News & Politics

Escalating protests in Baghdad threaten the Iraqi government as Shia Muslim factions battle for control for the country and retired U.S. Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney says Iran could soon wield all the power in Iraq unless the U.S. changes course in significant ways.

He is also reacting to ISIS killing a U.S. Navy SEAL, who was assisting the Kurdish Peshmerga against ISIS.

In recent days, demonstrators have stormed government buildings, protesting Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s decision to replace members of his cabinet.  Al-Abadi said the move was to root out corruption and bring in reformers.  The protesters believe it was designed to lessen the influence of different ethnic and sectarian factions.

And an old U.S. nemesis is right in the middle of it.

“What you’re seeing right now is that (radical Shia cleric) Moqtada al-Sadr is responsible for creating a greater wedge when the current Iraq prime minister wanted to make Iraq more independent from Iran,” said McInerney.

“You have a combination of Iranian Shia and Iraqi Shia competing as to who controls the government and who controls Iraq.  That’s the bottom line of what’s going on over there right now,” he added.

Al-Sadr is loyal to Iran.  he and is forces are responsible for the deaths of many American troops during the sectarian uprising in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.  Al-Sadr then fled to Iran when U.S. forces gained a decisive edge.

McInerney says all of this upheaval can be traced to the Obama administration’s decision to wash its hands of Iraq.

“When we pulled out, this administration fundamentally gave Iraq to Iran,” said McInerney.

Now the Iraqi government is feeling much greater heat from Shia factions more loyal to Tehran than to Baghdad in addition to the threat posed by ISIS in the north.  ISIS still controls Mosul and other swaths of territory in Iraq and is still within striking distance of the capital.

“Unless we have strong allied and U.S. leadership over there, then we are in danger of clearly losing Iraq completely to Iran,” said McInerney.

McInerney is not in favor of bringing huge contingents of ground forces back to Iraq, but he says the U.S. could end the ISIS threat very quickly if it would just use it’s overwhelming and largely unchallenged air power.

“I would have a very aggressive air campaign.  Not eight (sorties) a day.  I’d have hundreds a day.  I would take out ISIS right away.  I would absolutely destroy them and everything around them, and I would accept the collateral damage that goes with it because it would be a very short and intensive air campaign.  That would show our strength,” said McInerney.

His air campaign would include decimating ISIS headquarters and other critical infrastructure in Syria as well as spotting and eliminating weapons and fighters in the desert.  He says crushing ISIS would end the dream of the caliphate and stop the flow of radical ideologues to the area.

“Only then can we start reasserting our strength and position in the region,” said McInerney.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced the death of a U.S. service member as a “combat death” in Iraq.  Later identified as a Navy SEAL, the American was officially “assisting” Kurdish forces.

According to Fox News, ISIS was breaking through the Kurdish line when about 20 SEALs swooped in to “heroically” beat back the ISIS forces.

McInerney is not at all surprised that American “advisers” are engaging in direct combat with the enemy.

“Although the administration does not want to admit it, I think it’s obvious when you’re putting those kinds of numbers and those kinds of forces in there as advisers, particularly at the battalion level, that you’re going to have these kinds of incidents, particularly if you get a breakthrough,” said McInerney.

But he says it never should have come to that sort of ground action.

“Where was the air power to stop that effort.  Why didn’t we know what was going on down there.  That’s my concern.  We should have planes airborne 24/7 that could immediately respond to these kinds of attacks,” said McInerney.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Hillary Clinton squirm as a coal industry worker calls her out on her previous promise to put coal companies out of business.  They also unload on Donald Trump for trying to link Ted Cruz’s father to the Kennedy assassination.  And they react to a Huffington Post writer claiming that defending yourself with a gun ought to be unconstitutional because you’re depriving your attacker of a fair trial if they die.

A leading conservative media watchdog is blasting President Obama and the White House press corps for collaborating on a liberal agenda while Obama tells reporters he admires their commitment to facts and objectivity.

Media Research Center Vice President of Business and Culture Dan Gainor also reacted to reports that CNN is suddenly beating Fox News in prime time among a key demographic.

But the issue that really has Gainor fired up is Obama’s speech to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday.  After several minutes of cracking jokes at the expense of the press and political figures, Obama concluded by thanking the media for helping him make our country better.

“I’m very proud of what you’ve done.  It has been an honor and a privilege to work side by side with you to strengthen our democracy,” said Obama.

Just prior to that statement, Obama lauded the mainstream press for shedding ideology and only reporting where the facts and the truth lead.

“The only way we can build consensus, the only way we can move forward as a country, the only way we can help the world mend itself is by agreeing on a baseline of facts when it comes to the challenges that confront us all,” said Obama.

Those words left Gainor shaking his head.

“The president was standing in the middle of perhaps the metaphor for Washington corruption.  You’ve got the intersection of entertainment media, news media, politics and money, at an event where they have a red carpet where professional journalists are walking into an event on a red carpet,” said Gainor.

“And he’s talking about journalists taking a stand for what is true does not require you shedding your objectivity.  They have no objectivity,” Gainor added.  “For him to come out there and say he’s working side by side, what it means is they were working for him.  Absolutely, this is a telling quote.”

Gainor says journalists are even twisting basic facts into a political advantage for their allies.

“The media have all these fact-check things now.  ‘Oh, we’re going to check the facts.’  Then they turn it into propaganda,” said Gainor.

He says Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press’ provided another example.

“To really show that they’re being objective is to not do what Chuck Todd did with Ted Cruz at ‘Meet the Press,’ said Gainor.  “Getting offended that Ted Cruz is calling out the leaders of NBC as being partisan.  Of course they’re partisan.  Who is Washington journalism is not partisan?”

Also odd to Gainor is how much the media follow Obama’s lead while the president restricts access to the press more than any other president in decades.  He says it started even before Obama was elected.

“If you remember going all the way back to when a couple of newspapers endorsed John McCain, their political reporters were kicked off the campaign planes,” said Gainor.

He says the Obama White House and the press corps both have a vested interest in stifling transparency and pursuit of the truth.

“They don’t want to change it.  They don’t want to be transparent because to be transparent, they actually have to tell people what’s really going on,” said Gainor.  “The media also don’t want it either because then they would really have to after the Obama administration.  They don’t want that.”

So what would be signs that reporters are interested in fair play?  Gainor says this campaign season would be a good place to start.

“A telling sign that they were committed to truth would be doing the same due diligence that they seem intent on doing to Cruz or Trump or anybody who is running against Hillary Clinton, to Hillary Clinton,” he said.

He says journalists could also correct a glaring double standard that was on display again this weekend.

“There were people attacked at a Donald Trump rally over the weekend.  Do you see journalists running out and asking every major Democrat in the country to disavow those kinds of riots and those kinds of thuggish behaviors?  No.  But when something happens at a conservative event, they immediately demand that Republicans or conservatives disavow that,” said Gainor.

On the cable news front, CNN is now happily reporting that it beat Fox News in prime time among adults aged 25-54 in five of the past eight months.  It’s the first such stretch since late 2001, which came just before Fox started dominating the ratings.

So why the sudden shift?  Gainor chalks it up to the campaign and the raw emotions that are coming to the surface.

“I think this is the most emotionally volatile election year that I ever remember, even going back into 1968,” said Gainor.  “Voters are very concerned we’re not at the point we need to be.  Whether you look left or right, both parties are sharply divided right now.”

Gainor says there are more “talking head” shos on Fox and with so many strong opinions, some viewers are turning away from those they don’t like.  But he says CNN’s return to competitiveness, won’t last long.

“Going by the history of how CNN tends to treat conservatives, I don’t think they’ll be staying for very long,” said Gainor.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review hope reports showing CNN beating Fox News in the key 25-54 age demographic will spark much better election coverage at Fox.  They also shake their heads as Donald Trump’s strong wins last week have some unbound delegates thinking about abandoning Ted Cruz.  And they blast ESPN for editing Curt Schilling out of its documentary on the 2004 American League Championship Series just days after firing him for politically incorrect social media posts.

For one day only, theaters across America will screen a new documentary aiming to expose the “scientific nonsense” of the climate change movement and show it’s nothing but a huge wealth redistribution scheme.

“Climate Hustle” will be in theaters this coming Monday, May 2.  It’s a project spearheaded by Marc Morano, executive editor and chief correspondent at climatedepot.com.

“This is a film aimed for the general public and what we’re trying to do is reinforce what they know in their gut that what they’ve seen every night on the nightly news, all the propaganda, all the academia, coming from Hollywood, coming from the United Nations, coming from Al Gore means they’re being hustled scientifically and politically,” said Morano.

“They’ve juiced the science,” added Morano, citing former United Nations who expose the system in “Climate Hustle.”  “They discard data that doesn’t support them.  They suppress scientists, they threaten journal editors.  Mostly they intimidate scientists who don’t go along.”

He says the film shreds the conventional wisdom that political moves will somehow allow humans to control the earth’s climate.

“There are hundreds of factors influencing our climate.  Carbon dioxide is but one of them.  The idea we can tweak carbon dioxide on the margins and come up with a predictable climate or some impact on the climate, as one scientist says in the film, it’s scientific nonsense,” said Morano.

Morano says there is also humor in the film, as a result of some of the dire climate predictions over the years.

“We go through the tipping points.  We show how the United Nations in the 1980’s was predicting a 10-year tipping point, where we must act in order to fight global warming,” said Morano.

“We have Prince Charles.  We have Al Gore and a whole host of other people making ridiculous tipping points that have come and gone but they just draw a line and scratch out the old date and enter a new date,” added Morano.

“Climate Hustle” contends that the insistence of liberals that climate change is our greatest global challenge is simply a way from distracting the public form the real agenda: spreading the wealth around.

“We have the UN on record as saying they want to redistribute wealth by climate policy.  We have the EU climate commissioner saying that even if they’re wrong on the science, they’re doing the right thing by policy.  So they don’t even care about the science,” said Morano.

“They’re admitting the science is irrelevant.  They’re using a climate scare in order to achieve their agenda,” said Morano.

While important scientific concepts and political ideas are discussed, Morano stressed again that the film is also very entertaining.

“It’s very simply laid out so people can just sit back and enjoy.  It’s a popcorn munching film, I promise,” he said.

Tickets for “Climate Hustle” can be purchased at the film’s website or at the box office of theaters where it will be shown.  A list of participating theaters is also available at the site.

Bishop E.W. Jackson, the former Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia and  fervent Ted Cruz supporter, says the GOP must unite around its presidential nominee, even if it’s Donald Trump, in order to stop Hillary Clinton from returning to the White House.

Jackson, who still holds out hope for Cruz at the moment, wrote an open letter to all Republicans, urging them to stop the personal bickering over their preferred candidates and prepare to confront Clinton in the general election.

“I’m profoundly concerned about the stark and mean-spirited differences that are emerging between these candidates that are by and large personal, not always policy, and that this is going to interfere with their ability to mend fences and come together,” said Jackson in an interview conducted in response to his letter.

“I’ve heard them make statements that they’ll never support each other.  That’s terrible for the party.  That’s terrible for the general election.  I decided I’d had enough of it,” he said.  “We need to call for unity and we need to prepare to defeat Hillary Clinton.”

Exit polls in various states show anywhere from 25-40 percent of non-Trump voters in Republican contests plan will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee.  The #NeverTrump campaign among many grassroots activists is also vowing to hold firm.

Jackson strongly disagrees.

“Would they prefer Hillary Clinton?” laughed Jackson.  “It’s very simple.  Would they prefer Hillary Clinton.  She is the alternative.  We’re not dealing with this in a vacuum.  It’s not wither Trump or Jesus.  It’s Trump or Hillary Clinton,” said Jackson.

Reiterating that he thinks Cruz would be a better president than Trump, Jackson says Trump’s stand on several issues convince him it is worth the effort to help the front-runner defeat Clinton if Trump emerges as the nominee.

“Trump does espouse pro-life positions.  Trump does espouse the importance of the free market and creating jobs.  Trump does express his concern about the erosion of religious liberty in our country,” said Jackson.  “He has said some things that give me hope.  I have absolutely no hope with Hillary Clinton.”

 

“Some of the other issues we may not always agree on, but my goodness, I have far more agreement with him than I do with her,” said Jackson.

Jackson then rattled off several issues that terrify him if Clinton is elected.

“Hillary Clinton was a Saul Alinsky devotee.  She was discipled by him.  She clearly uses the free market when she wants to but I have no doubt that she sees the free market as the enemy of equality and the enemy of fairness and will do the same thing that Barack Obama has done,” said Jackson.

Trump has offered kind words about Planned Parenthood in this campaign but has also denounced its abortion practices.  Jackson says Hillary is far more cozy with the nation’s largest abortion provider.

“Hillary Clinton is clearly a major supporter of Planned Parenthood.  She thinks it’s just the greatest thing since Carter’s Little Liver Pills were invented.  She’s going to do everything in her power, not only to preserve, but to expand the power of Planned Parenthood.  And Hillary Clinton has not even once spoken about any threat to religious liberty,” said Jackson.

In his letter, Jackson says he’s personally experienced the disastrous effects of a fractured party.  In 2013, Jackson was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia on the ticket that included gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli and attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain.  All three lost.

In our interview, Jackson elaborated on why the lack of unity was lethal for the GOP in a tight race.

“Very prominent Republicans who, for personal reasons perhaps and maybe reasons I don’t fully understand, decided they were going to do everything in their power to undermine the ticket.  In effect, for a short time there, we didn’t really have a party,” said Jackson.

“It was just a gang of individuals who were divided against each other and didn’t care whether the party won or not.  They just cared that the people they didn’t like lost.  And of couurse, they got their wish,” said Jackson.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor and Democrats Ralph Northam and Mark Herring won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races respectively.

“The commonwealth has suffered as a result.  I don’t want our country to suffer as a result of the same kind of behavior at the national level,” said Jackson.

Jackson stated that if Trump gets within 100 delegates of the 1,237 he needs for a majority, then it’s in the GOP’s best interest to choose Trump as the nominee.

“I think to deny Donald Trump the nomination (if he is within 100 delegates) is going to fracture the party, perhaps irreparably.  At that point, I would really have some soul-searching to do,” said Jackson.

As much as he prefers Cruz, Jackson says he may well back Trump on the convention floor for the sake of the party.

“I might just have to say, ‘It’s time to wait.  Ted Cruz is young enough that he can come back, young enough that maybe we’ll see him as president of the United States one day.  Maybe this is not his time,'” said Jackson.

“Now we’re not there yet, but we may come to that point,” he added.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud former CNN and NBC reporter Campbell Brown, who is blasting the news media for making their networks all Trump all the time in a quest for ratings. They also slam the people behind a new film that intends to mock Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s Disease and pretend he had it while president. And they discuss the wild first night of the NFL Draft, where a top prospect watched his prospects plummet after a sudden video of bong hits and admissions he was given money by coaches in college.

Update: Actor Will Farrell has pulled out of the Reagan film project.

A top Ted Cruz supporter says former House Speaker John Boehner’s characterization of Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh” is a “badge of honor” for the campaign, as he denounced Boehner, touted Carly Fiorina and vowed the race for the GOP nomination is far from over.

Largely absent from public since stepping down as speaker last October, Boehner slammed Cruz during an appearance Wednesday at Stanford University.  When asked to offer thoughts on Cruz, Boehner considered the Texas senator “Lucifer in the flesh.”  But he wasn’t done.

“I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life,” said Boehner, according to the Stanford Daily.

At a campaign stop in Indiana, Cruz said Boehner seemed to be “channeling his inner Trump.”

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a top Cruz surrogate, was even more blunt.

“John Boehner has been part of the problem for a long time.  When he opposes somebody because they fight him at every turn, that person who is fighting him is well worthy of every American’s consideration.  In this case, that happens to be Ted Cruz.  That’s a badge of honor for us,” said Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli says Boehner deserves a good share of the blame for the nation’s current condition.

“The people that John Boehner is happy to see move forward are exactly the people that are miring America in debt and less freedom and dragging us down into nothing much more than another European-like welfare state,” said Cuccinelli.

The Stanford Daily reported Boehner as saying he had a high-maintenance relationship with John Kasich but loves him nonetheless.  Boehner also revealed he was “texting buddies” with Donald Trump.  The former speaker said he would back Trump as the nominee but would not vote for Cruz.

Cuccinelli is not surprised.

“He and people like him in Washington would be perfectly happy to work with Donald Trump.  ‘Hey, let’s just make more deals.’  Doesn’t matter what the basis of the deal is.  Doesn’t matter that the American people get the short end of the stick, that our children have more debt and less freedom or that we’re less secure.  But all the power people will continue to be happy.  God forbid, we wouldn’t want to make John Boehner cry,” said Cuccinelli.

The Boehner comments came just hours after Cruz, who trails Trump by more than 400 delegates, announced former GOP rival Carly Fiorina as his running mate if Cruz is able to beat out Trump at a contested convention.  Cuccinelli says Fiorina is a nightmare for Democrats and Hillary Clinton in paritcular.

“She has been one of the best and most articulate messengers against the Democrats during this whole presidential race.  I think she’s proven over the past two months while she’s been campaigning on Senator Cruz’s behalf what a real asset she is to the team,” said Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli says Fiorina was chosen by Cruz on the merits and that Cruz thinks she could be a fine president if necessary.  However, Cuccinelli admits Trump’s huge unfavorable numbers with women also played a factor.

Cruz scored a big win over Trump in Wisconsin April 5, but Trump has dominated the past six contests, easily winning a majority in all of the eastern states, in some cases eclipsing 60 percent of the vote and hauling many more delegates than expected.

Next up is Indiana on May 3.  Cuccinelli says it is not a must win, but the campaign is expecting a very strong showing.

“We’d like to see a performance like Wisconsin.  We’re working for that.  Carly is helping us do that on the ticket.  We have high hopes for Indiana.  Ted has been very warmly received there.  We think that’s going to turn out very well for us,” said Cuccinelli.

He is also rejecting the media narrative that Trump’s domination over the past two weeks essentially wraps up the nomination for the front-runner.

“The media have signed Ted Cruz’s death certificate on more than one occasion.  So this is just one more added to the heap.  It doesn’t really matter what network you’re talking about.  Fox does this just as badly and horrifically and inaccurately as anyone else,” said Cuccinelli.

He says the press want to declare Trump the nominee because he is ratings gold.

“The media would love to see Donald Trump for six months.  He’s an entertainer.  He wouldn’t be much of a president.  But let’s face it, from a media perspective, they’d love to have him for six months for just pure entertainment value and ratings,” said Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli is also swinging back against the Trump narrative, which many in the media have joined after the past two weeks, that even if Trump fails to clinch a majority of pledged delegates, the party will have no choice but to nominate him if he’s anywhere close to the magic number of 1,237.

“These are the same people who think you should give a trophy to every kid who plays.  This kind of whining, let’s roll over and not compete attitude is gutting America and Donald Trump fits very nicely in there.  All talk, no action,” said Cuccinelli.

He says the campaign itself proves Trump doesn’t have what it takes to be a good president.

“We’re killing him on the ground,” said Cuccinelli.  “When it comes to the actual mechanics of running a campaign, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  I don’t know why anybody thinks someone who can’t get through that process competently can be president of the United States competently,” said Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli says if Trump has 1,237 delegates or more come convention time, the nomination is all his.  But if Trump has 1,236 or fewer, delegates, Cruz plans to fight it out in Cleveland.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review figure Ted Cruz has nothing to lose by naming Carly Fiorina as his running mate and trying to take advantage of Donald Trump’s terrible numbers with women.  They also rip former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to shreds for sexually abusing high school boys and then covering it up for decades.  And they rip a Virginia state senator for publicly standing with the Assad regime in Syria and the media for thinking it was a U.S. senator and never bothering to check.

Five military judges heard oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of a U.S. Marine punished through a court-martial for refusing to remove bible verses from her workstation, and a retired general says the case could determine whether there really is religious freedom in the U.S. military.

Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling lost her original court case, as the court ruled the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not apply to the the type of religious expression she was displaying and did not protect her from punishment for refusing to remove the verses.

A decision is expected this summer.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin was in the United State Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces for Wednesday’s oral arguments before the five-judge panel.  Boykin says it’s likely to be a 3-2 decision.

“Two of them were supporting the actions of the Marine Corps.  Two of them were supporting the defendant, Monifa Sterling.  The chief judge held his cards very close to his chest.  We came out thinking the decisive vote will be the chief judge,” said Boykin.

However the court rules, Boykin says it will reverberate throughout the military.

“If they uphold her appeal and she is exonerated on this, it’s a strong, strong message to all of the military that you must protect the religious rights of service members.  On the other hand, if it is upheld and her special court-martial stands, I think it portends the situation in the military with regards to religious freedom is going to decline,” said Boykin.

In recent weeks, the military has shown a tendency to accommodate religious freedom.  The U.S. Army is now permitting hijabs and turbans to be worn by service members.  Boykin says that ruling shows the punishment aimed at Sterling shows selective application of religious freedom rights.

“I think it’s selective.  I think if she had been anything other than a Christian this would have been one of those situations in which political correctness would have been the dominant factor.  Because she’s a Christian, I think they feel very comfortable infringing on her first amendment rights,” said Boykin.

He points out service members do give up a few rights when joining the military, like the right to publicly identify with political candidates or publicly criticize the commander-in-chief.  But he says the Bill of Rights is fully intact for everyone in uniform.

“What it does not require you to do is sacrifice your first amendment right to the freedom of religion.  You are supposed to be able to exercise your religion.  That’s the most fundamental of all our rights.  Remember, that’s the first freedom articulated in the first amendment.  That is not to be sacrificed as a member of our military,” said Boykin.

Boykin believes Sterling should never have been ordered to remove the verses, but is mystified at how intense the punishment was when she refused to take them down.

“I had 36 years in the Army.  I’ve seen it all.  I have never seen anybody go to a bad conduct special court martial for something like this.  Normally, you handle this with non-judicial punishment,” he said, noting typical penalties would have included docked pay or some time restricted to barracks.

He says the Marine Corps dropped the hammer for a bigger purpose.

“Frankly, I think the leaders in the Marine Corps, certainly those who were dealing with her situation were trying to send a message to the other Marines,” said Boykin.

While noting the refusal of military leaders to stand up for religious freedom for several years, Boykin says he didn’t see this case coming.

“Actually it did surprise me from the Corps.  The Corps is our smallest branch but, as I think we all know, the Corps has historically maintained some rock-solid leadership, leaders that were willing to stand up and leaders that have shown a lot of moral courage,” said Boykin.

Boykin says military leaders in all branches are forgetting where their true loyalty belongs.

“What’s happened to all our military?  What’s happened to the leadership of our military and why are they so willing to compromise on such fundamental things.  Remember this: every member of the military takes an oath to the Constitution, not to the president.  They take an oath to the Constitution,” said Boykin.

So why won’t military leaders stand up for religious freedom?

“America is becoming a Marxist nation.  I say that and get criticized, but how many people are supporting Bernie Sanders?  What’s the enthusiasm level for Bernie Sanders?  America is becoming a Marxist nation,” said Boykin.

“Karl Marx said, ‘My objective is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.’  He also said religion is the opiate of the masses.  You cannot move through the socialist pathway to full Marxism unless you destroy this idea of unalienable rights, rights that come from God.  You do that by destroying people’s ability to openly worship their God,” said Boykin.

Boykin says the far left knows that engineering that change first in the military is the key to eradicating it from the public as a whole.

“You’ve got to change the military or you can’t change society.  That’s what this administration is all about,” said Boykin.