+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++What is next for BIBI? (See 1 below.)
Democrats continue their war against Bibi and disassociation of support for Israel. (See 1a below.)
Meanwhile, The IDF completes it's preparation for war if Hamas continues to attack Israel. (See 1b below.)
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Stacey Abrams craters as I always believe she would. Flash in the pan because she is another liberal complainer and not a uniter. (See 2 below.)
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My take on the G.E saga and Bernie's Socialism.
When I was a working sludge we had a consultant to our firm named Dave Hawkins. He was a Harvard professor of accounting, an Australian by birth and one of their Olympic Champion swimmers. Dave was also the consultant to G.E during the Welch period and he always maintained G.E had enough pockets so they could always reach or beat The Street's "Whisper Number."
Though Dave never said it, he implied they ran the company on the basis of quarterly earnings.
Over the years, G.E management lost sight of what really made their business profitable and their accounting maneuvering got them in trouble. It began with Japanese competition in their dominant appliance business and then their financial exposure overwhelmed them when the economic downturn occurred.
Today succeeding management has divested many of their divisions in order to meet their financial exposure and are left with some modest growth businesses which are predominantly cyclical and are experiencing down phases for a variety of reasons..
The oil industry is undergoing diminishing demand because world economies are soft so oil producers have made production cut backs to stabilize and increase pricing. The rise in the price of oil, however, has not resulted in a comparable rise in the demand for oil services so their Baker Hughes division is being impacted.
Meanwhile, the unpredictable problems at Boeing are having an impact on G.E's engine business and they still have a financial overhang that continues to place pressure on their weakened financial picture.
Jack Welch exited the company at the right time and handed the baton to other executives only for them to find it was wormy.
Wall Street seldom takes the long view. Those who run public companies receive compensation based largely on their personal stock ownership. Government taxation of salaries impacts cash compensation so consultants have concocted all kind of stock compensation. My 10K's run tens of pages explaining all the Rube Goldberg compensation formats. Executive job security depends upon stock performance and that means over focus on consistent earnings. Cyclical companies are more impacted than growth companies and thus G.E was caught in the performance trap.
G.E , like so many historic American companies, are also tied into union employment commitments that reduce work force flexibility. All of this occurred in the face of growing foreign competition which enjoyed lower wage costs, modernization and innovation which caused increased productivity and unfavorable trade policies that were icing on the cake.
Trump understands the genesis of our industrial problem and is trying to address these issues in a variety of ways. He is seeking trade concessions, allowing corporations to pay taxes at a more competitive rate and take full depreciation on capital equipment purchases.
As our economy recovers, employment increases , salaries rise, purchasing power increases and this ultimately leads to more "greening" of and recovery in our industrial base. When companies can make more money domestically they will return to America, build more plants to produce locally and employment will rise.
Bernie and all the other socialists with their restrictive policies will kill the golden goose market that is associated with capitalism and far too many Americans are too dumb to connect the dangerous dots espoused by these radicals.
Socialism has an emotional appeal because Capitalism is not perfect and, at times, is harsh but it beats any other economic policy designed by man, offers more freedom and personal mobility and has resulted in greater good for mankind than the misery associated with socialism.
Bernie, along with Pocahontas, recently released their tax returns and revealed they earned at the millionaire level. They claim, hypocritically, their wealth gives them greater insight into the needs and problems of those who are poor etc. Consequently, they want to raise taxes on the wealthy.
A simpler solution, if they feel in a munificent mood, is to write checks and send them to The Treasury. That would not, however, give them more power over the lives of citizens, which is their socialist goal. This is why they want to grow government so that it will control more of the nation's production and create a growing enslaved working class.
All one has to do is look at Russia, Cuba and now Venezuela if they believe socialism brings more freedom, produces more goods and improves life styles.
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Democrat' have begun fraudulent/hypocritical demonizing of Barr because Mueller's report did not serve their political interests. They thought the conclusion of Mueller''s Russian Collusion episode would reveal what they wanted. Now that it does not measure up to thei bias they are worried investigating the genesis of the Russian Collusion will bite them in the ass. So they want to bar Barr. The truth will prevail and is likely to screw Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, Schiff et al to the wall. (See 3 below.)
Meanwhile, McConnell is moving forward by getting The Senate to approve more judicial appointments which will do more to save America as the kind of republic intended by The Founding Fathers who gave us a brilliant constitutional document which progressive liberal radicals cannot abide because it elevates man not government
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Will Bernie's health care proposal make you sick? You decide. (See 4 below.)
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Why not allow AOC's "Green New Deal" die of its own accord? (See 5 below.)
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I find it amazing that a WAPO reporter was allowed to publish an article about Obama's many lies.
Is the mass media finally recognizing we have a border crisis issue?
Is the "Fourth Estate" worried their reputation for honest reporting has sunk so low they are now on a track to redeem themselves for fear of their future role in our society? (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) Of annexation and Trump’s peace plan, what’s next on the post-Israeli election agenda?
The questions now focus on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will follow through on his campaign pledge to annex parts of Judea and Samaria, as well as what his election win means for U.S. President Donald Trump’s much-anticipated “deal of the century" to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Things move fast in the Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just declared victory for the fifth time, and now, as he gets busy building the next coalition for the 21st Knesset, much attention has shifted to the day after—based on what Netanyahu said the day before—in which he made the groundbreaking claim that he would move to begin annexing some of the disputed territories. The questions now focus on whether Netanyahu will follow through on his campaign pledge and what his election win means for U.S. President Donald Trump’s much-anticipated “deal of the century” for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JNS that a lot depends on domestic politics and what pressure the right-wing parties will place on Netanyahu.
He noted that Netanyahu said he may carry out such an annexation at a later stage and certainly did not mean immediately. “It all depends on what kind of freedom of action he has domestically, as well as in the international arena, and he will have to decide what areas are important in terms of security and in terms of Israeli consensus,” said Inbar.
Ronni Shaked, senior correspondent and commentator on Palestinian Affairs for the Hebrew daily newspaper Yediot Achronot and a researcher at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute, seemed more concerned about the potential decision. He told JNS that “this will cause a lot of problems. The Palestinians will be very angry. For the Palestinian people living in the West Bank, not one will recognize it—no one in the world will recognize it.”
Shaked also said he did not think that the United States would recognize an Israeli move to annex any part of the West Bank.
He said any effort by Netanyahu to annex parts of the territories would “risk the nation of Israel from a democratic Jewish point of view.” He also warned of Israel losing its identity as a democracy—that it would be “marching towards becoming an apartheid state.”
However, Inbar noted that “annexation of the West Bank or parts of the West Bank has been on the agenda of every Israeli government, including Labor-led governments because [they] want the settlement blocs as part of Israel.”
So far, he observed, Netanyahu has been “very careful.”
In terms of the Trump-administration peace plan, Inbar said Israel just doesn’t know much yet.
“It will probably deviate from the Clinton parameters that everyone until now assumed would be the basis for a final settlement. It will move the goalposts,” he said. “This is basically good for Israel. Any Israeli government will, of course, say yes, and any reservations it has will be registered. The Palestinians have already said no, and they will continue with their rejectionism.”
Inbar added that “perhaps in another few months, the Americans will eventually realize that they cannot generate enough Arab pressure or even American pressure on the Palestinians” to convince them to accept a peace deal.
Inbar pointed to two main dynamics at play with regard to the above questions. The first is what will the American reaction be in response to Israel’s annexation of any part of the territories? The second is who will replace Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, and what effect could this might have on future peacemaking prospects? These two dynamics will strongly shape future Israeli decisions on both annexation and peace.
“Time will tell. We will see,” he concluded.
‘It sends an important message’
Eugene Kontorovich, a scholar at Forum Kohelet and a professor at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School, told JNS that “Netanyahu’s promise to apply Israel civil law to Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria leaves out a lot of details—when, where and so forth. But it sends an important message.”
He emphasized it was important to point out that “Netanyahu did not say ‘annexation’ because one cannot annex what already belongs to you. He speaks properly of more robustly applying Israeli sovereignty, which already exists.”
Agreeing with Inbar that the Palestinians appear to uphold a policy of rejectionism, Kontorovich also noted that the Palestinians “are the only national independence movement to ever turn down an internationally backed offer of statehood in any part of the territory they claimed.”
“Netanyahu’s statements are a sign that Israel will not continue to hold the status of these communities in limbo for decades while the Palestinians say no,” he said.
1a)
1a)
Democrats’ war on Netanyahu isn’t compatible with a pro-Israel stance
By seeking to override or ignore the will of Israeli democracy, they are accelerating the breakdown of the rapidly eroding bipartisan consensus in favor of the Jewish state.
When leaders of Tammany Hall—the legendary Democratic machine that ran New York City for more than a century—would be confronted with an occasional electoral setback, their usual response was to deride it by claiming that if their handpicked candidates didn’t win, then “it ain’t democratic.”
That’s pretty much the reaction of much of the Democratic Party to the results of Israel’s election. Prominent Democrats have greeted the victory of the man who was the bitter foe of President Barack Obama and, just as bad, the close friend and ally of President Donald Trump with a mixture of dismay and horror.
More to the point, they view the judgment of Israel’s voters—the majority of whom voted for either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party or other slates that were pledged to support his bid to lead the next government—as not merely wrong, but contrary to what is good for their country.
We’re all entitled to our opinions about the outcomes of elections. But this revulsion on the part of Democrats for the democratically expressed will of the Israeli people is likely to widen the divisions in their party about attitudes regarding the Jewish state. Even more troubling is that it increases the likelihood that support for Israel will be an issue in the 2020 presidential election. That will accelerate the crackup of what is already a rapidly eroding bipartisan coalition in favor of Israel.
The key talking point for pro-Israel Democrats for the last 25 years has been the claim that Republicans are undermining the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus by seeking to portray themselves as better friends to the Jewish state than their opponents. This is a somewhat dubious argument because the main purpose of such claims was to distract voters from the fact that the left wing of the Democratic Party was drifting towards being either highly critical or downright hostile to Israel.
But with Netanyahu being re-elected for a fourth consecutive term, more and more Democrats are dropping the pretense that we all still agree about Israel, and instead are adopting stances that condemn the prime minister as someone who is unworthy of support, or even more, assert that they know better about what is good for Israel than the Israelis.
There isn’t anything new about this since it was, in essence, the way the Obama administration regarded Israel throughout its eight years in office. Obama believed not only that more “daylight” between the two allies was better for Israel than steadfast support, but also that the Jewish state needed to be “saved from itself” with respect to the conflict with the Palestinians. He was just as indifferent to Israel’s credible fears about efforts to appease Iran via a one-sided nuclear deal.
Yet when faced with Obama’s changes of U.S. foreign policy that were clearly aimed at undermining the alliance with Israel, most Democrats chose not to protest.
The arguments about what it means to be pro-Israel have only grown more divisive since Trump took office. Acknowledging the truth that Trump is the most pro-Israel president to date is a difficult pill for Democrats, who despise the president, to swallow. So rather than concentrate their fire on other issues, many simply argue that supporting Israel and respecting the will of its voters represent betrayals of the alliance. This takes the form of bogus claims that Netanyahu’s election is a sign of a decline of Israeli democracy, rather than an expression of it.
That this is absurd and illogical doesn’t deter them. Some of their points are also deeply hypocritical. Suffice it to say that no matter what you think of Netanyahu’s electoral maneuver that enabled supporters of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane to join another electoral list (though in the end, those Kahanists were not elected to the Knesset), Democrats who don’t mind rationalizing the behavior or benefiting from the votes of anti-Semitic, BDS-supporting colleagues like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have no standing to criticize him on this issue.
More importantly, their position is rooted in the even more outrageous notion that Democrats understand the conflict with the Palestinians better than the Israeli people.
It’s important to remind those who make this argument that the Israeli political parties that clung to the illusion that Obama was right about the Palestinians and the two-state solution—namely, Labor and Meretz—got approximately 8.25 percent of the vote on April 9. They have been discredited by the reality of Palestinian intransigence that has somehow evaded the notion of Israel’s Democratic critics.
In 2020, the odds are that whoever it is the Democrats nominate will be someone inclined to bash Netanyahu and to treat the judgment of Israel’s voters about their security with disdain. This means that Israel will become a campaign issue for Trump, who will highlight his support for the Jewish nation, a position that is still backed by a clear majority of Americans.
Once this issue becomes fodder for campaign rhetoric from both sides, it will be a mortal blow to the pro-Israel consensus. And if the Democrats win, it will mean U.S.-Israel relations in the years that follow will make the spats between Obama and Netanyahu look like a picnic.
Democrats will try to blame this on Trump, but as with Obama’s stance on the Palestinians and Iran, such arguments will be utterly disingenuous. If Democrats want to preserve the pro-Israel consensus, then they need to be supportive of Israel, understanding of its exterior and interior security dilemmas, and respectful of the democratically expressed will of its people. More to the point, they cannot make common cause with those who seek—as some on the left wing of the Democrats do—to delegitimize or oppose the existence of Israel.
If Democrats can’t manage to respect Israel’s voters or refrain from seeking to override their judgment, they shouldn’t complain about the demise of a consensus that they themselves have chosen to abandon.
1b) IDF completes large-scale drill to improve readiness for war
By ANNA AHRONHEIM
The two-week long drill saw troops and reservists from all levels of the 36th Armor Division, also known as the Ga'ash (“Rage") Formation, train on combat scenarios in complex and urban areas.
Israel’s military completed a large-scale divisional exercise in the North on Friday to improve its readiness for war, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced.
The two-week long drill saw troops and reservists from all levels of the 36th Armor Division, also known as the Ga'ash (“Rage) Formation, train on combat scenarios in complex and urban areas. The troops, who drilled on operational planning and discourse, dealt with operational challenges on a tactical level.
The Division's units operated in brigade combat teams in accordance with the concept of the "Gideon Battlegroup” while providing logistical solutions through a mobile logistic center.
Israel’s ground forces have been undergoing a major change over the past several year with a combined fighting method of infantry, tanks and combat engineering in one unified force-the “Gideon Battlegroup,” a combat brigade with thousands of IDF soldiers.
The new method, which is designed to make the ground forces more efficient and better suited to the types of fighting they might face against terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, will be implemented in the coming years.
“The division's forces practiced a variety of combat scenarios, combined with advanced and unique capabilities in complex scenarios, which increased the division's preparedness for war,” the military said.
The IDF has significantly stepped up the scope and frequency of its combat training in order to improve it’s readiness. As part of the IDF’s five-year Gideon plan, the military has returned to 17 weeks of consecutive training, an increase from the 13 weeks soldiers trained for the past 15 years.
The IDF has been training in Israel’s Golan Heights for another war with Hezbollah which over the years since the Second Lebanese War has morphed into an army with more advanced weaponry and more mobile, able to draft large amounts of fighters and deploy them quickly into enemy territory.
The two-week long drill saw troops and reservists from all levels of the 36th Armor Division, also known as the Ga'ash (“Rage) Formation, train on combat scenarios in complex and urban areas. The troops, who drilled on operational planning and discourse, dealt with operational challenges on a tactical level.
The Division's units operated in brigade combat teams in accordance with the concept of the "Gideon Battlegroup” while providing logistical solutions through a mobile logistic center.
Israel’s ground forces have been undergoing a major change over the past several year with a combined fighting method of infantry, tanks and combat engineering in one unified force-the “Gideon Battlegroup,” a combat brigade with thousands of IDF soldiers.
The new method, which is designed to make the ground forces more efficient and better suited to the types of fighting they might face against terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, will be implemented in the coming years.
“The division's forces practiced a variety of combat scenarios, combined with advanced and unique capabilities in complex scenarios, which increased the division's preparedness for war,” the military said.
The IDF has significantly stepped up the scope and frequency of its combat training in order to improve it’s readiness. As part of the IDF’s five-year Gideon plan, the military has returned to 17 weeks of consecutive training, an increase from the 13 weeks soldiers trained for the past 15 years.
The IDF has been training in Israel’s Golan Heights for another war with Hezbollah which over the years since the Second Lebanese War has morphed into an army with more advanced weaponry and more mobile, able to draft large amounts of fighters and deploy them quickly into enemy territory.
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2)
Stacey Abrams Cratering in Georgia. Brian Kemp Surging
In a new poll commissioned for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Governor Brian Kemp’s popularity has
surged nine points since January when the poll was last taken. 46% of voters have a favorable opinion of his job performance. Only 39% have a negative opinion. Stacey Abrams, meanwhile, saw her popularity crater. She was at 52% favorability and is now at 45%. The troubling part is that her unfavorability is also 45%. She is both far more polarizing and far more disliked than Brian Kemp.
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3) Barr Brings Accountability
Trump’s foes call it ‘stunning and scary.’ Here’s what they have to be scared about.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
The most inadvertently honest reaction to Attorney General William Barr’s congressional
testimony this week came from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Mr. Barr had bluntly called out the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016. Mr. Clapper said that was both “stunning and scary.” Indeed.
No doubt a lot of former Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign officials,
opposition guns for hire, and media members are stunned and scared that the Justice Department finally has a leader willing to address the FBI’s behavior in 2016. They worked very hard to make sure such an accounting never happened. Only in that context can we understand the frantic new Democratic-media campaign to tar the attorney general.
Mr. Barr told the Senate Wednesday that one question he wants answered is why nobody at
the FBI briefed the Trump campaign about concerns that low-level aides might have had inappropriate contacts with Russians. That’s “normally” what happens, Mr. Barr said, and the Trump campaign had two obvious people to brief—Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, both former federal prosecutors.
It wasn’t only the Trump campaign that the FBI kept in the dark. The bureau routinely briefs
Congress on sensitive counterintelligence operations. Yet former Director James Comey admits he deliberately hid his work from both the House and the Senate. And the FBI kept information from yet another overseer, the judicial branch, failing to tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee had paid for the dossier it presented as a basis for a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a U.S. citizen.
Why the secrecy? Mr. Comey testified that the Trump probe was simply too sensitive for
members of congressional intelligence committees to know about—an unbelievable statement given the heavy publicity he gave the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s improper handling of classified information. Here’s a more plausible explanation: Mr. Comey and his crew have also testified that they were all convinced Mrs. Clinton would win the election. That would have meant that no politician other than the incoming Democratic president would have known the FBI had spied on the Trump team. Nor would the public. A Clinton presidency would have ensured no accountability.
Mr. Trump’s victory destroyed that scenario, and it became clear that the new Republican
president would soon know that the former Democratic administration had surveilled his campaign on the basis of information from his rival. At that point two things happened. Neither was accidental, and both were aimed, again, at forestalling accountability.
First, Mr. Comey and other intelligence officials, including Mr. Clapper, engineered the public
release of all the scandalous claims against Mr. Trump, to provide some cover. As liberal commentator Matt Taibbi notes in his new book, “Hate Inc.” Mr. Comey’s Jan. 6, 2017, briefing of the president-elect about the dossier was a classic Washington “trick.” It served as the “pretext” to get the details out, a “news hook” to allow the press to publish the dossier— with its salacious fictions about prostitutes and Moscow hotel rooms—and go wild.
Democrats used the furor in their successful push for a special counsel, which gave greater
legitimacy to the FBI’s probe. The appointment of a special counsel also froze other oversight. Congress can’t have access to certain documents or ask witnesses certain questions, since that might interfere with the probe. The White House can’t demand answers, because that too would interfere. Mr. Trump’s adversaries got to hide behind Robert Mueller for nearly two years.
Second, Democrats mobilized against the other big threat, incoming Attorney General Jeff
Sessions, who had the authority to conduct an internal review. Don’t forget, the dossier wasn’t delivered only to the FBI. Its ultimate owners were the Clinton campaign and the DNC. And one huge outstanding question is just how many Democrats pushing for Mr. Sessions’ recusal in early 2017 did so with full knowledge of the FBI-Clinton tie-up. Certainly no Republicans were aware, and thus they were clueless to the bigger consequences of the unnecessary Sessions recusal.
Namely, that no outsider would take a hard look at the FBI. The Russia question fell to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, an institutionalist who would go on to sign the final
application for a surveillance warrant against Mr. Page. Again, no accountability. Meantime, wonder why Democrats tried so hard to mau-mau Mr. Barr into also recusing himself? The goal all along has been to deep-six any discovery until a Democrat returns to the White House.
Mr. Barr didn’t merely refuse to recuse; he’s made clear he plans to plumb the FBI’s actions thoroughly. That makes him Threat No. 1 to everyone who participated in these abuses, and
it’s why the liberal media establishment is now disparaging his integrity. They are stunned and scared—that accountability has returned to the Justice Department.
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4) Would Patients Be Able to
Escape BernieCare? For all but a very few, the answer is no.
By James Freeman
On Wednesday Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) rolled out this year’s version of his draft
legislation to abolish traditional Medicare. He calls it “Medicare for All” because polls tell him that voters don’t want to abolish traditional Medicare. Voters also don’t want him to destroy the U.S. system of private medical insurance, but his plan would do that, too. A key question raised by the new bill is whether patients, doctors and nurses would be able to escape the new government-run system when it fails to provide needed care—as such systems always do.Calling it “Medicare for All” is not the only deception. One section of his bill, entitled
“Freedom of Choice,” includes the following text:
Any individual entitled to benefits under this Act may obtain health services from any institution,
agency, or individual qualified to participate under this Act.
In other words, you are free to choose any doctor the federal government allows you to choose. On at least one point, Mr. Sanders is being honest. He’s not even trying to sell the Obama whopper
that patients will get to keep the plans and the doctors they like.
Speaking of the private health plans that roughly half the country now enjoys, the legislative
text from Mr. Sanders makes it clear that they would be put out of business. Also, employers can not operate their own plans to compete with the government plan. Section 107 of the draft bill states that once the plan is fully implemented:...it shall be unlawful for—
(1) a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided
under this Act; or
(2) an employer to provide benefits for an employee, former employee, or the dependents of an
employee or former employee that duplicate the benefits provided under this Act.
And while politicians in Washington continue to roast Wells Fargo for opening accounts
without the knowledge of customers, this will be standard operating procedure for the new government insurance plan. The legislation calls for “the automatic enrollment of individuals at the time of birth in the United States or upon the establishment of residency in the United States.”
Of course sometime after birth many patients will want an alternative. As noted, the plan says
that patients can choose any qualifying provider. But will doctors choose to serve patients who are paying for care with a BernieCard? (The legislation formally calls it a Universal Medicare card.)
The idea is to contain costs by forcing doctors, nurses and other providers to accept very low compensation relative to the current system. This effort will go well beyond the current
Medicare system’s method for limiting reimbursements to the people who heal us. The Sanders bill says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services “shall establish, document, and make publicly available a standardized process for reviewing the relative values of physicians’ services.”
This process shall include “methods and criteria for identifying services for review,
prioritizing the review of services, reviewing stakeholder recommendations, and identifying additional resources to be considered during the review process.’’
For those uninitiated in the ways of politics, “stakeholders” means people with no direct stake
in the health of the patient.
Would people who do have a stake in maintaining the quality of American medicine be able to
avoid this system? Generally no, although a few lucky patients who are extremely wealthy and plan ahead may be able to find an avenue to escape.
The legislation does have a provision for private contracting for medical services, and
assuming doctors, patients and nurses obey the various rules for such contracts, there would be a path for some small amount of non-government health care. But remember insurance products and corporate plans are not allowed to compete against the broad coverage promised by the government plan. And the Sanders bill prohibits private contracts “entered into at a time when the beneficiary is facing an emergency health care situation.”
So there would generally be no escape for patients who realize too late that they will die
before they get to the front of the line for necessary care. But for someone who does not require insurance and is willing and able to pay cash for any needed services—and who contracts ahead of time to cover possible needs in a way that complies with the Bernieaucracy —there appears to be a narrow path to high-quality service. But how many Americans are financially capable of paying cash for any needed medical care?
Instead of a plan to allow freedom only for one-percenters like Bernie Sanders, why not let all
patients escape the new bureaucracy and make their own choices on health care?
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5) The Case for a Green ‘No
Deal’ Climate alarmism isn’t popular with the public, so Republicans don’t need analternative.
By Steve Milloy
The Senate rejected the Green New Deal on a 57-0 procedural vote last month. Not a single
senator voted to bring the proposal to the floor, including its chief sponsor, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey. Climate alarmists demanded that Republicans come up with a plan of their own. But the best plan may be no plan at all, for at least four reasons.
First, cutting U.S. emissions won’t have much of an effect on the climate. According to the
United Nations Environment Programme, total man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were an estimated 53.5 billion metric tons in 2017. If the U.S. went dark and magically stopped emitting CO2 today, the rest of the world would continue to emit on the order of 45 billion tons of CO2 annually, an amount far in excess of the Kyoto Protocol’s goal of reducing annual emissions below the 1990 level of 35 billion tons. Supposing the U.S. could go carbonless, the difference in atmospheric CO2 levels by 2100 would be only about 29 parts per million. Based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change modeling, this would make no discernible difference in mean global temperature.
Second, claims of reductions in national emissions should be taken with a grain of salt.
According to an August 2018 report from the ClimateWorks Foundation, Western industrial nations have simply outsourced as much as 25% of their emissions to Asia, where labor is cheaper and environmental and workplace regulation is less expensive. Local emissions may be “cut,” but global emissions aren’t. Despite decades of climate alarmism, the world is burning more coal, oil and natural gas than ever. Still, a billion people around the world live in homes without electricity. The U.N. projects that global population will grow from 7.6 billion today to 11.2 billion by 2100. So long as people who are living in poverty seek a way out of it, CO2 emissions will rise. Third, the only thing certain about CO2 is that it’s necessary for life on Earth. It’s plant food. NASA satellite images have charted the greening of the Earth since the early 1980s. The notion that climate change is necessarily bad is an assumption, and possibly an unfounded one. There is no known or demonstrable “correct” or “optimal” level of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is similarly no known or demonstrable “correct” or “optimal” average global temperature. The climate is always changing, albeit gradually and often imperceptibly. The U.N. reported in its first climate assessment in 1990 that average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere have been warming since about 1650, the end of a relatively cold period known as the Little Ice Age. Recent research has demonstrated that warming has helped increase corn yields and helped corn production move into colder climes like the Canadian province of Alberta.
Fourth, pointlessly wrecking the U.S. economy is bad politics. Climate routinely ranks at or
near the bottom in polls of voter priorities, and climate alarmism has never been a political winner. Bill Clinton tried and failed to get his BTU tax passed in 1993. The Senate voted 95-0 in 1997 on a resolution to keep the U.S. from signing the Kyoto Protocol. Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman couldn’t rally enough support to pass a bipartisan cap-and-trade bill in 2003. Sen. Markey and Rep. Henry Waxman’s cap-and-tax bill died on the vine in 2010. And then there is the recent skunking of the Green New Deal.
Climate crusaders do make a lot of noise, political and otherwise. Some activists mean well
but are simply uninformed or wrongheaded. Some use climate as a stalking horse to advance a socialist agenda. “System change not climate change” is a common poster at climate rallies. Some look for business or rent-seeking opportunities from stoking panic over the climate. Some go along with climate-change hysteria out of political correctness. All of this noise crashes into the realities of immense and growing emissions driven by the desire of poor people around the world to achieve a higher standard of living.
If the GOP needs a climate plan, consider what Utah Sen. Mike Lee suggested during the
debate over the Green New Deal. “The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution, but the serious business of human flourishing. . . . Fall in love, get married, and have some kids.”
Amen, Senator.
Mr. Milloy served on the Trump EPA transition team, publishes JunkScience.com, and is
author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
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6) WAPO CATALOGUES LIES TOLD BYBARACK OBAMA
In the last few days of the Obama administration, the WaPo made a list of his 10 biggest lies
including one that won “Lie of the Year” and that one was that if you liked your health insurance,
you could keep it and of course that wasn’t even a close call.
But it was easy to tell when Obama was lying. His mouth would open and words would come out
and that signaled that he was lying. There would probably have been more but the WaPo didn’t start
their fact checker until 2011.
“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it”This memorable promise by Obama backfired on him in 2013
when the Affordable Care Act went into effect and at least 2 million Americans started receiving cancellation
notices. As we explained, part of the reason for so many cancellations is because of an unusually early (March 23,
2010) cutoff date for grandfathering plans — and because of tight regulations written by the administration. So t
he uproar could be pinned directly on the administration’s own actions.
Another whopper was Obama’s claim that all but 10 percent of the federal deficit was due to
former President George W. Bush’s policies. Pushing back against criticisms of running up the deficit at an unparalleled rate with stimulus packages and bailouts, Obama made this claim during his 2012 campaign.
“90 percent of the budget deficit is due to George W. Bush’s policies”During the 2012 campaign, Obama
repeatedly reminded voters that he became president during a grim economic crisis. But he went too far when he
claimed that only 10 percent of the federal deficit was due to his own policies. About half of the deficit stemmed
from the recession and forecasting errors, but a large chunk (44 percent in 2011) were the result of Obama’s
actions. At another point, Obama also falsely suggested that the Bush tax cuts led to the Great Recession.
And throughout Obama’s two terms in office, he has been quick to dismiss clear acts of terrorism —
using phrases like “workplace violence” or blaming a YouTube video for an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The Post also included his categorization of the Benghazi
attack as “an act of terror” and his reference to ISIS as a “JV team.”
“The day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism”Obama did refer to an
“act of terror” in the immediate aftermath of the 2012 Benghazi attacks, but in vague terms, wrapped in a
patriotic fervor. He never affirmatively stated that the American ambassador died because of an “act of terror.
” Then, over a period of two weeks, given three opportunities in interviews to affirmatively agree that the
Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack, the president obfuscated or ducked the question. So this was a case of
taking revisionist history too far for political reasons.
In 2014, Obama repeated a claim, crafted by the White House communications team, that he was not
“specifically” referring to the Islamic State terror group when he dismissed the militants who had taken over
Fallujah as a “JV squad.” But The Fact Checker obtained the previously unreleased transcript of the president’s
interview with the New Yorker, and it’s clear that’s who the president was referencing.
But the Post did leave out some key falsehoods recited by Obama over the years. Here are a few:
“Over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed an
attack on our homeland that was directed from overseas.”
Playing a semantics game, Obama misrepresented the fact that there have been many terrorist attacks
carried out on American soil by those with ties to foreign terrorist organizations. In fact, in the case
of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Killeen, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan murdered 14 people on the
military base while shouting “allahu akbar” and was shown to be in direct contact with Al Qaeda
ISIS themselves also claimed responsibility for a 2015 attack in Garland, Texas, when two men were
taken down by police officers after they shot up a community center hosting a Muhammad cartoon
contest.
Over the last eight years, there were even more terrorist-related attacks in the country, including the
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two soldiers at a military recruiting station. Muhammad also
had ties to al-Qaeda.
“Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”
Obama claimed that combat operations would be finished by 2010 and later took credit for ending U.S. combat in Iraq. But his own former Defense Secretary Robert Gates disputed that in 2016, the
White House did a “disservice” to troops by engaging in word games.
“I think that it is incredibly unfortunate not to speak openly about what’s going on,” Gates told
MSNBC. “American troops are in action, they are being killed, they are in combat. And these
semantic backflips to avoid using the term combat is a disservice to those who are out there putting
their lives on the line.”
“We have not had a major scandal in my administration.”
Obama sidestepped the comprehensive list of scandals that plagued his tenure as president. These
scandals include but are not limited to: the Operation Fast and Furious gun walking scandal, the IRS
scandalinvolving IRS workers intentionally targeting Tea Party organizations, and his own
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using a private email server.
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