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Hill on Bill’s Women: ‘We Reached Out to Them’

September 30, 2016

Hill on Bill’s Women: ‘We Reached Out to Them’ American Thinker, Jack Cashill, September 30, 2016

In a halfway honest front-page article Thursday, the Washington Post posed the following question in the headline, “Enabler or family defender? How Hillary Clinton responded to husband’s accusers.”

I say “halfway” because reporter Shawn Boburg knew the answer to his question. Hillary provided it herself during a crucial “60 Minutes” interview to which Boburg alluded more than once. That interview took place on January 26, 1992, the day America first met Hillary Clinton.

Earlier that same month, Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers confessed to a tabloid that she and Bill Clinton had had a 12-year affair. In a Hail Mary attempt to save Bill’s candidacy, the Clintons agreed to the interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft.

When Kroft asked Bill about the affair, he answered, “That allegation is false.” Hillary, her hands lovingly intertwined with Bill’s, nodded her approval. Of course, they were both lying, Bill with much greater skill.

At this point in the interview, Hillary explained how Flowers’s claim surfaced. “When this woman first got caught up in these charges,” she said, “I felt as I’ve felt about all of these women: that they had just been minding their own business and they got hit by a meteor, and it was no fault of their own.”

Hillary then followed up with the assertion that answered the Washington Post’s question: “We reached out to them. I met with two of them to reassure them they were friends of ours.” (italics added) Yes, Hillary was — and still is — an enabler.

Hillary did not do all her own dirty work. As the Post acknowledges, in 1992 the Clinton campaign hired private detective Jack Palladino “to investigate the accusers involved in two dozen allegations.”

At the time, the Clinton campaign was insisting that these women were being pressured to lie by tabloids waving cash. Palladino’s role, as Clinton aide Betsy Wright memorably told the Post’s Michael Isikoff in July 1992, was to manage the “bimbo eruptions.”

Among the presumed bimbos the Clinton campaign “reached out” to was a former Miss Arkansas, Sally Miller Perdue. In July 1996, Perdue appeared on the Sally Jesse Raphael show to discuss her 1983 affair with Clinton, an affair later corroborated by several Arkansas State troopers. In his article a week after Perdue’s appearance, Isikoff noted that Palladino had done a sufficiently good job smearing Perdue that “no major news organization has reported the account.”

In August 1996, still worried about Perdue’s potential to disrupt the campaign, the Clintons had Democratic party operative Ron Tucker speak to Perdue. According to Perdue, Tucker told her, “There were people in high places who were anxious about me and they wanted me to know that keeping my mouth shut would be worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile” meant a GS-11 or higher job with the federal government. If she turned down the offer and talked to the media, “He couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.” After harassing phone calls and damage to her car, Perdue chose to go into hiding.

Perdue was the least of the Clintons’ problems in 1992. More potentially troublesome were the women that Clinton had assaulted, Juanita Broaddrick, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, and Paula Jones among others.

This week’s Post article pulls its punches on both Jones and Broaddrick. In the Post’s account, Jones was “groped” and Broaddrick was the victim of a claimed “sexual assault.” Yes, Clinton did grope Jones, but as she would later testify under oath, “Mr. Clinton then walked over to the sofa, lowered his trousers and underwear, exposed his penis (which was erect) and told me to ‘kiss it.’”

As to Broaddrick, she was not merely assaulted. She was raped. “It was a real panicky, panicky situation,” Broaddrick told NBC’s Lisa Myers in February 1999. “I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to ‘Please stop.’ And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip.”

Immediately afterwards, a colleague found Broaddrick in her hotel room crying and “in a state of shock,” her pantyhose torn and her lip swollen. The Post made no mention of Hillary’s literal hands-on effort to silence Broaddrick. “She threatened me at that fundraiser,” Broaddrick said of an intimidating grip-and-grin with Hillary soon after the rape, “that’s foremost in my mind; I’ll never forget that; I’ll never forget that encounter.”

The Post article in question makes no mention of Gracen. As Iskoff reported in his 1999 book, Uncovering Clinton, Gracen had a one-off with Clinton in 1983 when Clinton was governor and she was serving as Miss America.

To assure Gracen’s silence during the 1992 campaign, Clinton campaign manager Mickey Kantor got together with Clinton’s friend and Hollywood producer, Harry Thomason, and they arranged for her to take a part in a mini-series then filming in Croatia.

There was a reason to get Gracen out of the country. Like Broaddrick, Gracen was married when she was sexually assaulted by Clinton. “It was rough sex,” Isikoff wrote, “Clinton got so carried away that he bit her lip, Gracen later told friends. But it was consensual.”

Writing before Broaddrick’s prime-time confession, Isikoff missed the lip-biting MO. He also failed to acknowledge that at least one of Gracen’s friends, Judy Stokes, had told the Paula Jones legal team that the sex was not consensual at all.

“Do you believe Clinton raped her?” investigator Rick Lambert asked her. “Absolutely,” Stokes replied. “He forced her to have sex. What do you call that?”

In April 1998, Gracen came to the embattled Clinton’s aid, this time by recanting an earlier lie that she had never had sex with Clinton. In a television interview, Gracen said of the 1983 encounter with Clinton, “What I did was wrong, and I feel very bad about it now.” Gracen denied that the sex was coerced and said almost laughably of Hillary, “I’ll apologize to her now. It was wrong.”

After her 1998 TV interview, fearing a subpoena from prosecutor Ken Starr, Gracen flew to the Caribbean where she went island hopping for several months. “She had no interest being drawn into the case,” wrote Isikoff. “She had already lied for Clinton once.”

Then as now, the media had no interest in discovering who arranged for Gracen’s faux apology or her sun-drenched flight from justice.

Despite her decades-long sexist and classist war on women, Hillary had confidence enough in the major media to tweet in November 2015, “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

Every survivor, that is, except Bill’s “bimbos.” Although she had yet to coin the term, Hillary had apparently assigned these women to the ranks of the “deplorable.” If clarification were needed, Clinton aide James Carville provided it on national TV in 1996. “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park,” said Carville for the ages, “you never know what you’ll find.”

 

Categories: 2016 elections, Clinton lies, Hillary and Bill's Bimbos, Hillary Clinton - "Feminist", Media and Hillary Clinton
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Hillary and the Democrats Continue Their War on Blacks

September 30, 2016

Hillary and the Democrats Continue Their War on Blacks, PJ Media, Roger L Simon, September 30, 2016

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Forget all the back and forth on the first debate, the pundits, the people, the polls, the bizarre claims and counter-claims of an aging Venezuelan porn star.  All that can and will change, if it hasn’t already. Or will disappear among a new set of talking points, real or imagined, after the second debate.

Only one assertion of enduring importance was made on Monday—one that slipped quickly by, but will continue to fester under the surface for those eighty or so million watching and have a profound and deeply unfortunate effect on our culture.

Hillary Clinton declared that all Americans are racist, at least implicitly. The exchange went as follows:

Lester Holt: Do you believe police are implicitly biased against black people.Hillary Clinton: Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone not just police.

So we’re all racists now in Hillary Land.

Note I didn’t say Hillary’s view because this statement was not based on any form of reasoned observation, but on pure political calculation under the self-aggrandizing and self-deluding mask of moral narcissism. (I apologize for bringing up the subject of my recent book. But this just happens to be one of the most perfect and dangerous examples I have ever encountered of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.)

Here’s the calculation part that occurred as I see it: In response to Holt’s question,  Hilary didn’t know what to say about the police that wouldn’t offend someone, so she spread the accusation to everyone. We’re all guilty (meaning, one assumes, all white people, although that was naturally left unsaid). At the same time, obviously, she was doing her best to pander to the black vote that, for the first time in a long while, has been a tiny bit more fragile for the Democrats.

The moral-narcissism component allows Clinton to assume the mantle of the “good person,” that she is doing  the”right thing” when her policies and those of her party have had the exact opposite result for black communities that have been in steep decline for some time. Holt, of course, never raised that possibility.

Underlying all this is a ruthless attempt to encourage that most pernicious, self-defeating and self-fulfilling prophecy that African-Americans will always be victims.  And if they are victims, they always vote Democrat, the party of victimhood. (If they  don’t vote Democrat, they support professional victimhood organizations like Black Lives Matter until the proper deals are made and they do vote Democrat again, a roundelay of  unhappily ever after.)

The result of all this? Bodies in the street. A lot of them. Almost all black.

But we know that. The facts are readily available to anyone who wants to see them. But Hillary and her party are not interested in the facts—they are interested in generating emotions that translate into winning elections and remaining in power, even if it necessitates they hide the truth from themselves. This is  normal political behavior, except in this case, as mentioned, people die.

It’s ineffably sad, most notably for black America, of course, but also for the rest of us who have to watch, usually helplessly. Or live in a world seemingly on the brink of frightening disintegration.

Nevertheless, the Democrats and Hillary soldier on in their assault, thanks to moral narcissism.  They think (or pretend to think) they’re doing the right thing.  It’s “virtue signaling” taken to the nth power as stores get looted and buildings burn.

In reality, it’s a war on blacks for the advantage of a pseudo-liberal/pseudo-progressive elite. They get all the goodies at the end, along with a small sector of cooperative black elites who play the game.

This war kicked into high gear at the beginning of the Obama administration. To say the first black president instigated and perpetuated a war on blacks is pretty outrageous, but before his inauguration the relations between the races in our country were incomparably better and had what appeared to be a bright future. Perhaps that future was too bright and had to be annihilated before one party lost its raison d’être.  

That’s something to think about while Donald Trump makes his fitful attempts for the black vote.  At least he’s trying.  What other Republican presidential candidate really has? I wish he did it more skillfully, but when I hear Hillary Clinton accusing us all of being racist, I thank God for his attempt.

Categories: 2016 elections, Black voters, Democrat plantation, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and racism
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Crooked Hillary PAC Ad Feature Barack and Michelle Obama Blasting Clinton

September 29, 2016

Crooked Hillary PAC Ad Feature Barack and Michelle Obama Blasting Clinton Breitbart, Charlie Spierling, September 29, 2016

obamahillThe Associated Press

Four new videos released by an anti-Hillary Clinton political action committee highlight what voters might have forgotten about 2008, when Barack Obama was brawling in the Democratic primary with Hillary Clinton.

Michelle Obama warned voters that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t a good role model. Barack Obama warned that she was too close to lobbyists. Then he shamed her for running ugly attack ads, and said she was out of touch.

Watch all four of the new ads below:

 

 

 

Categories: 2016 elections, Obama and Hillary
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Hillary’s ‘Body-Shamed’ Beauty Queen Accused of Being Accomplice to Attempted Murder and Threatening Judge

September 28, 2016

Hillary’s ‘Body-Shamed’ Beauty Queen Accused of Being Accomplice to Attempted Murder and Threatening Judge, PJ Media, Debra Heine, September 27, 2016

(Update and a tip of the hat to Conservative Tree House: Here’s a 1997 video of Mr. Trump and Ms. Machado discussing her weight problem. — DM)

(Here’s an interesting video in which “fat shamed” Ms. Machado admits that she was the getaway driver in the attempted murder referenced in the article.

Oh well. That was long ago and she is not “perfect.” Currently, Ms. Machado is presented in some pretty raunchy porn videos. There’s more here about the lovely Ms. Machado. What a marvelous role model for Hillary’s anti-misogynist “feminist” fans.– DM)

missvenMIAMI, FL – AUGUST 20: Actress and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado campaigns for Hillary Clinton on August 20, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Credit: MPI10 / MediaPunch/IPX

The Venezuelan beauty queen Hillary Clinton mentioned during the debate with Donald Trump Tuesday night has a dark history with the law, it has emerged. While she was still living in Venezuela, Alicia Machado was accused of driving the getaway car after an attempted murder but “got off” due to lack of evidence. She also stands accused of threatening a judge.

Clinton cited Machado —  the first woman to win the Miss Universe beauty contest after Donald Trump took over the reins in 1996 — as an example of Trump’s boorish misogyny.

“One of the worst things he’s said was about a woman in a beauty contest — he loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” Clinton said with a smug smile while Trump grimaced in the background. “And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado!”

What Clinton left out of this harrowing sob story is the fact that Machado had broken her contract with the Miss Universe pageant by allowing herself to gain nearly 60 pounds — ballooning from 118 to 178 pounds — since she won Miss Universe. And when the media started fat-shaming her, Trump defended her.

In January of 1997, CNN reported that “as her universe expanded, so did she, putting on nearly 60 pounds.”

“Some people when they have pressure eat too much. Like me. Like Alicia,” said Donald Trump, the executive producer of the Miss Universe Pageant.Since winning the crown, the former Miss Venezuela went from 118 pounds to — well — a number that kept growing like the size of the fish that got away.

Rumors also surfaced that she might be forced to give up her Miss Universe crown.

But Trump, as co-owner of rights to the pageant, said he would never let that happen. “We had a choice of: termination or do this,” he said. “We wanted to do this.”

The pageant’s meaning of “do this” was for Machado to get her weight down to about 130 pounds. At a recent photo op, Machado — hardly a blimp at 5-foot-7 — pedaled a stationary bicycle and jumped rope in front of a pack of photographers and reporters who could themselves use a little training.

“A lot of you folks have weight problems. I hate to tell you,” Trump told the rowdy pool of reporters.

In private, Trump admits to “fat-shaming” Machado in order to inspire her to lose the weight. As Jeff Dunetz put it: “Trump’s reaction was no different than any coach or manger faced with an athlete who let themselves go.” Arguably, this episode was not one of his finest moments — but it’s still light years better than the time Hillary gleefully defended a child rapist (since we’re bringing up stories from decades past).

Machado has complained that the humiliation she suffered because of Trump was unbearable: “After that episode, I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said. “Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”

This brought to mind the story of Kathy Shelton, who was just 12 years old when a 41-year-old drifter brutally raped her on the side of an Arkansas road in 1975. Hillary Clinton defended the animal and got his sentence reduced from first-degree rape to “unlawful fondling of a minor.”

Shelton said she was physically beaten during the attack.’I can’t cuss, but [Taylor] was calling me the ‘b’ word, and [saying] ‘You like it, you know it’,’ said Shelton. ‘Slapping me and hitting me with his fist.’

A witness to the assault told the prosecutor that ‘he overheard Thomas Taylor having had sexual relations with the victim’.

Medical examinations ‘reflected that the victim herein had, in fact, had sexual relations consistent with the time stated by her wherein she was attacked,’ according to court filings.

Shelton said she managed to escape her attackers to a nearby house that had a light on, and later woke up in the hospital.

Shelton recounted the brutal assault that she said left her with severe internal and external injuries. She said she was knocked into a coma, and later required stitches in her genital area.

‘When I came out of the coma, I had several stitches down there. They tore me up bad,’ she said. ‘The doctors said there was a 99 percent chance I couldn’t have kids. I have been with a couple men after that, it took me a long time to grow there. But I never had any kids.’

As a result of the attack, Shelton said doctors told her it was unlikely she would ever be able to have children. She said she was devastated by the prognosis.

‘When I was younger I really wanted a kid so bad,’ said Shelton, who has never had children. ‘I love kids.’

Shelton told the Daily Beast in an emotional interview in the summer of 2014 that she was afraid of men for many years after that, and dealt with anger issues well into her adulthood.

At one point, she turned to drugs, a path that ultimately led her to prison. Now 52, she has never married or had children. She said she has been sober for several years and has achieved a level of stability, although she remains unemployed and living on disability assistance.

“Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” Shelton said.

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing,” Clinton, then named Hillary D. Rodham, wrote in the affidavit. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”Clinton also wrote that a child psychologist told her that children in early adolescence “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences,” especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”

The victim vigorously denied Clinton’s accusations and said there has never been any explanation of what Clinton was referring to in that affidavit. She claims she never accused anyone of attacking her before her rape.

“I’ve never said that about anyone. I don’t know why she said that. I have never made false allegations. I know she was lying,” she said. “I definitely didn’t see older men. I don’t know why Hillary put that in there and it makes me plumb mad.”

Later on, Clinton would laugh about the case with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed, who was researching an article on the Clintons that was ultimately never published.

In the reporter’s audio recordings (uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon), Clinton “appears to acknowledge that she was aware of her client’s guilt, brags about successfully getting the only piece of physical evidence thrown out of court, and laughs about it all whimsically.”

“He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” Clinton says on the recording, failing to hold back some chuckles.

This from a woman who bills herself as a leading advocate for women and children. Apparently, as far as Clinton is concerned, Trump’s “fat-shaming” was far, far worse than her blaming the child victim of a brutal rape.

But it turns out Machado — who is now an American citizen and urging other women to vote for Clinton in November  —  is perhaps not the best character witness:

beautyqueen

In February of 1998, the Associated Press reported that Machado threatened the judge handling the above investigation:

A Venezuela judge said Thursday a former Miss Universe threatened to kill him after he indicted her boyfriend for attempted murder. Venezuelan beauty queen Alicia Machado threatened “to ruin my career as a judge and … kill me,” Judge Maximiliano Fuenmayor said on national television.___

The victim’s family accused Machado of driving the getaway car, but Fuenmayor has not indicted her, citing insufficient evidence. The judge said there were no witnesses to place Machado at the scene _ or to back up her claim she was home sick at the time.

Machado could not be reached for comment Thursday. She was in the city of Maracay filming a soap opera Thursday, according to Mariela Castro of Venevision TV network. Machado’s lawyer was also unavailable for comment.

Fuenmayor said he planned to open a new case against Machado for Wednesday’s threatening phone call.

Machado told Inside Edition she’s voting for Clinton in November and she hopes her story will urge others to do the same.

Kathy Shelton — for one — will not be heeding her call.

Categories: 2016 elections, Alicia Machado, Clinton campaign, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton - "Feminist", Hillary Clinton and sexism, Trump and fat shaming
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In Debate, Hillary Dodges Blame for Libya, What Obama Called His “Greatest Mistake”

September 27, 2016

In Debate, Hillary Dodges Blame for Libya, What Obama Called His “Greatest Mistake”, Counter Jihad, September 27, 2016

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The first Presidential debate revealed a Democratic candidate who believes she has all the answers even though her failed performance as Secretary of State led directly to the formation of the Islamic State (ISIS), aided the rise of Iran, and furthered much of the chaos in the Middle East.  She cannot learn anything while she believes she already knows everything.  Electing her promises more of the same, and ‘the same’ has been a disaster.

The Republican challenger, meanwhile, has much still to learn about the security structure he would command as President.  Clinton’s strongest moment against him on foreign policy came as she chided him for appearing to suggest that America would not honor its mutual defense treaties with Japan or South Korea.  Nothing is more important to the world than the reliability of America’s word.  Clinton should know that:  it was her former boss, President Obama, who personally kicked off the refugee crisis bedeviling Europe by failing to enforce his red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people. His failure to keep his word on a security agreement gave the Syrian regime free rein to wage war on its own population, putting millions on the road to Europe.

Trump’s strongest moment against Clinton came when he accused her of bad judgment in the formation of ISIS.  She attempted to respond by saying that George W. Bush had negotiated the withdrawal from Iraq, and that “the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.”

That’s all true, but whose job was it to obtain such an agreement?  That was her job.  She was the one who was supposed to obtain that agreement, and she failed utterly.  As our earlier coverage states:

It was her job to negotiate an arrangement with the Iraqi government that would do two things:  allow a stabilizing US military presence to remain in Iraq, and allow the US Department of State the freedom of movement it would need to step up as guarantors of the peace.  The peace, you see, had been purchased not only by the US military’s victory on the battlefields, but also by its patient negotiation with militants formerly aligned with al Qaeda in Iraq.  These tribes, mostly but not exclusively Sunni, had rejected the terrorism of al Qaeda in Iraq in return for promises of fair treatment from the Iraqi central government.  This included jobs, assistance for communities recovering from the war, and many other things that the government promised to provide in return for the support of these former enemies.  The United States helped to negotiate all these agreements, and promised to see that they would be kept faithfully.

Instead, the Secretary of State failed to produce either a new Status of Forces agreement that would permit US troops to remain in Iraq, or an agreement that would allow State Department personnel to move about the country safely to observe whether agreements were being kept.  In the wake of the precipitous withdrawal of US forces, Prime Minister Maliki moved to arrest Sunni leaders in government, and broke all his promises to the tribes.

The result was that the western part of Iraq once again became fertile ground for an Islamist insurgency.

Clinton was similarly unreflective when she argued that Trump had supported “the actions we took in Libya,” without pausing for a moment to acknowledge what a destabilizing mistake it was.  Effecting regime change with no capacity to control the outcome is what allowed radical groups, including ISIS, to expand into the vacuum.  That one is also her fault personally, as she pushed President Obama to take this action.  Her own President says that he considers ataking her advice on Libya to be his “worst mistake.”  Yet again, she has learned nothing, and does not seem to be aware that there is even anything to learn.

A similar failure to understand the lessons of the recent past occurred in their exchange on NATO.  Trump is right to be critical of the institution’s continuing relevance, but he is criticizing it on the wrong grounds.  That the other nations do not pay their way is true, but it is not the problem with NATO.  That it does not focus on terrorism is partly true, but it does not render the organization obsolete because a resurgent Russia remains a security challenge for western Europe.

Nevertheless, Clinton’s smug response is un-reflective and wrong.

You know, NATO as a military alliance has something called Article 5, and basically it says this: An attack on one is an attack on all. And you know the only time it’s ever been invoked? After 9/11, when the 28 nations of NATO said that they would go to Afghanistan with us to fight terrorism, something that they still are doing by our side.

What Clinton fails to mention here is that, like all of NATO’s decisions, invoking Article 5 must be done unanimously.  The reason to question NATO’s continued relevance is that the Turkish drift into Islamist politics makes it unlikely that a unanimous vote could still be reached.  Turkey has also shown signs recently of falling into Russia’s orbit.  If Turkey becomes a Russian ally in the way that China is, NATO may be rendered obsolete simply because it can never take a decision.  If Turkey becomes a Russian satellite, NATO will indeed have been rendered obsolete.  In either case, NATO’s continued relevance turns on figuring out how to swing Turkey away from Islamist thought and Russian influence, eliminating the unanimity requirement on NATO actions, or else developing a mechanism to expel the Turks from the alliance.   None of that exists, and since Turkey would have to agree to any of those changes, none of it is likely to come to exist.

Finally, on Iran, Clinton is wedded to a policy that Trump rightly describes as a disaster.

You look at the Middle East, it’s a total mess. Under your direction, to a large extent.

But you look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal, that’s another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they’re going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they’re going.

The horror show in Syria is linked to the Iran deal, as Obama decided to let Syria fester in order to pursue Iran’s approval of his deal.  Clinton’s role in this deal is something she herself has celebrated, so she cannot walk away from it.  Since then, Iran has developed new ballistic missiles that make sense only as a delivery mechanism for nuclear payloads.  It has bought advanced anti-aircraft missiles, and installed them around one of the nuclear sites allegedly to be made harmless by this wonderful “deal.”  Why is it hardening this site against air strikes if it intends to live by the deal?  Why develop a delivery mechanism for weapons you don’t intend to build?

Clinton cannot even ask these questions, because she is wedded to her failures.

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Iran scam, Iraq, Islamic terrorism, Libya, Syria
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Islamic State, a new and deadlier enemy

September 27, 2016

Islamic State, a new and deadlier enemy, The Gorka Briefing, Sebastian Gorka, PhD, September 26, 2016

isw

An analysis/opinion piece that my wife Katharine and I wrote that was published in the Washington Times:

On the evening of May 2, 2011, America had a chance at closure.

We had lost thousands of our fellow Americans nine years earlier on that beautifully sunny September morning, and thousands more of our citizen-soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But now President Obama gave the word: The master jihadi is dead.

In an audacious operation deep within Pakistan, Osama bin Laden had been located. And killed. Al Qaeda would soon be described by the commander in chief, as “on the ropes,” condemned to ever-increasing irrelevance. But this was not the end. There would be no closure for our nation.

A new, deadlier enemy has since emerged. A foe responsible for the carnage of San Bernardino and Orlando, and scores of attacks around the world. Now we are at war with the Islamic State — a threat group that has already claimed responsibility for one of the recent attacks — and its new caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. Al Qaeda may no longer frighten us, but the Islamic State has dethroned it and is on the march.

We may be in the final stages of a presidential campaign which has polarized opinion on all matters, mundane and significant, but the facts speak for themselves.

According to the National Counterterrorism Center, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Islamic State currently has “fully operational” affiliates in 18 nations around the world. Two years ago, the number was seven. Some of these branches are far from Iraq and Syria, including Afghanistan, where numerous Taliban commanders have sworn allegiance to Abu Bakr, and Nigeria, where Boko Haram — one of the deadliest jihadi groups active today — has changed its name to the West Africa Province of the Islamic State. According to the analysts of the SITE Intelligence Group, the totalitarian message of jihadism is so popular around the world that since June 2, outside the war zones of Iraq and Syria, there has been a jihadi attack somewhere around the world every 84 hours.

But does this mean that Americans are in greater danger today than on Sept. 10, 2001? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding yes, and the empirical data is merciless in its incontrovertibility.

In its latest report titled “Muslim-American Involvement with Violent Extremism,” the University of North Carolina has compiled all the metadata on jihadi plots on U.S. soil since 2001. The trend they describe is an exponential one. The number of successful and intercepted terrorist attacks has grown every year (with an inordinate spike in 2009), and most disturbingly, with 2015 witnessing the greatest number of jihadi plots in America since the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago. Jihadism has not been weakened. Not abroad. Not in the States. With the attacks in California, Florida, and now apparently Minnesota, and potentially New York and New Jersey, ISIS has displaced al Qaeda, and it has done so here in America, too, not just in the Middle East or Africa.

In our report “ISIS: The Threat to the United States,” we answer the same question for the Islamic State that the University of North Carolina answered for all jihadists secreted within America.

The facts prove than our new enemy is more prevalent than al Qaeda ever was, with federal and state law enforcement arresting three times as many ISIS supports per month than the average for al Qaeda arrests since 2001. Here are the numbers: Since Abu Bakr declared the new caliphate from the pulpit of the Grand Mosque of Mosul at the end of June 2014, we have killed or interdicted 110 terrorists linked to ISIS, (the last one being two weeks ago in Roanoke, Va). And when one looks at what they were actually doing the picture is grimmest of all.

Just over 40 percent had sworn allegiance to ISIS and were set on leaving the United States to fight for jihad in Iraq and Syria. Just under 20 percent were management-level terrorists, the talent-spotters and recruiters who were facilitating the foreign passage of the “travelers,” as the FBI euphemistically calls them. But a full third of the ISIS suspects, like the San Bernardino killers, and Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadi, had already decided that they could best serve the new Islamic State not by leaving but by killing infidels here on U.S. soil. This is the reality of life in the West today. Whether it is in California or Florida, or in Brussels, Paris or Nice.

As we start the 16th year of what has turned into our longest war ever, we must radically reassess our strategy for victory. The Islamic State has displaced al Qaeda and it is richer, better at propaganda, and has more fighters than bin Laden ever had.

November represents not only a choice of who the new commander in chief should be, but also what our new strategy to defeat ISIS and the global jihadi movement should be. We owe at least this to the memories of those lost on the beautifully sunny morning 15 years ago.

Categories: 2016 elections, Al Qaeda, Islam and conquest, Islamic immigration, Islamic refugees, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Jihad in Obama's America, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State
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Hillary Clinton is not a friend of Israel

September 27, 2016

Hillary Clinton is not a friend of Israel, Israel National News, Aviel Shewin-Stevens, September 27, 2016

Hillary Clinton is campaigning on the basis that she is a friend of Israel, just as she did in the Senate, and Obama did twice for the presidency. As Secretary of State, she was the architect of the policy of the most anti-Israel president since the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It was a policy which reflected views she has held her entire life, with the exception of the nine-year period when she ran for and held the office of U.S. Senator from New York State. American voters should not let her get away with hiding her true self. Israel-focused Americans should vote for Republicans in Senate and congressional races, as well as for Donald Trump as president. Hillary Clinton has collapsed her election.

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Hillary Clinton has a lifetime of anti-Israel positions. She said she was a big supporter of Israel when she was in the U.S. Senate, when she needed campaign contributions from American Jews and New York’s Jewish voting bloc. She has not been pro-Israel since her resignation from the Senate to become Secretary of State in January 2009.

When Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State, she helped Barack Obama craft his anti-Israel positions. Like other presidents, Obama made his own policy; he fundamentally transformed America’s foreign policy. He reoriented America’s Middle East policy in favor of the ayatollahs, to make Iran the regional superpower, disadvantaging America’s traditional allies: Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab monarchies. Like other secretaries of state, Hillary had the option of resigning if she did not agree with the foreign policy, but she shared the same flawed vision of the world as Obama.

Hillary Clinton made an official visit to the Middle East in November 1999, when her husband was the president. During the visit, Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestine leader Yasser Arafat, made slanderous allegations in her presence: “Our [Palestinian] people have been submitted to the daily and intensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.” Suha Arafat also accused Israel of contaminating the water sources used by Palestinians with “chemical materials” and “poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.”

Hillary listened to a real-time translation of the accusations without objections. She also hugged and kissed Suha Arafat when she finished speaking. Twelve hours passed without a word from Hillary. Only when she saw the public outcry did she call Suha Arafat’s words “inflammatory.” She also called on all sides to refrain from “inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations,” including Israel, whose leaders made no such accusations.

Then Hillary did what she and her husband often do when they mess up: She blamed others. First she blamed the translator, though the Palestinians would have assigned one of their most capable translators to handle a major speech by the wife of the Palestinian leader. She then tried to blame the Americans traveling with her, who, she said, told her that Suha Arafat’s remarks were “not worthy of any particular comment.” She also blamed her husband: If she were not the First Lady, she could have spoken up sooner.

Hillary should not have been there. Her advisers told her that traveling to the Territories in the middle of a difficult peace process and her own Senate race was to court disaster. Perhaps the sumptuous trappings of overseas travel as First Lady won out. When Republicans questioned her actions, she responded with arrogance: “It is unfortunate that there are any questions about what was a very straightforward occasion.” Most Americans would not agree that public accusations that an American ally was engaging in chemical genocide make for a “straightforward occasion.” Till now, Hillary Clinton has not specifically contradicted nor denounced the lies uttered by Suha Arafat in her presence.

Hillary Clinton became a supporter of Israel in her Senate years because she needed the Jewish vote and campaign contributions. After becoming the Secretary of State, one of her first actions was to call for the end of construction of new homes for Jews in existing neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the Territories, contravening an existing U.S./Israel agreement made during the Bush administration. This was a major error by the Hillary Clinton State Department, compounded by the inclusion of Jerusalem. Elliot Abrams, who negotiated the agreement for the U.S., stated that the agreement was valid.

In early 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded the “settlement” freeze and was quickly supported by Obama. The Palestinians seized upon the Hillary-created settlement issue as an opportunity to avoid negotiations. They used the demands for a “settlement” freeze a precondition to further talks, even though there were negotiations and construction going on simultaneously before she became Secretary of State.

In August 2009 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced a ten-month “settlement” freeze. It was approved by the Israeli cabinet and implemented on November 25, 2009 and was to run till September 25, 2010. Despite pressure from America, the Palestinians refused to join any talks the first nine months of the freeze; they did not come to the negotiation table till September 2010, three weeks before the freeze ended.

As the end of the “settlement” freeze approached, the U.S. asked Israel to extend the freeze. Israel demanded that any proposal be presented in writing, based on their experience with Hillary denying the deal negotiated by Elliot Abrams during the Bush Administration. The written offer never came; Hillary was not negotiating in good faith.

In 2011, speaking at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the left-wing Brookings Institution, Hillary Clinton attempted to delegitimize Israel as a free nation by expressing concern for Israel’s social climate in the wake of limitations regarding female singing in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and gender segregation on public transportation. Both were accommodations made to the Orthodox communities in Israel. She said the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing reminded her of the situation in Iran. Whereas, in Iran the women would have been lashed or executed. In Israel the women sang, but some people, exercising their personal freedom, felt it was against their religious beliefs and were allowed to walk out. In the IDF, most senior officers supported the women’s right to sing.

Hillary Clinton also spoke of her shock that some Jerusalem buses had assigned separate seating areas for women, at the request of both men and women who are stringently Orthodox, and compared it to the segregation era in America. She said “it’s reminiscent of Rosa Parks.” Her statement was part of the continued attempt to de-legitimize Israeli democracy by the Obama administration.

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s email scandals, the media coverage of her emails from her close friend Sidney Blumenthal has mostly been about his recommendations about Libya; however, he also sent many emails about Israel. Some of them consisted of forwarding articles from his anti-Semitic son, writer Max Blumenthal, but others were recommendations of policies describing Israel as the oppressor.

As reported by the National Review Online: Blumenthal sent dozens of e-mails advising Clinton on Israel in 2010. Before her March speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Blumenthal sent Clinton an article from left-wing Israeli writer Uri Avnery accusing the Netanyahu government of “starting a rebellion” against America and defending interests that diverge from America’s. Clinton responded: “I have to speak to AIPAC tomorrow…How — and should I — use this [sic]?” Blumenthal said he will send another memo the next day.

In that memo, he told Hillary to “hold Bibi [Binyamin Netanyahu]’s feet to the fire” on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: “Perhaps most controversial would be to remind [AIPAC] in as subtle but also direct a way as you can that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion. Bibi is stage managing US Jewish organizations (and neocons, and the religious right, and whomever else he can muster) against the administration. AIPAC itself has become an organ of the Israeli right, specifically Likud.” Whereas, AIPAC favors Israel’s left-wing parties, and is becoming more so in reaction to J-Street, the group formed to give political cover to Obama among liberal Jews. J-Street professes to be pro-Israel, and pro-peace, but its public pronouncements regularly attack the policies of the Israeli government, and back all pressure Obama directs at Israel.

On May 17, Blumenthal forwarded Hillary an article on the Israeli government’s decision to deny pro-Palestine activist Noam Chomsky access to the Territories. Blumenthal wrote that: “Barring him for his political opinions has created a needless PR disaster. The US should not be a passive onlooker…The US effort on his behalf to gain entry should be part of the story.” Hillary forwarded the memo to her staff with instructions to “pls print 3 copies.” Chomsky is anti-Israel and has been fierce in his opposition to Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism, and had been banned from the country since 2010.

In an e-mail from May 31 entitled “Several observations on the Israeli raid,” Blumenthal blamed Netanyahu’s family “inferiority complex” for his decision to launch a raid on the “Gaza Flotilla,” a group of ships seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza: “Bibi desperately seeks his father’s approbation and can never equal his dead brother.” Blumenthal then hinted that the raid was deliberately orchestrated to kill the peace process and humiliate Obama before his scheduled visit with the prime minister. Hillary forwarded the message to Jake Sullivan, her deputy chief of staff at the State Department, and she wrote: “FYI and I told you so.”

On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks published a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails leaked to WikiLeaks. The DNC is the governing body of the United States’ Democratic Party. The leak caused the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda. The leak revealed attempts to smear Bernie Sanders, a candidate in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, with information that might damage him. Wasserman Schultz called Jeff Weaver, manager of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, a “damn liar.” The Washington Post reported: “Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.”

The DNC wanted to use Sanders’s Jewish heritage and lack of religious belief against him. In one of the email chains, Marshall told Dacey that someone should ask Sanders if he is an atheist: “Get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God [sic]. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” The DNC announced Wasserman Schultz would not gavel open the Democratic Party’s convention. Hillary subsequently appointed Wasserman Schultz chair of Hillary’s presidential campaign’s “50 state program.”

There is nothing in Hillary Clinton’s history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that should disqualify her. The most important job she ever held was as the Secretary of State, heading the U.S. Department of State, principally concerned with foreign affairs. Under her watch as Secretary of State, American foreign policy had one setback after another, separated by disasters. She orchestrated the U.S. intervention in Libya and Egypt, undermining governments that were no threat to American interests, which led to terrorist chaos in Libya and Islamic extremists taking over in Egypt.

Under Hillary’s watch as Secretary of State was the radical transformation of American foreign policy and the historic catastrophe — permitting Iranians to develop nuclear  weapons while making it difficult for Israel to stop them. Obama’s years-long negotiations with Iran allowed time to multiply, disperse, and fortify Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Obama administration’s leakage of Israel’s secret agreement with Azerbaijan, allowing Israeli warplanes to refuel if attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, sabotaged any Israeli attempt to destroy Iranian facilities.

In the 2009 Iranian Green Movement, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office, Hillary Clinton was intent on “engagement” with the world’s most dangerous regime and vilest state-sponsor of terrorism. She cut funding to organizations supporting Iranian human rights, then sat by as thousands of Iranians were imprisoned, tortured and executed. She repeatedly watered down sanctions against Iran, and it was during her tenure that negotiations began with the Ahmadinejad regime, culminating in the Iranian deal, which she supported, and still supports: Iran could develop nuclear weapons and the ayatollahs get $150 billion.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Libya, Syria and Yemen are the dark forces in Israel’s neighborhood. They could have looked different today had Hillary not betrayed America’s democratic values with her “smart power.” Hillary, as well as Obama, sought to put distance diplomatically between America and Israel.

She berated Netanyahu publicly for announcing Jerusalem home building, compared Israel to an apartheid regime, correlated the status of women in Israel to that in Iran, demanded reckless concessions from Israel to promote “peace talks” while never making serious demands of the Palestinian Authority or ever holding it accountable, granted legitimacy to George Soros-sponsored J Street, made a false equivalency between terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel’s attempts to defend itself, questioned Israel’s commitment to its American alliance, rejected the legitimacy of all Jewish construction across the Green Line including Jerusalem neighborhoods, etc.

Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration when he talked about the truth of the internationally supported Palestinian Arab demand that Israel must transfer control over Jerusalem and the Territories to the Palestinians Jew-free. From its first days in office, the Obama administration rejected the civil rights of Jews as Jews in these areas and seeks the complete negation of their rights through destruction, mass expulsion, and property seizure: ethnic cleansing. So if Hillary were elected president, her administration could be an Obama third term: the American people could be left unprotected from Islamic terrorists, and Israel could face unprecedented pressure to submit to Palestinian Arab terrorists.

The Republicans have become the pro-Israel party. Democrats talk about their commitment to Israel, but when Hillary and Obama were abusing Israel diplomatically, there was no pushback from congressional Democrats. Even the Jewish Democrats in Congress always stood with the administration. Whereas, Republicans have stood up for Israel unapologetically, and just passed the most pro-Israel platform in American history.

The blatant anti-Semitism displayed at the 2016 Democratic National Convention merits a mention: Booing any mention of Israel, chanting “Intifada”, burning the Israeli flag, etc. The Democrats do not even try to disguise their disdain for Jews any more. Nevertheless, a vast majority of American Jews could still vote for Hillary and other Democrats.
Hillary Clinton is campaigning on the basis that she is a friend of Israel, just as she did in the Senate, and Obama did twice for the presidency. As Secretary of State, she was the architect of the policy of the most anti-Israel president since the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It was a policy which reflected views she has held her entire life, with the exception of the nine-year period when she ran for and held the office of U.S. Senator from New York State. American voters should not let her get away with hiding her true self. Israel-focused Americans should vote for Republicans in Senate and congressional races, as well as for Donald Trump as president. Hillary Clinton has collapsed her election.

Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump and Israel, Hillary Clinton and Israel, Obama and Israel
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After First Debate, ‘Nobody Knows Anything’

September 27, 2016

After First Debate, ‘Nobody Knows Anything’ PJ Media, Roger L Simon, September 26, 2016

I can’t say I’m surprised, as others have noted (okay I took a few peaks), that moderator Lester Holt asked no questions about Hillary’s emails, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. That’s what the mainstream media are paid for — to be silent and practice omertà concerning anything embarrassing to Democrats. (Ironically, this leaves a big opening for one person — Julian Assange. And don’t think he doesn’t know it.)

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In his Adventures in the Screen Trade, screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote of Hollywood that “Nobody knows anything.”

He was mostly right about the movie business, except that sequels of Star Warsdo tend to make a lot of money (until they don’t).

But applied to politics, his words are one hundred percent correct. Nobody does know anything. Nevertheless, as in Hollywood, a lot of people are paid big bucks to pretend they do.

Goldman’s was the first phrase that came to my mind after watching the Greatest Debate That Ever Lived or whatever anyone wants to call the extravaganza Monday night that turned out not to be nearly as dramatic as some were expecting.

Who won? Beats me. Does it matter? Also beats me. (Well, I do have a suspicion, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

I do notice that as of this moment (8:20PM PT) the Drudge Report is showing Donald up 90% to 10% in its online poll.  That’s basically meaningless considering the source.  If Drudge’s poll had shown Trump winning by less that 80% it would have spelled disaster.

As for the pundits, I can’t stand watching them. They make my head explode.  And they’re basically useless. No one is more disconnected from the American public than a television pundit. When have you ever heard one say something you haven’t thought of a hundred times before? Well, maybe once in a blue moon. (You’re free to dial off me now.  I’m no better.)

But, being a good pundit, I will say the painfully obvious. Both candidates basically got what they wanted.  Hillary didn’t have a coughing fit or fall over. Donald seemed plausibly presidential. He didn’t assault Clinton or bite her head off (not that she didn’t deserve it). In the end, he may have gotten more.  (As I said, more of that in a moment)

I can’t say I’m surprised, as others have noted (okay I took a few peaks), that moderator Lester Holt asked no questions about Hillary’s emails, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. That’s what the mainstream media are paid for — to be silent and practice omertà concerning anything embarrassing to Democrats. (Ironically, this leaves a big opening for one person — Julian Assange. And don’t think he doesn’t know it.)

What did surprise me is that Trump barely brought much of this up himself. He had a huge opportunity when the subject of cyber security came up but didn’t take it.  Was this deliberate or an oversight?  If the former,  and I suspect it largely is, it’s a clever strategy. Everyone knows about Hillary’s email/Foundation veracity issues. Trump didn’t have to make a big deal about them, especially if his goal was to appear presidential, to not seem crazy or mean to those few remaining independent voters who are not attracted to Hillary but want to be reassured about Trump. And we have to remember, the polls at this moment show him practically even or ahead and surging, a great position.

Interestingly, as I continue to write, Drudge has abandoned his own poll and is linking to another online poll being run by Time magazine. It is currently showing Trump ahead 60-40 with well over 540,000 votes cast. That’s a significant number with a big spread and, unlike Drudge, Time is no conservative icon.

What does this mean? Well, there was a link from Drudge and it may be his fans coming over. As I said, “Nobody knows anything.” Another round of polls will be coming out in a few days and we will be told what to think.

Meanwhile there’s this: Trump concentrated his fire on Hilary actually having done nothing of substance in her 30 (later corrected to 26) years of public service — just talk talk talk. That approach may ultimately prove more lethal than the more obvious “Crooked Hillary.” I wonder if it was poll-tested. We’ll have to ask Kellyanne.

But before I sign off, I have to comment on what I think was the most significant moment of the debate and it came at the end. Hillary had just gone after Donald on the sexism issue — the beauty contest nonsense, etc. — and it seemed for a moment that Trump was going to come back at her on her dreadful family life the whole world knows about.  But then he stopped himself.  He didn’t turn into the mean Donald and turn off a whole bunch of people.

On Fox, immediately after the debate, Trump explained his decision to Sean Hannity. The candidate saw Chelsea in the audience and decided it was the wrong thing to do. Well done, Donald.  This is the moment that may resonate in the weeks to come.

So now I have one last online poll to report.  It’s from the ultra-liberal Slate and shows Trump in the lead by 9% with 42,000 votes cast. I assumed there were no Drudge links, but I checked anyway. There weren’t.

So did Trump win?  Possibly. He seems not to have lost anyway, which was all he needed.

But remember, in 2012, after the first debate, the pundits (mostly the same ones) were pronouncing Obama dead. All together now, “Nobody knows anything.”

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Lester Holt, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton
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Trump Takes on Holt and Hillary

September 27, 2016

Trump Takes on Holt and Hillary, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, September 27, 2016

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Like small boys jumping into a mud pile, media personalities had been urging each other on for weeks to abandon even the pretense of objectivity and just go after Trump. That’s what Holt did in his awkward and impotent way. And it proved to be ineffective as he quickly lost control of the debate. Holt, like the rest of his media cohort, had failed to understand that overt bias makes them less effective.

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Donald Trump’s main opponent in the first presidential debate wasn’t Hillary Clinton. It was NBC anchor Lester Holt. Hillary, with forced smiles as brittle as china and an eerie fake laugh, continued her primary debate strategy of repeating canned talking points while waiting for the moderator to knock off her opponent. Hillary wasn’t there to debate, but to once again seem like the only possible option.

Holt’s job was to make her seem like the only possible option by targeting Trump.

There were fears that Lester Holt would be another Candy Crowley. That was unfair to Crowley. The entire debate was structurally biased. Its general topics were framed in narrow left-wing terms, instead of discussing the economy and moving the country forward, Holt defined the topics as class warfare and racial divisiveness. Even national security was narrowed down to Obama’s favorite battlespace, cyberspace, rather than the actual battlefield.

Trump was hit with repeated personal attacks and gotcha questions by Holt, who then took to arguing with him over the facts. Hillary, despite having been under investigation by the FBI, received only a perfunctory offer from Lester Holt to comment on her emails after Trump had raised the issue.

But Holt’s overt bias also proved to be his undoing. Candy Crowley had been effective because her interjection into the debate between Obama and Romney had come as something of a surprise. Holt made his agenda clear at the outset. And it also made him easy to ignore, as Trump frequently did.

Like small boys jumping into a mud pile, media personalities had been urging each other on for weeks to abandon even the pretense of objectivity and just go after Trump. That’s what Holt did in his awkward and impotent way. And it proved to be ineffective as he quickly lost control of the debate. Holt, like the rest of his media cohort, had failed to understand that overt bias makes them less effective.

Hillary’s role in the debate was to grit her teeth and smile awkwardly, then deliver a few scripted attacks and lines that would allow her media allies to hail her as the winner. It was an easy job that she botched.

The media headlines were pre-scripted. And the same stories would have run even if Hillary had gone full Linda Blair spinning her head around 360 degrees or been devoured by a herd of wild dingoes during the debate. Here’s CNN. “Clinton puts Trump on defense at first debate.” And here’s the Washington Post. “Trump vs. Clinton: Her jabs put him on the defensive in first debate.”  This is what happens when the Clinton campaign writes your stories for you. They all sound the same.

But the only thing Hillary accomplished was to remind Americans of how unpleasant, insincere, untrustworthy and irritating she was. The pathological sense of entitlement, the political narcissism, the empty promises, the hollow rhetoric and the artificial attempts to connect to people whom she clearly despised were all on display here. The lady in red had nothing new to offer, either in policy or in her attacks on Trump. Like her, it was all reruns. And it was grating enough not to bear rewatching.

Hillary claimed to want to discuss policy, but she launched the first personal attack and between her and Holt, these supposedly serious personalities took the debate into the arena of petty malice. A country full of people who had lost hope had not tuned in to hear about Trump’s taxes or his comments about Rosie O’Donnell. In a particularly surreal moment, Hillary claimed to have brought an architect who had suffered at Trump’s hands. Because whom could working class people relate to better than an architect.

And it was obvious why Hillary and Holt had to embark on these desperate stunts.

Hillary’s message was a contradictory mess of promises to fix problems that existed for inexplicable reasons under Obama. Everything is already okay and she has a plan to fix all that. When Trump exploited this contradiction, her messaging completely collapsed into its own black hole.

The real agenda of the debate was to discredit Trump. Instead he came out appearing presidential, patiently listening to another Hillary rant, gamely sipping a glass of water every time she touted her website, and enduring it with the same wry expression that much of the audience was wearing.

Trump was at his best when puncturing the media and Hillary’s hypocrisy. Asked about his taxes, he demanded that Hillary release her emails. Challenged on Iraq, he pushed back on Libya. Where Hillary offered artificial bonhomie, pasting on plastic smiles and uploading fake laughs, he was natural. Nothing about Trump’s reactions or responses were faked. And that still remains a shock to the system.

And it is very much a system that we saw on display here tonight. It’s a system that Lester Holt and Hillary Clinton are a part of. It’s a system that has run this country deep into the ground.

Instead of destroying Trump, Holt’s bias brought the system out onto the stage. It reminded everyone that the national election was being hijacked just as the Democratic primaries had been. It showed viewers that the system was rigged and that it was rigged to select Hillary Clinton for the White House.

The fundamental question of this election is whether this country will be run by the people or the system. Trump reminded everyone that he was not the candidate of the system. The media’s post-debate analysis will tell us what the system thinks about the debate. But everyone already knows that. The system wants its own perpetuation. It wants, in Hillary’s words, more “investments.” That is the system’s euphemism for spending. It wants to export more jobs and import more migrants.

It wants to transform America into a grotesque reflection of its own warped processes.

Hillary Clinton is the perfect embodiment of the system. Artificial, unnatural and corrupt. And Lester Holt took on his role as the system’s feeble gatekeeper. But it’s not the system that the public wants. It seeks someone to smash the system. That is the source of Trump’s popularity. It is what makes him so threatening.

The debate was not about any of its topics, not the official ones or unofficial ones. It was about the subtext of the system. It was about what the system does to protect itself. Instead of a debate, what the people witnessed was the media hive trying to destroy an intruder while protecting its queen.

And once again, the system failed. Its media gatekeeper drone failed. The queen is in check.

Categories: 2016 elections, 2016 presidential debates, Hillary and media, Trump and media
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‘Donald Trump’s Special’

September 26, 2016

‘Donald Trump’s Special’, Wall Street Journal, James Taranto, September 26, 2016

It’s normal to play down one’s own candidate’s strengths and play up the opponent’s, but this is ridiculous. Mook is saying Mrs. Clinton—who we’ve been told endlessly is the most qualified man, woman or child ever to seek office anywhere in the universe—can’t handle a debate unless the moderator takes her side. What’s going on here?

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Why Mrs. Clinton needs help from the moderator.

 

The prevailing view ahead of tonight’s presidential debate, with which this column agrees up to a point, is that Hillary Clinton faces a much more difficult task than Donald Trump. He has to convince viewers that he is sane, while she has to persuade them to trust her.

It is possible he will fail, but it is difficult to see how she can succeed. “The concept pre-loaded with associations most damaging to immediate assessments and future dealings is untrustworthiness, along with its concomitants, such as lying and cheating,” observes social psychologist Robert Cialdini in his new book, “Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade.” What could Mrs. Clinton possibly say that would reverse decades of distrust?

Her surrogates are playing the expectations game, as surrogates do, but in a very strange way. They are “pressuring Monday night’s moderator to take a more active role in the presidential debate,” the Washington Times reports:

“It’s unfair to ask for Hillary both to play traffic cop with Trump, make sure that his lies are corrected, and also to present her vision for what she wants to do for the American people,” Robby Mook said on ABC’s “This Week.”

When pressed by host George Stephanopoulos that that’s “what a debater is supposed to do,” Mr. Mook said this case is “special.”

“Well, I think Donald Trump’s special,” Mr. Mook said. “We haven’t seen anything like this. We normally go into a debate with two candidates who have a depth of experience, who have rolled out clear, concrete plans, and who don’t lie, frankly, as frequently as Donald Trump does.”

“So we’re saying this is a special circumstance, a special debate, and Hillary should be given some time to actually talk about what she wants to do to make a difference in people’s lives,” he continued. “She shouldn’t have to spend the whole debate correcting the record.”

It’s normal to play down one’s own candidate’s strengths and play up the opponent’s, but this is ridiculous. Mook is saying Mrs. Clinton—who we’ve been told endlessly is the most qualified man, woman or child ever to seek office anywhere in the universe—can’t handle a debate unless the moderator takes her side. What’s going on here?

For a possible answer, let’s turn again to Cialdini, who advised President Obama’s 2012 campaign and is rumored to be advising Mrs. Clinton’s campaign this year. In his new book, he observes:

In contests of persuasion, counterarguments are typically more powerful than arguments. This superiority emerges especially when a counterclaim does more than refute a rival’s claim by showing it to be mistaken or misdirected in the particular instance, but does so instead by showing the rival communicator to be an untrustworthy source of information, generally. Issuing a counterargument demonstrating that an opponent’s argument is not to be believed because its maker is misinformed on the topic will usually succeed on that singular issue. But a counterargument that undermines an opponent’s argument by showing him or her to be dishonest in the matter will normally win that battle plus future battles with the opponent.

That’s what the Clinton campaign hopes to do to Trump. But she can’t do it on her own, because her dishonesty is already established in most voters’ minds. Thus she needs the help of an outside authority, the moderator.

And not just the moderator. Jason Easly of PoliticusUSA (slogan: “real liberal politics”) reported Friday: “The Hillary Clinton campaign held a special press call to call on the debate moderator, media, and voters to fact check Donald Trump. In order to help the press, debate moderators, and voters fact check Trump, the Clinton campaign has released 19 pages of Trump lies.”

As if on cue, HotAir’s Larry O’Connor notes, at least four major outlets published “news” articles characterizing Trump as a liar: the New York Times (“A Week of Whoppers From Donald Trump”), Los Angeles Times (“Scope of Trump’s Falsehoods Unprecedented for a Modern Presidential Candidate”), Washington Post (“Trump’s Week Reveals Bleak View, Dubious Statements in ‘Alternative Universe’ ”) and Politico (“Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths”).

Here’s an example of one of Politico’s “fact checks”:

52. “We’re presiding over something that the world has not seen. The level of evil is unbelievable.” (Sept. 19, Fort Myers, Florida, rally)

Judging one “level of evil” against another is subjective, but other groups in recent history have without any question engaged in as widespread killing of civilians as ISIS.

Whom does that discredit, Trump or Politico?

We stumbled across another hilarious example last night on Twitter. On CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter had this exchange with Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates:

Stelter: What about the issue of fact checking that has been talked about so much in the past few weeks? Does the commission want Lester Holt to fact check?

Brown: The commission asks independent, smart journalists to be the moderators and we let them decide how they’re going to do this. But I have to say, in our history, the moderators have found it appropriate to allow the candidates to be the ones that talk about the accuracy or the fairness of what the other candidate or candidates might have said.

I think, personally, if you are starting to get into the fact-check, I’m not sure what is the big fact, and what is a little fact? And if you and I information [sic in transcript], does your source about the unemployment rate agree with my source?

I don’t think it’s a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica. And I think it’s better for that person to facilitate and to depend on the candidates to basically correct each other as they see fit.

Jon Ralston, a respected Nevada political journalist, tweeted: “This, from the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates to @brianstelter, is insane.” Paul Krugman, the academic economist and New York Times columnist, was incredulous: “The unemployment rate? The UNEMPLOYMENT RATE?”

Because, you see, the unemployment rate is a simple matter of fact, about which there can be no dispute. Or is it?

In 2013, the New York Times published a blog post titled “There Is No ‘True’ Unemployment Rate.” It got a little technical in discussing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ different ways of gauging unemployment:

The usual measure, U3, measures your desire to work by asking whether you have been actively searching in the recent past; it measures your ability to find work by your taking a job, any job.

Obviously this can deviate from the Platonic ideal in both directions: there could be people who could find work if they were willing to take the jobs on offer, and there could be people who want to work but aren’t actively searching because they know that at the moment there’s no point—or who are working, but only part-time because that’s all they can find.

U6 casts a wider net; it includes people who are working part-time but say they want full-time work, it includes people who aren’t actively searching but either were working recently or say that they aren’t looking for lack of opportunities. Again, this could clearly deviate from the Platonic ideal, but it’s a reasonable stab at the problem. . . .

That’s all there is to it. No deep issues, just practical choices in a world where measurement is never perfect.

The author of that post: Paul Krugman.

The problem for Mrs. Clinton in relying on the authority of journalists is that their authority rests on the assumption that they are honest brokers of information who at least aspire to an ideal of objectivity. (That is also true of scholars, so that it would apply to Krugman in this example, even though he has no obligation of objectivity in his role as an opinion columnist.)
Journalists undermine their own authority when they use it to further a political agenda. The widespread and open anti-Trump bias will further erode journalistic authority and public trust in the news media. It may hurt Trump, although we tend to doubt it will hurt him much. Reporters are not trained in propaganda, so that they are not especially good at it.

Lester Holt and the other debate moderators find themselves in an especially difficult position. They are under pressure to side with Mrs. Clinton, not just from her campaign but from their peers. If they resist the pressure and conduct the debates in an ordinary manner, they’ll get the Matt Lauer treatment.

What if they don’t? There’s no guarantee they would succeed in discrediting Trump, who is no doubt prepared to respond by arguing that the debate is rigged (unlike Mitt Romney, who was taken by surprise when Candy Crowley made a brief and probably naive foray into “fact checking” in 2012).

If Trump is seen as winning the debate, the moderator will get no credit for trying to make him lose. The least bad approach, then, is probably to stick with old-fashioned professionalism.

Categories: 2016 elections, Hillary needs help, Trump-Clinton debates
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