HALF-FULL REPORT 07/15/16
Donald Trump has chosen Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to be his running mate. A former Congressman with national ambitions, Pence was once a conservative darling. But he lost a support in Indiana and a cred with conservatives last year when he first backed a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and then backtracked after pressure from gay activists and big business.
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The list of speakers at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week was released yesterday. There are six Trumps on it, four billionaires, four reality tv stars, two soap opera stars.
The prominent politicians on the list – Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark – all expect Hillary to beat Trump, hope to use their convention speeches to jump start their campaigns for 2020.
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A “Tunisian born Frenchman,” Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, drove a heavy truck into a crowd in Nice, France celebrating Bastille day, then opened fire, killing at least 84, two of them Americans, and at least 10 children. It would have been worse were it not for this guy.
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Theresa May became Britain’s prime minister Wednesday (7/13). Ms. May, 59, Britain’s longest serving Home Secretary, is “unpredictable and moralistic,” said the Guardian, a left-wing British newspaper, “but in time of national crisis, her calm consistency and sense of moral duty may be just what is called for.”
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President Obama now wants to have the U.S. military work with the Russians in Syria. The Pentagon thinks it’s a bad idea.
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It’s starting to dawn on foreign policy “experts” that North Korea is building nuclear weapons because it plans to use them.
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In a breach of decorum so shocking the New York Times felt compelled to denounce it, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a public attack on Donald Trump.
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According to Social Justice Warriors, the Obama administration and the Lying Swine, this couldn’t possibly have happened.
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Join the forum discussion on this postDRAKE AND THE SULTAN
Ternate, Spice Islands of the Moluccas, present day Indonesia. I am here in the place that started the Western exploration of the world.
The Spice Islands
It was the goal of Columbus in 1492 to get here – which of course he never did with the American continents getting in the way. Vasco da Gama decided to try the other way around Africa – which he did, reaching the southwest coast of India in 1498.
By 1512, Vasco’s fellow Portuguese made it all the way – to the fabled Spice Islands, the only source on earth for nutmeg, mace, and cloves. Since the Middle Ages, they were esteemed by Europeans for their medicinal and culinary properties.
As such, they were fantastically expensive, especially because the Arabs had a monopoly on the overland trade routes. Breaking the monopoly with sea routes meant unbelievable profits. So the Portuguese cashed in. A pocketful of nutmeg seed pods could buy you a home. Imagine what an entire shipload was worth.
Ferdinand Magellan convinced Portugal’s rival, Spain led by Charles V, that he could break the Portuguese spice monopoly by sailing west – for by now (1518) everyone knew there was an ocean on the other side of the Americas but no one had crossed it. Magellan did it, but was killed in the Philippines in 1521 before he got here.
So the Portuguese got to keep the Spice Islands, where they built their first fort – called Kastela – here on Ternate in 1522. The Spanish found there were almost unimaginable amounts of gold and silver for the taking in their new colonies along the west coast of South America and forgot about the Pacific Ocean.
Fifty years later, history was about to shift.
BLUE LIVES MATTER
“To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Black Lives Matter after five Dallas police officers were killed during a BLM protest.
Here’s who the Dallas Police Five were, murdered simply for the color of their skin.
Black Lives Matter doesn’t practice what it preaches. Neither do President Obama or most in the news media. Jumping to conclusions before the facts are known also is dangerous and irresponsible.
Black Lives Matter was begun in 2013. Participants in BLM’s often violent protests have called for the murder of police.
Was Micah Xavier Johnson, the cop-killer in Dallas, who said he “wanted to kill white people,” listening?
Was Lakeem Keon Scott in Bristol, Tennessee listening? Last Thursday (7/07), he shot four whites at random, murdering one, because he was angry about police violence against African-Americans. Since the shooting in Dallas, blacks have ambushed cops in Georgia, Missouri and Indiana.
Black Lives Matter “is a radical hate group,” said El Paso police chief Greg Allen, who is black. BLM is “a vile, vitriolic hateful movement,” said Milwaukee County (Wis) Sheriff David Clarke, who is black.
Yet at a memorial service yesterday (7/12) for the slain Dallas police officers, President Obama had the unconscionable gall to defend the BLM protests.
The president is trying “to calm racial tensions that his own behavior has done much to aggravate,” said former Fox News anchor Brit Hume. He “reminds me of a pyromaniac who sets a fire and then calls 911,” Sheriff Clarke said.
DIVEST FROM PALESTINE
On June 30, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old girl, was asleep when she was murdered in her own bedroom. She had just graduated 8th grade. It was her summer vacation and she was taking it easy. The Moslem terrorist who broke into her bedroom stabbed her over and over again. Eventually he slit her throat. The mattress that she slept on was soaked in blood. Her room with its casual teenage disarray, clothes tossed around carelessly, was stained red with the last gush of life from the girl who had played there, danced there and dreamed of the future that would never be hers. The murder happened in Israel, but Hallel was an American citizen. Her government not only failed to protect her, it financed her bloody death. And it will go on rewarding her killer’s family.
The United States has officially condemned Hallel’s murder. Its current government however will do nothing to stop the Palestinian Authority from funding terrorism. Instead it will usE its power to continue funding it. Hallel was not the first American to be murdered by Moslem terrorists this year. She was the seventh.
THE WORLD KNOWS TODAY BEIJING IS THE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
The South China Sea has become the most dangerous fault-line in the world. Beijing and Washington are on a collision course over these contested waters, the shipping lane for 60% of global trade.
To The Point has been predicting this for years. The prescience of that prediction became quite clear today.
This morning (7/12), the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled against China, that it has no “historic title” to areas of this sea stretching all the way to the ‘nine dash line’ - deep into the territorial waters of a ring of South East Asian states.
Beijing has as expected dismissed the verdict with scorn, accusing the tribunal of “shamelessly abusing its authority.” The state media said the country “must be prepared for any military confrontation” with the US, and must not flinch from war if provoked.
It is the latest in a series ominous developments in Asia and Europe that are rapidly subverting the Western international system and setting off a global rearmament race with strong echoes of the late-1930s.
IN PRAISE OF ROUNDUP
I once tried the organic alternative to the herbicide Roundup for clearing weeds from garden paths: a flame-thrower.
It was brutal for the environment, incinerating innocent insects and filling the air with emissions. Next week I might have to go back to that. Roundup, the world’s safest, cheapest and most effective weedkiller, may be illegal within days in Europe.
Roundup (chemical name glyphosate) was due to have its licence extended for 15 years. Normally it would have been nodded through.
But this time the relevant French and German ministers, Segolene Royale and Barbara Hendricks, nervous about the Greenie vote, have blocked the renewal, and the best that farmers and gardeners can hope for is an 18-month extension till after French and German elections.
Yet almost everybody agrees that glyphosate is safe: the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, my own British government.
Even at absurdly high concentrations, lab tests show it is only one-tenth as carcinogenic as coffee – and you don’t drink Roundup.
THE END OF THE WORLD IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING NEAR
Is today the worst of times? This past week we had shootings of police and shootings by police. The world economy and political situation is a mess. It is a time of crisis without an apparent Churchill, Thatcher or Reagan?
Yet, in many ways, things have never been better. In 1930, 304 American police officers were killed in the line of duty; last year it was 122.
In 1930, the U.S. population was a little over one third of what it is today, so, on a population adjusted basis, there were about seven times as many policemen being killed per year 85 years ago compared to recent years. And police killing of others, including black men, has also fallen sharply.
Most everything we buy becomes less expensive and better over time. A few decades ago, the doomsayers claimed that we were going to run out of many commodities, like oil. The fact is that most commodity prices, in real terms, are near record lows, and proven global oil reserves have never been higher.
Many improvements, and particularly new products and innovations, are not fully captured in the economic statistics, which means that the real improvements in well-being are underreported.
SUPPORTING YOUR KIDS WITHOUT OBSESSION
“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” – Joseph Campbell
Since the dawn of time, parents have wanted the best for their kids. They’re our link to the future beyond our own time here on Earth.
More importantly, we feel a connection with our kids: a visceral bond. When they’re happy, we feel delight. When they hurt, we feel pain. When they succeed, we feel proud. When they fail, we feel the loss.
It’s natural to want good things for our kids. We want them to grow into strong, good people. We want them to have work they love that enables them to live well. We want them to find good friends and a wonderful mate with whom they can grow a beautiful, loving life.
We want them to succeed.
But there’s an expression of this natural sentiment that’s growing across a large spectrum of our population. It troubles me.
HILLARY PICKS EM’ GOOD
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/08/16
Snipers killed five Dallas police officers, wounded seven others and two civilians last night (7/7). One suspect has been killed, three are in custody. Others may still be at large.
One suspect told police negotiators “he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” said police chief David Brown, who is black.
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In his statement today, Mr. Obama blamed the Dallas shootings in part on lack of gun control.
“When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist,” Ben Shapiro noted. “But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops (or when Islamists murder gay people) the left suggests that gun control is the issue.”
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FBI Director James Comey spent 12 minutes laying out in exhaustive detail how Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state endangered national security, violated at least three criminal statutes. But then the FBI Director said he wasn’t recommending prosecution, because Hillary hadn't intended to harm the United States.
Some of the statements Hillary made under oath were “not true,” the FBI Director told the House Oversight Committee yesterday. That’s perjury, Republicans said. Comey also said Hillary is “not sophisticated enough” to understand classified markings. She was, however, sophisticated enough to order classified markings to be removed from documents she sent via her private server.
In must see TV, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, a crackerjack prosecutor before being elected to Congress, leads Comey through the evidence Hillary intended to break the law.
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After Comey handed him a club with which he could have beaten Hillary all week, The Donald Tuesday retweeted from a neo-Nazi web site an anti-Semitic cartoon, and praised Saddam Hussein.
This was at least the fifth time Trump has diverted the news media’s attention from a breaking anti-Hillary story by saying something stupid or obnoxious.
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Austria’s constitutional court has thrown out the results of the presidential election in May, narrowly won by the leftist candidate, due to massive voter “irregularities.” The court ordered a new election for September. If Norbert Hofer, who opposes massive Muslim immigration, wins the rerun, he would be "the first far-right head of state in the European Union," Reuters whined.