I don't know whether or not you saw the memorial service for Ronald Reagan, but if you did, you probably noticed that Bill and Hillary were both dozing off.
President Ronald Reagan, who never missed a chance for a good one-liner, raised his head out of his casket and said...
"I see the Clintons are finally Sleeping together…
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This is what a Hillarious and Sanders' "free stuff socialist and entitlement dufus" is all about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CnofQQZcQ
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Hypocrisy is alive and well and now we are seeing the Demwits spewing forth about the fact that the Repubs must allow Obama his day in Court so he can bring more change.
If you have watched the news even worm Schumer argued President Bush 43 had no right to appoint a Supreme Court Justice when he had 18 months remaining in office and now he argues that it is Obama's right to appoint a Supreme Court member with less than 9 months remaining in office.
Being able to appoint someone for life gives tremendous leverage and could radically alter our nation beyond the permanent damage Obama has already done so the big guns are out, the lying and hypocrisy will increase and another nail is being prepared for our Republic's coffin. Power is everything and to hell with our nation. That is what will drive the Demwits and further divide an already disunited states!(See 1 below.)
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More PC garbage commentary:Click here: A Progressive's Guide to Political Correctness | PragerU
and then
==="With Europe its like the frog being boiled in a kettle ... They may wake up one day and find themselves cooked" ... (See 2 below.)
George Friedman on why the president is not important. You decide. (See 3 below.)
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Allen West recap "Live The Dash.:"(See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Dems in Senate passed a resolution in1960 against election year Supreme Court appointments
Read it and weep, Democrats. The shoe is on the other foot. David Bernstein at the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog:
Thanks to a VC commenter, I discovered that in August 1960, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 334, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.” Each of President Eisenhower’s SCOTUS appointments had initially been a recess appointment who was later confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats were apparently concerned that Ike would try to fill any last-minute vacancy that might arise with a recess appointment.
The GOP opposed this, of course. Hypocrisy goes two ways. But the majority won.
As it should this time.
Hat tip: Instapundit
==================================================================================2)The Lights are Going Out All Over Europe
By Geert Wilders, Chairman, Parliament , Netherlands :Dear Friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me. I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic.
We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe . This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe .
First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe . Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .
The Europe you know is changing ...
You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.
There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.
Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseilles and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammad is the most popular name among boys in many cities.
In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.
Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.
In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.
In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.
Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe . San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhardt Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.
Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.
The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority.
We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .
Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators settler's. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.
Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.
The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Gandhi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammad himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.
Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is Sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.
Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz . Second because it is a democracy. And third because Israel is our first line of defense.
This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.
The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.
Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel , they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islam as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands , 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome , Athens and Jerusalem .
Dear friends, Liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe , American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.
We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.
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3) Why the President Isn’t All That Important
By GeorgeFriedman
As an outsider to the investment community, I am constantly struck by its obsession with politics… and particularly with the role of the president. Attention and money flow to candidates in the belief that there is a unique importance to the president in shaping the republic’s future.
I find that interesting because, in my view, the American president is one of the least powerful national leaders in the world. This is particularly true in domestic affairs where he is a very visible, but a rather minor player in crafting policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping are obviously more powerful than the American president. But so is British Prime Minister David Cameron, who operates in a parliamentary system where his ability to pass legislation is far greater than the American president’s.
The 3 Branches of Government
The president represents one of three branches of government, presiding over 50 states, which also have their own rights to legislate. All legislation must pass through Congress.
Both the Senate and House of Representatives have the power to determine whether legislation is adopted or rejected. The speaker of the House can frequently choose simply not to allow a bill to come to a vote. In the Senate, any senator can prevent a bill from coming to a vote by speaking incessantly, and a handful of senators can take the floor and block the vote.
The president can veto legislation, but Congress can override the veto. The president cannot compel action or control the outcome.
So for example, while President Barack Obama got healthcare reforms through Congress, the final legislation was far from the bill he wanted. He had to bargain away some of the rest of his legislative agenda just to get these reforms through Congress. The level of effort required to achieve anything is enormous.
Then there is the third branch of government, the Supreme Court, which has the power to invalidate any legislation or presidential decision. For example, the court blocked implementation of Obama’s plans to cut power plant emissions.
The US federal government is composed of these three branches. However, we should also mention the Federal Reserve, which is the government body that has the most influence over the economy. Like the Supreme Court, the Fed was designed to operate independently of the president and Congress. Although the members of its Board of Governors are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the Fed is not answerable to either.
The president ultimately has limited powers over Congress and the Supreme Court. He can nominate Supreme Court justices but only with the concurrence of Congress.
Justice Antonin Scalia died this weekend, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already declared that he wants the next president, not Obama, to appoint Scalia’s replacement. There is good reason to believe that he can make that happen.
The president may propose any legislation he wishes and nominate any candidate to the high court he wants. Whether his bill becomes law, and whether his nominee takes office, is not up to him.
Planned Paralysis
The US was designed to be this way. The founders feared an efficient government. They did not believe in the goodness of man… but in his corruption. They understood the need for government but wanted its authority to be limited.
When necessary, they wanted the government to act with general conviction among the people that something had to be done. Barring that condition, they expected gridlock.
It is interesting that Americans now regard the paralysis of government as pathological, and a government that gets things done as healthy.
There is frequently discussion of government being run in a businesslike manner. This misses the obvious point: government is not a business. The purpose of business is to make money. The purpose of the American government is to contain the worst impulses of human beings by making the drafting of legislation as difficult as possible, without rendering it impossible.
Businesses want efficient decision making. The founders feared an efficient government. Government is designed to thwart rapid decision making, while business thrives on it. The founders valued business. They feared the government. So business methods and government methods aren’t even vaguely connected.
The President as Commander in Chief
The exception of course is in foreign policy. The founders understood that it was a dangerous world, and whatever system they developed for domestic governance, and whatever provisions they made for signing treaties and other formalities of the state, the need to go to war might arise suddenly. Therefore, they gave the president another post in government: commander in chief.
It is that post that causes people to think the president is powerful… because in that role he is. That role didn’t come to define the presidency until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Roosevelt managed to introduce some significant reforms through the New Deal, but it was his response to World War II that brought the commander-in-chief role to the fore.
World War II set the stage for a new type of republic that has endured. It was the republic at war, near war, or preparing for war. From 1941 until today, the primary responsibility of the president has been to prepare to act as commander in chief.
The advent of nuclear weapons made this role central to the presidency. In the event of a nuclear attack, decisions would have to be made that simply did not permit the time needed for the political system to function. The declaration of war became obsolete.
This declaration had never been as respected as the founders may have wanted. The wars against the Native Americans (recognized by treaty as nations) did not involve declarations of war. Countless interventions in the first half of the 20th century, from Haiti to China, had no such declarations.
The use of the declaration of war petered out after Roosevelt, and the constant state of war and near war elevated the role of commander in chief to the prime function of the president. As commander in chief, and without the tool of the declaration of war, the president became enormously powerful—outside the United States.
The great symbol of this power was the passing of the nuclear codes from the outgoing president to the new one—something both symbolic and very real. And the power he derived from the threat of nuclear war was extended to all other aspects of foreign policy.
Congress could intervene by withholding money or blocking an agreement. However, what the founders wanted worked here, too. As difficult as it was to get legislation passed through Congress, it was equally difficult to block presidential initiatives in foreign affairs. And the Supreme Court repeatedly ruled that the president’s actions in foreign affairs was outside its sphere of authority. Congress couldn’t act and the Supreme Court wouldn’t. The president’s power in foreign affairs and matters of war became, after World War II, unchallenged.
Since then, the president has filled two roles. One related to domestic policy, the other as commander in chief. Transfixed as the country was by the Cold War, the president’s major role became the owner of the nuclear arsenal. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States became the only global power in the world. Even as the nuclear threat declined, the role of the president in managing this new reality increased. This was in spite of Congressional attempts, through the War Powers Resolution of 1973, to boost its decision-making abilities regarding foreign interventions.
George H.W. Bush invaded Panama and intervened in Somalia and Kuwait. Bill Clinton intervened in Haiti and went to war in Serbia. And of course following 9/11, when war became what appears to be a permanent feature, the president’s role as commander in chief became central.
The founders always wanted a paradoxical president: weak in domestic politics but not in foreign policy or war. What shifted was not the office… but the world.
The president had not been regarded as a decisive figure before Roosevelt. Roosevelt spoke of the bully pulpit as the means of compensating for the lack of power in the office. But as the United States entered a state of permanent near war, the president’s role in foreign policy became the core of his authority.
The Illusion of Power
As it became the core of the presidency, this illusion of the president as enormously powerful grew. And the financial community became obsessed with who would become president. Whether Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or whomever.
A careful reading of a presidential candidate’s policy papers is one of the most pointless exercises imaginable. Even assuming that a candidate has read these documents and believes in them, he is not in control of what his own policies look like.
In terms of domestic proposals, a candidate’s options are profoundly limited. And in terms of foreign policy, a candidate is limited by not knowing what the US will face in the next four years. George W. Bush opposed nation building during the campaign. Bush did not anticipate that 9/11 would render all his positions meaningless. Obama assumed that he could reverse the hatred of the Islamic world for the United States by being conciliatory, but he was forced to become involved in the region’s conflicts.
In thinking about presidents, it is essential to remember they not only make history but history makes them. History causes us to remember FDR for his role in World War II. It causes us to remember Lyndon B. Johnson for his role in Vietnam. LBJ did not expect to be remembered in that way.
In the end, policies, like plans in war, die the first day in office. But the character of the president might make a difference. It’s not that the president doesn’t matter. It is just that he doesn’t matter nearly as much as the financial markets and others think. And if we ask why almost half the country doesn’t vote in presidential elections, it may be that they are on to something.
The intentions of the president are unimportant. They are subject to many forces that can block and overpower him. They are hostage to events that might make his intentions pointless. The obsession with the American president is partly due to the fact that he is the only official directly elected by all of the people. It is partly due to the role of commander in chief, in an age of nuclear weapons and global presence. In domestic affairs the president can be influential or a bystander. But he is never, by himself alone, a decision-maker. The presidential election is interesting, but it does not define the future of the republic.
George Friedman
Editor, This Week in Geopolitics
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4) Lt. Col. (Ret.)Allen West was born and raised in Atlanta, is married to Angela and they have two children.
He is currently President and CFO of The National Center for Policy Analysis, located in Dallas. NCPA is in its 34th year and its goal to is to develop and promote private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control and solving problems relying upon the private sector.
Priot to becoming NCPA's president Allen represented Florida's 22d District in Congress and prior to that he was the third of four generations of a military family and his service spanned 22 years.
Allen's career also encompassed teaching and military advisor in Afghanistan. Allen is a FOX News contributor, author (Guardian of the Republic) and Senior-Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.
Allen was last night's guest speaker at the Skidaway Island RepublicanClub's, President Day Dinner.
Allen reviewed the history of The Republican Party vis a vis its commitment to Civil Rights, free market solutions and how, most lamentably, it had abdicated its role and that public awareness
no longer connected the GOP with the fact that several of our Constitutional Amendments would not even exist were it not for the GOP. He decried the fact that Republicans have allowed Democrats to convince voters , and most particularly minorities, they are their champion when,
in fact, their own party member, Sen. Moynihan, warned of the destructive nature of their policies. Consequently, black families have been decimated, the overwhelming preponderance of black
children are being raised by single mothers, the connection to the church has been weakened and yet, there is a growing conservative element of blacks that the GOP can and must tap.
In order to connect, Allen used the metaphor that relates to our Island Community, that we must cross over the bridge and conservatives must improve their communication skills and embrace technology and speak in simple understandable language and not as policy wonks.
He also discussed the various candidates and believed the time for a governor had come. Allen stayed with us and in conversations we discussed the immaturity of Trump and how petulant he was. Allen pointed out the lack of support Sen. Cruz received from The Texas Delegation and his lack of fellow endorsements. Allen knows Carson well and warned him that his lack of foreign affairs experience could be his undoing and that has proven to be prescient.
He gave instance after instance how basically dispiriting and wrong headed the policies of Democrats had been regarding the black community and how basically fraudulent was their message but they were effective because Republicans are too reticent to get in the fight, too Patrician, as it were.
West laid out the vulnerabilities of Sanders and Clinton and went into some detail about the ravages of Socialism. He began his presentation with a video of an interview of a young lady (see the link above) as the titular head of the Million Student March who did not know what she was spouting. It was a chilling display of total ignorance and sound bite speak and quickly and convincingly reminded the audience of how tragic our education had failed to inform our nation's youth.
I had even sought to arrange a visit by West to go to a local Charter School and talk to the students because I thought it would be inspiring for them to meet and hear from one of their own
the many accomplishments of this man who had more to do and was preaching independence not what the government was serving , economic enslavement. I was unable to arrange the meeting because of his conservative bio and his association with me. A missed opportunity for all.
There is much to be done if we are to keep our Republic and turn the ship of state around from 8 years of destructive engagement. Allen asked the audience had they ever read Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx and did they understand the disconnect that existed between the rejection of Capitalism by progressives yet, their embrace and support of free markets etc.
Allen is spit and polish but very personable and engaging. He is very bright and a marvelous public speaker. He is also a devoutly religious man and when asked would he re-engage in politics he said he would lave that up to God.
I have not done total justice to Allen's presentation and have simply hit the highlights.
Allen West is a force within the conservative movement and his message and sense of what must be undertaken is smack on but the question for me is will The Establishment Crowd allow his thinking and advice to penetrate? It should, it must but the jury will remain out because the GOP is inhabited by far too many who are comfortable with their power, are incapable of changing and unwilling to fight in order to regain the advantage they had and allowed to slip away.
Time will tell, it always does.
Meanwhile, I consider my relationship with Allen just beginning and I look forward to our paths crossing many time. Certainly our philosophical ones are very much in sync.
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