Thursday, December 13, 2018

This article is a good perspective on perhaps the underlying objectives of
Trump’s domestic and foreign policy.  A good read whether or not you agree
or disagree.

Real Clear Politics -- K. S. Bruce

Donald Trump’s China Trade War Is Not About Trade

Their basic economic formula is simple: The economy
is, by definition, equal to the size of the labor force times the
productivity of the labor force. The Administration has been
working in various ways to increase both the labor pool and its
productivity, and to make sure that a fair portion of
benefits from economic growth will accrue to the workers
themselves.


The Administration’s more recent analysis has determined
that China will not simply become one, more mild-mannered
“club member” if left unchecked. Rather, the Administration
has concluded that China is seeking to surpass the U.S.
as a global leader, and is promoting centralized government
power as the model for the world to follow, at the expense of
Western, liberal-style democracy, personal freedoms and
individual rights.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

When the FBI and the DOJ under Mueller obstructed justice and changed the important results of a pivotal national election

Must Read Alaska
Senator Ted Stevens

Does this sound familiar yet?
The allegation was that Senator Stevens had not paid full price for improvements to his Alaska cabin. As Roll Call reported, he had actually overpaid for the improvements by over twenty percent. Roll Call went on to state:
“But relying on false records and fueled by testimony from a richly rewarded ‘cooperating’ witness… government prosecutors convinced jurors to find him guilty just eight days before the general election which he lost by less than 2 percent of the vote.”
Don’t forget, one vote in the Senate was critical to ObamaCare becoming law also. If Senator Stevens was still there, it would not have become law.

After a report substantiated massive improprieties by the FBI and DOJ in the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens, the result was ultimately a complete dismissal of the conviction.

If you wonder what happened to the valuable FBI agent who was an upstanding whistleblower with a conscience, you should know that in Mueller’s FBI, Special Agent Joy was terribly mistreated. Orders came down from on high that he was not to participate in any criminal investigation again, which is the FBI management’s way of forcing an agent out of the FBI. On the other hand, the FBI agent who was said to have manufactured evidence against Senator Stevens while hiding evidence of his innocence was treated wonderfully and continued to work important criminal cases for Director Mueller.

Monday, June 25, 2018

If it walks like a duck, swims and flies like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is usually a duck.

Sometimes appearances count and there is a clear appearance of bias in the handling of all of the investigations related to Hillary Clinton and those related to Donald Trump.

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Washington Post - June 14

By Devlin Barrett, Karoun Demirjian, John Wagner and Matt Zapotosky

Inspector general blasts Comey and also says others at FBI showed ‘willingness to take official action’ to hurt Trump

“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” the lawyer, Lisa Page, wrote to Strzok.

“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,”

The inspector general concluded that Strzok’s text, along with others disparaging Trump, “is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”

The messages “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations,” the inspector general wrote.

“Under these circumstances, we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias,” the report said.

----------------------

Mr Horowitz thus stated that there was an appearance of bias and an implication of a willingness to take official action, and furthermore that they did not have confidence that the prioritizing of the Trump investigation over the Clinton investigation was free from bias. Peter Strzok led both the Clinton and Trump investigations.. Yet, Mr Horowitz did not say that what looked like a duck was a duck.

Testifying before Congress earlier this week, Mr. Horowitz was asked if he believed whether Mr. Strzok’s texts showed political bias. “I think as we found it clearly shows a biased state of mind,” Mr. Horowtiz said. Later, Mr. Horowitz was asked if Strzok’s bias led to the start of the Russia probe. He responded, “that’s a matter that we have under review and are looking at right now.”

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See also: WSJ -- June 23, 2018 -- David E Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley

Mueller’s Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

“All special-counsel activities -- investigations, plea deals, subpoenas, reports, indictments, and convictions -- are fruit of a poisonous tree, byproducts of a violation of due process.”

------------------------------------

Since Mr. Horowitz’s report, Mr. Strzok was escorted out of the FBI building last week.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has now subpoenaed FBI agent Peter Strzok to be deposed by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.

James H. Rutherford, M.D.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Mutually Nonconsensual Sex

The Atlantic  - Caitlin Flanagan,  June 1. 2018

A Title IX case at the University of Cincinnati—rife with legal, anatomical, and emotional improbabilities—illustrates the potential excesses of policing sex on campus.

“Male and female student have a drunken hookup. He wakes up, terrified she's going to file a sexual misconduct complaint, so he goes to the Title IX office and beats her to the punch. She is found guilty and suspended.”

"Doe vs. Miami University found that a school acts in a discriminatory manner when it finds that both a male and a female student are intoxicated and engage in sexual activity yet chooses only to discipline one of the students."

"A half-century ago a group of American college students realized that the American university had assumed a role in their lives that was fundamentally at odds with their constitutional right to live in freedom. They wanted personal freedom, political freedom, sexual freedom….Now, in many regards, universities monitor the sexuality of their students more intrusively than in the 1950s.
…..the strongest and smartest and bravest among the students are beginning to realize that the beliefs and practices that dominate these places are irrational and hugely political."

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Kim Jong-un -- The Only Fat Man in North Korea

Why would Kim Jong-un consider giving up his nuclear weapons and shifting from a military based regime to an economic based regime?

First, President Trump has made it clear that the United States will not allow North Korea to fully develop the nuclear capacity to destroy American cities and to use that as a method of blackmail. A military confrontation with the United States would mean the end of the both the regime and Kim Jong-un, whose primary goal is to retain power. China, as the only nuclear power in the Far East, has apparently now decided that a nuclear North Korea is also not in its best interests. The combined economic sanctions are further crippling a N. Korean economy that is in chaos. How long does Kim Jong-un think that he can stay in power when he cannot feed his people, but also cannot provide for his military and bureaucracy? That is the stick. How long does Kim Jong-un think that he can be the only fat man in Korea.

The carrot is a way out by shifting from a military based regime to an economic based regime. The United States, like it did at the time of the Cuban nuclear crisis, can give assurances that it will not invade or destroy N. Korea. It can bring a formal end to the the Korean War. It can provide immediate food relief and South Korea can also help to provide economic assistance and some cultural integration. By actually providing for his people and developing a modern economy similar to that of China or Vietnam, Kim Jong-un could continue his autocratic rule and still be seen as the adulated leader of his country. The odds might be fairly good that he will see the development of a prosperous N. Korea also as his best chance for a prosperous survival.

Monday, May 7, 2018


39% of colleges have 0 Republican professors

The latest study of American campuses shows that nearly 40 percent of the colleges surveyed did not have even one professor on their faculty who identified as Republican – confirming that liberal indoctrination in classroom politics is no myth.

In recently released research conducted by National Association of Scholars’ (NAS) Mitchell Langbert of Brooklyn College, 8,688 fulltime professors with Ph.D.’s from a sample of 51 of the 60 top-ranked liberal arts colleges – as ranked by a 2017 U.S. News report – were surveyed, and overall results reveal that for every 10 professors who register as Democrat, there is only one registered Republican professor.

"The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman & a professor. The former will decide it as well, & often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules."
-- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Peter Carr 1787

Thursday, May 3, 2018

The White House Correspondents Dinner and the Race to the Bottom in Civility

This is an example of why other countries may not consider the United States to be a “City on a Hill” or our culture something they would want to emulate.

 From C-SPAN coverage -
 Michelle Wolf remarks at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Tributes to Stephen Hawking

Singularity Hub

Stephen Hawking: Martin Rees Look Back on Colleague’s Spectacular Success Against all Odds
(Perhaps this article along with the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Helen Keller should be on the recommended reading lists for young students.)

Gizmodo

What you need to Know About Stephen Hawking’s Final Paper

ArXive.org

A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?
  1. W. Hawking, Thomas Hertog
Oxford Science Blog - (Example of Current Theoretical Physics)
The other side of the Big Bang

Barak Kol

Head of Hebrew University’s Racah Institute of Physics
It is common knowledge that Prof. Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest scientists of our time, as well as an inspiring instance of human spirit and humor in the face of illness and difficulty. It is perhaps less known that his single most scientific achievement, namely the theoretical discovery of Hawking radiation from black holes was intimately related to the ideas of the late Prof. Jacob Bekenstein from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1972 Bekenstein, then a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, suggested that black holes might have properties of heat (more precisely entropy, known today as Bekenstein-Hawking black hole entropy). This idea was met with disbelief as scientists, including Hawking, thought that black holes absorb everything, yet nothing can escape them, and therefore their temperature would have to be the absolute zero.
Yet in 1974 it was Hawking who discovered theoretically that once the effects of quantum physics are taken into account a weak radiation must escape that black hole. This radiation is known as Hawking radiation and it is accompanied by a temperature of the black hole. In this way it was Hawking who established and confirmed Bekenstein’s earlier ideas and together they form the basis for Black Hole Thermodynamics, which is one of the pillars of contemporary theoretical physics. As this story illustrates, sometimes debate and even controversy, work towards a better and more united scientific understanding.

Monday, March 19, 2018

Justice by Robert Mueller and the FBI is Biased rather than Blind

Concerning all of the legal issues related to Hillary Clinton they tried not to make a case.
Against Trump they are being exceedingly aggressive.

National Review
The Trump Collusion Case Is Not Getting the Clinton Emails Treatment

“If the Justice Department is hell-bent on making a case, it plays an intimidating game of hardball. In July 2016, the Obama administration announced its decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for felony mishandling of classified information and destruction of government files. In the aftermath, I observed that there is a very aggressive way that the Justice Department and the FBI go about their business when they are trying to make a case — one profoundly different from the way they went about the Clinton emails investigation. There, they tried not to make the case.”

“Mueller succeeded in convincing a federal judge to force an attorney for Manafort and Gates to provide grand-jury testimony against them.”

“Interestingly, the jurist who rendered the 37-page memorandum opinion is Beryl A. Howell, who served for years as a senior Judiciary Committee adviser to the fiercely partisan Democratic Senator Pat Leahy (of Vermont) before being appointed to the bench by President Obama. Howell is now the district court’s chief judge. Why do I think that, in choosing to set up shop in Washington, Mueller and his team noted the district court’s local rule that vests the chief judge with responsibility to “hear and determine all matters relating to proceedings before the grand jury”? (See here, Rule 57.14 at p. 168.)”

“Compare that with the Justice Department’s treatment of the lawyers representing Mrs. Clinton and her accomplices. Actually, I shouldn’t really put it that way because . . . Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers were her accomplices.”