After Five Years, Dodd-Frank Is a Failure

by VERONIQUE DE RUGY July 20, 2015 2:13 PM 

When the Dodd-Frank Act took effect on July 21, 2010, critics were fast to predict that the 2,300 page-long legislation, which passed the House without a single Republican vote and received only three GOP votes in the Senate would fail. Tomorrow will mark the five-year anniversary of Dodd-Frank and its unfortunate distorting effects. Just as when it was passed, the legislation remains unable to address the problems it was intended to. 

  The legislation has overwhelmed the regulatory system, stifled the financial industry, impaired economic growth, and done nothing to correct the pernicious effects of “too big to fail.” But that’s only the beginning: Many more of its regulations still need to be written, some several years down the road, all of which injects massive uncertainty into the financial industry. Here is a round-up of interesting articles to read before this sad anniversary. First, we have a great piece by Chairman Hensarling in the Wall Street Journal (“After Five Years, Dodd-Frank is a Failure.”). Thankfully for us, the chairman is as committed to getting rid of Dodd-Frank as he was to getting rid of the Ex-Im Bank. I wish him the same success and more. The whole thing is worth a read, but here are a few paragraphs: Dodd-Frank was supposedly aimed at Wall Street, but it hit Main Street hard. 

Community financial institutions, which make the bulk of small business loans, are overwhelmed by the law’s complexity. Government figures indicate that the country is losing on average one community bank or credit union a day. Before Dodd-Frank, 75% of banks offered free checking. Two years after it passed, only 39% did so—a trend various scholars have attributed to Dodd-Frank’s “Durbin amendment,” which imposed price controls on the fee paid by retailers when consumers use a debit card. Bank fees have also increased due to Dodd-Frank, leading to a rise of the unbanked and underbanked among low- and moderate-income Americans. Has Dodd-Frank nevertheless made the financial system more secure? Many of the threats to financial stability identified in thelatest report of Dodd-Frank’s Financial Stability Oversight Council are primarily the result of the law itself, along with other government policies. There’s also a new report by John Berlau at CEI that shows how Dodd-Frank has stifled competition among the banks even more so than before the financial crisis.

 A failure to approve new banks, for instance, means that those “too big to fail” banks are now more entrenched than ever. In the last five years, regulators have approved only one new bank, as opposed to an average of 170 new banks per year before 2010. As Berlau notes: “This lack of new bank competitors is one important reason why a large bank failure could severely curtail the supply of credit and availability of financial services. That in turn sets the stage for a continuing cycle of bailouts.”  The New York Times has an interesting piece (“Fannie and Freddie are Back, Bigger and Badder Than Ever“) by Bethany McLean. It’s must read recap of the promises of what Freddie and Fannie would achieve vs. actually happened, along with the failure to reform two agencies in the aftermath of the financial crisis.    The proposed solutions for this mess? Among other things,

 Senator Warren believes it’s time to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that would require big banks to divide commercial and investment banking. Most economists and Federal Reserve policymakers disagree that the repeal of Glass-Steagall had anything to do with the financial crisis but, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders Martin O’Malley support the idea nonetheless. Hillary Clinton hasn’t said yet what she thinks of the proposal. However, according to Kevin Cirilli at The Hill, the White House is distancing itself from this push: The White House wants to keep its distance from a liberal push to re-implement legislation that would break up big banks… “At this point, we believe that the kind of implementation of Wall Street reform is the most effective way to protect our economy and middle-class taxpayers,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at a press briefing Friday when asked whether President Obama supports it. … Earnest said the administration is still focused on implementing the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law.   “Wall Street reform has been incredibly effective at reforming our financial system in a way that looks our for the interests of middle-class families and taxpayers,” Earnest said.

Via: National Review

Continue Reading.....

The US Navy's Cruise Missile Nightmare

The U.S. Navy has a problem. Or rather, it has two intertwined problems, one material and one intellectual and cultural. To all appearances, thankfully, the sea service has resolved to attack both of them. As psychologists say, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward solving it. And, I would add, it’s the biggest and most consequential step. Once you reorient yourself, deciding and acting constitute the easy part—relatively speaking, anyway. Ergo…

Huzzah!

The first of the navy’s woes is material. By and large American fighting ships and shipborne aircraft remain second to none as platforms. They’re festooned with state-of-the-art sensors, fire-control systems, propulsion plants, you name it. But the weapons they pack have fallen behind increasingly competitive times. Not since the early 1990s, for instance, has the surface navy procured a new anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM), its chief weapon for fleet-on-fleet engagements.

Time and technology moved on in the interim. Prospective competitors, notably China, have imported or manufactured missiles boasting greater reach, speed, and often times striking power than their U.S. counterparts. The U.S. Navy’s Harpoon missile, or standard ASCM, can strike at targets circa 76 miles distant. Impressive—except some Chinese ASCMs boast over triple that range, while the vast majority outrange the Harpoon by a sizable margin.

Which leaves American surface warriors—among whom I count myself despite the lapse of, ahem, a few short years—inhabiting an awkward spot.

Think about it in boxing terms. What happens when a short, stubby-armed boxer packing a crushing right squares off against a tall, rangy, equally musclebound opponent? It’s an unequal fight—never mind the apparent parity of strength. The long-armed pugilist jabs away from out of reach. He scores lots of points, and lands lots of blows. Sure, the brawny little guy may be a heavy hitter—but he takes a heckuva beating while closing the distance enough to counterpunch.

That takes its toll. Worse, the short-armed boxer may never get within reach. He could suffer a knockout before ever getting close enough to unleash that right. Likewise, never getting within missile range while an enemy pounds away is a Bad Thing in sea combat. Which antagonist fields the better platforms matters little if one fleet gets in range to deploy its principal armament and the other doesn’t.

Far better to lengthen your reach while amassing battle power—making yourself the tall, rangy, musclebound pugilist.

Which is why recent news out of the defense-technology world warms the heart of any American sailor. Last month off the California coast, a Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile repurposed for anti-ship missions slammed into a moving target at sea. It was fired from destroyer USS Kidd and guided by position data relayed from a F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft overhead.

The reconfigured Block IV constitutes a new, old capability—the sort of undead U.S. mariners like. The navy leadership ordered Tomahawk anti-ship cruise missiles (TASMs) withdrawn from the fleet during the 1990s, when U.S. maritime supremacy appeared beyond challenge and the sea service turned its attention to projecting power ashore. That took a very, very long-range weapon out of the surface (and subsurface) navy’s arsenal—a weapon that would outdistance most if not all of its competitors on the high seas today.

Restoring that range advantage would restore the surface fleet’s fighting edge over competitors—matching superior platforms with superior combat power. Small wonder Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work touts the nouveau TASM as an inexpensive “game-changing capability.” The missile—the expensive component—exists. Fielding a new seeker to find and target shipping is relatively straightforward.

Still to come: a test of the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), a “bird” under development since 2009 under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the Pentagon’s analogue to Q, the high-tech wizard from the James Bond films. If test-fired successfully from the vertical-launch system carried aboard surface combatants, the LRASM will add another arrow to the navy’s quiver in the not-too-distant future. Faster, please.

Neither bird is perfect. Both the Tomahawk and LRASM remain subsonic missiles, which means it takes them a long time to reach distant targets, which means the target may have moved by the time the missile reaches assigned coordinates, which means these weapons will presumably rely on airborne updates of the type used during last month’s test—even once perfected. Networking shooter with aircraft with missile opens up opportunities for mischief-making by adversaries who have every incentive to balk U.S. naval operations. Such is the reality of naval warfare.

Still, these are encouraging developments all around. For an appraisal of the second problem besetting our navy…tune in next week!!! 

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010. He is RCD’s new national security columnist. The views voiced here are his alone.

Via: Real Clear Defense

Continue Reading....

CNN’S MARC LAMONT HILL: ‘STUPID’ FOR O’MALLEY TO SAY ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’

Appearing on CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow on Sunday evening, liberal CNN contributor and Morehouse College Professor Marc Lamont Hill asserted that it was "stupid" for former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley to declare that "All lives matter" during a far left Netroots Nation event over the weekend.

Hill went on to compare the Maryland Democrat's comments to declaring that "all houses matter" when there is only one house on fire that needs immediate attention.

After fellow guest and conservative talk radio host Ben Ferguson jabbed Hillary Clinton for refusing to show up at the Netroots event, Hill complained about her absence:

I understand Ben's point, which is that, as a political calculus, it's better to run from this stuff than to take it head on because you end up saying something stupid like, "All lives matter," like Martin O'Malley did.

Poppy Harlow requested clarification from him as she posed:

Real quick, explain to those who might not understand why it was offensive to say, "All lives matter."

Hill began:

Well, outside of context, saying, "All lives matter," is reasonable, right? All lives do matter. The Black Lives Matter movement has never been about denying the legitimacy of other people's suffering. It's never been about saying all lives don't matter or that black lives are superior to other lives. The point is that there's a crisis going on. There is a crisis in the black community of state violence. There's a crisis of extra-judicial violence against black bodies. There's a crisis of mass incarceration, of poverty.

The liberal professor continued:

All these things are happening and they're targeted, disproportionately targeted toward black people. And to develop a movement and say black people need support in this way, black people's lives need to be affirmed and confirmed and protected in this way, to make that movement, and then to have people say, "Hey, but what about white people?" to me is to avoid the point. It's almost as if saying we can't affirm the humanity of black people without also bringing in some white people, we can't talk about the value of black life unless we talk about something else.

If there are two houses on a hill, one is on fire, I'm not going to scream out, "All houses matter!" I'm going to put out the fire in the one that's on fire. Right now, there's a fire in the black community.

Via: Newsbusters

Continue Reading...

TRANSGENDER OREGON RESIDENT COLLECTED SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER MALE AND FEMALE NAMES

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon resident who transitioned to a woman more than three decades ago continued collecting Social Security disability checks under her male identity, fraudulently raking in $250,000.

Court records show Richelle McDonald was born Richard McDonald in 1945. In 1974, Richard claimed disability because he was unable to work after suffering a serious arm injury when hit by a San Francisco bus.

McDonald in the 1970s also applied for a separate Social Security number under the name Richelle. She worked under that name from the early 1980s until 2012 while continuing to collect disability payments as Richard.

McDonald pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud in December and was sentenced Monday to eight months of home confinement. She must also pay restitution.

The 70-year-old apologized in court.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Study: Uber is twice as fast as taxi service and half the price

Uber is twice as fast as taxi service and about half the cost of a regular taxi, according to a new study of the company's ride-sharing app conducted in Los Angeles.

The average UberX ride took just under 7 minutes to arrive, versus over 17 minutes for a taxi requested by phone. For the same rides, the average UberX trip cost $6.40, while the cost of using the taxi was $14.63, including tip.

UberX gets people rides through private people driving their own cars, instead of professional drivers.

The study was conducted by the research firm BOTEC Analysis and funded by Uber, the leading ride-sharing company that has seen massive success but also tough opposition from regulators and taxi companies, which have charged that Uber can hurt poor people.

"The evidence in hand strongly suggests that UberX outperforms conventional taxis in serving low-income neighborhoods, at least in Los Angeles," wrote Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University and the chairman of BOTEC, in a blog post Monday.

The study sent pairs of riders out in low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles and asked them to alternate between hailing private drivers through Uber or taxis for pre-selected routes. The riders, who were hired through a staffing agency and didn't know the study was funded by Uber, collected data relating to arrival times and costs. The study noted that it is not typical to hail taxis on the street in Los Angeles' sprawling neighborhoods.

The study did not test the app versus taxis anywhere other than Los Angeles, nor did it measure other variables of interest in the debate over ride-sharing and other so-called "sharing economy" apps, such as service to disabled people, availability in all neighborhoods, or treatment of different ethnic or racial groups.

Nor did it address the welfare of the people providing the service, which was the question raised by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a speech on the economy last week. Clinton said the rise of sharing economy companies was "raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future."

• This article has been corrected to reflect that Mark Kleiman is a professor at New York University.

Via: Washington Examiner

Continue Reading....

Homeland Security Leaders Bent Rules on Private E-Mail

By Josh Rogin

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and 28 of his senior staffers have been using private Web-based e-mail from their work computers for over a year, a practice criticized by cybersecurity experts and advocates of government transparency.

The department banned such private e-mail on DHS computers in April 2014. Top DHS officials were granted informal waivers, according to a top DHS official who said that he saw the practice as a national security risk. The official said the exempt staffers included Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Chief of Staff Christian Marrone and General Counsel Stevan Bunnell.

Asked about the exceptions on Monday, the DHS press secretary, Marsha Catron, confirmed that some officials had been exempted. "Going forward," she said, "all access to personal webmail accounts has been suspended."

Future exceptions are to be granted only by the chief of staff. Catron said that a "recent internal review" had found the chief of staff and some others were unaware that they had had access to webmail.

The DHS rule, articulated last year after hackers first breached the Office of Personnel Management, states: "The use of Internet Webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL) or other personal email accounts is not authorized over DHS furnished equipment or network connections." Johnson and the 28 other senior officials sought and received informal waivers at different times over the past year, the official said. Catron said exceptions were decided on a case-by-case basis by the chief information officer, Luke McCormack. DHS employees are permitted to use their government e-mail accounts for limited personal use.

Erica Paulson, a spokeswoman for the DHS Office of the Inspector General, said that the office does not confirm or deny the existence of any open investigations.

It remains unclear whether Johnson and the other officials conducted DHS business on their private webmail accounts. (The DHS spokeswoman said "the use of personal e-mail for official purposes is strictly prohibited.") If even one work-related e-mail was sent or received, they could be in violation of regulations and laws governing the preservation of federal records, said Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

"I suppose it is remotely conceivable that in seeking a waiver, 20 or more government officials could all be wishing to talk to each other through a Web-based e-mail service about such matters as baseball games or retirement luncheons they might be attending," he said. "But it is simply not reasonable to assume that in seeking a waiver that the officials involved were only contemplating using a commercial network for personal (that is, non-official) communications."

In March, the New York Times reported that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had used a private e-mail server exclusively to conduct her State Department business. Clinton said she had not violated any transparency laws because the Federal Records Act states that officials are permitted to use private e-mail, so long as they forward on any government-related communications to their government accounts so they can be archived and used to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

In November 2014, the Federal Records Act was amended to impose a 20-day limit on the time an official has to transfer records from private e-mail to government systems. Clinton transferred over 30,000 e-mails from her private server to the State Department in early 2015. She deleted another 30,000 e-mails on her private server, claiming they were all strictly personal.

It is unclear how Johnson and the other officials used their webmail accounts, and whether they forwarded any messages about government business to their official accounts.

Johnson has used his personal Gmail for government business at least once, before he was head of DHS; that was disclosed during the scandal that led to David Petraeus's resignation as CIA director. The Justice Department is fighting to keep Johnson from having to give a video deposition in that case.

Via: Boomberg View

Continue Reading....

Lies, Damn Lies and John Kerry

Benjamin NetanyahuVerified account‏@netanyahu

Today: • Khamenei tweeted video calling for Israel's destruction • UN voted to lift sanctions on Iran Says it all. https://youtu.be/cMJinyFFmsw 

Just to bring you up to date in the ongoing efforts of the Obama administration to provide Iran with $150 billion and the ability to make a nuclear weapon. These are developments over the weekend:

Via Washington Examiner

Secretary of State John Kerry deflected bipartisan criticism of the Obama administration’s move to take the Iran nuclear deal to the United Nations before the U.S. Congress has the opportunity to vote on it, saying the U.N. has a right to go first and to suggest otherwise was “presumptuous.”

Obama had previously signed legislation that would give Congress 60 days to review and vote on the deal struck over Iran’s nuclear program. But since agreeing on the deal with the other world powers, the administration has announced its intention to bring the deal to the United Nations first.

Thus, by the time Congress votes, the administration will argue that were the body to reject the deal, they’d be blowing up a U.N.-approved agreement.

What this means is that by the time Congress gets around to voting on the deal, international sanctions on Iran will have been lifted. The only remaining sanctions are those which Obama has the authority to modify. While there remains the theoretical possibility of ‘snap back’ sanctions if Iran breaches the agreement (this, by the way, is virtually certain as they are already in violation of the interim agreement), for this to happen would require an affirmative vote of the UN Security Council. Russia and China are Iran’s allies. Both have veto authority.

One is left to wonder what in the hell Congress is voting on.

It is Bush’s fault.

CNN State of the UnionQUESTION: I’ve spoken to a lot of experts, ones who wanted this deal to be good, who were rooting for you. And they say the best case scenario is that over the next 15 years… the Iranians will be closer to the capacity to build a nuclear weapon… and they’ll have done it all under the guise of international law.
KERRY: … Guess what, my friend: Iran had 12,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and that’s enough if they enriched it further for 10 to 12 bombs. They had it. That’s what Barack Obama was dealt as a hand when he came in: 19,000 centrifuges already spinning; a country that had already mastered the fuel cycle; a country that already was threshold in the sense that they are only two months away from breakout.

Fox News SundayQUESTION: Secretary Moniz… why didn’t [President Obama] keep his pledge to the American people that we would end Iran’s program?
MONIZ: Well, first of all, the issue of Iran having a nuclear program was already established in the previous administration.

My gosh, when will this excuse ever wear out.

When he took office the Iranians had less than 4,000 centrifuges spinning and experts were still arguing over whether they had enough uranium for a bomb. He almost immediately began to reach out to the Iranians with confidence-building measures. They also didn’t have “19,000 centrifuges already spinning” they had 3,936 centrifuges spinning. And they were not 2 months away from breakout but instead were just getting around to stockpiling enough uranium for a single bomb [e].

In short, every thing Kerry and Moniz said was a lie and they knew it was a lie.

The administration is lying about Iran’s break out time.

Fox News Sunday
QUESTION: But the President said in April:
OBAMA: In year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges, they can enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.
QUESTION: That’s not ending the program.
MONIZ: The breakout time, in fact, will not be going to zero at that time.
QUESTION: So the President was –
MONIZ: The – I’m just telling you we have the agreement has – the final agreement has the one-year breakout time securely for 10 years and then there will be a soft landing after that for several years.
QUESTION: Right. So by year 13, 14 it’s –
KERRY: It never, ever goes to zero. Ever.
MONIZ: No, it will never go to zero.

This is balderdash translated into gibberish then blown out of Kerry’s ass. Back in April, the administration said the break out time was two months. Now it is a year. Logic tells you that this can’t be true. Assuming that break out time is a year, it means that Iran will have a nuke within a year because there is no mechanism available to monitor their progress or curb their development.

Anytime-anywhere inspections are dead.

Iran has already said that it will not allow inspections of military nuclear facilities and it will not allow US inspectors on the IAEA teams. Without unannounced inspections we are back to playing a shell game. Kerry is trying to gaslight everyone by claiming there is no such thing as ‘anytime-anywhere’ inspections because that isn’t an official term.

CBS Face the NationKERRY: There’s no such thing in arms control as anytime, anywhere. There isn’t any nation in the world – none – that has an anytime, anywhere.

Fox News SundayKERRY: The fact is that in arms control there is no country anywhere on this planet that has anywhere, anytime. There is no such standard within arms control inspections… we never, ever had a discussion about anywhere, anytime. It’s called managed access. It’s under the IAEA. Everybody understands it.

This is actually a lie. Everyone knows what the term means and the administration has guaranteed Congress that it will have that access.

The arms embargo is dead.

ABC This Week
KERRY: The United Nations resolution which brought about the sanctions in the first place said that if Iran will suspend its enrichment and come to negotiations, all the sanctions would be lifted. Now, they’ve done more than just come to negotiations. They’ve actually negotiated a deal. And three of the seven nations thought they shouldn’t therefore be held to any kind of restraint. We prevailed and insisted, no, they have to be.

CBS Face the Nation
KERRY: … [T]he reason that we were only able to limit them to the five and eight, which is quite extraordinary that we got that, was that three of the nations negotiating thought they shouldn’t have any and were ready to hold out to do that. And we said under no circumstances, we have to have those…

Fox News Sunday
KERRY: This is a nuclear negotiation about a nuclear program. The United Nations, when they passed the resolution, contemplated that if Iran came to the negotiation and they ponied up, all the sanctions would be lifted. We didn’t lift all the sanctions. We left in place despite the fact that three out of seven countries negotiating wanted to do away with them altogether. We won the five years for the arms and eight years for the missiles.

A majority of the negotiators wanted to retain an arms embargo. He refers to seven countries but keep in mind one of those is Iran. The US caved on this. If the US had stood with Britain and France and Germany it would have put Iran in the position of sacrificing everything for the sake of ending the arms embargo.

Summary.

John Kerry is a liar. He’s not a particularly skilled one… I don’t know whether this is good or bad, I rather think it is bad because he practices the skill regularly but never improves. The US position on the Iran negotiations is on our hands and knees squealing like a pig.

Via: Red State

Continue Reading....

Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Try Calling the IRS, Forget It – They Won’t Answer the Phone and Hung Up on 8.8 Million Callers Last Year

Republican cuts to the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) budget are manifesting as trouble for American taxpayers by degrading the service that they can expect from their government. During this most recent tax season, the IRS hung up on 8.8 million taxpayer, reportedAllGov.com.

According to a report from the National Taxpayer Advocate Service (NTAS), the IRS disconnected from so many people because they lacked enough staff to handle the large call volume. Last year, that number was nowhere near as bad, with 500,000 disconnections. The problem has grown exponentially since then. Last year, the average hold time for callers was 14 minutes. That time increased to 23 minutes by this most recent tax season.

“Millions of taxpayers were unable to reach the IRS by phone; millions did not receive a timely response (if any) to their correspondence; and many more may have had to pay a tax preparer or professional for answers to tax law questions,” wrote NTAS researcher Nina Olson.

Since 2010, Congress has cut IRS funding by $1.2 billion. This effort has been led by Congressional Republicans. The GOP has long been an enemy of the IRS and seeks to find any possible means of dismantling the agency. Having trouble with the IRS? Blame the Republicans.

Via RIng of Fire Radio

Continue Reading....

Rush: Trump Tells Establishment to 'Go to Hell'

(REUTERS/Jim Young)

Donald Trump is defying "conventional belief" by doubling down and refusing to apologize to Sen. John McCain for comments made over the weekend that at first questioned the senator's reputation as a war hero before saying that he is one, talk show host Rush Limbaugh said Monday.

"The American people haven't seen something like this in a long time," Limbaugh said on his radio program. "They have not seen an embattled public figure stand up, double down, and tell everyone to go to hell."

Limbaugh insisted that he is not a Trump apologist, but said the media and politicians are following a typical trail they use when they want to get rid of a public figure, and the talk show host said a similar pattern is often followed on his own controversial statements.

"Under conventional belief, a public figure makes a politically incorrect statement that offends somebody," said Limbaugh. "The Washington establishment and media react in outrage, and the media replays the offensive comment over and over and over."

Eventually, the establishment "gets together with the media" and all demand the public figure apologize, beg forgiveness, and withdraw from public life and "stay in chagrined irrelevance," said Limbaugh.

"This charade plays whenever this circumstance happens," said Limbaugh, and there is one fatal mistake made, when it is assumed that "the collective outrage of the Washington establishment and the media is reflective of the American people."

He noted that journalist Sharyl Attkisson wrote a "great analysis" of the Saturday incident. 

"It is a fact that Trump did not say what he is being reputed to say," said Limbaugh, that "McCain's not a hero, and so forth. Four different times, he said McCain is a war hero."

"Facts don't matter in a circumstance like this," Limbaugh said, but instead, statements are "purposely blurred, lied about or ignored, much like my ill fated commentary on ESPN. Take something that wasn't said and blow it out of proportion."

He also pointed out that Trump said what he did "following McCain's insult of Trump's supporters, calling them 'crazies.' This ticked Trump off, [because] he doesn't want to think they're a bunch of crazed wackos." 

But nobody is suggesting McCain apologize, but the media and Washington's establishment are all demanding apologies and saying that Trump's campaign can't survive, as is the usual pattern, said Limbaugh.

"Except one thing hasn't happened: Trump hasn't apologized," said Limbaugh. "Not only he hasn't, but he doubled down and added to his original criticism."

And the "architects" of the scandal "don't know what to do...the guilty party is begging for forgiveness but Trump has not," he said.

Via: Newsmax

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] CONSERVATIVE TV HOST TOMI LAHREN SPELLS IT OUT FOR OBAMA, THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY

If you aren’t familiar with Tomi Lahren, you probably haven’t seen this video that has skyrocketed to over 300k views in just a few days, or you don’t watch her on OANN, a relatively new news network that features her at 10pm. I just recently switched to AT&T so now I can watch her live.

This video is a rant she did last week after the murder of our four marines, telling our president that radical Islam was what did this, not climate change or gay marriage or anything else. It’s pretty dang awesome.

Via: The Right Scoop

Continue Reading....

Two Business Owners Fight the IRS to Get Their Seized Money Back

On the last day of Ramadan, which ended Friday, Khalid (Ken) Quran was headed to work.

The owner of a convenience store in Greenville, N.C., Quran works seven days a week with little opportunity for vacation, and has been since he first arrived in the United States in 1997. The ending of the month of fasting was supposed to be a day of celebration for Quran, who worked as a fireman in a town north of Jerusalem before immigrating, but instead it’s just like any other day.

For nearly two decades, Quran has been working to provide for his wife and four children here in the United States. He’s been successful, putting all four of them through college with the money his store makes, and saving for retirement.

But on a June day last year, Quran nearly lost it all after the Internal Revenue Service seized $153,907.99 from his store’s bank account

He was never charged with a crime.

“The United States government—they stole my money,” he said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “I’m working all my life, seven days a week, and they just came in here and took it.”

When two IRS agents came into Quran’s convenience store last year, he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong. But the agents told him he had committed multiple structuring violations, which involves making cash deposits or withdrawals of under $10,000 to skirt reporting requirements.

“The United States government—they stole my money.I’m working all my life, seven days a week, and just came in here and took it,” said Khalid Quran.

When the government officials came into Quran’s store to tell him his money had been seized, they provided him with a form confirming his “consent to forfeit.” Quran, whose first language is Arabic, said he had trouble understanding the form’s legal jargon.

The officers offered to read it for him, Quran recalled, and they ordered him to sign it, yelling in his face. If he didn’t, the IRS agents said they would go to Quran’s wife, Dina, and get her signature instead–which he viewed as a veiled threat.

Via: Daily Signal

Continue Reading....