RUTHFULLY YOURS

In What Happened, Hillary Clinton’s new 512-page recollection of what was perhaps the most painful and awkward election in American history, the former secretary of state recounts an infamous debate moment she shared with Donald Trump:

We were on a small stage, and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.

In her mind, Clinton recounts, she weighed two options:

Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, “Back up, you creep, get away from me, I know you love to intimidate women but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.”

Option B, as the kids like to say, would have escalated things rather quickly, with the added bonus of seeming a teeny bit unhinged. Hillary, of course, chose the more repressed Option A: “I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off.”

Ah, yes. It’s difficult to pinpoint the most painful Hillary Clinton moment of the many painful Hillary Clinton moments that populate What Happened, but this one certainly comes close. Think about it: Even now, after months of time to reflect and ruminate and engage in self-soothing techniques like downing Chardonnay and “one-nostril breathing,” Hillary Clinton is completely oblivious to what any decent politician would have realized, if not in the heat of the moment, at least in hindsight: There was an obvious Option C.

I’m referring, of course, to one of my favorite moments in presidential debate history, when a rather creepy Al Gore sidled up to a cheerful George W. Bush, looking as if he may or may have been considering a duel or a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs. The year was 2000, and the heated topic that catapulted Gore’s blood pressure skyward — brace yourself, for in the scope of today’s tabloid-splashed politics, this will seem rather quaint — was the details of the “Dingell-Norwood Bill.” Gore edged closer, quietly lurking, deadly serious. After ignoring him for a few moments, Bush turned, acted mildly surprised to see him, and greeted him with a bemused, dismissive nod.

The audience broke into laughter. They loved it. Gore did not.

Well, as we all know, Hillary Clinton is no George W. Bush. She is also, as What Happened strains to remind us over and over and over again, no Donald Trump. And while many Americans might wonder why on earth anyone would spend their free time reading a book rehashing what should be fairly obvious by now — Hillary Clinton is not a very good politician — What Happened does manage to offer some valuable insights. Unfortunately, they’re not the ones the author intends.

Let’s talk about David Foster Wallace, shall we? Hillary Clinton does, bringing up his famous “This Is Water” commencement speech in her chapter entitled “On Being a Woman in Politics.” She’s referring to the deeply moving and widely read address in which Wallace discusses human nature and life’s various struggles, noting that “the most obvious realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.” The speech opens with an anecdote about two fish who fail to recognize that they are completely immersed in water.

This, according to Clinton, “sums up the problem of recognizing sexism — especially when it comes to politics — quite nicely.”

Among the enduring criticisms of Hillary Clinton: Her sense of entitlement is limitless. She’s tone-deaf and doesn’t understand the average American — nor does she care to. Her greed is insatiable.

Add to this a gaping lack of self-awareness, and you have all the ingredients for the New York City launch of Hillary’s nationwide book tour Tuesday morning (also primary day, not that Hillary — who maintains she’s still here only for us — cares about that either).

Thousands of people lined up outside the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in hopes of meeting their idol. Some slept outside the night before. Clare Hogenauer, an older, disabled upper West Sider, told me she rented a downtown motel room nearby. “I didn’t want to take a chance,” she said.

For Hillary supporters, this event was meant to be a salve, a corrective, a moment of collective grief and healing.

“I’m excited for her book release because it’s something I’ve never seen from a candidate dealing with defeat,” 24-year-old Brandon Echevarria told me. He was at the front of the line, having arrived outside last night at 10 p.m., too excited to sleep. The book and the launch, he said, “has a lot to do with experience and self-help.”

Hillary’s attendees were willing to follow any directive. There were many, and here, in part, were the written instructions:

“A limited number of wristbands for entry will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis with purchase of the featured title at Barnes & Noble Union Square. Hillary Rodham Clinton will sign copies of her new release, What Happened and the 2017 illustrated children’s edition of It Takes a Village, no exceptions or personalizing. She will sign up to two books per customer, one of which must be What Happened. No other books or memorabilia please. Posed photos or selfies will not be taking place . . . Book purchase and wristbands are both required to meet the author, no exceptions.Customers without wristbands will not be allowed to participate in any capacity.”

In other words, everyone was here to serve two purposes: To make sure “What Happened” debuts at No. 1 on the bestseller list and to line Hillary’s pockets. (At least she wasn’t surcharging $89-$3,000 per head, as she is at forthcoming events.)

Hillary’s advertised arrival time was 11 a.m., which came and went. Hundreds of people were penned in on a top floor, with thousands more waiting outside in 80-degree heat. All bags had to be checked, so people didn’t have food or water. Yet most retained their excitement: If they couldn’t have Hillary as president, this was the next best thing.
Modal Trigger
Thousands line up outside Barnes & Noble for Hillary Clinton’s book signing.Gregory P. Mango

Thirty more minutes went by, then forty. And it wasn’t as though people could read Hillary’s book while waiting: They wouldn’t get their copy until they approached the dais, where Hillary would then generically sign it.

Perhaps that was for crowd-control reasons, or perhaps so she wouldn’t be challenged on some of the book’s doozies, such as:

“Although I never imagined running for office myself . . .” (after her politically-charged 1969 commencement speech was covered in Life magazine, her later work on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate investigation and her marriage to the politically ambitious Bill Clinton).

Losing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is opening a promotional tour for her new campaign memoir by smearing President Trump and his tens of millions of supporters as deplorable racists.

Not content to fade into the background as defeated nominees have tended to do in the modern era, the former secretary of state is race-baiting and grandstanding in front of anyone who will listen, a move that is causing consternation among plenty of professional Democrats.

On CBS over the weekend, her description of attending President Trump’s inauguration – it was “like an out-of-body experience” – seems understandable given Clinton’s belief her election was so certain that, in the words she used in the book, she “had not drafted a concession speech.”

But her incendiary claim that Trump’s inauguration speech almost eight months ago was a “cry from the white nationalist gut” went well beyond sour grapes. When Democrats are in trouble, they cry “racist!” When that doesn’t work, they cry “racist!” more loudly and hire publicists to spread the smear.

A credible case can be made that Hillary’s book is a cry for help from a disturbed individual, one who refuses to take responsibility for anything. Ever.

It is a matter of record that in his first address as president Trump made no attempt to stoke the flames of racial resentment. But left-wingers obsessed with alleged “dog whistles” conservatives throw to their supposedly racist base auditorily hallucinate such coded messages daily.

What Trump did do on January 20 was speak of the terrible damage Hurricane Barack and his party’s left-wing policies have inflicted on everyday Americans.

Speaking of the “forgotten men and women of our country [who] will be forgotten no longer,” the new president said:

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public, but for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists:

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

Anyone who interprets President Trump’s tough, eloquent call to arms against America’s problems as a “cry from the white nationalist gut” needs psychiatric help.

But we knew that already.

In the interview with CBS’s Jane Pauley, Clinton continued the lies, smearing Trump as a racist demagogue.

“He was quite successful in referencing a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others,” Clinton said, adding that she was referring to “millions of white people.”

Although known for her angry, sometimes alcohol-fueled explosions in private, Clinton said she wasn’t enraged enough on the stump to match the public mood. “A lot of people didn’t want to hear my plans. They wanted me to share their anger. And I should’ve done a better job of demonstrating ‘I get it.'”

In the interview, Clinton stood by her obnoxious “basket of deplorables” comment during the campaign, in which she wrote off half of Trump’s supporters as “irredeemable,” even though she previously backtracked on the comment and feigned remorse. “Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner,” she said, giving the sexually descriptive “Access Hollywood” audio footage from 2005 as proof.

Liberalism is a dirty word in today’s left. You hear it most often as an insult, neoliberalism, hurled by the hard left against anyone accused of insufficient hostility to free enterprise and other open systems. If you trust the free market and individual judgement over state regulation, you might just be a neoliberal.

And neoliberals are the biggest enemies of the left.

Liberal has become a slur on the illiberal left which is intolerant of open and tolerant systems. The defining symbol of the illiberal left is the campus safe space where no free speech is allowed. Safe spaces take the college, once the symbol of a liberal commitment to the free exchange of ideas, and invert it into a space that is safe from the free exchange of ideas under a warm and fuzzy name.

The safe space isn’t a campus eccentricity. As the riots from Berkeley to Boston show, using violence to silence free speech isn’t just something overzealous college kids do. It’s what the left does now. And sympathetic lefty mayors of cities put on the same show of helplessness as university administrators.

When the New York Times runs multiple editorials attacking the very idea of speech, one such op-ed claimed that some forms of speech were stressful and therefore a form of violence, it’s not college kids.

It’s the illiberal left.

After Trump’s win, the left reacted by finding fault with an excessively open society. The media blamed “Fake News” spread on social media for his victory and pressured Facebook, Twitter and Google into agreeing to its let its fact checkers decide what was and wasn’t legitimate. It wasn’t censorship, they insisted. It was social responsibility. And social responsibility is how censors justify what they do.

Meanwhile the latest wave of blacklists seeks to shut down organizations and silence individuals.

The post-election paranoia over Fake News and Russia, and the blacklisting surge have a common underlying theme. Our society is too open. Something has to be done to securely shut it down.

Free speech has the same problem as free enterprise. It assumes that we should trust people.

Potential donors to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) need to ask themselves, to what use their money will be put?

In the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, a former director of the World Jewish Congress decried the direction in which the new head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was taking the international human rights group. In a series of columns, Isi Leibler — a prominent Australian Israeli — blasted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, for turning the 100-year-old organization, whose mission is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, into a platform that “represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics.”

Leibler first took issue with Greenblatt’s April 2016 address to the far-Left Jewish organization J Street, backed by anti-Israel billionaire George Soros.

Leibler wrote that Greenblatt “incorporated [in his speech] criticisms of Israel that were thoroughly inappropriate…[and] indirectly gave a seal of approval for the Obama administration to impose solutions on future borders that could dramatically compromise Israel’s security.”

Ironically, Greenblatt’s rebuttal, in the form of a letter to the editor of The Jerusalem Post, illustrated Leibler’s point. He not only defended J Street, referring to the people in the audience as “a group of deeply thoughtful college students whose commitment to Israel is genuine and whose passion on the issues is impressive;” he claimed that he had not been morally equivocating Israel and the Palestinians.

Columnist Isi Leibler blasted Jonathan Greenblatt (pictured above), CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and a former adviser to President Obama, for turning the 100-year-old organization, whose mission is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, into a platform that “represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics.” (Image source: Erik Hersman/Flickr)

In a subsequent piece, Leibler called Greenblatt to task for having “lost the plot, behaving as though he remained employed by the Obama administration.” Leibler cited the ADL’s July 13, 2016 statement “welcoming the Republican Party platform on Israel,” but expressing “disappoint[ment] that the platform draft departs from longstanding support of a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict… the only viable way to secure Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state.”

Leibler wrote:

“One can disagree about a two-state policy, but for an American Jewish organization which must remain bipartisan and should be concentrating on anti-Semitism to issue such a statement breaches all conventions. It is totally beyond the ADL’s mandate to involve itself in such partisan political issues.”

Yet this is just what Greenblatt did. In a September 13, 2016 article in the journal Foreign Policy, he contested a video clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointing to the Palestinian Authority’s outright refusal to have even a single Jew reside within the boundaries of a future Palestinian state. In the piece, titled “Sorry, Bibi, the Palestinians are not ‘ethnic cleansing’ Jewish settlers,” Greenblatt wrote that Netanyahu “chose to raise an inappropriate straw man regarding Palestinian policy toward Israeli settlements.”

Far more questionable, however, has been the ADL’s support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement — a group established in 2013 to counter police brutality against African Americans, but that quickly mushroomed into a full-fledged “intersectional” anti-American, anti-white, anti-Israel, pro-radical Palestinian organization.

About this, too, Greenblatt made what critics claim is a convoluted statement — saying that the ADL has no “official relationship with the body of activists who claim membership in this effort,” and attributing its “anti-Israel — and at times anti-Semitic — positions” to a “small minority of leaders within the Black Lives Matter movement.”

American progressives have fnally gone all the way to a totalitarian vision, demanding control over not just your behavior, but your thoughts and beliefs. This as the price of simply living without being attacked.

And hats off to Erick Erickson for naming it first. The former RedState honcho and Never-Trumper called it right, and no, I’m not talking about his near-demonic hatred of President Trump.

Last year, Erickson released a book with a title he popularized: You Will Be Made to Care: The War on Faith, Family, and Your Freedom to Believe. The book is a summation of an argument Erickson has long made. As the sexual left makes progress on its biggest projects — same-sex marriage, transgenderism acceptance, pronoun wordplay — they are increasingly unwilling to brook resistance.

Do you believe in traditional marriage but don’t care that gays marry? Think it’s OK teenagers take hormonal injections to swap genders but it’s not right for your kids? Don’t really give a hoot about someone who identifies as “xe”?

Well, too bad, sucker. The new dispensation doesn’t care for your waffling. Going forward, your private beliefs must align with your public stance. No exceptions made or allowed.

In short: You will be made to care

Erickson’s warning was just vindicated in a tweetstorm by Zack Ford, the flamboyant correspondent for the liberal blog ThinkProgress.

Ford, who is prone to pique-filled tantrums, is the site’s LGBTQ editor. His beat consists of sniffing out any hint of pro-heterosexual bias and lambasting it as bigoted, backwards, and tyrannical. He’s a proud atheist who doesn’t hesitate to cite science when it’s convenient. But, nota bene, he believes men menstruate and become pregnant.

In response to an essay by Bethany Mandel in The Federalist, Ford had a bigger meltdown than Sex in the City fans when Mr. Big dumped Carrie at the altar. In her piece, Mandel admitted to once being a supporter of gay marriage, but the liberals’ Torquemada-inspired campaign for transgenderism inclusion among children has changed her mind. Feeling hoodwinked, Mandel pointedly wrote, “The Left has shown the totalitarian manner in which it exacts support, or at least silence, from everyday Americans.”

Ford wasn’t having any of it, no siree. Even though Mandel was an “ally” during the fight for same-sex marriage, her opinion that grates upon the “Approved Position” on transgenderism is hereby invalid. “What [Mandel] argues that [sic] she should be ALLOWED to believe what she believes, even though those odious beliefs harm others,” Ford tweeted. “Indeed,” our hysterical scribe continued, “she is a quintessential example of claiming free speech to justify her bigotry.”

Then came the kicker: “You’ll be ‘made to care,’ because intolerance harms people and is unjustified and the rest of us want the world to be a better place.”

Since Hillary is setting records as a sore loser harridan with he book tour, I thought this column from 2016 says it best….rsk

Who are the haters? Who are the autocrats? Who are the serial abusers of power?

Only one presidential candidate has wielded the sledgehammer of government against personal enemies.

Only one presidential candidate has exploited a spouse’s public office to exact revenge on political dissenters.

Only one presidential candidate has a quarter-century track record of taxpayer-subsidized demagoguery and class warfare.

And, as the most recent undercover investigation by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas revealed this past week, only one presidential candidate has been directly linked to a scheme to foment chaos and violence at her opponent’s rallies.

Ignore the kindly grandma with the “Stronger Together” backdrop warbling about her happy family and singing the praises of diversity and inclusion. Look beyond the carefully manufactured semblance of bipartisanship and moderation.

Remember history — or rather, “herstory.”

Hillary Clinton isn’t just a nasty woman. She’s a ruthless hatemonger devoted wholly to two corrupt pursuits while on the federal teat: tearing down and cashing in.

To clueless millennials, “bimbo eruptions” might sound like a Trumpism. But it was vintage Team Hillary’s misogynistic moniker for horndog Slick Willie’s accuser outbreaks in the 1990s.

Respect for women? This is the snarling elitist who attacked Gennifer Flowers, a paramour of her cheating husband, as a “failed cabaret singer” whom she would verbally “crucify” if she had the chance.

Just how vindictive can Crooked Grandma be? Ask the people who know her best. David Watkins, a former top administrative aide from Arkansas in the Clinton administration, laid out the then-first-lady’s central role in the crony-motivated White House travel-office firings.

The Clintons’ old pal, Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, had pushed for wholesale dismissal of travel-office staff in favor of their connected friends.

“We both know that there would be hell to pay,” Watkins informed chief of staff Thomas McLarty, if “we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”

Indeed, Hill unleashed hell. Watkins was sacked under the guise of punishment for using a government helicopter as transportation to a golfing event — something that’s a privilege for presidents, not peons.

He was far from alone. Bill and Hill’s IRS (two for the price of one, don’t forget) targeted conservative think tanks and nonprofits. Bill and Hill’s FBI improperly and illegally accessed the files of countless citizens who inconveniently ruined the Clinton narrative.

And the woman who just weeks ago mauled millions of Trump supporters nationwide as “irredeemable” and “deplorable” is a pro at sweeping demonizations.

What a way to peddle books.

Hillary Clinton, the woman who lost the White House to a candidate who never competed seriously for so much as a school-board seat, took to the airwaves to slander the man who crushed her political dreams.

President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address was “a cry from the white-nationalist gut,” the Duchess of Chappaqua proclaimed on Sunday while pitching What Happened, her brand-new, blame-all extravaganza about why her Oval Office bid crashed and burned. As she further pronounced in an audience that she granted to CBS News: “What an opportunity to say, ‘Okay, I’m proud of my supporters, but I’m president of all Americans.’ That’s not what we heard at all.”

Wrong!

In a case of he said/she said “he didn’t say,” President Trump uttered nearly verbatim the very words that Hillary accused him of not expressing. Consider these direct quotes excerpted from President Trump’s remarks, immediately after taking the Oath of Office:

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. . . .

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. . . .

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

You will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

We Will Make America Proud Again.

We Will Make America Safe Again.

And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again.

Funny, President Trump’s inclusive, unifying inaugural address contains the words “we” 49 times, “I” thrice, and “white” exactly once: “It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.”

Donald Trump’s deal with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling for three months and fund $15 billion in disaster relief has delighted the Dems and infuriated Republicans. “Trump got rolled!” was the refrain, said in disgust by one side and exultation by the other, since the Dems gave up nothing for the deal. The president seemed to rub salt in the Republicans’ wounds when he called the Senate minority leader and House minority leader “Chuck and Nancy.” The old NeverTrump claim that Trump is neither a true Conservative nor a Republican appeared prescient.

Leaving all that aside, the move probably will satisfy a majority of voters. The vote in the House before the meeting was 316-90, suggesting that the most democratic branch of government, and hence most accountable to the people, had an idea that such a move is what the people want. Later, the presumably more sober and judicious Senate agreed with an 80-17 vote. The old lesson of democracy is still valid: politicians succeed by giving people what they want. Ignoring vox populi is a surefire way to get tossed from office.

Raising the debt ceiling is an especially revealing moment in our democratic politics. The problem is critical: Common sense and simple mathematics tell us our runaway debt, deficits, and entitlement spending will in a few decades hit our economy like a Cat 5 hurricane. But the electorate’s fondness for these programs makes them nearly untouchable.

Nearly two-thirds of the annual budget goes to “mandatory” spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on $20 trillion of debt, along with some of the 83 social welfare programs. This spending will continue to grow as the population ages and interest costs return to normal levels. Social Security illustrates the problem. Its unfunded liability for the next 75 years is $12.5 trillion, an increase of 166% from just ten years ago. Social Security is losing money every year, $54 billion in 2016. In ten years that deficit will reach $215 billion in real dollars. Today, the “trust fund” financing the program is made up of Treasury debt, which means the feds have to borrow more money or raise taxes when the bonds are cashed in to pay recipients. It’s sort of like using one credit card to make a payment on another.

If left unreformed, programs like Social Security and Medicaid will hit the demographic wall: right behind the 75 million Boomers are nearly 76 million Millennials. Increasing longevity means that benefits for more people will be paid out for more years. We can’t grow ourselves or tax ourselves out of this looming disaster. Programs have to be reformed (higher employee contributions and retirement ages, and means-testing benefits), and more importantly, cut.

This problem is well known, amply documented, often decried, and seldom addressed meaningfully. Deficit and debt hawks blame politicians for pandering to the people, especially Democrats who think the “rich” don’t “pay their fair share,” and have secret vaults of money they’ve unjustly finagled from the people, even though the collective wealth of the country’s some 540 billionaires couldn’t fund the federal government for one year. Weak-kneed Republicans go along, afraid of their constituents and the progressive media that will Scrooge them royally every time a modest reform––such as cutting just the rate of increased spending for a program––is put on the table.