Saturday, August 27, 2016

The Best Essay I've Read All Week

Have I Always Been a Conservative?
By Mark Moncrieff @ Upon Hope

Winston Churchill is often attributed with saying something along the lines of "If you're not a Liberal at 20 you have no heart, if you're not a Conservative at 30 you have no head".  I guess I never had a heart, but I always had a head. When I first became interested in politics as a teenager I knew I was not a Leftist.
I grew up in a working class family in three working class suburbs in the north of Melbourne. Even in the 1970's and 80's it was multicultural, Australians, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Turks, and at school there were some Lebanese. The smallest street I lived on had only 6 houses in it, Greeks, Australians, an Italian Husband and English Mother, Australians, Yugoslav and Italians. The only Asians were at the Chinese restaurant and the darkest people I knew were Greeks, some of whom looked Indian more than European.
Violence was rare and crime was primarily property crime, although property crime was quite high. People lived side by side and shopped at the same shops and were friendly in the street, but at the same time each socialized in their own clubs and churches. The Turks I should add were very secular, I didn't even know they were Muslim until I was a teenager. At school there were ethnic tensions but often between other ethnic groups, but in hindsight rarely did it amount to much.
I first came to know about politics in the early 1980's, during what historians now call the Second Cold War, when tensions were high between the West and the Communist world. I knew we had enemies and I knew that some people in my country gave much aid and comfort to those enemies. A big controversy at the time were nuclear weapons. I always wondered why they protested American nuclear weapons but never the Soviet or Chinese ones. I also wondered why the media always showed the anti-Vietnam War protesters as the good guys. What became clear to me was that they had picked a side and it wasn't my
countries side....it wasn't my side either.
I knew from an early age that I was a Patriot, and living amongst other ethnic groups I also knew I was Australian. That I wasn't Greek or Italian or any other nationality and I learnt at an early age that they weren't Australian. Don't get me wrong I didn't hate any of these people as I said earlier they were in the main friendly and good people, but they weren't my people. They were foreign people who lived in my country.
Around the same time I saw something happen that was quite strange. Many of the Greeks, Yugoslavs etc. who worked with my Step-Father had enough money to return home, in most cases they hadn't been home in decades. Before they left they were very strongly Greek or Yugoslav but when they came back their attitude had change completely. When they came back they started calling themselves Australians. They had found out that their homeland had changed, just as everywhere else had, that the things they didn't like about Australia were often the same or worse back in the old country and that the life they had here was much better then the life they could have had if they had stayed. This change in attitude helped a great deal as they assimilated.
But the Australian Government wasn't happy with that, no they wanted more immigration and from more countries. The reason so many people point to Australia as a Multicultural success story was because most of the immigrants were European and in time they assimilated. Starting in the 1970's the Australian Government has decided to bring in primarily non-European immigrants and to encourage them not to assimilate. While at the same time having a large unemployment problem. Nearly all of the current problems with immigration can be traced back to this starting point.
So from as early as I was interested in politics I knew I wasn't on the Left, that must mean that I was a Conservative. And I probably would have called myself such, although now that I look back on it I also had a lot of Classical Liberal ideals. On the Conservative side I was a Monarchist, made much easier by being born in a Constitutional Monarchy, I was always sceptical of Feminism, I have always thought that a womens highest calling was as a Wife and Mother. That being an accountant was more important always seemed wrong to me.
But I also had a number of Classical Liberal ideals, I was a 
Civic Patriot, I was seduced by the idea of Equality, I knew I didn't support Communism or Socialism so I thought Free Trade might be the answer and while I was never a Crusader I accepted Global Warming. Last and I now realize the worst was that at the back of my mind was the idea that one day there might be a perfect society. I admit it is such a compelling idea that what you believe might one day result in perfection. But it's also at one and the same time a stupid idea because common sense and your own person experience should tell you that such a thing is simply not possible. What I find interesting is that I could see that in the ideas of others but not that it also lurked in mine as well.
Although I was never a Liberal Party supporter, I remember seeing a very small article in the newspaper, sometime around 1985. It was about the Victorian State Conference who had voted that they wanted Capital Punishment brought back, but not a single Liberal Member of Parliament would support it. Even as a teenager I saw that the Liberal Party didn't represent it's members and if it didn't support them it sure didn't support anyone who wasn't a member.
My first real taste of reality was when I left school, as it is for most of us. Unemployment awaited me as it did for so many. No job, no hope of a job and no women. The truth is that a man needs a job to hold on to a women. He needs money, he needs hope and he needs a future. But for the working class men of my generation we faced the twin challenge of immigrants getting the lower down jobs and women getting the higher up jobs. It would be a rare man who has not had a period of unemployment. And with unemployment comes hopelessness and loneliness and poverty. For some that poverty is much more than a lack of money, I was lucky as I never went that low.
I had jobs and unemployment and I went as an adult to University to get a degree that taught me alot, kept me busy but that never helped. That is this generations burden, the worthless degree. I had a long term relationship that ended many years ago. I've had my share of ups and downs. But I kept quite close to what I had always believed.
Over time I got sick of the constant lies I kept hearing. That we needed more immigration because it helped the economy, but it wasn't helping me and I didn't see it helping anyone else in the unemployment line. That the real problem with Multiculturalism was that Whites were racist, that we were not tolerant, hold on 1/3rd of Australia's population was born overseas and we aren't tolerant!  You would have to be a complete moron to believe that, sadly we have many more complete morons than we really require. It's also abit much to be constantly told how discriminated against women and immigrants are when they get the job that you require, and this keeps happening decade after decade. Until 2006 I accepted Global Warming without really thinking about it and one day my Mother is watching the news and she says "Another story on Global Warming!" and to my own surprise I replied "It's probably not even true". After that I started to think about it and I remembered all the horror stories we were told when Global Warming first started being talked about and how that time was now. But the oceans hadn't risen, the polar bears weren't extinct. In short they lied.
In 2010 I was very upset about the direction Australia was heading, so I decided to look on the internet to find some kindred spirit. I found 
Oz Conservative and contacted Mr. Richardson and we met up. Since then we have stayed in contact and see each other a few times a year, first with the Eltham Traditions and now with the Melbourne Traditionalist. But as I read more of his site I realized I had things I wanted to say and he was very supportive. He told me that one thing that would happen was that I would do alot of thinking and that it would really clear up my thinking. I was sceptical but he was right, my thinking is much clearer, things I had only vaguely thought about I had to deeply think about. I had to make sure that the things I wrote made sense to both me and to my readers. In doing that I came to understand Liberalism alot more and I came to understand Conservatism more. I realized what they had in common and where they differed. It finally ended most of my Classical Liberal ways, I won't say all as we are bathed in Liberal from birth.
So have I always been a Conservative? The answer is no, but I'm there now.

When they come for your guns, what will you do?

The edge of darkness
by Robert Arvay @ American Thinker
 
As election day approaches, I feel a dark premonition that we are about to lose our freedoms.  The portents are all too clear.  If Hillary Clinton takes the Oval Office, she will impose by executive order a list of so-called Progressive measures that will be worse than any of the many scandals by which her character has been revealed over the years.  There is no lie she will not tell, no crime she will not commit, and no freedom she will not usurp.
Perhaps the most central of all our freedoms is the Second Amendment.  It is the one that gives us actual physical power over a would-be tyranny.  Without it, all the other freedoms become forfeit, as so many of them already have. 
Progressives are all too aware of this fact.  The power of the Second Amendment was dramatically demonstrated by armed citizens against armed federal officials, and the federal officials had to retreat.  It happened in an incident known as the Cliven Bundy standoff in April and May of 2014.  It was a wake-up call, as the government was officially put on notice that armed citizens will, when pushed too far, unite in large numbers to confront armed federal officers. 
The issues today are far larger, and far more numerous, than cattle grazing rights, which sparked the Bundy standoff.  They range from the Lois Lerner violation of citizen rights of political participation to the requirement of bakers and photographers to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies to the federal demand that high school boys and girls share the same showers. 
As the Declaration of Independence tells us:
... all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. ... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Above provided by Norman E. Hooben
These words underscore the necessity of the Second Amendment, and also the absolute necessity to abolish it if Progressives are to secure the iron-fisted rule they have methodically and patiently pursued over many years.
This is why there can be no doubt that it will be a top priority of a Clinton administration to disarm the American citizenry.  Evils by the government will eventually become no longer sufferable.  Americans will rise up against them.  The government fully intends to prevent that from happening.
It has become a binary situation.  Either we win or they win.
The question has now become this: when they come for your guns, what will you do?  Think about that now, while there is time to plan.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

After reading this is there any reason that you believe Hillary Clinton should not be in jail? If you say she should not then you haven't read one word of this:

Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton

Source for the following: Judicial Watch
Crown Prince of Bahrain Forced to Go Through Foundation to See Clinton, after Pledging $32 Million to Clinton Global Initiative

Hollywood Executive Casey Wasserman, Slimfast Mogul Daniel Abraham, Controversial Appointee Rajiv Fernando also among Clinton Foundation Donors Granted Special Favors from Clinton State Department

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.
The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department).  These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”
Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000.


From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Tue Jun 23 1:29:42 2009
Subject: Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday
Asking to see her
Good friend of ours

 
From: Huma Abedin
To: Doug Band
Sent: Tue Jun 23 4:12:46 2009
Subject: Re:
He asked to see hrc thurs and fri thru normal channels. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny…


From: Huma Abedin [Huma@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:35:15 AM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Offering Bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for meeting woith [sic] hrc
If u see him, let him know We have reached out thru official channels

Also included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange in which Band urged Abedin to get the Clinton State Department to intervene in order to obtain a visa for members of the Wolverhampton (UK) Football Club, one of whose members was apparently having difficulty because of a “criminal charge.” Band was acting at the behest of Casey Wasserman, a millionaire Hollywood sports entertainment executive and President of the Wasserman Foundation. Wasserman has donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation through the Wasserman Foundation.

From: Tim Hoy [VP Wasserman Media Group]
Date: Tue. 5 May 2009 10:45:55 – 0700
To: Casey Wasserman
Subject: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Casey: Paul Martin’s [popular English footballer] client [Redacted] needs to get an expedited appointment at the US Embassy in London this week and we have hit some road blocks. I am writing to ask for your help.
The Wolverhampton FC is coming to Las Vegas this Thursday for a “celebration break.” [Redacted] so he cannot get a visa to the US without first being “interviewed” in the visa section of the US Embassy in London …
I contacted Senator Boxer’s office in SF for help … They balked at the criminal charge and said they “couldn’t help.”
I’m now trying to get help from Sherrod Brown’s office but that’s not going well either. So do you have any ideas/contacts that could contact the US Embassy in London and ask that they see [Redacted] tomorrow?

 
From: Casey Wasserman
To: Doug Band; Trista Schroeder [Wasserman Media Group executive]
Sent: Tue May 05 2:23:50 2009 [PT]
Subject: FW [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Can you help with the below [Hoy email], or maybe Huma??? I am copying trista as I am on the plane in case I lose connection … thx.

 
From: Doug Band
Sent: Tue May 05 7:08:21 2009 [ET]
To: Casey Wasserman; Trista Schroeder
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Will email her.

 
From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Tue May 5 7:26:49 2009
Subject: Fw: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
[As per subject line, Band apparently forwarded Abedin material sent to him by Casey.]

 
From: Huma Abedin [Huma@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:39:38 PM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
I doubt we can do anything but maybe we can help with an interview. I’ll ask.


From: Huma Abedin
To: Doug Band
Sent: Tue May 05 5:50:09 2009
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
I got this now, makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask.


From: Doug Band
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:43:30 PM
Subject:  Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Then don’t

The Abedin emails also reveal that Slimfast tycoon S. Daniel Abraham was granted almost immediate access to then-Secretary of State Clinton, with Abedin serving as the facilitator. According to the Clinton Foundation website, Abraham, like the Wasserman Foundation, has given between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. The emails indicate that Abraham was granted almost immediate access to Clinton upon request:

 
From: Huma Abedin
To: H
Sent: Mon May 04 4:40:34 2009
Subject: Danny
Danny abraham called this morning. He is in dc today and tomorrow and asked for 15 min with you. Do u want me to try and fit him in tomorrow?

 
From: H
To Huma Abedin
Sent: Mon May 04 5:14:00 2009
Subject: Re: Danny
Will the plane wait if I can’t get there before 7-8?

From: Huma Abedin
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 5:15:30 PM
Subject: Re: Danny
Yes of course
 
Additional Abedin emails in which the top Clinton aide intervenes with the State Department on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors include the following:
On Friday, June 26, 2009, Clinton confidant Kevin O’Keefe wrote to Clinton saying that “Kevin Conlon is trying to set up a meeting with you and a major client.” Clinton wrote to Abedin, “Can you help deliver these for Kevin?” Abedin responded, “I’ll look into it asap” Kevin O’Keefe donated between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Kevin Conlon is a Clinton presidential campaign “Hillblazer” who has raised more than $100,000 for the candidate.
On Tuesday, June 16, 2009, Ben Ringel wrote to Abedin, “I’m on shuttle w Avigdor Liberman. I called u back yesterday. I want to stop by to see hrc tonite for 10 mins.” Ringel donated between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
On Monday, July 6, 2009, Maureen White wrote to Abedin, “I am going to be in DC on Thursday. Would she have any time to spare?” Abedin responded, “Yes I’ll make it work.” White donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
In June 2009, prominent St. Louis political power broker Joyce Aboussie exchanged a series of insistent emails with Abedin concerning Aboussie’s efforts to set up a meeting between Clinton and Peabody Energy VP Cartan Sumner. Aboussie wrote, “Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request. I really would appreciate your help on this. It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick [Gephardt] and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s.” After further notes from Aboussie, Abedin responded, “We are working on it and I hope we can make something work… we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.” Aboussie donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

On Saturday, May 16, 2009, mobile communications executive and political activist Jill Iscol wrote to Clinton, “Please advise to whom I should forward Jacqueline Novogratz’s request [for a meeting with the secretary of state]. I know you know her, but honestly, she is so far ahead of the curve and brilliant I believe she could be enormously helpful to your work.” Clinton subsequently sent an email to Abedin saying, “Pls print.” Jill and husband Ken Iscol donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton subsequently appointed Novogratz to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
The newly obtained Abedin emails also contain a memorandum sent to Cheryl Mills from State Department White House liaison Laura Pena revealing that Rajiv Fernando was proposed for his controversial appointment to the sensitive International Security Advisory Board as early as June 2009. Fernando was not actually appointed until 2011, and his appointment raised a firestorm because, according to an ABC News report, “he had no obvious experience in the field.” Fernando donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.
The Abedin emails reveal that even U2’s Bono got into the act when former Bill Clinton aide Ben Schwerin, who helped set up the Clinton Foundation, urged Abedin to help the aging rock star broadcast from the international space station. In a May 27, 2009, email with the subject line “Bono/NASA,” Schwerin wrote, “Bono wants to do linkup with the international space station on every show during the tour this year.… Any ideas? Thks.” Bono has been a donor to the Clinton Global Initiative. And in 2011, he gathered top entertainers for “A Decade of Difference: A Concert Celebrating 10 Years of the William J. Clinton Foundation.” According to USA Today, “Some tickets were sold to the public for $50 to $550, and premium seats went for $1,000 to $5,000 on the Foundation website.”

“These new emails confirm that Hillary Clinton abused her office by selling favors to Clinton Foundation donors,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “There needs to be a serious, independent investigation to determine whether Clinton and others broke the law.”

This is the tenth set of records produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the non-state.gov email accounts of Huma Abedin.  The documents were produced under a court order in a May 5, 2015, Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) requiring the agency to produce “all emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013, using a ‘non-state’.gov email address.”

In June, Judicial Watch uncovered two batches (here and here) of new Clinton email records through court-ordered discovery.  Twice in May, Judicial Watch uncovered new Clinton emails, including emails that show Clinton knew about the security risk of her BlackBerry (see here and here).

Recently, Judicial Watch released other State Department emails (one batch of 103 pages, the second of 138 pages), with newly discovered Clinton emails also going back as far as January 2009.
In March, Judicial Watch released Clinton State Department emails dating from February 2009 that also call into question her statements about her emails. Those emails contained more evidence of the battle between security officials in the State Department, National Security Agency, Clinton and her staff over attempts to obtain secure BlackBerrys.
On August 9, Judicial Watch produced a 2009 email in which Band directed Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon. Band noted that Chagoury is “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us.” Chagoury has donated between $1 million to $5 million to the Foundation, according to foundation documents. He also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that she believes that the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails.  In response to a court order in other Judicial Watch litigation, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.” This new email find is also at odds with her official campaign statement suggesting all “work or potentially work-related emails” were provided to the State Department.

###

Monday, August 22, 2016

I wrote this story over fifty years ago...finally the government read it!

By Norman E. Hooben

Some years ago I was sitting at the edge of the pier... To be more accurate, it was one of the wide pilings that support the pier. I was fishing. After catching a few small fry that I tossed back into the water, my hook snagged something big.  Man, this was going to be a record breaker!  I struggled for what seemed the best part of thirty minutes and still no sight of what was at the end of my line.  Manipulating the pole such that whatever it was would not snap the line, I reeled some and released some trying to tire out whatever it was...the pole seemed like it was about to snap...I was the one getting tired. The battle for supremacy was coming to a head.   One of us will be a loser and it won't be me!  Then all of a sudden I saw this huge fish break the surface of the water...it happened so fast I could not identify the type of fish that it was... The action however caused me to over re-act and forgetting that I was so close to the edge of the pier and with a taut line and bent pole the forces pulling at me were greater than my resistance to overcome them...and with one big splash I fell into the water below... Do you want to know what happened next?






I drowned!


Meanwhile at Healthcare.gov