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2016

Does Anyone Actually Believe Cheryl Mills Was Just Helping the Clinton Foundation for Fun? Sorry, but I’m actually not an idiot. By Katherine Timpf

I can’t decide what’s more infuriating: Those e-mails suggesting inappropriate links between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation, or her campaign’s explanation of those e-mails suggesting that they think I’m a total, complete moron.

At the same time that Cheryl Mills was working as chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office, she was also conducting interviews for the secretary of state’s foundation. That is a textbook example of a situation that, at the very least, looks like someone using her public resources for personal gain. Any reasonable person can recognize that.

But the Clinton campaign — apparently hoping that voters completely lack critical-thinking skills – has released a statement in response insisting that all suspicions are completely ridiculous, that Mills was just doing “volunteer work for a charitable foundation,” and that “the idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd.”

That’s right . . . Mills was just doing it for fun! She was just like, “Hey I’ve got some time off . . . you know what my favorite thing to do in the whole world is? Watch TV? Drink wine? Nahhhhh, I want to go interview potential candidates for the Clinton Foundation! And she definitely chose that specific foundation solely because it was so great and fun, and definitely not because it was one that was run by her boss. How “absurd” to think that someone spending her free time doing work for her boss’ foundation might possibly indicate she was receiving anything from her boss for doing so. In fact, I’m sure they never even talked about it! And if you think otherwise, then you are the one who is being “absurd!”

Does anyone else hear how ridiculous that sounds?

When Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state, she and her foundation agreed to conduct their affairs in a way that would not “create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts for Senator Clinton as Secretary of State.” Got that? Not even the appearance of conflict — and regardless of what you think about what actually happened, you still can’t deny that this is a situation where that “appearance” is definitely, glaringly, blatantly present.

Of course, Hillary Clinton knows all of this, and she knew it at the time. She’s a career politician. Not only was she well aware of how it would look, but she also knew enough about political media to have predicted that people would find out about it when she ran for president. But guess what? She did it anyway, which suggests that she believes that she doesn’t have to worry about what she does or how it will look. She just does what she thinks is best for herself, no matter how glaringly inappropriate, because she is confident that no matter what, she will never, ever have to suffer any real consequences for her behavior.

What’s even worse is that this attitude is par for the course for the Clintons. Whether it’s this kind of shady business with her slush fund foundation, or her husband Bill having a private chat with Loretta Lynch as the Department of Justice was deciding whether or not to indict her, it’s clear that the Clintons are so confident in their total power that they are certain they will never, ever have to answer for anything.

Investigations and indictments aside, we already know that the way Hillary Clinton conducted herself as secretary of state was dishonest, inadequate, and fueled by her own self-interest. Scandal surrounds this woman, and for her campaign to claim that it’s “absurd” — not even understandable but incorrect, but actually “absurd” — to be suspicious about the objectively suspicious behavior of a woman with an objectively suspicious track record is, objectively, insulting.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

Obama’s Iraq Policy Did Not Create ISIS Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums. By Andrew C. McCarthy

The early Cold War wisdom that “we must stop politics at the water’s edge” has never been entirely true. In endeavors as human as politics, no such altruistic aspiration ever will be. But Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s adage does reflect a principle critical to effective national security: The United States is imperiled when partisan politics distorts our understanding of the world and the threats it presents.

We’ve been imperiled for a long time now. The most salient reason for that has been the bipartisan, politically correct refusal to acknowledge and confront the Islamic roots of the threat to the West. It has prevented us from grasping not only why jihadists attack us but also that jihadists are merely the militant front line of the broader civilizational challenge posed by sharia supremacism.

Inevitably, when there is a profound threat and an overarching strategic failure to apprehend it, disasters abound; and rather than becoming occasions for reassessment of the flawed bipartisan strategy, those disasters become grist for partisan attacks. From 2004 through 2008, the specious claim was that President Bush’s ouster of Saddam Hussein created terrorism in Iraq. Now it is that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS,” as Donald Trump put it this week.

The point here is not to bash Trump. He is hardly the first to posit some variation of the storyline that Obama’s premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq led to the “vacuum” in which, we are to believe, the Islamic State spontaneously generated. Indeed, this narrative is repeated on Fox News every ten minutes or so.

The point is to try to understand what we are actually dealing with, how we got to this place, and what the security implications are. There is no denying that American missteps have exacerbated a dangerous threat environment in the Middle East to some degree. It is spurious, though, to suggest that any of these errors, or all of them collectively, caused the catastrophe that has unfolded.

The problem for the United States in this region is Islam — specifically, the revolutionary sharia-supremacist version to which the major players adhere. There is no vacuum. There never has been a vacuum. What we have is a bubbling cauldron of aggressive political Islam with its always attendant jihadist legions.

Germany in new anti-terror plan to thwart Islamist militants

Germans with dual nationality will lose their German citizenship if they fight for militant Islamist groups abroad under new anti-terror proposals.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also announced plans to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals.

He announced extra personnel, equipment and surveillance powers for the police.

But he rejected banning the public wearing of the burka (the Islamic full veil). And he resisted pressure to ease medical confidentiality.

Some of his conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) colleagues have urged a burka ban but Mr de Maiziere said it would be “problematic” and “you cannot ban everything that you reject”.

Mr de Maiziere was responding to recent attacks linked to militant Islamists. Two terror attacks by Islamist migrants shocked Germany last month – in Wuerzburg and Ansbach.
Citizenship debate

“I propose that German citizens who are fighting with terror militias in other countries, and take part in combat operations there, if they have a second nationality – and only then – they would lose German citizenship,” he told a news conference.

There was a move in France recently to deprive jihadists of their French citizenship, but it did not get through parliament.

German media report that the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) – the CDU’s coalition partners – strongly oppose any general ban on dual citizenship. The Greens are also against the idea.

German Intel: ISIS Hit Squads Entering Europe Disguised as Syrian Refugees Daniel Greenfield

For months experts and the media insisted that it was inconceivable and impossible for Muslim terrorists to enter Europe or America by pretending to be Syrian refugees. Now it’s just a fact of life. That’s the way it usually is with the left. The disastrous outcomes of their policies are denied and then they’re just a reality that we’re expected to cope with.

German intelligence services have evidence that “hit squads” from the Islamic State terror group have infiltrated the country disguised as refugees, the deputy head of Bavaria’s spy agency told the BBC Thursday.

“We have to accept that we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, the vice president of the Bavaria region’s intelligence gathering agency, BayLfV, told the Today program.

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads. There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves. We are still following up on these, and we haven’t investigated all of them fully,” said Hauser.

Why do we have to accept them? Because we keep accepting Muslim migrants who claim to be refugees. We have to keep eating the whole bowl of candy wondering which of the pieces is poisoned.

Remember When Hillary Clinton Called Trump an ISIS Recruiter? Daniel Greenfield

The media’s outrage over the latest thing Trump said is not just bias, it’s ridiculous hypocrisy. After all much of the time Democrats have said the same things that Trump did. Including Dems like Hillary.

Trump called Obama and Hillary the founders of ISIS. The media swarmed. It’s apparently inappropriate to use such a figure of speech. Except that they had no problem with it when Hillary Clinton called Trump an ISIS recruiter.

“We have seen how Donald Trump is being used to essentially be a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism,” Hillary insisted on CNN.

Her campaign and the media blamed Trump for ISIS terror attacks.

Then in an interview with Business Insider, she quoted Hayden’s claim that Trump was a recruiting sergeant for ISIS.

“I think it was said just this week that the way Donald Trump talks about terrorism and his very insulting language towards Muslims is making him the ‘recruiting sergeant’ for ISIS.”

The media had no problem with this. Its problem with Trump’s founder comments has nothing to do with anything objective, but is entirely a function of their bias.

Germans Consider Banning Burqas by Michael Qazvini

In the wake of the recent rise in Islamic terror attacks, German conservative officials are calling to ban the burqa, a traditional Muslim grabs that covers a woman’s entire body, usually donned by the most extreme devotees of the religion.

A handful of state interior ministers from the Christian Social Union and Christian Democratic Party (Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party) drafted a proposal this week aimed at controlling the spread of radical Islam, cutting off the financing of terrorism-promoting mosques and banning Islamic dress that signals extremist affiliations.

“Freedom of religion is a central, fundamental right. However, religious extremism and the abuse of religious symbols have no place in Germany,” the proposal said, adding:

Freedom of expression is for us non-negotiable. The brutalization of our language and in particular hateful messages posted on social media will not be tolerated. We need to return to our civic virtues. Respect, courtesy and mutual consideration of one another are the foundations for a peaceful coexistence,” the proposal states.

Pointing to the fact that terror attacks in Germany have been mostly committed by Muslims with dual citizenship, the proposal called on Germans to decide where they stand.

“Dual citizenship is a huge obstacle for integration,” the proposal stated bluntly. “We object to this split loyalty. Whoever wants to engage themselves with the politics of foreign governments, we would advise to leave Germany. We call for people to make a conscious choice for the values of our free, democratic constitutional order.”

Moreover, the proposal addressed the politically-contentious issue of “uncontrolled immigration,” suggesting that it is a primary driver of violence in the country.

“Uncontrolled immigration and with that the link to people smuggling create unease within the population and simplify the process of sneaking into Europe for criminals and violent Islamist criminals,” the proposal asserted.

Leftist politicians have pushed back, arguing that the conservatives are straddling between between hate and xenophobia.

“Members of the Die Linke (Left Party) have already voiced criticism of the draft proposals. Bundestag Left Party member Frank Tempel told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that a burqa ban proposal has nothing to do with fighting terrorism,” reports The Local.

Hillary generously donates to her favorite charity: Herself By Ethel C. Fenig

The one percent of the one percent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, released their tax returns on Friday.

For a person who left the White House “dead broke and deeply in debt” (in spite of stealing White House furniture and artwork), the Clintons have done very well in the succeeding years. For fiscal 2015, they reported an income over $10.6 million, significantly down from the $28.5 million they earned in 2014.

Yeah, running for president doesn’t leave people time for other income-generating activities. Either way, they are the 1% of the 1%!

Slightly over a third of their income went for income taxes, while another 10% went to charity. How thoughtful! How generous! Not really! Actually, how selfish!

Of the the $1,042,000 the Clintons gave to charity as listed on their return, $1 million of that went to the Clinton Family Foundation. The other $42,000 went to Desert Classic Charities.

In other words, the Clintons donated – tax-free, no less! – to themselves. The Saudis, the Algerians, and other wealthy and not so wealthy Muslim human rights-abusing countries and prominent Wall Street firms and individuals associated with them also donated to the Clinton Family Foundation.

Not that the donors expected any favors or such, of course – they just are as generous and concerned about the less fortunate as the Clintons. Yeah.

Oh, and not so by the way, and I know this will come as a shock, shock, shock!, the Desert Classic Charities partners with the Clinton Family Foundation. Boom!

Desert Classic Charities, the local non-profit entity that has organized the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation (formerly the Bob Hope Classic) for 53 years, today presented 40 Coachella Valley charities with more than $2 million in donations[.]

And as for the Clinton Foundation itself, well, it has been called a “giant slush fund,” with such high overhead and such little charity that it was placed on a watch list by a charity watchdog group last year.

The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.

The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends. (snip)

In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand. (snip)

None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation. (snip)

Almost All of Hillary Clinton’s Charitable Donations Went to This One Organization By Rick Moran

According to tax returns for 2015 released by the Clinton campaign, 96% of the candidate’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation.

Daily Caller:

The documents show that the power couple earned $10,745,378 last year, mostly on income earned from giving public speeches.

Of that, they gave just over a million to charity. But the contributions can hardly be seen as altruistic, since the money flowed back to an entity they control.

The other $42,000 contribution was to Desert Classic Charities. That group hosts an annual PGA golf event. Doug Band, a Clinton Foundation adviser and Bill Clinton’s longtime assistant, was on the board of directors of that organization through 2014, according to its IRS filings.

Desert Classic Charities effectively returned that donation back into the Clinton orbit. Its 2015 tax filing shows that it contributed $700,000 to the Clinton Foundation for work on obesity programs. The group handed out $1.6 million in grants that whole year.

The Clinton Foundation dispenses contracts to Clinton cronies like Doug Band while also paying for the non-political travel of the Clintons and staffers. It’s all perfectly legal — and disgustingly unethical. The Foundation is used as a slush fund that enriches friends of the Clintons while allowing foreign businesses and governments to purchase influence.

I doubt this story will get much play beyond the conservative net. It might cast Hillary in a bad light, and we can’t have that when the press now sees that it has a holy quest to keep Donald Trump from winning. CONTINUE AT SITE

Hillary’s Islamist Phalanx By Mary A. Nicholas

The number of associations is large and creepy.

Unless you had taken a course in advanced agitprop, you would not have recognized that Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando nightclub shooter, was a plant. He was part of the propaganda show for Hillary Clinton, now playing to sparse audiences from coast to coast. The show is produced and directed by radical “let it all hang out” leftists, in coordination with misogynistic Islamic supremacists, who believe in forced marriage of children under 13 and clitorectomies.

The purpose of Mateen in Florida, a state Hillary needs to win, was to change the narrative, since Khizr Khan was so successful in changing the narrative at the Democratic National Convention. Those “selected” for front- or second-row status at a presidential candidate’s event are hand-picked for ideology, gender, race, or ethnicity. There is no chance that the Clinton show did not know of and approve of his appearance.

Clinton needed to change the narrative for two reasons. First, her poll numbers are not really up as Pat Caddell, a professional pollster, has attested to, especially if you look at the abracadabra methodology. It’s a classic case of disinformation.

What if you give a candidate event, and very few voters show up? You change the narrative, as the Clinton campaign has done, PhotoShop the audience of the event to downplay the numbers, get fire marshals to close down overflowing events of the opponent, or whip up interest in the campaign events via “walk-ons” like Khan and Mateen.

Second, and more important, there are continuing photos of Hillary tripping on and off stage with Broadway lights flashing “brain freeze,” “conquers the stairs,” and more. There are numerous documented events, that is, that even the producers cannot hide.

Pakistani-born Khizr Khan published writings in support of sharia, the enemy of the U.S. Constitution. And the choice between these two is the issue of this election. To understand the importance of sharia in today’s threat to America, here is a quote from Stephen Coughlin, who formerly briefed the Pentagon and other U.S. officials on the threat of Islam:

Sweden: Summer Inferno of Sexual Assaults by Ingrid Carlqvist

Almost all the perpetrators of sexual assaults who attacked in groups and who have been apprehended, are citizens of Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia — three of the four largest immigrant groups in Sweden who fall into the category of “unaccompanied refugee children.”

A few days later, it turned out that many of the perpetrators who sexually assaulted women at the “Putte i parken” music festival in Karlstad wore the “Don’t grope” bracelet.

Many people were therefore aghast to learn that the organizers of the Trästocksfestivalen music festival in Skellefteå had decided to arrange free bus rides to the festival for the local “unaccompanied refugee children.” They claimed they were “proud to be the first music festival in Sweden that encourages a significant increase of newly arrived migrants in the audience.” By the time the Trästocksfestivalen ended, the police counted twelve reported sexual assaults.

Apparently, Swedish girls and women should learn to live with being groped and raped — or leave the public space altogether. The latter seems quite in line with what Islamic sharia law prescribes.

In the wake of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, Germany, news broke in Sweden that a large number of sexual assaults against girls and women had occurred at the music festival “We Are Sthlm” [short for Stockholm] in both 2014 and 2015, but had been covered up by both the police and the media. The National Police Commissioner, Dan Eliasson, immediately launched an investigation to find out the scope of the problem.

The results were presented in May, in a report, “The current situation regarding sexual assault and proposals for action” — and the conclusions are frightening. Almost all the perpetrators who attacked in groups and who have been apprehended, are citizens of Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia — three of the four largest immigrant groups in Sweden who fall into the category of “unaccompanied refugee children.”