By John Shaffer Some of us may have known that the 770-foot high Oroville Dam, built in 1968, was the highest in America. We may not have known it impounds the second largest lake in California, but now everybody knows at least a little about the Oroville Dam. This winter has been uncommonly rainy, and the lake has risen to levels where officials made the decision to release water; unfortunately, a 300-foot hole formed in the main spillway, leading to serious erosion, the threat of collapse of the emergency spillway (though not the dam itself), and the potential evacuation of about 188,000 people who live or work in the path of the dam. Well, whenever there is a crisis, there are fingers pointing blame, and we learn that as long ago as 2005 people were agitating for upgrades to the dam spillway, which, eventually, federal and state authorities decided were not required. We imagine they have second thoughts over that decision, for it seems that $100 million applied at the proper time would have averted this crisis. By the way, in the high country around the dam, it has been uncommonly snowy, and when that snowpack melts, there may be even more water in the lake than now, so the crisis is not over yet.
By John Shaffer There has been a negative reaction to some of the statements the President has made and some of the expressions he has used. In at least one case we share the critics’ displeasure. We refer to the President’s “Super Bowl halftime” interview with Bill O’Reilly, which included an exchange when Mr. O’Reilly asked the President’s opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and we have underlined the words that prompt our displeasure:
Mr. O’Reilly: Putin’s a killer. President Trump: There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent. You think our country’s so innocent?…Well — take a look at what we’ve done too. We made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning. Mr. O’Reilly: But mistakes are different than — President Trump: A lot of mistakes, but a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me. One of the worst mistakes that critics of America make is to treat our policies as the “moral equivalent” of actions and policies of totalitarian states. President Trump’s reply to Mr. O’Reilly should have been something such as this: America isn’t perfect, and we have done some things that haven’t turned out well and taken some actions that I wish we hadn’t taken. But generally speaking we have taken them in order to promote freedom and advance liberty and democracy. The Soviet Union and other Communist countries have killed to keep their party in power. They have killed to crush their opponents. Any elections they may have are not free but are shams. They restrict the press, they do not have independent judiciaries, they do not give people the freedom to live their lives in peace. By John Shaffer President Trump has followed the example of President Obama and has decided to employ executive orders to achieve his policy goals. One of these orders made this weekend concerned immigration, and although almost every one of the President’s actions since he took the oath of office has sparked a fiery negative reaction from the progressive left – the outcry over this order has made the outcry over the others look mild. Sadly, much of the reaction to this order has little or nothing to do with the actual order, for the loudest voices raised in objection are objecting to things that are not in the law.
Claims to the contrary, The order is not a “Muslim ban.” It does apply restrictions to immigrants from seven countries – as it happens, the identical seven countries that President Obama designated for restrictions and extra controls. The order stops citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the U.S. for the next 90 days. President Obama signed a law that imposed restrictions on certain travelers who had visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or Syria on or after March 1, 2011, and later, President Obama added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen to the list, because of, he said, “the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters.” There are some 40-other majority Muslim-countries in the world on which the Trump administration did not impose immigration restrictions. The new order puts a 120-day halt on refugee admissions from Syria, during which time the vetting process is to be improved. Yes, the order could have been implemented differently, and the Trump administration bought some trouble in the way this was done, much like the Obama Administration injured itself with the botched roll-out of Healthcare.gov. BY JOHN SHAFFER President Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer got off to a rocky start, calling out the press for reporting that President Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. That report was false, and easily confirmable. Unfortunately, the reporter who first reported the false claim (based on the fact that he did not see the bust – he later said that a Secret Service agent was standing in front of it) did not do anything to confirm his observation – such as asking, “Where’s the bust?” Anyway, Mr. Spicer had him dead to rights. (The writer did apologize and the apology was accepted). Mr. Spicer could have gone home with a big victory – but then he weakened his argument by bringing up what he said was another false story, namely that the crowd that witnessed President Trump’s inaugural was bigger than that at President Obama’s inaugural. Just as the Martin Luther King Jr. bust removal story was easily proven false, so too was the claim about the inauguration. Mr. Spicer made several points that were quickly proven wrong, thus weakening his position as Press Secretary and diverting the administration into a sideshow battle that it could not win. This all started in reaction to the Park Service's release of side by side aerial photographs of the first Obama inauguration in 2009 and the Trump inauguration of 2017, and they clearly indicate that President Obama drew a much larger crowd.
By John Shaffer We continue to have some doubts about the CIA's claim that “Russia hacked the election," and the reprehensible behavior of John Brennan, CIA Director, who publicly scolded President-Elect Trump for failing to take the threat from Russia seriously underscores those doubts. Mr. Brennan’s accusations occurred during an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, and it is to be regretted that Mr. Wallace failed to ask Mr. Brennan why the CIA Director did not take President Obama to task publicly when he removed the defensive missiles from the Czech Republic and Poland during the early days of his administration. The Russians were overjoyed; the Poles and Czechs were dispirited and felt as if the rug had been pulled from beneath their feet, and other nations on the borders of Russia determined that the US would not firmly resist Russian aggression or demands, so they had best accept Russia’s terms. Or if the CIA Director took the President to task publicly when the Russians seized the Crimea, or made incursions on Ukraine? If Mr. Brennan disagreed with Mr. Obama’s “soft approach” or “reset” with Russia, he surely did not vocalize it publicly. Did the CIA Director publicly rebuke President Obama for reassuring the Russian President that he (Mr. Obama) “would have more flexibility after the [2012 Presidential] election?” Or when President Obama mocked Republican candidate Mitt Romney for stating that “Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat,” – remember- the President chided Mr. Romney with “The 1980s called – they want their foreign policy back.”
Well, last week we expressed doubt that the Russians were behind the intrusion that disclosed embarrassing emails from John Podesta and other Democratic party operatives. Since then, the agencies have issued a report and the consensus is that the Russians indeed were responsible.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence report is strong on opinion and scanty on detail, but seven pages of the report concerned Russian Television and said it influenced the election “by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.” “Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.” Wow! What a searing indictment! If we can be pardoned for continuing to wonder about all of this –we wish the ODNI would explain to us: How did the programming on Russian Television – which is available to very few customers in the US and is watched by even fewer of them – “influence” the election, especially considering that the US mainstream media, which is available to almost every American and is watched by most of them spent most of the election campaign making favorable comments about Hillary Clinton and consistently offered negative coverage of Donald Trump. We are asked to believe that the allegedly pro-Trump, anti-Hillary position of Russian Television, which no one watches, had a greater influence than the pro-Hillary anti-Trump spin on almost every other network, which almost everyone watches; or even than Fox News, which had a pro-Trump, anti-Hillary perspective and millions of viewers (and which President Obama has blamed on many occasions for turning Americans away from him). I guess we just don’t understand how “influence” works. By John Shaffer We have no inside knowledge of exactly how emails from John Podesta, Donna Brazile, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were obtained. They could have been stolen, they could have been hacked, they could have been leaked, or perhaps there was some other cause. We lean to believing that it was a leak, most likely from a Democratic party staffer who objected to the way the party leadership interfered with Bernie Sanders’ candidacy; or that Mr. Podesta foolishly gave his password in a “phising” episode. We think it is incredibly unlikely, though not impossible, that “the Russians” did it, because the US authorities who claim that they did have been notoriously reluctant to provide the actual evidence. We find it even more unlikely that “the Russians” favored Donald Trump’s candidacy because they thought Hillary Clinton would be tougher on them. We think this because Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State: 1) when the Obama Administration halted the program to place defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic (Russia opposed the placement of the missiles); 2) for the “reset” of relations with Russia – reset, we note from the less-than-friendly view that the Bush Administration had with Russia; 3) when a Russian millionaire crony of Vladimir Putin acquired control of a Canadian uranium company (after a $2 million donation to the Clinton Foundation); and we should note that the Obama Administration did nothing when Russia annexed the Crimea and seized part of Ukraine, and who can forget when President Obama reassured the President of Russia not to worry, because Mr. Obama “would have more flexibility after the election.” Anyway – we find it hard to swallow that Putin feared that Mrs. Clinton would be “tough” on him – because she never had been. Oh, yes, she did make a few statements about Putin’s treatment of his political opponents in 2011, but she was hardly a lone voice crying out against Mr. Putin, and her remarks were relatively mild and little more than pro forma and they were far less critical that those of many observers at the time. Our next point: the “election” was not “hacked” – not by the Russians, not by anyone else. The voting rolls were not tampered with; the voting machines were not tampered with; the results were not tampered with; the count was not tampered with. Don’t take our word for it - The President himself said that in mid November (after Mrs. Clinton was defeated) that the election was free and fair; his own Attorney General said “we didn’t see the sort of technical interference. . .in terms of voting machines and the like.” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (like Mrs. Lynch, an Obama appointee) said that the DHS cyber security team “we see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count or any cyber actions that deprived people of voting.” Yes, someone disclosed thousands of emails that were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton and her top operatives. But not even once has even one of the recipients or even one of authors of even one of the emails in question asserted that the content was false or tampered with. Every email that was released was one written by and sent by or sent to a top Democratic party personage. And those people and the party obviously would have preferred that none of the material was disclosed – but political parties and government officials are always trying to keep their business secret, and that is especially true of potentially embarrassing items during an election campaign. The Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton campaign are claiming that the release of those emails was detrimental to her campaign. It probably was, but so were most of the 55,000 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at the State Department that were ordered released by a judge. We think that the “Russian hacking” claim is just one more effort to overturn the election, or at a minimum to undercut Mr. Trump’s victory; this includes the recount, the claim that the popular vote should determine the winner, the attempt to subvert the electoral college, and other ploys. Anyway, if there was hacking the hackers should be confronted and punished, and the President has expelled 35 Russian “diplomats” (and we use the term loosely) in retaliation for the “hacking,” and it may be apt and the right thing to do. But it does raise the question of why the President did not retaliate when the State Department email system was victimized by a cyber attack by Russian hackers; nor did he retaliate when the fingerprints of 5.6 million Americans were stolen; nor did he retaliate when Chinese hackers launched multiple cyber attacks on the United States, some of which resulted in the theft of intellectual property. And then we have this report from NBC News: “[The Obama Administration] thought [Mrs. Clinton] was going to win, so they were willing to kick the can down the road.” In other words, they didn’t want to get involved in a potential cyber-war, or in other ways to upset the applecart for a new Clinton administration. Obviously, they have no such concerns about what might befall a new Trump administration. The lesson of this episode, for political party operatives and government workers alike, is this: do not use unsecured email for sensitive communications; do not presume one’s email is secure; do not use email to make embarrassing gossip or revelations, insults or flippant comments. Mr. Podsesta and the Democratic National Committee have learned this the hard way. The naked truth is that the American voter has known Mrs. Clinton for over 24 years, and over that time, a lot of people have grown to love her, and a lot of people have grown to dislike her. The voters who liked her didn’t change their minds because of the emails, and the ones who didn’t like her had made up their mind long before the emails were leaked. BY JOHN SHAFFER We’ll have to admit that until one of Hillary Clinton’s “faithless electors” in Washington cast his vote for her, we didn’t know who Faith Spotted Eagle was. Turns out she is a member of the Yankton Sioux nation and opponent of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. It is delicious that this woman received more electoral votes for president than did Jill Stein, who made a name for herself through pointless and counter-productive recounts. “Faithless elector” is used to describe members of the electoral college who cast their votes for someone other than the candidate who carried the state he or she represents. Faith Spotted Eagle wasn’t the only beneficiary of “faithless electors” this year. Donald Trump lost two votes, both from Texas. One was cast for former Congressman and Libertarian Presidential Candidate Ron Paul and the other for Ohio Governor John Kasich. Mrs. Clinton set a record of sorts, losing a total of five votes to “faithless electors.” In addition to the vote for Faith Spotted Eagle, three of Mrs. Clinton’s electors in Washington voted for Republican Colin Powell; one in Hawaii voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders. Interestingly, former President Bill Clinton was an elector from New York State, and he voted for his wife. A wag pointed out that this may have been the first time Bill Clinton was “faithful” to her.
BY JOHN SHAFFER The world experienced three terrible acts of terrorism in the past few days. The Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated; a mosque in Switzerland was attacked; and, the most horrific incident of the three, a dozen people were killed and many more injured when a Islamic terrorist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Germany. There were many people in the United States, Europe and elsewhere who warned of the dangers of allowing unrestricted immigration; the political and intellectual elites have consistently rejected the use of the terms “Islamic” and “terrorism,” and react with special horror when the two terms are combined. But the ground may be shifting. In contrast to the rest of his term, the Obama administration has already said that the act “appears to be terrorism,” and some reports are that the President used the phrase “Islamic terrorism” to describe the attack.
By John Shaffer Well, Jill Stein got her wish and Wisconsin has completed its recount of the votes cast in the November general election. Going in to the recount, Donald Trump had a lead of 22,617. 2.976 million ballot Were cast in Wisconsin, and everyone of them has been recounted. Ms. Stein, seconded by Mrs. Clinton, wanted the recount. Mr. Trump did not, saying it was a waste of time and money and little more than an effort to delegitimatize his election. The results, after the full recount from every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, shows that although Hillary Clinton gained 713 votes, Donald Trump gained 844, so his lead expanded by 131 votes. Jill Stein, by the way, gained 66 votes and Libertarian Gary Johnson gained 74, so Mrs. Stein, who had the idea of a recount in the first place, actually lost ground to each of the other major candidates on the Wisconsin ballot . Now. Mr. Trump’s final lead over Mrs. Clinton has expanded to 22,748 votes. The cost of Mrs. Stein’s recount cost an estimated $3.5 million. She came in fourth in the election and the recount was the equivalent of a coach asking for a measurement when the ball carrier is tackled eight yards short of a first down. He may have the right to do so, but it is a largely pointless waste of time. That pretty well describes the Wisconsin recount. In Pennsylvania, Mrs. Stein withdrew her state case request for a recount – perhaps because she missed the deadline, or perhaps because she had no evidence that there were any mistakes in the original count.
By John Shaffer There are a lot of things that we don’t comprehend. For instance – the US government signed agreements with Iran and released millions (or billions) of dollars to them, a regime that foments revolution, does not respect human rights, oppresses women and religious minorities, and furthermore is a government which our government does not even recognize as legitimate. Also, the United States government recognizes as legitimate the Communist government of Cuba (something the previous ten US administrations had not done), yet did not obtain any meaningful or lasting acts of good faith from Cuba in exchange – such as not arresting or holding political prisoners, allowing free and fair elections, having an independent judiciary, compensating those whose assets had been expropriated, etc.
Yet, both actions were lionized in the mainstream media and by most of the foreign-policy establishment. But just as they heavily supported those foreign-policy shifts, they almost unanimously oppose the President-elect taking a congratulatory phone call from the democratically-elected president of Taiwan. Taiwan is a nation to which we sell hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons. Taiwan was a founding member of the United Nations and held a seat on the Security Council until 1971, when the UN conveyed its membership and gave the seat to Communist China. Taiwan has a population of 23 million, giving it a rank of 53rd out of the 195 places considered “countries” by the United Nations. By John Shaffer We all have been told not to speak ill of the dead, and, just as Hillary Clinton has always “tried” to tell the truth, we have “tried” to follow that advice; but the death of Fidel Castro has made that all but impossible.
He was a wicked tyrant, who ran the most repressive totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere; denied basic human rights, murdered thousands, forced millions into exile, imprisoned tens of thousands of political prisoners (while giving sanctuary to killers and criminals from the USA and other places), expropriated wealth, fomented revolution and destabilized governments. Of course, one wouldn’t know any of that if one relied on the statements from President Obama, former President Jimmy Carter, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Secretary of State John Kerry, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, and almost everyone in the main stream media – all of whom ignored the truth and slavered the chuminess and puffery on thick. The world’s progressive left has been whitewashing Communism for just about the last one hundred years, and they keep doing it. By John Shaffer Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is challenging the outcome the the vote in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania where Hillary Clinton “expected” to win but did not. Ms. Stein barely hit the 1% mark in the popular vote and finished not third, but FOURTH in each of those three states as well as nationwide. Interestingly, Ms. Stein’s vote total, added to Mrs. Clinton’s, would have been enough to win Wisconsin and Michigan (but not Pennsylvania). The smallest difference between the Trump vote and the Clinton vote in any of the three states is in Michigan, which Mr. Trump carried by about 10,700. Ms. Stein received 50,700 votes – but Libertarian Gary Johnson got 173,057 votes! There have been 27 recounts since 2000. Three of them saw a change in the result. The average swing was 282 votes. The most votes “swung” in a recount in the last 16 years is 1,247 – which Al Gore gained on George Bush in the 2000 Florida recount – but it was still not enough to surpass Bush’s vote and overturn the results.
Hillary Clinton conceded the election. President Obama had urged her to concede and has stated that there was no “hacking” that could have affected the outcome. Election officials in the three states have meticulously counted the votes, added the votes, certified the votes and in some cases, audited the votes. BY JOHN SHAFFER The smash hit Broadway musical Hamilton was visited by Vice-President elect Mike Pence and his family, and the cast and crew lavished Mr. Pence with attention unlike that received by most theater-goers
Back during July of this year, there was a special extra matinee performance of Hamilton, and it was a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The tickets weren’t cheap. General seats were priced at $2,700; preferred seats were $5,000; premium seats and a photo reception with Mrs. Clinton was priced at were $10,000; one could have a premium seat and attend the wrap party for $33,400. “Event chair” sponsorships could be had for $100,000. The Hillary Victory Fund bought out the theatre (1,321 seats) and rented the theater. We don’t know how much money they raised or if they discounted some of the seats, but there can be no doubt that the producers and cast of Hamilton were firmly in the Clinton camp. What’s more, in November 2015, the Democratic Hope Fund hosted a performance of Hamilton as a fundraiser. So it came as only a slight surprise that the producers and cast prepared a statement of protest for Mr. Pence, which was read by Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr – who served, appropriately enough, as Vice-President under Thomas Jefferson (and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel). Here’s another delicious angle: Alexander Hamilton was one of the creators of the concept for an Electoral College, which would protect the interests of the smaller states, which reassured them enough to contribute to their ratification of the Constitution. The Electoral College is currently out of favor with the Democrats, who seem to be the greatest fans of Hamilton (or more accurately, the company of Hamilton is great fans of Democrats). By John Shaffer With Hillary Clinton having (at last count) some 766,000 more votes than Donald Trump (and her margin is increasing), her supporters are pushing hard to elect her. An online petition asking the Electors to vote for her has over 4 million votes; Senator Barbara Boxer has introduced legislation for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing the electoral college, replacing it with a popular vote system; and the oddest effort of all, the “National Popular Vote” campaign, which would require a state to give all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, which may not be the party that wins the popular vote of that state. Ten states and the District of Columbia have signed this pact, which might well disenfranchise their own voters. The NPV campaign would not take effect until states totaling a majority of the electoral votes have signed up. (Right now there are 165 votes in the pact, and it should come as no surprise to learn that they are pretty much the “bluest” of the “blue states: Hawaii, Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. All voted for Hillary Clinton. And yes, it is true that Mrs. Clinton has 766,000 more votes than Donald Trump – but she has a staggering 3 million vote margin in California. That means that Mr. Trump has about a 2.3 million advantage in the other 49 states combined. Given the high probability that there might be a sizeable number of votes cast by non-citizens in the Golden State (after all, it does not have a voter ID law), we perhaps should not be too eager to abolish the Electoral College.
Senator Boxer says that her amendment would “make every vote count,” but of course it would do nothing of the kind: instead it would create a huge incentive for illegal votes, or votes by illegals; and it would be much easier to “steal” an election with illegal votes counted from one large jurisdiction than from hundreds of municipalities across the nation. |
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