Hugs for Hillary

            The picture of Michele Obama embracing Hillary Clinton was plastered all over the media this past week. That one photo, I maintain, is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party: the wife of the President of the United States—who actually detests Secretary Clinton—loweriing herself to embrace the most corrupt liar of any presidential candidate in the history of this country. Which begs the question, “What does it take to embarrass Democrats?”

            I might ask that question of Nancy Theodore who should be embarrassed by her letter to the editor on October 26 that was filled with distorted facts and glaring omissions to refute my negative observations on Barack Obama’s legacy. Ms. Theodore has always been consistent in her support of Obama’s disastrous Affordable Care Act, his budget-busting tax and spend policies, his extra-constitutional executive orders, his job-killing regulations, his sympathies for Muslims, and his treasonous Iran agreement. For all these failures she still blames Bush and the Republicans. We can search in vain through all her letters critical of me to find anything critical of Obama and the Democrats.

            After all the WikiLeak exposures of Clinton corruption, after Director Comey’s announcement that the FBI is reopening its investigation into Hillary’s emails, what more does Ms. Theodore need to be embarrassed by Democrats? If Hillary Clinton came to Hertford, would Ms.Theodore stand in line to give her a hug?

Trump Blew It

            In the third debate Donald Trump had a chance to take down Hillary Clinton in front of 60 million viewers. But he blew it. He never brought up Hillary’s sordid, scandal-filled past (Cattlegate, White Water, Travelgate, missing Rose Law Firm records, Vince Foster suicide, etc.); he didn’t make the case for her complicity in the criminal racketeering of the Clinton Foundation, especially the treasonous uranium giveaway to the Russians; he didn’t expose her contempt for Catholics and evangelicals; and he didn’t rebut Hillary’s debate lies about the Heller decision and the claim that her advocacy for open borders was about energy. He didn’t even point to Hillary’s pathological mendacity by recalling her outrageous lie about the Benghazi video, a lie she repeated to the parents of the murdered Americans as their caskets were rolling by.

            Instead, Trump refocused the debate on himself by saying he might not support the winner of the presidential election. For days that’s all the media talked about, while giving Hillary a free pass on the corruption revealed by the WikiLeaks release of Clinton-camp emails.

            For the sake of this country Hillary Clinton must not become the next President of the United States. But I don’t see how Trump can defeat her when he is facing three powerful opponents simultaneously: the corrupt Clinton machine, the biased media, and his worst enemy, an uninformed, inarticulate, thin-skinned egomaniac by the name of Donald J. Trump.

           

The Fix

            The single most consequential decision in this presidential cycle was made my FBI Director James Comey. His decision not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton removed the major roadblock to her presidency. On the other hand, a recommendation to prosecute would most likely have assured Donald Trump’s election. One may justly wonder which consequence motivated Director Comey. Personally, I think he was motivated by politics: he wanted to save his job. The clues are everywhere.

            One. We now know that the case for prosecution was solid. FBI agents are telling us that the vast majority of investigators were convinced of that fact, in spite of actions by the Justice Department to impede the investigation, especially by preventing the interrogation of immunized witnesses. Yet, Director Comey went against the recommendations of his own investigators.  

            Two. President Obama did not want Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted for two reasons: 1) As his successor, she would continue his policies, thereby protecting his legacy, and 2) A grand jury investigation would reveal his complicity in the email scandal.

            Three. When Director Comey said that no reasonable prosecutor would take this case, he was right: prosecutors in the Department of Justice work under Loretta Lynch who works directly for the President. Clearly, there was no way she was going to implicate her boss in this scandal; she did not want to make a decision that would cost her her job, her reputation, or both. She needed a scapegoat.

            Four. Even though it wasn’t his role, Director Comey recommended against prosecution. By doing so, he took Loretta Lynch off the hook and enabled her to close the case without getting her hands dirty. You can bet that when she had that little meeting with Bill Clinton she knew what Comey would do. The fix was in.

            Director Comey saved his job. But his reputation for integrity has been shattered. He will have to live with that.

Legacy of a Narcissist

            Barack Obama, supreme narcissist, is concerned about preserving his legacy. He is depending on the voters in this election to confirm their love of him by electing Hillary Clinton to succeed him and continue his policies. That he is depending on the most corrupt politician in the history of presidential politics to perpetuate his agenda does not appear to bother him. But just in case, he is buying insurance by appealing to his most loyal constituents, the solid bloc of black voters who flocked to the polls to elect and re-elect him. He will consider it a personal insult if they don’t vote to cement his legacy by voting for Hillary.

            What will be Obama’s legacy? On the domestic front he will be remembered as the man who presided over: a recession recovery that never exceeded two percent growth in GDP; the lowest labor participation rate since the 1970s; a doubling of the national debt; a disastrous health care system derisively bearing his name; a widening racial divide featuring race riots and assaults on law enforcement officers; out-of-control illegal immigration; and repeated acts terrorism whose nature the president refuses to acknowledge.

            Internationally, history will remember President Obama as a weak leader who: abhorred confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, with China in the South China Sea, and with North Korea’s nuclear testing; created a vacuum in Iraq that led to the rise of ISIS; and negotiated with Iran a disastrous agreement that threatens the security of the Middle East.

            Worst of all, Obama drew a red line with Syria, but did not act when Syria crossed it. Had the President bolstered our allies on the ground by destroying Syria’s planes and its chemical stores, we would not have seen the destruction of so many cities, the loss of more than 200,000 innocent civilian lives, and the desperate migration of a million refugees.

            Barack Obama has always been in love with the image he sees in the mirror. But history will not be kind to him. His legacy will not be one of success and triumph; it will be one of failure at home, weakness abroad, and cowardice in the face of the enemy.

  

The Unity of Lies

    The top half of the front page of today's Virginian-Pilot Sports section is a photo of ODU football players forming a circle on the field. Their coach, Bobby Wilder, approved of this political statement. He said, "Let's show unity, respect free speech."
     Isn't that wonderful! Except that the players were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and holding their hands up in the familiar "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" pose. Free speech is wonderful, but not when it perpetuates a lie, especially when that lie has led to the murder of policemen.
     Coach Wilder caught some heat for his uncritical position on this matter. That's when he said, "But this is about the children. Everyone needs to put their agenda down." Well, what about Black Lives Matters's agenda? Does Coach Wilder approve of killing police? What about his responsibility for teaching his players respect for the truth?
     Bobby Wilder is a moron. He should not be in a position to influence kids. He should be fired.

Why No Hillary Indictrment

            I don’t know about anybody else, but to me the incessant cacophony in the media before the first presidential debate was the very definition of excess. I don’t think the media could have placed a greater importance on any event short of the Big Bang.  Unfortunately, its absorbed frenzy totally obliterated another story of perhaps greater import: the Friday night FBI dump of information that revealed why Hillary Clinton was never indicted (the Friday night in question being just three days before the debate).

            The reason FBI Director James Comey decided against recommending an indictment of Secretary Clinton—even after laying out a solid case for it—is that it would have exposed President Obama as a direct participant in the case, making him liable to prosecution himself for a violation of the law. The facts are really quite simple.

            We all remember President Obama announcing that he had first heard about Hillary’s illegal use of a private server from a news story in the press. That was a lie.  We now learn from the information turned over by the FBI that Obama not only knew about Clinton’s server, he sent classified email(s) to her on it. Even more telling, he used a pseudonym so as not to be identified as the source of the information.  According to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, “He not only engaged in the same type of misconduct Clinton did; he engaged in it with Clinton.”

            Are we starting to get the picture? Had Comey recommended a Clinton indictment, the prosecutorial process would have revealed the President’s own culpability and brought public embarrassment to the President, the Justice Department, and the FBI. Hence, the need for a massive cover-up, beginning with “straight-shooter” Comey squashing the indictment.

            The stench of corruption pervades this administration. The old saying has never been truer: A fish rots from the head down.

Taxes and Regulations

            We may soon see a new entitlement piled on top of the mountain of entitlements contributing to America’s massive debt. This one may be named for the next president’s daughter. No, not Chelsea Clinton, but Ivanka Trump. If Trump is elected president, Ivanka will likely be the face of a new entitlement providing child-care tax rebates or, for those who pay no income taxes, an increase in the earned-income tax credit.

            Donald Trump is looking for ways to ingratiate himself with women. But does the cost of this new idea have to be piled on top of existing entitlements and social programs, the chief causes of the nation’s unsustainable debt? Trump says he will pay for his new program with a reduction in fraud and abuse. Wishful thinking. A drop in the bucket at best.

            Given our presidential candidates’ opposition to reforming Social Security and Medicare, there is only one way to reverse the stampede to national bankruptcy: Growth. Under President Obama GDP has risen by less than 2% annually. What we need is for growth to be 3.5% at a minimum.

            So how do we remove the impediments to growth we have seen under Obama? Two ways: tax reform and regulatory reform.

            Growth can only happen if the private sector creates new jobs. The single most desirable tax reform would be a reduction in the 35% business tax that has forced companies like Apple to move overseas to avoid this massive tax burden and major employers like Ford to move plants to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor. Common sense reforms to reduce labor costs domestically would help, but nothing will persuade companies to remain in America more than tax reform.

            We must also reduce the burden of regulations that cost businesses billions of dollars in compliance and prevents start-ups from creating new jobs.  In 2015 the federal government wrote 5,712 rules and regulations totaling 81,611 pages. And that wasn’t even a record for an Obama Administration intent on regulating everything from smokestacks to puddles. This year will probably end up being worse.

            Taxes are necessary to run the government, and some regulations are needed to maintain order and safety for the citizenry. But government must stop micromanaging every aspect of our lives and just get out of the way so we can break the shackles of debt and get back to rebuilding a prosperous nation.