This from my dear friend and fellow memo reader: I feel almost as bad for the rioters as I did for my friend who sent me a wedding invitation and I RSVP’d, “Regrets. Maybe next time.”
Also
"One more state legislature and the Republicans would have the 75% needed to pass Constitutional Amendments without Congress. Which state would be a likely #37? J--"
I responded: "California, the la la land state. Me"
And
"Again, more great stuff from you.
Thanks so much!
Can't wait to see how Trump fills his cabinet positions.
Looking forward to another great day in the USA,
B------"
---
This from another dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 1 below.)As well as this:https://pjmedia.com/
My response: "Too early to tell but let his word's reach God's ears. Donald has the potential and all the signs have aligned. Me"
And finally:
This from a dear friend and neighbor and fellow memo reader: "“God’s own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything — even lunacy — is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.”;
— Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German-born theoretical physicist; in a letter to his son, Hans Albert, about life in the United States, including its passing political passions, May 1, 1954. J---"
===Then a response from a very dear friend, learned attorney and sometime fellow memo reader: "SORRY I CANNOT READ THIS E-MAIL RIGHT NOW AS I AM HEADING TO L.A. TO MARCH WITH NANCY P. IN A TRUMP PROTEST. I CANNOT ALLOW HIM TO DRAIN THE SWAMP...
A---"I responded that: " I understand and when you get to California tell Nancy P she can keep her doctor but only after reading the fine print. Me"
+++
A couple of op eds suggesting the sky is not going to fall because Trump is going to be our next president.
But I believe you can be sure of several things:
a) The mass media will not change and will continue to be biased and perhaps more so.
b) Liberals will continue to believe Trump is a threat to their sanity and security.
c) Schumer will have a difficult job getting his party to support Trump's legislation even though a few remaining centrists may want to spend money on roads and infrastructure.
d) There will be some flash points between Ryan and Trump on increasing our deficit but they will be amicably resolved. However, the press will highlight and portray them as being far more serious and factious.
e) At some point Trump will be tested by our adversaries and whatever Trump's response the mass media and liberals will pounce and take him to task regardless of what action he takes.
Why am I so dour? Because biases, misguided thinking and years of believing they know best will be hard , if not impossible, for liberals and their mass media dolts to expunge because it is part of their DNA just as my conservative thinking and philosophy is mine. The difference is empirical evidence and history are mostly on my side.
I am not talking about the right and obligation of the loyal opposition to oppose that which they philosophically reject which,with respect to Trump, will be most everything he favors, says and does.
Mitch McConnell, from Obama's git go, stated his job was to defeat Obama. I understood what he meant. In fact, Reid did more to defeat Obama than McConnell because Reid allowed the Senate to become dysfunctional while Obama took his pen and cell phone and thought he could run around Congress and the Constitution, cramming his failed policies down our throats. This lasted for eight years but all the while Obama kept losing at the ballot box, often in the courts and eventually in rural America which is a nation unto itself book ended by California and New York.
The mass media and Liberals are having, and will continue to have, a hard time adjusting to the reality they have been rejected and Obama's legacy has been and will be shredded.
Losers lose and Obama has proven to be a loser and the numbers tell the story. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
+++
Hillary blames Comey for her pathetic campaign and this is why she lost. She always takes full responsibility except when she does not. (See 3 below.)
====
Changes acomin! (See 4 below.)
And
Who is Stephen Bannon? (See 4a below.)
===
My memo readership is 10 points higher than those rated by Mail Chimp!
My Memo List average 29.4%
Industry average (Politics) 19.5%
+++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Open Letter to All the Whiny Safe Space Liberals Crying Over Our 'Racist,' 'Sexist' Country
By Hannah Bleau (Red Dawn)The first half of last night was stressful. I could barely eat. Stupid Florida, always keeping us on the edge of our seats. I switched my networks around last night. I mostly relied on Fox News and Twitter. CNN wasn’t calling states as fast, and MSNBC is a last resort kind of thing. I vowed to stay away from that channel, UNLESS things started shaping up for Donald Trump.
Then the results started coming in. Flyover nation. North Carolina. Ohio. Florida? Wisconsin?!!! That’s when the wheels started falling off their wagon. That’s when I started thinking about Hillary Clinton’s defeat. I never really allowed myself to go there before. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but my country came through. We the People are not stupid.
We the People defeated MSM. We the People defeated the establishment. We the People saved the Supreme Court. We the People rejected the power-hungry, seahag criminal in a pantsuit.
After they announced Wisconsin, commentators started to change their tune. They looked visibly nervous. Eventually, Mockarena told me it was safe to flip to MSNBC, and it was hysterical. I thought Rachel Maddow’s face was going to fall off. I flipped back to Fox News. Juan Williams practically peed himself. I watched the cheese slide off his crackers in real time. It was something.
I scrolled through social media. Liberals were melting down. They wrote stuff like, “I don’t know how we consistently underestimated the quiet endurance of racism in America.” They whined over “flagrant sexism.”
I'm sick and tired of it. I’m sick and tired of these uninformed jackholes telling me that I’m racist, sexist, Islamophobic and homophobic. They have no basis for those claims. They’re consumed by their emotions. Do they honestly believe Hillary Clinton lost solely because she’s a woman? It couldn’t possibly have anything with her being a pathological liar who’s spent her entire life pursuing political power? It had nothing to do with the fact that America’s not satisfied with her vision for America– an America with open borders, higher taxes and more bureaucratic scumbags in D.C. telling us how to run our lives?
We’re not racist. We’re not sexist. We want people to come into this country legally. That’s not racist. Progressive leadership in the big, urban cities hasn’t pulled the black community out of poverty. It’s worsened it. Liberalism has failed them. We acknowledge that. We want them to prosper. That’s not racist. And as for being sexist? All issues are women’s issues. I have no idea why liberals continue to separate them. Do they really believe we only care about vaginas, boobs and killing our offspring? Liberals assumed we (women) would vote for Hillary based on those reasons alone. THAT’S sexist, if you ask me. Women care about the economy. We care about national security. We care about the almost $20 trillion national debt. We care about the erosion of our freedoms. We care about the future of the Supreme Court. The list goes on and on and on.
I also saw some posts on how Trump’s victory signifies that America hates the LGBT community. NEWSFLASH: We elected a man who wants to keep dangerous anti-LGBT ideologues OUT OF OUR COUNTRY. Those people who want to throw them off rooftops? We don’t want them here. We want to protectthe LGBT community. The fact that we stand for traditional family values and don’t want men in the women’s bathroom doesn’t take anything away from that. Not for one second.
We’re not racist or sexist. We’re freaking SICK AND TIRED of the political establishment crapping all over the Constitution and treading on our liberty. We’re sick of them refusing to uphold the rule of law. We’re sick of being told that this is as good as it gets. We want economic freedom. We want to keep more of our hard-earned money. We want healthcare premiums that AREN’T AS MUCH AS OUR MORTGAGES. We want people to enter our country LEGALLY. We believe in peace through strength. Faith. Freedom. Family. We’re the most kick a** country that has ever existed. All you liberals whining over our “demise,” GET OVER YOURSELVES. You’re clueless. We were founded on the novel idea that we were endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Rights than cannot be given or taken away by a governing authority. This was about individual liberty. We reject government force and coercion. Votes. Favors. Political power. That’s the cycle of every progressive politician. We’re done. We’re sick of it.
Another part of Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech, “A Time For Choosing,” comes to mind.
“Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.”
“Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always ‘against,’ never ‘for’ anything.”
But we are. We’re for economic prosperity. Individual responsibility. Fiscal responsibility. Less government. More freedom. We’re sick of the liberal do-gooders shoving their BS agenda down our throats and calling us bigots when we reject their horrid ideas. We’re sick of them scoffing at the principles of liberty.
Donald Trump is America’s middle finger to the media, Hollywood elites, progressive ideologues and everyone else in the world who hates our guts.
I’m drinking the tears of our political enemies in a mug today and loving every minute of it. We defeated them. We have one more chance to prove that our ideas work. We’re right. We always have been.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)American Uprising - Everything is about to change.
By Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
This wasn’t an election. It was a revolution.
It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.
They were fathers who couldn’t feed their families anymore. They were mothers who couldn’t afford health care. They were workers whose jobs had been sold off to foreign countries. They were sons who didn’t see a future for themselves. They were daughters afraid of being murdered by the “unaccompanied minors” flooding into their towns. They took a deep breath and they stood.
They held up their hands and the great iron wheel stopped.The Great Blue Wall crumbled. The impossible states fell one by one. Ohio. Wisconsin. Pennsylvania. Iowa. The white working class that had been overlooked and trampled on for so long got to its feet. It rose up against its oppressors and the rest of the nation, from coast to coast, rose up with it.
They fought back against their jobs being shipped overseas while their towns filled with migrants that got everything while they got nothing. They fought back against a system in which they could go to jail for a trifle while the elites could violate the law and still stroll through a presidential election. They fought back against being told that they had to watch what they say. They fought back against being held in contempt because they wanted to work for a living and take care of their families.
They fought and they won.
This wasn’t a vote. It was an uprising. Like the ordinary men chipping away at the Berlin Wall, they tore down an unnatural thing that had towered over them. And as they watched it fall, they marveled at how weak and fragile it had always been. And how much stronger they were than they had ever known.
Who were these people? They were leftovers and flyover country. They didn’t have bachelor degrees and had never set foot in a Starbucks. They were the white working class. They didn’t talk right or think right. They had the wrong ideas, the wrong clothes and the ridiculous idea that they still mattered.
They were wrong about everything. Illegal immigration? Everyone knew it was here to stay. Black Lives Matter? The new civil rights movement. Manufacturing? As dead as the dodo. Banning Muslims? What kind of bigot even thinks that way? Love wins. Marriage loses. The future belongs to the urban metrosexual and his dot com, not the guy who used to have a good job before it went to China or Mexico.
They couldn’t change anything. A thousand politicians and pundits had talked of getting them to adapt to the inevitable future. Instead they got in their pickup trucks and drove out to vote.And they changed everything.
Barack Hussein Obama boasted that he had changed America. A billion regulations, a million immigrants, a hundred thousand lies and it was no longer your America. It was his.
He was JFK and FDR rolled into one. He told us that his version of history was right and inevitable.
And they voted and left him in the dust. They walked past him and they didn’t listen. He had come to campaign to where they still cling to their guns and their bibles. He came to plead for his legacy.
And America said, “No.”
Fifty millions Americans repudiated him. They repudiated the Obamas and the Clintons. They ignored the celebrities. They paid no attention to the media. They voted because they believed in the impossible. And their dedication made the impossible happen.Americans were told that walls couldn’t be built and factories couldn’t be opened. That treaties couldn’t be unsigned and wars couldn’t be won. It was impossible to ban Muslim terrorists from coming to America or to deport the illegal aliens turning towns and cities into gangland territories.
It was all impossible. And fifty million Americans did the impossible. They turned the world upside down.It’s midnight in America. CNN is weeping. MSNBC is wailing. ABC calls it a tantrum. NBC damns it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The same machine that crushed the American people for two straight terms, the mass of government, corporations and non-profits that ran the country, was set to win.
Instead the people stood in front of the machine. They blocked it with their bodies. They went to vote even though the polls told them it was useless. They mailed in their absentee ballots even while Hillary Clinton was planning her fireworks victory celebration. They looked at the empty factories and barren farms. They drove through the early cold. They waited in line. They came home to their children to tell them that they had done their best for their future. They bet on America. And they won.
They won improbably. And they won amazingly.
They were tired of ObamaCare. They were tired of unemployment. They were tired of being lied to. They were tired of watching their sons come back in coffins to protect some Muslim country. They were tired of being called racists and homophobes. They were tired of seeing their America disappear.
And they stood up and fought back. This was their last hope. Their last chance to be heard.
Watch fifty million Americans take back their country.The media had the election wrong all along. This wasn’t about personalities. It was about the impersonal. It was about fifty million people whose names no one except a server will ever know fighting back. It was about the homeless woman guarding Trump’s star. It was about the lost Democrats searching for someone to represent them in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was about the union men who nodded along when the organizers told them how to vote, but who refused to sell out their futures.
No one will ever interview all those men and women. We will never see all their faces. But they are us and we are them. They came to the aid of a nation in peril. They did what real Americans have always done. They did the impossible.
America is a nation of impossibilities. We exist because our forefathers did not take no for an answer. Not from kings or tyrants. Not from the elites who told them that it couldn’t be done.The day when we stop being able to pull of the impossible is the day that America will cease to exist.
Today is not that day. Today fifty million Americans did the impossible.
Midnight has passed. A new day has come. And everything is about to change.
2a) Trump" Riots and 75 Years Ago
Reflecting on Veterans Day in the context of the anti-Trump riots underway, consider the contrast between December 1941 and today. Along with adults a substantial number of teenagers signed up to defend America from tyrants in Japan and Germany together with our allies. Over 12 million in total were inducted by 1943 from a base of only a few hundred thousand armed forces in a nation of about 130 million or well over 25% of the eligible male population were inducted. The teenagers in the armed forces performed incredibly against determined and often vicious enemies. The teenagers in today's armed forces also perform incredibly against determined and often vicious enemies.
In contrast, some pampered and pandered to elements of today's teenagers have been generally brainwashed by our "elite" universities and are protesting and rioting in several cities and many campuses. They go from "safe spaces" to creating unsafe spaces and defacing and destroying the property of innocent Americans. They were told they were going to change the world and were so used to getting their way on campuses that a real world reversal is a complete shock to them and apparently also much of the Democrat Party.
These pampered and angry teens and some younger millennials need to grow up and like the teens of 75 years ago, face the realities of why they live in the time when the children are doing less well than their parents.
It is the liberal left that controls the college campuses that have raised the costs of college almost 10 times higher than the rate of inflation over the past 50 plus years-thereby putting graduates and their parents in a seeming financial "black hole" and gaining "educations" that do not prepare them for a productive work life.
It is the liberal left Obama administration that has brought the economy to a crawl with excessive regulation, Obamacare, high taxes, unending uncertainty, etc., thereby denying many college graduates and high school graduates good paying jobs.
Also almost 100 million adults have left the work force and the labor participation rate at 62% is the lowest since the malaise of the Jimmy Carter era.
It is the Washington establishment of both parties that have sold out the America middle class workers (and many high paid workers being replaced by foreign H1B replacement workers) by representing foreign nations as lobbyists in Trade "Deals" instead of the interests of American workers. Free Trade but fair trade is the new mantra. Bill Clinton literally built China's modern economy and military with the trade deals, WTO and military technology transfers he supported.
And so on and so on with the EPA climate hysteria, the IRS treatment of conservatives, the Un-Justice Department, the promotion of radical Moslem interests State Department under Hillary (and abuse our allies in Israel and Egypt, etc.), etc.
If the rioters can stop and reflect and deflect the biases inculcated into them at the "re-education camps (aka "elite" universities), they will come to realize that Trump's economic plans will again bring them good paying jobs and a brighter future than the dismal "new normal" "future" of the Obama "Administration" and likely Clinton administration.
2b) Mike Hukabee
It’s morning in America. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. But wait, how is that possible? Donald Trump is President-elect! We were assured that if that happened, the sky would blacken, there would be mass hysteria and the planet would immediately be immolated in a fiery, nuclear ball of death! Or something like that. Maybe I’ve been reading too much HuffPo.
Instead, the sun somehow seems to be shining more brightly and the birds singing a bit more sweetly. Or perhaps it just seems that way to me.
Just as I have been predicting for months, Donald Trump not only won, he scored a much bigger victory than even most supporters imagined. He gave a remarkably magnanimous and statesmanlike acceptance speech (see it at the link if you weren’t up late enough to watch history being made live). He also didn’t destroy the GOP down-ticket, as panicky Republicans feared (the only Republicans who got shellacked were turncoats who distanced themselves from Trump). The GOP held on to both the House and Senate, which means Trump should have a much easier time cutting deals for long-blocked, desperately-needed legislation, like repealing and replacing Obamacare. And he can appoint judges who respect the Constitution.
We now have to brace ourselves for the inevitable shirt-rending from the media: “How could America elect Donald Trump?! What does this MEEEEEAN?!”
Well, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that most Americans are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic deplorables, as Hillary suggested. It also doesn’t mean that they endorse every character flaw that Trump allegedly displays (they just understand that nobody’s perfect, he didn’t live his life with an eye toward politics, many of the charges against him were false or wildly overblown, and his opponents’ sins were just as bad or worse).
What it does mean is that a lot of Americans are fed up with failed Obama policies, both foreign and domestic; with an overreaching federal government trying to run every aspect of their lives; with representatives who seem to represent big money donors and shadowy billionaires like George Soros more than the people who elected them; with wealthy celebrities looking down on them and calling them bigots and haters just for having religious beliefs, morals, patriotism, pride in their traditions and a belief that laws should be respected; and with an unequal system of justice that gives the well-connected a pass for infractions that send regular citizens to prison.
And we’re tired of hearing that America is not exceptional, that our laws and culture and Constitution are nothing special, that we’re just one more vote at the UN -- when we know that America is the "shining city on the hill" that people from all those other nations and cultures gladly risk their lives to be part of.
Americans tried to tell Washington this in previous elections, with things like the Tea Party movement, only to be insulted, belittled and targeted by the IRS. But you can only sit on a pressure cooker so long before it blows you sky high.
Americans didn’t like being told that whether they wanted her or not, it was Hillary Clinton’s “turn” to be their President. They were put off by her sense of entitlement, which is so inflated, it could’ve been built by Goodyear (there was actually a children’s book about Little Hillary called “Some Girls Are Born To Lead.” Look for it in the remainder bins.) They were not happy when WikiLeaks exposed how the DNC, her campaign and the media secretly colluded to help her in countless underhanded ways, or to smear Trump supporters as violent racists, or how the “news” media launched an unprecedented partisan assault against her opponent. Their indignation over these things didn’t derive from negative emotions such as sexism or racism, but from one of Americans’ finest qualities: their belief in basic fairness. You can't get a fair deal from a stacked deck. We learned in this election that the people who talk about “fairness” the most practice it the least.
Another bit of meaning you can take from this election: despite all the efforts of politicians, consultants and media elites to separate Americans into little boxes, we refuse to be so easily categorized. Self-proclaimed experts assumed that women would vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, or Hispanics would vote against Trump because he wants to secure the border, or blacks would vote for Democrats because…well, because they’re black, and they’re supposed to! Turns out that women care about a range of issues other than gender identity, the vast majority of Hispanic immigrants believe in obeying the law, and many black voters don’t like being taken for granted. Democrats learned to their shock that demographic changes don't mean they can just sit back and enjoy a permanent majority. Maybe the idea that women and non-white voters will automatically pull the “D” lever just because of their sex and race is…gasp…sexist and racist!
Finally, this election proved that what Americans have in common is much greater than our differences. All our differences aside, most of us love and want to preserve the things that made America great: the Constitution, the rule of law, the American Dream that our children will live better lives than we did, equality, fairness, opportunity to succeed for all who are willing to work hard, and a government that serves the people, not the other way around. Tuesday, we rose up as one and said, “We want that America back. Make America great again.”
It’s morning in America. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. But wait, how is that possible? Donald Trump is President-elect! We were assured that if that happened, the sky would blacken, there would be mass hysteria and the planet would immediately be immolated in a fiery, nuclear ball of death! Or something like that. Maybe I’ve been reading too much HuffPo.
Instead, the sun somehow seems to be shining more brightly and the birds singing a bit more sweetly. Or perhaps it just seems that way to me.
Just as I have been predicting for months, Donald Trump not only won, he scored a much bigger victory than even most supporters imagined. He gave a remarkably magnanimous and statesmanlike acceptance speech (see it at the link if you weren’t up late enough to watch history being made live). He also didn’t destroy the GOP down-ticket, as panicky Republicans feared (the only Republicans who got shellacked were turncoats who distanced themselves from Trump). The GOP held on to both the House and Senate, which means Trump should have a much easier time cutting deals for long-blocked, desperately-needed legislation, like repealing and replacing Obamacare. And he can appoint judges who respect the Constitution.
We now have to brace ourselves for the inevitable shirt-rending from the media: “How could America elect Donald Trump?! What does this MEEEEEAN?!”
Well, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that most Americans are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic deplorables, as Hillary suggested. It also doesn’t mean that they endorse every character flaw that Trump allegedly displays (they just understand that nobody’s perfect, he didn’t live his life with an eye toward politics, many of the charges against him were false or wildly overblown, and his opponents’ sins were just as bad or worse).
What it does mean is that a lot of Americans are fed up with failed Obama policies, both foreign and domestic; with an overreaching federal government trying to run every aspect of their lives; with representatives who seem to represent big money donors and shadowy billionaires like George Soros more than the people who elected them; with wealthy celebrities looking down on them and calling them bigots and haters just for having religious beliefs, morals, patriotism, pride in their traditions and a belief that laws should be respected; and with an unequal system of justice that gives the well-connected a pass for infractions that send regular citizens to prison.
And we’re tired of hearing that America is not exceptional, that our laws and culture and Constitution are nothing special, that we’re just one more vote at the UN -- when we know that America is the "shining city on the hill" that people from all those other nations and cultures gladly risk their lives to be part of.
Americans tried to tell Washington this in previous elections, with things like the Tea Party movement, only to be insulted, belittled and targeted by the IRS. But you can only sit on a pressure cooker so long before it blows you sky high.
Americans didn’t like being told that whether they wanted her or not, it was Hillary Clinton’s “turn” to be their President. They were put off by her sense of entitlement, which is so inflated, it could’ve been built by Goodyear (there was actually a children’s book about Little Hillary called “Some Girls Are Born To Lead.” Look for it in the remainder bins.) They were not happy when WikiLeaks exposed how the DNC, her campaign and the media secretly colluded to help her in countless underhanded ways, or to smear Trump supporters as violent racists, or how the “news” media launched an unprecedented partisan assault against her opponent. Their indignation over these things didn’t derive from negative emotions such as sexism or racism, but from one of Americans’ finest qualities: their belief in basic fairness. You can't get a fair deal from a stacked deck. We learned in this election that the people who talk about “fairness” the most practice it the least.
Another bit of meaning you can take from this election: despite all the efforts of politicians, consultants and media elites to separate Americans into little boxes, we refuse to be so easily categorized. Self-proclaimed experts assumed that women would vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, or Hispanics would vote against Trump because he wants to secure the border, or blacks would vote for Democrats because…well, because they’re black, and they’re supposed to! Turns out that women care about a range of issues other than gender identity, the vast majority of Hispanic immigrants believe in obeying the law, and many black voters don’t like being taken for granted. Democrats learned to their shock that demographic changes don't mean they can just sit back and enjoy a permanent majority. Maybe the idea that women and non-white voters will automatically pull the “D” lever just because of their sex and race is…gasp…sexist and racist!
Finally, this election proved that what Americans have in common is much greater than our differences. All our differences aside, most of us love and want to preserve the things that made America great: the Constitution, the rule of law, the American Dream that our children will live better lives than we did, equality, fairness, opportunity to succeed for all who are willing to work hard, and a government that serves the people, not the other way around. Tuesday, we rose up as one and said, “We want that America back. Make America great again.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
Part of me is tempted to give her a pass on this for now. The woman just suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of the least-popular presidential nominee in modern American history, dealing a crushing blow to her lifelong quest for power. Coming to grips with just how deeply the American people detest you cannot be an enjoyable process, and such harsh realities undoubtedly trigger coping mechanisms. That is what's going on here. That being said, even if you're inclined to cut her a little bit of slack, this is pitiful and delusional spin:
Team Clinton vastly, vastly outspent Team Trump overall, but they missed the boat on key indicators over the final weeks of the campaign. Instead of locking down their "blue firewall," Clinton's campaign devoted major resources to places like Arizona, in an effort to scramble the map and run up the score. They lost there anyway, and left the barn door wide open in their supposedly "safe" states in the process. In the campaign's closing weeks, Hillary was running more ads in Omaha, Nebraska "than in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin combined." Result: Slim, devastating losses in the latter two states, and a three-point defeat in Nebraska's second Congressional District. And for their much-ballyhooed data superiority, funded by tens of millions in high-dollar donations, they ended up failing in new and entertaining ways:
An American Secretary of State and major party presidential nominee put extremely high-level national security secrets at risk -- recklessly handing our adversaries a trove of sensitive intelligence -- then lied to voters' faces about it at every turn. Some embittered leftists and journalists believe this was a "non-story" that the media over-covered. Preposterous. The American people clearly disagreed, meting out the ultimate political indictment of Mrs. Clinton several months after it became clear that the Obama Justice Department was never going to hold her accountable.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4)
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), left, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) plan to reintroduce the Iran Ballistic Missile Sanctions Act. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
3)
Pathetic: Hillary Blames Her Loss on James Comey
By GuyBenson
Part of me is tempted to give her a pass on this for now. The woman just suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of the least-popular presidential nominee in modern American history, dealing a crushing blow to her lifelong quest for power. Coming to grips with just how deeply the American people detest you cannot be an enjoyable process, and such harsh realities undoubtedly trigger coping mechanisms. That is what's going on here. That being said, even if you're inclined to cut her a little bit of slack, this is pitiful and delusional spin:
Hillary Clinton blamed FBI director James Comey for her stunning defeat in Tuesday's presidential election in a conference call with her top campaign funders on Saturday, according to two participants who were on the call...Clinton told her supporters on Saturday that her team had drafted a memo that looked at the changing opinion polls leading up to the election and that the letter from Comey proved to be a turning point. She said Comey's decision to go public with the renewed examination of her email server had caused an erosion of support in the upper Midwest, according to three people familiar with the call...Comey sent a letter to Congress only days before the election announcing that he was reinstating an investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information when she used a private email server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2012. Comey announced a week later that he had reviewed emails and continued to believe she should not be prosecuted, but the political damage was already done. Clinton told donors that Trump was able to seize on both of Comey's announcements and use them to attack her, according to two participants on the call.
Democrats assured us that Comey's 'treachery' or whatever would only serve to motivate Clinton's base down the home stretch. They later claimed that his reiteration of his decision not to recommend a criminal indictment two days before the election was vindication. In truth, scapegoating the FBI Director after the fact is a naked effort to deflect blame for a Hillary's humiliating loss, which she earned all by herself. James Comey didn't force her to set up an unsecure, rules-violating, national security-compromising email server. He didn't make her ignore explicit warnings that she was putting sensitive material at risk. He didn't make her wrongly withhold and attempt to destroy thousands of work-related emails. He didn't compel her to lie about every element of the email scandal, over and over again. He didn't tell Huma Abedin to fail to turn over a computer with previously unreviewed emails on it. All of those actions were taken by Mrs. Clinton and her team. In fact, Mr. Comey did Hillary a large favor by recommending against charges in the first place, even though he confirmed that her conduct was grossly negligent -- while averting his eyes from clear evidence of intent.
Even if it's true that the eleventh-hour renewed scrape with the FBI contributed to her loss (it surely did), it was merely one factor of many, including the Obamacare meltdown, ongoing questions about the Clinton Foundation, and voters' overarching desire for change. Comey's decision to briefly reopen an investigation in light of new evidence merely reminded voters of longstanding reasons they were planning to either vote against her, or sit at home: She is an historically untrustworthy and unlikeable political figure. A majority of voters held an unfavorable view of Clinton, and a super-majority saw her as dishonest. Those are fundamental flaws that no team of handsomely-compensated consultants or multimillion-dollar advertising blitz could overcome. And they certainly aren't the fault of James Comey. If Hillary Clinton wants to face up to the real reasons she crashed and burned, she need not look any further than her own loathed status among the US electorate, and her team's bad missteps. Case in point:
Team Clinton vastly, vastly outspent Team Trump overall, but they missed the boat on key indicators over the final weeks of the campaign. Instead of locking down their "blue firewall," Clinton's campaign devoted major resources to places like Arizona, in an effort to scramble the map and run up the score. They lost there anyway, and left the barn door wide open in their supposedly "safe" states in the process. In the campaign's closing weeks, Hillary was running more ads in Omaha, Nebraska "than in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin combined." Result: Slim, devastating losses in the latter two states, and a three-point defeat in Nebraska's second Congressional District. And for their much-ballyhooed data superiority, funded by tens of millions in high-dollar donations, they ended up failing in new and entertaining ways:
To make matters worse, because Republicans had a non-existent ground game in many areas this cycle, this powerful reminder from a Clinton volunteer to get out and vote might have been the only personalized GOTV communication these Trump voters received. The campaign’s text messaging GOTV effort may have been the worst offender. Volunteers reported as many as 30% of the replies they received from voters they were urging to get out were Trump supporters.But Comey. Speaking of refusing to learn hard lessons, I'll leave you with this ludicrous take on the media's role in Trump's victory:
An American Secretary of State and major party presidential nominee put extremely high-level national security secrets at risk -- recklessly handing our adversaries a trove of sensitive intelligence -- then lied to voters' faces about it at every turn. Some embittered leftists and journalists believe this was a "non-story" that the media over-covered. Preposterous. The American people clearly disagreed, meting out the ultimate political indictment of Mrs. Clinton several months after it became clear that the Obama Justice Department was never going to hold her accountable.
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4)
'NEVER TRUMP' GOP PREPARING TO WORK WITH TRUMP TO SQUEEZE IRAN
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), left, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) plan to reintroduce the Iran Ballistic Missile Sanctions Act. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Republicans in Congress who vigorously opposed Donald Trump’s run for president are now preparing to work with the incoming Trump administration on a number of foreign policy and national security issues where their policies overlap. First on their agenda is drastically increasing sanctions on Iran.
“There are several issues that I can work with the new president on, the Iran deal being number one,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who voted for independent candidate Evan McMullin, told me. “Trump has been right about the Iran deal, it needs to be renegotiated. I’m going to create leverage for him.”
On the first day Congress is back in session, Graham said he and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) will reintroduce the Iran Ballistic Missile Sanctions Act, which was first introduced by outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.).
The legislation would expand the non-nuclear related sanctions on Iran to include entire sectors of the Iranian economy that aid in Iran’s ballistic missile program. It would also sanction any Iranian companies or organizations that support the missile program.
The strategy is to tighten the noose on Iran such that if and when President Trump tries to renegotiate the Iran deal, as he promised to do on the campaign trail, the Iranians will be under more pressure to come to the table.
“I want to help Trump on Iran. One way is to reimpose sanctions outside the conduct of the nuclear deal,” said Graham. “I hope this will help President Trump get a better deal.”
Increasing sanctions on Iran is only one area where Republicans who opposed Trump previously are planning to work with the new administration. Defense hawks in both chambers also agree with Trump’s pledge to get rid of limits on military spending imposed by previous budget deals, move Israel policy to be more friendly to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and roll back the Obama administration’s moves to normalize relations with Cuba.
But the Iran issue is the most likely space for cooperation, because most of the preparatory work has already been done and because the effort might get some Democratic support.
In July, just before leaving town, the House Republican leadership passed three Iran sanctions bills that are primed for quick passage in the Senate. The main bill, sponsored by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), would impose new sanctions on Iran and any country that supports its illicit activities in response to Iran’s continued development and testing of its ballistic missile program, its support for terrorism and its ongoing violations of human rights.
If Hillary Clinton had won, there was also widespread expectation that her administration would have increased pressure on Iran due to what many Clinton advisers saw as Iran’s increasingly provocative and aggressive behavior outside the nuclear realm. Some senior Democrats, including incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y), also support new measures on Iran.
But the Clinton team was planning to ramp up sanctions in a way carefully calibrated to keep the Iran deal in place, while the Trump team has no desire to thread that needle.
Last month, Wendy Sherman, a top Clinton campaign adviser who was also the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Iran deal, said that if Trump were elected he would face difficulties trying to unravel the pact.
“If a president wanted to rip it up on day one, there are certainly things he could do. But it would be hard because we have partners in this endeavor and they wouldn’t be so happy about us doing so,” she said at the Meridian Global Leadership Summit.
But experts said that the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress are determined to move ahead even without the support of allies that are also a party to the Iran deal.
Even if the Trump administration keeps the Iran deal in place, the Obama administration’s effort to encourage Iran toward better behavior through positive engagement is now over and the United States is going back to a policy of pressure using several tools, including the threat of military force, said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“This election is a game changer with respect to the Iran policy, from a policy that was paralyzed by the Iran deal to a president who is more willing to use all the elements of American power,” he said. “The honeymoon is over.”
Josh Rogin is a columnist for the Global Opinions section of The Washington Post. He writes about foreign policy and national security.
4a)Stephen K. Bannon: Friend of the Jewish People, Defender of Israel
I have worked with Stephen K. Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump’s new chief strategist and senior counselor, for nearly six years at Breitbart News. I can say, without hesitation, that Steve is a friend of the Jewish people and a defender of Israel, as well as being a passionate American patriot and a great leader.
A word or two about my credentials: I am an Orthodox Jew, and I hold a Master of Arts degree in Jewish Studies. My thesis at the Isaac and Jesse Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town dealt with the troubled status of Jews in an increasingly anti-Israel, and antisemitic, post-apartheid South Africa. I believe myself to be a qualified judge of what is, and is not, antisemitic.
It defies logic that a man who was a close friend, confidant, and adviser to the late Andrew Breitbart — a proud Jew — could have any negative feelings towards Jews. As I can testify from years of work together with Steve in close quarters, the opposite is the case: Steve is outraged by antisemitism. If anything, he is overly sensitive about it, and often takes offense on Jews’ behalf.
Steve cares deeply about the fate of Jewish communities in America and throughout the world, a fact that is reflected in Breitbart News’ daily coverage. It was in that spirit that Steve joined Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov (also Jewish) in launching Breitbart Jerusalem last year, fulfilling Andrew’s dream of opening a bureau in Israel specifically to cover the region from an unabashedly Zionist perspective.
The American ideal, which Andrew Breitbart defended zealously, is E pluribus unum, “Out of many, one.” We gain a deeper appreciation for people from other backgrounds when we understand our own. That is the spirit in which Breitbart News has always operated with Steve as executive chairman. We have Jewish, Catholic, evangelical, Muslim, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and gay writers (did I miss anyone?).
Steve is a tireless, disciplined manager who demands excellence — and who seeks talent regardless of distinctions of race, gender, religion, sexuality, or any other kind. He has a clear sense of strategy and vision, yet welcomes debate and dissent on the basis of data and facts. He is also passionate about fighting corruption, and restoring the constitutional vision of our Founders. And he is calm under pressure, as his work as CEO of the Trump campaign shows.
Americans should see Steve’s appointment to a key White House role as a positive sign that President-elect Donald Trump intends to fulfill his promises.
Andrew Breitbart anticipated the kind of attacks that Steve, and anyone else who is effective at opposing the left, would face. In his book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, Andrew noted that the “Democrat-media complex” would tarnish any conservative with “made-up closet KKK status.”
While being targeted is a badge of honor for Steve, lies are lies, and they deserved to be called what they are.
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 Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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