Conservative Musings

Our goal is to have intelligent discussion of the topics of the day. We realize everyone has their opinion and they should be allowed to express it in a discussion forum without calling each other names. We learn from discussion and not from name calling or argument.We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. See details

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Israel Has A Friend In Trump's VP

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s VP choice, is best for US, Israel and Immediate World

Share This Post

www.israel-commentary.org
By Sean Savage
The Jewish Press, July 22, 2016
After a selection process that more closely resembled a reality television show than the usual political appointments, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Friday tweeted that his choice for vice president is Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who beat out flashier contenders such as former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
For the pro-Israel community, Pence is viewed as a strong advocate for the Jewish state who can bolster Trump’s sometimes shaky relationship with Jewish leaders. Although he has taken on a strongly pro-Israel tone in recent months, Trump had previously raised concern in pro-Israel circles by saying he would take a “neutral” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pence, an evangelical Christian, has noted that his strong support for Israel is rooted in his faith.
“Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel,” Pence said in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2009, while he was serving in Congress.
Many analysts believe Pence can boost Trump’s standing among social conservatives and strengthen his campaign in other areas such as executive experience, foreign policy, and navigating the political scene of Washington, DC.
Pence served in the House of Representatives from 2001-13, including on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he advocated for robust military defense aid for Israel. As governor of Indiana, Pence has continued his steady record of support for Israel. He visited Israel in late 2014 and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Hoosiers have cherished our relationship with the people of Israel for generations. As we look ahead, deepening our ties with the people, businesses, and state of Israel remains a commitment that will empower us as partners. Grounded in our shared values and our hope for the future, today our friendship is highlighted by a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit shared between our two nations,” Pence said in a statement ahead of that 2014 trip.
David Brog, a member of the board of directors at Christians United for Israel, which helped sponsor Pence’s visit to Israel, praised the Indiana governor as one of the Jewish state’s “most steadfast supporters.”
“We have known and worked with Mike Pence for years. His faith and worldview have made him one of Israel’s most steadfast supporters, both in Congress and as governor,” Brog told JNS.org. “He would be yet another powerful pro-Israel voice on Donald Trump’s team.”
In addition to his support for Israel, Pence, like Trump, favors an American foreign policy that is centered on robust military strength. He has repeatedly called for large increases in military spending and has criticized Democrats for not using the term “Islamic extremism” when describing jihadists.
Pence had also been a vocal critic of the Iran nuclear deal. In 2015, he joined 14 other Republican governors in signing a letter to President Barack Obama expressing their opposition to the deal.
Pence’s stance on the nuclear deal contrasts with his potential vice presidential opponent, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is rumored to be among presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s finalists for the job.
In 2015, Kaine was among a number of Democratic senators who boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress about the nuclear deal. Nevertheless, Kaine defined himself as a “strong pro-Israel Democrat” in an interview with The Forward, and also told the Washington Jewish Week following a visit to Israel in January 2016 that Netanyahu “is a key partner” that the U.S. must work with.
In Indiana, Pence signed into a law a bill that formally opposed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer called the Indiana measure the “toughest anti-BDS legislation in the nation.”
Elliot Bartky, president of the Jewish American Affairs Committee of Indiana, who worked closely with the Indiana State Assembly and Pence in crafting the anti-BDS legislation, said he feels the governor is an excellent choice by Trump.
“Governor Pence has had a long and distinguished track record advocating for Israel and the Jewish people as a congressman and then governor of Indiana,” Bartky told JNS.org. “We fully expect that if elected vice president, Governor Pence will continue to lead the nation with the type of sorely needed moral clarity and courage on this issue that has typified his career to this point.”
Despite his state’s relatively small Jewish community, Pence has promoted economic ties between Israel and Indiana.
“Israel and Indiana share many concerns that Hoosiers cherish,” Pence said last month at the second annual Indiana-Israel Business Exchange. “As our nation’s strongest and most important ally in the Middle East, Israel is also a key partner in our state’s economic growth.”

Terrorists Are Coming And Its Not A Movie!

FBI Chief Warns 'Terrorist Diaspora' Will Come to the West

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Wednesday, 27 Jul 2016 07:34 PM

0
inShare

Hundreds of terrorists will fan out to infiltrate western Europe and the U.S. to carry out attacks on a wider scale as Islamic State is defeated in Syria, FBI Director James Comey warned.

“At some point there’s going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we’ve never seen before,” Comey said Wednesday in New York. “We saw the future of this threat in Brussels and Paris,” said the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, adding that future attacks will be on “an order of magnitude greater.”

Comey’s blunt warnings echo those of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has scoffed at Obama administration efforts to defeat Islamic State extremists in Syria and Iraq. Nonetheless, the FBI chief’s comments reflect a consensus among U.S. intelligence officials that the group inevitably will strike out abroad as it continues to lose ground militarily under attack from a U.S.-led coalition.

For a QuickTake on the widening threat from Islamic State, click here.

CIA Director John Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee in June that “our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach.” Using an acronym for Islamic State, Brennan said, “as the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.”

‘Greatest Threat’

Comey, who called violence directed or inspired by Islamic State “the greatest threat to the physical safety of Americans today,” said that “a lot of terrorists fled out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is 10 times that or more.”

In his remarks at a conference on cybersecurity, Comey also cited the difficulty of heading off what are often called “lone-wolf” attackers acting on the group’s calls for violence.

It is “increasingly hard” for counterterrorism officials to find and stop individuals inspired or directed by Islamic State who use a knife or a vehicle to kill people, Comey said.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Who Should Be President? The One Less Intent On Becoming President!

Power and the overriding question; who is best suited to be our next president?

Posted on July 27, 2016 by John Myers Cartoon

It was Douglas Adams, the late 20th Century English novelist, who said, “It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

Whatever dragons Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama believed they had to slay for their “War on Terror,” they have sacrificed key guarantees in the U.S. Constitution. Obama has been the worst offender, ignoring Congress on major policies and making the judiciary his sword. I believe these two presidents have not been malevolent, yet they have suspended liberties that they were sworn to protect.

There always seems to be a “but,” and in the U.S. Constitution it is a whopper. The Suspension Clause of the United States Constitution can be found in Article 1, Section 9, clause 2, which demands that: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

Two earlier presidents, who to this day are revered, suspended habeas corpus. They are Abraham Lincoln in 1861 during the Civil War and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942, when eight German saboteurs, including two U.S. citizens who had secretly entered the United States to attack its civil infrastructure as part of Operation Pastorius, were convicted by a secret military tribunal.

In both cases the suspension of due rights was under extreme circumstances, but most recently its usage has been more sweeping and more casually implemented.

In 2006, Bush suspended habeas corpus to persons “determined by the United States” to be an “enemy combatant” in the global War on Terror. Bush’s action drew severe criticism, mainly for the law’s failure to specifically designate who in the United States will determine who is and who is not an “enemy combatant.”

In 2011 Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act providing for indefinite imprisonment, without trial or indictment, of any U.S. citizens designated as enemies by our president.

It gives sweeping presidential powers over U.S. citizens, even those who never entered combat or participated in any military actions. Instead, anyone designated by the Obama administration as “a member of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and who substantially supports these organizations” has no rights under the law.

Bush and Obama have been cavalier about trampling the Constitutional rights of Americans. With the growing threat from ISIS, which has manifested in violence in Europe and America, it is almost certain that neither Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump nor presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will impose limits on their powers by doing anything that would give them less power.

The sweeping powers of the executive branch would be so alien to Ronald Reagan and Congress in the 1980s, it would not have been believed possible… at least not in one generation.

To millions, this election is about which nominee is most likely to further abuse the powers of his or her office.

Last week I wrote to you under the headline: Catch-22: Guns, violence and race in America.

I look for Catch-22s in life (you can only borrow money if you don’t need it) and came upon the Douglas Adams’ quote at the top. Given the amount of drive, ambition and the almost divine belief in an individual’s own qualifications required to become a national elected official that one of them would be the last people you want to give the authority to launch a nuclear war abroad or a war at home.

Restrictions were put on the executive branch after Watergate. Former Vice President Dick Cheney railed against limiting powers of the executive branch. He saw 9/11 as a watershed moment to expand executive authority. For the most part, our representatives in Congress have not resisted this choking off of our American liberties.

The Founding Fathers never intended the Suspension Clause to make it so easy for a president to garner sweeping powers. But it has happened.

In 2013 Global Research published an article on the grave situation facing Americans:

It is now possible to deprive United States citizens of their fundamental rights because they have taken part in armed action against their own country, but also when they take a political position favorable to those who use military action to resist the Empire.

Abuse of power

I’ve never wielded much power. As an adult, the closest thing to power I ever had was when I owned a publication with three employees. And, while I may have never been drunk on power as a kid, I was drunk on horsepower.

I was 16 and stupid. While growing up I drove the back roads behind our farm in a beat-up 1964 International pickup that would shake violently when you hit 55 mph. When I received my driver’s license at 16 my father handed me the keys to a 1967 Ford Thunderbird with a big block 390 engine that generated 315 horsepower. It wasn’t long before I was traveling the highway to the city and back at 80 miles an hour or more.

On one of my typical morning races to classes I came over a rise and saw that my life might end in seconds. A cement truck had been rear-ended by a semitrailer, ejecting the driver from his fully loaded 30-ton cement mixer. Without a driver, the truck meandered lazily in a circle on the four lane highway.

When I first saw it I was two football fields away, traveling towards it at about 120 feet per second. The only thing I had going for me was sheer panic and teenage reflexes. I jammed both feet on the power disk brakes and locked up the bias ply tires, creating a terrible screeching sound and the stench of burnt rubber on my 4,200 pound car.

I cut my speed in half. I pulled as close to the ditch as I could and passed by unscathed. As I looked in my rear view mirror I saw someone shaking their fist at me.

I never drove that recklessly again, but I have a friend, who I’ve known for 40 years, who still loves raw power on what he calls “U.S. steel.” He owns a 2012 Shelby GT-500 with a supercharged 5.4 liter engine which generates a whopping 550 horsepower. He knows of his addiction to horsepower but he is experienced enough and has the right temperament not to abuse it.

The best temperament for the presidency

What millions of Americans will ask between now and the November election is which candidate has the better experience and temperament to be president. In a push, I would say Trump is better prepared for the powers of the office. I say this because as a construction magnate he has had dictatorial powers over his employees, yet seems to be generally liked by all of them from blue collar construction workers to Ivy League executives.

Conversely, Clinton has demonstrated the abuse of her powers particularly as Secretary of State. Most notable is her disregard for passing on sensitive and secret materials through her own email account which was unauthorized by the rules set forth by the State Department. Adams would say neither is suited for the job and he would probably be right.

Yours in good times and bad,

— John Myers

Black Man Gets Shot--For Supporting Trump!

MEAN SEASON: BLACK MAN SHOT FOR TRUMP SUPPORT

Gunman 'butted in the conversation. The conversation wasn't directed at him or to him'

Published: 5 hours ago

image: http://www.wnd.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-print/images/printer_famfamfam.gif

A black Air Force veteran from Cleveland has been shot for voicing his support for GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Paul Jones Jr., 60, loves talking about politics with his friends.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/07/Paul-Jones-Screenshot.jpg

Paul Jones, 60, was shot for being a Trump supporter

Paul Jones Jr., 60, was shot for being a Trump supporter

He was pumped up about his support for Trump after last week’s GOP convention in his city.

So he let his pals in his neighborhood bar know what he was thinking Monday night.

Jones took a bullet as a direct result of that conversation, he said from his hospital bed.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!

Detectives were still looking for the shooter Wednesday, and Jones is expected to make a full recovery.

As Jones tells the story, he was sharing his enthusiasm for Trump with a friend when another man nearby got involved in the discussion.

“He butted in the conversation,” Jones said. “The conversation wasn’t directed at him or to him.”

The unidentified assailant then reportedly went out to his car and came back with a gun.

Cleveland police said the attacker shot Jones in the thigh, then walked out.

“I’m quite sure you have a lot of people having their own opinions. But that doesn’t mean you should hurt somebody because you have your own opinion,” said Jones’ mother, Latosca.

Click here for reuse options!

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/black-man-shot-for-vocal-trump-support/#1xdKg6g1915L9utL.99