RUTHFULLY YOURS

The liberal media are too quick to rubbish Donald Trump Credit:

Just two months before the free world elects its next leader – if you believe America leads the free world, that is – the world’s liberal media seem united on two things. The first is that Donald Trump is a monster. The second is that he will lose the US presidential election on November 8.

The first contention may well be true. I am not sure I would want Mr Trump to marry my daughter (if I had one), and he has said and done things both as a businessman and as a politician of which most civilised people would not be proud. However, as I have been writing here since last autumn, his defeat is no certainty.
It is one thing for an army of pundits, mainly in America but also here, to decide that because they think a man is vile, with opinions to match, he cannot win an election. But there is no logic behind that assertion. One need only look at some who hold high elected office in our own and other democracies to work that out. The present leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, for example – about to be returned to that position by a thumping majority – has feted the Irish Republican Army and associated with some of the vilest anti-semites.

Mr Trump defies gravity. Every time he says something that would end the career of a politician in most of the Western world, his poll ratings rise. A crude attempt to libel his wife has just spectacularly backfired. Mrs Clinton leads in the polls, but the gap is closing. After the conventions she led in a Fox News poll by 9 per cent. Now she leads in the same poll by 2 per cent. Her leads have particularly shrunk in swing states. The liberal establishment in America, while pretending Mr Trump is toast, quakes with fear at the thought that he just might pull it off.
Earlier in the summer The New Yorker, the parish magazine of East Coast liberalism, published an issue in which every cartoon ridiculed Mr Trump. Its readers were not entirely charmed, one or two pointing out that if Mr Trump really was irrelevant, what was the point in emphasising his existence in this way? Since then it has avoided saturation coverage, but most editions of the magazine include something painting Mr Trump as deeply undesirable, or highlighting elements of his campaign as if it were a freak show. The daily email the magazine sends its subscribers also routinely contains another exercise in solemn vilification of the Republican candidate. These boys are clearly worried.

“One or two readers of The New Yorker pointed out that if Mr Trump really was irrelevant, what was the point of an issue with every cartoon ridiculing him?”

And they are right. First, Mrs Clinton remains unappealing to a vast body of Americans, including to many Democratic party supporters. The question of the potential security breach for which she was responsible in using a private email server has harmed her character. The FBI documents just published exposing her carelessness with classified information reinforce the impression that when it comes to important regulations, there is one law for her and one for everybody else.

If she wins, all those conservative Never Trumpers- David French, Krauthammer, Bret Stephens, George Will, Kevin Williamson, and you Mr. Tuttle, to name only a few, should hang your heads in shame for enabling her victory. Your silly hopes for 2020 will have been dashed by a loaded Supreme Court, unlimited and unvetted immigration of Jihadists, and a completion of the fundamental transformation of America by an Alynsky acolyte. Most painful of all, no matter who wins, you and those other conservatives will have lost all your standing and influence….Have a nice day….rsk

“A Clinton restoration will leave Americans looking for alternatives — will conservatives be ready?

A new Washington Post/ABC poll, released on Tuesday, shows that Hillary Clinton’s post-convention era of good feelings lasted approximately three weeks. Despite months of relentless media coverage of Donald Trump, his endless string of campaign calamities (including a weeklong spat with the family of a fallen American soldier), and the increasingly widespread view that Trump is a bigot — the worst thing you can be in American public life — the two candidates are about equally unpopular. He’s viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of registered voters; she’s at 59 percent.

Which is to say that, if Hillary Clinton is elected in November, she is in for a miserable four years. Because none of the sources of her unpopularity are going away.

First are the scandals. Ongoing litigation surrounding Clinton’s e-mails and her use of a private e-mail server would stretch into her first term in office, and is certain to yield further embarrassing revelations (like this week’s discovery that Clinton failed to turn over several e-mails related to the Benghazi attacks), and it was recently reported that field offices of the FBI are considering investigating the e-mail scandal in conjunction with various U.S. Attorneys’ offices. Even if those inquiries turned up nothing, their presence would continue to prompt questions about how seriously Clinton is taking security and transparency concerns as president (having spent her several years as secretary of state evading both). And, of course, looming over all of this will be the question of the Clinton Foundation. Given everything we know already about the way the Clinton Foundation operated during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, could we trust that the foundation and her White House would be truly separate? Hillary Clinton’s presidency would almost inevitably sit under a cloud of suspicion.

After two weeks spent waffling on immigration, and making noises on the subject largely indistinguishable from those of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Donald Trump has settled on a hawkish position — and a practical one. Trump’s crowd-pleasing antics aside, in his immigration speech in Phoenix, Ariz., on Wednesday he laid out a sensible, realistic path forward on genuine immigration reform.

Trump’s plan, even in its most primitive iterations, always has been based on the entirely commonsensical principle that America’s immigration policy should serve American interests. Taking this as a starting point, Trump laid out a ten-point policy that emphasizes securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, prioritizing the removal of criminal aliens, and creating the legal and economic disincentives necessary to reduce illegal immigration in the long term.

These are the right priorities. On border security, Trump renewed his commitment to a “physical” wall on the southern border (as well as, alas, his absurd promise that Mexico would pay for it), pledged to swell the ranks of the understaffed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agencies, and vowed to deploy technology, such as below-ground sensors, to aid them. He also promised an end to the catch-and-release policies that have defined the Obama-era commitment (or lack thereof) to border security and to defund sanctuary cities (an initiative that would, of course, have to come out of Congress). And as Trump noted, about half of America’s illegal-immigrant population overstayed legally gotten visas, meaning that a comprehensive visa-overstay tracking system of the sort he is proposing is also crucial part of any real enforcement agenda.

Trump would add to this an expanded use of E-Verify, which would help prevent employers from exploiting illegal labor and so make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to find work. “Turning off the jobs and benefits magnet,” to use Trump’s words, would make the prospect of entering and residing in the country less enticing for foreigners. If immigration trends at the height of the Great Recession are any indication, a sizable number of illegal immigrants are likely to return home when jobs are not readily available.

“I was often the ‘designated yeller.’”

That’s how Hillary Clinton described her relationship with the Israeli prime minister. Yelling and cursing was her particular specialty.

One marathon Hillary yelling session allegedly lasted 45 minutes. Afterward the Israeli ambassador said that relations between the United States and Israel had reached their lowest point.

Her favorite name for Netanyahu was, “F____ Bibi.”

But it wasn’t just about her hatred of any particular Israeli leader. The same year that Hillary was yelling herself hoarse at a man who had fought terrorists on the battlefield, she addressed the American Task Force on Palestine, a leading terror lobby, and blasted Israel and praised Islamic terrorists.

Hillary told the terror lobby, “I may have been the first person ever associated with an American administration to call for a Palestinian state.” She praised Mahmoud Abbas, the PA terror dictator who had boasted, “There is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.”

She celebrated Naomi Shihab Nye who had written of the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli cities, “Oppression makes people do desperate things.” Echoing her, Hillary denounced the “indignity of occupation”. A few years later she accused Israelis of a lack of “empathy” in understanding “the pain of an oppressed people”.

Perhaps they were too busy mourning their dead to emphasize with the terrorists who were killing them.

But fighting for her political life, Hillary and Huma dug through her closet and threw on a blue and white pantsuit. Her campaign placed an editorial in the Forward headlined, “How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Probably by yelling “F___ Bibi” at him for another 45 minutes.

When Hillary Clinton promised to reaffirm her “Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu” it was in the pages of The Forward. And, striving to sell a rotten radical to skeptical Jews, the left-wing paper has decided to run a piece claiming that “Trump Would Be Israel’s Worst Nightmare”. As if anyone in Israel goes to bed dreaming of eight years of Hillary.

The Forward shares Hillary’s view of Netanyahu. And it violently loathes Israel.

WASHINGTON—A new set of Hillary Clinton emails shows how politics, diplomacy and philanthropy would periodically converge during her tenure as secretary of state, with top aides drawing on Clinton Foundation contacts to cope with crises facing the U.S. government overseas.

A batch of emails released Thursday by the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, which received the documents from the State Department under a court order, includes an exchange from July 2009 involving Clinton Foundation official Douglas Band. In the exchange, Mr. Band asked Mrs. Clinton’s senior deputy, Huma Abedin, for diplomatic passports for himself and two others, saying theirs had lapsed. Ms. Abedin wrote back, “OK” and “will figure it out.”

Officials on Thursday said the passports were tied to a humanitarian mission: former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea later that summer to help free captive journalists. The passports were never granted. Instead, the North Koreans agreed not to stamp the passports of Mr. Clinton and the aides, including Mr. Band, who traveled with him to help free Euna Lee and Laura Ling. A person familiar with the matter cited concerns about having a North Korean stamp on individual passports.

A previous cache of emails released last month showed Mr. Band seeking a meeting between Mrs. Clinton and the crown prince of Bahrain, calling him a “good friend of ours.” The Kingdom of Bahrain has donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the foundation.

Critics have said such contacts underscore how the Clinton Foundation enjoyed special access to the highest reaches of the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s watch. Now, in the final stretch of the presidential bid, Mrs. Clinton is facing growing scrutiny over the entanglements between the foundation and her work as the nation’s top diplomat.

Mrs. Clinton has been forced to defend arrangements in which key aides played overlapping roles. At various times during Mrs. Clinton’s four-year tenure, for example, Ms. Abedin worked for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a private New York-based consulting firm co-founded by Mr. Band in 2011. Ms. Abedin is now co-chair of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“The idea that the State Department would even consider a diplomatic passport for Clinton Foundation executives is beyond belief,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

In reply, Clinton allies say the foundation has been driven solely by its charitable mission. They see the criticism as unfounded, citing the foundation’s work combating AIDS and easing poverty. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://circa.com/politics/accountability/fbis-hillary-clinton-email-probe-found-evidence-of-effort-to-evade-federal-records-law

New government sources have come forward to say that the former Secretary of State’s email abuse was “systemic and intentional” and began as soon as she took office in 2009 – according to a new report by John Solomon at Circa News. The FBI was building a solid case that Clinton violated the federal records law numerous times, but ultimately there was a decision to hide the email scandal that raises significant questions about the decision not to indict. Secretary Clinton kept the private server in order to avoid public scrutiny under the FOIA. When asked to turn over all private emails, sources confirm that about 15,000 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account were not given up. Of course, intentionally concealing, removing or destroying federal records violates the Federal Records Act and carries a fine and imprisonment up to three years. More than that: Violators “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” The decisions to hide the private email server were intentional and meant to go around the Federal Records Act.

The abuse was so bad that witnesses in the FBI investigation were forced to plead the fifth to avoid self-incrimination. John’s confirmed an agent was “scolded” by a supervisor and told never to raise the issue again.

THIS IS THE REPORT

Though it was not their primary mission, FBI agents who investigated Hillary Clinton’s email collected significant evidence suggesting she and her team violated federal record-keeping laws, including persisting to use a private Blackberry and server to conduct State Department business after being warned they posed legal and security risks, government sources tell Circa.The evidence was compelling enough to convince FBI Director James Comey that the Clinton team had not complied with record-keeping laws and to cause at least one witness to raise their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during an investigative interview, the sources said.

In public, the FBI recommended not filing criminal charges against Clinton on national security grounds. But in private, the Bureau chose to defer to the State Department on whether to recommend anyone to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on records law violations, the sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

Each email transmission of a government document that was not preserved or turned over to the State Department from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure could theoretically be considered a violation of the Federal Records Act, the main law governing preservation of government records and data.

Other federal laws make it a felony to intentionally conceal, remove or destroy federal records as defined under the Act, punishable with a fine and imprisonment of up to three years. A single conviction also carries a devastating impact for anyone looking to work again in government because the law declares that any violator “shall forfeithis office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

Hillary doesn’t want a fair fight. Or even an unfair fight. She wants to cripple the GOP so it can’t fight at all. It’s the ultimate rigged election….

We’re a little more than two months from the November 8th election and everyone knows that all Democrats, a good number of Republicans and conservatives, and almost the entire media have been agonizing over and militating against the fact that billionaire businessman Donald Trump is the last man standing in a contest that pits him against Crooked Hillary for the presidency of the United States.

But why are no professional political commentators—on TV, radio, or in print—explaining exactly why Mr. Trump is such a mortal threat? After all, he has proven himself to be an upright citizen, a wildly successful businessman, the bestselling author of over a dozen books, a philanthropist, the father of five respectful and loving children the eldest of whom are also impressively contributory members of society, the representative of every value Republicans and conservatives traditionally stand for—low taxes, fewer regulations, secure borders, a strong military, strict conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, et al—and significantly a person who has never been accused of being complicit in the deaths of U.S. servicemen, under the ominous investigation of the FBI, or operating an international money-laundering slush fund that compromises the national security of the United States.

Here is the answer: It’s all about the deal!

Underneath the veneer of “service” our elected politicians purport to be driven by, underneath the “ethical standards” our financial centers pretend to operate, and underneath the gauzy illusion of objectivity the media pretend they represent, the so-called culture of the D.C.-Wall St.-media complex is all about cozy arrangements that inevitably line the pockets of those engaged in the following kinds of local, regional, national and international deals, to name but a few:

under-the-table deals
pay-to-play deals
greasy-palm deals
foundation slush-fund deals (sound familiar?)
mutual back-scratching deals
hush-hush deals
access-to-power deals
good-stories-in-the-media deals (sound familiar?)
bad-stories-in-the-media-about-your-political-enemies deals (yep)
sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll deals
immense wealth-producing lobbyist deals
On and on…