Obama finally decided it was time to go to Louisiana and give comfort to those who have been decimated by the flooding. How does the visit of a wet blanket comfort those who have been flooded?
Hillary decided it was better to raise more money in California for her campaign so she can outspend Trump and buy the election with ads demonizing him rather than go to Louisiana. Maybe Obama did not invite her to join him? Will Bill show up when Obama's plane arrives as he did when he visited Atty. Gen. Lynch to make sure Comey would not call for his wife to be indicted?
I find it so interesting the Clinton's will fold their foundation tent once she is president but not before. Are they sending their donor's a message they need to get their funds in before November if they want their requests and favors recorded?
As noted in previous memos this campaign is quickly sinking into flooding and muddy waters as the press does everything they can to avoid the stench emanating from the Clinton's while doing everything they can to demonize Trump and challenge everything he says and does. (See 1 and 1a below.)
The one positive that favors Trump, but will not be acknowledged by his detractors in the press and media and certainly not by Hillary, is that Donald seems capable of learning, realizing he may have been incorrect and capable of modifying. He is a businessman in a political world and early on made some decisions that have proven to have stuck in his throat. In Donald's case it seems his changing of his mind is dictated by his learning curve whereas in flip flopping by Hillary, and there have been many instances, it seems less attributable to learning and more to naked political calculation..
Meanwhile the ISIS JV team is enlisting young kids to blow up weddings, Erdowan is getting in bed with Putin, our Air Force might wind up sharing the airfield we built in Turkey with the Russian Airforce which seeks to bomb those who are challenging Syria's leader Putin supports and China continues to expand their military bases in The China Sea.
Domestically speaking, insurance companies are fleeing Obamacare, the deficit mounts and the racial divide widens. Obama continues opening Guantanamo's gates and releasing terrorists so they can return to killing unbelievers. Meanwhile, Hillary appears on late night TV shows but refuses to be interviewed by the press because a few reporters might ask embarrassing questions causing her to lie some more and a U.S Olympic medal winner is pilloried for? you guessed it - lying.
In typical Clinton weasel fashion she tried to blame her e mail problem on former Sec. Powell but was unable to get away with it because he stood up for himself. Blacks thought Powell to be an Uncle Tom type so most will not view Hillary's actions as those of an important white person of wealth and stature dumping on a black man but it smacks of just that. The Clinton's prove again what low life they are.
As for how they plan handling their Foundation, if what they are doing is wrong if she becomes president why was it okay while she was Sec. of State? I thought selling your office was wrong period!
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1) A Trump Deportation Reversal
Hints emerge that he is rethinking one of his worst policies.
Donald Trump on policy is something less than a North Star, but that has its advantages if he jettisons one of his least attractive positions. Could the Republican be reconsidering his promise to deport the 11 million or more illegal immigrants estimated to be living and working in the U.S.?
That’s the intriguing possibility coming from the Trump campaign on the weekend. Mr. Trump met Saturday with his new Hispanic advisory council and attendees told the press the candidate seemed to be moving in that direction. Univision reports that three attendees said Mr. Trump “plans to present an immigration plan in Colorado Thursday that will include finding a way to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants.”
Trump advisers Kellyanne Conway and Sen. Jeff Sessions didn’t deny the reports on Sunday. “What I’m certain about is that he did not make a firm commitment yesterday, or the meeting the other day, about what he will do with that,” Mr. Sessions said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But he did listen, and he’s talking about it.”
Go for it, Mr. Trump. The Clinton campaign will cry “flip-flop,” but most voters would welcome the change as a sign of political progress and tolerance. A policy of mass deportation could never happen without the kind of human and economic disruption the American people won’t support once they see what it requires. House-to-house searches and forced family separation would cause a political uproar that would stop such a policy cold, as it should. The abrupt removal of millions from the workforce would probably cause a recession.
It’s possible to improve U.S. immigration controls without such a draconian policy that millions of Republican primary voters didn’t favor. Mass deportation is a political and economic loser.
1a) What Trump’s Foreign Policy Gets Right
The GOP nominee’s speech last week was a serious contribution, in sharp contrast with Clinton and Obama’s non-strategy.
By JOHN BOLTON
Had one of Donald Trump’s Republican opponents during the campaign for the GOP nomination given the same speech on combating global terrorism he gave last week, it would have raised few eyebrows. Naturally, competing candidates would have disputed particular points—some vigorously—but the speech’s overall analysis fits well within mainstream conservative and Republican thinking.
Some Trump opponents and supporters alike will be distressed by this news, but the speech visibly sharpens the contradictions with Hillary Clinton, who clearly would continue President Obama’s nonstrategy concerning radical Islam—now confirmed to include paying ransom for hostages. More broadly, the speech underlines why terrorism and other grave national-security threats should take center stage in the presidential race.
Mr. Trump rightly sees an ideological war being waged against the West by a hateful, millenarian obsession targeting core American constitutional and philosophical principles. From that assessment flow several policy consequences, most important the imperative to destroy the terrorist threat rapidly and comprehensively before it kills and maims more innocent people. Mr. Trump correctly argues that, in combating Islamic State, al Qaeda and others, “we must use ideological warfare” as well as stronger military and intelligence operations, and be “a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers.” This strategy is entirely consistent with what Jordan’s King Abdullah II and other Arab leaders characterize as a civil war within Islam.
In contrast, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton still believe terrorism is a law-enforcement issue. They fail to grasp the ideological war we are in and therefore refuse to combat the enemy effectively. There were once those who did not see Communism as an ideological threat. They played down their views publicly because U.S. public opinion was overwhelmingly contrary, as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are doing now regarding terrorism. Mr. Trump should emphatically move the debate about radical Islam into the campaign spotlight. Let’s see who stands where.
Mr. Trump’s speech also demonstrated his willingness to face the hand dealt an incoming president, rather than following ideological abstractions, as Mr. Obama has consistently done. Although Mr. Trump restated his opposition to President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq and overthrow of the dictator Saddam Hussein, he nonetheless argues correctly that Mr. Obama’s “reckless” withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011 rested on an “election-driven timetable” that “surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS,” thereby constituting “a catastrophic mistake.”
The wider implications of Mr. Trump’s speech were apparent in the subsequent commentary on two points: The GOP nominee’s immigration views as they intersect with terrorism, and his disdain for “nation building.” Let us take them in turn.
Mr. Trump correctly identified the terrorist threat as fundamentally ideological. It would be inexcusable for America not to combat that ideology in multiple ways, both offensively and defensively. Countering Islamic State’s successful propaganda and recruitment efforts, especially digitally, and exposing them for the barbarians their conduct proves them to be are critical elements of a winning plan.
Confronted with ideological threats, America is entirely justified in raising appropriate immigration protections, which is neither unprecedented nor contrary to existing law. Even now, a central statutory requirement for U.S. naturalization is that applicants be “of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution . . . and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.” That sounds very much like Mr. Trump’s speech, and hardly earth-shaking. Whether existing authorities suffice or whether new legislation is needed is unclear, but the broad policy isn’t.
On nation building, the debate is confused, with many advocates mistakenly conflating it with “intervention.” The two are different. President George H.W. Bush’s November 1992 decision to intervene militarily in anarchic Somalia, and his successor Bill Clinton’s far-different policies, highlight the distinction.
Agree or disagree with President Bush’s Somalia intervention, he precisely defined his limited objective of opening channels for humanitarian supplies. Although the military operations were blessed by the United Nations Security Council, Mr. Bush was always clear that they would be under U.S. command. So fixed was Mr. Bush on the intervention’s limits, he showed remarkable deference to President-elect Clinton by offering to withdraw all American forces by Jan. 20, 1993.
But Mr. Clinton had much grander objectives, namely practicing “assertive multilateralism.” Somalia was his chosen vehicle for nation building. Mr. Clinton’s ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright, praised Security Council action endorsing the president’s nation-building project, saying, “With this resolution, we will embark on an unprecedented enterprise aimed at nothing less than the restoration of an entire country as a proud, functioning and viable member of the community of nations.”
Disaster soon followed. And subsequent American nation-building efforts in other countries fared little better. Although bilateral financial, technical and military assistance can advance U.S. foreign-policy objectives, the local peoples themselves must know what they are about. We can’t do it for them and shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
This foreign-policy reality has been clear since the Marshall Plan. Following World War II, Washington provided assistance in various forms but insisted that European states conduct nation rebuilding, relying on existing legal, political and cultural foundations far stronger than those prevalent in less-developed regions. Mr. Trump isn’t committing heresy by saying America’s recent attempts at nation-building haven’t ended well. He’s telling the truth.
More important, whether Mr. Trump is “interventionist” or “noninterventionist” in his proclivities is really a nonissue, as are academic flights of fancy such as characterizing U.S. “multilateralism” positively and “unilateralism” negatively. These are essentially word games about tools rather than policies, like asking in the abstract “do you favor using a knife or a spoon?” Obviously, the critical question for real policy makers is “to do what?”
National security should be central to the 2016 presidential contest. Mr. Trump’s speech is a serious contribution to that end. He needs to maintain his focus and discipline, and by so doing compel Mrs. Clinton to defend her intention to continue President Obama’s failed polices.
Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
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