What difference does it make? Makes a difference to me. Does it to you? (See 1 and 1a below.)
Hillary took advantage of Baltimor today to tell us we need to restore faith in politics etc.
The woman is amazing.
She is like the robber who robs the bank and then attacks the bank for not having better safes.
Meanwhile we now find out over 1000 foreign donors are missing from required documents of the Clinton Foundation and, of course, the e mails she erased had nothing to do with her constant shenanigans.
I admit I ain't bright but geeze Hillarious how much do you want me to swallow without choking?
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Today a group of twelve met to discuss the hijacking of Islam. Attending were four from the Muslim faith, including one of Savannah's Imam and his wife, and two congregants, a Minister, a Rabbi, a Protestant , an agnostic and four Jews.
I began the discussion by asking the Imam to explain his thoughts regarding the problem radical Islamists were causing the world body politic and what could be done to arrest it if he agreed it was a dangerous trend.
He was very forthright and began by giving us background pertaining to his conversion from being a church attending Baptist and then stated that radical Islamists were misguided criminals and he pointed out that religion of all faiths, at one time or another, had been politicized.
The discussion is being written up by the Rabbi and I will post his comments in a later memo.
We concluded that education was critical if minds were to be changed, silence was dangerous in the face of what was happening world wide and we agreed to try and expand what we began by increasing the numbers attending our next discussion, which will be held at our home, sometime in the Fall. If you would be interested in participating in our discussion let me know and you will be invited.
I found the Imam a breath of fresh air, a bright and serious man and very credible. Would it not be a blessing if we could put him and those congregants who joined him in a Xerox Machine.
It would be a better world.
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Finally seeing the light of day and reality. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Did Israel just send a message to Iran? (See 3 below.)
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Michelle Malkin finds Obama' comments bilious. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
CLINTON CONCEPT OF CHARITY
Posted on 27th April 2015 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
charity, Clinton Foundation, fraud, Karl Denninger
charity, Clinton Foundation, fraud, Karl Denninger
A charity that only distributes 5.9% of the funds it collected to charitable causes is called a FRAUD!!!
Where is the IRS investigation? Where is the MSNBC expose?
Guest Post by Karl Denninger
I have to admit, this is a pretty impressive tax return…. and belies a simple question: Why would anyone “donate” to such a “charity”?$144 million in direct contributions and grants; $149 million in total revenue (2013 numbers); of that $8.9 million went to grants paid (that is, about 5.9% of the funds that came in went to charitable causes.)
Where is the IRS investigation? Where is the MSNBC expose?
Guest Post by Karl Denninger
I have to admit, this is a pretty impressive tax return…. and belies a simple question: Why would anyone “donate” to such a “charity”?$144 million in direct contributions and grants; $149 million in total revenue (2013 numbers); of that $8.9 million went to grants paid (that is, about 5.9% of the funds that came in went to charitable causes.)
The rest was either “absorbed” (that is, the “charity” still has it) or was paid out in things like executive compensation.
You might be interested in knowing that the “charity” had 35 employees with reportable compensation (that is, over $100,000) and their top five combined had $2.6 million in direct (that is, cash) compensation and another $278,000 in benefits for approximately $3 million — or 1/3rd of all spending on “charitable causes“. On a grossed-up basis the charity spent $21.8 million on salaries and wages or approaching three times what it spent on “charity.”
In fact this “charity” spent as much on travel ($8.4 million) and more on conferences and similar confabs ($9.2 million) as it did on actual grants for charitable purposes.
What is this “charity”?
Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clintons so-called “charity” that was operating while Hillary was Secretary of State and continues to operate today.
Again, if you were not trying to buy influence of some sort exactly why would you donate to a so-called “charity” that only spends 5.9% of the money received on actual charitable programs?
Again, if you were not trying to buy influence of some sort exactly why would you donate to a so-called “charity” that only spends 5.9% of the money received on actual charitable programs?
Go ahead folks, tell me what possible motivation someone who is rich might have in “giving” to such a foundation when virtually none of your money is going to go to actual relief causes such as feeding poor people and helping disaster victims.
Oh by the way, that’s not really much of a one-off either. In 2012 (the previous tax year) the ratio of spending on charitable programs to “contributions” was just under 15%
1a) Clinton Is Playing Her Fans for Fools
I once had a boss who gave me some great advice, not just for managing people but for judging politicians: You forgive mistakes; you punish patterns. Everybody screws up. But if someone won’t learn from his mistakes and try to correct his behavior, then he either doesn’t think it was a mistake, he just doesn’t care, or he thinks you’re a fool. The one indisputable takeaway from Peter Schweizer’s new book, Clinton Cash, is that Bill and Hillary Clinton fit one or all of those descriptions.
Let us recall Marc Rich, a shady billionaire indicted for tax evasion and defying trade sanctions with Iran during the U.S. hostage crisis. Rich fled to Switzerland to escape prosecution.
He hired Jack Quinn, a former Clinton White House counsel, to lobby the administration for a pardon. Quinn sought help from then–deputy attorney general Eric Holder, who advised Quinn to petition the White House directly — advice Holder later regretted. On the last day of his presidency, Bill Clinton pardoned Rich.
The ensuing scandal was enormous — and bipartisan. It was widely believed that Rich had bought his pardon. Denise Rich, his ex-wife, had made huge donations to the Democratic party, including $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign and $450,000 to the foundation building Bill Clinton’s presidential library.
Liberals were infuriated. “You let me down,” wrote the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen. “It’s a pie in the face of anyone who ever defended you. You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid.”
“It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified,” exclaimed then-Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.). “It was contemptuous.” Senator Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) chastised, “It was inexcusable.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd suggested Clinton had “traded a constitutional power for personal benefit.” Jimmy Carter all but called it bribery and said it was “disgraceful.”
You can understand the bitterness. Democrats had defended the Clintons through Whitewater, Travel-gate, and Hillary Clinton’s billing-records shenanigans. They even defended Bill Clinton when he raised millions in re-election donations from Chinese donors and rented out the Lincoln bedroom. But this was just too much. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us half a dozen times . . .
The Clintons said it was all a misunderstanding, which is what they always say. Quinn offered a familiar defense: “The process I followed was one of transparency.” Bill Clinton: “As far as I knew, Marc Rich and his wife were Republicans.” Hillary Clinton kept quiet.
Personally, I think Jimmy Carter was right, which is not something I say often.
But let’s assume it really was just a misunderstanding. Wouldn’t a normal person — never mind a family with historic ambitions — go to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of a repeat performance? When Senator John McCain was unfairly lumped in with the “Keating Five” influence-peddling scandal, he said the dishonor was more painful than his five years in a Vietnamese prison. He dedicated himself to demonstrating the sincerity of his shame, including his decades-long — though intellectually misguided — quest to reform campaign-finance laws.
There are no allegations of pardons for sale in Schweizer’s book. After all, Bill Clinton had none to sell anymore. But the Rich scandal was equally about the wealthy buying access and influence. And though there is no clear proof that Bill Clinton illegally sold access to shady gold-mining interests in Haiti or uranium moguls in Canada, no one this side of longtime Clinton defender Lanny Davis can dispute that the Clintons have acted as if they really just didn’t care how it all looked.
As New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait notes, the “best-case scenario” is that the Clintons have been “disorganized and greedy.”
The Clinton spin on the book is that there’s not a “shred of evidence” of criminal wrongdoing, or as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos helpfully repeated over the weekend, “There’s no smoking gun.” He’s right, but not being a criminal is a remarkably low bar for a politician, even a Clinton.
The standard is that public servants should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Not only is there three decades of evidence that the Clintons don’t think that standard applies to them, but there’s growing evidence that his biggest supporters are happy to play the fool — again.
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2)
CONSERVATIVE COALITION WORKS TO BAN SHARIA LAW IN AMERICA
Author: Christopher Agee
Just weeks after reports were confirmed regarding the establishment of an Islamic tribunal – the first in the nation – in Texas, a group of conservative activists announced the creation of an alliance existing solely to ban any form of foreign law from being observed in an American courtroom.
Though the effort takes aim at any law practiced outside of the U.S. system, the obvious focus of the organization is apparent in its website name: Ban Sharia Law.
Radio host Don Smith is working with the group, which he told Western Journalism was started by Tim Selaty – the driving force behind Tea Party Community, a right-wing alternative to Facebook. A number of other prominent conservatives have joined the coalition, he explained; and anyone interested in preserving American law is encouraged to show their support.
In addition to becoming a coalition partner and signing an online petition, supporters are encouraged to upload images of themselves holding signs that call for Sharia Law to be banned across the nation. An interactive map provides a quick look at which states have proposed or passed anti-Sharia – or, more specifically, anti-foreign law – legislation. On its website, the group explains why the distinction is important.
“Although we believe Sharia law is currently posing the biggest threat to infiltrating our legal system,” the notice states, “most of the states who’ve successfully passed legislation didn’t actually mention Sharia law directly. This was intentional to squash the counter efforts by organizations like the Council on America-Islamic Relations…. The successful legislation was crafted towards the restriction of all foreign/international law.” The site includes links to “graphic stories and disturbing videos” of Sharia law’s impact on society – both at home and abroad – and calls on anyone opposed to the implementation of this form of justice within U.S. borders to join the mission to prevent it.
2a) The Blue-City Model
You’re not supposed to say this in polite company, but what went up in flames in Baltimore Monday night was not merely a senior center, small businesses and police cars. Burning down was also the blue-city model of urban governance.
2a) The Blue-City Model
Baltimore shows how progressivism has failed urban America.
You’re not supposed to say this in polite company, but what went up in flames in Baltimore Monday night was not merely a senior center, small businesses and police cars. Burning down was also the blue-city model of urban governance.
Nothing excuses the violence of rampaging students or the failure of city officials to stop it before Maryland’s Governor called in the National Guard. But as order starts to return to the streets, and the usual political suspects lament the lack of economic prospects for the young men who rioted, let’s not forget who has run Baltimore and Maryland for nearly all of the last 40 years.
The men and women in charge have been Democrats, and their governing ideas are “progressive.” This model, with its reliance on government and public unions, has dominated urban America as once-vibrant cities such as Baltimore became shells of their former selves. In 1960 Baltimore was America’s sixth largest city with 940,000 people. It has since shed nearly a third of its population and today isn’t in the top 25.
The dysfunctions of the blue-city model are many, but the main failures are three: high crime, low economic growth and failing public schools that serve primarily as jobs programs for teachers and administrators rather than places of learning.
Let’s take them in order. The first and most important responsibility of any city government is to uphold law and order. When the streets are unsafe and crime is high, everything else—e.g., getting businesses to invest and create jobs—becomes next to impossible.
People also start voting with their feet. MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blake has stated that one of her goals is to attract 10,000 families to move to Baltimore. Good luck with that after Monday night.
It’s not that we don’t know what to do. Rudy Giuliani proved that in New York City, which he helped to revive in the 1990s starting with a revolution in policing that brought crime rates to record lows. A good part of this was policing in areas that had previously been left to the hoodlums.
His reward (and that of his successor, Mike Bloomberg, who built on Mr. Giuliani’s policies) was to become a villain of the liberal grievance industry and a constant target of attack. Few blue-city mayors elsewhere have been willing to take that heat.
Or take the economy. In the heyday of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the idea was that the federal government could revitalize city centers with money and central planning. You can tell how that turned out by the office buildings and housing projects that failed to attract middle-class taxpayers. Baltimore’s waterfront is a gleaming example of this kind of top-down development, with new sports stadiums that failed to attract other businesses.
The latest figures from Maryland’s Department of Labor show state unemployment at 5.4%, against 8.4% for Baltimore. A 2011 city report on the neighborhood of Freddie Gray—the African-American whose death in police custody sparked the riots—reported an area that is 96.9% black with unemployment at 21%. When it comes to providing hope and jobs, we should have learned by now that no government program can substitute for a healthy private economy.
Then there are the public schools. Residents will put up with a great deal if they know their children have a chance at upward mobility through education. But when the schools no longer perform, the parents who can afford to move to the suburbs do so—and those left behind are stuck with failure. There are many measures of failure in Baltimore schools, but consider that on state tests 72% of eighth graders scored below proficient in math, 45% in reading and 64% in science.
Our point is not to indict all cities or liberals. Many big-city Democrats have worked to welcome private investment and reform public education. Some of the biggest cities—New York, Boston and San Francisco—have also had inherent economic advantages like higher education and the finance and technology industries.
But Baltimore also has advantages, not least its port and one of the nation’s finest medical centers in Johns Hopkins. If it lacks the appeal of New York or San Diego, that is all the more reason for city officials to rethink their reliance on high taxes, government spending and welfare-state dependency.
For a time in recent decades, it looked like the reform examples of New York under Messrs. Giuliani and Bloomberg and the growth of cities like Houston might lead to a broader urban revitalization. In some places it did.
But of late the progressives have been making a comeback, led by Bill de Blasio in New York and the challenge to sometime reform Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago. This week’s nightmare in Baltimore shows where this leads. It’s time for a new urban renewal, this time built on the ideas of private economic development, personal responsibility, “broken windows” policing, and education choice.
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2) I'm Out
I remember the righteous smugness I used to feel when the one conservative friend in my social circle would begin expressing his opinions at a dinner gathering. I and the other ‘enlightened’ diners would shift uncomfortably and glance at one another, rolling our eyes: "Here he goes again." My stomach would tighten with a worry not fit for the occasion. I began to feel personally offended. And the smugness sometimes boiled over into anger, as I'd listen to my friend, loyal and kind, simply share his "crazy" ideas and opinions with us.
2) I'm Out
I remember the righteous smugness I used to feel when the one conservative friend in my social circle would begin expressing his opinions at a dinner gathering. I and the other ‘enlightened’ diners would shift uncomfortably and glance at one another, rolling our eyes: "Here he goes again." My stomach would tighten with a worry not fit for the occasion. I began to feel personally offended. And the smugness sometimes boiled over into anger, as I'd listen to my friend, loyal and kind, simply share his "crazy" ideas and opinions with us.
What I thought then was only my frustration with his views, I know now was also my own discomfort with my belief it was okay to dismiss and condemn him for expressing himself. We ganged up on him. And while he didn’t like it (who would?), he took it well, and eventually the conversation would drift into safer territory like work and sports, and all would be forgotten.
Oftentimes after these dinners I was left thinking (no pun intended), that this guy was one of the smartest, nicest people I knew, and all he was trying to do was offer another angle on things. He was sharing a voice that wasn't that of an echoing lemming skirting over issues in search of a choir, but rather an informed, passionate, and to us, provocative perspective we were all uneasy with. And again, I could feel in my gut that I hadn’t been fair or nice. But wait, aren't us liberals supposed to be “nice” and sensitive… and open? I mean, if the basic meaning of the word liberal is to “advocate the freedom of the individual,” why then is there such hell to pay for those who don’t agree with the Left’s political or social views?
Why the defensiveness? Why the arrogance? Why the hostility? I think it’s fear; the fear of one day realizing that we may just be wrong, and have been wrong all along. But because we’ve been entrenched in the culture for so long with this way of thinking, we can't simply admit we’re wrong – we’re just way too far down the road to turn back now. So instead of listen, absorb, and respect a contrary opinion, we resort to demeaning character or intellect, and attempt to intimidate. Feeling over facts.
So, who wouldn’t be hesitant or scared? I would be. I was. But a few years ago I did it. I decided to turn around and head back up the road and look at things from the other side. And after much rumination, research, and listening, I began to rethink my positions, and it became abundantly clear to me that I am a conservative. Not a criminal or a hater or even a telemarketer, no, just someone who doesn’t agree with the ideology, and won’t fall victim to emotional manipulation and hypocrisy of the Left any longer.
So I decided to do something that many people won’t or can’t do. I came out…‘right’, and owned the fact that I see things differently now.
And boy howdy what a reaction I got! When I first shared my new views on Facebook it was as if I had announced that I was dedicating my life to murdering kittens. The vitriolic responses from my “friends” only reinforced my theory that the "party of tolerance" was only tolerant of those who agree with them. Soon after that experience I wrote a taut farewell to Facebook-land and haven’t been back since.
Being someone who lives and works in Los Angeles (and wants to continue to do both), I had plenty to lose by revealing this change of heart and mind. Plus, having been raised in Massachusetts by a socialist mother during the ‘60s and ‘70s, this was the ultimate about-face. Many of my old colleagues don’t call me anymore, and have become alienated because I am so “out there” now. Some members of my family keep our conversations on the light side, and I get tight smiles from certain friends. I don’t begrudge them as much as I simply don’t get it.
So now here I am, a reformed, or shall I say transformed liberal, living in the center of the religious Left, wondering whether I should I continue to open my trap or keep my opinions to myself.
But… let’s just say I do decide to express my utter dismay for our current president’s arrogant, divisive, and remarkably cavalier manner as he’s bulldozed his agenda across the boundaries of democracy. Abusing his authority to spy on political opponents, attempting to align us with our enemies while leaving our allies hanging in the balance, and injecting himself into every racial incident to stoke the flames in order to strengthen his preferred narrative -- well then, I hope that whomever I do share these views with, especially if they don’t agree with me, behaves better than I did when I was on the other side of the dinner table.
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3): Did Israel just use new Bunker Buster to Bomb Iranian Missile Base in Yemen?
Editor’s Note… One of the internet’s best independent analysts, Thomas Wictor, who specializes in Open Source Battle damage assessment, believes Israel just used a new Bunker Buster to bomb Iranian Missile Base in Yemen: The Israelis and\or their Saudi allies have managed to come up with a roughly comparable substitute to the American MOAB Bunker Buster and have managed to convert a Boeing 707 tanker to a weaponized platform to carry such bombs. The beta test was carried out on the Iranian missile base in Yemen during the recent Saudi operation Decisive storm against the Iranian proxies (Houthis) and their IRGC handlers. If he is correct, the Israeli-Sunni coalition now has a feasible military option against the Iranian nuclear facilities.
There’s some amazing video of a massive explosion next to the Faj Attan neighborhood of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. We’ve been told that the target was a SCUD missile depot or a missile base. There’s a difference between the two: A missile depot is where you store the weapons, while a missile base is where the personnel and equipment used to fire the weapons are located. The American 319th Missile Squadron, for example, is stationed at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Whatever was hit, I think it was a message to Iran.
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4)Debunking Obama's Bilious Baltimore Babble
It's never enough. American taxpayers have surrendered billions and billions and billions of dollars to the social-justice-spender-in-chief. But it's never, ever enough.
The latest paroxysm of urban violence, looting, and recriminations in Baltimore prompted President Obama on Tuesday to trot out his frayed Blame The Callous, Tight-Fisted Republicans card. After dispensing with an obligatory wrist-slap of toilet paper-and Oreo-filching "protesters" who are burning Charm City to the ground (he hurriedly changed it to "criminals and thugs" mid-word), the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner got down to his usual business: hectoring his political opponents and grousing that America hasn't forked over enough money for him to make the "massive investments" needed to "make a difference right now."
If we are "serious" about preventing more riots, the president declared, then "the rest of us" (translation: all of us stingy conservatives) have to make sure "we are providing early education" and "making investments" so that inner-city youths are "getting the training they need to find jobs."
Narcissus on the Potomac wheedled that "there's a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now." Me, me, me! His laundry list of the supposedly underfunded cures that he can't get through Congress includes "school reform," "job training" and "some investments in infrastructure" to "attract new businesses."
I'll give POTUS credit: He can lay it on thicker than a John Deere manure spreader.
Let's talk "massive investments," shall we?
In 2009, Obama and the Democrats rammed the $840 billion federal stimulus package through Capitol Hill under the guise of immediate job creation and economic recovery. An estimated $64 billion went to public school districts; another nearly $50 billion went for other education spending. This included $13 billion for low-income public school kids; $4.1 billion for Head Start and childcare services; $650 million for educational technology; $200 million for working college students; and $70 million for homeless children.
How's that all working out? Last week, economists from the St. Louis Federal Reserve surveyed more than 6,700 education stimulus recipients and concluded that for every $1 million of stimulus grants to a district, a measly 1.5 jobs were created. "Moreover, all of this increase came in the form of nonteaching staff," the report found, and the "jobs effect was also not statistically different from zero."
More than three-quarters of the jobs "created or saved" in the first year of the stimulus were government jobs, while roughly 1 million private sector jobs were forestalled or destroyed, according to Ohio State University. President Obama later admitted "there was no such thing" as "shovel-ready projects." But there were plenty of pork-ready recipients, from green energy billionaires to union bosses to Democratic campaign finance bundlers. About $230 billion in porkulus funds was set aside for infrastructure projects, yet less than a year later, Obama was back asking for another $50 billion to pour down the infrastructure black hole.
In 2010, President Obama signed the so-called Edujobs bill into law -- a $26 billion political wealth redistribution scheme paying back Big Labor for funding Democratic congressional campaigns. A year later, several were spending on the money to plug budget shortfalls instead of hiring teachers. Other recipients received billions despite having full educational payrolls and not knowing what to do with the big bucks.
In 2012, with bipartisan support, Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act "to encourage startups and support our nation's small businesses."
In July 2014, with bipartisan support, Obama signed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to "help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy." (Never mind that a GAO review of the feds' existing 47 job-training programs run by nine different agencies "generally found the effects of participation were not consistent across programs, with only some demonstrating positive impacts that tended to be small, inconclusive or restricted to short-term impacts.")
In December 2014, the White House unveiled nearly $1 billion in new "investments" to "expand access to high-quality early childhood education to every child in America" from "birth and continuing to age 5."
That's all on top of the $6 billion government-funded national service and education initiative known as the SERVE America Act, which was enacted less than a month after the nearly $1 trillion stimulus with the help of a majority of Big Government Senate Republicans. The SERVE America Act included $1.1 billion to increase the investment in national service opportunities; $97 million for Learn and Serve America Youth Engagement Zones; and nearly $400 million for the Social Innovation Fund and Volunteer Generation Fund.
The "social innovation" slush fund was intended to "create new knowledge about how to solve social challenges in the areas of economic opportunity, youth development and school support, and healthy futures, and to improve our nation's problem-solving infrastructure in low-income communities." The biggest beneficiaries? Obama's progressive cronies.
Apparently, the richly funded "social innovators" haven't reached the looter-prone neighborhoods of Baltimore yet. But it's not ideologically bankrupt Obama's fault. It's ours.
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