The bombshell you'll probably never hear about

 Just wow.  Words no longer do justice to the level of injustice that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and their cabal of criminals committed on the people of America in 2016:

And many voters will not hear about this. Ever. Because of the media.

Collectively, we conservatives probably owe Chris Christie an apology

Back in 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast and New Jersey, among other states was pretty hard hit.  Then President Obama offered then New Jersey governor emergency assistance.  Chris Christie was appreciative and conservatives were...NOT HAPPY with Chris Christie.

I think we conservatives may owe Chris Christie an apology. 

After all, president Trump offered assistance to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler who very impolitely refused.  And now, a Trump supporter was killed on the street as a result. Ted Wheeler has blood on his hands.  Chris Christie does not.  Chris Christie's ability to rise above partisanship was very untimely for conservatives hoping to defeat Obama in 2012.  But it was the right thing to do.  And now, as an unintended consequence, instead of Mitt Romney as president we have Donald Trump.  And for that we should be extremely thankful.

Trump recovery vs Obama recovery

The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics so far show a stark contrast between the Obama Great Recession recovery and the Trump COVID-19 shutdown recovery.

The COVID-19 impact was much more severe than the Great Recession (pictured in grey).  But what is truly stark is the 2 months of drop off in the unemployment rate after the 2020 peak from 14.7 % in April, to 13.3% in May to 11.1%. 2.5 million jobs were added in May despite an expectation of 9 to 10 million more job losses.  And in June 4.8 million jobs were added.

May the president knows what he is doing when it comes to the economy. I mean really, really knows.  Compare that to the anemic recovery that Obama put the country through from 2010 through 2016.  It was abysmal and no one should be supporting his know-nothing VP for president because he has no clue of how to handle an economy.  The contrast is stunning. 

National Pharmaceutical Stockpile was depleted by Obama

President Obama allowed the National Stockpile of surgical type personal protective masks, which is a real thing, to be dramatically depleted according to a USA Today investigative report:

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the national stockpile was seriously taxed as the administration addressed multiple crises over eight years. About "75 percent of N95 respirators and 25 percent of face masks contained in the CDC's Strategic National Stockpile (∼100 million products) were deployed for use in health care settings over the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response," according to a 2017 study in the journal Health Security.

Again according to NIH, the stockpile's resources were also used during hurricanes Alex, Irene, Isaac and Sandy. Flooding in 2010 in North Dakota also called for stockpile funds to be deployed. The 2014 outbreaks of the ebola virus and botulism, as well as the 2016 outbreak of the zika virus, continued to significantly tax the stockpile with no serious effort from the Obama administration to replenish the fund.

ProPublica reported on April 3 that congressional budget battles in the early years of the Obama administration contributed to stockpile shortages. But the article notes available funds were used not to replenish masks: "With limited resources, officials in charge of the stockpile tend to focus on buying lifesaving drugs from small biotechnology firms that would, in the absence of a government buyer, have no other market for their products, experts said. Masks and other protective equipment are in normal times widely available and thus may not have been prioritized for purchase, they said."

While USA Today goes on to say that the Trump administration has not take significant steps to replenish the stockpile, they rate the claim about the Obama administration as true.

The real takeaway here is that no nation seems prepared for a pandemic, and at both a national and state level, preparedness for this type of scenario should take priority over things like funding of the arts or even within medical funding for things like abortions. 

Indisputably? I do not think it means what you think it means.

Former (ersatz) president Obama recently claimed that women are indisputably better leaders than men.  There are so many problems with that but I will highlight three.

(1) He's looking at groups not individuals.  That's always a flawed approach. Whether it's about assessing people or how you treat people, it's a recipe for division, something Democrats excel at doing deliberately.

(2) He's using the Al Gore "the debate is over" tactic to silence opposing views. Al Gore used the approach to end discussion on climate change when he could not argue facts.  Obama is using it here as a glibly tossed out thought in an effort to pander to an audience. To what end, who can say.?

(3) He offers no specific evidence. In fact it's mere opinion but it's disguised as fact, it's meant to lead opinion, not facilitate discussion or invite commentary.  That's contrary to everything the president claimed to be about - open inclusive discussion. Yeah, not so much.

The former president, clearly pandering, is once again proving that he is all style, no substance.

Tim Pool goes into more depth below.  I don't think Obama's foolhardy pronouncement needs it but Tim Pool does a good job of dissecting it, nonetheless.

Obama administration held 100k children in detention in 2015

According to the U.N., Obama was the worst - at least for detention of alien children.  By comparison, in 2018 that number had been reduced from 100,000 to 15,000 under president Trump.  Many will claim this is fake news but the U.N. report, is real.

Trump ahead of Obama at same point in presidency

More good news, Trump's polling numbers are more winning.

Imagine if North Korean peace talks happened on Obama's watch.

Imagine what liberals would do and say.  Oh wait, you don't have to imagine:

Let's get real. The press would be
in the midst of a collective orgasm if this Korea summit happened under Obama's watch. So let's call the meeting what it is... an unalloyed good thing.

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) April 27, 2018

President Trump, and getting our hands dirty

Years ago I argued that then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was not really a left-of-center conservative.  My point was that in a generally far left of center country, he had to move the country to the right cautiously or risk losing his government to the Liberals. I stand by that even though after a decade he finally lost power to ultra-liberal, ultra-clueless Justin Trudeau after accomplishing far less than I'd hoped during that time.

The situation in the United States is different than Canada when it comes to president Trump.  His predecessor tried to move the country to the left radically and with as much haste as he could muster.  The United States moved from it's historical position to something that looks a lot more like Canada and given the upset that candidate Trump sprung upon the left in 2016, the fierce resistance to moving the country back to the right is not unexpected, nor is it's ferocity or subterfuge. 

The president has taken exactly the right tack on getting America back to it's original place in the world and it's original course.  That is to say he's playing hard ball, he's fighting everything they throw at him and not backing down and he's charging headlong into the fight and wasting little time in doing so.  That seems to have rubbed off on some other Republicans. The Democrats have been taken aback and are on their back foot but do not expect that to last (even the wording of the story is laughable - the president did not negotiate and Schumer backed down and is now trying to save face with his base, by claiming withdrawing something he never had any say on, which will only serve to further his look of indecisiveness). Trump is winning by playing hard ball.  Yes he fights dirty and that's the point.  Arguably he does not fight as efficiently or focused as he could, but he has a team in the Senate and House that can, should and often does take up the fight alongside him.

Now is the time to shift the pendulum back to the right as far as possible in the next 10 months, four or eight years while the opportunity lasts because the march to the left is unrelenting. You can say you don't like his demeanor and I'd agree to some degree, but you cannot argue his successes; judges, economy and elsewhere. If you are not on his side as a conservative, you could at least do the right thing and stand aside rather than joining those who stand in the way who your future complaints about will ring hollow after this presidency.

Getting our hands dirty in the effort to thwart progressivism may be unlikable but it is necessary and it is at this point in history a requirement - anything else will result in the failure of conservatism and ultimately, America. 

What have I been saying?

I've been saying that 2018, contrary to mainstream popular opinion, could very well be a wave year for Republicans, not Democrats.  The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ensures that the economy will be even more robust than it was during president Trump's first year, and people will feel a difference.  If they want more of the same, they'll get out and vote to support Republicans who support president Trump's jobs agenda.

I'm not alone in this line of thinking. Peter Ferrara agrees:

2018 is a midterm election year, and typically the party that holds the White House gets thrashed in the midterms. But just the opposite will happen this year for several reasons.

The first reason is that tax reform is going to work spectacularly with Trump’s deregulation to finally restore booming economic growth of four percent a year or more. Just like President John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts in the 1960s and President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the 1980s, the critical tax rate cuts in the 2017 tax reform legislation will result in skyrocketing investment, flooding job creation, surging wages, swelling labor supply, rocking business expansion, rolling business creation and booming growth.

But that's just the tip of the success iceberg. Tax changes for corporations have instantly made America more attractive to businesses. He continues:

America’s formerly outdated corporate tax rates averaged nearly 40 percent, counting state corporate taxes—roughly double Asia’s 20.1 percent and Europe’s 18.9 percent. Other countries worldwide have been cutting their corporate tax rates for decades, creating this crippling tax disadvantage. Those countries responded to global competition and the latest economic studies showing that workers in modern economies actually bear most of the corporate and business tax burden.

America is falling behind the times, crippled by socialist media and misleading Democratic rhetoric.

His prediction for the outcome matches mine:

This economic boom will boost Republican candidates by November, all the more because not one Democrat voted for the tax reform. The boom will also rapidly nullify any increase in the deficit, with further help from spending restraint, further boosting Republicans.

Democrats will surely be hurt when voters realize that they and their media lied to them about tax reform. Blue collar workers and the middle class will see their taxes decline, and the fabrications about over 80 percent of the tax benefits going to the top 1 percent will be disrobed.

As Wayne Allyn Root astutely noted, we've gone from worst to potentially the best president in one year:

Obama was the worst economic president in America’s history. And what he did to the American working class and middle class is an unforgivable sin.

Wasn’t it Obama who said manufacturing jobs were gone forever? Here’s the quote. “When somebody says … that he’s going to bring all these jobs back. Well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s uh, uh, no answer to it … what magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he (Trump) doesn’t have an answer.”

This was Obama’s attitude with the lives and livelihoods of American citizens at stake...

Why didn’t Obama champion tax cuts for corporations if that would result in companies rewarding their employees? Did he also think that was impossible? Did he even care?

The Trump economy is exploding. These are developments over just the past few days — proving, once and for all, that Obama and his liberal supporters were wrong about everything.

It’s time for Obama and his liberal supporters to cry “Uncle.”

2017 was an impressive start for Republicans. 2018 will be a banner year for Republicans.

Dictator Watch - North Korea goes full nuke

While I'm starting out the year on a Dictator Watch note, I might as well comment on the North Korea has the bomb and the rocketry to hit anywhere in America situation.  While some are again saying that president Trump has put the world closer to nuclear war than ever before, the hyperbole just does not stack up to scrutiny.  We've seen from the president before a methodology in staking out a tough initial bargaining position before a negotiation.  That is most certainly the same case in this instance.

Granted that concern might be part of a planned leak to frighten Kim Jong Un into a negotiation. That won't stop CNN from freaking out of course. And we don't know for sure at this point if Kim Jung Un is simply full of bluster himself.   However, even if the capabilities he claims to have are bogus, they are certainly not that far off from a future reality. That's my issue; there seems to be a fundamental lack of concern by many people in the media about a tinfoil hat leader of a rogue nation having nuclear capabilities that hold the potential to decimate an American city.  That's a situation that must be resolved and quickly.  The previous administration bungled the North Korea situation as badly as it did the Iranian issue.  This administration will get results, perhaps imperfect but positive, and it will be in stark contrast to the failure of the Obama administration.

Dictator Watch - Iran, All is not quiet on New Year's Day

It's a rather slow start to the new year, so it's tempting to just say I've got nothing.  But there are reports of Iran cracking down on protesters to the point of killing them.  President Trump tweeted out a missive on the people of Iran wanting, and deserving freedom.  The left in a fit of Chamberlain-ism, felt the tweet itself deserved condemnation for inflaming the situation. Not Iran - the president's tweet is the problem. Okey-dokey.

This in stark contrast to then president Obama in 2009 who ignored videotaped killings in the streets of Iran and his dismissive quiet helped ensure the ultimate failure of the Iranian Green Revolution, and the served as the seeds of the failure of his own foreign policy on Iran.

President Trump is, as in most things, attempting a new approach. Blanket, predetermined condemnation seems to be a short-sighted approach to solving the problem, but what do I, or president Trump know about foreign policy that the establishment liberalism hasn't already solved?

Bloomberg belatedly recognizes Obama's alternative facts on Iran nuclear deal

Everyone with any modicum of intelligence knew that the Iran nuclear deal was horribly bad.  Everyone except president Obama and the mainstream media.  Bloomberg belatedly has figured out the truth; Obama's deal was a bad deal and the American people were being peddled a lie to sell a horrible, horrible deal.

It's not just bad, it's this bad:

When the Obama administration sold its Iran nuclear deal to Congress in 2015, one of its primary arguments was that the agreement was narrow. It lifted only nuclear sanctions. America, President Barack Obama told us, would remain a vigilant foe of Iran's regional predations through sanctions and other means.

Thanks to stunning new reporting from Politico's Josh Meyer, we can now assess these assertions and conclude that they are … well, "alternative facts."

Meyer reports that while the U.S. and other great powers were negotiating a deal to bring transparency to Iran's nuclear program, top officials in Obama's government dismantled a campaign, known as Operation Cassandra, intended to undermine Hezbollah's global drug trafficking and money laundering network.

A few months after the implementation of that bargain in January 2016, Operation Cassandra was ripped apart. Agents were reassigned. Leads and sources dried up. Bad guys got away.

The Politico story is so bad, that yesterday I linked to it but didn't comment because I could not believe how truly terrible it was.  It's getting harder to ignore though that this actually seems to have happened.

70 record Dow closes in one year under president Trump

The  Dow Jones Industrial average (DJIA) has closed 70 times at a record high in 2017, under president Trump - a record year after having risen from just under 20,000 in January to now on the edge of 25,000. A banner first year for the for the president on the stock market front, with a 25% DJIA rise. Impressive

President Trump himself had this to say, via Twitter;

70 Record Closes for the Dow so far this year! We have NEVER had 70 Dow Records in a one year period. Wow!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 18, 2017

Granted, even Trump himself said that the Dow is not the bellweather of the economy. But it most certainly an indicator as well as robust GDP growth and decades-low unemployment. Liberals will say it was a delayed reaction to president Obama's economy. President Obama had eight years to fix things, and they're willing to believe he fixed it in his ninth year. But they are right, it is a delayed reaction to Obama's economy; it's a realization that the Obama economic malaise is over. It's all good news.

SJWs, why so shrill?

Former president Obama was roundly lauded for his use of the phrase in describing his enemies as being on the wrong side of history and he, and his supporters were on the right side of history. As backwards as he was on all the important issues, it was a compelling phrase for a lot of people.  Even though it was often used in a really backhanded way.   

Which brings me to my question for Social Justice Warriors - if you are on the right side of history, and your side and your points of view will win in the end, then, 

Why so shrill?

Why yell, why antagonize, why fight? If president Trump and his supporters are the historical anomaly, why antagonize, demonize and vilify them? You are not going to win them over.  You are not in any way advancing the 'right side of history' by engaging in shrill and often violent protests.  What are you achieving by screaming at the top of your lungs about how terrible these people are?

You don't need to do so, because they are a dying breed.  Right?  Right?

I can think of only three possible reasons why you SJWs continue to be so shrill. (1) You want to make yourself feel good (at someone else's expense) about yourself.  (2)  Deep down you are not convinced you are right and are trying to convince yourself more so than anyone else about the veracity of your 'truths'. or (3) It's to impress a girl.

Whichever it is, isn't that just special for you?

Finally, U6.

During president Obama's tenure the mainstream media never reported on the U6 unemployment rate (which includes those who have given up looking for work as well as those who are 'underemployed' and spent several months at 17.1%) , preferring to make president Obama look good, so instead focused on U3 unemployment which peaked at 10%.

Meanwhile president Trump has been in charge of the executive branch for 6 months and U6 has already dropped from 9.4% to 8.6% (although it was as low as 8.4% in May).  At that pace, president will have U6 unemployment down to 3% by the end of his first term.  Impressive.  Nevertheless, the media has suddenly discovered U6 (because U3 remained flat month over month and could not give them the negative headline they needed to bash Trump. 

They've just used U6 as a cudgel to bash president Trump.

CNBC:

An alternative measure of unemployment that counts discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons — the underemployed — rose from 8.4 percent to 8.6 percent.

They were not done though.  They dug into wage growth, which was positive news, but not given this spin:

Wage growth, however, remained muted, with average hourly earnings rising 2.5 percent on an annualized basis, essentially unchanged from the previous month. On a monthly basis, the rise was 0.2 percent, which actually was a shade below the 0.2 percent expectation. The average work week edged higher, rising 0.1 hours to 34.5.

There's no bad news in that. 2.5% wage growth is reasonable and might help keep inflation low and therefore interest rates. Oh, and the number of employed in America is at a record high.  I guess the good news is that after nearly a decade of ignoring it, the mainstream media seems poised to acknowledge U6.

Strikes on Syria

Forget the politics of congressional authorization - that debate can come later - striking Syria is the right thing to do after Syria used chemical weapons on its own people.  it was the right thing to do in 2012 when president Obama drew a red line, Syria crossed it and president Obama did exactly nothing.  President Trump

...ordered 59 Tomahawk missiles to be launched at the al-Shayrat airfield in Syria, the base from where Syria launched a horrific sarin gas attack earlier this week.

The critics and proponents of intervention in Syria have already started reciting their talking points, but it's worth pausing for a moment.

It's significant that Trump changed his views quickly on Syria following the gas attack. Early reports are that some aircraft and runways were destroyed. But for now this act is mainly symbolic; it sends a message but won't change much on the battlefield.

 President Trump understands full well the disgusting use of chemical weapons in Syria and understands what the right thing to do was respond. 

This should allay some of those histrionics on the left about Trump working with Russia after the two parties are clearly on opposite sides on the Syria issue.  The two nations will be at loggerheads on Syria for the foreseeable future.

Krauthammer Gold

Krauthammer gold:

President Obama blowing smoke

From, of all places, MSNBC;

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is crediting its anti-recession stimulus plan with creating up to 50,000 jobs on dozens of wind farms, even though many of those wind farms were built before the stimulus money began to flow or even before President Barack Obama was inaugurated.

Out of 70 major wind farms that received the $4.4 billion in federal energy grants through the stimulus program, public records show that 11, which received a total of $600 million, erected their wind towers during the Bush administration. And a total of 19 wind farms, which received $1.3 billion, were built before any of the stimulus money was distributed. ( See a list of the projects here.)

Yet all the jobs at these wind farms are counted in the administration's figures for jobs created by the stimulus.

Why is MSNBC breaking this story? One of two reasons, I suspect.  Either they are closest to the green base and they know their audience will be interested in it or (2) nobody watches MSNBC, so it minimizes the damage to the President in the pre-election climate.

What are the odds Keith Olbermann talks about this story tonight? And if a tree falls in a forest, does anyone hear it? I mean, besides Al Gore.

Dick Morris on Obamanomics

Dick Morris expounds on Obama's underlying goals with respect to the economy and socialism.




True? Maybe. Possible? Absolutely.