Anchors Away -- Obama Sinks U.S. Navy

Daniel John Sobieski  "As China builds military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea, the staggering decline in U.S. naval readiness was made clear when a group of Navy captains testified before an unusual joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and readiness subcommittees last week. It was made clear that President Ronald Reagan’s 600-ship Navy is a distant memory as we return to the Jimmy Carter era of ships that can’t sail and planes that can’t fly for want of spare parts.

"This sad state of affairs is accomplishing what the Japanese Imperial Navy could not -- defeat the U.S. Navy and leave the seas increasingly open to hostile adversaries and leaving us increasingly unable to come to the aid of our remaining allies." . . .

comicallyincorrect.com

. . . "Naval commanders are worried that our ability to respond to such threats has been severely compromised by an Obama administration more concerned about rising sea levels than rising threats on those seas. The Navy captain’s Congressional testimony come after the Chinese announcement that it is building its second aircraft carrier to go along with a refurbished Soviet carrier, the Liaonng, commissioned by China in 2012 after extensive refitting of the 25-year-old vessel. As IBD has reported, the Liaoning is only the first step in the building of a blue-water navy capable of competing with our diminishing one, with Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, warning that the U.S. was losing its Pacific dominance to China:" . . .

"China is preparing for a naval confrontation with the United States. We may lose that confrontation in the South China Sea because the U.S. Navy is scavenging for spare parts."

And last comes the real kicker, Obama's Air Force:

Air Force Secretary Tells Grads to 'Follow the President's Lead'
"Before the United States Air Force Academy's class of 2016 Thursday, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James gave an odd commencement address. Instead of dispensing advice or wisdom, James's speech was a fawning tribute to President Obama and his administration."
. . . "She frequently told the graduates to "follow the president's lead" and made only vague references to the graduates' achievements at the academy or their future service in the Air Force."

. . . And therefore you too must build and celebrate diverse and inclusive teams. You must foster an environment of integrity and dignity and respect for all and allow your teams to flourish in a culture free from sexual assault and harassment of any kind." . . .

Yeah, I got your metaphor right here.

americanthinker

Department of Justice declares, "I am NOT a crook!"

Haunting pictures by British soldier reveal the trail of destruction in Nazi Germany after the war

UK Daily Mail   "A British soldier's fascinating photographs showing the devastation across Nazi Germany immediately after the Second World War have come to light 70 years later.

"The incredible album of 262 black and white pictures show the stark aftermath of the war, with buildings reduced to rubble, towns flooded, bridges and dams destroyed and battleships sunk.

"Among them are intriguing and haunting images of an abandoned factory where the Germans made their deadly V-2 rockets. " . . .

More at the link...

State Dept. thanks Fox reporter for flagging deceptive video editing

Politico

"The State Department's top spokesman offered his public thanks to Fox News reporter James Rosen for alerting the agency to a video from a 2013 briefing that had been edited to delete his question about Iran.

"We took this seriously," John Kirby said at the start of an interview on the network's "Fox & Friends" on Thursday, after the department acknowledged Wednesday that part of a video of Rosen asking a question was purposely deleted rather than being a "glitch," as it had previously stated. "And actually before I answer your question, I want to thank James Rosen, your correspondent, for bringing this to my attention. Because if he hadn't a couple of weeks ago I would have never known this occurred. So first of all, kudos to him."

"Kirby continued, calling Rosen "a journalist I have great respect for, so I thank him for that."

 Kirby said, emphasizing that if more details come to light, those would factor into any further investigation.

Trump Logo

Instapundit

Zombie time at campaign Hillary: Camille Paglia on Trump’s real strength and Clinton’s fatal sleepwalking

Have you noticed Hillary's speeches, especially when she feigns outrage? This woman seems to have no deep feelings or moral convictions and it is never more in evidence than when she tries to preach a stem-winder of a message, looking often down at her notes to see what she has to say.

Camille Paglia in Salon

"The media covers for Hillary on her email scandal while Trump gallops through the non-stop artillery barrage"

"It’s zombie time at campaign Hillary. Behold the dead men walking! It was with strangely slow, narcotized numbness that the candidate and her phalanx of minions and mouthpieces responded to last week’s punishing report by the State Department’s Inspector General about her email security lapses. Do they truly believe, in the rosy alternate universe of Hillaryland, that they can lie their way out of this? Of course, they’re relying as usual on the increasingly restive mainstream media to do their dirty work for them. If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.

"Meanwhile, former Bill Clinton advisor and pollster Douglas Schoen gave the strongest signal yet in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week (“Clinton may not be the nominee”) that worried backstage huddles in the Democratic party establishment are reaching fever pitch." . . .

"Trump’s boisterous, uncensored id makes a riveting contrast to Hillary’s plodding, joyless superego. Listening to her leaden attempts to tell rehearsed jokes is collective torture."

 Hillary must have gone to the Floyd R. Turbo school of speechifying: Video here.

Stop the world, I wanna get off!

Clinton’s Simple, Two-Step George Costanza Defense

"Insist that the rules were unclear and that everyone was breaking them anyway."

Youtube

National Review  "In her latest defense of her unlawful e-mail server, Hillary Clinton is following the playbook of Seinfeld’s lovable loser George Costanza. In one memorable episode, Costanza fulfills one of his fantasies with an after-hours romp with a cleaning woman at his office desk. Confronted by his boss after his paramour turns him in — George had tried to buy her silence with a defective cashmere sweater — Costanza insisted that the standards for workplace intimacy were not clear at the time of his indiscretion: “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here, that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, ’cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.” 

"Hillary Clinton did not choose to go full Costanza from the outset. When initially confronted with reports that she had circumvented federal-records laws by maintaining an e-mail server in the basement of her Chappaqua home, Clinton insisted instead that she had faithfully complied with the law. In July 2015, she told CNN that “everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation. There was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate. . . . Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation.”
. . . 

"In the aftermath of that devastating conclusion, Clinton has adopted George Costanza’s simple, two-step approach to controversy." . . .

Jerry Brown’s Long, Strange Trip to a Clinton Peace

Roll Call  . . . "Brown was to Bill Clinton in 1992 what Bernie Sanders is to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — always trailing, but never failing to scold the front-runner for the nomination, tossing nettlesome anti-establishment liberal barbs that delayed his insider rival’s path toward the reconstruction of party unity.  

“The prince of sleaze,” Brown dubbed the Arkansas governor back then, an epithet Sanders has never come close to matching while working to derail the former secretary of state’s campaign."

. . . "California is the nation’s dominant “blue” state and so any Democratic governor has obvious economic and political reasons to be on friendly terms with a like-minded administration.  

"And this year the differences between the  state’s worldview and that of the Republican nominee are particularly stark: Under Brown, for example, the state has set policies on the environment and the rights of migrant workers that are totally antithetical to Donald Trump’s views about climate change and immigration. " 

Did Obama pay a ransom to Iran for our captured sailors?

OUTRAGE! Iran Mocks Captured US Sailors at Revolution Day Parade  Do they have one sailor sucking his thumb?

Rick Moran  "One day after Iran released the 10 sailors they had abducted for strayinhg into Iranian territorial waters, the administration released $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars to Iran. The money was part of a settlement of a decades old legal claim by Iran and came from a special fund that the executive department can tap to pay claims against the US.

"Or was it a ransom paid for the kidnapped sailors?

"The administration insists the timing of the released funds is coincidental. But legislation introduced in Congress now seeks to discover the truth of the matter." . . .

"Why would Congress disbelieve the president? Perhaps because the Iranians themselves are claiming the money was part of the deal to release the sailors."  Emphasis added, TD
. . . 
"The final report on the incident has been continuously delayed by the [Obama] Pentagon. A Congressman who has seen the details of the capture says that the American people will be shocked when the truth comes out:" . . .

Honest Hillary Might Not Be the Nominee

Douglas Schoen: A Sanders win in California would turbocharge the mounting Democratic unease about her viability.  "There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president.

"How could that happen, given that her nomination has been considered a sure thing by virtually everyone in the media and in the party itself? Consider the possibilities.

"The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen." . . .

. . . There is every reason to believe that at the convention Mr. Sanders will offer a rules change requiring superdelegates to vote for the candidate who won their state’s primary or caucus. A vote on that proposed change would almost certainly occur—and it would function as a referendum on the Clinton candidacy. If Mr. Sanders wins California, Montana and North Dakota on Tuesday and stays competitive in New Jersey, he could well be within 200 pledged delegates of Mrs. Clinton, making a vote in favor of the rules change on superdelegates more likely. . . .

Hillary’s long record of lying to keep the public in the dark



2015: Hillary Clinton -- Once a Congenital Liar, Always a Congenital Liar   . . . "But the late New York Times op-ed columnist, William Safire, had her number early on, as this gem from 1996 about the prevaricating first lady illustrates:

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -- is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor's wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

 Hillary is still a bad liar despite decades of practice

"Hillary Rodham Clinton lies.

"This is a widely acknowledged fact among people who pay attention and aren’t on her payroll.

"Nearly 20 years ago, New York Times columnist William Safire wrote: 

“Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our first lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.' ” . . .