September, 2019, Part 4,Political Class Insanity: More Wasteful Spending, More Biden Lying, and More Obama Failures

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) In our last post we started talking about the annual “Waste Report” publication that Senator Rand Paul publishes every year. This report identifies and tracks how billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted every year on idiotic programs and projects. This year the Senator identified $50 billion in wasted taxpayer wealth. Other examples include the following spending atrocities:

• The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $8 million on solar panels that were never used.
• The Pentagon lost $28 million on heavy equipment that was somehow lost in Afghanistan.
• The State Department spent subsidizing the Pakistani film industry. In my opinion it would be a waste of $100,000 to subsidize our domestic film industry never a foreign film industry.
• Half a million dollars were spent studying frog mating calls in Panama, probably one of the most inane and stupid wasteful spending we have ever covered in this blog.
• The Feds also spent a whopping $10 million on “green growth, whatever that is, in Peru.

As we pointed out in a recent post, there are millions of Americans who are hungry, homeless, and in need of drug addiction treatment and yet the buffoons in Washington spend tax money on this nonsense every year. How many Americans could have been fed if we did not spend half a million dollars on some frogs in Panama? How many homeless shelters could be staffed if we let Peru worry about its own “green growth?” Such bad priorities.

2) One thing you can always rely on is for politicians to lie. We often mused whether these people actually believe the huge whopper lies they tell us or if they think we are too stupid to know or find out they are lying. In fact, we did a whole post on the dozens of lies of Barack Obama at the end of his Presidency, a list that was very impressive in its scope and depth of lying: 

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/11/retro-1-part-1-obama-presidency-end-of.html

Joe Biden, currently the frontrunner to become the Democratic Party Presidential candidate, just got himself caught in another huge lie:

• Biden was recently interviewed by NPR radio in which he boldly stated: “Immediately, that moment it [the invasion of Iraq during the bush Presidency] started, I came out against the war at that moment.”
• He seems pretty sure of himself, came out “immediately” against the invasion.
• But even CNN, the lover of everything Democratic, liberal and Obama-related, called him out on this lie.
• According to CNN, quoting Biden from a 2003 speech: “Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force and I would vote that way again today. It was the right vote then and would be a correct vote today.” 

When CNN calls a liberal a liar, you know it was a whopper of a lie. And this clown still wants to be President. 

3) One of the great pieces of life advice I ever received was from a work colleague who said: “Never be so in love with a deal that you cannot walk away from that deal at anytime.” That advice has served me well, basically telling me that if you get too close to a deal, to enamored with a deal, to in need of a deal, that you end up getting a blind spot, get taken advantage of, and you do something stupid.

Such may have been the case in a recently uncovered set of shenanigans that Obama pulled in the midst of trying to make a deal with Iran and its nuclear weapons program, a deal that endangered the lives of a lot of people and fortunately he got lucky, no one got hurt:

• James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense under Trump, recently discussed a terror attack that almost happened because Obama refused to admit he could not walk away from a deal.
• Mattis claims that if the terror attack had not been thwarted it would have been the “worst terror attack since 9/11.”
• The attack was planned by, funded, and coordinated by the Iranian government.
• The plan was to bomb Cafe Milano, a high end restaurant right in Washington DC, a restaurant that was often frequented by rich, famous, and important people including the Saudi Arabian ambassador.
• According to Mattis, who also held high level intelligence positions under Obama: “Attorney General Eric Holder said the bombing plot was ‘directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Qods Force.’ The Qods were the Special Operations Force of the Revolutionary Guards, reporting to the top of the Iranian government.”
• Mattis says that the Obama administration knew this for a fact, they had the intelligence data to prove it, and “had recorded Tehran’s approval of the operation.”
• Mattis says that, “Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”
• Nasty stuff, a foreign government sponsoring terror right in our own capital city. 
• And yet, Obama did nothing in response, treating it as a small time criminal matter and not a major terror threat.
• And the reason for this tepid response is that Obama was too in love with a potential deal to walk away from it, namely he was desperate from a legacy perspective get a nuclear arms deal with Iran.
• If he had responded strongly, and correctly, to a terror threat on our shores, the Iranians might have walked away from Obama’s nuclear arms treaty dream.
• Mattis thought Obama should have walked away from the Iranians and for his opinion he got fired: “In my view, we had to hold Iran to account and strike back when attacked. But there was a reason for the administration’s restraint. The administration was secretly negotiating with Iran, although I was not privy to the details at the time.”
• Obama eventually got his treasured Iranian nuclear deal but it turned out to be a bomb, as Mattis points out: “In my military judgment, America had undertaken a poorly calculated, long-shot gamble. At the same time, the administration was lecturing our Arab friends that they had to accommodate Iran as if it were a moderate neighbor in the region and not an enemy committed to their destruction. As long as its leaders consider Iran less a nation-state than a revolutionary cause, Iran will remain a terrorist threat potentially more dangerous than Al Qaeda or ISIS.”

And Mattis, and Trump, were right. Obama claimed that this agreement would force the Iranians to curtail their nuclear actions, reduce their worldwide terrorism actions, and make life better for ordinary Iranians. But none of Obama’s objectives were achieved: the lives of ordinary Iranians got worse, not better, leading to scattered rioting against the Iranians rulers and, if anything, Iranian terror activities across the Middle East and the world of went up, not down, and the Iranians had no trepidations about attacking us on our own turf while negotiating with Obama. 

Never be so in love with a deal that you cannot walk away. Some advice that Obama failed to adhere to which resulted in Obama downplaying an act of war and showed the Iranians what a lack of a backbone he had. This realization and Obama’s desperation led to the one sided, corrupt, and failed nuclear arms deal, potential harm to Americans from a domestic terror attack be damned.

Wasting Americans’ tax dollars, lying to Americans, and endangering Americans for a Presidential ego trip, insanity.

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:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

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

September, 2015, Political Class Insanity, Part 5: Iranians Buying U.S. Senators, The Federal Inability to Build A Fence and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is in free fall.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 46 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets
• A record number of police officers have been assassinated in the past week.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing.

1) While we try to respect everyone’s opinion, we find it difficult to believe why anyone believes that Obama and Kerry did not get their pockets picked by the Iranians when you look at the lopsided, one sided deal that was agreed to to limit Iran’s ability to get a nuclear weapon or two. We will be talking about the idiocy of this deal in a near term future post and have already shown its shortfalls in the following past post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-iran-nuclear-weapons-deal-stinks.html

But somehow dozens of Democrats in the Senate are supporting this atrocious deal which puzzled me until I remembered that old adage: “follow the money.” In a recent article by Daniel Greenfield, writing for the Israel’s Voice website, he laid out the the amount of money that Iranian interests and lobbyists have showered onto Democratic U.S. Senators. Once you follow the Iranian money, it becomes clearer why a Senator would vote to support this crazy deal:

• Senator John Markey of Massachusetts supports the Obama Iranian deal and also was the top recipient of campaign funding contributions from the Iranian American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) which maxed out the amount of dollars it could contribute to his campaigns.
• Senator Al Franken of Minnesota also supports the deal and also received a load of money from IAPAC.
• Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire also supports the deal but is obviously a lousy money negotiator since she supports the deal but only got half the amount of money from IAPAC given to Markey and Franken.
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also supports the deal and she also had received IAPAC money a few years ago.
• The Iranian lobbyists also tried to turn Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Charles Schumer of New York with campaign contributions but those investments went sour since neither supports this deal.
• Iranian lobbyist Hassan Nemazee has also contributed to Gillilbrand, served as Hillary Clinton’s national campaign finance director, raised campaign funds for both her and John Kerry, pleaded guilty to a fraud scheme involving millions of dollars and has served as an IAPAC trustee.
• Nemazee also contributed to deal supporter Senator Barbara Boxer who also received IAPAC money.
• Vice President Joe Biden has also received big bucks from Iranian interests including the American Iranian Council and the Iranian Muslim Association of North America.
• According to the article: A member of Iran’s oppposition had accused Biden's campaigns of being “financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network.” Biden’s affinity for the terrorist regime in Tehran was so extreme that after 9/11 he had suggested “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran”.
• Akbar Ghahary, a co-founder of IAPAC, has donated and raised more than $50,000 for Obama’s election campaigns.

Now, supporters of the deal might point out that Israel also plays the lobbyist game and has probably donated far more to American politicians than Iranians lobbyists have done. There is a big couple of differences though:

1. First, Israel’s leaders and its citizens do not preach “Death To Iran” and vow to wipe Iran off the face of the earth.
2. Israel does not support terror organizations and terrorist attacks across a wide swath of the Middle East and throughout the world.
3. Although the Israelis probably have had nuclear weapons for a long time, they have proven themselves to be responsible owners of such weapons, something that the Iranians have not proven they would be.

Of course, we could have avoided the whole mess of Senators prostituting themselves and their principles to the highest bidders if we had implemented Step 6 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.” Step 6 would allow only individual American citizens to donate to political campaigns. No PACs, no foreign interests, only American citizens. 

But Step 6 is not in play and as a result, the worst set of politicians to ever serve in Washington have again proven themselves to be weak willed, shallow people who would trade the safety of millions of people for a few thousands dollars. Insanity.

2) We have often showed that projects and programs started by the Federal government never get completed as planned. Much money is promised, much ballyhooing is done at the beginning, and years and billions of dollars later, nothing has been accomplished. Such is the case with building a Federal government wall to secure our southern border with Mexico.

According to reporting by Paul Bedard, writing for the Washington Examiner, on September 4, 2015, the Department of Homeland Security recently admitted that only 36 miles along the U.S./Mexican border had effective double fencing. 36 miles out of thousands of miles. Pathetic. Especially pathetic since the Federal government has been trying to build an effective security fence since at least the Reagan administration over three decades ago...and probably billions of dollars ago.

How badly has the effort gone? Consider some recent Congressional testimony from Homeland personnel:

• With a current budget of $2.5 billion, the Feds have still only been able to build less than 40 miles of effective fencing.
• Another 352 miles of border have different types of less effective fencing which cost an amazing $7 million a mile. For that cost, the fence should go a mile under ground and a mile in the air.
• Some of this 352 miles of fencing are built out of Vietnam era helicopter landing pads, not a very effective approach to security fencing.
• 1,300 miles on the border have NO fencing at all. This is 66.5% of the border mileage.

Incompetence, plain and simple.

3) Let’s stay with the Department of Homeland Security for one more piece of insanity. This organization has probably received at least hundreds of billions of funding to secure the homeland since the 9-11 attacks. How well they have done is open for debate given the dozens of attacks, both executed and thwarted, over the years.

However, along one dimension of measurement they have been a total failure despite hundreds of billions of dollars. According to more Paul Bedard reporting from the Washington Examiner, a recent opinion survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 72% of those surveyed think an Islamic terror attack on our shores is critical threat. 

Additionally, the percentage of respondents who perceive a "critical threat" from Islamic fundamentalism has increased 15 percentage points in just a year, to 55%, up from 40% in 2014 and is at the highest level since 2002. So much for making us feel safe. Given the ineptness of the Department of Homeland Security to build a simple, effective border fence, this fear and tribulation is probably real and justified.

Another day, another three examples of political class insanity: Iranian lobbyists buying U.S. politicians, a Federal agency that needs $7 million to build a mile long fence, and the same Federal agency that has not calmed our fears of being attacked in our own country. And the insanity will continue to march on again tomorrow.



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

Why The Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal Stinks

As most concerned Americans know, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry reached a tentative agreement with the Iranian government several months ago to theoretically halt the march of the Iranians to becoming a nuclear arms power. In the next few weeks, Congress will debate and then vote on whether to approve the deal. 

Rather than trying to sell the deal to the American people on its merits and upsides, and perhaps showing some leadership in the process, this administration has continued its long established ways of demeaning, ridiculing, and name calling those that have concerns or doubts about the deal. 

The President has called those that oppose the deal "crazies" even though the majority of Americans who have an opinion about the deal do not want it approved. Which is just the typical condescending attitude that this President has had against anyone who dares disagree with him. John Kerry has been out of sight and out of mind the past few weeks, obviously not trying to sell the deal to America either.

As a result, a number of thoughtful people have put forth, in very concise, easily understandable ways, why this is a bad deal. Why the President has not addressed these points  rather than just say they are wrong and to blindly trust him, is another example of the absence of leadership skills of this Presidency.

Judge and comment for yourself after reading the following rebuttals to the proposed deal. If you believe that these rebuttals are an accurate description of reality of the deal and worry of the major consequences such a putrid deal will do the the Middle East and our own security, I strongly suggest that you call your Congressional reps right away and deal them to reject the deal. 

If you think that the President can be trusted and that he is not shopping for a foreign policy legacy win, i.e. he will do anything to make it look like a winning deal just to enhance his legacy, then you can sit back and watch a new nuclear arms race unfold in the Middle East, watch Iran hype up its terrorism activities across the world, and watch Iran work on how to put its eventual nuclear weapons on the tip of an intercontinental missile. And the President calls us that oppose this deal the crazies.

The first set of logical objections to this deal come from the website of former Congressman Allen West:

1. Iran is the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism and has not evidenced any desire to curtail their activities. In fact, given the Ayatollah’s comments, sounds to me like they want to ratchet it up.

2. The JCPOA [the tentative deal] does not gradually relieve economic sanctions against Iran; it does so immediately to the tune of $115 billion in unfrozen assets released to the number one sponsor of Islamic terrorism.

3. In year five, the JCPOA allows the U.N. ban on conventional weapons for Iran to expire, which means the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism can legally buy and sell arms. Iran, however, has already entered into talks with Russia and China to purchase new aerial refueling tankers and fighter jets, and the Chinese are seeking an exchange of the fighter jets for oil. And incidentally, General Qassem Suleimani, who heads the Iranian Quds Force – a designated terrorist organization – violated an international travel ban by going to Russia to meet with their defense minister and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

4. In year eight, the JCPOA lifts the U.N. weapons ban on ballistic missiles for Iran, a country where the leadership chants “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

5. In year ten, Iran can return its centrifuges to full operational capability and enrich uranium. In the meantime, Iran has the authority to do its own inspections, and the original requirement of immediate, “no notification” inspections has been replaced with a 24-day advance notification process.

6. Finally, in year fifteen, the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism is allowed to build new nuclear reactors. We’re not stopping them; merely delaying.

The second source debunking the details of the deal come from Michaela Dodge writing for the Heritage Foundation. She specializes in missile defense, nuclear weapons modernization and arms control as policy analyst for defense and strategic policy in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. Her recent writings include the following top line realities:

• Recently, over 900 rabbis formally announced their opposition to the deal.
• Almost 200 retired U.S. generals and admirals signed a joint letter urging Congress to reject the deal while the White House could only round up 30 former military leaders to support the deal.
• Even though the majority of Americans and Israelis polled are in favor of a diplomatic answer to the Iranian problem, the majority of them do not want THIS deal to be the diplomatic answer.

She then goes on to rebut specific points of the deal, much like Mr. West did above, providing concrete examples of why this is a bad deal:

1) “This deal blocks every pathway Iran might take to obtain a nuclear weapon.” This statement is untrue. A piece of paper cannot stop a determined country from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The cash-strapped regime in North Korea is a great example. 

To make matters worse, the deal does not dismantle Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure, which was developed in defiance of Iran’s international obligations.

The deal effectively rewards years of Iran’s violations of its international obligations with billions of dollars to fund terrorism and lifts sanctions on advanced technologies and materials usable in Iran’s nuclear program, including Tehran’s ballistic missile program.

The deal even opens a path for Iran to buy functioning parts of a nuclear weapon.

2) “It ensures that centrifuges are removed except for a handful.” Usually, a handful does not mean thousands, as is the case with the number of Iranian centrifuges the deal leaves untouched.

Additionally, the deal allows Iran to continue research and development of more advanced types of centrifuges, including letting Iran operate them by hundreds. None of the centrifuges will be destroyed. And they are only a part of the problem. Maintaining skilled people who know how to manage the centrifuges is just as serious.

Should Iran decide that the deal is no longer in its interest, it will be in an excellent position to restore its capabilities fast.

The United States will not be able to impose a sanctions regime that would be as rigorous as the existing regime, which is a result of years of labor and hundreds of trips of U.S. officials to foreign banks.

Once cash starts flowing, it will be immensely difficult to re-impose these sanctions. Sanctions relief is front-loaded, further reducing Iran’s incentive to not follow through with all its obligations.
3) “But this deal does not rely on trust. It relies on verification.” How will members of Congress know if Iran is cheating, let alone the American people, since the administration has failed to provide documents outlining details of verification? In fact, neither Secretary of State John Kerry nor Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz has read these documents.

Just last week, it became clear that Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate sites suspected of conducting nuclear weapon work. This is akin to letting a fox guard a chicken coop. The verification regime is particularly weak when it comes to undeclared/covert activities and activities that do not involve radioactive material.

Iran can hold up inspectors for months and will be provided information about where covert activities are occurring, making it easier to cover them.

Iran has been lying, cheating, and covering up its nuclear activities for years. Americans and the International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for deal’s verification, have been surprised more than once in the past regarding Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.
4) “We are not giving away anything in this deal in terms of our capacity to respond if they chose to cheat.” Obama will be putting future American presidents in a tough position.

This is because Iran will be able to spend billions of dollars on terrorist activities—and the United States and allies will be on the receiving end of these activities. Tehran will be able to obtain advanced weaponry from Russia and China, certainly complicating U.S. options should Iran decide to cheat.

A couple of points of emphasis to add unto the points made above:

• North Korea became a dangerous nuclear power despite having virtually no economy and being one of the poorest nations in the world. Imagine how much easier it will be for Iran to become a nuclear power once we give it over $100 billion to spend as it pleases.
• Effective economic sanctions will never be reimposed since China and Russia, two of the five members of the United Nations Security Council will not allow it since they will benefit economically from the deal and politically in their quest to grow their power and influence at the expense of the United States.
• The Obama/Kerry negotiating team was so weak that they could not even negotiate the release of four American citizens being held in Iranian jails despite giving the Iranians over $100 billion in sanctions relief. This point alone establishes how poorly the U.S. negotiated for this deal.
• News reports have stated that the Saudis are already in the market to purchase nuclear weapons, lord knows they have enough money to do so, likely buying their nuclear weapons technology from the Pakistanis, because of how threatened they feel about this deal.
• Does anyone really think the the North Koreans and the Iranians care about and will respect an eight year ban on selling the Iranians missile technology? News reports are already circulating that the North Koreans and Iranians are already in negotiations for the selling and buying of long range missile technology.
• Why would any good negotiator make a deal with an opponent while that opponent continues to threaten death to the the negotiator's interests? Despite the deal, Iranian citizens and high ranking government officials continually still go on record to vow "Death to America" and "Death To Israel?" And Obama wants to give them $100 billion to spend as they like? Insanity.
• And finally, given this President's track record of lies and deceptions, who can believe anything he says? In fact, if not for a lucky happenstance, we would not know that there are at least two secret agreements that came out of the negotiations that Obama and Kerry had no intention of sharing with Congress or the American people event though the were legally required to so. 

I once worked for a boss who had the following great advice: never be so in love with a deal that you cannot walk away from it. This is advice that Obama and Kerry should have used but did not. In their blind haste to get a deal done, any deal done, to build any kind of legacy, they were weak, anemic negotiators vs. the Iranians, bad salesman of the deal to the world and America, and probably have lied about the untold downsides of the deal. Strike one, strike two, strike three.

This is a bad deal for America, a bad deal for the world, a bad deal for humanity. Call your Congress men and women and them to kill this deal and go for a real diplomatic solution, not a politician's solution. And stopp calling Americans crazies, it is so un-Presidential...and this case, plain wrong.

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

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:

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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.

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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