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POLITICS

Obama: Prospect of Electing a ‘Powerful Woman’ President ‘Troubles’ Many Americans By Debra Heine see note please

Also, he’ll consider it “a personal insult” if black people don’t vote for Hillary.Also, he’ll consider it “a personal insult” if black people don’t vote for Hillary. He will never change…he is hopeless…..rsk

President Barack Obama, speaking at an event in New York City on Sunday, suggested that sexist attitudes are the reason why the most qualified person in American history does not have a commanding lead in the polls.

The “Lecturer-in Chief” told liberal donors at a fundraiser in Manhattan that Americans are trying to “grapple” with electing a “powerful woman.” But he expressed confidence that the American people will make “the right decision” and elect Hillary Clinton.

“There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president,” Obama lectured. “We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women. And it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly, and that expresses itself in all sorts of ways.” He concluded, “The good news is, despite all that, I have confidence in the American people that we’re going to make the right decision and we’re going to win this thing.”

See, there’s always a good explanation for why a Democrat might struggle to win over certain “deplorable” segments of society. In 2008, it was because the deplorables were bitter and clung “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

In 2016, it’s because we are grappling “with what it means to see powerful women. And it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly, and that expresses itself in all sorts of ways.” Okay, we get it. These are the Neanderthals who are voting for Trump.

The Mulish Stupidity of Clinton-Obama Counterterrorism By Andrew C. McCarthy

As Rich notes, Hillary Clinton is essentially accusing Donald Trump of treason on the theory that his rhetoric aids and abets ISIS in recruiting Muslims because it affirms their narrative of a war between Islam and non-Muslims. This is as stupid as would be a claim that Mrs. Clinton is guilty of treason — as opposed to mere idiocy — because, by refusing to acknowledge the Islamic doctrinal roots of jihadist terror, she and her policymaking cohort blind us to the motivation, objectives, and strategies of our terrorist enemies.

As I have previously recounted, when I prosecuted the Blind Sheikh’s terrorist cell in the mid Nineties, the defense lawyers for the jihadists – who sounded just like today’s anti-anti-terrorist progressives – claimed that their clients had been lured into terrorist activity by U.S. government policy and by the enticements of a government informant who spouted Islam-against-the-world rhetoric. In response to this fatuous contention, we put a very simple question to the jury: “What would it take to turn you into a mass-murderer?” What policy could be so bad, what rhetorical us-against-them flourishes so inspiring, that a person would join the terrorist cause and commit acts of barbarism?

When a person with a modicum of common sense considers such a question, he or she knows that there could be no such policy. There is no controversial policy or figure that could cause a person to become a terrorist – not Gitmo, not harsh interrogation tactics, not Bosnia, not Abu Ghaib, not torched Korans, not anti-Muslim videos, not Donald Trump . . . or George Bush . . . or Dick Cheney . . . or Bill Clinton . . . or Pope John Paul II (the latter two of whom jihadists plotted to kill in the mid-Nineties).

Of course, all of these policies and people are exploited pretextually by jihadists in order to justify themselves and to play the West like a fiddle. But it’s all a side show. A person joins the jihad only if the person adopts jihadist ideology. A person is moved to commit mass-murder – an act that requires depraved indifference to the lives and the humanity of his targets – because there is no ideology as powerful as religious ideology, as the notion that God Himself has commanded the aggression because the infidels offend Him by their infidelity.

Trump shatters GOP records with small donors ‘He’s the Republican Obama,’ one operative says as Trump monetizes his Republican supporters. By Shane Goldmacher

Donald Trump has unleashed an unprecedented deluge of small-dollar donations for the GOP, one that Republican Party elders have dreamed about finding for much of the past decade as they’ve watched a succession of Democrats — Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton — develop formidable fundraising operations $5, $10 and $20 at a time.

Trump has been actively soliciting cash for only a few months, but when he reveals his campaign’s financials later this week they will show he has crushed the total haul from small-dollar donors to the past two Republican nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney — during the entirety of their campaigns.

All told, Trump is approaching, or may have already passed, $100 million from donors who have given $200 or less, according to an analysis of available Federal Election Commission filings, the campaign’s public statements and people familiar with his fundraising operation. It is a threshold no other Republican has ever achieved in a single campaign. And Trump has done so less than three months after signing his first email solicitation for donors on June 21 — a staggering speed to collect such a vast sum.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said a senior Republican operative who has worked closely with the campaign’s small-dollar fundraising operation. “He’s the Republican Obama in terms of online fundraising.”

Clinton counted 2.3 million donors as of the end of August, the result of decades of campaigning, a previous presidential bid and allies who painstakingly built her an email file of supporters even before she formally announced her second run. But Trump had zoomed to 2.1 million donors in the past three months alone, his campaign has said.

The question now is what the gusher means for the GOP. The Republican National Committee, through a deal struck with Trump in May, is getting 20 percent of the proceeds from its small-donor operation for Trump plus access to this invaluable new donor and email file. But can Trump’s candidacy help close the Republican Party’s small-donor divide in one fell swoop? Will these donors — 2.1 million and counting — give to other Republicans? Will they drag the Republican Party in Trump’s direction for years to come? Or, if he loses, will they simply vanish?

Trump’s Marshall Plan for Inner-City Kids School choice is the most important civil rights cause since Martin Luther King. September 19, 2016 Matthew Vadum

Eleven days ago Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a revolutionary speech in Cleveland about public education that should have changed the face of American politics forever. Unfortunately few people know about this compassionate blueprint for desperately needed change. That is because the Sept. 8 address came the day after Trump’s strong performance at the Commander In Chief Forum hosted by Matt Lauer. Pundits’ tongues were still wagging furiously over what happened at that event as the thought that Trump could actually win in November began to sink in.

But it’s not just the fault of talking heads and the rest of the mainstream media. Trump did himself no favors during what was touted as a major speech focusing on education and lifting up America’s inner cities. Instead of diving right in, he devoted the first 18 minutes to attacks on Hillary Clinton over national security issues and the war on the Islamic State that had nothing to do with America’s inner cities and the decades that corrupt big city Democrats have spent oppressing inner-city children.

In short Trump’s revolutionary call to arms against the public school monopoly was effectively buried by the candidate’s lack of discipline. Consequently, few people are aware of Trump’s unprecedented proposal for a $130 billion plan to bail poor inner-city kids out of schools that don’t teach them, who are thus condemned to lives of grinding poverty.

The speech that unveiled a modern-day Marshall Plan to rescue poor kids in low-income neighborhoods from failing public schools barely caused a ripple. But if the lives of the poor in our inner cities are to change, Americans need to know about Trump’s plan.

What’s especially refreshing about the Trump proposal is that it is not half-hearted or drawn up in a way to placate Democrats, who now are not going to relinquish their control of the failed urban public school system. Republican politicians have in the past advocated relatively timid, innocuous-sounding school choice proposals but Trump’s plan is a blazing thunderbolt hurled at the education establishment that puts previous school choice proposals to shame.

Trump’s plan, which he laid out at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, an inner-city charter school, drives home the point that Democrats are the true enemies of inner-city residents. They have a monopoly control of America’s major inner cities that goes back 50 to 100 years. Democrats want poor blacks and other inner-city inhabitants to stay exactly where they are – and keep on voting Democrat until the end of time.

Everyone with eyes knows that the urban public school system in America is a travesty. Over decades the Left took a basically good system that churned out good citizens, entrepreneurs, and employees, and transformed it into a jobs program for adults, especially Democratic Party supporters and labor bosses. It amounts to a gigantic partisan slush fund that everyone who pays taxes in America is forced to support. And no matter how much money gets spent, things never seem to improve.

Peter Smith Those Conservative Inexplicables

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives cannot be policy-based. Yes, it’s true that his positions do not meet the conservative ideal, but there is not the shadow of a doubt they are much closer to that standard than are Hillary Clinton’s.
“Namby-pamby, panty-waisted, weak-kneed,” was the way evangelical preacher Pastor Robert Jeffress didn’t mince words on the Sean Hannity (Fox News) show in describing the never-Trump conservative coterie. Clearly he didn’t take his lead in his choice of words from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Equally clear, he was talking about conservative men. After all, most women, whatever their politics, are in a literal sense panty-waisted.

It set me wondering about the temperament of conservative men who have decided that they can never support Donald Trump. Some seem so nauseatingly precious when I see them on TV. They whine about not being able to bring themselves to support such a vile creature as Trump. And then they dissemble feebly when challenged that they are effectively supporting Hillary Clinton, her left-wing policies, and her left-wing appointments to the US Supreme Court.

For example, I saw Glenn Beck being interviewed. There are candidates to vote for other than Trump or Clinton he mumbled. Really, Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or one of a host of other minor wannabes who’ve put themselves on some state ballots? None of them has any chance and Beck knows that. He spouts about being a constitutional conservative, yet he is willing to risk the Supreme Court being stacked for generations to come with judges who will not give a fig about the US Constitution.

Another never-Trump person is Bret Stephens. He is a conservative columnist (or so he claims) for The Wall Street Journal. Take this recent piece of his, rerun in The Australian on September 14. His piece comprises his answers to a series of Dorothy Dix questions asked of him by a mysterious third party posing as a semi-apologist for Trump. How irritating is that? Never mind, I said to myself, feel the content not the annoyance. It didn’t help.

“How can you call yourself a conservative columnist when you’re rooting for Hillary Clinton?”, the mysterious third party asks. Stephens answers thus: “Because Donald Trump is anti-conservative, un-American, immoral and dangerous.” There are fifteen other questions like this, all with answers beating Trump about the head. I can only advise those who have not read Stephens’ piece to make no effort to do so.

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives, like Beck and Stephens, cannot be policy-based. Trump’s policies, while admittedly not conforming to a conservative ideal, are much closer to it than are Clinton’s. He also intends appointing solid Supreme Court judges (originalists and literalists) who will uphold the Constitution. He has put out a list of potential appointees, all of whom passed muster among the most ardent conservatives. The choice is between these kinds of judges or flunkies.

It is inexplicable to me why any conservative would prefer Clinton to Trump. That is why I have decided to name them “the inexplicables” and contrast them with the “irredeemable basket of deplorables” who Mrs Clinton believes constitute half of Trump’s supporters. Ah, but as self-identifying deplorable, and irredeemably so to boot, I am not content to leave the mystery unresolved. Is it possible to explain the inexplicable?

More Clinton Shenanigans in Haiti Emails show the State Department and the Clinton Foundation collaborated on policy. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

On Jan. 27, 2011, Clinton Foundation Chief Operating Officer Laura Graham sent an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, voicing concern about a rumor. Ms. Graham had heard that Foggy Bottom was thinking about revoking the U.S. visa of Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive. “Wjc will be v unhappy if that’s the case,” Ms. Graham warned Ms. Mills, using the initials of the former president.

Ms. Graham, who was also chief of staff to Mr. Clinton at the foundation, had other reasons to worry: “I’m also staying at [Mr. Bellerive’s] house fyi so exposure in general and this weekend in particular for wjc on this.”

So Clinton Foundation staff was hobnobbing with a powerful Haitian politician and using connections at the State Department to try to influence U.S. policy decisions involving that same politician. That’s unethical and it is also contrary to what Mrs. Clinton promised when she went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009 as president-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state nominee.

Back then she boasted that the foundation and the incoming administration “decided to go beyond what the law and the ethics rules call for to address even the appearance of conflict” of interest with a “memorandum of understanding” to “address potential concerns” and ensure transparency.

Now a string of State Department emails from January 2011—made public through a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by Citizens United—demonstrates that Mrs. Clinton’s State Department did not separate itself from the Clinton Foundation but instead collaborated with it.

In her Jan. 27 email Ms. Graham also offered advice: “Nor do I think u need remove his visa. Not sure what it gets u. Remove elizabeth’s and prevals people,” she wrote, referring to the wife of Haitian President Rene Preval and his staff.

The next publicly available email from Ms. Mills to Ms. Graham reads, “You also should consider the message it sends to others that you stay at his house.” Ms. Graham shot back that she had “discussed staying at his house w both u and wjc long ago and was told good strategic value.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s School-Choice Fight His plan to let money follow the child is a moral and political winner.

If Donald Trump knew that promoting school choice would cause such a ruckus on the left, maybe he’d have weighed in sooner. The Republican nominee has found a winning issue by pitching a plan to “provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America.” Amen.

During a visit to the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, Mr. Trump proposed a $20 billion block grant for states by redirecting federal education money to support charter schools and vouchers. He also endorsed merit pay for teachers and said he’d support local candidates who champion school choice.

Most of the $50 billion or so that the federal government spends on K-12 education is targeted to particular programs like teacher training, and rural and STEM education. About $14 billion in Title I funds are earmarked for disadvantaged students. However, this money doesn’t follow kids to private schools, and states often shortchange charter schools.

Mr. Trump wants to let states use federal funds to boost voucher awards, so parents rather than governments get to choose where the money goes. As he noted in Cleveland, “there is no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly.” Judging by the panicky reaction on the left, you’d think he’d proposed eliminating public education.

Hillary Clinton said his block-grant plan would “decimate public schools across America.” Yet $20 billion is merely 3% of what states spend on K-12 education each year and less than the increase in school spending in California since 2012. By the way, charters are public schools—freed of union control. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump and the Translators A chance to prove his policy is not anti-Muslim but anti-jihad.

At the recent commander-in-chief forum, a woman asked Donald Trump whether he would let an undocumented worker who wanted to serve in the armed forces stay in the U.S. His answer probably wasn’t what people expected. “I think that when you serve in the armed forces, that’s a very special situation,” Mr. Trump said, “and I could see myself working that out, absolutely.”

Thanks to the Obama Administration and Congressional Republicans, the GOP candidate now also has a chance to show common sense on the matter of Muslims. At issue is a special visa program that expires Oct. 1 for foreign translators who served honorably with U.S. troops, the State Department or agencies such as the FBI—and whose lives are now in danger because of that service.

These visas are meant for folks such as Janis Shinwari, who in April 2008 was attached to a U.S. Army unit in Ghazni province when it was ambushed and Lieutenant Matt Zeller was blown into a ditch by an enemy mortar. Two Taliban were about to kill him, Mr. Zeller says, when his interpreter, Mr. Shinwari, shot them dead. Mr. Zeller says he knows at least four other Americans whose lives Mr. Shinwari saved.

The danger these former translators face is real. Last year Sakhidad Afghan, an interpreter for the U.S. military, was hunted down by the Taliban, tortured and executed. He had been waiting years for a special visa.

Congress should have extended the program for a year this spring, but it got caught in domestic politics. Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said the visas are an immigration measure under his jurisdiction. He says he supports the program but also says we need “reasonable limits.” The final House language allocated no new visas and narrowed the criteria for eligibility.

Utah’s Mike Lee held up the bill in the Senate to make an unrelated point, so the provision never got a vote. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has come out publicly for letting the program expire. That means these visas are in limbo as Congress tries to complete a defense bill before Members head home for the election.

The leaders who should be loudly calling on Congress to keep this program going—President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton—have been silent. Meanwhile, Messrs. Goodlatte and Sessions are effectively strangling the measure.

Strategic Lessons of Clinton’s Health Crisis By: Srdja Trifkovic |

According to Hillary Clinton’s campaign talking points, she wanted to “power through” her pneumonia; but after that “overheating episode” on September 11 it “seemed like the smart thing to do” to take some downtime. According to Politico.com, which obtained the document, “those phrases, projecting strength, prudence, and vigor, were among the six bullet-pointed talking points about Clinton’s health the campaign distributed to its army of outside surrogates Tuesday morning.” They were part of the “Daily Message Guidance” from her Brooklyn headquarters:

To anyone who knows Hillary, it does not come as much of a surprise that even when she’s under the weather, she would want to power through her normal schedule . . . This is the Hillary Clinton America saw as secretary of state: someone who traveled the world at a breakneck pace, tirelessly representing America abroad . . . [She] has more than met the standard set four years ago by President Obama and Mitt Romney in terms of disclosing details about her health.

The implications of this episode for the potential commander-in-chief are dire. When faced with a sudden challenge (in this case pneumonia diagnosed on September 9, assuming that was indeed the real problem), an able strategist will make an assessment that will consider likely costs and benefits of any given course of action. To “power through” was an irrational decision discretely made by Mrs. Clinton, without prior consultation with her advisors (who were apparently kept in the dark) and contrary to expert advice (her doctor had advised immediate rest). It was a high-risk course which reflected Mrs. Clinton’s preference for the possibility of strategically perilous outcome (her Sunday collapse and the ensuing legitimization of questions about her health) rather than the acceptance of tactical defeat which would have entailed payment of limited price (full disclosure of the facts of the case, taking a few days off right away).

There are numerous parallels in history, mostly alarming or outright disastrous. Two will suffice to illustrate the problem. “Powering through” is the secular, New Age-motivational equivalent of “God will provide,” which was Philip II’s standard response to the warnings that Spain was overextended in its military-political commitments—against England, France, the Netherlands, the Ottomans. Towards the end of his reign, to pleas from the Cortes of Castille that the burden was no longer bearable, he replied that “they should and must put their trust in me… [T]hey are never, on any pretext, to come to me with such a suggestion again.” But in the end it turned out that God was not Spanish, and therefore Spain was doomed to failure. His messianic imperialism prompted him to power through against reason and prudence, and after 1588, for all the money and men deployed, “and for all the prayers and devotions offered, the strategic miracles ceased.”

Ground Zero for the Iran Deal: Rosenthal Versus Nadler ” By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Rosenthal is outraged: “This district is literally Ground Zero and our representative supported the Iran Deal? Is no one paying attention?

More Jews live in New York’s tenth congressional district than in any other district in the United States. Philip J. Rosenthal – the kind of guy who could easily be a character on television’s The Big Bang Theory – wants its citizens to elect him as their representative.

Jerry Nadler, however, has been representing that area of New York, first in Albany beginning in 1977, and for the past 14 years in Washington, D.C.

So ma’neesh tanah ha this year ha zeh? Nadler voted for the Iran Deal, that’s why.

And if you don’t recall, the Iran Deal was the one issue behind which nearly all of the organizational Jewish world united against. The Iran Nuclear Deal which many Americans, especially Jews, and most especially Jewish New Yorkers, realized at the time was a deal only for Iran but a disaster for the safety of the United States, Israel and much of the West.

And yet, thumbing his nose at his constituents, Cong. Jerrold Nadler came out in support of the disastrous Iran Deal. Many folks in his district felt badly betrayed by Nadler. Some saw him as bowing to the wishes of the Democratic administration while ignoring their wishes and their safety. Nadler was the only Jewish member of the New York delegation who came out in favor of the deal.

Into the breach now steps Philip J. Rosenthal, a shiny example of a Bronx boy made and does good.

Rosenthal grew up facing a train yard and across the street from Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated (“salutatorian, my father would want me to tell you,” he says.) Rosenthal went on to graduate from Yale University with a degree in Physics, “summa cum laude, phi beta kappa,” he says, sheepishly, again hearing his father’s voice echoing in his head).

Where next? The California Institute of Technology, where Rosenthal studied string theory and cosmology, garnering both a master’s degree and a PhD. Ouch.