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2016

TRUMP’S TRUE OPPONENT : CAROLINE GLICK

As these lines are being written it is Thursday morning in the US. Wikileaks announced hours ago that it is about to drop the mother lode of material it has gathered on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Previous Wikileaks document drops set the stage for FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, when he informed lawmakers that he has ordered his agents to reopen their probe of Clinton’s private email server, which he closed last July.

One week on, the FBI probe still dominates election coverage. If Wikileaks is true to its word, and even if it isn’t, Clinton and her campaign team will be unable to shift public attention away from the ballooning allegations of criminal corruption. This will remain the story of the election when polls open Tuesday morning.

The focus on Clinton’s alleged criminality in the final weeks of the election brings the 2016 presidential race full circle. Since the contest began in the summer of 2015, it was clear that this would be an election like no other.

After eight years of Barack Obama’s White House, America is a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change.

Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical.
The outcome of this presidential election will determine whether Obama’s fundamental transformation of America will become a done deal. If Clinton prevails, the Obama revolution will be irreversible.

If Republican nominee Donald Trump emerges the winner, America will embark on a different course.

But even support or opposition to Obama’s revolution is not what this election is about. The anger that Americans’ feel is more powerful than mere policy differences – no matter how strongly felt.
More than a referendum on Obama, Tuesday vote will be a vote about Republican nominee Donald Trump and what he has come to represent. Voters on Tuesday will have to decide what they oppose more: Trump or what he stands for.
Trump is without a doubt a morally dubious candidate.

RUTHIE BLUM: LAME DUCK OBAMA’S LAST HURRAH

U.S. President Barack Obama is rumored to be planning a lame-duck anti-Israel move after the election of his successor next Tuesday, and before the handing over of his White House keys in January. In other words, there is reason to believe that the outgoing leader-from-behind of the free world is set to recognize a Palestinian state.

Though, as the Syrian civil war proves, bolstering one party to a conflict does not always translate directly into attacking the other, in the case of Jerusalem vs. Ramallah, the dichotomy is crystal clear.

By now, only extremists refuse to acknowledge that Hamas, the terrorist organization running Gaza — while running it into the ground — is not a statehood-yearning entity willing to forfeit its aim of annihilating all infidels in its path, Israel chief among them.

But there are still many diehard two-state-solution seekers, both in Israel and abroad, who cannot relinquish the fantasy that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party — the guys ruling the West Bank — are still potential partners. Even those who blast the PA for inciting youth to violence; denying Israel’s ties to the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem; and now launching a campaign to sue Britain for the 100-year-old Balfour Declaration — which expressed support for the Zionist enterprise, well before the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 — conclude that it is “urgent” to create a Palestinian state. And that Israeli settlements are an obstacle to that imperative.

My Say A response to a campaign question

During the last days of her campaign Hillary Clinton is making a real push…the Dems have sent a note around “What would you like to say to Hillary Clinton?
Here is the response I would love to hear:

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

Americans Have a Chance to Dethrone the House of Clinton The Clintons and their minions deserve to be driven from public life. By Deroy Murdock

‘Drain the swamp!” GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has insisted before huge crowds increasingly confident of a well-deserved, sorely needed, come-from-behind victory.

But this slogan doesn’t quite capture the urgency of the moment. This one does:

“Flush the toilet!”

Washington’s corruption under Barack Obama and the Clintons has devolved to fetid depths suggestive of the days before indoor plumbing. Step back and shudder at today’s unsanitary state of public affairs.

The Cosa Nostra–like tone that Hillary Clinton has set for herself and her associates suggests a preview for a new film: The Godmother.

As word emerged on March 2, 2015, that Hillary maintained an outlaw e-mail system in her Chappaqua mansion’s basement, WikiLeaks reports, her campaign chairman, John Podesta, e-mailed her top aide, Cheryl Mills: “We’re going to have to dump all those e-mails.” Podesta now claims that the meaning of the word “dump” is to “release, distribute, or otherwise publicize.” This might be plausible, except that Team Clinton then erased some 33,000 “private” e-mails and used BleachBit software to guarantee that Hillary’s server, at least digitally, sleeps with the fishes. Hillary’s aides demolished her 13 communications devices — not the single one that she lied about having, for “convenience” — some with hammers.

Most of this happened while these public records were under congressional subpoena. This is called obstruction of justice.

Bryan Pagliano, the computer whiz who managed Hillary’s clandestine server, initially took the Fifth Amendment while under congressional scrutiny. But he twice couldn’t be bothered to show up in September, despite being subpoenaed by the House Government Oversight Committee.

A Malignancy Grows at an International Cancer Agency The prognosis for a controversial cancer agency looks terminal. By Julie Kelly

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) now faces congressional inquiries, legal challenges, and harsh criticism from the scientific community that are shredding the agency’s credibility and threatening its future. The Lyon, France–based group is an arm of the World Health Organization and has received millions in U.S. tax dollars, funding that is now being questioned by top lawmakers on Capitol Hill including House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz. Congress is also investigating whether IARC is colluding with officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to advance a political agenda rather than sound science.

IARC’s central role is to evaluate certain risk factors and whether they can cause cancer. Each year, an IARC working group produces a report — called a monograph — classifying the level of risk for each agent. Out of the nearly 1,000 factors IARC has evaluated, only one (caprolactam) was deemed non-carcinogenic.

But one particular finding — that the agricultural chemical glyphosate is carcinogenic — led to serious questions about IARCs scientific integrity and exposed conflicts of interest among IARC participants who are trying to influence public policy here and abroad. In March 2015, IARC released its monograph on glyphosate, classifying the chemical as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” It is the only international agency to issue such a classification.

That report raised immediate suspicions for being politically motivated; glyphosate is a widely used weedkiller now targeted by environmental and anti-GMO groups around the world because it is used on several genetically engineered crops. The chemical was created by Monsanto, which also sells genetically engineered seeds, and sold under the brand name Roundup. Nearly every other scientific and governmental agency has determined that glyphosate is safe. (After the IARC report in March 2015, a separate WHO agency found that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer.) But armed with the imprimatur of a global health agency, anti-GMO activists brandish the report as proof that glyphosate is unsafe and unhealthy.

Why Is the Clinton Foundation Investigation Being Run from Brooklyn? The Justice Department is conducting its probe in a very Clinton-friendly district. By Andrew C. McCarthy

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal’s Devlin Barrett published another eye-opening report about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation. It elaborates on the pitched battle between FBI agents who believe they are building a strong case and Justice Department prosecutors who have thrown cold water on it, erecting roadblocks that have made the agents’ work much more difficult.

For reasons worth pausing over, the locus of that battle is the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which is headquartered in Brooklyn.

As I explained earlier this week, that is the office that Attorney General Loretta Lynch ran for several years after being appointed by President Obama during his first term — up until Obama appointed her U.S. attorney general. That was Ms. Lynch’s second tenure running the EDNY. She was launched into national prominence when President Bill Clinton made her the EDNY’s U.S. attorney in 1999. So the Clinton Foundation investigation is being overseen by the prosecutors’ office to which Lynch is closest — filled with prosecutors she hired, trained, and supervised.

Is it any wonder, then, that the EDNY seems to have broadened its territorial reach?

There are 93 federal districts in the United States. Some states are small enough to be single districts; others are big enough to be carved into two districts or more. The federal law of venue (i.e., the district in which a criminal case may be prosecuted) is very elastic. In theory, a case may be brought in any district where some of the criminal conduct, however minimal, took place. In practice, though, the FBI customarily runs its investigation, and the Justice Department files any indictment, in the district where most of the criminal activity occurred.

Anchoring an investigation in the district that is the epicenter of the conspiracy, or is at least the locus of significant criminal conduct in the case, is obviously practical. It also serves the Sixth Amendment mandate that criminal cases be tried in the “district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

Hillary Deleted Email Showing She Sent Chelsea Classified Information By Debra Heine

Hillary Clinton deleted an email she sent to her daughter Chelsea in 2009, a new batch of email messages released by the State Department shows. State released 285 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Friday as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act request.

The email chain in question contained information that was upgraded to the confidential level of classification when it was released about a year ago.

clinton-classified-email-to-chelsea

Via The Daily Caller:

The Dec. 20, 2009 email chain, entitled “Update,” started with a message from Michael Froman, who served as a deputy assistant to President Obama and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

The email, which is redacted because it contains information classified as “Confidential,” was sent to Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser at the State Department, and several Obama aides. Sullivan sent it to Hillary Clinton who then forwarded it to Chelsea, who emailed under the pseudonym “Diane Reynolds.”

All of the text in the body portion of the classified emails is redacted because it contains foreign government information.

The State Department labeled the email a “near duplicate,” indicating that it was mostly similar to other emails that the agency has released from the trove of emails that Clinton turned over in Dec. 2014.

Chelsea Clinton shows up in latest Hillary Clinton email dump Matt Picht

The U.S. State Department has released another batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Among them is an email containing classified information Clinton apparently sent to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton forwarded an email from a White House staffer to an account reportedly linked to Chelsea Clinton. In 2015, the State Department determined that email contained confidential information — the lowest level of classification.The initial email was released during a previous State Department email dump. It was originally sent just after Hillary Clinton attended a round of international negotiations over climate change. The message was addressed to “Diane Reynolds,” a pseudonym Chelsea Clinton has used before.

The trouble is, we don’t know whether the information in the message was classified at the time or if the State Department upgraded it to classified after the fact.

And the State Department’s not telling. Spokesman Josh Kirby said, “As to whether emails were classified at the time they were sent, the State Department … is focusing on whether information needs to be protected today.”

The Clinton Business Model: State Version In Pennsylvania, Katie McGinty shows money and power are fungible.

Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton have made a bundle trading on the exchange rate between dollars and political power, and others seem to be learning that they too can cash in on the same business model. Take Katie McGinty, the Pennsylvania Democrat attempting to unseat Senator Pat Toomey.

Ms. McGinty is an old Clinton hand, starting as an aide to Al Gore and rising in the 1990s to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality for nearly six years. From 2003 to 2008 she was the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) under Governor Ed Rendell.

At DEP Ms. McGinty led the successful push for the 2008 Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard Act, which requires utilities to generate 18% of Pennsylvania’s electricity from wind, solar and other renewables by 2020. She also steered $2.7 million in grants from the Growing Greener Watershed Protection Program to an environmental nonprofit that employed her husband as a consultant. The state ethics board ruled that the arrangement violated financial conflict-of-interest laws.

For Ms. McGinty, this was merely a down payment. After she left the Rendell administration, she moved seamlessly into lucrative positions at companies she used to regulate or had subsidized, or both, all of which operated under her green-energy mandate and most of which received more DEP subsidies.

In 2009 she took a seat on the board of Iberdrola USA, the U.S. subsidiary of a Spanish utility. At DEP Ms. McGinty had made nearly $20 million in grants and loan guarantees to Gamesa, in which Iberdrola owned a controlling investment stake, to locate two windmill-making factories in Cambria and Bucks counties. The plants were built but have since shut down. In 2005 Ms. McGinty gave Community Energy, another Iberdrola subsidiary, $1 million to build a wind farm using Gamesa turbines.

Also at DEP, Ms. McGinty lobbied Mr. Rendell to serve as a character witness for Iberdrola’s “good corporate citizenship,” according to a 2008 letter she wrote. He followed through and urged then-New York Governor David Paterson to approve a merger of Iberdrola and Energy East, a utility in New York and New England that had nothing to do with Pennsylvania.

After hiring Ms. McGinty, Iberdrola received a $10 million stimulus grant, as selected by her DEP successor, to build a wind farm in Fayette County. Her campaign-finance disclosures show she earned $100,000 a year as a director.

From 2008 to 2013, Ms. McGinty made $1.1 million on the board of NRG Energy, a Pennsylvania utility. She resigned to become chief of staff to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and emailed her old pals at NRG in 2015: “Miss all you guys and look forward to a big NRG solar push in PA. Please let me know if I can help in any way.”

The feeling is mutual. Finance disclosures show that the political-action committees of both Iberdrola USA and NRG Energy are donors to Ms. McGinty’s Senate campaign. CONTINUE AT SITE

Islam’s “Human Rights” by Janet Tavakoli

No intelligent government should impair the right of free speech to placate people who falsely claim they are victims when often they are, in fact, aggressors.

To the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, however, all human rights must first be based on Islamic religious law, Sharia: whatever is inside Sharia is a human right, whatever is outside Sharia is not a human right.

Therefore, slavery or having sex with children or beating one’s wife, or calling rapes that do not have four witnesses adultery the punishment for which is death, or a woman officially having half the worth of a man, are all “human rights.”

Soft jihad includes rewriting history as with the UNESCO vote claiming that ancient Biblical monuments such as Rachel’s Tomb or the Cave of the Patriarchs are Islamic, when historically Islam did not even exist until the seventh century; migration to widen Islam (hijrah), as we are seeing now in Europe and Turkish threats to flood Germany with migrants; cultural penetration such as promoting Islam in school textbooks or tailoring curricula for “political correctness”; political and educational infiltration, as well as intimidation (soft jihad with the threat of hard jihad just underneath it).

More regrettable is that these are so often done, as at UNESCO, with the help and complicity of the West.

Both hard and soft jihad are how Islam historically has been able to overrun Persia, Turkey, Greece, Southern Spain, Portugal, all of North Africa, and all of Eastern Europe. It is up to us not to let this be done to us again.