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POLITICS

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.

Surge in Classification Rate, New ‘Secret’ Document in Latest Clinton E-mails By Brendan Bordelon —

The batch of Hillary Clinton e-mails released Thursday afternoon is the smallest in months. But there’s a higher rate of classified documents in the latest production than in any since the first of her e-mails were released, and one is labeled “Secret” — the first new document found with that highly sensitive classification in four months.

The State Department missed a court-imposed deadline on Thursday, producing less than two-thirds of the e-mails promised to a federal judge and making today’s production the smallest since July. Still, just under 9 percent of the 3,100 e-mails were marked classified by State Department reviewers. That’s up dramatically from last month’s 6.5 percent, the previous high.

Most of the classified e-mails were marked “Confidential,” a middling level of classification used by the federal government. But one e-mail was marked “Secret,” the second-highest classification level, just below “Top Secret.” The last time the department produced a document marked “Secret” was in September.

The e-mail was sent to Clinton by Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary for the Middle East. Both subject line and body of the e-mail were entirely redacted by State Department reviewers. The document was marked “SBU” in multiple places, an abbreviation meaning “Sensitive but Unclassified.”

Clinton is under investigation by the FBI for her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. Much of that investigation centers on whether she sent or received classified government material through an unsecured server. Clinton and her campaign have maintained that she never knowingly sent or received classified material, and the State Department has said that all the e-mails it has released have been classified retroactively. The CIA and other intelligence-community reviewers dispute that claim, saying that at least four e-mails – including two labeled “Top Secret” — were classified at the time they were sent.

Hillary Nailed Again on Benghazi Lie in New Hampshire By Debra Heine

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sat down with the editorial board of New Hampshire’s Conway Daily Sun on Tuesday — and thanks to conservative columnist Tom McLaughlin, it did not go as smoothly as she would have liked. A question Clinton struggled to answer when it was put to her by George Stephanopoulos on December 6 came back to haunt her on Tuesday when McLaughlin asked her about private statements she had made blaming the Benghazi terrorist attack on “an al-Qaeda-like group” while publicly blaming a YouTube video.

She tried to swat away the issue by blaming the “fog of war” and likened the situation to a “40-alarm fire.” She also insinuated that the CIA was behind the video narrative even though the acting CIA director claims his CIA intelligence analysts never said the video was a factor.

Sun Columnist Tom McLaughlin said she told an Egyptian diplomat the Benghazi attack was planned and not a protest but that she told family members of the deceased that the attack was the result of a demonstration. He said she then told George Stephanopoulos that she didn’t tell the families the attack was a demonstration about a film.

“Somebody is lying,” said McLaughlin.”Who is it?

Clinton replied, “Not me, that’s all I can tell you.”

At the time, Clinton said, everyone was emotionally distraught. She said some families didn’t know their sons were working for the CIA or were in Benghazi. Clinton said the information she had about the attack was from the intelligence community.

Hillary Clinton Is Not a Feminist By Katherine Timpf

Since Hillary announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail, people have been debating whether or not it’s fair for the GOP to attack Bill’s sexual misdeeds in order to indirectly attack her.

This makes sense. After all, we’re talking about a guy who has been accused of the sexual assault of more than ten women. Think about it: How is her appointing him really any different than if she’d appointed Bill Cosby?

But here’s the thing: The real issue isn’t whether or not to attack Bill to indirectly attack Hillary — it’s about directly attacking Hillary for how she herself treated the women involved.

Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-women, yet has actively worked to ruin lives of so many of them. She’s running on a “feminist platform” — she’s even dared to say that sexual-assault survivors have a “right to be believed” — despite the fact that what she did to the women who accused Bill went far beyond not believing them.

She attacked them.

When allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during Bill’s 1992 presidential run, she’s reported to have said “Who is going to find out? These women are trash. Nobody’s going to believe them.” Multiple people also report that she called the women “sluts” and “whores” — you know, for daring to be raped. A private investigator named Ivan Duda claims that, after Bill lost his second governor’s race, Hillary told him: “I want you to get rid of all these b****** he’s seeing . . . I want you to give me the names and addresses and phone numbers, and we can get them under control.”

Populist Parties Are Rising because Mainstream Conservatives Have Failed By John O’Sullivan

Political realignments are long in gestation, face huge obstacles to their achievement, and are easy to divert or subvert. All mainstream parties have needed to do is offer some modest concessions to the forces of discontent and they dissipate. Ross Perot’s support evaporated when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton (in that order) got control of spending and undercut Perot’s signature issue: the runaway budget deficit. Perot shrank faster than the deficit. That little episode explains why American third parties are known as the wasps of political history: They sting and they die.

So why are realignments suddenly galloping to fruition throughout the Western world?

The Economist magazine has no doubts on the matter. (Does it ever?) Anti-immigrant populist parties are exploiting fear, mostly about the current surge of migrants into Europe, to rise in the polls. The British magazine brings together Donald Trump, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban on a sinister sepia-tinted cover to illustrate the dark threat of “populism.” The Economist has finally found a moral panic it likes.

Alas, the magazine’s explanation is too simple by half.

Former president Clinton spoke to groups with issues before State Department …He’s Just her Bill…. an ordinary lout

Speaking Fees Meet Politics for Clintons By James V. Grimaldi and Rebecca Ballhaus
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take “extraordinary steps…to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Later, more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures.

In several instances, State Department actions benefited those that paid Mr. Clinton. The Journal found no evidence that speaking fees were paid to the former president in exchange for any action by Mrs. Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mrs. Clinton has come under fire from Republicans and some Democrats for potential conflicts of interest between her family’s work at the foundation and her duties as secretary of state between 2009 and February 2013. Her husband’s high-profile activities pose a unique challenge for Mrs. Clinton as she runs for president and he prepares to step up his role in her campaign.