Sunday, January 24, 2016

op ed review 1/24



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Cover story in National Review, penned by 21 conservative columnists, calling Donald Trump a “menace to American Conservatism.”
TRUMP FIRES BACK: Magazine 'dying, dying'...
RNC Strips National Review of Debate Hosting Gig After Cover Story Attacking Trump
“Donald Trump is poised for the strongest primary performance in modern history”
According to a just-released poll, in a 12 person Republican primary, Donald Trump is blowing the pack away in Florida with a +32 point lead over the number 2 choice.
Sarah Palin:   all in for Trump 
A McCain senior adviser blasted former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s endorsement of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as “just classless”
Global elite fear Trump.
“Evangelicals See Donald Trump as Man of Conviction, if Not Faith”
Trump touted his faith at Liberty University on Monday, telling the conservative college that Christians have to ban together because their religion "is under siege."

At least one Hollywood superstar and a barefoot monk – braved the cold and snow Friday to join the 2016 March for Life in Washington on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Some mainstream media publications, such as CBS News, chose not to cover the big event, and still others downplayed the size of the turnout.
March for Life buoyed by young people opposing abortion in increasing numbers

Hillary Clinton Email Said to Include Material Exceeding ‘Top Secret’
Former Sec Def Robert Gates: 'Odds Are Pretty High' Russia, China, And Iran Accessed Hillary's Server...

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading Hillary Clinton by a wide margin, 60 percent to 33 percent, in New Hampshire heading into the February 9 primary, according to a poll released Tuesday.
“Berserk Clinton Bigwigs Launch Nixonian Attack Against Surging Sanders.”
Democrats backing Hillary Clinton, nervously eyeing Senator Bernie Sanders’s growing strength in the early nominating states, are turning to a new strategy to raise doubts about his candidacy, highlighting his socialist beliefs to warn that he would be an electoral disaster who would frighten swing voters and send Democrats in tight congressional and governor’s races to defeat.

Two new polls released in the past week show women won’t be voting in droves for Hillary Clinton the way African-Americans voted in droves for President Obama.

IRS Erases Hard Drive Despite Court Order

Obama vacation expenses:  $10 million per year for each year he has been in office.

The Obama administration paid the Iranian regime $340 million for each US hostage released by Iran. Another brilliant deal by the Obama administration. No need to worry. Iran will likely spend the extra millions on education and child care.
Days after Iran received hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief from the controversial nuclear deal, US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday admitted a good portion of the massive funds will go to terror.
???  John Kerry declares Obama’s work with Iran a success: ‘The world is a safer place today”

More fundamental transformation:  The US Navy is planning to make job titles gender-neutral - putting the future of long-established names like ´midshipman´ in doubt.

‘El Chapo’ Drug Kingpin Had a Rifle From Federal ‘Fast & Furious’ Program
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Wall Street Journal Editorial  1/19

It’s time to take  Bernie Sanders seriously. The Vermont Senator is leading in Iowa and New Hampshire and in Sunday’s debate he sounded for the first time like a candidate who thinks he can win. He still isn’t the favorite against the Clinton machine, but it’s no longer impossible to imagine the 74-year-old socialist as the Democratic nominee.

It’s fashionable to describe Mr. Sanders as the progressive version of  Donald Trump, but that is true only in that they both tap into public dissatisfaction with the status quo. Mr. Trump has populist instincts but few fixed ideological principles. Mr. Sanders is a true-blue man of the left. He would be the most left-wing Democratic nominee since  George McGovern in 1972, but his economic agenda is more radical and hasn’t been seen in the U.S. since the 1930s.

This week he rolled out his Medicare-for-all plan that would end private health insurance. Mr. Sanders can see the public frustration with ObamaCare and wants to turn it to the left. The Vermont Senator also wants to make college and child care into universal entitlements paid for by the government, spend $1 trillion on public works, raise the minimum wage nationwide to $15 an hour (from $7.25) and greatly expand Social Security benefits.

Mr. Sanders would also use government to control the means of production, as the socialists used to say, starting with the banks. He would break up the largest via a “21st century Glass-Steagall” that suggests something far more ambitious than merely dividing investment from commercial banking. He says climate change is his main national-security concern, and he has called for a criminal investigation of climate dissenters.

His many tax increases would include a sharply higher rate for high earners that he doesn’t specify, though he does often speak fondly of the tax rates of the pre-Reagan (70%) and New Deal (94%) eras. He’d introduce a new payroll tax for the middle class to pay for universal health care and eliminate the income cap on the Social Security payroll tax (now $118,500) on earnings above $250,000.

He also wants to impose a tax on Wall Street trading—he calls it “speculation”—of the kind that the French Socialists tried but couldn’t make stick because trades can be made anywhere in the world. This would all normally be politically suicidal, but Mr. Sanders is using his candor about raising taxes as a badge of progressive authenticity.

This may sound like the stuff of socialist dreams, but Mr. Sanders has already moved the Democratic debate sharply to the left, forcing  Hillary Clinton to chase him. Her policy response has been to do a partial Bernie, which is to the left of President Obama on most domestic issues.

Mrs. Clinton remains the front-runner, and unlike in the GOP there really is a powerful Democratic establishment of unions, green lobbies and feminists that has rallied behind her. Her argument is that she has the best chance to win in November, but that case was more persuasive a year ago than it is now.

The Clinton campaign feels the threat because the media left has done a hairpin turn on Bernie. He was fine as the lovable old left-wing uncle, but Hillary’s acolytes suddenly find him too, well, socialist. Bernie has the courage of their convictions, and his appeal is he’s more honest about it.

Mr. Sanders has also begun to mention, ever so gingerly, her ethical and Wall Street vulnerabilities. On Sunday he said “you’ve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from  Goldman Sachs  in one year.” And what happens if the FBI recommends some legal action as a result of her mishandling of classified email information? Another Democrat might want to get into the race, but it could be too late.

Many Republicans claim to welcome a Sanders nomination on the assumption he’d be easy to beat. But don’t be so sure, at least not this year. As the question nearby from the latest WSJ/NBC poll shows, Republican front-runner Donald Trump loses to Mr. Sanders by 15 percentage points among registered voters. Mr. Trump loses to Mrs. Clinton by only 10 points in the same survey.

Such polls are unreliable so far from Election Day, but they could influence Democratic perceptions of electability. If it looks as if Republicans might nominate Mr. Trump or  Ted Cruz, could more Democrats become more convinced that they can afford to indulge their true hearts and vote for Mr. Sanders?

It’s also possible, perhaps even likely, that if Messrs. Sanders and Trump or Cruz are the nominees, then a third-party candidate would enter the race. Maybe billionaire former New York Mayor  Michael Bloomberg would get in, or perhaps a more conventional Republican. Mr. Sanders might have an even better chance to win in a multicandidate race. And if the GOP splits in two, the political check of a Republican House could also be in jeopardy.

We aren’t predicting this. But in a campaign that has already busted normal American political conventions, the possibility of an extreme election outcome is no longer unthinkable.

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FILM
3 Stunning Indictments of Obama and Hillary in Benghazi Movie

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ISLAM
A Pakistani boy says he has no regrets about cutting off his own hand after being accused of blasphemy. "Why should I feel any pain or trouble in cutting off the hand that was raised against the Holy Prophet?"
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LEFTIST WATCH
Bernie’s radical past¨ In July 1985, Bernie Sanders traveled to Nicaragua, where he attended an event that one wire report dubbed an “anti-U.S. rally.” The leftist Sandinista government was celebrating the sixth anniversary of the revolution that saw it take power from an American-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza. Sanders was in a crowd estimated at a half million people, many of whom were clad in the Sandinistas’ trademark red-and-black colors and chanting “Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die.”

Top Democrat Donor Tom Steyer Won’t Endorse Clinton

Venezuela Inflation to Surpass 700% this year.

A Kent State professor long known for fiery anti-Israel rhetoric is under investigation for alleged links to ISIS,

Portland Community College has designated April "Whiteness History Month" (WHM), an "educational project" exploring how the "construct of whiteness" creates racial inequality. Whiteness "does not simply refer to skin color[,] but [to] an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits, and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color."

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ARTICLES
Former Harvard President Larry Summers: 'Creeping Totalitarianism' on College Campuses.  “…a great deal of absurd political correctness.”
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WISE WORDS
"[M]y religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."
                 -Stonewall Jackson

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