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PENNY HEALING AND NOW ON HER OWN AFTER MANY SURGERIES:
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Whistleblowers: FBI/DOJ Deep State Working Overtime to Protect Hunter Biden
By Matt Vespa
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Posting from Hoover Weekly:
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I re-print Hanson's thorough op ed because, if you deny any of this you have chosen to become a liar to yourself.Why? Because only Trump is the nation's sole soul who wanted to bring down our government over his questioned election. No one excuses his role, at whatever level, in encouraging questionable behaviour but neither can one deny Democrats, radical progressives have been at it for the years Hanson has documented.
German neighbors looked the other way when they hauled their "Jewish friends" to their death and what the Democrats have been doing is only a step away from the same degree of barbarism.
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I have one particularly contentious cousin who is a lawyer. Very combative and snarky. Then my father was a brilliant lawyer, two sons in law were lawyers, I went to law school and upon graduation realized I did not have the temperament to be a lawyer.
Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?
In truth, “insurrection” has been fueled by the Left since 2015.
By Victor Davis Hanson
For 120 days in summer 2020, violent protesters destroyed some $2 billion in property and injured 1,500 police officers in riots that led to over 35 deaths.
Because blue-state mayors and governors saw BLM and Antifa instigators as useful street soldiers, most of those arrested were never tried in court. Street thugs paid no price for declaring themselves de facto owners of downtown areas of Seattle, which police themselves conceded were no-go zones. Why did public officials in blue states ignore the violence? They were certain that it enjoyed majority support among their leftwing constituencies.
Indeed, some leftist icons cheered on the violence. Well after the failed attempt to storm the White House grounds, in June 2020, the Democratic candidate for vice president Kamala Harris warned us that protestors were “not going to let up, and they should not.” What did Harris mean by “should not?”—when she knew numerous protests that summer had ended in terrible violence? Was she reckless in the manner Trump was said to be by encouraging a demonstration on January 6?
The architect of the “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones assured the nation that vast destruction of (someone else’s property) was not a real crime. CNN’s Chris Cuomo gushed that violent demonstrations and riots were American traditions. Were these national voices urging calm during weeks of violent rioting and looting?
There were no investigations, no congressional committees, and no voices of outrage from the left-wing establishment over months of such carnage. Indeed, much of the organization of the violent protests was facilitated by social media that was apparently unbothered that the medium under their stewardship was used to torch and loot.
The Attack on Norms and Customs
Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged her followers to tail, dog, and get in the faces of Trump government officials to the point that they would lose their freedom to even be seen in public. “And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she famously admonished.
Corporations began boycotting events deemed illiberal in fears of being boycotted themselves. Not saluting the flag for professional athletes was considered patriotic, saluting it insurrectionary. Mobs of leftists, cheered on by Democratic grandees, began tearing down statues of Confederate generals—but only as a preliminary to defacing the Lincoln Memorial and other statues of Lincoln, Jefferson, and Frederick Douglass.
From 2015-16, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with impunity had wiped away thousands of her supposedly personal emails on a likely illegal private server. To cover her tracks, she ordered her devices destroyed, despite many being under subpoena.
Clinton also sought to warp the entire machinery of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Clinton’s skullduggery was hidden behind three firewalls—the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins-Coie legal firm, and the Fusion GPS opposition research firm—to mask her likely illegal payments that enlisted a foreign national and ex-spy, Christopher Steele, to assist her campaign by destroying Donald Trump.
Steele proved a clumsy, grifting con artist who tapped Clinton’s money, her friends, and her former subordinates in concocting a fake “dossier” of gossip, lies, and slander aimed at rendering Trump unelectable. No matter—Steele used Clinton’s State Department contacts and former government clients to compile and seed the lies among a toady media to undermine her political opponent and later sabotage the Trump presidency.
The War Against Institutions
The Left, in revolutionary fashion, has waged a sustained and unapologetic attack on constitutional norms and long-held institutions—whenever it senses they no longer prove conducive to its own radical agendas.
Barack Obama declared during a funeral oration for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) that the filibuster was racist and must end—although as a senator Obama had used it and declared it essential.
The Electoral College? When the so-called “blue wall” fell, it transmogrified from valuable to a bankrupt fossil. In fact, the Left has wanted to create two new blue states (the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) to fast track four left-wing senators, and cram through a national voting law to make the states’ constitutional prerogative to require voter IDs illegal.
There is no border. For two years, Joe Biden, again in true revolutionary fashion, has simply abrogated federal immigration law by fiat. In less than two years, he has welcomed 3 million illegal aliens without audit—or COVID-19 tests or vaccinations—during a pandemic in which unvaccinated federal employees and military personnel faced dismissal. Biden had taken an oath of office to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, but then shortly thereafter destroyed immigration laws as we knew them. No prior president has simply rendered an entire corpus of law null and void.
Fueled by leftist billionaires, the Left waged a multiyear effort to elect big-city district attorneys whose agendas were pure nihilism: to not enforce laws, to release arrested criminals without indictments, to end cash bail, and prematurely to release convicted and hardened lawbreakers. The guiding principle was the revolutionary theory that the law was a simple construct used against marginalized peoples and the poor, and therefore simply could be ignored or discarded.
There is no longer free speech on college campuses. Guests who voice minority opinions are in danger of being shouted down or put into physical danger—with the near certainty that their attackers will face few if any consequences.
“Safe spaces,” dorms, and graduation ceremonies are often racially exclusive—all knowingly in violation of the spirit and the letter of once vaunted civil rights legislation. At many colleges, faculty and potential faculty are asked to write “diversity statements,” apparently in emulation of the old McCarthy “loyalty oaths” that likewise served both to eliminate any dissent and to frighten would-be apostates. Any dissident professor will have his biography thoroughly scanned for thought crimes, and then be libeled as a “racist” or “sexist”—as a clear warning to others to keep silent.
There is a revolutionary war now being waged against the Supreme Court, because it no longer characteristically legislates from the bench. If the Court was once beloved as an iconic institution that was a sort of liberal judiciary, legislature, and executive all in one, it is now utterly despised as counterrevolutionary. Indeed, it is declared illegitimate, and its rulings to be ignored.
Former law professor Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) screams about a need to pack the Court—an insurrectionary attempt to end 160 years of judicial law and custom, that would be impossible without first ending the 180-year filibuster.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanagh by name at the doors of the Court, issuing biblical warnings of violence to both: “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
What sort of “force” did a U.S. senator refer to by screaming to a mob about what might “hit” the justices or when he further threatened, that the two “have released the whirlwind and [they] will pay the price”? What price? What whirlwind?
Did such physical threats incite would-be nuts to seek out a court justice—as in the recent case of 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske arrested armed near the home of Justice Kavanaugh and who currently faces a charge of attempting to murder an associate justice of the Supreme Court?
Illegally leaking rough drafts of future opinions is now not unlawful but a voice of conscience—as long as it is seen as another effective leftist tool to intimidate conservative justices.
Leftists, egged on by Democratic politicians, now routinely mass, circle, shout, and seek to intimidate at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices—a felony violation that is never prosecuted.
Joe Biden, who claimed Trump showed insufficient respect for the judiciary, now while abroad savagely attacks the U.S. Supreme Court in off-topic rants before his smiling foreign hosts.
In sum, laws are said to be irrelevant and to be ignored by states, cities, and counties at will—depending on their usefulness or impediments to the Left’s agenda.
Indeed, leftists are at times states’ rights extremists. They attack the federal government’s authority on immigration issues and simply nullify it—as evidenced by 550 sanctuary city jurisdictions in blue states designed to render inert federal immigration law.
Yet at other times, the Left seeks to crush states’ rights. Currently it is calling for the federal government, in violation of the Hyde Amendment, to nullify states’ rights to establish abortion laws—by creating abortion clinics on federal military bases and national parks inside red states (that is, in states where about 10 percent of the nations’ yearly abortions occur).
The common denominators are not principles—but only the retention of power, and the notion that law is fluid and gains legitimacy only when advancing leftist dogma.
Our Revolutionary Agencies
Former Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan both lied under oath—without legal consequences—to the Congress.
The FBI itself has descended into a sort of revolutionary police force rather than a disinterested investigative body focusing mostly on intrastate and federal crimes. The fired former Director James Comey feigned amnesia or ignorance 245 times in his responses under oath to a House committee.
The subsequent interim director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied three times to federal investigators and likely discussed wearing a wire to entrap the president of the United States. He was never charged with any federal crime.
An FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered a federal affidavit to warp a FISA court hearing. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller claimed under oath that he had no idea what the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS was, even though, arguably, they were the goads that prompted his own 22-month-long investigation.
There is no need to review the creepy careers and texts of FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her paramour FBI agent Peter Strzok, other than to note both used FBI resources to advance political agendas. The entire agency was knee-deep in fueling the Russian collusion hoax, itself a veritable revolutionary attempt to destroy a political campaign, a presidential transition, and a presidency.
In the fashion of the former East German Stasi, the FBI hounds political opponents on the Right by surveilling parents at school board meetings, sending a SWAT team to arrest a flamboyant Trump supporter Roger Stone, arriving at the house of journalist James O’Keefe in the deep of night to confiscate his files and devices, and putting former White House advisor Peter Navarro in veritable shackles. The common denominator is the FBI devolving into a retrieval service for the Biden family syndicate, whether by putting on ice Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop or hounding out Ashley Biden’s lurid diary or intimidating Biden critics.
Yet when asked to produce relevant cell phones of possibly wayward agents, the FBI claims that such data was erased, shrugs, and does not comply. Apparently, the FBI leadership fears the progressive Washington political-bureaucratic-media nexus far more than it fears the consequences of violating the law it is sworn to uphold.
Retired four-star admirals and generals no longer just revolve out of service to woke corporate boards and lobbying firms. Now they must first prepare their trajectories by violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, in damning their commander-in-chief and thus virtue signaling their bankable corporate orthodoxy.
As a result, the left-wing media and elite have dropped their traditional dislike of such federal authorities, be they the FBI, the CIA, or the Pentagon. Indeed, the Left has come to love those with badges and guns—but solely as a revolutionary force far more efficient than the clumsy Congress in greenlighting their progressive agendas and making life hell for their opponents.
Sort of Sacrosanct Elections, Sort of Not
As far as rejecting the outcomes of federal and state elections, for leftist insurrectionists the validity of an election hinges on whether the Left is a declared winner or loser. Once Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016, her opponent became “illegitimate.” She joined the “Resistance” and later advised Joe Biden to reject the ballot tally if he lost the popular vote. No one claimed she was endangering hallowed institutions or sounding insurrectionary.
For Time journalist Molly Ball, the billionaire effort to undermine the 2020 election by infusing hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money to usurp the work of selected county registrars was a giddy “conspiracy.” For former Obama Pentagon lawyer Rosa Brooks in 2017, the 11-day tenure of newly inaugurated President Donald Trump was already an occasion to weigh the relative advantages of either impeachment, invocation of the 25th Amendment—or a military coup to remove him.
Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams became a left-wing cult figure by touring the country claiming she was the real governor of her state who somehow, nonetheless and illegitimately, had lost her campaign by 50,000 votes.
Good Threats of Violence
As far as violence goes, the Left has descended into full assault pornography over the last few years.
Former vice president and “uniter” Joe Biden boasted that he would like to beat up President Trump: “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him . . .” or “He’s the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I’d smack him in the mouth.”
Do we remember when Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), another 2020 presidential hopeful, railed that, “My testosterone sometimes makes me want to feel like punching him [Trump], which would be bad for this elderly, out-of-shape man that he is if I did that. This physically weak specimen.”
Robert De Niro similarly announced that he had his sights on Trump, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
Do such threats have consequences? Maybe. On the day Trump was inaugurated, Madonna incited a crowd outside the White House by warning that she had thought of blowing up the White House. Comedian Kathy Griffin trumped that in a video in which she held up a facsimile of a decapitated Trump head.
Few today remember James Hodgkinson—a former Bernie Sanders campaign worker—and his 2017 attempt to assassinate Republican congressmen at a practice for a charity baseball game.
So yes, let us fear that democracy is dying in media darkness. Real insurrectionists are seeking to dismantle the Constitution, to end centuries-long customs and traditions, to justify the use of political violence, and to disobey all the laws they find inconvenient.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the newly released The Dying Citizen.
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Why Putin Must Be Defeated
By Guy Millière , GATESTONE
artistic picture of menacing looking putin in front of a russian flag
The Ukrainian military urgently needs long-range air defenses and longer-range artillery. It does not have them.
[Zelensky] said he wanted the war over before Russia could rebuild its forces, and that each additional day of war meant more death and destruction. Above all, he said, not only Ukraine is at stake, but the security and values ??of the West.
“History teaches that prolonged conflicts bleed both sides, but dictatorships have an advantage over democracies. They are not accountable to their societies and can pay the price of blood, even with opposition from their citizens…. Does the transatlantic free world still want to occupy a position of leadership? Do we still believe in the universality of values ??such as freedom and the right of national self-determination?” — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Politico, June 27, 2022.
The almost total destruction of entire cities… has no precedent in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Neither do the horrific war crimes committed in Bucha and other towns on the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv. Nearly two million Ukrainians have been deported and sent to Russia, with some in detention camps in Siberia…. The invasion of Ukraine without a declaration of war is itself a war crime.
The Baltic states, Finland, Sweden and Poland have every reason to feel threatened: if Putin is not defeated, he will not stop at Ukraine.
Russia, in 1994, signed the Budapest Memorandum, committing itself to respect the borders of Ukraine. Twenty years later, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and created secessionist militia in the Donbass. In 2022, Putin showed that the Budapest Memorandum had absolutely no meaning for him.
Putin is leading a campaign of annihilating Ukraine’s infrastructure and industrial base. He appears to want Ukraine to become a ruined, non-viable country, virtually impossible to rebuild because the costs would be too high. The more time passes, the higher the costs.
To achieve his ends, Putin is apparently perfectly willing to hold hundreds of millions of innocent people hostage, and even sentence them to death by starvation. Meanwhile, his propaganda services cynically claim to the countries concerned that the risk of famine results from the Western sanctions against Russia.
Failing to give Ukraine every means to win… or letting a stalemate set in — or even worse — rewarding Russian aggression by ceding Ukraine’s Donbass and declaring that Russia had “won”, would effectively be announcing to China and all the enemies of the Western world that the power of the West and its ability to command respect belong in the past. Such an outcome would also be telling them that the rules of international law established after the Second World War, and the values ??that the Western world claims to embody, are now rules and values ??that the West is incapable of defending.
A war only ends when there is a winner and a loser. In the present situation, Putin is the ruthless aggressor who tramples all the rules and values of the West. He must be defeated. If he is not, the consequences will not be limited to Ukraine. They will be devastating.
The Russian military is not invincible. On the contrary, it has shown itself to be extremely deficient and vulnerable. It is the army of a weak state: Russia’s GDP is lower than that of Italy. The Russian army can be crushed and the murderous destruction inflicted on Ukraine can end. What is missing is the clear and concrete will from the West. The United States must lead.
In Madrid, Biden said, “We are going to stick with Ukraine, and all of the alliance is going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to, in fact, make sure that they are not defeated”. He did not say what he should have said, had he wanted to show some strength: Ukraine must win. If it receives the required armaments, Ukraine will win.
Only an American president has the political and military means to show strength in a credible way. It is tragic that the United States has a weak president just when the future of the world is threatened by so many predatory regimes — all doubtless aware of the small but irresistible window they have at this time.
“We must aid Ukraine, for to do so in part is our first duty to America and to Americans…. By supporting Ukraine, we prevent larger European conflict. A war that would almost certainly involve America’s military because we have a deep commitment to the NATO treaty and Article Five therein.” — Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“Putin will not stop, unless he is stopped… if the West is aware of what is at stake and sees this war as its own, then this price is not too high. After all, Ukrainians are paying a much higher price. Ukrainians have no choice, since they are defending their country. But the West has no choice either—it is about its future as a community, driven by values ??and the ability to project these values ??globally.” — Iryna Solonenko, Senior Fellow at the Zentrum Liberale Moderne (LibMod), Berlin, Internationale Politik Quarterly, April 13, 2022.
May 9, Moscow. The annual military Victory Day Parade was held in Red Square, but with fewer soldiers and military vehicles than in other years. The parade had been cut by 35%. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s short, sober speech tried to justify the war of aggression he had launched against Ukraine on February 24.
Putin seemed on the verge of defeat. A month earlier, in an apparent debacle, the Russian Army had hastily left the Kyiv area. Countless Russian soldiers had been wounded and killed; the loss of military equipment was unimaginable. A report from the UK Ministry of Defence on May 15 said that Russia had lost a third of its combat forces and much of its heavy equipment.
On May 14, Russian troops withdrew from ??Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; they had been pushed back by Ukrainian forces to the Russian border. Russia’s only “victory” was the total destruction of the city of Mariupol, by the Sea of ??Azov. Communications intercepted by American intelligence services showed that the Russian military had a low morale and that cases of insubordination, mutiny, and refusal to obey orders had multiplied. Russian generals had been killed at the front.
Russian forces then began concentrating their efforts on the Donbass and has been waging a war of attrition ever since. Much of Russia’s modern military equipment has been destroyed; its older equipment dates from the 1960s, but Putin has lots of bombs. Russia has now been bombing Ukrainian positions for weeks. It advances just a little but destroys everything in its path. It has razed not only much of Mariupol, but also Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
The Ukrainian Army courageously resists, but does not have enough heavy weapons to end the destruction, stop Russia’s offensive or carry out an effective counter-offensive.
Putin seems to be counting on time; he seems betting that the Western world will lose interest in Ukraine and turn to other matters.
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America is sinking while Captain Biden sleeps.
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The Iran Nuclear Deal’s Convulsive Death
Biden will face a test like no other as Putin and Xi see America’s global power faltering.
By Walter Russell Mead
No matter what you call it, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—JCPOA for short or “Iran nuclear deal” for convenience—is in trouble. Since Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of Barack Obama’s agreement that ended economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear activities, the deal has been the Schrödinger’s cat of diplomacy—sealed in a box, neither dead nor alive but in some indeterminate state.
These days, however, the stench from the box is getting harder to ignore. As Iran approaches the nuclear threshold, the saga seems to be moving toward a close.
In December Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that “what we will not allow is for Iran to, in effect, tread water at talks, while at the same time advancing its program.” Iran was not deterred and has been merrily treading water and advancing its nuclear program ever since. Last week Britain’s intelligence chief told reporters that Iran had decided to reject America’s terms for re-entering the deal, though it was happy to let negotiations drag on. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency’s head, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran’s nuclear program is “galloping ahead.”
Even the most optimistic Washington insiders are losing hope. In lead negotiator Robert Malley’s words, “You can’t revive a dead corpse.”
One reason for letting talks drag on inconclusively for so long is the unappetizing consequences of admitting their failure. The definitive end of the Iran deal would almost certainly force the administration to choose between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran and initiating a confrontation likely to culminate in another American war in the Middle East. Both courses of action entail unpredictable but large risks and costs. Avoiding this ugly choice has, understandably, been the Biden administration’s central goal in the region.
Unfortunately, time wasn’t on President Biden’s side. The Iran negotiations have moved toward failure as America’s international position grew less secure, and today the deal’s impending collapse is part of a global crisis of American power. With Russian missiles raining down on Odessa and China threatening massive consequences if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goes to Taiwan, the administration is already grappling with an international situation far graver than anything it expected or prepared for. Whatever their long-term concerns about a nuclear Iran, both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin seem more interested in stiffening Iran’s commitment to the anti-American alliance than in facilitating an agreement that would reduce the pressure on a beleaguered American president.
Americans need to see Iran’s nuclear push in a global context. The crisis with Tehran comes at an extremely beneficial moment for Russia and China. Our opponents hope that simultaneous geopolitical crises in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia will overwhelm a dazed and weary America. As the economic consequences of those crises ripple through the U.S. and global economies, the revisionists hope that America’s cohesion at home and alliances abroad will weaken as the threats grow. To prevent that, Team Biden needs to restore a sense of deterrence and caution to adversaries who have enjoyed a long run of success.
If the U.S. is going to develop an effective response to this combination of strategic threats, our political leaders will have to move beyond finger pointing and blame games over the fate of the JCPOA. Republicans can say justly that Mr. Obama’s decision to sign something as consequential and controversial as the Iran nuclear deal without the bipartisan support needed to get a treaty ratified in the Senate was a historic mistake. Democrats can reasonably riposte that Mr. Trump’s unilateral withdrawal made everything worse. Such matters can be left to the historians. The question before us now is not who was right in 2015 or 2018. It is what we do next.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly said that allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons is not an option. If his administration fails to hold that line, the consequences for American power in the Middle East and globally would be profound and perhaps irreversible. If America attacks Iranian nuclear facilities and finds itself stuck in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire, the effects at home and abroad will also be dire. China and Russia would take advantage of America’s Middle East preoccupation to make trouble elsewhere, and U.S. public opinion would be further polarized.
Few presidents have faced policy choices this tough or consequential. It’s understandable if not commendable that the administration postponed the day of reckoning for so long, but as the dead-cat stink intensifies, Mr. Biden is coming closer to the greatest test of his career.
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Sent by my Canadian computer guru:
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One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week’ The florist was pleased and left the shop.
When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.
Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.’ The cop was happy and left the shop.
The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.
Then a politician came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.’ The politician was very happy and left the shop.
The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen politicians lined up waiting for a free haircut.
And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.
As Robin Williams said: "Both politicians and diapers need to be changed. And for the same reason.”
++++++++++++++++++++++MICHAEL ZOLLER. WONDERFUL PERSON, GREAT DOCTOR GREAT FRIEND.
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We are going to NewYork in two weeks to celebrate Lynn's aunt's 100th birthday. Then we go to Kingston to be with our oldest granddaughter and Scott, her husband, to see their new abode. They are delighted to be out of Brooklyn:
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Let's end on a funny note
Let's end on a funny note
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Oh hell, let's end on a sad note and talk about lawyers. I have one particularly contentious cousin who is a lawyer. Very combative and snarky. Then my father was a brilliant lawyer, two sons in law were lawyers, I went to law school and upon graduation realized I did not have the temperament to be a lawyer.
I like action, not delay. I like helping people make money not solving messes they get in because they do something stupid or allow someone to take advantage of them.
We need lawyers just as we need bees and tigers etc. but everything in moderation.
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Lawyers in Government
Lawyers in Government
As an attorney, I hesitated to forward this as it can be considered to be an indictment against my profession. But I believe there is much truth to the article below. Very thought provoking. Lawyers are adversarial and are trained to try to win at all costs. May work in litigation ----- but does not work well when governing our nation in Congress. Trying to win at any cost creates the polarization and hatred that now fills our country....Leaves no room for common sense or legitimate debate.
Every Democrat presidential nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate – Biden (no surprise) was at the bottom of his class). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Barack Obama was a lawyer. Michelle Obama was a lawyer. Hillary Clinton was a lawyer. Bill Clinton was a lawyer. John Edwards is a lawyer. Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer. Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress: Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is a lawyer. Former Senator Harry Reid was a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Trump is a businessman. President Bush 1 and 2 were businessmen. Vice President Cheney was a businessman. President Eisenhower was a 5 star General. The leaders of the Republican Revolution: Newt Gingrich was a history professor. Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist. Ex-House Minority Leader John Boehner was a plastics manufacturer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon. Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against actor Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. This is very interesting. I had never thought about it this way before.
The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Trump, Bush, and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich. The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America . And, so, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, we have seen the procession of official enemies grow. Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, which, in this case should be the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.
When politicians, as lawyers, begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
The United States has 5% of the world's population and 66% of the world's lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in Congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association go to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high.
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Had a total breathing/stress test today and seem to do what they wanted me to. Get results several weeks out.
My great pulmonologist is going to tell me I need to get my heart rate up. Emily, who gave me the test is a lovely young mother with two sons and beautiful blue eyes. Lynne is the person who met me and took my records etc. is just great. Candler is a local hospital and their staffing is superb.
Savannah has good medicine, you just have to pick and choose. I have a fabulous team of caring physicians who are more than just my doctors. They are caring friends.
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