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2016

HILLARY’S HEALTH PROBLEMS: EDWARD KLEIN

Among all the recent WikiLeaks email dumps, perhaps the most important one of all has been overlooked by the mainstream media.

In it, Neera Tanden, Hillary Clinton’s longtime political guru, warned campaign manager John Podesta not to raise the question of primary opponent Bernie Sanders’ health because it would draw unwanted attention to the hidden truth about Hillary’s health.

“Hard to think of anything more counter-productive than demanding Bernie’s medical records,” Mr. Tanden emailed Mr. Podesta, according to an email obtained by WikiLeaks from Mr. Podesta’s personal inbox.
Until the publication of my new book, “Guilty As Sin,” the truth about Hillary’s health has been her campaign’s closest guarded secret.

Her physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, has said that Hillary is fit as a fiddle, but according to my sources in the White House, that is not what President Obama and his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, believe.

Mr. Obama and Ms. Jarrett have been so worried about Hillary’s health that they recently offered to arrange a secret medical checkup for her at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Hillary declined their offer because she feared a leak to the media would prove fatal to her presidential campaign. Instead, she has been secretly visiting the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where she arrives through a private entrance out of public sight and where she can rely on her doctors not to speak to the media.

Sources close to Hillary tell me that her doctors have discovered she suffers from arrhythmia (an abnormal heart beat) and a leaking heart valve. They have recommended that she consider having valve replacement surgery, but Hillary has refused because she does not want to risk the negative political fallout from stories about such a serious operation.

In addition to the arrhythmia and leaking heart valve, Hillary suffers from chronic low blood pressure, insufficient blood flow, a tendency to form life-threatening blood clots, and troubling side effects from her medications.

Her doctors have prescribed Coumadin, a blood thinner, and a beta blocker to treat her condition. However, these medications make her drowsy and tired, lower her blood pressure, and have led to frequent bouts of light-headedness and fainting spells.

Hillary has suffered at least five fainting spells that the public is aware of, including the most recent one at the 15th anniversary memorial service of 9/11.

In addition, there have been many other incidents of fainting that have been hidden from the public.

For example, after her 11-hour testimony before the Trey Gowdy Benghazi committee, Hillary swooned as she walked to her waiting Secret Service SUV and had to be carried into the back seat by her aides.

Among Hillary’s friends, it is common knowledge that she suffers from tension headaches, sits with her feet elevated, nods off to sleep while studying her speeches, gets dizzy and has frequently stumbled and fallen at her home in Chappaqua. She asks her closest aide, Huma Abedin, to rub her shoulders and bring her cold compresses for her neck and forehead.

“Huma always kneels down, whispers to her, rubs her shoulders, and comforts her,” said one of Hillary’s closest friends. “Huma seems genuinely alarmed at her condition, and looks agonized as well.

“Hillary also has a masseuse on call to work on her legs, which give her almost constant pain,” this friend continued. “It reminds me of what I read about Jack Kennedy’s constant back problems and how they were always hidden from the public.

“Hillary’s campaign people are well aware of her problem and are doing everything possible to make her schedule as easy as possible, but it’s hard to run for president and not work hard and spend a lot of time on your feet and constantly get photographed.

Safeguarding Patients and Data In The Evolving Healthcare Cybersecurity Landscape by Chuck Brooks

Healthcare cybersecurity is in a state of transformation. As medical care becomes more networked and interconnected via computers and devices, the digital landscape of health administrators, hospitals, and patients, has become increasingly vulnerable.

The cybersecurity healthcare landscape has many facets. These include the information security networks of medical facilities and hospitals, medical equipment and devices, and protection of the privacy of patients. Technologies, processes and people are the cornerstones of the healthcare cybersecurity transformation.

The 2016 Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy & Security of Healthcare Data presented by Ponemon Institute, May 2016, revealed that a large number of healthcare organizations have experienced multiple data breaches resulting from evolving cyber threats. Hackers have already exploited medical facilities and hospitals – and the problem is escalating.

Earlier this year, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was victimized by ransomware. For ten days the computer systems were unavailable because of the hackers and Hollywood Presbyterian ended up paying the hackers in cryptocurrencies to recover control of their systems. Another US hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital was the target of a series of breaches including distributed denial of service attacks. Medical institutions in Europe and Canada have also been subjected to intrusions.

The reality is that hospitals are a logical hacker target for several reasons. They are susceptible to phishing attacks and insider threats because of the large data flows throughout various systems. They are many points of vulnerability for malware/ransomware extortion because their systems are networked with multiple stations and devices. In addition, most workers in medical facilities are not trained in basic cybersecurity hygiene.

For hackers, healthcare facilities are viewed as achievable targets where they can reap quick monetary gains. Hackers can steal medical records that are commodities with a resale value on the Dark Web. And, the likelihood is pretty strong that hospital administrators will pay ransoms to gain back operational control over facilities to reduce liabilities and putting patients at risk. Hospitals and healthcare facilities also want to protect their reputations and prevent cybersecurity incidents from going public.

Thought of the Day – “Public Pensions: Promises Promises” Sydney Williams

The end of liberalism is not an original thought, but it is a possibility. In 1969 (revised in 1979), Theodore J. Lowi, professor of government at Cornell, published The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States. He argued that government had become too big and that interest groups had caused Congress to cede responsibilities to unelected (and, in some cases, unaccountable) agencies. These agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), control more than a trillion dollars in annual expenditures – almost 25% of all federal spending. Ironically for Democrats, special interest groups have created another problem – they compete with unionized government, and the demands public-sector retirees exact from American taxpayers.

Today, global progressives see the end of liberalism in the rise of nativism, xenophobia and populism – manifested in decisions such as Brexit, the Republican nomination of Trump and the Colombia-FARC Accord. It is seen in the failure of the Arab Spring and the resurgence of Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China. Conservatives bemoan the unraveling of liberal values, which date to the age of enlightenment – the acceptance of anti-Western ideologies, cultural and moral relativism, and political correctness. The latter denies language from being used as it was intended – to accurately describe people, their actions and events.

I do not pretend to know if “liberalism” is at an end. What I believe is that big, activist government is being hoisted with its own petard. Promises have been made that will prove impossible to keep. Activist government was conceived in the belief that equality of outcomes supersedes that of opportunity. In the United States, “big” government was born during the New Deal, reached maturity in LBJ’s Great Society, and has come into senescence with ObamaCare and the CFPB; it is seen in the Administration’s videos: “Life of Julia” and “Pajama Boy.” The factors progressives cite allow them to ignore what seems an inevitability – that promises politicians made to those who elected them will not be possible to keep.

The Case for Trump Conservatives should vote for the Republican nominee. By Victor Davis Hanson

Donald Trump needs a unified Republican party in the homestretch if he is to have any chance left of catching Hillary Clinton — along with winning higher percentages of the college-educated and women than currently support him. But even before the latest revelations from an eleven-year-old Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump crudely talked about women, he had long ago in the primaries gratuitously insulted his more moderate rivals and their supporters. He bragged about his lone-wolf candidacy and claimed that his polls were — and would be — always tremendous — contrary to his present deprecation of them. Is it all that surprising that some in his party and some independents, who felt offended, swear that they will not stoop to vote for him when in extremis he now needs them? Or that party stalwarts protest that they no longer wish to be associated with a malodorous albatross hung around their neck?

That question of payback gains importance if the race in the last weeks once again narrows. Trump had by mid September recaptured many of the constituencies that once put John McCain and Mitt Romney within striking distance of Barack Obama. And because Trump has apparently brought back to the Republican cause millions of the old Reagan Democrats, various tea-partiers, and the working classes, and since Hillary Clinton is a far weaker candidate than was Barack Obama, in theory he should have had a better shot to win the popular vote than has any Republican candidate since incumbent president George W. Bush in 2004.

What has always been missing to end the long public career of Hillary Clinton is a four- or five-percentage-point boost from a mélange of the so-called Never Trump Republicans, as well as women and suburban, college-educated independents. Winning back some of these critics could translate into a one- or two-point lead over Clinton in critical swing states.

Those who are soured on Trump certainly can cite lots of understandable reasons for their distaste — well beyond his sometimes grating reality-television personality. In over-dramatic fashion, some Against Trumpers invoke William F. Buckley Jr.’s ostracism of John Birchers from conservative circles as a model for dealing with perceived Trump vulgarity. He is damned as an opportunistic chameleon, not a true conservative. Trump’s personal and professional life has been lurid — as, again, we were reminded by the media-inspired release of a hot-mic tape of past Trump crude sexual braggadocio. The long campaigning has confirmed Trump as often uncouth — insensitive to women and minorities. He has never held office. His ignorance of politics often embarrasses those in foreign- and domestic-policy circles. Trump’s temperament is mercurial, especially in its ego-driven obsessions with slights to his business ethics and acumen. He wins back supporters by temporary bouts of steadiness as his polls surge, only to alienate them again with crazy nocturnal tweets and off-topic rants — as his popularity then again dips. He seems to battle as much with GOP stalwarts as Clintonites, often, to be fair, in retaliation rather than in preemptory fashion.

Trump’s Misdemeanors vs. Hillary’s Felonies By Roger Kimball

Early in November 2015, when the 2016 election was still an over-populated free-for-all, I had lunch with a friend who is a member of an endangered species: the conservative, “Scoop Jackson” Democrats. They are very thin on the ground these days, and are vanishingly rare in public life. But once upon a time these patriotic, unashamedly pro-American Democrats provided a life-giving current of realism and sanity to their party. They were strong on defense, pro-labor but also pro-prosperity, and they tended to regard their Republican counterparts not as enemies but as colleagues with whom they had differences of opinion or strategy.

As I say, such Democrats are all but extinct today, especially in the corridors of power. My well-connected friend is almost as aghast as I am at the Democrats’ lurch to the hard, identity-politics Left. He could not muster any enthusiasm for my candidate — Ted Cruz — but he was not flattering about the two Democratic contenders, either. Bernie Sanders he regarded as insane and Hillary Clinton — whom he knows well — he regarded with that visceral distaste that only close personal acquaintance can impart.

At the time, Ted Cruz seemed to be doing well — my how appearances can be deceiving! — and already there were troubling stories about Hillary Clinton’s health. I said that I doubted she would be up to the rigors of the campaign, but he replied: she won’t need to campaign. She will win the primary and then the election by acclamation.

“Er, ah,” I said, or words to that effect. I didn’t believe a word of it. Now I am not so sure.

A year ago, I thought that a growing, cross-party impatience with the self-serving Washington establishment would usher in a candidate of change. I favored Ted Cruz, but I understood those making the case for Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and even, on the other side, those making the case for Bernie Sanders. Yes, he was insane and his policies were (in my view) preposterous, but he was the understandable mouthpiece for a certain species of populist revulsion. Why, just to take one issue, should the presidency of the United States be a prize that rotated among the Bushes and the Clintons?

North Carolina Republican Headquarters Firebombed By Debra Heine

The Republican Party headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina, was firebombed overnight, resulting in major smoke and fire damage. Somebody threw a bottle of flammable liquid through a front window of the Orange County Republican headquarters , setting supplies and furniture ablaze, Hillsborough police said. The side of an adjacent building was also spray painted with a swastika and the words “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else.”

Damage estimates were not immediately available but Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state GOP, said, “The office itself is a total loss.” He called the bombing “political terrorism” and said “the only thing important to us is that nobody was killed, and they very well could have been.”

Violence has broken out at a large number of Trump rallies this year — the vast majority of which involved anti-Trump protesters assaulting Trump supporters.

N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of the GOP headquarters “an attack on our democracy.”

Via the Charlotte Observer:

“The firebombing of a local political headquarters in Orange County is clearly an attack on our democracy,” McCrory said in a statement. “Violence has no place in our society – but especially in our elections … I will use every resource as governor to assist local authorities in this investigation.”

Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens said, “This highly disturbing act goes far beyond vandalizing property; it willfully threatens our community’s safety … and its hateful message undermines decency, respect and integrity in civic participation.”

Brooklyn College Garners Dubious Spot on ‘Terrorist-Supporting Colleges’ List Shining the spotlight on campus propagandists for a genocidal terrorist movement. Fern Sidman

Reprinted from the Jewish Voice.

For those of us who grew up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and 70s and for those of us who decided to linger a bit longer in the County of Kings before taking the proverbial plunge into the big world out there, many of us ended up at good ol’ Brooklyn College.

Decades ago, however, this veritable Brooklyn institution boasted an integrated student population and crafted an enduring legacy as a campus that heralded the right of free speech, thought and assembly.

Not so, anymore. Apparently, the proverbial compass of time has pointed Brooklyn College in the “politically correct” trajectory as have most other urban centers for higher learning. For those not in the know, that essentially means that a fascist flavor now dominates campus political life. As such, Muslim organizations (among others) have sealed their pact with leftist totalitarian groups in order to “shut down any opposing viewpoints” and to “not allow any dissenting ideas to be publicly expressed,” says David Horowitz. A stalwart champion of free speech and founder of the eponymously named David Horowitz Freedom Center, Horowitz is one of the lone voices in the wilderness in offering an alternative narrative to the liberal, leftist, anti-Semitic ideologies that are taught on college campuses today and are being passed off to a naïve generation as the unadulterated truth.

Last week his conservative campus watchdog group issued a list of the “Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists” and to the surprise of many, Brooklyn College had the dubious distinction of garnering the number one position.

“I spoke at Brooklyn College back in 2011 and the atmosphere was so threatening, that I had to take body guards along with me,” recalls Horowitz. The 2011 speech to which Horowitz referred, entitled the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Myths and Facts,” was sponsored and organized by Brooklyn College student Yosef Sobel and Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor in the department of business and economics.

“Because the Hillel organization on campus was too afraid to sponsor me, I must thank those who had the courage to do so.” said Horowitz at the time. Despite numerous warnings prohibiting verbal disruptions, Muslim student hecklers abounded and Horowitz’s remarks were often punctuated by the sounds of acrimonious attacks.

Brooklyn College: Hornets Nest of Pro-Terrorist Activists “Jews – root of all evil” was graffitied on campus.

On Sunday night, the David Horowitz Freedom Center conducted a guerilla postering campaign on the campus of Brooklyn College, a school where actions such as storming a faculty meeting with demands for “Zionists off campus” or support for anti-Israel terrorism are facts of everyday life.

Brooklyn College, one of several schools making up the City University of New York (CUNY) system, is home to one of the most active and extreme Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in the nation. Brooklyn College SJP has posted articles and videos online defending terrorism including an advertisement titled “The Third Intifada” on its Facebook page. It has hosted multiple speakers on the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and even an event to discuss its policy of shunning pro-Israel organizations and students. A gang of 10 anti-Israel activists recently stormed a campus faculty meeting, calling one faculty member a “Zionist pig” and issuing demands for “Zionists off campus.”

The Freedom Center’s poster operation covered the campus with posters identifying the organization Students for Justice in Palestine as a campus front for Hamas terrorists and the Hamas intermediary American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). AMP was revealed in recent congressional testimony to be funneling terrorist dollars to Students for Justice in Palestine to support the Hamas-sponsored, anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in America.

One of the posters depicts Raja Abdul Haq, a Brooklyn College student and BDS supporter. The poster contains a quote from Haq stating “It’s very important to always remember that Western colonial powers are as guilty as Israel…especially the USA.” Israel has always been the canary in the mine for the holy war that radical Islamists have declared on America and the West.

A second poster depicts a gun-toting Hamas terrorist holding the strings of a puppet labeled “American Muslims for Palestine” which in turn controls a marionette labeled “Students for Justice in Palestine.” Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is described as “The chief sponsor of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities on campus.” Hamas is identified as “A terror organization pledged to wipe out Israel” (a goal explicitly stated in the Hamas charter) while AMP is the “Hamas-created chief organizer and funder of SJP.” The poster also depicts shadowed bodies lying in pools of blood, illustrating the bloody deeds of Hamas’s campaign of terror against the Jews. The poster contains the hashtag #JewHatred and the Freedom Center’s website, www.HorowitzFreedomCenter.org.

A third poster created by the Freedom Center asks sardonically, “Do you want to show your support for Hamas terrorists whose stated goal is the elimination of the Jewish people and the Jewish state?” and answers the question with “Join us! Students for Justice in Palestine.” The poster then lists the names of student and faculty leaders on campus who promote the genocidal Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel.

Seattle Teachers Enforce Black Lives Matter Indoctrination A Maoist-style reeducation fest approaches in Seattle schools. Matthew Vadum

Thousands of taxpayer-supported Seattle teachers are planning to don Black Lives Matter t-shirts this week in public schools and force-feed left-wing propaganda to their students about race in an effort to draw attention to the systemic racism they imagine is embedded in the public education regime.

The shirts say “Black Lives Matter” and “We Stand Together,” which is almost identical in meaning to the Hillary Clinton campaign slogan “Standing Together.”

The Black Lives Matter cult is animated by a hatred of normal American values. Its members idolize convicted, unrepentant black militants and cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal and have declared “war” on law enforcement. Its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated. Sympathizer Micah X. Johnson answered the call murdering five cops in cold blood during a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas in July. Black Lives Matter, which is vehemently anti-white, ought to be designated a domestic terrorist organization for fomenting a war against police, critics say.

The October 19 event is being run by Social Equality Educators (SEA), a group of teachers within the Seattle Education Association (SEA), a local collective bargaining unit. A political faction, SEE runs candidates for offices in the SEA.

Jesse Hagopian, a SEE leader, says more than 2,000 shirts have been ordered for the event. Wearers will include teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, nurses, instructional assistants, librarians, and others this Wednesday as part of “Black Lives Matter At School,” which he calls an unprecedented action.

Selling Out Liberty for False Piety Were George Patton, Ulysses S. Grant, Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson saints? Michael Finch

I will come right out and say it: I could give a damn what Donald Trump says in private. What this signals to me is that the false piety on display by so many Republicans and conservatives is nothing more than a symptom of the wussification of America and the American male and the selling out of our liberty. Yes, what he said is crude and immature; in fact, I can’t even get my mind around the actual particulars of what he was saying. But again, I don’t care. This country stands on the precipice between tyranny and liberty and I am to be a self-appointed judge of a man’s private conversations and the thoughts in his head? Who among us is so arrogant?

The quislings are all running for the hills. After all, the GOP cannot be led by such a rogue, a womanizer, a brute! But let’s pull back. As conservatives, we love to think of America being founded, and for 240 years, run by nothing but pious Christian pilgrims. But, this is just fantasy. We have had very pious men in our history, but also very many rogues, drunks, gamblers, womanizers, etc., lead our country, fight our wars, and create our industries. We may not want to admit it, but the very same traits required to take risks, to lead men, to create and build, often coalesce with some of the traits that we find so morally repugnant.

George Patton, Ulysses S. Grant, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson and so many others were hardly saints. Sam Houston’s bio reads like a rap sheet of drunkenness, criminal assault, cuckolding, and misery. And then…. he went on to found the Republic of Texas. George Patton wouldn’t last five minutes in today’s Army of political correctness. He almost didn’t last past Sicily and the slapping of a soldier, not to mention his many “insults.” But how many American lives and the lives in the German camps did he save by steamrolling into Germany months ahead of schedule?

We are not electing a pope — we need a leader. Conservatives fall into the trap of thinking that with a pious perfect Christian who is a moral saint, we are guaranteed the traits necessary to lead our country in a time of crises. I am sorry — they are not one and the same. Sometimes you get a deadbeat drunken failure like Ulysses S. Grant to take you to victory at Vicksburg. So, save the piety, conservatives, the man who leads us in battle or who leads our country through crisis is not the man you confess to on Sundays or the man who marries your daughter.