By John Shaffer Several Republican Presidential candidates have found themselves in a bit of a jam by answering the hypothetical question, “If you knew then what you know now, would you have supported the Iraq War?” Even Jeb Bush, the brother of the President who led the Iraq War, stated that he would not. Now there is nothing wrong with opposing the war, or with changing one’s mind, but we can’t help but think that these candidates may have come to their hypothetical answer by sticking their finger into the wind and voting with public opinion, or perhaps finding out that Iraq is on the brink of collapse. But it wasn’t always – in 2011, President Obama and Vice-President Biden took credit for “ending the war” responsibly and said that Iraq could be the "administration’s biggest success.”
By John Shaffer A couple of weeks ago an Amtrak train crashed near Philadelphia, killing eight people, injuring dozens of others and disrupting rail transportation for several days. Before all of the bodies were recovered, the Democrats were mounting an offensive to blame the tragedy on Republicans, who were charged with pursuing budget cuts that led to reduced maintenance that led to the crash. Oops!
By John Shaffer Last week we questioned why people in Baltimore would riot and destroy millions of dollars of public and private property because someone died in police custody. As we said, there are abundant legal channels through which such cases can be handled. Burning down stores is not the answer. The protestors said they were seeking justice for Freddie Gray, but we want to point out one fact: since January 1, 2015, there have been 88 homicide victims in Baltimore. The world knows the name of one of them – Freddie Gray, the man who died in police custody. Like Mr. Gray, almost all of the other eighty-seven are black.
By John Shaffer Two events that happened in the past few weeks demonstrate how our society treats overreaction – once considered unusual, it is becoming closer and closer to “the new normal.”
Case in point – Freddy Gray dies in police custody. After Baltimore endured a week or so of protest followed by days of rioting (in which no deaths were reported, but over 200 businesses and millions of dollars of property was destroyed), the City Attorney charged six police officers with various crimes. Justice will work its course. Perhaps they will be found guilty, but that is not what is before us here. Whether the police are culpable or not – by what reasoning can people, no matter how upset they are over Mr. Gray’s death, cause so much destruction? By John Shaffer Hillary Clinton and her supporters momentarily were reeling from the news stories about the shady dealings and million-dollar contributions to the Clinton family Foundation; but they soon came up with a strategy to counteract the bad news: “There is not a shred of evidence” that the donations to the foundation were in exchange for favors. Essentially, she doesn't deny the accusation, but says "You can't prove it!" Now, the hilarious irony of the “shred” remark coming from someone who destroyed thousands of e-mails and wiped her server clean must be unintentional, but this is classic Clinton behavior: send the media scurrying off on a snipe hunt, looking for evidence that, if it ever existed, surely has been destroyed long before now. And while the search is going on and folks are railing about finding proof of malfeasance or defalcation, the truth is staring them in the face, and it is this: the mere donation of millions of dollars from entities doing business with the US government demonstrates, unquestionably demonstrates, influence peddling and conflicts of interest.
By John Shaffer Hillary Clinton has been gearing herself for a run at the Presidency since 1996, when her husband won his second term (if not before then). She is very well-known, but like many celebrities, she is “famous for being famous.” Her positive accomplishments are minimal, and along the way she has affected an almost paranoid urge – no, demand – for secrecy and lack of transparency in her dealings with Congress, Press and the Public alike. Anyway, Hillary has been running for President for a long time, has assembled an army of top campaign operatives, and for her entire public career has been renowned as “the smartest person in the room.” One would think that her campaign rollout would be pretty darn well perfect - but it was not. Her roll-out has been so bad that if If the Republican Party had the power to have scripted her campaign in ways to sink it, they could not have succeeded any better than Hillary did on her own.
By John Shaffer Some states have passed laws to require their state to cast its Electoral votes for the candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide. If, for example, the Republican candidate won the most votes, California would be compelled to cast its 55 electoral votes for him – even if he came in second in the state. At least ten states, with 136 combined electoral votes, have voted to join a “compact” that will compel their electors to vote for the popular vote winner. It is not insignificant that all of these states have been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections; and there is a trigger – the “compact” is not valid until states combining for 270 electoral votes sign on. There is a Constitutional difficulty with states forming compacts, and there are other serious problems with this law, not the least of which is the potential for the complete disenfranchisement of its own voters.
By John Shaffer Last week we wrote about President Obama’s support for a deal with Iran. Something happened last week, and the President celebrated it. It wasn’t a deal; it wasn’t the framework of a deal; it may be an understanding that both sides accept some terms that may lead to a deal in the next three months; but whatever it is, its value to the President seems to be greater than its importance as a tool to keep the peace.
By John Shaffer American governments that have negotiated successful agreements have done so from a position of strength, and with firm goals in mind. However, in the ‘30s, the powers dealing with Hitler’s Nazi Germany were chastened by the immense casualties, barely twenty years earlier, of the most terrible war the world had seen, and were reluctant to fight – and Hitler understood that weakness and exploited it at every possibility. The Western powers were unwilling to confront Hitler, so they kept surrendering to his demands, no matter how dangerous they were and how much they jeopardized future peace. They formalized successive land grabs, tolerated a series of violations and ignored broken promises, in order to keep making deals – somehow believing they were “preserving the peace.” Of course, what they really were doing was paving the way to war. This happened because they feared conflict and even were willing to trade away the freedom and security of smaller nations in hopes that the Nazi hunger for power and territory would be satiated. It was a vain hope, and within a few years, forces were unleashed that led to a second war that outdid the first in death and destruction.
By John Shaffer Audiences are used to outstanding performances from the Troy Drama Club productions. Last weekend's Singin' In The Rain joined a lengthening list of great shows. Each is memorable in its own right, but we think that this show stands out for its tremendous dancing - tremendous and very athletic. The cast worked hard to master the techniques of tap and put together dance moves that are seldom seen on the high school stage.
By John Shaffer Hillary Rodham Clinton, we thought, was one of the most accomplished politicians in America. Our use of the past tense will be explained later. The way she obfuscates issues and manages to distract from the main issue is brilliant. In her statement and press conference she declared that she used her own email account “for convenience” and because she “wanted to use only one device instead of two.” That’s two insignificant reasons for an unprecedented enterprise. (No other government official has used his own private account “exclusively.”) If it was “more convenient” for her, why would it not be more convenient for any government official?
By John Shaffer The results from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before Congress are in, and the President and most Democrats did not like it. The Republicans were thrilled with it.
By John Shaffer According to the original thoughts of President Obama and his spokespeople, the victims of recent Islamic jihadist atrocities were “random,” not attacked for any purpose, it seems, other than blood lust. Of course, as the Administration belatedly came to understand, this is nonsense. The victims in the Charlie Hebdo attacks were chosen because they “insulted the Prophet.” Those killed in the kosher market in Paris were Jewish. The twenty-one Egyptians whose throats were slit on that Libya beach were Coptic Christians, not “random Egyptian citizens.” Their denials were so outlandish that even the administration spokesmen have relented and now use the word “terrorism” almost freely, and acknowledge that the victims were selected, not “random.” It is a good thing that they have come around to the correct position, but they still won’t tell us why they got it wrong for so long.
by John Shaffer Well, the “good news” is that solar energy generated 15.9 million kilowatt hours of electricity in the United States from January through October 2014. That’s up a bit from a year earlier. The “bad news” is that over the past five years the federal government has subsided the solar energy industry with $39 billion of taxpayer money. Is the return on that subsidy worth it? Well, that 15.9 million kwH amounts to about one-half of one percent of all the electricity generated in America.
by John Shaffer President Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast,urged Christians to get off their “high horse,” because many evils "have been committed in the name of Christ." The latter part is true - but it is worthy of note that the President goes out of his way to deny that evil committed in the name of Allah actually is committed in the name of Allah. Too bad the President does not use that phrasing to describe the growing list of beheadings, immolations, crucifixions and other atrocities perpetrated by Islamic Jihadist radicals. The dictionary definition of “high horse” is "in a haughty or contemptuous manner.” We wonder exactly who – and more specifically, which Christians - have been “haughty or contemptuous” over the motivation of the modern Islamic terrorist. We know of no one – no one – who says anything that could provoke the President’s statement. No one says anything like – “We Christians never committed any sins or crimes, unlike those Muslims who chop off people's heads.” We know that most Muslims do not condone the violence of the radicals, but it does no good to deny that the radicals who do commit those crimes are "doing it in the name of Allah." If the President truly believed the Christianity he professes, he would know that we all – Christians not excepted – are sinners and that we sin every day. There may be some “high horse” Christians who believe they are above sin or that they are better than non-Christians, but we are not acquainted with them. Given the President's description of the Jihadist murders in the Kosher market in Paris as "random," his insistence that "climate change" is a bigger threat than the "overhyped" stories of terrorism, and his moral equivalence between the Crusades and the rampage of ISIS, perhaps it is he who is mounted on the "high horse." |
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