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
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rnc-strips-national-review-debate-hosting-gig-cover/story?id=36438101
“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
______________________________________________________________
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.
______________________________________________________________________
FILM
3 Stunning
Indictments of Obama and Hillary in Benghazi Movie
_______________________________________________________________
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?"
_________________________________________________________________
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."
______________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Former
Harvard President Larry Summers: 'Creeping Totalitarianism' on College
Campuses. “…a great deal of absurd political
correctness.”
________________________________________________________________
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
posted by gary at
10:23 AM
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