Hillionaire has some 'splainin' to do

Guccifer 2.0 presents us with a hacked 42-page DNC document on party jitters over Hillionaire's vulnerabilities due to the Clinton Foundation.

The document chronicles hundreds of news reports of Clinton Foundation malfeasance featured under devastating headings created by DNC staffers themselves. Track-change comments featured inside the document contain the names “Lauren Smith” and “Jeremy Brinster,” both of whom are listed as former or current DNC research staffers. The DNC’s own descriptive headings, which are backed up by mainstream media reports, demonstrate how politically toxic the DNC considers the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign donations during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Sec. of State.

In the section titled, “CLINTON FOUNDATION INDIVIDUAL FOREIGN DONORS,” the DNC vulnerabilities memo reports the following:

• THE CLINTON FOUNDATION RECEIVED DONATIONS FROM INDIVIDUALS TIED TO SAUDI ARABIA WHILE CLINTON SERVED AS SECRETARY OF STATE
• INDIAN POLITICIAN AMAR SINGH, WHO HAD DONATED AT LEAST $1 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, MET WITH HILLARY CLINTON IN SEPTEMBER 2008 TO DISCUSS AN INDIA-U.S. CIVIL NUCLEAR AGREEMENT
• BILLIONAIRE STEEL EXECUTIVE AND MEMBER OF THE FOREIGN INVESTMENT COUNCIL IN KAZAKHSTAN LAKSHMI MITTAL GAVE $1 MILLION TO $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION BEFORE CLINTON BECAME SECRETARY OF STATE
• SOON AFTER SECRETARY CLINTON LEFT THE STATE DEPARTMENT, THE CLINTON FOUNDATION “RECEIVED A LARGE DONATION FROM A CONGLOMERATE RUN BY A MEMBER OF CHINA’S NATIONAL PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”
• A GERMAN INVESTOR WHO HAS LOBBIED CHANCELLOR MERKEL’S ADMINISTRATION GAVE BETWEEN $1 MILLION AND $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, SOME OF WHICH WAS DURING MRS. CLINTON’S TENURE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT
• A VENEZUELAN MEDIA MOGUL WHO WAS ACTIVE IN VENEZUELAN POLITICS DONATED TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION DURING CLINTON’S TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE
• AN EMBATTLED BUSINESSMAN WITH “TIES TO BAHRAIN’S STATE-OWNED ALUMINUM COMPANY” GAVE BETWEEN $1 MILLION AND $5 MILLION TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION
• DURING CLINTON’S TENURE AS SECRETARY OF STATE, A FORMER CLINTON POLLSTER REGISTERED AS A LOBBYIST FOR PINCHUK AND TOOK MEETINGS WITH CLINTON AIDE’S ABOUT ISSUES IN THE UKRAINE

Also a section on Haiti.

The sum total of it doesn't smell good at all.

Tuesday morning roundup

A lot of twists and turns to the redacting of the Orlando-jihadist-utterings transcript. After the DoJ removed references to Allah and ISIS, the regime thought the better of it and released a version that is true to what Mateen said. Which amounts to the Most Equal Comrade throwing Loretta Lynch under the bus.


Squirrel-Hair may know how to buy resorts and skyscrapers and squeak through bankruptcies, but he's still at the beginning of the learning curve regarding financing a campaign.

Oh, Hillionaire!

Chess players having a field day with post-America's cluelessness:

Cyber actors linked to Russia’s intelligence service carried out a sophisticated cyber attack against Democratic National Committee computer networks in a bold attempt to influence the U.S. presidential election.

That’s the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies and private computer security firms regarding the covert intrusions by Moscow into DNC networks over the course of at least one year that resulted in the theft and release of sensitive internal information.

As with other state-sponsored cyber attacks, the White House is refusing to condemn the incident or take action despite ample electronic intelligence indicating the DNC hacking was a Russian cyber operation.

It is not the first major Russian cyber attack. Others in recent months have included cyber penetrations of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff email server and infiltrations of unclassified networks at the White House and State Department.

White House National Security Council spokesman Mark E. Stroh told The Cyber Threat it does not regard the DNC hacking operation as a Russian state-sponsored cyber attack. “That’s a supposition,” he said. “The USG has not made that determination.”

The comment suggests that the Obama administration is again avoiding any action in response to major and damaging cyber attack against the United States. Its questionable rationale is that the DNC attack cannot be linked to Russia without courtroom-level evidence, despite intelligence indicating that it is. The issue of attack attribution—the ability of intelligence agencies to conclusively link cyber intrusions to known state sponsors of cyber attacks—is once against letting the bad guys off the hook.

Glad to see there's a good chance Marco Rubio may want to keep his Senate seat.

Squirrel-Hair's dangerously sloppy thinking on the no-fly list and Second Amendment rights

Here's how a conversation about it with ABC's Jonathan Karl went down:

After affirming that he supports a policy of preventing gun purchases for people the "No Fly" list, and acknowledging (but glossing over) that there are huge problems with this, Trump adds as some sort of apparent reasoning "we have to make sure that people that are terrorists or have even an inclination toward terrorism cannot buy weapons, guns."

A fine, non-specific sentiment that has nothing to do with what he's supporting. As has been noted at length here at RedState and in most other places where civil liberties, the Constitution broadly, and the Second Amendment specifically are respected, this is a terrible, precedent-setting, oppressive government point of view that Donald Trump wholeheartedly shares with the filibustering, gun-controller Democrats. And he doesn't even know what the No Fly list actually is.

What's even worse is that, like Politico's Azi Paybarah, he completely minimizes the notion that protecting due process or Second Amendment freedom is something that even matters.

Now, but what they say, and I understand that also, is the Second Amendment, they’re depriving them of those rights. And that it could be that people are on there that shouldn’t be on, you know, etc. etc.

He waves off the very real problem of people being on the no fly list who are not only citizens and therefore guaranteed a right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, but who are not remotely associated or "inclined" to terrorism. Trump is just swallowing and regurgitating MSM lies that we discussed this morning here at RedState. 

Coming out as a gun control softie is not smart at any stage of an election for a Republican, but it's lunatic for the presumptive nominee to do before the convention has even taken place. He is way off the reservation here, even for him.

Spin this one, Bots.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

The charge that the 17 state-and-territory-level attorneys general are making that Exxon has been up to something nefarious regarding "climate change" is beyond flimsy. It's obvious that the goal is to harass anyone who champions economic liberty and opposes statism:

The 17 attorneys general participating in this cause have always been careful to identify Exxon as their only target. It’s easier to accuse a big, bad oil company of nefarious deeds, so they make the bogus claim that Exxon somehow “defrauded” the public and its shareholders by engaging in “climate denial.” All the better if they can beat Exxon into cutting a giant check to settle any future charges—a payoff for their states (and for the trial lawyers helping them).

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

But the Healey subpoena shows that Exxon is a front. The real target is a broad array of conservative activist groups that are highly effective at mobilizing the grass-roots and countering liberal talking points—and that therefore must (as the left sees things) be muzzled. This is clear from the crazy list of organizations Ms. Healey asked for information about in her subpoena. She demanded that Exxon turn over decades of correspondence with any of them.

Take Americans for Prosperity. AFP confirms it has never received a dime from Exxon. But its 2.3 million activists nationwide are highly effective in elections, and it receives funding from the left’s favorite boogeymen, Charles and David Koch.

Or, closer to home: Ms. Healey named the Beacon Hill Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Boston. My sources confirm Beacon Hill has also never seen Exxon dollars. But it is a perpetual thorn in the side of liberal Massachusetts politicians like Ms. Healey.

Also named: the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC doesn’t now, and hasn’t ever, taken a position on the climate. The group is, however, one of the most powerful forces in the country for free-market legislation, having written hundreds of model bills that states use in their efforts to reduce taxes, cut regulations and reform tort laws. Democratic activists have, for the past five years in particular, waged a vicious campaign to run ALEC out of business, and Ms. Healey is now doing her bit.

The same tactics were on display in a subpoena to Exxon from Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker. He appears to have cut-and-pasted from an anti-Exxon website maintained by Greenpeace, since his subpoena lists the same groups in pretty much the same order. The exercise was so sloppy that Mr. Walker named numerous organizations that have been defunct for years, listed several targets twice, and misidentified others.

The goal of the Exxon probe isn’t to protect consumers or help the environment. It’s a message: Oppose us, and we will marshal our terrifying government powers to intimidate and threaten you, to force you to spend millions defending yourself, to eat up the time you’d otherwise use speaking out.

This is raw totalitarianism, right here in post-America.

Just because music - this evening's edition

Just 

They smell weakness - today's edition

The Most Equal Comrade and his nomenklatura are in the last few months of having their grip on post-America's throat. We can now begin to see the arc of their rule and its historic context.

Both domestically and on the world stage, the MEC's central impetus has been planned decline - what we here at LITD call The Great Leveling Project. The results have been a success by his standards, and a feeble economy, cultural rot and national endangerment by ours.

Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, examines the foreign-policy component of the Great Leveling Project in an important article at Middle East Quarterly. It's lengthy, but every paragraph is indispensable.

He says the MEC has given lip service to a "pivot to Asia" that has yet to actually materialize, and that he has done so quite consciously at the expense of attention to, and application of anything like a consistent policy toward, the Middle East, the region where jihad of both the Sunni and Shiite varieties originates.

From his early days in power, President Barack Obama has pursued a grand strategy of retrenchment based on the belief that the Bush administration's interventionist policies had severely damaged U.S. standing and that a very different strategy was required: a non-aggressive, multilateral, and noninterventionist approach.[1] This has resulted in the erosion of U.S. clout in several regions, notably Eastern Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East.[2]

Most unambiguous was Obama's intent to reduce the U.S. presence in the Middle East, and the rationale for this policy shift is clear: The region is among the world's most volatile areas with anti-U.S. sentiments particularly rampant.[3] U.S. forces had fought two costly wars there in the past decade, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in an attempt to prevent these states from becoming hotbeds of terrorism and to promote their democratization, only to be taught a painful lesson about the limits of power and the need for greater foreign policy realism.[4] As Washington's deficiency in political engineering in the Middle East became clearer, overseas interventions became less popular at home. This evolution in domestic attitudes facilitated Obama's strategic shift.

The desire for a lower profile in the Middle East was not the only factor behind Washington's retreat from the region. Dependence on energy resources from the Persian Gulf has been reduced, thanks to new technologies that can extract natural gas and oil within the continental United States. The country has, in fact, become an influential producer in the global energy market and is heading toward energy independence. According to an Energy Department report, even with low prices, U.S crude oil production was expected to hit a new record in 2015.[5] Under these new circumstances, the Middle East appears less directly relevant to U.S. interests. However, in the long run, this perspective might prove short-sighted as the decline in energy dependency could be temporary.

The preference to downgrade U.S. involvement in the Middle East was reinforced by Washington's pronounced decision to "pivot" toward China, an emerging global challenger. While Asia has always been important for the United States, Obama emphasized that his administration would no longer be diverted by secondary arenas such as the Middle East and would instead elevate Asia to top priority.^[6] Despite such declarations, however, "pivoting to China" remains primarily a slogan with little policy content, only underscoring Washington's inaction and weakness.

As a result of this re-prioritization, the Obama administration has reduced military assets available for projecting power in the Middle East. To take one example, there was a recent period during which there were no aircraft carriers in either the eastern Mediterranean or the Gulf—an unprecedented situation since October 2015. And while officials within the Navy continue to recognize the need for a permanent aircraft carrier presence in the gulf or in its vicinity, the department is going ahead with plans for longer periods during which there will be no carriers in the area at all. A U.S. spokesperson has said that the reduced presence is due, not to lack of need, but to the availability of fewer carriers and the prioritization of the Asia-Pacific.[7]

As President Obama's reluctance to act in the Middle East became clearer, his policies were often viewed within the region as unwise, projecting both weakness and a lack of understanding of Middle Eastern politics. One early example was the administration's initial inclination to try to engage foes, such as Iran or Syria. Other defining moments were the passive approach toward the mass protests against the rigged June 2009 Iranian presidential elections; the desertion of long-time ally Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in February 2011; the "leading from behind" strategy in the Western intervention in Libya in March-October 2011, and the retreat from threats to use force against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for crossing a chemical weapons "red line" that Obama himself had promulgated in August 2012. These decisions contributed to widespread perceptions, both in the Middle East and beyond, that Obama is a weak, unreliable ally with a questionable grasp of regional realities.[8]

The campaign against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sha'm [Greater Syria]) provides additional evidence of the retreat of U.S. power in the Middle East. In August 2014, after a long and confused decision-making process, Washington concluded that ISIS's land conquests were evolving into a significant threat to U.S. interests and ordered its air force to attack ISIS installations and forces in Syria and Iraq.[9] By the summer of 2015, the territory in those areas under ISIS control had indeed shrunk, but ISIS had made gains elsewhere. Unfortunately, the gap between the administration's goals and its willingness to allow its troops to pursue them on the ground has only bolstered ISIS's dual message about the weakness of the decadent West and the group's ability to withstand military pressure.[10] The campaign also illuminated the daunting political and logistical challenges involved in organizing proxies to fight ISIS.[11]

All this has implications for the roles of players such as Turkey, Russia and China as well as the nation-states and non-state forces cited above. These countries have some strategic ambitions that, were this still the United States of America, would most definitely run counter to the USA's interests.

The presumptive candidates for president in each of post-America's major parties inspire exactly zero confidence in any informed observer that he or she would be able to repair this damage at all.

The window for injecting any other possible scenario than what we look to be facing narrows by the hour.

 

When even the State Department is fed up with the Most Equal Comrade's Syria non-strategy

This doesn't happen every day:

There’s an old joke about how it would be nice if there was an American Interests desk at the State Department, since Foggy Bottom was usually more sympathetic to foreign nations than our own. The truth behind that joke is what makes so extraordinary the story the Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight about the 51 State Department employees who have signed a petition calling for a tougher military policy against the Assad regime in Syria:

BEIRUT—Dozens of State Department officials this week protested against U.S. policy in Syria, signing an internal document that calls for targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.

The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy in various capacities, according to an official familiar with the document. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the cable, which repeatedly calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year.

The views expressed by the U.S. officials in the cable amount to a scalding internal critique of a longstanding U.S. policy against taking sides in the Syrian war, a policy that has survived even though the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of violating ceasefire agreements and Russian-backed forces have attacked U.S.-trained rebels.

The Wall Street Journal doesn’t say so directly, but this represents massive internal disgust with the pusillanimity of Obama going on for several years now. That the State Departmentwould want stronger military action is simply extraordinary. Here and there the reality of the matter breaks through:

“It’s embarrassing for the administration to have so many rank-and-file members break on Syria,” said a former State Department official who worked on Middle East policy. . . The recent letter marked a move by the heart of the bureaucracy, which is largely apolitical, to break from the White House.

This comes on the heels of CIA chief John Brennan's Senate Intelligence Committee testimony about the ISIS threat that directly contradicts what his boss had said not 48 hours earlier.


Very late in the day here in post-America.

Ehud Barak is quite goofy

The former Israeli prime minister says the current holder of that job, Benjamin Netanyahu, is pursuing a fascist, apartheid society.

And goes on to dispense this astounding bit of goofiness:

Barak then insisted that Israel faces no serious threats. 

“He also said Israel faces “no existential threats” from regional enemies, and accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of magnifying the threats from terror groups and other enemies by comparing them all to Nazi Germany. “Hitlerization by the prime minister cheapens the Holocaust,” he said. “Our situation is grave even without [comparisons to] Hitler.”

It’s astounding to hear this kind of rhetoric from one of Israel’s former leaders. Perhaps Barak didn’t hear Iran bragging about its ability to "level" Iran with missiles in mere minutes. Or, he ignored the swarm of terrorists aggregating in the Gaza Strip planning attacks on Israel, such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On the same note, he also must have turned a blind eye to the Palestinian terror attacks being waged in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other major cities. The Israeli Defense Forces has published a detailed post about these threats and more on its blog.

But yes, keep insisting Netanyahu is naive and paranoid.

Just goes to show you that no Western nation is lacking in its own citizens with warped worldviews.

The fatally stupid party

Matthew Continetti has a piece at the Washington Free Beacon called "The Self-Immolation of the Republican Party." The entire thing is appropriately brutally candid, but here's the essence of his argument:

What is likely to change the trajectory of this race? The terror attack in Florida did not change it. Whatever bounce Trump gets from the convention will dissipate by October. The debate—and there may be only one—is unlikely to move the needle in his direction. He’ll probably be able to hold himself together for about 35 minutes, then the moderator or Clinton will say something and he’ll let himself go, ranting about Monica Lewinsky and how Mitt Romney is a choke artist and all the people Hillary has murdered. And when we are in late October, and Trump is still behind, his supporters will dismiss the polls as skewed, as phony. And when Trump loses, his cheerleaders in talk radio and on the Internet won’t accept a smidgen of responsibility, but will blame the neocons and the media and the Republican establishment for not doing more to help a lunatic become president.

It’s a joke. All of it: his candidacy, the apparatus of propaganda and grift surrounding it, the failures of governance and education and culture that have brought us to this place. What disturbs me most is the prospect that Donald Trump is what a very large number of Republican voters want: not a wonk, not an orator, not a statesman, not even a leader, really, if by leader you mean someone who persuades and inspires and manages a team to pursue a common good. They just want a man who vents their anger at targets above and below their status.

How cathartic it is to give voice to your fury, to wallow in self-righteousness, in helplessness, in self-serving self-pity. It’s what one expects of teenagers, artists, bloggers, pajama boys—immature, peevish, radical, self-destructive behavior. If that is how Republican voters would like to end their days, in a defensive posture of suspicion and loathing of this big crazy wonderful country that has made them literally the wealthiest and most entitled generation of human beings in the history of the world, well, that’s their right as Americans, I suppose. Best of luck.

What I've put in boldface is the crux of the matter. We are so dumbed down as a people that a coherent worldview based on consistent principles is too challenging for us to contemplate. So it's time for the pitchforks and torches, except that the machinery of the enemy - the Freedom-Hater party - is formidable enough to put a squelch on that one its continued rule is confirmed this coming winter.

Squirrel-Hair roundup

Peter Wehner at Commentary looks unflinchingly at the latest poll numbers:

A new Bloomberg Politics national poll shows Clinton leading Trump with 49 percent to 37 percent among likely voters in November’s election. 55 percent of those polled say they could never vote for the real-estate developer and TV personality. Women are a majority of voters, and a full 63 percent of them say they could never vote for Trump.

Then there is the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll showing that negative views of Trump have surged to 70 percent, their highest level of the 2016 campaign. (Hillary Clinton’s are at 55 percent.) It’s not only that Trump’s negatives are sky-high; it’s also that a majority of those who have negative impressions of him (56 percent) hold those views “strongly.”

And for those Trump supporters who are hoping he will benefit from his response to the Orlando massacre, based on the belief that he comes across as “strong” and “tough” and will protect us, there’s this: In a new CBS News poll, more than half (51 percent) of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is responding to the Orlando attack, while only a quarter (25 percent) approve.

Jim Geraghty  at NRO on the feeble attempts of S-H's Pub water-carriers to put lipstick on their pig:

There is no responsible, unifying, disciplined Trump waiting to be unveiled at the right time. This is who he is. Republicans running for reelection are stuck with him, and they seem increasingly inclined to decline comment, feign unfamiliarity, or simply throw up their hands when asked about it.

“I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential candidates today,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

“I’m not gonna make a career out of responding to every comment and every tweet,” said Mississippi senator Roger Wicker.

“I have offered public encouragement at important times, but I must admit that I am personally discouraged by the results,” said Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker.

Trump has single-handedly created a political environment where his surrogates are forced to attempt a defense of the indefensible while Republican lawmakers with any sense of self-preservation refuse to even bother. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is left to insist that a Tweet about taco bowls represents a sign that Trump is “trying,” and Orrin Hatch lamely instructs everyone to “be nice to him,” since “he’s a poor, first-time candidate.” Former senator Scott Brown merely claims that the 70-year-old Trump is “learning and growing, learning and growing.”

Susan Wright at RedState offers this noteworthy nugget: The new S-H campaign director in Iowa is Eric Branstadt, a major ethanol lobbyist.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air looks at the latest in the matter of S-H throwing the NRA under the bus. Reuters wasted no time in trying to make it look like the NRA had changed its position on allowing gun sales to people on terror-watch and no-fly lists. Not so fast:

Reuters seized on one sentence and ignored its context. The whole point of a watchlist is to flag activity for immediate investigation, whether it’s a travel watchlist or a gun-purchase watchlist. The NRA is in fact saying that such an activity is legitimate — but that’s as far as they go.

The sale of a firearm in this instance should only get delayed if the government does a timely investigation and then “immediately go to court, block the sale, and arrest the terrorist.” If the government is not prepared to do that, then the sale should proceed.

In other words, the government should not be able to block the exercise of civil rights merely on the basis of executive-branch suspicion and force citizens to (a) discover why their civil rights have been abrogated, and (b) prove themselves innocent rather fight against a presumption of guilt. That’s what we call “due process,” and that’s precisely what the watchlists lack.

It’s also the reason why FBI Director James Comey opposes the Democratic proposal. The denial of sale would trigger a process that could ruin national-security investigations . . . 

Pubs, I know everybody is telling you that you've made your bed and now must lie in it, but it's a plain fact that not one delegate who is going to show up in Cleveland is obligated to vote for this clown.

Let's check in with the "A"CA

Passed without a single Pub vote in the dead of night, underwater, public-opinion-wise, since even before it was passed, and expensive as hell:

Premiums for popular low-cost medical plans under the federal health care law are expected to go up an average of 11 percent next year, said a study that reinforced reports of sharp increases around the country in election season.

For consumers, the impact will depend on whether they get government subsidies for their premiums, as well as on their own willingness to switch plans to keep the increases more manageable, said the analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The full picture on 2017 premiums will emerge later this summer as the presidential election heads into the home stretch. The health law's next sign-up season starts a week before Election Day. Democrat Hillary Clinton wants to build on President Barack Obama's health overhaul, which has reduced the uninsured rate to a historically low 9 percent. Republican Donald Trump wants to repeal it.

The Kaiser study looked at 14 metro areas for which complete data on insurer premium requests is already available. It found that premiums for a level of insurance called the "lowest-cost silver plan" will go up in 12 of the areas, while decreasing in two. The changes range from a decrease of 14 percent in Providence, Rhode Island, to an increase of 26 percent in Portland, Oregon.

Half of the cities will see increases of 10 percent or more. Last year, only two of the cities had double-digit increases.
"Premiums are going up faster in 2017 than they have in past years," said Cynthia Cox, lead author of the analysis.
Among the cities studied, the monthly premium for a 40-year-old nonsmoker in 2017 will range from $192 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to $482 in Burlington, Vermont.
Final rates may change if regulators push back on the requests from insurers. The foundation plans to analyze major cities in all states as more data becomes available.
Most workers and their families are covered by employers, but about 12 million people get private coverage through HealthCare.gov and online insurance markets run by states. Nearly 7 in 10 pick silver plans, a mid-tier option that allows consumers with low to modest incomes to also get financial help with out-of-pocket costs when they receive medical care.
Income-based premium subsidies designed to keep pace with costs will cushion the impact for many. But not all consumers get help. About 2 million marketplace customers make too much to qualify for the subsidies. And an estimated 3 million to 5 million people who buy their policies outside of markets like HealthCare.gov do not receive financial assistance.
For both the subsidized and the unsubsidized, willingness to switch plans and insurers may be crucial in keeping premiums more manageable next year.

The Most Equal Comrade flat-out lied to us. And his poll numbers are ticking upward. The cattle-masses appear to have entirely lost the ability to make the connection between cause and effect.

 

Gun grabber roundup

Rolling Stone has an opinion piece calling for the flat-out repeal of the Second Amendment. Sorry, not providing the link.

Jeh Johnson cloaks his freedom-hatred in a sense of urgency about the jihadist threat:

Just days after the massacre in an Orlando nightclub left 49 people dead and 53 wounded, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Tuesday said that gun control is now a critical element of protecting the U.S. homeland and keeping Americans safe. 

"We have to face the fact that meaningful gun control has to be a part of homeland security," Johnson said in an interview on "CBS This Morning." "We need to do something to minimize the opportunity for terrorists to get a gun in this country." 

On the issue of people on the no-fly list and various other lists being able to purchase a weapon in the U.S., Johnson said, "I believe that that's something that has to be addressed.

And the head of that moral sewer, the UN Human Rights Commission, weighs in:

U.N. human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein urged the U.S. government to live up to its obligations to protect citizens from the “horrifyingly commonplace but preventable violent attacks that are the direct result of insufficient gun control.”

“Examples from many countries clearly show that a legal framework to control the acquisition and use of firearms has led to a dramatic reduction in violent crime,” said Zeid.

“In the United States, however, there are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation, and every year thousands of people are killed or injured by them.”

Zeid deplored what he called the ease with which individuals can buy firearms in America – “in spite of prior criminal backgrounds, drug use, histories of domestic violence and mental illness, or direct contact with extremists – both domestic and foreign.”

“How many more mass killings of school-children, of co-workers, of African-American churchgoers, how many more individual shootings of talented musicians like Christina Grimmie, or politicians like Gabrielle Giffords, will it take before the United States adopts robust gun regulation?” he asked.

Notice how he didn't, in his list of mass killings, say a damn thing about any of the jihadist attacks post-America has experienced in the last fifteen years.

Caleb Howe at RedState on why the NRA's endorsement of Squirrel-Hair was an ill-advised move in the extreme.

Russ Vaughn at The American Thinker on New York Daily News reporter and all-around effete dweeb Gersh Kuntzmann's piece on the experience of firing an AR-15.

 . . . his article [opens] with this sentence: "It feels like a bazooka – and sounds like a cannon," about a lightweight sporting rifle that is so easy to handle that it is popular enough with teenage female shooters to be manufactured in hot pink Barbie versions.  But an admittedly "terrified" Kuntzmann goes on to proudly parade his ignorance by inferring that such a weapon can fire a forty-round "clip" in less than five seconds.

Right here I'll wager Kuntzmann any amount he chooses that he can't possibly fire forty rounds from an AR-15 in less than five seconds, because an AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon, which requires the trigger to be pulled back fully to firing position for every individual round fired.  Even with his pinky finger fully extended, Gersh just ain't that good a gunner.  He simply can't operate that trigger that fast.  By the way, you can always tell a liberal writer expounding on firearms because they invariably use the term "clip" rather than the correct term "magazine."  And, Kuntzmann, magazines are typically configured for 20 or 30 rounds, not 40, as anyone with minimal knowledge of firearms knows.But it is in the actual firing of the weapon that Gersh seriously sissifies himself:

The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions – loud like a bomb – gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.

I gotta tell you, Kuntzmann, you had millions of American gun owners guffawing with that bit of hissy-fit histrionics.  Thousands of teenage girls fire the AR-15 routinely, and they can tell you, the recoil is minimal compared to most sporting rifles.  And those unbruised young ladies have the presence of mind not to let themselves become disoriented by those absolutely icky brass shell casings flying past as they steel themselves not to be overcome by the smell of destruction, whatever the hell that is, and the bomb-like muzzle blasts that gave you temporary PTSD, whatever the hell that is, and made you anxious and irritable for at least an hour.

Good grief, Kuntzmann, don't you have a clue what a complete pantywaist you have described yourself to be?  It's not just real men who are laughing at you – it's real women as well.

Post-America is wearing a big "attack us some more" sign.

This is what I was talking about

Speaking of CNN, Sally Kohn has really stepped in it:

A petition urging CNN to fire or suspend lesbian contributor Sally Kohn for her comments attacking Christians in the wake of the Orlando shooting has garnered 400 signatures in just over 24 hours. The petition calls Kohn "a hateful bigot," and attacks "her disgusting, bigoted tweets that slander Christians and people who choose to love God in a different way than her own."

Following the Pulse nightclub attack in Orlando, Fla., Kohn repeatedly tied Christians and the "Christian Right" to the shooter, who was linked to the Islamic State group, a radical Islamic terror organization which claimed responsibility for the attack. Kohn alleged that Christian opposition to the LGBT agenda is different in degree but not in kind from the kind of hatred unleashed by the shooter.

Here are some examples.

Islamic extremists kill LGBT people.

Christian and Jewish extremists just drive us to commit suicide.

Either way, #HateIsHate.

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) June 13, 2016

Hey right wing Christians desperately trying to point out that right wing Muslims are more anti-gay than you are: Your guilt is showing!

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) June 13, 2016

"Our religion's extremists hate gay people we just don't slaughter them or throw them off buildings" is a very strange #ChristianHumblebrag — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) June 12, 2016

So it's "petty" to mourn the incredibly destructive role Christian Right ideology has played in US gay community? https://t.co/E2jsV3We8S — Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) June 13, 2016

Kohn seems to be arguing that there is a difference in degree, but not in kind, between the "hateful" Christian view that homosexual practice is a sin and the terror attack in Orlando. Because Omar Mateen hated gays and Christians (and Jews) hate gays, she argues, Christian hate is partially responsible for his shooting. Never mind Mateen's declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State or that organization's claiming responsibility for the attack. 

And McClatchy news service is perpetuating an extremely toxic, not to mention ridiculous, narrative:

One publicist sent out an email Tuesday afternoon, suggesting journalists explore a presumed link between the Orlando shooting and “anti-LGBT” laws passed in several states: “While other motives may have inspired the attack, which killed 49 people, advocates say the rate of hate crimes against LGBT people goes up when there is a debate over their rights.” He linked to a McClatchy article entitled, “Hundreds of bills to curb LGBT rights preceded Orlando attack. Is there a link?”

The authors write:

While other motives may have inspired the attack … advocates say the rate of hate crimes against LGBT people goes up when there is a debate over their rights.

The sponsors of the various bills say they are not intended to promote violence against LGBT people.

Rather, the supporters say they want to protect the religious freedom of people who oppose same-sex marriage, or the concerns of people who feel uncomfortable using the same restroom as transgender individuals.

The article specifically explores whether legislation regarding the “transgender bathroom” debate, such as North Carolina’s recent law requiring individuals to use public restrooms according to their biological sex, is responsible for an increased amount of anti-LGBT hate crimes. (The “T” is only the last letter of LGBT — “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender”.)

In addition, McClatchy explores whether state laws designed to protect religious freedom and traditional marriage, among other laws, might have had some effect on the motivations of a radical Islamic terrorist who may have had gay tendencies.

And of course the gun-grabbers are gearing up. May have more on that later.

Folks, this is why we call them jackboots.

Anderson Cooper, generally considered to be a journalist of integrity, is not above indulging in slime

Guy Benson at Townhall discusses what Cooper did to Florida AG Pam Bondi. It's pretty disgusting:

Cooper's execrable line of questioning -- which embraces exactly the sort of amoral, heinous equivalency I earnestly urged against in my Monday essay -- basically demanded that Bondi justify her public revulsion at the slaughter "despite" the fact that she's opposed same-sex marriage and defended her state's ban of the practice in court. How could she pledge to prosecute anti-gay violence to the fullest extent of the law when she'd never even promoted gay pride on social media?  That is literally a question that a respected news anchor decided would be relevant and appropriate to ask in this context. 

This is the kind of cultural dare I was talking about in my post "Day-After Reflections." The outpouring of grief and sympathy for survivors of the Orlando horror was sure to reinforce the notion so prevalent in our society that Christians, or anyone who doesn't subscribe to the notion that homosexuals can be truly married, were to shut up and move on.

Benson - who is gay - points out that Cooper is attempting to construct a phony syllogism:

Many Lefties and press types are giddy over Cooper's performance, for which he should actually be embarrassed.  There is precisely zero hypocrisy -- none -- in an elected official both (a) opposing same-sex marriage as a public policy matter, and (b) unequivocally blasting the mass murder of gay people, and vowing to do everything in her power to prevent or severely punish similar outrages in the future.  This should be patently obvious to anyone who doesn't reflexively assume that all opposition to gay rights legislative efforts are rooted in "hate." 

I was ripped into on Facebook for my post the other day by a gay man who wanted to know how I could, at a time of such catastrophe and tragedy, preoccupy myself with matters such as I did.

Well, because I was sure that someone in a position like Anderson Cooper's would "go there" and further balkanize our already fractured society.

The CEO - wage earner gap debunked

Mark Perry at the American Enterprise Institute explains:

The nation’s largest labor federation reports this year that the typical CEO running an S & P 500 firm received total compensation of $12.4 million in 2015 while the average rank-and-file worker was paid just $36,875 — a pay gap of 335-to-1.

But the AFL-CIO can only get such an inflated pay ratio by applying a series of statistical sleights of hand that result in an invalid apples-to-oranges comparison of the total compensation for CEOs to the cash wages of mostly part-time workers.

To start, the AFL-CIO only considers a very small sample of S&P 500 CEOs to get its 335-to-1 ratio. Using a larger, more representative sample of CEOs produces a much smaller pay gap.

For example, the AFL-CIO’s own website reveals that the average CEO compensation of Russell 3000 companies was $5.7 million last year, which would cut the 335-1 ratio by more than half to only 155-to-1.

Further, BLS data show that there are actually more than 20,000 chief executives employed nationally who “manage companies and enterprises” at an average annual salary of $220,700. For that more comprehensive group of America’s CEOs, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio drops to only 6-to-1.
Then there’s the issue of average pay for rank-and-file workers. The AFL-CIO reports an annual pay figure of $36,875 in 2015 for the “average nonsupervisory worker,” but doesn’t provide any additional details.
Here are the details not provided by the AFL-CIO.
The $36,875 annual average worker pay for the 99 million “production and nonsupervisory employees” is based on an average hourly wage of $21.04 for rank-and-file workers in 2015, an average workweek of only 33.7 hours for those workers, and an assumption of 52 weeks of work per year. That’s how the AFL-CIO gets its reported annual pay for the average U.S. worker: $21.04 per hour x 33.7 hours per week x 52 weeks = $36,875.

So every year, to get the highest possible pay ratio, the AFL-CIO does a statistically deceptive comparison of the total compensation for only 500 CEOs who are working full-time and in their prime earning years to the cash wages only for 99 million rank-and-file workers who are mostly part-time workers. But you would never know that from the AFL-CIO’s website because the details of average worker pay are never fully explained. 

How would the AFL-CIO’s outsized pay ratio change if we considered total compensation for both CEOs and full-time rank-and-file workers? To make the comparison as accurate as possible, let’s consider rank-and-file employees working a 50-hour week (even though most CEOs probably more than 50 hours a week) and receiving fringe benefits equal to 46% of their cash wages, which is the current estimate from the BLS for all workers.
The total annual compensation for rank-and-file workers would be nearly $72,000 and would result in a CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of only 172-to-1. In other words, the AFL-CIO’s reported CEO-to-worker pay ratio is inflated by a factor of almost two times by comparing the total compensation of CEOs to the average cash wages for part-time workers.
Beyond the statistical chicanery used to generate an inflated pay ratio, what’s the point of the AFL-CIO’s annual reports on CEO pay? The AFL-CIO tells us that although America is supposed to a land of opportunity, the rising CEO-to-worker pay gap means that “corporate CEOs have been taking a greater share of the economic pie” while wages have stagnated for the average worker. The message is that if CEOs weren’t being so generously compensated then rank-and-file workers would be making higher wages rather than getting only the leftover scraps.

Let’s do a little experiment: The S&P 500 CEOs received $6.2 billion as a group in total compensation in 2015. If the AFL-CIO could confiscate that entire amount and redistribute it to the rank-and-file workers, how would that affect average worker pay? 

Each of 99 million rank-and-file worker would receive an annual increase in pay of only $63 before taxes, or about 3.6 cents more per hour. In other words, complete confiscation and redistribution of S & P 500 CEO compensation would make almost no difference in pay for rank-and-file workers.
It’s not that surprising that the AFL-CIO would engage in an apples-to-oranges comparison to produce the highest possible CEO-to-worker pay ratio possible in its role representing union workers.

But, of course, a comprehensive look at facts doesn't have the sex appeal of a class-struggle-narrative sound bite.

 

Day-after reflections

I'm exhausted.

Being a post-American in 2016 was already exhausting enough, but then along comes an event like the Pulse massacre and the ensuing free-for-all between the various factions of our fractured society. At my core there remains an unshakable conviction that there is a good, right, sensible and noble way to approach life, but it's buried beneath the cacophony of the moment and this age save for a precious microsecond here and there.

In an attempt to systematize my thoughts on the matter, I'll take the various players and examine what their significance is.

The gun-control opportunists - Are you surprised at how quickly and loudly they chimed in? Just as they have with terms such as "gender fluidity" and "climate change," they have strung together a pair of words and coined a supposed concept - the "assault rifle" - that doesn't actually exist. And, once again, the scene of the horror was a gun-free zone, so nobody in that club was in a position to take Mateen down.

The LGBT "community" - There was a time, prior to the Stonewall Inn riot of 1969, when people with unconventional notions of companionship, intimacy or just plain pleasure-seeking sought their satisfactions without declaring some kind of demographic affiliation that needed to be championed. Then those who so declared showed themselves to be leftists even before they were homosexuals, lesbians, or bisexuals. That is, the juxtaposition of their now-established identity against the larger "establishment" took on the same class-struggle trappings as all leftist causes. We now had the beleaguered minority against some supposedly consciously organized majority determined to impose its supposed bigotry in perpetuity. And then came the slippery slope of the last - well, year, really. Hasn't it been basically in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling creating a "right" to homosexual "marriage" out of whole cloth that everybody up and down the block wants to be "transgendered" and the federal Justice Department has acted to force acceptance of this, in the form of an edict about restrooms, on anybody still clinging to what was normal in, say, 2014? And, of course, because there is no doubt that the survivors of those killed at Pulse indeed deserve our sympathy, there is pressure on the remaining Christians in post-America to once again zip it. And now those exerting the pressure have an exquisite form of leverage: Keep your mouth shut re: any talk of sin, or we'll lump you in with the jihadists who throw us off rooftops in Mosul, hang us in Tehran, or shoot up our nightclub in Orlando.

The Most Equal Comrade - Of course, he showed his gun-control-opportunist colors as soon as he could, and, as has been much noted, he didn't mention radical Islam, but perhaps his most nauseating assertion was that “we need the strength and courage to change.” There's always something wrong with the populace of his own country with this guy.

Donald Trump - His initial tweet, which once again demonstrates his lack of command of rudimentary syntax and punctuation, is also a classic glimpse into the way his Grand Canyon-size ego functions. He appreciates the congratulations for his prescience, but really he's not interested in it. And resolving the West's twilight struggle with a mortal threat is reduced to a matter of being "tough and smart." One thing he was actually right about was the Most Equal Comrade's failure to acknowledge the massacre as an act of jihad, but he pointed it up in such a ham-fisted way ("he should step down") that it gives ammunition to those eager to show what a bonehead he is. Of course, the Bots will eat it up.

Hillionaire - Not much to say here. She's been predictable in her response, wanting to cover all the bases: showing solidarity with the LGBT "community," grandstanding for gun control, positioning herself to the Most Equal Comrade's right - and thereby deny Squirrel-Hair a barking point - by naming radical Islam as the perp.

The jihadists - They will incinerate the nation's major cities when they have everything in place to do so, and they will turn any of the nation's surviving women and girls into sex slaves.

As you can see, with the above players consuming nearly all the oxygen in our national conversation, there is little room for the assertion of basic truths, such as the fact that post-America is under assault from both jihadists and cultural Marxists, and that ours is a safer society the greater the number of devotees of ordered liberty who are armed.

Not to mention the most over-arching point of all: Life in this nation is going to make even less sense and be even more fatiguing and painful as we go forward, because we are a stiff-necked people utterly uninterested in turning toward almighty God.