Tag: Current Events

Obama, the Most Corrupt and America Hating President in U.S. History

Obama was elected for two reasons. One was the color of his skin, the first black U.S.  President, history was made. The second was that the America haters recognized that the timing was right for them to destroy America and he was the perfect “tool” for them to use to do it!

Last week I wrote about Hillary’s life of corruption and that she had never been charged with a crime. Obama also has a history of corruption, has never been charged with a crime, will never be charged with a crime and was elected to be President twice.  Obama has one other thing that Hillary does not have. Hillary does not care about anything but money and power. Obama, in addition to an obsession with money and power, absolutely hates America and everything about it. This last thing is what makes him the perfect “tool” for the people who are intent on destroying America, and as noted above the timing was right. Under Obama we have become so Politically Correct (PC) we cannot function, our economy is destroyed, our allies do not trust us, our enemies laugh at us and taunt us, our Government functions at a minimal level at best, lawlessness is rampant, especially in many of our major cities and even in most Federal Government agencies, and our state of readiness militarily is at an all time low. If you think I am overstating any of these issues Goggle it and then read the rest of the articles on this website. This will be the 27th article posted on this website. Each one of my previous articles details a part of how we got to this place in America.

The America haters have actually been steadily chipping away at the very fabric of American life for about 50 years. All their efforts have been carefully orchestrated with time on their side. They were perfectly willing to experience a minor setback from time to time as long as they got what they wanted in the end. And then along came Obama, an America hating man totally without a conscious. Everything he has done as an adult confirms that.

Let’s begin with Obama’s college years. Where are his college records? Why are they sealed? What are they hiding? Who spends a fortune (of other people’s money) having their college records sealed and keeping them sealed?

After college Obama claims that he was a Constitutional law professor. In fact he was only a part time lecturer who spent most of his time writing a book about himself.

Obama was a Saul Alinsky disciple and close friends with Bill Ayers. Some sources say that it was Bill Ayers who actually made Obama’s book readable and ready to be published while Obama became a community organizer. Saul Alinsky was the person responsible for creating the destructive community organizer movement in America. Bill Ayers was a member of the radical ”Weather Underground”  group in the late 60’s and  early 70’s. He went underground to escape prosecution for his part in several terrorist bombings the group did, re-emerged and became a tenured college professor!

During all his time in Chicago after college Obama sat in Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s extremely radical, “God Damn America” church almost every Sunday.

Obama’s first step into politics was when he “finagled” an Illinois Senate seat, where he did very little except plan his next move to the U.S. Senate.

After Obama made it to the U.S. Senate, he again did very little except plan his Presidential run. When he did make a speech or vote it was always an anti-Bush media show.

During Obama’s first Presidential run every America hater pilled on and threw truckloads of money at him. And the main stream media enthusiastically signed on. “Fundamentally Change America” became their Holy Grail. Ethics, rules, facts or laws were not to be an impediment in any way.

As soon as he was elected Obama openly displayed a level of arrogance that is not fitting to the office of the President of the United States of America. During his first term, in one of his extremely rare bi-partisan white house meetings Obama said to John McCain, “elections have consequences, I won”. Immediately after his second election he moved from “fundamentally changing America” to “we are going to punish our enemies and reward our friends”.

After Obama was sworn in his promised “most transparent administration in history” became the most secretive and blatantly corrupt administration in history.

Obama appointed total sycophants to every presidential appointed position in the Federal Government, preferably as America hating and lacking in ethics as he was. He even created some new positions like a lot of new White House Czars. Some of the Obama administration’s appointments have actually been members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many state and local governments and Democratic Party organizations immediately followed Obama’s lead (Baltimore).

Throughout his two terms Obama continued to appoint people who he could depend on to blindly carry out his agenda, including illegal recess appointments. Additionally there is no end to the budgets, maximum allowable salaries and even bonuses for everyone who successfully plays Obama’s game (VA and IRS are examples). If anyone fails to publicly and blindly do what Obama wants they are “out” instantly. If anyone displeases Obama he does not hesitate to throw them “under the buss”. And God help a “whistle blower” no matter what the situation, in spite of specific Federal laws protecting them.

As President nothing is beneath Obama or his supporters in their efforts to destroy America. The list of “scandals” during Obama’s two terms is actually many pages long. Below is a brief explanation of some of the most corrupt Obama Administration actions.

A totally agenda driven and corrupt DOJ was created shortly after Obama began his first term. This was critical for the Obama Administration to do as it pleased with no fear of being questioned, let along anyone being charged with wrong doing. This began with the blatant voter intimidation convictions against the Philadelphia Black Panthers being thrown out by Eric Holder.

Obamacare was illegally implemented and changed with multiple illegal executive orders.

”Fast and Furious” was an illegal, poorly conceived, poorly managed, extremely costly, secret operation run by the DOJ and BATF. It was designed to discredit Federally Licensed Firearms dealers in order to set up an opportunity to take the first steps to destroy the 2nd Amendment.

The IRS illegally targeting conservative groups was a deliberate attack on the 1st Amendment. This massive and lengthy operation was a calculated and successful attempt to dramatically influence Obama’s re-election.

“Fast and Furious” and the IRS targeting operation were both orchestrated and covered up at the highest levels of the Obama Administration, especially at the DOJ. Eric Holder repeatedly lied to Congress about both, changed his “story” on multiple occasions and refused to turn over relevant documents. In fact he was so arrogant and dishonest in his interactions with Congress that he was charged with contempt (which had no effect on him since he is the chief law enforcement officer in America). Obama attempted to protect Holder and various records about these illegal activities with “executive orders” (which have been ruled illegal).

Operation “Choke Point” was another DOJ operation that was launched secretly using bank regulators to try and force banks to refuse to do business with industries the Obama Administration did not like. Firearm, coal and precious metals businesses were their specific targets. The effort was intended to shut down these industries by denying them banking services. Another agenda driven attack on the 1st and 2nd Amendments!

During his 1st term Obama began to establish a Federal police force (armed police that report to the Federal Government). They are armed and their uniforms and vehicles have “Federal Police” identification. Government agencies like the IRS are spending millions of dollars on guns and ammunition and designating employees who can become part of a Federal police force. The Federal Reserve refers to its security staff as Federal Reserve Bank Police. Their uniform I.D. is “FRB Police”.

During Obama’s 1st term in office his administration spent untold millions of dollars buying up and stock piling ammunition. This was a twofold operation. One objective was to have an unlimited supply of ammunition for the “Federal Police”. The second was to prevent U.S. Citizens from stock piling ammunition. For many months ammunition dealers were limiting the amount of ammunition a customer could buy (if they had any stock at all of some calibers). The Obama Administration also stopped selling surplus military ammunition to dealers and even stopped selling used bullet brass to bullet manufacturers to prevent them from producing bullets.

The Obama Administration’s auto industry” take over” was another massive and illegal operation. It openly violated a number of long standing Federal and state trade and DMV laws. They even went so far as deciding which dealers were terminated, without proper notice, and who got to keep dealerships based on their political affiliations and especially who supported and donated to Obama’s campaign. They literally created illegal monopolies for certain brands in some large geographic areas. Terminated dealerships were left with new vehicles on their lots that they could not legally sell to the public. And of course the unions were protected from being negatively financially impacted at the expense of secured lenders.

When the Inspector General for the Department of Agriculture found that hundreds of “Food Stamp” vendors were committing massive fraud the investigation was shut down with no action taken.

After Obama’s re-election the “Free Cell Phone” program was expanded by over a $100,000,000 with distribution contracts going to big Obama donors.

Under the Obama Administration “Legal Immigration” has basically been turned into a massive graft and corruption program to expand the Democratic donor and voter base.

Under Obama Illegal Immigration has been mismanaged and corrupted so it can be used as a political wedge issue by the Democrats to expand their donor and voter base.

Based on immigration alone you need over 100,000 net new jobs each month for the unemployment rate to stay the same. In May we only had 38,000 net new jobs yet the Obama Administration proudly announced that the unemployment rate fell from 5 to 4.7 percent!

Under Obama our economy has been destroyed. The 1st quarter GDP growth rate was only .005 (one half of one percent). We need a minimum of 3 percent to meet America’s expanding needs.

Our national debt is about to reach an inconceivable level of 20 trillion dollars ($20,000,000,000,000)! At some point in time we will not be able to pay the interest on this debt, let alone pay it off!

The “climate change fantasy” is an integral part of Obama’s corrupt administration. Billions of dollars were illegally given to green energy projects that failed immediately but benefited big donors, insider trading on green energy projects was rampant, and the EPA and other Government agencies took illegal steps to hurt the coal, oil and gas industries. And now the DOJ is planning to bring federal charges against “climate change deniers” using the Rico organized crime statues!

Under Obama we now have the worst level of national defense we have had in decades (even worse than it was under Bill Clinton). Every branch of our military is understaffed, underequipped, and run by political ideologies at every level. All the career patriotic warriors have been forced out from the top Generals to the line officers and senior NCOs.

Benghazi. While men were dying there was a meeting/conference call, which Obama did not participate in, with half the meeting time dedicated to developing the video story. NOT a single piece of military equipment moved while the brave men were fighting and dying except for one, hours into the battle, and it went to Tripoli, not Benghazi. The only help they got was a group of CIA folks who took it upon their selves to basically commander a plane in Tripoli to get Benghazi during the fight at the Annex (one of them was killed). BUT IT WAS ONLY 51 DAYS TO Obama’s RE-ELECTION AND HE HAD SINGLEHANDEDLY DEFEATED TERRIOSM….

As noted above this is only a partial list. Do not forget the Iran deal, Gitmo, the Bergdahl trade, and other Obama Administration actions that have damaged America and put us at increased  risk of attack here and abroad.

The real shame in all this is that it was all coldly calculated and deliberately executed with a compliant Congress, including rino Republicans!

 

 

 

The Clintons Versus Obama. Why Hillary Can Never be President!

 

There has been a lot written about these three people and their lifetime in the Democratic Party; however there has not been that much written about how different they are individually. A close look at the history of each of these people confirms that they have similar ideologies, personal interest and desires but they also have “extraordinary differences”.  All three have personal agendas and are self-absorbed. However all three are very different regarding their personal agendas, how committed they are to their agendas, how far they will go to carry out their agendas and how self-absorbed they are

Let’s start with President Clinton, otherwise known as “Slick Willy” (with good reason) by many people who liked and supported him and many people who disliked him and opposed him in every way while he was in office. A perfect example of this is what Dick Morris said about him after Bill left the Whitehouse, ”he is a scoundrel, but a likable scoundrel”. His references to Hillary’s likeability were the exact opposite. Dick Morris is a well know author and Bill’s campaign manager during both of his successful Presidential campaigns.

History will probably refer to President Clinton as one of the smartest and “slickest” politicians in American history. He is a man who always seemed to be driven, maybe even obsessed, with two things, votes and being “popular” with everyone. Throughout his political career he could, and did move to the Left or Right of center politically any time he sensed public opinion changing on any subject, and he did it successfully (hence the nick name “Slick Willy”). He did this for votes for himself and his party, but also to feed his insatiable need to be “popular”. He was truly a politician who needed to be a “people’s man”, however.one of his well-known weaknesses is his inability to control “certain personal impulses”.

“Slick Willy” also had the uncanny ability to skirt rules, ethical standards, and even laws with little to no bad publicity or ill effects. A perfect example of this is how he created the “housing bubble” which ultimately destroyed the U.S. economy (I wrote about this in detail in a recent article, “I Am Going to Put My Husband In Charge of the Economy”). The only times he experienced any significant ill effects for his actions being unethical or illegal were when he failed to control his unacceptable “personal impulses”. And even with his blatant misconduct regarding these “personal Impulses” the American people, in general seem to have forgotten about that now.

The bottom line for President Clinton is that he did do significant long term damage to America during his time in office. However I believe history has shown that he did it for the reasons detailed above, for votes for himself and his party and to be “popular with the people”. Even with these desires driving his actions and thoughts while he was in office he never did anything to indicate that he had any malice toward anyone and certainly none toward America.

Obama does embrace the same Left leaning Ideologies as the Clintons. However that is where the “similarities” end. As a person he is the absolute polar opposite of “Slick Willy”. One of the most glaring differences is how they feel about people in general. President Clinton has a “need” to be popular with the people. Obama has an even stronger “need” to be an “Imperial or Supreme Ruler” that is on a level well above everyone else in every way!  According to Charles Krauthammer (who is an accomplished Psychologist) Obama is an extreme example of a “pathological narcissist”.  His obsessive use of the two words “I’ and “My” are text book symptoms of this mind set.

Unlike President Clinton, Obama’s ideology is extreme with no willingness to negotiate or modify his positions. He also has little to no regard for rules, ethics, or laws. He actually revels in flaunting his Administration’s total disregard for them. Three recent examples of this are the White House editing tape of a joint press conference with Obama and  the French President to remove the French President’s use of the two words “Islamic terrorist”, the State department editing out eight minutes of a video tape of a press conference about the Iran nuclear deal (they publicly stated they cannot determine who ordered that  to be done), and Obama loudly and publicly endorsing Hillary when she is supposed to be under two Federal criminal investigations. Note the first two examples are clear violations of Federal records keeping laws.

President Clinton surrounded himself with people who would give him sound advice and he had a willingness to have meaningful discussions with them about issues. Obama only tolerates brain washed sycophants around him who will endlessly stroke his insatiable ego and insist that everything he does is absolutely correct.

Obama openly has no regard for the long term damage his actions are doing to America and the world. In fact practically everything he says and does indicates that he has a deep seated and open malice toward America and everyone who does not embrace him as being a “Supreme Ruler”. He even flaunts an arrogant indifference to the Democratic Party that he is supposed to be leading, the party that elected him to the office of the President of the United States of America.

The only thing Obama does have in common with President Clinton is the appearance of being an extraordinarily gifted campaigner. However even this is completely inaccurate. President Clinton is a natural born politician and spent his entire adult life perfecting those skills. Obama is nothing more than an extremely self-centered and ideological “actor“ who is really good at reading a teleprompter (in front of carefully screened audiences)  and role playing while misleading the public about his Administration’s accomplishments..

Two simple examples that will illustrate what I just wrote about Obama are the just released May jobs report and the 1st quarter U.S. GDP growth rate! There were only 38,000 net new jobs created in the U.S. last month. Yet the Obama Administration proudly announced that the unemployment rate dropped from 5 per cent to 4.7 per cent at the end of May! This is so absurd that it is insulting (read my previous writing, “What is the Actual Unemployment Rate in America?”). The U.S. 1st quarter GDP growth rate was only .005 (one half of one) percent yet Obama continues to loudly proclaim what a great job he has done with the U.S. economy. In my recent writing, ”The U.S. National Debt Versus GDP Crisis” I detail how much long term damage the Obama Administration has actually done to the U.S. economy..

Here are two quotes from Obama that also illustrate what I wrote about him above. One is what he publicly said to John McCain in one of the very rare partisan Whitehouse legislative meetings he hosted during his first term, “Elections have consequences. I won”. The second is when he was reelected. He publicly said, “Now we will reward our friends and punish our enemies”.

And last but not least we have Hillary, otherwise known by many people as the “devil”. On the surface she does pretend to embrace her husband’s ideology and love for people. However a careful look at her history reveals that her nickname, the “devil” is well deserved.

Like her husband, Hillary moves to the Right or Left of center regarding her policies. However, unlike her husband, she does it more often then she changes her pant suits. Consequently.it is obvious to the most casual observer that she is doing that purely for political reasons. This makes her the opposite of her husband regarding her ability to be an effective campaigner.

Unlike her husband Hillary is not a people person. In fact she is one of the most unlikeable and anti-people individuals imaginable. She is so nasty toward people around her that being assigned to her Secret Service detail is considered to be a form of punishment. People on her staff or Secret Service detail who make the mistake of saying “Good Morning “ to her in private are usually subjected to a harsh “F… Y….” (According to a number of internal sources she regularly uses the “F” :word in private).

Hillary does resemble Obama in her desire to surround herself with brain washed sycophants. However she is such a poor “people person” that she is not as effective in accomplishing this as he is.

Hillary also resembles Obama in her total disregard for rules, ethical standards and laws and her tendencies to be a “pathological narcissist”. However, unlike Obama, she does make some effort to hide that. There are endless examples of this throughout her life. They are all a matter of record for anyone who wants to take an open minded look. One was her first job right out of law school. She was hired to work for the Watergate special prosecutor. She got the job at the request of a family friend. She was fired from that job for lying and evidence tampering. She should have been prosecuted and disbarred.

When you look at Hillary’s entire adult life it is obvious that she has failed to accomplish much of anything except to demonstrate that her total distain for the truth and the rule of law is deeply ingrained in her DNA. Her history also indicates that she is obsessed with only two things, absolute power and endless personal wealth. She will never have enough of either.

President Clinton and Obama both did long term damage to America, but in somewhat different ways and based on different ideologues and personal interest. However Obama has done, and is still doing more damage, in more different ways than any President in history. A careful look at Hillary indicates she could be more disastrous for America than either one of them by simply adding to the damage done by Obama.

Obama and Hillary are both devoted Saul Alinsky disciples!

Is it November yet?

 

 

The Left’s Deliberate Lies, Disgusting Dishonesty, and Insulting Disrespect

In most of my writing in the past I have referred to Obama as President Obama out of respect for the office of President of The United States of America. Based on his reactions to the Orlando Massacre, and his “kool aid” drinking supporter’s similar reactions, I cannot, will not do that again! They have not only been blatantly dishonest in their comments and actions, they have been insultingly disrespectful to the victims and their families and friends. Regarding Obama specifically he has been described as being “petulant” and behaving in a manner that is beneath anyone who occupies the office of President of the United States of America. Unfortunately this sort of behavior is “Standard Operating Procedure” for Obama and most of his supporters, but their behavior this week finally crossed a line that cannot be ignored. Even some of the people who usually insist that Obama can “do no wrong” and some members of the usually compliant media have acknowledged this.

It has been abundantly evident this week that the Obama Administration’s policy of “never let a crisis go to waste” has been in full effect. And to make matters worse, they no longer appear to make any effort to disguise their obsessive pursuit of absolute and permanent power, which requires the destruction of our Constitution.

Obama did multiple press conferences and speeches to rant about Republicans and guns. To quote Trump early in the week, “President Obama is madder at me than the terrorist”.

Obama did not even call the Governor of Florida to offer his condolences or offer any Federal assistance that was needed. The Governor is a Republican.

When Obama and “crazy uncle” Joe Biden did finally go to Orlando Obama used the occasion to rant about guns and Republicans. Sometimes I wonder if Obama actually has a conscious.

For those of you who are not fully aware of it there are more than enough gun laws on the books NOW to make America much safer. However if they were properly enforced it would negate the deliberate and blatant lies the “Left” constantly spew in their  obsession with eliminating the 2nd Amendment. It is important to note here that the 2nd Amendment is not all the “Left” wants to destroy. However it is the only thing standing in the way of the destruction of the rest of the Constitution (think about that for a moment…). I do not recall who said it but there is a famous quote, “an unarmed population is a complaint population”.  After the 2nd Amendment is destroyed then we will lose the 1st. Amendment. Remember the attempts to eliminate the 1st Amendment on certain college campuses recently? After the 1st and 2nd Amendments are eliminated then the rest really do not matter!

Regarding specific “Deliberate Lies, Disgusting Dishonesty, and Insulting Disrespect”, there are so many undeniable examples of these it would take a long book to discuss them. I will include just enough specific examples here to make my case, in no particular order.

A Democrat state representative in Florida gave a live televised press conference before the bodies were recovered, or even identified to rant about guns!

The Democrats in Congress loudly interrupted a moment of silence for the Orlando victims to grandstand about gun control and walked out of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. This was obviously planned and coordinated for maximum media coverage.

The Democrats illegally filibustered in the Senate to demand gun control legislation be considered. Again it was obviously organized and coordinated for maximum publicity.

As noted above we already have all the guns laws on the books that we need. There are Federal limitations on purchasing guns from a licensed gun dealer anywhere outside the state where your legal residence is located. It is illegal to purchase a gun for someone else. ALL gun sales made by licensed gun dealers require valid, verifiable ID and an electronic background check (there is NO gun show loophole here). A licensed firearms dealer cannot sell you a gun over the phone or internet or ship a firearm directly to you if you are not a licensed dealer (there is NO internet sales loophole here). Multiple purchases of guns at the same time or in a short period of time are a red flag on the electronic background check system. Felons cannot legally purchase or possess firearms. There are variations of some of these regulations state by state and in some cases in municipalities within states but as you can see it would be easy to reduce illegal gun possession and gun violence if our government wanted  that to happen. Two perfect examples of this are all the criminals walking around with guns. “Stop and frisk” and hard jail time would solve that problem. Another is the illegal cross state gun sellers the “Left” loves to scream about. Red flags from electronic background checks for multiple purchases would solve that problem. As previously noted if the Government did these simple things it would lose the basis for its efforts to destroy the 2nd Amendment.

So you think it is OK to deny gun rights to people on the “no fly list”? That is another cheap shot at shredding the 2nd Amendment!  Apparently anybody in this administration can put anyone they want to on the “no fly list”. Ask Steve Hayes about that and how hard it is to get off the list. He is a prominent Fox News contributor and columnist who is frequently critical of the Obama Administration.

It is an undeniable fact that incidences of gun violence are consistently higher in states with the most restrictive gun laws, Chicago is an extreme example of this but Obama and his supporters constantly state (deliberately lie) that the opposite is true!

The AR 15 and similar weapons are not “weapons of war” or “automatic assault weapons”. They are a legal civilian version of the M16 which is a “weapon of war”. The M16 has a “selector switch” that allows it to be fired continuously (automatically) as long as the trigger is depressed. It is illegal to possess any “automatic” weapon in the U.S without a Federal permit which cost tens of thousands of dollars and is practically impossible to get.

When Democratic U.S. Congressman Grayson from Florida, who in my studied opinion is certifiably insane, was interviewed by a reporter last week he said that the weapon the killer used “fired 700 rounds per minute” which is impossible for any firearm!  To my knowledge the reporter did not question his insane claim. Note, the M16 when used in combat on automatic fire tended to jam if the 20 round clips they used had more than 18 rounds in them!

A retired FBI agent reported that he was investigating the mosque where the killer was radicalized but his investigation was shut down by multiple directives from the Obama Administration, including the State Department while Hillary was Secretary of State.

The killer was allowed to continue his killing spree for an extended period of time. He could have killed as many as he did, or more with a wide variety of legal weapons. How about a pump shotgun with 3 inch magnum buckshot loads and//or multiple six shot revolvers with heavy loads? He even made numerous phone calls and Facebook connections while he was inside “Pulse” methodically killing people.

The killer was investigated by the FBI on multiple occasions but was still allowed to buy weapons legally and even keep his armed security guard license. How will more gun laws fix that?  Simple answer is they will not! If the Obama administration had not been so obsessively P.C. and had enforced the laws on the books, this tragedy could have been prevented. Obama, Hillary and their supporters are responsible for this tragedy. (See my recent article about Political Correctness).

The Orlando police finally used an armored vehicle to break into “Pulse”, rescue live victims and take down the killer. In 2015 Obama issued an executive order preventing law enforcement agencies from getting surplus military equipment because he wanted to prevent the “militarization” of the police. What if the Orlando Police did not have that armored vehicle and the protective gear?  How many more, including police would have died? One of the police officers who went in to take the killer down took a high powered bullet to the head and lived because he was wearing a military style bullet resistant helmet.

Have you ever been to a European country? I have been to most of them on working trips. Do you know what was the first thing I noticed on my first trip to England ?  When I got off the plane at the airport in London I saw two man teams of heavily armed, swat team style officers with a guard dog on a leash patrolling the airport, and this was in the early 1990’s! I also saw terrorist attack warning systems in the department stores in London!  We do not have that in America because we are legally allowed to own firearms.

Do you think the 2nd Amendment cannot be destroyed to make us be like Europe? It can. It happened in Australia over one incidence because the voting majority was concentrated in the cities and was majority liberal. The first stages of this happened in Colorado for the same reason!

I am a “former” Federal Firearms Licensed (FFL) dealer. “Former”  because during “Slick Willy’s” first term he instructed his AG, Janet Reno to eliminate as many FFLs as she could any way she could. She happily complied by having the BATF execute ‘unannounced inspections” of FFL holders they suspected were not full time retail operations. These “unannounced inspections” basically became something that resembled “Gestapo” raids on private residences of people who held valid FFLs at that address. As soon as I became aware of these “unannounced inspections” I “voluntarily” requested the cancellation of my FFL and submitted all my records to the BATF, which unfortunately included a complete inventory of all my personal firearms, including all those I had before getting the FFL. Mission accomplished!

The efforts to outlaw certain firearms and make gun manufacturers and dealers liable for damages when guns they sold were used in crimes also began when “Slick Willy’s was President. These efforts were obviously intended to shut done the firearms industry. Hillary strongly, publicly supports this and “changes” to the 2nd amendment. Obama also used  the DOJ to try to shut down the firearms industry by forcing banks to stop doing business with them under “Operation Choke Point” and to destroy the 2nd Amendment through “Fast and Furious” (see my article, “The Department of InJustice”).

As I have detailed here a President who is willing to do anything, regardless of its legality, to achieve their personal agenda can usually get away with it if they have a compliant media and an opposition party that will not step up and oppose them (sound familiar?).

What is openly happening in America now is a deliberate and determined assault on the Constitution. Obama has about 215 more days to finish destroying America.

We have one chance to save what is left of our Republic. Even if you do not like the available options in November, choose America!

You may read my other writings on my website www.onlymakessense.com.

Fifty Years in America. How the Obama Administration has been Able to Make America be so P.C. that it is Dysfunctional

Until I began to study this subject I did not think about  “Political Correctness” being a powerful political tool for many decades until it clearly began to be used that way in America. It actually has roots in Marxism and Communism. There are references to it being used by Marxist and Hitler to brain wash people into not just believing in their Ideology but to ”rise up” and fight for it. Ideologues, young people, and the “have nots” were the usual target audiences (sound familiar?).

This is not the first time I have noted and written about how America began to be manipulated in the 60’s to become what we are today. There did need to be changes made in America during the 60’s. There was, and still is a lot of focus on racism in the South at that time. This was highlighted by Bull Conner, the Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama. He ordered the use of fire hoses and police attack dogs to deny civil rights to people of color, including children. However, open discrimination of one form or another was taking place all over America at that time. This made America an easy target for the ideologues that believed they had a mission and were willing to go to any extreme to carry it out. Bill Ayers is a perfect example. He was a co-founder of the “Weather Underground” in the late 60’s. This was a radical off shoot group of the “Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)”. The new group was Communist ideology inspired and willing to, and did use violence to attempt to achieve their goals. When the FBI linked them to several bombings in the U.S. Bill went into hiding. He resurfaced later and became a tenured college professor! In recent years he has appeared on shows like Megyn Kelly’s, where he admitted to being part of that radical group and their activities and said that he “did not do enough”. He recently did a live television interview during one of the first violent riots at a Trump rally.

Unfortunately people like Bill Ayers are not solely responsible for America becoming so “P.C.” and dysfunctional. Many of the people who were elected or appointed to positions of authority in America have played a much larger role in this frightening transition. The Obama Administration, especially Eric Holder and the DOJ have aggressively put the final nails in our Republic’s proverbial coffin. As they do this they are openly as lawless as Bill Ayers and his “Weather Underground” was, and flaunt it to a mostly compliant media and a political opposition that makes little to no effort to stop them. I detailed this in my recent writing, “The Department of injustice”.

As I noted earlier, the roots of this transition sprouted in the early stages of the “non-violent” civil rights movement in the 60’s. Unfortunately the protests were not always non-violent. The Watts riot in 1965 was one of the first to be extremely violent. This was followed closely by the protests against the Vietnam War by peace activist on many of our college campuses and the hippie generation in some of our major cities. Soldiers who were coming home on leave or returning from active duty were booed and harassed if they were seen in public wearing their uniform. The “”SDS” and subsequently the “Weather Underground” came out of this unrest and civil disobedience. As a college student during the late 60’s I saw some of this first hand and more played out on the evening network news.  As I think back about that now I cannot remember a time since then when America was not experiencing some form of protest or organized civil unrest focused on a wide variety of real or imagined injustices.

The organized protest during the Obama Administration have shown an increasing tendency to use violence to try and achieve their goals or simply because they can do it with little to no fear of prosecution. To these people the 1st Amendment is only useful for trampling on the 1st Amendment rights of people they do not agree with!  A clear example of this is speakers who are invited to speak on college campuses that are shouted down by ideologues who do not agree with their views. Or speakers that are disinvited by college administrators before they speak due to student protest against them on campus.

In the 60’s and 70’s many of the organized protest did seem to have at least some semblance of reason or meaning behind them.  As I look at many of the protest today I actually find it hard to understand how the protesters, including their “leaders” and/or “spokespersons” could be so irrational and unreasonable. People like Sandra Fluke, a student at a very expensive law school leading a national Democratic supported movement demanding free birth control for everyone because, “the students at her law school could not afford to pay for them”. When many of these people are interviewed by someone that actually has real questions they cannot answer even the most simple questions. Here are two examples. An “Occupy Wall Street” spokesperson who could not begin to explain what the movement was about while the police made no effort to control the illegal protest or stop the open destruction of public and private property. A spokesperson for the “Million Student” protest group that is demanding free college for everyone who stated that the “Government had the money to pay everyone’s tuition”. When pressed regarding where the Government would get the money she replied that she had never been elected to any office so she did not know and it was not her responsibility to know.

Unfortunately in today’s political environment irrational thinking and unreasonable demands by organized groups seems to be the norm, not the exception. This has peaked during Obama’s presidency. He and his liberal supporters have been so obsessed with making America become P.C. that they have taken our country to the point where we are experiencing a collapse of authority and the destruction of 1st amendment rights. As a result of this we are seeing an increasing use of violence by special interest groups and the law enforcement community’s increasing refusal to enforce our laws. And to make matters worse, at times the people in positions of authority publicly blame someone other than the protestors (like the San Jose mayor blaming Trump for the violent protestors at his rally). And then they compound the problems by making excuses for not stopping openly illegal behavior (San Jose police chief) and in some instances actually enabling the violent behavior (Baltimore).

And now we have Orlando, June 11/12, 2016, and I saw a Democrat state representative hold a press conference before all the bodies had been recovered or identified, and blame it on GUNS, BULLET MAGAZINES and GUN SHOW LOOPHOLES! Unfortunately for her these ridiculous and untimely accusations had nothing to do with this act of terror. The shooter was a state licensed armed security guard since 2007, in spite of being investigated by the FBI as a security risk in 2013 and again in 2014! Not a mention by her of radical terrorism even though the terrorist called 911 to express his loyalty to ISIS!

Now it is Monday, June 13th and it is obvious that the “Do not let a crisis go to waste” policy of the Obama Administration is in full effect. Obama, Hillary, Bernie and every Liberal that can get close to a microphone is loudly calling for new gun bans, blaming the NRA and refusing to even say the words “Islamic Terrorist” or “Radical Islamist”. As noted above this cold blooded killer was a declared “Radical Islamist” and had a “current”, state issued, armed security guard license which requires an initial Federal back ground check which must be repeated on a periodic basis.

The Obama Administration is so P.C. obsessed with refusing to use terms like “Islamic Terrorist” or “Radical Islamist” that it was recently revealed that the White House edited video tape to remove the part where the French President used the two words “Islamic terrorist” during a joint press conference with Obama (which is a clear violation of Federal records keeping laws).

We do not need to return to the days of Bull Conner: but we desperately need to return to the “rule of law” in America, not a final rush into anarchy!

We must save what is left of our Republic in November!

The U.S. Department of “Injustice”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) began with the Judiciary ACT of 1789 which created a one man, part time Attorney General. It obviously has been changed many times since then and expanded to the point that it is now a huge government bureaucracy. Like all government bureaucracies its actions have been influenced at times by political ideology. However, I am not aware of it being referred to as the “Department of Injustice” until recent years. There has been a lot written and reported about the Department over the years including a book titled, “Injustice” by a former career DOJ attorney, J. Christopher Adams. In the book he documents how completely the DOJ became a partisan department under President Obama.

As I read about the DOJ under Eric Holder over the last few years I began to wonder how it became so politically and ideologically driven so quickly. As I researched the subject I discovered why it was able to become such an effective tool for the Obama Administration so quickly. It was because Bill Clinton staffed it with leadership and a deep base of left leaning ideologues during his two terms in office. He did that so he could use the DOJ to push his personal and political agenda items. Bill just did not do that as blatantly as President Obama has. I wrote about one way President Clinton did this last week in my article “I Am Going to Put My Husband In Charge of the Economy”. In that article I detail specifically how President Clinton used the DOJ to push his home ownership agenda and earn the DOJ its first references as the “Department of Injustice”. In addition to creating the housing bubble through new CRA rules, enforced by the DOJ, there were also the questionable last minute pardons that Eric Holder, the Assistant Attorney General at the time, wrote up and processed for President Clinton.

In addition to making sure the DOJ was staffed with as many partisan attorneys as he could during his two terms in office, President Clinton also authorized a big hiring push late in his second term. Most of these people managed to stay with the DOJ during President Bush’s two terms because it is practically impossible to fire a U.S. Government employee. Additionally the Bush Administration had to deal with 9/11
happening only 7 months and 21 days after he was sworn in as President. Plus the long term effects of that tragedy as well as the long term effects on the U.S. economy of the “housing bubble bust”.  Some of the Left leaning Ideologues that did leave the DOJ during the Bush Administration quickly returned when President Obama was sworn in and Eric Holder was appointed as the Attorney General. In addition to the Left leaning Ideologues that  the new AG inherited, he immediately began to replace as many of the non-partisan career attorneys who  worked there as he could with people that he could count on to go along with his and President Obama’s efforts to “fundamentally change America”. This effort to replace people who he could not count on to be partisan especially applied to people in positions of authority. Non-partisan people that they could not immediately push out or replace were subjected to intimidation and harassment by other employees and supervisors.

With the appointment of Eric Holder as the (AG) the enforcement of President Obama’s agenda items took off immediately and with an absolute indifference to the rule of law the DOJ is sworn to enforce and protect. This management ideology did not change with the appointment of Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder. She proved that recently when she testified before Congress about the DOJ’s plans to try to silence “climate change deniers” by bringing charges against them using the Federal RICO statues! This is a deliberate attack on the 1st Amendment.

One of Eric Holder’s first specific, agenda driven acts as AG was to throw out the voter intimidation convictions against the Philadelphia Black Panthers. A veteran civil rights attorney who witnessed their blatant acts of intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling location stated on the record that it was the worst case of voter intimidation he had seen in his career. This act alone indicated how agenda driven this administration was going to be.

And then they moved on to much bigger partisan agenda items! Two of these were “Fast and Furious” and the IRS targeting of non-profit conservative groups. “Fast and Furious” was intended to set up an opportunity to take the first steps to destroy the 2nd Amendment and the IRS targeting of conservative non-profit groups (an attack on the 1st Amendment) dramatically influenced voting efforts during the 2012 elections. Both of these were orchestrated and covered up at the highest levels of the Obama Administration, especially at the DOJ. Eric Holder repeatedly lied to Congress about both, changed his “story” on multiple occasions and refused to turn over relevant documents. In fact he was so arrogant and dishonest in his interactions with Congress that he was charged with contempt (which had no effect on him since he is the chief law enforcement officer in America), and President Obama attempted to protect him and various records about these DOJ activities with “executive orders” (which have been ruled illegal).

Operation “Choke Point” was another DOJ operation that was launched secretly using bank regulators to try and force banks to refuse to do business with industries the DOJ did not like. Firearm, coal and precious metals businesses were their specific targets. The effort was intended to shut down these industries by denying them banking services. More agenda driven attacks on the 1st and 2nd Amendments!

Another way this administration uses the DOJ to push their favorite agenda items is to quietly encourage special interest groups to file suit against various government agencies over rules or regulations they do not like. This allows the DOJ to enter into financial “settlements” with the special interest groups who brought the suits and for the agencies to re-write the rules or regulations in question to fit the Obama Administration’s agenda (without consulting Congress).  Clearly the Obama Administration does not see a need for our Republic’s system of government with a Constitution and, the 3 coexisting branches of government, Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.

The examples listed above are only a few of the constant stream of partisan, and in most cases illegal actions coming out of the Obama DOJ. In fact the DOJ has been so flagrant and dishonest in its partisan and agenda driven actions that a district court judge in Texas recently issued an order that said, The Obama administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is “unethical” and “intentionally deceptive”.  He found the DOJ attorneys to be so dishonest that he also ordered the DOJ to establish annual “Ethics Training” programs. This is not the only time this DOJ has lost cases or been reprimanded for sloppy or dishonest activities.

The only way to stop this calculated and deliberate destruction of our Constitution is to change which party occupies the Whitehouse in November!

 

I Am Going to Put My Husband in Charge of the Economy

 

If you are on the left side of our political system you probably cheered when you heard Hillary say that. For the rest of us our reaction was the absolute opposite because we remember what happened to America based on his economic policies when he was President!  Just one example is how he used the “Department of Injustice” to enforce his home ownership ideology which resulted in the long term destruction of the American economy. The “Department of Injustice” will be the subject of one of my future articles.

I know some people will loudly protest what I just wrote about President Clinton’s economic policies. They will say that we had balanced budgets and a thriving economy during his time in office. We did have some balanced budgets but that was the result of a Republican led house forcing a government shutdown twice and refusing to let President Clinton use it to his advantage politically.

And yes, we did have a false sense of a “thriving” economy during part of President Clinton’s Administration. However this was not necessarily a result of his economic policies. This was partially the result of the “dot com bubble” which was stock market driven and the “housing bubble” which was deliberately created by the Clinton Administration.

There was also the “peace dividend”. President Clinton, with the help of Congress drastically cut spending on national defense and intelligence to help reach the balanced budget agreements.

The “dot com” bubble was the first of the two bubbles to “bust”. This happened late in President Clinton’s second term and caused a lot of people to lose a significant portion of their retirement funds, myself included and a huge hit to our economy.

The damage done to our economy by the “dot com bubble bust” was insignificant and temporary compared to the absolute and long term destruction of our economy caused by the ”housing bubble bust”.  Yes, the “housing bubble bust” did happen during President Bush’s (43) presidency but he did not create the bubble. He actually tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage banks with the largest sub-prime loan portfolios, before the economy crashed. However the banking regulators who testified before various Congressional committees about the need to tighten bank lending practices were literally shouted at by various Left Wing Ideologues like Barney Frank and Maxine Waters.

Here is how the housing bubble was created. During the Carter Administration the CRA (Community Revitalization Act) was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Carter. However it had little to no effect on the home mortgage or small business loan industry because lenders simply refused to make loans to people who did not meet minimum credit qualifications. This changed early in Bill Clinton’s first term. He used the Attorney General, Janet Reno and the “Department of Injustice” to force banks to make loans to people who did not qualify for them. Their approach was simple. The banking regulators, working with Janet Reno and her staff, looked at bank loan portfolios based on a new set of CRA guidelines to determine if the banks violated “Fair Lending Regulations” or were guilty of “Redlining” (not making loans in certain geographic locations or opening branches in these areas).

 

The regulators even modified how they reviewed a bank’s lending practices. They started ignoring all basic loan application requirements used by all financial institutions at that time. They reviewed all applications submitted to a lending institution based on one criterion, applicant’s annual income. They ignored basic loan review requirements like the applicants credit score, net worth, other outstanding debts and time on their job. If a person was turned down for a loan while someone else with the same income was approved, then the ethnicity and address of the two applicants was reviewed. If the person who was turned down was a minority and/or lived in what was considered an “underserved area” the bank was charged with a violation of the CRA. In fact under the new CRA regulations banks were actually mandated to use “flexible underwriting standards” to qualify more low income and minority borrowers for home and small business loans.

In 1995 President Clinton authorized the “securitization” of sub-prime mortgages. This made it legal for these high risk loans to be packaged and sold as “securities”. This kept the sub-prime loan business going for years and allowed the housing bubble to grow to such a level that its “bust” did so much damage to the U.S. economy that we are still struggling to overcome it. And to make matters worse the Obama Administration continues to blame everything on President Bush (43) and the banking industry, while making ridiculous claims about what a great job his administration has done fixing the economy. It is also aggressively working to restart the sub-prime loan business!

Forcing banks to meet these new government sub-prime loan goals resulted in the total destruction of the banking industry as we knew it prior to the “housing bubble bust”. There are NO locally owned and operated banks where I live now. Everyone who bought stock in their locally owned and operated banks lost everything they had invested in that stock. Not to mention the thousands of people who worked at these banks who lost their jobs, many worked at these banks their entire adult lives. And to make matters worse our locally owned and operated banks were replaced with banks owned and operated by giant bank holding corporations that continually merge and/or buy each other out while continually reducing bank services and locations (and jobs).

President Clinton did not create the housing bubble all by himself. He had literally thousands of Left Leaning Ideologues in all branches of Government and a number of special interest groups, including “criminal” groups like ACORN, helping him every step of the way. But he was the “Captain of the Ship” who initiated the program and made sure it was carried out.

One last bit if irony, to my knowledge no one involved in this vast ideological conspiracy at any level has been charged with a crime or even sued for anything related to their involvement in this process. Except for people like the Officers and members of the Board of Directors of my locally owned and operated bank who were sued by the FDIC for “making bad business decisions involving questionable loans”!

We have one last chance to save our Republic, at least what is left of it in November. Choose wisely!

The U.S. GDP Versus National Debt Crisis

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period. National Debt is the total dollar amount that a Government has in outstanding debt. This article is a comparison of the 2015 U.S GDP to the U.S. national debt on December 31, 2015 and how that affects the U.S. economy.

The United States 2015 year end National Debt as a percent of the U.S.2015 GDP was 104.17 percent (total GDP divided by total National Debt). Another important GDP percent is the annual GDP growth rate. Why is the National Debt, as a percent of annual GDP, and the annual GDP growth rate important? Because they are undeniable indicators of how healthy the U.S. economy is now, will be in the immediate future, over the next few years, and to some degree, long term.

How are these two percentage numbers “undeniable economic indicators”?

First, if national Debt as a percent of GDP is over 100 percent it means that if the U.S. Government took ALL of the goods and services produced in the previous year and converted them to U.S. dollars the amount of money generated would NOT pay off our national debt!

Second, a 3 per cent annual GDP growth rate is considered by most economists as the minimum annual growth rate necessary to meet the minimum needs of the expanding U.S. population.

Both of these economic measurements indicate the U.S. economy will be even weaker on December 31, 2016. The projected National Debt will be over $20,000,000,000,000 (yes that is the correct number of “0’s) by December 31, 2016 and the Obama Administration has presided over an economy where the monthly GDP growth rate has not exceeded 3 percent a single month during his time in office and has actually been less than that during many of his months in office. The GDP growth during the 1st Quarter of 2016 was only 0.05 percent, which is extremely weak by any measurement.

It is even more concerning when you consider that our Government managed to accumulate this much debt, and continues to add to it while the national Interest rates have been at historical lows for years. Imagine what our National Debt annual growth rate will be when interest rates increase?

An interesting side note to this situation is that at one point during his presidency President Obama and key members of his staff were bragging to the media that, “we are reducing the deficit at the fastest rate since the end of WWII”, and no one called them out on it!

How did we get here? It is simple, our U.S. Government continues to spend more money than it generates year after year after year. This is in spite of the fact that it is the only Government entity in America that has the legal authority to endlessly print its own money and borrow money with no limits by issuing and selling U.S. Treasury Bills, Notes and Bonds.

What is even more frightening is that the growth in our National Debt has happened on a continuing basis (as noted above) with national interest rates at historical lows for years and our National Defense budgets being slashed every year for the last few years.

Here is a small sample of the  slashed National Defense budgets:

The U.S. Army has been reduced to about the size it was in 1940. In addition to the huge “Reduction in Force” orders, the lack of adequate funding has also created a situation where two thirds of our active duty military are not prepared or equipped to be deployed.

Our Marine aviation unit’s budgets have been cut so deeply that the pilots in a squadron that is scheduled to be deployed have only been able to log one hour a month of training time when the minimum requirement is 10 hours. The maintenance personnel in this unit have been working 18 hours a day to try and keep their aircraft flying. They are working schedules like this because they must cannibalize some aircraft to keep others flying.

A B1 bomber squadron with 20 planes only has 9 that can fly.. They do not have the parts to repair the other planes. Some of the planes have over 10,000 hours in the air

An F16 squadron that just returned to the states has been scavenging parts from planes displayed in museums in an effort to try and keep their planes flying.

42 years ago the U.S. Navy had 70 Admirals and over 7,000 ships. Today it has more Admirals than ships. This ridiculous “top heavy” situation exist in every branch of our national defense system. The “Reduction in Force” orders that have been issued and carried out generally applied to the career line officers and NCOs who were the back bone of our military, not the top brass.

What if we suddenly experience a national emergency? (Sound familiar? Bill Clinton and 9/11).

While they were continually slashing National Defense spending the Obama Administration, with the help of the Ideologues on the “Left”: and the rino Republicans in Congress was constantly increasing government spending in virtually all other government departments. Here is a small sample of areas where Government spending has steadily increased:

The U.S. Government work force has steadily increased with many of the new employees not being qualified for the jobs they were hired to do. Some even had “Do Not Rehire” stamped on their personnel files! This situation is aggravated by the fact that the productivity rate of most U.S. government employees is much lower than the productivity rate of employees in non- government jobs. Why should you make an effort to do your job well when it makes no difference on your performance evaluations or annual salary or wage increases, and you CANNOT be fired?  Look at the V.A. as an example.

There are significantly more Czars in the Obama Administration than in any previous administration. Plus they all have staffs and annual operating budgets. In most cases the President can appoint Czars without Congressional approval.

The Obama Administration has significantly more staff members who earn the maximum salary of $175,000 per year than previous administrations. In addition the administration has a significant number of staff members who earn around $171,000 per year. The staff members who earn less than $175,000 per year do not have to be accounted for on the annual list of staff members who earn the maximum allowable annual salary.

The annual budgets for food stamps, free cell phones, and many other “Government Assistance” programs have increased significantly during the Obama Administration.

Bottom line is that our government is operating like a family that continuously over spends on its credit cards while buying a house and new car that it cannot afford to make the monthly payments on!

Regarding people buying a house that they cannot afford to make the monthly payments on, that is the subject of a future article on massive Government corruption and how it destroyed our economy.

We have one chance to save our “Republic”, at least what is left of it in November. Get informed and CHOOSE wisely!

Information for this article was compiled from a variety of internet articles, books, and broadcast and cable news reports.

The information in this link seemed to sum up my observations perfectly: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/12/congressman-pens-deeply-disturbing-confessions-in-scandalous-tell-all.html

 

 

Term Limits and Special Interest

Sent to me by a friend who found it on the internet, origin unknown but appropriate:

“All politicians should be limited to two terms…..

One in office and one in prison.

Works in Chicago”.

Based on everything I have read and been told over the years the Founding Fathers saw elected office as a patriotic public service especially on a national level. In fact they were concerned about elected officials becoming professional politicians. This is evidenced by Benjamin Franklin’s reply to a woman who asked him a question as he exited Independence Hall with the announcement that they had agreed on a final proposed Constitution for our new country. She asked, “What have you given us Sir, a Republic or a Monarchy?” Without hesitation he replied, “A Republic Madam, if you can keep it”. To me this confirms that the Founding Fathers feared the concept of a national government run by career politicians. Every time I read anything about or think about our Founding Fathers I am amazed at how brilliant and far sighted these men were. The fact that such a diverse group of men agreed on a document this significant and Benjamin Franklin’s reply to the question is the evidence. As I wrote this article a comment by Jaun Williams in his recent book, “We the People” really resonated with me. It was a reference to our Founding Fathers and what their reaction would be if they could walk the streets of America today.

Every day I am literally stunned when I see the American flag trampled on (here in America!), hear people shout down free speech at our colleges and universities, or hear people publicly say things like what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said about our Constitution. In a televised interview she advised the people trying to form a new Egyptian government that they “should not use the US Constitution as a model for their new constitution”.  This is a life time member of the Supreme Court of the United States of America publically saying that our Constitution is “bad”! How did we get to this place in America?

I think the answer to my question above is simple. It is that too often money and power bring corruption. All you have to do is turn on the news, look at a newspaper or open up your internet browser to see endless examples of corruption and mismanagement of public funds on every level, local, state and national. In my local paper I periodically see reports of local officials or their staff members committing fraud or outright theft. At the state level it is even worse and on the national level it dominates the news way too often. Unfortunately this is becoming the new “norm” where the only thing that matters to the ideologues on the “Left” and the rino Republicans is what is in their personal best interest. To these people what is morally and ethically right, is in violation of applicable regulations, and in some cases outright illegal does not matter. Here are a few examples:

Obama’s public denigrating objections to the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision. This from a man who publically committed to accepting matching funds (with its restrictive fund raising regulations) for his first presidential campaign but then ignored the commitment and  went on to break all campaign fund raising records with no concern for any related ethical or legal regulations regarding campaign fund raising. This included his campaign headquarters refusing to use approved software which would eliminate illegal donations from the same donor or possible foreign donors and the CEO of Goggle staffing, paying for and managing a team of high end technicians to “mine” data and maximize campaign donations and election efforts. Loud public objections to the “Citizens United” decision have now been adopted by every ideologue on the “Left” including Hillary. It seems massive infusions of cash from any source are only OK when it is to their benefit!

A commissioner with the Federal Elections Commission recently ruled that Harry Reid could keep all the money left in his reelection campaign fund and use it to fund a “transition office”. It seems that “loose” regulation of unspent campaign funds is common by the FEC, especially under this administration.

The Bernie Sanders family and “other people’s money”. In the past Berne’s wife and daughter were paid annual salaries out of his senate reelection funds with questionable job titles and duties. Bernie’s wife was also involved in questionable financial transactions involving millions of dollars when she was president of Vermont College.

Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen have been indicted for accepting inappropriate gifts from a wealthy donor. The charges indicate these gifts appeared to be in exchange for special favors from the Governor that benefited the donor’s business ventures in the state.

Obviously this list of examples could be endless with people from all political parties or no real political affiliation, but I think these examples illustrate how broken our political system is today.

What can you do about it? Short term, get informed and get involved. We have ONE chance left in November to keep our Republic, at least what is left of it today. Vote and CHOOSE wisely.

Long term you should support efforts to make significant necessary changes like term limits. Here is a group working to do that, www.termlimits.org. Go there and click on the “Article V” tab.

 

References:

Various internet news reports articles, and broadcast and cable news reports.

‘Citizens United ‘ is a U.S. Constitutional Law case dealing with the regulation of campaign spending by organizations. The U.S, Supreme Court  held (5–4) that the First Amendment  prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. The principles articulated by the Supreme Court in the case have also been extended to for-profit corporations, labor unions and other associations.

Newsmax article: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Bernie-Sanders-Accused-Campaign-Money-

http://nypost.com/2016/05/13/were-running-a-f-ing-casino-politician-tells-all-in-manifesto/

Turmoil in America’s Two Party Political System

Almost every news outlet including print, internet, broadcast and cable say that the current Presidential primaries are not like any other primaries in the history of America. Everything that has happened in the primaries in the last few days confirms that conclusion and compelled me to update, expand, rewrite and repost one of my previous posts, “Turmoil”.

For the first time, at least in modern history “big money” donors and the main stream media are NOT determining who the final Presidential candidates will be. In fact their attempts to influence the primary elections are driving increasing numbers of voters to support the unconventional candidates. Some of these voters are becoming fanatical in their support of these candidates.

Some of the historically unprecedented primary results so far are:

Seventeen qualified Republican candidates officially entered the race.

The one remaining candidate in the Republican primary is one of the seventeen original candidates who spent the least money during his campaign.

Jeb Bush and his supporting PACs spent over $130,000,000 but he was one of the first of the seventeen Republican candidates who was forced to drop out of the race due to ridiculously low and steadily declining poll numbers.

A 74 year old lifelong declared Socialist with little to no actual work experience that qualifies him to be President of the United States of America (sound familiar?) is still in the Democratic primary and will be all the way to the Democratic convention. He has accomplished this without any super PACs supporting him or doing any major fund raising events.

Without super PACs, big dollar donors, or major fund raisers Bernie Sanders has raised more money than Hillary in a number of recent months and spent dramatically less money than her on his campaign.

Hillary is supported by big dollar PACS and donors and has been doing big dollar fund raisers on a regular basis. Consequently there is substantially more money being spent on her campaign than there is on Bernie Sander’s campaign but she is still losing to him in key states including Indiana on May 3.

The Democratic National Committee clearly chose to “anoint” Hillary as their nominee and believed she would cruise to an easy victory in November. It is now obvious that they were completely unaware of the ”anger” in America today and are still trying to ignore it. The Republican Party leadership’s failure to be aware of this “anger” was even more consequential than the Democrats. But unlike the Democrats, the Republicans are now grudgingly acknowledging the “anger” and trying to figure out how to deal with it, win the election and save their party.

When you take a closer look at what is happening in the primaries for both parties it is clear that neither one can expect to have a “happy” convention or a candidate who has an “open road” to the general election. Even with Trump being confirmed as the Republican nominee on the first ballot at the Republican convention, I still think it is not going to be a “happy” convention. There are just too many “never Trump” Republicans.

The FBI investigations into Hillary’s use of an unapproved private server to conduct State Department business and the Clinton Foundation’s operations during her term as Secretary of State are both moving forward rapidly. Regardless of what happens with these investigations they could create a situation where Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee at their convention or someone else steps up to run for President on the Democratic ticket or as a third or fourth party candidate.

Recently the investigation into Hillary’s private server appears to have moved forward dramatically. Marcel Lazar, a Romanian  hacker has been extradited to the US for hacking into President Bush (43) and other people’s e-mail and Facebook accounts. He is also being investigated for hacking into Hillary’s private server (which he has admitted to doing). In a jail house phone interview with Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge he discussed how easy it was to get into her server and that while he was inside it he could see that a number of other hackers were, or had been in the server. Internet security experts who are knowledgeable about the investigation were also interviewed as part of Catherine’s report. They stressed that Lazar’s claims have not been confirmed yet but could be true. They also said that if his claims are not true it was probable that a number of hackers did gain access to the server due to its lack of available and required security systems.

It has also been widely reported that the FBI and Judicial Watch (a non- profit Government watch dog group) are, or will be interviewing Hillary and her former State Department staff regarding her use of the  private server while serving as Secretary of State (Judicial Watch based on a recent Federal judge’s order). Even if President Obama prevents the Department of Justice from pursing criminal charges against her or any of her staff members Judicial Watch will not let the investigation be buried if criminal action is confirmed.

Another interesting thing that has been reported regarding the status of the investigations into Hillary’s private server is that her former staff members are all being represented by the same lawyer. This is an unusual arrangement and implies to me that Hillary is paying their legal fees and is trying to control what they say and prevent any of them from “rolling over” on her and/or the other staff members. Whenever Hillary and her staff are interviewed it will be under oath and the interviews will be recorded. If Hillary or any of her staff answer the same questions differently Hillary’s entire defense will collapse.

Many Bernie Sanders supporters still say they will not vote for anyone else, including Hillary.

Some Bernie Sanders supporters still say they will vote for Trump if Bernie is not the nominee.

Many Trump supporters still say they will not vote for anyone else.

Some Trump supporters still say they will vote for Hillary if Trump is not the nominee.

Many anti-Trump Republicans still say they will not vote for any presidential candidate if Trump is the party nominee or will vote for a write in candidate.

There are increasing numbers of groups and individuals who are making public threats of violence if Trump is a Presidential candidate in the general election. There are also increasing numbers of groups and individuals who are threatening violence if Trump is not a candidate.

Many people say they have never voted before but are registering and voting in the primaries for this Presidential election. They are voting solely as anti-establishment voters. Most of them will only vote for their choice for President which means that they will not vote for anyone else running for any national or state office, especially incumbents.

With all this turmoil we could have a huge voter turnout or a really low voter turnout in the general election in November with the votes split among more than two Presidential candidates. If Trump is the Republican nominee and there is not a viable third party candidate in the race immediately after the Republican convention a group of anti-Trump Republicans is planning to run a candidate in key states. With a viable third party candidate running in the general election it is probable that no Presidential candidate will win a majority of the votes. If a candidate does not win a majority of the votes the US House of Representatives will elect the President and the US Senate will elect the Vice President based on the Twelfth Amendment (ratified June 15, 1804).

The US House of Representatives would choose the President with each state having only one vote (the representatives do not get an individual vote). The House will consider only the three candidates who got the most votes in the general election.

The US Senate would choose the Vice President with each Senator casting a single vote for one of the two candidates who got the most votes.

Another interesting side effect of the “turmoil” surrounding the Presidential candidates is how it could affect the other people running for office on national, state, and local levels in the general election in November and ultimately the Supreme Court. This election has the potential to completely change the political structure of our country for generations.

Over the last few years I have been constantly reminded of what Benjamin Franklin said to the woman who asked him a question as he exited Independence Hall after it was announced that the Founding Fathers had reached an agreement on a proposed Constitution for our new country. She asked, ”Well Doctor what have you given us, a Republic or a Monarchy?”  With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A Republic Madam, if you can keep it.”

Get informed, get involved, and choose WISELY in November. I firmly believe this is our last chance to avoid the “total transformation of America” President Obama promised in his 2008 election campaign.

 

References:

Information in this article was compiled based on a number of internet articles, internet news reports and broadcast and cable news reports.

The book “Injustice” by J Christian Adams.

The information posted above regarding the House and Senate electing the President and Vice President was summarized using information from a much more detailed writing. You can use the link below to see the original writing.

http://electoralcollegehistory.com/electoral/crs-congress.asp

 

 

Illegal Immigration

This quote is inscribed on a plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

We are a nation of immigrants. In the past we welcomed them. They assimilated into our society and became a part of the greatest nation on earth. There are three key words here, ”immigrants”, “welcomed”,  and “assimilated”. These words do not seem to be used in Immigration discussions today?

Immigration has become such a controversial subject now that when we hear the word “immigration” we immediately think about “illegal immigration”. The situation has become so politically driven that it literally seems like we as a nation cannot solve any of the problems associated with legal or illegal immigration. The ideologues on the Left  (with help from rino Republicans) are determined to use legal and illegal immigration to further their own “self-interest” regardless of the long term damage to America and the millions of lives that are negatively impacted every day by their actions.

Illegal immigration into the US happens two ways. One is legal immigrants who become illegal when they overstay their visa or do not use their visa for the purpose it was issued. One example is people who come here on a student visa but take jobs from Americans, usually at lower wages than would be paid to an American. In fact legal immigration has become so corrupt and mismanaged that some experts on the subject believe that the majority of the illegal immigrants in America originally came here legally. I detailed and documented this in my recent post, “Legal (?) Immigration”.

How our Government tries to manage Immigrants who cross our borders without our approval has also become so politically driven that it is totally corrupt and mismanaged. When you add these illegal immigrants to the legal immigrants who become illegal each year the actual number of illegal immigrants living and working here is probably closer to 20,000,000 than the 11,000,000 the Obama administration claims are here. And the number gets bigger each year due to increases in visa programs.

Under the Obama administration we now have:

“Catch and release” policies where people who are caught trying to cross the border are simply turned back. Does anyone actually believe these people will not keep trying until they make it across and stay? Another is people who are apprehended and released with an order to appear before a judge for a deportation hearing, without checking to see if they have a criminal record here in America!  Does anyone actually believe these people will show up for a hearing to be deported? Even if they did the deportation courts are so backlogged that it will take years to clear the cases already on the books.

Young illegals who are encouraged to come here by the 10,000’s of thousands. When they get here they are housed, get medical attention and then are released to the custody of relatives, who are probably here illegally. When any of these “young illegals” show up at a public school that school is required by law to take them and attempt to educate them without asking any questions, even if they do not speak any English. If you look closely at the news footage of these  ”young illegals”  you will see that many are teen aged boys (young men). Some reports say there is a high incidence of these young men being members of Hispanic gangs or drug cartels.

Sanctuary cities, which is something that I find hard to believe has become so prevalent in America! These are cities that openly refuse to follow federal and state laws regarding illegal immigrants, even those with long, violent criminal records here in the US. Not only do these cities do this, they flaunt it because they know the Obama Administration will not do anything about it. Additionally President Obama has publicly stated that he will veto any legislation by Congress that attempts to address this issue. This is not just happening in declared sanctuary cites. I was eating breakfast at a fast food restaurant one Saturday morning with two Sheriff Department deputies in the booth next to me. One of the deputies was a sergeant and shift supervisor. The sergeant got a call on his radio from another deputy who had made a traffic stop in the north end of the county. There were five young illegals in the car, some with no ID, no one with a driver’s license, some under 16 years old. Ultimately the sergeant told the deputy (loudly and profanely) to tell them to turn around and never try to come back to this county again. I could not resist asking him about how he handled the situation. He calmly explained that some prominent Hispanic people in the county met with the (elected) sheriff and informed him that they would file harassment charges against him if his department prosecuted people whose only crime was being here illegally. In this case they also ignored the fact that the driver was guilty of driving without a driver’s license and most likely without a valid car registration or insurance.

Regarding my reference to illegals that have a violent criminal record being released, this happens on a regular basis, sometimes with horrible results. Here are two well documented cases:

Kate Steinle was killed in a random act of violence while standing on a pier overlooking the San Francisco bay with her father. Her father held her while she died begging him to help her. She was pregnant with her first child. Her murderer was Francisco Lopez Sanchez. He had been deported five times and had numerous drug convictions. He had recently been released from Federal prison to Customs Enforcement who then turned him over to the San Francisco County Sheriff Department. Instead of holding him for deportation the Sheriff Department released him. He randomly gunned Kate down with a stolen gun while high on drugs.

Edwin Ramos was an illegal from El Salvador and member of the violent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang. He had a long criminal record (including felony weapons charges). In June 2008 in what can only be described as an act of unprovoked violence he murdered Tony Bologna and his two sons while they were sitting in their car at a traffic light in San Francisco.

While most of us feel compassion for the illegals who are only seeking a better life for themselves and their families, we as a country simply cannot afford to allow the current situation to continue. The illegals add to our already overloaded social safety net programs, dramatically add to the cost of operating our public school systems and hospital emergency rooms and take jobs from those in America who need them the most.Take a look at the unemployment rate in America for young men and men over 50 of all races who do not have a good education or job skills, especially young black men.

Bottom line is that our Government does not know how many people are here illegally, where they are, or what they are doing and is not doing anything to attempt to solve these problems. In fact the “Left” has done everything possible to make the situation worse so they can continue to profit from it politically. President Bush (43) and his staff worked with Congress to put together an immigration reform bill in 2007. There were compromises from all sides but the administration had enough committed votes from both parties to assure passage in both houses of Congress. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi deliberately killed the bill to keep it from passing so they could continue to use immigration as a wedge issue with voters.

And then there are the “REFUGEES”! That will be the subject of another future post.

We have ONE LAST chance to save America in November! Get involved and choose wisely.

 

Information for this writing was compiled from a variety of internet news articles, cable news reports and published  books including, “Sold Out” subtitled, “How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasils Are Screwing America’s Best and Brightest Workers” by Michelle Malkin and John Miano , “CON JOB” subtitled “How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering  And Racial Division by Crystal Wright (conservativeblackchick.com), and,  !ADIOS AMERICA! .subtitled, “The Left’s Plan To Turn Our Country Into A Third World Hell Hole” by Ann Coulter.

 

What is the Actual Unemployment Rate in America?

There is an old saying that has been attributed to Mark Twain, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”. There are other versions of this phrase attributed to Mark or someone else. One is, “Figures do not lie but liars do figure”. This phrase has been defined as describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments or cast doubt on an opponent’s arguments. I begin this writing with this information because there is no end to the data available regarding the unemployment rate, under employment rate, and the number of people in the work force in America. There is also no end to how these numbers can be “spun” for political purposes.

One indicator that the unemployment rate is well above 5 percent is the Labor Participation Rate. This data is the per cent of people in the population who are considered to be part of the work force and are actually working. Like most data and terms used by various government departments and special interest groups the exact definition of this term and how it is calculated varies. Regardless of how you calculate the per cent of people in the work force who are working  the results indicate that on December 31, 2015 it was the lowest per cent it has been since the 1960’s. According to this data there are millions of people in America who still want to work but are not counted as being part of the work force now.

Another part of our work force that must be considered when you calculate the unemployment rate is the people who are underemployed. These are people who lost their jobs and had to take work that they are over qualified for or take part time work. I do not see how you can try and calculate the actual unemployment rate without considering these people. I am sure the vast majority of them are looking for full time work that they are qualified to do. Estimates as to how many of these people there are vary. One report I saw recently indicated it was 6.5 million.

Other data that must be considered when attempting to determine the size of the work force in America is the mortality rate. The number of people who die in America each year is a matter of record. But how many of them were still considered to be part of the work force when they died? Obviously this can be another “fuzzy” number.

What age people are considered to be out of the work force will also dramatically affect the calculated unemployment rate. Is it age 62, 65, or “and up”. I prefer the “and up” method because people in America are living longer and are more healthy and active in their later years than they were in the past. Some may change to a job with less stress or physical demands but they are still working much later in life.

Some people like to calculate the number of people in the work force in America to indicate that approximately 92,000,000 people are out of work. They count everyone in the population that is 16 years old “and up” as being part of the work force. They do not take people out of the calculation that are not in the work force by choice. Students, retired people, disabled people, or people who are taking time off work for personal or other reasons are counted as being in the workforce. If you take all these people out to make it a more reasonable calculation the unemployment number is still well above 5 percent.

Immigration also adds to our unemployment numbers. The US government issues over 1,000,000 visas every year but does not make any effort  to see that the people leave when their visa expires or verify that they are doing what they were admitted to the US to do. My recent post “Legal (?) Immigration” covers this topic in detail.

As you can see it is easy to spin these numbers any way you want depending on your political agenda. I became interested in the numbers when I noticed that the Obama Administration appeared to be manipulating them to suit their agenda midway through his first term. The more I looked into it the more questions I had regarding how it was calculated by our Government.

As I have explained above there are just too many variables and estimated numbers for me to calculate an unemployment number that I am confident saying is the actual number. However, after all my research I am absolutely convinced that it is higher than 5 per cent. I am also certain that we cannot trust the Obama Administration to do anything about a problem that it insists it has already solved!

This chart, “Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization” Is an example of how he numbers are reported differently. It indicates that the unemployment rate in January of this year was 9.9 per cent while the Obama Administration was loudly saying they had lowered the unemployment rate to 4.9 per cent.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

We have ONE LAST chance to turn America around in November. Choose wisely!

 

Its The Economy Stupid

It’s the Economy Stupid

Some of you may remember the phrase “it’s the economy stupid”. It was coined by James Carville as a campaign theme in Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential campaign. As I was researching and writing this article it just seemed right to use it as the title since it seems even more appropriate today.

When you ask people in America what is most important to them they will almost always say the economy, security, and immigration are the things they are most concerned about, with the economy being by far the number one concern. I firmly believe that if you do not have a strong economy nothing else matters .It takes money to fund a strong national defense; to enforce a reasonable immigration policy, and to do anything else our Government tries to do. I used the term “tries to do” because Government does almost everything badly and spends more money doing it than any private enterprise would spend to do the same thing. Consequently as Government grows it spends more which adds to the downward pressure on our economy.

Here are some of the economic issues in America today:

The actual unemployment rate is not 5 per cent! I was “annoyed” when the Obama administration took a victory lap earlier this year when the monthly net new jobs report indicated that 151,000 jobs had been created the previous month and the unemployment rate was lowered to 4.9 per cent. I and a number of other people believe that it is probably around 10 per cent and that does not include all the people who are “under employed”. There is a lot of data available on this topic, including a number of US Government websites that indicate the unemployment rate is being manipulated to support the Obama Administration’s agenda. I will post a complete article on this topic in the future.

Our national debt is now more than $19,000,000,000,000 (yes, that is the correct number of “0”s). It will be more than $20,000,000,000,000 before the end of this year! At one point while we were getting to this unimaginable level of debt the Obama administration was taking a victory lap and saying, “we are reducing the deficit at the fastest rate since the end of WWII”, and I did not see anyone in the media call the administration out on that? I will post about this in more detail in a future article.

NO actual wage growth for years. In fact some reports indicate that median household annual income has fallen by $5,000 since 2007.

Here are some real life examples of what has been, and continues to happen around me (note, I live in an urban middle class area):

There are still a lot of abandoned homes and business locations sitting vacant.

People of all ages and races are walking on the side of the road and it is obvious that they are walking because they do not have any other means of getting where they need to go.

Panhandlers of all ages and races in places I have never seen panhandlers before.

Shelters, soup kitchens and food banks still have a high demand for their services.

Some restaurants and fast food locations tell me that they have people come in every day, say they are hungry and ask for free food.

Companies are outsourcing and cutting jobs at an accelerating rate. One recent example is a national company that outsourced, dramatically cut jobs and liquidated facilities in August 2015.

Cars left sitting along the highways and freeways because they are out of gas, have flat tires or they have mechanical failures. This is still happening in spite of the huge drop in gas prices, which means the money they are saving on gas has not raised their standard of living.

Increases in monthly housing rental cost. There are so many people who cannot qualify for or afford home ownership now that rental property owners are able to continually raise their rental rates.

Increased food prices while the size of the containers is decreasing (what was a half a gallon in the past is now 59 ounces).

What can we do to make things better? First, stop and take a good look at what is happening around you and listen to what people around you are saying. I do not believe you can do this and really believe the “Left’s” insistence that life has gotten better under the Obama administration. Not only have they not made life better, they are not telling you the truth about what is really happening.

Second, try to engage people in rational, fact based conversations about what you think needs to be done to make things better. People who have an ideological mindset are not usually open to discussion so do not waste your time trying to have a conversation with them. There are other people that can be positively influenced so do your homework on issues and share your knowledge with them.

We have one last chance to turn America around in November. Electing a Socialist or Progressive Democrat as the President will not solve our problems!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ideology and Extremism in American Politics Today

Thanks to mass media and the 24 hour news cycle we can now be virtually consumed by “information”. So much that many people simply turn it off or selectively filter it. If you step back and consider all this “information” from a somewhat analytical point of view, you will see that it will appear to be one of the following categories:

1. Actual news

2. What is in the best interest of the people of America

3. Ideological.

In recent years it has become increasingly obvious to me that too often the “information” does not fit into the category in which it was presented. More often than not it will actually be what is in the best interest of the presenter. It has also become obvious to me that many of the “ideologues” in America have morphed into “extremist”, causing tremendous anger and turmoil in America.

If you look at American history you will see that our political system has never been as heavily influenced by ideology as it is today and certainly not by extreme ideology! However this is something that has happened throughout history on a regular basis in other parts of the world. Some of the common names used were Collectives, Cooperatives, Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and Communism. In reality it makes very little difference what you call it. The core ideology is the same under each, NO private ownership of property is allowed. The only exception to this core ideology was when some Cooperatives allowed very limited and highly regulated group ownership of some property.

When I was in high school some teachers lectured that history has proven Communism always moves toward Capitalism and that Capitalism always moves toward Communism. It was an even more popular theory with some of my college professors. And now research for this writing has confirmed that history has proven this to be factual. History also shows that every time a society moved from one form of Government to another the process varied dramatically as to how long it took and how violent it was. The motivations for the people leading the change also varied but they were always extreme ideologues and produced the same results over time.

In recent months it has become clear to me that America is on the verge of being pushed into the final stages of the Capitalism to Communism category. Some of the “politically elite” in America, with the support of media, have been working  a long time to accomplish this and they are prepared to use the elections in November to take us there. Unfortunately it looks like the odds are in their favor, especially if people do not stop and really look at what is happening and what they can do about it!

The current two party political system in America and the Constitutionally mandated Electoral College process for ultimately electing the President and Vice President are certainly not perfect, BUT LOOK AT THE ALTERNATIVE!

References:

“Heaven on Earth, The rise and Fall of Socialism” by Joshua Muravchik

From the internet:

Ideology – a collection of doctrines of beliefs shared by members of a group or visionary theorizing

Extreme –very great in degree

Extremism –advocacy of extreme measures or views

The difference between Socialism and Communism from a lifelong, blue collar Democrat:

He said, “I really wanted to vote Democrat in this election but I cannot vote for Hillary under any circumstance and I certainly cannot vote for a Socialist. I have been trying to explain to people that the only difference between Socialism and Communism is the spelling”. Pretty simple but based on my research it seems just about right.

 

 

 

 

 

Turmoil – Updated (5/4)

Turmoil

The Democratic National Committee clearly chose to “anoint” Hillary as their nominee and believed she would cruise to an easy victory in November. It is now obvious that they were completely unaware of the ”anger” in America today (the Republican party leadership made the same mistake). See my post, “The Quiet Revolution”

When you take a closer look at what is happening in the primaries for both parties it is clear that neither one can expect to have a “:happy” convention or a candidate who has  an “open road” to the general election. Even with Trump appearing to be the Republican nominee on the first ballot (as of 5/03), I still think it is not going to be a “happy” convention.  There are just too many “never Trump” people.

Bernie Sanders will stay in the race until the convention and may actually keep Hillary from earning the nomination before the convention. He won all three of the recent primaries (by almost 80 percent in one).  On Tuesday, April 5 he also won Wisconsin. He is raising substantially more money than Hillary without doing any fundraisers or taking Super Pac money and has a much lower “burn rate” (he is spending less money than she is). This means that he will have more to spend on advertising as we get closer to the convention and she will have to spend more time fund raising.

Update – Sanders has now won the last six Democrat primaries or caucuses and has raised more money than Hilary three months in a row.

Update April 11 – Sanders wins Wyoming making it seven in a row.

Update May , 5 – Saunders wins Indiana by a comfortable margin.

The FBI investigations into Hillary’s use of an unapproved private server to conduct State Department business and the Clinton Foundation’s operations during her term as Secretary of State are both moving forward rapidly. Regardless of what happens with these investigations they could create a situation where someone else steps up to run for President on the Democratic ticket or as a third or fourth party candidate.

Many Bernie Sanders supporters say they will not vote for anyone else, including Hillary.

Some Bernie Sanders supporters say they will vote for Trump if Bernie is not the nominee.

Update 5/03 – Cruz unexpectedly drops out of the race virtually assuring that Trump will be the Republican nominee.

Many Trump supporters say they will not vote for anyone else.

Some Trump supporters say they will vote for Hillary if Trump is not the nominee.

Many anti-Trump Republicans say they will not vote for any presidential candidate if Trump is the party nominee or will vote for a write in candidate.

Many people say they have never voted before but are registering and voting in the primaries for this Presidential election. They are voting solely as anti-establishment voters. Most of them will only vote for their choice for President which means that they will not vote for anyone else running for any national or state office, especially incumbents.

Some groups and individuals have made public threats of violence if Trump is a formal Presidential candidate while others are threatening violence if he is not!

With all this turmoil we could have a huge voter turnout or a really low voter turnout in the general election in November with the votes split among more than two Presidential candidates. If Trump is the Republican nominee and there is not a viable third party candidate in the race immediately after the conventions a group of anti-Trump Republicans is planning to run a candidate in key states. With a viable third party candidate running in the general election it is probable that no Presidential candidate will win a majority of the votes. If a candidate does not win a majority of the votes the US House of Representatives will elect the President and the US Senate will elect the Vice President based on the Twelfth Amendment (ratified June 15, 1804).

The US House of Representatives would choose the President with each state having only one vote (the representatives do not get an individual vote). The House will consider only the three candidates who got the most votes in the general election.

The US Senate would choose the Vice President with each Senator casting a single vote for one of the two candidates who got the most votes.

The information posted above regarding the House and Senate electing the President and Vice President was summarized using information from a much more detailed writing. You can use the link below to see the original writing.

http://electoralcollegehistory.com/electoral/crs-congress.asp

Another interesting side effect of the “turmoil” surrounding the Presidential candidates and the general election in November is how it could affect the other people running for office on national, state, and local levels and, ultimately the Supreme Court. This election has the potential to completely change the political structure of our country for generations.

Get informed, get involved, and choose WISELY in November.