RUTHFULLY YOURS

Odds Favor a Hillary Clinton Candidacy Posted By Rich Baehr

It is easier, at this point, to address the issue like this: “Will Hillary be nominated if she runs? If that’s true, then will she run.”

This is not because I think there is much doubt about whether she will run. I expect Clinton to run, and her activities since her defeat in 2008 in the nominating contest against Barack Obama suggest a long, meticulously planned road to get back to where and what she thinks she deserves. But, as Tom Bevan has noted [1] at Real Clear Politics, there are reasons she might choose not to go for it. Bevan provides five possible outs: Hillary is not that good at campaigning, she may lack the fire in the belly, winning is not guaranteed, Obama is leaving a mess, and the country wants real change.

I think any doubt about the fire in the belly misses the Clinton family dynamic — Hillary needs to be running and serving the family to stay relevant. Politics is their industry. Would the Clinton Global Initiative, whatever exactly this is, get the attention and pampering it does from well-heeled people, corporations, and foreign governments if it were perceived that Hillary was done with politics? If daughter Chelsea is being groomed for a future political role, isn’t a Hillary run essential to breaking the ceiling first and keeping the family industry operating?

Bill and Hillary are a perfectly matched couple in that each of them seems to have had ambitions for the highest office from their teenage years. This is not a normal level of ambition or narcissism to sustain for five decades, even among the excessively ambitious political class.

Hillary thought 2008 would be a cakewalk, but was tripped up by a younger, more exciting, and more agile candidate who appealed to Democrats as a true believer rather than the establishment liberal offered up by a Clinton. Hillary and Bill will not find such a threat for the nomination within the Democratic Party this time around. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren may be the closest to setting leftist hearts aflutter with her fake populism and anger at Wall Street, but it is far more likely that Warren will only backtrack on her publicly expressed lack of interest in running if Hillary surprises and chooses not to run.

The near-glide path to the nomination is what makes a Clinton run so much more likely. Yes, her book launch has shown she is not a natural in front of the camera like Bill — or even Obama — when scripted. But if her only potential opponents in the primaries are former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, Joe Biden, and Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, then she has nothing to fear. Even the Clinton machine’s history of prodigious and wasteful campaign spending will still leave lots of money for more of a general election campaign during the nominating period than is normally the case.

Note to Obama and Kerry: There was no restraint involved in the terrorist triple murder of those Israeli teenagers.

Three Israeli teenagers are kidnapped and murdered. Their bodies are found in a rock pile near the West Bank city of Hebron. It is horrible. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”

And from the wood-paneled office suites and limousine back seats of the diplomatic sphere — from Washington, the European Union and the United Nations — comes the usual chorus, urging that all parties show “restraint.”

That call for restraint is prefaced, of course, by expressions of sympathy and condemnations of the murders. But there is always that culminating line — the call for restraint — which undercuts all the rest. There was no restraint involved in the terrorist triple murder of those teenagers. But the hollow diplomatic default is to demand that the Israelis refrain from striking the terrorist leaders who spawn these attacks. That’s a brand of “restraint” that translates into an invitation for more terrorism.

From Secretary of State John Kerry, we hear that the news [1] of murder is “simply devastating…a horrific loss…. We condemn this despicable terrorist act in the strongest possible terms” and “the perpetrators must be brought to justice.” But then there’s the thud of that closing line: “This is a time for all to work towards that goal without destabilizing the situation.”

From the EU comes a statement [2] expressing “profound sorrow.” The EU condemns the killing of the three Israeli youths, sends condolences to their their families and friends, and professes to “share their grief.” The EU further trusts that “the perpetrators of this barbaric act will swiftly be brought to justice.” But then comes that inevitable disclaimer to round it off: “We call for restraint of all parties concerned in order not to further aggravate the fragile situation on the ground.”

From a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon comes word [3]that Ban believes “there can be no justification for the deliberate killing of civilians.” Ban hopes the perpetrators will be swiftly brought to justice, etc., etc., but then comes the ritual kicker: Ban “calls on all parties to abide by their obligations under international law and to refrain from any actions that could further escalate this highly tense situation.”

Todd Starnes reports that “Brown Shirts” who have been hired by the federal government are actively silencing medical personnel who are dealing with the flood of illegal aliens on the Texas-Mexico border. Medical personnel are under threat of arrest if they talk, but some are talking anyway.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.

The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”

“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”

Let’s unpack some of that. The Baptist Family & Children’s Services has a branch in San Antonio, Texas, so the “Brown Shirts” are likely coming from that group. The government has contracted with BFCS’ Emergency Management Division. Here’s how they dress on duty, in this stock photo from the group’s website.

As for those brown shirts, the BFCS said they are “incident management team personnel” – who happen to wear tan shirts.

The San Antonio branch is hiring…

Their website confirms that they are working on the border crisis.

On Monday evening the bodies of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shear, and Eyal Ifrach, the three Israeli teenage boys kidnapped on their way home from school on June 12, were found by Israeli forces and volunteers in a field northwest of the West Bank town of Hebron, very close to where they were kidnapped.

Trying to hitch a ride home on the evening of the 12th, they were shot dead, it turns out, very soon after entering the car of the Hamas kidnappers—either because one of the three boys, Gilad, managed briefly to phone the police or because that was the terrorists’ intention in any case. If it was not their intention, then they likely aimed to sequester Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal somewhere and try to extort a prisoner swap from Israel.

That detail is still not known because the two Hamas operatives the Israeli authorities have fingered as the kidnappers, Hebron residents Marwan Kawasmeh and Amar Abu-Isa, are still at large. Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, the three Israeli boys were buried together in the Israeli town of Modi’in even though they lived in separate communities. The joint funeral was attended by tens of thousands, with eulogies by, among others, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.

So ended 19 days of tension and hope, marked by an upsurge of the extraordinary solidarity that lies at the deepest stratum of Israeli Jewish society, despite often bitter fractiousness. They were also 19 days of intensive activity by the Israeli security forces, who, in addition to searching for Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal, arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives, confiscating the terror organization’s funds and closing its institutions and media outlets.

Those three Israeli teens, including a U.S. citizen, have been found — their bodies, that is. The young men were murdered by Hamas operatives. And President Obama put out a statement:

“As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing.”

At least he did not pull a Clinton: “I feel your pain.” And Obama is right, of course, that the parents of the dead feel the pain most acutely. But Israelis at large are in pain. They, all of them, are on the front lines in a way that we Americans rarely are (thanks in part to our “blessed location,” as Washington said).

The kidnap and murder of young Israelis is not quite routine, but it is not all that extraordinary either. The day the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was announced, Hamas killed a young soldier named Nachshon Waxman. He had been hitchhiking in central Israel to visit his girlfriend. Hamas nabbed him and held him for five days. The Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, ordered a raid on the terrorist redoubt. It failed: The terrorists killed Waxman and one of the rescuing soldiers.

About this latest episode, Obama said, “From the outset, I have offered our full support to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice, and I encourage Israel and the Palestinian Authority to continue working together in that effort.”

Sometimes evenhandedness can be false and offensively so. Israel and the PA, a.k.a. the PLO, are not partners in the struggle against terrorism. In fact, the PLO has become a partner of Hamas. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made a statement about Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO chief: “If he is truly committed to peace and to fighting terrorism, then logic and common sense mandate that he break his pact with Hamas. There can be no alliance with the kidnappers of children.”

Obama, in contrast, urged “all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”

So, the message we have sent to Israel, one of our strongest allies, is: Simmer down, sport.

If birth control is “not your boss’s business,” why do you expect him to pay for it?
Abortion-rights protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building on Monday holding signs that read “Birth Control: Not My Boss’s Business.”

Much to their chagrin, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito agreed in his ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.

Of course, that’s not how supporters of the government’s contraception mandate see it. They actually believe that birth control is their boss’s business, and they want the federal government to force employers to agree.

More on that later, but it’s first worth noting how we got here.

First, contrary to a lot of lazy punditry, there is no Obamacare contraception mandate. As my National Review colleague Ramesh Ponnuru notes, even President Obama’s liberal rubber-stamp Congress of 2009–10 never addressed — or even debated — the question of whether companies can be forced to provide contraceptive coverage. Department of Health and Human Services bureaucrats simply asserted that they could impose such a requirement. Indeed, “several pro-life Democrats,” Ponnuru adds, “who provided the law’s narrow margin of victory in the House have said they would have voted against the law had it included the mandate.”

Moreover, Hobby Lobby never objected to covering birth control per se. It already covers 16 kinds of birth control for its employees. But it objected to paying for what it considers to be abortifacients, which don’t prevent a pregnancy but terminate one. The pro-abortion-rights lobby can argue that “abortion” and “birth control” are synonymous terms, but that doesn’t make it true.

Why a green-pork blowout would do more harm than good.

Can something good come from a U.S. splurge of climate pork that, in itself, would have no discernible effect on global climate or atmospheric carbon dioxide?

A probable answer is no. It would actually end up making our putative carbon challenge worse.

But Paul Krugman and others say a carbon tax is politically impossible, and that we should settle for President Obama’s “second-best” approach. The problem with subsidies and mandates is that they create vested interests in inefficient renewable energy. Warren Buffett already is collecting millions for what he admits is hopelessly cost-ineffective solar energy in California. State mandates for renewables favor in-state providers, discouraging competition that would lower costs.

Lobbies that form around such favors are quietly unfriendly to interstate power lines that would force expensive local energy to compete with cheaper renewables elsewhere. In Germany, where vast subsidies flow to wind and solar, coal has become the fuel of choice for utilities struggling to provide backup power. Result: German carbon-dioxide output is growing not shrinking.

Most glaring is the renewable lobby’s opposition to fracking—never mind that fracking, by displacing coal, has done more to reduce carbon output than renewables have. As for cap-and-trade, check out the Senate testimony two weeks ago by Joseph Mason, of LSU and the Wharton School, on how easily such schemes have succumbed to fraud and corruption.

A straight-up, revenue-neutral carbon tax clearly is our first-best policy, rewarding an infinite and unpredictable variety of innovations by which humans would satisfy their energy needs while releasing less carbon into the atmosphere.

Failing that, our second-best policy might well be to do nothing, skip the green pork bonanza, and hope that new energy technologies emerge out of the already-ample natural incentives to do so. Why? One thing that can be safely predicted is that renewable energy that becomes addicted to subsidies in order to survive will not meaningfully replace fossil energy that remains cheaper in real terms.

Couple Has Raised More Than $1 Billion in Two Decades; Republicans Worry of Early Lead in 2016

Bill and Hillary Clinton helped raise more than $1 billion from U.S. companies and industry donors during two decades on the national stage through campaigns, paid speeches and a network of organizations advancing their political and policy goals, The Wall Street Journal found.

Those deep ties potentially give Mrs. Clinton a financial advantage in the 2016 presidential election, if she runs, and could bring industry donors back to the Democratic Party for the first time since Mr. Clinton left the White House.

Republicans, while capable of raising similar sums, worry the Clintons will take an early lead in the next presidential race, which is expected to total well above the $2 billion spent in 2012.

“Clinton Inc. is going to be the most formidable fundraising operation for the Democrats in the history of the country. Period. Exclamation point,” said Rick Hohlt, a lobbyist and fundraiser for Republican Party presidential candidates. “It sure causes concern.”

The Journal tallied speaking fees and donations to Mr. Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns; the Democratic National Committee during Mr. Clinton’s eight years in the White House; Mrs. Clinton’s bids for Senate and president; and the family’s nonprofit entity—The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

The Journal was aided by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks election contributions. The center provided an industry breakdown of campaign donations.

Finding an exact total is difficult because the Clintons aren’t required to make public any details about donations to their foundation. They voluntarily report donor names, however, and donation amounts within broad ranges.

Tel Aviv
Here is what bias against Israel looks like. Three Israeli teenagers are abducted by the terrorist group Hamas, and after a desperate weeks-long search for the boys, they are finally found—dead in shallow graves near the site of the abduction. While all this is happening, Hamas instigates a new round of missile attacks from Gaza, firing 56 rockets at southern Israeli communities. The Obama administration’s response? Express sympathy but call on Israel to refrain from responding.

Moments after the news broke today that the bodies of the teenagers had been found, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. was “urging restraint”—that is, urging Israel not to respond to the murder of its citizens.

Likewise the president’s condolence statement concluded with an admonition that “all parties refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.” Make no mistake—this is not a call on “all parties.” It is a call directly to Israel, as Hamas already acted to “destabilize the situation” by abducting and murdering three teenagers and it continues to “destabilize the situation” by launching dozens of rockets a day at Israel, including 16 this morning. Throughout this rocket campaign Obama issued no statements calling on Hamas to stop “destabilizing the situation.” Hamas is prosecuting a multifaceted terror offensive—and Obama’s position is to call on Israel not to respond, on the grounds that that would be “destabilizing.”

The murder of the teens and the rocket fire from Gaza are, of course, entirely the fault of Hamas. But it would be taking too narrow a view of the situation not to consider the way over the past five years the Obama administration has shaped the environment in which these events are unfolding.

A few examples: Israeli intelligence believes the Hamas cell that carried out the abduction was run by a Hamas leader who lives openly in Turkey. The Erdogan regime has, of course, made Turkey a comfortable haven for anti-Israel terrorists, allowing weapons smuggling to Hezbollah, staging the terror flotilla to Gaza in 2010, hosting (and feting) Hamas leaders, and so on. Obama’s protest? None. In fact, a few years ago Obama said that Erdogan was his favorite Middle East leader, and Obama over the years has offered nothing but lavish public praise for Erdogan.

Hillary Clinton needs a conscience transplant, and she needs it now. Her book tour is in a shambles, the fate of her $14 million advance from her publisher is marooned somewhere in limbo. She’s under 50 percent approval for the first time in the presidential polling for 2016, and, scariest of all, she’s having to call on Bubba for help. She knows better than to become merely “a wife of,” but 2014 is beginning to smell like 2008, and she’s Miss Inevitability once more. This is dj vu all over again.

Some of the learned pundits, who only yesterday were writing about “the five reasons why Hillary is a lock for the White House,” are writing now about “five reasons why Hillary won’t run.” The budding consensus is that (1) she’s just not very good at politics; (2) there’s no “fire in the tummy”; (3) who wants to clean up after Barack Obama, any way; (4) the country wants real change; and (5) another round of “Clinton, Bush, Clinton” with children of both families waiting in the wings, is thrilling nobody.

The pollsters, consultants and campaign wizards who are paid to know all the answers are puzzled by Hillary’s flopping around like a hen suddenly beheaded by events she was expected to control. “Even more than her dwindling leads over Republican contenders is that while she is pretty much running against herself, in a very high-profile book tour, she is losing ground,” says pollster John Zogby. “Her biggest problem is the inevitably factor. It helped do her in in 2007-2008, and right now it looks to be her major nemesis. She has this whole playing field to herself and is declining in the polls.” That’s definitely not good.