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POLITICS

The Month That Was December 2015

We ended the year with the good ship ‘United States’ rudder-less, in a threatening sea and captained by an imperious and aloof President – an Ahab fixated on his dislike for America’s imperious past and determined to amend it in his own image. Prospects for the upcoming Presidential election, at least given the two individuals who lead their respective Party’s polls, are dispiriting. On the one hand we have a megalomaniac, a man who approaches politics as though he were hosting a fantasized-reality TV show. His narcissism exceeds his respect for his fellow man. On the other, we have an arrogant and supercilious woman who feels the crown is her due – a consummate liar who measured her success as Secretary of State, not in terms of bringing peace to the world’s hot-spots or in treaties enacted but by miles flown and countries visited. While the present is daunting, the future – unless our choices are different – scares the bejezus out of anyone who loves their Country, has knowledge of its history and is endowed with common sense.

Sadly, we have reached a point where Lincoln’s depiction of the United States seems no longer to apply. We have become a “government of the elite, by the elite, for the elite.” The “people,” apart from their votes and their money, are no longer relevant. Washington politicians are a class unto themselves, with mainstream media as their PR department. We listen to President Obama talk of fairness, of wealth and income inequality; yet the divergence has grown sharper during the past seven years. We listen to Mrs. Clinton claim she speaks for the “little” people, while subverting the system to her own financial benefit. Donald Trump is adored by what was once termed the “silent” majority – those who believe that the Country they see is not the one they knew. Yet they ignore his past crony-like ties to politicians of all persuasions.

Hillary Clinton Shouts Down Rape Victim Challenging Her Over Bill’s Sexual Assaults “The hypocrisy of so-called women who fight for women” Daniel Greenfield

The media is applauding this as if shutting up a rape victim is some kind of political triumph.

Yes, that was me and yes, I am fully aware of how impolite I was. According to a little sign in Hillary Clinton’s Salem, NH office; Well Behaved Women Rarely make History.

I have been trying to get Hillary’s side of the story for many years and gave her many opportunities to talk to me about it. She cannot say she is both fighting for women but will not even try to find out what her husband was doing on the day in April of 1978 that the rape probably happened according to the very well researched Dateline NBC story Lisa Myers did in 1999. I would not blame a woman for what her husband did but it is what Hillary did after the fact, intimidated Broaddrick and has enabled her husband’s abuse of other women. Hillary is a traitor to the core values of feminism.

When Al Gore was running for president, I asked him if he believed her too because I was shocked that women’s groups like NOW were not demanding answers. Gore told me that he doesn’t know the story but that I should forgive Clinton anyway as if I was asking about an affair, not a crime. After Broaddrick saw that question on TV, she called me and I asked her all the questions people were throwing at me about why she may not be telling the truth. I was in a support group at the time for rape and sexual assault survivors and I know this subject better than I want to

Hillary believes Broaddrick was raped and that is why she will not discuss it in any sincere way. That is what drove me to do what I did today, my concern for sexual assault survivors. If I could have brought this issue up in any polite way or if people in her campaign really did follow up with me by calling me, I would never have been so impolite. I know I was impolite but in this whole scenario, you are angry at the wrong person, save that anger for Bill Clinton for being a sexual predator or for the woman who enables him-not me.

Bill Is Back What ‘buy one, get one free’ really means with the Clintons By John Fund

Bill Clinton, perhaps the best natural campaigner of his generation, will stump for his wife’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire on Monday. He will inject an energy into her sometimes lackluster campaign, but bringing Bill back comes with a price.

Bill Clinton made a famous 1992 campaign promise that if people voted for him, it would be a package deal that included Hillary: “Buy one, get one free.” Now Hillary is in danger of reminding voters that in voting for her, they also get Bill Clinton and what he brings with him — from the dubious dealings of the Clinton Foundation to his “woman problem” and his renowned talent for evasion (“It all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”). Democratic primary voters aren’t likely to care much, but polls show many independent voters in a general election would be leery of the baggage the couple drags with them. In a new Quinnipiac national poll, only 23 percent of independent voters view Hillary Clinton as “honest and trustworthy.”

Donna Brazile, a CNN commentator who was Al Gore’s 2000 campaign manager, has bluntly said that “one of the most important things [Bill Clinton] can do in this election cycle is basically stay out of the way. Let Hillary Clinton make the case for herself.”

Hillary Clinton to Heckler Mentioning Juanita Broaddrick: ‘You Are Very Rude,’ ‘I’m Not Ever Gonna Call on You’

Hillary Clinton dismissed a heckler Sunday during a town hall in Derry, New Hampshire, calling the woman “very rude” and promising never to answer her questions–which concerned Juanita Broaddrick and her allegations of sexual assault from Clinton’s husband Bill.Clinton got a round of applause when she announced her husband Bill would be campaigning in New Hampshire this week.

Hillary then continued her habit as of late of taking rather adult questions from young children.

A quick run-down of Donald Trump’s positions By Ed Straker

That is to say, his positions from within the past year, and no earlier.
ConservativeReview.com, which is edited by conservative talk show host Mark Levin, has emerged as a great ranking service for politicians. Recently the site ranked the positions of Donald Trump based on his public comments. Since everyone knows that Trump has spent most of his adult life as a liberal but has since recanted nearly all of his former positions, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and exclude any quotations over one year old. Everything you read below has come from Trump’s own plush lips in the past twelve month

Taxes: Trump wants to lower income taxes (though not as much as Ted Cruz), but he also wants to take a lot of voters off the tax rolls entirely, giving them incentive to vote for politicians who will vote to raise taxes and spending on the remaining people who do pay income taxes.

Free Trade: Trump will slap high tariffs on goods from China, Japan, and Mexico, which has the potential to create more jobs in America but also to radically raise the price of consumer goods here.

Guns: Trump currently supports Second Amendment gun rights, in contrast to his past support for gun control.

Abortion: Trump is against abortion. On August 3, he said he would defund Planned Parenthood, but on August 11, he changed his mind, saying he wants to continue funding Planned Parenthood, finding ways to finance the “good things” they do. Since all money is fungible, that would mean the continued indirect subsidy of abortions and sale of baby parts.

Peggy Noonan and the left’s prom dress By Richard F. Miniter ****

Ray Kroc, the man who built McDonald’s, once said that if his competition was drowning, “he’d stick a hose in his mouth.” A very American attitude toward life and winning, which hasn’t taken root in today’s Republican establishment standard-bearers. Odd, since it was Reagan who famously said, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War. We win. They lose” – or, more germane to the politics of 2016, quipped that he was reluctant to allow a government shutdown until one day he asked himself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

But almost as if Reagan never lived, the sad fact is that you almost always find Republican establishment types today parading around in the 1950s prom dress liberals hand them to wear – a mentality they’re encouraged in by conservative establishment pundits like Charles Krauthammer, or most particularly Peggy Noonan, when, in “A Rash Leader in a Grave Time” (12/18/15), knocking Trump, she says this:

[O]ne thing an effective leader must always do is know what can be misunderstood and guard against it, what can be misconstrued and used to paint you – and your followers – as bigoted. Leaders try hard not to let that happen. It is the due diligence of politics.

Whew! Coming from Ms. Noonan, I suppose this is the gold standard of establishment thinking. But what a way in which to define leadership or diligence. I remember Ms. Noonan sideswiping Sarah Palin (during McCain’s campaign?) with the comment that we need leaders who can think through problems. Reading this mush, you’re forced to ask – what manner of thinking through does it take to conclude that effective leadership requires one not to say that which can be “misconstrued and used to paint you—and your followers—as bigoted”? News flash: Democrats always misconstrue and paint Republicans as bigoted. It’s what they do, the fetid air they thrive on. Indeed, there’s nothing Republicans can say, ever, that Democrats won’t misconstrue or lie about. Pretending there is just means you allow the left to control the debate.

What Trump and FDR Have in Common Who said the “mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results”? by Dr. Rafael Medoff

Irate New York State residents, including a state senator and an assemblyman, are calling for the renaming of Donald J. Trump State Park, in Yorktown Heights. With his recent remarks about Mexicans and Muslims, Trump “has shown himself to be a bigot,” said the creator of an online petition urging the name change.
Just a few miles further up the Taconic State Parkway, however, is another state park named after a public figure who made disparaging remarks about various minority groups.
This other gentleman once complained to an interviewer that “the foreign elements” were failing to “conform to the manners and the customs” of most Americans. He believed the kind of immigrants that would benefit America would be Europeans with “blood of the right sort.” He warned that “the mingling of white with oriental blood on an extensive scale is harmful to our future citizenship.”
He also boasted that he helped bring about a quota on Jewish students admitted to Harvard; he worried about Jews “overcrowding the professions”; and he was convinced that “the best way to settle the Jewish question essentially is to spread the Jews thin all over the world.”
These may be the kind of sentiments many would imagine to have been expressed by Donald Trump, but in fact they were uttered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States.
It goes without saying that the differences between the two men are vast. It is a monumental understatement to note that FDR’s accomplishments as president dwarf Trump’s achievements as a real estate developer and entertainer. Yet in their attitudes toward foreigners and immigration, they had more in common than is generally realized.
Like many upper-class white Protestants of his time, FDR harbored a strong disdain for most immigrants—except for those with “blood of the right sort,” as he put it in a newspaper column he wrote in 1925. He advocated restricting immigration for “a good many years to come” and limiting subsequent immigration to those who could be most quickly and easily assimilated. How different is that from what Mr. Trump is currently advocating?

New Clinton emails reveal critiques from Israel-bashing son of adviser

Sidney Blumenthal’s input to secretary included materials by his son Max, a self-described anti-Zionist who wrote a volume seen as the ‘I hate Israel’ handbook.

The State Department’s New Year’s Eve release of over 5,000 pages of former secretary of state and current Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s emails from her private server reveals correspondence with one-time adviser Sidney Blumenthal regarding Israel, with Blumenthal citing the work of his son, writer Max Blumenthal.

The younger Blumenthal, author of the book Goliath, is a fervent critic of Israeli policies and a self-described anti-Zionist. The senior Blumenthal referred his son’s work to the secretary of state, sending her transcripts and links to articles. On at least one occasion, Clinton appears to have asked that one of the younger Blumenthal’s articles be printed out in multiple copies for distribution.

The Times of Israel has previously reported on correspondence between Sidney Blumenthal and Clinton regarding Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The latest emails provide further insight into the opinions of the secretary’s confidant.

In March 2010, Blumenthal plugged his son’s work — this time, playing up links between evangelical Pastor John Hagee and Netanyahu — in the context of an article (written by a different writer) discussing a controversial Pentagon briefing on US relations with Israel and the Arab world.

The briefing had dealt with the lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and American concerns over a growing perception among Arab leaders that the US was incapable of standing up to Israel.

Hillary Wants You to Know She Binge-Drinks on the Job By Scott Ott

Hillary Clinton wants you to know that she’s just regular folk. That’s right, she’s like any other adult who, while representing her state and her country on government business, during a taxpayer-funded trip, engages in an alcoholic binge-drinking competition. Who hasn’t?

I’m not unearthing dirt to smear the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who hopes to command the world’s most powerful military, tickle the nuclear trigger, and become the global face of these United States of America.

I’m merely passing along Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign video [see below], in which an off-camera woman asks if Madame Secretary has “ever won a drinking competition.”

She laughs, with that endearing husky tone so familiar to hard-drinking chain-smokers, as she brags of her vodka-shots showdown with fellow Sen. John McCain. Furthermore, Mrs. Clinton assures an American public concerned about a stagnant economy and the threat of terrorism that the McCain-Rodham throwdown was not the only time she chugged copious quantities of non-prescription ethanol depressants to see who could knock back the most before blacking out or puking.

It is, however, in her words, the “most famous” episode.

Predators for Hillary by Mark Steyn

It’s odd the things that catch the eye of the Internet. My comparison of Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton was a throwaway aside on yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh Show. I spent less time on it than on the question of whether President Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick (NBC’s Lisa Myers to Mrs Broaddrick: “The good news is you’re credible. The bad news is you’re very credible”) or on the fact that more recently Clinton was a frequent guest of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who flew the former President on “Lolita One” at least 11 times to the island resort where he kept “slaves”, and that a procurer of underage girls was among the guests Bill invited to Chelsea’s wedding.

Nevertheless, it’s the Cosby/Clinton comparison that tickled the fancy of Breitbart News, and now of Brian Lilley at Truth Revolt, Don Surber, and Elizabeth Preza for Mediaite and Fox News:

Mark Steyn: Why Is Bill Cosby Finished While Bill Clinton Is Beloved?

Nobody needed criminal convictions to drop Cosby – just multiple accusations of sexual assault and some out-of-court payouts. But multiple accusations of sexual assault, out-of-court payouts and the loss of his law license are apparently not enough to bar Bill Clinton from another eight years in the White House.

Abigail Abrams turns up this interesting tidbit from the dawn of Hillary’s post-White House political career:

When Hillary Clinton was running for the United States Senate in 2000, Cosby endorsed the former first lady, using his power as America’s most beloved TV dad to drive support for her…

When Hillary Clinton appeared with Cosby on election day in 2000, he was one of several celebrities giving her their support. Sen. Chuck Schumer was also in attendance, along with Doug Flutie, the Buffalo Bills quarterback who had a line of cereal at the time.