White House warns: U.S. could use its 'nuclear capability' if North Korea attacks an ally

Via Billy

The White House warned North Korea that any attack on American allies or territory could result in a nuclear weapon being used on the country.

President Trump spoke with Japanese Prime minister Shinzo Abe for the second time this weekend on Sunday and told him the United States would back Japan up in case of any attack from North Korea.

The statement came after Trump sent Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to tell reporters Trump had been briefed on all options to respond to North Korea's sixth nuclear test, said to be a hydrogen bomb.

Mattis said the United States has the ability to "annihilate" North Korea, but doesn't want to and will continue to use diplomatic means to de-escalate the situation.

More @ Washington Examiner

Reconstruction

 

Reconstruction. There is no part of American history in which what is taught these days is more distorted by false assumptions and assertions. For leftists, Reconstruction can be celebrated as a high point of revolutionary change and egalitarian forward thrust in American history. This interpretation is untrue in the terms in which they portray it, but that is the dominant, indeed only mainstream view today. This is the part of American history, then, that is most in need of honest understanding. You will be getting a lot of that this week. In fact, the scholars gathered here have things to teach about Reconstruction, both old things and new things, that cannot be heard anywhere else in the whole vast apparatus of American education.

First, the term “Reconstruction.” It does not refer to rebuilding.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

Trump Rolls Back Onerous Diversity Regs

Via Billy

 

The Trump administration blocked Obama-era rules that would have saddled employers with hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs and increased paperwork loads by millions of hours each year.

The Office of Management and Budget instructed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to shelve a rule change that would have required employers to submit 20 times as much data to the agency as previously required. The Obama administration called for the new standards, which would have affected 61,000 American companies with more than 100 workers and federal contractors with more than 50 workers, to demonstrate his commitment to closing the much-disputed "gender wage gap." Obama's EEOC called for businesses to provide 3,660 different data points about each employee and their pay structure, up from the 188 points.

More @ The Washington Free Beacon

Antifa opening eyes and making new conservatives

Via Billy

The events a week ago in Berkeley, California are sinking in, and maybe opening a few more minds.  Police there stood aside allowed hundreds of uniformed, masked, armed-with-clubs thugs beat-up a handful of harmless free speech and anti-Marxist demonstrators. All of this recorded on countless cell phones. Reporters, including a local TV anchor, were attacked and intimidated along with other helpless people surrounded by the club-wielding militia.

Neoneocon has a fascinating example of one such person undergoing political change, who has posted a YouTube video:

More @ American Thinker

Herbert Hoover's lesson for today's America

Via Billy

It is a testimony to the promise of our country to stand inside the home of young Herbert Hoover. The scope of where the Hoover family began, lived and ended each day can be observed in the blink of an eye.

One room served as a bedroom for the future president along with his parents and two siblings. The other room was their living room, dining room, and kitchen. The rooms are literally side-by-side.

They had little, they soon had less, yet Hoover persisted.

"This cottage where I was born is physical proof of the unbounded opportunity of American life," Hoover once wrote.

It's hard to disagree.

Few today know much about the poor little Quaker boy who was orphaned at age nine, separated from his siblings, and sent off to Oregon to be raised by an uncle; most students learn in school that he was America's president when the stock market crashed in 1929 and that he failed to right the country as it slipped, then fell, into the Great Depression.

More @ Washington Examiner

Steven Mnuchin proposes cutting off 'all trade' with countries that do business with North Korea

Via Billy

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin promised to consider a sanctions package that may cut off "all trade and all other business" with North Korea's trading partners after North Korea's latest nuclear test, saying the rogue country's behavior is "unacceptable."

"We are going to strongly consider everything at this point and, again, I will draft a package for [President Trump's] strong consideration that would go as far as cutting off all trade and other business," Mnuchin said in response to whether a package would also censure Chinese financial institutions and companies on "Fox News Sunday."

"This behavior is unacceptable, and if countries want to do business with the United States, they obviously will be working with our allies and others to cut off North Korea economically."

President Trump later backed up Mnuchin's statement in a tweet.

More @ Washington Examiner

Albany Confederate statue has long history

Via Billy

 

 

Albany statue was erected as reminder of tremendous loss of life during Civil War

As Civil War monuments and memorials across the country continue to be vandalized, defaced or damaged by people/protesters moved by strong personal convictions, racial motivations, political agendas or simply by an ability to be provocatively offended by social conventions and societal norms that existed, in all their ugliness, more than 152 years ago, The Albany Herald looked into the history of a Confederate monument that once was located in downtown Albany.

Long moved from downtown, today the monument sits as the centerpiece of Confederate Memorial Park on Philema Road.

More @ Albany Herald

Trump complained he’s reading fewer articles from right-wing sites

 

 

Get rid of Kelly.

White House chief of staff John Kelly has severely cut down on the number of news articles President Trump receives from conservative-leaning and right-wing news organizations, according to a new report.

The New York Times reported Friday that Kelly has restricted what information ends up in Trump’s daily digest of articles. Because Trump does not have an Internet browser on his phone and doesn’t use a computer, he relies on hard copies of news articles.

But after a few weeks of Kelly in the chief of staff role, Trump reportedly complained to a friend about the lack of articles from right-wing websites like Breitbart and The Daily Caller, according to The Times.

More @ The Hill

1975: Thais Wouldn't allow US to retrieve SVAF F5's

Via Quan Nguyen Thanh

 

 

So much for our "ally" who sent troops to join us in the fight.

"The Thais would not let us fly the F-5s off the base as they owned it and we were just paying a lease. The USS Midway was stationed off the coast and they tried hoisting them out to the carrier. It didn't work very well, we dropped a few in the ocean and finally gave up. So, to answer your question, yes the Thais ended up with most of the aircraft."
Photo and caption by Bob Phillips.

Why a Mueller-Schneiderman team on Russia could be good news for Trump

Via Billy

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's reported involvement in the Justice Department's ongoing Russia probe could give new ammunition to critics of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is aggressively investigating former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Schneiderman and Trump first crossed paths in 2010, when the former Democratic state senator solicited a donation from Manhattan's iconic real estate mogul during his bid for attorney general.

After defeating his Republican opponent, Schneiderman announced that he would press forward with a case against Trump's now-defunct online college, frustrating the wealthy New York businessman who had contributed $12,500 to his campaign.

Two years into his tenure as attorney general, Schneiderman sued Trump for fraud, seeking millions of dollars in restitution for former students who claimed they were swindled by Trump University.

Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement just days after he won the 2016 election, but not before his campaign spokesman had blasted Schneiderman as a "partisan hack who has turned a blind eye to the Clinton Foundation for years."

More @ Washington Examiner