RUTHFULLY YOURS

Every corner of the media is pouring cold water on what they view as the wreckage of the Trump campaign. It is so pervasive that one friend, an ardent Trump supporter, said he listens to nothing but his own thoughts.

The message is to move beyond Trump to building a mandate and a Democrat Congress for Hillary.

Oh, and you people who were crazy enough to listen to Trump and your own values and beliefs might as well forget about it and stay home. And those silly “Trump: Make America Great Again” signs? If they have not already been vandalized, you can put them with your Goldwater buttons and your Bibles.

There will be time after November for denial and disbelief, and then the final grief and eventual hardening to the reality of another unbearable president, should Trump not emerge victorious. But this is not that time.

One can quickly get lost in the weeds of poll samples, weightings, and methodologies, but that is best left to the professionals. The way things are is made obvious even to irredeemable clingers by a statistic contained in one recent poll that found Hillary up by twelve points but also contained the finding on page 24 that Obama voters outnumbered Romney voters in the sample by 46 to 32.

Fortunately, there is competition even among pollsters, and there remain three reputable national polls that consistently indicate a tight race nationally.

While the wizards of talk in their cloistered network studios harp endlessly about the coarse and vulgar Mr. Trump, who just can’t seem to act like a normal politician, there is much more still in play in this election.

The Las Vegas Review Journal, owned by major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, came out this weekend in support of Trump for president, noting that voters “clamor for an alternative” to the corruption “dominating the capital” and that voter “discontent isn’t confined by ideology or political philosophy.”

The political and media elites are outraged beyond measure by Donald Trump’s charge that the election could be rigged. How dare he suggest such a thing, they say, for the system is as honest as the day is long!

It shows he knows he is going to lose, they say. It shows that he has no faith in the American system, and is really a fascist at heart.

In reality, it shows no such thing, but it does show that a conversation about whether this election — and the political system in general — is rigged is one that the elites most desperately do not want to have.

And that is why we must have it.

And, if we’re going to have it in an honest fashion, the question should be framed not as “Is the system rigged?” but as “In what way is the system not rigged?”

First, there is the media.

Richard Nixon complained of media bias as long ago as 1960, but even he never envisioned the state propaganda machine we have today. Even just a decade ago, conservative media watchdogs were tallying up mainstream media stories that were favorable and unfavorable to conservative politicians and issues, and finding that unfavorable ones vastly outnumbered favorable ones — which did, however, exist.

Now, even the idea that anything or anyone not left-of-center would get even the briefest fair hearing in the mainstream media seems quaint.

Another State Department IT aide invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer more than 90 questions Monday during a Judicial Watch deposition. John Bentel, former director of information resource management of the executive secretariat, refused to answer questions about whether Hillary Clinton had paid his legal fees or given him financial incentives during the final deposition in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit over her private emails. According to Judicial Watch, Bentel repeatedly answered, “On advice from my legal counsel, I decline to answer the question and I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights.”

District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered him to testify under oath back in August because he noticed that the record in the case appeared to contradict Bental’s sworn testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Bentel told the House Select Committee on Benghazi in June 2015 that he had no knowledge of Clinton’s private email server.

However, the State Department inspector general later discovered that Bentel “told employees in his office that Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff and also instructed his subordinates not to discuss the Secretary’s email again,” according to the court order.

State Department aide and Clinton employee Bryan Pagliano also asserted his Fifth Amendment rights during Judicial Watch’s deposition back in June.

“The fact that yet another State Department official took the Fifth highlights the disturbing implication that criminal acts took place related to the Clinton email and our Freedom of Information Act requests,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton commented.

Fitton said in a recent Clinton email update that no matter who wins the election, pressure for a criminal investigation into Clinton’s email corruption will continue and a special prosecutor will have to be appointed.

A highly acclaimed expert in election law says that Hillary Clinton may well have broken the law by directing an outside group to put “ducks on the ground” at Trump events and that a criminal investigation may be in order. Elliot Berke, managing partner of Berke/Farah LLP, has been named by Chambers USA as a “Nationwide Best Lawyer” and by Washingtonian as one of “Washington’s Best Lawyers.”

He appeared on Fox News Monday evening to discuss the latest Project Veritas video, which implicated Hillary Clinton in a possible FEC violation.

In the video, longtime community organizer Bob Creamer said that it was Hillary’s idea to have activists dress up in Donald Duck costumes and protest outside of Trump/Pence events. Creamer is a convicted felon and husband of Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky. He has visited the White House 342 times since 2009 and met with Organizer-in-Chief Barack Obama a total of 47 times. Creamer was caught on video affirming that Clinton is aware of “all” of his work and that his group Democracy Partners has a daily telephone call with the Clinton campaign to coordinate efforts.

“In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States, who wanted ducks on the ground,” said Creamer. “So, by God, we would get ducks on the ground.”

Activists suggested on tape that the goal was to provoke a violent reaction from Trump supporters — a tactic known in progressive circles as “bird-dogging.”

Special Report’s Bret Baier asked Berke if Hillary and company had broken any campaign laws, given that it was Hillary Clinton’s idea to deploy the ducks.

“Any time a candidate, committee or political party is working with an outside group, you get into possible in-kind contributions,” Berke said. “Here, the allegation is the candidate herself may have directed an outside group to engage in this behavior, and if so — this could be an in-kind contribution.”

Which candidate has the best economic plan to get America growing again? This is the most important question of the 2016 presidential campaign, yet think tanks and journalists keep getting the answer wrong.

Donald Trump will cut taxes, reduce regulation, unleash our abundant energy and eliminate our trade deficit through muscular trade negotiations that increase exports, reduce imports and eliminate cheating. These policies will double our economic growth rate, create 25 million new jobs, boost labor and capital incomes, generate trillions of additional tax revenues and reduce debt as a percentage of GDP.

Hillary Clinton’s plan points in the opposite direction. Her tax hikes on businesses and “the rich” reduce incentives to work and invest. She will increase the already staggering $2 trillion annual regulatory burden on the U.S. economy. She vows to put coal miners out of work and oil and natural gas on the back burner—raising energy prices and reducing America’s competitive advantage. After giving us three of the worst trade deals in U.S. history—Nafta in 1993, China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, the 2012 South Korea fiasco—the Clinton team is primed to pass the worst deal yet—the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would decimate the American manufacturing base.

How this adds up to a better economic plan than Mr. Trump’s is as mysterious as it is counterintuitive. Yet economic pundits keep popping up like bad pennies to make the claim.

One reason is that most think tanks only consider the competing tax plans, not the overall economic plans. This has an inherent Democratic bias because Republican tax cuts viewed in isolation almost always reduce revenues. However, by failing to calculate the substantial positive revenue offsets of growth from the Trump plan’s other reforms, these tunnel-vision “experts” are missing the bigger picture.

Consider the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It dynamically scored a revenue reduction under the Trump plan of $2.6 trillion and a modest $663 billion surplus for the Clinton plan over the next decade. These numbers suggest the Clinton plan is more fiscally responsible. CONTINUE AT SITE

Hillary Clinton may win the election in two weeks, but the manner of her victory will bedevil her in the White House. Specifically, evidence keeps turning up suggesting that the FBI probe into her emails was influenced by political favoritism and double standards.

The latest news is the Journal’s report Monday that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend of Hillary and Bill, steered money to the campaign of the wife of a top FBI official. Political organizations under Mr. McAuliffe’s control gave more than $675,000 to the 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of Jill McCabe, the wife of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Mr. McCabe, director James Comey’s right-hand man, helped oversee the probe into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information on her server.

Some $467,500 of the money came directly from Mr. McAuliffe’s political action committee, Common Good VA, while $207,788 came from the Virginia Democratic Party, which the Governor essentially controls. The funds amounted to more than one-third of all the money Mrs. McCabe raised.

Mrs. McCabe announced her candidacy the same month (March 2015) as the news broke about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. Mr. McCabe was running the FBI’s Washington field office at the time, and he was promoted to the No. 3 FBI slot not long after the formal FBI investigation began in July 2015.

The FBI said in a statement that none of this is an issue because Mr. McCabe wasn’t promoted to the No. 2 position until February 2016, months after his wife lost her race, and only then did he assume “for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

There is a sizeable faction in this country that is disgusted with the choices we have going into the 2016 General Election. While the choices are far from the quality a great nation like the United States deserves, they are what they are. No amount of complaining, abdication of responsibility or indignation will change this reality.

But, like it or not, the outcome of this election will affect each and every one of us, and in ways that can never be rectified in our lifetimes, if at all. It is for that reason this election is a referendum on the issues, not on the candidates. It is also for this reason that it needs to be reiterated – in no uncertain terms – that General Elections are not for electing your favorite candidate. They are for protecting the country from the worst candidate.

Right now we have two candidates – arguably not the best the country can offer, who possess two extremely different visions for the country. It is about these differences – exclusively – that we must base our choices come Election Day. Put bluntly, this election isn’t about personalities, capabilities, soundbites or even criminality; it is about issues, and on these issues, we do have choices to make.

Yes, the names on the ballot give us pause. I will cede that point but offer this rebuttal for your consideration.

On the one hand, we have a politically untested, braggadocios businessman in Donald Trump who routinely makes statements before he thinks about the consequences of his words. But while many may have their principles insulted by the prospect of casting a vote for such an overt braggart, there is no question that he loves and appreciates the country that has allowed him to be so successful.

No pearl went unclutched when Trump refused to agree in advance to validate the giant scam that is this election. Yeah, scam. In light of all we’ve seen during this stupidest of years, a year where I had to move my book about this country tearing itself apart from the fiction section to nonfiction, how the hell can anyone keep a straight face as he, she, or xe demands that we default to trust the system?

Okay, this is where Team Fake Pearl Clutch jumps in and whines about my “dangerous talk” and about how I have no “honor” because I won’t submit in advance to another establishment okie-doke. Yeah, sure, whatever – and the emperor caught pneumonia because the little kid pointed out that he wasn’t wearing any clothes, not because he was walking around with his junk in the wind.

The system is manifestly rigged – even Heap Big Chief Warren used to say so until a memo informed her that this meme is now inconvenient – so spare me your sanctimonious crap about our sacred system. Our loyalty is properly only to the Constitution, not a perversion of it. Just because you hold office under Article I, II, or III doesn’t mean we still owe you respect or deference when you treat your obligations to the People like a teenage Thai boy at one of Raymond Burr’s Halloween parties.

We owe the system nothing. Nada. Zip. Instead, the system owes us fairness and honesty, and without them it has no right to our default acceptance of its results. That acceptance must be earned. This means that the system must aggressively police its own integrity, and this year it has utterly failed to do so.

The most important thing in a democratic republic, the keystone that holds it together and ensures the peaceful transition of power, is the ability for a loser to accept a loss. We used to be able to fight out our political differences and, if we came up short, shrug and say, “Well, next time we’ll convince a majority.” We could move on, confident that the playing field had been level, that we had been heard, and that we had lost fair and square.

“Not anymore. Trump’s wrong about a lot, but he’s not wrong about this. He may very well lose, but it won’t be fair and square. And Trump is not the problem for saying so.

In a sudden and shocking burst of coherence during the third debate, in which Trump put a cherry on top of his brutal trouncing of his Westworld-escapee opponent by refusing to agree to be scammed, The Donald articulated a three-point critique of the system that its defenders have not even tried to answer. Instead, all we got was fake outrage over Trump’s perfectly legitimate rejection of the default legitimacy of our illegitimate system.

The Clinton campaign’s recent attacks on Donald Trump for his comments about a beauty queen’s weight problems were months in the making, according to an opposition research report uncovered in emails released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton invoked those comments during the first presidential debate on Sept. 26. Near the end of the showdown, during a sustained riff about the Republican nominee’s past remarks about women, Clinton cited the case of Miss Universe 1996 Alicia Machado.

“And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest,” Clinton said. “He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.”

Trump responded: “Where did you find this?”

The answer is: in a 157-page opposition research file that Clinton’s campaign had been using since at least Dec. 19, 2015, the day research director Tony Carrk emailed it – and research files on Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio – to Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta. Podesta’s emails were subsequently hacked and more than 25,000 of them have been released so far by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In a section on Page 31 titled “Trump Has Devalued And Demeaned Women Repeatedly Throughout His Career,” Trump’s comments to “This Morning” in 1997 are transcribed under the heading “Trump On Miss Universe Pageant Winner.”

“She weighed 118 pounds, or 117 pounds, and she went up to 160 or 170,” Trump said on “This Morning.” “So this is somebody that likes to eat.”

© FoxNews.com On ‘The Kelly File,’ the former Miss Universe says she is sharing her story for the Latino community

Machado is not identified by her last name, and her first name is misspelled “Alisa.” The supposed “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” put-downs do not appear either. However, Trump’s printed comments on Machado in the document seemingly show the Clinton campaign began considering using the episode against the business mogul before the primaries even began.

Her record on defense and foreign policy offers a cautionary tale

After yet another meeting of diplomats failed to resolve the war in Syria, our ever-clueless secretary of state, John Kerry, said on October 15 that diplomacy would continue because of “the urgency of trying to find something that works other than military action.”

As if it were intended to illustrate Kerry’s foolishness, a Russian navy battle group led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov sailed for Syria less than a week later to engage its combat aircraft against the U.S.-backed forces trying to topple Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

Sending the Kuznetsov wasn’t a militarily necessity. Other Russian aircraft could have easily been deployed to Syria. But sending the aircraft carrier is a demonstration of Russia’s ability to project power and a reminder to America and its allies that diplomacy cannot succeed unless it is backed by the threat of military force.

Though he may do more harm before he leaves office, President Obama will soon be irrelevant. It’s time to look to the future. As ghastly as that prospect is, unless the most reliable pollsters are badly wrong, that president will be Hillary Clinton.

Her record provides all the evidence we need to derive the bases on which she would decide matters of defense and foreign policy as well as the most likely result. Those factors compel the conclusion that the events of the next four years will prove far worse than we expect.

The relentless ineptitude of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry team did not proceed from the same foundation as Mrs. Clinton would on her own. She is campaigning on her claims of experience in making the hardest decisions a president has to make.

There are four key proofs that enable us to determine the manner and means by which Mrs. Clinton will decide foreign policy and defense matters.