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October 2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

Why Trump Will Win By Michael Finch

By on October 27th, 2016

Donald Trump is going to win on November 8th and the moment when this election turned from seeming defeat to certain victory will be the least expected and one of the most derisively attacked moments of his campaign. During the third debate when Trump said on being asked if he would accept the election results, “I will look at it at the time” the election was his. The uproar on both sides of the political spectrum has been an avalanche of criticism; this was Trump at his worst, the dooming moment of a quixotic and egomaniacal campaign. Or was it?

Decisiveness and boldness don’t always result in a victory on the field of battle but indecisiveness and hesitation, in the moment of crisis, most assuredly will result in inglorious defeat. Trump has been called a lot of things, probably the most flattering among, even his allies, is that he is a good “entertainer.” For political acumen, he might be given a 2, and that would be the score given by his friends. But too many have all missed something that Trump as seen since the beginning.

Trump is reading something different, a mood and frustration in this country that is not just confined to some 32%. The country is heading in the wrong direction, we on the right know that, but in fact, almost 70% of Americans overall sense that. And that is not just an indictment of the Obama years; it is an indictment of the entire bipartisan political class.

This election is not being run for the pundits, the media, the conservative gadflies and hangers on, the consultants and wise thinkers who tut-tut continually on television about how Trump, “just can’t do it this way,” he must pivot and be “presidential” and discuss nothing but the issues.

One radio pundit said that Trump obscured his otherwise solid speech on Obamacare by mentioning the “rigged” election. She went on to say that the national media only cover the segment on the rigged election and not the “substantive” part of the speech on Obamacare. For being smart pundits, they sure have one hell of a huge blindside. First of all, the main stream media would never exclusively cover a part of a speech that rips into Obamacare, it would never happen. The speech would be completely ignored, so therefore Trump gets zero coverage. His base gets a policy speech; the rest of the country gets darkness. Instead, CNN and the rest report on the rigged part and give Trump prime coverage. They think this makes Trump look and sounds like a fool and loon. But they aren’t the audience and Trump is not looking for approval from the D.C. to New York elites.

The middle of the country, already restive and suspicions of anything and everything that has to do with Washington D.C., hears Trump railing against the corrupt system and how we need to “clean house.” What is so arrogantly dismissed by the chattering elite class as bar room “unsophisticated” rhetoric, is hitting the voters across the country like a breath of fresh air and a lot of “you’re damn right, Trump!” exhortations.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama By Richard Baehr

By on October 27th, 2016

Every year, there is some report of the blissful ignorance of American history demonstrated by the supposedly best and brightest at elite American universities. Suffice it to say the collected writings of David Horowitz on the American Left, which constitute part of a solid foundation for understanding the last half century of American politics, are nowhere to be found on any college or high school reading list.

Horowitz’s latest book, The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama, is the seventh volume in his nine-volume collection, . This new volume provides a collection of his writings over the last quarter century, focusing primarily on the Left’s control in our government and culture. As Horowitz reveals, even during the Bush years, conservatives were on the defense and leftists controlled the narrative as they attempted to destroy Bush and his chances for re-election in 2004. Their primary mode of attack was to undermine America’s efforts in Iraq almost from the start of the conflict, when just months earlier a majority of Senate Democrats and near half of House Democrats had supported the President. The Left then destroyed Bush’s second term with bogus charges of racist neglect in the handling of Hurricane Katrina. There was plenty of incompetence in the response to Katrina, but local and state officials — all Democrats, of course, and many of them African American — were the principal operators on the ground during the crisis.

The immediate abandonment of support for the Iraq war effort was a signal event in American history, sending a message that a large part of the Democratic Party was not remotely concerned about the morale of our men and women fighting overseas. The weak effort by some Democrats to hold onto an ounce of patriotic resolve — “end the war, support the troops” — was designed more for campaign speeches than any meaningful attempt to convey national unity for the effort underway by our armed forces. So too, the obsession with Abu Ghraib gave the lie to the Democrats’ “support our troops” message, as a broad brush was used to paint the incident as somehow what you would expect from our military on a routine basis.

Horowitz outlines this narrative, faulting the Bush administration for failing to fight harder to present its story of why we went into Iraq and the risks if we had done nothing. Regrettably, the Bush administration never had a chance to get a better defense of the Iraq war out to the media. Most in the media considered the Bush administration illegitimate due to its narrow victory in the 2000 presidential contest, a lie to be sure. Unfortunately, it is almost certainly true that the media today are far more in the bag for the left than ten or twenty years ago and work harder at pushing the left’s agenda. The soft liberalism of Walter Cronkite has been replaced by cable and national network anchors who routinely bury stories embarrassing to their side and focus on those that can do damage to the other side. During the current Presidential election cycle, we have seen the most prestigious media organs explain why it is necessary and appropriate for them to be biased this year. It is a special time, they argue, because Trump is, in their view, a unique threat to the Republic.

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE DOMINATRIX IN THE FOX HOUSE

By on October 27th, 2016

Megyn Kelly Seeks Salary North of $20 Million in Contract Talks With Fox News ‘The Kelly File’ host is in active negotiations; keeping her at the network is a priority for management, including Rupert Murdoch. ‘It’s up to her’ and others ‘would give their right arm for her spot,’ he says. Joe Flint

Fox News star Megyn Kelly has changed agents and publicity teams since last year. Now the question is if she will change TV networks.

Host of “The Kelly File,” one of the cable-news channel’s most popular shows, Ms. Kelly is in active talks over her contract, which expires next July. Her profile has been rising during the presidential election cycle, in part thanks to a dust-up with Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Keeping Ms. Kelly is a priority for senior management, including Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of Fox News and co-executive chairman of its parent company, 21st Century Fox.

Asked if Ms. Kelly would stay at the channel, Mr. Murdoch said in an interview that she is important to the network and he hopes to get a contract signed “very soon,” but noted, “it’s up to her.”

Mr. Murdoch said he is kept abreast of the talks “every minute of the day.” While he doesn’t want to lose her, he said, “we have a deep bench of talent, many of whom would give their right arm for her spot.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thank You, Blue A new Gallup survey finds a surge in support for local police.

By on October 27th, 2016

The Black Lives Matter movement has fascinated the media for more than two years by pretending that violence against blacks is principally the work of racist cops. But most Americans, regardless of color, know better. Support for police is now at its highest level in decades.

A new Gallup survey out this week finds that a full 76% of Americans say they have “a great deal” of respect for the police in their area, up from 64% in 2015. Another 17% in this year’s survey say they have some respect for local cops, and only 7% say they have “hardly any.”

Strong support for local police cuts across racial lines. Whites have historically been the most supportive in Gallup surveys and that’s true again this year, with 80% expressing great respect for their local cops. But support is also surging among nonwhites, 67% of whom say they have great respect for the police in their area, up from 53% last year.

Politicians like Hillary Clinton have responded to the message of Black Lives Matter by vigorously agreeing that all Americans have a problem of “implicit bias,” if not worse. But on this issue the politicians seem to be way out of step with the people. While Gallup finds rising support for local police across all demographics, the biggest surge in respect for America’s men and women in blue is occurring among political liberals. People in this category expressing a great deal of respect for police shot up to 71% this year from 50% in 2015.

Perhaps they have come to realize that blue lives matter a lot in any successful campaign to save black lives.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The State Taxathon Public unions are behind tax increase initiatives from coast to coast.

By on October 27th, 2016

State government revenues have swelled 30% in the last five years. That’s a bigger raise than most workers have received, but public unions and their friends are asking voters for more at the ballot box on Nov. 8.

In California unions are seeking to extend a 2012 ballot referendum that raised taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 and bumped the top rate on income above $1 million to 13.3% from 10.3%. Proposition 55 would postpone the income surtax’s scheduled sunset by 12 years to 2030. Ergo, another “temporary” tax increase becomes permanent.

A mere 1% of California earners account for about half of the state’s income-tax revenues and a third of the budget. Since 2012 California’s coffers have grown by nearly 40% thanks to large capital gains. About two-thirds of the new revenues have gone to schools, but for the teachers union it’s never enough.

A recent Field Poll shows voters favoring the tax extension by two to one. Opponents have raised $3,000. Labor groups and hospitals—Medicaid would get a dedicated share of the revenues—muzzled the opposition by vilifying donors to the antitax campaign in 2012 and dumping $60 million into this year’s initiative.

Maine is following California’s leftward lead with an initiative to impose a three-percentage-point surcharge on household income exceeding $200,000 per year—regardless of whether the taxpayer files as an individual or jointly. If enacted, Maine would lay claim to the second highest top individual rate in the country at 10.15% after California’s 13.3%

The Maine Heritage Policy Center estimates that the tax would cost 4,000 private jobs and $265 million in real disposable income by reducing economic activity. Some would shift next door to New Hampshire where the income tax is zero. The Pine Tree State was one of only five states last year to lose population, and the tax hike would make it harder to recruit and retain professionals in high-demand fields like health care. The average salary of a physician in Maine is $210,760, and about half of pass-through business income was reported on returns with income greater than $200,000.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat: Thomas Pickering and Russia’s Pipeline Sales to Iran and Syria Christine Brim ****

By on October 26th, 2016

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” is a hard-hitting investigative report from the Center for Security Policy, exposing the ties of former Ambassador Thomas Pickering to a Putin-linked Russian company that sold oil and gas pipelines to Iran and Syria when Pickering was on its Board of Directors. The report reveals Pickering’s overlapping roles: as Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Advisor, as an Advisory Board member for two Iranian advocacy groups, as a paid Director for a Russian firm selling pipeline to Iran and Syria, as a paid consultant to Iranian aircraft contractor Boeing, and as a Senate committee hearing witness, all with a common goal of ending economic sanctions on Iran and reversing U.S. Iran policies.

As meticulously documented in “Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat,” Pickering was a paid Director for the Russian-owned company Trubnaya Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya (TMK) from June 30, 2009 to June 26, 2012. TMK is majority-owned by Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Pumpyansky, a close Putin ally.

The investigation discovered extensive proof of TMK’s business dealings in Iran and Syria while Pickering was on the Board, including a financial offering disclosure, catalogs, marketing materials, websites, press releases, legal documents, reports from the steel industry press and Iranian customer websites. Sales of oil and gas pipelines to Iran were specifically prohibited under U.S. laws and executive orders.

According to TMK’s records, Pickering attended 143 of the 145 TMK Board meetings. Pickering is estimated to have been paid over half a million dollars for his service to TMK, based on TMK’s compensation rules.

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” documents TMK’s relationships with three Iranian customers, all listed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “Specially Designated Nationals” during the years Pickering served on the Board: the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Petropars, and Pars Oil and Gas Company.

The investigation also shows TMK’s relationships with three Syrian customers listed by OFAC as “Specially Designated Nationals” in 2011, while Pickering was on the Board: the Syrian Gas Company, the Syrian Petroleum Company, and the Al Furat Petroleum Company. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from conducting any kind of business with “Specially Designated Nationals.”

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BOOKS, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Book That Obama Won’t Read, But Hillary Clinton Should Sixty years after the Suez Crisis, two new histories of the Egypt-Israel conflict try to garner lessons on the Mideast and American power in a changing world By Adam Kirsch

By on October 26th, 2016

On a list of the most important historical episodes of the 20th century, the Suez Crisis of 1956 wouldn’t make the top 10, or even the top 20. Insofar as it was a war, it was a fizzle: Israel invaded Egypt with a small force, conquered some of the Sinai desert, and then gave it back a few months later. As a diplomatic incident, Suez was more significant, altering the balance of power between Britain, France, and the United States. But it hardly compares to a major Cold War confrontation like the Cuban Missile Crisis of a few years later, which threatened the survival of the world. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/215931/book-hillary-clinton-should-read

Yet the appearance of two new books on the subject of Suez—Ike’s Gamble by Michael Doran and Blood and Sand by Alex von Tunzelmann—suggests that the events of October 1956 continue to have a symbolic significance out of proportion to their actual scale. That is because Suez serves as a convenient marker for the twilight of European colonialism and the rise of American empire. At the same time, it encapsulates a number of the themes of America’s experience in the Middle East, down to the present day: the difficulty of identifying allies and enemies, the uncertainty about how deeply to get involved, and the dangerous law of unintended consequences.

Von Tunzelmann, a British popular historian and journalist, and Doran, an American Middle East specialist and occasional White House adviser, have produced very different books covering some of the same ground. Blood and Sand focuses on the two weeks of the crisis itself, from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8, with hour-by-hour updates on the action as it unfolds across several continents. (Sections are introduced by the kind of datelines familiar from Jason Bourne movies: “1500 Washington DC//2000 London//2100 Paris.”) And Von Tunzelmann interweaves the Suez affair with scenes from another crisis that, coincidentally, broke out at exactly the same time—the rebellion against Soviet rule in Hungary. The effect is a cinematic, you-are-there style of history-writing, which plunges the reader into the chaos of events, but does little to explain their deep background or ultimate consequences.

Doran, on the other hand, fits the Suez crisis into a broader argument about American policy in the Middle East during the Eisenhower administration. He draws on a wider range of primary sources, and crucially, he puts those sources themselves into question, showing how the biases and beliefs of the participants in the Suez drama shaped the way its history has been told. Indeed, Ike’s Gamble is a revisionist history, in which Doran takes issue with precisely the mainstream interpretation of Suez that is found in Blood and Sand.

To understand the lessons these writers draw from Suez, it’s necessary to recall the events themselves. The Suez Crisis lasted only about two weeks. But its roots are very deep—in the founding of Israel in 1948, the British occupation of Egypt in 1881, or even the building of the Suez Canal itself, in 1869. The canal, which connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, was from the beginning a crucial strategic asset for the British and French empires, because it greatly shortened the journey between Europe and Asia. The company that controlled the canal was jointly owned by the British and French governments, and it remained in their hands until the 1950s.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

WikiLeaks Exposes Podesta-Steyer Climate McCarthyism How the Center for American Progress campaigned to suppress speech By Robert Bryce

By on October 26th, 2016

The latest WikiLeaks dump contains plenty of insider dirt on John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the tawdriest story to be exposed by Podesta’s pilfered e-mails is the bragging by an employee of ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress, about how they got Roger Pielke Jr.’s scalp.

A July 2014 e-mail from Judd Legum, an editor at ThinkProgress, to billionaire Democratic climate activist (and former coal-mine investor) Tom Steyer exposes the climate-change McCarthyism that the Left — and its myriad allies in the liberal media — use to discredit or silence anyone who doesn’t adhere to the orthodoxy of the climate catastrophists.

In the e-mail, Legum boasted to Steyer about how ThinkProgress had silenced Pielke by preventing him from publishing at Nate Silver’s then-new website, fivethirtyeight.com, on the issue of climate change. Legum was also asking Steyer, indirectly, for more money. Steyer and Podesta both sit on the board of the Center for American Progress. Between 2008 and 2014, Steyer gave the Center for American Progress some $3.85 million. I’ll come back to the specifics of that e-mail shortly.

First, some background. Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado since 2001, holds degrees in mathematics, public policy, and political science. He has authored or co-authored seven books. He has won several awards for his academic work. For about two decades, he was a prolific writer and speaker on climate issues. In 2013, he testified before Congress and declared that there is “exceedingly little scientific support for claims found in the media and political debate that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and drought have increased in frequency or intensity on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.” During that same testimony, he said that global weather-related losses have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP. He went on, saying that there were also no observable increases in floods, tornadoes, or droughts.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary and Weaponized Immigration How international terrorists would turn Clinton’s “compassionate” immigration proposals against us. Michael Cutler

By on October 26th, 2016

Hillary Clinton clearly shares the views and ideology and goals of open-borders/immigration anarchists.

On October 23, 2016 Breitbart reported, “Hillary Clinton and the United Nations on the Same Open Borders Page.”

That disconcerting report included this excerpt:

In a private, richly-paid speech that Hillary delivered to a Brazilian bank on May 16, 2013, she said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future, with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

The section of Hillary’s address to the foreign bankers was confirmed by a release from the hacker site WikiLeaks.

For her part, Hillary claimed that she doesn’t want completely open borders and pointed to the segment of her speech where she mentioned energy and claimed she was only talking about sharing an electric grid across international boundaries.

“If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy,” she said during the last debate. “We trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined.”

But this seeming obfuscation doesn’t reflect many of her past claims nor even the policy proposals on her own website.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is The University Of Chicago A Safe Space? A phony champion of campus free speech destroys Freedom Center posters. David Horowitz

By on October 26th, 2016

There are many ways to suppress free speech, the right to which is the foundation of all our other rights, and our democracy as well. Many leftists would like to outright suppress the speech of those with whom they disagree. But given the fact that most Americans still believe that the First Amendment is important, they are forced to resort to other measures. One of these is to obstruct speakers who challenge them by disrupting their events and shouting them down. An even more effective and more common tactic is to slander those whom they disagree with and call them “extremists” and “racists” and the whole bag of “deplorables” that Hillary Clinton so imprudently identified.
Across the country campus activists are seeking to make universities “safe spaces” for facts and ideas that make them uncomfortable and which they can’t refute. The University of Chicago recently took a small but brave step to oppose the regressive environment of the university culture by announcing it did not support “trigger warnings” or “safe spaces” – both of which are antithetic to a university education and to a democratic society in general.

Unfortunately, the U of C’s ham-fisted response to the poster campaign conducted by my organization represents a giant step backwards. It is an indefensible attempt to make the university a safe space for supporters of terrorists in the Middle East and their hateful propaganda. To justify destroying our posters, the university administration said, “While the University of Chicago encourages the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives concerning a wide range of issues, these flyers are defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies.” This is hypocrisy at its worst. The student government supported by the U of C recently passed a resolution to boycott the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only inclusive and tolerant state there. The BDS resolution was designed to isolate, delegitimize and strangle the Jewish state.

Even liberals like Hillary Clinton and Larry Summers have denounced the BDS resolutions as anti-Semitic – Jew hatred. Evidently, the university is okay with that defamatory campaign. It even provides university facilities and funds to the campus hate groups that sponsored the resolution. Yet it condemns and destroys our posters whose sole purpose is to hold the individuals who did this accountable. What can a reasonable person conclude but that Jew-hatred is consistent with the U of C’s values and policies while opposing it is not?

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