Archive for October, 2015
When the Vikings hired Mike Zimmer, they hired him because they were impressed with his ability to coach up defenses. Zimmer’s reputation looked a bit shaky early on because Detroit scored easy touchdowns on their first 2 drives of the game. While it’s impossible to predict the final score, it isn’t impossible to predict the fact that Zimmer’s in-game adjustments would change the complexion of the game.
Trailing 17-6 with 5:08 left in the first half, Zimmer unleashed his defense. Matthew Stafford, who played courageously, didn’t stand a chance once the Vikings dialed up the pressure. The Vikings finished with 7 sacks of Stafford, robbing him of the time to pick out his weapons like Calvin Johnson, Golden Tate and Eric Ebron. Offensively, they kept giving the ball to Adrian Peterson but they also unleashed Teddy Bridgewater and Stefon Diggs. Saying that Diggs has been the hottest wide receiver in the game the last 3 weeks is understatement.
Against the Broncos’ outstanding secondary, Diggs caught 6 passes for 87 yards. Against a solid Chiefs secondary, Diggs caught 7 passes for 129 yards. Today, against Detroit, Diggs caught 6 passes for 108 yards, including this catch, which might be the best TD catch in the NFL this season:
These stats, especially the highlighted statistics, speak to the Vikings’ defensive dominance:
Honestly, I didn’t know that the Vikings outgained Detroit by 150 yards. I didn’t know that they had the ball 13 minutes more than Detroit. I was aware that the Vikings pressured Stafford mercilessly from the middle of the second quarter, sacking him a total of 7 times for the game.
At one point late in the third quarter or early fourth quarter, Fox NFL announcers Chris Meyers and Ronde Barber highlighted the fact that the Vikings had outgained Detroit something like 350 yards to 3 yards since the end of the first quarter.
The Vikings have some things they need to fix during the week. Fixing their defense isn’t their highest priority, though.
Hillary Clinton’s worldview is shaped by a visceral hatred of Republicans. This article highlights Hillary’s hatred of Republicans by quoting her as telling Rachel Maddow that “the constant berating of the VA that comes from the Republicans, in – in part in pursuit of this ideological agenda that they have. They try to create a downward spiral, don’t fund it to the extent that it needs to be funded, because they want it to fail, so then we can argue for privatization.”
Wow.
That’s a glimpse into the stunning dishonesty of Hillary Clinton. The VA scandal wasn’t caused by underfunding of the system. The VA scandal is about corrupt bureaucrats that didn’t deliver medical care to veterans while paying themselves huge bonuses. Further, there was bipartisan support in the House and Senate to give veterans the option of getting treatment at private clinics or hospitals. It was so bipartisan that Bernie Sanders attended the bill-signing ceremony. If Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton think that Bernie Sanders is interested in privatizing government, then they need to be institutionalized, preferably to a VA facility.
Let’s hear Hillary explain this away:
An inspector general’s report last year found that veterans in Phoenix waited 115 days on average for an initial doctor’s appointment, while official data claimed that the average wait was only 24 days.
The IG’s report showed that this didn’t just happen in Phoenix, either. It happened all across the nation, which means the corruption has metastasized to the point of being inoperable.
Hillary should admit that.
Robert Tracinski’s article introduces us to a new acronym for the Democrats. That acronym is TINA, which stands for “There Is No Alternative”, which is what the Democrats have now that Hillary is finally the inevitable candidate she’s always thought she’d be. The good news for Democrats is that Hillary is their all-but-official presidential nominee. The bad news for Democrats is that Hillary is their all-but-official presidential nominee.
Thanks to Hillary’s ‘competitors’ either dropping out or showing that they aren’t seriously attempting to win the nomination, the excitement that a competitive campaign would’ve produced disappears. That’s easy to illustrate. CNN’s GOP debate attracted over 20,000,000 viewers. CNN’s Democratic debate attracted less than 15,000,000 viewers. Now that the Democratic nomination is essentially finished, what’s there to get excited about?
Bernie Sanders was attracting big crowds before he said he was tired of hearing about Hillary’s emails. Since then, those types of headlines have disappeared, too. That’s predictable. The far left was aching for a serious hardline progressive candidate. Their first choice was Elizabeth Warren but they would’ve settled for Bernie Sanders.
Now, they don’t have either as a legitimate option.
Prior to Sanders’ surprising rise in the polls, Hillary had a significant enthusiasm gap crisis. Now that it’s obvious that they’re stuck with Hillary, what is there to get excited about??
Meanwhile, Republicans still have a competition on their hands. That guarantees large viewing audiences for their debates. That means people can see the difference between solutions-oriented conservatives and a career politician with a thin list of accomplishments.
If Republicans nominate a principled conservative, the swing state map will expand in the Republicans’ favor.
We’ve known that Hillary’s been planning on running a negative campaign. That’s why it isn’t surprising that Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s communications director, stopped just short of admitting that Hillary intends on running a thoroughly negative campaign. When Ms. Palmieri said that Hillary “will launch a forceful fight against the Republicans,” she might as well have said she plans on throwing everything including the proverbial kitchen sink at the GOP nominee.
That’s because Hillary can’t win without tearing her GOP “enemy” down. That’s because Hillary’s accomplishment list, whether we’re talking about as First Lady, senator or Secretary of State, is microscopic. As First Lady, Hillary was put in charge of implementing universal health care. The initial reviews were glowing. That was its high point. HillaryCare didn’t even get a vote in the House Ways and Means Committee. As New York’s junior senator, Mrs. Clinton didn’t author any major legislation. As President Obama’s Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton’s first act was to give Russia’s Foreign Minister the infamous Reset Button. Since then, Russia has disrespected the United States, first by annexing the Crimean Peninsula, which was part of Ukraine until the Obama administration rose to power. Then Russia ‘mediated’ a deal for the world to get rid of Syria’s chemical weapons. Syria still has those WMDs plus it’s got Russian protection from the United States.
Hillary was part of President Obama’s foreign policy team that pushed for the removal of U.S. troops in Iraq, which led to the rise of ISIS, aka the JV team in Lakers uniforms.
All of those things pale in comparison with Hillary’s decision to not protect Christopher Stevens. Thanks to her inattention, 4 American patriots were murdered by terrorists while serving their country. Hillary’s deceitfulness and Hillary’s incompetence got Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty murdered in a well-coordinated, well-trained terrorist attack on the 11th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
Other than that, Hillary’s list of stellar accomplishments is impressive.
During her testimony Thursday at the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Hillary Clinton made some exotic statements that require follow-up questioning. During Rep. Adam Schiff’s, (D-CA), first round of questioning, Hillary testified that “I’ve thought more about what happened than all the rest of you put together. I’ve lost more sleep than all the rest of you put together. I have been racking my brain about what more could’ve been done or should’ve been done.”
Stephen Hayes’ article includes a quote from Charles Woods, the father of murdered American patriot Ty Woods, about what he was looking for at the hearing. In the quote, Mr. Woods said “The truth, hopefully.” One of the unasked questions from Thursday’s hearing relates to Mrs. Clinton’s statement that she’s racked her brain about what more could’ve been done. The proper follow-up questions should’ve been ‘Mrs. Clinton, while you were thinking about what more could’ve been done, did you think that you should’ve contacted Christopher Stevens directly? After all, you knew from your daily CIA briefings that the security situation in Benghazi was rapidly deteriorating. At minimum, shouldn’t you have directed your staff in charge of embassy security to contact Ambassador Stevens directly to see if his security was adequate?’
Another important question that didn’t get asked was with regards to the steep decline in email traffic between Mrs. Clinton and her staff about Libya. In 2011, there were sometimes hourly updates on Libya. The stack of printed out emails for 2011 was almost a foot high. The pile of emails for 2012 was 67 pages. Mrs. Clinton explained that little of her communications were via email. The proper follow-up question should’ve been ‘How do you explain the significant use of emails in 2011 to the virtual elimination of using emails to communicate in 2012? Mrs. Clinton, what caused you to virtually stop using emails in 2012 after using prolific amounts of emails in 2011?
During one of his outbursts, Elijah Cummings wondered aloud why people focused on Sid Blumenthal. The easy explanation is that Mrs. Clinton promptly replied to more than 180 of Mr. Blumenthal’s emails compared with Mrs. Clinton’s testimony that she never approved or rejected Christopher Stevens’ requests for additional security because they never got to her desk.
The logical question at that point should’ve been ‘Mrs. Clinton, how can you justify prompt responses, many of which happened while you were in the State Department Building, to an employee at the Clinton Foundation, especially considering the fact that you never responded to security requests from your ambassador serving in one of the biggest hot spots for terror in the world? Shouldn’t you have put a higher priority on making sure U.S. ambassadors are safe than you put on responding to Clinton Foundation employees?’
During questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan, (R-OH), the American people found out that Mrs. Clinton told daughter Chelsea that “two” people had been killed by al-Qa’ida-inspired terrorists less than an hour after she’d issued an official statement that suggested a video sparked an attack in Benghazi. Here’s part of Mrs. Clinton’s testimony:
And if you look at what I said, I referred to the video that night in a very specific way. I said, some have sought to justify the attack because of the video.
The logical question should be which people “have sought to justify the attack because of the video”?
Isn’t it reasonable to say that Mrs. Clinton’s priorities were badly wrong? Isn’t it reasonable to ask why she put a higher priority on taking time during a terrorist attack to tell her daughter about a terrorist attack while the terrorist attack was still being fought? In 2008, Mrs. Clinton ran a campaign ad about a phone call coming in at 3:00 am that suggested she, not Barack Obama, was the only one prepared to take that call.
The call from Libya came in at 5:00 pm ET. Mrs. Clinton and President Obama both failed to protect Christopher Stevens and 3 other American Patriots. Then they failed to tell the American people the truth about the terrorists’ coordinated attacks. Doesn’t that mean that the biggest unanswered question should be whether either of them was qualified to be commander-in-chief?
Here’s Hillary’s racking my brain video:
According to Hillary Clinton’s testimony yesterday, Christopher Stevens, the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, had a great sense of humor. When Mrs. Clinton was questioned by Rep. Susan Brooks, (R-IN), about security conditions in Benghazi, Mrs. Clinton said “Well, Congresswoman, one of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor. And I just see him smiling as he’s typing this, because it is clearly in response to the email down below talking about picking up a few ‘fire sale’ items from the Brits.” Rep. Brooks responded indignantly, saying “Those ‘fire sale’ items by the way, are barricades. They are additional requests for security for the compound.” Doing her best to look unflappable, Mrs. Clinton replied, saying “Well, I thought it showed their entrepreneurial spirit, Congresswoman. And I applaud them for doing so.”
Making light of Benghazi’s deteriorating security conditions after an ambassador and 3 other American patriots were murdered is ghoulishly morbid. It’s the type of thing that only pathological liars are capable of doing.
This morning on Morning Joe, Chuck Todd said that “Hillary was untouched” yesterday. Last night on Special Report, A.B. Stoddard said that Hillary “looked presidential” while fielding the Committee’s difficult questions. Stoddard and Todd are making my case. Mrs. Clinton looked unflappable because she doesn’t think that she failed Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glenn Doherty and Ty Woods, the 4 American patriots that were murdered during the terrorist attack of 9/11/2012.
When Mrs. Clinton was told that Christopher Stevens made over 600 requests for additional security, it was after she’d admitted that she’d personally responded to over 180 emails from Sid Blumenthal. Mrs. Clinton then said that “Chris Stevens certainly knew how to get in touch with me directly.” That’s an especially damning statement considering the fact that Mrs. Clinton later testified that she never saw Christopher Stevens’ 600+ requests for additional security. In that testimony, Mrs. Clinton said that she neither rejected or approved Christopher Stevens’ security requests.
If “Chris” knew how to get directly in touch with Mrs. Clinton and if “Chris” was Mrs. Clinton’s dear friend and if Mrs. Clinton knew that the Benghazi compound’s security had been breached, why didn’t Mrs. Clinton reach out directly to Christopher Stevens?
The answer is contained in Mrs. Clinton’s testimony that she couldn’t recall meeting with or talking to Christopher Stevens after his swearing in as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
The unspoken gist of Mrs. Clinton’s testimony is that “Chris” was a dear friend of hers that Mrs. Clinton never talked to literally for months and that she didn’t lift a finger to protect. To real human beings, that isn’t the definition of a friend.
Nobody will ever be able to accuse Lanny Davis of not being loyal to Hillary Clinton. In fact, the accusation that people could make is that he’s so loyal to Hillary Clinton that he’s willing to shill for Hillary rather than doing the right thing for the nation.
This morning, Davis’ op-ed instructs Republicans to ask Hillary some questions, starting with “Secretary Clinton, can you tell us why you appointed the Accountability Review Board, chaired by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Michael Mullen, to investigate the Benghazi tragedy and what was the result of their work?”
Davis then replies that if Republicans did that they’d find “she gave the board, led by a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Republican President George H.W. Bush and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, complete independence and access. She committed ahead of time, unlike any prior secretaries before her, to full transparency. And when she published the full report (except for some classified material), she immediately accepted all the board’s recommendations to correct “systemic failures” of the department prior to and during the tragedy, and took responsibility.”
It’s a great question if your interest is to distract attention away from the ARB’s failure to actually investigate the murder of 4 American patriots. Mssrs. Pickering and Mullen didn’t interview any of the high ranking officials in the State Department who were responsible for security in Benghazi. They didn’t question Secretary Clinton about what information got to her desk. They didn’t ask her if she was aware of the increasing terrorist activity in the area. They didn’t ask her why Christopher Stevens’ urgent requests for additional security were rejected. They didn’t ask Secretary Clinton why her senior staff reduced Christopher Stevens’ security staff in Benghazi.
That’s before asking them why they didn’t bother getting Secretary Clinton’s emails or getting Christopher Stevens’ emails. Without communications documentation between Hillary’s senior staff and Christopher Stevens, it’s impossible to know who failed to protect Christopher Stevens.
Anyone that thinks that the ARB did a thorough investigation isn’t worth listening to. I’m being charitable when I say that the ARB’s investigation and report are incomplete.
Secretary Clinton, as you know, seven other congressional committees have investigated the Benghazi attack. Is there anything they missed that we should be looking into?
Of course, if Gowdy and the Republican members ask this question, they will have to try to explain why their committee exists at all (other than the anti-Clinton reason that everyone knows) unless they are willing to criticize other Republican Benghazi committees for not doing an adequate job, such as the Republican-controlled House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, which published extensive reports and findings about Benghazi.
I’m perfectly willing to accuse these other committees of not conducting a thorough investigation. They didn’t know that Hillary had a private, unsecured, email server. That’s a glaring, unforgiveable, mistake that these 7 committees made.
It’s proof that they didn’t conduct thorough investigations.
Secretary Clinton, did your choice to use a single BlackBerry to send out emails during your tenure as secretary of State rather than two, or your decision to store emails on a private server at your home, have any impact whatsoever on the tragic events of what happened at Benghazi and its aftermath?
Of course, the truthful, and indisputable, answer to this question is: No. Gowdy and his fellow Republicans know this.
Every single member who asks any question about emails, Gowdy, Brooks, Jordan, Pompeo, Roby, Roskam and Westmoreland, should be asked by the media and all constituents back home who care about wasteful government spending: How can you justify spending almost $5 million of taxpayer money when you have uncovered nothing new, duplicated spending by fellow Republicans, and have spent so much time on a subject having nothing to do with the tragedy at Benghazi?
Mr. Davis, how do you know that this committee hasn’t uncovered new information? While it’s certain that committee Democrats have funneled information to the Clinton campaign, I’m equally certain that Mr. Davis would be willing to ignore new information, especially if it’s damaging to Hillary, in writing a dishonest op-ed while defending Secretary Clinton’s indefensible actions.
In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady, started something that she called ‘the politics of meaning’. Some conservatives, myself included, sarcastically highlighted that this might’ve been the first time she noticed that ordinary people (janitors, carpenters and other blue collar workers) actually added value to society. We said this because we were astonished that our First Lady hadn’t figured that out by then.
This year, Hillary is running for president. Her chief strategy is to tell America that she’s qualified for the job of POTUS because she doesn’t have a pair of testicles. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t have a darker, nastier message that should frighten Americans. It’s something that Salena Zito wrote about in her latest column.
In 2008, then-candidate Obama criticized Pennsylvanians who cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. That was the first hint that an Obama administration wouldn’t be inclusive. That was a hint that President Obama’s administration would be the most divisive administration in recent US history.
President Obama has celebrated that he is not, nor ever intended to be, such a leader. He has used his position as one of deep correction, to change what his elite and academic prisms view as a deeply flawed country.
Those corrections were not made in the spirit of taking us together to a better place. Instead, they have been bitterly divisive and intended to produce “justice.” There is nothing wrong with change, but a good leader would have invited all of us to take that journey. Not doing so has been Obama’s greatest flaw.
It appears that President Obama’s disdain for blue collar America is hereditary:
Last week’s Democrat debate was incredibly revealing of where this party wants to take the country. With the exception of Jim Webb, everyone on stage seemed to loathe anyone who wouldn’t vote for them in a primary.
They hate gun owners and supporters of traditional values; unless you’re “progressive,” you have no place in their view of the world.
They think America’s worst enemies are climate change, the NRA, and Republicans.
Compare the Democrats’ divisiveness agenda with Marco Rubio’s prosperity and inclusiveness agenda:
The difference between the Democrats’ divisiveness agenda and Sen. Rubio’s prosperity and inclusiveness agenda is dramatically different in both substance and tone. The Democrats want to divide America because they think a significant portion of America is evil. When Howard Dean ran for chairman of the DNC, he said “There’s a fight between good and evil…and we’re the good.” Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is currently the chair of the DNC. She’s still practicing the politics of division.
It’s time to unite America. It’s time we rejected the Democrats’ politics of division. It’s time we threw their policies of division onto the trash heap of history’s rejected ideas.
Donald Trump’s love of eminent domain abuse isn’t sitting well with constitutional conservatives. Recently, Carly Fiorina explained why Mr. Trump’s love of eminent domain abuse runs contrary to limited government conservatism when she said “I think Donald Trump, among others, has engaged in crony capitalism in its most raw and abusive form. When commercial interests get together with government to take away private property for their own commercial interests, that’s a big problem. And I think I join so many conservatives in saying that eminent domain has been abused. And it has been abused by the collusion between governments eager for revenue and businesses eager for competitive advantage. So I find the Kelo case—if ever there was a case for judicial engagement instead of judicial restraint, it’s this set of issues.”
There’s nothing pro-limited government about developers who don’t respect private property rights buying off city officials in their effort to steal land from a private property owner. That’s the definition of crony capitalism:
Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.[1][2] Crony capitalism is believed to arise when business cronyism and related self-serving behavior by businesses or businesspeople spills over into politics and government,[3] or when self-serving friendships and family ties between businessmen and the government influence the economy and society to the extent that it corrupts public-serving economic and political ideals.
Donald Trump isn’t a constitutionalist. He definitely isn’t a limited government conservative. Finally, it’s apparent that he thinks that he should get anything he wants even if that something is owned by someone else.
That’s the definition of evil. If we want an evil president, we can just keep the corrupt SOB that’s currently in the White House or elect a corrupt career politician that’s running as a Democrat. The day that the Republicans nominate another corrupt politician is the day I leave the GOP.
First, Kevin McCarthy insisted that the House Select Committee on Benghazi was designed to cut into Hillary Clinton’s favorable/unfavorable ratings. It didn’t matter that Rep. McCarthy was an outsider. His words were treated like they were etched in stone tablets atop Mount Sinai. Now, another outsider, Rep. Richard Hanna, (R-NY), has stepped forward to opine that the Benghazi Committee is all about politics. When Rep. Hanna said “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton”, he said it without confirming what the Committee has spent its time doing.
Simply put, it’s an uninformed opinion. If Rep. Hanna would’ve said that he talked with committee staff who showed him documentation showing that they’d been pulled off of one investigation to start investigating Hillary, and if Rep. Hanna named the committee staffer, then I’d have something concrete to buy into.
Rep. Hanna later said “After what Kevin McCarthy said, it’s difficult to accept at least a part of it was not. I think that’s the way Washington works. But you’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”
Listen to those weasel words:
it’s difficult to accept at least a part of it was not.
If Rep. Hanna had documented proof, he wouldn’t have to accept anything. He’d be able to say that he can provide documentation that proves that part of the Committee’s assignment was to cripple Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Forgive me for being skeptical but I can’t classify this as anything but ironclad innuendo.
