When I picture Uncle Sam, I no longer see a tall confident man. I picture one on his knees looking pitiful and depressed not because of America's unemployed and terrorism but because of the terrible threat from climate change. Sad.
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The critical debate is fast approaching and Trump is gaining but still remains electorally behind.
Trump needs to stay focused on these key issues: the economy, America's vulnerability to radical Muslim Terrorism, government that fails everything it undertakes, our external enemies, illegal immigration, a border-less America and America's weakened military and top leadership.
He should be sincere not over promise, or be boastful and if Hillary starts attacking him he should respond tactfully, tastefully, truthfully and with bare knuckles.(See 1 below.)
As for Hillary, the best she can hope for is when she cackles her left eye does not cross.
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Rahami was not unknown to the FBI. This is the fourth person the FBI knew about, who had terrorist ties and demonstrated empathy. Yet, they failed to apprehend them before they caused or tried to do harm.
Is it because Obama has restricted their ability to act? Has forced them to think in a PC manner that undercuts their ability to be effective? Do our laws, pertaining to personal freedom, cripple our ability to protect ourselves? Is the embrace of PC'ism so restrictive it is beyond logic and even dangerous?
That law enforcement were able to arrest Rahami so quickly is amazing but not, necessarily, encouraging.
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N Korea's shadow will challenge the next president. (See 2 below.)
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Another op ed regarding Obama's policies and approach helping cause world chaos. (see 3 below.)
Clinton Foundation hosts wife of a convicted Palestinian killer/terrorist. (See 3a below.)
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When black police respond to calls involving their own race and a death ensues followed by rioting, one has to ask, are black citizens increasingly prone to lawless rioting? If so, why has this become a standard reaction? Why do they not obey police demands? Finding a gun among the crowd is far more prevalent than a book. Is black rage boundless like our borders?
Where is Obama? Playing golf? You decide.
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Meanwhile, who is this man we call Obama? We all know someone calling himself Barack Obama was born/hatched and became president of these United States. There is no history of his youth, marriage, friendships, time in college etc. Does this matter? Again, you decide. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Debating Hillary
“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.” - Christopher Hitchens
The impending presidential debates are likely to be the best attended in the history of American politics. The viewing and listening audience will set a standard for political discussions past and future. At this point, the draw is Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, Trump is a candidate who packs a house and elevates the ratings.
Whether or not the Trump “draw” translates into votes remains to be seen. Ironically, Trump’s negatives may be the new positive. Those so-called “undecideds,” might be a closet demographic, folks who do not support Trump publicly, but on Election Day will push the button for change anyway.
At this point in the campaign, both candidates represent real choice. Hillary is the establishment, the ancien regime, more of the same if you will. Trump is the parvenu, the rhetorical bomb thrower. The Donald represents change, anxiety, and uncertainty too.
Here Trump has a decided advantage. Call it the enthusiasm gap. Emotion and energy are the important components of any political campaign. Specific issues are, for the most part, window dressing. Most candidates see politics as the art of saying and playing, not doing.
Issues are merely emotional outreach, the hot buttons of cynical voter manipulation. If you can talk-the-talk well enough, you might never have to walk-the-walk.
The great weaknesses of democracy are tenure, inertia, and complacency.
Few candidates feel compelled to deliver on campaign promises anyway, especially reform. American campaigning and governance have now morphed into perpetual spin, a cynical PR ritual. Nonetheless, most aspirants are still expected to make politically correct noises to get nominated, reelected – or elected.
Trump has proven to be the singular exception to this and almost every other bit of conventional wisdom, a quality of uniqueness that is now both an asset and a liability
Prospects are diminished, in any case, for any candidate who fails to touch the emotional G Spot of the electorate. Relative likeability and some sensitivity to the mood and needs of the masses is money in the bank.
With Barack Obama the touchstone was melanin. With Hillary the emotional G Spot is sex, gender, and the usual piñata politics. Hillary Clinton is figuratively flying on her genitals and literally sitting on Obama’s entitlement coattails.
Romney was correct about one thing in the last election; America is now two classes, a decreasing number of makers carrying a growing burden of takers. Alas, establishment Romney couldn’t get away with that kind of Mormon candor wearing a Republican frock.
With Trump, truth is an offensive weapon. Change is his forte. Thus, remaking America is at once a noble objective for the “deplorables” and a subversive threat to the usual suspects. Oddly enough, critics right and left seem to be fueling the Trump phenomenon with brickbats.
Indeed, you could argue today that Donald Trump has trashed every possible stuffed shirt, touched every third rail, and roasted every sacred cow on the political green. Indeed, Trump’s critics are in danger of exhausting all stocks of metaphor and invective.
From the beginning, Trump has been riding towards the Oval Office on a tsunami of righteous indignation. The “system” is thought to be rigged or broken and public sentiment says, “throw the bums out.”
The debates are one last hurdle. As media events, these spectacles are front-loaded for Hillary. The moderators are a rainbow coalition from the American left. There’s nothing “moderate” about Trump’s inquisitors. Lester Holt (NBC) speaks for the black vote. Martha Raddatz (ABC) represents the feminist vote, and of course Anderson Cooper (CNN) represents homosexuals and the socially ambiguous. None of these demographics are sympathetic, or even neutral, about Trump. Chris Wallace (FOX) is supposed to be the red bone, a pink token at best. These debate panels are rigged and Trump needs to make that clear to the viewing audience at the outset. Trump has few sympathizers midst the chattering classes. He can expect a barrage of hostile and/or loaded questions. He would be wise to stay with the tactic that served him so well to date. Offense!
When confronted with leading or hostile questions, Trump needs to confront media spinners as he has done in the past. If he has done nothing else in this campaign, Trump has exposed American journalists as partisan shills. Trashing pundits is a no-lose hedge. The press is about as popular as herpes.
If Trump doesn’t like the question, he might ignore it and introduce a question of his own. Becoming Hillary’s interrogator permits all those questions not likely to be asked by a biased press panel.
Mrs. Clinton avoids press conferences for good reasons. She doesn’t like questions, accountability, or candor -- and she gets rattled or hostile on defense.
Topics likely to keep Clinton in a defensive crouch include: her tolerance of husband Bill’s abuse of women from the statehouse to the White House; the Obamacare fiasco; Veterans’ care incompetence; serial foreign policy failures; the Benghazi betrayal and cover up; the private server and email controversy; subsequent FBI corruption; DNC primary fixing; and Clinton Foundation fraud just to name a few areas where the media will try to give Hillary a pass.
Trump is uniquely qualified to grill Mrs. Clinton. She has a policy and program record to defend. He does not. Trump is only liable for hearsay or those now infamous lip slips. Clinton, in contrast, has real skeletons that have been out of her closet for over a decade.
Trump does not have a horrid family and policy record to defend. In contrast, Hillary’s private and public behavior is literally indefensible. She is especially vulnerable as the putative “feminist.” Recall how Mrs. Clinton demonized Bill’s female victims and conquests. A Clinton “score” was characterized as a “bimbo eruption.”
Mrs. Clinton’s achievement deficits are relevant in every sense of the word. Her personal peccadillos, integrity, judgment, temperament, and character should be the core issues of the forthcoming debates.
Hillary’s contempt for common men and women is now, in her own words, a matter of public record. Less well known are the sentiments of those who have witnessed Clintonian behavior out of the public eye. The few Secret Service testimonials available are unanimous about Hillary Clinton.
She is arrogant, patronizing, condescending, abusive, vulgar, often hysterical, and frequently rude, especially to military and police details. The people sworn to protect the presidential family are usually reticent to discuss their wards. Hillary is the one notable exception.
Secret Service agents consider the Hillary detail to be punishment. She’s that bad.
If there are any institutions that do not look forward to another Clinton regime, it’s the military, the Secret Service, and cops at large. Apparently, Hillary abhors uniforms.
Mrs. Clinton apparently suffers from some kind of multiple personality disorder too, smiling and cackling in public and then morphing into an abusive shrew off camera. There may be a medical explanation for Hillary’s mood swings, but those closest to her believe that the ailment is personality.
Pathology or illness is always fair game, but for any politician, it’s character, or lack of it, that matters most
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2) The Coming Confrontation With North Korea
Imagine it is 2020. The director of the CIA requests an urgent meeting with the US president. The reason: North Korea has succeeded in making a nuclear bomb small enough to fit inside the tip of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental United States. The news soon leaks to the public. High-level meetings to devise a response are held not just in Washington, but in Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing, and Moscow as well.
This scenario may seem unreal today, but it’s more political science than science fiction. North Korea just carried out its fifth (and apparently successful) test of a nuclear explosive device, doing so just days after testing several ballistic missiles. Absent a major intervention, it’s only a matter of time before North Korea increases its nuclear arsenal (now estimated at 8-12 devices) and figures out how to miniaturise its weapons for delivery by missiles of increasing range and accuracy.
It’s difficult to overstate the risks were North Korea, the world’s most militarised and closed society, to cross this threshold. A North Korea with the ability to threaten the US homeland might conclude it had little to fear from the US military, a judgement that could lead it to launch a conventional, non-nuclear attack on South Korea. Even if such a war ended in North Korea’s defeat, it would be extraordinarily costly by any measure.
That said, North Korea wouldn’t have to start a war for its nuclear and missile advances to have real impact. If South Korea or Japan ever concluded that North Korea was in a position to deter American involvement in a war on the Peninsula, they would lose confidence in US security assurances, raising the possibility that they would develop nuclear weapons of their own. Such decisions would alarm China and set the stage for a regional crisis or even conflict in a part of the world with the greatest concentration of people, wealth, and military might.
There is another risk as well. A cash-strapped North Korea might be tempted to sell nuclear arms to the highest bidder, be it a terrorist group or some country that decided that it, too, needed the ultimate weapon. By definition, nuclear proliferation increases the chances of further nuclear proliferation—and with it the actual use of nuclear weapons.
The US has options, but none is particularly attractive. As for negotiations, there’s little if any reason to be confident that North Korea would give up what it considers to be its best guarantee of survival. In fact, it has often used negotiations to buy time for further advances in its nuclear and missile capabilities.
Another option is to continue with a version of the current policy of extensive sanctions. The problem is that sanctions will not be potent enough to force North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs. This is partly because China, fearing large refugee inflows and a unified Korea in America’s strategic orbit should North Korea collapse, will most likely continue to ensure that it gets the fuel and food it needs.
As a result, it makes more sense to focus on diplomacy with China. The US, after consulting closely with South Korea and Japan, should meet with Chinese officials to discuss what a unified Korea would look like, so that some Chinese concerns could be met. For example, a unified country could be non-nuclear, and any US military forces that remained on the Peninsula could be fewer and farther south than they are now.
It’s of course possible or even probable that such assurances wouldn’t lead to any meaningful diminution in Chinese support for North Korea. In that case, the US would have three more options. One would be to live with a North Korea in possession of missiles that could bring nuclear bombs to US soil. The policy would become one of defence (deploying additional anti-missile systems) and deterrence, with North Korea understanding that any use or spread of nuclear weapons would lead to the end of the regime and possibly nuclear retaliation. Cyber weapons might also be employed to obstruct and impede the progress of North Korea’s program.
The second option would be a conventional military attack, targeting North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities. The danger is that such a strike mightn’t achieve all of its objectives and trigger either a conventional military attack on South Korea (where nearly 30,000 US troops are based) or even a nuclear attack from the North. Needless to say, Japan and South Korea would have to be prepared to support any US military response before it could be undertaken.
The third option would be to launch such a conventional military attack only if intelligence showed North Korea was putting its missiles on alert and readying them for imminent use. This would be a classic pre-emptive strike. The danger here is that the intelligence mightn’t be sufficiently clear—or come early enough.
All of which brings us back to that possible day in 2020. If much is unknown, what seems all but certain is that whoever wins November’s US presidential election will confront a fateful decision regarding North Korea sometime during her or his term.
Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of A World in Disarray, to be published in January 2017. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2016.
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President Obama will surely put his best spin on his legacy Tuesday in his eighth and final speech to the United Nations General Assembly. But even his biggest fans must struggle to ignore the spread of mayhem on his watch, in the Mideast and beyond.
The president is likely to highlight his oh-so-historic diplomacy, from that (toothless) global climate agreement to the improvement, such as it is, in the world’s economy. Plus, of course, the nuke agreement with Iran and the opening to Cuba.
So how fitting that as Obama speaks in New York, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will be completing a trip to Cuba and Venezuela, before giving his own UN speech Thursday. After all, these rogue nations have come together and, in Cuba’s and Iran’s cases, come in from the diplomatic cold thanks to Obama.
Similarly, the Obama-Hillary Clinton “reset” with Russia has left that nation far more aggressive than in 2008. China, too, is pushing hard in the Pacific, despite Obama’s much-announced “pivot to Asia.” In his UN speech eight years ago, Obama promised action on perennial UN priorities — including, of course, making peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
That unfulfilled goal proved to be a sideshow as the wider Mideast underwent tremendous changes through the Arab Spring — a brief surge of democracy, followed by chaos.
And as the Mideast (Israel excepted) became even more of a mess, America became a spectator.
Take the refugee crisis. During the last decade, according to the United Nations, the number of people fleeing wars around the world jumped from 37 million to 66 million — most of them from the Mideast, and many flooding Europe.
European policymakers are at a loss for answers, and Syria’s neighbors — Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — are struggling to handle the inflow.
But not to worry. Obama’s on the case. While at the UN assembly, he’ll host world leaders in a conference on migration. They’ve already reached an understanding to talk about it further and may even, in two years or so, reach a global treaty (which will surely be too weak to make a dent in the growing problem).
It’s a problem, so they’ll talk about it, and talk about talking about it some more.
Meanwhile, in Syria, the eye of the refugee storm, America is losing its last trace of dignity. On Monday the Syrian army announced an end to that cease-fire declared just a week ago by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
The Kerry-Lavrov pact was doomed from the start, but the death blow came late last week when US planes bombed forces loyal to Syria’s butcher-in-chief, Bashar al-Assad. The Obama administration rushed to apologize, swearing it was a mistake.
Remember when Team Obama said Assad must go? That policy, we learned over the weekend, secretly became a dead letter two years ago: It was back then, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin disclosed, that the United States “committed,” in an agreement with Damascus, that our airstrikes in Syria “would not affect” Assad’s army.
We became, in effect, an accomplice of Assad, the world’s most prolific killer.
We became, in effect, an accomplice of Assad, the world’s most prolific killer.
One chief reason: our desire to secure an agreement with his main regional backer, Iran.
That agreement was supposed to be the crown jewel in Obama’s attempt to promote a nuke-free world. Yet, eight years after he announced that goal at the United Nations, North Korea’s arsenal grows as it tests new nukes with added frequency. And under Obama’s deal, Pyongyang’s ally, Iran, is on the road to joining the growing club of nuclear-armed countries.
Meanwhile, Iran wages proxy wars with rival Saudi Arabia; consolidates its Syrian and Lebanese bases to assure a presence near the borders of the country it vows to annihilate, Israel; and stretches its tentacles as far as Africa and Latin America.
And America shies from confronting Iran for fear Tehran might walk away from the nuke deal. So instead, the West lifts sanctions and enriches Iran’s leaders.
A top promise of the Obama presidency was that, as a global child (African roots and Indonesian childhood), he’d unite the world and help nudge it toward the ideals the United Nations was originally meant to espouse.
Yet while America toiled these last eight years to strengthen global institutions like the United Nations, America’s global leadership has waned. The world is worse off, and so are we. But you won’t hear that part in Obama’s speech.
3a)Palestinian Terrorist’s Wife to Address Clinton Foundation
by Joel B. Pollak
Donald Trump is criticizing Hillary Clinton over the fact that the Clinton Foundation is honoring a Palestinian teacher whose husband is a convicted terrorist on Tuesday evening.
Hanan an-Hroub is scheduled to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative event in New York after winning a $1 million teaching award from another charity that donates to the Clinton Foundation. Her husband, Omar al-Hroub, spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for his role in a 1980 bombing that killed six Israelis.
The event is going ahead as planned, in spite of the recent Islamist terrorist bombings in New York and New Jersey, which injured dozens.
The Wall Street Journal noted Tuesday:
Omar al-Hroub was convicted on charges that he was an accomplice in a deadly bombing attack in Hebron that killed Israelis walking home from Friday night Sabbath prayers. According to an Associated Press account at the time, Omar al-Hroub was a chemist who provided chemicals needed for making the bombs.
Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said:
Today’s report that the Clinton Foundation is feting the wife of a Palestinian man convicted of helping bomb innocent Israeli citizens is deeply disturbing, especially in the wake of this weekend’s attacks. The decision to honor the wife of a terrorist by Hillary Clinton’s foundation shows a complete lack of judgment and a callousness that should disqualify her from holding the presidency.
The Republican National Committee has also reportedly objected.
The biography for Hanan al-Hroub on the Clinton Foundation website does not mention the terror connection:
Winner of the 2016 Global Teacher Prize, an initiative of the Varkey Foundation, Hanan Al Hroub grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp, Bethlehem, where she was regularly exposed to acts of violence. She went into primary education after her children were left deeply traumatized by a shooting incident they witnessed on their way home from school. Her experiences in meetings and consultations to discuss her children’s behavior, development and academic performance in the years that followed led Al Hroub to try to help others who, having grown up in similar circumstances, require special handling at school. With so many troubled children in the region, Palestinian classrooms can be tense environments. Al Hroub embraces the slogan “No to Violence” and uses a specialized teaching approach she developed herself. Al Hroub has shared her perspective at conferences, meetings and teacher training seminars.
The Clinton Foundation responded by producing a statement from Democrat mega-donor Haim Saban, who also supports pro-Israel causes, in support of the event and of Hroub’s work as a teacher.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regenery through Amazon.
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4) After 8 years he remains an unanswered mystery.
It will be interesting to see what they put in his "Presidential Library" about his early years when he is out of office.
In a country where we take notice of many, many facets of our public figures' lives, it seem odd there's so little we know about president, Barack Obama?
For example, we know that Andrew Jackson's wife smoked a corn cob pipe and was accused of adultery; Abe Lincoln never went to school; Jack Kennedy wore a back brace; Harry Truman played the piano.
As Americans, we enjoy knowing details about our newsmakers, but none of us knows one single humanizing fact about the history of our president.
We are all aware of the lack of uncontestable birth records for Obama; that document managing has been spectacularly successful.
There are, however, several additional oddities in Obama's history that appear to be so well managed as the birthing issue.
Another interesting thing.... There are no birth certificates of his daughters that can be found.
It's interesting that no one who ever dated him has shown up. The charisma that caused women to be drawn to him so strongly during his campaign certainly would, in the normal course of events, lead some lady to come forward, if only to garner some attention for herself.
We all know about JFK's magnetism, that McCain was no monk and quite a few details about Palin's courtship and even her athletic prowess. Joe Biden's aneurisms are no secret; look at Cheney and Clinton, we all know about their heart problems. Certainly, Wild Bill Clinton's exploits before and during his White House years, were well known. That's why it's odd not one lady has stepped up and said, "Obama was soooo shy..." or "What a great dancer..."
It's virtually impossible to know anything about this fellow's past.
Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Then check groomsmen.
Then get footage of the graduation ceremony. Has anyone talked to the professors? It is odd that no one is bragging that they knew or taught him or lived with him.
When did he meet Michele, and photos? Every president gives the public all their photos, etc. for their library. What has he released?
Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend, etc.? Not one person has ever come forward from his past. very.
As insignificant as each of us might be, someone with whom we went to school will remember our name or face; someone will remember we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.
George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. He questions why no one has acknowledged the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on campus. Stephanopoulos also was a classmate of Obama at Columbia--the class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him.
He is such a great orator; why doesn't anyone in Obama's college class remember him? Why won't he allow Columbia to release his records?
Nobody remembers Obama at Columbia University....Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there... but none remembered him.
Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia who knew him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia, ever."
Nobody recalls him. Root adds that he was also, like Obama, Class of '83 Political Science, and says, "You don't get more exact or closer than that. Never met him in my life; don't know anyone who ever met him. At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me. No one ever heard of Barack!
And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the (as we say in New York) 'the macha' who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human, who ever met him."
Obama's photograph does not appear in the school's yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia .
Some other interesting questions:
Why was Obama's law license inactivated in 2002.
It is said there is no record of him ever taking the Bar exam.
Why was Michelle's law license inactivated by court order? We understand that was forced to avoid fraud charges.
It is circulating that according to the U.S. Census, there is only one Barack Obama but 27 Social Security numbers and over 80 alias connected to him.
The Social Security number he uses now originated in Connecticut, where he is reported to have never lived. And was originally registered to another man (Thomas Louis Wood) from Connecticut , who died in Hawaii while on vacation there. As we all know, Social Security Numbers are only issued 'once, they are not reused'.
No wonder all his records are sealed...
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