December, 2018, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: Genital Mutilation Okay, The Clintons Bomb, and Obama's Never Resolved Scandals

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) The Minnesota state legislature is currently working on legislation that would ban the genital mutilation of young girls, a barbaric practice of the Muslim religion. One would think that everyone would want to ban this crude and painful process and that how could anyone support such terror practiced on young girls.

One would think that but one would be wrong, according to a recent Liberty Planet website article:

• Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, says not so fast when it comes to banning female genital mutilation in the state.
• She is opposed to the bill “that is designed to impose harsh penalties to parents who force their girls to have this procedure.”
• She has stated that the bill is too harsh for offenders, i.e. those that commit genital mutilation against young girls, a stand that I personally find repulsive.
• The current proposed legislation would make the act a felony, would allow parents to lose custody of their kids for allowing such a process on their own daughters, and possibly prison terms.
• Only four members of the Minnesota House voted against the bill.

So now Ms. Omar will bring this position to Congress and the national stage. I cannot imagine what the reaction of liberals and Democrats would have been if a Republican or conservative came out and said that the mutilation of young girls is a good thing. And yet, in this country and age of female equality, a member of Congress dares to have this barbaric position. Insanity.

2) While we find most politicians to be useless, self serving, and never knowing when to just go away, the Clintons seem to have taken these traits to a new level. They are currently on a joint, Trump bashing speaking tour around the world, never missing an opportunity to make some big bucks off of their notoriety. But maybe, just maybe their run at doing anything to make a buck is finally coming to an end, according to an article on the Zero Hedge website by Tyler Durden:

• Only 3,300 tickets were sold to hear the Clintons up at the Scotiabank arena in Toronto, an arena that holds almost 20,000 people.
• As you can see, a lot of people showed up to hear them disguised as empty seats:

• This comes out to roughly an 83% vacancy rate.

• Hopefully the rest of the tour goes as badly and these folks will finally just go away, we do not need them going around the country and the world and bad mouthing the current, legally elected and so far, very successful President.

But another aspect that was interesting was the return of Hillary’s coughing fits. As you may recall, there were many times when she coughed so much in public that she could not speak. That trait returned again in Toronto, again causing speculation that she is not a healthy woman. Another reason for her to just go away, a two time, hateful lying politician that is possibly not healthy enough to stand up to the rigors of being President. To see her coughing fit, go to:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ai5aukEcFyUqcdKw65hyYtHVF_0iUS-JHEIZdtAxtnw/edit#

3) While it looks like Hillary Clinton is bombing in the present, much like she did in 2016, The Horn News website recently reminded us of five Obama scandal fails that were never resolved. Remember when Obama once claimed that his administration was scandal free? In fact, Matt Margolis, author of the book, “The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama” says that, “Many of Obama’s scandals covered in my book make Watergate look like a high school prank gone wrong by comparison.” His writing documents 29 major Obama scandals!

We have discussed the reality of how out of touch that claim is but let’s look back at five of his biggest scandals that were never fully resolved and its culprits brought to justice:

1-Obama was so desperate to sign a nuclear arms treaty with Iran that he actually short circuited a major anti-drug effort by the Federal government. According to reporting to left leaning Politico, Iran’s terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, were working with South American drug cartels to sell cocaine in the U.S. to fund their terror activities. They also used used car dealerships in the U.S. to launder their drug money.

The Feds were close to shutting down the terror/drug connection via their Project Cassandra. But Iran threatened to not sign Obama’s nuclear agreement if this drug operation was shut down. Obama, desperate for some type, any type of legacy folded immediately. As a result he signed a ridiculously lousy agreement and allowed terrorists to continue to addict American kids and fund their terror efforts.

2- He promised to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay but a) failed at that effort and b) he ended up freeing hundreds of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay but many (224) ended up returning to terrorism, endangering American soldiers and citizens around the world. When asked, “Is there a possibility of some of them trying to return to activities that are detrimental to us?” he replied “Absolutely.” He just didn’t care.

3- Obama actually had the gall to spy on Congress, a clear violation of the Constitution and the separations of power as envisioned by the Founders. He did so to try and identify and punish whistleblowers who were telling the world and Congress how corrupt the Obama administration was. According to Senator Chuck Grassley: “The CIA under the Obama administration was reading congressional staff’s e-mails.” 

4- We have often discussed how Obama attacked companies that dared to not support him (see Gibson guitars) or used taxpayer money to favor his political supporters (see Solyndra). But consider this extensive abuse of government power to support his friends: “Obama hated businesses — but he only tried to ruin companies if it would make his friends big bucks.

Two of his buddies, Marty Nesbitt and Harreld Kirkpatrick III, formed an investment firm called Vistria right about the time Obama got re-elected. Obama spent his second term attacking companies — payday lenders, coal mines, for-profit colleges — that they wanted to buy…and driving down their stock prices. “A curious pattern began to emerge,” wrote researcher Peter Schweizer in his book Secret Empires: How Our Politicians Hide Corruption and Enrich Their Families and Friends. “Obama and his administration would attack industries with government power, which led to substantially lower valuations for these companies. Nesbitt and Vistria, or others close to Obama, could then acquire those assets for pennies on the dollar.” It pays to have friends in high places!”

5- Obama not only spied on just about every American’s electronic communications and on Congress, but he also apparently spied on Trump’s election campaign. Mr. Margolis thinks this is Obama’s worst scandal: “There are many serious scandals, and therefore it’s hard to say which is the biggest scandal but I believe Obama’s spying on the Trump campaign, which is starting to be fully unraveled now, will likely prove to be one of the biggest.”

Obama’s extensive scandals, Hillary’s flop in Canada, and Obama exacerbating Americans’ drug addictions for a personal, shallow political legacy. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

February, 2018, Political Class Insanity, Part 4: The Continued Failures of the Obama Presidency

It is the beginning of another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let's get started:

1) We are not fans of very many politicians and one of the worst of all time in our opinion was Barack Obama. We have made the case that he came into the office as a community organizer and left the office eight years later as a ...community organizer, showing no growth in leadership or effectiveness in those eight years. 

He almost doubled the national debt by adding almost ten TRILLION to the national debt and provided no strategic plans at any time to fix a whole slew of issue facing Americans from failing public schools to a failed foreign policy to fiscally distressed government programs like Social Security.

But he was also one of the most lawless President of all time. We documented his lawlessness in the following blog post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

This post laid out dozens of situations where his Presidency broke current laws, broke international treaties, violated the Constitution and deprived ordinary Americans of their rights. And although he has been out of office for over a year, it appears that his law breaking ways may have included previously unknown violations including:

• According to a Daily Wire article by Ryan Saavedra on January 11, 2018, a former Obama administration official has implied that the Obama administration had warned a known, identified Iranian terrorist that the Israelis were about to assassinate him.
• The article summarizes the findings of an article that appeared in a Kuwaiti newspaper.
• A reporter for the New York Times, Bret Stephens, tweeted out the article that showed the newspaper claiming that the Obama administration had warned the Iranian government that Israel was going to kill Iranian general Qassem Soleimani who is the leader of the Quds Force, an officially designated sponsor of terrorism.
• The Daily Wire asserts that this general was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq.
• Stephens then got into a Twitter war with a former member of Obama’s national security staff, Tommy Vietor, who more or less denied that the incident happened.
• However, as a result of the back and forth Twitter exchanges Stephens seemed to get Vietor in a corner that makes it appear that the Obama administration MAY have actually warned the Iranians in order to keep relations good with this terroristic country.

We may never find out if the Obama administration sold out the Israelis and this country when it came to eliminating a terrorist leader. But given Obama’s history of lying and the fact that he would have done anything to get a nuclear arms deal with the Iranians, no matter how bad the deal turned out to be, my betting would be that he did sell out the Israelis attempt to eliminate a known terrorist leader. Insanity.

2) But the above piece of political class/Obama insanity takes on a more realistic possibility when you consider this next piece of insanity. It appears that Obama may have unethically or criminally disrupted an important investigation by his own administration, an investigation that may have disrupted his obsessive need to reach a deal, any deal with the Iranians on their nuclear arms program. 

Let’s allow Cris Erickson, writing for the Opslens website tell us what may have happened, “Five Facts You Need to Know About ‘Project Cassandra’”:

• The general accusation is that: “The Obama administration allowed Hezbollah terrorists to freely traffic drugs and launder money in order to broker the Iranian Nuclear Deal.”
• The terrorists were being investigated under the codename Project Cassandra which was led by the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and whose purpose was to reduce the amount of money the Iranian-supported Hezbollah terrorists were raising via drug trafficking and money laundering.
• These efforts were estimated to give the terrorist organization $1 billion a year.
• Hezbollah has long been classified by the State Department as a terrorist organization.
• Hezbollah was formed in 1982 and is an arm of the Iranian government's armed forces to carry out terrorist and Iranian backed military efforts throughout the Middle East.
• Congressional testimony showed that Hezbollah had extensive connections with South American drug cartels.
• Former DEA operations chief Michael Braun called the Hezbollah drug running operation “the most sophisticated money laundering scheme or schemes that we have ever witnessed.”
• According to those involved in the Project Cassandra efforts, the Obama administration constantly blocked the DEA’s efforts to arrest and prosecute Hezbollah operatives or impose financial sanctions to cut back Hezbollah’s drug running operations.
• In addition, “In order to protect the nuclear deal, the Obama administration went so far as to allow a senior member of Hezbollah to return back to Lebanon, rather than pressuring the Czech government to have him extradited to the US after he was indicted for planning the murders of US government employees. Ali Fayed is reportedly back in the arms dealing business, supplying fighters in Syria with heavy weapons.”
• But all of this effort was for naught since a Politico article by Josh Meyers cites former Obama Treasury official, Katherine Bauer stating: “under the Obama administration … these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.” The success of Project Cassandra in targeting and eliminating Hezbollah operations became “problematic” for the negotiations leading up to the nuclear deal; out of fear of the deal being sabotaged by DEA operations, the Obama White House took on a policy that would result in a deal, regardless of cost.”
• Once the incredibly bad, one sided Iranian nuclear arms deal was signed, the Project Cassandra leaders were immediately moved to other assignments.

As we all know, the final nuclear deal with Iran, while it may have slightly delayed the Iranian development of nuclear arms, was on the whole an utter failure. Which should surprise no one since all of Obama’s agreements were horribly one sided and not in the favor of America. 

And for this poor agreement, we have allowed a known terrorist organization continue to spread illegal drugs in exchange for billions of dollars and to continue to kill innocent people around the world. Insanity.

3) If Obama did not do any of the above treasonous acts, we do know something atrocious that he really did do. We have previously discussed the stupidity and grossness relative to the fact that Obama was aiming to spend $1.5 BILLION to build his Presidential library. I always thought that George Bush was obscene for spending half a billion dollars on his library but Obama has tripled my disgust with his plans.

But in a small sense of satisfaction, the preliminary view of the Obama library was not well received:

• According to Joe Crowe, writing for NewsMax on January 10, 2018, reviewed some of the earliest reviews of Obama’s library plans.
• Alex Griswold of the Washington Free Beacon newspaper called the plans a “giant toenail.”
• A group of University of Chicago professors also gave a bad review: "This is a socially regressive plan . . . We also note that the Obama Center has abandoned its original plans to be a presidential library. It will be a private entity with no official connection to the National Archives." 
• Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune said: "To me, it evokes a soft-boiled egg in a teacup."

Either in office or at out of office, the Obama Presidency still stinks. And is still lawless and expensive with no noticeable value in return. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Another Day, Another Obama Baseless Claim?

President Obama was recently interviewed on MSNBC and made the claim that there is less violence in the world today than 30-40 years ago and we should be thankful for that “fact”: “I remind people that, you know, there actually is probably less war and less violence around the world today than there might have been 30, 40 years ago. It doesn’t make it any less painful but things can get better.” As with most Obama claims, one’s ears should go up and one's truth detector alarm should sound, given his history of false claims in the past that include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• If you like your current doctors/hospitals/drug plans/insurance policies you can keep them. Not the case.
• He was going to operate the most transparent Presidential administration ever. Not the case.
• He was going to cut the annual Federal government deficit in half by the end of his first term. Not the case.
• He was going to reduce the average American’s annual health insurance cost by up to $2,500 a year. Not the case.
• He was going to post every piece of legislation passed by Congress on the Internet for review before signing it. Not the case.
• He was going to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Not the case.
• He was going to uphold the laws of the land and the Constitution. Not the case.

We could go on but you get the idea: any claims by this President have to now assumed to be false until proven true. It is just his track record.

So let’s take a casual look back through time and see if the world is less violent that it was 30 - 40 years ago as he claims. Let’s assume 35 years ago is our baseline and that would put us around the year 1980:

1) Middle East

• Back in 1980, there was fighting going on in the Middle East but that was mostly between Iran and Iraq and did not really concern us or endanger us. The fighting was confined to the border of the two countries with little chance of spilling over to other geographic areas.
• Today there is fighting all over the Middle East with ISIS Sunnis fighting Shiites and Kurds in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, Yemen is now a lawless country without a functioning government with at least three terrorists groups fighting amongst themselves inside the country which is about to be invaded by Saudi Arabia.
• ISIS is not content to stay in their current geographic areas, declaring they will spread their hatred and repression far beyond their current geographic area, killing or converting all non-Muslims in their path, having demonstrated those intentions a number of times already with heinous murders of Christians and others.
• U.S. military warships are on alert in the Persian Gulf with the potential of engaging Iranian ships taking arms to their allies in Yemen. This could possibly ignite a hot war between the United States and Iran in their backyard with the potential of devastating the world’s oil supply line.
• In the mean time, high ranking nut case Iranian government officials continue to claim “Death to America” while simultaneously developing a nuclear weapons capability. 

So 1980 vs. 2015: got to give the violence winner to 2015 with the widespread warfare, nuclear arms presence, and desire to subjugate the rest of the world to Islamic extremism putting 2015 over the top.

2) Europe

• Back in 1980, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain with the possibility that a hot war could break out at any time with the U.S. led western Europe facing off against Russia led eastern Europe.
• Today, Russia has no military allies anywhere in Europe but that has not stopped it from invading and annexing large parts of the Ukraine, resulting in financial and other sanctions against Russia by much of Europe and the U.S.
• In addition, today Russia  is in a military modernization frenzy, developing new weapons systems and upgrading its military in preparation for a potential conventional war around its borders if it feels threatened by the U.S., NATO, or other factors.

1980 vs. 2015: close call but I have to go with 2015 since the potential for violence and war existed in 1980, it never happened. In 2015, it did happen in Crimea and eastern Ukraine with the potential to grow wider.

3) Nuclear Weapons

• In 1980, we were still in the midst of the Cold War with the constant potential of the nuclear armed nations being capable of wiping out the human race with one mistake or misunderstanding. 
• However, 1) in 1980, we were already three decades into the Cold War and nothing had happened, making the possibility that it would suddenly get nasty very small and 2) the leaders of nuclear nations were relatively rational people that did not want to get themselves killed, resulting in the Mutually Agreed Destruction situation. 
• In 2015, we have more nations that have nuclear weapons and those nations are not the most stable or led by the most leaders: Pakistan, North Korea, and soon to be Iran.
• Both Iran and North Korea are working on long range intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities that can deliver those nuclear weapons far beyond the local geography,with the potential of reaching the U.S., something they had absolutely no possibility of doing so in 1980.
• And the 1980 nuclear leaders valued their own lives and would not endanger those lives while in 2015 there is the distinct possibility that nuclear leaders today would welcome their own death if they could martyr themselves it he destruction of infidels, making the potential of nuclear weapon use much higher.

1980 vs. 2015: 2015 wins relative to nuclear weapons.

4) Terrorism

• In 1980, there were various terrorism groups around the world including the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigade in Europe, and others. 
• However, for the most part, those groups were independent of each other and more concerned about local acts of terror and politics and not intent on attacking the United States, its people, or its interest.
• Today’s major terror groups are much more tightly linked across the world, from the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to ISIS in Iraq and Syria to Iran to Muslims in Chechnya, China, and Indonesia, under the common theme of spreading the world of violent jihad and Islamic terrorism.
• Even worse, very few Americans in 1980 were interested in joining faraway terror groups and bringing that terror back to the U.S. while today every few weeks we seem to be seeing the FBI and police breaking up potential terror attacks by American citizens linking into word wide Islamic jihad streams.

1980 vs. 2015: no contest, 2015 is far more violent than 1980 relative to the reality and threat of terrorism.

5) Criminal Violence

The following graph from the FBI shows that life in the U.S. was more violent in 1980 than today:



Okay, the above analysis is not a definitive, quantitative analysis of Obama’s claim. We did not cover the Great Britain short war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. But that was a localized and short term wear involving only two countries far from the U.S. border. We did not talk about the U.S. Embassy invasion in Iran and hostages that were taken during the Iranian revolution. But those Iranian leaders then did not have missile or nuclear weapon technology like they have today.

Given the above discussion, I would vote that the Obama statement on violence today vs. 30 - 40 years ago is just another falsehood and deception. Russia is still causing problems like they did 35 years ago, terror groups were around in both eras but today’s are more violent, more focused, and more widespread, nuclear weapons are more widespread and in the hands of much more unreliable characters, and the Middle East is the scene of much more violence and much more organized and deadly terrorism organizations (e.g. Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.), all of which is offset by less violent crime rates in the U.S.

Another day, another claim out of reality from the Obama Presidency. No surprise there.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

July, 2013 Political Class Insanity, Part 6: Inspector General MIA, Even More IRS Shenanigans, and More

Day six and we are still not through the July, 2013 political class insanity from the past month. When will it all end? Probably not until we fix our broken political processes and find a way to hand pink slips to all of the Washington politicians who have inflicted their wasteful spending and inane policies and legislation on us all.

Not unexpectedly, we start off today’s insanity with more IRS insults and mischief:

1) According to an Associated Press article from June 25, 2013, IRS employees have been misusing and abusing their government issued credit cards, wasting taxpayer wealth in the process:

• According to a report from an IRS watchdog agency, the IRS’s poor oversight has resulted in employees to use IRS-issued credit cards to purchase wine for an expensive luncheon, useless giveaways for managers' meetings and, for one employee, romance novels and diet pills.
• Two IRS credit cards were used to buy online pornography, though the employees said the cards were stolen.
• One of the workers who reportedly used IRS credit cards to purchase pornography reported five agency credit cards lost or stolen.
• The report said the IRS has inadequate controls to prevent inappropriate purchases using taxpayer dollars by IRS credit card holders.
• Investigators found that one the diet pill purchasing employee spent $2,655 on diet pills, romance novels, steaks, a smartphone and baby-related items, including bottles, games and clothes.
• At a luncheon, the IRS bought 28 bottles of wine — for 41 guests, the report said.
• A dinner at an IRS conference cost the agency $140 a person, four times the allowable government rate at the time.
• In 2010 and 2011, IRS internal controls found 327 cases in which employees divided their purchases to skirt the $3,000 credit card spending limit.
• Other "improper" purchases identified by the inspector general included $3,152 to rent a popcorn machine and to buy prizes for an employee event, including bandanas, stuffed animals, sunglasses and stovepipe hats, $418 for novelty decorations at managers' meetings, including kazoos, bathtub toys and "Thomas the Tank Engine" wristbands, and $119 for Nerf footballs that were never used and were found stored in a filing cabinet.
• "Inadequate procedures to identify, report and address inappropriate use leaves the IRS purchase card program vulnerable to repeated violations of applicable laws and regulations," said J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
• This report comes on the heels of another inspector general released a report earlier this month that detailed lavish spending at employee conferences, which cost nearly $50 million from 2010 through 2012.

I had always thought that the TSA was the worst run, most wasteful Federal government agency. But reviewing IRS shenanigans from just the past month, from persecuting Tea Party and other Americans who had political views different from the Obama administration to excessive conference spending to employees' fifth amendment performance in front of Congress to credit card abuse of taxpayer wealth, I now think that the IRS has unseated the TSA as the most inept government agency in existence today.

2) An article from the Washington Examiner from June 27, 2013 provided another example of how our four decade war on drugs has been an utter failure. This faux war has not reduced drug abuse in this country, has created violent and widespread drug cartels, has cost the American taxpayer trillions of dollars, and has resulted in the unnecessary incarceration of millions of Americans for no reason at all.

The article reported on how in one California border town, at least four drug-laden, ultralight airplanes fly in from Mexico land each night onto U.S. soil to drop off hundreds of pounds of narcotics to waiting drug cartel accomplices. The ultalight planes then fly back to Mexico, despite a $100 million detection system funded by American taxpayers.

The U.S. Border Patrol’s inability to find and catch these planes, sometimes piloted by armed dealers, was among the emerging border security threats at a recent House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. According to Congressman Jeff Chaffetz, “These planes take off in Mexico with the drugs, go across the border and drop them off and then the ultralight lands back in Mexico. And we are fairly inept at dealing with them,” Fairly inept, good description of most government programs.

Another government program, this one worth $100 million, a total failure at accomplishing its goals. The failed war on drugs continues despite another $100 million flushed down the drain.

3) In that same Examiner article, Chaffetz also reported on another problem due to our inept government ability to seal the border to prevent illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug trafficking. Chaffetz said border agents are also grappling with an influx of illegal immigrants sneaking across the Mexican border who are not from Mexico. They are identified as “OTM” or “Other than Mexican.”

For example, the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona has detained 900 people from 60 countries other than Mexico. Most of them from Central and South America but there were 127 illegals from India , 22 people from China and one person from Afghanistan.

“We have a surge in OTM’s coming across the border,” Chaffetz said. Somewhat of an understatement, Congressman. But more importantly, these are the OTMs that have been apprehended. How many Iranians have gotten into the US through the leaky border? How many Hamas or Hezbollah would-be terrorist OTMs are already in the country? And what are Chinese doing sneaking into the country? Are they government spies?

It is probably a good bet that there are professional foreign agents in this country, they got here through an unsealed border, and any future terror activities will be far more violent and wide ranging than the Boston Marathon bombers who were untrained amateurs.

4) Ever wonder why government corruption, waste, and ineptness is out of control? Well one reason, according to Wall Street Journal reporting on June 17, 2013, a number of the government's largest organizations, including the Departments of Defense, State, Interior, and Homeland Security, have not had permanent inspectors general in place for one to five years. This failure is raising concerns from lawmakers and government-watchdog groups that the Obama administration isn't sufficiently policing itself.

We have already reported that government auditors have given up trying to audit the Department of Defense, that is how screwed up that department is. We have already reported that the State Department spent $80 million on a consulate in Afghanistan that was never used because the State Department officials ignored their own internal guidelines and built a consulate that was a sitting duck for a terrorist attack. We have suffered through at least four different terrorist attacks since Obama took office, the same time that the organization responsible for protecting us, Homeland Security, also did not have a permanent inspector general.

In total, government departments without permanent inspectors general account for $843 billion in annual spending, a whopping 25% of the Federal budget. Inspector generals are independent officials within an agency whose job is to root out waste and misconduct. They run staffs of auditors, criminal investigators, program analysts and others.

Is there any doubt why government spending is out of control when there are no professionals in charge and in place of keeping everything and everyone in line? Disgraceful and insulting to taxpayers.

Unfortunately, we are still not done, more days ahead for more government and political class insanity still to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

Part 2, Update On Our Lost War On Drugs: Corrupted Banks, Wisconsin Pot Fields, and More

Yesterday was the first of two posts on our update on the losing war on drugs that the Federal government has been fruitlessly waging since Nixon was in office. We reviewed how innocent Mexican citizens were being killed or their lives ruined by the powerful Mexican drug cartels along with the recent death of a U.S. Coast Guard sailor who was working on drug interdiction duty off the coast of California. We also reviewed how two former Presidents, Carter and Clinton, have come to the realization that our war on drugs has been a losing proposition, wasting trillions of dollars with minimal benefits.

So what did we not get to cover yesterday:

1) We promised to show how our failed war on drugs would impact our national security at some point in time. Consider the recent words publicly spoken by Hillary Clinton at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 30:

“We already know very well that the Iranian regime already exports terrorism, not only to Israel’s doorstep, but across the world. If we had a map I could put up there, I could show you what we track and plot on that map. The evidence of terrorism, mostly, thankfully, plots foiled or unsuccessful, unfortunately, as in Bulgaria, some that succeeded,. But those plots, those activities of Iran directly or through their agents, stretches from Mexico to Thailand.”

Mexico. Remember that we already have had a potential terror attack via Mexican drug cartels in the recent past when the Iranians tried to utilize the drug cartels’ network in the U.S. to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Given the power and reach of the cartels, the hatred the Iranians have for us, and the wealth the Iranians could probably put together for the cartels’ cooperation, the fact that our Secretary of State publicly acknowledges that the link exists between Mexico and Iran exists should scare all of us.

2) But the Secretary of State is not the only government official to worry about this potentially violent link. Congresswoman Sue Myrick, R-N.C., was interviewed on WABC Radio in New York City on November 29, 2012. In that interview she stated that she believes it’s possible that Hezbollah, the radical terrorist organization tied to Iran, may be working with Mexican cartels to funnel not only drugs, but also terrorist agents into the U.S.:

• “Former [Defense Intelligence Agency] people and others have told me what is going on, there have been a couple of arrests in this country relative to people who have had ties to Hezbollah or Iran, and my concern has been with the drug cartels and the gangs that are operating in Mexico. There is, what I have been told, a very strong presence there of coordination between the two.”
• She went on to state that she shared her concern with the Obama administration and wanted to know what was being done at the Mexican border to thwart such smuggling of terrorist agents. She came away with little confidence that anything was being done.

For more details on what is potentially happening relative to terrorists' links to the drug cartels, visit the following two websites:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/20/mexico-disputes-house-gop-report-alleging-terrorists-ties-with-drug-cartels/

http://cognitionemission.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/cartels-%E2%99%A5-terrorists/

The first site contains details of a House of Representatives investigative report that highlights the potential and dangerous relationship between the cartels and terrorism. The second site is an extensive historical review of Mexico's ties to terrorism entities. It is well sourced and if even ten percent of what it claims is true, the implications could be a disaster relative to the safety of Americans right here at homnd

3) HSBC is a British bank and one of the largest banks in the world. Which makes the following news really scary in that the cartels’ reach has gotten that deeply into the world of banking and high finance. A CBS News report from December 11, 2012, along with other credible news sources reported that:

• HSBC has admitted that it laundered more than $800 million for Mexican drug cartels, and covered up illegal transactions for Burma, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and Libya, all of whom were under international banking sanctions including terrorism.
• The bank will pay a $1.9 billion fine to the U.S. government.
• According to CBS News, in eighty pages of court documents, HSBC admits to sometimes going out of its way to act as a financial clearing house for drug dealers and cartels.
• One of the U.S. Attorneys working the case, Loretta Lynch, stated in the report that the government investigation revealed that staggering amounts of cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars were being deposited daily into HSBC Mexican bank locations using boxes specially made to fit through HSBC tellers' windows to speed the cartel transactions.
• While no one went to jail from HSBC for the money laundering, a fact that the bank admits to, they have cleaned house of many executives who should have been aware and stopped the laundering.
• HSBC will now be monitored by a Federal monitor to ensure this does not happen again.

This is not a two bit bank in the deserts of Mexico. This is a premier, major international banking company that should have known better. But given the wealth and reach of the drug cartels, based on their lucrative trade in illegal drugs, it should not come as any surprise that they were able to manipulate a major bank to launder their money.

This also brings up a related assertion that we have made many times in this blog. We have observed that very few in the U.S. banking industry have been arrested, prosecuted, or jailed as a result of the hanky-panky that went on and which contributed to the Great Recession, e.g. sub-prime lending.

Given that no one went to jail for causing the greatest economic meltdown in this country since the Depression, I guess it is not surprising that no banker went to jail for aiding and abetting the drug cartels and other rogue nations.

4) An article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that was reprinted in the November 18, 2012 issue of the Tampa Bay Times, showed how deeply the cartels have moved their production of marijuana into U.S. Borders.

According to the article:

• Heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers are using the only national forest in Wisconsin to grow thousands and thousands of marijuana plants.
• The value of their Wisconsin pot farms are in the millions of dollars.
• Once they harvest their crops they leave behind a blighted area of garbage, animal carcasses, and dangerous pesticides and herbicides.
• The police have made a number of arrests in this area with all of the arrested suspects being almost all Mexican citizens (far away from Mexico, in Wisconsin, close to the Canadian border) and have confiscated numerous weapons including handguns, AK 47s, and powerful rifles.
• Since 2008, Wisconsin authorities have found 11 major pot growing areas but believe this is just the tip of the iceberg relative to the total number of Mexican operated pot farms in Wisconsin.
• The ecologic damage has been extensive since the pot growers cut down hundreds of trees to provide sunlight to the pot plants, sunlight that damages the ecology of the fishing environment in the numerous Wisconsin streams.
• The cartels chose Wisconsin because of the remote areas for growing and the fact that the Wisconsin grown pot can be easily shipped to large Midwest cities like Chicago and Detroit, saving the cartels the transportation costs of ship Mexican grown pot all the way from Mexico to the upper Midwest.

Scary stuff. If the cartels can get workers and farmer implements up to Wisconsin to set up pot harvesting operations, you can see how easy it would be for them to sneak a fewer Islamic terrorists across the border and get them into any area of the United States.

The other scary aspect of this operation is the safety of Wisconsin citizens who are enjoying the outdoors. It is not too hard to imagine a hiker, a fisherman, or hunter stumbling across a pot farm in the Wisconsin wilderness. Combine their discovery with cartel employees armed with AK47s and the potential for death and injury of innocents is highly likely.

5) It certainly is a lost war. Big banks laundering cartel money, cartels possibly involved with terrorism entities, cartel’s invading areas deep in America’s heartland to operate multimillion dollar pot farms, cartels endangering the lives of innocent citizens, etc. The cartels have won the war on drugs so far. They have creatively fed a demand and became rich and very powerful in the process.

But there are a few hopeful signs around the country that promise to look at the lost war on drugs and take a different, more rational path. Washington state and Colorado voters recently passed referendums that relax the laws regarding marijuana and its legalization.

According to a Reason magazine article from November 14, 2012, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts politicians are in various stages of launching drives to relax or legalize the use of marijuana in their states also.

It seems that some sanity is prevailing at the state government levels where local politicians realize that 1) some Americans will continue to get high, regardless of who supplies them the illegal drugs, 2) continuing to focus anti-drug resources on enforcement and imprisonment is costly and has done nothing to reduce the demand and addiction levels, and 3) continuing to make the use of drugs illegal introduces all kinds of criminal elements into the community.

Unfortunately, this sanity has not reached the Federal government level where the Washington political class continues to wage a lost war, a war that wastes taxpayer wealth, does not help citizens with their addiction problems, does not keep our borders secure, does not protect us from foreign terrorism elements, and enriches the cartels while weakening governments.

It should be very interesting when state level sanity collides with Federal level insanity relative to the war on drugs. We would suggest that the Washington politicians read Step 26 from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” Step 26 provides a rational and intelligent process for putting together a compassionate, effective, and less costly strategy when it comes to drug use and addiction.

If we do not eventually get this problem under control and move away from an ineffective and liberty reducing war on drugs, I fear the prediction of William Simpson will eventually come to past: “What are the politicians going to tell the people when the Constitution is gone and we still have a drug problem?”

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Another Lost Week In The Failed "War On Drugs"

More bad news this week in our failed "war on drugs" and with it, increasing danger to our safety and stability as a nation. Today's reports come from both Mexico, the scene of horrific violence and killings over the past few years, and across the ocean to Afghanistan:

- An April 12, 2011 Associated Press report described how 116 bodies were found in a pit in northern Mexico.  All of the dead are believed to have been kidnapped off of buses while traveling on a main highway by drug cartels, murdered and dumped in this mass pit or grave.

A number of distressing things about this incident besides the unnecessary killing of  116 human beings. First, this highway is regularly patrolled by Mexican military forces, just another indication of how brazen the major drug cartels have become in Mexico. Second, one of the captured suspects in this mass killing confessed to witnessing or participating in the killings of over 200 other human beings. Third, Mexican authorities believe that this is a new way for the cartels to forcibly recruit young men into their ranks. Those that refuse to join up are murdered. Finally, this incident took place only 90 miles from the border with Texas.

- An article in the March 18, 2011 issue of The Week magazine reported that Mexican citizen  Marisol Valles Garcia is seeking asylum in the United States. Why is this important? At 20 years old, Ms. Garcia had become the youngest police chief in Mexico when she accepted the post in a border town. This police chief position that had been vacant for over a year since no one was willing to confront the drug cartels that were battling each other and the Mexican authorities for control of the town. After receiving death threats for months after her appointment, she took a five day leave of absence to care for her baby son but rather than return to her job, she crossed the border into the U.S. at El Paso.

- An Associated Press article from April 18, 2011 reported that Afghanistan poppy production was likely to be down slightly this year because of the fighting between NATO and Afghan government forces against the Taliban in the southern part of the country. Poppy production, the basis for heroin, was up in the northern part of the country to partially offset the loss from the south.

As a result of reading this article, I checked some reliable sources on the Web to see if Afghanistan was still the world leader in poppy production, which it apparently is. I was also surprised and a little shocked to find out that about a year ago, according to a Reuters news article, the country was also the top producer of marijuana in the world.

Unfortunately, a great deal of the profit from trafficking in these illicit drugs is used to fund the resources of the Taliban and other terrorists, the very people that are attacking and killing our armed forces personnel. And Afghanistan has attained this leadership position in poppy, heroin, and marijuana in the midst of a raging war. Imagine how much more production be done if the war was not going on and how much more money would go to fund terrorists?

Nasty, nasty stuff. The human toll on this issue is horrific, Murders, kidnappings, intimidation of law enforcement, forced conscription of young Mexican men, addiction, etc. But by not having a sane, compassionate, and effective strategy to dealing with this problem since Nixon declared "war" in the late 1960s, we have now endangered our national security. Well armed and well financed gangs roaming well within range of our borders. Law enforcement officers from Mexico fleeing for their lives. Our armed forces killed with weapons purchased as a result of selling marijuana and heroin to our own citizens.

These disparate events are all tightly related to each other: the thirst for illegal drugs in this country, the source of those drugs in Mexico, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the profits that are used to destabilize Central and South American countries besides Mexico and the profits that are used to kill our soldiers. And the latest wrinkle comes from an article in the March 18, 2011, "Triple Frontier, Brazil - Hotbed of Islamic Militancy."

According to the article, Islamic al-Qaida extremists and other terror groups have set up camp in a remote part of the Brazilian jungle. The article cited Brazilian and U.S. intelligence sources and Wikileaks documents as the basis for the reporting. The article detailed how there were at least 20 high ranking members of al Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah at the camp where they are busy raising money and planning attacks on high profile Western targets. The article named the leader of the group, who is originally from Lebanon, is currently a Brazilian citizen, and who is responsible for terror activities in more than twelve countries.

The immediate concerns in Brazil are the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, both of which will be hosted by Brazil. However, the larger, more strategic concern should be our safety here in the United States. Foreign terrorists are no longer separated by the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans from our shores. They now have a foothold in South America and a land bridge from their foothold up through Central America and Mexico to our borders, which we know are still very porous. The sad part is that the drug profits that are funding the weapons that kill our soldiers may eventually fund the weapons that kill our civilians.

And we are supposed to believe that our political class will be able to protect us from this multi-faceted threat? The same political class that could not even develop an one year budget on time? The same political class that allowed SEC employees to search for porn all day on their government job and government computers? The same political class that cannot keep its air traffic controllers awake during an eight hour shift of duty? The same political class that would rather posture and campaign for their re-election than solve any issue facing America? The same political class whose second in command, Vice President Biden, cannot even stay awake during a critical budget summit?

We are in trouble. Doing things they way we always have done them in this area is not going to work, the threats and danger keep growing. That is why Step 26 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so critical to implement. Step 26 would establish a blue ribbon panel of smart Americans, exclusive of the political class and their lobbyist friends, to once and for all accurately address this issue of illegal drugs and put together a strategic plan to address the underlying root causes before it is too late.

Members of this panel would include law enforcement experts from many different agencies, both local, and Federal, military personnel, economists, sociologists, drug treatment experts, medical experts, and others. Others would include experts form other countries who may have tried other approaches to their nation's drug addiction problem. For example, apparently Portugal decriminalized illegal drugs a little while ago which actually resulted in lower illegal drug usage.

One option that must be on the table, an option that the political class would never consider, is the complete legalization or decriminalization of illegal drugs. Americans have proven over the past forty or so years, since Nixon's time, that they will indulge in illegal drug usage. The illegality of this usage has resulted in record profits for drug cartels and foreign terrorists as the "war on drugs" drove up the price of delivering illegal drugs that Americans and others continue to use.

I am not endorsing legalization or decriminalization, I am not an expert in this area, the panel would be. However, the results are clear. Usage of illegal drugs, both in this country and around the world, is unrelenting. The production of the illegal drugs is unrelenting. The distribution of the illegal drugs is unrelenting. Unfortunately, the ever rising record profits from illegal drugs is now a national security issue.

Somebody needs to step up and develop a coherent plan before lost weeks become lost years which eventually become lost freedom from this farce known as the "war on drugs."



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com