Institutions Crack

            We Americans are blessed. We live in the most prosperous and most powerful country in the world. For our entire short history people have wanted to come here to enjoy the limitless opportunities offered by our liberty, our free-market capitalism, and our system of government. Ours is the longest-surviving democracy in the history of the world, a democracy based on a Constitution that has guaranteed freedoms enjoyed nowhere else.

            But our base is cracking because of a loss of faith in our institutions. Our national defense is crumbling, our no-growth economy is mired in debt, our cities are festering with drugs and violence, while our law-enforcement community is disrespected my millionaire football players and protests based on lies. Moreover, we have a political system corrupted by venal politicians abetted by a biased media and led by candidates with unheard-of negative ratings. Even the FBI, an institution deemed incorruptible from the days of Elliot Ness, has fallen prey to political ambition.

            There was a time when the FBI could not be bribed and could not be dictated to from above. It was truly untouchable. Now that aura is gone. It was blown away by a scandalous dereliction of duty in the Hillary Clinton investigation. We had been led to believe that Director James Comey was a straight-up guy who would not be influenced by politics, who would conduct a fair and impartial investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Now it appears that he intentionally let her off the hook. Whether it was at the direction of President Obama who wanted to protect his ideological successor or whether Comey wanted simply to advance his career, we likely will never know. In the face of overwhelming evidence that Hillary Clinton committed multiple felonies (destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, perjury), Comey caved. He recommended that no charges be brought, thereby relieving compromised Attorney General Loretta Lynch from making that decision. This wasn’t justice: it was pure politics.

            Elliot Ness must be turning in his grave.

Multiculturalism -- Good or Bad?

            America has never appeared to be so divided as it has during this election season. There seems to be no middle ground anymore.

            Take immigration. Donald Trump wants to keep illegal immigrants and Musllims out. Hillary Clinton wants open borders to our south and open arms for Syrian refugees.         Trump and his followers are not against immigrants. After all, this country was built by immigrants. They brought different languages and different cultures, but they all sought to assimilate and to make their fortune in this land of opportunity. They might have been British, Germans, Italians, Poles, and Jews, but they all wanted to be Americans. Their descendants on the Right view any immigrant group that does not want to assimilate as rejecting America’s core values and should therefore be barred the door.

            Obviously, the Left does not see it that way. It trumpets multiculturalism as necessary for the advancement of our pluralistic society. Asian, Latino, and Middle Eastern immigrants all enrich America. Never mind Mexicans who burn the American flag or Muslims who prefer Sharia to our system of laws. Just give them time to assimilate.

            Multiculturalism is not an evil nor a goal to be achieved without qualification. If it is to benefit our nation, it must be tempered by common sense and the realization that everything that is different is not necessarily good—or bad. There is a middle ground on immigration. I hope warring political factions can find it.

A Little Adversity, Please

            I have a new hero, and I’d like to introduce him to my granddaughter Allison who is starting her first year at James Madison University. His name is Jay Ellison, Dean of Students at the University of Chicago. He is not the first to welcome incoming students by telling them that the university is committed to freedom of inquiry and expression. As one might expect, he said that “freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.” But then he continued, “…we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.” It gets better.

            “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove to be controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas   and perspectives at odds with their own.”

            Wow! It’s about time somebody tells all those coddled millennials who claim the right not to be offended that the real world is full of adversity, and that they had better start learning about how to deal with it.

            As expected, minority groups such as the Office of LGBTQ Student Life protested. But University President Douglas Zimmer supported Ellison. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Zimmer wrote, “Universities cannot be viewed as a sanctuary for comfort but rather as a crucible for confronting ideas and thereby learning to make informed judgments in complex environments.”

            I hope Allison gets it. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea for teachers of our new high school senior class to pass Mr. Ellison’s message along as well.

Meet a Cynic

            Is it any wonder that we have become so cynical about our government and our system of justice? Every day, it seems, we get new information about Hillary Clinton’s unethical, even criminal behavior while she was Secretary of State. Yet, the President, the Attorney General, and the Director of the FBI will do nothing to derail her accession to high office. The mainstream media, meanwhile, is obsessed with Trump and utterly failing in its journalistic duty to investigate and report on the mounting evidence of Hillary’s malfeasance.

            Hillary Clinton has spent months defending her use of a private server and the destruction of emails, a felony for which she has not been charged. Last week we learned that the FBI uncovered 15,000 work-related emails that she failed to turn over to the State Department after she lied about having turned over everything. That alone should meet the definition of intent that FBI Director Comey said was needed to recommend indictment. But if that’s is not enough, there is clear evidence of why she did it: she needed to hide her influence peddling to enrich herself via the Clinton Foundation. Want direct access to the Secretary of State? Make a sizable donation to the Clinton Foundation.

            We now have the prospect of a thoroughly corrupt President of the United States “owned” by business and foreign entities who have donated millions to the Clinton Foundation, a president who is open to bribery and influence peddling, a president who will do anything to enrich herself, even if it means putting the security of her country at risk. If that is not enough to disqualify her, what is?

            And we’re not supposed to be cynical?

Never Pay Any More Income Tax

I don't have to pay income taxes any more, thanks to Hillary Clinton's brilliant move. Her tax returns for last year show she gave over a million dollars to charity. The charity? The Clinton Foundation. Talk about chutzpah! She actually took a tax deduction for giving herself a charitable contribution. The Clinton Foundation, a criminal racketeering enterprise, gives only 10% of its income to charity, while the rest goes to pay Bill's expenses and all his buddies who masquerade as employees. How clever!

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start my own foundation and donate all my income to it. I'll call it the Milot Foundation and put my wife in charge of  it--at a nice salary, of course. I may even designate the kids, grandkids and great grandkids as co-workers in the management of the foundation's business. I'll make sure the foundation gives 10% to my church, just to make it legit. Finally, when I make out my taxes next year, I'll take a full deduction for all my donations to the Milot Foundation. What a neat idea!

Think I'll get away with it?  The Clintons do.

Love, Mercy and Justice

            Last week a local Democrat supporter wrote that she is going with the Democratic Party because it is the party that supports love, mercy, and justice for all. What nonsense! Is it love for a party to support the killing of innocent babies in the womb, even late-term abortions? Is it mercy to open prison cells and let drugs dealers loose on our streets to resume poisoning our children? Is it justice to apply different standards to Hillary Clinton than the ones the rest of us have to live by?

            We all know about FBI Director Comey making a solid case for indicting Hillary and then not making a criminal referral for political reasons; we have all seen Hillary  perjure herself repeatedly before House committees without being held accountable; we have all heard Hillary lie about the famous video, a lie she shamelessly repeated to the parents of the Benghazi victims as their caskets were rolling by. And now we learn that the Justice Department, no doubt at Obama’s direction, will not pursue the seamy connections between Hillary’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation, in spite of recommendations from FBI investigators to do so. This is justice?

            The Clintons have been managing a Pay-to-Play racketeering enterprise right out in the open, but they have no fear of being prosecuted because they are protected by a Democrat administration that is as corrupt as they are.

            You may choose to vote for Democrats, Madam, because you support the party’s platform of high taxes, increased spending, job-killing regulations, and crushing debt. But don’t tell us that the Democrats are the party of love, mercy, and justice.

           

Fools Will Be Fools

            I can’t recall feeling as much disgust at our politicians as I have these past few weeks, and I’m not even talking about the circuses in Cleveland and Philadelphia. It began with the Sunday shows: Hillary lying through her teeth about Benghazi and the FBI investigation, and Donald Trump putting both feet in his mouth while counterpunching the Khans. Then President Obama took over.

            First, our anointed leader gave a campaign speech praising Hillary as the most qualified candidate ever to run for the presidency. Yes, that same Hillary whose 30-year public career has featured an unending string of scandals and lies, not to mention incompetence at every level.

            But Obama didn’t dwell on Hillary: he used most of his speech to boast about his presidency. Somehow, he failed to mention our $20 trillion debt, the lowest job participation in decades, a GDP below two percent, and attacks on our soil by terrorists he refuses to name.

            Confirming his belief that the incarceration rate for blacks is disproportionately high, he next commuted the sentences of 208 federal prisoners, bringing the total commutations during his presidency to 562.  He justified his action by saying these prisoners had not committed violent offenses, including many who had been convicted of drug dealing, as if providing deadly poisons is not a violent act. Tell that to the mother of a child found dead with a needle sticking out of his arm.

            Then, mirroring the President’s views on LGBT issues, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced plans to name a Navy ship for homosexual predator Harvey Milk. In describing Milk, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said: “The Navy seems intent on following in the administration’s ridiculous footsteps and bestowing a great honor on someone primarily on the basis of his sex life…A life marred by promotion of illegal drug use, sexual exploits, and lies doesn’t deserve one of the greatest military distinctions.”

            Finally, it was revealed that the President had sent $400 million to Iran in laundered money delivered in the dead of night on an unmarked cargo plane, the same day that four American prisoners were released by Iran. An Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander boasted it was ransom money, but the Administration denied it. It was just a coincidence. Right.

            Obama knows the fools will believe it all. They voted for him, didn’t they?