Tag Archive for: hillary clinton

Hillary seeking donations from Islamic Republic of Iran front group

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Why not? Obama was so useful to the Islamic Republic, and Clinton promises just more of the same.

NIAC has been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Said Michael Rubin: “Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, now appears to push aside any pretense that NIAC is something other than Iran’s lobby.

Speaking at the forthcoming ‘Expose AIPAC’ conference, Abdi is featured on the ‘Training: Constituent Lobbying for Iran’ panel. Oops.” Iranian freedom activist Hassan Daioleslam “documented over a two-year period that NIAC is a front group lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.” NIAC had to pay him nearly $200,000 in legal feesafter they sued him for defamation over his accusation that they were a front group for the mullahs, and lost.

“Clinton Reaches Out to An Iranian Front Group for Campaign Donations,” by S. Noble, Independent Sentinel, February 20, 2016 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

When you see who Hillary takes money from, you have to wonder what she will do in return. She is already a known threat to our national security.

Hillary Clinton is being outspent by Bernie Sanders 3 to 1 and keeps going back to the same donors who have for the most part given the maximum donations, but don’t worry, she’s found some new donors.

A pro-Iran lobby group that is working against US interests and is actively trying to kill new antiterrorism laws will be at a fundraising event with her this weekend.

This Sunday, Clinton will attend a fundraiser hosted by Twitter executive Omid Kordestani and his wife Gisel Hiscock along with National Iranian American Council (NIAC)  board member Lily Sarafan and Noosheen Hashemi, who serves on the pro-Iran advocacy group Ploughshares, a major funder of the pro-Iran agenda.

NIAC advocates against the pro-Israel community and on Iran’s behalf, they pushed against sanctions, have close ties to Barack Obama, pressured the US to abandon sanctions, and they spread propaganda the same way Press TV does. In 2013, they put out the lie that President Rouhani was a moderate and US papers lapped it up.

Ploughshares partners with NIAC and with the White House to pressure the Jewish community and others to back the Iran nuclear deal.

Iranian state-run media have referred to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) since at least 2006 as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

It portrays itself in the media as an independent group of Iranian expatriates. But Sam Nunberg, director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum project, describes the NIAC as an Iranian “front group.”

And documents released during the discovery phase of a defamation lawsuit NIAC filed against Seid Hassan Daioleslam, editor of the Iranian American Forum and one of the regime’s most public critics, include correspondence with Mohammed Javad Zaif, then Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations. He later negotiated the nuclear “deal” with Iran.

NIAC spends millions to propagandize the Iran nuclear deal as a positive for US national security.

Check out one of their full-page New York Times ads.

niac

They are working to block legislation that will require Iranians to enter the US without a visa. The legislation is meant to keep terrorists out of the country. Why do the Iranians want that, do you think?

Back in 2013, Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister who negotiated the peace talks with Iran, told Mehr News that they would use our democracy and our divisions against us:

“The Republic of Iran has the power and capacity to challenge U.S. and Israel in the international arena. To achieve this we must believe in the abilities of ourselves and of our diplomatic team. If we think that there is a unified voice in America, we are mistaken. By utilizing the opposing views in the U.S. we can be the winners in the (diplomatic) scene, and, of course, we can take advantage of the Zionist regime’s weaknesses.”

Also in 2013, Hossein Naghavi, the speaker of the parliament’s Committee described Zarif’s plan to play our game:

“We consider enemies as enemies and believe that we should not let the Zionists (Israel) present themselves as victims. We believe the U.S. is not a super-power and we can defeat the U.S. and Israel in the diplomatic arena. We should believe in the power and capacities of the revolution and the country. The United States and the Zionists want to show that Iran has no room to play. But we have both the power and the capacity. We know the rules of the game and we can play the best game.”

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) aggressively lobbies on behalf of the Iranian government likely with direct communications to Tehran itself.

This group has ties to Hollywood, industry, Silicon Valley and the White House.

Iran’s representatives in the US will certainly expect favors for their donations.

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No, Women Are Not Obliged to Vote for Hillary by Sarah Skwire

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“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

It’s one of Madeline Albright’s most famous lines, and she’s brought it out on any number of occasions. Starbucks even put it on a coffee cup. I understand why. It’s eminently quotable and suggests a kind of tough-minded sisterhood that can be appealing. I can see its ready application, for example, when helping a drunk friend get home safely from a party or when holding another mom’s infant so she can use the restroom in peace.

But Albright should have been a lot more careful before she applied her signature line to what she sees as an obligation for women to vote for Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries. Because the minute that you take her line out of the context of relationships among people and move it to the political context it loses whatever tough-minded charm it has, and it becomes a bullying, sexist, prescriptivist piece of obnoxious nonsense.

I don’t believe in hell, so threatening me with it has never had much purchase. But to the best of my understanding, for religions that do believe in hell, the things that get people sent there are sins against God or against other people. Taking a political action that someone doesn’t agree with (voting for someone other than Hillary Clinton) doesn’t seem to fit that bill in any way. Suggesting that it does mingles church and state in ways that sit uncomfortably with long American traditions.

And even if voting in a way that Albright thinks is wrong is a sin that leads to damnation, if Albright really is a believer in eternal torment and hellfire, she should probably be led by the many New Testament verses that counsel believers to use gentle correction and instruction toward those who have gone astray.

If Albright isn’t a believer in eternal torment and hellfire, she might be well advised to keep theology out of her politics entirely.

But even if we leave aside the myriad objections that arise when a bullying and inaccurate theology is dragged into the political realm, Albright’s insistence that women have a duty to vote for Clinton because she is also a woman remains moronic.

It is sexism of the oldest and most annoying type. With one comment, Albright managed to suggest the following:

  1. Women should shut up and vote the way they are told to vote.
  2. All women should vote the same way.
  3. All women have the same interests and objectives.
  4. Women who have made choices others disagree with have chosen incorrectly and must be brought back into line.
  5. Women cannot be trusted to recognize (and vote in favor of) their best interests.

Women have, over the centuries, gotten quite practiced at responding to these particular bits of idiocy. So while it’s disconcerting, at best, to hear this tosh from a woman of Albright’s stature and experience, it’s not particularly challenging to formulate an intelligent response. In fact, one thing that makes Albright’s comment so maddening is that, to many women, it seems so incredibly retrograde when applied to politics. It ignores the very real progress made by 21st century feminist thinkers in recognizing the different kinds of lives lived by different kinds of women — from different classes, of different colors, with different religions, of different sexualities, and in different bodies. By shouting right over that kind of nuance, Albright’s comment sounds like it’s stuck in the feminism of the 1960s.

But it’s worse than that. In its gender essentialism — its insistence that women are all women and therefore all alike — Albright’s comment could have been ripped right out of the first years of the 20th century. Or the 19th century. Or the 18th.

Happily, we have had Mary Wollstonecraft around for the past nearly 225 years to respond to that kind of nonsense. Albright would do better if, like Wollstonecraft, she would “consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties.”

Telling a woman how she should vote because she is a woman is no less insulting than telling her that she shouldn’t vote because she is a woman. Both approaches deny an individual the opportunity to unfold her unique faculties as she sees fit. Both approaches reduce a complex individual to a single characteristic. Politics routinely does this to all sorts of groups — women, people of color, people of faith, gun owners — and it is in every case an insult to the dignity of the individual.

But Albright’s comment does something even worse. Or perhaps, for our purposes, it does something even better. Albright’s comment reveals the truth about politics. And that truth is that Clinton’s run for the White House, like Sanders’s run, or Trump’s, or Bush’s, or Cruz’s, or anyone’s, is not about serving the people.

We are told to vote for Clinton because we have a special duty to help other women. But Albright and Clinton do not mean that we have a special duty to the women standing next to us in line at the grocery store, or to the women who are suffering from poverty, or out of work, or abused by their spouses, or harassed by their bosses. They mean that we have a special duty to one woman: Hillary Clinton. It is our duty, as women, to help her to a spot in the White House, because no woman has done that before. Seeing her up there proves … something. And it will make us all feel … something.

That’s pretty weak tea, Albright.

But it is, at least, weak tea that exposes the fundamental truth about politics. It’s not about helping women. Or men. Or people of color. Or the unemployed. Or whomever we are told it is about helping.

It’s about helping the politician.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to do that.

Sarah SkwireSarah Skwire

Sarah Skwire is the poetry editor of the Freeman and a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis. She is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

Bernie trounced Hillary in NH Primary despite his Israel Hating Advisers

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Bernie Sanders may have trounced Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary by a significant double digit margin with his Wall Street bashing and Swedish-style entitlement giveaways trolling for millennials and the economically disaffected.  However little known are his foreign policy advisers who are notoriously anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. Among them are Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute, former Defense official Larry Korb and, of course, the Soros-funded operatives of J Street.

Adam Credo’s article in yesterday’s Washington Free Beacon article noted the views of these ‘foreign policy’ advisers, “Meet Bernie Sanders’ Israel Hating Advisers.”   You thought his stint in a left Socialist Hashomer Hatzair Israeli kibbutz in his 20’s would make him a lifelong Zionist defender of the Jewish State. As my mythic cousin Vinny from Brooklyn would say, FERGEDABOTIT. Just look at his brother who lives in the UK, a supporter of the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.  Bernie congratulations Corbyn on his victory winning the Labor Party leadership. The UK Daily Mail article  noted his email to Corbyn saying:

The Democrat presidential hopeful said he is ‘delighted’ to support a leader who ‘tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all’.

‘At a time of mass income and wealth inequality throughout the world, I am delighted to see that the British Labor Party has elected Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader,’ he said in an email to Daily Mail Online.

‘We need economies that work for working families, not just the people on top.’

His words come after then Argentina’s President  Cristina Kirchner, since ousted by conservative successor Mauricio Macri, gushed that ‘hope has triumphed’ and that Corbyn ‘stands with Argentina’ in their anti-American stance.

Bernie also has a close friendship with notorious left wing anti-Israel advocate Noam Chomsky who endorsed him for President. They both share an Israeli kibbutz experience that in Chomsky’s case bolstered his Israel hating obsessions.

Watch this You Tube video of Chomsky’s endorsement of Bernie for President:

Note these comments from Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Yehudit Barsky, fellow at Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy in Kredo’s Washington Free Beacon article:

Sanders, who is Jewish and had family members slaughtered during the Holocaust, recently disclosed that his top foreign policy advisers include J Street, a dovish Middle East advocacy group that backs some of Congress’ most vocal critics of Israel, former assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb, and James Zogby, an Israel detractor who heads the Arab American Institute.

The inclusion of these advisers in the Sanders’ campaign, which has already come under fire for ignoring prominent Jewish-American political organizations, has prompted speculation from some that the presidential hopeful will pursue anti-Israel foreign policy priorities.

“Bernie seems to care very little about foreign policy, and so his views are shaped inordinately by advisers,” said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, an advocacy organization. “And now we know who those advisers are. Two of them—Zogby and J Street—are leading anti-Israel apologists for terrorism. By his association with these extremist groups, Bernie fails the commander-in-chief test.”

“If advisers are a crystal ball to the future of foreign policy, then Sanders seeks a policy which doubles down on many of the failed assumptions that have undercut Obama’s policies,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and terrorism analyst. “America’s adversaries are real and are motivated by ideology rather than grievance. To rest American national security on the good will of anti-American despots and Islamists is never a good gamble.”

Zogby has accused the Jewish state of committing a “Holocaust” against the Palestinians and has referred to Israelis as “Nazis.” He has also described sitting members of Congress as “Israel firsters,” an anti-Semitic trope that implies dual loyalty to the Jewish state.
Zogby also has come under fire for exploiting the memory of the Holocaust for political purposes.

Zogby claimed in a 2010 blog post for the Huffington Post that “the plight of Palestinians is to the Arabs, what the Holocaust is to Jews world-wide.”
His comparison immediately drew outrage, with researchers from the UK Media Watch organization describing it as “grievously insulting.”
“Nothing that I could say to highlight his words would make them any more insulting or horrid than they are on their own,” a representative of that group wrote at the time.

“Zogby has two goals: to make Arab Americans more powerful than Jewish Americans and to be their preeminent leader,” Yehudit Barsky, a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, wrote in a profile about Zogby’s anti-Israel attitudes.

J Street has faced similar criticism for its efforts to pressure Israel into making security concessions to the Palestinians that could endanger its survival.

J Street accused the Jewish state of “fanning growing flames of anti-Semitism” due to its efforts to stop daily attacks on civilians during Israel’s 2014 battle against Hamas terrorists.

The group’s leaders also have accused leading Israeli politicians of being racists.

We’ll see how Bernie Sanders fares in the upcoming Democratic primaries.  Given his radical background there was a reason why the media took to calling the city he was elected to serve the People’s Republic of Burlington.  With the FBI released a letter yesterday that Hillary is under investigation because of alleged confidential intelligence abuses using her private email server, you never know what can happen next in the 2016 Democrat Presidential nomination race.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

That Voice

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So many issues, so little time, which is why I am studiously avoiding any issues about Hillary other than that voice!

I am definitely not going into the terminal dishonesty thing, you know, when she told the American public, and also the parents of the murdered victims in Benghazi, that the four patriots who lost their lives to a savage Islamic attack was because of an anti-Islam video; that Wall St. and specifically Goldman-Sachs is not donating to her campaign and that, according to Dick Morris, FEC reports say that Hillary has received $21.4 million from the financial and insurance industry––almost 15 percent of the total $157.8 million she raised, and she’s still trolling them for big money.” How about that she won a smashing victory in Iowa (by six coin tosses that magically landed in her favor)? Dozens of websites have catalogued Hillary’s lies,  starting decades ago with her debut on the political scene. Also here and here and don’t miss this one. Not going there.

I’m definitely not going into the incompetence thing, the colossal failure of her secretly-conducted socialized-medicine initiative as First Lady, her stunning lack of accomplishments in the U.S. Senate, or, most damning, the dangerous state of the entire world under her tenure as Secretary of State, which has resulted in a chaotic, devolving Europe, saturated in Islamic-terrorism; a catastrophic Middle East, also inundated with Islamic terrorism; and the mysterious loss of six-billion dollars! Uh uh, not going there.

Also definitely not going into the crook thing, the perjury thing, the slush fund thing vis-à-vis The Clinton Foundation and the zillions she extorted––oops, accepted––from thug nations and tin-pot dictators throughout the world while, ahem, representing our country. Or the e-mail thing and the threats to our national security her fecklessness brought about, or the laughable denials, or looming Leavenworth. Not going there.

Most definitely not going into the abused-wife syndrome, the paranoid streak, the harassment and attempts to destroy the women assaulted by her, ahem, better half, or the laughable notion of her being a role model for any woman, much less the millions of American women who earned their way without the taint of scandal and criminality. Sooo not going there!

And definitely not going into Hillary’s disturbing laugh, which according to writer Elspeth Reeve, has been covered extensively. A few years ago, Reeve cited the National Journal which compiled “The Comprehensive Supercut of Hillary Clinton Laughing Awkwardly with Reporters” and The Washington Free Beacon, which created “Hillary Clinton’s Interview Tour: A Laughing Matter,” to name but two out of hundreds of articles that have covered Hillary’s aberrational trait over the years. Nope, not going there.

WHERE I AM GOING

For years I’ve wondered what that clap-your-hands-over-your-ears assault weapon is that emanates from Hillary Clinton’s mouth, specifically her wince-evoking, cringe-producing, decibel-shattering voice.

I don’t mean ear-splitting shrillness or the screech of a banshee, although God knows those are prominently featured in her vocal repertoire, but rather the shrike-like, hectoring tone that suggests that Hillary was born without the normal fluttering of the vocal cords, a function that helps to moderate speech sounds. This results in campaign speech in which every promise sounds menacing. Quite a feat!

I’m going to produce more jobs, Hillary says, get incomes rising again, make Obamacare work, improve early-childhood education, pay down student debt, fight for more abortions (oops, “defend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions”), on and on, and yet every word comes out sounding like the patronizing, finger-wagging lecture of a screech-owl harpy.

Hillary fan Geraldo Rivera speculates that this unfortunate trait might result from a hearing loss, the kind that makes people who don’t hear very well think that other people need to be shrieked at to hear their message.

Steven Hayward from Powerline.com simply describes her pronouncements as “cackling.”

Writer Elspeth Reeve asks: why do so many people hate the sound of Hillary’s voice? “It’s just so loud and annoying. Or maybe it’s like a nagging wife…inauthentic—that phony Southern accent! Those flat Midwestern vowels! Whatever it is, her voice is burned into your brain.” Maybe “she sometimes SPEAKS SO LOUDLY in hopes of conveying ENERGY and FORCEFULNESS.”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz explains to Sean Hannity: “Forget the words. Listen to the way she communicates. It’s ALL AT THE SAME LEVEL…her voice turns people off. Because they feel like they’re being lectured.”

Journalist Peggy Noonan compares Hillary to an irritating landlord. “She lately reminds me of the landlady yelling up the stairs that your kids left their bikes in the hall again.”

According to writer Kathy Miller, Hillary hired a voice and drama coach, Michael Sheehan, after her last unsuccessful presidential run in 2008, paying him $7,500. Yoo hoo, Hillary, ever consider a malpractice suit?

THEN THERE’S THE AFFECT THING

A person’s emotional affect is simply the way they display their feelings. They can be manic or flat, bubbly or dour, sincere or snarky, relaxed or intense, serious or light-hearted, on and on.

Once you see someone three or five or 10 times, you “get” what they’re all about. Unless, they have distinctly different affects…the stern executive during the day and the party girl at night; the all-American dad on the weekends and the internet troller of child porn during his working day.

Most of us fall along this spectrum. But few of us, in our travels, change our speech patterns when we go from state to state.

Not so of Hillary, who segues from high-falutin’ Wellesley girl when she’s courting East Coast donors to plantation Southerner when she’s addressing a black audience, for instance when she cited the hymn of James Cleveland: “Ah don’t feel nowhere tired….” Talk about cringe-producing!

Then there’s her affect of sincerity––eyes a little too wide open, gaze a little too fixed, head a little too bobbling, smile a little too plastered, the tacit message a little too “get me away from these irritating hicks!”

And there, too, is old Bubba, standing behind her…stooped, skinny, wizened, looking not a little out of the loop, applauding on cue, still too narcissistic to want her to win, but still counting on her to perpetuate the gigantic Ponzi scheme they created.

NATURE VS. NURTURE?

Was Hillary born with that weaponized voice of hers, or did she acquire it along the way? My bet is on the latter. It’s not uncommon for people who are essentially––when all the layers of the onion are peeled back––inauthentic to appropriate behaviors of other people, the better to make themselves appear to be the real thing.

It’s as if Hillary looked around and observed how a regular person or even an animated character acts when he or she is angry or impassioned or wants to get a point across or appeal to someone, and she said to herself, “Aha, I’ll take Alec Baldwin’s anger from Column A, Ida B. Robinson’s passion from Column B, Johnny Appleseed’s ardor from Column C,” on and on, and then adopts whichever behavior fits the occasion.

But it never works, never comes across as authentic because, well, it isn’t! Hence the strangely hyena-like laugh, the hectoring tone, the weird meet-and-greet affect, and, occasionally, the bursts of raw anger––“What difference does it make?”––in which the public gets a vivid and decidedly unpretty picture of what lies beneath the phony façade.

WHERE IS THIS ALL GOING?

Looming over the entire Clinton agenda is ole genuine Bernie Sanders, grabbing the young vote, the far-left vote, the entitlement vote, the socialist and communist votes, and now we learn the woman vote, effectively telling the largely anti-Semitic world that American Democrats prefer a Brooklyn-born Jew to a female career-politician with an alienating affect, a scandal-ridden past and present, and indictments of downright treason hanging over her head,

Yes, Hillary’s dishonesty thing looms large with voters, as does her incompetence thing and crook thing and abused-wife thing and weird laugh thing,

But nothing is as predictive of her ultimate defeat as the voice thing, even though she can’t help it, anymore than someone afflicted with barnacles. Millions of people may want a woman in the White House, so much that they overlook Hillary’s Mt. Everest heights of deficits and failures. In and of itself, as even her advocates grudgingly admit, living with that voice for the next four years will compel every man in America to buy earplugs and every woman in America to wonder what the entire estrogen fetish was all about.

I predict that nothing––not the trendiest public-relations firms or the most credentialed drama coaches––will stop the American public from voting against Ms. Hillary because of that voice!

Bernie Sanders suspends campaign, endorses Clinton

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Durham, NH – Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders abruptly suspended his campaign following tonight’s debate, and Hillary Clinton has graciously accepted his endorsement. As is often the case when a candidate withdraws from a race, the announcement came directly from his opponent during a post-debate interview with moderator Rachel Maddow. Clinton appeared distracted by her phone as Maddow questioned her on points made by Sanders regarding income inequality, but as Maddow concluded, Clinton exclaimed, “my opponent made valid arguments that I think merit serious consideration, but I am pleased to announce that he has dropped out of the race and given me his endorsement. I urge the supporters of Senator Sanders to honor his wishes and direct their enthusiasm to make a Hillary Clinton presidency a reality.”

The move is not totally unexpected, as Sanders had limited finances and little chance of carrying any state beyond New Hampshire. He has reportedly decided to take a much needed vacation after months of running a passionate, if largely fruitless, campaign.

Some commentators, particularly those on the Republican side, questioned the circumstances surrounding the announcement. Minutes after the debate, Clinton posted, “why hasn’t Sanders been fed into the hay baler yet?” on Huma Abedin’s Facebook wall, and Abedin responded, “five minutes. There was traffic.”

Stories of similar evidence of Clinton’s purported wrongdoing have never gained traction in the past, and the announcement clears the way for her to direct attention and resources towards the eventual GOP nominee.

“Bernie Sanders ran an honorable race and contributed valuable insights into the direction that we need to go, but his concession makes the party stronger,” tweeted Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, adding the hashtag #BernHillaryBern.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Why Bernie Sanders Has to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class by Daniel Bier

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Willie Sutton was one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history. Over three decades, the dashing criminal robbed a hundred banks, escaped three prisons, and made off with millions. Today, he is best known for Sutton’s Law: Asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, Sutton allegedly quipped, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Sutton’s Law explains something unusual about Bernie Sander’s tax plan: it calls for massive tax hikes across the board. Why raise taxes on the middle class? Because that’s where the money is.

The problem all politicians face is that voters love to get stuff, but they hate to pay for it. The traditional solution that center-left politicians pitch is the idea that the poor and middle class will get the benefits, and the rich will pay for it.

This is approximately how things work in the United States. The top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19 percent of total income and pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earn 12 percent and pay 3 percent. This chart from the Heritage Foundation shows net taxes paid and benefits received, per person, by household income group:

But Sanders’ proposals (free college, free health care, jobs programs, more Social Security, etc.) are way too heavy for the rich alone to carry, and he knows it. To his credit, his campaign has released a plan to pay for each of these myriad handouts. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has totaled up all the tax increases Sanders has proposed so far, and the picture is simply staggering.

Every household earning below $250,000 will face a tax hike of nearly 9 percent. Past that, rates explode, up to a top rate of 77 percent on incomes over $10 million.

Paying for Free

Sanders argues that most people’s average income tax rate won’t change, but this is only true if you exclude the two major taxes meant to pay for his health care program: a 2.2 percent “premium” tax and 6.2 percent payroll tax, imposed on incomes across the board. These taxes account for majority of the new revenue Sanders is counting on.

But it gets worse: his single-payer health care plan will cost 80 percent more than he claims. Analysis by the left-leaning scholar Kenneth Thorpe (who supports single payer) concludes that Sanders’ proposal will cost $1.1 trillion more each year than he claims. The trillion dollar discrepancy results from some questionable assumptions in Sanders’ numbers. For instance:

Sanders assumes $324 billion more per year in prescription drug savings than Thorpe does. Thorpe argues that this is wildly implausible.

“In 2014 private health plans paid a TOTAL of $132 billion on prescription drugs and nationally we spent $305 billion,” he writes in an email. “With their savings drug spending nationally would be negative.”

So unless pharmaceutical companies start paying you to take their drugs, the Sanders administration will need to increase taxes even more.

Analysis by the Tax Foundation finds that his proposed tax hikes already total $13.6 trillion over the next ten years. However, “the plan would [only] end up collecting $9.8 trillion over the next decade when accounting for decreased economic output.”

And the consequences will be truly devastating. Because of the taxes on labor and capital, GDP will be reduced 9.5 percent. Six million jobs will be lost. On average, after-tax incomes will be reduced by more than 18 percent.

Incomes for the bottom 50 percent will be reduced by more than 14 percent, and incomes for the top 1 percent will be reduced nearly 25 percent. Inequality warriors might cheer, but if you want to actually raise revenue, crushing the incomes of the people who pay almost 40 percent of all taxes isn’t the way to go.

These are just the effects of the $1 trillion tax hike he has planned — and he probably needs to double that to pay for single payer. Where will he find it? He’ll go where European welfare states go.

Being Like Scandinavia

Sanders is a great admirer of Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and many of his proposals are modeled on their systems. But to pay for their generous welfare benefits, they tax, and tax, and tax.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all capture between 20-26 percent of GDP from income and payroll taxes. By contrast, the United States collects only 15 percent.

Scandinavia’s tax rates themselves are not that much higher than the United States’. Denmark’s top rate is 30 percent higher, Sweden’s is 18 percent higher, and Norway’s is actually 16 percent lower — and yet Norway’s income tax raises 30 percent more revenue than the United States.

The answer lies in how progressive the US tax system is, in the thresholds at which people are hit by the top tax rates. The Tax Foundation explains,

Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers.

The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent. …

Compare this to the United States. The top marginal tax rate of 46.8 percent (state average and federal combined rates) kicks in at 8.5 times the average U.S. income (around $400,000). Comparatively, few taxpayers in the United States face the top marginal rate.

The reason European states can pay for giant welfare programs is not because they just tax the rich more — it’s because they also scoop up a ton of middle class income. The reason why the United States can’t right now is its long-standing political arrangement to keep taxes high on the rich so they can be low on the poor and middle.

Where the Money Is – And Isn’t

As shown by the Laffer Curve, there is a point at which increasing tax rates actually reduces tax revenue, by discouraging work, hurting the economy, and encouraging tax avoidance.

Bernie’s plan already hammers the rich: households earning over $250,000 (the top 3 percent) would face marginal rates of 62-77 percent — meaning the IRS would take two-thirds to three-quarters of each additional dollar earned. His proposed capital gains taxes are so high that they are likely well past the point of positive returns. The US corporate tax rate of 40 percent is already the highest in the world, and even Sanders hasn’t proposed increasing it.

The only way to solve his revenue problem is to raise rates on the middle and upper-middle classes, or flatten the structure to make the top rates start kicking in much lower. You can see why a “progressive” isn’t keen on making more regressive taxes part of his platform, but the money has to come from somewhere.

The bottom fifty percent don’t pay much income tax now (only $34 billion), but they also don’t earn enough to fill the gap. Making their taxes proportionate to income would only raise $107 billion, without even considering how the higher rates would reduce employment and income.

The top 5 percent are pretty well wrung dry by Sanders’ plan, and their incomes are going to be reduced by 20-25 percent anyway. It’s hard to imagine that there’s much more blood to be had from that stone.

But households between the 50th and the 95th percentile (incomes between $37,000 to $180,000 a year) earn about 54 percent of total income — a share would likely go up, given the larger income reductions expected for top earners. Currently, this group pays only 38 percent of total income taxes, and, despite the 9 percent tax hike, they’re comparatively spared by the original tax plan. Their incomes are now the lowest hanging fruit on the tax tree.

As they go to the polls this year, the middle class should remember Sutton’s Law.

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Tech Sector Bears Brunt of Capital Taxes, Random Regulation by Dan Gelernter

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According to our president’s final State of the Union, we’ve recovered from the economic crisis and now enjoy the strongest, most durable economy in the world. Obama does acknowledge that startups and small businesses may need some help, so he wants to reignite our “sprit of innovation” — which he plans to do by putting Vice President Biden in charge of curing cancer.

But the problem facing startups is not a lack of innovation. We are being killed by the economy, which, for those of us who have to live in it, is not good at all. Young entrepreneurs may have spent last year working hard, innovating and building, only to find their companies are worth less now than when they started.

The market is adjusting downwards. Valuations are sinking. The investors I’ve spoken to feel the Fed’s free-money policy has created a dangerous over-valuation of companies and stocks and, now that the rates are coming back up, the air is being let out. 2015, they say, was a tough year because we knew this was coming. 2016 is going to be even tougher.

There is something else weighing on the minds of entrepreneurs and investors alike — regulatory uncertainty. No startup can deal with compliance by itself — not even software companies with no physical products to sell. Startups have to hire lawyers and compliance experts to help them, and this is money we’re not spending on product development or marketing or making our prices more competitive.

The way Obamacare is being implemented, for example, makes our hair white. The rules seem to change with bureaucratic whim; various parts of the law are suspended by executive order. How will we comply next year, and what will it cost? Nobody knows.

In the meantime, the Democratic candidates for President are proposing large hikes to the capital gains tax, which increases effective risk for investors and depresses valuations. Will these hikes ever take place? We don’t know, and that uncertainty carries an additional price.

We’re already seeing more investors decide to weather the storm on the sidelines, keeping an eye on their current affairs and declining to invest in companies they would have snapped up a year ago. A tech startup with a working product will find it harder to raise money today than it would have two years before with nothing but a concept. Not only are we faced with a weak market now, the trend is even more disturbing.

The problem is easier to diagnose than to repair. As an entrepreneur, I’d like to see less regulation and lower taxes. And not just lower taxes on the companies themselves, but on the people who can afford to invest in them. This may come as a surprise, but it’s the hated “one percent” that invests in startups and helps entrepreneurs’ dreams come true. When taxes cut deeper into the pockets of the wealthy, it most negatively affects us — the entrepreneurs and the people we would have hired — not the wealthy.

Regulation remains erratic, and the policies of the next administration cannot be foreseen. 2016 is going to be a hard year for the startup. Investments will continue to decline until investors see a stable market. And they’re not looking at one right now. Companies will die as a result, and not for lack of innovative ideas.

Dan Gelernter

Dan Gelernter is CEO of the technology startup Dittach.

Voter Survey: Muslims in U.S. Overwhelmingly support Democratic Party

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WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released the results of a six-state survey indicating that 73 percent of registered Muslim voters say they will go to the polls in upcoming primary elections and that 67 percent will vote for Democratic Party candidates.

According to an Investigative Project report, CAIR:

[P]urports to be a “leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and claims to speak for the majority of American Muslims. However, after a careful review of the history, activities, statements, and causes of and by CAIR, it seems that its primary goals are to silence and de-legitimize its critics and redefine what it means to be a moderate Muslim. And when it comes to U.S. efforts to crack down on terrorists and their financiers, CAIR takes an almost visceral stand in opposition. This has the effect of undermining the legitimate security-related concerns and campaigns of the United States and its allies. These conclusions and the summary immediately below are based upon the evidence and examples that follow in this report; beginning with CAIR’s very founding.

The full dossier “CAIR Exposed,” can be found here.

CAIR’s Muslim voter survey also indicated that more than half of respondents said they would support Hillary Clinton in the elections (51.62%), followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (22.03%) and Donald Trump (7.47%).

Growing Islamophobia in America was ranked as the most important issue for Muslim voters. Domestic issues like the economy and health care also topped the Muslim voters’ list of priority concerns in this election. (NOTE: Islamophobia was listed as the third-ranked issue in a similar 2014 CAIR survey.)

CAIR’s survey of almost 2000 registered Muslim voters in California, New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, andVirginia – the states with the highest Muslim populations – was conducted January 26 using an independent automated call survey provider and asked four questions:

1. “Do you plan to vote in your upcoming state primary election?”
2. “Which political party do you plan to support in your upcoming state primary election?”
3. “Based on your party support which candidate do you plan to vote for in the upcoming state primary election?”
4. “What is the most important issue to you in the 2016 presidential election?”

Survey Results: (NOTE: Results indicate number of respondents and corresponding percentages.)

Question One: Do you plan to vote in your upcoming state primary election?

Yes                 

1417

73.80%

No                     

235

12.24%

Decline to Answer      

268

13.96%

Total Respondents    

1920

100.00%

Question Two: Which political party do you plan to support in your upcoming state primary election?

Democrat              

876

67.33%

Republican            

190

14.60%

Libertarian            

21

1.61%

Green                             

11

0.85%

Other                            

57

4.38%

Decline to Answer      

146

11.22%

Total Respondents    

1301

100.00%

Question Three: Based on your party support which candidate do you plan to vote for in the upcoming state primary election?  

Hillary Clinton     

525

51.62%

Bernie Sanders                   

224

22.03%

Donald Trump                  

76

7.47%

Sen. Ted Cruz               

21

2.06%

Jeb Bush                        

16

1.57%

Sen. Marco Rubio       

15

1.47%

Martin O’Malley          

10

0.98%

Sen. Rand Paul               

6

0.59%

Dr. Ben Carson                       

5

0.49%

Gov. Chris Christie      

4

0.39%

Carly Fiorina                

3

0.29%

Decline to Answer     

112

11.01%

Total Respondents     

1017

100.00%

Question Four: What is the most important issue to you in the 2016 presidential election?  

Islamophobia           

456

29.71%

Economy               

364

23.71%

Health Care            

221

14.40%

Civil Liberties             

103

6.71%

Foreign Affairs                    

95

6.19%

Education                       

86

5.60%

Other                        

78

5.08%

Decline to Answer     

132

8.60%

Total Respondents    

1535

100.00%

RELATED ARTICLES:

Is CAIR a Terror Group? – National Review Online

FBI Chart and Documents Portray CAIR as Hamas-Related

Council on American-Islamic Relations – Discover the Networks

Hillary and Bernie Must ‘Stop Spewing the Gender Pay Gap Myths’

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SAN DIEGO, California /PRNewswire/ — The National Coalition For Men (NCFM) calls on Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and all other candidates to be honest about the gender “pay gap.”  Claiming that women “earn less” without explaining why is misleading and dishonest.  The Department of Labor funded a study that showed the pay gap is mostly due to choices, not discrimination.

Before women get married and have kids, they earn the same as men, and are also beneficiaries of quality of life choices that favor health and longevity as reflected by statistics on industrial deaths.  After having kids, women make additional quality of life choices different from males, such as more flexible hours and less managerial positions. Women have more options than men when it comes to being primary parents.  In fact, over half of female graduates of Stanford and Harvard left the workforce within 15 years of entry into the workforce.  This is not an option for most men.

Men are either primary breadwinners or on the streets. Consequently, they make the vast majority of homeless adults, job-related deaths, suicides, and incarcerated persons.

Women who were never married and are childless earn more than their male counterparts.  And as corporate executives, women now earn more than men.

NCFM calls on the candidates of both parties to be honest and tell the whole truth about the gender pay gap as well as the many gender inequalities that men face in our society, not just in terms of homelessness, workplace deaths, and suicides but also systematic sex discrimination in child custody, criminal sentencing, public health policies, and more.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL COALITION FOR MEN

Operating since 1977, NCFM is the oldest men’s group committed to ending sex discrimination. Throughout our history we have advanced step by step, across three nations, toward our goal of resolving issues which are barriers to progress and freedom. You may quickly realize that you are not alone or that an uncomfortable feeling has been revealingly discussed here. Or you may realize that your insight or skill could dramatically improve our mutual progress. We are not finished. We are a work in progress toward substance, comradeship, and freedom. We are glad that you are here, whether you are seeking help or learning how you can work with us.

Check out our National Advisors , read about our philosophy, make a suggestion, check out our newsletter, join us on FaceBook or come back again and again. We are a select group of serious activists, but we may enjoy your membership and our work could certainly use your support. You may enjoy an event at one of our chapters. You may be interested to know if a chapter is forming in your area. Otherwise there are events at many affiliated organizations.

Learn more about NCFM.

Bloomberg for President?

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Amid reports that the FBI is close to recommending that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified materials, and that FBI Director James Comey and other agency personnel investigating Clinton may resign if the DOJ refuses to do so, sources close to Michael Bloomberg say the billionaire former mayor of New York City may run for president if Clinton appears unable to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

CBS New York reports, “[t]hey say Bloomberg would strongly consider running if the general election looked like it would be a contest between Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.” Bloomberg, who has let on that he would be willing to spend 1 billion dollars on a campaign, is expected to make his decision by March. Four states are holding their presidential primaries and caucuses in February, and another 14 will do so on Super Tuesday, March 1st.

Appearing unfazed by her troubles, Clinton insists “nothing that I did was wrong” and said of the Bloomberg news, “the way I read what he said was if I didn’t get the nomination, he might consider it. Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination, so he doesn’t have to.”

Unfortunately, from Clinton’s perspective, that may be a fairly big “if.” Polls show her being trounced by Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire and also losing Iowa, where the country’s first presidential primaries and caucuses will be held, and that her national figures are dropping. Other polls show that more Americans view her unfavorably than favorably.

Fox News reports, “[t]he FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible ‘intersection’ of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws.” Fox followed up on the story on Tuesday, saying, “The security investigation is now part and parcel with the criminal [public corruption] investigation.”

Bloomberg must theorize that he could appeal to voters on the basis of his success as a businessman and his time as the mayor of the nation’s most populous city. But he faces a difficult “if” of his own. Clinton been casting herself as the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history, a distinction Bloomberg would certainly want to challenge if he threw his hat into the ring. Also, and perhaps for the same reason, a Morning Consult poll released this week found Bloomberg at 13% in a hypothetical three-way race against Donald Trump and Clinton, 11% when the Republican candidate is Sen. Ted Cruz, and down to 10% when the Republican is Sen. Marco Rubio.

Bloomberg might be able to bump those numbers up among Democrats a bit, if he promised to pardon Clinton on the first day of his presidency. That would not only endear him to Clinton’s most fanatical supporters, it would wipe the slate clean, at least legally-speaking, for someone who shares his deep antipathy for guns. With public opinion trending steadily against gun control, a President Bloomberg couldn’t afford to have one of his strongest anti-gun allies in court or in prison.

Hillary Adjusts Her Gun Control Message and Volume for Different Audiences

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Hillary Clinton is not known for her sincerity and forthrightness.

In fact, a poll conducted last September by Suffolk University/USA Today demonstrated that more than one in five voters associate some term of deceitfulness with Clinton, including “liar,” “dishonest,” “untrustworthy,” and “fake.” This followed an earlier Quinnipiac University poll that found, “’Liar’ is the first word that comes to mind more than others in an open-ended question when voters think of Clinton.” And that one followed similar findings from CNN/ORC International. Et cetera.

Like Abraham Lincoln said, “you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

But you can’t fault Hillary Clinton for trying her level best to do just that.

Regular observers of Hillary Clinton know for a fact she is no fan of the Second Amendment. We know, for example, she thinks the Supreme Court was “wrong” to declare that it’s an individual right, that self-defense is its “core” purpose, and that it prohibits the government at all levels from banning handguns. We also know that she is open to the idea of a mandatory, nationwide surrender of firearms, along the lines of what Australia did.

So we can at least credit her for being honest about that.

Well, sort of, anyway.

Those statements are now part of the public record, and we’ll gladly remind the public of them every chance we get.

But not everybody follows politics closely … not even everybody who votes.

So Hillary Clinton is counting on Americans to have short memories and limited awareness during the general election this year.

For now, she is willing to pander to her base and try to position herself to the left of primary challenger Bernie Sanders by harping on gun control … at least some of the time. She believes that message will resonate with the much smaller and more ideologically-oriented segment of the population that chooses a candidate in the primary election. But will she be singing the same tune if (and likely when) she faces the general electorate in a bid for the White House?

Not if a recent Associated Press (AP) analysis of her primary political ads is any indication. As an article in the D.C. Caller put it, “The Hillary Clinton campaign wants to both highlight her staunch support of gun control laws, but also obscure those views in places where it may hurt her at the polls.”

According to the AP, 1 of every 4 of her televised political ads in New Hampshire touts her support for tougher gun control. Meanwhile, in Iowa, only in 1 in 17 ads mention Clinton’s support for stronger gun control and in a less strident way. As University of Iowa Professor Tim Hagle opined to the AP, “It may have to do with the polls and that the hunting tradition is stronger here in Iowa.”

In other words, Hillary is being what is commonly called – in the world of normal human interaction, where people don’t routinely misrepresent themselves to each other wherever it might offer a perceived advantage – “two-faced.”

Remember that when Hillary Clinton is talking to the nation as a whole (and not just her party’s most ideologically-motivated base) about what she supposedly believes and what she supposedly would do as president.

Even if certain primary voters support Hillary’s gun control agenda, America at large does not. That being so, you can count on Clinton to be more muted about her radical designs to disarm the populace when she’s trying to bamboozle her way back to Pennsylvania Avenue. Rest assured, we do not intend to let her pull the wool over America’s eyes on this point.

Hillary’s Middle East Legacy: 6 Failed States, 7 Autocracies and one Democracy

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Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton served as the 67th United States Secretary of State under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. The below map is a graphic representation of what occurred during her time as Secretary of State. Not shown on the map are the failed states of Syria and Iraq and the failing state of Afghanistan.

arab spring graphic

Some may argue that former Secretary Clinton was doing the bidding of President Obama. Others may argue that she had no control over events in the Middle East. However, we must recall what former Secretary Clinton said about the “Arab Spring”. Andrew Quinn, Reuters correspondent in Washington, D.C., in an October 2012 column titled “Clinton Says U.S. must embrace Arab Spring despite dangers” reported:

The United States must look past the violence and extremism that has erupted after the “Arab Spring” revolutions and boost support for the region’s young democracies to forge long-term security, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

Clinton, seeking to reinforce the Obama administration’s Middle East policy following a wave of anti-American violence and last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, said Washington cannot be deterred by “the violent acts of a small number of extremists.”

“We recognize that these transitions are not America’s to manage, and certainly not ours to win or lose,” Clinton said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

[ … ]

Clinton acknowledged that political turmoil in Libya and Yemen, the rise of Islamist parties to power in Egypt and Tunisia and the expanding crisis in Syria were all tests for U.S. leadership – but said more engagement, not less, was the only way forward.

The violence and extremism continues today in-spite of engagement by the United States. A growing number of Muslim armies under the banner of the Islamic State, the newest caliphate, among others are creating havoc in Europe. During former Secretary Clinton’s watch was the Iranian “Green Revolution”. Debra Heine from PJ Media wrote:

If you’ll recall, millions of people had poured out into the streets to protest the sham election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of the leaders of the Green Revolution, the widely revered Hussein-Ali Montazeri, had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, but without a regime change, there was no real hope that Iran would abandon its nuclear weapons program. The country was at a tipping point, and with a little encouragement and logistical support, the murderous Iranian regime could have been overthrown. Hillary Clinton was the secretary of State at the time.

I recall a 2008 campaign ad that the Hillary for President campaign ran. It talked about who was best prepared to take a White House call at 3:00 a.m. Here is the ad:

Well the call came to the White House and the U.S. State Department on September 11th, 2012. Only the call wasn’t at 3:00 a.m. Rather the call came at 4:00 p.m. The call came from Ambassador Christ Stevens from Benghazi, Libya.

No one took the call.

Iowa Poll: Trump and Clinton Surge 10 Days Before the Caucus — Cruz & Sanders Faltering

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trump clintonBOSTON, MA /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In a new, statewide Iowa poll, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have surged to 9 and 10 point leads in Iowa with just 10 days before the first in the nation voting begins. Clinton receives 52% of the vote and Sanders at 43%. Trump leads his Republican rivals with 33%, followed byTed Cruz at 23%, Marco Rubio (14%), and Ben Carson (9%) round out the top four with the rest of field under 6%; Rick Santorum — who won the 2012 Iowa GOP Caucus with 25% of the vote — has less than 1% of Iowans this time around, and Mike Huckabee who won the 2008 Iowa Caucus is at 2%.

The survey began January 18, the day after the latest Democrat debate, and concluded January 20, the day following Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump.

“At this point, while both Trump and Clinton have significant leads in their own primaries the electorate appears volatile, and it is still up in the air as to who will win,” said Henry Krause, a Senior Political Communication major at Emerson College, who helped oversee the project. The data fluctuated on the three days of polling on both sides with Clinton holding a 14 point lead on Monday, dropping to 9 points on Tuesday and was at 1 point, 48% to 47% on Wednesday. Trump also sees variability over the three days watching a 13 point lead on Monday drop to 4 points on Tuesday and rebounding on Wednesday to 12 points 35% to 22% over Cruz.

Iowa voters, however, are not thrilled with their 2016 Presidential options. The top three GOP candidates all have negative favorability numbers with Trump at 37% favorable to 55% unfavorable, Rubio at 37% favorable to 47% unfavorable and Cruz is worse at 34% favorable to 54% favorable. Clinton has the highest favorable rating at 42% but also carries a high unfavorable rating of 53%.

In the Democrat Primary, Clinton holds the support of registered Democrats 54% to 42% over Sanders, while Sanders holds a 44% to 36% lead among registered Independents. On the Republican side Trump holds a 34% to 24% over Cruz among registered Republicans and extends his lead to 15 points among Independents 30% to 15% over Cruz.

The survey also found that 66% of Iowan voters did not know a person of Muslim faith and that 28% said they did not have a Hispanic friend of acquaintance.

Caller ID

The ECPS poll was conducted from Monday, January 18 at 6:00 p.m., through Wednesday evening January 20. The polling sample was a random selection of registered voters purchased through Aristotle Inc. Likely primary voters were classified through a screening question. For non-completes with a working residential phone line, at least five callbacks were attempted. The Democratic and GOP Presidential primaries consisted of 258 and 271 adult registered likely primary voters in Iowa, with a margin of error of +/-6.1% and +/-5.9% respectively at a 95 percent confidence level, was used for the additional statewide questions. Data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response system and weighted based on 2012 General Election voting to reflect likely voter populations in Iowa. The full methodology and results can be found at www.theecps.com

RELATED ARTICLE: One Week Out: The Problem With Polling Iowa

13 Hours – Secret Soldiers of Benghazi a Stephen Coughlin Video Moment

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This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Stephen Coughlin Moment with Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure.

Stephen discussed 13 Hours – Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, focusing on a few crucial things not covered in the film.

And make sure to watch The Stephen Coughlin Moment: The “Countering Violent Extremism” Deception, in which Stephen unveiled how the CVE narrative was fostered by the Muslim Brotherhood -– and how it negates countering terror: CLICK HERE.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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EDITORS NOTE: The Glazov Gang is a fan-generated program. Readers may donate through The Glazov Gang Pay Pal account, subscribe to their YouTube Channel and LIKE them on Facebook.

Don’t Believe The Bigots

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Despite the ongoing onslaught of lies the progressives promote against the truth concerning anything, including American history, the United States of America was founded upon Judeo/Christian Ethics.  In many circles, there was a heavy emphasis on the blessed leadership, protection, wisdom and mercy of God almighty, through his son Christ Jesus.  Great men of adventure, dating all the way back to Christopher Columbus dedicated land in this hemisphere to the God of Abraham, Isaic and Jacob.  As time progressed, there came to the fore a series of events that would build toward what would later become the United States of America.

Such a venture was an almost non-stop cascade of herculean actions which took an unlimited amount of faith, grit and intelligence to accomplish.  There were also the horrendously scorched summers that the Europeans were not accustomed to.  In addition, many of the first wave of early pilgrim settlers were wiped out through disease, starvation and bad decisions until wisdom finally prevailed and changed their fortunes and halted their demise.

Sometime later, 56 men gathered in Independence Hall in Philadelphia and said “no more” of the boot heel of tyranny under Britain’s King George and declared independence.  As a result, there was a collective wave of laughter throughout the British Empire.  After all, Great Britain was the world’s super power at the time.  So it was unfathomable to those in England that those colonial rabble rousers could present much of a challenge to the mighty Brits.

However there were four things the Founding Fathers of the United States possessed that the proud red coats did not seem to poses or exhibit.

  • Faith
  • Sense of purpose
  • Destiny
  • Mission of Liberty

For just as during the time of the prophet Nehemiah, there were those lousy skeptics and discouragers who sought to prevail against what some might describe as a rendezvous with destiny.  As the men focused more on the job at hand than the irritant discouragers, they prevailed, setting yet another example of not giving in to those who oppose what you are destined to achieve.  You can refer to Nehemiah 2: 17 to 20 in the Amplified or King James version.

Of course, Nehemiah and his friends rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem.  They clearly were victorious.  But eventually, the glory of their victory faded into a defeat for their nation.  Primarily, because the people turned away from God, who was their source of success.  In addition to that mistake, the parents and others including national leaders did not properly pass on the concept of victorious living to the succeeding generations.  Throughout the annals of history, mankind has either experienced or caused revival then fell away to defeat or decline, followed by revival again, then yet another tumbling away from the greatness of victorious living.  Yet we were meant to be continuously victorious in living all aspects of greatness, victory and positive achievement, not just a partial life of existence.

For example there is more to salvation than simply being saved from Satan’s vow of damnation with him.  Much like the founding fathers did, I believe God wants us to live complete lives of continuous advancement, vitality, victory and liberty, which they understood comes from our creator.  Our liberty and unalienable rights do not come from government or bastardized rights called civil rights either, no matter what certain people may say.

The United States was and is still meant to be the beacon of light to the world.  The light of true liberty should be so bright that rest of the world would desire to emulate the concept in their respective nations.  Through true liberty, America was once known as the envy of the world do to almost unlimited opportunities and even her cities were world renowned for their civility.  I believe America will experience a soon to come revival.  But before that can really occur there may be some sort of setback, possibly on the scale of the 9.11 attacks in 2001.  Why? Because many stupid and detrimental decisions (like the Iran deal and speeding up the growth of immorality) have been made by the current regime that has America vulnerable to possible enemy attacks or economic collapse.

Also, unfortunately our nation has become stuck in a quagmire of declining greatness because the good aspects of our past are purposely not taught to most students.  So as a result, the foundations of individual and societal greatness based upon God’s principles have not been built upon, and now our republic is in a heap of hurt.

But despite the mangled mess of today, I believe our republic will arise from her current moral, economic, political, educational and spiritual stupor.  Even though America is currently in a seemingly bottomless pit of decline, believe it or not there is much hope.  First of all, God wants us to do away with the curse of mediocrity that breeds stagnation for both individuals and the nation as a whole.

We don’t have to hold on to the brokenness that has led to the prevailing scourge of mediocrity that has led to stagnation, decline and pervasive misery.  Just as the Founding Fathers and the people of ancient Israel turned to God, especially after making wrong decisions and paying for them, let us humble ourselves and seek God’s forgiveness, wisdom, guidance and mercy.  He will then hear from heaven and forgive our national sin and heal our land.  It can’t hurt to give it a faith filled try. I believe our future generations and the republic itself is worth the effort.

God Bless You, God Bless America and May America Bless God.

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