In an amazing exposition of the kind of corruption with which Joe Biden has been augmenting his lifestyle for years, here we see how swamp creatures are able to get filthy-rich while holding public office. Rudy Guliani, who has obtained a copy of the hard-drive from the abandoned computer turned over to the FBI, shows a text between Hunter and Naomi Biden(Hunter’s daughter.) In the text, Hunter reveals that “Pop”(Joe) required him to hand over half his salaries, and the implication is that this had been going on for 30 years.
I love all of you. But I don’t receive any respect and thats fine I guess -works for you apparently. Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary. -Hunter Biden
I want you to think about the kind of corruption this represents. I also want you to ask yourself how many other people in Washington DC have done an continue to do exactly the same sort of thing. Here, as Rudy explains, we have a crime family, of which Joe is the head, and he’s using his position and authority in government to make his family wealthy, from which he receives a cut. If you want to know how people go to Washington DC with relatively modest net wealth, but leave town(if ever they do) with vast fortunes, Joe Biden is an exemplar of the method. This corruption is absolutely despicable, and Joe Biden is a bona fide criminal.
Here’s the video of Rudy introducing the subject as is currently posted on his website:
Here’s video of the actual disclosure of the text:
This was just posted on Drudgereport. Please go read the details, to the degree we have any, here. When you have read the facts of Justice Scalia’s death to the extent they have been reported, I need you to come right back here and finish reading. It’s urgent.
We are at a constitutional breaking point. Without Scalia, the most reliable conservative on the court, we’re in desperate trouble. More than that, I want you to look around at how conservatism is under assault on all fronts. In the Primary campaign for the presidency, conservatives are madly running off in this direction and that, hurling insults back and forth in a manner that will make it nearly impossible to come together for any purpose any time in the near-term future. More, it’s not just that conservatives are running off on their own, but that they’re being driven in a predictable pattern. Look around. How many people you once trusted as conservatives are now mad at you, or you at them? How many? How much of this is natural, and how much of it is being driven by something else? Ladies and gentlemen, please consider this before you send out another tweet; Facebook or blog posting. We’re being divided and conquered, and it’s happening from the top to the bottom of the conservative movement. It will now be the method by which we are prevented from saving our nation. It’s how the death of Antonin Scalia, the most consistently faithful constitutional jurist in my lifetime will come to spell the end of the Republic, and how conservatism will be neutered and helpless to stop it. Listen to me: Elections come and elections go, and the upcoming election will be frightfully important to the future of our country, but we MUST NOT LET OURSELVES BE DIVIDED over transient political campaigns. Candidates will come, and candidates will go, but if you’re really concerned about the country, and if you’re reading this, I know you are, we must stop the pointless, hurtful bickering and understand that we’re being driven toward an inevitable result, and it doesn’t matter who you’re supporting at this moment. What will matter is that at the end of this process, we are going to be ripe for domination because we have permitted ourselves to be torn asunder. STOP! Who benefits when conservatives are at war with one another? Who? No, not just Obama and the Democrats… It’s worse than that. Stop yelling at one another. Think about what’s happening and how our vaunted conservative “spokespersons” are being neutered, one right after the next. It’s happening now. It’s hard to see because we’re in the midst of it all.
Think, people. We’re being played. All of us. We’re being divided and set up for conquer at the moment we can least afford it. More on all of this later.
Allen West is in the fight of his life. St. Lucie County Florida’s Election Supervisor seems to be playing shenanigans with the counting of ballots, and at around midnight Eastern time on Friday night, she finally decided that it was time to count the military ballots. Shocker. Delayed until the middle of the night, when it would be hard to have sufficient observers on hand. At this late hour, if you can get there, you are needed. The address is:
7865 Central Industrial Dr. Riviera Beach
You can still help if you’re close and can get there quickly(and safely.) The reported turnout in that district so far is 141% of the eligible population. I want you to think about what kind of vote rigging that implies. They’re attempting to flank Col. West with this sneak attack.
Somebody asked the question about what can be done if the Democrat machine succeeds in ousting Col. West from Congress so that he still has a role. I won’t get into details now since time is of the essence, but there damned-well is something we can do. The Speaker of the House need not be an elected member. We need to replace Boehner anyway. We could hound our Republican representatives into making him the new speaker whether he is ultimately re-elected or not.
Now, back to the matter at hand, because the idea posited above is a long-shot, and we know what kind of fraud he’s up against. If you can get there in a timely fashion and do so safely, please lend a hand to a patriot in need. If you’re a Facebook member, you can get additional updates and information by joining the group located here:
The vote shows a slight lead for Allen West at this hour. The long knives are out. People ARE showing up even at this late hour to help with the observation of the counting. The people already there are undoubtedly exhausted but soldiering on. Good news is that Breitbart is carrying the story now. That will help.
THIS JUST IN
From the group linked above, Gary Angelo Galiano posted:
Update: Please put the word out we have enough people now! Thank you everyone!!!
Thank you to every one who responded to this call. They now expect to have a final tally within an hour or two, and they have plenty of people!!! Thank you Patriots!!!
On Tuesday evening, Greta Van Susteren reported the astonishing but predictable news: The Obama administration knew within hours or even minutes who had perpetrated the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, ultimately killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The cover story about an anti-Islamic video was merely a scapegoat of convenience that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on our consulate, but the sickening fact is that President Obama’s administration, including the State Department, and high level national security officials were well aware of the truth even as they continued to try to sell its cover story to the American people. The reason is simple: The Benghazi attack was the first successful strike on American soil by organized radical Islamic supremacists since September 11th, 2001, on its 11th anniversary. Fourteen days after this attack, Barack Obama was still telling the American people it was about a video, desperately hoping to disconnect the events from the obvious failures in his leadership and foreign policy. Barack Obama has deceived the American people. For seven hours, in full possession of the facts, as the attack raged and Americans were slaughtered, this President and his administration did nothing except to concoct a cover story.
Perhaps the most galling meme put forward by the Obama administration in the wake of this dismal failure was the attempt to accuse Mitt Romney of politicizing the event. The facts speak for themselves: The Obama administration commenced the politicization of this attack by lying to the American people on the basis of politically motivated calculations about the impact the truth would have on the upcoming election. Barack Obama and his administration clearly have no shame, but while they have sought to hide the truth, on Tuesday evening, emails were disclosed that should put an end to the obfuscation. From FoxNews:
The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.
Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.
That Candy Crowley would give Obama cover on the cover-up during the second Presidential debate is bad enough, but to now discover that the whole administration was quite well aware of the source of the attack means that we not only have a President willing to lie to the American people, but that he has surrounded himself with a cadre of bureaucratic henchmen who share his contempt for Americans. The Obama administration may be amateurish with respect to its handling of foreign policy, but they are first-rate professionals when it comes to lying to the nation. The mainstream media continues to cover and hide the lengths to which this administration has gone in its disinformation campaign against the American people.
Joe Wilson was right when he yelled at Obama during a State of the Union address: “You lie!” Worse, however, President Obama isn’t a man who once told a lie and got away with it: He is a reprobate. He is a liar by trade, and nothing he says may be trusted. Cataloging the lies of his debate appearance on Monday night would take many pages, but suffice it to say that even some in the mainstream media are having a difficult time covering his tracks.
What readers need to know about Barack Obama is this: There is no lie he won’t tell, and no American whose life and memory he will not sacrifice to his political desires. This President yammers about the politicization of a tragedy as a pre-emptive strike against the shocking truth that political calculations were and remain the motive for the cover-up of the events in Libya. Obama hopes the American people will be fooled again, and that when he says he has “kept us safe,” they will forget the deadly attack on our consulate, and the Fort Hood shooting, among other acts of terrorism he refuses to acknowledge as such. That’s all this really is, and all it’s intended to do. His entire administration is convicted of a lie, and he’s betting the American people will be too.
“The Five” became six for a short time on Wednesday evening when Governor Sarah Palin joined the other participants. They discussed many topics, but near the end of the segment, Eric Bolling teased his own show Wednesday night. Governor Palin was interviewed, and will answer definitively the question: If a brokered convention picked her, would she accept the nomination and run. Bolling played coy about the answer, and said we’ll need to tune in to find out. This should be interesting. Bolling tweeted earlier about the interview saying it was the one that could change everything. This will be the last interview on Bolling’s “Follow the Money” on FBN as the show is being axed.
The show airs at 10pm Eastern. So what do you think? Will she say “yes” or “no”?
The reports coming from CPAC in Washington DC suggest that the theme we have heard, that “Sarah Palin is no longer relevant,” has been exposed irrevocably as a lie. At present, the lines into the event are being described as enormous, and this is more than two hours in advance of her speech scheduled for 4:30 eastern. CPAC has actually gotten an overflow space set up in an adjacent conference room in order to try to accommodate more of this crowd. As I predicted, Sarah Palin’s speech would be the biggest draw of the event, for all the reasons we’ve discussed.
Matthew Sheffield, posting via Twitter provided the photo at left, and as you can plainly see, the line inside is gargantuan, and it extends out and around the building. Meanwhile, spotted in an brief press interview, Governor Palin said that a brokered convention would not be a negative for the Republican party.
You can watch the video of that brief exchange here:
There’s really not a great deal more to say about this ridiculous war on Newt Gingrich by Matt Drudge. To call his coverage “lopsided” is an understatement, at the very least. I consider it pure media sabotage. He is now making all-out war on Gingrich.
Take a look at all the Anti-Gingrich stories now on Drudge. Count ’em up. What? 13?
Clemson University is reporting the results of a poll that shows Gingrich up by six points over Romney in South Carolina. This tends to confirm suspicions that Gingrich may have stabilized despite attacks with a solidifying lead because Romney admitted earlier on Friday that Gingrich would win some primaries. Clemson’s Palmetto Poll evaluated the impact the revelations about Gingrich might have on the election outcome, but they still draw the same conclusions as in December, although it has closed:
“We expect a reaction by the electorate to the personal revelations about Gingrich to be registered on Saturday, however, we do not think it will be substantial enough to erase the lead Gingrich has over Romney,” said Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard.
“Our head-to-head matchup of the candidates has consistently shown Mitt Romney competitive. The margin for Romney has evaporated this week, and we believe that Gingrich — who led our December poll with 38 percent to Romney’s 21 percent — will win the South Carolina primary,” he said.
In the newest poll, Gingrich had slipped to 32%, and Romney had climbed to 26%, meaning the race is tighter than a month ago, but considering the full-court press of negative advertising Romney had done throughout December, and has continued in New Hampshire and South Carolina, it’s not really surprising that this race has tightened, but the effect of the re-aired story of Gingrich’s second wife’s allegations surely had some effect. The Clemson poll showed respondents to this poll had the following priorities in choosing their candidates.
“After choosing a candidate, respondents gave a wide variety of answers as to what they liked most about the person they selected, but the two most popular appeared to be: “he has honesty and integrity” and “his overall political ideology” — meaning conservative principles.
“Much has been made of the ‘electability’ issue of the candidates, but in our poll the response: ‘He has the best chance of beating President Barack Obama,’” was the fourth choice of voters, after “‘He has better ideas for strengthening the economy,’” said Clemson political scientist Bruce Ransom.”
Saturday should be an interesting match-up, and Gingrich’s performance in Thursday night’s debate almost certainly helped him, while Romney’s performance was rather flat, and his meandering explanation of why he hasn’t released his tax returns is sure to take a toll on his support in the Palmetto state.
USAToday is reporting that Rick Perry is suspending his campaign. The Texas Governor is coming off of his best debate performance, but he was dealt some real set-backs after poor-than-expected performances in earlier debates. Perry is the longest-serving Governor in Texas History, and his entry into the race last August was greeted by anticipation of a vigorous campaign.
Whatever else you might say about Perry, he certainly provided some moments of entertainment on the campaign trail, and in the debates, and not everything funny about what he said was at his expense. I personally enjoyed when he took on Mitt Romney a little.
If you want to know a media outlet’s slant, just compare their headlines to the stories that accompany them for a little while, and you’ll know the truth. CNN is reporting that “Report: Iowa results show ‘virtual tie’ between Romney, Santorum,” because Santorum will actually be recorded as the victor by thirty-four votes, but back when the story from Iowa was different, showing a Romney victory by eight votes, we were instead treated to “Romney wins Iowa by Eight votes” and similar language. So what’s the point? When it was believed Romney had won Iowa by a slim eight votes, “a win’s a win,” but when Santorum turns out to have won by thirty-four, well, then it’s just a “virtual tie.”
To summarize:
Romney victory by 8? “Romney wins!”
Santorum victory by 34? “Virtual tie”
This is why the media is dangerous. Romney received almost all of the good press associated by having his name accompanied by the word “win,” but now that it turns out he didn’t, he will not be slapped with “loss” or “lose” and Rick Santorum will not get the acknowledgment of his victory that Romney had gotten. There won’t be any “Santorum Wins!” headlines over at CNN. Say what you will, but this, along with the Gingrich smear story that Drudge is still pushing, serve as just two small examples of how media uses headlines to push an agenda.
ABCNews is reporting that Todd Palin is endorsing Newt Gingrich in the primary for the GOP nomination. Coming ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, this may provide something of a boost to Gingrich, because many Palin supporters have been holding off to see how the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin would endorse. That still hasn’t been answered, but the fact that Todd Palin is endorsing Gingrich will be seen by many so-called “Palinistas” as a tip to who Sarah Palin may herself endorse.
The Daily Caller is reporting that Obama is ratcheting up the pressure on the matter of the “recess appointments” that were not during a recess. Now he’s asserting that his appointee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, will have full powers of his office despite the fact that the plain language of the law says otherwise. The 2010 law that established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau includes a section that says many of the bureau’s new powers are to be held by the secretary of the Treasury “until the Director of the Bureau is confirmed by the Senate.” Until then, those powers are supposed to be retained by the Secretary of the Treasury. Those extra powers include the authority to write regulations for non-bankfirms, such as payday lenders.
Said Obama during his Friday visit to the CFPB:
“Now that Richard [Cordray] is your director, you can finally exercise the full power that this agency has been given to protect consumers under the law.”
The law requires that Obama’s nominee first be confirmed by the Senate to have all of these powers. Since no such confirmation has occurred, it’s clear that Obama is again flouting the law. This is an outrage, and every concerned citizen should be incensed, and they may be, but it seems few are concerned, because the mainstream media is not covering this story. Most Americans remain ignorant of this controversy. This is one instance in which conservatives and Tea Party folk should be getting the word out. It’s time to yell at your members of the House and the Senate, but perhaps more importantly, it’s time to tell your friends and family. This President is taking dictatorial powers, and our Congress sits on its hands as the United States is reduced to the status of a banana republic. The reason for Congressional inaction is simple: Your fellow Americans aren’t demanding it, I suspect mainly because they don’t know about it. That should be something you can change.
Barack Obama’s tyrannical actions must be challenged. This is going to be in the form of what Donald Rumsfeld once explained when he said to cat-calls: “You go to war with the army you have – not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” We are now in that sort of fix. John Boehner is a weak leader, at least in terms of his willingness to make waves or engage in battle, but this is no time for whimpering. President Obama has openly declared by his actions of Wednesday that the Constitution is fungible, and that he has no need to obey it due only to a technicality otherwise known as the law. This cannot be permitted to go without challenge, and whether the United States Senate will take it up or not, the Speaker of the House must move to begin impeachment proceedings on the basis of Barack Obama’s willful disobedience of the US Constitution. Members of Congress must assemble to denounce him, and this must be brought to the light of day. What Barack Obama has hereby argued is that the constitution only matters when he permits it to be the controlling legal authority, but that in all other cases, it is secondary to the whims of his willingness to enforce or abide by the law.
If you haven’t kept up with this issue, or like so many, haven’t heard a peep about it, let’s make it simple to understand: What’s at stake is our constitutional form of government, and the checks and balances about which you may have been taught when you were a child in school. Those checks and balances provide that presidents do not possess unlimited authority to act without reference to the other co-equal branches of government. What the President has done in this case is to make a “recess appointment” without the Senate actually being in recess. In so doing, he is violating the law, and he has more than one motive with this plot. Obama intends not only to give a new hand-out by virtue of mortgage write-downs for qualified persons, but also to set the precedent for undermining all law.
This is extraordinary, and for the President to undertake this action is a treason against the United States Constitution. What he is attempting to do is to pull the rug out from beneath his opponents by buying off enough of the electorate to swing the vote in his direction, and he’s willing to violate the law to carry it out. This sort of reckless indifference to the rule of law is unprecedented in American history, and it cannot be stated loudly enough or often enough that it must be opposed by every American, but particularly our political leadership. This demonic assault on the separation of powers embodied by our Constitutional Republic must not be permitted.
Congress must act. We haven’t the luxury of waiting for an election. Every member of Congress must stand and in one voice denounce this violation of law. Every American should be upset by this, because what it means is that one man, Barack Obama, has arrogated to himself the power of law. Ladies and gentlemen, let none persuade you that this had been a trivial matter. Presidents swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and here, Barack Obama has taken it upon himself to simply ignore the law. At the American Center for Law and Justice has an excellent piece on the specifics here.
Let none be mistaken: Your lives are under attack by this action as surely as by the act of a foreign aggressor. If you’re not writing and calling and raising a ruckus, what you’re doing is to participate in the surrender of our nation. This isn’t just another act by Obama in defiance of some statute, or some judge’s ruling, all of which are bad enough to impeach him, but instead a direct head-on assault upon your US Constitution. Why do so many shrink from this? I realize the media is downplaying it for the most part, so it’s not really caught on with most people who aren’t even aware of the situation, much less its details. This, I submit to you, is when you can be most effective if you’re inclined to fight for your country. Pick up the phone, call your Representatives and Senators, call your friends and family, and call anybody you know who will give you a few minutes of their time.
Explain to them the simple facts, direct them to the ACLJ link above, and make it known that this is a serious issue with which we must contend. I read many oaths in the comments section, some of which do not get published because they’re too profane, but a constant theme is how you will fight for the country. This is one of those times. It’s Friday, and the press is putting the week to bed, but if you wanted to, by Monday morning the country could be a sea of uproar over this issue, with or without the media’s reporting.
I have long feared that for too long, this nation has suffered a surplus of sports fans and a dearth of active citizens. I would hate that my surmise had been proven correct over an issue of such glaring national effect. Will we have the rule of law, or the rule of one man? It’s time for you to decide. It’s time for you to place those calls. It’s time to make the start of a resistance to a growing, grasping dictatorship. Unopposed, he will grow to love his newly discovered power, and he will make ever greater use of it.
Hotair is reporting that Rick Santorum appears to have beaten Romney, but due to a typo, 20 votes were counted incorrectly. That’s astonishing, because it would flip it from a win by eight votes to a loss by twelve. At this hour, I have no further details, but this is an interesting story because it points out how close things really were, and how thoroughly weak the alleged “front-runner” is in fact.
This makes Santorum’s rise all the more astonishing, as it seems he pulled off the upset after all. I guess when you are willing to visit voters one at a time, you’re entitled to a positive turn of events.
The American Conservative Union has announced that former Alaska Governor will deliver the keynote address at the 2012 CPAC convention in Washington DC, gathering from the 9th through the 11th of February. Other speakers throughout the course of the three-day event will include Ann Coulter, Senators Jim DeMint and Marco Rubio, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Governors Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, Congressmen Jim Jordan, Steve King, Paul Ryan and Allen West, former Senator Rick Santorum, Governor Scott Walker, and many others.
In 2009, Rush Limbaugh was the Keynote speaker, followed by Glenn Beck in 2010, and Allen West in 2011.
I think if you ask most conservatives and Tea Party folk what makes them angriest about the Republican party, they’d tell you without much hesitation that it’s the establishment wing of the party that denies its own existence. We all know the players, and we all know how it works: Election after election, they trot out their conservative credentials when they think they need us, but the rest of the time, their basic answer to our complaints is roughly: “Take a hike.” This may be the one factor that makes Ron Paul more viable than the others, inasmuch as while some have considerable heartburn with his unrealistic foreign policy, as the Washington Examiner points out, if he were to win in Iowa, the long knives would come out from all quarters to attack Ron Paul. They make a very worthwhile comparison to Patrick Buchanan’s losing campaign, and they’re right: If Ron Paul manages to pull off a win in Iowa, the establishment wing of the Republican party will join with the leftist media on a tactic of scorched-earth against Ron Paul.
It’s plainly true that if there’s one candidate the whole establishment in Washington DC hates, it is certainly Ron Paul. Perhaps only Sarah Palin could have roused them to greater vitriol, but since she’s not in this race, Ron Paul may be the recipient of their rage, particularly should he manage to pull off the win in Iowa. I would expect that within moments of such an event, the GOP would begin to trot out its spokesmen, official and otherwise, to minimize the importance of Iowa in the grand scheme of things. You would in such a case be told that Iowa is symbolic only, and a poor predictor of electoral prospects. In the mainstream media, dominated by leftist thought, there would be a sudden and undeniable sympathy for the GOP and its moderates, leading readers to believe that “if only we had a more moderate candidate,” there might be some hope of defeating Obama.
Those of who watch politics closely can scarcely be unaware that the only thing more frightening to Washington DC than the prospect of their opponents’ victory is when it is somebody considered out of the Washington establishment mainstream. It’s true that Ron Paul fits this mold to a large extent, because his views on many issues are not in alignment with the party chieftains from either side of the aisle. They will call his views on entitlements “extreme,” and he will be constantly challenged on his foreign policy ideas. Even Republicans will scoff at the notion of cutting $1Trillion dollars of spending in his first year, as the Congressman proposes, and the notion will be quickly spread that he would feed granny dogfood and poison the water, and all of the other charges ordinarily made by Democrats against conservatives, the solitary difference being that this time, those making the charges will be Republicans, only backed up and aided by a willing leftist media.
Whatever else you may think of Ron Paul, it is undeniably true that his platform is of the sort that poses an immediate threat to much of official Washington, because it promises a return to limited government. Most all Democrats, and all of the establishment Republicans will be on a search and destroy mission if Paul should happen to pull it off. Polls suggest some tightening in Iowa, so it may be that he will offer a serious challenge, and if he does, expect Iowa to be minimized in its import in the reporting that follows. While I am on record as having said repeatedly that I think his notions about foreign policy are naive and irresponsible, I favor much of what he has to say on the matter of domestic policy, and this election may favor domestic issues given the economic disaster through which we’re now living. If something significant happened in the economic sphere, for instance the collapse of the Euro, expect for Ron Paul’s credibility in his discussion about the Federal Reserve to achieve a whole new level of political capital.
Only fifteen days from Iowa’s kick-off, we’re apt to see fireworks in the coming two weeks, and you can expect the stump speeches to become ever more heated. So much for “tidings of comfort and joy.”
I read the news of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement on Saturday evening of Willard “Mitt” Romney in grim amusement. Apart from the fact that I question the value of endorsements in general, I have some specific problems with the Register’s endorsement of Governor Romney. They cited “Sobriety, wisdom and judgment” as the basis for their reasoning, but I am now left to wonder whether the Register is a valid judge of those traits, partiicularly where conservatives and Tea Party patriots may be concerned. I don’t know whether the Register is up to the chore, and reading through their endorsement, I believe many will take issue with their specific justifications, but I also believe some will share my amusement. This is further evidence of the absurdity of the establishment media, and one more reason to ignore it. Let us examine it together.
Under the heading of “Sobriety,” the Register said:
While other candidates have pandered to extremes with attacks on the courts and sermons on Christian values, Romney has pointedly refrained from reckless rhetoric and moralizing. He may be accused of being too cautious, but choosing words carefully is a skill essential for anyone who could be sitting in the White House and reacting to world events.
In one respect, this may well be true unless you and I happen to think in so doing, he was pandering to the establishment class who values the notion of a dispassionate candidate. The chattering establishment class sees a passionate advocate as a “firebrand” or some such thing, and they prefer a nuanced, flexible, flip-able, flop-able candidate as being better able to avoid pitfalls. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans want to know what a candidate believes, and the only outward sign they might glimpse of this is through the passion and consistency a candidate shows to the world in spite of some criticisms for strong stances.
In considering his”Wisdom,” the Register opined:
Romney obviously is very smart. He graduated as valedictorian at Brigham Young University and finished in the top 5 percent in his MBA class at Harvard, where he also earned a law degree. Romney also exhibits the wisdom of a man who listened and learned from his father and his mother, from his church and from his own trials and errors in life. He does not lack self confidence, but he is not afraid to admit when he has been wrong.
Is he? While I am certain Governor Romney isn’t a dolt, neither do I view him as a brilliant man. He is clearly very disciplined, and knows how to stick to a plan. I am happy that he had good parents, and that he is a man who has a strong moral underpinning, but does it seem odd to you that the same publication that only a paragraph earlier criticized the practice of “moralizing” now goes out of its way to tell you Mitt Romney is a moral man? This sort of crudely constructed self-contradiction shouldn’t be permitted in polite society, never mind an editorial board’s meeting room.
Romney should have no problem admitting having been wrong on an issue, as there are few issues in which he hasn’t at some point embraced both sides. With a record like his, admitting one’s errors ought to become habitual.
On the matter of his “Judgment,” the Register offered:
Romney disagrees with Democrats on most issues, but he offers smart and well-reasoned alternatives rather than simply proposing to swing a wrecking ball in Washington. He is a serious student of public policy who examines the data before making a decision. His detailed policy paper on the economy contains 87 pages of carefully crafted positions on taxes, energy, trade and regulatory policy, complete with 127 footnotes.
Well, Hallelujah! (Perhaps I should find another word, if I’m to please the Register.) Let us stipulate to the Register’s knowing that he is running as a Republican, after all, and it should be no surprise that he lately disagrees with Democrats, but what is most telling is that they here reward him for his bipartisan approach to reform. I know, they didn’t say “bipartisan,” but in the establishment media, “smart and well-reasoned” and “bipartisan” are interchangeable descriptions. Which of Mitt’s opponents for the nomination does not examine data before making decisions? His detailed policy paper on the economy is carefully crafted to promise everything and nothing at once, and there is no consistent underlying philosophy of economics with which I am familiar, but there is a consistency in another form: It consistently avoids serious hot-button issues. They seem impressed by 127 footnotes. If so, I’ve seen more in fewer pages, but I still don’t know how this tells us anything about his judgment.
The Register goes on to stress his record in business and on economics, but let’s be blunt, shall we? The state of our economy is not merely the result of mistaken economic policies. The state of our economy is an effect born of a much larger cause to which the Register never wishes to speak: The moral decline of our nation has birthed the intentionally disastrous economic policies we are now facing, and it is that moral schism that threatens the continuation of the Republic. A president who replaces Barack Obama will be forced to effect change greater than mere economics if he or she hopes to mend the nation. We will need a president willing to go to bat on moral arguments, and Mitt, by their own admission, is terribly uncomfortable in so doing.
This is precisely the sort of endorsement I’d expect from an old media rag, and exactly the kind of thing conservatives and Tea Party patriots have come to expect from the establishment. More than speaking to the limited virtues of his candidacy, it is code for telling the establishment that he’s the safe bet, and that this is the candidate least likely to offend anybody, including particularly the most offensive of characters. You can take your advice from the Des Moines Register if you like, but you’ll excuse me if I form my own conclusions. They’re apt to be a good bit more accurate.
Ann Barnhardt has run her grain and livestock brokerage for years, but now, she’s “Going Galt.” This reminds me very much of the character “Midas Mulligan” from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and it’s no coincidence that she has chosen this moment to shut down her company. After years of watching the Obama administration and its cronies looting the capital markets, Barnhardt has made the moral decision to shut down operation since in the current environment, she can no longer safeguard her clients’ capital against the predatory tendencies of this administration, and its henchmen in the markets. As I have told you before, this is being done intentionally: Our country is being destroyed by design.
Apparently, Ms. Barnhardt is the first courageous broker to say this flatly, and to make plain that she no longer has confidence in the rule of law since the federal government now makes it up as it goes along. In such an environment, nobody can do business, because every transaction is subject to the whimsical prerogatives of government bureaucrats, and nothing is certain. If contracts have no meaning, because they will not be enforced, and if government can reach back in time to retroactively steal funds, there is no safe market anywhere any longer.
Rather than tell you what Ms. Barnhardt said, I’m going to provide her notice completely:
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST
Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.
Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.
As for me, I can only echo the words of David:
“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”
With Best Regards-
Ann Barnhardt
Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about it: This is a sign of the end of our way of life as we have known it. When diligent people assess the state of the country, the government, and the law, arriving at the conclusion that there is no basis for confidence in any of these, and making the moral choice to cease doing business, you are looking at the end of a civilization. We have known for more than a century that the statists would use our own financial markets, our banks, and our commodity markets against us as the trigger for total collapse, but now that day has arrived. Ms. Barnhardt’s courage in stating the truth should be commended, but her most important points must be understood in the context of a woman who has stopped. She has refused to participate in a market dominated by looting, graft, corruption, and lawlessness, where government does nothing to uphold law, and instead merely makes law on any basis it decides, by dictates.
I am proud of Ms. Barnhardt, and for those who think she has quit, I would say to you that she hasn’t quit. She’s made the moral choice that one cannot deal in a market without laws and without fixed, predictable rules that will hold up in all conditions. Put another way, imagine sitting in at a game of Blackjack, where the dealer makes up the rules, or changes them, without any rhyme or reason except to take more of your money. How long would you remain at such a table? What Ms. Barnhardt has done here is to tell the dealer to shove it. I don’t blame her. She’s my new hero, and I can only hope men and women of courage throughout the market will now join her.
I looked at my calendar, and it’s not April 1st, but it might as well be April 15th. The Tax Man arrives in a red suit, with a twinkle in his eyes, but that isn’t old Saint Nick. It’s Barack Obama, and this absurd man and his merry band of elves over at the Department of Agriculture have cooked up another new board to manage your lives, and help you appreciate Christmas trees by improving their image. This is not a joke. It should be, but it’s not. Yes, Christmas tree producers will now pay a 15% surcharge on all of their tree sales, which they are of course going to pass along to tree buyers. The good news is this will only apply to producers who sell five hundred or more trees per year. Hurrah! More class envy, now among tree producers! Don’t worry, it’s all in keeping with the spirit of the season.
The Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board, the purpose of which is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). It’s all designed to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).
Do you believe this? Other than in the Obama White House, I wasn’t aware there had been a problem with the image of Christmas trees. For most Americans, I believe, the whole notion of the Christmas tree is rather a fun and happy tradition with which most associate things like family gatherings, family togetherness, giving, and sharing. I’m not sure the image of Christmas trees has ever been in question amongst the American people, but this sounds suspiciously like a tax, and or a hand-out to somebody, dressed in the guise of government help to an industry that has been slowly losing business to its artificial competitors. What we really need to know is who in Obama’s cabinet or among his contributors owns a Christmas tree farm somewhere.
This all raises another question: Will they be applying this fee to artificial trees too? It seems not, so it now begs the question: Will this be the basis for a move to extend government power to cover artificial trees too? Surely, that’s outside the purview of the Agriculture Department, since artificial trees are not grown, but manufactured. Will this create an opportunity for the producers of Christmas trees to claim they are being unfairly singled out?
Why do we need such a board? It sounds like just another way to create yet one more government commission or board that will provide jobs for a full-time staff and probably perquisites for members who will be buddies and pals of the Ag Secretary, or political contributors to this President. Will this wind up staffed by members of the Muslim brotherhood? Since this is specifically about “Christmas trees,” can non-Christians serve on the board? Surely, this violates something or other with respect to the much ballyhooed “wall of separation” between Church and state. Surely, this is a form of “respecting an establishment of religion,” a.k.a., Christendom. The other question is: Will they also go after the producers of prayer rugs with a similar fee? Somehow, I doubt it.
Mark my word: No good can possibly come of this. You can read more of the particulars of this ridiculous “fee” here, at the Heritage Foundation Website. Nobody can convince me that this administration doesn’t hate America.
That’s right, save all those emails over there at Random House! Oh, and I can think of a few bloggers who are probably puckering right now too. Do you know what I’m saying folks? I can think of around a half-dozen of them or more who are probably scrubbing their sites right now if they’re smart. It won’t save them, since they don’t own the servers, but it should be interesting nonetheless.
