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2016

Another Obama Parting Gift His final fiscal year federal budget deficit will increase by 35%.

As President Obama ends his second term, he’s leaving plenty of political parting gifts. The latest is a 35% single-year increase in the federal budget deficit, and a rising trajectory of spending and debt as a share of the economy. Hillary Clinton’s campaign promise of more “stimulus” spending next year suddenly looks a lot more politically problematic.

That’s the story you haven’t read from the Congressional Budget Office’s latest fiscal and economic outlook released this week. For the 2016 fiscal year that ends next month, CBO now forecasts that revenues will rise by only $26 billion while outlays will increase by some $178 billion. The federal deficit will therefore rise from $438 billion to $590 billion, the biggest deficit since 2013.

The revenue shortfall reflects the decline in corporate profits and slower economic growth; the second quarter was revised down to 1.1% Friday. Meanwhile, outlays will rise 5% thanks in large part to the automatic spending drivers of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which has soared thanks to ObamaCare). Net interest outlays will rise 11% this fiscal year despite historically low interest rates as overall debt continues to increase.As a share of the national economy, debt held by the public—the kind the Treasury must repay—will increase to 76.6% this fiscal year. That’s the highest share of GDP since 1950 when the debt burden was winding down after World War II. It was 52.3% in President Obama’s first year in office, and it usually is flat or falls during an economic expansion.

No such debt reduction is on the horizon now. Thanks to ObamaCare and his refusal to reform entitlements, Mr. Obama has set the federal fisc on an even uglier path long after he’s left for a tour of the world’s great golf courses. CBO says spending will keep rising and so will debt as a share of GDP—to 77.2% in 2017, 79.3% in 2021 and 85.5% in 2026. (See the nearby chart.) All of this assumes no change in current policy and no economic recession. The odds of the latter are close to zero.

One intriguing question is whether Mr. Obama has planned it this way. One of his abiding goals has been to reorient federal spending away from defense toward more income redistribution and social spending. He has achieved that to some extent during his eight years in office, but his spending wedge will grow even more pronounced as the years go on. Budget room for defense will shrink as the entitlement state expands. He is Europeanizing the U.S. military budget.CONTINUE AT SITE

A CONSERVATIVE FOR HILLARY CLINTON- A “COMEYTATION” OF CHARGES

Hillary hatred is a reckless indulgence: Gabriel Schoenfeld
Clinton derangement syndrome is not only irrational, it threatens to elect Donald Trump.

To hear the Hillary haters tell it, the Democratic presidential nominee is suffering from a number of critical illnesses that render her unfit for office and which she is hiding from the public. Rudy Giuliani, now a leading Donald Trump surrogate, says the evidence for the various diagnoses is right there on the Internet.

Of course, leveling such an unfounded accusation is both reckless and nutty. Bush Derangement Syndrome was the name of the malady conservatives ascribed to those who heaped obloquy on our last Republican president. Now Hillary Derangement Syndrome has struck Giuliani and quite a few other Republicans hard.

This is by no means a new affliction. Ever since she entered public life as America’s first lady, a barrage of allegations, many fair but quite a few preposterous, have been hurled against President Clinton’s wife. Without any foundation, she is said to be implicated in the “murder” of her friend Vincent Foster, to have caused the fiasco inBenghazi, and to be covertly promoting the Muslim Brotherhood. Trump has gone so far as to call her “the devil,” to which his supporters responded with thunderous applause. For those of us not subsumed by Hillary hatred, the level of anger is a mystery. What accounts for it?

First and foremost, one must point to the deepening polarization of our politics, exacerbated in recent years by the strains and stresses of the post-9/11 era. Given how divided the country has become on fundamental issues, anyone seeking the White House in this environment would be subject to severe disapprobation from the other side.

But the extraordinary intensity of Hillary hatred suggests it is based upon impulses extending well beyond disagreement over policy. Any explanation must begin by acknowledging that Clinton herself has regularly poured gasoline on the fires burning around her.

Dishonesty is a case in point. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, among voters who dislike Hillary Clinton, 47% cite untrustworthiness, a number that is well-earned. Examples abound. Most recently, we have her pointblank false claim about her use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of State: “It was allowed.”

Bombing Hasakah Shoshana Bryen and Stephen Bryen

Last week, two Syrian government Su-24 airplanes bombed the Kurdish-held areas of the city of Hasakah. The attack was unexpected.

The Kurds have operated semi-autonomously in Syria because their pressure on ISIS has been helpful to Damascus, and because the Kurdish agenda has been primarily regional autonomy rather than deposing Assad. U.S. Special Forces on the ground assisting the Kurds were in the range of fire, prompting a warning to Russia and Syria from the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

It was unexpected, too, because Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously demonstrated strong support for Kurdish interests. Even before the decline in Russian-Turkish relations when Turkey shot down a Russian Sukhoi jet, Putin went out of his way to praise the Kurds and indicate Russian support for them. The Russians allowed the Kurdish administration in Syria to open an office in Moscow, signaling that Kurdish interests would be included in any settlement of the civil war.

Turkey, naturally, sees all Kurdish military activity as threatening, and found both Syrian and Russian – not to mention American – support for or “hands off” attitude toward the Kurds as a continuing aggravation. To change the dynamic, Turkish President Erdogan’s rapprochement with Israel included an apology to Russia. Erdogan then visited Moscow, leading some commentators to seize on the Hasakah bombing as evidence that Turkey and Russia have made a deal at the expense of the Kurds.

How do the Syrian, Russian, Kurdish, Turkish and American positions intersect?

The Syrian attack on Hasakah wasn’t in independent effort. It needed Russian backing because five separate Kurdish positions were targeted. Surveillance of sites so far north in the country would have needed airborne assets and satellites; the Syrian air force has neither, but Russia does. Notably, although U.S forces were in the area, they were not directly targeted; as far back as February the U.S. had provided Russia with information about the location of American forces.

Furthermore, the attack on Hasakah had almost no military significance for the Assad regime. Syrian forces were located far from the targets, and there is no tactical military benefit to Syria from flying a mission against a town that is firmly in Kurdish control. Other motives for the bombings, which killed a large number of civilians, might have been an overture by Russia to Turkey. Or a warning from Russia to the United States. Or a mistake by Russia.

Humiliation on the High Seas The Obama administration isn’t taking Iran’s threat to the U.S. Navy seriously. Shoshana Bryen and Stephen Bryen

The United States was humiliated this week when the USS Nitze came under simulated attack by four Iranian missile and torpedo-equipped speedboats in international waters. Despite American warnings, radio calls, flares and foghorns, two of the boats came within a few hundred yards of the Nitze. Iran is harassing American naval warships in the Persian Gulf while Washington refuses to acknowledge Iranian threats for reasons that are both political and practical. The political reason is that Washington still entertains the idea that Iran can be a friend of America. This view, strongly held by the White House, State Department, Pentagon and CIA, is a true fantasy. No matter how many Iranian statements from top Iranian political and military leaders proclaim their total hatred of the United States, Washington persists in fostering the illusion. There is no immediate cure for a political disease: We have yet to invent an anti-regime-biotic that, when injected into the insane, returns them to normalcy.

As there is no solution, the Obama administration will explain the Persian Gulf incident as some sort of aberration or unauthorized action by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or a mistake, but not an act of overt hostility.

Second is the practical reason. The attack on the Nitze, described by the Navy and Pentagon as “unprofessional” and “unsafe,” actually was a test of an Iranian tactic called the “swarming boat” to destroy U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

The swarming boat attack is just what it sounds like: a number of fast boats equipped with missiles and torpedoes attack enemy ships from multiple angles to damage or destroy them as quickly as possible. Recently the Iranians added another dimension to the swarming boats: a vessel known as the Ya Mahdi, a remotely piloted fast patrol boat that can fire rockets or be stuffed with explosives. It is a new version of the boat that attacked the USS Cole in Aden in 2000 at a cost of 17 lives, 39 injuries and severe damage to the ship.

The “Mental Illness” of Islamic PC: Edward Cline

Daniel Greenfield comments on how the authorities (East, West, South, and North) engage in tongue-twisting, mental gymnastics to avoid “offending” the Islamic Ummah by ascribing the latest stabbing, rape, or murder by a member of the Muslim flock to “mental illness” or lack of employment opportunities, and other external drivers. The Press complies with the explanations also for fear of raising the lice-ridden hackles of Muslims. The latest episode from Australia.

The media is describing the Muslim terrorist as a French man. Because if it’s anything the French are known for, it’s shouting “Allahu Akbar”. and stabbing random non-Muslims.

A French national allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar” during and after a stabbing attack that left a British woman dead and another Briton fighting for his life at a backpackers hostel outside of Townsville last night.

Possible extremist motivations for the attack are now being investigated by Queensland Police and the Australian Federal Police, with the man yet to be questioned by investigators.

Queensland Police Service Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the 29 -year-old French man shouted the phrase following the attack at the hostel at Home Hill, south of Townsville, but police had not determined whether the incident was terror related.

Who knows? Maybe the “French” stabber was expressing his Francophonic distaste of Brits by shouting Allahu Akbar.

“While this information will be factored into the investigation, we are not ruling out any motivations at this stage, whether they be political or criminal,” he told reporters in Brisbane.

“Investigators will also consider whether mental health or drug misuse factors are involved in this incident.”

Many stones will not be overturned in the search for a motive, particularly those marked with the telltale symbol of “Islam.” We don’t want to offend Muslims by blaming Islam for horrendous crimes randomly committed by a “radicalized” Muslim. “Allahu Akbar” just might be his misspoken utterance of “I’m a little teapot!” and the fellow had a speech impediment that aggravated his emotional outbreak!

So, heads are being scratched in Australia – call it a kind of infectious, epistemological psoriasis – in France, Britain, Germany, and in the U.S. because, you see, anyone shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he stabs away at a “random non-Muslim” cannot be said to be a jihadi or an “immigrant” or a “refugee.” That would be a defamation of the man’s character, and would come automatically under the rubric of “hate speech” and/or “Islamophobia,” which is by PC definition a “crime.” But if the evidence is overwhelming concerning his “motivation” and individuals refuse to grant it any role in the crime, who is the actual mentally ill person? Or is he a kind of mental doppelganger of the criminal?

The mental illness being reported has two classes of the afflicted: Muslims, who are by definition mentally ill (who else but someone not in his right mind would exalt a killer, rapist, bandit, all in the name of AllahWall – Wallah for short – as a moral ideal, and expect everyone else to acknowledge and defer to the sanity of the insanity, or else), and the Mainstream Media (MSM) or the Massagers of the Seven Mongoloids.

Erdogan’s mighty hypocrisy: Ruthie Blum

On Sunday afternoon, as residents of southern Israel were enjoying the last days of summer before the start of the school year, a Qassam rocket struck a yard in Sderot. Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

Though the attack was not perpetrated by Hamas specifically, Israel made good on its oft-repeated promise to hold the organization that rules the Gaza Strip responsible for any terrorist activity aimed at the Jewish state from its territory.

This was among the first tests put to Israel’s new defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who recently announced the implementation of a “carrot-and-stick” policy toward the Palestinians.

Lieberman did not disappoint. Throughout Sunday night, the IDF bombarded terrorist targets in Gaza. It was, according to Israeli families living near the border, the largest military sortie since Operation Protective Edge two years ago.

The terrorist attack and retaliation took place two days after the Turkish parliament ratified the rapprochement agreement with Israel reached in June. Six years ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Hamas loyalist, sparked the diplomatic schism that ostensibly is being overturned now.

Yet, even as Jerusalem and Ankara began to prepare for the exchange of ambassadors, Erdogan’s Foreign Ministry ripped into Israel, “strongly condemning” its “disproportionate attacks, unacceptable whatever prompted them.”

MY SAY: HILLARY DIAGNOSED!

Forget all the media hype about Hillary’s health woes. I have made the diagnosis. Irrefutable and incurable.

She suffers from Munchausen Syndrome.

Munchausen syndrome, named for Baron von Munchausen, an 18th century German officer who was known for embellishing the stories of his life and experiences, is the most severe type of factitious disorder. While the habitual lying is usually related to phantom physical ailments, there are many cases where the prevarication spills over into falsehoods about all aspects of a person’s life.

Diagnosing Munchausen syndrome is very difficult because of the dishonesty that is involved. Doctors must rule out any possible physical and mental illnesses before a diagnosis of Munchausen syndrome can be considered.

Dr. Ruth, by appointment only.

Experts Who Got Brexit Wrong Now Say Trump Can’t Win Is elite overconfidence surfacing again? By John Fund

Donald Trump says that the same experts and pollsters who incorrectly predicted that British voters would vote to stay in the European Union are now dismissing his chances to win the White House.

That’s mostly true. Before the Brexit vote, PredictWise, a website that aggregates data on the likelihood of events, found that there was a 21 percent chance of its being approved. Early on the night of June 23, when Britons voted, it pinned the chances of Brexit’s passing at only 12 percent. Over the last month, PredictWise has placed Trump’s chances of winning at between 19 percent and 30 percent. Other American prediction outlets give Trump only a 15 to 25 percent chance of victory.

Nigel Farage, who as head of UKIP (UK Independence Party) helped launch the campaign for the EU exit 20 years ago, thinks there is a parallel. Appearing at a Trump rally of 15,000 people in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Farage told the crowd:

We saw experts from all over the world . . . giving us Project Fear, telling us if we voted to be run by a bunch of unelected old men in Brussels, our economy would fall off a cliff, they told us there would be mass unemployment and investment would leave our country. . . . We saw the commentariat and the polling industry doing everything they could to demoralize our campaign.

Farage believes that it’s possible for a similar populist rebellion to succeed in America and elect Trump. He overstates the parallels, but he is spot-on when it comes to ridiculing the experts on Brexit. A new analysis by the Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper, concludes that British employment is up post-Brexit, retail sales have rebounded, the budget deficit is lower than it was last year, inflation remains low, the stock market is near an all-time high, and a weaker pound has boosted British tourism.

Column One: Trump and the American Dream by Caroline Glick

According to most polls taken since last month’s party conventions, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys an insurmountable lead over Republican nominee Donald Trump. Consequently, a number of commentators on both sides of the partisan divide have declared the race over. Clinton, they say, has won.

There are several problems with this conclusion.
First of all, the “official campaign,” won’t begin until September 26, when Clinton and Trump face off in their first presidential debate. Clinton is not a stellar debater and Trump, a seasoned entertainer, excels in these formats.

Second, recent polls indicate that Trump is closing the gap. Whereas until this past week Clinton enjoyed a 6-8 point lead in the polls, in two polls taken this week, her lead had contracted to a mere 1-3 points.

Third, it is quite possible that Clinton’s problems have only begun. Her peak popularity may be behind her. Since her nomination, barely a day has passed without another stunning exposé of apparently corrupt behavior on the part of Clinton and her closest advisers. This week’s AP report that half of Clinton’s non-official visitors during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation was merely the latest blow.

The continuous drip of corruption stories will have a corrosive effect on Clinton’s support levels. If the revelations to come are as damaging as many have claimed, their impact on Clinton’s candidacy may be fatal.

In light of Clinton’s weaknesses, Trump’s main hurdle to winning the election may very well lie with the NeverTrump movement. That movement encompasses much of the Republican establishment – that is, the political class of centrist elected officials, opinion-shapers, former officials and ideologues. Its members have vowed not to vote for Trump even if it means that Clinton wins the White House. The fact that so many prominent Republican voices continue to oppose Trump even after he has been nominated hurts his ability to build support among swing voters.

As far as the NeverTrumpsters are concerned, Trump carried out a hostile takeover of their party.

Extremist Islam in Canada A shocking new report reveals what is being taught in mosques and schools inside the country. Lloyd Billingsley

Leading Canadian politicians have been proclaiming that, despite what former prime minister Stephen Harper contended, Islamic extremism is rare or nonexistent in Canada’s mosques, and that to believe otherwise is racist or Islamophobic. On the other hand, an investigation by two experts finds that in some Canadian mosques and school libraries, extremist Islamic literature is the only brand available.

That is the contention of “The Lovers of Death”? Islamist Extremism in Our Mosques, Schools and Libraries, a recent study by Thomas Quiggin, formerly an intelligence analyst with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Privy Council Office. Quiggin is also a court-qualified expert on the structure of jihadist terrorism. Co-author Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt, has written extensively on Islamic extremism in the Middle East and in Canada.

“It is not the presence of extremist literature in the mosque libraries that is worrisome,” the new report contends. “The problem is that there was nothing but extremist literature in the mosque libraries.”

Examples include In the Shade of the Qur’an and Milestones by Sayyid Qutb, an author al-Qaida leaders found inspirational, as Lawrence Wright noted in The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Quiggin and Shoaaib also found prevalent the complete works of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, perhaps the most extremist form of Islam, heavily promoted by Saudi Arabia.

This type of material, the authors argue, has eclipsed Canadian Muslims with humanist and modernist outlooks. At certain mosques in Montreal and Toronto, authors Quiggin and Shoaaib found statements that promoted jihad and homophobia. Likewise, Canada’s CIJ news found that some Islamic private schools in Canada use textbooks produced by the Saudi Ministry of Education. In two textbooks homosexuality is depicted as “one of the most heinous sins” and punishable by death.