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Ruth King

Clinton Foundation Head Declines Questions About Congressional Inquiry By Nicholas Ballasy

WASHINGTON — Clinton Foundation president Donna Shalala dodged questions about a congressional request for all communications between the foundation and the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of State.

Shalala was in Washington for a speech at the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Leaders Summit, where the nation’s “healthiest schools” were honored. Following her speech at the event, PJM began to ask Shalala about the letter she received from House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) about the committee’s investigation into connections between the State Department and the foundation. Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) was copied on the letter.

Shalala, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under former president Bill Clinton, waved and walked away when PJM mentioned the letter sent to her by Chaffetz.

Later, after the event concluded, PJM started to asked Shalala if the foundation is going to release the names of all its donors.

“We already do,” she said as she went up the escalator of the hotel.

PJM began to ask a follow-up question but a Clinton Foundation staffer stepped in and said, “She’s heading to a dinner if you could just give us a minute. Thank you so much.”

PJM started to ask about the Oversight Committee letter when the staffer interrupted.

“She’s on her way to some personal activities, so we appreciate your understanding,” she said.

Refugees or an Occupation Army? by Maria Polizoidou

“Allah requires from the believers to be masters of the land where they live, and only they can have property, and only we will be able to own the land.” — Muslim migrants in Crete, Greece.

The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek State and its inhabitants had no responsibility.

The establishment in Greece is a miniature of the American establishment: politicians and institutions of government corrupted to the bones.

We Greeks have already been crushed by Islam, by the twentieth century genocide in Turkey and the more recent Turkish occupation of Cyprus, again with the world’s complicity.

What is happening in Greece, as in much of Europe, is actually a massive replacement of its population, its values and its way of life.

The mainstream political parties obey the self-destructive EU policies on immigration that could eventually cause the end of the Hellenic-Judeo-Christian values of Europe, such as individual freedom, critical thinking and dispassionate inquiry.

What does an occupation army do when it is installed in a country? It occupies the land, forcing residents to follow its own way of life. It implements measures against the country’s inhabitants, it propagandizes its beliefs and uses force to have them imposed.

This, sadly, is what has been happening in Greece from the migrants who seem to “forget” that they are hosted in Greece and force the Greeks to feel like guests in their own country.

If someone is a war refugee or his life is in danger in his homeland, it would seem appropriate, when he arrives in the country which offers him asylum, to be grateful to this country, respect its history, its people its values and its laws. The same would hold true for an immigrant who wants to go to a country where he hopes he will find a better future.

In Greece, conversely, illegal immigrants — all of whom the media call “refugees,” apparently trying artificially to legalize them in the moral consciousness of citizens — have been occupying spaces that do not belong to them, using violence, blocking roads, committing crimes against public property, acting aggressively toward residents and the police, and saying that they feel offended when they see symbols that represent Christianity. The guests seem to be trying to take over the house.

A few weeks ago, 200 North Africans and Pakistanis rioted in the middle of the night, demanding to leave Mytilene Island. They were chanting, “Jihad! Jihad!”, smashing the residents’ cars in the center of the island and disrupting the local community. The migrants claimed that someone told them about the death of seven migrants on a ship, so they rose up against the authorities. The police and NGO workers explained that this was misinformation, but the 200 migrants were evidently not interested in hearing that. The migrants were ready to wage jihad because they believed a rumor about an event for which, even had it been true, the Greek state and its inhabitants had no responsibility. The authorities were unsuccessful at calming them down and trying to make them return to their living area.

As it turned out, there were no dead migrants; the uprising was a “mistake,” but the police and the locals had to spend the night tracking down refugees and migrants on the streets of Mytilene.

The illegal immigrants stated that the information about the seven dead migrants came through phone calls to them during the night. Police sources say, off the record, that this incident has all the hallmarks of covert “black operations.”

Turkey’s Dangerous Moves in Iraq by Burak Bekdil

Turkey’s primary concern is not to drive ISIS out of Mosul but to make it a “Sunni-controlled city” after ISIS has been pushed out. And this ambition jeopardizes the planned assault on ISIS.

Turkey’s pretext is that its troops are in Iraq to “fight ISIS.” That does not convince anyone.

In a span of five years Turkey has had serious political and military tensions with several countries in its vicinity: Israel, Syria, Russia, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus and Greece. Most recently, Iraq has also joined the club of hostilities surrounding Turkey.

Despite the Iraqi government’s vehement requests that Turkey withdraw its troops in Iraq, Ankara shrugs it off and says it will maintain its military presence in the neighboring country for “Iraq’s stability.” What a nice neighborly gesture! Behind the Turkish indifference lies sectarian concerns and ambitions.

On October 1, Turkey’s parliament extended the mandate of Turkish troops deployed in Iraqi territory by one more year. The troops are stationed near Bashiqa in northern Iraq — as unwanted guests. That sparked a row with Baghdad and may further complicate the cold sectarian war between the Sunnis in the region, supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and their Shiite enemies, supported by Iran and the Shiite-controlled government in Baghdad.

Trump, Reality and the GOP A Pelosi House is becoming a real election possibility.

Paul Ryan told House Republicans Monday that he won’t defend Donald Trump’s campaign or his other behavior, and the Speaker advised Members to do what is best for their districts. This is not a new position so much as the latest restatement of a familiar strategy: to limit the 2016 electoral damage and preserve the GOP majority as a check on whoever wins the Presidency.

Defending down-ballot races isn’t the most inspiring goal, and it won’t satisfy those who want the moral validation of condemning Mr. Trump and all his works. But Republican leaders have real institutional obligations, and these include serving the country when their political choices are less than ideal.

At the current moment that means preventing Hillary Clinton from returning to Washington with a Democratic Senate and perhaps even House. One irony of this election is that as Mrs. Clinton has focused on disqualifying Mr. Trump’s character and temperament, she has also released about 112,000-odd words of little-noticed policy proposals that a Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be happy to rubber-stamp.

A new burst of liberal legislation could include a “public option” for ObamaCare that would be one more giant leap toward government-run health care. Energy from fossil fuels would become stranded assets. Government by and for the regulatory state would accelerate, and the Supreme Court would be lost to judicial conservatives for a generation. A final irony is that a Pelosi-Schumer Congress would readily pass the “amnesty” immigration bill that has animated Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
This prospect ought to concentrate Republican minds because House and Senate races are becoming more competitive as Mr. Trump slips. In the Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll published Monday, voters favored the generic Democratic ballot in Congress by seven points, 49% to 42%. Last month the spread was plus-three.

The same survey also shows the Trump predicament for GOP leaders. Some 67% of Republican voters said Congress should continue to support Mr. Trump, while 14% say they should call on him to drop out and 9% say they can’t support him personally. Mrs. Clinton is nonetheless widening her leads in swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio.

The question for Congressional Republicans is how to distance themselves from Mr. Trump when he says the indefensible without alienating his loyal core. Like it or not, a 45% plurality of GOP primary voters nominated Mr. Trump, and they knowingly put him on the ballot because they concluded that his unconventional political profile was a risk worth taking.

That choice may not have been wise, but the GOP can’t renounce democracy and win elections. A successful party must acknowledge the voters that Mr. Trump has inspired and the legitimate problems he has identified. These voters aren’t “irredeemable” in Mrs. Clinton’s phrase; most are ordinary Americans frustrated by their diminished economic prospects. CONTINUE AT SITE

Megyn Kelly calls Juanita Broaddrick a Liar By Daniel John Sobieski

In the post-debate analysis of Trump/s spot-on rebuttal of Team Clinton’s exploitation of the 2005 Trump “locker room” remarks, Megyn Kelly sparred with Trump manager Kelly Anne Conway over Trump’s trotting out of some of Bill’s “bimbo eruptions” in a pre-debate press conference. In what will undoubtedly be Team Clinton’s defense, Megyn Kelly claimed that Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick denied any rape in a 1998 affidavit.

Close, but no cigar, Megyn. The story is a little more complicated than that. It was not that her story was false as Megyn Kelly implied. Like many rape victims, Broaddrick felt no one would believe her and she simply wanted to put it behind her and not be forced to relive it, particularly in any legal setting: she resisted interviews, fearing no one would believe her charge against a popular President. As Breitbart reported in 2014:

In January of 1999, a month after Clinton’s impeachment by the House — and in the midst of the Senate trial grappling with whether Monica Lewinsky should testify — Broaddrick finally agreed to meet NBC’s Lisa Myers for an interview… Broaddrick’s decision to go forward with an interview came after “she contemplated all the layers of tawdry rumor about her that had multiplied in the wake of the other, larger scandal involving the president.”…

Broaddrick continued to refuse to cave to the media’s requests for interviews. In 1997, she was subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys, yet she continued to deny the assault.

“I didn’t want to be forced to testify about one of the most horrific events in my life,” she told Myers. “I didn’t want to go through it again.”

Broaddrick still refused to come forward when Kathleen Willey accused the President of unwanted sexual advances, saying that she “wasn’t brave enough to do it.”

When Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s office approached her in April of 1998, however, Broaddrick finally agreed to provide the details of Clinton’s alleged sexual assault, saying she feared lying to a federal grand jury. Starr would also grant her immunity from prosecution for perjury….

Starr never pursued Broaddrick’s allegations, however, because he was investigating charges of obstruction of justice against Clinton. Since Broaddrick was not alleging that the President urged her to lie, her allegations of the assault never went forward.

Broaddrick feared the retaliation of Team Clinton as well as the glare of a disbelieving media. Res she signed an affidavit denying the rape, again trying to avoid being forced to relive the horrible experience. But she told Starr and his office the affidavit was false. Starr didn’t pursue the rape story not because it was false, but because it was not part of his obstruction of justice investigation.

At the Trump press conference, Broaddrick, tired of being accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and afraid that her attacker would once again occupy the White House with the woman who orchestrated the attacks on Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions”, repeated her accusation:

The Art of Neglecting Veterans By Joanna Rosamond see note please

THE VA’S SCURRILOUS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN EXPOSED BY OPEN THE BOOKS…CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE: http://www.openthebooks.com/about_us/ And http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_snapshot_oversight_report_-_the_va_scandal_two_years_later/

The Department of Veteran Affairs has as its mission statement:

To fulfill President Lincoln´s promise: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” by serving and honoring the men and women who are America´s Veterans.

How does this lead the VA to go on art shopping spree while our Veterans’ life span is dramatically reduced by inhuman living conditions and lack of medical care? While the department worries about overpayments to ex-soldiers and scrupulously “saves” millions of dollars on benefits, it seems that blowing seven figures on “artwork” can do no harm.

The VA Santa forgot about gifts such as food and shelter, yet splurged on a 27 foot artificial Christmas tree ($21,000 only) for our homeless Veterans to admire al fresco. More than half a million dollar rock sculptures are somehow necessary in a facility for blind Veterans and an army of ´´art consultants´´ is allegedly vital for VA´s transformation.

The $ 1 billion over budget Aurora facility for example, simply could not do without Brazilian wood and “a glass concourse the size of a football field,” not to mention the indispensable 70-foot-high glass walls.

The enormous budget and lack of accountability have certainly helped Secretary McDonald to hone his decoration skills. The VA Martha Stewart wannabe’s creative freedom and aesthetic appetite have clearly increased from his P&G days when he was reduced to boasting about empty drawers in his office and horsing around with a weird Japanese stick.

Secretary McDonald seemed unfazed by his September 28th subpoena and artfully skipped the topic of Denver Titanic and art expenditures, craftily turning over 18 of 71 required items of evidence.

Rightly angered, Rep. Jeff Miller, Chairman, House Committee on Veterans´ Affairs demanded answers and stated:

“We simply will not tolerate VA’s attempts to keep information related to its wasteful art expenditures and the biggest construction failure in VA history shrouded in secrecy. Sec. McDonald must immediately comply with the terms of this subpoena.”

Well, it would be about time to stop pampering Secretary McDonald with Hillary Clinton-like legal privileges; until now there are not only answers but questions which are missing.

How comes that VA could afford Blue Eclipse $250 000 hanging bubbles piece of art, while neglecting burials and leaving bodies of our Veterans to decompose?

Steve Kates Dirty Donald and Sunshine Conservatives

This US election is not about who has lived the most blameless life. It is about who can best protect our collective interests. Trump is a vulgarian, no doubt about it, but of the two presidential contenders he is the only one who grasps that the West is in peril.
“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer blogger and the sunshine conservative will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

This has been a fearfully clarifying US election. There are people who declare themselves on the right side of politics, who are in truth sham defenders of freedom and our way of life, and who will be forever shunned by those of us who stood for saving the American Republic and the Western world at this moment of great peril.

The American election will determine the fate of the West. An America with open borders, unprepared, unwilling and unable to defend our freedoms from predators of every kind, from Islamic terrorists, from economic vandals, from those who masquerade their profound ignorance as concern for the environment — it is from these we must defend ourselves against or our way of life will be lost. The American Republic as it has been since 1776 will disappear. We will live to see our own fall of Rome.

Sunshine conservatives: those who pretend to represent freedom, individual rights and personal responsibility, but who refuse to stand with the only person who could make a difference. They are people whom history will recognise as the enemies of freedom, who refused to stand for the right when the moment arrived. It is Trump alone, the most improbable candidate in American political history, who provides even this sliver of hope. He is elected or Hillary is elected. There is no other possible outcome.

The mounting hostility among those supposedly on his own side is a disgrace. The array of enemies who have been uncovered from within what is nominally his own side of politics has demonstrated, better than anything else might have, that the Republican Party as it has become is a rotting curse on everything it is supposed to represent.

Those who stand with Hillary in this dark hour will have revealed they cannot be trusted and their counsel is without value. They are enemies of freedom. If you support Hillary Clinton in this election, nothing you write and say will from this time forward be worth the slightest attention. Your judgements will have been revealed as eternally worthless.

Steve Kates No Sex, Please, She’s Skittish

The second presidential debate was a Trump victory, no doubt about it, even though the timely leaking of his “locker room tape” should have given his opponent a clear advantage. Hillary’s problem is that she can’t go there, not with that satyr of a husband in the wings
We know who doesn’t want Trump to win. Hillary for one, along with the Democrats in general, the infamous 47% of tax-hoovers (who have probably grown to around 55% by now), to which, strangely, you can add many, if not most, of the wealthiest financial institutions across the world. There is then the media, and not just the journalists and reporters but the owners who are all-in for Hillary. And there’s a large proportion of the Republican Party which must include the #NeverTrumps who are the supposedly right-side conservative writers, bloggers and columnists, but who are part of the political establishment with no obvious allegiance to small government and the preservation of the American Republic.

And, of course, there are the dead citizens and non-dead non-citizens who will also be lining up to vote her in, along with those who vote early and often. Not to mention those who will vote for her because she is a woman irrespective of any other considerations whatsoever.

Formidable, almost impossible odds facing Donald Trump, in other words. Even after a flawless presentation against his Obama-clone opponent, in which he took Hillary apart despite each and every effort by the laughably “impartial” moderators, the bad news is that Donald Trump remains no better than 50-50 to win. But that is also the good news. He has not yet lost and might yet emerge victorious.

And why that is so is because he represents the last chance for the United States to save itself, and approximately 51% of the voting American public know it.

The supposed killer issue was a 2005 tape made of Trump discussing in crude terms his approach to women. And possibly in anyone else’s hands, this would have been the death blow it may still turn out to be. But for Hillary Clinton, married to a genuine sexual predator, this is an issue that can only be used carefully, as the blowback is so enormous. Whatever Trump has done is as nothing in comparison with what Bill Clinton has done, who was protected by Hillary in quieting the many and various “bimbo eruptions” (her term). I regret to have to deal with this, but since you’d have to have been born before 1980 to have an active memory of any of it. I will deal with only one, the story of Paula Jones, and I will include it only at the end.

I find all this repulsive, and the Paula Jones story is the least disturbing among the stories that surfaced at the time, and it is plenty disturbing since it was only one instance of what must have been nuch more common at the time. What is more repulsive is listening to others go on about Trump, as if Clinton were not orders of magnitude worse. But what is actually significant is that bringing that tape to light has enraged Donald Trump so that we ended up with the single most devastating, one-sided debate in American political history. With Bill’s past once again in everyone’s minds, Hillary could not truly exploit the tape to the full extent she might. Trump’s was a cold anger, but it was devastating.

The New World Order By Herbert London

President, London Center for Policy Researchhttp://www.londoncenter.org/

Recently the Russian military force deployed an advanced anti-missile system and sophisticated radars over Syria. In doing so, Russia and its allies in Iran and Hezbollah realize the ability of the U.S. to assist the rebel groups in Aleppo is severely limited. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, may not know what Aleppo is, but for anyone following current events this city of 250,000 is now a “killing field.”

Russian bombs have converted this “hold out” city of Sunnis into the contemporary Cologne of World War II. And all that Secretary Kerry can say is we will cancel further talks with the Russians. A U.N. aid convoy was bombed during the so-called ceasefire and there was barely a murmur of disapproval from the international press corps. Russian forces are engaged in a blitzkrieg – all out destruction of those rebels opposed to Assad. Admittedly some of those in the opposition are ISIS supporters, but Russian bombs are intended for any group opposed to Assad.

Since the civil war began in 2011 twenty-three million Syrians have been displaced. Many are “temporary” residents in Lebanon, Iraq and Libya. Many have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe, altering the continent for the foreseeable future. As noticeable as the demographic shift in Europe, is the indisputable fact that Russia has used the civil war in Syria to become the “strong horse” in the eastern Mediterranean. Not only have the Russians reinforced their naval facility in Tartus, they have built a major air base in Khmeimim and an airport in Latakia. These military installations not only check possible Sixth Fleet intervention, but now challenge NATO’s hold on its southern flank.

There came a time, only a decade ago, when Israel had regional air superiority. That claim can certainly be questioned today. Israel may be able to defend herself against most threats, but when Russian air power is put into the equation and the U.S. sits on the sidelines accepting the new world order, threat assessments have changed.

With Shimon Peres’ death, Israel lost one of its founders and spiritual leaders. He was also Israel’s primary dreamer, a person who with his final breath believed that peace could be achieved in the Middle East through a broad based economic development program. At some point his dream may be realized, but not now. President Obama’s appeasement orientation has made life in Israel precarious. A tilt to Iran through the lifting of sanctions and financial assistance has given Shia leaders the resources to pursue their imperial aspirations in the region. Those aspirations include the arming of Hezbollah with missiles- many quite sophisticated- that can reach every Israeli population center. Iran has engaged in saber rattling, but its attention is presently on Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. But that will change, and when it does Israel must be prepared. It is, of course, one thing to oppose Iranian air assets, but quite another matter to defend against Russian aircraft. This explains why President Netanyahu has spent so much time with Vladimir Putin. Israel recognizes the “strong horse” as well as the disappearing horse.

Open letter response to The Washington Post by Matthew Tyrmand

MATTHEW TYRMAND IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN POLAND AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF OPEN THE BOOKS….RSK
To the Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

This past Friday evening you posted an editorial under “The Post’s View” entitled “Donald Trump is normalizing bigotry.” In this post you utilized my Breitbart column (“WaPo’s Anne Applebaum Embarks on Kremlin-Style Disinformation Offensive Vs. The Antii-Globalist Right”) to give credence to the thesis in your post’s title. The column I posted earlier in the week at Breitbart.com exposed some of the lesser known cross currents (for non-Poles) of recent Polish political history and your columnist’s (Anne Applebaum) connection to the previous government.

As I know the editorial board is aware, Mrs. Applebaum is married to the former Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, whose party was ejected from power in a clean democratic election in 2015. This election resulted in a diametric changing of the Polish political guard and delivered an unprecedented unilateral mandate to govern without coalition to the Law & Justice party for the first time in modern Polish history (I highlight this since your columnist has not). But well before the rotation of parties in government, Mr. Sikorski was dismissed from his ministerial position after it became apparent to all that he too was embroiled in the “Aferatosmowa” hidden tapes scandal that decimated many Civic Platform, Sikorski’s ruling party, careers and reputations and paved the way for the dramatic turnover in government. This is not something Mrs. Applebaum has ever disclosed despite the distinct pertinence this has with regard to covering Poland and especially in writing about the new government whose leading figures’ enmity with Mr. Sikorski’s turfed-out party is well known in political circles. This is in clear violation of this paper’s “Standards and Ethics” as defined in the described “Conflict of Interest,” Section A, opening lines: “This newspaper is pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible.” as well as by the final lines of Section A: “We avoid active involvement in any partisan causes- politics, community affairs, social action, demonstrations- that could compromise or seem to compromise our ability to report and edit fairly.” Any columns referencing Poland would need to have Mrs. Applebaum’s detailed marital disclosure to avoid a violation of these statutes. I have not seen any disclosures.

In utilizing my column as proof of bigotry you failed to link to the column but rather chose to link to a Mediate analysis of it (“Breitbart Attacks WaPo Columnist For Being A ‘Jewish, American Elitist’”),reducing the opportunity for your readership to ascertain for themselves if this highly charged allegation was accurate. You used the words “repeatedly” and “gratuitously” to describe the frequency of my reference to her “Jewish origin.” In a 1400 word essay the word “Jewish” appeared exactly twice and with no over or under tone attached (most who read would have to agree). Any such perceived “dog whistle” is resultant from a reader’s prejudices, NOT from the author’s intent. This supposedly “gratuitous” bigotry was a descriptor applied in one small section (two consecutive sentences) that was relevant to the debate for the primary reason that in her September 19th Washington Post column (“In Poland, a preview of what Trump could do to America”) she suggests the sitting defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz (a bitter rival of her husband’s, also glaringly undisclosed) is an anti-Semite by stating that he has “given credence to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”