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YouTube has entirely removed PragerU's new video with Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim who is a pro-Israel activist. In the video, Hafeez explains how he overcame the anti-Semitic indoctrination that radicalized him from an early age. Within hours of the video's release Monday morning, YouTube flagged it for "hate speech" and took it down. PragerU is disputing YouTube's removal of the video. You can view the video on our website by clicking here.
Please sign this petition to demand that YouTube remove its "hate speech" label on a video that is about fighting anti-Semitism!
Received the email from Prager U too. It didn't surprise me really. Very provocative to the leftists, regardless of the reality of truth. Friend of ours had Dennis and their team at his house to roll out their program. We were all impressed.
Great Moments in Communism........
Castro Vehicle Breaks Down, Just Like His Policies
Mark Alexander · Dec. 5, 2016
A fitting final metaphor for Fidel Castro’s puppet Soviet regime:
The Russian UAZ-469 light utility vehicle hauling Castro’s corpse in the state funeral procession experienced engine failure and had to be pushed by soldiers along the “Caravan of Liberty.” That was the ironic name Castro’s communist guerrillas gave their 1959 march from Santiago to Havana to topple the Batista government.
By the way, all the mainstream media are referring to this vehicle as a “Jeep.” Cease and desist! Jeeps were the primary light four-wheel drive vehicle used by the U.S. Army and our allies in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and are now a popular SUV. That broken-down piece of socialist junk pulling Castro’s carcass is not a Jeep!
And while we’re on the subject of hogwash, Fidel’s brother Raul declared, “The leader of the revolution rejected any manifestation of a cult of personality and was consistent in that through the last hours of his life, insisting that, once dead, his name and likeness would never be used on institutions, streets, parks or other public sites, and that busts, statues or other forms of tribute would never be erected.”
And why should he? He’s got plenty of help in the media’s cult of propaganda.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/46268
Great Moments in Communism........
Castro Vehicle Breaks Down, Just Like His Policies
Mark Alexander · Dec. 5, 2016
A fitting final metaphor for Fidel Castro’s puppet Soviet regime:
The Russian UAZ-469 light utility vehicle hauling Castro’s corpse in the state funeral procession experienced engine failure and had to be pushed by soldiers along the “Caravan of Liberty.” That was the ironic name Castro’s communist guerrillas gave their 1959 march from Santiago to Havana to topple the Batista government.
By the way, all the mainstream media are referring to this vehicle as a “Jeep.” Cease and desist! Jeeps were the primary light four-wheel drive vehicle used by the U.S. Army and our allies in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and are now a popular SUV. That broken-down piece of socialist junk pulling Castro’s carcass is not a Jeep!
And while we’re on the subject of hogwash, Fidel’s brother Raul declared, “The leader of the revolution rejected any manifestation of a cult of personality and was consistent in that through the last hours of his life, insisting that, once dead, his name and likeness would never be used on institutions, streets, parks or other public sites, and that busts, statues or other forms of tribute would never be erected.”
And why should he? He’s got plenty of help in the media’s cult of propaganda.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/46268
Obama’s Labor Market Mischief
by Richard A. Epstein
via Defining Ideas (Hoover Institution)
Monday, November 28, 2016
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and its subsequent amendments (FLSA), Congress has delegated to the President the power to set overtime regulations for all public and private employees throughout the United States. On March 13, 2016, President Obama directed Thomas E. Perez, head of the Department of Labor (DOL), to “modernize and streamline the existing overtime regulations for executive, administrative, and professional employees,” which, in his view, “have not kept up with our modern economy.” The Department of Labor conducted exhaustive hearings on the matter, during which it received comments from close to 300,000 individuals and organizations.
In May 2016, following these hearings, the Department issued its Overtime Final Rule that showed how little it had learned from the process. It did nothing to adjust the definitions of EAP (executive, administrative, and professional employees) workers. But it did raise the minimum salary level for exempt EAP workers from $23,660 per year, or $455 per week, to $47,892 per year, or $921 per week. The regulation also included a provision that automatically raised the minimum salary level every three years to take into account the effects of inflation.
This rule, which generated widespread consternation in government and business, was scheduled to go into effect on December 1, 2016. But on November 22, 2016, in Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor, Judge Amos L. Mazzant of the Eastern District of Texas, an appointee of President Obama, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that blocked its implementation at the request of 21 states (all but Louisiana with Republican governors) and a number of private businesses. Under the FLSA, the exemption only applies to workers paid on a salary (as opposed to an hourly) basis who must be paid the minimum amount set by the regulation in question. Most critically, the FLSA regulations contain a so-called “duties test” that must be met in order for employees to be treated as exempt
EAP workers.
Executives typically have management powers and the ability to hire and fire. Administrators do office and non-manual work related to firm management. Professionals have to engage in intellectual work that, with study, allows them to acquire “advanced knowledge . . . in a field of science or learning.” In the end Judge Mazzant held that the regulation failed because in raising the minimum level to $47,892, it did not take any steps to make sure that EAP workers under that level were not exempt from the overtime provision. In other words, the duties component of the test had to be satisfied independently of the hourly test.
In reaching his decision, Judge Mazzant upended the usual expectation that the government is given broad discretion in interpreting its own regulations. Thus in the course of its argument, the Department of Labor insisted that the well-known 1997 Supreme Court decision of Auer v. Robbins gave the Secretary of Labor virtually full discretion in fleshing out the details of the regulations that it promulgated under the FLSA. In that decision, Justice Scalia held that the Secretary could refuse to classify police sergeants and lieutenants as bona fide EAPs because they were subject to reductions in pay for various disciplinary infractions. The supposed standard for upholding an interpretation was that the interpretive rule was not “plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” But it was laughable nonetheless because it was at enormous variance with ordinary language, which everywhere describes sergeants as “field supervisors” and lieutenants as the supervisors of a “bureau, squad or unit.” Notwithstanding Auer’s indefensible intellectual acrobatics, Judge Mazzant decided to apply a “plain meaning” test that struck down the regulation on the simple ground that many workers earning below the new threshold in fact occupy bona fide EAP roles. Yet the Secretary made no effort to provide separately for any of those cases. Interestingly enough, the same objection did not succeed against the lower, previous minimum salary number given that few if any EAPs earn such low wages.
In making this decision, however, Judge Mazzant turned away another challenge to the FLSA insofar as it applies to public employees, to whom his decision devoted virtually exclusive attention. This more fundamental challenge should have been based on the sensible view that the United States has no business regulating the wages or overtime pay of state government employees. In principle, the strongest argument in favor of this position is that the United States and the states should be regarded as coequal sovereigns, each within its own defined territory. Under that conception, the states should be able to organize the internal affairs of all its own agencies as it sees fit. In National League of Cities v. Usery (1976), Justice Rehnquist did not embrace this strong originalist conception, but he did hold that the states were exempt from federal oversight insofar as they discharge “traditional governmental functions”—a phrase that the Court never fully defined. The unworkable nature of that needless distinction led the Court in 1985 to overturn National League of Cities in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, given its professed inability to decide whether mass transit in a metropolitan area fell within the class of traditional government functions.
Unfortunately, this whole judicial episode was misconceived, because in the post-New Deal Era, there is no principled reason at all to distinguish between traditional and novel government functions when both are regarded as equally legitimate. The correct result is that all states should be liberated from any statute, including the FLSA, that seeks to set the wages and hours of a state’s own employees. Judge Mazzant briefly noted correctly that the Court did some modest backtracking from Garcia in Printz v. United States, which held that the federal government could not require state and local enforcement officers to conduct background tests on prospective handgun purchasers. But he was surely correct to conclude that Garcia is still the law. Ideally, the model of coequal sovereignty is most faithful to our constitutional traditions. A reconstituted Supreme Court could solve a large fraction of this problem by ditching Garcia and expanding the exemption under National League of Cities so that it covered all state and local workers, regardless of their function.
Nonetheless, in the short run, the new Trump administration should not wait to find out whether Judge Mazzant’s edgy decision will be sustained on appeal. On day one in office, President Trump should scrap the DOL’s new overtime rule: Far from modernizing and streamlining business, the new rule, as is evident from the torrent of objections, throws a massive wrench into the new economy. The simplest point here is that the “hour” is no longer the gold standard of compensation for many workers. The gig economy, for example, pays its workers by the job and not by the hour. It is impossible for these employers to monitor the hours of workers who, under their contracts, have complete freedom to decide whether or not to take any given assignment. It becomes the road to economic ruin to impose rules of this sort when the penalties for noncompliance are so high.
The same can be said with respect to graduate students whose laboratory work is a mixture of study and employment, where it is again impossible to tease out the one component from the other. The objection also applies to tech start-ups, whose employees receive a huge chunk of their compensation in the form of stock options and future bonuses, which are largely ignored under the myopic FLSA hourly formula. None of these cases gave rise to much difficulty when the base wage was set low, but they cause enormous confusions to millions of workers whose responsibilities are not accurately measured by their base rate of compensation.
Nonetheless, the DOL has buried its head deeply in the sand in promulgating the regulation. Its own original assessment of the impact of its new overtime rule is a perfect self-parody of economic analysis. The stated point of the rule was to raise “salary threshold at the 40th percentile of weekly earnings for full-time salaried workers in the lowest wage Census region in the country, currently the South.” The meaning of this particular figure is never explained. Nor did DOL come to grips with the massive disruption that the new overtime rule could cause to many established forms of business. Instead, it adopted the naïve conclusion that “managerial costs” will be about $224 million, which is “based on the median compensation of a manager multiplied by the assumed average 5 minutes per week for the additional monitoring (i.e. more than one hour per quarter) multiplied by the total number of directly affected workers who work overtime either regularly or occasionally but on a regular basis.”
At no point does the DOL even ask whether to include in its calculation the key decisions that firms must make on whether to keep workers below the threshold, or to raise them above it, in order to avoid the heavy monitoring costs. Nor does it ask whether firms will choose to lay off some workers or redefine job classifications in ways that minimize the impact of the new rule. The DOL also fails to examine whether, and if so how, these firms will have to adjust other salaries to keep relative compensation in order. And, of course, the DOL ignores the possibility that some workers are opposed to the shift, given the loss of potential status from having to punch a clock, and the possibility that some departments might have to close or restructure or let go of some workers. The DOL model also assumes that it is easy to set in place the systems needed, and that the firms in question need not worry about inspections, fines, and potential civil liability for noncompliance with the rules. It is laughable to think that the fight over this rule is about the allegedly $224 million per annum in quantified managerial costs or even the $1.2 billion in pay increases that are identified by the DOL. The greatest sin of the DOL is that it assumes blithely that neither private nor government firms and agencies respond to incentives, so that it can reduce a complex economic inquiry into a simple set of mathematical calculations not worth the paper that they are written on.
Nonetheless, the DOL is largely unrepentant; in response to Judge Mazzant’s decision, it wrote: “We strongly disagree with the decision by the court, which has the effect of delaying a fair day’s pay for a long day’s work for millions of hardworking Americans." But once again this pronouncement suggests that the DOL knows what counts as a fair day’s pay for the millions of workers who are subjected to the rule. In so doing, it makes the most fundamental mistake in economic analysis. It assumes that the agreements that are in place do not reflect the revealed preferences of the workers who have signed on to these deals. It is of course the case that workers want to receive higher wages, and every employer would prefer to pay less. It is just these two pressures that drive a competitive market to set wages as they do. There is absolutely no reason to think that the optimal pay schedule for overtime is one-and-a-half of basic wages. A huge number of firms will have to change their job classifications and reorganize their work and production schedules to avoid overtime payments. Yet the DOL ignores this elephant in the room, so little does it understand the market that it regulates.
The only way in which to achieve permanent wage increases is to reduce the many impediments on the FLSA and other statutes that make it harder for employers and workers to achieve productivity gains. The fruitless overtime rule of the DOL, if implemented, will probably result in resource losses that exceed, by at least an order of magnitude, the paltry sums that it purports to transfer from employers to workers. The quicker the DOL is pushed to the sideline, the better it is for the American economy, its workers, and employers and consumers alike. Let’s hope that the change in presidential administration leads to a long overdue change in labor market regulation.
http://www.hoover.org/research/obamas-labor-market-mischief
General Jim Mattis Brings Insight And Clarity To The Nature Of War
interview with General Jim Mattis
Friday, March 6, 2015
http://www.hoover.org/research/general-jim-mattis-brings-insight-and-clarity-nature-war
A Plan To Defeat ISIS interview with Retired General Jack Keane
via Uncommon Knowledge
Thursday, August 11, 2016
General Jack Keane briefly describes the history and rise of ISIS
Recorded on March 25, 2016
General Jack Keane briefly describes the history and rise of ISIS and its aim in the Middle East. Keane then discusses the concrete steps America should take to defeat ISIS, including partnerships with Sunni tribes and a more comprehensive air war.
video:
http://www.hoover.org/research/plan-defeat-isis
Kellyanne Conway Discusses The 2016 Presidential Election
interview with Kellyanne Conway via Uncommon Knowledge
Friday, December 2, 2016
Recorded on November 30, 2016
Kellyanne Conway discusses her life working on a New Jersey blueberry farm as an adolescent in the summers and being brought up by her mother, grandmother, and two unmarried aunts. She reflects on how she became conservative through the values her family placed in her and the inspiring reelection campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1984. Brought in by Donald Trump in August, Conway talks about how she told Trump that he was losing but there was a pathway to victory, which she helped the campaign realize and bring about Donald Trump's victory. Finally, Conway discusses how she is able to balance being a wife and mother with running a presidential campaign and what the future holds for her.
Interview:
http://www.hoover.org/research/kellyanne-conway-discusses-presidential-election-2016
General Jim Mattis Brings Insight And Clarity To The Nature Of War
interview with General Jim Mattis
Friday, March 6, 2015
General Jim Mattis brings insight and clarity to the nature of war
In this episode, Uncommon Knowledge is honored to have retired four-star General James Mattis. General Mattis retired from the Marine Corps as a full general in 2013, where he served as the eleventh commander of the United States Central Command. He also served as the commander for NATO supreme allied transformation, and as commander of the United States Joint Forces Command. Mattis is now an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow fellow at the Hoover Institution.
http://www.hoover.org/research/general-jim-mattis-brings-insight-and-clarity-nature-war
He's trying to get back on line after taking a lot of heat with conservative groups. A work in progress. We decided not to see him here recently.
After a Mere 25 Years, the Triumph of the West Is Over
By Charles Krauthammer
Dec. 2, 2016
Twenty-five years ago — December 1991 — communism died, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union disappeared. It was the largest breakup of an empire in modern history and not a shot was fired. It was an event of biblical proportions that my generation thought it would never live to see. As Wordsworth famously rhapsodized (about the French Revolution), “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven!”
That dawn marked the ultimate triumph of the liberal democratic idea. It promised an era of Western dominance led by a pre-eminent America, the world’s last remaining superpower.
And so it was for a decade as the community of democracies expanded, first into Eastern Europe and former Soviet colonies. The U.S. was so dominant that when, on Dec. 31, 1999, it gave up one of the most prized geostrategic assets on the globe — the Panama Canal — no one even noticed.
That era is over. The autocracies are back and rising; democracy is on the defensive; the U.S. is in retreat. Look no further than Aleppo. A Western-backed resistance to a local tyrant — he backed by a resurgent Russia, an expanding Iran and an array of proxy Shiite militias — is on the brink of annihilation. Russia drops bombs; America issues statements.
What better symbol for the end of that heady liberal-democratic historical moment. The West is turning inward and going home, leaving the field to the rising authoritarians — Russia, China and Iran. In France, the conservative party’s newly nominated presidential contender is fashionably conservative and populist and soft on Vladimir Putin. As are several of the newer Eastern Europe democracies — Hungary, Bulgaria, even Poland — themselves showing authoritarian tendencies.
And even as Europe tires of the sanctions imposed on Russia for its rape of Ukraine, President Obama’s much touted “isolation” of Russia has ignominiously dissolved, as our secretary of state repeatedly goes cap in hand to Russia to beg for mercy in Syria.
The European Union, the largest democratic club on earth, could itself soon break up as Brexit-like movements spread through the continent. At the same time, its members dash with unseemly haste to reopen economic ties with a tyrannical and aggressive Iran.
As for China, the other great challenger to the post-Cold War order, the administration’s “pivot” has turned into an abject failure. The Philippines has openly defected to the Chinese side. Malaysia then followed. And the rest of our Asian allies are beginning to hedge their bets. When the president of China addressed the Pacific Rim countries in Peru last month, he suggested that China was prepared to pick up the pieces of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now abandoned by both political parties in the United States.
The West’s retreat began with Obama, who reacted to (perceived) post-9/11 overreach by abandoning Iraq, offering appeasement (“reset”) to Russia and accommodating Iran. In 2009, he refused even rhetorical support to the popular revolt against the rule of the ayatollahs.
Donald Trump wants to continue the pull back, though for entirely different reasons. Obama ordered retreat because he’s always felt the U.S. was not good enough for the world, too flawed to have earned the moral right to be the world hegemon. Trump would follow suit, disdaining allies and avoiding conflict, because the world is not good enough for us — undeserving, ungrateful, parasitic foreigners living safely under our protection and off our sacrifices. Time to look after our own American interests.
Trump’s is not a new argument. As the Cold War was ending in 1990, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the quintessential neoconservative, argued that we should now become “a normal country in a normal time.” It was time to give up the 20th-century burden of maintaining world order and of making superhuman exertions on behalf of universal values. Two generations of fighting fascism and communism were quite enough. Had we not earned a restful retirement?
At the time, I argued that we had earned it indeed, but a cruel history would not allow us to enjoy it. Repose presupposes a fantasy world in which stability is self-sustaining without the United States. It is not. We would incur not respite but chaos.
A quarter-century later, we face the same temptation, but this time under more challenging circumstances. Worldwide jihadism has been added to the fight, and we enjoy nothing like the dominance we exercised over conventional adversaries during our 1990s holiday from history.
We may choose repose, but we won’t get it.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/46230
Mattis: Another Great Nominee
By National Security Desk
Dec. 2, 2016
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis has been tapped by Donald Trump to head the Defense Department. Mattis is an outstanding pick for a number of reasons, not least of which is the message sent to our enemies by having the Pentagon under the charge of a man nicknamed “Mad Dog.” Mattis was forced into “early retirement” by Barack Obama because he wouldn’t play along with the Iran “nuclear deal1” charade. He’ll will inherit a post facing serious challenges thanks to the malfeasance of that same former boss. So what did Mattis do in retirement? He got in his car and drove across our nation, trying to personally visit the families of Marines who died under his command.
He will require House and Senate waivers for the seven-year moratorium on military officers taking a civilian appointment at the Pentagon, but that’s unlikely to be a problem given the high esteem in which he is held on Capitol Hill. Some of the congressional cupcakes, however, might wet themselves over some other observations from the man also known as the “Warrior Monk”:
“I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.”
“The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some a—holes in the world that just need to be shot.”
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”
“Demonstrate to the world there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine.” (Mattis' letter To 1st Marine Division)
On a final note, consider how different our response to Iran’s hijacking of our Navy vessel and its seamen would have been, if a Marine named “Mad Dog” was at the helm. Those Iranians would have been toast. Of course, if “Mad Dog” was at the helm of DOD, Iranians never would have gotten within range of that boat.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/46241
The Clinton Crime Syndicate
By Mark Alexander
Aug. 24, 2016
“A lie stands on one leg, a truth on two.” —Benjamin Franklin (1735)
In 1992, a young charismatic Democrat from Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton1, defeated a stale older GOP presidential candidate, and then, over two presidential terms, established himself as the undisputed champion of the “BIG lie2.”
In 2008, another young charismatic Demo, Barack Hussein Obama3, defeated another stale older GOP presidential candidate, and then, over two presidential terms, took the art of big lies to a whole new level.
However, their considerable records of duplicity and deception notwithstanding, both Bill and Barack have been bested by the most shameless of all prevaricators, Hillary Rodham Clinton4, who lies about everything.
I have previously outlined Hillary’s prolific record of felonious activities and deadly malfeasance in a chronological study, “From Little Rock to Foggy Bottom5.” Now she’s endeavoring to nationalize the political extortion and profiteering she mastered as secretary of state.
In this bizarre quadrennial election cycle, when voters are tasked with choosing the least unfit candidate6 to lead the blossoming kakistocracy — government by the least qualified and principled charlatan — allow me to highlight what I believe are the two most significant Clinton political liabilities.
The flood of 24-hour talking-head news recycling about the latest evidence of Clinton’s corruption and cronyism is delivered by fire hose from the right-of-center media, and by an occasional dribble from the dominant Leftmedia outlets. Unfortunately, the significance of her corruption and cronyism tends to become lost in the now-meaningless hyperbole of ubiquitous “News Alert” banners.
So, as we endeavor to do in our daily editions, allow me to cut through the media din and highlight the essential facts about Hillary Clinton’s “ethical lapses” — corrupt activities that should outright render her ineligible for office, if not eligible for prison. What follows is a summary of what matters most about her communication concealment conspiracy7 to hide her official business from public view, and her nefarious Clinton Foundation shenanigans8.
I should note that these liabilities have already been factored into the “price” of candidate Clinton, and as long as she can avoid unscripted press conferences9 that will not change. Unless the FBI puts her in shackles and carts her off to the big house, there is little that will change any Demo’s blind allegiance to her.
Clinton’s Email…
When an icon of investigative political journalism, Bob Woodward, was asked recently about Clinton’s efforts to conceal her official communications as secretary of state, he kindly responded, “Hillary Clinton just has not come clean on this.”
Asked why, Woodward said, “Habit of secrecy, the whole idea of the private server was so no one would know. And it’s a very bad habit. … [I]f she became president, are we going to have some kind of transparency? Is there going to be a culture of straight talk rather than a culture of concealment?”
Well, in this case, by way of disclaimer, past performance is most assuredly a guarantee of future results.
Given the endless loop of news about Clinton’s communication servers — her deleted or recovered emails — the significant findings regarding her illegal activities can get lost amid the minor findings. I previously provided a detailed summary of Clinton’s email subterfuge10, the how and why, but here’s what’s most important about those communications now.
Clinton’s “email problem” began when she was investigated by the House Committee on Benghazi, as it attempted to uncover her cover-up of the Benghazi attack11 to protect Obama’s 2012 re-election. The committee learned that Clinton had been illegally using a private email server, and Rep. Trey Gowdy demanded that she surrender those communications.
Unquestionably, Clinton set up her not-so-“private server” in order to conceal all her communications from FOIA requests and public scrutiny ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.
While stonewalling the Benghazi Committee, Clinton and her staff sorted through more than 60,000 (sanitized) emails sent during her tenure as secretary of state, using various search terms to determine which were “official” and which were “personal.” Then, without any legal authority or third-party accountability, Clinton’s team permanently erased 33,000 of those emails — which she claimed as “personal” — before turning the rest over to federal investigators.
Or maybe not so permanently erased?
Last week, Bill Clinton declared12 that FBI Director James Comey’s conclusion about Hillary’s “extremely careless” mishandling of classified email was “the biggest load of bull I ever heard.” And considering Bill has been married to Hillary for 40 years, he has heard his share of big bull loads…
This week, Comey confirmed that the FBI has recovered nearly 15,000 of Clinton’s 33,000 erased emails — perhaps a gift from WikiLeaks or Russian hackers. That discovery left Clinton scrambling for cover.
Recall her erroneous claim, “We turned over everything that was work related — every single thing.”
Likewise, Clinton’s other claim — “Director Comey said that my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people” — was also a boldface lie. Typical of Clinton deceptive illogic, she was asserting that she must be innocent because she was slick enough to have escaped indictment13 of a felony offense by the FBI. But the fact is, Clinton has lied repeatedly14 about her communications.
Having previously claimed that her 33,000 erased emails were related to “yoga classes” or “wedding plans,” it’s likely that some of the newly recovered emails went through State Department servers or personnel — making them official, not personal.
The FBI has turned the newly recovered communications over to the State Department, which will review them for classified information and release what it deems is suitable for release in late November — after the election. However, Federal Judge James Boasberg has ordered State to review the emails by September 22 and release them, however heavily redacted.
The FBI has also provided details of its Clinton investigation to congressional investigators. Recall, too, that just prior to the release of that information, Bill Clinton had what was supposed to be a secret meeting with Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch15, on the tarmac at the Phoenix Airport.
According to Woodward16, “[This] reminds me of the Nixon tapes: Thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his. … 60,000 emails and Hillary Clinton has said 30,000 of them, half, were personal and they were deleted. Who decided that? What’s in those emails? … The answers are probably not going to be pretty.”
Last week Clinton trotted out another lie — blaming former Secretary of State Colin Powell for advising her to use a private email account in order to keep her communications off the grid. But, according to Powell, “The truth is she was using [her personal email] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did [with personal communications]. Her people have been trying to pin it on me.”
In addition to the revelation about 15,000 recovered emails, a federal judge has ruled that Clinton has 30 days to answer questions from the intrepid folks at Judicial Watch — under oath17 — for the first time. Recall that Clinton’s holiday weekend FBI interview15 on July 2 was not under oath.
Chris Farrell, director of investigations for Judicial Watch, says they “will get Clinton under oath regarding the setup of her outlaw server [in order to] explain the why, the when, and how the server was set up and whether the goal was to avoid her email correspondence from becoming public.” Which, of course, it was…
The “Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation”…
Remember back in 2008 when Hillary Clinton was attacking her then-primary opponent, Barack Obama, about influence peddling? She leveled legitimate claims about his ties to corrupt campaign backers like the now-convicts Tony Rezko and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And her campaign ads questioned donations Obama received from corporate interests like “Big Oil”: “Barack Obama accepted $200,000 from executives and employees of oil companies.”
Well, Obama was a mere amateur at influence peddling when compared with to Clinton and her corrupt “pay-to-play18” foundation donors.
The Clinton Foundation (CF) was founded as a 501©(3) charitable organization in 1997, perhaps to put a diversionary philanthropic happy face on Bill Clinton’s latest episode of sexual predation — then involving a young subordinate White House intern. CF’s stated goal was to “strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.” Globalism. It’s focus was also to advance Albert Gore’s so-called “climate change19” agenda. Globalism.
In its early years, some of the foundation’s humanitarian efforts actually received bipartisan praise — as calculated.
However, soon after the Clintons left the White House “dead broke20,” the charitable grants diminished and the foundation began keeping most of its funds and operations in house, hiring its own staff and managing programs internally.
Of course, the Clintons were not dead broke for long, except for their ethical and moral account. Over the last 15 years they have amassed a personal net worth estimated in excess of $115 million — most of that from “speaking fees,” a.k.a. political influence peddling graft.
Their joint 2015 tax return21 listed a mere $6,725,000 in speaking fees, down significantly from previous years, but then they knew this return would be made public.
Once Hillary Clinton was tapped by Obama as secretary of state (to keep her out of the 2012 election), restricting her exorbitant pay-to-play speaking fees, she ramped up the foundation’s pay-to-play schemes and CF became an official conduit22 for those seeking to influence politics and policy.
Just as leopards can’t change their spots, the Clintons can’t keep from grifting — or grafting.
Indisputably, every dime of the billions of dollars “donated” to CF by Hillary’s wealthy Wall Street moguls and foreign government cutouts, some of whom she personally met with during her tenure as secretary23, and the dollars coming in now that she’s a presidential contender, includes a long quid pro quo list. And not a dime of that graft has been spent without calculating how it would advance the Clintons' statist political and social agenda.
An evaluation of CF’s most recent 990 tax filing24 with the IRS helps identify how its programs comport with that agenda. Just follow the money – both into and out of the Clinton Foundation.
Notably, CF claims that one of its major areas of focus is the betterment of women around the world. But the fact is, Clinton and Obama have made the world far more dangerous for hundreds of millions of women by allowing the unabated metastasis of Islamist oppression25 worldwide. And here at home, the failed social policies26 advocated by Clinton and her political allies27 have enslaved millions of women and children on urban poverty plantations28 for generations.
And on a personal level, Hillary Clinton has been waging a “war on women29” for her entire political career — especially those who’ve been assaulted and, as was the case with Juanita Broaddrick, raped by her husband.
But I digress.
Because of the “unusual” structure of CF, the nation’s leading evaluator of charitable organizations, Charity Navigator, placed the foundation on its “watch list” — at least until last December, when Clinton lawyers convinced it to remove CF from that list. (I wonder if anyone associated with Charitable Navigator suffered a “suspicious death30” or IRS audit31 about the time the watch status was lifted?)
It is now clear that Hillary Clinton used CF as a medium for access, which is one of the reasons she attempted to maintain all of her official communications off the grid. We now know that three Justice Department field offices requested permission to open case file investigations of the Clinton Foundation32, but in each case those requests were blocked by Obama’s lawless attorney general, Eric Holder33.
In a recent assessment of Clinton’s foundation fixer, Huma Abedin, National Review’s editors34 note that she “must be a remarkable woman. She has held down four of the worst jobs in politics, several of them simultaneously: right hand to Hillary Rodham Clinton, fixer and patron-patronizer for the Clinton Foundation, an editor of a journal spawned by a major al-Qaeda financier35, and wife to Anthony Weiner. … It is clear why Mrs. Clinton did not want to release these e-mails: They detail precisely the Clinton Foundation corruption that critics have long alleged. … Huma Abedin may have been the conductor of influence, but the wrongdoing here is all Mrs. Clinton’s. Serial dishonesty, self-serving, and influence-peddling: These are the Clintons, after all. No one can say he is surprised.”
Two weeks ago, Donald Trump’s VP candidate, Mike Pence, declared, “The new emails made public … make a direct connection between favors done by State Department officials and major foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation. [Americans] are tired of the pay-to-play politics in Washington, DC.”
Indeed we are — and a joint FBI/U.S. attorney investigation is underway.
Because the Clinton Foundation is headquartered in New York, Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, will head an investigation into CF’s practices to determine the connection between Clinton donors and Clinton favors. Bharara is no Demo hack — he has taken down major crime syndicates and currently has an open investigation into the corrupt Demo dealings of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
According to an Associated Press report, “More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation.” Predictably, though, the AP characterized those meetings as merely an indication of Clinton’s “possible ethics challenges if elected president.”
“Possible ethics challenges”?
In an effort to short-circuit the investigation, Hillary, Bill and Chelsea claim they will stop raising money36 from foreign governments if Clinton is elected and will turn CF operations over to independent affiliates. But cutting all those “pay-to-play” deals was no problem while she was secretary of state? And does anybody believe that the Clintons are going to turn operations of CF over to someone who’s “independent”?
Even the leftist editors of the Boston Globe37 recommend CF should be shuttered: “If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down. … Many of the foundation’s donations come from overseas, including from foreign governments with troubling human rights records. … Winding down the foundation, and transferring its assets to some other established charity, doesn’t have to hurt charitable efforts. If the foundation’s donors are truly motivated by altruism, and not by the lure of access to the Clintons, then surely they can find other ways to support the foundation’s goals.”
So, where will this all lead?
Remember, the botched Watergate burglary by Richard Nixon’s campaign operatives that would later sink his presidency occurred prior to his 1972 landslide victory over George McGovern. Though Nixon had no knowledge of the illegal break-in, he did have knowledge of its cover-up.
It was the aforementioned Bob Woodward and his Washington Post associate Carl Bernstein who discovered the details of the burglary and, later, the cover-up. They exposed the cover-up after being advised to “follow the money.”
And it’s no small irony that a young attorney, Hillary Rodham, served on the Impeachment Inquiry staff and was among those tasked with drawing up impeachment charges against Nixon.
Later, the Chief Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Jerry Zeifman, Hillary’s supervisor, assessed her performance as “dishonest” and claimed she “engaged in a variety of self-serving unethical practices in violation of House rules,” including conspiring with Ted Kennedy to keep a politically wounded Nixon in office to help Kennedy’s 1976 presidential aspirations.
Zeifman wrote that Clinton was “ethically unfit to be either a senator or president — and if she were to become president, the last vestiges of the traditional moral authority of the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson will be destroyed.”
For the record, Nixon erased 18 minutes of more than 3,700 hours of Oval Office conversations related to discussions about Watergate. Not to be outdone, Clinton erased over 33,000 emails.
In 1974, Nixon had the grace to resign from office rather than put the nation through a presidential impeachment process. In a private meeting with his cabinet, Nixon said, “Mistakes, yes … for personal gain, never.” ?Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has perfected the model of “politics for personal gain.”
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/44454
GOP Has Golden Opportunity to Expand Liberty
By Louis DeBroux
For those who work to restore constitutionally limited government — as we in our humble shop do daily — a recent Quinnipiac poll is daunting. It shows large majorities or pluralities of Americans oppose reducing regulations, oppose across-the-board tax cuts, and favor increased federal spending on infrastructure and other goodies.
Leaving aside the accuracy of the poll (Quinnipiac had Hillary Clinton +7 nationally less than two weeks before the election), the polling reveals a paradox in the mindset of the American electorate. Every American — Republican and Democrat, men and women, young and old, black, white, Hispanic or Asian, rich or poor — wants government to mind its own business ... except for their preferred program or regulation.
John Stossel writes, "Few people bother to go to Washington to ask for spending cuts. Even though America is heading toward bankruptcy, 90 percent of congressional testimony comes from people who want more stuff."
What far too few Americans understand is that to empower government is to restrict individual liberty, and once you agree to grant government power over A, you have opened the door to granting government power to do B, C and D.
That is why the Founding Fathers strictly limited the power of the federal government, forbidding it from any and all actions not specifically authorized under the U.S. Constitution and, for emphasis, declaring in Amendments IX and X the primacy of the individual and the states over every sphere not listed in those enumerated powers.
The Founders understood the truth and wisdom in George Washington's declaration: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!"
Few Americans, for example, would disagree with the idea that everyone should have access to health care, but the devil is in the details. Without the vote of a single Republican, arrogant Democrats, invigorated by their electoral victories, passed ObamaCare, ostensibly to guarantee health care to every American. As a result, the IRS was granted access to our medical information, we were forced to buy an outrageously expensive product whether we wanted it or not, we faced a bevy of new taxes and burdensome regulations, and tens of millions of Christians were forced to fund abortion through their insurance.
Government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, but it is the nature of government to expand and acquire power, and that power is acquired at the expense of individual liberties. As another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, so eloquently put it, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Ironically, the very government that we empower to do our bidding against our neighbor ends up being the government that becomes our master.
Disagree? Keep in mind that when the 16th Amendment (the income tax) was proposed, its proponents promised that it would only affect the very rich. The bottom bracket was a 1% tax on income over $20,000 ($488,341 in 2016 inflation-adjusted dollars) and a top bracket of 7% for income over $500,000 ($12,208,535 in 2016 inflation-adjusted dollars). It was a way, its proponents argued, to make the rich pay their "fair share" (sound familiar?). Yet in a very short time the rates went up and the entry point for the bottom bracket went down, eventually capturing many more Americans in its web, and creating the IRS, possibly the most feared institution in American government, with the power to ruin your life and take everything you own.
Government is a necessary evil. As a third Founder, James Madison, argued in Federalist No. 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
Thus, individual liberties are safest when government is smallest, and when the power of government is closest to the people. As constructed by the Founders, the vast majority of government is enacted at the local and state level, with only a small portion belonging to the federal government.
When they held the White House, Senate, and House under George W. Bush, the Republicans blew a golden opportunity. Instead of reducing the size and scope of government, they doubled government spending and gave us Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, and an expansion of nearly every federal department and agency.
In 2016, Republicans get a do-over. While Democrats claim the GOP has no mandate because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Republicans can counter with the fact that the GOP won a 3.2 million national popular vote majority in House races, and under Barack Obama, Republicans have won a net 11 Senate seats, 63 House seats, 14 governorships, and roughly 1,000 state legislative seats.
Republicans have a rare opportunity to reduce the size and scope of government at every level, and return to the form envisioned by the Founders, where government is limited and individual liberty is vast. It's in the best interests of every American to encourage them to do just that. Our job is to educate our fellow Americans accordingly.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/46193
From the article:
“We did hear like three or four things that would sound like gunshots, then we heard sirens so we assume they were gunshots,” Crosher, 19, said. “It’s very scary. We don’t know much. We just know there was an active shooter across the street.”
Why The Left Loves Totalitarians Like Fidel Castro
I pity people who celebrate the life of Fidel Castro in a knee-jerk reaction to salve their consciences for having committed themselves to failed and morally bankrupt ideas.
Paul Bonicelli
By Paul Bonicelli
November 28, 2016
Progressives’ and leftists’ outpouring of praise for Fidel Castro at his death was to be expected, although it has been more fulsome, tone-deaf, and cloying than I expected. For just a few examples see President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.
Rational and moral people, however, will rightly ask, “How would anyone aware of Castro’s more than 50 years of human rights abuses mourn the death of a tyrant who was both an intellectual and moral idiot, much less praise his legacy?”
The Left Loves Collectivism
I have a few possible answers. First, many people on the Left sold their intellects to socialism and statism long ago. Great numbers of academics, politicians, and entertainers embraced Castro as he rose to power then ruled for decades as a socialist dictator, because he represented the practical application of their ideas.
Also, he clearly irritated the same people who irritated them: conservatives, Republicans, Cold Warriors, etc. Every human rights violation, every social and economic disaster that resulted from his foolish socialist policies, and every military adventure he launched with his oversized Soviet-backed military, was forgiven if not outright praised.
As a graduate student in the early 1990s I marveled at highly educated, decent, and kind men and women in academia forgiving Castro every sin and justifying everything he did because, I suppose, “He’s our guy.” It seemed so childish to me. After all, I thought Gen. Augusto Pinochet was better for Chile than a Soviet-allied Marxist politician would have been, but I hardly excused Pinochet’s human rights crimes or pretended he was perfect. I also wasn’t confused about who was better for U.S. national security interests.
Pretending Science Can Govern Is Attractive
Second, many on the Left seem to have an affinity for any leader—dictator or democrat—who claims to govern according to science, whether that be “scientific socialism” or just plain old numbers-based public policy. Rather than work out a view of anthropology and seek to truly understand human beings according to our nature, it is far easier for some to default to the materialist view of humankind.
Assume “economic man,” and then crunch numbers. That way you can avoid moral judgments and just keep stressing that the right amount of technical tweaks and educated guesses will produce economic viability and social peace. Above all, ignore the “moralizers” who keep harping about all those eggs being broken without the appearance of an omelet.
Trump Derangement Syndrome
Third, and this is a more immediately relevant reason for celebrating Castro, maybe the Trump derangement syndrome that affects so many on the Left has enhanced their desire to praise whatever they think is the opposite of the people and ideas that just won the 2016 presidential election.
Remembering how Trump galvanized the Cuban-American vote with his articulation of views that lined up with Castro’s critics, and knowing who his advisors are, the Left was ready for his statement at Castro’s death on Friday. Sort of a “If he’s for it then I’m agin’ it!” attitude prevailed upon them.
Add to that their innate understanding that Castro always represented the leftists’ elitist ideas about the paramount role of the state and that Trump’s victory represents the uprising of their opponents, they had to over-praise and ignore any failings of their champion. Take your pick, but these answers probably cover most of Castro’s fans.
The Cold War Is Back
Finally, Castro’s death and the outpouring of praise from his fans should remind us about the essence of the Cold War: it will never really be over, because it was always more than a geopolitical struggle between two nation-states. It was and is a struggle between those who value the liberty of the individual above all else versus those who embrace utopian dreams of a state than can solve all problems and make everyone happy, as long as the “right people” are in charge.
I pity people who celebrate the life of Fidel Castro in a knee-jerk reaction to salve their consciences for years of having committed themselves to failed and morally bankrupt ideas. They are not ignorant or stupid: they know Castro was a murderous tyrant who built a slave-state and ruined his country and has handed on that legacy to his brother who is even now planning to leave it to their heirs, helped along by the foolish policies of the American president and others in the West who always think their goodwill gestures and magnanimity will bring everyone around to a better way. Pity them or not, however, we cannot absolve them of accommodating the Castro brothers’ crimes.
I hope that the Cuban democracy movement will be emboldened and that with a new U.S. administration we can return to policies and declarations that support what has always been the North Star of the morally and intellectually correct side of the Cold War: individual human liberty.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/28/left-loves-totalitarians-like-fidel-castro/
Paul Bonicelli serves as director of programs at the Acton Institute. His career includes a presidential appointment with Senate confirmation as assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development; as a professional staff member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives; and as an official delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.
Fact is, Hillary is a sore loser. The Demons can't help themselves through their devastating defeat. Facts hurt those who are so convinced they are invincible.......
They would never stop even if they had total control of all seats of government in country. I call them the totalitarianism party.
Irony
Folded Napkins. A Trucker Story. If this doesn't light your fire your wood is wet.
I try not to be biased, but I had doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy.
But I’d never hired a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. And I didn't know how my customers would react to Stevie.
He’s short and dumpy with the smooth face and thick speech of Down Syndrome. I wasn't worried about my trucker customers because they don't care who the busboy is as long as the meatloaf is good and the pies are homemade.
Mouthy college kids were the ones who concerned me. Traveling to school, the yuppie snobs secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching a deadly "truck stop virus.”
And the shirt and tie business men on expense accounts think every truck stop waitress is a flirt. I knew they would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I watched him closely for a few weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his little finger, and within a month my truckers had adopted him as their mascot.
After that, I didn't really care what other customers thought of him. He was like a kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and to please, but very attentive to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly placed, and not a bread crumb was visible when Stevie got done with a table.
His problem was waiting to clean tables until the customers finished. He’d hover nearby, shifting from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he’d scurry to that table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and quickly wipe the table with a quick flourish of his rag.
If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would furrow with worry, as he took pride in doing his job just right, and we loved how hard he tried to please everyone.
Soon we learned that Stevie lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after some cancer surgeries. They lived on Social Security checks in public housing near the truck stop, and their social worker often stopped by to check on Stevie, admitting that he and his mom had fallen between the cracks.
Money was tight, and what I paid him kept them living together, instead ot Stevie going to a group home. That's why the restaurant was gloomy one morning in August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.
He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, getting a new valve to repair his heart. His social worker said that Down Syndrome folks often have heart problems so it wasn’t a surprise, and there was a good chance he’d come through the surgery well and be back at work in a few months.
A ripple of excitement ran through our staff on the morning when we heard he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine! Frannie, our head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.
Marvin Ringer, one of our regular 18 wheeler customers, stared at this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look. He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what’s that all about?" he asked.
"We just heard that Stevie is out of surgery and will be okay!" I had a new joke to tell him about doctors. Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other drivers sitting in his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: “Yeah, I'm glad he’ll be OK, but I don't know how he and his mom can handle all the bills. From what I hear, they barely get by as it is.”
Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on other tables. Since I hadn't had time to find a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him. so the girls were bussing their own tables until we decided what to do.
After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office with a paper napkin in her hand and an odd look on her face.
"What's up?" I asked. "I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared after they left, so Pete and Tony were sitting there when I got back to clean it." She said "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk. On the outside, in big letters, was printed "Something For Stevie.”
"Pete asked me what it was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his mom, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they gave me this." She handed me another paper napkin that also had "Something For Stevie” scrawled on it. Two $50 bills were tucked inside it. Frannie smiled with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply... "truckers."
That was a month ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.
His social worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter that it’s a holiday. He called often last week, making sure we know he’s coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was gone. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. Then I met them in the parking lot and invited them to celebrate his return.
Stevie was thin and pale but he couldn't stop grinning as we pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and bussing cart were waiting.
"Hold on there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your return, lunch for you and your mom is on me!” And I led them to a large corner booth at the rear of the room.
I knew that our staff was following us as we went through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join our parade. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you must do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said, trying to sound serious.
Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on it. As he picked it up, two $20 bills fell onto the table.
Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name on it. I turned to his mom. "There's more than $10,000 on this table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about then, with everybody laughing and shouting, and there were many tears, as well.
You know what's funny? While everyone was shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.
Best worker I ever hired.
Folded Napkins. A Trucker Story. If this doesn't light your fire your wood is wet.
I try not to be biased, but I had doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy.
But I’d never hired a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. And I didn't know how my customers would react to Stevie.
He’s short and dumpy with the smooth face and thick speech of Down Syndrome. I wasn't worried about my trucker customers because they don't care who the busboy is as long as the meatloaf is good and the pies are homemade.
Mouthy college kids were the ones who concerned me. Traveling to school, the yuppie snobs secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching a deadly "truck stop virus.”
And the shirt and tie business men on expense accounts think every truck stop waitress is a flirt. I knew they would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I watched him closely for a few weeks.
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his little finger, and within a month my truckers had adopted him as their mascot.
After that, I didn't really care what other customers thought of him. He was like a kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and to please, but very attentive to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly placed, and not a bread crumb was visible when Stevie got done with a table.
His problem was waiting to clean tables until the customers finished. He’d hover nearby, shifting from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he’d scurry to that table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and quickly wipe the table with a quick flourish of his rag.
If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would furrow with worry, as he took pride in doing his job just right, and we loved how hard he tried to please everyone.
Soon we learned that Stevie lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after some cancer surgeries. They lived on Social Security checks in public housing near the truck stop, and their social worker often stopped by to check on Stevie, admitting that he and his mom had fallen between the cracks.
Money was tight, and what I paid him kept them living together, instead ot Stevie going to a group home. That's why the restaurant was gloomy one morning in August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.
He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, getting a new valve to repair his heart. His social worker said that Down Syndrome folks often have heart problems so it wasn’t a surprise, and there was a good chance he’d come through the surgery well and be back at work in a few months.
A ripple of excitement ran through our staff on the morning when we heard he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine! Frannie, our head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.
Marvin Ringer, one of our regular 18 wheeler customers, stared at this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table. Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look. He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what’s that all about?" he asked.
"We just heard that Stevie is out of surgery and will be okay!" I had a new joke to tell him about doctors. Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other drivers sitting in his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: “Yeah, I'm glad he’ll be OK, but I don't know how he and his mom can handle all the bills. From what I hear, they barely get by as it is.”
Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on other tables. Since I hadn't had time to find a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him. so the girls were bussing their own tables until we decided what to do.
After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office with a paper napkin in her hand and an odd look on her face.
"What's up?" I asked. "I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared after they left, so Pete and Tony were sitting there when I got back to clean it." She said "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup." She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk. On the outside, in big letters, was printed "Something For Stevie.”
"Pete asked me what it was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his mom, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they gave me this." She handed me another paper napkin that also had "Something For Stevie” scrawled on it. Two $50 bills were tucked inside it. Frannie smiled with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply... "truckers."
That was a month ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.
His social worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter that it’s a holiday. He called often last week, making sure we know he’s coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was gone. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. Then I met them in the parking lot and invited them to celebrate his return.
Stevie was thin and pale but he couldn't stop grinning as we pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and bussing cart were waiting.
"Hold on there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your return, lunch for you and your mom is on me!” And I led them to a large corner booth at the rear of the room.
I knew that our staff was following us as we went through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join our parade. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you must do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said, trying to sound serious.
Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on it. As he picked it up, two $20 bills fell onto the table.
Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name on it. I turned to his mom. "There's more than $10,000 on this table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving."
Well, it got real noisy about then, with everybody laughing and shouting, and there were many tears, as well.
You know what's funny? While everyone was shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.
Best worker I ever hired.
Looking forward to it. Hope the Trump stops his post Pres. money grab attempt.
MoH Recipient Uninvited From Marine Ball
Harold Hutchison · Nov. 20, 2016
Why would one of the Marine Corps' biggest heroes be uninvited from the Marine Corps Ball in Afghanistan?
Sergeant Dakota Meyer received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Sept. 8, 2009, during the Battle of Ganjgal, in which five Americans and eight Afghan security personnel were killed in action. Meyer made five runs into enemy fire to evacuate wounded personnel and recover the bodies of American KIAs.
For this year’s Marine Corps Ball held to celebrate the 241st birthday of the Marine Corps, Meyer had been invited to attend in Afghanistan, where he had served with Embedded Training Team 2-8. According to a report by tribunist.com, the celebration was to be held at the American embassy in Kabul due to security concerns. Such concerns are valid, as a recent murder-suicide bombing at Bagram Air Base left four Americans dead and wounded 17 others.
Meyer’s invite was reportedly rescinded at the direction of Amb. P. Michael McKinley over Meyer’s “political views.” On his Facebook page, Meyer has been vocally critical of the Obama administration on a number of issues, including a push for additional gun control laws. Meyer’s wife, Bristol Palin, is also the daughter of former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
“It’s disheartening that he’s using the Marine Corps Ball as a chance to be petty and political. This should be beyond politics and a time for him to support the men and women who defend he and his staff at the embassy,” Meyer said. On his Facebook page, Meyer added, “I want to make sure the Marines in Afghanistan know I really wanted to join them for our birthday, but politics got in the way. Let me know when you guys get back in country and we’ll rock out then!”
https://patriotpost.us/posts/46062
Donald Trump's New World Order
Niall Ferguson
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/
There are several titles similar if not the same as this one. This article would not let me copy and past the writing. We know Niall, Harvard Professor now Hoover fellow.
One version of this topic, none will be perfect but each are interesting to read to get a feel for what we might expect.
Our position for Mitt would be Secretary of Commerce not Secretary of State but who knows. Could be nothing at all, just an advisor, someone to bounce ideas off.
Niall Ferguson interview:
https://audioboom.com/posts/5307591-before-trump-figuring-out-the-obama-doctrine-nfergus-hooverinst
A man went into the confessional of a Catholic church in Washington, D.C.
He started to say, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. Last night, in a bar, I hit a Democrat"…
But the priest interrupted, saying: “My son, I’m here to forgive your sins, not to discuss your community services.”
A Texas Cattleman went into a restaurant in Mexico.
While sipping his wine, he saw a sizzling, scrumptious-looking dish being served at the next table. It looked good, and the smell was wonderful.
He asked the waiter, 'What did you just serve?'
The waiter replied, “Si Señor, you have excellent taste! Those are Cojones de Toro, bull's testicles from the bull fight this morning. A delicacy!"
The Texan said, "What the heck, bring me an order."
The waiter replied, "I am so sorry Señor. There is only one serving each day because there is only one bull fight each morning. If you come early tonight and place your order, we will be sure to save this delicacy for you."
Early the next evening the Texan returned, placed his order, and was served his special delicacy. After a few bites and inspecting his platter, he called the waiter over and said, "These are delicious, but they are much smaller than the ones I saw yesterday."
The waiter shrugged and replied, "Si, Señor, sometimes the bull wins."
Something one might want to watch. Was there with wife, 2nd row in front of speaker.
Friends and Colleagues:
This is a preview and a one hour video of George Shultz talking about his book Learning From Experience, from this past Wednesday (16 Nov), hot off the press. I think this is a 95 year old former SecState at his best – redirects and tangents included -and we were fortunate enough to capture it.
I thought there may be a few people to whom you might want to forward this.
Preview
Something one might want to watch. Was there with wife, 2nd row in front of speaker.
Friends and Colleagues:
This is a preview and a one hour video of George Shultz talking about his book Learning From Experience, from this past Wednesday (16 Nov), hot off the press. I think this is a 95 year old former SecState at his best – redirects and tangents included -and we were fortunate enough to capture it.
I thought there may be a few people to whom you might want to forward this.
Preview
And the other thing he keeps...........
One thing BO keeps............
She's been pissed for a long time......
She's really going to be pissed when the 'free' stuff we pay for stops.
Mooche is not a happy camper.
Mooche is not a happy camper.
I love it. Great idea.
With all the chatter from the left, see where the American people actually are as they choose they want to lead the country.
Noise vs. competence.
With all the chatter from the left, see where the American people actually are as they choose they want to lead the country.
Noise vs. competence.
So what did Hillary get from spending millions of other people's money on her campaign and lifestyle?
So what did Hillary get from spending millions of other people's money on her campaign and lifestyle?
Boxer is finally retiring. She has nothing to lose and our state gave the Shrill the lead in the popular vote. Without our vote, Trump would win the popular vote. It's another way to imply Trump isn't the real winner of the election and shouldn't be President. The left strikes first and daily/hourly from this point forward. The LSMedia will carry their message, millions of dollars of free partisan propaganda.