White House Economics Is Killing Americans

[From article]
The inability of people aged 40 and above to find a decent job to support their families has led to an epidemic of suicides.
But as Betsy McCaughey points out in this New York Post column, you'd never know it to hear President Obama and Hillary Clinton talk. President Obama insists that the "“American economy is pretty darn good right now.”
[. . .]
When the recession hit, suicide deaths suddenly started outnumbering deaths from auto accidents. But eight years later, job losses are still driving the suicide rate higher and higher.
Clinton seems unmoved. She’s pledging to close down the coal industry and block natural-gas fracking. More pain for coal country or for portions of upstate New York that are sitting on natural-gas treasure.
Self-inflicted deaths in the Syracuse area are up about 40 percent in the past five years, and rates in depressed western New York are double New York City’s rate. Upstate New Yorkers are literally dying for jobs.
[. . .]



Economic distress is so widespread that for the first time ever, life expectancy for white women in the United States actually dropped. Despite progress against cancer and heart disease, lives are being cut short by hopelessness.
It’s a national health emergency. Suicide kills more middle-agers than flu, pneumonia and diabetes combined — often after dashed expectations, abandonment by a spouse and loss of self-worth. Then a bullet to the head or a noose (for men), or a deliberate drug overdose (for women) ends the pain.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/the_obama_economy_is_killing_people.html

April 27, 2016
The Obama economy is killing people
By Rick Moran

White House Lawless Abuse Of Power

[From article]
Apparently, President Obama believes it is time to move beyond the constitutional constraint called separation of powers, an idea he considers outdated, obsolete and certainly not progressive.
A pillar of America’s political foundation is the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches are coequal but different in authority. Separation was how the U.S. Founding Fathers prevented a return to governmental tyranny. Separation was supposed to prevent the concentration of power in one person or group.
Mr. Obama has a habit of saying one thing and doing the opposite. Though he said, “I am not a king,” as well as “I am not a dictator,” he acts as though he is both rolled into one. He sees no limit to his power and behaves as though Constitutional limits on the executive branch do not apply to him.
[. . .]



Religious Freedom (First Amendment)
The case of Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Burwell (Secretary of Health and Human Services) is currently before the Supreme Court. The issue is simple. The Sisters want to follow their religious convictions. Obamacare forces the Sisters to go against these beliefs in the matter of contraceptives and abortifacients.
[. . .]
Gun control (Second Amendment)
Everyone knows the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly states, “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The Constitution does not specify certain people: it clearly meant all people. The president wants to deny guns to “a dangerous few,” and he knows which people are dangerous. So, he wants to infringe their right to bear arms.
[. . .]
For the first three and a half years in office, Mr. Obama enforced our immigration laws, deporting 1.4 million illegals, more than anyone during a similar timeframe. In order to woo the Latino vote, five months before the 2012 election, he issued an Executive Order halting the deportations. Note that Congress had made no change in immigration law.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/obama_uber_alles.html

April 28, 2016
Obama Uber Alles
By Deane Waldman

Canadian Mother Investigated For Allowing Her Children to Play Unsupervised in Her Back Yard

[From article]
Apparently, Canadian child services agencies aren't any better than their American counterparts.
A Winnipeg mother received the surprise of her life when a child services agent showed up at her front door telling her they had received a complaint of "unsupervised" children on her property.
The mother was under scrutinty because she let her three children play alone in their fenced in backyard.
[. . .]



Children's services agencies have been under fire for allowing children to live in homes where they are beaten and abused. So the answer is to swoop in and investigate anyone who doesn't sit on their children 24 hours a day?
We are seeing this kind of draconian reaction from government agencies more and more. Parents are arrested for letting their children walk home from school or play in a park by themselves. Is it any wonder by the time they get to college they need "Safe Spaces"?
The child service agencies have a a tough job. But the answer won't be found in badgering parents who want to teach their children to be independent. There might be no more anguishing or important job for parents than learning how to let go of their kids and allow them to discover who they are. This kind of "supervised" independence should be encouraged, not snuffed out.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/canadian_mom_investigated_for_letting_her_children_play_alone_in_backyard.html

April 24, 2016
Canadian mom investigated for letting her children play alone in backyard
By Rick Moran

Censorship Thrives On College Campuses

[From article]
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression usually hands out awards every year to the most oppressive and anti-free speech government agencies.
But the group took a different tack this year. Witnessing the incredible assaults on free speech at colleges and universities across America last year, the TJC gave its "Jefferson Muzzle Awards" to those institutions of higher education that demonstrated "excellence” in the categories of censorship and intolerance.
Many of the award winners were involved in highly publicized incidents on campus.
[. . .]



The awards were broken down into five categories this year, including both “censorship of students” and “censorship by students.” Yale University took first in the latter category for its Halloween costume incident, during which a respected professor was chased off campus by her students for suggesting in an email that they may be capable of selecting a costume on their own.
“The student response to Christakis’ email was swift and severe. Students’ called the email ‘disrespectful’ and ‘dangerous.’ Angry students surrounded Nicholas Christakis, cursing at him and calling him ‘disgusting,’ while several students told reporters that they could no longer bear to live in the college,” the TJC commented.
[. . .]



Former University of Missouri (Mizzou) professor Melissa Click took home the grand prize in what was perhaps the most memorable campus moment of 2015.
Click, an assistant professor of mass media studies, was captured on video attempting to prevent coverage of a public protest on campus.
[. . .]
“Students at numerous universities attempted to exclude certain viewpoints from being heard on their campuses in 2015,” the TJC observed, saying, “such efforts do all members of the community a disservice by stifling open debate and the ability of others to hear and challenge controversial ideas.”
Dozens of other universities were awarded muzzles for their anti-free speech efforts, including Louisiana State University, Northwestern, and Butler, all of which fired tenured professors for saying or writing something inconsistent with the administration’s orthodoxy.
[. . .]



So the question we should be asking is, are these just islands of intolerance, or is the cancer spreading across the country? I think we know the answer to that question. Led by the rabid left and aided by the Democratic Party, there is a steepening price for conservatives to speak their mind anywhere. And it's likely to get a lot worse before there's a chance for it to get better.
When politcal opponents can be throttled by accusing them of using "hate speech," we approach the reality of a one-party dictatorship. Criminalizing freedom of expression has already begun and, as Germany's descent into Nazism showed, it is not a huge leap from jailing people for expressing unpopular thoughts to jailing people for opposition to a leader.
The American people would barely look up from their smartphones to notice they've become slaves.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/american_colleges_sweep_jefferson_muzzle_awards.html

April 21, 2016
American colleges sweep 'Jefferson Muzzle Awards'
By Rick Moran

Replacing Historical Icons With PC Images

[From article]
Patrick J. Buchanan is an historian. In his piece, “Dishonoring General Jackson”, Buchanan conjures up facts. That is what historians do. Regarding the recent proposal to put new faces on our currency, and noticing a very certain attitude,
“..this is affirmative action raised to fanaticism, a celebration of President Obama’s views and values, and a recasting of our currency..”
I heard a conservative radio host dismiss the currency reconfiguration issue as a non event. His argument was that there were more important issues to concern ourselves with, the national debt, illegal immigration, etc.. I maintain that we can hold concern for many things at the same time, and that this currency remake is indeed one that should hold our attention. Pat Buchanan agrees.
Image control is no small issue, and politicians and revolutionaries know it. To reface the currency is to shuffle the deck on historical hierarchies, or should I say “load” the deck. It is a rewrite of history, a new declaration of what is and was important. That is no small matter.
[. . .]



Buchanan continues:
This is affirmative action raised to fanaticism, a celebration of President Obama’s views and values, and a recasting of our currency to make Obama’s constituents happy at the expense of America’s greatest heroes and historic truth…
While King already has a holiday and monument in D.C., were the achievements of any of these six women remotely comparable to what the six men honored on our currency — Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jackson, President Grant and Ben Franklin — achieved?



I find it curious that we get the forced and reworked American history lesson from a man who was never tutored in history in the continental United States, and received none from his schooling in Indonesia.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/a_recasting_of_our_currency_to_promote_a_new_history.html

April 23, 2016
A Recasting of Our Currency to Promote a ‘New’ History
By James Longstreet

Speaking Correct Grammar is White Privilege

[From article]
Consider Mona Chalabi, an editor of the iconic leftwing British newspaper, The Guardian, who believes that having good grammar and correcting others is racist, an expression of “white privilege.”
The notion that nonwhites cannot command good grammar is racist to the core. And the idea that grammar rules are simply optional based on race is a recipe for imprecise communication, aka misunderstanding.
That an editor should voice these opinions is astonishing. I suppose we can look forward to the Guardian sliding even further into incoherence.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/frontiers_of_white_privilege_good_grammar_is_now_racist.html

April 24, 2016
Frontiers of 'white privilege': good grammar is now ‘racist’
By Thomas Lifson

Harvard Law School Students Demand FBI Expose Student Political Opposition

Few police departments know what to do about computer crimes. Harvard University campus police are notoriously poorly trained. In Cambridge, MA (where Harvard Law School is located) laws are optional. Harvard University faculty and administrators are protected by the Obama-Holder Doctrine: Inconvenient laws may be ignored by a select few. Emails do not travel remaining in one jurisdiction. Campus police jurisdiction ends at the Harvard University property line. They can hardly investigate lawfully. A great book about the coming tsunami of computer and other technology crimes is Marc Goodman's Future Crimes. Hackers stole $80 million almost got a billion from the Bangladesh national bank last week.

[From article]
Emails published on a blog run by activists opposed to a racial justice group at Harvard Law School show that the organization, Royall Must Fall, asked the Harvard administration to investigate the anonymous site and discover who is behind it.
The blog, Royall Asses, grew out of an incident last year where pieces of black tape were placed on the portraits of black law professors. The site claimed that the incident was a false flag operation by members of Royall Must Fall.
One member of the racial justice group claimed to have received email threats. She went to the FBI and asked them to monitor the blog despite the fact there was no evidence anyone connected with the blog had sent the threatening emails.
The group also asked law school administrators to find out who was behind the blog.
[From] Daily Caller:
Royall Asses claims that it came into possession of the two emails because one of the people Williams contacted was appalled that the student activists and Harvard itself would use “Gestapo tactics to invade student privacy.” That student forwarded the emails to Royall Asses.
If Williams’ emails accurately represent Harvard’s actions, then it suggests Harvard attempted to investigate (and potentially expose) its own students simply for running a blog that criticized left-wing elements on campus.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/emails_point_to_investigation_by_harvard_administrators_of_anti_racial_justice_blog_.html

April 25, 2016
Emails point to investigation by Harvard administrators of anti 'racial justice' blog
By Rick Moran

Immigration Advocates Admit Illegal Aliens Receive More Taxpayer BenefitsThan Citizens

[From article]
The concept of a civic community has been turned on its head in the United States. No longer do we take care of our own first and then do what we can to help the rest of the world. Along with the idea of actual borders, the idea that we owe our citizens the greatest protection is being tossed aside in practice, if not yet in theory.
As you ponder Rick Moran’s blog post, “Illegal alien families surging across border at record pace,” consider this, via the Washington Examiner:
Among recipients of food stamps, welfare cash and Social Security payments, refugee children receive more in taxpayer-funded aid than children of citizens, according to a new report on federal spending from the pro-immigration Migration Policy Institute.



For example, 30 percent of refugee children live in households that received food stamps from 2009-13. Among American children, the number was 27 percent, said the report titled, "Young Children of Refugees in the United States: Integration Successes and Challenges."
Some 8 percent received cash welfare, compared with 6 percent of U.S. citizen households. And 5 percent of children of refugees were part of Social Security's Supplemental Security Income program, compared with 4 percent of U.S. children.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/proimmigration_group_admits_refugee_children_get_more_federal_benefits_than_poor_us_kids.html

April 25, 2016
Pro-immigration group admits: refugee children get more federal benefits than poor US kids
By Thomas Lifson

Celebrating Criminals, New Government Initiative

[From article]
A warning issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development yesterday points in the direction of eventually declaring criminals a protected class, the coveted status that gives a person more rights than ordinary Americans. Blake Neff of The Daily Caller News Foundation reports:
The Obama administration released a warning Monday telling the nation’s landlords that it may be discriminatory for them to refuse to rent to those with criminal records.
Now, technically, this is not (yet) making criminals into a protected class:
The Fair Housing Act doesn’t include criminals as a protected class, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says refusing to rent based on a criminal record is a form of racial discrimination, due to racial imbalances in the U.S. justice system.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/federal_government_paving_the_way_to_make_criminals_a_protected_class.html

April 5, 2016
Federal government paving the way to make criminals a protected class
By Thomas Lifson

Anti Semitism In Public Schools

Act For America National Convention

Brigette Gabriel, Founder

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Published on Oct 27, 2015ACT for America is the nation's largest non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots organization devoted to promoting national security and defeating terrorism. ACT for America has 280,000 members organized in more than 890 chapters nationwide and 11 countries worldwide.

https://youtu.be/5XYoqw_R4C4

Ann Couter Analyzes Republican Candidates

Left to right: Donald Trump, John Kasich, Ted Cruz: The Last Three Standing

[From article]
Apparently, John Kasich and Ted Cruz are at their most appealing when no one is paying attention to them, which, conveniently, is most of the time.
After Cruz won cranky Wisconsin last month — only the fourth actual election he’s won — voters decided to give him a second look. But two seconds after people said, “OK, let’s give this guy a try,” he cratered. You might say a little of Ted Cruz goes a long way. Voters can’t stand Cruz any more than his Senate colleagues can.
Listening to Cruz always makes me feel like I have Asperger’s. He speaks so slowly, my mind wanders between words. As Trump said, there’s a 10-second intermission between sentences. I want to order Cruz’s speeches as Amazon Audibles, just so I can speed them up and see what he’s saying
The guy did go to Harvard Law School, so I keep waiting for the flashes of brilliance, but they never come. Cruz is completely incapable of extemporaneous wit.
Now that Cruz has been mathematically eliminated, he’s adding Carly Fiorina to the ticket. She’s not his “running mate,” but his “limping mate.” It’s an all-around lemon-eating contest.
Voters quickly moved on from Cruz and tried Kasich. But he turned out to be the spitting image of a homeless man. He’s got the slouch, the facial tics, and a strange way of bouncing his head and looking around that makes you want to cross the street to avoid him. It looks like he cuts his own hair, and his suits are Ralph Nader cast-offs. He wolfs down food like a street person, has a hair-trigger temper, and rants about religion in a way that only he can understand.
Kasich is constantly proclaiming that illegals are “made in the image of God,” and denounces the idea of enforcing federal immigration laws, saying: “I don’t think it’s right; I don’t think it’s humane.”
[. . .]
When giving a speech to Ohio EPA workers a few years ago, Kasich suddenly went off topic and began shouting about a police officer who had given him a ticket three years earlier. “Have you ever been stopped by a police officer that’s an idiot?” he began. He proceeded to tell the riveting story of his traffic violation to the EPA administrators, yelling about “this idiot! … He’s an IDIOT!”
[. . .]
With Trump it’s exactly the opposite. The more people see of him, the more they like him. The usual pattern is: Trump says something perfectly sensible, the media lie about it, then voters find out the truth and like him more and the media less.

http://humanevents.com/2016/04/27/a-slow-talker-and-a-homeless-guy-walk-into-a-bar/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

A Slow-Talker And A Homeless Guy Walk Into A Bar…

Ann Coulter

Wednesday Apr 27, 2016 6:01 PM

Cartoons For Those Opposed To Guns

If you are verbally oriented, try reading John R. Lott Jr.'s book, More Guns Less Crime.

Belgium Official Reports Muslims Danced In Streets Celebrating Terror Attacks

[From article]
In a interview yesterday, Belgium’s Interior Minister Jam Jambon charged that a large part of the country’s Muslim population celebrated terrors attacks:
AFP reports:



"A significant section of the Muslim community danced when attacks took place," Jambon said in an interview with the Flemish-language De Standaard newspaper.
The Belgian minister also accused Muslim residents of Brussels' largely immigrant Molenbeek neighbourhood of attacking police during an operation last month to arrest a suspect in connection with the deadly attacks in Paris last November.
[. . .]



Shades of Donald Trump charging that Muslims in the US celebrated after 9/11, a charge that has lacked a lot of corroborating evidence. Jambon’s portfolio presumably includes police and security forces, so perhaps he has access to more information than Trump.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/belgian_interior_minister_significant_part_of_muslim_community_danced_in_wake_of_attacks.html

April 17, 2016
Belgian Interior Minister: ‘Significant’ part of Muslim community ‘danced’ in wake of attacks
By Thomas Lifson

Can People Govern Themselves? United States Experiment in Self Government Keeps Question Alive

[From article]
It has been said by some, and not entirely without reason, that the American experiment in self-governance is failing. Is it? Are we incapable of the virtues required of sovereign citizens?
The founding principle of American civics is that "we the people" govern ourselves. As self-governing citizens, we ensure that the government does not rule over us, but rather that it act under us. It is neither our parent nor our provider, but our subordinate. We call the shots. The government follows our orders. Our representatives represent us – not themselves, not their donors.
Has all that become a pipe dream?
[. . .]



Socialism is on the rise, and its roots are sinking ever deeper into the social fabric. Education, entertainment, and even religious institutions are indoctrinating our fellow citizens. There is no reasoning with socialists, because when you try to speak, they shout you down, and that in itself is the harbinger of tyranny.
As matters now stand, we are not governing ourselves. We are being ruled by a distant and largely unaccountable officialdom that operates mostly out of our view. This system is supported by a bloc of voters who are appallingly ignorant of basic civics. People who cannot raise their own children are allowed to vote, and the people for whom they vote tax you to pay for their children.
[. . .]
First, it is necessary to restore citizenship to its constitutional roots. Birthright citizenship was never the bedrock of civic entitlement, but only one of several considerations.
[. . .]
I would make at least one critical requirement for anyone to be a voter. That requirement would be that every voter must pass the same test that foreign applicants for citizenship must pass. Presently, most voters would fail that test, many of them miserably.
Citizenship founded upon basic knowledge of the Constitution would be a good start. The rest might then, hopefully, take care of itself.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/can_we_really_govern_ourselves.html

April 17, 2016
Can we really govern ourselves?
By Robert Arvay

Bay of Pigs Disaster Remembered

[From article]
Fifty-five years ago, my parents and lots of other Cubans woke up to "la invasion," or the invasion that most of us expected and were ready for. There were groups in Cuba who had been fighting Castro, from sabotage to confronting the regime block by block.
This is about The Bay of Pigs, an event that most people have forgotten unless you're a Cuban of my parents' generation or someone like them who was impacted by it.
The plans for the invasion were passed on to new president Kennedy by the outgoing Eisenhower administration.
[. . .]



The veterans of the brigade have a museum in Miami, a reminder to the young about the men who were willing to fight and remove communism from the island.
The politically correct explanation is that the invasion failed because Cubans did not rise up against Castro. Actually, it failed because the total plan was never carried out, and the men were left stranded, as Michael Sullivan wrote:
[. . .]


President John F. Kennedy

President Kennedy, anxious to cover up America's role, inexplicably called off all American air support, leaving the rebels stranded on the beach.
Cuban army and militia units, organized by Castro himself, swarmed the invasion site to block the rebels from gaining the interior of the island.
The Cuban Air Force rallied to strafe the landing site and the supply ships moored in the bay.
One ship sank and the remaining three barely made it out to sea.
Without resupply or air support, the men of 2506 Assault Brigade managed to hold out for two days, until nearly all were either killed or captured by pro-Castro forces. When the smoke cleared, 114 died and 1,189 languished in Cuban prisons.
There they remained for 22 months, until the Kennedy administration paid more than $50 million in food, medicine and cash for their release.
[. . .]



Over the years, I have personally spoken to many of the veterans of Brigade 2506. Like my parents, they started their new lives in the U.S., and many served in the U.S. military. Every one of them tells me the mission would have succeeded if the plan had been carried out.
The lesson of The Bay of Pigs is simple. Presidential weakness, and confusion, has consequences way beyond the event in question.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/the_other_bay_of_pigs_story.html

April 17, 2016
The other Bay of Pigs story
By Silvio Canto, Jr.

DePaul University Bans Chalking; Emory University Students Traumatized By Trump Chalk

[From article]
The DePaul University administration announced that it is banning political chalking because of pro-Trump slogans written on the sidewalk.



The university also claims that because of its nonprofit status, the slogans are deemed partisan and therefore illegal.
[. . .]



So now the janitors are making unilateral decisions on what constitutes free speech? Wow.
It would be an understandable policy if they had been enforcing it all along. But the ban appears to have been motivated by the "offensive" Trump postings.
Although the grounds crew “regularly cleans up chalk messages,” meaning DePaul students regularly chalk their campus’ sidewalks, this appears to be the first time university officials have expressly addressed their chalking policies. Zdziarski noted, after the Trump chalkings appeared, that students are not even allowed to chalk on sidewalks at all.



We see this kind of lying at every educational level, from grade school to college. Justification for punitive or oppressive actions comes after the fact and usually involves making up rules as they go along. It's nauseating to watch.



http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/depaul_u_bans_political_chalking_because_of_offensive_trump_slogans.html

April 15, 2016
Depaul U bans 'political chalking' because of 'offensive' Trump slogans
By Rick Moran

Curbing Waste Of Taxpayer Funds Strongly Opposed By The Spending Other People's Money Society

[From article]
The Government Accountability Office has released its annual report: "Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits." As usual, no one is paying attention.
But people should. The GAO is the premiere government watchdog, and it has identified 100 actions that could be taken by Congress that would save the taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
Washington Free Beacon:
The federal watchdog’s 2016 annual reportidentified nearly 100 actions Congress or the executive branch could take to make government run more efficiently, including eliminating $1.3 billion in disability insurance overpayments and more than $100 billion in savings from the Pentagon by sharing how much excess ammunition it has with other agencies rather than destroying it.
[. . .]
Among the report’s findings included $388 million that could have been saved between 2013 and 2015 by consolidating federal government cell phone contracts. In a GAO report last year, only five of the 15 agencies it reviewed knew how many cell phones and plans it had.
[. . .]



The $1.3 billion in disability insurance overpayments is on top of the $2.4 billion the Social Security Administration lost by waiving overpayment debts over the past 10 years.
[. . .]
This brings to mind that wonderful quote from the movie Contact as the industrialist informs Dr. Arroway that another alien machine has been built. "First rule of government spending: why have one when you can have two at twice the price?"
And that appears to be the mindset of government agencies. For example, 18 federal programs deal with nutrition education and assistance. There are a couple of dozen job training programs spread out over several agencies. Consolidating these programs could save the government billions.
Before a single new dollar of federal spending is authorized, these duplicate programs should be eliminated or consolidated as much as possible. But there appears to be very little effort on the part of government to deal with this waste and inefficiency, because the bureaucratic culture won't allow it. It's just not in their DNA to eliminate programs and possibly eliminate jobs in government.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/04/report_feds_waste_hundreds_of_billions_of_dollars_on_duplicate_programs_and_inefficiencies.html

April 14, 2016
Report: Feds waste hundreds of billions of dollars on duplicate programs and inefficiencies
By Rick Moran