Friday, July 31, 2015

Hillary's Emails Damaging Because We Will Never Know

Hillary Clinton's unsecured email server is far more damaging than Jonathan Pollard, John Walker, Aldrich Ames and Edward Snowden combined. (For any of you low information voters who may be reading this, some of these names might not be familiar to you. I invite you to use "the Google".)

The worst part about intelligence leaks is not knowing what was disclosed. Since Hillary illegally destroyed emails that Congress had requested (you try that and see if you don't spend a bit of time in prison), we will never really know what was in those emails and what was possibly compromised. No big surprise that the emails she did provide have a 3 month gap that just so happens to coincide with the Benghazi debacle.

18 minutes of missing tapes brought down Nixon. 10s of thousands of missing emails, and Hillary still may be our next president.

The lack of accountability of our public officials is completely out of hand and will destroy this country. We are spiralling toward 3rd Worldism if we aren't there already and the Left couldn't be more excited.


Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Hillary's Email Claim Simply Not Believable

Hillary Clinton's claims that she had no classified emails on the unsecured  private server that she had set up in her home in New York is either the claim of a complete incompetent or a bold faced lie.

I served as a mid-level officer at a small American embassy for just shy of four years and I dealt with classified emails on a fairly frequent basis. How could the person in charge of the entire State Department not send or receive classified emails? Clinton's claim is simply not credible.

Secrecy is essential to diplomacy. Those you are trying to negotiate with can't know your strategy ahead of time or you have no leverage in the negotiations. If Clinton discussed any State business with anyone, due to her position, at a minimum it would be confidential because it would give away intentions, plans, etc. Further, her emails would have to contain reports from our embassies abroad that would contain the country teams' assessments of the situation in those countries. Sensitive things like the country's stability, impressions of their leadership, vulnerabilities, etc. These are things we need kept private. They are dangerous in the hands of our enemies and those of our friends and allies.
They could also be very embarrassing to all parties because we rely on our diplomats serving overseas to provide frank assessments about the county where they are posted. I'm sure the few friends we have in the world must be furious.

If  Secretary Clinton's claims that she had no classified emails on her server are true then she ran the entire State Department on a strictly unclassified level. She is either lying or she wasn't doing her job. Either way it would explain why she left our international relations around the world in a complete shambles.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Hillary's Awards Case of Participation Trophies

I found this opinion piece on www.addictinginfo.com "Here’s A List Of Hillary Clinton’s Accomplishments, So Quit Saying She Doesn’t Have Any" from



          Former U.S. Senator, and
          Former Secretary of State.

The problem is these are "titles" not accomplishments. He goes on to site these as accomplishments:
  • Even though her major initiative, the Clinton healthcare plan, failed ... it laid the groundwork for what we have today, the Affordable Healthcare Act, something Clinton supports and would continue. - She failed!
  • She played a leading role in the development of State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides the much-needed state support for children whose parents cannot afford nor provide them with adequate healthcare coverage. - Played a leading role, how?
  • She was also instrumental in the creation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the Foster Care Independence Act. - Instrumental, how?
  • Successfully fought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and asthma at the National Institute of Health (NIH). - What role did she play?
  • She spearheaded investigations into mental illness plaguing veterans of the Gulf War; we now have a term for it – Gulf War Syndrome. - Spearheaded investigations? Was she chairperson of a committee?
  • At the Department of Justice, she helped create the office on Violence Against Women. - Helped create in what capacity?
  • She was instrumental in securing over $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center redevelopment. - Again, instrumental, how?
  • Took a leading role in the investigation of health consequences of first responders and drafted the first bill to compensate and offer the health services our first responders deserve (Clinton’s successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, passed the bill).  - Gillibrand's accomplishment not hers.
  • Was instrumental in working out a bi-partisan compromise to address civil liberty abuses for the renewal of the U.S. Patriot Act. - Instrumental in what way?
  •  Proposed a revival of the New Deal-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to help homeowners refinance their mortgages in the wake of the 2008 financial disaster. - Proposed? So?
  • Was a major proponent of sensible diplomacy which brought about a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and brokered human rights with Burma. - A proponent? So? What was her role?
  • Oversaw free trade agreements with our allies such as Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. - Ok, I'm for free trade too but Panama and Columbia are "small potatoes."
  • Was the most traveled Secretary of State to date. - So she has frequent flyer miles. So what?
Here again these are not really anything more than things she participated in. They are vague and lack any concrete indication of how she made a difference. "Fought for", "played a leading role", "Was a major proponent of", "Proposed" etc. are all really weak words of endorsement. The last bullet point is perhaps the most laughable because a lot of good it did. Our international relationships are in a shambles and our standing in the world with allies and enemies alike is at the lowest point it has been in decades.

We shouldn't elect someone whose accomplishments are nothing more than a series of participation trophies. I know that flies with the "everyone gets a trophy crowd' these days but look where that has gotten us.We deserve better and should demand more.

Friday, July 24, 2015

The Real Question about Trump

The real question if Trump gets the Republican nomination and wins the election is not whether or not he will build the wall along the southern border. Trump builds things so when he says he will build the wall, he will. No, the real question is whether the wall will have "TRUMP" written on it in big giant letters!

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

An Idea for Real Healthcare Reform

One of the many flaws of the Affordable Care Act is that it increases demand for healthcare but does nothing to increase the supply of healthcare providers i.e. doctors.

An important metric of the strength of a country's healthcare system is physicians per capita which is usually given as the number of physicians/1,000 of the population. According to the CIA World Factbook and similar references, the U.S. had 2.45 physicians/1,000 population in 2011. The left loves to point to European countries as examples for the United States to emulate. For example, France has a physicians per capita of 3.19, Germany 3.89 and Switzerland 4.05. America's number is even less than Uzbekistan's 2.53. Obviously, physicians/1,000 of the population is only one indicator and doesn't tell the whole story but it is significant. 

An important factor in the shortage of doctors in the U.S. has to be the high cost of medical school. Typically, a new American doctor starts his or her career with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. To help alleviate this problem, I propose the creation of the Civilian Medical Training Corps which would be modelled after the Reserve Officer Training Corps or ROTC.

CMTC would offer promising American students a full scholarship to a civilian medical school in exchange for five years of service in an underserved region of the country or perhaps a VA hospital. After that, the doctor would be free to practice medicine anywhere they chose but would still be required to donate their time one weekend a month and 2 weeks a year just like a military Reservist. An additional benefit would be they would also be available during times of crisis such as natural disasters. The students would be selected through a national competitive exam. So how much would this program cost? A quick check of the numbers follows.

In order to increase the physicians per 1000 to 3 it would require an additional 170,500 doctors. To do this in 10 years means 17,050 doctors per year at a cost of $3.41 billion which is a little less than 4% of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $87.4 billion annual discretionary budget. To raise the physicians per 1000 to 4, the cost would be $9.61 billion or about 10% of the annual discretionary budget. This seems to me to be a worthy use of HHS funds.

Would this proposal significantly improve the healthcare system in America? I guaran-damn-tee you it will have a more positive effect than Obamacare's fiddle farting around with the insurance system!


Monday, July 20, 2015

What Is the Difference Between Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton?

Both Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton have been accused by many women of sexual assault. At last count, I think they are about dead even. So why are the media only interested in Cosby? As a matter of fact, when the media weren't completely ignoring the accusations against Clinton, they were giving airtime to his cronies like James Carville so they could disparage the character of his accusers and call them "trailer trash" and the like. Or allowing Hillary during an interview with Matt Lauer to dismiss the accusations without challenge as the work of a vast right wing conspiracy. So why the difference in treatment?

At one time, Cosby was the darling of the Left. He said the right things. He acted the right way. He stuck to the business of acting and comedy. However, somewhere along the way things changed. Maybe it was the murder of his only son, Ennis. Or maybe it was his advancing years. Regardless, the Cos started stepping off the liberal plantation. He began to criticize the behavior of the young blacks of today. He began to speak out against the use of the Ebonics (Black English), the black drop out rate, single parenthood and consumption of frivolous things at the expense of necessities. Cosby began advocating self-reliance and responsibility. How dare he suggest that not all the problems in the black community are the result of white racism! Cosby had crossed the line and now he has to be discredited; personally and professionally destroyed while, if Democrats have their way, Bill Clinton may well be on his way back to the White House ironically as "The First Gentleman". Equal justice liberal-style.

Apparently, all sins, including violence against women, are forgivable as long as you are a good, liberal, Democrat.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Gun-free Zone: An Idea Whose Time Has Come......To Go

Regardless of how one feels about gun control or the 2nd Amendment, one thing is for certain - and all the evidence bears it out - gun-free zones are a bad idea. The massacre of four Marines at a Chattanooga recruiting station is just the latest result of this bad idea. The pictures in the newspapers from the crime scene of the "gun-free zone" sticker surrounded by bullet holes in the glass tragically and ironically demonstrate the point - criminals don't obey the law. Furthermore, those intent on killing lots of people look for the best opportunity to be successful. They avoid areas where they think there will be a high police presence or there is a high likelihood that they will meet armed resistance. The evidence is crystal clear.

According the Crime Prevention Research Center, 92% of the public mass shooting since 2009 have taken place in gun-free zones. [http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/CPRC-Mass-Shooting-Analysis-Bloomberg2.pdf] James Holmes, the recently convicted, Aurora, Colorado movie theater killer, chose the one cinema out of the seven theaters in his area showing the premiere of the new Batman movie that was a designated "gun-free" zone - not the closest or the biggest - the safest for him and the one where he would not face an armed defender or defenders. The murderers themselves often leave a written record of why they chose the target that they did and usually they specifically site that they seek to attack locations where they aren't going to face another armed person. Elliot Rodgers, the Santa Barbara killer, wrote in his crazy manifesto that he specifically wanted to avoid areas where there would be lots of police because he didn't want to be stopped before he was able to kill a lot of people. (By the way - key safety tip: If you ever hear someone talk about writing a manifesto or you stumble across one on the Internet, alert the authorities - you have identified a freaking nut job!) Sandy Hook, Ft Hood (shootings 1 and 2), the Washington Navy Yard - all gun-free zones.

While not a mass shooting, several years ago, airport rental car companies had to stop putting stickers on their cars because carjackers realized that if you were in a rental a car coming from the airport, you most likely just got off a plane and couldn't be armed. You were an easy target.

The point is criminals and mass murderers look for easy targets. It's time to stop making it easy for them. We should start by not patronizing businesses that are "gun-free" zones. It could save your life! Here is a list of gun-free zone businesses (potential death traps) to avoid:



Or at least write and tell them to stop advertising themselves as nice, soft targets to the bad guys. I'm not saying I want a bunch of armed people in these places. I just don't want crazies to know for sure that there aren't any there.

And for heaven sake, let out trained military men and women carry their side arms on base again! It is what they do.