Saturday, November 12, 2016

Can The NYT Survive? Israel and America - An Important Relationship. When Obama Departs The White House The Prism Through Which We Judge Will Change!


DUH! https://youtu.be/x8Y30EOQljI  

and 

 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442137/donald-trump-media-elites

And

2 fabulous blogs this AM Dick!Trying to get a handle on the reaction of folks not part of the Trump camp, these blogs really helped.... especially the humor!
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The Gray Lady's Publisher is rightly concerned about losing more of his family paper's shrinking readership. 

My liberal friends send me NYT articles all the time because it is their bible.

Liberal Jews eat it for breakfast. 

The NYT's Sunday paper was a standard in my family.  My mother loved the Cross Word Puzzle section and my father would devour the news section.  Over the years The NYT's became less significant and I got my father to start reading the Wall Street Journal for balance.

He understood the need of a free and balanced press. I wonder what he would say today? My father was too bright and informed to remain Liberal. 

I warned, in a previous memo,  The NYT would not exist if they continued along their current path.

I hope for the sake of the nation, The NYT mends their ways because a great national paper would help reinforce and insure our freedoms.  I have my doubts they can because their bias is em-bowled but time will tell.(See 1 below.)
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Trump team warns Obama regarding Israel? (See 2 below.)

And

Glick's thoughts now that Trump will become our next president.

America's relationship with Israel is important for a variety of reasons.

a)  It is the only Democracy in that region of the world and, in time, countries like Jordan and Egypt will move in a democratized direction.

b) Israel is one of our strongest allies and is willing to defend itself.

c) Israel and America benefit from shared information and technology that has both military as well as civilian purposes. 

d) President Truman had the foresight, decency and courage to force the U.N to recognize the right of Israel to become a nation and that act of genuine morality distinguishes America's foreign policy as does Carter's introduction of Human Rights. (See 2a below.)
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Ford pardoned Nixon and that cost Ford the election.  I doubt Trump will act precipitously because Hillary's alleged illegalities are different but at some point the issue of her and "Ole" Bill being above the law will rise to the front.  Frankly, a pardon by Obama would remove the matter from Trump's plate and though I would have reservations about the message it would send Trump has more important matters occupying his attention and screaming for his attention. (See 3 below.)
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I live on an island and we have plenty of gators living in our lagoons so I understand what Trump means by draining the swamp. (See 4 below.)
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There never was anything progressive about Progressives.  Retrogressive, misguided and flaky, yes!(See 5 below.)
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I have read a ton of articles and op eds about Trump's victory, where his victory leaves the beaten Democrats, why Hillary lost,  the post Trump rioting, speculation pertaining to his economic programs and a host of other topics.

If one believes Trump is the person Clinton and Obama characterized as well as those in the mass media, I suspect they will continue to misunderstand what is happening around them and is likely to happen to them. This would not surprise me because they have lived in their own cocoon for years and most everything has gone their way as America's decline continued and then accelerated after Obama became president.

On the other hand, if Trump's detractors and doubters can become less biased, can objectively observe what he and his team propose and are about to undertake and recognize market reactions can provide a clue then I suspect they will not only be surprised but also eventually and grudgingly, come to realize Donald can become the president we needed.

The hills and mountains of problems America faces are enormous but so are the opportunities and power that can be unleashed and which have been bottled up by inane legislation and divide and conquer social policies and presidential rhetoric.

Sometimes it is difficult to realize stupidity when you are living it and are supportive.  Furthermore, when you are frightened by the prospect of change and the person proposing it is off the charts you can lose total perspective.

I have said and repeat, Trump has many unlikable aspects to his personality but he is driven by a desire to be a winner, is smart, has proven experience outside of politics, has keen instincts and will bring  all of these positives to bear on our nation's problems.  I also have been told, by those who know him,  he surrounds himself with people who are free to tell him what they think and he listens.

I always believed Obama was "The Music Man" from the git go and though I hoped he would succeed I never thought he would and I believe history will prove my instincts were correct.

I believe Trump has the potential to be a coarser Reagan and though he faces different challenges and problems I believe he will prove his detractors wrong. Unlike the rioters and cry baby Liberals, I expect  Donald will confirm my instincts and will appoint a sound Jurist to The Supreme Court, rebuild our military, restore faith in our nation among our allies, put the economy back on a 4% or better growth track, and will project a healing tone through his messaging.  If he can accomplish these awesome results he will have a wonderful base on which to accomplish his other articulated goals of protecting our borders, restoring our re-embrace of the rule of law and cleaning up the corruption that has infected federal agencies starting with the IRS, The Justice Department, The State Department, The FBI and EPA to name a few.

I suspect after Obama departs The White House, Americans will become clearer eyed as they take a look back and realize how blinded they became by the reflection off Obama's toothy smile. Obama understood he could cover his mistakes by claiming criticism was racially motivated. If a black person adds 1 and 2 and comes up with 4 they are wrong not because they are black but because the Egyptians and the math tables say they are and the same conclusion would obtain were they white.

I am convinced the prism through which we observe what is happening will look different once Obama is back in Chicago.
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Dick
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1)

New York Times: We blew it on Trump



The Gray Lady feels the agony of political defeat — in her reputation and in her wallet.

After taking a beating almost as brutal as Hillary Clinton’s, the New York Times on Friday made an extraordinary appeal to its readers to stand by her. The publisher’s letter to subscribers was part apology and part defense of its campaign coverage, but the key takeaway was a pledge to do better.
Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. admitted the paper failed to appreciate Donald Trump’s appeal
“After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”


While insisting his staff had “reported on both candidates fairly,” he also vowed that the paper would “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor.”
Ah, there’s the rub. Had the paper actually been fair to both candidates, it wouldn’t need to rededicate itself to honest reporting. And it wouldn’t have been totally blindsided by Trump’s victory.
Instead, because it demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president.
Sulzberger’s letter alludes to this, promising that the paper will “striv[e] always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”
But bad or sloppy journalism doesn’t fully capture the Times sins. Not after it announced that it was breaking it rules of coverage because Trump didn’t deserve fairness.
As media columnist Jim Rutenberg put it in August, most Times reporters saw Trump “as an abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate” and thus couldn’t be even-handed.
That wasn’t one reporter talking — it was policy. The standards, developed over decades to force reporters and editors to be fair and to build public trust, were effectively eliminated as too restrictive for the Trump phenomenon.
The man responsible for that rash decision, top editor Dean Baquet, later said the Rutenberg piece “nailed” his thinking, and went on to insist that Trump “challenged our language” and that, “He will have changed journalism.”
Baquet also said of the struggle for fairness, “I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” adding: “we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”
Baquet was wrong. Trump indeed was challenging, but it was Baquet who changed journalism. He’s the one who decided that the standards of fairness and nonpartisanship could be broken without consequence.
After that, the floodgates opened, and virtually every so-called news article reflected a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton. Stories, photos, headlines, placement in the paper — all the tools were used to pick a president, the facts be damned.
Now the bill is coming due. Shocked by Trump’s victory and mocked even by liberals for its bias, the paper is also apparently bleeding readers — and money.

I’ve gotten letters from people who say they cancelled their Times subscriptions and, to judge from a cryptic line in a Thursday article, the problem is more than anecdotal.
Citing reader anger over election coverage, Rutenberg wrote that, “Most ominously, it came in the form of canceled subscriptions.”
Having grown up at The Times, I am pained by its decline. More troubling, as the flagship of American journalism, it is giving all reporters a black eye. Its standards were the source of its credibility, and eliminating them has made it less than ordinary.
It is because of those concerns that I repeat a suggestion about how to fix the mess. Because he now concedes a problem, perhaps Sulzberger will consider taking action.
Using an outside law firm or even in-house reporters, he must assess how and why Baquet made the decision to sever the paper from its roots. He must assess the impact on reporters and editors, and whether they felt pressure to conform their stories to Baquet’s political bias.
Whatever the findings, the publisher must insist that the standards of fairness again become a fundamental tenet in the news room. As an added guarantee, he must insist that the paper enlarge its thinking about diversity to include journalists who disagree with the Times embedded liberal slant. There has to be a difference of perspective to judge where fairness lies.
Readers, and former readers, should be part of the process. Many already know that the paper must get its head out of parochial New York and into the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere.
This is about survival. If it doesn’t change now, the Gray Lady’s days surely are numbered.
To our readers,
When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years — cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity.
After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office?
As we reflect on this week’s momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.
We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty.
Sincerely,
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
Publisher
Dean Baquet
Executive Editor
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2)  Trump team warns Obama against major moves against Israel at UN  
“Obama shouldn’t go seeking new adventures or pushing policies that clearly don’t match Trump’s positions,” the president-elect’s national security adviser tells Politico • Senior Trump adviser: With Trump there won’t be any coercion against Israel.

Reports surfaced last week, before the Nov. 8 elections, that outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama could be preparing an unpleasant surprise for Israel, most likely in the form of calling on the United Nations Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state.


Now, with Donald Trump set to step into the White House, his aides say Obama should not even think about taking such steps, according to American political website Politico.
“On big, transformative issues where President Obama and President-elect Trump are not in alignment, I don’t think it’s in keeping with the spirit of the transition … to try to push through agenda items that are contrary to the president-elect’s positions,” a Trump national security adviser told Politico on Thursday. “It’s not going to be just counterproductive, but it will also send mixed messages.”
He added: “The machinery of government is going to have to keep grinding as best it can. But Obama and his aides shouldn’t go seeking new adventures or pushing through policies that clearly don’t match Trump’s positions.”
Israel vehemently opposes any move by Obama to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution, which it views as hostile to Israeli interests, especially if he was to ask other world powers to embrace U.S.-drafted parameters for a two-state solution.
One Israeli official, who asked not be identified, told Politico that any such move would represent a “dagger in the heart” of the peace process — perhaps forever.


2a) Israel in the Trump Era 
By Caroline Glick

What can we expect from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration?

The positions that Trump struck during the presidential campaign were sometimes inconsistent and even contradictory. So it is impossible to forecast precisely what he will do once in office. But not everything is shrouded in mystery. Indeed, some important characteristics of his administration are already apparent.

First of all, President Barack Obama’s legacy will die the moment he leaves the White House on January 20. Republicans may not agree on much. But Trump and his party do agree that Obama’s policies must be abandoned and replaced. And they will work together to rollback all of Obama’s actions as president.

On the domestic policy front this means first and foremost that Obamacare will be repealed and replaced with health industry reforms that open the medical insurance market to competition.

With the support of the Republican-controlled Senate, Trump will end Obama’s push to reshape the US Supreme Court in the image of the activist, indeed, authoritarian Israeli Supreme Court. During his four year term, Trump may appoint as many as four out of nine justices. In so doing he will shape the court for the next generation.

Trump made clear during the race that the justices he selects will oppose the Obama-led leftist plan to transform the Court into an imperial judiciary that determines social and cultural norms and legislates from the bench.

Trump will also clean out the IRS. Under Obama, the IRS became an instrument of political warfare. Conservative and right wing pro-Israel groups were systematically discriminated against and targeted for abuse. It is possible to assume that Trump will fire the IRS officials who have been involved in this discriminatory abuse of power.

To be sure, much is still unclear about Trump’s foreign policy. But here too, certain things are already known. Trump will vacate the US’s signature from the nuclear deal with Iran.

Trump will not be able to repair the damage the deal has already caused – at least not immediately. He will not be able to reimpose the multilateral and UN Security Council sanctions on Iran that the nuclear deal cancelled. Such a move will require prolonged negotiations and their conclusion is far from assured.

Trump will likewise be unable to take back the billions of dollars that Iran has already received due to the abrogation of economic sanctions and through cash payoffs from the Obama administration.

At the same time, from his first day in office, Trump will change the trajectory of US policy towards Iran. He will oppose Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. He will oppose Iran’s rise to regional hegemony.

A second conclusion that it is already possible to draw about the Trump presidency is that Trump will be much more like the hands off Ronald Reagan than the hands on Obama. His past as a businessman along with his lack of governmental or political experience will lead Trump to set general policy guidelines and goals and delegate responsibility for crafting suitable policies and programs to his cabinet secretaries and advisors.
This means that personnel will very much be policy in the Trump administration. Whereas Obama’s cabinet members and advisors have been more or less interchangeable since Obama himself determined everything from the details of his policies to the ways that the policies would be sold to the public (or hidden from the public), and implemented, Trump’s pick of advisors will be strategically significant.

Clearly it is too early to know who Trump’s advisors and cabinet members will be. But there is good reason for Israel to be encouraged by the advisors who have worked with Trump during the campaign.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence is one of the most pro-Israel policymakers in America. Former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich is an outspoken ally of Israel and of the US-Israel alliance. Likewise, former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, former senator Rick Santorum, retired general Mike Flynn, and former UN ambassador John Bolton are all extraordinary champions of the US alliance with Israel.

Trump’s Israel affairs advisors during the campaign, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt are also among the strongest advocates of the US-Israel alliance that have arisen in decades.

The striking friendliness of the Trump election team is even more notable when we consider what Israel would have faced from a Hillary Clinton administration. Clinton’s cabinet-in-waiting at the George Soros-funded and John Podesta-run Center for American Progress contained no serious advocates of the US-Israel alliance.

And her stable of advisors were not merely indifferent to Israel.

The Wikileaks revelations from Podesta’s emails, like the correspondences published by Judicial Watch from Clinton’s tenure as secretary made clear that Clinton’s team included several advisors with deep-seated hostility if not animus toward Israelis and toward the Israeli government.

The third thing that is already clear about the nature of the Trump administration is that it will not hesitate to abandon received wisdom on a whole host of issues and initiate policies that the bipartisan policy elites wouldn’t be caught dead even talking about.

Trump’s victory was first and foremost a defeat for the American elite, what Prof. Angelo Codevilla memorably referred to as America’s “ruling class.”

Trump’s campaign did not merely target the Democratic establishment. He attacked the Republican establishment as well. True, in his victory speech Trump said that he intends to heal the rifts in American society – presumably starting with his own party. But at least one thing ought to be clear about that reunification. As the president-elect, Trump will set the terms of the healing process.

There is every reason to expect that at a minimum, Trump will not soon forgive the Republicans who refused to support and even opposed his presidential bid. Members of the NeverTrump camp will be denied positions and influence over the Trump administration and sent into the political desert.

Another establishment that fell on its sword in this election is the American Jewish establishment. Led by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish establishment, including its largest donors, stood almost as one in its support for Clinton. The American Jewish leadership placed their partisan preferences above their communal interests and responsibilities. In so doing they enfeebled the community in a manner that will be difficult to repair.

Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have anti-Semites in their ranks. The Jewish establishment ignored and pretended away the Democratic anti-Semites, even when they were burning Israeli flags at the Democratic convention. They said nothing when anti-Israel ravings that were at best borderline anti-Semitic of senior Clinton advisors like Thomas Pickering and Anne Marie Slaughter were published by Judicial Watch.

On the other hand, the Jewish establishment castigated Trump as anti-Semitic for the presence of anti-Semites like David Duke on the fringes of the Republican Party. Legitimate criticisms of anti-Israel financier George Soros were condemned as anti-Semitic while truly anti-Semitic assaults on Trump donor Sheldon Adelson by Clinton backers went unaddressed.

The consequence of the Jewish establishment’s almost total mobilization for Clinton is clear. The Trump White House won’t have an open door policy for those who falsely accused Trump of anti-Semitism.

Jewish Americans are going to have to either oust the leaders of the groups that put their party before their community or establish new organizations to defend their interests. Whatever path is chosen, the process of rebuilding the communal infrastructure the community’s leaders have wrecked will be long, difficult and expensive.

Unlike the American Jewish community, for Israel, the defeat of the American establishment is a positive development. The American foreign policy elite’s default bipartisan position on Israel was bad for both Israel and the health and reliability of its alliance with the US.

As I explained in my book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, there was a dismaying consistency in US policy towards Israel that ran from Bill Clinton’s administration through the George W. Bush administration and on to the Obama administration.

At least since the Clinton years, the received wisdom of the American foreign policy elite has been that the US must seek to swiftly cause Israel to sign a deal with the PLO. The contours of the deal are similarly clear to all concerned. Israel must surrender control over all or most of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and transfer the areas, more or less Jew free, to the PLO.

This bipartisan view is inherently hostile to Israel. It places all the responsibility for making peace on Israel. And as the sole responsible party, Israel is also the sole party that is guilty for the absence of peace. The flipside is similarly dismal. Palestinians are absolved of responsibility for terrorism, hatred and political warfare against Israel.

The anti-Israel hostility inherent in the two-state paradigm has brought on a situation where even pro-Israel US officials end up joining their anti-Israel colleagues in bearing down on Israel to act in manners that are inimical both to its national security and to the very concept of a US-Israel alliance. The foreign policy ruling class’s commitment to the two-state paradigm has blinded them to Israel’s strategic importance to the US and caused them to see the US’s only stable ally in the region as a drag on US interests.

Many of Trump’s advisors, including Gingrich, whose name has been raised as a leading candidate either to serve as Trump’s White House chief of staff or as Secretary of State, have rejected this received wisdom. In a Republican presidential debate in 2011, Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an “invented people,” and noted that they indoctrinate their children to perceive Jews as subhuman and seek their annihilation. For his statement of fact, Gingrich was brutally assaulted by Democratic and Republican elites.

But he never rescinded his statement.

Trump’s election provides Israel with the first opportunity in fifty years to reshape its alliance with the US.

This new alliance must be based a common understanding and respect for what Israel has to offer the US as well as the limits of what the US can offer Israel. The limits of US assistance are in large part the consequences of the many genies that Obama unleashed during the past eight years. And the opportunities will come more in areas related to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and the political war being waged against it by the Europeans and the international left than to the challenges posed by the ascendance of Islamism in the Middle East.

To be sure, Trump is inconsistent. But from what we do know we must recognize that his rise is a deflection point in US history.

It is a rare moment where things that were unimaginable a month ago are possible. And if we play our cards right, like the American people, Israel stands to gain in ways we never dreamed.
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3) Indict Hillary Clinton

While Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” was marching to the polls pitchforks and torches in hand to deny her access to the presidency and a new revenue source for the Clinton Foundation, Scooter Libby got his law license back and was reinstated to the bar by the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Libby was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff when he was charged with obstruction of an investigation into the “outing” of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Plame was in fact a desk jockey at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, not a secret agent in harm’s way. As Investor’s Business Daily noted:
Remember the alleged outing of the already known CIA officer and desk jockey Valerie Plame? We were told then that the Vanity Fair cover girl's 15 minutes of fame jeopardized our national security even if everybody already knew who she was.

"Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, went to jail because his memory of events and who said what to whom regarding Plame differed from the recollections of others, particularly news reporters.
Libby in fact did not out Plame who was not a covert operative. Hillary Clinton, whose faulty memory caused her to say to the FBI she couldn’t recall some 39 times, did in fact endanger the lives of foreign operatives in her “carelessness”, as FBI Director James Comey put it, regarding classified emails.

Scooter Libby’s “crimes” included making “false” statements to the FBI in the case of the alleged “outing” of well-known CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame. If anyone has made false statements to the FBI, it is one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Saying you don’t recall more than three dozen times doesn’t past the Pinocchio test.

Plame was as noted a well-known desk jockey at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Hillary’s lies and reckless carelessness included the transmission of emails containing the names of actual CIA operatives in the field involved
in clandestine operations. As the New York Post reported:
Hillary Clinton’s e-mails included the names of CIA officers serving overseas and foreigners who are on the spy agency’s payroll -- potentially endangering their lives, it was reported Monday.

“It’s a death sentence,” a senior intelligence-community official told the Observer. “If we’re lucky, only [foreign] agents, not our officers, will get killed because of this.”
The paper said the intelligence community is in panic mode trying to determine which agents may have been compromised.

CIA officials assume foreign agencies intercepted unencrypted e-mails stored on Clinton’s.  home server while she was secretary of state.
So why was Libby convicted and Hillary Clinton not even indicted? In an interesting historical footnote, Comey, who falsely claimed no serious prosecutor would take the case of Hillary Clinton, was among those who found sufficient evidence to prosecute and convict Libby. Comey, it appears, has even more explaining to do. As the Daily Caller reports:
Washington D.C.-based former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova believes the Libby decision is a “terrible blow” to FBI Director James Comey, who announced Sunday that the agency had no new conclusions on Hillary Clinton and her private server from the 650,000 new emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

“Scooter Libby was restored to the practice of law by the DC court of appeals because they believed that Scooter Libby presented evidence that his original trial had been corrupted by false testimony. And that false testimony was coerced by Jim Comey’s friend Patrick Fitzgerald and Comey was part of the team to destroy the vice president of the United States and it didn’t happen,” DiGenova said.

He added,” It’s such a smack in the face to Jim Comey.  Comey and Fitzgerald tried to frame Scooter Libby, and they did….”
The evidence against Hillary is damning, and the line of prosecutors willing to take the case would encircle the FBI building in Washington, D.C. Judge Michael Mikasey, former attorney general under President George W. Bush, listed the charges that Hillary Clinton could face on Fax Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends:
We are looking at a range of things, everything from the misdemeanor that was charged against General Petraeus, which is putting classified information in an unprotected, classified setting, that’s a misdemeanor. Then there is destroying government records. Then there is taking information related to the national defense and treating it with gross negligence such as it becomes disclosed. And finally, there is obstruction of justice.”
There is the destruction of evidence under Congressional subpoena. As even Comey admitted, Hillary lied about sending and receiving classified material; about having only one device, and about turning over all her emails. If intent is needed, what is accidental about smashing devices with hammers or using Bleach Bit to render emails unrecoverable? If you need a motive for having a private server, which speaks to intent, the obvious purpose is to cover up the “pay to play” trail that leads from the State Department to the Clinton Foundation.

As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, donations to the Clinton Foundation even played a factor in the refusal of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to designate Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist organization for two years:
Hillary's emails may be only the tip of an iceberg that could include Clinton Foundation donations to shield Boko Haram from being designated a terrorist group and her brother's involvement in a Haitian gold mine….

In interviews with the Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which seems more and more to be an unseemly mix of charitable work with the political and business interests of Clinton Foundation donors.

And then there's Hillary's strange dealings regarding the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, which just recently pledged its allegiance to the ever-expanding Islamic State -- dubbed the "JV team" by President Obama, who has yet to make good on his pledge to degrade and destroy them.

Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton's watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department "refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011" after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria…

How many of the more than 30,000 "personal" emails that Hillary deleted from her private account relate to these matters? Is that why she needed a private email server? We need to see that server. It might provide, er, a veritable gold mine of information.
This is but one example. The public corruption of Hilary and Bill Clinton was also on display in Colombia, Haiti, and other places. Hillary Clinton has endangered the lives of our foreign operatives, placed our national security at risk, lied to Congress, the FBI, and the American people, and used her public office to enrich herself and her family without benefit if a business or private sector job.

Various FBI offices are said to still be investigating the Clinton Foundation and we can only hope so. Comey doesn’t think there’s any fire under all that smoke but perhaps a Trump attorney general might think differently. We have hope in Trump’s own remarks in a presidential debate as reported by the New York Times:
About 20 minutes into the debate, Donald Trump delivered a menacing threat to Hillary Clinton. “If I win,” he warned, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.” …
“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton observed.
“Because,” Mr. Trump replied “you’d be in jail.”
This is not a Third World country where leaders incarcerate their predecessors and opponents on a whim. But we are a nation of laws and Hillary Clinton has broken many of them. Her only accomplishment in public office has been to so far avoid prosecution. President Trump should keep his promise to incarcerate this fugitive from justice. The voters have denied Hillary Clinton the presidency. A Trump Justice Department should deny Hillary Clinton her freedom.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human EventsReason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications. 
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4)The End of the Beginning


Paul Krugman writing for the New York Times on Wednesday expressed dismay at the victory of Donald Trump. He said in part; “We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.” Here is a newsflash for Mr. Krugman: we do.
Trump might not have been a “perfect” candidate. But his resounding election represents a collapse of the establishment. An establishment based on crime. The halls of power live off of theft through confiscatory taxation, licensed killing by abortion, and political kidnapping. An establishment, never forget, that Mr. Krugman supports.
Yes, Mr. Krugman, we still believe in the rule of law. Trump’s election was all about restoring the rule of law and applying the law to an establishment that feels exempt from legal oversight. Yet the establishment does not understand this reasoning. The only possible reason for Trump’s support, from the point of view of the elites, is some sort of latent desire in the minds of the productive citizens of the United States for the “good old days” of lynchings and segregation. I hardly think it is the Trump supporters that are stuck in the past.

Judging by the sheer outrage radiating from the media clearing houses after the results came in, the establishment feels threatened. They do not feel comfortable in a world that is not dominated by the Clinton and Bush machines. In a nation where the elite are shunned, their practices are scrutinized, and the people hold institutional crime to account, they are operating in completely new territory.

We cannot let them get accustomed to the terrain. When the Allied forces in World War II swept into North Africa, exposing the soft underbelly of Nazi-occupied Europe, Winston Churchill made the following rousing observation: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” I ask the readers, what would have happened if the Allies had stopped advancing after reaching Tunisia? Hitler would have made up the lost time very easily.

And in the words of Patrick Henry, we must not react by “lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope.” Trump is merely one man. Every vehicle of the establishment will be called out to oppose him or buy his people off. If we bask in the sun of Trump’s largely unexpected victory, the establishment will recover from the knockout blow and again operate without the oversight of the people. Criminality will advance yet again from the bureaus of D.C.

Electoral victory, and the four years of respite from the “norm” that the victory brings, (the same norm which Mr. Krugman longs for) must be backed up by real political action at all levels of government. Allow me to set forward a list of tactical objectives that must be understood, and pushed, over our short respite from an establishment-controlled paradigm.

1. Abortion should be limited by regulation of abortion mills to keep them sanitary.

Following the Kermit Gosnell trial in 2013, state level regulations have been slowly closing down many unsanitary and dangerous facilities. Abortion mill closures quantifiably save lives. We can step in here and force movement in the right direction by entering into a conversation with our state representatives. It is up to us to hold our delegates to their promises. Also, giving financial aid to organizations that help single mothers and adoption agencies, or founding new services with the same goals, replaces the demand for establishment-licensed killing.

2. Property taxes should be opposed, and replaced or abolished where possible.

The bureaucratic elite lives off of confiscatory taxation. Property taxes are the least justified because the claim behind the tax is that the government has a right over private property. Clearly, the reasoning violates the right to property held so dear by the Founders.

Private business and private charity should replace government coercion in supplying the services financed by property taxation. Local school systems and welfare need some vigorous competition from private sources. In Detroit, illiteracy rates hit 93% in 2015. The citizens of Detroit are literally being robbed in order to finance the creation of an ignorant class of citizens doomed to sit on the state’s payroll. Detroit’s situation is merely an extrapolation of where the rest of the nation is heading.

Such actions are unacceptable in a country wishing to preserve its freedom. But we cannot expect others to do the work for us. Private institutions that actually help those suffering and abused children should be founded. Or perhaps a new service could grow off an existing non-profit or religious organization like a church or synagogue. Either way, those children must be saved from the entity that wishes to enslave them, and thereby a powerful argument for property tax reductions may emerge.

Do not “lie supinely on your back” and hope that your newly elected representative will do it for you. You elected him or her to get out of your way, not to solve your problems.

3. Voter fraud must be limited by auditing the voter rolls for deceased persons, illegals, and felons.

Prior to the election on November 9, several stories broke about voter fraud in VirginiaCalifornia, and Colorado, just to name a few. Now that we have elected legislators opposed to voter fraud, it is time to hold them to their promises. Call them, write them, and enlist the support of the community and other elected officials such as the sheriff. Just and fair elections are essential to the republican process. Oh, and yes, Mr. Krugman, fair elections do represent the rule of law.

The above is only a very short list of issues that must be hit, and hit hard while the establishment is still reeling. Private entrepreneurship, lobbying of state representatives, writing letters to the editor, political blogging, going down to your state house and testifying before a legislative committee; it all needs to happen. We have our respite from the onslaught of the criminal establishment, but we need to do something with it or we will not be better off four years down the road.

To modify an expression I have heard quite often recently -- we’ve drained the swamp… but we still have to kill the gators.
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5)

Dear Progressives, Thank You for Reminding Us of the Real Reasons We Fight You




As if they see the world in only one or two dimensions, so-called “progressives” seem incapable of processing their overwhelming emotions outside a narrow framework of self-pity and raging narcissism. Because they appear to think about the world around them in ways guided entirely by emotion, unlike their foes who see emotion as a dangerous foundation for permanent change, they react to disappointment or loss as self-righteous victims, or antisocial thugs, rather than mentally sound individuals. It seems necessary to their fragile psyches to believe that any opposition to their obvious superiority is illegitimate, and therefore its proponents deserving of punishment. The irony of this fact will be utterly lost on any progressive reading this.

We have been subjected to their scorn and ridicule for years. You will find it in the comments section that follows this or any other article that identifies them. However, you can also find it in your pick of violent confrontations with people expressing a view they don’t like, or assaults on police, or riots over fake narratives, or obnoxious thugs who verbally and physically assault otherwise decent people who resist. It’s all of a kind, and a common thread in all of this seems to be their belief in a right to be as offensive and aggressive as one can be, as if this validates the illusion that they’re right, and so are entitled to correct the nonbeliever. There is also the implied premise that virtue is the sole property of these embittered, angry zealots, whose reflexive dehumanization of every person who disagrees animates so much of what they say or do.

Normal, well-adjusted, mature people do not function at this level of hatred and vitriol against total strangers, or especially friends. Mentally well people do not insist that their behavior, no matter how anti-social, is permissible because they have granted themselves a “right” to do it, on the basis of their own “moral” superiority. Certainly each person is entitled to his or her own sense of morality, and those who possess a real one recognize that it is motivated by something greater than service only to themselves and their political agenda. However, when one crosses the line from proclaiming his morality to deciding that open hatred and violence are permissible to compel others to adopt and practice his brand of self-serving morality, any claim to objective virtue vanishes. Read Facebook and you know what I mean. In their bigotry, leftist moralists angrily chided us before and after the election for not admitting to our own bigotry, which they have made the sole explanation for our not surrendering to their agenda.

These unwell agents of coercive change are putting on quite a show for us and the world since their hero, whose primary qualification for president was that she urinates while sitting (perhaps), lost an unlosable contest to Donald Trump. To hear the rioting leftists tell it, or even the non-rioting ones, racism, or sexism, or Islamophobia, or homophobia, or some other slur, shared by tens of millions of strangers, and many friends, is the only possible explanation for how they and their burgeoning message of intolerance and division could have failed to win the day, the century, and eternity. Needless to say, those tens of millions of people, most of whom don’t belong to a special interest group which has become accustomed to using government as a bludgeon to advance undemocratic “change” for the last eight years, bear no actual resemblance to the caricature the left needs them to be. Such is virtue on the left.

What is lost on these human fire hoses of vitriol and intolerance is that they, and their smears and violent behavior in a still-civilized society, were foremost among the reasons that people voted for an alternative that did not include their agenda, after years of having radical government officials force liberal “change” down our throats. That their goals or objectives might suffer troubled no one who voted against them, since anything considered desirable and worthy to so many unhinged and irrational people is obviously something to be wary of in a society of people who don’t blow the place up because they are angry. Calling for vindictive retaliation against political opponents, whites, the wealthy, religious, those who hold other beliefs, cops, or an ordered society in general, all after getting everything you’ve wanted and more for eight years, helpfully affirms for normal citizens that these folks are largely what’s wrong. No matter what they get, it is never enough, because it never will be.

In case you didn’t know who would rule society in a Clinton presidency, the radicals are rioting over the opportunity they lost. They fully intended to conquer us. Some have openly said that there will be bloodshed now, which they seem to desire as their own overt racism and bigotry, superimposed upon their enemies, is laid bare. What target of “progressive” hatred, being finally backed into a corner and forced to defend the right to think differently, and live free of the tyranny of frothing mental patients, would vote for that? It doesn’t matter whether the haters are black or white, female or male, gay or straight, Muslim or not, or any other self-appointed superior class. We are repulsed by the bigotry of their monolithic ideologies, not their identity.

As bad as the message is, many people have finally come to understand that the messengers are equally problematic, and that if they demand something, it’s quite probably bad for the rest of us. They have declared their goals and ours to be mutually exclusive. They serve only themselves, and their own subjective beliefs, while railing that all other beliefs must be punished and condemned. That they do this while simultaneously preaching to us about tolerance and unity is almost too ridiculous to describe. Delusionalism and progressivism apparently are twins.
These vengeful members of the Democrat party are doing us a favor. They are reminding us that there is no middle ground in their agenda, and they still intend to control us. They hate what they have decided we are, and are not remotely interested in hearing otherwise. They are showing us that if they don’t get their way, they will respond with violence, verbal and physical, because we do not agree or embrace an agenda which purposefully spits on our history, our beliefs, our rights, our faith and our patriotism. We cannot negotiate with that, which to them means the conflict is entirely our fault. If only we would stop resisting and allow them to enforce their agenda, or punish us terminally, it would all be better -- for them. Whenever they burn a flag, that is the America they demand. This is what radical extremism looks like.

Don’t let the therapy dogs, the crayons, or the cry-ins fool you. They are not asking how we can come together. They are not seeking dialogue. They discuss only how to defeat us and take what they want. We have no place in their thought-controlled utopian disaster. Winning this election only delayed the total victory they still pursue. The prize is everything we have, every freedom we treasure, and every right that protects us from them and from forced conversion to their conflicting and incoherent ideologies, each of which is long on victimhood, smug self-righteousness and anger, but short on wisdom. We will either win, or be conquered and ruled by emotional bigots and violent sociopaths, who thankfully remind us each day how far they have already descended, and why we cannot surrender and join them
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