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Politics

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, listens to the delegate roll call vote at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, listens to the delegate roll call vote at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, blamed a “senseless act of gun violence” for the Ohio State University attack. In a knee-jerk reaction fueled by a desire to spout anti-Second Amendment talking points, Sen. Kaine apparently didn’t bother to learn there was no gun involved in the attack.

In reality, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali refugee and student, was behind the attack that involved a car and a knife on the campus of Ohio State University Monday. It left nine people injured.

Sen. Kaine, who repeatedly questioned the judgement of President-elect Donald J. Trump, was forced to tweet a message clarifying his response. But rather than a true clarification, he blamed early reports for not waiting for adequate information or “updated reports.”

For the record, it is common to get erroneous information in the early hours of the onset of a shooting or terror attack, which is something Sen. Kaine knows full-well. He, along with other Democrats, were obviously overwhelmed with excitement over the prospect of attacking the Second Amendment constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

Further, Sen. Kaine wasn’t even the worst case of politicization. Vox, a leftwing off-shoot of The Washington Post, brought up gun violence even after they conceded a gun wasn’t used in the crime.

As more of these events end up in the news, the the country is consistently forced to consider why the U.S., more than any other developed nation, suffers from such extraordinary levels of gun violence.

Again, in reality, crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation clearly show nearly three times more people are stabbed to death than killed with rifles & shotguns.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Hillary Clinton's vice

Elections

FILE - In this Oct. 6, 2016 file photo, Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in Oakland, Calif. Stein says America is running out of time. Out of time to avert a climate disaster, out of time to alleviate millions of people from crushing student debt, and out of time to end conflicts she says are leading the U,S. toward nuclear war. The 66-year-old Massachusetts doctor and Green Party candidate is offering an aggressive set of policy prescriptions to avoid such disasters in her longshot bid for the presidency. (Photo: AP/File)

FILE – In this Oct. 6, 2016 file photo, Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein in Oakland, Calif. Stein says America is running out of time. Out of time to avert a climate disaster, out of time to alleviate millions of people from crushing student debt, and out of time to end conflicts she says are leading the U,S. toward nuclear war. The 66-year-old Massachusetts doctor and Green Party candidate is offering an aggressive set of policy prescriptions to avoid such disasters in her longshot bid for the presidency. (Photo: AP/File)

Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein missed the deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount in Pennsylvania, the secretary of state confirms. After months of claiming she was the only true progressive in the race unwilling to be a pawn for Hillary Clinton, she’s become just that and began raising millions more than what is reported to be necessary.

“According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday, “the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Monday, Nov. 21.”

The failure to meet the deadline is a major blow to the Democratic effort to initiate recounts in the The Keystone State, Michigan and Wisconsin. The latter began conducting one on Monday, which would have to see a difference of roughly 25,000 votes to change the outcome.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign initially stated they would not pursue a recount anywhere because “we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.” They still haven’t and, over the weekend, the Obama administration said that there was no unusual cyber activity or evidence to indicate hacking occurred on election night. The White House added that the president believes the results reflect the will of the American people.

However, the Clinton-Stein alliance can still mount a legal challenge, though the chances of litigation are less than certain. President-elect Donald J. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by nearly 70,000 votes, a rather large margin for a Republican in a state the nominee hasn’t carried since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The decision by Clinton to join an otherwise irrelevent candidate in a recount effort was described by President-elect Trump and his team as stunningly hypocritical. Reacting to then-candidate Trump’s refusal to say whether he would accept the election results until he assessed the situation, Clinton said during the third and final debate that it “is expected of anyone standing on a debate stage in a presidential election.”

“That is not the way our democracy works. We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections,” Clinton said. “We’ve always accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them and that is what is expected of anyone standing on a debate stage in a presidential election.”

She would follow up with the “threat to our democracy” narrative to gin up supporters and paint her opponent as temperamentally unfit to serve.

“[Trump] refused to say that he would accept the results of our election,” Clinton said during a rally immediately after the debate in Vegas. “Now, I have to admit, when we were both asked the questions, I assumed he would say what everybody else has always said, which is, ‘Hey, of course.’ You know, because to say you won’t respect the results of the election — that is a direct threat to our democracy.”

Meanwhile, as PPD previously reported, experts’ estimates have held steady around $2.2-2.5 million for the cost of a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, Stein’s fundraising page claims have changed multiple times over the last week. First, the site claimed “attorney’s fees are likely to be another $1 million,” in addition to other associated costs. Yet, when they were just about to hit that goal, it changed, claiming “fees are likely to be another $2-3 million.”

Now, over the weekend, the fundraising website once again was updated. Now it claims the “total cost is likely to be $6-7 million.”

Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein missed

News, US

An officer blocks the scene as police respond to reports of an active shooter on campus at Ohio State University on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo: AP)

An officer blocks the scene as police respond to reports of an active shooter on campus at Ohio State University on Monday, Nov. 28, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo: AP)

DEVELOPING: Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali refugee and student, was behind the attack involving a car and butcher knife on the campus of Ohio State University Monday that left nine people injured, officials said.

The attacker, identified by authorities as first-year student, plowed his vehicle into the crowd before he got out and began attacking people with a butcher knife. He was shot and killed by a campus police officer.

Monica Moll, the school’s public safety director, identified Alan Horujko as the campus officer who engaged the suspect as he was attacking people with a butcher knife. Officer Alan Horujko shot and killed him within minutes of the slashing attack.

According to law enforcement sources, Artan came into the U.S. as a Somali refugee granted status as a legal permanent resident. While the motive behind the attack is still not certain, law enforcement sources say investigators are not ruling out anything at this point, including terrorism. There has been a clear but taboo issue with the radicalization of Somali immigrants who are not assimilating, particularly in enclaves in Minnesota.

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs confirmed authorities were looking into whether it was a terrorist attack. But Ohio State Police Chief Craig Stone said he was clearly intentional in his actions, which included driving over a curb and into pedestrians.

“This was done on purpose,” he said.

The attack did share similarities with the terrorist attack in Nice, France, which killed at least 77 people gathered on Bastille Day. The method sounds like an instructional straight out of al-Qaeda’s “Inspire” magazine for jihadis and produces a scene outlined on page 54 in a 2010 issue.

Pick your location and timing carefully. Go for the most crowed locations. Narrower spots are also better because it gives less chance for the people to run away. To achieve maximum carnage, you need to pick up as much speed as you can while still retaining good control of your vehicle in order to maximize your inertia and be able to strike as many people as possible in your first run.

Still, while investigators noted it is too early at this point to ascertain the suspect’s motive for the attack, though the more that is learned the more it becomes clear.

osu-lantern-abdul-razak-ali-artan

He spoke with the Lantern, a campus publication, on his first day at OSU and said that he was “kind of scared” to pray in public.

“If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen,” Artan was quoted as saying in the Lantern.

On his Facebook page before the attack, he wrote that he had reached a “boiling point” and actually referenced “lone wolf attacks,” as well as radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah (community). We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said.

Ohio State University said in a statement the injuries in the attack included stab wounds, and being struck by a vehicle.

A Somali refugee student was behind the

Opinion

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a granite batholith formation in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a granite batholith formation in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).

The medieval Tuscan town of Assisi is one of the best-known tourist destinations in the world. It is also the birthplace of the founder of the Franciscan Order, St. Francis. Its art, architecture, and religious significance make it one of the most fundamentally important symbols of European culture. And here’s a new twist: if you are an Italian couple that just happens to conceive while staying in a hotel in Assisi, you can bring back the birth certificate and if the dates kind of match, you’ll get a full refund of your hotel fees courtesy of the city government.

Let’s let that sink in; you and your spouse want to have a baby, maybe desperately, but just cannot bring yourself to go ahead with it. Along comes a 200 euro refund nine months in arrears and BAM! you’re off to the races.

If ever there was a first prize for the admission of total cultural and moral bankruptcy by the modern Western civilization, this little gem of a policy out of Assisi of all places is a guaranteed shoe-in. And it is not winning in an uncompetitive field; many European countries from Denmark to Italy are putting in place policies and engaging in advertising campaigns designed to increase the dismal birth rates among their indigenous populations, often hovering around one birth on average per woman per lifetime (2.2 average is considered the threshold for population sustainability).

The common thread for these efforts is the offer of economic incentives that amount to a few hundred or at most a few thousand euros, a pittance when one realizes that the real cost of bring up a child to age 18 averages around 150,000 (yes, one hundred and fifty thousand) euros. This fact is, of course, not unknown to the Eurocrats. Why then do they even bother? The answer is that it’s the best they can do without admitting to a 70-year colossal mistake and committing cultural, political, and moral seppuku.

Why and when do homo sapiens have children? The answer, as is always the case in science, is: when the necessary and the sufficient conditions are met. What is the necessary condition? Simply having access to sufficient calories to have intercourse and carry the baby to term. This is biology. I can hear the cries now: we are not animals; we have free will magnified through the means of birth control and abortion on demand. And that brings me to the sufficient condition. Simply stated, we must want to have children. There must be a positive reason to engage in this enterprise with its unavoidable loss of personal freedom and ruinous financial consequences.

In years past, the reasons were in fact also financial; children helped on the farm or in the family business and played the role of social security when parents became elderly and could no longer provide for themselves. Modern economy and welfare programs have all but done away with these reasons, especially in the West. However, there was always a much deeper reason. Children are the only means to eternal life here on Planet Earth. The truth of this statement depends on a worldview that expands the definition of “life” beyond the accumulation of material goods and physical or even intellectual pleasures. Living fully means living as part of a vibrant and meaningful culture that is unique to one’s extended tribe.

Quiz yourself: Do you know anything about your ancestors? Do you believe that they have, on the balance, contributed something positive to the world? Do you think that you have, in your life, followed in the footsteps of your ancestors? Would you like to tell someone the story of your ancestors so that their work in the world continues? People who emphatically answer yes to all of these questions prioritize having children above anything else under all circumstances. They have a real need to tell their and their ancestors’ story to their offspring and by doing so fulfill their own destiny as a cross-generational link. This is the reason that even among the educated elites in Israel birthrates are above three per woman, way higher than the sustainability threshold. Israeli women get their law degrees and PhD’s while pregnant with their second and third child with the first and second one still in diapers. This is also the reason that the only group of Americans of European descent who have above sustainable birth rate are evangelical Christians.

As to the American coastal elites, money is plentiful, but children are considered a yoke that cannot possibly be justified until every possible “self-actualization” whim is met. In Europe, both Western and Eastern, money is in rather short supply, but people have been known to reproduce under much harsher conditions. For the past three generations Europeans have been subjected to a concerted campaign of cultural delegitimization and outright cultural and religious destruction by their own governments.

There is a clear and unequivocal correlation between drops in church attendance and birth rates. After all, if your ancestors were nasties who oppressed poor peasants at best and engaged in ruthless campaigns of genocide at worst; if your religion is no better or worse than that of the Aztecs who tore the living hearts out of as many as eighty thousand people in one festival alone, why would you bother learning about your past let alone pass it on to anyone?

In stark contrast to the European nickel and dime approach to demographic extinction, Russia has set on a two-pronged approach that includes cultural and religious revival and the extermination of the culture of death that is so pervasive in post-modern European societies. For the first time in a hundred years, there is no Russian figure of any prominence over its one-thousand-year history that doesn’t have a positive side. Ivan the Terrible was actually an enlightened ruler and the progenitor of the Russian Empire; his statue, the first ever erected, was just unveiled. Prince Vladimir, who converted Kievan Rus to Greek Orthodox Christianity is another recipient of a statue. Patriarch Kirill in full regalia walked side by side with the de-facto Tsar Vladimir Putin to the unveiling ceremony. The Russian double-headed eagle, representing the twin pillars of monarchy and church, lives on. Meantime, the West is busy demolishing and hiding the statues of its heroes, be they Confederate soldiers in Virginia or Lord Cornwallis in Nova Scotia.

The Russian government and its various official and unofficial organs have recently declared war on two of the three heads of the culture of death hydra: abortions and euthanasia. While the third head, birth control, is still too difficult to tackle, even the anti-abortion campaign in a country that in the Soviet days allowed abortion at all stages of pregnancy to be used as a means of birth control (the USSR was late to the pill and condoms were as poor quality as all other consumer goods), the war on abortion is remarkable. Consider that the Russian medical term “abort”, was replaced in the Soviet era by the term “cleaning”, implying that the fetus was an impurity that had to be removed and the pregnancy itself a disease that had to be cured. Russia has come a long way.

The West, committed as it is to diversity and multiculturalism agendas, cannot possibly implement the Russian solution because it would simply mean that you are French if your name is Jean-Luc Picard, not Muhammad Atta. And what if Muhammad Atta is a law-abiding citizen with a perfectly legal French passport? What if he was born on the bank of the Seine? Still not French. The implications of implementing such a policy in Europe are unthinkable. In fact, I could be prosecuted there under hate speech laws just for writing these lines. But reality is simple; only this kind of drastic change, the return of the feelings of pride and superiority that people in Europe used to feel when thinking of their cultures and of their ancestors who built them from the ruins of ancient Rome will solve the European demographic collapse.

Amazingly, the situation in North America is even more dire and likely irredeemable. American culture is younger and thinner than its European counterparts. It has also been more drastically repudiated. It is almost impossible to think of the white American elites relearning to admire the pioneer spirit of the original settlers and the toughness that they had to exhibit to survive and thrive. It is equally impossible for the dwellers of American coastal cities to learn that their lifestyle now is owed in full to those first Europeans who won the continent from its aboriginal inhabitants and to be thankful for their sacrifice in winning that war. Finally, it is beyond imagining that the Sunday morning services in Seattle and LA, in New York and DC, will be overflowing again with people who take deep pride in their cultural and religious heritage and cannot wait to pass it on to their offspring.

[mybooktable book=”motherland” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

The West cannot possible be great again

Economy

Housing-Market-Real-Estate-Signs

Mortgage lenders and real estate agents flood the housing market. (Phone: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

First-time buyers, fueled by easier lending practices and a relatively stronger labor market, increased housing market risk in August. While the First-Time Buyer Mortgage Risk Index (FBMRI) for Agency purchase came in at 15.6% in August, which is relatively unchanged from a year earlier, Agency FBMRI is now 6.4 percentage points higher than the repeat buyer MRI, up 6.0 percentage points from a year earlier.

The First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share Index (FBMSI) saw loan volume surge by 14% in August on a year-over-year basis, and is now 2.5 percentage points higher than in August 2014. Total first-time buyer (FTB) volume is up 39%.

The First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share and Mortgage Risk Indices (FBMSI and FBMRI) are housing market indicators conducted monthly and are based on nearly all government-guaranteed home purchase loans. Unlike traditional first-time buyer surveys conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which are based on small samples of homebuyers or real estate agents, the indices greatly reduces the risk of sample error by covering millions of loans.

“Contrary to news reports, the first-time buyer is alive and well in today’s home purchase market,” Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at AEI said. Mr. Pinto was a former executive vice president and chief credit officer for Fannie Mae.

“Compared to two years earlier, the FTB share for August is up 2.5 percentage points,” Pinto said, “while total FTB volume has surged 39%.”

The National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI), which measures how government-guaranteed loans with an origination date in a given month would perform if subjected to the same stress as in the financial crisis that began in 2007, has long-documented the loosing lending practices.

The NMRI is similar to stress tests routinely performed by the Federal Reserve on big banks, those conducted to ascertain an automobile’s crashworthiness or a building’s ability to withstand severe hurricane force winds. For instance, an NMRI value of 10% for a given set of loans indicates that 10% of those loans would be expected to default in a severe stress event. It is based on the actual performance of loans with the same risk characteristics after the financial crisis.

The FHA First-Time Buyer NMRI came in at 24.8% in July, up 1.0 percentage point from a year earlier, setting a series high.

“House prices will continue to rise as long as long as too much demand keeps chasing too little supply,” Tobias Peter, a senior research analyst at the International Center for Housing risk. said. “Therefore proposals such as lower mortgage insurance premiums or higher loan limits, will only stimulate more demand, worsening affordability – not improving it.”

Other notable takeaways from the August First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share and Risk Indices include:

  • 53 percent of FTB loans were subprime or high risk (MRI above 12%) in August, down from 54 percent a year earlier.
  • The combined FBMSI (measures share of first-time buyers for both government-guaranteed and private-sector mortgages) stood at 50.8 percent, down slightly from 51.2 percent the prior August.
  • Fueled by solid job gains, low mortgage rates, and high and growing leverage, the national seller’s market is now in its 50th month. Median home prices for the U.S. as a whole have risen relative to median household income, retracing about a third of the drop from the 2006 peak to the 2012 trough, thus crimping affordability.

With the addition of the data for August 2016, the First-Time Buyer Mortgage Share and Risk Indices cover nearly 5.1 Agency purchase loans dating back to February 2013. The NMRI covers nearly 23.6 million Agency loans dating back to September 2012, comprised of over 10.7 million Agency purchase loans and over 12.9 million Agency refinance loans. The NMRI is published for purchase loans (with separate indices for first-time and repeat buyers), refinance loans (with separate indices for no-cash-out and cash-out refinance loans), and the composite of purchase and refinance loans.

[caption id="attachment_38381" align="aligncenter" width="740"] Mortgage lenders and

Elections

Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, center, takes questions from reporters during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. (Photo: AP)

Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein, center, takes questions from reporters during a campaign stop at Humanist Hall in Oakland, Calif. on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. (Photo: AP)

Despite unanimous agreement that there is no evidence to indicate hacking occurred on election night, the recount effort led by Jill Stein has already revealed fraud–just not the voting type.

Jill Stein is a fraud. After months of claiming she was the only true progressive in the race unwilling to be a pawn for Hillary Clinton, she’s become just that. Never before in modern American political history has such an insignificant candidate had such a big say in such a historic election. That still isn’t the case. Nobody seriously believes that Clinton just decided to join the recount on Saturday.

The campaign initially stated they would not pursue a recount anywhere because “we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.” Well, they still haven’t. Over the weekend, the Obama administration said “that there was no unusual cyber activity or evidence to indicate hacking occurred on election night,” adding the president believes the results reflect the will of the American people.

All of this is based on the speculation of one group, the Election Integrity Project. This is the same “voter integrity” group that also claimed Clinton stole the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders by rigging voting machines. They didn’t actually have hard proof of that. Rather they cited the disparity in performance from one county to another comparing the use of paper ballot and voting machines as evidence.

They were mocked and called a discredited organization by one of the very parties participating in the recount. Clinton’s sycophants in the media played their usual role of attack dog for her and that was the end of it. But the ludicrous nature of all of this doesn’t end here.

Even if there was cyber hacking, a recount has no ability to uncover it. In fact, the results of the recount are less legitimate than the initial count. Why? For the same reason the “paper ballot vs. voting machine” disparity is intellectually feeble. Even if we assume there was a legitimate disparity, recount proponents presume with no basis that it necessarily was to the benefit of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Historically, we actually have evidence of paper ballot tampering, including in this election, and thus far not a single one of those allegations would’ve been to the benefit of President-elect Trump. In other words, the evidence indicates it is far more likely tampering with paper absentee and in-person ballots hurt Mr. Trump, rather than hacked voting machines hurting his opponent.

The recount–any recount–only adds the potential for further ballot tampering, while it has zero ability to identify or rectify cyberattacks on voting machines.

There’s also another fraud going on here. This is the season of giving, but it’s not supposed to be to the rather wealthy Dr. Stein. It’s supposed to be to those who cannot feed, shelter or clothe themselves. While many of those targets are missing their worthy fundraising goals, Dr. Stein keeps moving the goal post for her scam.

Experts’ estimates have held steady around $2.2-2.5 million for the cost of a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, Stein’s fundraising page claims have changed multiple times over the last week. First, the site claimed “attorney’s fees are likely to be another $1 million,” in addition to other associated costs. Yet, when they were just about to hit that goal, it changed, claiming “fees are likely to be another $2-3 million.”

Now, over the weekend, the site once again was updated. Now it claims the “total cost is likely to be $6-7 million.”

A bit of advice: Save your money for more worthy causes and stop contributing to the Stein Scam Fund.

Finally, as many of us have been saying for years: Hillary Clinton is a fraud. She’s whatever her donors and/or the polls want her to be. The development over the weekend was slimy hypocrisy at its worst, but sadly it isn’t surprising.

“That is not the way our democracy works. We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections,” Clinton said during the third and final debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. “We’ve always accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them and that is what is expected of anyone standing on a debate stage in a presidential election.”

Moderator Chris Wallace, of FOX News, turns towards the audience as he questions Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Moderator Chris Wallace, of FOX News, turns towards the audience as he questions Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Then, she followed up with the “threat to our democracy” narrative to gin up supporters and the never-ending narrative to paint her opponent as temperamentally unfit to serve. Remember this Clinton said on the stump?

“[Trump] refused to say that he would accept the results of our election,” Clinton said during a rally immediately after the debate in Vegas. “Now, I have to admit, when we were both asked the questions, I assumed he would say what everybody else has always said, which is, ‘Hey, of course.’ You know, because to say you won’t respect the results of the election — that is a direct threat to our democracy.”

Or, this tweet?

Yup, Jill Stein’s #Recount2016 movement uncovered fraud alright.

Despite there being no evidence of cyber

Elections

Moderator Chris Wallace, of FOX News, turns towards the audience as he questions Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Moderator Chris Wallace, of FOX News, turns towards the audience as he questions Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016.(AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

In what could be the most hypocritical move this election, Hillary Clinton on Saturday joined the recount effort in Wisconsin led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Following the third and final presidential debate, Clinton said even the thought of not accepting the results of the election is “a direct threat to our democracy.”

“[Trump] refused to say that he would accept the results of our election,” Clinton said during a rallies after the presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. “Now, I have to admit, when we were both asked the questions, I assumed he would say what everybody else has always said, which is, ‘Hey, of course.’ You know, because to say you won’t respect the results of the election — that is a direct threat to our democracy.”

In a tweet the following day, she used this “threat to our democracy” to gin up supporters and in the never-ending narrative to paint her opponent as temperamentally unfit to serve.

Stein, who earned an abysmal 1.1% of the vote in Wisconsin, has been raising money and pushing a petition for a recount in the state, as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Green Party candidate–though many believe under Clinton’s direction and George Soros’ funding–has also erroneously claimed “experts” found evidence of voting machine hacking, a claim the Obama administration has vehemently rejected.

“The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We must accept this result and then look to the future,’ President-elect Trump said in a statement. “This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount.”

In the Badger State, President-elect  Trump’s victory was higher than the threshold set for a mandatory recount by state law and, in Pennsylvania, where Stein already missed the deadline, it was even higher. She will now ask a judge to order a recount. Clinton initially conceded and because of a lack of evidence opted against calling for a recount.

“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves,” Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias wrote in a Medium Post, adding, “but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

The Election Integrity Project, which are behind Stein’s accusations of hacking, was characterized as a discredited organization by Big Media outlets after they accused Clinton of stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders. They said the disparity in performance county-by-county indicated she rigging voting machines, many of which produced by a company own by George Soros.

Meanwhile, the White House said this weekend that there was no unusual cyber activity or evidence to indicate hacking occurred on election night. The Obama administration said they believe the results reflect the will of the American people.

“This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing,” President-elect Trump added.

An Obama administration spokesman also insisted the president advised Clinton to concede on election night and now implores her to accept the outcome.

In what could be the most hypocritical

Opinion

Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba, smokes a cigar during his meeting with two U.S. senators, the first to visit Castro's Cuba, in Havana, Cuba, Sept. 29, 1974. (AP Photo)

Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of Cuba, smokes a cigar during his meeting with two U.S. senators, the first to visit Castro’s Cuba, in Havana, Cuba, Sept. 29, 1974. (Photo: AP)

Do politicians celebrate the life of Osama bin Laden? Or fondly remember the supposed contributions of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party? Or wax poetic about the memory of Pol Pot?

Maybe in some backwater of the third world, but no politician from a civilized nation would be remotely tempted to say anything nice about these evil people.

So why, then, are some of these clowns falling all over themselves to lionize one of the world’s worst people, the former communist dictator of Cuba? Why would any sentient adult say anything nice about Fidel Castro, a vicious and brutal tyrant who imposed such hardship on his people?

Yet there are people with this perverse degree of moral blindness.

Including the head of the European Commission.

And the Prime Minister of Canada, who actually referred to the former dictator as Cuba’s “longest serving President.” I guess the boy wonder of Ottawa doesn’t understand that you can rule for a long time when you don’t allow free elections. Now you can understand why I am so quick to believe that he’ll say really stupid things.

Almost nobody in the world would recognize the President of Ireland. But since he didn’t like the fact that Ireland’s economy boomed, it’s understandable that he is despondent about the death of a man who did so much to keep Cuba mired in poverty.

And, of course, Jimmy Carter couldn’t resist showing why he was a one-term blunder.

The nutjob leader of the British Labour Party predictably fawned over Castro with a series of laughably inaccurate assertions.

I’m relieved, by the way, that Barack Obama resisted the temptation to say anything overly vacuous about Castro (even if he did say something stupid about Cuba’s totalitarian regime earlier this year). His statement is mostly mush. And even though I have my doubts about Trump, his statement hit the nail on the head.

But let’s set aside Castro’s brutal treatment of dissidents and denial of basic human rights. Let’s ignore the fact that tens of thousands of people have risked their lives to escape his island prison. And let’s instead look at the economic misery of Cuban communism.

In a column back in 2014, I noted that living standards in Cuba and Hong Kong were identical in the 1950s.

But the two nations then conducted an experiment. Hong Kong chose laissez-faire capitalism while Cuba chose communism.

The result, as you can see in the graph, is that Hong Kong has enjoyed decades of strong growth while Cuba has stagnated.

I’m not alone in noticing the onerous economic cost of Cuban oppression.

This academic article has a devastating summary.

We examine Cuban GDP over time and across space. We find that Cuba was once a prosperous middle-income economy. On the eve of the revolution, incomes were 50 to 60 percent of European levels. They were among the highest in Latin America at about 30 percent of the United States. In relative terms, Cuba was richer earlier on. Income per capita during the 1920s was in striking distance of Western Europe and the Southern United States. After the revolution, Cuba slipped down the world income distribution. Current levels of income per capita appear below their pre-revolutionary peaks.

Now let me make a new contribution to the discussion.

I went again to the Angus Maddison database and decided to compare historical numbers for per-capita GDP, looking at Cuba, Chile, and the world average.

As you can see, Cuba has been a disaster for ordinary people. Living standards used to be near the world average. Now the average Cuban is at half the world average.

Meanwhile, Chileans also had a period of stagnation during their era of statism. But once free-market reforms were adopted, the notion started a lengthy boom and per-capita GDP is now almost twice world average.

That’s the real-world consequence of statism. Deprivation and hardship.

To get an idea what it’s like in a communist prison nation, slaves in the 1800s actually got more food than what Castro allowed when the government took control of food production and distribution.

The good news, so to speak, is that the rationing has moved from starvation levels to hunger-and-misery levels.

The Guardian has a summary of the current system.

Every Cuban family registers with a local supply store, where they can use a libreta or ration book. This typically provides about 10kg (22lb) of rice, 6kg of white sugar, 2kg of brown sugar, 250 millilitres (1 cup) of cooking oil, five eggs and a packet of coffee per person per month, along with 2kg of meat (usually chicken) every 10 days, a bun every day and a bag of salt every three months. Milk is provided for pregnant women and children under seven years of age. The basic libreta products are guaranteed, but they are not enough – so people often have to travel to several places on several different days to make up the shortfall.

Not as bad as 1962, but still a miserable life.

Here are portions of a very appropriate obituary in the Washington Post by a Yale professor.

One of the most brutal dictators in modern history has just died. Oddly enough, some will mourn his passing, and many an obituary will praise him. Millions of Cubans who have been waiting impatiently for this moment for more than half a century will simply ponder his crimes and recall the pain and suffering he caused. …deceit was one of Fidel Castro’s greatest talents, and gullibility is one of the world’s greatest frailties. …Many intellectuals, journalists and educated people in the First World fell for this myth, too — though they would have been among the first to be jailed or killed by Castro in his own realm — and their assumptions acquired an intensity similar to that of religious convictions. Pointing out to such believers that Castro imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands more of his own people than any other Latin American dictator was usually futile. His well-documented cruelty made little difference.

He highlights 13 reasons to despise Castro. Here are the one that stood out to me.

●He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon.

●He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.

●He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.

●He forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels.

●He outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.

●He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.

●He censored all means of expression and communication.

And the Caracas Chronicles also summed it up nicely.

Has any other Latin American done as much damage in a single lifetime as Fidel Castro? It’s…not even close. From his roots as a student gangster and two-bit murderer in Havana in the 40s, through a succession of catastrophes on four continents, Fidel Castro punched far, far above his weight. The guy who pleaded with Khrushev to start a nuclear holocaust, who sent tens of thousands of Cuban farm kids to dole out lead in a crazy, murderous war in Angola, thousands to attack Israel in the Yom Kipur War, thousands more to stand with the genocidal communist Mengistu regime in Ethiopia, who tried and failed to destabilize Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela, el Salvador, Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Guatemala, who tried and succeeded in destabilizing Nicaragua, Chile, Granada and — alas — Venezuela is finally, finally dead at 90.

Keep all this in mind the next time you hear some leftist says something nice about Castro. Or the racist murder Che Guevera.

P.S. For what it’s worth, Castro did have a late-in-life epiphany about the failure of communism.

Why would any sentient adult say anything

World

Fidel Castro, the tyrannical Cuban prime minister and president, was a communist and nationalist revolutionary.

Fidel Castro, the tyrannical Cuban prime minister and president, was a communist and nationalist revolutionary.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the communist-nationalist who ruled from 1959 to 2008, is dead at age 90, state TV says. Castro was the prime minister until 1976 and then became president until he put his brother Raul Castro in power in 2008.

Several political figures in the U.S. have reacted to the Cuban leader’s death and the disparity in how they viewed Castro has been stunning to the say the least.

President Barack Obama offered his “condolences” to the Castro family and extended “a hand of friendship” to the Cuban people, saying his death invoked “powerful emotions” and we should leave it to history to “record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

Big mediates struck an even more somber tone.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who was overwhelmingly supported by Cuban-American voters, which proved pivotal in his victory in Florida, reacted more plainly. It embodies all the things–ideological and attitudinal–that separate the current and future presidents.

“Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,” President-elect Trump said in the statement. “While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a Cuban-American agreed with President-elect Trump and mirrored his sentiment. He said Fidel Castro turned Cuba “into an impoverished island prison and said we should take the day to “reflect on the memory and sacrifices of all those who have suffered under the Castros.”

Indeed, the real Fidel Castro turned the island of Cuba into a tyrannical one-party state under his own Communist Party rule, the first ever socialist state in the Western Hemisphere. Promising policies of widespread state-run healthcare and education, he put in place failed central economic planning and total state control of the press, while suppressing and punishing internal political dissent.

Initially, the conservative press was adversarial to Fidel Castro and his socialist government. However, Castro used the loyal printers’ trade union to threaten and punish editorial staff.[1] In January 1960, the government actually ordered them to publish what they were told to classify as a “clarification.” Eventually, those clarifications, which were actually written by the printers’ union, appeared at the end of each article critical of the government.

Castro’s government arrested and tortured countless counter-revolutionaries, subjecting them to solitary confinement, beatings, other inhumane treatment and even death.[2]

Cuba’s domestic policy wasn’t the only arena in which Castro posed a grave danger.

For years, international relations scholars lacking primary sources from the U.S.S.R. painted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as an emotional and irrational leader seeking to project Russian power in the Western Hemisphere. However, the more recent documentation paints a very different picture of the events leading up to and during what came to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Khrushchev’s memoirs and correspondences show he was “gravely concerned with keeping the crisis in hand and curbing the hotheaded Castro, who seemed eager to see Soviet missiles speeding their way to the United States.”[3] He refused to give Castro command of the naval task force, the long-range missile and SAM sites, along with the troops protecting them. While Castro insisted the base was only for defense, he repeatedly urged Khrushchev to threaten a nuclear strike on the United States.

He supported Che Guevara and his “Andean project”, a failed guerrilla movement targeting the highlands of Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. Castro also allowed revolutionary groups from across the world, from the Viet Cong to the Black Panthers, to train in Cuba while at the same time decrying imperialism.

The speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, R-Wis., expressed hope for the future of the Cuban people.

“Now that Fidel Castro is dead, the cruelty and oppression of his regime should die with him,” he said in a statement. “Today let us reflect on the memory and sacrifices of all those who have suffered under the Castros.”

Yet, with his brother remaining in power and still enjoying a political victory from Mr. Obama agreeing to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations, there is little concrete evidence to suggest the future will be brighter. Following his historic meeting with President Obama in 2015, Raul Castro blamed U.S. presidents for the communist nation’s troubles in a nearly hour-long speech at the Summit of the Americas.

It was the first a U.S. and Cuban leader held a significant meeting since 1958, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower met with Fulgenico Batista. The following year, Fidel Castro met with President Richard Nixon, who was serving as Eisenhower’s vice president at the time.

Ignoring his failure to implement promised reforms, Raul took the moment to run down a litany of Cuban grievances against the U.S. dating back more than a century. The only reforms that have come to fruition benefit Cuban pharmaceutical companies essentially run by the Castro regime. In October, Mr. Obama announced rule changes that allowed them to participate in medical research projects and sell U.S. citizens their products, which they can return home with if they are FDA-approved.

The rule change was hidden in a greater package that was sold publicly as the administration lifting the import limit on Cuban cigars and rum brought into the country by Americans travelers coming home.

Still, the brutal communist dictator was “fondly” remembered by former President Jimmy Carter, who also took steps to attempt to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuban during his failed one-term presidency. President Carter, who was widely seen as a weak leader before he was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan, establishment of “interest sections” in Havana and Washington. They now serve as embassies.

“Rosalynn and I share our sympathies with the Castro family and the Cuban people on the death of Fidel Castro,” Mr. Carter said in a statement released Saturday by the Atlanta-based Carter Center. “We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of his country. We wish the Cuban citizens peace and prosperity in the years ahead.”

Granman, the state-run newspaper, demonstrated that Castro’s death did not mean an end to the propaganda. In their headline, they didn’t even mention his death let alone the often barbaric tactics the socialist regime engaged in. In fact, it printed the revolutionary slogan “Onwards to victory, always” and a picture of Fidel Castro waving a Cuban flag.

In fact, Mr. Carter visited Fidel Castro in Cuba back in 2011. Afterwards, he told reporters that they “welcomed each other as old friends.”

[1] Bourne, Peter G. (1986). Fidel: A Biography of Fidel Castro. New York City: Dodd, Mead & Company. ISBN 978-0-396-08518-8.

[2] Coltman, Leycester (2003). The Real Fidel Castro. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10760-9.

[3] Hunt, Michael (2003). Crisis in U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06368-7.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the communist-nationalist

Politics

KT McFarland, a national security analyst for Fox News, delivered remarks at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

KT McFarland, a national security analyst for Fox News, delivered remarks at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen KT McFarland for the role of Deputy National Security Adviser, second to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Currently Fox News’ National Security Analyst and Contributor, she is also the host of FOXNews.com’s DEFCON and a FOXNews.com Opinions page columnist.

Mrs. McFarland was born Kathleen Troia in Madison, Wisconsin, and is a graduate of George Washington University. She has a deep government resume highlighting a career that began while she was just a freshman at George Washington University. She got a part-time job in the White House Situation Room typing the President’s Daily Brief.

“I am proud that KT has once again decided to serve our country and join my national security team,” said President-elect Trump. “She has tremendous experience and innate talent that will complement the fantastic team we are assembling, which is crucial because nothing is more important than keeping our people safe.”

The latest pick marks the fourth high-profile national security position filled since the Trump transition team got underway, adding to Lt Gen. Flynn as National Security Adviser, Rep. Mike Pompeo as CIA Director and Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

“The American people chose Donald J. Trump to lead them for a reason,” said Ms. McFarland. “He has the courage, brilliance and energy to Make America Great Again, and nobody has called foreign policy right more than President-elect Trump, and he gets no credit for it. I’m honored and humbled that he has asked me to be part of his team.”

Big Media is hysterical in their attempt to paint the transition as being in disarray, but as PPD revealed last week the team is leaps and bounds beyond prior presidential transitions on appointments. Former President Bill Clinton didn’t announce a single appointment until the sixth week, the current president made his first appointment during the third week and President Ronald Reagan didn’t announce a pick until the eight week.

KT McFarland speaking at CPAC 2016 in Washington, DC.

KT McFarland speaking at CPAC 2016 in Washington, DC.

McFarland, largely a proponent of Reaganite realism, spent seven years in the West Wing of the White House before earning a spot on Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council Staff. Returning to academics after the Ford Administration, she studied at Oxford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mrs. McFarland also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1985 as a spokeswoman and senior speechwriter for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, the architect of the realist Weinberger Doctrine.

She actually wrote the Weinberger Principles of War Speech, which outlined the limited threats to vital national security interests that justify the use of force.

The Deputy National Security Adviser is a position that does not require Senate confirmation, as is the case with Lt. Gen. Flynn. She has been a staunch critic of President Barack Obama’s doctrine and strategy to combat Islamic terrorism.

Watch KT McFarland at CPAC 2015 — A Strong America: Protecting Opportunity For All

[brid video=”80814″ player=”2077″ title=”CPAC 2015 A Strong America Protecting Opportunity for All”]

President-elect Donald J. Trump has reportedly chosen

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