Trump, Taiwan, and the hysterical media

Who would’ve thought one little phone call would cause such a stir? Donald Trump takes a congratulatory call from the president of Taiwan and the left-wing news media go nuts. They start screaming “One China Policy” and suggest Trump may have upended the whole world order.

It’s something that needs upending. A little background. When the communist took over China in the civil war of 1949, the legitimate government of China set up shop in Taiwan. They still refer to themselves as the Republic of China. America’s One China Policy dates back to Richard Nixon. When Nixon was trying to open trade with China, he issued a diplomatic communique stating there was only one nation called China. That did not acknowledge China’s dominion over Taiwan. It merely opened to door to trade relations with China by officially recognizing them.

Jimmy Carter broke off relations with Taiwan in 1979 which prompted Congress to pass the Taiwan Relations Act. That act sets up diplomatic relations with Taiwan and promises to protect them from invasion by China. That is America’s official relationship with Taiwan. Any other relationship that favors China over Taiwan is simply a presidential policy. As we know from the Obama administration, those are easily cast aside by a new president. Regarding China, Trump should do just that.

One would think that the American left would be more sensitive to human rights abuses than anyone else. After all, they’re the ones constantly reminding us of the very slightest hurt feelings of college snowflakes still devastated by Hillary Clinton’s loss. They’re the ones who vigilantly guard our language so that we don’t say something inappropriate that might upset the protected classes. Yet they want to protect and excuse the most brutal regime ever known to mankind.

According to The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese Communist regime has killed 63 million people. That compares to about 11 million who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust. Why we even trade with a regime with such an abysmal record is beyond me. We broke off trade relations with Cuba over about 3,000 people executed in firing squads.

But the left-wing media are scared to death to upset China. Remember when the same news media were scared of Ronald Reagan because he had vowed to relegate the Soviet Union “to the ash bin of history” when he was running for president? And he did. Imagine how nuts these people would’ve gone had Trump vowed the same thing for China.

I’ll say it out loud. Communist China needs to be relegated to that same ash bin of history. The magnitude of Trump’s phone call with Taiwan was not measured in terms of diplomacy. It was measured in terms of fear. There needs to be an abrupt change in trade policy with China. First of all, no item made with slave labor should ever be allowed to enter this country. Basic human rights should be observed. You lock up dissidents, you raid churches, we don’t trade with you. That’s how you affect change. That’s how you free the oppressed. That’s how you break the grip of brutal communism on an entire nation of people. That might very well be Donald Trump’s greatest legacy, while the mainstream news media cower.

The left seems to have a fascination with communist regimes like China and Cuba and the Soviet Union. Of course, they’ve never had live under one of them. In their effort to right the wrongs of the aggrieved, maybe the American left ought to start with the Chinese people. They’re certainly deserving of a cry-in.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Terrorist seems to be the hardest word

Abdul Artan was a terrorist. That simple sentence is impossible for the left-wing media to utter, but it’s true. Artan was the 18-year-old Somali immigrant who rammed his car into a crowd of students at Ohio State University then hopped out with a butcher knife to stab anyone in sight. He was also a student at Ohio State. 

NBC News reported that Artan had posted on Facebook about reaching the “boiling point” and talked about “lone wolf attacks.” He even cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Then they asked, “Did Ohio State University attacker have terror ties?”

You think?

He complained to the school newspaper that there weren’t enough prayer rooms for Muslims and that he was “kind of scared” to pray in public. In the end, it was everyone else who had cause to be scared of him. 

It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when radical Muslims complain of feeling alienated then end up killing or trying to kill a bunch of people. I had a girlfriend once who was obsessed with the idea that I was cheating on her. I wasn’t, but nothing I could say would convince her. Our relationship ended when I caught her cheating on me. It seems some of these terror attacks are similar. Paranoid people tend to transfer their paranoia onto other people.

One of the first steps of radicalization is to be thoroughly convinced you’re being persecuted. It’s this sense of persecution—real or imagined—that lays the foundation for your future actions as a terrorist. Artan was a man who graduated cum laude from Columbus State Community College then headed off to Ohio State. Somewhere along the way he learned to be offended by the fact that he was Muslim and most of the people around him weren’t. It’s highly unlikely that his persecution as a Muslim was anything more than a figment of his imagination.

People can literally drive themselves crazy over their perceptions. Radical Islamists prey on those perceptions. Radical Islamists are, by definition, nuts. Their obsession with their religion has driven them to the point of madness. Yes, there are crazy Christians, too, but their psychosis seldom manifests itself in murder.

This is the distinction the politically correct fail to make. Truth be known, we’re all a little bit crazy in our own way. The question is, are our idiosyncrasies a threat to others? It’s foolish to ignore the obvious. When Muslims go nuts they go nuts in a big way. That’s not to say, of course, that all Muslims are crazy. It’s just an obvious observation that crazy Muslims are a bigger threat than crazy people of any other religion.

Knowing that, why on earth do we continue to allow possible ticking time bombs to enter the United States without proper vetting? Artan came to us from Somalia via Pakistan. Was he radicalized along the way? It’s doubtful anyone checked. After all, we don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

This terrorist came to the United States legally. How many others are coming illegally? And just days before the attack, Ohio State students were protesting in favor of making their campus a sanctuary campus for illegals. They might want to re-think that position. It’s bad enough that we’re letting crazy people in the front door, the last thing we need to be doing is allowing unvetted students to roam freely on American campuses.

There’s a very good reason why we provide a legal avenue of immigration. It’s to weed out the criminals and the terrorists. If we don’t, what good is it?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump's first 100 days

Donald Trump is moving ahead with his bold plan to make America great again and the left-wing media are stunned. They didn’t think he’d actually follow through on his campaign promises. They’re accustomed to conniving politicians who say what the voters want to hear just to get elected. Rarely do these politicians follow through. Trump is following through big league.

And what’s more, he’s bypassing the media and going directly to the people via YouTube.

The first thing he plans to do is withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Most Americans have no idea what the TPP is all about, and that’s by design. It was largely negotiated in secret and written by corporate lobbyists and lawyers. That’s not to say that TPP might not have some benefits. It’s very much like Obamacare. We have to pass it find out what’s in it. Trump’s not willing to take that chance, so we’re out.

Upon taking office, Trump will cancel Obama’s executive orders and actions that choke the energy sector. At long last, we will begin using the vast energy reserves we have, which will mean millions of jobs and affordable energy for everyone. That’s not to say that we’re abandoning so-called green energy. It’s just that green energy will not exist to the exclusion of traditional energy sources. The market will be reintroduced into the energy sector and all sorts of energy sources will compete on an even playing field.

Trump is also regulating regulations. His new rule means that for every new regulation enacted we must eliminate two old regulations. In other words, government will begin loosening its stranglehold on American businesses. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Obama holds the top 4 rankings in presidents with the most regulations in a year. This year set a new record with over 81,000 pages of new regulations. These regulations seldom expand our liberties, they contract them. Trump understands that, and he’s adopting rules to start chipping away at them.

Trump is tasking the Defense Department with developing a plan to protect our infrastructure from cyber attacks. We have been hit countless times by Russia, China, and other countries who don’t have our best interests at heart. Trump understands that we’re leaking secrets—both from the government and the private sector—to countries that are potentially hostile. This was, ironically, one of the issues that kept Hillary Clinton from the White House.

On immigration, Trump is instructing the Labor Department to investigate all forms of work visa abuse, from fake visas to immigrants overstaying their visas. That’s not to say that the wall is now off the table. It’s simply a first step in putting American workers first.

One of the most interesting items on his list is a ban on executive branch lobbying for five years. In other words, no one in his administration will be able to leap-frog seamlessly to a cushy lobbyist job upon leaving his employ at the White House. Furthermore, no one working for the president will ever be able to lobby for a foreign country.

While the left-wing media portray Trump’s transition team as being in disarray, Trump is diligently going about the difficult task of undoing much of the damage that has been done over the past 8 years. And this is just the beginning. I personally can’t wait until they pull Obamacare out by the roots and replace it with a free market system that actually works.

People are either excited or terrified about Trump’s presidency. There’s one thing for sure. The next four years will not be boring.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The false enthusiasm for the first female president

In the aftermath of the presidential election, I watched female anchors on CNN report with sadness how they took their daughters to the polls with them. They were hoping to be a part of the historical election of the first female president. That sounds great but it’s a horrible excuse to vote for somebody. We found that out with Barack Obama.

The irony is Kellyanne Conway was the first successful female campaign manager of a presidential campaign. Funny how such firsts are unimportant to the mainstream media when they’re Republicans.

Too many in the media were so fixated on Hillary becoming the first female president that they ignored the reality. Very few Americans really cared about the issue. Newsweek, the once great weekly news magazine that has devolved into an obscure online Democrat sycophant, declared “the presidential election was a referendum on gender and women lost.” In just one more example of how out of touch these people are they also demonstrated how wrong they were and continue to be. Women were not the issue. Hillary was. Their myopia was so acute that they only saw a female candidate. The rest of us saw a candidate under constant federal investigation who demonstrated questionable judgement on numerous occasions and was perceived by much of the country as too crooked to be president. But, of course, we just hate women.

Now these same forces are trying to saddle Donald Trump with labels such as racist and anti-semitic. Do you realize how insane this is? When Donald Trump opened up his Mar-a-Lago golf club he upset the Palm Beach norms by accepting blacks and Jews. Now the mainstream media are trying to paint his senior advisor, Steve Bannon, as anti-semitic. You do know that Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, is Jewish, right? So are his son-in-law and one of his daughters-in-law. The notion that Trump would have allowed some so-called “alt-right” neo-Nazi into his inner circle is absurd. Bannon, by the way, worked for Goldman Sachs, Breitbart, and owns a piece of the hit TV show, Seinfeld. All Jews.

The mainstream media are obsessed with things that obviously are second nature to Trump. Blacks like Dr. Ben Carson and Herman Cain have enthusiastically embraced his campaign and now his presidency. He’s always surrounded himself with bright women like Conway and his daughter, Ivanka. First and foremost, he surrounds himself with the best. That’s something we’re not accustomed to seeing with Obama and the Democrats. They’re more concerned with diversity. Trump’s more concerned with winning. Barriers are broken when excellence is allowed to thrive. Otherwise, it means nothing.

And yes, breaking through barriers is something to celebrate. When Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith became the first black coaches in a Super Bowl in 2007 it had nothing to do with affirmative action. It had everything to do with excellence. Nobody spotted the Bears or the Colts points so they would win their divisions. They earned the right to be there.

That was Hillary’s problem. The Democrats nominated her, in large part, because it was her turn and because she was a woman, not because she was the best they had to offer. The rest of the country was less enamored with the prospect of making her the first female president. First for first sake is folly. We’re due a female president. That will happen, and when it does it will hopefully be someone in the tradition of Margaret Thatcher or Jeane Kirkpatrick. Thank God a flawed candidate like Hillary Clinton didn’t screw that up.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What part of illegal don't you understand?

If there’s one issue that’s been thrust to the forefront because of the 2016 presidential election it’s the issue of illegal immigration. Donald Trump tapped into a long-frustrated electorate that believed their voice wasn’t being heard on the issue. Conventional wisdom had kept Republicans pretty much away from the issue for fear of hacking off Hispanic voters. But they failed to understand the frustration within the Hispanic community itself.

Pulse Opinion Research conducted a poll just before the election and the results were shocking to the beltway crowd that thought Hispanics were a monolithic voting bloc. When asked if the government’s efforts to enforce immigration law have been too much, too little, or just right, 51% of Hispanics said the government’s efforts had been too little.

When asked if employers should be required to verify legal status of their workers, nearly half of Hispanics said yes.

Asked if they would support a policy that forces illegals to return to their home countries and one that penalizes employers who hire them, half said yes.

What the open borders crowd fails to realize is the people most adversely affected by illegal aliens are legal aliens. Many of them are competing for the same jobs, for the same opportunities. Illegals have a distinct advantage because they don’t play by the rules. Both parties have pandered to the illegals for too long.

President Obama was asked before the election if so-called “dreamers”—kids brought here illegally by their parents—would get in trouble if they voted. The interviewer referred to these people as “undocumented citizens,” a ridiculous oxymoron. Citizens, by their very nature, are documented. The president told the interviewer that no one would try to intimidate them into not voting. He went on to say that if you manage to vote then you’re a citizen! It’s supposed to be the other way around.

The rule of law has been thrown out the window over the past eight years, but ignoring immigration law certainly didn’t start with Obama. George W. Bush was as bad, if not worse. Like Obama, he was pandering for votes, not recognizing the undercurrent of anger in the Hispanic community.

The wave of illegal aliens over the past several years has been mind-boggling. The plan is to flood the country with illegal aliens, put them on welfare, grant them amnesty, then add them to the voter rolls. We should start referring to these people as what they are: undocumented Democrats.

It’s a numbers game. California went Republican as late as 1988. The flood of immigrants, legal and illegal, has ensured that California will never be red again. Democrats want to spread that model to the rest of the country.

And you’re a racist if you don’t go along. This is the single biggest issue of our time. Republicans have been scared to make it the centerpiece of their campaign. Donald Trump was not, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for having the courage to do that. It’s up to the individual states to make sure they don’t become California. Many states have laws on the books against hiring illegal aliens. We need governors to grow backbones and enforce those laws.

Republicans need to stop being afraid of confronting this issue. Whether it’s overcrowded prisons or overcrowded schools, high crime rates or the scarcity of good-paying jobs, illegal immigration is a component of every major problem we face. It’s time we recognize that at least half of Hispanics in America are on the right side of this issue. Let’s fix it before it’s too late.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What an election!

People ask me all the times these days, “What are you going to talk about after the election?” I must admit that this has been the most entertaining election I can remember. That’s due almost entirely to Donald Trump. Of course, the past week has been immensely pleasing, watching smug Democrats who thought they had the election in the bag suddenly scrambling for excuses. 

There is no excuse. All of Hillary Clinton’s wounds are self-inflicted. It’s not a vindictive FBI director. It’s not dirty tricks by the Republicans. It’s karma.

And I love the counter attack. Trump is in cahoots with Putin and the Russians to steal the election. Hear that sound? Click, click, click. They’re out of ammo. They’re fresh out of porn stars to launch at Trump. Now they’re left with the deafening sound of their own incompetence.

We probably won’t know for some time what’s in the e-mails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Here’s what we do know. Huma Abedin was so inept that she couldn’t figure out how to print from the government system, so she forwarded classified e-mails to her joint account with her husband and her Yahoo account. Hillary didn’t even have a computer in her State Department office. She also didn’t know how to run her home fax machine. Sounds like a bunch of yahoos were running the secretary of state’s office.

The irony that a sexting scandal involving Anthony Weiner could bring Hillary down is delectable. She spent most of her life cleaning up behind her own husband, destroying his accusers, and snatching both of their political careers from the jaws of death on numerous occasions. Now it’s her own aide’s husband’s sick perversions that might be the end of her career. Of course, Bill Clinton “officiated” the Weiner-Abedin wedding. What a way to start a marriage.

If Trump wins on Tuesday it’ll set up an epic fight between the looters/moochers and the producers. The Democrats, who have planted and tended their crop of dependents, will find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to stop a man from freeing the liberals’ prisoners from cyclical government addiction. Then there’s illegal immigration. The battle with Mexico over the border wall will, alone, be worth the price of admission. Not to mention the fun in watching the Larry Tate Republicans who will suddenly act as if they’d been on Trump’s side all along.

Even if Hillary wins there’s the prospect of the FBI drilling deeper down into the president-elect’s self-made labyrinth of deceit. All along Wikileaks will provide an endless stream of tantalizing e-mails from various crooked people the Clintons seem to surround themselves with. Oh, and the sure-to-come James O’Keefe videos that will continue to chronicle the corruption behind the Democrat machine. Does Hillary pardon herself? Will she pardon Huma and Weiner and everybody else who will surely take the fall around her, or will she leave them, as John Ehrlichman famously said during Watergate, to twist slowly in the wind?

And speaking of Watergate, will Hillary go down in history as half of the only husband and wife tandem to be impeached by Congress? What drama. And we haven’t even gotten to the gun-running that was apparently the reason Hillary and Obama made up the story of a video-induced protest at the consulate in Benghazi when the real target was the CIA annex. Or the toppling of regimes in Libya and Egypt, and the continued efforts to overthrow the government of Syria.

Indeed, what shall I talk about after the election?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Obamacare working as planned

The revelation that Obamacare premiums will jump an average of 25 percent next year seemed to catch many by surprise. Critics claim Obamacare is imploding. The reality is it’s working just as it was planned.

A Fox News story stated “about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from.” That, my friends, is the plan. I’ve been warning since Obamacare was first debated in Congress that the end goal is single-payer health insurance. Now we’re seeing that plan come to fruition. Major insurers like UnitedHealth Group, Humana, and Aetna have drastically scaled back their roles in many states. This is all by design.

The economics of Obamacare are pretty simple. They herded the riskiest consumers into one exchange. Instead of spreading risk, they’ve concentrated it. That means that premiums have to go up and/or coverage has to go down. Insurance companies gleefully lined up behind President Obama when he signed the legislation into law. They loved the idea that everyone would now be required to buy insurance. How they couldn’t see that the model was unworkable is a mystery.

Obama lured them into the trap with promises the government would back the payments. Now the government is in arrears to insurance companies to the tune of billions of dollars. The companies have sued the government, and Obama is trying to use the little-know ‘Judgement Fund’ from the Treasury Department to pay them off. In other words, Obamacare has become just another welfare program, despite being sold to the American people as a way to cut healthcare costs.

Then there are the unintended consequences of Obamacare. Employers with more than 50 employees are now required by law to provide health insurance. This has, naturally, forced many companies to reclassify certain positions as part-time. Part-time workers are defined under Obamacare as logging less than 30 hours per week. It’s not just the work week requirements. If an employee works more than 120 days in the year they’re considered full-time! That’s less than half the days a full-time employee works, but they’re considered full-time.

In my line of work—and I’ve seen it in all sorts of other businesses—part-time workers’ hours and days are closely monitored. Even when we need part-timers, like when workers go on vacation, we don’t have adequate staff because of Obamacare rules. There’s no telling how much productivity has been depressed in this country as a result. Not to mention all these people who would have more hours and more money but don’t because the government has seen fit to run their businesses.

The single biggest mistake of those opposing Obamacare was not challenging the employer mandate in court. They, instead, chose to fight the individual mandate. Those numbers were so small as to be insignificant. The real trouble with Obamacare was how it would affect businesses. I brought that point up to an “expert” at the Heritage Foundation and was told that employers providing health insurance has become expected, that they didn’t see the sense in challenging it. Expected and required are two entirely different things.

My having health insurance has nothing whatsoever to do with my job. Employers started offering health insurance as an incentive. The liberals have now turned a gift into a right enforced by the IRS.

We can’t count on the Republicans in Congress to do anything about Obamacare. That’s why we gave them control of both houses and they’ve done nothing. I’m afraid if Hillary Clinton is elected that single-payer health insurance is inevitable.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.