Hannity 6/29/16 FULL: Lying Crooked Hillary, Judge Jeanine Pirro via YouTube, June 30, 2016
Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ category
Donald Trump vs. CNN: Score One for Donald
June 30, 2016Donald Trump vs. CNN: Score One for Donald, Town Hall, Emmett Tyrrel, June 30, 2016
WASHINGTON — I see that CNN is calling upon the good offices of Mr. Potato Head to refute Donald Trump’s evisceration of Hillary Clinton in his speech last Wednesday. Mr. Potato Head is very indignant that Peter Schweizer has written a book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” demonstrating that a pattern of corruption exists in the relationship between The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department. He says that pattern of corruption does not establish the Clintons’ guilt. Well, an author can only do so much. Schweizer has written a convincing book about the Clintons’ corruption. The rest is left to the courts, which have yet to get the Clintons’ case, but my guess is they will have at the Clintons soon enough.
You might recall that Mr. Potato Head, as he was called some 20 years ago by The American Spectator, is David Gergen. Two decades ago he was employed by the Clinton White House, and he apparently still works for them at least part-time. On CNN this past week Gergen looked even more like Mr. Potato Head than he did when he worked in the White House. I remember him calling me some time in the early 1990s and complaining that we did not give him a “heads-up” on our Troopergate stories. He asked me if I would do so in the future. I generously offered to send him subscription information but offered no special rate — not even our student rate. The government of the United States could pay for its subscription to The American Spectator, as it paid for Bill Clinton’s subscriptions to “Playboy” and “Hustler.” Perhaps it could’ve paid for two subscriptions!
Mr. Potato Head was in high dudgeon last week over Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash,” claiming the book had been “discredited.” Well, it was used as a source by The New York Times and the Washington Post. They relied on it heavily for stories about the Clintons’ corruption, and it has sold quite well.
Mr. Potato Head was working with CNN’s posse comitatus to bring down Trump for his revelations about Crooked Hillary, but it is they — the so-called fact-checkers at CNN — who were brought down.
The CNN fact-checkers deemed Trump in error for claiming that the continuing bloodshed in Syria was due to Clinton’s support of regime change. But Trump never made that claim. All he charged was that her support for regime change began Syria’s descent into a bloody civil war. He did not say that she had a hand in the ongoing bloodshed. There is a significant difference. And, she actually bragged about what she did. “Yes, when I was secretary of state,” she boasted, “I did urge along with the Department of Defense and the CIA that we seek out, vet and train and arm Syrian opposition figures so that they could defend themselves against Assad.” That quote was actually broadcast during the CNN Democratic presidential debate in April. The Syrian death toll is now well over 250,000.
The CNN fact-checkers assailed Trump again for claiming the U.S. trade deficit with China soared by 40 percent while Clinton was secretary of state. This, the fact-checkers said, is “exaggerated.” Unfortunately for them we have at our disposal the U.S. Census Bureau, which in its report “Trade In Goods With China” asseverated that from 2009 to 2012 the trade deficit with China increased by almost $89 billion, or 39 percent. So Trump’s exaggeration was off by one percentage point.
Finally, CNN’s crack team of fact-checkers rated Trump in error for saying that Clinton’s State Department refused all requests for additional security in Benghazi. He said the State Department received “hundreds and hundreds of requests for security. … Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all.” Well, there were few security personnel on the ground when Ambassador Stevens was murdered in Benghazi. In the felicitously titled Washington Post column “Fact Checker,” Glenn Kessler claims that 581 documents have been found that deal with the security situation at Benghazi. The number is likely to climb higher if classified documents are taken into account. I have found six other open-source accounts of lax security in Benghazi, among them one from January 15, 2014 titled “Democrats Join GOP To Blame State In Benghazi.” It reported: “Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks after having made requests for more security to the State Department. State has acknowledged that security was not adequate.”
After last week’s speech, it appears that Donald Trump’s charges against Hillary Clinton are absolutely copper-bottomed. CNN’s “fact-checkers” should be retired. Like all politicians, Trump may occasionally exaggerate a trivial matter. But Clinton lies repeatedly on things that matter.
Trump, Brexit, Iceland, Turin, and Rome
June 30, 2016Trump, Brexit, Iceland, Turin, and Rome, Gingrich Productions, Newt Gingrich, June 29, 2016
There has been a lot of commentary about the British decision to leave the European Union and its implications for Trump and the American presidential race.
Trump was at his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland the day after the vote. He was enthusiastic about Brexit and claimed it was a model for the American choice. He suggested the British hostility to bureaucracy in Brussels paralleled the American hostility to bureaucracy in Washington. He felt the concerns about massive immigration and Syrian refugees were the same in both countries. He drew a direct comparison between the British desire to be independent again and the American desire to put America first in foreign relations. And of course, he did the entire press conference wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Clinton took the opposite approach. Despite the defeat of the British establishment and its “Remain” campaign, she was committed to stability and risk avoidance. She emphasized the dangers of Brexit whereas Trump had emphasized the opportunities.
Yet focusing on Brexit creates much too narrow a basis for understanding the winds of change sweeping through the Western world.
The first harbinger of change this year was May 23, the day of the Austrian presidential elections.
In the first round, the two parties that had dominated Austria for the past half-century came in fourth and fifth. An independent came in third. The two formerly minor parties in the run-off were a hardline conservative anti-immigrant candidate and a green who favored more immigration. The entire national establishment mobilized to block the anti-immigrant candidate. He got 49.65 percent of the vote.
The second big signal of change was the Italian municipal elections. Out of disgust with widespread corruption, an Italian comedian named Beppe Grillo launched the Five Star Movement in 2009. In the 2013 elections, it came in second. This month, the Five Star Movement candidates won the mayor’s offices in both Turin and Rome.
Virginia Raggi, 37, became the first female mayor in Rome’s 2,800-year history. In the midst of a corruption scandal which forced the previous mayor to resign, Raggi got 67 percent of the vote against the Prime Minister’s party. In Turin, the results were similar and the reform movement won in 17 other cities.
Brexit, then, was at least the third big-change election in the West this year. The entire British establishment, the business leadership, President Obama and Hillary Clinton all came out for the Remain side. They lost 52-48 in a stunning upset which the polls did not predict. In England and Wales, the margins were much higher as people voted to make Britain independent again.
Fourth and finally, last Sunday was the little-noticed election of a new president in Iceland. The former president had resigned in a scandal caused by release of the Panama Papers. He had broken no laws but his previously secret investments were very unpopular. The winner of the presidential elections with 39 percent of the vote was Gudni Johannesson, a history teacher. Second, with 28 percent of the vote, was Halla Tomasdottir, a businesswoman. The leading professional politician, a former prime minister, got 13 percent.
These results from four different countries show a consistent momentum toward throwing out established politicians and rejecting the establishment.
There are real warnings here for Clinton and real signs of encouragement for Trump.
Hillary’s ‘Serious Lack of Competence’ Cost lives at Benghazi
June 29, 2016Hillary’s ‘Serious Lack of Competence’ Cost lives at Benghazi, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, June 29, 2016
Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.
The foreign policy establishment that is irrevocably committed to these politically correct fantasies must be swept out. And to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States would be, in D. W. Wilber’s words, “lunacy on a grand scale.”
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Former CIA officer D. W. Wilber noted in The Hill Monday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions leading up to the Benghazi attack, and the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Libya as a whole were “lunacy on a grand scale”: “Additional security was denied even though intelligence reports clearly indicated the presence in Libya of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups hostile to the United States.” Hillary’s “trust in the various militia factions to set aside their longstanding differences and establish a governing body in the war torn country illustrates another amateur mistake.” But it wasn’t. It was a professional mistake.
In reality, Hillary’s actions in Libya were an implementation of the policy called for by foreign policy professionals for years: to ignore whatever a study of Islamic doctrine and law might reveal about the thought processes and motivations of Islamic jihadis, and to assume that they’re motivated by the same mix of pragmatism and self-interest that motivates secular Western urban cosmopolites, i.e., people just like themselves.
This is the kind of disastrous miscalculation preached by establishment foreign policy wonks including the likes of the puerile and silly Will McCants (and the Qatar-funded Brookings Institution in general), Max Abrahms (and the Council on Foreign Relations in general), and a host of others that the State Department and other foreign policy entities hire by the pound.
The foreign policy establishment is a bipartisan creation, and both parties refuse to challenge its hegemony. The Republicans, as the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearings showed Tuesday, continue instead to let Hillary and Obama off the hook, and don’t even come close to challenging the entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy. Breitbart News noted that the final report from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’s committee refused “to blame President Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as refus[ed] to say directly if Clinton lied to the American people regarding the Benghazi attacks.”
The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell said of Gowdy after the Tuesday hearing: “It was up to him to get to the truth, and he punted. Just as with the IRS investigation, the Republicans lacked the fortitude to confront those responsible.”
Bozell detailed the many failures of Gowdy’s inquiry: “The causes, events and circumstances regarding the attacks on the American personnel and facilities at Benghazi are still a mystery to the American people. Who denied the multiple requests for additional security for the compound? No answer. Who is being held responsible for the deaths of these men? No answer. Why did this administration deliberately lie about the video? No answer. Should the Commander-in-Chief be held responsible for the multiple failures of the military? Should the Secretary of State be held responsible for the disastrous consequences of State Department decisions? Not according to this report. They wouldn’t even state that Hillary Clinton lied about the video though her own emails, read by committee members, prove she had! But they did blame a ‘rusty bureaucratic process.’”
That “rusty bureaucratic process” is a product of the foreign policy establishment that led us into this mess. Hillary Clinton is just their most prominent exponent — which does not in the least exonerate her. It’s just to say that not only does Hillary Clinton’s influence over the U.S. government in whatever capacity need to be decisively rejected; the whole foreign policy establishment needs to be swept out, cherished and unquestioned assumptions rejected, and the edifice remade by people who are more realistic and unafraid to base policy on unpleasant realities rather than upon politically correct wishful thinking.
Even worse, right after the Benghazi massacre, the father of one of those slain there recounted that Secretary of State Clinton spoke to him at a memorial service about the Muhammad filmmaker, saying, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted.” And she did. The filmmaker, who went by several different names, had a record full of run-ins with the law, and at the time of the Benghazi attacks was out on parole. A condition of his parole, however, was that he not go on the Internet – which he apparently did in order to upload the notorious video to YouTube.
For that, he was arrested and imprisoned for several months, thereby becoming the first political prisoner in the U.S. for Obama’s war on free speech and enforcement of Sharia blasphemy laws. There can be no doubt that he was imprisoned not for the technicality of the probation violation (while thousands of more serious probation violators walked the streets), but for insulting Muhammad. His arrest was a symbol of America’s capitulation to the Sharia. He was nothing more than the fall guy who became the first offender against the new de facto federal crime of blasphemy against Islam.
That, too, was a reflection of the foreign policy establishment’s determination to compel Americans to stop doing anything and everything that any Muslim might construe as offensive to Islam. Reflecting the establishment policy also were Hillary’s fatuous words: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” In response to that, Donald Trump recently opined that Hillary was “in total denial, and her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the entire world — true weakness.” Clinton wants, he said, “to take away American’s guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don’t have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want….The bottom line is that Hillary supports policies that bring the threat of radical Islam into American and allow it to grow overseas, and it is growing.”
Trump’s point was sound. In what way was it not? Combining unrestricted immigration and a massive influx of Muslim migrants, among whom the Islamic State has promised to embed jihadis, with a disarmed American population is simply an invitation to jihad massacres on a frequency never hitherto imagined. Could there be an Orlando-style attack every day? Why not, in the America of the near future that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are busy preparing for us?
Trump declared: “The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why she believes immigration from these dangerous countries should be increased without any effective system really to screen.” Again, his point his sound: all those, including Hillary, who are busy excoriating Trump for the “racism” and “bigotry” of his immigration proposal have not bothered to suggest any alternative plan for preventing jihadis from entering the country. Hillary and the rest of the political and media elites would rather see Americans subjected to jihad mass murder on a huge scale than do anything that is politically incorrect.
The foreign policy establishment that is irrevocably committed to these politically correct fantasies must be swept out. And to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States would be, in D. W. Wilber’s words, “lunacy on a grand scale.”
Trump’s Declaration of Independence
June 29, 2016Trump’s Declaration of Independence, Power Line,
Today Donald Trump delivered a major speech on the economy in Pennsylvania, titled “Declaring America’s Economic Independence.” You can read the speech, as prepared for delivery, here. These are my thoughts on it:
1) The fact that it is a prepared speech at all is good. Trump’s speeches during the primary season were generally stream of consciousness riffs, and he often has gotten into trouble while ad libbing. He needs the discipline of a prepared text to keep him on message and avoid foolish distractions.
2) The speech previews themes which I think will be highly effective. Those themes aren’t new, of course, but Trump is now honing them and bringing them to a wider audience. Speeches like the one he delivered today will drive the Democrats crazy. They will denounce Trump as a demagogue and xenophobe, which means they are afraid voters will find him persuasive. Trump’s speech tells a story–a personal, populist story, with Hillary Clinton as one of the villains:
We are thirty miles from Steel City. Pittsburgh played a central role in building our nation.
The legacy of Pennsylvania steelworkers lives in the bridges, railways and skyscrapers that make up our great American landscape.
But our workers’ loyalty was repaid with betrayal.
Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization – moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas.
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.
3) The speech was mostly about trade. Trump sounds very much like Dick Gephardt, circa 1988. He links the decline in American manufacturing jobs to currency devaluations and cheating by our trade partners, under the benign eye of the globalist financial elite represented by Hillary Clinton. I think Trump’s diagnosis is mostly wrong. The number of manufacturing jobs has declined due to constantly improving productivity, even as the value of goods manufactured in the U.S. is at an all-time high. Trump talks about dealing with “cheating” by trade partners and denounces specific deals (NAFTA and TPP) as bad for the U.S., but to the extent that manufacturing has grown more rapidly in some other countries, like China and Mexico, it is because of cheaper labor and less costly regulation. Trump implies, but doesn’t quite say, that he wants to impose high tariffs on manufactured goods. This would be a highly destructive policy, I think.
4) Still, Trump’s narrative contains a considerable kernel of truth. There is a globalist elite that doesn’t much care about the United States, and Hillary Clinton is its foremost representative in American politics (or will be when Barack Obama steps down). I think it is true that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad deal for America, and, in general, that we would be better served by tough negotiators who care about American interests. Most voters sense this, which is why Trump’s approach could be political dynamite:
[I]f we’re going to deliver real change, we’re going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties.
The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything – and say anything – to keep things exactly as they are.
The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change.
The inner cities will remain poor.
The factories will remain closed.
The borders will remain open.
The special interests will remain firmly in control.
Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small – and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.
My campaign has the opposite message.
I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again.
At times, Trump is downright Reaganesque.
5) Once he gets away from trade, pretty much everything Trump says is sound, if vague:
We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.
This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses.
We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity. Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world.
We are also going to fully capture America’s tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines.
Altogether, it is a powerful message. I would like to see less emphasis on trade and more on regulation, but from a political standpoint, Trump’s formula will be effective.
Humor? | Let’s give all immigrants and Muslim “terror” groups what they want and need.
June 28, 2016Let’s give all immigrants and Muslim “terror” groups what they want and need. Dan Miller’s Blog, June 28, 2016
(I marked the post as “Humor?” but it comes very close to reflecting Obama’s world view. The opinions implicit in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
This is a guest post by Loretta Lynchmob, Supreme Attorney of Imam Obama’s Loving America. Her younger sister is among the singers in the following inspirational video, as is Hillary Clinton. Here are her, er, inspiring words.
I also participated in this dazzling performance on my way to support an abortion clinic:
Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to sing What the World Needs Now is Love before or after making my remarks following the White supremacist hate-group’s attack in Orlando, Florida during which almost two hundred innocent homosexuals and lesbians were killed or wounded. That sad incident, of course, had nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with the wonderful Religion of Peace and Tolerance. Rather than listen to the haters who claim that it was on account of our their beautiful Islam, we must give all Muslims at home and abroad love, not hate.
This brings me to the major point of this article: Since everyone — including Muslim “terror” groups — wants the same loving sort of life that all good Americans want, we must give them what they want and need to end their totally justified “depredations.” To do so is Imam Obama’s Loving American way and we cannot do otherwise; that would not be who we are and would put us on the wrong side of hisherstory.
What do immigrants and the so-called terror groups want and what can we give them?
“Terror” groups, like the immigrants fleeing the poverty and repression they suffer in much of Latin America, want to have the same prosperity and freedom that we have in Imam Obama’s already-great America; America was never greater than under the heel of Obama. The Latin American immigrants want it here, the “terror groups” want it in the countries we wrongfully took from them to give to radical firebrands such as President al-Sisi in Egypt and Prime Minister Netanyahu in Occupied Palestine. They will have the prosperity and freedom they want and deserve only when we give them love, not hate. Trump offers hate, we offer love. Surely, ours is not only the better way, it is the only way.
Aside from our abiding, non-judgmental love, what can we give them? They are poor so we need to give them money and the stuff that money can buy. Based on our outpourings of love, they will not use the money to purchase automatic weapons and other types of assault rifles to use against innocents or even against us. Obama’s wonderful peace deal with Iran is a case in point: due to His wisdom in returning to Iran economic power and money of which she had been unjustly deprived, Iran has joined the world community as a peaceful power, opposed to “terrorism,” and will never have nuclear bombs. Only those in America who cling hatefully to their guns and their religion of hate see the world differently and use weapons of war on innocents.
We can, and must, also help them to learn more about democracy. We encouraged democracy when the Egyptian masses overthrew “their” dictator Mubarak and replaced him with their own peace-loving, tolerant President Morsi. That’s the way true democracy works. Then, sadly, a few thousand Egyptian enemies of the brave and peace-loving Muslim Brotherhood conducted a coup, led by an Egyptian general, and replaced President Morsi with a fascist dictator named al-Sisi. The people of Egypt have not forgotten about how democracy should work, and given a chance will again rebel against fascist al-Sisi and depose him in favor of another brave, peace-loving Muslim Brotherhood advocate. We must do everything we can to help them in their loving quest for true freedom and true democracy.
Much of Occupied Palestine is rich; that’s where the Jews live and parade with their filthy feet in what they call “Temple Mount.”
What do the Jews give their Palestinian brothers — who want only their love and sustenance? When they provide water, they poison it. They often cut off electricity to Gaza, with no better excuse than that their poverty-stricken supplicants there can’t pay for it! Is money all that matters? Is gross human suffering of no consequence?
We can, and must, do everything possible to send the Jews festering in Occupied Palestine back to wherever they came from. It’s only just and fair! The blessed United Nations is one hundred percent with us on this; too long have we vetoed Security Council resolutions even modestly adverse to “Israel.” Were we to sponsor a decree by the UN Security Council to rid Occupied Palestine of its Jews, it would pass without veto. If we believe in love — not the hate spewed by “Israel” — that’s precisely what we must do.
Hillary Clinton is indisputably the best-qualified person to take up Obama’s great work when He, sadly, must leave office next January. There is much left to be done, and only She can and will do it. Even the proprietor of this vile right-wing hate blog has said so. Trump, on the other hand, would destroy everything that Obama has done and thereby destroy America as we know and love her. A vote for Hillary is a vote for honesty, candor and, most important, love. A vote for he-of-the-orange hair is a vote for dishonesty, lies and hate.
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Editor’s comments
Ms. Lynchmob does a good job of articulating the differences between Trump and the Obama-Clinton cabal and their visions for America as seen by the left. How many in Obama’s America see things as she does?
Why Trump frightens the GOP Illuminati
June 28, 2016Why Trump frightens the GOP Illuminati, American Thinker, Lee Cary, June 28, 2016
Unlike the Democrats, who hunger for full power and control over the federal government, the GOPe aims to “go-along-to-get-along.” They don’t want to lead. It’s too hard. They’d rather follow. It’s less risky.
Besides, the party is ill-equipped to lead. It has no guiding, discernible political philosophy. It collectively swims in the neither hot, nor cold, waters of moderation.
When conservative GOP Senators are elected, the moderates ostracize them as extremists, a la Cruz.
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George Will, Brent Scowcroft, Hank Paulson, and Paul Ryan all fear Donald Trump.
They’re part of a growing list of GOP Establishment Illuminati that includes Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Mitch McConnell.
George Will officially declared himself an independent – no longer aligned with the GOP. He recommends that Republican conservative voters “grit their teeth” and hope Trump loses. Referring to the GOP, Will said, “This is not my party.”
(Screenshot, not a video)
George doesn’t understand that he never owned the party.
On June 23, 2016, CNN trumpeted that “a heavyweight foreign policy adviser to Republican presidents” had endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy:
“Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to Presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and who worked in the White House of Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, said Clinton ‘brings truly unique experience and perspective to the White House.’”
Then, on June 24, 2016, CNN gleefully announced that Hank Paulson “endorsed Hillary Clinton, adding his name to prominent GOP heavyweights who are backing the presumptive Democratic nominee.”
Yet another “prominent” GOP “heavyweight” for Clinton!
Paulson was Treasury Secretary during George W. Bush’s presidency. Hank brought us the 2008 Big Bank Bailout – along with union pension fund bailouts – plus, funding for all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects that were never-ready for shovels. A huge scam.
And there’s Robert Kagan, a reputed neoconservative who writes for the Washington Post. On July 21, 2016, Kagan is scheduled to headline a D.C. fundraiser for Clinton. TPM quotes him saying,
“For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”
Kagan is concerned that America will become 1933 Germany. His May 18, 2016, Post article led with this incendiary title: “This is how fascism comes to America.” In it, he deploys 1,300 words to describe Trump as America’s rendition of Adolf Hitler.
No hedging from Kagan there – we Americans are potential Nazis. Speak for yourself, Bob.
Kagan’s byline at the Post reads, “Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Post.”
The “Brookings” in Brookings Institution was Robert S. Brookings, once President Emeritus of Washington University (a signed, discarded book from WU Library is the source for the quote below).
In The Way Forward (1932), Brookings wrote,
“The economic consequences of what went on before the crash and of what has followed it, have been of such a drastic nature as to leave us, and indeed the whole world, after the lapse of more than two year’ time, in a state of industrial and agricultural depression requiring a thoroughly planned policy if we are to attain a sound healthy economic condition.”
Brookings firmly believed in central economic planning.
Brookings also wrote,
“This means that our present system for the distribution of wealth is unjust to those who mainly produce it and whose needs would easily absorb all of its products, could there be brought about some modification in our system of compensation providing a more equitable distribution and so increasing the consumption power of workers. This – distribution based on social justice – is the main problem of the world today.”
Sound familiar?
Kagan is a poster boy for a GOPe that talks the limited-government-talk, but walks the bigger- government-walk.
Then there’s The Weekly Standard founder and editor, Bill Kristol. Kristol, another neocon, came out early and loud against Trump. In response to Will’s party abandonment, Kristol tweeted this:
Kristol declared he won’t vote for Trump. He has encouraged Mitt Romney and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse to step forward as alternative candidates. And, he asked Sen. Lindsey Graham to “resurrect the campaign he suspended in December.”
How do you resurrect a campaign that was never alive?
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell display the anti-Trump style of politico-speak characterized by the English idiom, damn with faint praise.
Ryan called Trump “a very unique nominee.” He might have added, “Bless his heart,” if he lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
McConnell’s comments about Trump, made to the Washington Post, went public on June 10, 2016, in an article with the blatantly editorialized title, “Mitch McConnell just made a devastating admission about Trump — and the GOP.”
“Mitch McConnell is getting a lot of attention this morning for his startlingly candid admission, in a new Bloomberg Politics podcast, that Donald Trump ‘doesn’t know a lot about the issues’ and has not displayed the requisite ‘seriousness of purpose’ for the presidency. And it certainly is clarifying to have the top Senate Republican admit this about the party’s standard bearer.”
The Washington Post always welcomes devastatingly clarifying negative comments from Republicans, about other Republicans.
The list of prominent GOPe anti-Trumpters is likely to grow as the Republican Convention approaches. So why are some GOPe Illuminati so afraid of Trump? Here’s why:
Trump threatens the complacent comfort they’ve long enjoyed as members of the junior political party – junior even though they now control both Houses of Congress.
Unlike the Democrats, who hunger for full power and control over the federal government, the GOPe aims to “go-along-to-get-along.” They don’t want to lead. It’s too hard. They’d rather follow. It’s less risky.
Besides, the party is ill-equipped to lead. It has no guiding, discernible political philosophy. It collectively swims in the neither hot, nor cold, waters of moderation.
When conservative GOP Senators are elected, the moderates ostracize them as extremists, a la Cruz.
When liberal GOP Senators are elected, the moderates see them as bridges across the proverbial aisle that allegedly separates the two parties. In fact, no bridge is needed. Just a stepping stone, or two, will suffice.
Because Trump threatens to destabilize the GOP’s status quo position as the junior political party, he presents an existential threat to the livelihoods of party apparatchiks. The GOPe is fully content to play the Washington Generals to the Democrat Globe Trotters.
Meanwhile, everybody gets paid. Not just the elected pols.
Faux dialectical partisanship in America is big business for a burgeoning host of enterprises. In addition to the pols who benefit from this dualistic charade, there’s a long list of roadies who keep the show on the road, including, but not limited to: the professional fund-raisers; the career strategists and consultants; the crony-capitalism lobbyists; the political action groups’ administrators and accountants; the media pundits (including most of the FOX All Stars), who often play the roles of dueling talking-heads; the erudite fellows who swim in Think Tanks (like Kagan at the Brookings Institute); the multiple, redundant polling enterprises; the political-ad firms; big media that charges big fees to air political ads; the major-events planners and providers; caterers and sound technicians for those big events; the new myriad of social media hacks…the list goes on.
Let’s not forget the little people who make the bumper stickers, the hats, the signs, the flags, the banners, the campaign buttons, and the requisite convention balloons.
It’s like when the credits roll at the end of the latest blockbuster movies showing how many and varied are the workers who make a living in Hollywood – even when the film is a bust.
It’s no surprise that four of the ten richest neighborhoods in the U.S. surround Washington D.C. The town is a bipartisan, bottomless sinkhole for taxpayer and donor greenbacks.
Then along comes a Donald Trump – an outsider, despite disingenuous efforts to stamp him as an “insider” – who threatens to lead the GOP from the here comfortable known, to the unknown somewhere else.
It’s no wonder that the Wills, Ryans, Kristols et al are threatened by Trump. He represents a clear and present danger to their comfortable lives.
And, since they know what’s best for the nation, much better than the rubes that determined the GOP primary results, the Illuminati despair at the thought that Trump will represent their beloved party in the General Election.
They don’t get it. It’s not their party. Maybe it was once. But no longer.
Worrying signs in Democratic platform
June 27, 2016Worrying signs in Democratic platform, Israel Hayom, Zalman Shoval, June 27, 2016
Israel and its allies in the Democratic Party cannot afford to be complacent in light of the prevailing trends in the drafting committee.
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As is the case every four years before U.S. presidential elections, Israelis try to figure out which candidate will be better for Israel. The answer is often: Whoever is elected.
This does not mean that both presumptive nominees, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are identical political twins. What it does mean is that candidates’ rhetoric on the campaign trail usually has little impact on their overall policy once they become president. In any case, it is not wise for Israelis to speak out on such issues. And in any event, such talk has no bearing on the election’s outcome.
But this should not prevent us from discussing the official party platforms, which are updated ahead of each election. Israelis will find it hard to stay ambivalent about the emerging Democratic platform in light of its clauses dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although the new platform will only be formally adopted at the Democratic National Convention in July, the new language introduced over the weekend on Israel-related issues makes it abundantly clear that the party is distancing itself from its traditional pro-Israel stance.
This trend was evident in 2012 as well, when the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee removed a clause mentioning Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — only to have it reinserted following pressure by party leaders. This time the very nature of the drafting committee underscores the negativity toward Israel. Five members of the committee were appointed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and six were appointed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and four more were appointed by the Democratic National Committee).
But what matters more is not the proportion of pro-Sanders members in the committee, but their identities. They include James Zogby, a leading pro-Arab activist; U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim; and Dr. Cornel West, a professor with provocative views on Israel who has embraced the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and has come out against the Israeli “occupation.”
The Clinton campaign is fully aware of the electoral damage an anti-Israeli platform could inflict on her candidacy, not to mention the financial fallout on her fund-raising efforts, even if the platform is described as “balanced.” This is why her allies took pains to make sure the drafting committee hears out expert testimony from the likes of Dennis Ross, who served as a Clinton’s Middle East adviser, and former key Democratic lawmakers, but this did not sway the hard-core Sanders loyalists. Sanders has been invigorated by his impressive campaign against Clinton, while Clinton has had to deal with very low favorability ratings.
Thus, Sanders has had the upper hand in the ideological arm twisting, even though Clinton’s supporters have gone out of their way to describe the new language as a compromise that does not depart from the party’s traditional stance. They explained that it was designed to help party unity.
But here are the facts. Ellison, who represents Sanders on the committee, and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez from Illinois, who represents Clinton, wrote a joint statement calling on party delegates to adopt the new language on Israel during the convention. They published it on left-wing organization J Street’s blog. Gutierrez recently returned from a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority organized by a pro-Palestinian group.
“Israelis today live in fear of acts of terror that can turn peaceful marketplaces and neighborhoods into scenes of violence and horror,” the two warned in their statement. “Palestinians struggle under an unjust occupation that deprives them of the rights, opportunities and independence that they deserve.” The statement made no mention of Palestinian incitement, of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to hold talks without preconditions, of Hamas, or of the real reasons behind the century-old conflict.
The committee has yet to publish its views on Jerusalem, but judging from how things have recently unfolded, keeping the 2012 language on the city is anything but guaranteed.
Some play down the importance of party platforms, and sometimes this dismissive approach has merits, including in Israel. Having said that, Israel and its allies in the Democratic Party cannot afford to be complacent in light of the prevailing trends in the drafting committee.
Why we must support Donald Trump
June 27, 2016Why we must support Donald Trump, American Thinker, Carol Brown, June 27, 2016
I supported Ted Cruz during the primaries and struggled mightily with Donald Trump (and in many ways, still do). But I will vote for Trump in November because as intrigued as I was early on by the NeverTrump movement, it’s clear these folks (who stand on soap boxes of personal integrity) are putting self before country.
David Horowitz and Daniel Greenfield of Front Page Magazine are two conservatives among many who have been covering the urgent need to get behind Trump. Writing in forceful and eloquent ways, they are sounding the alarm, pointing out critical differences between Trump and Clinton. Most recently Horowitz wrote:
Barack Obama delivers nuclear weapons and $150 billion to America’s mortal enemy in the Middle East…
But when Donald Trump insinuates the president is a man of uncertain loyalties, Republican leaders back away from him. When Trump proposes fighting “radical Islam,” securing America’s borders, stopping unvetted immigration from Muslim terrorist states, surveilling mosques, and scrutinizing the families of terrorist actors, Republicans join Democrats in denouncing him, or take an uncomfortable distance or maintain a silence that leaves him to fend for himself. [snip]
…Democrat betrayers of America are on the attack, while Republican leaders who claim to be patriots are on the run…This is the sad state of the Republican forces in retreat in an election campaign that will decide the fate of our country.
The threat of Islam, terror, and open borders drives home the fact that without national security, all else is moot. And on this front alone, Donald Trump’s views are dramatically different from Hillary Clinton’s. The gap between Trump and Clinton on national security is so wide it is one that might one day save your life. Or mine. Or the lives of Republicans who will not vote for Trump because, you know: integrity. As if casting a vote that helps ensure that a criminal, socialist, Islamist sympathizer gets to plop herself down in the oval office in order to continue the destructive and downright evil work of the past eight years is an act brimming with integrity.
To those whose delicate sensibilities are offended by Trump, I ask: Are your sensibilities not offended by Clinton? Because if they’re not, then you should register as a Democrat. And if they are, then the reality is that it will be Clinton or Trump.
Choose one. “Conscientious objector” is an adolescent cop-out. Our nation is at war (albeit a one-sided one we refuse to fight). All adults are needed on deck.
As Daniel Greenfield wrote concerning those who are committed to abandoning our presumptive nominee and helping to “usher in eight years of left-wing rule” that embraces “positions well to the left of Obama”:
Political campaigns can get ugly and Trump’s style is, at times, to get as nasty as possible, but it’s a sign of misplaced insider priorities to allow personal animus to matter more than the war against the left. It’s not unreasonable for some conservatives to be angry at Trump and his tactics. It is unreasonable to let that anger turn into a petulance that would let the left rule the nation for another eight years.
So to those holier-than-thou conservatives who refuse to vote for Donald Trump because their personal integrity will not allow them to do so, I say: If you want more jihad, don’t vote for Trump and help Hillary win. If you want to be sure our borders remain open, don’t vote for Trump and help Hillary win. And if you want the next president to be someone who got Americans killed and then lied about it, don’t vote for Trump and help Hillary win. And when Hillary Clinton is sworn in as the next president, you can pat yourself on the back, know you did the right thing, and raise a glass to your integrity, which will have served your ego but not the nation.
The primaries are over. Whatever happened, happened. Whatever rude, obnoxious, manipulative behavior Trump engaged in is in the past. Voting for him doesn’t mean you condone such behavior, you support everything he has expressed, you trust him implicitly, or that you even like the guy. It means you understand what’s at stake and have the maturity to move beyond your own ego in order to be a true patriot.
We either have a shot at a future or we don’t.
Trump gives America a chance to survive. And maybe even do better than that.
Why Brexit Is More Entrance Than Exit
June 26, 2016Why Brexit Is More Entrance Than Exit, PJ Media, Roger Kimball, June 26, 2016
(The petition for a new referendum poll was apparently a scam.
The BBC, The Mirror, France 24, The Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian… all reported on the bogus petition.
But they got punked. The poll was manufactured by 4Chan and Anonymous hackers who loaded up the signatures with fake names from The Vatican, Ghana, North Korea and elsewhere. [Emphasis in original — DM]
The petition fit the meme, so it deserved and got no fact-checking — DM)
Pop psychologists tell us that grief proceeds through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Have been blindsided by the stunning victory of Brexit on Thursday, members of the camp of the Remainders are now vibrating somewhere between anger and bargaining. This followed hard on a brief period of stunned denial that often expressed itself as gulping incredulity. As the psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple observed in City Journal,
For a long time, Britons who wanted their country to leave the European Union were regarded almost as mentally ill by those who wanted it to stay. The leavers didn’t have an opinion; they had a pathology. Since one doesn’t argue with pathology, it wasn’t necessary for the remainers to answer the leavers with more than sneers and derision.Even after the vote, the attitude persists. Those who voted to leave are described as,ipso facto, small-minded, xenophobic, and fearful of the future. Those who voted to stay are described as, ipso facto, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking.
At this point it is not clear exactly when the Brits will formally invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and officially begin the withdrawal negotiations. But Thursday’s vote made Britain’s congé in the most stinging and public manner.
As of this writing, early Sunday morning, the Remainders have yet to take that rebuke on board. They have, however, moved firmly from denial to white hot anger, as the movement to invalidate the referendum by holding a second referendum attests. As of last night, a petition demanding that Parliament force a new referendum had attracted some 2 million signatures.
The fatuousness of that effort is as patent as it is contemptible. Back in 2009, Barack Obama smugly observed that “elections have consequences.” Thursday’s vote was a non-binding referendum, not an election, but it most assuredly has consequences, as (for example) the immediate announcement by David Cameron, the prime minister, that he would soon be resigning demonstrates.
I expect that the Remainders will soon abandon the petition and move on to more circuitous, backroom maneuvers to subvert or nullify the will of the people. It is at that point, when the delayers and dispensers of red tape arrive with their megaphones, that we’ll know that the bargaining stage has been definitively reached. (I am no psychologist, but my observation is that most people, even if they do progress through the five stages described, do not entirely leave behind the earlier stages. There generally persists, I believe, a bit of denial and more than a bit of anger.)
Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, put his finger on one of the most extraordinary features of the Brexit phenomenon: that the vote turned out the way it did despite the Establishment’s mobilization of every resource at its command against it. “Never,” he wrote in an article for The Wall Street Journal, “has there been a greater coalition of the establishment than that assembled by Prime Minister David Cameron for his referendum campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union.”
There was almost every Westminster party leader, most of their troops and almost every trade union and employers’ federation. There were retired spy chiefs, historians, football clubs, national treasures like Stephen Hawking and divinities like Keira Knightley. And some global glamour too: President Barack Obama flew to London to do his bit, and Goldman Sachs opened its checkbook.And none of it worked. The opinion polls barely moved over the course of the campaign, and 52% of Britons voted to leave the EU. That slender majority was probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage.
I’d say that 52% is closer to “decisive” than “slender,” but Nelson’s point is well taken. The Remainders threw everything they had into this campaign, but it availed them nothing. The British people don’t like what the commissars in Brussels have been doing to their country. What is euphemistically called “immigration” — really, it is a sort of invasion – was part of the story, but only a part. Remainders seized on immigration as the motivating issue because it was easy to weaponize and use it to castigate those who favored Brexit as troglodytic nativists and reactionaries.
As I noted yesterday, the Brexit vote was less an “anti-Europe” vote than a positive assertion of freedom. Indeed, it was by accentuating the positive, by underscoring Brtain’s native strengths and potential, that Brexiteers like Boris Johnson were able to give affirmative voice to the people’s disenchantment. The unease that many Brits felt under the regulatory yoke of the EU is felt by many other people, including many Americans.
As has been often pointed out, that unease helps to explain the success of Donald Trump. Would that Trump had a scintilla of the insight and affirmative spirit of Brexiteers like Boris Johnson, Dan Hannan,Michael Gove, and Nigel Farage. Despite desperate howls to the contrary, the campaign these men waged triumphed not because of what they were repudiating but what they were saying Yes to. Sure, the campaign involved a No to officious interference by corrupt and unaccountable officials across the channel. But the main course was Yes: Yes to freedom, Yes to individual responsible, Yes to deciding for ourselves how we will govern ourselves.
There’s a moral here for politicians, and for political pundits. It’s unclear, however, whether many people are bothering to read the script.
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