Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
The New York Times calls Zika a "vicious and unpredictable virus."
Frankly, we know very little about it, and a new radiological study indicates that children inflicted with Zika may face additional brain and body abnormalities as they grow.
While many in the media have declared the presidential election all but over, damning accusations of pay to play at the Clinton Foundation and reports that the FBI found 15,000 work-related documents that Hillary Clinton failed to turn over represent the political land mines that still lie between her and the presidency. Multiple ongoing Freedom of Information Act civil suits, perjury allegations, an IRS probe and alleged joint U.S. Attorney-FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation represent the inescapable cloud of corruption that could be the Democratic nominee's undoing.
As the drip, drip, drip of information highlighting the intersection between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department surfaces, the political fallout for Hillary Clinton is unavoidable. The newly exposed emails demonstrate another lie told by the Clinton campaign. Despite her lawyers stating that only 30,000 emails on her server were related to work, the 15,000 puts that number closer to 45,000. But more importantly, it paints a clearer picture of what Hillary Clinton was attempting to hide by setting up private servers in the first place and attempting to wipe them clean.
What is particularly troubling for Clinton is that liberal publications like the Huffington Post and Boston Globe are calling for the Clinton Foundation to shut down. The calls will undoubtedly grow louder as reports continue to expose the overlap between top foreign donors to the foundation and the access it gained them to Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. That access puts into question the impartiality of the decisions Secretary Clinton made while in office and the potential conflicts of interest she would be confronted with as commander in chief. The Wall Street Journal has reported that "At least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation." And according to the Associated Press, 55 percent of Clinton's meetings and calls with people outside of the government were donors to the Clinton Foundation.
More than 40 percent of the Clinton Foundation's top donors are based in foreign countries, prompting the Washington Post to write, "Rarely, if ever, has a potential commander in chief been so closely associated with an organization that has solicited financial support from foreign governments." Many of those foreign governments have a history of human rights abuses. It is estimated the Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from Middle Eastern countries.
Emails recently released by Judicial Watch and reports by Fox News demonstrate the close level of communication between State Department and Clinton Foundation officials. Judicial Watch recently released 725 pages of State Department documents showing coordination between Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Douglas Band, a former longtime aide of President Bill Clinton and employee of the Clinton Foundation, who worked together to grant access to then-Secretary Clinton for high-dollar donors like Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain.
After failing to set up a meeting with the secretary of state through State Department channels, Salman, who contributed $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, went through the Clinton Foundation and successfully set up a meeting 48 hours later...
That's the best summary and analysis of this so far.
But how does the seal know that it's safer on the boat. You could have someone up top with a baseball bat ready to bludgeon the hell out of that little puppy, heh.
That wouldn't be good, of course. But who knows? Maybe the seal's got a good track record of hopping up on boats.
The National Interest's got a series running, mostly by realists (those skeptical of aggressive forward use of U.S. military power, especially of the neoconservative variety).
And it's not just the Ferguson effect. California's on the leading edge of the "de-incarceration" movement, with predicable results.
And remember, Long Beach is home to some of the most notorious gangstas anywhere in the country. Local hoodlums brag about their Long Beach creds. Snoop Dogg came out with "I'm From Long Beach" last year, apparently trying to capitalize on this city's hoodlum image:
After dark, no hooks, no marks, all Gs
Dip through the Funk House and I graduated with all Cs
So dope and I made bread
Never switching that's some real shit
Stayed down from the playground
And I always represent 20 crip...
Police Chief Robert Luna said his department has been concerned about the crime rate since it began rebounding from historic lows in recent years.
In 2014, the number of violent crimes committed in the city was the lowest in 42 years, but violent crime jumped up almost 20 percent in 2015. That included 36 murders, the highest number in six years.
‘KEEPING US UP AT NIGHT’
“To see numbers like this, I’ve got to be honest with you, was keeping us up at night trying to figure out what was going on,” Luna said.
As crime has increased, so have the number of calls the police department has to respond to, according to the chief.
“We’re working more overtime right now to keep up with the workload,” Luna said.
Overtime is often assigned to a specific location and at specific times to tamp down areas where police see crime trends, Luna said.
The chief also said recent changes in California law have made it harder for officers to do their jobs. For example, Proposition 36 softened California’s three-strikes law. Proposition 47 reclassified a swath of felonies, including many drug crimes, as misdemeanors. And AB 109, a prison downsizing bill known as realignment, put local law enforcement in charge of supervising lower-level parolees.
Luna said he couldn’t directly tie the rise in crime to those changes, but he said he’s “highly suspicious” that offenses started trending upward after they went into effect...
But I don't feel sorry for him. If you're out drunk "carousing" at 4:00am in a Third World Country, bad things can happen. Very bad things. He's lucky things didn't turn out worse.
One thing for sure: He's at the tail end of his swimming career either way, and thus his sponsors are making a rational decision to cut him loose. He might repair his reputation, but I'd be surprised if he returns to his swimming glory days of yore. Never say never, of course. I'll give the guy due props if he makes it to the 2020 Tokyo games.
With over 600 comments on this issue, obviously a lot of people have strong opinions about KC [Kellyanne Conway]. What I am about to say probably has already been said but here goes anyways. I do not believe for an instance that KC’s [Kellyanne Conway's] comment/s were accidental. I don’t think most of you think so either. So the question is whether or not they were intentional for profitable design or nefarious design. The article has landed on the side of nefarious design. That is understandable considering the clients KC [Kellyanne Conway] has represented in the past. I couldn’t stand “wolf in sheep’s clothing” Cruz.
However, I just don’t see this as something of nefarious design...
Yeah, Trump's purported flip on immigration does put Coulter in a bind, but she's consistent, in any case. According to Hot Air, so far she's the only hard-line Trump backer willing to criticize the nominee.
That out of the way, I'm skeptical that we'd be able to pull off mass deportation. I'm skeptical for a variety of reasons. It's not the cost that bothers me (we can afford it), it's the visuals. Not only would mass deportation take on police state optics on an industrial scale, we'd have the radical left sabotaging efforts to the point of domestic terrorism. It could possibly foment civil war. Just look at the Costa Mesa and Sacramento Donald Trump rallies for an idea of the kind of dregs who'd take to the streets. Ask yourself if you're ready to crush a leftist insurgency, because that's what it'd be like. That's how far things have gone in this country.
At rallies and debates over the last year, Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to round up and deport the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally, sometimes saying he would eject them all in two years.
Over the last four days, however, the GOP presidential nominee and his top aides have issued contradictory signals as to whether Trump is backing off that core campaign pledge.
Aides have not said if Trump’s plan is under review because it appears politically unpalatable with moderate Republicans, or because forced deportations of millions of people would be prohibitively expensive and probably logistically impossible.
For now, the campaign has yet to provide specifics on how mass removals would be carried out, who would be targeted, and how much it would cost.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 235,413 people last year, down from a record high of 409,849 in 2012, according to ICE records.
The fall-off followed the Obama administration’s efforts to target individuals who threaten public safety or national security and not deport those with clean records and strong family ties in the U.S.
Independent groups have expressed widespread skepticism that a Trump administration could dramatically ramp up that process without disrupting key sectors of the economy, tearing apart millions of families and violating civil liberties on a mass scale.
In May, a report by the right-leaning think tank American Action Forum estimated that finding, detaining, legally processing and deporting everyone who is in the country illegally would cost up to $300 billion.
To meet Trump’s two-year goal, the report said, Congress would need to appropriate money to hire, train and field about 90,000 immigration apprehension agents — up from 5,000 Enforcement and Removal Operations officers today.
The government also would need to build about 1,250 immigration courts — there now are 57 such courts — and hire thousands more immigration judges and federal attorneys to process the caseload.
The think tank estimates that the lost labor and purchasing power of 11 million people — many of whom work, own businesses and pay taxes — could reduce the nation’s gross domestic product by $1 trillion, equal to about $9,000 per household.
Moreover, finding millions of undocumented migrants almost certainly would entail immigration agents entering homes, raiding businesses and operating roadblocks to check identity papers to separate U.S. citizens and approved immigrants from those in the country illegally, a winnowing-out process that undoubtedly would be challenged in court.
“You will really have to tear up the social fabric to get this done,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, head of the nonprofit think tank...
