 276 electoral votes, six more than necessary, while Clinton was at 218. The popular vote was neck-and-neck, with both candidates earning over 59 million votes each so far.

Trump and his supporters swept aside the narrow-minded concerns of the political and media elites like a purifying white squall across the bloody deck of a slave freighter. Supporters refused to give answer to reporters and pollsters who sought a predetermined outcome. Instead, each took cover in his or her personal privacy, waiting for early voting or election day to pull the lever for Trump.

The Trumpers pulled it mightily again and again. Their votes tore down the so-called “Blue Wall” of the Democrats, the imaginary boundary Democrats believed protected them from defeat in those states.

The result bestowed an astonishing mantle of victory on the shoulders of Trump, the never-say-die candidate and accomplished billionaire who overcame the media’s monstrous partisanship and endless effluent of innuendo: the false or unsubstantiated accusations about his finances, businesses, taxes, campaign and debate statements, marriages, and sexual habits.

It seemed a mountain too high to climb, and the media, particularly national outlets like CNN (oft dubbed the “Clinton News Network”), MSNBC, CNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, network news, etc., doubled up on the shots they took at Trump by turning a blind eye to Hillary Clinton’s reckless, criminal email behavior, the sordid pay-to-play scheme of her Clinton Foundation, her pimping the media for debate questions against Sanders and Trump, and her salacious campaign operation designed to bring out the most sordid unsubstantiated details about Trump and present them even to the eyes and ears of children through their media minions.

Instead of journalistic investigative reporting into any of those aspects of Clinton’s character and practices, the major media rode the bench while Wikileaks and Russian hackers did the job the media should have done.

The media decided it had a more important job to do than communicate facts to voters. Their job was to assuage the “deplorables” with faux sympathy while paying no heed to what they were saying. Instead, the media portrayed voters’ support for Trump as at best a misdirected emotional venting of a barbarous and baleful national pride that led down a slippery slope of xenophobia, racism, and general hatred and national endangerment.

This distillation denied any value to what citizens – those drawn to Trump and his message – held in their hearts and in their minds: the policies of the last 25+ years had deprived them of jobs, income, opportunity, freedom, personal and national pride, and their sense of society and culture while bestowing all kinds of benefits and attentions on special interest groups and illegal immigrants and Middle Eastern refugees with no amity for the American political and religious culture.

Trump advocates were Americans unwelcome in their own country, Americans who could find no succor and respect in their country’s policies, Americans abandoned because they were deemed expendable by the elites and their minions, the collateral damage of today’s ineluctable global, social, economic, and technological evolution hailed as the natural progress of things.

So bad have circumstances become, and does the future look, that one columnist at The Washington Post has proposed the government provide a living wage to all Americans who are no longer needed in the workforce. 

Of course, the elites and their minions seem themselves to be immunized from the tumult of such evolution. 

In short, the ivory tower, elitist, leftist media didn’t get it. They didn’t get it that citizens have not conceded that this evolution is natural. Rather, government policies have artificially induced these conditions. Further, those who made the choice to support Trump have adduced correctly and rightfully that the constitutional mandate that infuses the American government is to make laws and policies that promote the common welfare and defense of American citizens, not foreigners.

The American government was not established to promote globalism, open borders, big corporate tyranny and license, and immigration just for the sake of immigration. The purpose of American government has always been to promote liberty and justice for each and every one of its citizens through the common welfare and defense.

No person would know this by reading the election reporting, especially that perpetrated by the national media outlets. If one reads their journalism, one sees that Trump supporters are ignorant, emotional, and prone to grave biases and prejudices, all of which produced an irrational choice to vote for Trump, a man whose flaws, the media crowed, were too profound and essential to permit him to win the presidency. On top of that, Trump offended the media’s sense of good taste. 

No. While Trump supporters may have entertained distaste for some of Trump’s personal qualities, they greatly preferred his ideas and proposals to Hillary’s. They did not want terrorists to have an easy time entering their country, and Hillary stood for that. They did not want illegal aliens staying in America, and Hillary stood for that. They did want our existing laws enforced. They did want illegals to be held accountable to the law, just like everyone else is. They did not want free trade agreements that robbed them of their jobs and devalued their labor. They did want American companies to build and operate factories in America. They did want to be able to pay their bills and have some left over for fun with their families. They did want their kids to be proud of them. And we all have wanted to see more “Made in America” print on products. 

Furthermore, Hillary’s experience was contrived, and she herself was deeply flawed. Hillary’s handling of Benghazi was both a substantial and a public relations disaster. Americans, including our ambassador, paid for her blunder with their lives. Like Trump, she offended many Americans’ moral sensibilities. Beyond Trump, however, Hillary engaged in criminal email activity but got away with it because of who she was. The media will argue she has never been convicted of anything; but in the court of public opinion, many, if not most, believe she has flouted the law repeatedly over the years. As a member of the elite, she was inoculated from prosecution. The perceived stain of criminality, however, sullies her person.

Good sense, good ideas about policies, and different ideas about what it means to be American and what the purpose of American government is, propelled people to support and vote for Donald Trump. He was the one person, the one candidate, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, who heard them and who identified what the problem was: an elite, stuck-in-the-mud establishment used to running the show on its own and shaming those who dissented with labels of political incorrectness.

As of today, that time is over. The fight will continue, but that time is over for now. It is the elites who better get used to the natural order of things, and that means the adoption of a true civic spirit that includes their fellow citizens.

Last Ditch Manipulation by the Shills!

The panicked, last ditch efforts to thwart democracy and manipulate American citizens to vote for Hillary Clinton have broken out of the gate.

Examine a few of these latest laughers (though they have serious implications)!

1. President Obama tells men to cast aside their reluctance to vote for a woman, just as he acknowledges that Michelle, his wife, is superior to him; then how come he ran for president instead of Michelle?

The significance: men are hateful dirtbags unless they vote for the female presidential candidate this year. Sounds an awful lot like, uh, prejudice.

2. Clinton operatives are huffing and puffing to push the Trump University civil case into the front and center of viewers, but viewers’ vision is obscured by 650,000 wayward emails.

The significance: Hillary is so blemished and rotten, she has to go hunting again for anything to try to make Trump look worse. This one’s been tried already. And Hillary isn’t going to win with her policy positions, like supporting Obamacare, which will punish citizens with draconian rate hikes and benefit cuts next year and on.

3. Microsoft and USA Today have rolled out a story with a seductive headline about former President Bush and his former governor brother, Jeb, possibly voting for Clinton. In the end the source, Jeb’s son, George P., says he does not know how his father and uncle voted. George P. himself says he supports Trump.

The significance: We already knew the Bushes were picking up their marbles and running to Hillary when Trump took Jeb out to the woodshed during the primaries. At least, that’s what they said they were going to do. If they retained any loyalty to the Republican Party, they voted Trump. If not, they voted for the Clinton Crime Family.

4. Another article on the MSN website touts a looming credit cut to Great Britain once it severs ties with the European Union. Moody’s made the threat. It had already downgraded the sovereign nation’s credit to “negative” when British subjects voted to depart the loose confederation. Others grimly warned of a testing of Britain’s “constitutional and legal frameworks” now and beyond; others, what a byzantine mess Britain’s departure will make.

The significance: voters who assert their constitutional prerogatives and national sovereignty will be punished for getting in the way of the elite establishment and its globalism. It’s their way or they will make your lives miserable. So much for the invisible, guiding hand of the free market! It’s more like the Invisible Fist!

You know what to do, right? Vote and be counted, then join the NRA!

5. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman begged Trump voters to listen to him, the voice of political reason crying out in the wilderness of the… the… the… whatever. Here was his key thought to change your minds: “Yes, Hillary Clinton is a flawed leader… . But she is not indecent… .”

The significance: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Clinton’s desperate dog-and-pony shills have run out of smoke and mirrors to alter the appearance of her reckless, criminal activity and her elitist, globalist policies that will rifle through your pocketbooks to meet higher costs and export your jobs to other countries.

To vote for Trump is to vote for American individualism and excellence, it’s to vote for the hard-fought liberty and laws our forefathers won, it’s to vote for a culture of faith and freedom, it’s to vote for creating jobs and prosperity, it’s to vote for getting things done on time and under budget, it’s to vote to take care of our own citizens and veterans instead of another country’s citizens, especially those who hate our faith and freedom.

Won’t it be great to have that kind of country? Make America great again!

It’s Hillary’s Fault

Sometimes we do not want the light spotted on us. We prefer the spotlight draw attention elsewhere, particularly to someone else who is doing wrong so that our sin is not exposed or given attention.

Such is the case in this 2016 presidential race. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, who boasted she had built herself a resumé of accomplishment, has discovered during the rough and tumble of an actual campaign that merely having a job or a title does not make a person qualified for his or her next job. A jobholder has do do something significant, something significantly good, or better, a series of significantly good things.

Instead, Mrs. Clinton, while touting her experience, has become aware that the objective evaluation of her performance differs vastly from her perception of that performance in her politically motivated appointment.

Worse, her argument that she performed admirably has been blocked out by the deafening thunder of her national security transgressions. She has been left to shout and scream that the FBI is interfering in her election, that the Russians are interfering in her election, and that nobody is spoiling Donald Trump’s election in this post-Access Hollywood moment. Where are her media collaborators?

She and they are, of course, trying to turn the spotlight elsewhere. The truth is that she is responsible for turning the spotlight on in the first place. Handle your national security emails properly and lawfully, and you don’t have a problem. Take them off your job site for your “convenience”, and you expose them to the computerized hacking of foreign powers, allow them storage on additional devices at additional places that are off your job site and away from care and security, and make a mess of doing your job.

Then comes the criminal investigation, as it should, a faux exoneration, and then more criminal investigation when it becomes clear, despite your best efforts to “wipe” the evidence and eliminate the devices carrying it, your transgressions, and those of your staff, were more egregious than first contemplated.

It’s true we do not know yet what the 650,000 emails ensconced in the virtual world of Anthony Wiener’s computer will tell us (though the sheer volume does not bode well). That does not permit Mrs. Clinton to cry “foul”. She created this mess. She created the mishandling and violations of law willfully and intentionally.

Mrs. Clinton gave us her intention when she declared that she wanted to make life more “convenient” for herself, merging her government business communications – the people’s business, mind you – and her personal communications into one account so that she, and not the government for whom she worked, could exercise sole control for whatever ends, good or bad, she saw fit.

Hillary Clinton placed herself above the people whose interests she was hired to protect in the role of an agency head.

She failed to do her job. She failed the people.

So don’t blame FBI Director James Comey that he had to reopen the investigation he thought was closed because his agents found what appears to be more of your emails. Your reckless placement of national security affairs and classified material on your personal, private server stashed in the basement of your Chappaqua, New York, home was your fault. Because you and your staff connected to your private, personal server, instead of doing all your business on secure government servers like you were supposed to, national security and classified emails are all over in places they should never have been.

Please don’t blame the Russians either, even if they did meddle. If the media, which has been aiding and abetting your campaign and trying to sink your opponents’, had done their job and reported and investigated objectively and completely, we would not have needed the Russians and Wikileaks. Had law enforcement been doing its job, we would not have needed the Russians or Wikileaks.

The shame – your shame, Mrs. Clinton, and ours – is that the Russians had to teach us that you behaved very, very badly, that you were crooked, and that you have been using every cheating and dirty trick in your power to win your party’s nomination and to win a presidential election for which you don’t even deserve to be running.

So if your quest for convenience has come back to haunt you, if your own haughty defiance of law and procedure has returned with a vengeance to devil your campaign at a most inopportune time, look in the mirror and point a bony finger at the withered image you see.

It’s your fault, Hillary Clinton! Blame no one else. It’s your fault!

The Hillary-Obama Axis of Contempt for Americans

The Obama Pentagon has decided to rescind its demand that American soldiers return the re-enlistment bonuses they earned and had been promised.

Still, thousands of soldiers were stripped of millions of dollars, and it remains uncertain whether those who complied with the Scroogean order will get their money back.

The fiasco highlights the contempt in which Obama, his hoped-for successor Hillary, and some Democrats have held our valiant military men and women. In their eyes, it wasn’t enough that our young men and women had put their lives on the line for our country.

The Obama administration wants to squeeze our soldiers for a few extra bucks. They don’t mind spending billions of our tax dollars to fund illegal aliens and Muslim refugees, but they want to penny pinch our own citizens, demanding the return of bonuses and hoarding money from VA hospitals that suffer from gross inefficiencies.

Hillary will continue those erratic, imbalanced, anti-American policies. She will take money from veterans and soldiers and give it to illegal aliens and Muslims.

Donald Trump will stop that misfeasance. He will not fund people who are here illegally. He will not pay to relocate potentially violent Muslims to a democracy and Western culture that they hate.

What Trump will do is spend money to make VA hospitals take care of the men and women they were supposed to take care of in a timely, effective manner – veterans. He will pay and allow soldiers to keep the bonuses they were promised. Trump will NOT cheat them.

Does that not make sense? Aren’t our president and our government Constitutionally mandated to look out for the common welfare and defense of our citizens?

The answer is, “Yes!”

Is our government supposed to take care of the citizens of other countries? Is that a Constitutional mandate?

The plain and simple answer: “No, it is not!”

Was not the whole point of the American Revolution to liberate ourselves from a dictatorial monarchy that not only failed to look out for all its subjects but made those subjects feel like they were NOT subjects.

Now Hillary and Obama make American citizens feel like they should be second class to foreigners, and the disturbing duo claim they are representing “American values” to con Americans into feeling guilty about demanding their government look out for them first.

They are not telling Americans the truth. How do we know? We know because America has NO tradition of encouraging ILLEGAL immigration. None. Yet they cunningly omit the word ILLEGAL when they speak of immigration. The only tradition America has encouraged is LEGAL immigration. Bring your poor and your tired LEGALLY.

When you don’t have a conscience, and when you see illegal immigrants as votes who can overwhelm the votes of real American citizens, it is easy to lie. That’s what Hillary and Obama do.

You are being conned, fellow citizen!

Vote for the candidate who stands for Americans and America, not the candidate who despises the military and puts foreigners first.

Megyn Kelly Preys on Trump, Fights Newt

Newt Gingrich called out Megyn Kelly for inflammatory and untruthful reporting during a Fox News interview on her show Tuesday, Oct. 25.

A video of the heated exchange can be found at the link below:

http://nation.foxnews.com/2016/10/26/hot-debate-megyn-kelly-vs-newt-gingrich-trump-and-alleged-media-bias

Kelly, unable to get past Trump’s put-downs of her during the primaries, zeroed in – again – on the statements the business mogul made during a secret taping prior to an Access Hollywood episode 11 years ago.

She incorrectly stated – as she and others have in the past – that Trump said on the recording that he liked to grope women in their private areas “and kiss them against their will.”

That is false. Megyn Kelly lied. She spoke untruthfully. Trump absolutely never says that on the recording. Yet Kelly relayed as fact something that was and has always been fiction to continue to claw at Trump and to avoid losing a war of words to Newt Gingrich, which she did lose.

What does the recording say? What does The New York Times transcript of the recording say?

“And when you’re a star, they LET you do it. You can do anything.”

Does everyone see the word “let”? Does everyone know what the word “let” means?

In other words, the women to whom Trump refers allowed, permitted, gave consent to him to do that – much in the same way groupies consent to have sex with the groups they follow – if, in fact, he actually ever tried to grope and kiss anyone and was not simply sticking his male chest out and thumping on it.

What’s more, what actually happens in the recording? What actually happens when the Access Hollywood bus arrives and Trump and Billy Bush are greeted by the beautiful Arianne Zucker? After just boasting about his actions with women, does Trump try it with beautiful Arianne in front of his friend to whom he boasted?

No. He doesn’t.

In fact, Trump only gives a verbal greeting to Zucker at first. He hugs her only after Bush suggests Arianne give Trump a hug. Then, with his own beautiful wife on his mind, Trump gives the hug saying, it’s okay with Melania! He was telling Arianne the only reason he is hugging her is because it’s okay with Melania!

The mendacity of mendacious Megyn Kelly would be astounding in any other context if it were not for the fact that she is just one of many of the mendacious, such as lying, cowardly, won’t-stand-up-for-gays Anderson Cooper.

She wanted to stand out as the filthiest of the filth, so Kelly went further by suggesting that Donald Trump might be “a sexual predator”. Below lie her exact, dissembling words:

“What I said was, if Trump is a sexual predator, then it’s a big story. And what we saw on that tape was Trump himself saying that he likes to grab women by the genitals and kiss them against their will.”

Do a DuckDuckGo search for The New York Times Access Hollywood transcript and read the whole thing. Nowhere does Trump speak about doing anything to women against their will.

You are a liar, Megyn Kelly, a vicious prevaricator, deceiver, and dissembler who deliberately lied so people would think Trump said it and you would appear to be a relevant, incisive journalist. Like your words, your are utterly lacking in substance.

Further, Megyn Kelly supposedly has legal training. Yet she employed the term “sexual predator”, one of the gravest of designations a court, and only a court, can impose on a convicted defendant. It is a worse designation than “sexual offender”, which itself is a serious designation.

The designation “sexual predator” is usually, if not entirely, applied to those cunning men and women who stalk and violently molest or rape much younger victims, often torturing or killing them. Kelly used the term deliberately to shock voters and viewers, and her unfounded use of it, even in a conditional statement, represents a most grave, ethical breach for a journalist.

Fortunately, she subverted her own “logic” when, just prior to repeating the sexual predator term, she admitted she did not know if Trump was, in fact, a sexual predator.

We can go further. We don’t know that Trump did anything with anyone with their consent, much less against their consent.

Then why was she using the term???

I don’t know that Megyn Kelly is a pervert, but if she is, or if she is a sexual predator, it’s a huge story. Since she keeps using the word, sexual predator, maybe she has sexual predation on her mind. So if Megyn Kelly is a sexual predator, it’s a huge story that must be covered, just like we’re covering it right now by talking about it over and over again.

Please, make sure you tweet and post on Facebook and on any other social media that IF Megyn Kelly is a sexual predator – I don’t know that she is, and I’m not saying that she is, but maybe she is getting defensive if she denies it or takes issue with any talking about it – but if Megyn Kelly is a sexual predator, it’s a huge story, and we will cover it from now until Kingdom Come!

And even if we don’t know that it’s true, we are going to keep doing stories about if it is true. We’re going to keep driving it through your ear holes like a spike into Dracula’s heart!

Gingrich said it best in his righteous reply: “You are fascinated with sex, and you don’t care about public policy.”

Well, if Megyn Kelly is fascinated with sex… .

Uh, never mind!

Do You Want Hillary to Sell Out America?

I have been telling you about the need to peel away the layers of BS that cocoon the candidates and which isolate you from the truth, crippling your ability to vote wisely.

This need to peel away the layers applies to both the candidates and the people who speak for them, as it does to the media which filters the information that reaches you.

Some of you may be aware already of the comments of legendary journalist Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story for The Washington Post in the 1970s. That story led to the downfall of then President Richard M. Nixon. Others of you will not be aware, because most of the media seem to have ignored or to given the most cursory play to what Woodward said in an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

Please keep in mind that I think most people and journalists would consider Woodward a reporter who looks through a liberal lens.

So on Sunday, with news out from Wikileaks that the King of Morocco gave $12,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for a visit from Bill and Chelsea Clinton, and perhaps other considerations, Wallace asked Woodward for his take on the accusations that the Clintons used their foundation as a pay-to-play scheme.

“It’s corrupt. It’s a scandal”, Woodward said in a quote provided by mostly secondary news sources but which was included in a story that appeared in the left-leaning Huffington Post. “The mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined. And it’s corrupt. You can’t just say it’s unsavory.”

That’s a damning judgment based on the facts, coming from a veteran, legendary journalist like Woodward.

We can extrapolate two things from Woodward’s judgment.

First, we see how the standards of journalism have changed. Forty years ago, the pattern of facts demonstrated by the Clintons, Hillary’s campaign, Hillary’s operation of the State Department, and their “charitable foundation”, would have undergone massive, relentless scrutiny by the press. Newspapers and TV networks would have pursued the story until they had uncovered everything. Character, or ethos, the ethical attitude given off by the person being examined in the public light, possessed a significance to news people and voters that it does not today. Hence, we see little meaty reporting on the Clintons.

Nonetheless, we arrive at our second and most important point, and it comes to you in a question: Do you really want to elect Hillary to sell out America?

Hillary is not going to change. She is not going to uncorrupt herself. She is not going to stop using elected office to enrich herself by selling what she can of her country. She cannot. Her habits have grown long, thick roots into her soul. She does not want to change. She could not change even if she wanted.

You can change, however. You can look the facts straight in the eye. You can acknowledge you have been misled, that a person you thought was good and well-meaning in fact was not. It’s a tough admission to make to yourself. I get it. The facts aren’t going to change for us, though.

Hillary says all the right things, but she does something different.

You can exercise your reasonableness and your foresight and say, “I cannot vote for someone of such weak and poor ethical character. I cannot vote for someone who bases her decisions on what will enrich her. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to expose our national security and our American lives to unnecessary danger. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to sell out my country.”

Join Americans of all political stripes, some who have not even voted in thirty or forty years, and take a stand.

“I won’t let Hillary sell out my country!”

If You Want a Job, Vote for Trump

Most Americans want to be and feel valuable. They derive their value by their adherence to their personal beliefs, the usefulness and excellence of the products they make or the services they provide, and by the amount of money which they make.

Which candidate offers the best hope and help to give Americans the opportunity to merit the self worth they want?

Donald Trump does. Why?

The reasons Donald Trump gives Americans the best hope and help to achieve their self worth are his business savvy and his successful experience financing and building his businesses.

How many years have Americans been saying it was time to get someone, not merely outside of the Washington establishment, but outside the profession of law to enter the political sphere and run it successfully because of his executive business experience?

Now we have that person, Donald Trump. His confidence, his strong leadership, his savvy, and his skill at executive administration have allowed him to negotiate the most profitable deals and to complete projects on or ahead of time at or under budget.

Can you imagine the benefits to us by having a person like that seize the reins of government? Would he not gain control over this beast of bureaucratic federal government and make it more efficient, profitable, and responsive to Americans?

Donald Trump is the sterling candidate to restore America’s dwindling economic fortunes.

Why isn’t Hillary Clinton that person?

Hillary has no business experience. She’s an ivory tower lawyer. She has no experience creating jobs. She has no experience completing projects on time and on budget.

Hillary has created an institution, the Clinton Foundation, which has been described as a vast money laundering machine that enables special foreign and financial interests to obtain government favors by enriching the Clintons. That’s good for her but does not help Americans.

Hillary wants more illegal aliens and Muslim refugees to come to the United States, and to keep here those who are already illegal. Those policies not only create a strain on public budgets, but they add huge numbers to the potential employment pool, which means job creation has a harder task keeping up with the growing numbers of available workers.

Add to that Hillary’s support, not merely for open borders, but for globalization, which means manufacturing plants will continue to close in the United States, making more Americans income-less, and reopen in foreign countries.

All those Hillary policies mean more unemployment and loss of money to spend!

Finally, Hillary wants to force on Americans a medical insurance program, Obamacare, whose costs will skyrocket by 25% in 2017 and will continue to rise in subsequent years. Yesterday, the White House acknowledged the impending cost increases.

Hillary Clinton’s plan will take away jobs from Americans, create a greater likelihood Americans will not obtain employment, create a few, low-paying, part-time jobs, make Americans pay more for medical insurance, likely raise taxes even on middle and low income Americans, and increase our national and public debt, all while enriching herself and a few wealthy friends.

Donald Trump’s plan calls for reducing taxes, reducing expenditures, creating more wealth for the average person, creating more jobs, creating more income, returning manufacturing to the United States, expelling illegal aliens, and keeping out bloody terrorists and their sympathizers, which creates public safety and a more stable business environment.

If having a job and making money to support yourself and your family are NOT important to you, vote for Hillary.

If you want a job, if you want an opportunity to make more money and to take care of yourself and your family, vote for Donald Trump.

It’s that simple. It’s that clear.