Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Tag Archives: Jimmy Carter

Ninth Circuit Vacancies Present Trump With Incredible Opportunity

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 2, 2018: 

Map of the geographic boundaries of the variou...

Map of the geographic boundaries of the various United States Courts of Appeals and United States District Courts.

With the death last week of “liberal lion” Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, there are now seven vacancies on the 29-judge court  — a court so liberal that 80 percent of its decision are reversed when appealed to the Supreme Court. However, the unusual number of vacancies means one fourth of the composition of the Ninth Circuit could be Trump nominees, not enough to make it conservative but enough to move the court to the right.

After Reinhardt’s passing, Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Runyan Thomas offered his condolences:

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Is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Impervious to Change?

his article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, April 2, 2018:

English: George Armstrong Custer.

English: George Armstrong Custer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The president’s problem with the 9th Circuit – provably the most liberal court in the land with a nearly 80 percent reversal rate on rulings that are appealed to and considered by the Supreme Court – may be the same faced by George Armstrong Custer: there were just too many Indians! In Trump’s case, there may be too many liberals, both on the court and in the Senate for him to make any substantive change, no matter how desperate the need.

Custer didn’t recover, but, over time, the American Republic just might. With the death of the court’s most liberal judge, “liberal lion” Stephen Reinhardt, law professor Carl Tobias got excited:

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Is the NFL Now Just Another Progressive Mouthpiece?

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, November 8, 2017: 

English: Vin Scully

Vin Scully

Far-left progressive Joe Lockhart took over PR duties at the NFL in February 2016. In August, black revolutionary Colin Kaepernick took a knee. Roger Goodell did nothing, despite NFL rules that players are not allowed to make political statements while working.

Is this a bridge too far?

Let’s consider.

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Dodgers Sportscaster Vin Scully Latest to Snub the NFL

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 7, 2017: 

English:

Vin Scully

Last week, former sportcaster Vin Scully expressed his disgust with NFL players kneeling — aka, the “anthem protests” — by making his final announcement: “I will never watch another NFL game again.” Added Scully, “I am so disappointed.… I used to love, during the fall and winter, to watch the NFL on Sunday…. I was in the Navy.… I have overwhelming respect and admiration for anyone who puts on a uniform and goes to war.”

Scully, the voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers and then the Los Angeles Dodgers for an astonishing 67 seasons, was best known for his introduction to Dodger baseball:

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Trump’s Regulatory Executive Order: One In, Two Out

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 30, 2017:

Official Portrait of President Ronald Reagan

White House officials described President Donald Trump’s Executive Order for “Reducing Government Regulations and Controlling Regulatory Cost” as Trump’s “one in, two out” plan: For every regulation promulgated by a federal agency, that agency must “identify” two existing regulations to be targeted for extinction.

The order also sets a cap of $0 for the cost of new regulations, with the only exceptions being military and national security regulations. The president said when signing the order,

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Will Mick Mulvaney Pull Trump’s Financial Fat Out of the Fire?

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 19, 2016:  

English: Official portrait of US Rep. Mick Mul...

Michael “Mick” Mulvaney (shown) rode the Tea Party wave in 2010 into Congress, replacing a 14-term Democrat from South Carolina’s 5th District. He has been handily reelected ever since. He took his oath of office seriously, saying in 2010 that “If political reporters want to know what drives the Tea Partiers, it is their belief in the Constitution. That’s what has always driven me in politics and will guide me in Congress.”

He remained as true to his word as any of those riding the same wave,

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Mutt and Jeff? Laurel and Hardy? Crosby and Hope? Preibus and Bannon?

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, November 16, 2016:  

Cover of "The Road to Hong Kong"

The Mutt and Jeff comic strip began in 1907 and lasted until 1983, with Al Smith drawing them for nearly 50 years. The slapstick comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy played to audiences from 1927 to 1950 while Bing Crosby and Bob Hope made seven “Road” films starting in 1940 and ending with “the Road to Hong Kong” in 1962. An eighth “Road” film was planned in 1977, “The Road to the Fountain of Youth,” but it was canceled when Crosby died of a heart attack that year.

Question: how long is the “co-equal” partnership of Reince Preibus and Steve Bannon likely to last?

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Trump Names Steve Bannon as Co-Equal of Priebus

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 15, 2016:  

Donald Trump’s announcement on Sunday that he was naming Reince Priebus as his chief of staff and Steve Bannon (shown) as his chief political advisor generated outrage from the Left and the Right. While the Right accused Trump of selling out his principles by installing longtime Republican stalwart Reince Priebus as his personal gatekeeper, most of the Left’s outrage was focused on Bannon, who has made it his life’s mission to oppose and expose the establishment’s control of the media and the political process in general.

Those who know him, however, have a vastly different and more favorable view of the man.

Running Breitbart News ever since its founder, Andrew Breitbart, died in 2012, Bannon has tapped into, and augmented, an increasing number of citizens’ distaste of and outrage against the establishment. More than 40 million people view his website every month,

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Comeuppance in the Oil Patch

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, August 3, 2016:  

Looking down from Heaven, George Mitchell must be pleased with what’s going on below: oil inventories are growing to the point where offshore tankers and railroad tank cars are having to be used for storage, oil and gas prices are dropping along with the costs of all the other 6,000 consumer products made from petroleum, rig counts are increasing, production costs are dropping, and, best of all, OPEC’s influence is waning daily.

The Economist called Mitchell the father of fracking in its eulogy following his death in July, 2013. They referred to him as

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Fracking Boom and the Development of America’s Energy Resources

This article will appear as the cover story in the next issue of The New American print magazine:

Travis Wright’s first impressions of Williston, North Dakota, in January 2012 remain vivid. It was bitter cold and the Walmart parking lot was filled to overflowing with campers and RVs whose owners were using them as de facto homes while working in the oil fields. Once inside Walmart, Travis discovered pallets of goods blocking the aisles as the understaffed nighttime crew of stockers simply couldn’t keep up with demand. He quickly learned to do his shopping in the middle of the night when the lines were only 30 minutes long. He learned later that this Walmart in Williston was the highest-grossing one in North America. The local economy was booming to such an extent that even paying $17 an hour for entry-level jobs, store officials couldn’t find enough employees to work for that amount.

Travis — at 6′6″ and 280 pounds, his friends called him Big ‘Un — was also astonished to learn

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What’s Behind the Attack on Fracking?

The following is the text of a talk I made in September to some oil industry people in Nashville:

In the opening sequence of the movie Gasland, Josh Fox, the film’s producer, said:

One day I got a letter in the mail. It was from a natural gas company. The letter told me that my land was on top of a formation that was called the Marcellus Shale which stretched across Pennsylvania… New York… Ohio… and West Virginia… and that the Marcellus Shale was the “Saudi Arabia” of natural gas.

I could lease my land to this company and I would receive a signing bonus of $4750 an acre. Having 19.5 acres, that was nearly $100,000… Right there in my hand. Could it be that easy?

No, it couldn’t.

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US oil output is up 25 percent from just one year ago

If the increase in US oil output continues to increase by 25% every year, as it did from September 2012 to September 2013, total US output would double every three years. It’s a simple case of mathematics, compound interest, and the Rule of 72.

The main thing working to keep that from happening is

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April 1st is the 71st Anniversary of California’s Deportment of Japanese Americans

On Wednesday, April 1st, 1942, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt issued “Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry” that they “will be evacuated from the above designated area [north San Francisco] by 12 o’clock noon Tuesday, April 7th… The Civil Control Station at 1701 Van Ness Avenue will provide temporary residence elsewhere…[and] transport persons…to their new residence…”. Some 120,000 persons were deported from California and sent to internment camps in

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Looking Behind the Latest Jobs Report Numbers

JOB Toulouse

(Photo credit: JiPs☆STiCk)

On the surface, Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) looked pretty good, and the response from establishment economists was predictable: the economy continues to grow, Obama’s policies are working, just give them time, and so forth.

For the record, BLS reported that “total non-farm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged [from September] at 7.9 percent.” It disclaimed any impact that Hurricane Sandy had on these numbers as the data upon which their report was based had been collected before the storm.

Diane Swonk, an economist at Mesirow Financial told CNBC: “The consumer’s feeling a little bit better…[employers] are not hiring out like crazy, but certainly you’ve got to welcome these kinds of numbers.” And Arne Kelleberg, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, claimed the report proved that “the fundamentals are strong. I do see the cyclical aspects of the unemployment situation being

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Wayne Allyn Root: Romney Will Win in a Walk

English: Wayne Allyn Root

Wayne Allyn Root (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wayne Allyn Root is the former Las Vegas oddsmaker with an uncanny record of calling the shots, both athletically and politically. Back in December, he predicted Romney would win the Republican nomination, and then would go on to win the presidency this November.

He also predicted the G.W. Bush victory in 2004 and that the GOP would get slaughtered in 2006. He also predicted a win for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in his recall election in June.

Now, he’s making his prediction in the November election crystal clear

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Don’t Bother Seeing 2016: Obama’s America?

I lost an hour and a half of my life Sunday at a matinee showing of the sleeper-hit documentary “2016: Obama’s America.” But I kept the stub for tax purposes, and you get to read this column. With luck, we’ll both end up just slightly worse off for the experience.

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the Hous...

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the US Capitol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gene Healy is a VP at Cato, one of my favorite think tanks, but I think he has successfully missed the main point of the movie: Obama is a mystery, and D’Souza is trying to figure it out.

Healy uses the rhetorical device of belittlement to misdirect the conversation:

D’Souza, “2016’s” narrator, stresses his commonalities with the president: born the same year, both with third-world parentage, both steeped in an anticolonial tradition. “I get it,” D’Souza assures us, which is why he alone has the secret decoder ring that can explain Obama’s positions on the war on terror, Israel, the Falkland Islands and much else besides.

This even applies to Obamacare:

Then there was the health care bill” D’Souza segues. But who needs a decoder ring to explain why, like every Democratic president of the post-WWII era save Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama pushed for universal health insurance? Does “anticolonialism” explain Obama’s embrace of a plan cooked up in a conservative think tank and first implemented by his 2012 Republican opponent?

This is misdirection of the first order. Just because Obama (more accurately, Nancy Pelosi and her thuggery) got Obamacare passed by Congress when other presidents couldn’t, doesn’t diminish the impact of it on

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Denver Debate: Romney 1, Obama 0

Romney Spanking ObamaConservative pundits with little understanding that whoever wins the election, the electorate loses, had a field day yesterday, chortling that their candidate romped over the incumbent at the Denver debate. One such was Pat Buchanan, who could scarcely contain himself:

Mitt Romney on Wednesday night turned in the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Patrick Buchanan has been close to, and sometimes inside, the establishment. He is familiar with its inner workings and machinations. Yet, to my knowledge, he has never acknowledged the influence of the Council on Foreign Relations as part of the establishment. He has never aknowledged the control the CFR has over the media. He has never acknowledged the control the CFR has over Romney, especially among his foreign policy staffers.

But Buchanan expressed what a lot of other commentators were saying:

Obama was mauled, with facts, figures, anecdotes, arguments, jokes, quips. A smiling Romney was on offense all night. And the president’s performance seems inexplicable.

With the split screen showing his response to Romney’s swarm attacks, he appeared diffident, sullen, pouting, flustered, petulant…

 The verdict on the Denver encounter – that Romney turned in the performance of his life and one of the most impressive in the history of presidential debates, and that the president underperformed, was outclassed and lost badly – was virtually unanimous.

Buchanan claims that the debate has reset the entire race – “it’s a whole new ballgame!” Prior to the debate, polls appeared to show Obama pulling away from Romney, especially in key swing states (including Colorado). Articles began popping up explaining the false assumptions being made by the polls that didn’t agree with their mindsets. Even Rasmussen, the closest to being accurate, showed Obama pulling away.

Nevertheless, Buchanan thinks next week’s polls will show a nice bump for Romney:

The first sign of how great a recovery Mitt made will come next week in the head-to-head polls, when the nation has absorbed the news that Obama not only got waxed, he came off as man exhausted, weary with the duties of office, who lacks the fire and energy to lead us out of the economic doldrums in which this country finds itself.

And there’s the establishment’s mantra: Romney is The Man To Do the Job! Yes!

Clinton: No president could have fixed this?

Mark Murray – Clinton: No one could have restored economy to full health in 4 years

What I [Clinton] can do….is explain why I think his approach is right and it’ll pay off if we renew his contract. [What I can do is] explain why the economy he faced was much weaker and different than the one I faced, so that there’s no way any president, no president could have restored it to full health in just four years.

Bill Clinton Returns to Yale

Bill Clinton Returns to Yale (Photo credit: altopower)

This is jaw-droppingly ignorant of history, both recent and past. Some commentators have referred to Reagan’s “recovery” as one example of a rapid recovery from a recession. But that example is highly flawed. And it assumes that Reagan had anything to do with any such recovery at all. It is an argument that is flawed as well.

The economy when Jimmy Carter took over in 1976 was stagnant. Remember “stagflation” and Carter’s use of the word “malaise?” It was because of regulations, poor foreign policy decisions, and lack of certainty about the future that was holding the economy back. Inflation was eating away at people’s purchasing power, and Carter was quickly discerned to be weak and ineffective.

By 1979 inflation was running at 13 percent per year. At that rate, prices would double every four years (this is the rule of 72: divide the inflation rate into 72 and you get a doubling of the price level every 4 years.)  That was frightening.

I was operating an office in Aspen, Colorado, at the time as an investment advisor. For a brief time I had my office inside a realtor’s office and was privy to what was happening in the Aspen real estate market at the time. Some of the realtors had put together price projections of where real estate prices would be if an investor would just buy now. It didn’t matter that prices were so high – so very high – that they had little basis in reality. Don’t look back, they said. Look forward! And out would come the charts: if you bought now, you’d be rich in 10 years!

It was the classic sign of a bubble.

And then along came Paul Volcker who decided – against the wishes of many – to raise interest rates to rinse out such inflationary expectations from the economy. He knew that such increases in the price level could destroy the economy and set the country (and the banks, especially the banks) back at least one generation.

He forced interest rates to over 20 percent, and quashed those expectations. But in so doing he set the stage for an economic recovery that just happened to take place when, guess who – Reagan – happened to be in the White House.

So let’s not hear any more nonsense about how a president can’t “fix” the economy in four short years. The president can do little about the matter at all.

NOT The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes

Bob Beauprez: What Patriots Can Learn to Do

It seems that virtually everyone agrees that the upcoming election in November is the most important in our lifetimes. And, while many people do engage in supporting candidates, the vast majority of citizens remain on the sidelines. Barely half of the eligible population bothers to vote even in a presidential election. Only a small fraction of the people ever step up to volunteer to help or write a check.

Rep Bob Beauprez from Colorado

Rep Bob Beauprez from Colorado (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I like Beauprez. He’s a “gut” conservative, meaning that he basically is conservative without having studied it by attending LPR or immersing himself in some other conservative program. But this time his premise is wrong. This isn’t the “most important election in our lifetimes.”

That’s just plain bunk. I learned that the hard way. Back in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was running for president, and likely to win, I thought that was going to be the last election to be held in America. I considered myself to be well-read. In 1967 I was introduced to the John Birch Society through a man who later became a very good friend. I fought it. I resisted it. I read everything I could about it (the society). It made some outrageous claims, and then proceeded to back them up with proof.

I remember reading Mr. Robert Welch’s book, “The Politician” about President Eisenhower. My folks thought Eisenhower was practically a saint. I remember working on his campaign, handing out literature (I was 16 in 1956, when Ike was running for reelection). Mr. Welch proceeded to dismantle, piece by piece, the image created by the media, and bought into by my folks, and then filled the last half of his book with footnotes and sources that proved his allegations. I was devastated.

I joined the JBS and continued on a quest to read…and read…and read (that continues to this day–I still feel like I’m chasing a bookmobile down the road, but not getting any closer!). By 1976 I figured I was pretty well read, and had things figured out. And one of those things was that the insiders had arranged for Jimmy the Peanut to be our last “elected” president and that he would install martial law upon taking the White House.

Imagine my surprise when life pretty much continued along as it had previously. Freedom shrank a little, but then expanded when Reagan took the White House in 1980.

So, no, Bob, I don’t think this election “is the most important election in our lifetimes.” It is an important election, sure, but much more is going to be decided in November in the House and the Senate and in the states and cities and municipalities. That’s where the battle for freedom is being fought, and being won.

Odds Maker Picks Romney to Romp in November

English: The official headshot of Wayne Allyn Root

Last week, conservative political commentator and the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008 Wayne Allyn Root reiterated his prediction from last December: Republican front-runner Mitt Romney will beat incumbent Barack Obama in a landslide in November.

Before hosting his own radio show, W.A.R: The Wayne Allyn Root Show in New York City, Root was a professional sports handicapper in Las Vegas. Root says he is “a well-known Vegas odds maker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races.” But neither Romney nor Obama is his favorite. Said Root:

Neither Obama nor Romney are my horses in this race. I believe both Republicans and Democrats have destroyed the U.S. economy and [have] brought us to the edge of economic disaster….

But as an odds maker with a pretty remarkable record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them.

Root predicted back in December that Romney, behind in most polls at the time, would win the Republican nomination in Tampa in August. He also predicted then that Romney would beat Obama in November and has found no good reason since then to change his mind: “Today I am even more convinced of

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann