http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/robert_creamer_caught_on_camera_talking_about_provoking_violence_at_trump_events_visited_the_obama_white_house_340_times.html The shocking video by James O’Keefe and Project Veritas Action has so far not been screened on the mainstream networks, but cannot be totally embargoed in the age of social media. It shows Robert Cramer discussing provoking mayhem at Trump events. The Democratsare trying to distance themselves, with Donna Brazile, interim head of the […]
Remember when Sarah Palin was excoriated for suggesting that ObamaCare contained death panels? Then we learned that the nonexistent death panels were actually deleted from the law and then, oops, economist Paul Krugman let slip that “…we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care, doc pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits. So the snarky version… which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this [.]”
Such is the usual seesaw when a law which should never have seen the light of day continues on its destructive path. Socialized medicine, single payer system — all of which describe ObamaCare — are designed to give substandard care by their very nature.
And with Hillary Clinton doubling down on this unconstitutional boondoggle, here is what folks who still don’t understand the existential harm that will befall all of us need to clearly comprehend.
Adam Brandon explains how Obama is yet again showing his contempt for the Constitution with the result that “taxpayers could be on the hook for a bailout of health insurance companies that have lost money through the ObamaCare exchanges.”
In fact, “despite repeated attempts by Democrats to portray private insurance companies as the bad guys, the industry gets billions in subsidy checks from taxpayers under Obamacare.” And even though “cost-sharing” subsidies were illegal in the first place, Obama diverted money to insurance companies. Who is the real culprit in these behind-the-scene shady transactions?
Obamacare in Pictures shows the ever increasing adverse effects of the law. Thus, buying individual health insurance in the exchanges is generally more expensive than it was before ObamaCare. Fifty-year-olds will see premiums rise by 50% or more and millions will remain uninsured under ObamaCare.
The latest FBI document release reveals that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy urged the FBI to downgrade from classified to unclassified a Benghazi-related email that had sat on Mrs. Clinton’s server. “At the time Mrs. Clinton was still insisting she’d never transmitted classified information,” notes a Journal editorial. “Mr. Kennedy proposed that rather than mark the email classified, he’d give it a special exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests, which would allow him ‘to archive the document in the basement of [State] never to be seen again.’”
Morning Editorial Report
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Our columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. notes that “Hillary Clinton is her party’s nominee and on her way to the White House only because the Obama administration decided to waive the law on handling classified material—and the FBI went along—in order to assure that its designated heiress would succeed to the presidency.”
A separate editorial notes that the U.S. is engaged in five hot conflicts as Barack Obama prepares to leave office. “An eternal law of global affairs is that weakness invites aggression that can lead to war. The latest validation of this truth is that in the eighth year of the Obama Presidency the tide of war is building on multiple fronts and the U.S. can’t escape the consequences,” writes the editorial board.
The Journal’s Kate Bachelder Odell says that Nevada Republican Joe Heck could win the Senate seat of retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid. “Mr. Heck is a sharp and disciplined candidate, his opponent has no discernible ideas, and he’s running to expand the GOP’s appeal,” writes Ms. Odell.
As this year’s rough-and-tumble election campaign heads toward a conclusion, Craig Shirley and Frank Donatelli share an anecdote from America’s 40th president: “In 1987, when he was informed that Democratic presidential aspirant Gary Hart was accused of extramarital activities, President Ronald Reagan reportedly quipped, ‘Boys will be boys. But boys will not be president.’”
Marc Siegel, a professor at New York University Langone Medical Center, notes the temptation for reporters and even physicians to “make pseudo-psychiatric diagnoses” of presidential candidates. “Such assessments are so common in this election season that you would think the two candidates were as familiar to you as your own uncle or aunt. But the truth is, we don’t actually know them except through the fog of the media lens.”
If the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server has shown anything, it’s that the Clintons have many helpers in Washington. This includes the State Department, where even the civil servants have tried to protect their former boss.
The latest FBI document release on Monday contains interviews with officials revealing that in spring 2015 Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy contacted an FBI official to coax the FBI to downgrade from classified to unclassified a Benghazi-related email that had sat on Mrs. Clinton’s server. At the time Mrs. Clinton was still insisting she’d never transmitted classified information.
The headlines have focused on whether the Kennedy request to FBI official Brian McCauley was a quid pro quo: an offer that State would allow the FBI to place more agents in foreign countries, in exchange for downgrading the document. There is a dispute in the FBI interview notes over whether this was proposed by Mr. Kennedy or by Mr. McCauley, and both State and FBI deny an explicit tit for tat, as do Mr. Kennedy and Mr. McCauley. The FBI also did not downgrade the document. Yet even the FBI concedes it referred the “allegations” to “appropriate officials for review,” which makes the episode ripe for Congressional investigation.
Even without a quid quo pro, the episode shows that the State Department has been assisting the Clinton campaign. Especially notable is evidence that Mr. Kennedy knew the FBI had grounds for classifying the document. According to the McCauley interview notes, Mr. Kennedy called asking for the downgrade, explaining that the email “caused problems” for him.
Mr. Kennedy proposed that rather than mark the email classified, he’d give it a special exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests, which would allow him “to archive the document in the basement of [State] never to be seen again.” Mr. Kennedy seemed to agree that the email was too sensitive for public consumption but wanted to spare Mrs. Clinton the classified reality.
Mr. Kennedy waged a sustained campaign to get Mrs. Clinton off the classification hook. One unnamed official claims Mr. Kennedy followed up his telephone request with a private meeting in which he again asked if the FBI would “see their way to marking the email unclassified.” He also, according to the notes, went directly to Michael Steinbach, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, to press his case.
Donald Trump probably is not helping his cause much with his conspiracy-mongering about a “rigged” election but Democrats should be thankful for small favors.
Mr. Trump lacks message discipline. Instead of scattershot claims that the race is being manipulated, wild conspiracy theories about ballot box-stuffing, which both parties and Americans of decency and goodwill strongly refute, he might be focusing laser-like on the “rigged” argument that nobody can confidently refute.
That’s the argument that Hillary Clinton is her party’s nominee and on her way to the White House only because the Obama administration decided to waive the law on handling classified material—and the FBI went along—in order to assure that its designated heiress would succeed to the presidency.
Google says the question “is Trump trying to lose?” has skyrocketed in popularity in the last few days. Mr. Trump is perhaps willing to be president but hasn’t been willing to do what was necessary to win. He never seriously tried to expand beyond his core support. He never wanted to spend the money, especially on TV advertising, that would be needed to do so.
If, in a deeper realism, he suspected that something like the Billy Bush tape was always going to stand in his way, he was rational to limit his financial risk—though he did the country no favor by accepting the nomination. In any case, Mr. Trump is now behaving as we knew he would. The appeal of “rigged” is obvious. It’s an argument that can continue to be prosecuted on-air after Election Day. Mr. Trump need not, as losing candidates do, concede defeat and disappear. His son-in-law, we’re told by the Financial Times this week, has already reached out to an investment banker about starting a Trump TV network after the election.
America, you’ve been played.
If today’s Democratic campaign were being fought against a generic Republican without Mr. Trump’s distinct qualities and history, here’s what would dominate the news:
Mrs. Clinton was verbally convicted by the FBI chief for mishandling classified information yet somehow not formally charged.
Her aides were allowed to cut curious deals with FBI investigators that effectively swept under the rug any possible charges against them for obstruction or evidence tampering.
Those same aides have been revealed, through email leaks, to have freely mixed public and private interests, including their own and Clinton private interests, in the performance of jobs that, in some cases, saw them receiving salaries from the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton family even as they also worked for the taxpayer at the State Department. CONTINUE AT SITE
Imagine you are thinking of defecting from a dictatorship. Pehaps you have important information about a plan by your country’s “supreme leader” to assassinate unfriendly American politicians. With this information you are sure the CIA will hide you and subsidize a new life in America.
Then you get second thoughts.
Your cold feet come from hearing of the following news item:
When Bill Clinton was president, his wife Hillary ordered that John Huang be brought into the Commerce Department. Huang had worked at a bank controlled by James Riady.
According to Barbara Olson’s Hell to Pay, Riady had close ties with the Communist government of China. This is bad news for your plans to defect, because in the Commerce Department,
John Huang could dip into the flow of U.S. cable traffic at will. He had access to hundreds of CIA documents… He had access to information that, if revealed to a foreign power, would have exposed informants to torture or execution.
But then you think to yourself — Hillary is out of power, and Barack Obama, from what you have heard, is incorruptible and competent. So maybe you will defect after all.
Then you read that:
In June 2015, perhaps 21 million personnel records of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) were stolen. (Before hiring applicants for sensitive positions OPM asks the neighbors of applicants what they know that could be used to blackmail him or her.)
The OPM had been warned multiple times of security vulnerabilities and failings. A March 2015 OPM Office of the Inspector General semi-annual report to Congress warned of “persistent deficiencies in OPM’s information system security program,” including “incomplete security authorization packages, weaknesses in testing of information security controls, and inaccurate Plans of Action and Milestones.
So who was in charge of the OPM? The director was Katherine Archuleta, former National Political Director for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page director of the Wall Street Journal, speaking on Fox News’ Journal Editorial Report, criticized the appointment of Archuleta to be “in charge of one of the most sensitive agencies” in the U.S. government, saying: “What is her experience to run something like that? She was the national political director of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. She’s also the head of something called the Latina Initiative. She’s a politico, right? … That is the kind of person they have put in…”
You start thinking the U.S. government is corrupt, even if it involves national security. And if they don’t care about national security, why would they care about your security? So maybe you should not defect.
You spend a sleepless night. But then your idealism kicks in. For the sake of liberty, you must defect!
Until you read about:
Bradley Manning, the soldier who disclosed to WikiLeaks nearly three-quarters of a million classified or unclassified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents.
“Amazing,” you think to yourself. Any soldier can obtain all this classified information! This country is just not serious.
We now face the ironic, yet all-too-predictable, result of years of U.S. appeasement of Iran in order to secure a global nuclear deal: U.S. military involvement in a proxy war with the Islamic Republic in Yemen.
In recent days, an exchange of missile attacks between Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the United States puts the lie to President Barack Obama’s argument that the nuclear deal would make war between the United States and Iran less likely. Instead, recent events justify the concerns of critics that Washington’s numerous eye-popping concessions to Tehran to secure the nuclear deal, along with Washington’s stubborn refusal to address Iranian provocations on the high seas, would serve to embolden Iran to pursue its regional ambitions even more aggressively than it had before.
To be sure, the United States didn’t trade missile attacks with Iran directly. But Iran’s fingerprints were all over the Houthi move against the U.S. military, and Tehran responded to the U.S. attack by sending two warships to the region where American ships are patrolling.
The Houthis are one of Iran’s key proxy armies and, as such, are an important tool of its regional ambitions. Indeed, through its own military forces and through proxies, Iran controls to varying degrees the governments of four neighborhood countries – Syria, through its close ties to president and strongman Bashar Assad; Iraq, through the Shiite militias that it supports; Lebanon, through its terrorist proxy Hezbollah; and Yemen, through the Houthi rebels who overthrew Yemen’s government in 2014.
Iran, a Shiite Muslim nation, is competing fiercely with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional dominance, and Yemen has become a key battleground in this contest. While Iran backs the Houthis with financial support, weapons, training and intelligence, Saudi Arabia since 2015 has led a multinational military effort (supported by the United States) to oust the Houthis and restore the previous government to power.
Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting technology company with deep ties to George Soros, has control over voting machines in 16 states including battleground zones like Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Other jurisdictions affected are California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.
Its website includes a flow-chart that describes how the company has contributed to elections in the U.S. from 2006-2015 with “57,000 voting and counting machines deployed” and “35 million voters assisted.”
In 2005, Smartmatic bought-out California-based Sequoia Voting Systems and entered the world of U.S. elections.
According to Smarmatic’s website, “In less than one year Smartmatic tripled Sequoia’s market share” and “has offered technology and support services to the Electoral Commissions of 307 counties in 16 States.”
Among the “case studies” that Smartmatic lists on its website as examples of its work are Venezuela, where it has been facilitating elections since 2004 when it “won a bid to provide Venezuela with a reliable voting system.”
It also lists Cook County, Illinois as another success story, when in “in 2006, Smartmatic signed what at the moment was the largest election automation contract in US history.” Cook County includes Chicago and its suburbs, a geographic zone that has historically and lately been subject to criticism for voter fraud.
ON FACT CHECKING AND MODERATORS:
‘‘Fact-checking’
Few any longer believe in fact-checking, largely because it was exposed as an arm of progressive campaigns.
The embarrassing recent statements of Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, were a frightening synopsis of rank bias defined up as disinterested audit. So were the obsequious check-ins by toady journalists with the Clinton campaign to remind Podesta, Inc. of their own lack of ethics.
Fact-checkers inordinately go after conservatives. Or they make up rules about what constitute “facts” as they go along, providing context and supposed noble intent to water down progressive inaccuracies. Or they use adverbs like “mostly” to suggest that false liberal assertions are “mostly” true and other accurate statements of non-liberals are “mostly” false. Fact-checking is postmodern truth that depends on who says something and for what purpose.
When Hillary Clinton in the second debate directed the audience to her own website to “fact-check” Trump, we came full circle from naiveté to farce.
Fact-checking might have been a neutral concept, not inherently better or worse than the original “facts” themselves — given that it is entirely predicated on the character and ability of those who fact-check (who, as we see from WikiLeaks, can be just as sanctimonious and deceitful as the politicians they audit). Fact-checking in the age of the Internet arena will go the way of America Online or Myspace.
Debate Moderators
There are no such persons any longer as “debate moderators.” The enterprise has devolved into artifice, in which the moderator is supposed to argue with the conservative candidate, “fact-check” him or her in mediis rebus, while being deferential to the like-minded progressive candidate.
Debate moderators follow assumed premises: an Anderson Cooper, Candy Crawley, Lester Holt, or Martha Raddatz envision themselves as crusaders hammering away at selfish and dangerous conservatives, in behalf of an ignorant audience that needs their enlightened help to avoid being duped. In a few of the worst cases, a scheduled debate question is leaked to the liberal candidate to ensure she is not embarrassed.
If a conservative candidate seems to have tied his opponent, the liberal moderator — witness a Matt Lauer — is considered a sell-out, soon to be shunned by the right people. Most are thus deterred from moderating “incorrectly.”
After 2016, we should either let the candidates go at it, or, better yet, let robot time keepers run things.” The entire column can be read below.
Our Neutron Bomb Election The shells of our institutions maybe survive the 2016 campaign, but they will be mere husks. By Victor Davis Hanson http://www.nationalreview.com/node/441158/print
The infamous neutron bomb was designed to melt human flesh without damaging infrastructure.
Something like it has blown up lots of people in the 2016 election and left behind empty institutions.
After the current campaign — the maverick Trump candidacy, the Access Hollywood Trump tape, the FBI scandal, the Freedom of Information Act revelations, the WikiLeaks insider scoops on the Clinton campaign, the hacked e-mails, the fraudulent pay-for-play culture of the Clinton Foundation — the nuked political infrastructure may look the same. But almost everyone involved in the election has been neutroned.
In theory, there are nominally still such things as a D.C. establishment, the Republican party, still abstractions known as “fact-checking,” still something in theory called “debate moderators,” still ex-presidents’ “foundations.” But, in fact, after this campaign, these are now mere radiated shells.
Who are the big losers of 2016, besides the two candidates themselves?
The D.C. ‘establishment’ and its ‘elites’
Collate the Podesta e-mails. Read Colin Powell’s hacked communications. Review Hillary’s Wall Street speeches and the electronic exchanges between the media, the administration, and the Clinton campaign. The conclusion is an incestuous world of hypocrisy, tsk-tsking condescension, sanitized shake-downs, inside profiteering, snobby high entertainment — and often crimes that would put anyone else in jail.
The players are also quite boring and predictable.
They live in a confined coastal cocoon. They went largely to the same schools, intermarried, traveled back and forth between big government, big banks, big military, big Wall Street, and big media — and sound quite clever without being especially bright, attuned to social justice but without character. Their religion is not so much progressivism, as appearing cool and hip and “right” on the issues. In this private world, off the record, Latinos are laughed off as “needy”; Catholics are derided as near medieval and in need of progressive tutoring on gay issues. Hillary is deemed a grifter — but only for greedily draining the cash pools of the elite speaker circuit to the detriment of her emulators. Money — Podesta’s Putin oil stocks, Russian autocrats’ huge donations in exchange for deference from the Department of State, Gulf-oil-state-supplied free jet travel, Hillary’s speaking fees — is the lubricant that makes the joints of these rusted people move. A good Ph.D. thesis could chart the number of Washington, D.C., insider flunkies who ended up working for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac or Goldman Sachs — the dumping grounds of the well-connected and mediocre.
