“Gun control laws are like OSHA for criminals. When criminals have guns and their victims don’t, crime becomes a safer occupation. In some countries with strict gun-control laws, burglars enter houses while people are still at home several times as often as that happens in the United States.”
13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff and the Annex Security Team
Mitchell is a journalism professor at Boston University. This is not a political book. It is a detailed account of what happened on September 11, 2012 in Benghazi. It details what the security arrangement were, including the use of local militia groups, who was where during each of the multiple attacks, who died, who was wounded, and what the responses by the State Department were at the time.
For those of you coming in late to the party, Earth Day” is on Lenin’s Birthday. Not a coincidence, given that the “founder” of Earth Day was much more a “Watermelon” than an actual environmentalist. Watermelon: Thin layer of green of the outside, red to the core.
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” — Life Magazine, January 1970
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Ok, Ehrlich was sorta right on this, if you restrict his predictions to modern Communist China, where they are showing the typical communist/socialist contempt for the environment.
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Now we get to my personal favorite, although probably not Al Gore‘s… “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Argue with neighbors, get in their faces… If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard… I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry…If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at only a 0.7% seasonally adjusted annualized ratein the fourth quarter of last year, the Commerce Department reported today. That’s quite weak.
2015 as a whole wasn’t so good either. GDP expanded at only 2.4%, the same as in 2014. That’s called limping along. For as James Pethokoukis points out, from the end of World War II through 2005, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 3.5%.
Time to clear out all the tabs on my browser again.
Let’s lead with this article from the Foundation for Economic Education. It points out what is wrong with Trumps claims about manufacturing jobs, and how to fix the problem. It goes on to point out that Trump is the moderate on the subject when compared to Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders. Sanders is completely divorced from reality on the subject, and his “solutions” have the high probability of making the thing he wants to fix even worse.
Modern Healthcare has a report on the Illinois Obamacare program. I’ll give you the short version, they operated at a $90.8 million loss in 2015. Remember back before the so-called “Affordable Care Act” was passed in the middle of the night right before Congress left Washington for Christmas? Come on, you remember. It was done using a procedure that even the democrats own resident high ranking Klansman objected to, in order to avoid a vote in the Senate. Something to do with the democrat stronghold of Massachusetts electing a Republican expressly to vote against Obamacare. There were some people, mainly those who had actually read the ACA, who objected to it, claiming it was economically unviable. They were uniformly called “racists”, which we now know means “anyone who disagrees with a democrat.”
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. ”
— President Ronald Reagan, who predicted our Dear Leader‘s methods well in advance
The Nevada caucuses are over for both parties, and the Republican primary has been run in South Carolina.
There is much angst in the hearts and minds of the establishment members of both parties.
Let us first take a look at the big hot mess the Republican side is.
Donald Trump is winning, and winning big. He is ahead in the delegate count. Not just in this race either. He is head of where Romney and McCain were at this point in the last two election cycles.
The Republican “leadership” is clutching their collective pearls and asking how in the name of a merciful God is this possible.
My advice to them is to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The Republican “leadership”, especially in Congress has been destroying their brand value for decades. They have worked long and hard to completely alienate their conservative base.
Speaking of that conservative base, in a rare instance of agreement with the party leadership, they are as confused over this whole Donald Trump thing as the leadership is. Not for the same reasons though. The “establishment” leaders of the GOP put a lot of money behind former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. In past Presidential elections, this would have been enough to give Jeb a pretty good shot at winning the primary battle. Not this time though, remember that whole alienating their voter base thing? So the people who think they run the GOP have had their candidate shot down in flames.
The conservative base is scratching the collective heads because they don’t consider Trump to be an actual Republican. Take a look at his record. He has self-identified as a democrat in the past, and has supported a lot of democrats. As I have pointed out before there are some strong similarities between some his policies and those of the admitted socialist Bernie Sanders. Their policies on legal and illegal immigration for example. There is another reason to believe that Trump is not a Republican. He knows how to handle a hostile press.
So why is Trump so far ahead? Simple. He is perceived as a “Washington outsider.” The voters are sick and tired of “business as usual” inside the Beltway. They don’t want to throw away a vote on the same old, same old once again. Look who is second place, Texas Senator Ted Cruz. He is not just hated by the congressional Republican leadership, they actually fear the concept of him in the Oval Office. He doesn’t “play ball” and cozy up to the democrats. He actually tries to keep his promises to the people who elected him, which makes him a renegade maverick in Washington, regardless of the letter after his name.
I’m not a Trump fan, but his run for the Presidency is fascinating for a political junkie. Not only is he appealing to pissed off GOP voters, he has actual cross party support. Polling has consistently shown that 20% of his supporters are Blue Collar democrats. What used to loyal democrats who have been thrown under the bus by their party over the past seven years. He is also doing better than the typical GOP candidate in traditionally democrat demographics. Namely hispanics, blacks and women.
To see why Trump is doing well with those traditional democrat groups, just look at how the democrats have been treating their base since they started the Occupy the White House Golf Tour in January 2009.
There has been mild, sporadic and slow economic growth since the recession ended in July 2009, despite our Dear Leader’s best efforts to kill it. Most people have benefited from this. Except for blacks. They have gotten the shaft, despite all the promises made back in 2008. Just take a look at the very detailed information on employment, and unemployment, at the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can find breakdowns by race, gender, and age. As Senator Sanders has pointed out in his stump speeches, unemployment among black Americans is significantly higher than those of white Americans or any other group of American. This has not gone unnoticed by black single parent mothers, who are now working three jobs to send their kids to private school instead of two. Why they are sending their kids to private schools instead of public schools is left as an exercise to the reader in yet another way the democrats have been alienating their base.
Americans of Hispanic descent who are registered to vote (i.e. legal immigrants, and remember that Mexico is the number one source of legal immigrants to America), are hearing Trump’s call to secure our border. They have observed our Dear Leader’s policy of not enforcing our immigration laws, and the results of that policy. Things they left Mexico (which is in a violent narco civil war) to get away from, are showing up here in America. Drug Cartels, kidnapping, and armed gangs working for the cartels. In more and more cases, these violent criminal organizations are found using semi-automatic weapons supplied to them by our Dear Leader’s “Fast and Furious” program. They don’t like it, and are turning to Trump and Sanders, both of whom want to enforce the law in regards to our southern border.
Which leads us to the question being raised by the establishment democrat leadership wondering what happened to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s comfortable stroll to primary victory they were predicting. No surprised here, as I’ve pointed out, they have been working hard to alienate their base as well. Plus the fact that HRC is extremely unlikable, and massively corrupt. So democrat voters are also looking for an outsider. Thus the support for the socialist from Vermont from everyone who doesn’t like or trust Hillary Rodham Clinton. Given her high negatives, and history of massive corruption, is a significant number of democrats. This does not speak well of Hillary. She was correct when she said that Sander wasn’t a democrat until he decided to run for President. He has always run openly as a socialist. While in the Senate, he caucused with the democrats, but was not officially a member of their party.
However, you aren’t seeing the runaway victories that Trump has been seeing in the Republican primaries. This is because of another thing the doddering old socialist has gotten right. The system is rigged. The DNC has been blatantly in the tank for Hillary Rodham Clinton in this cycle. HRC is well ahead in the delegate count because the party made sure she had the super delegates wrapped up long before those pesky citizens could possibly muck up their coronation of Queen Hillary the First.