Politics, Government & Public Policy: December 2015 Archives
Hillary Clinton says that she didn't blame the internet video for the attack on our embassy in Benghazi when she met with the families of the dead, but the families say she did exactly that. I guess you've got to decide for yourself who to believe.
George Stephanopoulos asked her Sunday if she'd told the victims it was about the film. Clinton gave a flat "no."She added: "I said very clearly there had been a terrorist group, uh, that had taken responsibility on Facebook, um . . ."
At least four family members disagree.
Tyrone Woods' father said he hugged Clinton and shook her hand. Then "she said we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son . . . She said 'the filmmaker who was responsible for the death of your son.' "
Sean Smith's mother said Hillary is "absolutely lying . . . She said it was because of the video." Smith's uncle backs her up.
Glen Doherty's sister agreed: "When I think back now to that day and what she knew, it shows me a lot about her character that she would choose in that moment to basically perpetuate what she knew was untrue."
President Obama wants more restrictions on gun ownership, and apparently he's willing to deceive people to get his way. He says that America has more mass shootings than other developed countries, but he completely neglects to account for our vastly larger population.
Let's look at mass public shootings from 2009 to the middle of June this year. To compare fairly with American shootings, I excluded attacks that might be better classified as struggles over sovereignty. For instance, I did not count the 22 people killed in the Macedonian town of Kumanovo last month.Norway had the highest annual death rate, with two mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Macedonia had a rate of 0.38, Serbia 0.28, Slovakia 0.20, Finland 0.14, Belgium 0.14 and the Czech Republic 0.13. The U.S. comes in eighth with 0.095 mass public shooting fatalities per million people. Austria and Switzerland are close behind.
In terms of the frequency of attacks, the U.S. ranks ninth, with 0.09 attacks per million people. Macedonia, Serbia, Switzerland, Norway, Slovakia, Finland, Belgium and the Czech Republic all had higher rates.
It's funny that the term "liberal" is so backwards now... modern leftists see authoritarianism as the solution to every problem.
Normally, What We Learned This Week is a digest of the week's most curiously important facts. This week, it is not. This week the only thing we learned is that America has a gun problem.
Blah blah blah.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. I'll disarm right after the rich and powerful lay off their professional armed bodyguards.
The State Department has redacted this list of Hillary's achievements while Secretary of State. Darn it! Now we'll never know.
Maybe they were too confusing.
This is disgraceful: Inspector General reports that HUD can't be audited due to poor records. The people responsible for this failure should be prosecuted. Government that is both big and incompetent is the worst of both worlds. It seems incapable of competence, so it needs to be shrunken drastically.
A government watchdog says it can't audit billions in Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spending because the agency's financial books are kept so poorly.HUD's financial statements and systems are missing records, inaccurate and sometimes even violated federal laws, according to a HUD inspector general report released Monday. Included among the programs with useless financial accounting records is nearly $20 billion at the Government National Mortgage Association.
Try this with the IRS in April and see what happens.
Jay Rosen explains that Donald Trump's vast wealth makes him immune to the forces that normally confine presidential candidates.
But notice: Trump is not an institution. trumpairHe is really his own campaign manager, spokesman and chief strategist, which means that the chief strategist of the Trump campaign -- Trump -- doesn't care if he ever gets hired by another campaign. Poof! There goes one of the little structural forces that tend toward isomorphism. Multiply by 100 and you have pundits asking: have the laws of political gravity been repealed?
Rosen has several other good points, but I think they all come down to the fact that Trump's wealth makes him willing to alienate powerful/important people that other politicians want to be liked by.
