Philosophers Of the Century ...
Jean Kerr...The only reason they say 'Women and children first' is to test the strength of the lifeboats.
Spike Milligan...
The best cure for Sea Sickness, is to sit under a tree.
Jean Rostand...
Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror
Arnold Schwarzenegger...
Having more money doesn't make you happier. I have 50 million dollars but I'm just as happy as when I had 48 million.
WH Auden... We are here on earth to do good unto others. What the others are here for, I have no idea.
Johnny Carson... If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive today and all the impersonators would be dead.
Jimmy Durante... Home cooking. Where many a man thinks his wife is.
Jonathan Winters... If God had intended us to fly he would have made it easier to get to the airport.
Robert Benchley... I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.
David Letterman... America is the only country where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is real but the moon landing was faked
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Posted before but worth doing so again: https://static.uglyhedgehog.
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The Democrat Party has been engaged in offering "honey" for decades. The concept was if you offer "honey" (read public beneficence in the form of welfare and call it entitlements) you will not only be seen as compassionate but you will create and attract more dependent voters.
That there will always be many unaddressed issues is not only a fact but also an unending circumstance that provides constant opportunities to spend tax payer funds in a subtle manner resulting in transferring wealth, another goal of socially oriented Democrats.
They key to seeing Trump's many/even amazing accomplishments necessitates one's ability to ignore the man and that means disregarding the mass media, his quirky personality, his many twisting of the facts and his shoot from the hip intemperate style. That may not always be easy but the fact that he is the first president willing to touch third rails and to carry out his commitments is refreshing.
(See 1 below.)
The problem is, over time, the bees attracted eventually turns into "killer" ones. What I mean by this is a radical variety is eventually attracted and that is where The Democrat Party now finds itself.
Today, Democrats are being forced to cater to insane demands emanating from the growing number of radicals within their ranks. They place protection of illegals over Americans. They have dispensed with support for the rule of law as it relates to innocence and they embrace a double standard of justice enforcement. They have turned against Israel and now support those who spew anti-Semitism and press for anti-Semitic legislation. They have attracted those whose vulgarity towards the occupant of The Oval Office is despicable and no senior member within their party raises a finger. See 1a below.)
Worst of all Democrat Governors and Mayors favor sanctuary status for illegal immigrants who are also criminals and claim there is no border crisis yet,care not a "smidgeon" when our police and citizens are wantonly killed.
If these trends are not disturbing enough, a radical House member recently proposed legislation to impeach a legitimately elected president because anti-Trump haters, within their ranks, cannot swallow their 2016 defeat. Another wants to get rid of the Electoral College for much the same reason. (See 1b below.)
There is an old saying that: "lay down with dogs and you get fleas." The Democrat Party is now paying the price for all that ill advised "honey" they dispensed to attract voters. The benign bees have become the "killer" variety and now the Democrat Party is infested with radical fleas who seek the end of our republic, who know the best way to achieve this goal is through chaos, pitting citizen against citizen. increasing discord and heightening social tension etc.
I am a conservative who loves this nation and have spent my entire adult life speaking out against those who mean my country harm. It is time to highlight the radicalism that has captured The Democrat Party.
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What bemuses me is the Democrat's fight over Trump's barriers. First Pelosi, Schumer and Obama favored walls, built walls and the former two voted to spend a lot more than Trump now wants several years ago regarding walls. Then Trump wins and all of a sudden they have a change of heart and claim walls are immoral. If they are immoral then why not tear down all existing walls?
Second, LBJ and subsequent Democrats spent billions on fighting poverty and created more and also broke up the family structure and made millions dependent on a bloated government in the process
These mis-directed policies continue to this day and I do not understand why this is not immoral?
When it comes to the wall issue I personally believe Trump has a winning, the superior and more logical hand and I hope he and Republicans will stand their ground. (See 1 below.)
A question Trump should pose to Schumer and Pelosi and all those who want to defeat Trump's desire to keep his wall commitment would they take the same stand were the young policeman-father who was killed by an illegal immigrant feel the same way were he a family member?
What Pelosi and Schumer do not understand but Trump does and is betting on, ie. Americans understand hypocrisy!
These two postings (See 2a and 2b below.) were sent to me by a very dear friend and memo reader. It was sent to him by friends of a friends
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Now Democrats want to bar Bill Barr ,who already served as a fine Attorney general, from becoming such in The Trump Administration. Rep. Nadler, another Trump hater, is doing his best to stonewall Barr. If Democrats think they are serving the nation's interests over their own twisted ambitions then, I am in a state of delusion. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)How Sweden Overcame Socialism
It’s a model for the U.S., but the lesson isn’t what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks it is.
Nearly half of millennials say they prefer socialism to capitalism, but what do they mean? “My policies most closely resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told “60 Minutes.” Yet Sweden’s experiment with socialist policies was disastrous, and its economic success in recent decades is a result of market-based reforms.
Until the mid-20th century, Sweden pursued highly competitive market-based policies. By 1970 Sweden achieved the world’s fourth-highest per capita income. Then increasingly radical Social Democratic governments raised taxes, spending and regulation much more than any other Western European country. Economic performance sputtered. By the early 1990s, Sweden’s per capita income ranking had dropped to 14th. Economic growth from 1970 to the early 1990s was roughly 1 percentage point lower than in Europe and 2 points lower than in the U.S.
Before its socialist experiment, Sweden had a smaller government sector than the U.S. By the early 1990s, government spending and transfer payments ballooned to 70% of gross domestic product, and debt had increased to 80% of GDP. Between 1966 and 1974, Sweden lost some 400,000 private jobs—proportionate to 16.7 million in today’s U.S.
In 1991 a market-oriented government came to power and undertook far-reaching reforms. Policy makers have privatized parts of the health-care system, introduced for-profit schools along with school vouchers, and reduced welfare benefits. Since 1997, government ministries that propose new spending plans have been required to find offsetting cuts in their budgets. As a result, public debt has declined from 80% of GDP in the early 1990s to 41%.
To increase incentives to work, Sweden reduced unemployment benefits and introduced an earned-income tax credit in 2007. The electricity and transportation industries were deregulated in the 1990s, and even the Swedish postal system was opened up to competition in 1993. The corporate tax rate was cut from its 2009 level of 28% to 22% today, and is scheduled to decline to 20.4% in 2021.
This policy mix has earned Sweden a Heritage Foundation ranking as the 15th freest economy in the world. The U.S. is 18th. And it’s paid off. Since 1995, Swedish economic growth has exceeded that of its European Union peers by about 1 point a year. Sweden is now richer than all of the major EU countries and is within 15% of U.S. per capita GDP. While Sweden still has a larger government than the U.S., its tax code is flatter. The progressivity of the U.S. tax code distorts incentives. These distortions would become even larger under the tax-increase proposals of democratic socialists like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
There is an example for the U.S. here, but the lesson isn’t what Ms. Ocasio-Cortez thinks. Command-and-control economic policies undermined Sweden’s prosperity, and they would do the same to America’s.
Mr. Fernández-Villaverde is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ohanian is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of economics at UCLA.
1a)Senate Democrats block pro-Israel, anti-BDS bill for second time in a week
The final tally was 53-43. At least four Democrats voted for cloture: Arizona’s Krysten Sinema, Alabama’s Doug Jones, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and New Jersey’s Robert Menendez.
For the second time this week, Senate Democrats failed to reach the necessary 60 votes on Thursday afternoon to end debate on Republican-introduced legislation that, if enacted, would impose fresh sanctions on Syria, as well as boost security cooperation with Israel and Jordan amid the announced gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. It is also aimed at tackling the anti-Israel BDS movement.
The final tally was 53-43.
At least four Democrats voted for cloture: Arizona’s Krysten Sinema, Alabama’s Doug Jones, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and New Jersey’s Robert Menendez.
On Tuesday, the Senate failed to proceed to start the clock, which is no more than an additional 30 hours of debate, to then proceed to vote on the bill that would also reauthorize the United States-Jordan Defense Cooperation Act of 2015 to help the Hashemite Kingdom respond to the Syrian refugee crisis, fight the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, and protect its borders with Iraq and Syria.
Democrats have objected to move with the bill due to the partial government shutdown that has lasted 19 days due to U.S. President Donald Trump refusing to sign funding legislation that includes at least $5.6 billion for a border wall with Mexico.
“It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats.
“Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government,” he continued. “Let’s get our priorities right.”
“Senate Democrats should block consideration of any bills unrelated to opening the government until Sen. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans allow a vote on the bipartisan bills the House passed to open the government,” tweeted Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “Mitch, don’t delay. Let’s vote!”
In response to the criticism to not vote on the bill until the rest of the government is funded, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a sponsor of the measure, said before Thursday’s vote, “I don’t understand the logic of it,” and said that it will cause people to question those who say they are outraged by the situation in Syria and support Israel.
He compared the excuse to not invoke cloture on the bill to those who don’t go to work the day after their favorite sports team loses. “I don’t know how to explain that,” he said.
Finally, the bill would enable state and local governments in the United States to fight the anti-Israel BDS movement.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America has supported the move by the left side of the aisle.
“Senate Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to the American people by forcing a second vote on S.1, a bill that has nothing to do with reopening the government,” said JDCA executive director Halie Soifer in a statement. “After consideration of this bill was blocked on Tuesday, Senate Republicans’ decision to hold a second vote on the same bill is a clear effort to defer reopening the government and politicize U.S. support for Israel.”
“Senate Democrats support aid to Israel and unanimously oppose the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement—these two issues are not in question,” she continued. “The government shutdown imposes grave and growing social, economic and security risks on the American people. JDCA stands behind Senate Democrats’ insistence that the Senate prioritize opening the government, and demands that Senate Republicans stop politicizing historically bipartisan support for Israel.”
However, B’nai B’rith International CEO Daniel Mariaschin and the Endowment for Middle East Truth disagreed.
“This bill speaks to two crucial Jewish community priorities: fighting BDS and supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he told JNS. “Those concerns have been, are now and will continue to be at the forefront of the Jewish policy agenda, regardless of the unrelated impasse that has led to the current government shutdown.”
“We are profoundly disappointed that this critically important package of legislative initiatives is being held hostage by the U.S. Senate,” said EMET founder and president Sarah Stern to JNS.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee struck a hopeful tone: “We strongly support this legislation, which contains pro-Israel provisions that have previously gained wide bipartisan support, and we continue to urge the Senate to move as quickly as possible to adopt it,” spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JNS.
1b)The Right’s Resistance
They are unalterably supportive of Donald Trump’s presidency, flawed vessel or not.
By Daniel Henninger
The reasons offered for why Donald Trump won’t win re-election in 2020 continue to pile up. His approval rating is stuck, seemingly forever, below 45%. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll puts the percentage of voters who say they’re likely to vote for him at 38%, while some 52% currently prefer a Democratic candidate.
Numbers like that are why every Democrat and your grandfather is jumping into the presidential race. It’s why the Pelosi-Schumer tag team is chest-thumping over the border wall.
Finally, the truest weather vane of the political winds is freshman Sen. Mitt Romney’s maiden diatribe against President Trump in the Washington Post. Mr. Romney’s denunciatory op-ed was a politician sensing that this presidency is—his words—“in descent.”
The anti-Trump betting could be right. Much of the country is exhausted with Mr. Trump’s manic personal style and may vote for some downtime when choosing the next president.
But that Romney op-ed served one useful purpose: It reminded us why neither Mitt Romney nor anyone like him will take the Republican nomination away from Donald Trump.
One of the abiding mysteries of recent political history remains how the blunt and brutal character standing on the GOP primary stage in his fire-engine-red tie beat the skilled politicians alongside him. You can find the answer in Mr. Romney’s Washington Post article.
“A president,” Mr. Romney intoned, “should unite us and inspire us to follow ‘our better angels.’ ” And then he said: “I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”
You could not make up a more explicit pander to the prevailing political zeitgeist, or conventional wisdom, on Donald Trump—racist, sexist, destructive to democratic institutions. This is a kitchen sink of anti-Trump buzzwords. And the enduring reality two years after Mr. Trump won the presidency is that more U.S. voters than the conventional wisdom will admit just don’t care.
For two years, this column has received emails virtually every week from readers who have been along for the entire Trump ride. Some love him, others abhor him.
But among the most intriguing on this political odyssey are those in recent months who have been at pains to say they don’t need more descriptions of what a crude, often insufferable boor Donald Trump is. They know that. I’ll let one of them explain. The reference to “nutburgers” is his summary of the cultural and political left in America:
“When I see long-hoped-for ‘Resistance’ to those nutburgers from Trump—which I did not see from Nixon, Ford, Bush 41 or Bush 43—I am unalterably supportive, flawed vessel or not. It’s not the man, it’s the resistance that binds us to him.”
This is the voice of the resistance on the right. These aren’t only dislocated people living inside the Trump “base” in places like hollowed-out Wilkes-Barre, Pa. This sentiment has been building for decades. Its scale is suggested by the degree of Trump outrages these voters have been willing to discount on behalf of a larger cultural and political cause.
What exactly is their problem? In our time, it takes the form of the left’s cultural triumphalism on matters of identity, race, gender and indeed assimilation, or “the American idea.” If Donald Trump or any other political figure challenges these ideas, some media figure will call it a dog whistle.
Mitt Romney and virtually all Republican politicians entertaining runs for the presidency simply will not stand up to this dominant status quo. They just won’t do it. Instead, they address these matters in a kind of tiptoeing careful-speak. Meanwhile, any Democratic candidate, notably a so-called “serious” moderate such as Joe Biden, must pay obeisance to these ideas or get out of politics.
As to appeals to our “better angels”—typified by the Romney op-ed or anytime John Kasich speaks—history shows that the cultural left simply pockets these genuflections and then pushes its army forward. This history of bad faith—the identity left’s takeover of the campuses being Exhibit A—has created the right’s resistance, which in 2016 defaulted to Donald Trump and still does.
Anyone thinking of challenging Mr. Trump in the New Hampshire primary will have to show they understand, and would fight for, voters who don’t care about “the man” but care deeply about the nation’s cultural direction. Which means being willing to accept exclusion and ridicule by the media trolls. Don’t hold your breath.
It is possible Mr. Trump will personally grind down enough people to make him a one-term president. Still, we hope no one feigns shock in 2020 if, despite everything, at least half the electorate quietly opts for the incumbent over what the Democrats have come to stand for. The resistance on the right is real, with the presidency the only outlet remaining for their vote.
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2)Trump's Considering Declaring A
National Emergency. That's A Dumb Ploy, Particularly If He Wants A Wall.
By Ben Shapiro
On Wednesday, the day after a national address in which he laid forth his case for building a border wall and refusing to sign a budget without one, President Trump suggested openly that he might in fact simply declare a national emergency with regard to the border and order the Defense Department to redirect funds toward the building of a border wall.
Trump stated, “I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want…my threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.” Trump would presumably invoke 10 USC §2808 or 10 USC §284 in order to declare a national emergency. Under 10 USC §2808, the president may “In the event of a declaration of war or the declaration by the President of a national emergency in accordance with the National Emergencies Act,” undertake “military construction projects, and may authorize the Secretaries of the military departments to undertake military construction projects, not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces.” It would be a serious stretch to suggest that military necessity dictates the overruling of Congressional powers in this case – and it sets the precedent that the executive would presumably try to declare a national emergency to redirect already-allocated defense funding to pet projects on a routine basis. Imagine Elizabeth Warren declaring a “green national emergency” and then authorizing the military to shutter coal plants, as Erick Erickson has suggested.
As David French points out at National Review, President Truman attempted to do exactly that with regard to steel works in the United States during the Korean War, and was rejected by the Supreme Court, which declared, “The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.”Trump could also theoretically use 10 USC §284, which allows the Secretary of Defense to “provide support for counterdrug activities” if such support is requested by the official responsible for such counterdrug activities. Such support would be restricted to “maintenance, repair, or upgrading of equipment.” Building hundreds of miles of new wall would probably not fall under this definition.
Furthermore, a court will undoubtedly stop Trump. And that’s presumably what he’s looking for: he could try his emergency powers while simultaneously signing an end to the government shutdown. While a court works to strike down that emergency declaration, Trump can fulminate against the judiciary, the Democrats, and weak-kneed Republicans. He gets a win from his base; the government reopens; the Democrats can claim that they never caved. That’s the most cynical answer to Trump’s government shutdown predicament.
It’s also not going to get a wall built. Trump should stick to his guns if he cares about his campaign promise. And Republicans should stick right alongside him. Earmarks alone cost the federal taxpayers $14.7 billion in 2018. Each Congressperson should be forced to explain why building a bridge named after them in Podunk ought to outweigh the national security interests of the United States. The feds earmarked $65 million for restoration of Pacific coastal salmon; $500 million was earmarked for the troubled F-35 JSF aircraft and another $544 million for the similarly troubled Littoral Combat Ship; $55 million for entrepreneurial development programs within the Small Business Administration. Trump should be asking Congresspeople what their spending priorities are.
If Trump instead takes the easy but ineffective way out, he’ll be doing the wrong thing – and demonstrating that Republicans are more interested in optics than in actually building the wall. That wouldn’t be a surprise, given their obvious indifference toward defunding Planned Parenthood, which continued to be given government grants during a wholly Republican Congress.
2a) What Does Failure Look Like?
Good Morning:
Well, folks, it is getting close to “crunch time.” Friday marks the end of a Federal pay period, and if a deal is not made today, lots of Federal employees are not going to get paid if they are working in critical-sensitive positions and required to remain on the job (e.g. law enforcement, air traffic controllers, emergency responders, prison guards , etc.) during a “government shutdown.” They will eventually get paid what they are due, but, in the mean time, it definitely presents cash-flow problems for those concerned. The folks who are really in a pickle, however, are those who have been furloughed. They are not working, and they are not accruing any income.
Last night at 9:00 p.m. (EST) America was treated to some bizarre political stagecraft. First, the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, was seated at the Resolute desk in The Oval Office of the Wests Wing of the WH. His “handlers” sanitized his credenza and removed everything from his desktop The President presented as intense and on edge, somewhat stiff in the delivery of his remarks. He quickly and directly presented facts and figures to demonstrate that America is under siege, on our Southern border with Mexico, from a human invasion coming from Mexico and Central America. The situation was presented as a humanitarian and political crisis which demands an immediate solution. The executive solution is more border enforcement, in particular, the construction of a wall to keep out the illegal invaders at convenient border crossing points. The speech was short and to the point. There were no smiles on the President’s countenance.
The second event was a two-on-one stand-up routine delivered by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in response to the President’s remarks. I have seen a few political disasters in my day, and I have also witnessed some major historical events. The Schumer/Pelosi response fit into the first category. The responders presented no better than wooden cigar store Indians, ventriloquist’s “dummies,” standing at a podium somewhere in our nation’s capital. Their body language was absolutely horrible — totally rigid and stiff. They both looked like they had each undergone a botox treatment shortly before their appearance to erase a decade or two, or three, from their visages. The Democratic Party Congressional leadership basically stood up to declare that there was no crisis on our Mexican border, and that the President is not telling America the truth. His wall will not work and Congress will not fund it.
Today there is another meeting at the WH between the President and his staff, and the Democratic Legislative Branch leadership. My sense is that #45 is going to lay down the law — let’s do a deal: Give me my requested $5.7 billion to begin to build a wall, or I am going to declare a national emergency and get the job done with existing funds and the US Army Corps of Engineers and their contractors. Sue me if you want, but that is what is going to happen. The President has these powers, and he will use them.
Already allegedly another caravan of thousands is already forming up to proceed north to Mexico composed of the denizens of failed states in the Southern Hemisphere. As #45 stressed in his Oval Office remarks, America is out of space in our illegal detention centers, which are filled with illegal border crossers and trafficked young children — the illegals’ ticket for admission to America, from the Hell Holes below of the Mexican border. The time for American political action is now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
https://www.businessinsider.
The ball is in the Democrats’ court. We are about to witness the end game of the Total #Resistance movement to the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th American President.
2b) Democrats Can Fund the World, but Not the Wall
There is nothing like a government shutdown to illustrate clearly the priorities of the two opposing sides to the standoff. On one side is President Trump, keeping a campaign promise to build a wall, to keep crime, sex-trafficking, drugs, and terrorism, not to mention the unfunded burden of illegal aliens, out of America.
On the other side are the Democrats, hell-bent on keeping 25 percent of the government closed for business rather than funding border security, a concept they wholeheartedly supported a decade ago.
Who's winning and who's losing the battle? If you watch cable news, it's clear that the president is on the ropes, having backed himself into a corner. Reality sings a different tune. How did we get here?
Donald Trump, announcing his candidacy for president in June 2015, rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best." He went on, "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
These were among his first pronouncements that day and have been a constant theme of his rallies and tweets since then – including this tweet from a few days ago.
Democrats were once in favor of border security, too. Many, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. This provided for, "Operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States."
Now, because it's 2019 and Trump is president, Democrats are conveniently against border security. This is a common theme of Democrats, frequently for something before they are against it. Remember John Kerry and the Iraq War?
The current fight is over a mere $5 billion in funding for a wall – or a "fence" if the term "wall" is offensive, but a physical barrier between two nations, controlling who and what traipses from one country to the other. The federal budget is $4.4 trillion, meaning wall funding represents about a tenth of a percent of the budget, a rounding error. What else are Nancy Pelosi and colleagues spending money on? How about foreign aid?
The 2019 federal budget requests nearly $27 billion in foreign aid for economic development, health, humanitarian assistance, peace and security, and other objectives. This is over half the cost of securing "[t]he entire international land and maritime borders of the United States" something Democrats were keen about in 2006.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 budgeted $50 billion over 25 years to control America's borders. Unfortunately, Congress appropriated only $1.4 billion and forgot about the rest. The foreign aid request above was for one single year. Two years of the foreign aid budget spent instead on U.S. border security would create the type of physical borders so common in the countries we are generously supporting.
Fund the world, but not America.
It's instructive to compare the current administration to the past one, since the media treat the last administration as the Second Coming and the current administration as the Fourth Reich.
In 2012, Congress appropriated $40 billion in foreign aid, a billion more than what was requested. In 2013, the amount went up to $43 billion appropriated. The following year, 2014, $42 billion was appropriated.
Let's look at what was actually spent on foreign aid in Barack Obama's final year of 2016: $31 billion total – more than half of what America needs to insure its own "peace and security."
Countries receiving American taxpayer largess include Pakistan, $687 million, the same country that provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Seven point two billion dollars went to Afghanistan, with not much to show for it other than its opium products finding their way through our unsecure southern border.
Five hundred seventy million went to Syria, a country where I thought Obama was calling for regime change. Even China received $20 million. I thought China was our geopolitical and economic adversary! A few hundred million each went to most African countries, quickly adding up to the grand total of $31 billion.
This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad, as clearly, it is not. America is the most generous nation in the world. Much of our foreign aid is lifesaving. Much of it is also wasted or filling the Swiss bank accounts of foreign thug leaders – or worse, finding its way into the bank accounts of those who appropriated the money from the U.S. Treasury.
How else to explain members of Congress living in multi-million-dollar mansions or having net worth's in the tens of millions while earning a congressional salary of under $200,000 per year?
An old proverb says, "Charity begins at home." Even the Bible reinforces the idea in 1 Timothy 5:8: "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
American taxpayers are footing the bill not only for foreign aid, but also for illegal immigration, which costs U.S. taxpayers $115 billion a year.
Then there is the human toll, from Kate Steinle to police officer Ronil Singh. Or the previously deported illegal alien who viciously raped a woman in New York. Or another previously deported illegal who raped a child in Philadelphia.
Don't forget illegal drugs. Heroin and cocaine aren't produced domestically and instead transit our southern border. How much Chinese fentanyl is arriving through Mexico?
The United States gives about a million dollars a year in aid to Hungary, the same country that was able to fund the construction of "a second fence on the border with Serbia to keep migrants out."
Congress is happy to give money to countries to secure their borders, but House Democrats refuse to spend a dime for the same security measures in their own country.
Shameful, but the shutdown is illustrating Democrat priorities, especially for Pelosi-Schumer Democrats. Let's have the debate. Where do taxpayers want their hard-earned money to go? To foreign countries so they can secure their borders and protect their citizens? Or should some of that money stay here, providing safety and security for Americans?
Trump will get his wall, either through an eventual budget deal or via the military on the basis of national security. The shutdown may simply be Trump's way of exposing Democrat priorities, which are not for those they are elected to represent or the constitution they swore to support and defend.
Democrats may believe that the shutdown is a way to insulate themselves against exposure of their real priorities, but the longer the shutdown goes on, the more their insulation melts away.
Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer.
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3)
The U.S. Senate is back in session, and therefore so is the Democratic nominations blockade. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Wednesday that President Trump withdraw his nomination of Bill Barr as Attorney General, even though Mr. Barr served with distinction as President George H.W. Bush’s AG. The question is whether Senate Republicans are going to do anything more to overcome this deliberate political obstruction than they did in the last two years.
The White House will now have to renominate these men and women, assuming they haven’t given up in frustration. Mark Greenblatt was nominated to be inspector general of the Ex-Im Bank in September 2017, 16 months ago. The Banking Committee approved him three months later; he’s still waiting for a floor vote. Burlington Stores exec Janet Dhillon, the nominee to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has been waiting 18 months
The Partnership for Public Service reports that 543 of President Trump’s 934 nominations had been confirmed by Dec. 19, 2018. At the same point in Barack Obama’s presidency, 809 of his 1,003 picks had Senate approval.
3)
Return of the Nominations Blockade
Democrats lost Senate seats, but they’re still blocking appointees.
By The Editorial Board
The U.S. Senate is back in session, and therefore so is the Democratic nominations blockade. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded Wednesday that President Trump withdraw his nomination of Bill Barr as Attorney General, even though Mr. Barr served with distinction as President George H.W. Bush’s AG. The question is whether Senate Republicans are going to do anything more to overcome this deliberate political obstruction than they did in the last two years.
The Senate confirmed 77 stalled nominees—a collection of ambassadors, U.S. attorneys or other non-controversial picks—by voice vote on Jan. 2. But thanks mostly to Democratic objections, the upper chamber returned to the White House 384 nominees it failed to confirm in the 115th Congress. That includes some 70 judicial nominees.
The Partnership for Public Service reports that 543 of President Trump’s 934 nominations had been confirmed by Dec. 19, 2018. At the same point in Barack Obama’s presidency, 809 of his 1,003 picks had Senate approval.
The White House was rightly criticized for its slow start with executive-branch nominations, but the main problem long ago became the systematic Democratic effort to prevent President Trump from filling out the government. First, Democrats take as much time as possible tying up nominees in committee. Once even non-controversial nominees get to the floor, Democrats then object to a quick voice-vote confirmation and demand a cloture vote that requires 30 hours of floor debate.
In the 115th Congress, there were 128 cloture votes for Trump judicial and executive nominees, compared with 12 for Mr. Obama’s nominees in his first two years. Mr. Trump’s six most recent predecessors combined faced no more than two dozen cloture votes in their first two years.
Consider David Schenker, who was nominated last April to be assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs. A fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mr. Schenker speaks Arabic and held a high-ranking Pentagon job in the George W. Bush Administration.
Yet Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine has held Mr. Schenker hostage, demanding that the Trump Administration turn over the memo that authorized U.S. air strikes against the Assad regime for using chemical weapons. Mr. Schenker’s nomination was returned to the White House last week.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made confirming judicial nominees a priority given their lifetime tenure, and the upper chamber confirmed 85 judges in the last Congress. Yet there are still 145 judicial vacancies, and Democrats will try to delay the nominations for every one in hopes of leaving many for what they expect to be a Democratic President in 2021.
Mr. McConnell had his best success on nominees last Congress when he threatened to keep Senators in town over weekends and recesses until certain nominations received a floor vote. He should do that again starting in the first weeks. Republicans also should negotiate a change in the cloture rule for non-controversial nominees to eight hours of debate from 30. The GOP granted that to Democrats from 2013-15. If Mr. Schumer won’t do the same, Republicans should unilaterally change the rule at least for the executive branch.
The Beltway press corps is full of stories about the trouble caused for civil servants by the current partial government shutdown. Yet the media don’t report that an elected American President can’t put a government in place even after half his term is over. This gives the permanent bureaucracy far more power than America’s Founders intended.
This affront to democratic self-rule is more damaging to effective government than temporary furloughs, and don’t be surprised if Republicans return the favor the next time there’s a Democratic President.
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