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

Friday, June 15, 2018

Is Obama The Only Democrat With Any Punch?

Dems turn on Obama, castigate him for not being more involved in party: report

Jun 14, 2018 5:30 pm

Reports say that some Democrats are unhappy with former President Barack Obama's apparent detachment from the party and its movement. The Democrats are reportedly now looking for the former president to step in for party guidance and more. (Getty Images)

A report by The Hill on Thursday alleges that several people in the Democratic Party are highly dissatisfied with former President Barack Obama’s apparent detachment from the party.

What are the details of the report?

Amie Parnes at The Hill writes, “When former President Obama left the White House, he pledged to take a back seat to make room for other Democrats in the party to shine.”

“Nearly 17 months later, that’s proving to be an impossible task,” she grimly adds.

Parnes notes that Clinton “fatigue” has set in and Democrats are now looking for the former president to step in for party guidance and more.

According to the report, Democrats want Obama to step in “to take a more leading role” during the 2018 midterm elections, and help to bolster the party for the 2020 presidential election.

“There’s f***ing no one else,” one Democratic strategist told Parnes. “Bill Clinton is toxic, [former President Jimmy] Carter is too old, and there’s no one else around for miles.”

Another detractor — a “longtime Obama bundler who rarely criticizes the former president” — said, “[Obama has] been way too quiet. There are a lot of people who think he’s played too little a role or almost no role in endorsing or fundraising and he’s done jacks*** in getting people to donate to the party.”

What about Obama’s lack of endorsements?

The bundler added that Obama’s lack of endorsements during the midterm election season has been off-putting to some Democrats.

“You have all these people running for office, some of them against other Democrats, and his strategy has been to not endorse anyone and that’s what’s been so f***ing ridiculous because not only are you not helping them, you’re hurting them,” the bundler added.

Parnes reported, however, that it seems Obama does have plans in pocket, despite his apparent hands-off attitude at this point in the game.

“A source close to Obama said the former president is looking forward to hitting the campaign trail, fundraising and issuing more endorsements closer to the midterms,” Parnes writes. “But the source added that injecting himself into day-to-day politics would do the Democratic Party a disservice by making it more difficult for other Democratic voices to rise to prominence.”

Anything else?

A Politico report on Monday revealed that Obama has quietly met with at least eight Democratic 2020 hopefuls.

Those with whom Obama has reportedly met are purportedly seeking his counsel for potential 2020 presidential bids.

According to the Politico report, the former president “is eager to be a sounding board and counselor to the Democrats he sees as playing a role in shaping the party’s future.”

The Politico piece reported that Obama has met with lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.), among others.

British Judge Proves He Is An Idiot

"Blunt tips for knives seems practically absurd," The Heritage Foundation's Amy Swearer retorts. "You can make a shank out of plastic in prison. Will they regulate plastic next?" (Photo: Brett Stevens/Newscom)

A veteran British judge says Britons should round off the tips of their large kitchen knives as a way to cut down on the rising number of knife attacks in England, which has strict gun controls.

Judge Nicholas Madge made his proposal at his recent retirement ceremony after 77 knife-related incidents, including three deaths, occurred in Bedfordshire, England, over the prior two months, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

“Why do we need 8-inch or 10-inch kitchen knives with points?” Madge said at the May 25 event. “Butchers and fishmongers do, but how often, if at all, does a domestic chef use the point of an 8-inch or 10-inch knife? Rarely, if at all.”

Amy Swearer, legal policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, ridiculed the idea as knife control.

Rounding off the tips of kitchen knives, Swearer told The Daily Signal, is “the liberals’ version of gun control in England, 40 years ahead of the United States.”

“Blunt tips for knives seems practically absurd. You can make a shank out of plastic in prison,” Swearer said. “Will they regulate plastic next? Where will the line be drawn?”

The Heritage policy analyst attributes Madge’s “extreme” proposal to England’s gun control policy, in place since the mid-to-late 1990s.

England slowly achieved the dream of American gun control advocates, but it didn’t help curb crime, Swearer said.

“To keep people safe, allow law-abiding citizens to defend themselves,” she said.

Today, England suffers from an epidemic of so-called “hot burglaries.” Hot burglaries occur when an individual enters a house despite knowing that the resident is home.

Swearer said that in the U.S., 14 percent of all burglaries are “hot,” while England’s “hot” rate is 60 percent.

“There was a study that asked burglars why they did or did not commit hot burglaries,” she said. “American burglars said residents were more likely to have a gun, while English burglars knew that the resident didn’t have a gun, and that they could get [the victim] to open [his or her] safe.”

Swearer attributed that to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, a right Britons don’t enjoy:

England didn’t have a gun problem, and did everything [American pro-gun control advocates] wanted. Now, they are in a worse, violent situation than they were already in, even compared to the U.S. By cracking down on the most basic things, liberals are laughing. … Basically, Britain has become a police-protectionism state, so now [the British] have the right to hope that the police arrive in time before they are killed.

Madge’s call for blunting knives stems from the fact that deadly mass attacks may be committed using anything that can serve as a weapon.

England has seen a 21 percent spike in knife and other non-gun related incidents from 2011 to 2017, with an incident occurring every 14 minutes with a sharp object, the Independent reported.

Swearer said that’s because knives in England have become the “new guns.” If British citizens were given their guns back, she said, England would be better off:

We have the Second Amendment, literally, for things like this, and we shouldn’t listen to people who try to diminish it. The Second Amendment protects firearms used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. When we ignore these provisions, that basically removes a very serious protection that prevents us from going down the path that the Founding Fathers did not want, and become just like England.

The Sloppiness Of The Government Is Incredible

[VIDEO] Obama Knew About

Hillary's Private Server ALL ALONG

06/15/2018
Source: AAN
by: AAN Staff

SPECIAL:RESULTS ARE IN: SEE THE BEST CREDIT CARDS OF 2018

Our experts evaluated over 3,400 credit card offers to give you the 16 best credit card offers and deals for June 2018, including the top...

Learn More

HELP AAN SPREAD THE NEWS CNN WON'T SHARE

Turns out, Barack Obama knew all along.

According to the inspector general report, President Obama was one of 13 select individuals who had "direct contact" with Hillary Clinton on her private email account.

Absolving the former president, at least somewhat, intelligence analysts determined none of Obama's correspondence with the then-Secretary of State contained classified information.

However, Obama said in an interview with CBS News in 2015 that he learned about Hillary's private server and potential misuse of top-secret intel about "the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports." (Fox News)

Press Secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged shortly after those remarks attracted attention that Obama and Clinton did exchange emails.

"The president, as I think many people expected, did over the course of his first several years in office, trade emails with the secretary of state," he said.

...

Elsewhere in the IG report, the IG asked investigators why they made no effort to obtain the personal devices that Clinton’s senior aides were using at the State Department, since those devices were "potential sources of Clinton's ... classified emails" or places where unauthorized classified emails were being stored.

In response, officials on the probe claimed that "the culture of mishandling classified information at the State Department" was so pervasive that it "made the quantity of potential sources of evidence particularly vast" -- a rationale that the IG implied was unconvincing, because investigators could simply have obtained personal devices for a handful of key Clinton aides.

The FBI Must Answer For Imposing Their Will On An Election

There's no spinning Peter Strozk's anti-Trump 'We'll stop it' text

By Larry O'Connor - The Washington Times - Friday, June 15, 2018

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

It’s the most damning and politically damaging text part of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email report.

Peter Strozk’s text message exchange with alleged paramour Lisa Page. The two high-level FBI officials were discussing their investigations and the 2016 presidential campaign:

PAGE: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

STRZOK: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

Here’s the important context in this story line:

In early August, just a few weeks after he had helped James Comey exonerate Hillary Clinton, Peter Strzok, the man leading the FBI’s Counterintelligence division, assured Lisa Page that “We’ll stop” Trump from being president.

Who’s “we”? Did he mean the FBI as a whole, or his Counterintelligence division? Or, did he mean he and Page? None of these possible answers are good for Strzok or for Americans looking for an FBI free of political bias.

Days later, Strozk and Page, the Chatty-Cathys of the FBI, had another text exchange about the dire circumstances our nation faced if Hillary Clinton didn’t win the 2016 election.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office - that there’s no way he gets elected - but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok texted on Aug. 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

So Strzok, the man helping to exonerate Hillary Clinton and now in charge of the Trump/Russian FBI investigation says “we’ll stop” Trump from getting elected and “we can’t take the risk” if he does so we better set up an “insurance policy” just in case.

Finally, and possibly most damning of all, the “We’ll stop it” text message was completely omitted from Justice Department disclosure to congress that Republicans had been begging, cajoling and threatening the DOJ for over several months:

I spoke with Byron York of the Washington Examiner just hours after the report was released. I asked him “is there any context where this text exchange isn’t a very big deal?”

“No, I don’t think there is. This was also about 8 days into the Trump investigation. It was in early August of 2016. They were both on the investigation. And by the way, the Inspector General is critical of the FBI’s decision to take the very same people who had just finished the Hillary Clinton investigation in early July, in late July and put them on the Trump investigation. The Inspector General says surely there were other people in the FBI that they could have put on this investigation, but they put the people who had just exonerated Hillary Clinton on.”

My entire interview with York can be heard here on WMAL: