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POLITICS

Wikileaks reveals apparent sale of presidential appointments by DNC By Thomas Lifson

It has always been taken for granted that presidents appoint wealthy donors to commissions, ambassadorships, and other honors. But we have never before seen evidence of the way the transactions are carried out. However, thanks to Wikileaks, we have an actual spreadsheet listing donors and possible purchases of office being circulated among DNC officials.

Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller has the story.

The spreadsheet — which was accompanied by emails sent between officials with the DNC’s finance team — contains 23 names of little-known corporate executives and professional fundraisers who have donated to the committee and various Democratic political action committees.

(snip)

The donor spreadsheet is included in an email chain in which Jordan Kaplan, DNC’s national finance director, asks other officials to provide names of donors they want to propose for federal commissions.

“Last call for boards and commissions,” Kaplan wrote on April 20.

“If you have someone, send to [DNC finance chief of staff Scott] Comer – full name, city, state, email and phone number. Send as many as you want, just don’t know how many people will get to.”

The email confused at least one official involved in the exchange.

“Boards and commissions? Sorry, I’m lost,” wrote Jordan Vaughn, the national finance director for the DNC’s African American Leadership Council.

Comer explained: “Any folks who you’d like to be considered to be on the board of (for example) USPS, NEA, NEH. Basically anyone who has a niche interest and might like to serve on the board of one of these orgs.”

“I should say, though, that the likelihood of landing a spot on ones as prestigious as NEA/USPS is unlikely,” Comer added, referring to the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Postal Service.

For Trump! Against the Disloyalists! By Jared E. Peterson

At last it’s beyond dispute: This time the Republican Party’s presidential nominee is someone chosen by full throated roar from its augmented voter base, not by the timid and failed leadership that’s gripped the Party since Reagan.

And just as importantly, despite furious howls from “We prefer Hillary” turncoats scattered among Republican elites and conservative intellectuals, it’s now also indisputable that Donald Trump is fighting for the major part of the Republican Party and American conservatism’s Reagan agenda: unapologetic patriotism and belief in American exceptionalism, a freer, less regulated economy, a Supreme Court that respects the Constitution, unrestricted freedom of expression, unambiguous condemnation of all domestic violence, especially against the police, and a muscular defense of America, its people and allies against increasingly murderous enemies.

Not good enough, say the allegedly Republican and conservative turncoats … we prefer Hillary Clinton and all that comes with her.

An important aside: In law as in logic, the absolutely certain consequences of actions that are known to the actor beforehand … are consequences that he intends. If he fires an automatic weapon into a crowd, he will not be heard to say he did not intend to kill or seriously wound.

Those members of the Republican elite now denouncing Donald Trump and proclaiming he will not get their votes, or failing to endorse and campaign for him when by resume they would be expected to, are actions they know — to an absolute certainty — will help elect Hillary Clinton.

Thus, the entire gaggle of Republican and conservative disloyalists — from former presidents and failed presidential candidates all the way down to obscure scribblers — are intentionally working for the election of Hillary Clinton and the now radical Left Democratic Party.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, especially if by a narrow vote, the turncoat disloyalists will forever own all of the utterly predictable consequences of her Leftist presidency (see below for a partial list).

The reasons for this astonishing betrayal of their own voter base? A mixture of motives is on display. Much social and intellectual snobbery, selfish wound licking, and sinecure protecting are all unsuccessfully seeking cover behind alleged issue or character criticisms.

The soreheads’ issue gripes with Trump focus on those positions that indisputably have expanded the potential voter base of the Republican Party: In addition to embracing much of core conservatism and Republicanism, Trump has responded favorably to two pleas from huge and long-standing majorities of Republican and conservative voters — and from large numbers of working and middle class Americans who are neither:

The Democrats’ Second Email Problem Hacked messages showing the party connived against Sanders have sent his fans in Philly into a tizzy.By Allysia Finley

Donald Trump got a post-convention gift Friday when WikiLeaks released a trove of hacked emails that showed Democratic National Committee leaders conniving against Bernie Sanders.Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz disparaged Mr. Sanders’s party loyalty in one email and called his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, a “damn liar.” The party’s CFO, Brad Marshall, suggested trying to make an issue of the Vermonter’s religion: “Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist.” Amy Dacey, the party’s CEO, replied: “AMEN.”

It’s hardly news that the Democratic machine assisted Hillary Clinton throughout the primary. The party scheduled debates at times likely to draw few viewers—for instance, Sunday night at 9 p.m. Still, it’s bracing to see the political cynicism lain out in black and white.

The uproar cost Ms. Wasserman Schultz her job, as the chairwoman announced she will step down at the end of the convention. She leaves after having accomplished her mission of nominating Mrs. Clinton, for which she is being rewarded with a titular position as head of the Clinton campaign’s “50-state program” to elect Democrats nationwide.

At first the party establishment expressed remorse only that the improper collusion was exposed. Mr. Marshall, the CFO, apologized Saturday. “I deeply regret,” he wrote in a post on Facebook, “that my insensitive, emotional emails would cause embarrassment to the DNC.” The following day, after Ms. Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation, President Obama lauded her service, saying that “her fundraising and organizing skills were matched only by her passion, her commitment and her warmth.” Mrs. Clinton thanked her “longtime friend” for “getting the Democratic Party to this year’s historic convention.”

Meantime, Team Clinton is using Russian hackers as a diversion. “Sources are saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump,” campaign manager Robby Mook said. Campaign Chairman John Podesta sensed “a kind of bromance going on between Putin and Trump, which is distinct from this leak.”

Putin and Those Democratic Emails Clinton blames Russia for the DNC leak. Pre-emptive inoculation?

Here’s the last word Democrats wanted to hear at their Philadelphia convention this week: emails. But there it was after WikiLeaks released 20,000 internal emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee revealing, among other things, that party officials had favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

That wasn’t news, but it gave the Sanders legions a new opening to vent their frustration with the establishment. Their fury brought down Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the party chair, who on Sunday announced her resignation at the end of the convention but by Monday had been strong-armed by the Clinton campaign to abandon any convention role.

Remember those Casualties of Bill (Clinton) from the 1990s? Ms. Wasserman Schultz is the first Casualty of Hillary in this Clinton comeback. She had to go for the sake of party unity but also because the DNC emails remind Americans of another batch of emails, those belonging to the former Secretary of State.

On that score, it was startling to hear the Clinton campaign respond to the email leak by blaming Russia. Campaign manager Robby Mook accused Russian “state actors” of divulging the emails for “the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” and even suggested several pro-Russian provisions in the recent GOP platform were behind the leak. The media is now noting that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort once worked for a Vladimir Putin crony.

Nothing is beyond Mr. Putin, especially since he is already trying to influence European elections. His allies are bankrolling France’s National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, they supported Britain’s exit from the European Union and fabricated stories this spring to undercut Chancellor Angela Merkel in regional elections. Vlad the Election Impaler might well prefer Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, even if Mrs. Clinton was an architect of President Obama’s 2009 “reset” with Russia.

Ryan Mauro: Tim Kaine’s History of Embracing Islamists

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s newly-announced running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has a history of embracing Islamists. He appointed a Hamas supporter to a state immigration commission; spoke at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect and received donations from well-known Islamist groups.

Appointing a Muslim Brotherhood Front Leader Who Supports Hamas

In 2007, Kaine was the Governor of Virginia and, of all people chose Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish to the state’s Immigration Commission. A Muslim organization againstIslamism criticized the appointment and reckless lack of vetting.

Federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” AChicago Tribune investigation in 2004 confirmed this, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics to appear moderate. Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi testified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Read our fully-documented profile of MAS here.

According to Omeish’s website, he was also president of the NationalMuslim Students Association (click there to read our profile about its Muslim Brotherhood origins) and served for two years on the national board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which the Justice Department also labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.

His website says he was the vice president of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties, including having future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as itsimam and being frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member.

Omeish’s website also says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University, which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi chairman of its board until at least 2006.

Omeish was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas.

Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted that he and MAS are influenced by the Islamist movement.

Yup, She’s Crooked: Fred Barnes

Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to get this close to becoming president of the United States. Aaron Burr was corrupt, but his treason didn’t occur until after his presidential possibilities had dried up. Ulysses Grant was a great man whose administration was riddled with corruption, but he wasn’t personally involved. Warren Harding wasn’t a great man, but he wasn’t party to the corruption in his administration either. Hillary Clinton stands alone.

Her corruption has many dimensions. It encompasses her personal, professional, and political life. There are lots of overlaps. Her use of a private email server engulfs all three aspects. With Clinton, one never has to exaggerate. Her malfeasance speaks for itself, loudly. She lies to get out of trouble and fool the press and voters. But she also lies gratuitously—when it’s not required to avoid trouble. Face to face with the parents of CIA commandos who were killed in Benghazi while protecting Ambassador Chris Stevens, Clinton lied. She said an anti-Islam video had prompted the fatal attack, which she knew wasn’t true, when she could have simply expressed her condolences. Clinton has a masochistic relationship with the media. She spurns them. They protect her.

Is there any public figure who lies as routinely as Clinton? Not in my lifetime in Washington. Not Richard Nixon. Not LBJ. Not Donald Trump. Not even Bill Clinton. She skillfully, though probably unconsciously, spreads out her lies to lessen the impact. But when you pack them together, as Rep. Trey Gowdy did while questioning FBI director James Comey at a House hearing, they’re shocking. The Gowdy-Comey exchange went like this:

Gowdy: Clinton said she never sent or received any classified information over her private email. Not true?

Comey: Right.

Hillary Clinton’s Greatest ‘Accomplishments,’ Annotated What do honest Abe or Ike amount to compared with our presumptive Democratic nominee? By David French

Surveying the entire history of the American presidency, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to James Madison to Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant to Dwight Eisenhower and beyond, President Obama recently declared that he doesn’t think “there’s ever been someone so qualified” to be president as . . . Hillary Clinton.

She didn’t lead American forces to victory in the Revolution. She didn’t write the Declaration of Independence. She didn’t write the Bill of Rights. She didn’t lead the Union to victory in the Civil War or the Allied forces to victory in the world’s worst war. Her accomplishments must be greater — her leadership even more magnificent.

Worried that I’d overlooked her greatness, I scurried over to Hillary’s website to feast my eyes on her “7 biggest accomplishments.” Valley Forge? The Starks have seen colder winters. The Declaration of Independence? White man’s words. Normandy? A beach vacation. Behold the greatness that is Hillary Clinton, in her campaign’s own words — with a few modest annotations following.

1. Fought for children and families for 40 years and counting.

After law school, Hillary could have gone to work for a prestigious law firm, but took a job at the Children’s Defense Fund. She worked with teenagers incarcerated in adult prisons in South Carolina and families with disabled children in Massachusetts. It sparked a lifelong passion for helping children live up to their potential.

Well, not all children:

Michael Warren Davis Far-From-Dead White Males

US politics has long been shaped by policies specifically crafted to win the fealty of recognised minorities — a logic that assumes the largest single electoral demographic can be ignored at best or, just as often, actively disparaged. Donald Trump has shot down this canard.
Much – probably too much – has been made of Donald Trump’s popularity with the Alternative Right (or Alt-Right), an internet-based network of white nationalist trolls. They serve has his praetorian guard on Twitter, dividing their time equally between harassing his opponents and composing propagandic memes. Indeed, the myth of the Angry White Man has been enlisted by Trump’s opponents more than all the cracks about bad hair and orange skin put together. But the role that race and gender has played (and continues to play) in Trump’s ascendency can’t be waved off so easily. A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that Trump leads among college-educated white men, 49% to 42%. Compare this to an earlier Pew poll’s finding that whites overall prefer Trump 51% to 42%, and men overall prefer him 49% to 43%.

Before going on, let’s take a moment to reflect on one fact: Hillary Clinton leads among blacks (91% to 7%), Hispanics (66% to 24%), and women (59% to 35%) – statistics her political and media allies tout with orgiastic relish. That a candidate appeals to protected identity groups is meant to be inherently appealing. These groups are basically assumed to be an on the side of the angels, and politicians are expected to tailor their policies accordingly. Indeed, one of the great identity crises raging in the GOP is whether Republicans should make themselves more agreeable to Hispanics or blacks. That blacks and Hispanics are simply incorrect for voting overwhelmingly Democratic never occurs to the Republican establishment. If the conservative message doesn’t resonate with minorities, their thinking goes, then there must be something wrong with conservatism.

That vacuous, pliable attitude is dangerous in itself, and there’s no need to dwell on it at any great length. Everyone knows that pandering to race and gender is deplorable; it’s just a matter of whether or not you’re willing to commit deplorable acts in order to get elected.

Politicians and commentators are, however, loathe to discuss a candidate’s appeal to white men one way or the other. It’s impossible to say that appealing to whites – still by far the largest ethnic group in the United States – is intrinsically negative. Then again, appealing to them can’t be intrinsically positive either: political correctness won’t allow it. Ditto for gender: appealing to men isn’t usually considered a thing to be condemned, but the PC censors would never allow it to be regarded as a thing to be applauded either. To all intents and purposes, the white male vote is purely incidental.

The grassroots and interfaith effort behind the GOP’s pro-Israel, anti-2 state platform by Shalle’ McDonald

Amid the intrigue and speculation over the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland, one item that the party has settled is its firm support for Israel and opposition to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Tuesday, the Republican Platform Committee unanimously approved a number of significant changes to its platform in an attempt to further set the party’s pro-Israel credentials apart from the Democrats, who are facing concerns over their party’s future support for the Jewish state. The GOP’s platform changes included removing language encouraging a two-state solution as well as reinstating a reference to an “undivided” Israel that was previously included in the party’s 2008 platform, but was removed in 2012.

“The U.S. seeks to assist in the establishment of comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, to be negotiated among those living in the region,” the approved amendment said. “We oppose any measures intended to impose an agreement or to dictate borders or other terms, and call for the immediate termination of all U.S. funding of any entity that attempts to do so.”

Alan Clemmons, a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a Republican convention delegate, conveyed his disappointment over the 2012 GOP convention, when the platform committee chose not to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

“I was a delegate at the last RNC, but was not on the platform committee. I observed the platform committee process and proposed language similar to the language that was passed today (July 12). Unfortunately, that language gained no traction and it went nowhere on the platform, and as a matter of fact the platform regressed in terms of support for Israel,” Clemmons told JNS.org.

The push to bolster the Republican Party’s language on Israel follows a four-year effort by Clemmons and Joseph Sabag, the former executive director of the Israel Allies Foundation. Both leaders sought to reach out to the party’s base—evangelical Christians—as well as to Jewish and other ethnic groups to reach a consensus on the GOP’s pro-Israel stance.

Will Pence help Trump with Jewish voters? Richard Baehr

Indiana Governor Mike Pence will reportedly run with Donald Trump as his vice presidential nominee, with the selection to be officially announced shortly. Prior to his election as governor, Pence served in Congress as a member of the House of Representatives and had an excellent reputation as a very strong and knowledgeable supporter of Israel. Many Jewish Republicans hoped that he would run for the White House. Now, a key question going forward will be whether having Pence on the Trump ticket will enable more Jewish Republicans and some “never Trumpers” to back the ticket and financially support the campaign.

A sizable number of prominent Jewish Republicans and other mainstays of the pro-Israel cause have been unenthusiastic about Donald Trump as the GOP nominee. They have been put off both by some of his policy positions, and the way he ran his campaign for the nomination — including the personal attacks on other candidates. Others consider him insufficiently conservative — a former Democrat who successfully engineered a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. Trump has also had to deal with accusations that he has not been quick enough to criticize and separate himself from members of the “alt-right,” which includes nasty anti-Semites who have harassed some Jewish writers that were critical of Trump. His most recent controversy was over his sending out a tweet about Hillary Clinton accompanied by a graphic created by someone who did not belong to his campaign. The graphic called her the most corrupt candidate ever and showed a six-pointed star over a large amount of cash. Trump was accused of sending out an anti-Semitic tweet because of the association of the six-pointed star (the Jewish star of David) with mounds of money. Trump argued that the star was not a Jewish star, and could as easily have been a sheriff’s badge. In essence, he maintained that this was an example of politically correct hypersensitivity at work and that many Americans were sick of it. Trump is very uncomfortable with appearing to cave to this kind of pressure. His campaign has been built on an image of strong leadership, and bowing to critics could damage this appeal.

There is no evidence whatsoever in his long background in business and media that would lead one to believe that Trump is an anti-Semite. He has worked with, hired and been friends with many prominent Jewish people, and contributed to Jewish and pro-Israel causes. This is perfectly natural for a successful businessman in the New York area. His daughter Ivanka married a Modern Orthodox Jewish man, underwent a conversion, and is now leading a traditional Jewish lifestyle, keeping kosher at home, and observing the Sabbath. Whatever one thinks of Trump, he appears to have very close relationships with his adult children and relies on them for support and guidance in both business and in his political efforts this year. His Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner took to the pages of the weekly newspaper he owns, the Observer, to defend Trump against charges of anti-Semitism and bias in general.