RUTHFULLY YOURS

Across America, the spirits of a weary nation lift as after cashing in on her last round of six-figure speeches (private jet [1] and presidential suite [2] inclusive) in a surprise announcement that no one expected, Hillary Clinton finally revealed to a breathlessly expectant country that she will run for president.

Why? Not for fame or for glory. Not even to help her brother pick up even more super-rate Haitian mining contracts [3], but to help “everyday Americans.” Everyday Americans, like you.

Or almost like you, if you could afford to spring for her private jet.

What can these everyday Americans, who may be found on the boards of major corporations, non-profits and in the roster of international fugitives, expect from eight years of Hillary Clinton?

That all depends on whether they cheaped it out by flying Hillary out in a Gulfstream 450 with a miserable cramped sixteen seats or whether they stepped up to the Gulfstream 650. Were the crudités fresh? Did the presidential suite make Hillary feel truly presidential? Or did she feel like just another flat broke contender having to deliver speeches to lobbies, corporations and trade groups to keep the wolf away from the door of her latest mansion?

In this brave new era of open government, we will be privileged to see how it all works.

It is the morning after in Israel, and there are a few developments worth noting. As ‎Bill Kristol joked on Twitter:‎

‎”BREAKING: British PM Cameron, in close re-election ‎contest, has called WH to ask that Obama intervene ‎against him.” ‎

David Cameron might be the first in a string of elected ‎international leaders calling for help for their ‎opponents given U.S. President Barack Obama’s track record since ‎he took office.‎

For if there is one consistent political story that has ‎emerged about Obama, it is his unique ‎ability to destroy his political allies. After his ‎landslide victory in the presidential contest following ‎the financial collapse in 2008, the Democratic Party ‎held 60 Senate seats (after one party switch) and ‎‎258 House seats. Today, after two disastrous mid‎term routs, the Democrats have fallen into the ‎minority with 46 Senate seats and 188 House seats. ‎The House total is the lowest for the party in nearly ‎a century. ‎

In an age where so many of our elites assert that tolerance, pacifism and dialogue are the foundation of the moral life, we are certainly seeing a lot of intolerant banning, shunning and boycotting. This notion of tolerance for the intolerant Islamofascists (who, when they take power, ban all tolerance) is the main concern of my recent book, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed (Mantua Books).

For the current ideology of tolerism is in fact only tolerant towards evil and is very intolerant of the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic.

In my book, I outline how cultural and moral relativism and moral equivalency act to twist the value of tolerance into a value that replaces traditional values like justice and individual liberty with some kind of multicultural appeasement, where the appeasers see nothing in American values that are more admirable than the Islamist values rooted in 6th century jihad.

We know that the tolerists do not really act in a tolerant way when it comes to the country in the forefront of identifying the evil and taking concrete steps against it. Instead, we see:

– Banning of Israelis speakers or professors from American campuses.

Obama’s approval ratings and MSNBC’s viewer ratings are in a close race to the bottom of Death Valley. It’s only a question of which set of obnoxious hipsters with a head full of bad policy ideas and no real life experience will be fired first; the Maddow crew or the White House staff.

The progressive pajama boy era is over. The asexual messenger bag toting wonk has met an ISIS Jihadist and run home to its non-traditional family. Liberalism isn’t over, but its contenders are trying to butch up their act. The second coming of Hillary is accompanied by bellicose rhetoric about Putin and Syria. Leon Panetta, her gnomish errand boy, is sneering at Obama as an egghead too busy dithering about what not to do to be able to actually do anything about ISIS.

Democrats are adjusting to a new reality of less nuance and more centrist politics. So is MSNBC.

If Obama loses the Senate, then his leftist backers also lose their death grip on the Democratic Party. And that’s why they’re panicking so badly. Progressives proved that money and media bias could let them get away with anything. But then they lost in 2010, barely hung on in 2012 and are heading for a beating in 2014. If they can’t buy the Senate now, the Democratic Party will have to correct its course.

A sober analysis of the Big Billionaire Left shows that they were good at getting Obama elected, but not much else. Like the USSR, they could pour a lot of energy and capital into inefficiently getting one big thing done, but they aren’t much good at doing a lot of little things. Their hijacking of democracy ran into trouble the moment they tried to push past the White House. It was only the White House’s hijacking of democracy by trying to function as a unilateral dictatorship of pen and phone that extended their influence beyond their initial defeat in 2010. And that came with its own price in popularity.

Obama’s arrogance isolated him politically. He insisted on running everything and is stuck with the bill. In countless speeches he demanded more power and authority; his sinking approval ratings reflect the growing willingness of even his own supporters to hold him responsible for his unilateral policymaking.

As the election approaches everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Not only did Obama’s aggressive efforts to stoke racial unrest on the border and in Ferguson to turn out the minority voters who generally sit out midterm elections backfire, but the resulting messes deepened the popular impression that he was in over his head. Now instead of pivoting from Global Warming to a minimum wage to some offensive thing that some local Republican somewhere said, the media is stuck in an Ebola-ISIS cycle that reminds Americans on a daily basis that everything really is out of control.

Republican chances to win control of the Senate in the 2014 midterms, requiring a pickup of six seats, have taken a blow. Kansas, a state no one considered anything other than a safe hold for the party a few months ago, now appears to be slipping away.

After a contentious primary resulting in a victory for the 78-year incumbent Pat Roberts over tea party challenger Milton Wolf, things have gone steadily south for Roberts. Wolf refused to close ranks and endorse Roberts. A self-funded independent, 45-year-old Greg Orman, has now opened up a solid lead over Roberts after Chad Taylor, the Democrat, withdrew from the race, trailing badly in third place. As expected, polls that had shown [1] Roberts narrowly ahead in a three-man race, transformed into a 5-10-point Orman lead with Taylor no longer part of the polling survey .

The Kansas secretary of State attempted to prevent Taylor’s name from being removed from the ballot, since the law allows for this only when the candidate dies or has a physical disability preventing him from running, and Taylor fits neither profile. But this maneuver was challenged by Democrats and lost in court. Republicans are now trying to force Democrats to replace Taylor on the ballot, but that gesture will probably also prove unsuccessful, and worse, smacks of a near complete lack of confidence in Roberts’ chances to win straight up.

Roberts has come under attack for many of the same things as Mary Landrieu in Louisiana — for effectively becoming a Washington, D. C., senator, and not a senator of the state. There have been questions about Roberts’ legal residence and time spent in the state, just as with Landrieu. These issues, plus his age and long tenure in Congress (16 years in the House, and now 18 in the Senate), as well as accusations of being a big spending, go-along senator, were primary reasons why Roberts faced his first serious primary challenge in years.

Now the plot has thickened. Orman, who has largely escaped serious scrutiny so far, is feeling the first pushback from national Republicans, desperate to preserve the seat in the GOP column. His business relationship with a jailed Goldman Sachs banker and former board member, Rajat Gupta, is the first hit [2]. Roberts went on offense in similar fashion against Wolf in the primary fight, accusing his radiologist opponent of being dishonest and unethical.

The bitterness of the primary contest, combined with Roberts’ declining approval in the state, is the reason why many Republicans have so far not come back into the fold and appear to prefer the independent Orman. Mississippi had a similarly bitter Republican Senate primary this year, but the race there remains Republican versus Democrat,without a significant independent in the November field. In Mississippi, whites tend to vote Republican, and the state’s sizable black population always votes Democratic in even greater percentage numbers. With the current white/black split in the state, Republicans win.

The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton will make her announcement that she is trying for a second time to become the Democratic nominee for president sometime in 2015. She will then go on to easily get nominated, and coast to a solid victory in the 2016 general election against any Republican nominee.

Clinton’s presumed path to victory relies on a number of factors, including that her candidacy will enable Democrats to excite another key element of their base — female voters, particularly single women, much as Obama did in 2008 and 2012 with African American voters. If she runs, she will have no serious opposition, unlike in 2008, when she was heavily favored, but led Obama in the year before the primaries began (2007) by only 10-15 points, not the roughly 50-point lead she now holds [1]over any potential opponents for the nomination. So too, Obama , even while trailing, represented a real threat to Clinton, with his ability to pull away black voters, and even women once he was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Obama also appealed to the anti-war left of the Democratic Party due to his early opposition to the Iraq war, which Clinton had supported as a senator. One study has calculated that Winfrey’s support may have shifted [2] a million votes in the tight Democratic nominating contest from Clinton to Obama, undoubtedly the decisive factor, if the numbers are even close to accurate.

With no serious opposition this time, Clinton’s already established national fundraising base, plus what she can absorb from the Obama campaign and DNC apparatus in terms of voter targeting and online fundraising, will enable her to fire away at any of her potential GOP opponents from the start of the campaign season. If any Republican candidate catches fire and begins to emerge in the early primaries, negative attacks and a character assassination effort can be financed, similar to what Obama’s campaign did to Mitt Romney in the spring of 2012. Clinton, in essence, will have all the fundraising and organizational advantages normally associated with an incumbent running for re-election.

Clinton is well-known to voters, and seems less divisive as a candidate this time around. Bill Clinton has struggled to restore some dignity to his name, achieved through his “work” with the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation, whatever they may actually do. The Clintons will welcome a grandchild into the world later in the year, a great send-off to Hillary’s campaign if her goal is to help soften her image a bit. All the $200,000 and up speeches by the two Clintons have reconnected both of them to a very wealthy donor base, among both individuals, and corporations seeking to cement relationships with the likely next president.

There is one other major reason for delaying any announcement that her candidacy is official. Her national rollout campaign tour, disguised as a book tour, fell flat and at times proved embarrassing. Clinton seemed tone deaf about her family’s financial fortunes when Bill left office and she seemed defensive about her record as secretary of State, in particular the Benghazi attacks of September 11, 2012, which spoiled an otherwise nearly risk-free tenure as America’s chief diplomat.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/tennessee-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball

Primary: August 7, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

Bob Corker (R) Next Election in 2018.
Lamar Alexander (R) Incumbent

http://www.lamaralexander.com/ http://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/lamar_alexander.htm**

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/vermont-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball

Primary: August 26, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).

U.S. Senate

Pat Leahy (D) Next Election in 2016.
Bernie Sanders (I) Next Election in 2018.

Not sure of your district? Click here to find out

US HOUSE OF REP LOGO

At Large:
Peter Welch (D) Incumbent

http://www.welchforcongress.com/ http://www.welch.house.gov/#dialog

http://www.ontheissues.org/house/peter_welch.htm**

Rated +2 by AAI, indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE “Access to quality, affordable health care for every American is long overdue. The Affordable Care Act will bring peace of mind to millions of working Americans and their families, take decisions about health care coverage out of the hands of insurance companies, expand cost effective preventive services, and improve health care coverage for seniors.” Congressman Welch:

Expanded nationwide a pioneering Vermont health care model that rewards health care providers for improved patient outcomes rather than the number of procedures performed;
Introduced legislation to save taxpayers and seniors $160 billion through the negotiation of lower prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients;
Strongly supports a woman’s right to choose and access to preventive health care services for women; and
Founded the bipartisan Affordable Medicines Caucus, a coalition of House members working to lower prescription drug prices.

ENERGY Voted against construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments. Congressman Welch:

Is the nationally recognized champion in Congress of energy efficiency investments that create good manufacturing jobs, cut energy bills and improve the environment;
Supports federal investments and incentives to create a 21st century green energy economy; and
Opposes taxpayer subsidies for the oil, nuclear and ethanol industries.

Mark Donka (R) Challenger

http://www.markdonkaforvt.com/

HOT BUTTON ISSUES

HEALTHCARE From the second President Obama forced through a 2,300 page law that no one read with back room deals and not a single Republican vote, ObamaCare became partisan government at its worst – intrusive, expensive and ineffective. Mark will fight to repeal this disastrous piece of legislation and put patients back in control of their own healthcare. To boot, Congress was given an exception from participating. Peter Welch does not have Obamacare, why should you?

BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION The latest assault on our southern border is another clear sign that this administration is incapable of dealing with or anticipating problems that are a direct threat to our national security. Every scandal or situation appears to surprise them. In Congress, he’ll fight to lock down our borders and will continue to oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. We encourage all who want the promise of the American dream to come to the United State, but there is a legal manner in which to do so. Congress tried amnesty once in 1986!! We need better solutions not empty promises and do-overs at the taxpayers’ expense.

ENERGY It’s time for an all-of-the-above energy policy which embraces our domestic resources, peels back the overreach of the EPA and approves the Keystone XL pipeline. We need to continue to experiment with the aid of technology.

MILITARY In Congress, supporting our soldiers in the field and veterans at home will continue to be one of his top priorities. The top priority of the Constitution is to protect the United States of America. President Obama continues vacant promises. He knew about the VA issues in 2007, acknowledging his intentions to take care of our vets. He did nothing. It’s time to remove the do-nothing crowd from Washington. His bizarre West Point speech was given an appropriate chilling response from the core of our next generation heroes. Another guidepost indicating how out of touch this administration is.

SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL Amidst the turmoil in the Middle East stands Israel as a true friend to America and our best ally in the region. The recent nuclear “treaty” President Obama and John Kerry negotiated with Iran highlights the erosion of our once unbreakable alliance with Israel. In Congress, Mark will call for a renewed American commitment to our trusted ally. President Obama’s abysmal Foreign Policy has the world mocking the US and utterly confused in its global role.
Don Nolte (R) Challenger

http://www.nolte-for-us-house-vt-2014.com/
Donald Russell (R) Challenger

https://www.donaldrussellforuscongress.com/

NRA life member since 1997

Also a member of: ​gun owners of Vermont, gun owners of America

Les Feldick ministries, international fellowship of Christians and Jews,

The veterans of foreign wars, the American legion

Disabled American veterans ,paralyzed vets of America

The Heritage foundation, Marine Toys For Tots

Vermont sheriffs’ assoc. The Humane Society

English As Official Language

Matthew Andrews (Liberty Union) Challenger

https://www.facebook.com/peopleunite
Cris Ericson (I) Challenger

http://vermontnews.livejournal.com/
Randall Meyer (I) Challenger

No website
Jerry Trudell (I) Challenger

No website

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/vermont-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=puball#ixzz392jaFOu6
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

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.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW MUCH THE VA SCANDAL IS COSTING YOU IN YOUR STATE? GO TO THIS AMAZING SITE: http://www.openthebooks.com/

The Veterans Affairs scandal has exposed a failing bureaucracy, so naturally Congress’s solution is to give the same bureaucracy more money. The underreported story is that taxpayers could end up paying $50 billion each year so Congress can claim to have solved the problem.

The Senate recently whisked through with only three dissenting votes a bill cobbled together by Bernie Sanders and John McCain that authorizes $500 million to hire additional VA providers, over $200 million to lease 26 medical facilities and an unspecified amount to contract private care for veterans who live more than 40 miles from the nearest VA or experience treatment delays. Minutes before the vote, CBO issued a “preliminary” estimate that private care would cost $35 billion over the next two years and $50 billion annually thereafter. This is more than Mr. Sanders had proposed to spend when he was pitching a Democrats-only bill earlier this year.

Majority Leader Harry Reid then rushed to vote on the Senate floor before anyone might notice this future tab. As CBO notes, the “magnitude of [the bill’s] budgetary effects is highly uncertain” because it’s unclear how many more veterans will seek care once they don’t have to drive four hours or wait three months to get it. Only 8.4 million of more than 16 million veterans who qualify for VA care are enrolled.

Nor is it clear how much more care veterans will seek. The VA doesn’t charge premiums, immunizations and preventative screenings are free, and out-of-pocket costs are negligible. Even the lowest “priority group” pays a mere $10 daily co-pay for inpatient care. The upshot of this all-you-can-eat buffet has been rationed care, which is the real cause of the VA waiting-list scandal.

The truth is that many doctors won’t treat patients at Medicare reimbursement rates, which the VA started paying in 2011 to curb costs. The VA Office of Inspector General and Government Accountability Office have also reported improper payments and claim delays in non-VA “fee basis care.” A March 2012 report by the OIG reported an improper payment rate of 12.4%, which is one of the highest in federal programs.

The Senate bill would create a new private-care option called “choice cards” that allow veterans to seek care from outside providers if wait or driving times are excessive. The trouble here, as the CBO notes, is “the specific parameters of the new program would depend on regulations that would need to be developed.”