Conservative Chronicle for November 2 2016 by Mid-America Publishing Corporation

At Issue this week... November 2, 2016 2016 Election Barone (3) Fields (1) Krauthammer (14) Morris (18) Saunders (8) Sowell (18) Clinton, Hillary Bozell (17) Elder (15) Harsanyi (16) Malkin (22) Moore (17) Citizens United Charen (10) Dear Mark Levy (19) Deficit de Rugy (12) Democracy Cushman (26) Dirty Politics Limbaugh (5) Shapiro (20) Thomas (20) Education Will (23) Williams (22) Establishment Barone (25) Buchanan (4) Foreign Policy Buchanan (31) Government Napolitano (24) Health Insurance Jeffrey (29) Hungary Bay (28) Immigration Chavez (30) Sowell (29) Johnson, Ron Will (12) Leslie’s Trivia Bits Elman (14) Media Bias Coulter (7) Hollis (6) McCaughey (11) Tyrrell (11) Moral Equivalence Thomas (6) Proposition 57 Saunders (21) Rigged Elections Schlafly (2) Silicon Valley Saunders (13) Supreme Court Murchison (3) Trump, Donald Greenberg (25) Lambro (8) Lowry (13, 26) Trump, Melania Kudlow (9) Two-Party System Massie (30) YouTube Censorship Prager (27)

2016 Election by Suzanne Fields

Why character counts in a president “Reputation is the shadow,” Abraham Lincoln said, “and character is the tree.” Lincoln, as he usually did, got to the point with an earthy homily. He understood that character is more than reputation. Reputation is what we want others to see. If we’re lucky, Lincoln’s tree is a hickory — hard and tough, unbending in the teeth of the gale, impossible to move, difficult to break. If we’re not so lucky, the tree will be a willow — graceful and lovely to look at, and always eager to bend to whatever wind that blows. Reputation can be faked in politics by the arts of clever image-makers. Character can’t be faked because it’s who we are when no one is watching. Welcome to Campaign 2016. VULGARITY AND abusive blue language isn’t everything, but it provides an insight into who a man or woman actually is when no one is watching. Lies are even more revealing. Hillary Clinton has earned — if that is the word — a reputation for lying about just about everything. That’s the shadow across her character. Donald Trump’s gross language in describing his sexual speculations about women — though it was more than a decade ago and he says that those boasts do not portray the man he is now — give us more than a hint to his character. He had the misfortune of saying some of these things when someone was not actually looking but rather listening with a tape recorder. We don’t have Clinton on tape, but we do have credible witnesses, including several Secret Service agents who were assigned to what agents regard as “the worst duty assignment:” Guarding her life. They tell of vulgar language that might put the Donald to shame and mistreatment of servants, which a woman of character would regard as unforgivable. Sex, lies and videotape have defined this presidential campaign, but for anyone interested enough to take a close look at intimations of character there’s more than that. Both Trump and Clinton have laid out important policies — the things the voters could expect them to do if elected. These policies — on taxes, defense and the waves of immigrants — can be measured against Clinton’s professed dream of higher taxes, expanded government spending and “open borders” to bring in an unlimited number of refugees from the miserable places of the

world. But the Donald’s vulgarity has put him beyond the pale for many voters, particularly women. Clinton has gone largely unexamined by the so-called mainstream media. The WikiLeaks disclosures, which the mainstream media resolutely refuse to cover in any telling detail, reveal the depth of Clinton’s contempt for the public. She boasts that whatever she says is not necessarily true.

Suzanne

Fields

“YOU NEED both a public and a private position,” she told a housing group in 2014. Only she knows when she’s telling the truth and when she’s not. There’s a convenient truth and an inconvenient truth, and only Clinton needs to know the difference. She has earned a reputation, even among many of her friends and supporters, for being untrustworthy. Some might say this reflects a fatal lack of character. Character, in anybody’s definition, is determined by how we respond to events and circumstances, particularly when things go wrong — like something as trivial as a servant bringing in a wrong dish; or something far more important, such as playing loose with the nation’s security secrets and

then lying about it. “When push comes to shove,” says Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University who has written extensively about presidential character, “a candidate’s character might be the most important factor guiding how he or she will make decisions and run the White House.” James David Barber was a professor at Duke University when he wrote The Presidential Character in 1972. The book has been reprised every four years since. He argued that character — not quite a synonym for personality — is clearly the most important thing to know about a candidate. It is “the way the President orients himself toward life — not for the moment, but enduringly.” CHARACTER, HE wrote, “grows out of the child’s experiments in relating to parents, brothers and sisters, and peers at play and in school, as well as to his own body and objects around it.” The man-to-be — or woman-to-be — learns through early experiences and arrives at a profound conviction of his or her worth. The rest of us have to choose, wisely if we can, when we select the president on whom our hopes and fears, which through the years have been fraught with peril and possibility, ultimately depend. October 21, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

RIGGED ELECTIONS: October 25, 2016

Is the election rigged? There’s more than one way

s the election rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton, as Donald Trump repeatedly claimed? The mainstream media have been in collective outrage since Donald Trump, in the third debate, said he reserves the right to contest the outcome on November 8. Liberals insist that voter fraud is a myth invented by conservatives as a pretext for voter suppression. By defining voter fraud so narrowly as to mean only impersonation at the polling place, liberals ignore other serious threats to the accuracy and legitimacy of our elections.

LESS THAN a month ago, Obama’s secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson publicly warned about the potential for cyberattacks from overseas could disrupt the administration of this year’s presidential election. “In recent months,” Johnson said, “we have determined that malicious actors gained access to state voting-related systems.” Cyberattacks get headlines, but there are many other ways our elections can be stolen. One of the most common is the risk that your vote could be cancelled by the votes of people who are legally ineligible to vote. Felons are one large category of people who, in many states, are prohibited from casting a ballot unless they regain that privilege by going through a process of application and approval. But that didn’t stop felons from illegally voting in close elections, including the 2000 presidential race in Florida (decided by 537 votes

out of six million cast) and the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota (decided by 312 votes out of 3 three million cast). Al Franken supposedly won that U.S. Senate race, which led him to become the 60th and deciding vote for Obamacare. But as John Fund said on C-SPAN last week, “we have proof that 1200 felons voted illegally in that election, and 200 of them were actually convicted of casting a fraudulent ballot, and the election was decided by 312 votes.” Virginia, where longtime Clinton fixer Terry McAuliffe is now the governor, is another state that bars felons from voting until they apply for and receive restoration of their voting rights. Saying he “cannot accept” a ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court which struck down his unilateral action to give voting rights to 206,000 felons, Gov. McAuliffe reinstated voting rights to 13,000 felons — which is enough to swing the election in that battleground state. Besides felons, an even larger category of persons ineligible to vote is noncitizens. Surely we can all agree that U.S. citizenship should be required for anyone to vote in U.S. elections? Yet most states do not demand proof of U.S. citizenship from persons voting or registering to vote. No one denies that our registration rolls include millions of non-U.S. citizens, both legal and illegal, who have accidentally or intentionally registered to vote while applying for public assistance or a driver’s license. But how many of those aliens actually voted, and how

many elections were swayed by those fraudulent votes? A study published in 2014 by researchers at Old Dominion University provides some answers. Using standard statistical techniques, the ODU study extrapolates from surveys to conclude that tens of thousands of illegal votes were cast in recent elections by citizens of other countries. In the 2008 Minnesota Senate race that Al Franken supposedly won by 312 votes, the ODU researchers estimate that 3,000 votes were cast by persons who were not U.S. citizens. The study also concludes that in the 2008 presidential election in North Carolina, Obama’s narrow victory margin of 14,177 votes was made possible by non-citizen voters.

in more than one state (including 70,000 people who are registered in more than two states). About 12 million registrations had incorrect addresses, which suggests that the voter no longer lived at the address where he registered. Every bad registration creates the temptation to cheat by someone casting a ballot in the name of a voter who has died or moved away from the precinct. Liberals claim such impersonation is rare because it is rarely punished, but with 24 million bad registrations, many close elections can be determined by fraudulent votes. Just last month, a judge in St. Louis judge threw out a Democratic primary election because of absentee voter fraud and ordered a do-over. The do-over was held Sept. 16, and this time the challenger REMEMBER THE five million ille- (the victim of voter fraud) won in a landgal aliens who received temporary legal slide. status under the DACA and DAPA programs because of Obama’s unilateral exTHE LIBERAL St. Louis Post-Disecutive action? Now they are going door- patch has strongly criticized Trump’s talk to-door to help elect Hillary Clinton and of a rigged election, but when it came to other Democrats, especially in northern the Democratic primary in its own back Virginia. yard, the paper interviewed dozens of Although felons and non-citizens are people, reviewed thousands of docuobvious sources of voter fraud, they are ments, and found “numerous irregularijust the tip of the iceberg. According to ties.” For example, “Many voters said a study by the Pew Center on the States, they were duped into filling out absentee published in February 2012, more than 24 ballots and were told to mark that they million voter registrations are invalid or were incapacitated when they were not.” seriously inaccurate. Among the 24 million bad registraJohn and Andy Schlafly are sons of tions are 1.8 million people who are Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th dead and 2.8 million who are registered book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.

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November 2, 2016 2016 ELECTION: October 25, 2016

The politics these two nominees hath wrought

n last week’s third and (thank goodness) final presidential debate, each candidate did an excellent job of presenting convincing arguments for why people shouldn’t vote for the other. Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton a felon, and Clinton called Trump a traitor. Unfortunately for America, there is plenty of basis for the former charge and less but still disturbing evidence for the latter. THESE TWO may not be the most unpopular pair of major-party presidential nominees in history. James Buchanan and John C. Fremont in 1856 may have been worse, at least judging from their later feckless careers. But of all the nominee pairs since random sampling polling was invented in 1935, Trump and Clinton certainly win the prize. Majorities of voters look

negatively on both and consider each tic politics and celebrity politics. The dishonest and untrustworthy. It’s not Clinton candidacy foreclosed serious opposition — and revealed the increashard to see why. How did we end up with such nomi- ing strength of the Democratic left. The nees? It’s easy to blame the presidential Bush family provided a huge supply of nominating process, which is widely money for a worthy candidate for whom and correctly regarded as the weakest there was insufficient demand. Much of the $100 million raised for part of our political system. Perhaps Bush’s super PAC not coincidentally, it is the only part not J e b was spent on deconaddressed by the structing Marco RuFramers. bio, who might have The problem been a stronger is that there’s no Trump opponent way to construct (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate than Ted Cruz and an entirely satisfactory system in a nation with 50 would have been a stronger Clinton opsovereign states and a long history of ponent than Trump. Meanwhile, Trump’s celebrity gave economic and cultural diversity. Both parties’ earnest efforts over the past four him some $2 billion worth of free media, decades, aimed at repairing previous leaving little room for exposure of other Republicans. Until Trump clinched the flaws, have only created new ones. What gave us these two nominees Republican nomination, mainstream this year was a combination of dynas- media had as little interest in digging up

Michael

Barone

SUPREME COURT: October 25, 2016

Hillary Clinton and the high court

he worst thing about Supreme Court-anxiety in the upcoming election is that Supreme Courtanxiety should figure in the upcoming election at all; that it should figure hugely, heatedly — arsenic inserted into a political casserole noxious enough on its own terms. Our national government’s judicial branch matters in a way it shouldn’t. The political outlook that controls the judiciary controls the country, to a degree never contemplated by the founders. What the Supreme Court says goes — particularly as to the rights asserted by this group or bloc or faction, or by another one. Abortion, gun ownership, contraception, speech, the meaning of marriage: The justices sort out various competing claims, then, thank you very much, here’s the fatherly/motherly word. No, you can’t take the car! That hem’s too short! Your math grade’s lousy!

IN THEORY, various checks to Supreme Court power do exist; in reality, they don’t work. Constitutional amendments to reverse the court never pass Congress; impeachment (“a mere scarecrow,” said Jefferson) doesn’t happen; Congress never seriously considers changing the court’s appellate jurisdiction or slashing the justices’ pay. The Supreme Court is supreme. A 5-4 decision chokes off debate. That’s it. Shut up, everybody! Congressmen and presidents rail at the court. So what? Nothing changes, except membership on the court — the very reason many voters have identified

the Supreme Court as the determinative factor in the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We know exactly the kind of jurists Clinton would nominate — whomever she wants to carry on the federal-power-expanding work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

JUSTICE GINSBURG has said she’ll retire when a Democratic president is available to name her successor. What we can look for in that case is a Ginsburg successor infinitely more like Ginsburg than like Clarence Thomas: That is to say, friendly to the use of federal power to bring conservative recalcitrants in line with liberal/

William

progressive aims. Among these: The overturning of a recent high court decision allowing unions and corporations to voice their own political aims, using their own money. As other high-court vacancies occurred, President Clinton would add new progressive sympathizers to the mix. How come? Because as Clinton said in the third presidential debate, “The Supreme Court should represent all of us. ... And the kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing up on behalf of our rights as Americans.” It sounds delightful, as far as rhetoric goes — which isn’t far. The Supreme Court’s mission

is assessing, weighing, judging — according to constitutional, as opposed to political, standards — the claims of competing parties. It’s a different matter entirely from “representing,” as Mrs. Clinton puts it, the views of constituents — a function that belongs to the legislative and the executive branches of government. The court’s constituency is everybody: The strongest, the weakest and all in between. Did the lady really graduate from Yale Law School with so little knowledge of the judiciary’s role in democratic government? Or, likelier, does she see her job as significantly modifying that role? That we’ve gotten to this point in the campaign — treating jurists as legislators — shows how far the constitutional order has deviated from the design of the founders. “I formally combatted,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1821, “(the) heretical doctrine that the judiciary is the ultimate expounder and arbiter of all constitutional questions.” He ought to have “combatted” harder. A president’s power to drive the nation along a particular course by allying himself — or, all right, herself — with similarly minded judges is a power that just sort of evolved. And will keep evolving, we can assume, on the basis of how Clinton reads the road map to power. JUSTICE ANTONIN Scalia held his finger in the constitutional dike for nearly three decades. Then he died, leaving the Supreme Court in a place of greater peril than before: a hair or two off the center of the deepening battle for national power.

dirt on him as they have now in airing the scandals swirling around Clinton. THE MAJORITY of voters who yearn to see Trump lose can take comfort in the national polling that currently shows him six points behind Clinton, compared with his being one point behind before the first debate. Almost all target state polling confirms that picture. The smaller majority of voters who yearn to see Clinton lose may take what comfort they can from the three national polls (Los Angeles Times, Rasmussen Reports, Investor’s Business Daily) that show an even race, even though the New York Times’ Nate Cohn has demonstrated the unreliability of the LA Times poll’s sample. They might take comfort, as well, from the fact that voters in Britain and Colombia voted, contrary to polls, against an overwhelming tide of respectable opinion in referendums on June 23 and Oct. 2. But the British polls weren’t far off, and candidates’ character wasn’t a factor in those contests. There remains uncertainty about what pollsters have trouble projecting: Turnout. Clinton struggles to enthuse blacks, Hispanics and young people. Trump’s talk about rigging elections may discourage conservative turnout. The choice of these nominees may result in two significant shifts. One is a recoloring of the familiar political map. When Trump was running close to even, he was threatening to win previously safe Democratic states. Clinton is now threatening to win previously safe Republican states. The static polarized partisan lines may be shifting. The other is the opening of new fissures in both parties. Trump enthusiasts and “never Trump” critics are already embarked on a civil war. Bernie Sanders enthusiasts are understandably furious about what WikiLeaks has revealed that Clinton and top aides have said in emails and speeches. A Bloomberg poll asked Republicans and Democrats which of several figures should be the face of their party nationally if their nominee loses. A plurality of Democrats, 32 percent, said Hillary Clinton, and six percent said Tim Kaine. But 31 percent said Bernie Sanders, and 23 percent said Elizabeth Warren. Among Republicans, 24 percent said Donald Trump, far below the percentage supporting him against Clinton. But a total of 71 percent picked the more conventional conservative alternatives Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and John Kasich. THAT’S A crude measure, but it provides an interesting hint of the politics that are just a couple of weeks ahead.

Conservative Chronicle

ESTABLISHMENT: October 21, 2016

An establishment in panic and the new cult

ressed by moderator Chris Wal- that Middle America is never again able lace as to whether he would to elect one of its own. But that estabaccept defeat should Hillary lishment, disconnected from the people Clinton win the election, Donald Trump it rules, senses, rightly, that it is unloved replied, “I will tell you at the time. I’ll and even detested. keep you in suspense.” Having fixed the future, the establish“That’s horrifying,” said Clinton, ment finds half of the country looking setting off a chain reaction on the post- upon it with the same sullen debate panels with contempt that our talking heads fallFounding Fathers ing all over one came to look upon another in purplethe overlords Parfaced anger, outliament sent to (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate rage and disbelief. rule them. “DisqualifyEstablishment ing!” was the cry on Clinton cable. panic is traceable to another fear: Its “Trump Won’t Say If He Will Accept ideology, its political religion, is seen Election Results,” wailed the New York by growing millions as a golden calf, a Times. “Trump Won’t Vow to Honor Re- 20th-century god that has failed. sults,” ran the banner in the Washington Trump is “talking down our democPost. racy,” said a shocked Clinton. After having expunged Christianity BUT WHAT do these chatter- from our public life and public square, ing classes and establishment bulletin our establishment installed “democraboards think the Donald is going to do cy” as the new deity, at whose altars we if he falls short of 270 electoral votes? should all worship. And so our schools Lead a Coxey’s Army on Washing- began to teach. ton and burn it down as British General Half a millennia ago, missionaries Robert Ross did in August 1814, while and explorers set sail from Spain, Eng“Little Jemmy” Madison fled on horse- land and France to bring Christianity to back out the Brookville Road? the New World. What explains the hysteria of the esToday, Clintons, Obamas and Bushes tablishment? send soldiers and secularist tutors to “esIn a word, fear. tablish democracy” among the “lesser The establishment is horrified at the breeds without the Law.” Donald’s defiance because, deep within Unfortunately, the natives, once deits soul, it fears that the people for whom mocratized, return to their roots and vote Trump speaks no longer accept its politi- for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim cal legitimacy or moral authority. Brotherhood, using democratic processIt may rule and run the country, and es and procedures to re-establish their may rig the system through mass immi- true God. gration and a mammoth welfare state so And Allah is no democrat.

Pat

Buchanan

BY SUGGESTING he might not accept the results of a “rigged election” Trump is committing an unpardonable sin. But this new cult, this devotion to a new holy trinity of diversity, democracy and equality, is of recent vintage and has shallow roots. For none of the three — diversity, equality, democracy — is to be found in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers or the Pledge of Allegiance. In the pledge, we are a republic. When Ben Franklin, emerging from the Philadelphia convention, was asked by a woman what kind of government they had created, he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Among many in the silent majority, Clintonian democracy is not an improvement upon the old republic; it is the corruption of it.

Consider: Six months ago, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bundler, announced that by executive action he would convert 200,000 convicted felons into eligible voters by November. If that is democracy, many will say, to heck with it. And if felons decide the electoral votes of Virginia, and Virginia decides who is our next U.S. president, are we obligated to honor that election? In 1824, Gen. Andrew Jackson ran first in popular and electoral votes. But, short of a majority, the matter went to the House. There, Speaker Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams delivered the presidency to Adams — and Adams made Clay secretary of state, putting him on the path to the presidency that had been taken by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Adams himself. Were Jackson’s people wrong to regard as a “corrupt bargain” the deal that robbed the general of the presidency? The establishment also recoiled in horror from Milwaukee Sheriff Dave Clarke’s declaration that it is now “torches and pitchforks time.” Yet, some of us recall another time, when Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in Points of Rebellion: “We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.” Baby-boomer radicals loved it, raising their fists in defiance of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. BUT NOW that it is the populist-nationalist right that is moving beyond the niceties of liberal democracy to save the America that they love, elitist enthusiasm for “revolution” seems more constrained. What goes around comes around.

November 2, 2016 DIRTY POLITICS: October 21, 2016

Dangerous collusion: DNC, Clinton, Obama, media

so important it must be subsidized by the federal government. We have politicized governmental entities — e.g., the IRS, Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Communications Commission — and we are suffering ever-deteriorating race relations and a war on cops fomented and fueled by the president and his race-exploitive Democratic Party. We have proliferating Islamic terrorism acPERHAPS I can be considered a bit companied by an administration that is of an alarmist, but if I am, so are millions in denial about it and sees more danger of others when it comes to the dire state in generic extremism and conservative of this nation on a number of fronts. We “bitter clingers” than it does in Islamic have a staggering national debt, a dan- extremism. These multitugerously declining military and a rundinous existenaway regulatory tial threats to the state that is supUnited States are pressing our libenough to cause erties, insulating anyone who cares government from (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate about America, as accountability and helping to smother economic growth. founded, to lose sleep. I have confidence We have onerous taxes on people who in the United States and the American are still working (notwithstanding the people to rise to these challenges if malicious lie that the wealthy don’t pay they set their minds to it. The problem their fair share), an exploding welfare is that the entire liberal establishment is state, a war on the Second Amendment determined to obstruct the resolution of and the rights of private gun owners, and these problems. Liberals are primarily a government-caused health insurance responsible for every last one of them catastrophe — with liberal promises of and don’t even want to address them. more of the same. We have unprotected To them, America is on the right course. borders (which threaten jobs, national They’ll tell you they want more jobs, sovereignty and the integrity of demo- for example, but they do everything in cratic processes), a war on Christian their power to keep that from happenreligious liberties by militant secularists ing — from minimum wage hikes to who deny they’re doing it and a sick, higher individual and corporate taxes amoral culture supported by the openly to oppressive regulations to demonizvalueless Democratic Party, which glo- ing businesses, producers and entreprerifies abortion as a quasi-religious right neurs, who “didn’t build that.” ’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t know how reasonable people can fail to recognize the overt collusion of the Obama administration, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party and the liberal media to shield Hillary Clinton from accountability for her many misdeeds and abundant corruption.

David

Limbaugh

That’s why many believe we must oust Democrats from control of the White House. But in the past few months, anyone not afflicted with blinding liberal bias has been able to see that these policy issues are just the beginning of our problems. In addition to this destructive agenda, there is a level of collusion among the above-mentioned institutions — the Obama administration, the DNC, the Clinton machine and the liberal media — that is unprecedented in this nation. WE SEE THIS collusion and its poison fruit everywhere we look, in the coordinated witch hunt against a phantom anti-Islam video to shield Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration from accountability for the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, in the White House, Department of Justice and FBI scheme to protect Clinton from prosecution for her destruction of emails, in the DNC’s nefarious orchestration of violence and bullying of women at rallies for Donald Trump — evidenced by the fact that the main operative of that enterprise visited the White House hundreds of times — in the DNC’s voter

fraud operation, in Clinton’s admitting that her private positions differ from her public ones, in the pay-to-play scandals of the Clinton Foundation and the administration’s insulating it from investigation, in the administration’s politicizing its actions according to various “food groups,” such as “needy Latinos,” in Clinton’s lying about the threat of terrorists entering the United States among the refugees with whom she wants to flood this country, in the denigration of Catholics, in the delivery of debate questions to Clinton in advance, in the probable cover-up of Clinton’s health issues, in the White House plan to target “violent ideologies,” in liberals’ goal of resurrecting the so-called Fairness Doctrine to suppress conservative opinion on radio, in the Democrats’ refusal to enforce immigration laws, in the surrendering of our sovereignty to the United Nations, in the promotion of voter fraud by opposing voter ID laws with the cudgel of phony allegations of racism, in the political targeting of conservatives by the IRS, in the circumvention of the legislative branch through lawless executive orders, in the liberal media’s absurdly disproportionate contributions to Democratic politicians and in the media’s highlighting of allegations against Trump and blackout of allegations against Bill and Hillary Clinton. I’m concerned about the imminent destruction of our nation through disastrous policies should the Democrats remain in control. I fear a dangerous, Third World level of lawless one-party rule by a party that has demonstrated its contempt for the Constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the democratic process, the watchdog role of the media, the military, American sovereignty, capitalism and liberty. If Hillary Clinton can get away with all of her corruption before she is even in charge of the executive branch, can you imagine what she’d be able to do when controlling it, presumably with a mandate to continue in the same vein? Call me crazy. Call me an alarmist. Call me hyperbolic. But understand I am but one of the millions who fear for America’s future — and with overwhelmingly good reason. THE CHOICE between Clinton and Trump? It’s not even close.

Conservative Chronicle

MEDIA BIAS: October 20, 2016

Donald, Julian and James come bearing gifts

ome GOP leaders and conservative writers are convinced that Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. To the contrary, I think Trump has given the public an enormous gift, and he has been assisted in that effort of late by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Project Veritas’ enfant terrible, James O’Keefe. For some time, conservative voters and candidates alike have harbored strong suspicions about bias in U.S politics. Here are just a few: “The press is in the tank for Democrats.” “Democrats are engaged in voter fraud.” “The left hates Christians.” “George Soros is funding anti-conservative and anti-Republican protests.”

DEMOCRATS HAVE previously dismissed these with a collective eyeroll. Oh, how things have changed. Donald Trump has blown a huge hole in one of the GOP’s most consistent strategic errors: He has thumbed his nose at the press and has taken his message straight to the American public. Much to the shock of both the press and the GOP leadership, that tactic has been staggeringly successful. Trump’s primary successes have confirmed the diminishment of traditional media in politics, and Assange and his WikiLeaks team have exposed why Republican hopes of fair treatment at the hands of the press have been a fool’s errand. We’ve known for years that the press is overwhelmingly left-leaning politically; however, WikiLeaks revealed that the media is willing to bend the rules to favor a Democrat candidate. Leaked emails between Hillary Clinton’s campaign team and numerous members of the press reveal extraordinary favors given to Clinton, including: — Giving her interview questions in advance. — Giving her veto power over content. — Allowing her to edit or delete quotes. — Offering a preview of articles before they are published. — Suppressing or delaying the release of unfavorable information. As if this were not damaging enough, earlier this week O’Keefe released two undercover videos in which Democratic operatives Scott Foval, Aaron Minter and Bob Creamer represent on film how they would have thousands of people vote illegally, and they describe hiring people to incite violence with the “crazies” at Republican events. This election has taken hypocrisy to a new low. Democrats accuse Trump of fomenting hatred and violence — meanwhile, Clinton supporters engage in actual violence in Chicago and San Jose,

California. Democrats accuse Repub- “There is a lot of fraud, not just voter licans of racism and bigotry — mean- fraud, all kinds of fraud.” Scott Foval while, in emails and speeches, Clinton bragged, “We’ve been bussing people in and her team have used derogatory terms to deal with you f---ing a—holes for 50 we’re not going to stop like “Needy Latinos,” “taco bowl en- years, and now.” gagement,” “sand The press’ reacn-ggers,” “deplotion has been tepid. rables,” “basement And, of course, dwellers,” and now we know “bucket of losers.” (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate why. Thank you, Released emails Julian Assange. also reveal some It is not fair to smear all Democrat deep loathing for conservative Catholics politicians, much less Democrat voters, and evangelical Christians. by accusing all of them of engaging in or DEMOCRATS SCREAM that voter approving of these behaviors. But when fraud doesn’t exist, that voter ID efforts this kind of corruption is taking place at are unnecessary, and that those pushing the national level, and the press is so enfor integrity in the voting process are just meshed in it that they refuse to call it out, trying to disenfranchise poor or minority we have a serious problem. Democrat voters have some housevoters. Meanwhile, state after state finds incorrect voter registrations, dead people cleaning to do. They must acknowledge registered to vote and people registered that these practices not only run counter in multiple states. Manhattan Board of to the very values that Democrats purElections Commissioner Alan Schulkin port to stand for, but also that they are was captured on film complaining that, actively ripping apart the fabric of the

Laura

Hollis

nation. You cannot reward those debasing the system by electing them. Nor can we continue to deflect by saying, “Oh, well, they all do it.” That’s a cop-out. First, it isn’t true; not all political leaders or parties incite violence or attempt vote fraud. Second, that reasoning gives anyone who hasn’t engaged in political malfeasance justification to do so in the future. After all, if “everyone else” does it, then that’s the only way to win. The press won’t do a thing, and the voters clearly don’t care. Donald Trump, Julian Assange and James O’Keefe may or may not be three wise men. But they have come bearing gifts. They have ripped the cover off of a very rotten system, and have given us the opportunity to make a much-needed course correction. WE CAN AND we must insist that our politicians conduct their campaigns (and their administrations) according to the principles in the Constitution and the values enshrined therein.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE: October 20, 2016

The Bernie Sanders effect

any millennials are OK with socialism, even communism, according to a YouGov poll commissioned by The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Forty-five percent of those polled between the ages of 16 and 20 years old said they would vote for a socialist, while 20 percent said they could vote for a communist. Maybe that explains the Che Guevara T-shirts so many of them like to wear. Responding to the poll, Marion Smith, the executive director of the organization, said, “An emerging generation of Americans has little understanding of the collectivist system and its dark history.” Partial credit for this should go to former presidential candidate and avowed socialist Bernie Sanders.

EVEN MORE shocking is the poll’s discovery that a third of millennials believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin, whose regime murdered 20 million people between 1924 and 1953. The total killed under all communist regimes (so far) is estimated at 100 million. The poll also found that capitalism, which offers millennials more opportunities than the socialism and communism so many of them admire, is viewed favorably by 42 percent of young people, compared to 64 percent of Americans over the age of 65. That

so few older adults appreciate capitalism is also disturbing, though it is a triumph of liberal propaganda, which tends to base its ideology on intentions and feelings, not evidence and outcomes. In part, these results are a product of a public education system that increasingly treats all ideas and organizing principles — save democracy and capitalism — as equal. Moral judgments are not to be made, thanks in part to an emerging philosophy divorced from right and wrong.

Cal

The late Catholic Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen brilliantly summed up the problem with modern society more than a half-century ago; before it evolved into the morally chaotic nation we are today. He wrote, “America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.” WHEN ONE has lost a standard for judging right from wrong, good from evil, when anything goes (Cole Porter wrote a satirical song with that title), then socialism and communism become one

more organizing principle among many of equal value. That liberal Democrats are succeeding in shaping young people’s minds is revealed by this finding in the YouGov poll: More than half of millennials say the capitalism system works against them, while four in 10 call for a “complete change” so that the highest earners pay their “fair share” in taxes. No one ever defines what “fair share” means, much less holds government accountable for the money it wastes, including the failure of costly programs Congress lacks the will to terminate. This way of thinking is a triumph of the envy-greed-entitlement worldview, which believes that if someone is making more money than you, they owe you the difference, except those higher taxes won’t find their way into your pocket. We used to learn from the successful, because they served as role models and examples of how hard work and risktaking could improve any life. Now, we penalize success and, as a result, get less of it. But we feel better and feelings are all that matter, right? At least that’s how we have been conditioned to think. THESE POLL results ought to spur more parents to rescue their children from an education system that is failing them on many levels. Maybe a field trip to a communist country would cure millennials of their moral equivalence. They might start by visiting the prisons in Cuba.

November 2, 2016 MEDIA BIAS: October 19, 2016

Hillary’s advantage, media: Trump’s advantage, issues

ay, does anyone remember when Trump was the lightweight with no “policy specifics?” I have an entire chapter in my book In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! quoting media savants complaining about Trump’s lack of “policy specifics,” interspersed, by date, with his major policy speeches and papers. At this point, the only “policy specific” Trump hasn’t given us is which company will supply rebar for the wall. But now, the media’s entire campaign against Trump is to prevent him from talking about policy. They would rather talk about fat-shaming than trade, immigration and jobs. Sometimes, it seems like Trump is cheating by taking the vastly more popular side of every issue. THE OFFICIAL GOP used to send its candidates out with ankle weights, a 75-pound backpack and blinders. But Trump didn’t agree to take any staggeringly unpopular positions, however much the Business Roundtable loved them. He’s against amnesty, for building a wall, against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for Social Security, against the Iraq War and for extreme vetting of Muslim immigrants. That’s why the media have to change the subject to something flashy that will capture the attention of the most downmarket, easily fooled voters. Trump is a groper! The media’s interest in sex scandals goes back and forth, depending on their needs at the moment. When the last name of the perp is “Kennedy” or “Clinton,” they’re not interested. When it’s “the Duke lacrosse team”: Guilty. The fact that a lacrosse team at an elite college had hired a couple of strippers,

Emma Sulkowicz, or “Mattress Girl,” who — THANK GOD ALMIGHTY — turned out to be black, was all the evi- claimed she had been raped by a fellow dence our media needed to conclude that student at Columbia University and that the athletes had committed a gang-rape, college administrators refused to take action against her rapist. based on centuries of entitlement. Columbia, to refresh your memory, By contrast, when former U.S. senator John Edwards was cheating on his dying is the institution that invited Iran’s Mahwife — while he was running for presi- moud Ahmadinejad to speak. University dent, paying his mistress with campaign administrators are constantly changing funds and lying to the American people mascot names and canceling traditionabout it, between lecturing us about al celebrations because some feminist morality with the unctuous sanctimony yelps. But, somehow, Mattress that passes for policy in the Democratic Girl’s claim that adParty — the media ministrators at Coprimly refused to lumbia turned a deaf cover it. ear to her brutal That is, unrape was comtil Edwards was (c) 2016, Ann Coulter pletely believable out of the race, at to our media and which point the media refused to cover it because he political class. You could see the corpowasn’t a candidate. (You guys are the rate recruiters lining up! Among the many, many articles in the best! I love the media.) For more than a year, the National New York Times about brave Mattress Enquirer had the entire Edwards story Girl, art and culture writer Roberta Smith to itself. Finally, its reporters chased Ed- said her art project — carrying a mattress wards into a hotel bathroom at 2:40 in the around campus to symbolize the weight morning, after having caught him spend- carried by rape victims — raised “analoing the evening with his mistress and gies” to Christ’s Stations of the Cross (especially to writers at the Times, where their love-child at the Beverly Hilton. At that moment, when the affair was not a minute goes by without their thinkplastered in photos all over the Enquirer, ing about the Passion). Mattress Girl made the Times’ “QuoLos Angeles Times editor Tony Pierce emailed his bloggers, instructing them tation of the Day” for this humdinger: not to mention the “alleged affair,” ex- “I’ve never felt more shoved under the plaining, “We have decided not to cover rug in my life.” the rumors or salacious speculations,” EVEN AS the charges were unravelsince “the only source has been the National Enquirer” — he might have added, ing, easily fooled U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gil“a vastly more interesting and accurate librand brought Mattress Girl as her special guest to President Obama’s State of publication than the L.A. Times.” A few years passed, and suddenly we the Union address. (If only Clinton had were back to Duke lacrosse standards of known it was possible to invite girls with proof. As a rule of thumb, the only sex mattresses to the State of the Union!) After Mattress Girl had spent a couple stories our media believe are the false of years accepting awards, her alleged ones. rapist finally released her texts to him, both before and after the alleged rape. Here are a few from before the alleged rape: “f--k me in the butt” “I love youuuu” And here are a few after: “I wanna see yoyououoyou” “I love you Paul. Where are you?!?!?!?!” Unlike Trump’s secretly recorded hotmic conversation 11 years ago, the Times never thought it worthwhile to quote any of Sulkowicz’s messages to Paul — much less on its front page, sans asterisks. The closest the Times came to acknowledging these texts was to delicately note that the two had “traded mutually affectionate messages.” Continuing the media’s winning streak, about the same time as Mattress Girl was sitting for her Smithsonian portrait, Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Rubin Erdely was all over the news, reaping accolades for a story about a gang-rape at

Ann

Coulter

the University of Virginia even more preposterous than the Duke lacrosse case. Sadly for the media, the victim wasn’t black. But, on the other hand, the alleged perps were “frat boys.” (As far as our media are concerned, the lowest circle of hell is reserved for “frat boys.”) Erdely was the toast of the town ... until a few weeks later, when her story completely fell apart. Rolling Stone retracted the article, the Columbia Journalism Review investigated, and there are currently three defamation lawsuits proceeding against the magazine. Now, the same people who brought us the Duke lacrosse case, Mattress Girl and the Rolling Stone abomination — but who discreetly left John Edwards’ sex scandal to the National Enquirer; Bill Clinton’s serial sexual assaults to private litigant Paula Jones; and the Kennedy family’s wh--ing to investigative journalists Seymour Hersh (30 years later) and Leo Damore (20 years later) — these are the people who tell us they’re pretty sure Donald Trump is a groper. Three weeks before a major presidential election. Trump has been a rich celebrity for 40 years, employing thousands of women, but this is the first time he has been seriously accused of any sexual impropriety. You will recall that, just this May, the New York Times conducted a major investigation into Trump’s treatment of women — and came up empty-handed. Trump denies the allegations, but don’t expect a “Correction” like this one from the Chicago Tribune, dated Sept. 5, 1996: “In her Wednesday Commentary page column, Linda Bowles stated that President Clinton and the former campaign adviser Dick Morris both were ‘guilty of callous unfaithfulness to their wives and children.’ Neither man has admitted to being or been proven to have been unfaithful. The Tribune regrets the error.” Strangely, the allegations against Trump don’t even tell a larger story about the (apocryphal) “campus rape culture.” Trump’s not a member of the Duke lacrosse team. He isn’t a “frat boy.” The only reason for these 11th-hour claims is that the ruling class doesn’t want voters thinking about the immigration policies, trade deals and wars that are destroying their way of life. Ever since Trump started raising the issues that no one else would, the media and the political class have done everything in their power to try to stop our movement. They’re so close! Just four more years of importing the Third World at breakneck speed, and America will be O-ver. MAYBE IT will work. And then six months after the election, Americans will realize they’ve been scammed by the media into giving away their country.

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: October 20, 2016

GOP losing election that should have been a slam dunk

he presidential debates are mercifully over in an election that may long be remembered as a lost opportunity for Republicans to take control of the nation’s government for the next four to eight years. This should have been an election that was all about the dreadful Obama economy, lost jobs, and persistently weak economic growth that’s crawling along at little more than one percent. This should have been a relentless, unforgiving, game-changing campaign that turned the election into an historic referendum on the last eight years of an underperforming economy that has hurt tens of millions of Americans.

INSTEAD, THE voters nominated Donald Trump, who has been incapable of mounting a campaign focusing like a laser beam on the Democrats’ biggest political weakness. University of Maryland business economist Peter Morici, who has been one of President Obama’s severest critics, correctly summed up this administration’s failure: “The current economic recovery has been one of the longest and weakest since World War II. Growth at 2.1 percent has not been enough to resurrect family incomes to pre-recession levels or create enough good-paying jobs.” In the last and blessedly final year of Obama’s anemic economic record, the economy has grown weaker, raising fears that we may be headed toward another recession. To be sure, Trump has made the weak economy one of the issues in his campaign, but his criticisms have for the most part been drowned out or undermined by unending controversies, scandals and inflammatory rhetoric of his own making. Heading into the final days of the campaign, he was dismissing a taped conversation, in which he bragged about sexually forcing himself on women, as nothing more than “locker room banter;” denying charges from women that he assaulted them; and saying he often got away with such behavior because he was famous and a television “star.” More recently, Trump insists he is a victim of a “global conspiracy” that has “rigged” the election against him in favor of Hillary Clinton. As Clinton has lengthened her lead in pivotal states, he has raised a new and unprecedented issue in the annals of presidential politics: That if he loses, it will be the result of election fraud. He has offered no evidence of this paranoid plot, or for his bombastic charges that the election process is rigged. Yet at the end of Wednesday night’s rancorous debate, he leveled one of the most incendiary threats of

his campaign — refusing to say wheth- dential election immediately comes to er he would accept the outcome of next mind, when large numbers of dubious Democratic votes were counted in Chimonth’s election. “I will keep you in suspense,” the cago that swept John F. Kennedy into notoriously litigious real estate mogul the White House. Since then, stringent safeguards said. Conspiracy theories abound in this have been put in place by both parelection, and Trump is clearly appeal- ties, with poll watchers at voting places ing to that part of the electorate that and during the vote-counting process. There are respected studies that show buys into them, hook, line and sinker. But by raising the specter of voter voter fraud is rare. Meantime, polls fraud — even before the polls open — in key battlegrounds he is attempting to show that Hillundermine pubary Clinton leads lic confidence in in enough states America’s demoto give her more cratic process and (c) 2016, United Media Services than the 270 electhe very foundatoral votes she needs to win the presitions of self-government. dency. Clinton is said to hold leads of four HE’S ALSO trying to shift the news media’s attention away from his grop- percentage points or more “among ing scandal, and he effectively did just likely voters in states that add up to 304 that in Wednesday’s debate. He also electoral votes,” according to a Surveymade it clear that he disagrees with his Monkey poll of 15 pivotal states convice presidential running mate, Indiana ducted by the Washington Post. Trump Gov. Mike Pence, who has said, “We “has the advantage in states with an eswill absolutely accept the results of the timated electoral vote total of 138.” Of course, as Yogi Berra once said, election.” Has there been voter fraud in our “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Still, things elections? Of course. The 1960 presi- look bleak for the Republicans.

Donald

Lambro

It didn’t have to be this way. Trump would be leading in the polls if he had made Obama’s failed economy his chief issue in this campaign — detailing its weaknesses, spelling out how lower tax rates would produce a wave of new job-creating capital investment, and, of course, refraining from childish insults and bombastic behavior. And if he had embraced the House GOP’s revenueneutral tax reforms, which would shut down needless loopholes and corporate welfare. Meantime, Hillary Clinton’s tax-hiking economic agenda will be a disaster for our country. Listen to Morici: “If Congress permits her to expand Obamacare, impose a $15 minimum wage, finance broader subsidies for child care and college tuition and impose other regulatory burdens, those would likely cook our economic goose,” Morici writes. BUT TRUMP is not going to change his rude and vulgar behavior, nor restyle his campaign agenda. Democrats handed the Republicans this election on a silver platter, and it appears that a deeply flawed GOP nominee is about to lose it.

2016 ELECTION: October 20, 2016

At last, the final presidential debate

he 27th law in Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power is “to create a cultlike following.” Toward that end, Greene suggests that the modern day prince “use words of great resonance but cloudy meaning, words full of heat and enthusiasm.” You wonder if Donald Trump read the book when you consider such pronouncements from the final presidential debate as this: “NAFTA, it’s a disaster.” Trump also promised amazing economic growth — “I think you can go to five percent or six percent.” “Most people want to hear that a simple solution will cure their problems,” Greene explains. “Instead of the complicated explanations of real life, return to the primitive solutions of our ancestors, to good old country remedies, to mysterious panaceas.” Trump’s motto: “Make America great again.”

GREENE ALSO advises powerseekers to “create an us-versus-them dynamic.” In refusing to stipulate that he’ll accept the result of the election in November, Trump doubled down on the division. He blamed the “corrupt media” and a “rigged” election system, secure in the knowledge that his followers will rally for the cause. When he told a rally Thursday he would ac-

cept the results “if I win,” his fans cheered. Hillary Clinton is riding Law 33, “Discover each man’s thumbscrew.” Look to a person’s childhood, Greene advises. Thus the former first lady and secretary of state commented on Trump starting his business with a $14 million loan from his father

Debra J.

— Trump says it was a $1 million loan. She jabbed Trump for his bigmouth gaffes — he mocked a disabled reporter, called 1996’s Miss Universe an eating machine and dismissed some of his female accusers as not being attractive enough for him to push himself on them. She did everything she could to prod Trump to overreact. TRUMP DIDN’T lose it totally when Clinton read out her list of his sins. He saved his anger for later when moderator Chris Wallace asked the candidates to discuss entitlement spending. That’s when Trump interrupted Clinton to call her “such a nasty

woman.” Female voters should have little trouble recognizing Trump’s issues with women. As Greene wrote, when you poke a childhood weakness, “the person will often act like a child.” As Greene observed, “People in the grip of these emotions often cannot control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them.” Clinton didn’t even try to convince voters that she is forthcoming. She dodged questions about the Clinton Foundation’s “pay-to-play” proclivities and her remarks in support of “open trade and open borders” in a paid speech to a Brazilian bank. Clinton gave undecided voters no reason to support her — other than the fact that she is not Donald Trump. AFTER THE debate, Twitter was flush with praise for Wallace as the best moderator in the presidential debates. But despite Chris Wallace’s best efforts, the final presidential debate was not a contest of ideas. It wasn’t a drag race where the fastest driver wins the cup. Rather, it was a demolition derby where voters tuned in to see how much damage one driver could inflict upon the other. But at this racetrack, the drivers have revved their engines and plowed into the stands.

November 2, 2016 MELANIA TRUMP: October 20, 2016

Finding strength in Melania Trump

hen the now-infamous Don- dates are in a race to the bottom for the ald Trump-Billy Bush au- worst untrustworthy rating in political dio feed was released, my history. It would seem the public has confidence in Trump all but evaporated. come to believe, rightly or wrongly, that The conversation about kissing, groping Trump is a skirt-chaser and Clinton is and fondling women was worse than so- incapable of telling the truth. called locker room talk. It was vile, vulFor Clinton I don’t see redemption. gar and inexcusable for a grown man. She is a corrupt political operative of the But it didn’t end with the audio tape. worst kind. But for Trump I may see After that came a barrage of sexual as- a way back. And his wife, sault allegations Melania Trump, is a from various wombig reason why. en against Trump She gave some that drowned out remarkable cable any talk of subinterviews this (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate stantive issues. No week, and she has wonder his polls slid. me looking at the awful last two weeks in He was a stock looking for a bottom. a somewhat different light. Trump told CNN that her husband’s DURING THE second debate, just words on the audio tape were not acceptdays after the audio tape release, he did able. In even stronger language, she told apologize, and he did get to some key is- Fox News, “Those words, they were ofsues. I thought his stock might be finding fensive to me, and they were inappropria bottom. ate. And he apologized to me. And I exBut then he re-hit the campaign trail pect — I accept his apology. And we are with bizarre statements about being the moving on.” victim of a Mexican billionaire, major I’ve only met Melania once, a few media outlets and rigged elections. His months ago at a funeral. For some reastock continued to slide. son, she recognized me. She came up, In the meantime, a boatload of Hillary shook my hand and, if I recall correctly, Clinton emails leaked out. Of course, we thanked me for supporting her husband’s learned of unscrupulous deals, official tax-cutting economic plan. favors for cash and how one of her forAnd then she turned her head and in a mer undersecretaries at the State Depart- strong voice said to Donald, who was a ment tried to make a deal with the FBI to few bodies away, “Look who’s here. Say protect her. hello.” Granted, sex sells better than emails. I was surprised and impressed by her But both of these presidential candi- political skills. She also had a certain

Larry

Kudlow

strength and toughness that reminded me she’s a successful businesswoman. When she told cable reporters that she accepted her husband’s apology, I think she meant it. WE REALLY hadn’t heard from Melania Trump since these semi-scandals hit. She never showed up at that typical news conference — the wife dutifully staring up at that guilty-as-sin politician, playing the fawning bride beside the man who proceeds to lie through his teeth to the media.

When she repeated, “This is not the man that I know,” it reminded me that he’s not the man I know. In meetings in his office or on his plane, he was always a serious, accessible, engaged businessman-turned-politician, wading through important policy issues as he learned his craft. True enough, Donald Trump has said some indefensible things this campaign. Many of us who have supported him have said so, and we will criticize him again if it comes to that. But then again, how is it that all these women spontaneously come out of the woodwork with unverified stories about Trump? Again, I like how Melania Trump handled it: With great civility under pressure, instead of viciously attacking these women, as Clinton once did to her husband’s accusers. Trump simply said, “All the allegations should be handled in a court of law.” She correctly makes one think that this phalanx of accusations is planned and organized. If not, why hasn’t one accuser filed charges? And she had one more thing to say — some advice for her husband: Get back to the issues. Indeed, Donald Trump, if he is to regain his chance, must pivot back to economic growth, jobs, wages, Obamacare repeal, border security and destroying ISIS. Women, by the way, are just as worried about these issues as men. It is doubtful that all this will be put to rest at Wednesday’s debate. But Trump has one last opportunity to apologize to the nation, just as he apologized to his wife. And then he can tell us how his plan to get America right again is far better than Clinton’s. I WANT TO thank Melania for starting me on the path of restored confidence in Donald Trump.

Conservative Chronicle

CITIZENS UNITED: October 21, 2016

Undermining our system: The bogeyman

ecause of what came later — President Barack Obama, who chose Donald Trump’s refusal to say to malign the United States Supreme whether he’d accept the re- Court from the well of the House of sults of the election — Hillary Clinton’s Representatives during his 2010 State similar, if somewhat less incendiary, of the Union address. Citizens United, remark about our system’s legitimacy he thundered, “allowed big companies — including foreign corporations — to went nearly unnoticed. limited amounts to inRight out of the box, responding to a spend unour elections.” This query from Chris Wallace about the Su- fluence is what caused a preme Court (and startled, and doubtlet me add my less appalled, Jusvoice to the genertice Samuel Alito to al hosannas for his shake his head and mature and profes(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate mouth the words sional conduct), Clinton implied that a Supreme Court “not true.” It’s a dangerous and irresponsible decision she disliked, Citizens United v. FEC, “undermined the election sys- thing to undermine confidence in the tem in our country because of the way nation’s institutions. So glad that Demoit permits dark, unaccountable money to crats have discovered that this year. Perhaps now that they are hearing it from come into our electoral system.” the mouth of Donald Trump, they will IN THIS, she is echoing others in the repent of their own recklessness. Citizens United v. FEC concerned Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders put it this way in a statement on his web- the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold First Amendment limitation (er, site: “Six years ago, as a result of the di- campaign finance) law. The decision did sastrous Citizens United Supreme Court not change the law forbidding foreigners decision, by a 5-to-4 vote, the U.S. from donating to American elections. Supreme Court essentially said to the At issue, appropriately enough, was wealthiest people in this country: You a harshly critical movie about Hillary already own much of the American Clinton. Like many politicians (includeconomy. Now, we are going to give ing Donald Trump), Clinton’s position you the opportunity to purchase the is that there ought to be a law restrictU.S. Government, the White House, the ing such criticism. That’s what McCainU.S. Senate, the U.S. House, Governors’ Feingold did, and that’s what the Court seats, legislatures, and State judicial held violated the First Amendment. branches as well.” CLINTON SUGGESTS that the deHe, in turn, was repackaging the misrepresentations of none other than cision prevents Americans from know-

Mona

Charen

ing who is funding political activity. Citizens United did nothing of the kind. It simply ratified the concept that groups of Americans, whether they come together as labor unions, advocacy groups or corporations of various kinds, do not lose their right to speak when they join together. Under campaign finance laws, groups like Citizens United or People for the American Way were prohibited from running ads for or against candidates at any time, and McCain-Feingold extended this prohibition to prevent such groups from even mentioning a candidate in a broadcast ad within 60 days of a general election. The Supreme Court held that such political speech was the essence of the First Amendment.

Contra the Democrats, there is no secret about who is spending what on American elections. Candidates, parties, traditional PAC, and super PACs must all disclose their spending and their donors. When Democrats speak of “dark money,” they are creating a bogeyman. Here’s what they’re referring to: When nonprofits like Planned Parenthood, trade associations or the NRA (i.e., groups that devote more than 50 percent of their activities to nonpolitical matters) spend money on political messaging, they do not have to disclose their donors (except funds earmarked for that particular ad). As former SEC Chairman Brad Smith explains, this represents a small fraction of total campaign spending. In 2012, it was 4.3 percent. In 2016, it’s coming in at under three percent. We know how much they spend, because they must report it. We know what they represent, or in the case of a group like Americans for Prosperity, we can easily find out. And nothing in the Citizens United decision altered disclosure requirements. Citizens United upheld the most cherished right protected by the Constitution. The disclosure requirements in current law are more extensive than ever before in American history. Moreover, there are some pitfalls in total disclosure, such as exposing those with unpopular viewpoints to harassment. Democrats obscure these essential girders of free speech and demonize the case to suggest that a wealthy, obscure elite has hijacked the political system. DONALD TRUMP again signaled his contempt for democratic norms by declining to say he’d respect the results of the election. But Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who stoke mistrust by falsely spinning conspiracy theories of illegitimate, dark forces controlling our system are also to blame for the parlous state of social trust in America.

November 2, 2016 MEDIA BIAS: October 20, 2016

And they call it puppy love: MSM goes too far

am in jolly old London for a Spectator debate about America’s presidential candidates, Donald Trump and What’s Her Name. London is resplendent as ever, and at this point in the election cycle my wife is patrolling my behavior, lest I hazard our bank account by popping into Anderson & Sheppard to order another suit or seeking psychiatric refreshment. I AM, of course, arguing for the Republican candidate against the fascist, and I predict a close election. Somehow, Hillary Clinton — the fascist — has everyone in the media scandalized and fretting over Trump’s flirtatious nature back when he was a TV celeb, and no one in the press corps is even interested in her or her husband, Bill the Groper. Did Bill Clinton harass women, and did Hillary Clinton employ private investigators to hound them? The mainstream media, or MSM, will ignore that topic.

Though I published the investigators’ cool for men and women to act like names in this column several weeks monkeys on monkey island at the zoo. ago and in a book, The Clinton Crack- Well, the sexual revolution is now over. Up: The Boy President’s Life After the Even Bill Clinton has slowed down. White House, I wrote of their nefari- I, for one, think he looks a wreck. I not even imagine him ous achievements. Did she commingle c a n thrusting himself her foundation’s upon a woman towork with her day. To those who State Department in the 1960s and business, raking 1970s told us that in millions of dol(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate sexual excess lars for her family, and expose classified documents on was a salubrious pursuit I say, look at her home server so that our intelligence Bill today. He is badly depleted, and I community was vulnerable and Ameri- blame his libido. can agents were endangered worldSO THE MSM is throwing evwide — and in at least one instance put to death? That is a minor complaint, erything they have at Trump. They say the MSM: “She is one of us. Let us have gone too far. Frankly, even I was shocked late last week when I read in move on.” The urgent question for the MSM the Washington Post that back in 2005 is who Trump may have kissed back Trump was taped clandestinely telling in his bachelor days when the sexual someone by the name of Billy Bush that revolution was in high gear and it was he thought his TV-star status ensured

R. Emmett

Tyrrell

MEDIA BIAS: October 26, 2016

Trump’s accusers: No facts required

he roll out of women accusers against Donald Trump continues. On Oct. 20, accuser No. 10, Karena Virginia, charged that Trump took hold of her right arm in a crowd after the 1998 U.S. Open. When he did, his hand also made contact with the side of her breast. Attorney Gloria Allred, a two-time Hillary Clinton convention delegate and Democratic Party grenade thrower, flanked Virginia as she told her story to reporters. Then Saturday, Allred staged another press conference to unveil accuser No. 11, Jessica Drake, an adult film performer who also operates a website “Guide to Wicked Sex.” Drake claims she met Trump 10 years ago at a golf outing and he invited her to his hotel room. When she got there, he hugged her tightly and kissed her on the lips.

SEXUAL ASSAULT is a serious issue. But these accusations raise another grave issue: Is it fair for the media to rush to publicize damaging claims against Trump — or anyone else — without witnesses or backup evidence? Consider accuser No. 1: Jessica Leeds. She told the New York Times that almost forty years ago, Donald Trump sexually groped her on a flight to New York, while a man across the aisle looked on, his eyes “bugging out of his head.” Less than 48 hours after interviewing Leeds, and despite Trump’s protests that the charge was false, the Times ran the allegation on the front page. The report-

ers couldn’t confirm the date or even the year the incident supposedly occurred, or on what flight. They didn’t find even one witness. No facts. Two days after the Times article, Anthony Gilberthorpe came forward, saying he was the man across the aisle: “I was there,” and what Leeds is claiming is “wrong, wrong, wrong.” Gilberthorpe said Leeds was all over the mogul, and when Trump got up to the bathroom, she confessed she wanted to marry him. Gilberthorpe also had no facts to prove his statements.

Betsy

So, who’s telling the truth? Impossible to say. That isn’t stopping the media from repeating the Times’ account, despite all the holes. AND DESPITE the controversy over an earlier Trump hit piece by the same reporters. They argued that Trump treated women in his Miss Universe contests like objects, inspecting them up and down on stage. Imagine that at a beauty contest. Two women quoted in that article — Miss California USA Carrie Prejean and Rowanne Brewer Lane — said the Times reporters had twisted their words. Is accuser No. 11 the last? Probably not. Natasha Rickley, a former Miss Nebraska Teen, says ABC News is trying to reach every beauty contestant who

ever had contact with Trump. Allred appears heavily involved. Democrats have called on her to smear Republican candidates in the past, including presidential hopeful Herman Cain and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. On Oct.15, Allred led accuser Summer Zervos to a press conference like a pony on a rope to accuse Trump of forceful kissing and touching. These accusations are rushed into print without facts. The Washington Post blazoned Kristin Anderson’s accusation that Trump put his hand up her miniskirt at a nightclub, even though she couldn’t remember what year it happened or the friends with her that night. Pretty thin. What has happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” The media often forget that, like when a student at the University of Virginia concocted a tale of gang rape. The sensationalist coverage smeared innocent people. But it didn’t influence a presidential election. A Reuters poll released Friday shows 63 percent of Americans now believe Trump committed sexual assault. MAYBE HE did, and maybe not. Trump and the public deserve fair, balanced coverage of the accusations until the facts are known. Sadly, it’s not happening. Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg suggests that “normal standards” of journalistic fairness do not apply because in the media’s view, Donald Trump is a “demagogue” who must be brought down. Voters beware.

him the ability to “grab any woman by the puppy” — the prudish Post wrote it “p----,” but we all know what it meant. Think about it. Why would Trump ever grab a woman’s puppy? For one thing, he is famously a germaphobe. I was with him on his airplane just the other day, and he washed his hands at every opportunity. Additionally, such unrestrained behavior with a woman’s puppy would surely get him in even more trouble with the Anti-Cruelty Society than he is with the MSM. Even I share the Society’s concern for cruelty to animals. I have no idea how the Post arranged the taping, but it almost surely is a fraud. This is but another absurd diversion by the MSM away from the real issues of this campaign and toward the gutter. How times have changed. I well remember when the Los Angeles Times and the American Spectator published the Troopergate stories back in late 1993. All hell broke loose. The Arkansas state troopers who served as Clinton’s bodyguards (and, incidentally, as his procurers) were traduced. The MSM jumped to his defense: The bodyguards were liars, his privacy was violated, and what about the sanctity of his marriage? Distinguished members of the press corps, such as Michael Kinsley and Joe Klein, called me dishonest, though at the time Klein was hard at work on a book about a little-veiled Arkansas governor’s goatish ways. He called it Primary Colors and, not wanting to reveal himself, published it under the name Anonymous. Of course, the name Paula Jones emerged from the Troopergate stories. She sued Clinton for sexual harassment, and during the case’s legal-discovery phase Monica Lewinsky’s name came up. Clinton was eventually impeached. But back then all this sexual innuendo talk was dismissed as, “It’s only about sex. Everyone does it.” Well, once again it is only about sex. And as you might gather from my mention of puppies, I find it absurd. What Clinton did in the 1980s and 1990s was while he was an official of the state — including president. In fact, he was in state offices and state vehicles, and he used state credit cards. He did it in the Oval Office. Whatever Trump did was on his own time, years ago, and it’s child’s play when compared to the former president and his enabler, the first lady. HOW ABOUT finishing this race by talking about the issues: Taxes, the economy, national defense, immigration and Obamacare. How about Hillary Clinton’s server and lies to the American people. Puppies? Forget about it.

Conservative Chronicle

RON JOHNSON: October 23, 2016

In Wisconsin, a measure of the country’s metabolism

n 49 states, when you order breakfast in a restaurant you might be asked if you would like pancakes or an omelet. In Wisconsin, you are asked if you would like pancakes with your omelet. Ron Johnson would, thank you. This Republican U.S. senator, who is burning prodigious amounts of calories campaigning for a second and final term, really does represent the hearty eaters who were fueling up at a Perkins restaurant here on a recent Sunday morning.

IN 2010, Johnson left his plastics manufacturing company that made him wealthy enough to try, against his preference for the private sector and against his wife’s adamant disapproval, to become the only manufacturer in the Senate. He surfed into that chamber on the Republican wave raised by two things that annoyed Johnson enough to propel him into politics — the Obama administration’s stimulus that did not stimulate, and Obamacare, which six years later is in intensive care. Johnson defeated a three-term incumbent, Russ Feingold, who this year is again Johnson’s opponent. Being devoted environmentalists, Democrats believe in recycling even their candidates: In Indiana, too, a former senator, Evan Bayh, is in a tight race trying to return to Washington. In a season supposedly inimical to insiders, Feingold, 63, is more of this detested breed than is Johnson. Feingold first won elective office at age 29 and his involuntary six-year sojourn in the private sector has been an aberration he is eager to end. Johnson, 61, said when seeking his first term that he would never seek a third. Johnson says he has traveled 130,000 miles — “that’s with me behind the wheel” — to ask audiences: How many of you think the government is efficient and effective? When no hands are raised, he asks: Why, then, would you want it enlarged? Johnson was considered so vulnerable this year that the national party essentially wrote him off — indeed, it virtually announced as much by its parsimonious support. Ten months ago he trailed Feingold by double digits. He is attempting to become the first Wisconsin Republican since 1980 to win a Senate election in a presidential year. In that year, Ronald Reagan’s coattails pulled 16 freshmen Republicans into the Senate. This year, Johnson faces headwinds beyond the fact that the unhinged spectacle at the top of the Republican ticket lost the Wisconsin primary to Ted Cruz by 13 points. Wisconsin last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1984 and is much more congenial to Republicans in non-presidential years,

support for a faith-based program teaching unemployed inner-city residents the modalities of job seeking (interviews, etc.); the other highlights Johnson helping a Wisconsin couple bring their adopted child home from Congo. This year of the counterintuitive has reached an appropriate culmination: NEVERTHELESS, although Hilary Republican retention of Senate control depend on weakness Clinton is expected to win Wisconsin m i g h t at the top of the handily, Johnson ticket starting imstill could be the mediately. If Donunlikely savior of ald Trump’s chances Republicans’ Senof winning are ate control: Two (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group soon seen to be, recent public polls as they actually show Johnson behind by less than the polls’ margins of are, vanishingly small, Republican Senerror. This is partly because, in a year ate candidates can explicitly encourage of unrelieved political ugliness, he has tactical voting: They can acknowledge done something eccentric: He has run that Trump is toast and can urge voters television ads that make people smile to send Republicans to Washington as a rather than wince. One concerns his check on President Hillary Clinton. when turnout is lower. In 2010, the total vote for Senate candidates was 2,171,331. In the presidential year 2012, when Democrat Tammy Baldwin defeated former Gov. Tommy Thompson for the state’s other Senate seat, the total vote surged to 3,009,411.

George

Will

In 22 of the 36 election cycles — presidential and off-year — in the 70 years since World War II, voters have produced divided government, giving at least one house of Congress to the party not holding the presidency. This wholesome American instinct for checks and balances is particularly pertinent now because Clinton will take office as an unprecedentedly unpopular new president. FOR CONSERVATIVES, this autumn has been about simultaneously stopping Trump and preserving Republicans’ Senate control to stymie Clinton. Johnson will return either to the Senate and the invigorating business of preventing progressives’ mischief, or to private life. Come what may, he says, “I’ll be the calmest guy on election night.”

DEFICIT: October 20, 2016

The trillion-dollar question

ave you noticed that for a few months, President Barack Obama has stopped bragging about how the federal budget deficit is shrinking? That’s because it’s not. For the first time since 2009, the deficit has gone up rather than down. The Congressional Budget Office recently released its budget review for September 2016. It shows that in fiscal 2016, which ended Sept. 30, the deficit grew by $149 billion, from $439 billion to $588 billion. It now stands at 3.2 percent of gross domestic product, up from 2.5 percent last year. It’s also the first increase in the deficit as a share of GDP since 2009. THIS YEAR’S deficit growth has nothing to do with a loss in revenue. Almost all of the $149 billion added to the deficit came from additional spending. The estimated spending increase was $168 billion, and the estimated revenue increase was $19 billion. The CBO notes that $41 billion of that spending was the result of payments that should have been made in fiscal 2017 but weren’t because Oct. 1 fell on a weekend. That being said, CBO adds, it did not make much difference. “If not for that shift, the deficit in 2016 would have been about $547 billion, or 3.0 percent of GDP — still considerably higher than the deficit recorded for 2015.” Putting the deficit figure in perspective is interesting. A $588 billion deficit is more than we spend on the Department of Defense for the year ($564 billion, excluding war funding) and only slightly less than we spend on health

care for non-poor Americans’ Medicare ($595 billion). If you add Social Security and Medicaid to the Medicare amount, we spent $1.87 trillion on the three largest mandatory programs, which explains why I always stress that these programs drive our future debt. We are steadily heading back toward a trillion-dollar deficit. CBO projects a deficit of $954 billion by 2022, assuming Congress sticks to the current law and maintains the budget caps, which are supposed to make their comeback in fiscal 2018. But unlike the trillion-dollar deficits we experienced during the Great Recession, this red ink

Veronique

is here to stay — and grow. Of course, the fact that the economy will keep growing at a meek, though steady, 1.9 percent per year will contribute to these worrying trends. WHY SHOULD we care? First, these numbers show that the government is constantly growing and expanding its size and scope, a move that will lead to future tax increases or slower economic growth. Second, having higher deficits also means having higher public debt. Federal debt is already high relative to its historical levels. But if current policies remain in effect, the debt held by the public will grow from almost 77 percent of GDP at the end of this year to 150 percent by 2046.

In the long term, if unaddressed, it will have a damaging impact on American families. Higher sustained debt also makes it harder for the government to respond to real emergencies, such as natural disasters and acts of terrorism. It’s frustrating because we know exactly what needs to be done to get off this unsustainable cycle of spending, larger deficits and higher debt levels. Behind the trend is the rising spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and net interest. These programs account for a large share of past deficits and will account for an even larger share of future ones. The only solution as such is to reform these programs. Some will tell you that no reform can be achieved without significant tax increases. However, there are serious side effects from raising taxes in terms of labor productivity and economic growth. It’s also very questionable whether Uncle Sam could raise much more revenue with higher tax rates under the current system. THE BOTTOM line is that we have a spending problem that should be addressed by reforming these programs. The good news is that over the years, scholars in different institutions have come up with many plans on how to do just that; the solution is already out there. The bad news is that we’re in this situation because of a lack of political power to get us off a path that leads to financial chaos. How we change those dynamics is the trillion-dollar question.

November 2, 2016 SILICON VALLEY: October 25, 2016

The Silicon Valley’s nasty war on voters

wo years ago, Mozilla CEO a modest sum for a position that was Brendan Eich was forced to mainstream in 2008. Barack Obama resign because it had been said he opposed same-sex marriage reported that he had given $1,000 to and, incongruously, Prop. 8 — and he the campaign to pass Proposition 8, won the White House that year. Six the 2008 ballot measure approved by years later, Eich lost his job for opposCalifornia voters that prohibited same- ing same-sex marriage, and actually besex marriage. (Later the U.S. Supreme lieving it. Ellen Pao, a co-founder of Project Court ruled in favor of marriage equaliwhich is supposed to ty.) Now Silicon Valley activists are tar- Include, promote diversity geting Peter Thiel, in the tech world, because the consaid Thiel’s big troversial venture donation prodcapitalist and a ded her group to board member for (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate sever ties with Facebook donattech incubator Y ed $1.25 million to a super PAC that supports Donald Combinator, where Thiel is a part-time Trump. Those of you who wonder why partner. Pao explained, “While all of us there is so much division in American believe in the ideas of free speech and politics need look no further than Sili- open platforms, we draw a line here. We agree that people shouldn’t be fired con Valley. for their political views, but this isn’t a PAO, WHO IS most famous for her against Kleiner Perkins, doesn’t underEICH MUST have been in shock disagreement on tax policy, this is adfailed sexual discrimination lawsuit stand free speech or the difficult balwhen activists went after him for giving vocating hatred and violence.” ancing acts it requires. She doesn’t say how Thiel advocated for hatred and viDONALD TRUMP: October 24, 2016 olence, other than to assert that Trump makes some people — women, Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Asians — feel “unsafe.” She relies on intolerance’s favorite crutch, guilt by association. “No one’s calling for every Trump illary Clinton may be the first controversies, compared with the ones button? It is meant to portray Trump’s supporter to be driven out of the Valcandidate in American his- that have truly rocked the campaign, outrageousness as affirmatively dangertory to win a contest of per- like Trump’s post-convention fight with ous, and cast her own persona — which ley,” Will Oremus wrote in Slate; when the Khan family and the airing of the belongs in the same leaden category as critics call for a billionaire to lose a sonalities without having one. Al Gore or Michael Dukakis — in the board seat, “it’s a far cry from the sysShe has been content to make the Access Hollywood tape. tematic persecution of suspected comIt’s not as though Trump doesn’t talk best possible light. election all about Donald Trump’s charNo candidate who has had such a munist sympathizers.” acter, and Trump has obliged because, about the issues. But nothing besides Of course it’s not systematic persereally, what else would he consider as his core of immigration and trade has seemingly commanding lead in a presithe force to escape the extreme gravi- dential race has ever been so little in cution because there is only one known fascinating and important as himself? In a more normal year, Obamacare tational pull of his persona, which is evidence as Hillary Clinton. She is win- Trump mega-donor in Silicon Valley. would be a byword for the failures of outsized, compelling and — in a presi- ning a presidential election when poli- But it’s still persecution designed to tics isn’t her strength because she can marginalize a point of view. liberal technocrat rule. Insurers have dential campaign — ripe for Even though Facebook CEO Mark rely on surrogates to do much of the been exiting the exchanges, and many deconstruction. campaigning (especially Barack and Zuckerberg disagrees with Trump on of those that are staying are hiking preMichelle Obama) while she raises the immigration, he has resisted calls from miums by 20 percent or more. Even a money to feed the massive Democratic his staff to expel Thiel from Facebook’s Democratic governor, Mark Dayton of political apparatus. Otherwise, she tries board. “We can’t create a culture that Minnesota, has said that Obamacare (c) 2016, King Features Syndicate to stay out of her own way — with some says it cares about diversity and then exis “no longer affordable to increasing mixed success — and counts on Trump cludes almost half the country because numbers of people.” they back a political candidate,” ZuckIF TRUMP is defeated in Novem- to soak up all the attention. And so he does. His “closing argu- erberg wrote. “There are many reasons IN A MORE conventional elec- ber, he will lose, more than anything tion, President Barack Obama’s for- else, on the basis of his character flaws. ment” speech over the weekend started a person might support Trump that do eign policy would be under relentless His lack of discipline. His thin skin. His with a threat to sue his accusers that not involve racism, sexism, xenophobia assault. The Russian reset is in flames. boastfulness. His refusal to admit er- inevitably drove all the press cover- or accepting sexual assault.” ZuckerSyria is Obama’s Rwanda. Iran, with ror, even when it’s in his interest. His age. Any other candidate would want berg also has had to overrule staffers its nuclear program intact, is making a inability to project seriousness or to hit to change the subject from the accusa- who wanted to remove Trump posts on bid for regional hegemony. ISIS estab- a grace note. The Clinton campaign has tions, but not Trump, who can never let a Muslim ban as “hate speech.” lished its caliphate in the space created exploited them all, and Trump, ever a damaging controversy go, even two THIS IS ALL about who gets to himself, has lacked the self-awareness weeks before the election. by Obama’s passivity. play in the high-tech playground. Pao In any other campaign, the economy or wherewithal to keep from playing to IN THE primaries, Trump displayed and like-minded techies fear they might would be front and center, and the slow- type every single time. The so-called beer test is the usual an uncanny ability to understand and have to work next to people with disest recovery in the post-World War II personality metric in presidential poli- target the vulnerabilities of his oppo- sident views. If they got out more and period a constant flashpoint. Instead, none of these issues have had tics. Which candidate would you pre- nents. But he either never understood, talked with folks with different philosothe resonance of Donald Trump’s early- fer to share a cold one with? Hillary’s or didn’t care to minimize, his own. phies, they could argue and engage in hours Twitter war with a former Miss campaign has worked instead to make This is why he chose to make the elec- a battle of ideas. But they don’t know Universe, or even his aside in the third the personality benchmark the “nuclear tion about the single hardest thing for how to argue. They only know how to debate that Hillary Clinton is a “nasty code” test. Which candidate would you him to defend effectively, namely Don- cover their ears. woman.” And these have been third-tier prefer to have his or her finger on the ald J. Trump.

Debra J.

Saunders

Trump’s biggest vulnerability is Trump

Rich

Lowry

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: October 21, 2016

My vote, explained: Two weeks to go

because, for political reasons ... you can’t sit idly by and do nothing.” Giving the appearance that something had to be done. That’s not why Elizabeth Warren supported Dodd-Frank. Which is the difference between a conviction IT’S THAT emptiness at the core that politician like Warren and a calculating makes every policy and position negotia- machine like Clinton. Of course, we knew all this. But we ble and politically calculable. Hence the seen it so clearly laid out. embarrassing about-face on the Trans- h a d n ’ t Illicit and illegal as is Pacific Partnership WikiLeaks, it is the after the popular camera in the sausage winds swung decifactory. And what it sively against free reveals is surpasstrade. (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group ingly unpretty. So too with fiI didn’t need nancial regulation, THIS IS nonetheless an odd choice as in Dodd-Frank. As she told a Goldman the Wiki files to oppose Hillary Clinfor most egregious offense. First, it oc- Sachs gathering, after the financial col- ton. As a conservative, I have long discurred several layers removed from the lapse there was “a need to do something agreed with her worldview and the policampaign and from Clinton. It involved a career State Department official (he ocLESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: October 24, 2016 cupied the same position under Condoleezza Rice) covering not just for Clinton but for his own department. Second, it’s not clear which side originally offered the bargain. Third, nothing tangible was supposed to exchange n 2016, Portugal won the UEFA His “Gallery of the Louvre” depicts all of hands. There was no proposed personal European soccer championship; that museum’s great works — including enrichment — a Rolex in return for your superstar player Cristiano Ron- Mona Lisa — hung in a single room. His soul — which tends to be our standard for aldo topped the Forbes magazine list portrait of John Adams — for which he punishable misconduct. of the world’s highest paid athletes; and was paid a paltry $25 in 1816 — is in the And finally, it never actually hap- the airport in his hometown of Funchal collection of the Brooklyn Museum. His pened. The FBI turned down the declas- on the island of Madeira was renamed portrait of James Monroe hangs in the sification request. in his honor. With that, Ronaldo joined Blue Room of the White House. In sum, a warm gun but nonsmok- a short list of athletes with namesake air“Candy Land” was devised by Eleaing. Indeed, if the phrase “quid pro quo” ports: Soccer star George Best in Belfast, nor Abbott of San Diego in the 1940s, hadn’t appeared, it would have received Northern Ireland; ancient Olympic boxer while she was recuperating from polio. little attention. Moreover, it obscures the Diagoras on the Greek island of Rhodes; Hard as it was for her to be confined to real scandal — the bottomless cynicism and great American golfer Arnold Palm- a hospital ward as an adult, she of the campaign and of the candidate. knew it was even harder for er in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Among dozens of examples, the Qatari gambit. Qatar, one of the worst actors THE TALL, pointed headdress we in the Middle East (having financially associate with fairytale princesses is supported the Islamic State, for example), called a hennin. They were all the rage offered $1 million as a “birthday” gift to in the mid-15th century especially in (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Bill Clinton in return for five minutes of France, where fashionable ladies wore his time. Who offers — who takes — hennins three-feet tall with a veil at- the children there with her. So she in$200,000 a minute? We don’t know the tached to the tip. A woman could fold the vented a board game that could be played “quid” here, but it’s got to be big. veil under one arm or let it float behind to pass the time. The rules were simple In the final debate, Clinton ran and her like angel wings when she walked. enough for three-year-olds — no readhid when asked about pay-for-play at the To accentuate the look, she’d tuck as ing required. Abbott pitched the game Clinton Foundation. And for good reason. much of her hair as she could inside the to Milton Bradley, which brought out its The emails reveal how foundation donors hennin then shave off stray strands from first edition of “Candy Land” in 1949. were first in line for favors and contracts. her forehead and temples. A governance review by an outside THE FIRST designated military Rabies, swine flu and avian flu are law firm reported that some donors “may diseases transmitted from animals to camouflage unit in modern history was have an expectation of quid pro quo ben- humans, often with fatal consequences. formed in the French army in 1915 under efits in return for gifts.” You need an out- But sometimes the transmission goes the the direction of a painter named Lucienside law firm to tell you that? If your Sul- other way. Animals in zoos — especially Victor Guirand de Scevola. Its main obtanic heart bleeds for Haiti, why not give primates — have died from influenza jective was to disguise ground artillery so to Haiti directly? Because if you give and other viruses they picked up from it wouldn’t be spotted and destroyed by through the Clintons, you have a claim humans. There’s even some evidence aerial bombers in World War I. By 1918, on future favors. that humans with the H1N1 “swine flu” the French military camouflage section The soullessness of this campaign — virus passed that virus back to healthy employed 3,000 officers and troops at all ambition and entitlement — emerges pig population and made them sick, too. the front, plus a few hundred German almost poignantly in the emails, espeBefore he developed the telegraph and prisoners of war, and some 10,000 civilcially when aides keep asking what the the code that bears his name, Samuel F.B. ian women “camoufleurs” at a studio in campaign is about. In one largely over- Morse (the F.B. stands for Finley Breese) Paris. looked passage, Clinton complains that was an accomplished painter who trained TRIVIA her speechwriters have not given her any at the Royal Academy of Art in London. 1. Lambert-St. Louis International he case against Hillary Clinton could have been written before the recent WikiLeaks and FBI disclosures. But these documents do provide hard textual backup. The most sensational disclosure was the proposed deal between the State Department and the FBI in which the FBI would declassify a Hillary Clinton email and State would give the FBI more slots in overseas stations. What made it sensational was the rare appearance in an official account of the phrase “quid pro quo,” which is the currently agreed-upon dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable corruption.

overall theme or rationale. Isn’t that the candidate’s job? Asked one of her aides, Joel Benenson: “Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?”

Charles

Krauthammer

Leslie’s Trivia Bits

Leslie

Elman

cies that flow from it. As for character, I have watched her long enough to find her deeply flawed, to the point of unfitness. But for those heretofore unpersuaded, the recent disclosures should close the case. A case so strong that, against any of a dozen possible GOP candidates, voting for her opponent would be a no-brainer. Against Donald Trump, however, it’s a dilemma. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. But, as I’ve explained in these columns, I could never vote for Donald Trump. THE ONLY question is whose name I’m going to write in. With Albert Schweitzer doubly unavailable (noncitizen, dead), I’m down to Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse. Two weeks to decide.

Airport is named for Albert Bond Lambert, an aviation pioneer with what other distinction? A) Major League Baseball player B) Olympic athlete C) Performed the first successful kidney transplant D) U.S. secretary of state 2. Cary Elwes, John Cleese, Sean Connery and Russell Crowe all have played what role on screen? A) King Henry VIII B) Moses C) Robin Hood D) Sherlock Holmes 3. What type of animal is Ranger Rick, the National Wildlife Federation mascot? A) Bear B) Dog C) Raccoon D) Skunk 4. In Morse code, one dot signifies the letter E. What does one dash signify? A) A B) O C) S D) T 5. What nonprofit organization was founded by Candy Lightner in October 1980? A) Doctors Without Borders B) Human Rights Watch C) MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) D) Teach for America 6. What was pictured on the uniform insignias of both the French and American camouflage units in World War I? A) Chameleon B) Lion C) Mask D) Paintbrush (continued on page 19)

November 2, 2016 HILLARY CLINTON: October 20, 2016

Hillary and the battered black voter syndrome “Birtherism:” Clinton routinely atWhat will it take for Democrats to lose tacks Donald Trump for what she calls the 95 percent black vote? Hacked email to and from staffers at the “racist lie” that Obama is a Muslim the Democratic National Committee and from Kenya. Yet a 2008 memo between to and from John Podesta, Hillary Clin- a polling analyst and several people close ton’s campaign chairman, shows she to Clinton’s campaign — including Podcares far more about the black vote than esta — listed several “negatives” of her opponent, then-Sen. Obama, included black voters. Concern for lack of diversity: One the following: “Obama (owe-BAHMfather was a Muslim email, three months before she an- u h ) ’ s and Obama grew up nounced her presiamong Muslims in dential candidacy, the world’s most shows Clinton’s fupopulous Islamic ture campaign staff country.” Just mocking the criti(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate weeks ago, James cism that it lacks racial diversity. Her then-spokesperson Asher, former Washington bureau chief and future traveling press secretary Nick for McClatchy news, stated that during Merrill dismissively joked that former the 2008 campaign long-time Clinton Bill Clinton chief of staff and future Hill- confidant Sidney Blumenthal told him to ary Clinton campaign director Robby investigate Obama’s African birthplace: Mook “claims he’s 1/16th Apache, so we “Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy, where he and I met should be all set.” in my office. During that conversation EARLIER THIS year, “Frank” (iden- and in subsequent communications, we tified by WikiLeaks as fwj77@comcast. discussed a number of matters related to net, and reported by RT.com to be Frank Obama. He encouraged McClatchy to do White Jr., who raised $2.3 million for stories related to Obama and his connecBarack Obama in 2012) wrote to Podesta tions to Kenya.” Ridiculing an “African-American about courting black votes: “I’m hearing the same complaint in political circles sounding” name: Another DNC email that I continue to hear while fundraising. chain shows staffers making fun of ‘The campaign doesn’t value black folks the name of a black woman named and takes us for granted.’ Can I make a LaQueenia. Why is this noteworthy? In recent years some academic experisuggestion? A black campaign vice chair or senior advisor would go a long way ments purport to show racism by showing during the primary and send the message how prospective employers discriminate that Hillary puts her actions where her against “African-American sounding mouth is, and actually does appreciate names.” Never mind the same employers the black vote.” Podesta replied: “Right show similar reluctance to hire those with now I think we should do this right after “white-sounding names” like “Emily” and “Todd.” And never mind that emSuper Tuesday.”

Larry

Elder

ployers located in black neighborhoods also showed reluctance to hire those with “African-American sounding names.” So, if it’s “racist” to draw a negative inference from a “black-sounding name,” what is it to mock such a name? PUBLIC SUPPORT for, but private opposition to, $15 minimum wage: Economist and Ronald Reagan adviser Milton Friedman famously called the minimum wage “the most anti-black law on the books.” Yet Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee platform support a $15 federal minimum wage, more than double the current federal rate of $7.25. Yet Podesta’s email inbox showed Clinton staff and adviser emails refer to and frequently quote prominent left-wing economists and left-wing think tanks that argued against a $15 minimum wage on the grounds that such a spike

from the current federal minimum would costs jobs. Contempt for people of faith: Blacks are more religious than whites. Yet Hillary Clinton staffers’ emails show contempt for people of faith. One 2011 email from Clinton’s current director of communications, then with the Center for American Progress, denounces Catholicism as being embraced by conservatives who think it’s a more socially acceptable religion than others. She wrote: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.” She was responding to a co-worker, who wrote: “Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups. It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” Calling Black Lives Matter a “radical movement:” Even the Black Lives Matter movement that Clinton publicly embraces was demeaned in a DNC memo. Last year, a staffer for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent an internal memo to Democratic House candidates, calling Black Lives Matter a “radical movement.” The memo said, “Don’t offer support for concrete policy positions.” It advised avoiding phrases like “all lives matter” and warned candidates not to bring up “black on black crime,” since the “response will garner additional media scrutiny and only anger BLM activists.” THAT CLINTON says one thing about blacks while believing something altogether different is no surprise. After all, in the leaked email with excerpts of her Wall Street speeches, she admits having contradictory public and private views. But, hey, Donald Trump’s a bigot.

November 2, 2016

Hillary’s dishonesty was on display in final debate

his home to protect himself, his family or his property. Also of note, the Heller decision had nothing to do with toddlers or saving toddlers’ lives or toddler gun safety or toddlers shooting at one another. As my colleague Sean Davis has pointed out, the word “toddler” doesn’t appear anywhere in either the majority or dissenting opinions in the case. After she was done fearmongering, Clinton went on to say, “there’s no doubt that I respect the Second Amendment, that I also believe there’s an individual right to bear arms.” No, she does not. Heller ended the “total ban on handguns” in Washington, FIRST, WAS there anything more ri- D.C. — which was the Supreme Court’s diculous in the debate than Clinton’s an- description of the gun control laws in the swer on guns? When pressed by Wallace district. It codified the Second Amendto explain her opposition to the 2008 ment as an individual right to keep arms for self-defense. landmark District of Columbia v. Heller and bear Clinton admits she decision, Clinton supports an effective went through a ban on all handguns checklist of plati(for the toddlers), tudes before saywhich is what ining, “You men(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate stigated Heller. tioned the Heller decision, and what I was saying that you What application of the decision does reference, Chris, was that I disagreed she oppose, if not the individual’s right with the way the court applied the Sec- to own a gun? Let’s move to the only constitutional ond Amendment in that case because what the District of Columbia was trying “right” Clinton believes shouldn’t have any constraints: Abortion. Last night, to do was protect toddlers from guns.” Clinton brought up “toddlers” a few Clinton reiterated her support for lemore times because little children are gal abortion on demand for any reason mostly adorable and no one wants to throughout the entire pregnancy. Alsee them shot. The thing is, the Heller though Clinton is free to hold this posicase revolves around Richard Heller, the tion, she’s not free to make stuff up. For starters, the idea that Clinton — then-66-year-old police officer in Washington, D.C., who was allowed to carry the woman who, in 2008, argued that a gun in a federal office building to pro- President Obama’s health care plans tect politicians and strangers but not in were too modest — wants to keep gov-

he third and mercifully final presidential debate also turned out to be the most conventional. Fox News’ Chris Wallace did a solid job pressing the candidates on issues in Las Vegas, giving them space to spar but not enough space to get out of control. Of course, not even a strong moderator will deter candidates from misleading, lying and prevaricating all night. And since we know Trump’s performance will be comprehensively factchecked by the entire media, let’s talk about three of Clinton’s biggest whoppers.

David

Harsanyi

ernment out of health care decisions is worthy of 8,000 Pinocchios. While one hopes that those who are anti-abortion remain sensitive to the heartbreaking, painful decisions women make, Clinton’s insinuation that most late-term abortions are to save the life of the mother is not backed up by evidence. Dr. Leroy Carhart, nationally known for performing late-term abortions, was taped admitting that he often performs elective late-term abortions at 26 weeks “or more.” Dr. Martin Haskell, the pioneer of partial-birth abortion, was once taped acknowledging that 80 percent of partial-birth abortions are “purely elective.”

medical literature and late-term abortion providers, found that the majority of late-term abortions are not performed for “maternal health complications or lethal fetal anomalies discovered late in pregnancy.” The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute found that in “many ways, women who had later abortions were similar to those who obtained firsttrimester procedures.” Which is to say the decision’s based on convenience, not health. Though Clinton acknowledges that Roe v. Wade allows for some limits on abortion, she has never supported a single one. Today, the health exemption is being used to end the life of a viable fetus for nearly any reason at all. THE EVIDENCE comports with These kinds of deceits have long been Haskell’s claim. The anti-abortion Char- a part of the culture wars. But I was a lotte Lozier Institute, using data from bit taken aback by Clinton’s, dare I say, Trumpian dishonesty on economics. For instance, she said, word for word, “I also will not add a penny to the debt.” Clinton could tax the wealthy at a 90 percent top-marginal rate, raise rates on corporations and enact every other trickle-down tax on consumers she desires, and there’s still no way she would not add to the national debt. If she failed to enact her agenda and did absolutely nothing as president (we should be so lucky), Clinton would still add to the debt. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which accepts her economic plan on its face, estimates that her policies would cost $200 billion and cause public debt to rise from over $14 trillion to more than $23 trillion over the next decade. LIKE ME, you might find this estimate implausibly low. But even in the fantastical world of contemporary progressive economics, $200 billion is a lot more than a “penny.” Like many of the contentions we heard in Las Vegas, it was a lie peddled for political purposes. October 21, 2016

This Week’s Conservative Focus

Hillary Clinton

No bigger hypocrite than Hillary Clinton

n the modern history of American politics, has there ever been a bigger hypocrite than Hillary Clinton? Her 30 years in politics have taught us clearly that Clinton lives by one set of rules and wants to impose different rules for everyone else. She constantly accuses Donald Trump of transgressions of which she herself is guilty. She sermonizes about a code of conduct that she, her husband and her operatives routinely violate. We have learned from her emails that she has two personas: She tells voters one thing and her donors the opposite. AFTER THE last presidential debate, I started to jot down her double standards, and the list went on and on. This column can’t possibly do justice to all her double-dealings (and I welcome readers to add to the list). Here are some of the biggest whoppers, and I paraphrase Clinton here: — I stand with working-class

Americans: Unless they are coal min- zens United — after I raise a world ers, who I want to throw out of work record $1 billion of special interest money from Wall Street and Washingand put in unemployment lines. — I have devoted my whole life to ton lobbyists. —The Trans-Pacific Partnership is helping children: Except that I’m for the infanticide of partial-birth abor- the “gold standard” of trade deals. No, wait, I’m against it. No, wait, I’m for tion. — It is reprehensible that a ma- it. — We cannot tolerate religious jor presidential candidate would ever question the validity of the election bigotry from a presidential candidate: it is bigotry against results: Unless that candidate’s name Unless Catholics or evanis Al Gore or John gelical Christians. Kerry. — I have been — We should in “public service” do everything for 30 years, possible to ensure (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate selflessly helpthe fairness and ing families and integrity in our elections: Unless it means that people children, and that is how Bill and I have to show valid photo identification got rich amassing over $50 million of when they vote, because that might wealth. — Donald Trump’s tax plan would prohibit illegal immigrants from votexplode the debt, and my plan won’t ing for me. — We have to take special-interest “add a penny to the deficit,” but I money out of politics and repeal Citi- worked for the president who bor-

Stephen

Moore

How Hillary pandered to the press

he WikiLeaks email trove is revealing more than the servility of “objective” reporters trying to please Hillary Clinton and her aides. It’s revealing the press strategy of Clinton and her aides — how they seek to praise reporters, even as they arrogantly stonewall them. One internal campaign email exchange is salient. It discusses Clinton speaking at a Syracuse University event for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, which is so named for the deceased liberal New York Times political correspondent Robin Toner. Clinton had been invited as a keynote speaker.

HER AIDES discuss how she should try to please the journalists she’d been ignoring by mocking her tendency to avoid journalistic scrutiny. Press secretary Nick Merrill liked the draft of jokes that was sent around as a strategy that never surrenders, saying, “What I liked about it is that it provided a rare opportunity for her to show some contrition and selfawareness but do it under the guise of humor so as not to cede any ground.” The Clintons never cede any ground and never relinquish their kung-fu grip on their own narrative and imagery. “Guise of humor?” Their contempt for their friends is astounding. The media may not like this, but it doesn’t stop their never-ending cooperation, hence the contempt.

Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri proposed that they “pretend everyone in the audience is a serious, on the level journalist trying to get the story right and cover serious issues in an absurdly difficult environment where speed and mass appeal are over valued.” And she scripted the rest of the media-pandering approach: “Have her commend them on how hard they all work in this difficult environment to tell the facts, unearth impor-

Brent

tant stories ... if (Clinton) acknowledges that and says she and all thoughtful people appreciate the struggle the reporters in the room face, and how (important) it is that they keep at it, how needed they really are — (I) think that would go over really well.” CLINTON DID exactly that. First, she admitted she was a control freak with the press, saying, “My relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated.” And she proclaimed: “I am all about new beginnings: A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press? So here goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy.” She

joked that they all had a nondisclosure agreement from her lawyer under their chairs. Clinton slathered on praise. “You are facing fundamental questions that may not fit into 140 characters but are nonetheless vital to our democracy,” she said. “Too many of our most important debates occur in what I call an evidence-free zone, ideology trumping facts, made-for-cable shoutfests, Twitter storms, drowning out substantive dialogue and reporting that often leads to shallower more contentious politics and even no, or not the best, public policy.” Clinton closed her remarks with a pitch for the media elite. “We need, more than ever, smart, fair-minded journalists to challenge our assumptions, push us toward new solutions and hold all of us accountable,” she said. The result? A standing ovation. NEVER MIND that the Clintons resist at every turn any half-hearted efforts to hold them accountable for all of their scandalous behavior. The only journalism they really respect is the “journalism” that rips their enemies apart or blatantly promotes them as they dishonestly see themselves — as incredibly smart and compassionate public servants with no moral flaws worth noticing. October 26, 2016

rowed as much money as every president in the history of the country and never raised a peep of protest. — Donald Trump is a racist for questioning whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, even though it was my campaign brain trust that first raised this issue in the 2008 primary campaign against Obama. — I have apologized for using a private email that imperiled our national security, and I have not broken any laws — which explains why I did everything possible to obstruct the investigation of the State Department inspector general, and why my team destroyed my devices with a hammer and bleached the disks clean, and why I and all my colleagues lawyered up when confronted by the FBI. — Only the richest one percent will pay higher taxes under my plan: Which is exactly what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama said before they were elected, and the first thing they did was raise taxes on everyone. — Donald Trump favors the rich and powerful, but under my plan I’m going to give around $200 billion to my green friends and donors in the solar industry, constituting the biggest corporate welfare handout in American history. (Why don’t we just have the government write a $10 billion check to Elon Musk right now?) — Donald Trump will do anything to avoid paying taxes, but I took tax deductions for donating socks and underwear that Bill and I so generously donated to the Salvation Army. — Children are going to be my highest priority, yet I oppose school vouchers because I favor teachers unions over the kids and their parents stuck in failing public schools. — I favor taking away guns from people to prevent gun violence and to protect “toddlers,” but I’m against stop-and-frisk laws that take guns away from criminals and reduce gun violence. — I am going to create millions of new jobs, and I am going to do that by raising taxes by $1.4 trillion on the businesses that create the jobs in the first place. — We cannot tolerate a womanizer who gropes females in the White House. (This one doesn’t even require any kind of comment!) And how would Saint Clinton defend herself in these and so many other cases when her duplicity is exposed? AT THIS POINT, she would say, what difference does it make? October 25, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

2016 ELECTION: October 26, 2016

The demographics of Democrats

but it has reassured African-Americans that he is no racist and no threat. Clinton’s problems among younger voters are even more severe. The DemoPOLLS SUGGEST that blacks are cratic Party is almost totally dependent on 28 percent less enthusiastic about vot- under 35 year old voters. Had all voters ing than they were in 2012. Since they been over 35, Romney would have won. vote overwhelmingly Democratic, any But it is precisely these voters who overfalloff in turnout comes right out of Clin- whelmingly backed Bernie ton’s vote. Trump Sanders over Clinton has been careful in the Democratic not to catalyze fear primaries. They among African don’t like her and Americans about never have. Yet it is (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate his candidacy. His among these voters efforts to promote school choice — let- that she must craft her victory coalition. ting parents send their child to the pubPolling suggests that young voters are lic or private school of their choice with much less enthusiastic than they were in state funding to pay for it — may not 2012 and even less than that compared to have garnered him a lot of black votes, 2008.

he outcome of the U.S. election for her as the Democratic candidate, they hinges on one simple question: cannot summon the enthusiasm for her Which electorate will show up that they did for him.

to vote? If the 2016 electorate is the same as that of 2012, Hillary Clinton is in for a massive victory. But if a new electorate — with lower turnout among blacks and higher voting rates among downscale whites — should emerge, Donald Trump may yet win. The polls conducted by ABC, FoxNews, CNN, NBC, CBS and Quinnipiac all use some variant of the 2012 turnout model. But those by Rasmussen, Investors Business Daily and the Los Angeles Times use a newer turnout model that portends an emerging electorate very different from that which elected Obama. POLLS ARE good at determining how people will vote. But they are not at figuring out who will vote — mainly because the very voters themselves don’t know what mood will strike them on election day. Central to the difference between the turnout models, and therefore the polls, is the question of how many less educated, poorer whites are likely to vote. But Donald Trump has energized and attracted this very segment of the electorate. It is their votes that nominated Trump as they cast ballots in Republican primaries for the first time. They are why Trump’s average final polling was 40 percent of the vote in the primaries, but he actually got 45 percent of the vote on average. Will this demographic vote? We don’t know. To grasp the psychology of the downscale voter, use the metaphor of Christmas shopping habits of husbands and wives. Typically, the wife does her shopping in the fall. By November, she’s finished. But her husband often waits until December 24 to buy his presents. The downscale voter is like the husband. One can bombard him with information about the sales and new products, but he won’t bite. But right before Christmas, there is no more avid consumer than a man desperate for a gift to give his wife! The downscale voter habitually never turns out. He boasts to polling firms that ask how likely he or she is to vote that they haven’t voted in decades and won’t start now. But as the election nears, their interest level begins to peak. Trump looks attractive and seems to speak to them in ways other politicians don’t. In the end, will this person vote? The answer may determine the outcome of the election. Meanwhile, a parallel drama is unfolding in reverse among African American voters. But they are now suffering an Obama hangover; and Clinton is no Obama. While blacks will dutifully vote

Dick

Morris

Finally, she faces the threat of defections to the third and fourth candidates — Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Greens. Clinton has done little to elucidate a positive rationale for her candidacy and is appealing to voters to keep Trump out of the White House. Such a two-candidate, zero sum strategy is vulnerable to defections, impelled by discontent over the TrumpClinton choice. Again, polling suggests a higher level of intensity among Trump supporters than among Clinton’s backers, making third party defections more likely among Democrats this year. PUT IT ALL together and the potential is still there for a close election and a Trump victory.

2016 ELECTION: October 25, 2016

Turnout time: Your duty and right

ome of us this election year don’t even want to say the words “Clinton” or “Trump” — and with good reason. However, there is one word that we should keep in mind: “Turnout.” If we sit home in disgust on election day, we forfeit the right — and the duty — to elect a Congress that can keep either of these dangerous people from doing permanent damage to this country and to the future of this generation — and generations yet unborn. Control of Congress has probably never mattered more than in this election, simply because of two out-ofcontrol people, one of whom is going to become President of the United States. WE NEED a Congress that can block dangerous legislative proposals coming from the White House, and block dangerous nominees to the federal courts, including especially the Supreme Court. More than that, we need a Congress that can remove a dangerous President who ignores the law and commits impeachable offenses. Any Congress theoretically can do so, since the House of Representatives has the power to impeach and the Senate then votes on whether to remove the President from office. However, as we have seen over the past seven years, that theoretical power means nothing, if neither House of Congress has the incentives and the guts to use the power they have. Barack Obama has repeatedly exceeded the powers of his office, disregarding laws passed by Congress, and making in effect a unilateral treaty with Iran, exempting it from American sanctions for building nuclear bombs. Just by not calling it a treaty, Obama

has ignored the Constitution’s requirement that all treaties be made only with Senate approval. Yet there has never been a treaty with more far-reaching — and potentially fatal — consequences than this unilateral presidential agreement with a foreign country. Yet who was going to impeach “the first black President,” with the media ready to go ballistic if they tried?

Thomas

With no credible threat of impeachment, neither of this year’s candidates for President will have any deterrent to indulging their already demonstrated headstrong disregard of anything other than their own interests and their own egos. NOT ONLY does this mean that we have a duty to vote for Congress, even if we don’t have the stomach to vote for either presidential candidate, it also means that we need to decide what kind of Congress we want, in light of the high stakes. We need to ask which of our local candidates for the House of Representatives, and which of our statewide candidates for the Senate, is someone with the character and the guts to remove a President from office. Don’t try to hide behind the lame excuse that “They’re all the same.” Let’s not forget that President Richard Nixon resigned for a reason. That reason was that Senator Barry Goldwater led a delegation of Republican Senators

to the White House to inform Republican President Nixon that they would not support him in the Senate if the House of Representatives impeached him. We know it can be done, because it already has been done. The real question now is: What kind of voters are we? Those who ask “What can I do, I am only one little person?” are just copping out. “We the People” are not only the first three words of the Constitution, it is where the Constitution put the ultimate power to make or break any politician. What can you do? Everything. If you can’t be bothered, then be honest enough to say, “I can’t be bothered.” But don’t cop out with a lame excuse. Too many other people’s fate depends on whether you do your duty. Painful as it may be to realize that we are reduced to considering the impeachability of a presidential candidate, that is a reality that will not go away, just because we don’t like it. How impeachable is Hillary Clinton? Since she would be “the first woman President,” any criticism of her, much less any impeachment, would bring loud howls from the media across the country that ugly sexist bias was behind any opposition to anything she did — no matter how awful. Hillary in the White House would have a blank check, and she would not hesitate to use it. DONALD TRUMP has no such exemption. Neither the media nor Congressional Republicans would automatically spring to his defense if he overstepped the line. His impeachability may be his most important asset in a year of painful choices.

November 2, 2016 DEAR MARK: October 21, 2016

Trump criticized, open borders, Hillary’s dump truck DEAR MARK: I am so tired of Barack Obama’s crap. He comes off as so sanctimonious as if he is better than everybody else. Now he is slamming Donald Trump for claiming that the electoral system is rigged and bashing Trump for saying he won’t accept the election results if he loses to Hillary. BHO, Hillary and other liberals in the media are acting as if Trump is planning some type of violent insurrection if he loses — which he won’t. Why are they doing this? — Deplorable Redneck in Lincoln Dear Deplorable: I found it odd that so many of the headlines after the third debate concerned Trump’s reluctance to concede the election as opposed to headlines proclaiming some of the lies Hillary continued to perpetuate concerning the WikiLeaks’ emails, Obamacare, her economic plan and the Clinton Foundation.But then again the media has paid little attention to anything substantive in this campaign because they know Hillary is weakest when Trump is discussing actual issues.There should have been hundreds of headlines across the country beginning with “Hillary dodges question about ... you fill in the blank.” Or “Hillary fails to answer the question about ... take your pick.” Personally I don’t understand what all of the fuss is about. Between what we have read in the WikiLeaks’ emails and now the Project Veritas videos showing a major Democratic operative admitting to promoting voter fraud, why shouldn’t Trump question the results if the election is close? Here’s what the president said concerning Mr. Trump. “When you try to

sow the seeds of doubt in people’s mind about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines our democracy.” With all of the Democrat election shenanigans it’s obvious that President Obama isn’t referring to Trump undermining American democracy when he says “our democracy.” Barack is referring to the Democrats form of democracy and their crooked methods for rigging elections. DEAR MARK: I am tired of hearing politicians talk about open borders and at the same time proclaim they want stronger

Mark

border security. Hillary Clinton was busted in WikiLeaks and Donald Trump pointed out during the debate that she wants open borders. She didn’t deny it but simply changed the subject. How is she getting away with this? — Seems So Simple in Saginaw Dear So Simple: Once again the media refuses to do its due diligence with the WikiLeaks emails because they believe in the same liberal agenda Hillary is promoting. So to accurately report on WikiLeaks would be akin to committing liberal treason. As Trump pointed out during the Al E. Smith Dinner “the heads of NBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post” all appear to be on Team Hillary by ignoring the revelations found in the leaked emails.

Specifically to your point about Hillary and “open borders,” liberals believe that if the United States simply opened its borders it would be a world of Kumbaya where everyone lived in peace and harmony. The trouble for Hillary is that if there are no borders exactly which country would she be president of? DEAR MARK: I cannot stand Hillary Clinton and I fear for our country if she somehow wins the election in November. It’s obvious she’s guilty of lying and assorted crimes but this latest incident takes the cake. Her campaign bus was caught dumping human waste down a storm drain on a public street. Aren’t these wimpy libs supposed to care about the environment and follow EPA rules? —Tree Hugging Trump Supporter Dear Tree Hugging: The Clinton campaign claims the illegal dump was an honest mistake and that they were unaware of any law violations. Are you kidding me? Liberals wrote almost all of the EPA regulations Americans face today. How could they possibly not know that depositing a tank full of Hillary and Bill’s bodily waste was illegal? Unless of course they are convinced that theirs doesn’t stink. This is simply another case of a politician telling us “do as I say not do as I doo doo.” Sadly Hillary’s bus dumping its contents on an American street is the perfect metaphor for what Hillary will do to our country if she’s elected. E-mail your questions to marklevy92@aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy

CONTACT INFORMATION Individual Contact Information Fields - suzannefields2000@gmail.com Greenberg - pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com Krauthammer - letters@charleskrauthammer.com Levy - marklevy92@aol.com Lowry - comments.lowry@nationalreview.com Malkin - malkinblog@gmail.com Massie - mychalmassie@gmail.com Napolitano - freedomwatch@foxbusiness.com Saunders - dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Thomas - tmseditors@tribune.com Will - georgewill@washpost.com Contact through Creators Syndicate Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Suzanne Fields, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terry Jeffrey, Larry Kudlow, David Limbaugh, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Contact - info@creators.com Contact through Universal Press Ann Coulter or Donald Lambro Contact by mail : c/o Universal Press Syndicate 1130 Walnut Street Kansas City, MO 64106 Answers from page 14

TRIVIA ANSWERS T rivia B I T S

ANSWERS 1) Albert Bond Lambert won a silver medal in golf at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis. 2) Cary Elwes, John Cleese, Sean Connery and Russell Crowe all have played Robin Hood on screen. 3) Ranger Rick is a raccoon. 4) One dash in Morse code signifies the letter T. 5) Candy Lightner founded MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) in October 1980. 6) Insignias for the French and American camouflage units in World War I had a picture of a chameleon.

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Conservative Chronicle

DIRTY POLITICS: October 19, 2016

The Democratic normal shouldn’t be normal

here’s no question that this up by a Trump supporter was actually election cycle has seen a bevy working for him. That event generof radical media double stan- ated major national headlines: “Arrest dards. Donald Trump’s sexual harass- warrant issued in assault of 69-yearment and assault accusers have been old female protester at NC Trump raltreated as headline news; allegations ly,” blared the Washington Post at the about intimidation of sexual harass- time; “69-year-old says she was ‘coldby Trump supporter ment and assault victims by Hillary c o c k e d ’ protest,” said MeClinton have been utterly ignored. d u r i n g diaite; “Video Trumpian bigotry shows aftermath of against a Mexi69-year-old wom- about her position on voter ID now that can judge domian punched at a it appears some associated with her nated the news (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Trump rally,” re- campaign have been deliberately floutcycle for weeks; ported the Los An- ing voting law? Clinton-connected Some of this is due to the media’s bigotry against Catholics went com- geles Times. None of this seems to rate national leftism. But a good deal of it is due to pletely unnoticed. We heard for a full week about a Miss Universe contestant attention. Has that 69-year-old wom- the fact that corruption regularized over Trump allegedly called “Miss Piggy” an, Shirley Teter, appeared on national time simply becomes background noise. back in 1997; we’ve heard very little news anytime this week? Apparently Nobody expects anything else from about Hillary Clinton’s perverse deal- not. How about the firebombing of the Democrats. Americans have accepted ings with the media and the FBI. We’ve Trump offices? Nope. And when’s the the Democratic Party as the party of votheard for months about Trump’s toxic next time Hillary Clinton will be asked er fraud and political violence since the impact on politics; we’ve seen precious few headlines about the firebombing of DIRTY POLITICS: October 25, 2016 a GOP campaign headquarters in North Carolina or shattered windows at other GOP operations or the repeated violent attempts to disrupt Trump rallies or hurt Trump fans. tudents of the Watergate era lefties called “hate speech.” PredictPART OF this is the allure of novel(or those old enough to have ably, the media, especially CNN, which ty: Trump’s a new figure in politics, and lived through it) will recall the gave the disturbances nonstop and reevery bit of information now hitting the “dirty tricks” played by Richard Nixon’s petitive coverage, bought this narrative newsstands seems fresh. Meanwhile, henchmen, most notably Donald Seg- and willingly spread it without investiClinton’s been in politics for decades, retti. Segretti, who was hired by Nix- gating the background of the disruptors. which means that every allegation of on’s deputy assistant, Dwight Chapin, That’s probably because the resultant corruption and nastiness merely rein- was tasked with smearing Democrats, free-for-alls fit the left-leaning media’s forces general perceptions about her. including senator and 1972 presidential narrative about Trump. But there’s something else afoot candidate, Edmund Muskie of Maine. The equally predictable response here: Most Americans simply expect Among several “tricks,” Segretti com- from the left was that the videos must Democrats to act like Hillary Clinton posed a fake letter on Muskie’s letter- have been edited. Democratic Party opand get away with it. head falsely alleging that Sen. Henry eratives and Hillary Clinton deny any Take, for example, the new allega- “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) had fathered knowledge of such tactics. Do tions by James O’Keefe that Clinton-as- a child with a 17-year-old girl. you really expect them to adsociated parties are involved in promoting voter fraud and violence at Trump IN 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to rallies. O’Keefe’s Project Veritas went three misdemeanor counts of distribundercover with a Democratic opera- uting illegal, even forged, campaign tive who openly admitted to encourag- literature and served four months of a (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services ing people to rent cars in order to drive six-month prison sentence. to precincts and vote illegally. “You use I mention this sordid history because mit it? shells,” said the operative. “Use shell some Democrats are playing similar In an Oct. 20 column for National companies. Cars come in from one “dirty tricks” on Donald Trump. Review, Kurtz reminds us that these company; the paychecks come from Videographer James O’Keefe and tactics are straight from the mind of the another. There’s no bus involved, so his Project Veritas and National Review late Rules for Radicals author and comyou can’t prove that it’s en masse, so it columnist Stanley Kurtz have exposed munity organizer, Saul Alinsky, a Hilldoesn’t tip people off.” Democratic dirty tricks in this presi- ary Clinton pen pal. dential campaign. THE OPERATIVE also admitted ANOTHER OF O’Keefe’s videos is O’Keefe’s videos purport to show to attempting to provoke violence at Democratic activists, allegedly hired of Robert Creamer, an Alinskyite from Trump events. “You put people in the by the party, describing tactics they use Chicago, an experienced community line, at the front which means that they to deceive the public. The most notable organizer and a man who, according have to get there at six in the morning comes in a clip in which Scott Foval, to Breitbart News, visited the White because they have to get in front of the national director at Americans United House 340 times and on 42 of those rally,” he said, “so that when Trump for Change, tells of hiring people to occasions met with President Obama. comes down the rope line, they’re the demonstrate and even start fights at Creamer admits to being the brains beones asking him the question in front of Donald Trump rallies. The objective hind hiring and paying for Trump disthe reporter, because they’re pre-placed was to encourage the media to treat the ruptors. He was also sentenced to five there.” The activist admitted that a disturbances as spontaneous responses months in prison for bank fraud and a 69-year-old woman supposedly beaten to Trump’s rally rhetoric, which some tax violation.

Ben

Shapiro

1960s. They’ve accepted Hillary Clinton as the candidate of manipulation and corruption since the 1990s. Democratic evils are normal; Republican evils are an ever-present source of news and interest. THAT’S TERRIBLE for the country. All corruption should be shocking. The fact that it isn’t helps explain why the 2016 election has become a competition in pursuing new lows: The old lows just don’t register anymore.

Dirty tricks: Then and now

Cal

Thomas

While in prison, Kurtz writes, Creamer authored a book titled Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win. In it, he instructs his fellow lefties how to handle conservatives: “In general our strategic goal with people who have become conservative activists is not to convert them — that isn’t going to happen. It is to demoralize them — to ‘deactivate’ them. We need to deflate their enthusiasm, to make them lose their ardor and above all their self-confidence. ... [A] way to demoralize conservative activists is to surround them with the echo chamber of our positions and assumptions. We need to make them feel that they are not mainstream, to make them feel isolated. ... We must isolate them ideologically ... [and] use the progressive echo chamber. ... By defeating them and isolating them ideologically, we demoralize conservative activists directly. Then they begin to quarrel among themselves or blame each other for defeat in isolation, and that demoralizes them further.” Creamer is not alone. George Soros has long funded various groups who engage in similar tactics of disinformation, even violent behavior. Neither the mainstream media, nor Republicans, have sufficiently exposed these dirty tricks and their intent to swing elections toward the Democratic candidate. Federal authorities — from the compromised FBI, to higher ups in the Justice Department — won’t do anything about it either, mostly because they back Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. AND SOMEWHERE Richard Nixon is shaking his head.

November 2, 2016 PROPOSITION 57: October 23, 2016

Proposition 57: Do you feel lucky?

ponsors say Proposition 57, the The California Supreme Court ruled Public Safety and Rehabilita- 6-1 in Brown’s favor. In his lone dissent, tion Act of 2016, will save Justice Ming Chin lamented the top court taxpayers money by making nonviolent setting a precedent of turning a “true refelons eligible for parole earlier and form” into “just another rule that can easimprove fairness by having judges, not ily be evaded with a little imagination.” prosecutors, decide whether juveniles California has been under are tried as adults. Critics call it a “get U . S . Supreme Court out of jail early” order to reduce the card. I would add prison population that it’s the sort of — which Brown dishonest measure has overseen. But that becomes comalso, this is per(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate monplace under sonal for Brown. unaccountable one-party rule. State pols In 1976, during his first stint as governor, gamed the system to get it on the ballot. Brown signed a determinate sentencThe title promises public safety when it ing law with fixed penalties for serious could result in the early release of re- crimes. “I didn’t think about incentives,” peat offenders. Yet California voters Brown recently told the San Francisco are likely to approve Prop. 57 because Chronicle editorial board. “My point was they don’t know what the measure re- to avoid arbitrariness and have a clear ally does. punishment.” The second time around, Brown sees PROP. 57 originally was submitted a prison system that is “criminogenic” as a measure to let judges decide wheth- — he means, prison creates more crime er juveniles are tried as adults. Later, — “because it is run by gangs. There’s sponsors changed its focus to expand dope, violence, intimidation and rape.” adult parole. In Sacramento, when you Most inmates are going to get out anygut a bill and replace it with something way. If Prop. 57 passes, more inmates else, it’s called “gut and amend.” will participate in rehabilitation proThe California District Attorneys As- grams, Brown argues, as he frames Prop. sociation went to court because spon- 57 as “a scheme where people have to sors changed the language after a 30-day earn their way out.” public comment period. (A 2014 reform Michael Rushford of the Criminal was supposed to improve the initiative Justice Legal Foundation maintains that process by giving critics a chance to California’s crime rates have been low comment and proponents an opportuni- over the past decade because of laws ty to correct their product. Instead, Gov. like the 1994 “three strikes” measure Jerry Brown and company used the new that increased sentences for criminals timetable to rewrite the language when who re-offend. Prop. 57 peels back that it was too late for a fix.) focus.

Debra J.

Saunders

The ballot argument assures voters Prop. 57 “does not authorize parole for violent offenders.” But as former GOP Gov. Pete Wilson points out, that’s not entirely accurate. Prop. 57 would allow the state to parole an inmate after serving time for shoplifting, a nonviolent crime — but even if the shoplifter had an earlier conviction for assault with a deadly weapon that lengthened the sentence under three strikes. “You are putting a dangerous person back on the street,” Wilson warned. Instead of concentrating on keeping recidivists behind bars, he added, “we will be letting out people who are in fact dangerous.” By making repeat offenders as eligible for parole as first-timers, Wilson

argued, Prop. 57 also would undercut automatic sentence enhancements for ex-cons who carry guns when they reoffend. And because Prop. 57 is a constitutional amendment, it’s extra hard to fix. What could go wrong? Well, in 2014 Californians approved Proposition 47, which downgraded property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Yet, most voters did not realize they had downgraded gun theft and possession of date-rape drugs to misdemeanors. Last year, violent crime jumped 10 percent. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the surge was the result of “reforms” — see chart — that cut the state’s prison population by a quarter. The state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst estimates Prop. 57’s savings to be in the tens of millions annually, but that’s based on estimates that 30,000 inmates would become eligible for parole. Brown tells a different story. He told the Chronicle that Prop. 57 would make some 1,300 inmates eligible for parole; likely half, or 700 inmates, would win early release. But if the legislative analyst is right, half of 30,000 inmates could get out of prison early. In short order, California’s prison population could drop by a third, to 110,000 from 166,000 in 2010. WOULD PROP. 57 free 15,000 or 700 inmates? If sponsors hadn’t hopscotched public comment, a vote for Prop. 57 wouldn’t be a total crapshoot. Wilson fears Prop. 57 will take California back to the 1970s, when crime was so scary that San Francisco’s bestknown movie cop was Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. After a shootout, the detective would ask bad guys if they wanted to bet whether a bullet was left in his .44 Magnum: “Do you feel lucky?” So, 15,000 inmates or 700? Do you feel lucky, voter?

Conservative Chronicle

HILLARY CLINTON: October 26, 2016

Hillary’s climate of hate, culture of corruption

ho are the haters? Who are the autocrats? Who are the serial abusers of power? Only one presidential candidate has wielded the sledgehammer of government against personal enemies. Only one presidential candidate has exploited a spouse’s public office to exact revenge on political dissenters. Only one presidential candidate has a quarter-century track record of taxpayer-subsidized demagoguery and class warfare. And as the most recent undercover investigation by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas revealed this past week, only one presidential candidate has been directly linked to a scheme to foment chaos and violence at her opponent’s rallies.

Money-grubbers never change. He was far from alone. Bill and Hill’s IRS (two for the price of one, While walloping drug companies don’t forget) targeted conservative again last year, she took more money think tanks and nonprofits. Bill and from the nation’s top-15 largest pharHill’s FBI improperly and illegally ac- maceutical firms than all the other cessed the files of countless citizens GOP candidates combined. T h e two-faced, splitwho inconveniently ruined the Clinton tongued politinarrative. cian who mocked And the womTrump for callan who just weeks ing out America’s ago mauled milrigged system lions of Trump (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate came to power supporters nadecrying the “vast tionwide as “irredeemable” and “deplorable” is a pro at right-wing conspiracy” to deflect from that blue dress her husband stained. sweeping demonizations. She’s a menace to alternate media, to REMEMBER: SHE made a name entrepreneurs, to honest, hard-working for herself attacking life-saving drug people, to the rule of law, public safety companies as greedy profiteers in the and national security. When you tune out the manufac1990s, even as she and her husband IGNORE THE kindly grandma raked in their campaign donations. tured noise and distractions, when you with the “Stronger Together” backdrop warbling about her happy family and EDUCATION: October 26, 2016 singing the praises of diversity and inclusion. Look beyond the carefully manufactured semblance of bipartisanship and moderation. Remember history — or rather, o you wonder why Sen. Ber- dents Remarkably Incompetent” cites “herstory.” nie Sanders and his ideas are a study done by the American InstiHillary Clinton isn’t just a nasty so popular among American tutes for Research that revealed that woman. She’s a ruthless hatemonger devoted wholly to two corrupt pursuits college students? The answer is that over 75 percent of two-year college while on the federal teat: Tearing down they, like so many other young people students and 50 percent of four-year who think they know it all, are really college students were incapable of and cashing in. To clueless millennials, “bimbo uninformed and ignorant. You say, “Wil- completing everyday tasks. About 20 eruptions” might sound like a Trump- liams, how dare you say that?! We’ve percent of four-year college students ism. But it was vintage Team Hillary’s mortgaged our home to send our children demonstrated only basic mathematimisogynistic moniker for horndog to college.” Let’s start with the 2006 geo- cal ability, while a steeper 30 percent Slick Willie’s accuser outbreaks in the graphic literacy survey of youngsters be- of two-year college students tween 18 and 24 years of age by Nation1990s. Respect for women? This is the al Geographic and Roper Public Affairs. snarling elitist who attacked Gennifer LESS THAN HALF could identify Flowers, a paramour of her cheating husband, as a “failed cabaret singer” New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Six(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate whom she would verbally “crucify” if ty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, could not progress past elementary she had the chance. Just how vindictive can Crooked and three-quarters could not find Iran arithmetic. NBC News reported that Grandma be? Ask the people who know or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not Fortune 500 companies spend about her best. David Watkins, a former top locate even one of those four countries. $3 billion annually to train employees administrative aide from Arkansas in Youngsters who had taken a geography in “basic English.” the Clinton administration, laid out class didn’t fare much better. By the way, REPORTED BY Just Facts, in the then-first lady’s central role in the when I attended elementary school, durcrony-motivated White House travel ing the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. 2009, the Pentagon estimated that 65 maps, and our assignment was to write percent of 17- to 24-year-olds in the office firings. The Clinton’s old pal, Hollywood in the states. Today such an assignment U.S. were unqualified for military producer Harry Thomason, had pushed might be deemed oppressive, if not rac- service because of weak educational skills, poor physical fitness, illegal for wholesale dismissal of travel of- ist. According to a Philadelphia maga- drug usage, medical conditions or fice staff in favor of their connected zine article, the percentage of college criminal records. In January 2014, the friends. “We both know that there would be grads who can read and interpret a food commander of the U.S. Army Recruithell to pay,” Watkins informed Chief of label has fallen from 40 to 30. They ing Command estimated this figure at Staff Thomas McLarty if “we failed to are six times likelier to know who won 77.5 percent, and in June 2014, the take swift and decisive action in con- American Idol than they are to know Department of Defense estimated this formity with the First Lady’s wishes.” the name of the speaker of the House. A figure at 71 percent (http://tinyurl.com/ Indeed, Hill unleashed hell. Watkins high-school teacher in California handed guz7pqy). A few weeks ago, my column diswas sacked under the guise of punish- out an assignment that required students ment for using a government helicop- to use a ruler. Not a single student knew cussed the dishonesty of college officials (http://tinyurl.com/zgmhzkc). ter as transportation to a golfing event how. An article on News Forum for Law- Here’s more evidence: Among high— something that’s a privilege for yers titled “Study Finds College Stu- school students who graduated in presidents, not peons.

Michelle

Malkin

Dumb American youth

Walter

Williams

ignore the media squirrels and engineered scuffles, when you rip up the gender card and contemplate nearly 25 years of the politics of personal destruction and private enrichment — not to mention the standalone disqualifying scandals of Benghazi, Emailgate and the WikiLeaks disclosures — the choice should not be difficult. YOU CAN TAKE a gamble on the imperfect businessman who has never held public office. Or you can go with the guaranteed continuation of Hillary Clinton’s entrenched climate of hate and culture of corruption. Left, right or center, if you are opposed to Clintonian history repeating itself, you’ll take your chances with Trump. I am.

2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent. However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent. What I am labeling as dishonest, fraudulent or deceitful comes from the fact that many more students are admitted to college than are in fact college-ready. Admitting such students may satisfy the wants and financial interests of the higher education establishment, but whether it serves the interests of students, families, taxpayers and the nation is another question. TO ACCOMMODATE less college-ready students, colleges must water down their curricula, lower standards and abandon traditional tools and topics. Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein writes in his book The Dumbest Generation: Tradition “serves a crucial moral and intellectual function. ... People who read Thucydides and Caesar on war, and Seneca and Ovid on love, are less inclined to construe passing fads as durable outlooks, to fall into the maelstrom of celebrity culture, to presume that the circumstances of their own life are worth a Web page.”

November 2, 2016 EDUCATION: October 20, 2016

To encourage, not suppress, a diversity of viewpoints

specter is haunting academia, mary and dominant value the fostering the specter of specters — of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civilghosts, goblins and “cultural ity or mutual respect. ... It will never let appropriation” through insensitive Hal- these values, important as they are, overloween costumes. Institutions of higher ride its central purpose.” That purpose, as Hanna Holborn education are engaged in the low comGray, a former president of the Univeredy of avoiding the agonies of Yale. Last October, the university was sity of Chicago, once said, is not to make adults comfortable, it is rocked to its 315-year-old foundations y o u n g to make them think. by the wife of a Since 1975, howevresidential coler, universities have lege master (a embraced the doctitle subsequently trine that speech expunged from (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group that offends peoYale’s vocabulary ple actually harms lest it trigger traumas by reminding people that slavery them, mentally and even physically. The once existed). In response to a universi- decision to treat young adults as fragile ty memorandum urging students to wear and perpetually vulnerable to victimculturally sensitive costumes — e.g., no ization coincided with academia’s turn sombreros — she wrote an email say- away from the world: Fifty years ago, ing it should be permissible for young student assertiveness concerned mopeople to be inappropriate, provocative mentous issues of war and civil rights. or even offensive because “the ability to Today, students have macro-tantrums tolerate offense” is a hallmark of “a free about micro-aggressions (e.g., sombreros). Time was, students rebelled against and open society.” universities acting in loco parentis. ToAFTER THE dust settled from this, day, they welcome having their sexual she and her husband left the residential and other social interactions minutely college. And Yale had trampled in the subjected to government regulations addust the noble legacy of its 1975 Wood- ministered by Pecksniffs with Ph.D.s. Fortunately, The Chronicle of Higher ward Report. Named for the chairman of the com- Education reports that some schools mittee that produced it, historian C. are having second thoughts about their Vann Woodward, the report was writ- “bias-response teams” that spring into ten after Yale’s awkward handling of action when someone says that somesome controversial speakers. Reaffirm- one has said something offensive. These ing freedom of expression’s “superior schools have noticed the obvious: When importance to other laudable principles such teams elevate campus harmony to the supreme value, they become civiland values,” the report said: “Without sacrificing its central pur- ity enforcers with a chilling effect on pose, [a university] cannot make its pri- speech.

George

Will

AMERICA’S GREAT research universities are ornaments of Western civilization, so their descent into authoritarianism and infantilization matters. Because conservatives are largely absent from faculties, and conservative students are regarded as a rebarbative presence, many conservatives welcome academia’s marginalization of itself by behavior that invites ridicule. But universities are squandering the cultural patrimony that conservatism exists to conserve. And what happens on campuses does not stay on campuses. According to the Pew Research Center, American millennials (ages 18 to 34), fresh from academia, “are far more likely than older generations to say the government should be able to prevent people

from saying offensive statements about minority groups.” Forty percent of this cohort think government should be empowered to jettison much constitutional law concerning the First Amendment in order to censor speech offensive to minority groups. Gerard Alexander, a University of Virginia political scientist, argues in National Affairs quarterly that a university’s “permanent population,” the faculty, is secure in the tenure system and maintains its monochrome intellectual culture by hiring from a Ph.D. pipeline that young conservatives are understandably reluctant to enter. He could have added that faculties’ ideological tendencies are reinforced by peer review of publications. “Schools,” Alexander notes, “have applied millions of hours of work to the priority of improving racial, ethnic and gender diversity. Viewpoint diversity could be elevated to similar prominence and urgency.” This would improve scholarship, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Their research concerns economic behavior, the meaning and importance of classic literature, which social problems matter most and the evidence about ways of addressing them, how to evaluate different ethical positions and legal systems, and which aspects of history most merit study. Viewpoint diversity in faculties would, Alexander argues, at least pit one scholar’s susceptibility to “confirmation bias” — the tendency to seek, and be receptive to, evidence that buttresses one’s beliefs — against another’s different bias. ACADEMIA JUST now needs a reminder akin to Florence Nightingale’s terse axiom that whatever else hospitals might do, they should not spread disease. Universities, as the word suggests, have many missions, but becoming safe spaces for faculty and student juvenility is not among them.

Conservative Chronicle

GOVERNMENT: October 20, 2016

What if liberty is attached to humanity?

What if the government is supposed to protect those liberties — the ones that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the others that are too numerous to enumerate and are covered by the Ninth Amendment? What if the government — no matter which party controls the White House or Congress — always claims that it is protecting personal freedoms? What if this is just an empty boast? What if there is a government within the government that never changes, never shrinks, answers only to itself, hates and fears personal WHAT IF the reason some of our freedoms, and is largely unrecognized by rights are listed in the Bill of Rights was the Constitution? What if that government, because of its the fear the colonists had after the Ameriis largely unaccountcan Revolution that the new government secrecy, able to the voters? here might beWhat if it resides in come as destructhe Federal Reserve, tive of freedom as the military, federthe British king al law enforcement and Parliament — (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate and intelligence whose government they had just kicked out — were before establishments, and an enormous federal the Revolution? What if it is impossible bureaucracy that regulates and spends in to list completely the freedoms that all secret to a greater extent every year, no people enjoy by reason of our humanity? matter which party is in control? What if the secret government comWhat if the Framers — who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — un- mands the loyalty of the elected government by sharing secrets with it? What if derstood that? What if, in order to address the impos- the law requires those shared secrets to sibility of listing all rights, the Framers be kept secret? What if the elected govratified the Ninth Amendment? What if ernment knows what the secret governthe Ninth Amendment declares that the ment is up to but cannot legally reveal it? enumeration of certain rights in the Con- What if members of Congress know why stitution shall not be construed to deny Hillary Clinton was not indicted but they or disparage other rights retained by the learned it in secret and so cannot legally people? What if this amendment was the reveal it? What if members of Congress Framers’ way of recognizing the inherent know the extent of the Donald Trump fiattachment of our personal liberties to our nancial shell game but they learned that in secret and so cannot reveal it? individual humanity? hat if the Declaration of Independence states that the purpose of government is to protect our natural rights? What if natural rights are the freedoms we enjoy without neighbors or strangers or government interfering? What if those freedoms are listed in part in the Bill of Rights? What if the government is supposed to keep its hands off those freedoms because they are ours, we have not surrendered them and we have hired the government to protect them?

Andrew

Napolitano

WHAT IF some personal courage has broken this mold? What if Edward Snowden revealed massive secret government spying on all Americans after the government had denied it? What if Sen. Dianne Feinstein revealed horrific torture by the federal government after the government had denied it? What if the elected government knew about the spying and the torture but was legally prevented from revealing it? What if Hillary Clinton was largely right when she said politicians have a public persona and a private persona? What if President Barack Obama has demonstrated his two sides by killing people in secret, with his undeclared wars, and denying it in public? What if the interest rate you pay on your home mortgage or car loan is not established by the free market — or even

reached by bankers looking for your business — but is fixed in private by the secret government? What if the secret government has decided that it prefers Clinton to succeed President Obama and so its agents in law enforcement will overlook all evidence of Clinton’s lawbreaking in order to bring that about? What if the secret government has given Trump an enormous pass on his financial behavior, a pass unavailable to the average voter, and it needs to keep that secret? What if government has no interest in personal freedom, except perhaps as a catchy phrase around which to rally support? What if government nurtures having foreign adversaries — real and imagined — so that it has an excuse, in repelling or resisting those enemies, to exercise unlawful powers? What if the presidential election this year has become a beauty contest — devoid of intellectual substance, without serious debate over the limited duties of government in a constitutional democracy, rolling in the gutter and largely motivated by hate and fear? What if both Clinton and Trump recognize the paradox that government is essentially the negation of personal liberty? What if whoever wins will largely use it for that purpose? What if liberty really is attached to humanity? What if all rational people yearn for personal freedom? What if the government — in order to stay in power — has detached liberty from humanity and made it a gift of the state instead of a gift of God? What if government knows that by restricting and then expanding liberty, it can command loyalty? WHAT IF there is a sense of hopelessness in the land? What if this hopelessness is bred by a government that kills, lies, steals, conceals and denies? What if that hopelessness is furthered by a rational fear that things will only get worse, no matter who wins the presidential election? What do we do about it?

November 2, 2016 ESTABLISHMENT: October 21, 2016

Demotic protest politics doesn’t always fail 2016 has been a big year for protest politics — not just in the United States, what with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting over 40 percent of primary votes, but also all over Europe and Latin America, where voters have been rejecting the advice of their nations’ political, financial and media establishments. TWO PRIME examples were in referendums. On June 23, 52 percent of British voters rejected the advice of Prime Minister David Cameron and other parties’ leaders and chose to leave rather than remain in the European Union. On Oct. 2, 50.2 percent of voters in Colombia voted to reject President Juan Manuel Santos’ peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas. Polls had shown “remain” winning and the peace agreement far ahead. Financial and betting markets expected them to come out on top easily. Barack Obama endorsed “remain.” The Norwegian Nobel Committee voted Santos the Nobel Peace Prize assuming his agreement would be approved.

Britain and Colombia have differ- ment prevailed — namely, that Britain ent political cultures and traditions, must continue to accept EU interferbut examination of the referendum ence in the form of laws and regularesults shows similar patterns in both tions and that Colombia must accept a countries — one similar to the parti- peace deal giving FARC amnesty and san divisions that have developed in automatic congressional seats. American politics since the 1990s. In But in the central part of each counboth referendums, the establishment try, the part most typical of its position prevailed in the capital me- historical national culture, tropolis and in a demotic politics geographic fringe prevailed. England areas of distincoutside of London, tive cultural and casting 74 percent (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate ethnic heritage. of national votes, Metro London, voted 55 percent with 11 percent of Britain’s votes, vot- “leave.” People in Colombia’s cordiled 60 percent “remain.” Scotland, with lera — the valleys and mountainsides eight percent, voted 62 percent “re- among the three Andean ridges, in the main.” And Northern Ireland, with two heart of the country — and those in the percent, voted 56 percent “remain.” sparsely settled Amazonian region to Colombia’s capital, Bogota, with the east, casting 63 percent of nation20 percent of national votes, voted 56 al votes, voted 58 percent against the percent for the peace agreement. The peace agreement. coastal departments along the Caribbean and Pacific, with 16 percent of IT HELPED that despite the overnational votes, voted 60 percent “si.” whelming establishment support for In the capitals and the fringes, the “remain” and “si,” there were respectemollient arguments of the established leaders making the case for the oth-

Michael

Barone

DONALD TRUMP: October 18, 2016

A trumped-up campaign

t’s hard to believe, but Donald Trump’s outburst over the weekend may have hit a new bottom in American electioneering, and he’s sinking faster and faster into this swirling gutter of his own making. It’s not easy keeping up with what appears to be his bottomless well of invective, but here’s a sample of the latest dispatch from Trumpland if you can bear to hear it. In it, he smears not just his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, but the country’s whole electoral process from the role of the press to what used to be mutually respectful debate: “THE ELECTION is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in effort to elect her president.” As for all those women who have stepped forward with stories about his groping them, The Donald claims those revelations are “100 percent fabricated and madeup charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton Campaign,” which “may poison the minds of the America Voter, FIX!” It’s as if the poisoner had binged on his own poison. Mr. Trump’s propaganda is as dubious as his syntax, punctuation, grammar and just about everything else in his delirious communiques. Quick, stop this man before he tweets more, each time destroying more and

more his credibility, which was none too good to begin with. Let’s just say Lincoln-Douglas this campaign isn’t, or even Dewey vs. FDR, both of whom look like giants compared to this year’s paltry choices for president. Hillary Clinton, he now claims, “should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election.” While he seems to be doing his worst to rig it. Naturally enough, the lower The Donald sinks, the higher his opponent rises in the public’s

Paul

regard till, at this point, the presidential election of 2016 is shaping up as the biggest and headiest Democratic landslide since 1936, in which the Republicans weren’t just defeated but just about wiped out. THE DONALD’S self-induced delirium rambles on like the druggie he claims his opponent to be. It’s not that his arguments get personal; they seem nothing but personal. There’s not a real thought in a carload. “Athletes, they make them take a drug test,” he says. “I think we should take a drug test prior to

the debate. ... I don’t know what’s going on with her. But at the beginning of our last debate, she was all pumped up at the beginning, but at the end she was like, ‘Oh, take me down.’ And she could barely even reach her car.” At last count, nine women have accused The Donald of groping them at some point in his misadventures. Here’s one presidential election turned nightmare it would be a relief to just sleep through. But there seems no chance of that with The Donald on a rampage that will doubtless last, and even mount, till Election Day, may it come blessedly soon. His whole campaign should come with a warning label: For Adults Only — lest the children see. There was once a method to political madness when it was practiced by demagogues like George Wallace, but Donald Trump’s crazy approach to politics may call not so much for political analysis as psychoanalysis. MEANWHILE, good people go about their business in this country earning a living and raising families and carrying on as sane, rational people do. If they’re accused of not paying sufficient attention to politics, who can blame them with someone like Donald Trump still at large? Our recommendation: Rise above him. Which, Lord knows, is easy enough to do.

er side — Conservatives Boris Johnson and Michael Gove and (German-born) Labourite Gisela Stuart for “leave” in Britain and former President Alvaro Uribe, who led successful operations to quell FARC and other terrorist guerrillas, for “no” in Colombia. These voices provided critical support for the common-sense intuition of Brits who valued independence from foreign bureaucrats and Colombians who opposed coddling a largely defeated terrorist movement. The division between the establishmentarian capital and fringes and the demotic center crossed party lines in Britain and was not entirely tied to party affiliation in Colombia. But the divisions in those countries resemble the geographic and cultural divisions that have come to exist in the United States. Our establishmentarian states — the center of our political, financial and media elites, i.e., the Northeast, except half-industrial Rust Belt Pennsylvania, plus the West Coast — cast 31 percent of the nation’s votes in 2012 and voted 60-38 percent for President Obama. The states in between, the demotic center, cast 69 percent of national votes and voted 51-47 percent for Mitt Romney. That’s a 13-point regional gap, one that’s been widening. It was 11 percent in 2004, five percent in 1988 and zero in 1976. It could be larger this year. It’s widely accepted in journalistic circles that Republicans are doomed to minority status because of the increasing percentage of nonwhite voters. But looking at politics through the establishmentarian/demotic lens, other results are possible. George W. Bush could win in 2004 because the establishmentarian states gave John Kerry only a 12-point margin, while Bush carried the twiceas-large demotic center by nine. The British and Colombian referendums show that depending on the substance of issues, even overwhelming establishment media dominance can fail to overcome demotic opposition. In Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, neither the establishmentarian capital nor the demotic center has an ideal champion. Trump has shown neither the command of issues nor the moral steadiness needed to win and in polls is further behind than “leave” was in Britain. BUT THAT doesn’t mean the demotic side must always lose. Always in politics, new issues arise, circumstances change and leaders’ performance varies. Neither side can count on always prevailing.

Conservative Chronicle

DEMOCRACY: October 20, 2016

A broader perspective from the world at large

his political season has been so heated that many voters are looking forward to putting it behind them — regardless of the outcome. For those of us who have been inundated with social media, cable and television political talk — it can seem depressing and debilitating. What we need is a broader perspective: a view not from the vantage point of U.S. voters, but from the world at large. We are in the middle of an election season that will culminate on Nov. 8, when citizens will have the opportunity to vote for the candidate that they want to hold office. This is an enormous responsibility and a right that many people in the world do not have. ACCORDING TO the “Democracy Index 2015, Democracy in an age of anxiety,” produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit, the United States ranks 20th in the world from the perspective of democracy. In the index, each country falls into one of four types of regime, based on its composite score. These are “full democracies” (8-10), “flawed democracies” (6-7.9), “hybrid regimes” (4-5.9) and “authoritarian regimes” (below 4). When looking at the two ends of the spectrum — the differences are clear. “Full democracies: Countries in which not only basic political freedoms and civil liberties are respected, but also tend to be underpinned by a political culture conducive to the flourishing of democracy. The functioning of government is satisfactory. Media are independent and diverse. There is an effective system of checks and balances. The judiciary is independent and judicial decisions are enforced. There are only limited problems in the functioning of democracies,” according to the report. In contrast, “Authoritarian regimes: In these states, state political pluralism is absent or heavily circumscribed. Many countries in this category are outright dictatorships. Some formal institutions of democracy may exist, but these have little substance. Elections, if they do occur, are not free and fair. There is disregard for abuses and infringements of civil liberties. Media are typically state-owned or controlled by groups connected to the ruling regime. There is repression of criticism of the government and pervasive censorship. There is no independent judiciary.” IN THE 2015 report, the United States had an overall score of 8.05, barely clearing the low end of the full democracy category. This score is a composite of electoral process and pluralism (9.17), functioning of government (7.50), political participation

(7.22), political culture (8.13), and that characterizes much of our politicivil liberties (8.24). We fall short in cal discourse, or perhaps because of the areas of political participation and the disgust felt by many at our government’s inability to function as a whole. functioning of government. According to the report, “One of the Political participation is important to a democracy. In presidential elec- central problems of political life today tion years, about 50-55 percent of is the absence of clear values binding cal elite together, which those eligible to vote do so. In off-year the politiprovide it with a elections, the percent who participate c o u l d narrative to engage is even smaller. Jackie with its citizens... “Democracies This crisis of selfflourish when belief and values citizens are willexplains much ing to participate (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate about the conduct in public debate, elect representatives and join political of political life in the Western world parties,” according to the Economist. today; without such an ethos, it is dif“Without this broad, sustaining partici- ficult for political elites to inspire the pation, democracy begins to wither and public and encourage public participabecome the preserve of small, select tion in democracy.” This disgust at political elites has groups.” Why is participation low in the Unit- given rise to populism, both here and ed States? Perhaps because of the in- abroad. “Its basic premise, that the excreasingly partisan negative language isting political establishment no longer

Gingrich Cushman

represents the people, is the key to understanding its widespread appeal,” according to the Economist. According to Peter Zeihan, president and founder of Zeihan on Geopolitics, “The party coalitions on both sides are already broken beyond repair. The last time this happened, it was in the 1930s. We had the Great Depression; we moved into World War II; we had the most popular president in American history, FDR,” he told the CFA Institute Annual Conference in Montreal last spring. “It took us 15 years for the parties to settle into their new form, the form that we know today.” THE NEXT decade or so might well see a reformation of the major political parties. Let’s hope this is done in a way that increases political participation and the functioning of government, and helps us become a more robust democracy.

DONALD TRUMP: October 20, 2016

Don’t blame Never Trump No one can accuse Kellyanne Conway of complacency. She is already preparing for post-election recriminations. Donald Trump’s campaign manager has recently cited Hillary Clinton’s financial advantage, media bias and President Barack Obama’s popularity as reasons Trump should be losing to Clinton even more badly. She also floated the stabbed-in-the-back thesis: “We have the Never Trumpers,” she said in a MSNBC interview, “who are costing us four or five percent in places.”

NO ONE CAN doubt that Trump is at a financial disadvantage (which is why he either should have spent more of his purported $10 billion on his campaign, or built a serious fundraising operation); that the media hate him (it also hated Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who won four presidential elections between them); or that Obama is popular (alas). It is the claim about Never Trump that is risible, and will set the stage for the initial hostilities in the impending post-election Republican Civil War. The Trump forces have never gotten their story straight about Never Trump. At times, the GOP’s internal opposition is supposed to be irrelevant; at other times, it is invested with more sinister significance than the Doctors’ Plot at the height of Josef Stalin’s paranoia. Which is it? It was never right to call Never Trump a movement; it is a motley collection of conservative commentators,

political professionals, policy experts and a handful of politicians who had the (not particularly stunning) foresight to see that Trump would be the weakest and most vulnerable of the Republican general-election candidates and the (not particularly acute) discernment to recognize in him qualities unsuited to the presidency. The arguments between Never Trump and its critics are fascinating and important, but it is fantastical to consider them electorally decisive in a contest with some 130 million voters. Prior to the first debate,

Rich

Trump had more uniform party support than Hillary Clinton in some polls. Gallup shows Trump’s favorability rating among Republicans has been steadily falling since. He was at 72 percent favorable and 26 percent unfavorable in late September. Now, he’s at 63-34. THIS IS unsurprising, given his jawdroppingly self-destructive past month. Never Trumpers didn’t advise Trump not to prepare for the first debate; they didn’t tell him to attack Alicia Machado and tweet foolish things in the middle of the night; they didn’t sanction him saying lewd things on tape, or allegedly groping women; they didn’t recommend charging the election is “rigged.”

All of that is on the campaign, and especially the candidate. For more than a year, Trump has had the biggest megaphone on the planet. His performance has mattered more than what any columnist or blogger says about him. And Trump has damaged himself, especially among voters already leery of him. Data from NBC News has Clinton leading by 26 points in urban suburbs, 10 points better than Obama’s margin over Mitt Romney in these areas. To think this is the work of Never Trump, you have to imagine moderate suburban women intensely following the intraconservative debate over Trump and changing their allegiances based on the latest Twitter flame war. Anyone who believes this has probably never been to a kid’s soccer practice. If Trump thought he needed any of his conservative critics or reluctant endorsers, he could have actively sought to allay their concerns and conduct himself and his campaign more rationally. But the fundamental conceit of his campaign was that he could do it his own way, and win. With the exception of the month prior to the first debate, he has indeed done it his own way, and is losing. SHOULD TRUMP come up short against a desperately flawed Hillary Clinton, it will be his failure and his alone. So if Kellyanne Conway is preparing for the blame game, the first thing she should do is direct the candidate’s attention to what is surely one of his favorite household accoutrements: The mirror.

November 2, 2016 YOUTUBE CENSORSHIP: October 25, 2016

YouTube versus conservative speech

ast week, the Wall Street Jour- but the company is undercutting its claim nal wrote an editorial about to be a platform for ‘free expression.’” It is a good sign that YouTube’s cenYouTube restricting access to 16 videos — down from 21 — that were sorship of respectful and utterly nonviocreated and posted online by my non- lent and nonsexual videos made it to the profit educational organization, Prager Wall Street Journal editorial page. It is University. The subheading read, “You- a very bad sign that it had to. And it is a Tube thinks Dennis Prager’s videos may very bad sign that it made the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal but not be dangerous.” The Journal said: “Tech giants like Google and Face- that of the New York Times, the Washbook always deny that their platforms ington Post, the Los Angeles Times or mainstream newsfavor some viewpoints over others, but any other paper that still purthen they don’t ports to support the do much to avoid classic liberal value looking censoriof free speech. ous. ... Dennis To understand Prager’s ‘PragerU’ (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate what YouTube, puts out free short videos on subjects ‘important to under- which is owned by Google, has done, it standing American values’ — ranging is necessary to briefly describe what it from the high cost of higher education to has restricted access to. Every week, PragerU (the generally the motivations of Islamic State. used name for Prager University) posts “THE CHANNEL has more than at least one five-minute video presenta130 million views. ... As you might tion online. These presentations are on guess, the mini-seminars do not include just about every subject and are given violence or sexual content. But more by important thinkers — some very than 15 videos are ‘restricted’ on You- well-known, some not. The list includes Tube ... This means the clips don’t show dozens of professors at Massachusetts up for those who have turned on filtering Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, — say, a parent shielding their children Princeton, Dayton, Boston College, from explicit videos. A YouTube spokes- Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, and West person told us that the setting is optional Point, among other universities; a black and ‘based on algorithms that look at a member of South African Parliament; number of factors, including community comedians Adam Carolla and Yakov Smirnoff; two former prime ministers flagging on videos.’ “PragerU started a petition calling for (one of Spain, and one of Denmark); YouTube to remove the restriction, and Pulitzer Prize winners George Will, Bret more than 66,000 people have signed. Stephens and Judith Miller; Mike Rowe YouTube is free to set its own standards, of Dirty Jobs; Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Arthur

Dennis

Prager

Brooks; Jonah Goldberg; Alan Dershowitz; Nicholas Eberstadt; Larry Elder; Steve Forbes; Walter Williams; Christina Hoff Sommers; George Gilder; Victor Davis Hanson; Bjorn Lomborg; Heather Mac Donald; Eric Metaxas; Amity Shlaes; Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan; and many others. I also present some videos. Any responsible person, left-wing or right-wing, would have to acknowledge that this is a profoundly respectable list of non-bomb-throwing presenters. It’s hardly conducive to censorship. YOUTUBE PLACED restrictions on the following videos. — Two videos on race: “Are The Police Racist?” and “Don’t Judge Blacks Differently.” — Six videos on Islam: “What ISIS Wants,” “Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?” “Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do,” “Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?” “Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology” and “Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?”

— Two videos on abortion (the only two offered): “Who’s More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?” and “The Most Important Question About Abortion.” — Two videos on Israel: “Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army” and “Israel’s Legal Founding” (the latter video, presented by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, was reinstated after much publicity). — Three videos on America: “Why Did America Fight the Korean War?” “Did Bush Lie About Iraq?” and “What is the University Diversity Scam?” — One on politics: “Who NOT to Vote For.” — And one on men and women: “He Wants You” (a video I present about men and women). Think of these topics, and consider the list of presenters. Do you see any violent content or sexual content? Do you see anything you wouldn’t want your minor child to view? The only possible “yes” might be to the video titled “He Wants You.” Though void of any explicit content, it deals with the subject of men looking at other women yet most still wanting their own wives. It has almost four million views and has helped a lot of couples. Obviously, then, the explanation is not that “algorithms” catch violence and sex. Rather, YouTube doesn’t want effective conservative videos to be posted (each video has at least one million views). Does that mean that it has left-wing censors looking for every widely viewed conservative video? If so, it doesn’t have to. Left-wing viewers simply flag our videos and others’ as inappropriate, and YouTube does the rest. I have never devoted a column to PragerU. But I have done so today because if YouTube gets away with censoring as big a website as PragerU — after a major editorial is published in the Wall Street Journal, after coverage in the New York Post, the Boston Globe, Fortune, National Review and many other places, and after a petition signed by over 70,000 people (which is on the PragerU website) — what will happen to other conservative institutions? For the probable answer, see your local university. THE QUESTION, then, is this: Will YouTube do to the internet what the left has done to Prager University?

Conservative Chronicle

HUNGARY: October 26, 2016

Recalling Hungary’s courageous Cold War revolt

n October 23, 1956, Hungarians began Eastern Europe’s only Cold War armed rebellion against Communism. Unfortunately, their attempt to free themselves would falter and fail, defeated by Russian tanks.

In July 1956, the “de-Stalinizing” Kremlin had removed Rakosi. The Russians knew Rakosi was despised. Imre Nagy replaced him. Rakosi’s AVH, however, wasn’t replaced. The plucky Nagy began investigating Rakosi’s crimes, with the goal of righting past wrongs. Righting wrongs, BUT WE TOOK the risk; 21st cen- however, would implicate the Soviets, tury Hungarians remind our forgetful so the Kremlin fired Nagy. A Rakosi world. We put lives on the line in a fight ally, Andras Hegedus, became prime for basic freedoms — free speech, free- minister. dom from fear of a totalitarian governOne of the 16 points explicitly dement and its savage secret police. manded that the courageous Nagy lead On October 22, 1956, students in Bu- a free Hungarian government. dapest announced they would rally the The students marched next day to protest on the national radio government instation. Along the justices. The next way several hundred day, 100,000 peoprotestors decided to ple showed up to topple a statue of (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate cheer as students the hated Soviet read a document dictator, Josef Stawith 16 demands addressing political lin. At the radio station protestors deand economic issues. manded they be allowed to read the 16 “The 16 Point Program” was unre- Points on the air. Scuffles broke out. An alistic, but its goals were popular. The AVH security force at the station fired students called for the withdrawal of on the unarmed students. Soviet troops. The Kremlin had violated The night of the 23rd was a busy one its own peace treaty, the one it had im- in Budapest. A group of armed freedom posed after WWII. fighters seized the radio station. Imre The students demanded a just gov- Nagy became the revolutionary prime ernment. Matyas Rakosi’s Commu- minister. Sometime after midnight, a nist regime was a Russian puppet and a Russian tank unit rolled into the city. criminal enterprise. After securing absoOn October 24, clashes between lute power in 1950, Rakosi and his State Russians and Hungarians were miniProtection Authority had imprisoned or mal, in part because Nagy said to avoid murdered over 200,000 Hungarians. confrontations. On the 25th, however,

Austin

Bay

Russian soldiers shot and killed 800 demonstrators in Budapest. Nagy declared a free, multi-party Hungarian state. Fighting between Hungarian freedom fighters and Russian forces erupted throughout Hungary. IN BUDAPEST an ad hoc Hungarian National Guard led by General Bela Kiraly attacked pro-Communist Hungarian forces and battled the Russians. A WWII hero, the communists had sentenced Kiraly to life in prison. His release was recent. At one time, both

Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin had ordered Kiraly’s execution. The dictators’ enmity spoke volumes about Kiraly’s political liberalism and his Hungarian nationalist credentials. Kiraly’s ad hoc army dealt the Russians an initial defeat. Russian counterattacks produced a stalemate — an astonishing outcome given the presence of Russian armor. On October 28, Nagy announced a ceasefire. Fighting lapsed from October 28 to November 4. The Kremlin wasn’t sure what to do. Russian WWII hero, General Georgy Zhukov, thought Russian forces should withdraw. But on October 30, armed protestors attacked a Communist Party office in Budapest and killed 20 AVH secret policemen. On November 1, Moscow began reinforcing its units in Hungary. On November 4, the Kremlin launched an all-out attack on the Hungarian revolution. By November 9, the revolution was shattered and over. Nagy was arrested November 22 and later executed. 2,500 Hungarians died in the revolt, and an estimated 20,000 were wounded. Officially, Russia lost 699 soldiers killed in combat. Over 200,000 Hungarians refugees fled the country. That figure includes Kiraly and some 3,000 fighters who evaded pursuing Russian tanks and escaped into neutral Austria. Why didn’t the U.S. and NATO intervene? In President Dwight Eisenhower’s opinion, military intervention was impossible. NATO would have to enter Austria or Yugoslavia to reach Hungary. GIVEN THE circumstances, it was the best decision Ike could make. Still, his decision embitters some Hungarians. Ike praised the Hungarians’ courage. 60 years later it deserves celebration.

November 2, 2016 HEALTH INSURANCE: October 26, 2016

Government health insurance up, freedom down “We’ve agreed that our health reform bill will promote choice,” President Barack Obama said on July 21, 2009. “Americans will be able to compare the price and quality of different plans and pick the plan that they want,” he said. “If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it,” he said. “Let me repeat that: If you like your plan, you will be able to keep it,” he said. He apparently wanted Americans to remember that — at least until Congress enacted his Affordable Care Act. THIS WEEK, the Kaiser Family Foundation released an analysis of the Obamacare insurance exchanges that

indicates there will be five states in In Phoenix, Arizona, it will increase 2017 where only one insurance com- 145 percent — jumping from $207 to pany is offering health insurance plans $507. through the exchange. These include But unlike the Obamacare exchange Ala., Alaska, Okla., S.C. and Wyo. users in Birmingham and Oklahoma But these exchanges will only be City, according to the KFF analysis, exfor people who can still afford private change users in Phoenix will actuhealth insurance. ally get to choose between In Birmingtwo different insurham, Alabama, ance companies. according to the That is what they KFF analysis, the call a “marketmonthly premium place.” (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate for the secondFor Americans lowest-cost silver plan for a 40-year- worried about these escalating insurold nonsmoker will increase 71 percent ance premiums, government apologists — jumping from $288 to $492. are quick to note that, if you make less In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, it will than 400 percent of the poverty level, increase 67 percent — jumping from the government will subsidize your in$295 to $493. surance premiums.

Terry

Jeffrey

IMMIGRATION: October 25, 2016

Immigration controversies

espite controversies that rage over immigration, it is hard to see how anyone could be either for or against immigrants in general. First of all, there are no immigrants in general. Both in the present and in the past, some immigrant groups have made great contributions to American society, and others have contributed mainly to the welfare rolls and the prisons. Nor is this situation unique to the United States. The same has been true of Sweden and of other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

SWEDEN WAS, for a long time, one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world. As of 1940, only about one percent of the Swedish population were immigrants. Even as the proportion of immigrants increased over the years, as late as 1970 90 percent of foreign-born persons in Sweden had been born in other Scandinavian countries or in Western Europe. These immigrants were usually well-educated, and often had higher labor force participation rates and lower unemployment rates than the native Swedes. That all began to change as the growing number of immigrants came increasingly from the Middle East, with Iraqis becoming the largest immigrant group in Sweden. This changing trend was accompanied by a sharply increased use of the government’s “social assistance” program, from six percent in the pre-1976 era to 41 percent in the 1996-1999 period. But, even in this later period, fewer than seven percent of the immigrants from Scandinavia and Western Europe used “social assistance,” while 44 per-

cent of the immigrants from the Middle East used that welfare state benefit. Immigrants, who were by this time 16 percent of Sweden’s population, had become 51 percent of the long-term unemployed and 57 percent of the people receiving welfare payments. The proportion of foreigners in prison was five times their proportion in the population of the country.

Thomas

The point of all this is that there is no such thing as immigrants in general, whether in Europe or America. Yet all too many of the intelligentsia in the media and in academia talk as if immigrants were abstract people in an abstract world, to whom we could apply abstract principles — such as “we are all descendants of immigrants.” A HUNDRED years ago, when a very different mix of immigrants were coming to a very different America, there was a huge, multi-volume study of how immigrants from different countries had fared here. This included how they did as workers in various industries and in agriculture, and how their children did in school. Some people like to refer to the past as “earlier and simpler times.” But it is we today who are so simple-minded that it would be taboo to do anything so politically incorrect as to sort out immigrants by what country they came from. As Hillary Clinton said in one of her recently revealed e-mails, she is for “open

borders.” However congenial the idea of open borders may be to elites who think of themselves as citizens of the world, it is not even possible to have everyone come to America and the country still remain America. What is it that makes this country so different that so many people from around the world have, for centuries, wanted to come here, more so than to any other country? It is not the land or the climate, neither of which is so different from the land and the climate in many other places. Nor is it the racial makeup of the country, which consists of races found on other continents. What is unique are American institutions, American culture and American economic and other achievements within that framework. People who came here a hundred years ago usually did so in order to fit within the framework of America and become Americans. Some still do. But many come from a very different cultural background — and our own multiculturalism dogmas and grievance industry work to keep them foreign and resentful of Americans who have achieved more than they have. SOME IMMIGRANT groups seek to bring to America the very cultures whose failures led them to flee to this country. Not all individual immigrants and not all immigrant groups. But too many Americans have become so gullible that they are afraid to even get the facts about which immigrants have done well and improved America, and which have become a burden that can drag us all down.

In other words: If you make less than 400 percent of the poverty level, federal taxpayers all across the country will be required to help you buy your insurance. The government’s lesson here: Keep your income down, so you can get other Americans to subsidize your insurance. OR, IF YOU do not earn enough to buy insurance even with a government subsidy, you can go directly onto government-provided health insurance. In July, the number of people in the United States enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program exceeded the entire population of the United Kingdom. It also exceeded the population of France. There were 72,810,267 people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP this July, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That was up by 15,393,550 people from Medicaid and CHIP enrollment back in the July-toSeptember period of 2013, which was just before the Obamacare exchanges opened. Meanwhile, there are only 66,836,154 people in France and 64,430,428 in the United Kingdom, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. In 2015, according to the Census Bureau, there was a total U.S. population of about 318,868,000 and 37.1 percent — or 118,395,000 people — had government health insurance at some point during the year (including Medicaid, Medicare, and military and veterans’ coverage). That was up from 34.6 percent in 2013. That is a good measure of the trajectory of American liberty: As government control of health care rises, freedom falls. Under the Obama administration, the federal government worked to establish that it can dictate what insurance coverage you must have. For the first time in our nation’s history, the federal government ordered people to buy a product (health insurance), which the Supreme Court upheld as a legitimate exertion of the taxing power. Wielding this power, the federal government ordered many Americans (by regulation) to buy a version of the product (one that included coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and devices) that violated their moral and religious beliefs and made them complicit in the taking of innocent human life. NOW THAT the federal government has forced you to buy coverage (including coverage that you do not want) and shown that it will use this power to attack human life rather than protect it, what is to stop it from taking the next step: Telling you what coverage you cannot have.

Conservative Chronicle

TWO-PARTY SYSTEM: October 24, 2016

Two-party system exposed as myth by Donald Trump

s I have said many times, the idea of a two-party system is a myth. What we have are two warring factions both fighting to control and sustain the same political zeitgeist but approaching said objective from only marginally different directions. That said, heretofore these warring factions were able to carry out their Erebusic machinations with impunity thanks to the complicit dishonesty of the socalled “mainstream media.“ The mythical two-party system has kept We the People at odds with one another based upon an unrealistic idealism, which we are led to believe by the various bureaus of agitprop, will usher in political utopia if we just vote the right way.

THANKS TO Donald Trump much of the citizenry has finally had their eyes opened. The public is now aware that the long held belief that We the People actually elected the president and representatives “of our choice” was in fact not the case. The wraithlike political ghouls operating behind the scenes were pulling the strings and the media was doling out convincing lies presented as truth, which gave the masses the illusion of voting their choice. In reality, the voters were white mice unwittingly being navigated through a labyrinth of candidates to make the predetermined choice. The media promotes candidates and destroys candidates according to the wishes of the diabolical marplots who were the bologna between the metaphorical slices of bread, heretofore recognized as political parties, while the moneyed wraiths were actually making the decisions. But that has now been exposed thanks to the “force” that is Donald Trump. Due to the futility of the time-tested attacks that heretofore worked seamlessly until Donald Trump, the media and party controllers abandoned all pretenses that We the People controlled our political destiny. The media has been exposed as nothing more than bureaus of misinformation. The late Arnaud de Borchgrave was a journalist for whom I have the greatest of respect. De Borchgrave frequently argued that journalistic integrity had become nothing more than a de facto Pravda the Russian Broadsheet, which was the principle propaganda organ of the Communist Central Committee. The American news organizations are no longer interested in reporting facts; they are interested in spinning insidious political ideologies and the heterodoxies of whichever political persuasion they adhere to. These practices have been developed at the highest levels of media ownership and instituted in a way that blinded the audiences regardless of which political entity they thought they were support-

ing. The truth is that we’ve not been sup- now learned that not only must we quesporting a political party; in reality we’ve tion authority but that it is our duty. In his letter to William Stephens Smith been performing to the orchestrations of political powerbrokers who before Don- in Paris, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “... ald Trump, were able to remain in the The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong shadows. Thanks to the internet, they have now will be discontented in proportion to been conspicuously revealed in all of the importance of the facts they misconthey remain quiet under their malevolent anti-American deca- ceive. If such misconceptions dence. The media h a s it is a lethargy, the been exposed as forerunner of death to the liars and dethe public liberty ... ceivers they are. What country ever Those such as (c) 2016, Mychal Massie existed ... without myself who have a rebellion? And been trying to alert the people to their sinister activity have what country can preserve it’s liberties if now been vindicated. The mainstream their rulers are not warned from time to media and the political parties will never time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The be trusted in the same way again. remedy is to set them right as to facts, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN famously pardon and pacify them ... The “tree of said: “It is the first responsibility of every liberty” must be refreshed from time to citizen to question authority.” We have time with the blood of patriots and ty-

Mychal

Massie

rants. It is it’s natural manure. (November 13, 1787) We as a people have been “lied” (sic) into a false sense of reality, cloaked in a vestige that deceived us into believing a manufactured narrative intended to give the illusion of purposed participation. In reality, we have become nothing more than pawns valued only for money and votes. Donald Trump has given voice to We the People and the political powers cannot abide that. Ergo they have been driven to expose themselves, which has led to the irrefutable revelation that we have been lied to and used. WE ARE ON the verge of one of the most significant revolutionary victories in modern history second, perhaps, only to Brexit. We cannot let down and we dare not allow our victory to be stolen and/or denied by a media that would make Vladimir Lenin proud.

IMMIGRATION: October 21, 2016

Not solved with insults or pandering

o issue has generated more heat in this year’s presidential election than immigration — but neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton shed much light on the issue in their third presidential debate. Trump made his usual promise to build a wall and added to his insults against Mexican immigrants by warning, “We have some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them out.” Clinton responded with images of deportation forces going school to school but quickly pivoted from discussing meaningful legal immigration reform to attacking Trump on his relationship to Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, most voters were left in the dark about what is really going on with respect to immigration.

AMERICANS ARE right to want secure borders in a dangerous world. But America’s borders have never been more secure than they are now. We spend more protecting our southern border — more than $16 billion a year — than we do on all federal criminal law enforcement by the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives combined. What’s more, the money and additional agents have paid off. Illegal immigration is at its lowest point in four decades. There are now more Mexicans leaving the United States than coming here, legally and illegally. But you won’t hear that from Trump — and even Clinton seems loath to mention the fact.

Trump said during the debate that he would fix the legal immigration system: “We’re going to speed up the process bigly, because it’s very inefficient.” He’s right about the inefficiency of the current system, in which applicants from Mexico, the Philippines, China and India must often wait decades.

BUT HIS IDEA of fixing the broken legal immigration system is to propose that we go back to laws enacted in the early 20th century that were

Linda

driven by ethnic prejudice to favor northern Europeans like Trump’s German grandfather and Scottish mother. Those laws, the first in our nation’s history to restrict immigration, made it more difficult for Italians, Jews, Slavs and other southern and eastern European emigrants to come to America. Trump’s version would put limits on all immigrants, calling for a return to “historical norms.” He won’t say how many that would mean, but you can bet it would entail drastic reductions, which would be a big problem for an aging American population. To keep our Social Security and Medicare systems viable, we need an expanding workforce and a growing population, yet without a continuing flow of immi-

grants, our labor force would decline and our population would shrink. But Clinton’s immigration policy is hardly ideal, either. She has spent more time talking about what she would do to give legal status to the 11 million immigrants here illegally than she has about how she would fashion a better immigration system going forward to prevent the same problem from occurring again. Until we change our immigration laws to reflect our need for skilled workers at both ends of the spectrum — more engineers, scientists and mathematicians at the high end and more agricultural workers, meat processors and laborers at the low end — people will continue to come illegally or overstay their visas. But the unions that support Clinton don’t want a viable guest-worker program and will insist on prevailing wage rules that make hiring foreign workers economically unattractive even when there are shortages of people willing to do certain jobs. WE NEED a real debate on immigration, but don’t expect one in the remaining days of this presidential election. When all the ugliness and posturing is done, the country will still have to face this issue. The American economy is helped, not hurt, by immigrants, but we need a system that brings in immigrants with the right skills. And whoever occupies the Oval Office in January will have to work to fix our immigration system, not just lob insults, invoke fear or use the issue to try to win votes.

November 2, 2016 FOREIGN POLICY: October 25, 2016

Dump President Duterte ‚ for starters Given the resentment of the Russian people toward America, for exploiting their time of weakness after the breakup of the Soviet Union, to drive our alliance onto their front porch, such moves could trigger a conflict that could escalate to nuclear weapons. Moscow has warned us pointedly and repeatedly about this. Yet now that the election is almost over, neocons burrowed in their think tanks are emerging to talk up U.S. confrontations with Syria, Russia, Iran and AS THE OTHER Western pow- China. Restraining America’s War Party ers bled and bankrupted themselves, may be the first order of business of the we emerged relatively unscathed as next president. Fortunately, after the Libyan debacle, the world’s No. 1 power. The Brits and French lost their empires, and much President Obama has lost any enthusiasm for new wars. else, and ceased to be great powers. Indeed, he has Stalin’s annexaa narrow window tion of Central of opportunity to Europe and acquibegin to bring sition of an atom our alliances into bomb, and Mao’s (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate conformity with triumph in China our interests — by in 1949, caused us to form alliances from Europe to Korea, serving notice that the United States is Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Aus- terminating its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila. tralia. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Yet, with the end of the Cold War, we did not dissolve a single alliance. NATO is proving himself to be an unstable was expanded to embrace all the nations anti-American autocrat, who should not of the former Warsaw Pact and three be entrusted with the power to drag us into war over some rocks or reefs in the former republics of the USSR. This hubristic folly is at the heart of South China Sea. Earlier this year, we got an idea of present tensions with Russia. Now, Beltway hawks have begun to what a commitment to go to war for a push the envelope to bring former So- NATO ally might mean when President viet republics Moldova, Ukraine and Tayyip Recep Erdogan, another mercuGeorgia into NATO, with some urging rial autocrat, shot down a Russian plane us to bring in the Cold War neutrals that strayed over Turkish territory for 17 seconds. Sweden and Finland.

Alliances are transmission belts of war. So our Founding Fathers taught and the 20th century proved. When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany in 1914, America sat out, until our own ships were being sunk in 1917. When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany, Sept. 3, 1939, we stayed out until Hitler declared war on us, Dec. 11, 1941.

Pat

Buchanan

Had Vladimir Putin retaliated in Now, the practice has apparently been kind, Erdogan could have invoked Ar- introduced nationwide. ticle 5 of NATO, requiring us come to While campaigning, Duterte said he Turkey’s defense against Russia. would Jet Ski 120 miles to Scarborough Shoal, which is occupied by China GIVEN HOW Erdogan has acted though it is in Manila’s territorial wasince this summer’s attempted coup, ters. Since then, he has flipped and bepurging Turkish democratic institutions come outspokenly pro-China. and imprisoning tens of thousands, do Before attending a summit in Laos, the benefits of our NATO alliance with Duterte called President Obama “the Ankara still outweigh the risks? son of a wh--e.” He has insulted AmeriDuterte harbors a lifelong grudge ca and canceled joint military exercises. against America for our war of 1899- In Beijing he announced a “separation 1902 to crush the Philippine indepen- from the United States. ... No more dence movement, after Admiral Dewey American influence. No more Amerisank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. can [military] exercises. It’s time to say We liberated the Philippines, only to an- goodbye.” nex them. “I would rather go to Russia and to A longtime mayor on Mindanao be- China,” he added. fore being elected president, Duterte is President Obama should email Presireputedly the godfather of death squads dent Duterte: “Message received. Acthat executed drug dealers and users. cept your decision. Good luck with the Russians and Chinese.” Would termination of our Mutual Defense Treaty mean severing ties with the Filipino people? By no means. What it would do, though, is this: restore America’s absolute freedom to act or not act militarily in the South China Sea, according to our interests, and not Duterte’s whims. Whether we intervene on Manila’s behalf or not, the decision would be ours alone. Terminating the treaty would absolve us of any legal or moral obligation to fight for Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef or any of the other rocks in a South China Sea that are now in dispute between Beijing and half a dozen nations. A U.S. decision to terminate the treaty would also send a wake-up call to every ally: America’s Cold War commitments are not forever. Your security is not more important to us than it is to you. As Donald Trump has been saying, we are starting to put America first again. ON THIS, maybe even President Obama could find common ground.

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Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Ann Coulter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Joseph Farah, Suzanne Fields, Paul Greenberg, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terence Jeffrey, Charles Krauthammer, Larry Kudlow, Donald Lambro, David Limbaugh, Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, Mychal Massie, Stephen Moore, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Andrew Napolitano, Marvin Olasky, Dennis Prager, Debra J. Saunders, Phyllis Schlafly, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Cal Thomas, Matt Towery, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., George Will, and Walter Williams.

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•NEWSPAPER• •DATED MATERIAL•

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Postmaster: Timely Material Please deliver on or before 11/2/16 Periodicals Postage Paid Mailed 10/27/16

Read David Harsanyi, Stephen Moore & Brent Bozell on Pages 16-17

Hillary Clinton

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Read Suzanne Fields’ Column on Page 1

Vulgarity and Lies Are Revealing

Character

Wednesday, November 2, 2016 • Volume 31, Number 44 • Hampton, Iowa