RUTHFULLY YOURS

Cheered on by the media, abusive and personal invective have dominated the campaign. But beneath the mud-slinging, the election is really about issues that are critical – policies that will shape the country over the next one or two decades. To the extent these topics get ignored, we the people are the losers.

There are dozens of issues facing the electorate: public school education; the economy; the Supreme Court; immigration; race relations; inequality; political correctness; national security; the war against Islamic terror and extremism; cyber-attacks; disintegrating democracies in Latin America; and relations with Russia, China, Iran, Israel and Europe. This essay will focus on the first two problems: public school education and the economy.

This is not to trivialize other issues. A Democrat victory in November will assure that the Supreme Court becomes more activist – with relativism subsuming universal moral truths, and the bending of the Constitution to fit an interpretation that suits current mores. Immigration has been elemental to our success as a nation; but we need a policy that promotes legal immigration and that relies on secure borders. While it is unrealistic to deport eleven million illegals, we cannot allow criminal aliens to remain, nor should we permit sanctuary cities to take the law into their own hands. Does anyone believe that United Health and Aetna dropping out of ObamaCare markets will be positive for the pricing of health insurance? Or that a single payer will allow for better and less expensive healthcare? Sadly, our first African-American President has presided over worsening race relations. National security remains a priority. The next President needs to be forthright with the American people about Islamic terrorism and how long the war against it might last. She or he needs resolve and leadership. We cannot back away from our responsibilities and commitments. The world is fortunate that the strongest nation on the planet is one with democratic principles and free market capitalism.

However, education and economics are fundamental to success in all endeavors. A democratic republic requires an educated electorate. Similarly, we cannot do all we want, or be all we would like, without a robust economy based on free market principles. When children graduate from high school without basic groundings in English, math, history, science and geography, we assign them to lives of deprivation. When our economy is seen principally as a source of revenue to government, and when regulation is biased toward the large and the favored, we find ourselves on the path to diminished economic returns.

The most highly regarded indicator of high school competence is the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years tests half a million 15-year-olds in math, science and reading, in 70 countries and educational jurisdictions including the other 34 OECD nations. Results for the 2015 tests will be released in December, but the ones for 2012 showed American students lagging in achievement. They ranked 17th in reading, 20th in science and 27th in math – essentially unchanged from tests taken twelve years earlier. The problem is not our children – the success of Basis charter schools in Arizona and Success Academy charter schools in New York show the capability of minority and impoverished students. The problem, in one word, is unions. Union leaders are more interested in expanding membership than in producing qualified graduates. Non-teaching administrative jobs have proliferated. In most cities and towns, public schools are monopolies. Unions don’t want school competition, especially from those that hire non-union employees, which is why they fight charter schools and voucher programs with such intensity.

The presidential election was over the moment the word “deplorable” made its run out of Hillary Clinton’s unguarded mouth. As the whole world now knows, Clinton told a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender fundraiser Sept. 10, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

She apologized, to be sure, but no-one will believe her: she was chilling with her home audience and feeling the warmth, and she said exactly what she thinks. The “Clinton Cash” corruption scandals, the layers of lies about the email server, health problems, and all the other negatives that pile up against the former First Lady are small change compared to this apocalyptic moment of self-revelation.

You can’t win an American presidential election without the deplorables vote. Deplorables are America’s biggest minority. They might even be the American majority. They may or not be racist, homophobic and so forth, but they know they’re deplorable. Deplorable, and proud. They’re the median family whose real income has fallen deplorably by 5% in the past ten years, the 35% of adult males who deplorably have dropped out of the labor force, the 40% of student debtors who deplorably aren’t making payments on their loans, the aging state and local government workers whose pension funds are $4 trillion short. They lead deplorable lives and expect that their kids’ lives will be even more deplorable than theirs.

Americans are by and large forgiving people. They’ll forgive Bill for cavorting with Monica “I did not have sex with that woman” Lewinsky in the Oval Office and imposing himself on any number of unwilling females. They might even forgive Hillary for losing tens of thousands of compromising emails on an illegal private server and then repeatedly lying about it in a way that insults the deplorable intelligence of the average voter. But the one thing you can’t do is spit on them and tell them it’s raining. They’ll never forgive you for that. They’re hurting, and they rankle at candidates who rub their faces in it.

Mitt Romney’s campaign was unsalvageable after the famous 2012 “47% remark,” by which he simply meant that the 47% of American workers whose income falls below the threshold for federal taxes would be indifferent to his tax cut proposals. The trouble is that these workers pay a great deal of taxes–to Social Security, Medicare, and in most cases to local governments through sales taxes and assessments. After a covert video of his remarks at a private fundraiser made the rounds, Romney spent the rest of the campaign with the equivalent of an advertising blimp over his head emblazoned with the words: “I represent the economic elite.” Clinton has done the same thing with the cultural elite.

Michelle Malkin wrote about Hillary’s behavior during President Bush’s speech to Congress on September 20, 2001

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2001/09/26/hillary_clinton_in_crisis

— WHAT’S eating Hillary Clinton? Her behavior during President Bush’s address to Congress last week was abominable. At a time when even the most partisan of her Democratic colleagues stood united with the president, NY Sen. Clinton shunned patriotism for petulance. She grimaced. She sighed. She rolled her eyes. She fidgeted like a five-year-old at an opera. And when Mrs. Clinton mustered enough energy to clap, she acted as if there were razor blades strapped to her palms.

Although network talking heads refrained from comment, outraged Americans across the country spoke out. Teacher Kathie Larkin of Atlanta wrote to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “This is behavior I would not accept from my sixth-graders listening to a speaker, and I expected better of an adult from a state ripped apart by terrorist violence. Hillary needs to grow up.”

James Gale of Silver Spring, Md., wrote to the Washington Post: “She at times seemed bored and uninterested, clapping perfunctorily, and at other times she was talking during the speech. I thought her actions were unbecoming a senator at this difficult time.”

The Boston Herald, one of the few bold newspapers to take note of Clinton’s insolence, editorialized that she “looked like she was sucking on a lemon.”

And Karen Gauvreau of Clearwater, Fla., wrote to the St. Petersburg Times: “She would have been better off had she stayed home.”

Mrs. Clinton’s staff claims she was weary from traveling. What nerve. All she had to do last week was park her taxpayer-funded backside on a plane seat. Meanwhile, her constituents and volunteers from across the country pulled 13-hour shifts, sifting through rubble, sorting body parts, and collapsing on curbsides from exhaustion and grief.

A few nights’ rest didn’t seem to cure Mrs. Clinton’s unsightly condition. During last weekend’s prayer memorial at Yankee Stadium, she remained dour and tight-lipped as the tearful crowd of thousands sang the National Anthem. Hiding behind sunglasses – guess she can’t control the rolling eyeballs any more than Al Gore can control his heaving sighs – Mrs. Clinton posed for photos with a strange sneer frozen on her stony face.

Let there be no doubt about whose interests come first for Mrs. Clinton in times of crisis. While New Yorkers mourned, their junior senator sulked. Then she tried to rip off both President Bush’s and Mayor Giuliani’s coattails by claiming credit for securing federal disaster aid. The damage-control patrol at the New York Times ate up her narcissistic spin. A Sunday puff piece, which was silent on her churlish performances, extolled her “full transition from a former first lady who happened to hold a Senate seat to true federal legislator.”

Hillary Clinton’s mean-spirited put-down of half of Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” gives further proof that she is the real “basket case.”

The term, itself, is so archaic that I keep forgetting it. I have to remind myself that it rhymes with “adorable,” though I’m sure that adjective is not in Her Heinous’ anti-Trump vocabulary. Yet somehow the strange term fits Hillary’s image as a relic of the past. She has not driven a car for over 20 years. Her excuse is that the Secret Service demands it. Nor does she demonstrate the slightest understanding of technology, for which there is no excuse. So Hillary’s outrageous use of a quaint metaphor suits her well.

It doesn’t suit in other ways, though. We have many hundreds of millions of voters in America but only two major contenders running for president. A candidate cannot be excoriated for the makeup of his supporters any more than a novelist can be blamed for those who read his books.

Further, Hillary’s blast at Trump supporters defies Logic 101, since the premise is suspect. To hold water, arguments must be based on fact, not mere assumption. Classic example:

In most states, American citizens over 18 are eligible to vote.

John Doe, 20, is an American citizen.

Therefore, in most states, John Doe is eligible to vote.

Without getting too technical about propositional logic, it’s fair to say that the first two statements in this formula must be accurate in order for the conclusion to be the same. If in the premise you substitute the word” “permitted” for “eligible” it changes things. And if John Doe is only 16 and is not an American citizen as stated, it also invalidates the conclusion.

What Hillary Clinton took for granted in her accusation was this:

Donald Trump is a bigot who incites followers.

Half of these followers are bigots.

Therefore, they support Trump.

………Consider the reaction over the weekend to Mrs. Clinton’s comments Friday night that “just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”

The remarks echo Mitt Romney’s comment in 2012 about the 47% on the government dole. The media played up the Romney comments as emblematic of an out-of-touch rich guy, and they probably contributed to his defeat. Mrs. Clinton’s comments were arguably worse, attributing hateful motives to tens of millions of Americans, but the media reaction has treated it like a mere foot fault.
Mrs. Clinton apologized, sort of, on Saturday by saying in a statement that, “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’—that was wrong.” But she went on to say she was otherwise right because some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are the likes of David Duke.

Yet the rest of what she said was almost as insulting. She said Mr. Trump’s other supporters are “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

So she thinks half of Mr. Trump’s voters are loathsome bigots and the other half are losers and dupes who deserve Democratic pity. It’s no accident that Mrs. Clinton said this at a fundraiser headlined by Barbra Streisand, the friendliest of crowds, because this really is what today’s elite progressives believe about America’s great unwashed.

Mr. Trump has certainly made appalling comments, but Republicans and media conservatives have criticized him for it. They denounced his praise of Vladimir Putin. They assailed his attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel and his insensitivity to the Khan family. Some have said they can’t support the GOP nominee.

But where are the Democrats raising doubts about Mrs. Clinton’s behavior? Mrs. Clinton reneged on her confirmation promise to the Senate not to mix her State Department duties with the Clinton Foundation by doing favors for donors. She maintained a private email server to hide her official emails and lied about it to the public. Yet no prominent Democrat we know has denounced this deception, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says there’s “too much ado” about it.

The great liberal media watchdogs aren’t challenging Mrs. Clinton either. They’re beating up NBC’s Matt Lauer because he spent too much time asking Mrs. Clinton about the emails during last week’s military forum. This is best understood as a collective warning to the moderators of the coming debates not to jeopardize their standing in polite progressive company by doing the same.
CONTINUE AT SITE***