RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mrs Clinton is plainly a globalist like President Obama, Donald Trump an opponent—if not the best one. But this election will not decide the issue which of its nature pits most voters against the progressive elites. It’s your politics for the next century.
Five weeks ago I summed up the state of the US presidential race in the Weekend Australian. After a long stretch in the primaries that had produced one surprise after another, I wrote, the Trump-Clinton battled had settled down to a surprising if unedifying stability:

Maybe the best metaphor for the current state of the race is one Trump himself has used: the “fixed” fight. On this occasion, however, the Mob has blundered and “persuaded” both candidates to take a fall . . . Each is fighting to lose, moreover, in his and her distinctive ways: Clinton is being undermined by the continuing drip-drip-drip of her own emails that show her to have lied and broken federal laws during and since her time as Secretary of State; Trump is being derailed at intervals by his own gaffes and insults . . . Both presidential candidates as a result are now two of the most distrusted people in America. Each overtakes the other at intervals depending on whether her lies or his gaffes dominate the headlines.

That pattern has continued to the time of writing which is just three weeks short of the election—and two weeks before Quadrant appears on the news-stands. Surprises still occur, of course, indeed more extravagantly than before, but they do so within this pattern of gaffe versus insult, or as the race deteriorates, scandal versus scandal. Just at present the accusations of sexual impropriety (and worse) by numerous women against Donald Trump dominate the headlines. But the steady flow of leaked emails from the Clinton campaign courtesy of Wikileaks, including dismissive remarks about Catholics and Latinos (supposedly constituencies within the Clinton camp) ensures that the candidates remain within hailing distance of each other.

Mrs Clinton is clearly ahead. Most pundits predict her clear victory, made sweeter by Democratic gains in the Senate. Her scandals have thus far been less scandalous than his scandals in the public mind—and less high-lighted by a largely partisan media. On the other hand it seems likely that Wikileaks’ supply of material will be at least as extensive as Trump’s legion of insulted women. And one less-noticed aspect of the campaign is the depth of consumer resistance to Hillary Clinton. Trump’s repeated comebacks from seeming catastrophe—the latest poll shows him trailing only four points behind his opponent despite the “bimbo eruptions”—are testimony to her dogged unpopularity as much as to his energy and media skills. Behind the sleaze factor, something deeper in American society apparently lies behind the resistance to Clinton and the refusal of the Trump rebellion to go away even as its champion implodes.

David Blankenhorn, the president of a small conservative think-tank devoted largely to reversing the decline of the American family, discovered that he didn’t know a single person who intended to vote for Donald Trump. He felt that was wrong in someone whose title was president of the Institute for American values. So he set off on a drive around America’s South-East—an electoral stronghold of Trumpism—to meet Trump voters and to find out what makes them tick. The results are collected in his article in the current American Interest magazine.

Among other things he found that the Trump voters were realistic, even cynical, about Trump. Those who supported him most strongly did so because they liked the fact that he was not bound by political correctness in speaking about immigration and similar issues. Paradoxically, some of the same people disliked his insults to others, his use of profane language, and his inability to control his own mouth–but liked what one might call his political profanities all the same. That lack of illusion about Trump helps explain why he has not been destroyed by the scandals plaguing him. They’ve been “factored in”.

No matter who wins on Tuesday, political reformers should focus on the lucrative ties between big business and big government. Consider the $17.6 million that Laureate International Universities paid Bill Clinton to be its “honorary chancellor” from 2010-2015.

We wrote about this in “The Clinton For-Profit Standard” (Sept. 7), and Laureate CEO Doug Becker criticized us in a letter for suggesting that Mr. Clinton may have been hired to provide political protection. Recently released emails via WikiLeaks provide a little more, er, color on the Clinton-Laureate relationship.

Clinton factotum Doug Band wrote a memo in 2011 to lawyers at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett showcasing Laureate as one of the relationships that his company Teneo cultivated for the Clinton Foundation. “Laureate is a Foundation relationship that evolved into a personal advisory services business relationship for President Clinton,” the memo says. “I have managed this relations and, since 2011, Teneo partners have helped this relationship, which is very time-consuming.”

We can only imagine. The memo says Laureate donated $1.35 million in 2009 and 2010 to the Clinton Global Initiative, plus another $50,000 for CGI University in 2011.

As the Washington Post reported, Laureate was invited to a State Department dinner related to higher education with academic leaders world-wide in August 2009. Another email that was released in a public records request last year shows that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Laureate should be invited to that dinner because it is “the fastest growing college network in the world.” Oh, and Mr. Becker is someone “who Bill likes a lot.”

It looks like our contributor, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, was right last week. FBI Director James Comey’s review of newly discovered Hillary Clinton-related emails was never going to change his legal judgment because the FBI and Justice Department handling of the case was never serious in the first place.

The Justice Department never went to a grand jury in the case, which was needed to gather all appropriate evidence and vet the legal charges. Judge Mukasey’s judgment was vindicated on Sunday when Mr. Comey sent a letter to Congress saying that the FBI had reviewed the new emails and “we have not changed our conclusion that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

To rehearse Mr. Comey’s actions: In July he publicly exonerates Mrs. Clinton in an extraordinary press event, two weeks before she is to be nominated for President, though that is not his responsibility. He thus liberates Attorney General Loretta Lynch from her decision-making obligations as the nation’s chief prosecuting official. Later we learn Justice cut needless and generous immunity deals with Mrs. Clinton’s advisers.

Then 11 days before Election Day Mr. Comey sends a letter to Congress saying the FBI has found new email evidence. He comes under ferocious Democratic assault for meddling in the final days of the campaign. His boss, President Obama, joins the criticism and says Mrs. Clinton has already been exonerated. Then two days before the election Mr. Comey sends another letter exonerating Mrs. Clinton again. And Washington’s political class wonders why Americans don’t trust government?

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the main point of Mr. Comey’s many political interventions has always been to protect Mr. Comey’s job and political standing. Certainly Mrs. Clinton will have cause to be grateful to Mr. Comey if she wins on Tuesday. The price to the country is the damage he has done to the reputation of the FBI as an apolitical law-enforcement agency.

A recent exposé by FOX News Channel’s Bret Baier and his Special Report team, exposed and chronicled a damning timeline and some internal practices that prove the Clintons – both Bill and Hillary – did, in fact, have a “pay-to-play” scheme in place entangling the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. It also proves that senior staff within the Clinton campaign knew there was damaging information held within the emails trafficked over Hillary Clinton’s private unauthorized server, including correspondence between Clinton and President Obama.

These revelations alone, regardless of what FBI Director James Comey believes is actionable within either of the FBI investigations, had the potential to end Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. Alas, the mainstream media is so intent on providing cover and refuge for all of Hillary Clinton’s unethical and criminal acts – by Comey’s own description in his first announcement, that she is getting the pass of the millennium.

Since the re-institution of the original criminal investigation by the FBI and the revelation of a second investigation by multiple FBI offices targeting the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton has dropped like a rock in the polls. This decline is especially felt in several of the critical swing states, including Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Comey’s statement today that he is standing by his earlier decision not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for additional instances of mishandling classified information will most likely have no effect on the polls at all, although it will give the Clinton team a closing argument centered on deflection and ambiguity. The fact remains – and it is undeniable – Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and is being treated in the aftermath as being above the law.

One of the key issues in the email and unauthorized (read: illegal) server scandal is Clinton’s initial and consistent claims to transparency where her communications were concerned. In her first statement on the matter she insisted – in no uncertain terms – that she wanted to combine her personal and government devices for “convenience.” Since then we have learned that she had over a dozen communications devices, some of which her team destroyed…with hammers.

‘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.

Meanwhile, five different FBI offices are probing the Clinton Foundation on suspicion of public corruption. The Wall Street Journal called this “a sprawling cross-country effort.” Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, citing “more than six” sources in the FBI “with specific knowledge of the Clinton investigations,” reported today that “they confirm that there is an active investigation into the Clinton Foundation that has been going on for more than a year. It is continuing, and for those investigators working it, it is a priority.”

While Clinton apologists call the foundation a font of beneficence, its 2014 IRS filings show that it spent a whopping 5.76 percent of its funds on actual charitable activities — far below the 65 percent that the Better Business Bureau calls kosher. That paltry figure also mocks Hillary’s Las Vegas lie, uttered at the final presidential debate on October 19: “We at the Clinton Foundation spend 90 percent — 90 percent of all the money that is donated on behalf of programs of people around the world and in our own country.”

The Clinton Slush Fund . . . uh . . . Foundation seems to be mainly a travel and full-employment program for Hillary’s government in waiting. It’s also a bribe pump that sucks in money and spews out favors.

As detailed in Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, the IRS wanted information on some $20 billion in 52,000 accounts that well-heeled Americans deposited with the Union Bank of Switzerland. So, UBS gave $60,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary then met in March 2009 with Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey and then intervened with IRS officials on UBS’s behalf. Like magic, IRS asked UBS for only 4,450 accounts — roughly 91 percent fewer than IRS first demanded.

Three days away from the presidential election, the Islamic State issued a seven-page voter guide warning that both candidates will “undoubtedly” break their election promises and U.S. Muslims should skip the voting booth — and that Americans who do vote are “more deserving” of being killed than soldiers.

ISIS even details what it sees as the nominees’ worst qualities: that Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Donald Trump is “impulsive and unpredictable.”

The release from ISIS’ Al-Hayat Media Center titled “The Murtadd Vote” — the apostate vote — begins with the first George W. Bush administration and the up to 80 percent of Muslims who voted for the Texas Republican over Vice President Al Gore.

“Thus, in addition to committing the apostasy of democratic voting, they share in the crimes committed by Bush against Islam and the Muslims throughout his eight years of rule. The murtadd voters, however, did not learn, as by 2008, Obama got up to 90 percent of their vote,” the booklet reads. “And after almost thirty years of history proving to the entire world that there is no difference between the American Republican and Democratic parties in their policies against Islam and Muslims, the murtadd imams of the so-called ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ and its sister sects continue to advocate voting in the pagan festivals of US democracy, this time campaigning for the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.”

“They refuse to see that Obama interfered – both directly and indirectly – against the interests of Muslims just as Bush senior, Bill Clinton, and Bush junior had done before him.”

This page of the article includes a footnote: “George W. Bush, John McCain, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and so forth are all supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). So how can the murtadd imams of the West claim there is any real difference for Muslims between the various US presidential nominees and candidates?”

“The only differences between Trump and Clinton are that Clinton is more skilled in ‘political correctness,’ giving her leverage in the sorcery of hypocrisy,” the ISIS article argues, adding she’s a “female feminist” and the Prophet Muhammad said “never shall a people who give their leadership to a woman be successful.”

Clinton, they continued, sees American Islam as “a project that can be projected to other countries, thereby leading more Muslims astray towards apostasy and eternal Hellfire,” while Trump “has yet to learn that what he refers to as ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ is nothing but the teachings of Islam, plain and simple — no adjective needs to precede Islam to describe the just terror it incites.”

On this page is a photo of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, captioned: “Hillary Clinton’s running mate courting a Jewish taghut [legislative rival to Islam].”

The article delves into Quranic arguments on why Muslims shouldn’t vote, noting “as the US presidential election day draws nearer, it becomes necessary to remind others what the shar’i ruling on partaking in the rituals of democracy is and that this ruling remains the same whether or not one of the two candidates is ‘the lesser of the two evils.'”

Whoever votes, ISIS declares, “is an apostate whether he is an open secularist or an alleged ‘Islamist,’ as legislation is Allah’s alone and judgment is his alone, not for the people, nor the constitution of the people, nor the representatives of the people.”

The pages also included a photo of Trump “courting Jews at the AIPAC convention” this year and of Khizr Khan — “a murtadd supporting Hillary Clinton and the taghut constitution” — holding his pocket Constitution aloft at the Democratic National Convention.

I recently met with an academic colleague for drinks, and the conversation quickly turned, as seems inevitable these days, to American politics. She was appalled when I expressed my admiration for Donald Trump. How could I break ranks so egregiously? After all, she expatiated, Trump wants to end all immigration to the U.S., he hates Muslims, he intends to launch a vendetta against Mexicans, he is an uneducated barbarian and an unscrupulous mountebank to boot.

I explained that she had been conned by the media blitzkrieg against Trump and had not considered his stated policies, for which he has gone on public record: To reduce the multi-trillion dollar American debt, bring jobs back to a country suffering massive unemployment, seal the porous southern border in order to stem what amounts to an invasion of the homeland, monitor immigration protocols to prevent the Muslimization of the United States and limit jihadist attacks, and stamp out high-level corruption. Anyone against these legitimate and necessary endeavors has either been fast asleep or is in sync with the forces of destruction. What, then, was her position on these issues?

No answer was forthcoming. I was, apparently, an alt-right apologist for political oppression, a traitor to the morally enlightened consensus, and, to put it succinctly, a lost cause. She rose from the table and walked out with an expression of contempt on her face. I suppose one could expect little different from someone who reads only The Huffington Post, The New York Times, the National Post and the Toronto Star, and listens to the pap spewed out by the CBC, CNN and MSNBC. Like most liberals, she was wholly unfamiliar with the countervailing literature and was therefore in no position to weigh evidence, balance competing viewpoints, and make an informed judgment. And like most leftists, her only response to an opposing argument was to shut down the debate. Trump was doubtless the monster rising from the Black Lagoon, slavering to devour the country. Case closed.

I have met people more or less like Trump, businessmen with whom my father had dealings when he was, prior to going bankrupt, a flamboyant millionaire. These men were not so much the salt of the earth as the pepper of the earth—colorful men with fiery temperaments, with neither academic credentials nor pretensions, rough hewn in some ways but likable once you got to know them, and totally indifferent to what people thought of them. They were like characters out of Mordecai Richler: eccentric, highly successful, not always totally immaculate in their transactions, but generally sensitive to the needs of their employees and capable of unexpected charm. When I exchange impressions with people who have come to know Trump, whether personally or indirectly, I feel that I recognize him.

Many Christians have expressed their horror of Donald Trump as some sort of incarnation of Beelzebub, as a wanton fornicator, as an adulterer, as a man without religious principle, as a pro-abortionist, as an exploiter of the poor—the list of his faults, transgressions and vices seems encyclopedic. I would ask the legion of anti-Trump Christians, including many commenters to my recent PJM article written in favor of Trump, to forgive me if I suggest that they have gone over the top in the intensity and scope of their animadversions. And I would ask them to consider three salient facts:

Jesus advised his followers in Matthew 22:21 to Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s. The ballot within the framework of a secular democracy is a thing that belongs to Caesar, not to God. The two should not be confused.

The American Constitution provides for the separation of Church and State. The ballot in this case is a function of the State, not the Church. The two should not be confused.

If one believes one has a civic duty to vote—and to vote responsibly—in a national election, it becomes crucial to make a distinction between candidates, their character and their policies, and to consider the likely impact of these factors on the conduct and political nature of an incoming administration. One must also remember that a non-vote, or a protest vote for a splinter candidate —an Evan McMullin or a Jill Stein or a Gary Johnson—will generally translate as a vote for whoever is leading in the polls or appears to enjoy an Electoral College advantage, which seems to be Hillary. Such naivety is nothing but an injurious distraction. The race is between Hillary and Donald and no one else. The two should not be confused.

With respect to this third factor and certainly in the current electoral context, it behooves the believer to weigh carefully the moral, intellectual and political qualities of the major candidates vying for the presidency; and if he or she is dissatisfied in either case, there is no alternative but to vote for the lesser evil, despite the naïve urgings of the overly zealous, earnestly gesturing young man representing the organization “Faith Not Fear” not to do so. This young man is dangerously wrong in assuming that voting for a peripheral candidate will have a “statistically significant impact in this election and the major political parties will take note.” The major parties shrug and continue on their way. Remember Ross Perot?

Of course, I am convinced that Donald Trump, for all his shortcomings, is precisely the chief executive that America needs at this critical juncture in its history, but I do not ask anti-Trump Christians to agree with my convictions. I ask them only—despite their theological sensibilities, which I do not share but which I respect—to reflect upon the consequences of their political decision to act in such a manner as to promote the election of Hillary Clinton. For any impartial assessment of her past record, her character (FBI agents reportedly refer to her as “the antichrist”), and her declared and obvious policies irrefutably condemn her as the greater evil. In comparison with Clinton, Trump appears almost a choirboy.

“A true time for choosing. Get on the train or sit at the empty station waving goodbye. ”

Republicans, particularly those of the establishment ilk, cozy with the big donors and other party elites, have been reluctant to join the Donald Trump train. Fearing a landslide defeat on election day, these Republicans felt it in their best political interests to steer far clear of the Trump Titanic so as not to see their political futures dragged to the bottom of the electoral sea.

After sticking their fingers into the political winds, they decided the safer route would be to steer clear of Donald Trump, all in the hopes that come November 9, they could sit atop their high horses and proclaim, “See I told you so.”

As the political winds shifted this past week, with tightening polls and more talk of a Trump victory than a Clinton landslide, some of the fair weather Republicans are reconsidering their sideline stance, preferring to be on the winning train rather than being left at the station.

Paul Ryan was tap dancing around his party’s nominee. At a recent campaign rally, he told voters, “We are going to win everything including the White House.” In Lord Voldemort fashion, Ryan never mentioned, “He Who Cannot Be Named”, the actual candidate Donald Trump. At least Ryan is on the train, perhaps hanging on rather than seated, but on the train. Like Cruz, Ryan is campaigning with Pence, not with Trump.

Mitch McConnell is the GOP leader most firmly on the Trump train, although he too was late to the station and almost missed the train. Speaking at a recent rally, he told voters, “We need a new president, Donald Trump, to be the most powerful Republican in America.”