Half the voters of the United States want an unindicted criminal to be president.

Yet to vote for Hillary Clinton is to vote for

Higher taxes

Higher unemployment

More debt

More terrorism

The discarding of the Constitution

A traitor.

To vote for Donald Trump is to vote for

Lower taxes

Higher employment

Lower debt

Much less terrorism

The upholding of the Constitution

A patriot.

Those who are against Hillary Clinton coming to power but do not cast their vote for Donald Trump will be as guilty of putting a corrupt criminal traitor into power as those who vote for her.

The guilty will also be putting the indicted and impeached criminal Bill Clinton back in the White  House from which he, with his criminal wife, stole hundreds of dollars worth of furnishings.

How can there be any hesitation on the part of any sane voter in choosing which of the nominees should be president? Or any doubt as to which of them would  be best for his /her own interests as well as the interests of the country?

If pollsters are to be believed –

President Obama has attained a high “job approval” rating of late.

Yet

His health care plan has failed miserably.

He has vastly increased the country’s debt.

The number of unemployed has risen beyond calculation under him.

The incomes of workers have dropped.

No one earns anything on their savings.

He has grossly worsened race relations.

He has let hundreds of felons out of prison.

He has diminished the strength of  the US military.

He has encouraged illegal aliens to pour into the US over the southern border.

He has imported tens of thousands of Muslims and refuses to recognize or name Muslim terrorism from which America and the whole world are increasingly suffering.

Every one of the agencies of his government have become deeply corrupted under his leadership.

The Middle East is in flames because of his policies.

Libya is in chaos because he bombed it.

Third World migrants are flooding Europe as they flee from the areas where his policies have caused war and the rise of savage tyrants.

Iran is on the way to becoming a nuclear power due to his efforts.

Russia is preparing for nuclear war again.

He is so disrespected by the Chinese that they wouldn’t even give him stairs to descend from his plane when he landed there, let alone a red carpet or a greeting by the leader of the country.

He has alienated Israel, cold-shouldered Britain, broken his promises of providing defense weaponry to Poland and the Czech Republic.

And that’s only a partial list of the harm he has done to this country.

Yet

His “job approval” has gone up.

What can explain this?

So like every other heterosexual male over the age of 7, Donald Trump talks about those little cats to his buddies. Talked about them to Bill Clinton maybe  on the golf-course. Yes, that Bill Clinton – the RAPIST.

Suddenly the Left turns prude. Public nudity is okay with the lefties. S&M performed in public in a gay pride parade is okay. Delightful actually. But using the p-word! Call me an ambulance!

Because it’s Donald Trump using a naughty word. You see it’s a matter of WHO does something, not WHAT they do. Bill Clinton raping a protesting, struggling woman, while also biting her lip till it bleeds, isn’t bad because don’t you see he’s BILL CLINTON.

But if Donald Trump talks about “grabbing pussy” and kissing willing “stars”- Oh Djeeziz! Help! I’m so-o-o appalled. I need a safe space.  

Really?

A lubricious statement weighed against RAPE? Are they kidding?

No. Look at their tight little mouths. They’re all celibate monks who’ve never told a dirty story in their lives. Never boasted of their sexual prowess, their conquests – Lor’ no. Wouldn’t think of it!

And not only lefties. Paul Ryan too is sickened, sickened!

Meanwhile that suppurating bag of corruption, Hillary Clinton, gets a pass for selling her country. Because she’s HILLARY CLINTON. See?

The Democratic Party has become the Party of Wall Street billionaires, Hollywood stars, Silicon Valley whizz-kids, and the ruthless Utopians of the Ivory Tower.

Its “progressivism” harks back to the last century. Its concerns are mystical like those of all religions: the earth burning up; the end of days; the humbling of humankind; the profound spiritual need for the Holy Family Clinton and its angels to reign over the whole earth.

Its high priests are richly dressed and housed, driven in stately carriages, flown on the wings of Boeings.

Still, it claims to have a bleeding heart. Ask not for whom it bleeds. Obviously, dull-witted Underdog, it bleeds for thee!

James Pinkerton writes at Breitbart:

The Democrats, once the party of working people, are now a party dominated by environmentalists and multiculturalists. And I can prove it.

As we shall see, when Democrats must choose between … providing jobs for workers, and … favoring politically-correct constituency groups — they choose the PC groups.

Indeed, the old assumptions about the Democrats as the party of labor are nowadays so tangled and conflicted that the unions themselves are divided. Some unions are sticking with their blue-collar heritage, but more are aligning themselves with the new forces of political correctness — and oh, by the way, big money.

The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, running through four states — from western North Dakota to southern Illinois — would create an estimated 4,500 unionized jobs.  That is to say, good jobs at good wages: The median entry-level salary for a pipeline worker in North Dakota is $38,924.

Yet the advancement of what was once called the “labor movement” is no longer a Democratic priority.  The new priorities are heeding the goals of “progressive” groups — in this instance, Native Americans and the greens. Indeed, this new progressive movement is so strong that even many unions are climbing aboard the bandwagon, even if that means breaking labor’s united front. To illustrate this recent rupture, here’s a headline from the The Huffington Post: “Dakota Access Pipeline Exposes Rift In Organized Labor.” Let’s let Huffpo labor reporter Dave Jamieson set the scene:

The nation’s largest federation of labor unions upset some of its own members last week by endorsing the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Some labor activists, sympathetic to Native American tribes and environmentalists, called upon the AFL-CIO to retract its support for the controversial project.

In response to the criticism, Sean McGarvey, head of the AFL-CIO’s building-trades unions, fired right back; speaking of pipeline opponents, McGarvey declared that they have …

… once again seen fit to demean and call for the termination of thousands of union construction jobs in the Heartland.  I fear that this has once again hastened a very real split within the labor movement.

Yes, it’s become quite a fracas within the House of Labor: so much for the old slogan, “Solidarity Forever!” We can note that typically, it’s the old-style construction unions — joined, perhaps, by other industrial workers, if not the union leadership — who support construction projects, while the new-style public-employee unions side with the anti-construction activists.

In the meantime, for its part, the Democratic Party has made a choice: It now firmly sides with the new progressives.

To cite just one ‘frinstance, we can examine the July 2016 Democratic national platform, released at the Philadelphia convention. That document includes a full 16 paragraphs on “climate change”, as well as 14 paragraphs on the rights and needs of “indigenous tribal nations”. Here’s one of those paragraphs; as we can readily see, Democrats are striving mightily to synthesize the demands of both groups, green and red:

We are committed to principles of environmental justice in Indian Country and we recognize that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles. We call for a climate change policy that protects tribal resources, protects tribal health, and provides accountability through accessible, culturally appropriate participation and strong enforcement. Our climate change policy will cut carbon emission, address poverty, invest in disadvantaged communities, and improve both air quality and public health. We support the tribal nations efforts to develop wind, solar, and other clean energy jobs.

By contrast, the Democratic platform included a mere two skimpy paragraphs on workers and wages.

Some Democrats are troubled by this shift in priorities, away from New Deal-ish lunch-bucket concerns — because, as a matter of fact, it’s a shift away from the very idea of economic growth. For example, William Galston, a top White House domestic-policy aide to Bill Clinton in the 90s, had this to say about the Democrats’ latest platform:

The draft is truly remarkable — for example, its near-silence on economic growth. . . . Rather, the platform draft’s core narrative is inequality, the injustice that inequality entails, and the need to rectify it through redistribution.

… Perhaps it seems strange that a political party would lose interest in such an obvious political staple as economic growth. And yet if we look more closely, we can see, from the perspective of the new Democrats, that this economic neglect makes a kind of sense: We can note, for example, that the financial heart of the green movement is made up of billionaires; they have all the money they need — and, thanks to their donations, they have a disproportionate voice.

One of these noisy green fat cats is San Francisco’s Tom Steyer, who contributed $50 million to Democratic campaigns in 2014 and has been spending heavily ever since. We can further point out: If Steyer chooses to assign a higher value to his eco-conscience than to jobs for ordinary Americans, well, who in his rarified Bay Area social stratum is likely to argue with him?

Admittedly, billionaires are few in number — even in the Democratic Party. Yet at the same time, many other groups of Democratic voters aren’t necessarily concerned about the vagaries of the economy, because they, too, in their own way, are insulated from its ups and downs. That is, they get their check, no matter what.

The most obvious of these groups, of course, are government employees.  … Public-sector workers have an obvious class-interest in voting Democratic, and they know it — lots of Lois Lerners in this group.

Then there are the recipients of government benefits. … Welfare recipients, for example, are overwhelmingly Democratic. And Democratic politicians, of course, know this electoral calculus full well. Indeed, in this era of slow economic growth, nearly 95 million Americans over the age of 16 are not in the labor force; not all of them are receiving a check from the government, but most are. And that has political consequences.

We can take this reality — economic stagnation on the one hand, economic dependence on the other —a  step further: If the Democrats can find the votes they need from the plutocrats and the poor — or near-poor, plus public employees — then they can make a strategic choice: They can ignore the interests of working-class people in the private sector, and they can still win.

So for this cynical reason, the Democrats’ decision to stiff the working stiffs who might have worked on the Dakota pipeline was an easy one.

We can sum up the Democrats’ strategy more concisely: In socioeconomic terms, they will go above the working class, and also below the working class. That is, they will be the party of George Soros and Al Sharpton. So no room, anywhere, for the blue collars. (Of course, if any of those would-be pipeline workers end up on public assistance, well, they’ll have a standing offer to join the Democratic fold.)

We can see this Soros-Sharpton coalition in America’s electoral geography: The Democrats expect to sweep the upper east side of Manhattan, and, at the same time, they expect to sweep the south side of Chicago. Moreover, this high-low pattern appears everywhere: Greenwich and the ghetto, Beverly Hills and the barrio.  

In addition, Democrats can expect to do well in upper-middle class suburban enclaves, as well as college towns. And so if we add all those blocs together, plus the aforementioned public-employee unions, we can see that the Democrats have their coalition …  a 2016 victory coalition.

So now we can see the logic of the Democrats’ policy choices. And we can even add an interesting bit of backstory to the Democrats’ 2016 platform. In June, as a concession to the insurgency of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s campaign agreed to include a contingent of Sanders supporters on the 15-member platform-drafting committee.

Specifically, the Clinton camp accepted the Palestinian-American activist James Zogby, the Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the environmental activist Bill McKibben, the African-American activist Cornel West, and the Native American activist Deborah Parker. …

The unions got a grand total of one name on that 15-member body. … So we can see: Big Labor isn’t so big anymore; it is now reduced to token status within the party.

Given this new correlation of forces, it’s no surprise that top Democrats oppose the Dakota pipeline. …

In this new era of green-first politics, the anti-pipeline forces must win, and the pro-pipeliners must lose. …

For her part, Hillary Clinton certainly knows where she stands: She’s with the new eco- and multicultural Democrats, not the old unionists — who were, after all, mostly “deplorable.” As she said to a cheering campaign crowd earlier this year, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

To be sure, Clinton has a heart — a taxpayer-funded heart. In fact, she has offered to put all those soon-to-be ex-coal workers on the government dole; she has proposed a $30 billion program for them.

Yet whether or not Congress ever approves that $30 billion, it’s a safe bet that if Clinton wins, more fossil-fuel workers will need to find some new way of earning a living. After all, just last year, the Obama administration pledged that the U.S. would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. And whereas Donald Trump has promised to scrap those growth-flattening CO² targets, Clinton has promised to maintain them.

Indeed, during Monday night’s debate in New York, she promised to install “half a billion more solar panels” as part of her plan, she said, to create 10 million new jobs.

We can quickly observe that most blue collars don’t seem to trust Clinton with their livelihoods; Trump beats her among non-college-educated men by a whopping 59 points. Yet at the same time, we can add that if Trump leads among blue collars by “only” 59 points, that might not be enough for him to overcome Clinton’s advantage — her huge strength among the Soros-Sharpton coalition.

And here we can note, with some perplexity, that the leadership of the industrial unions is still mostly in lockstep with the Democrats. That residual partisan loyalty to the party of FDR might cost their members their jobs now that the Democrats have found policy goals other than mass employment, but hey, perhaps the union bosses themselves can get jobs at Hillary’s Department of Labor.

So if Clinton wins this November, what will happen to the private-sector blue collars, especially those in the traditional energy sector?

Sadly, we already know the answer to that question; the only unresolved matter is how they might react.

The Party of the American princess, the professor, the fashionable the cool the glamorous, the very rich and the very safe is the Party of the party. Of parties in Manhattan, Nob Hill, Santa Monica, Bel Air.

But its heart bleeds for … Oh, you know, blacks and Hispanics and gays and women and Muslims and …

And the workers?

You gotta believe it.

If you don’t … all you can do is vote Trump for President.

Among the many bad things that Hillary Clinton has accomplished (and she has accomplished only bad things), one of the very worst is her destruction of the rule of law in America.

She could only do this with the co-operation of the Department of Justice; and the Department of Justice could only do it with the co-operation of the FBI.

Two of the chief pillars of justice, two of the the mightiest guarantors of the rule of law, have both been suborned by this woman.

Judge Andrew Napolitano writes at Townhall:

Earlier this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what members of Congress want to see; and in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking.

Here is the back story.

Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her failure to safeguard state secrets during her time in office, many in Congress have had a nagging feeling that this was a political, not a legal, decision.

The publicly known evidence of Clinton’s recklessness and willful failure to safeguard secrets was overwhelming. The evidence of her lying under oath about whether she returned all her work-related emails that she had taken from the State Department was profound and incontrovertible.

And then we learned that people who worked for Clinton were instructed to destroy several of her mobile devices and to remove permanently the stored emails on one of her servers. All this was done after these items had been subpoenaed by two committees of the House of Representatives. Yet the FBI – which knew of the post-subpoena destruction of evidence and which acknowledged that Clinton failed to return thousands of her work-related emails as she had been ordered by a federal judge to do, notwithstanding at least three of her assertions to the contrary while under oath – chose to overlook the evidence of not only espionage but also obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, perjury and misleading Congress.

As if to defend itself in the face of this most un-FBI-like behavior, the FBI then released to the public selected portions of its work product, which purported to back up its decision to recommend against the prosecution of Clinton.

Normally, the FBI gathers evidence and works with federal prosecutors and federal grand juries to build cases against targets in criminal probes, and its recommendations to prosecutors are confidential.

But in Clinton’s case, the hierarchy of the Department of Justice removed itself from the chain of command because of the orchestrated impropriety of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, who met in private on the attorney general’s plane at a time when both Bill and Hillary Clinton were subjects of FBI criminal investigations.

That left the FBI to have the final say about prosecution – or so the FBI and the DOJ would have us all believe.

It is hard to believe that the FBI was free to do its work, and it is probably true that the FBI was restrained by the White House early on. There were numerous aberrations in the investigation. There was no grand jury; no subpoenas were issued; no search warrants were served. Two people claimed to have received immunity, yet the statutory prerequisite for immunity – giving testimony before a grand or trial jury – was never present. 

Because many members of Congress do not believe that the FBI acted free of political interference, they demanded to see the full FBI files in the case, not just the selected portions of the files that the FBI had released. In the case of the House, the FBI declined to surrender its files, and the agent it sent to testify about them declined to reveal their contents. This led to a dramatic service of a subpoena by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on that FBI agent while he was testifying – all captured on live nationally broadcast television.

Now the FBI, which usually serves subpoenas and executes search warrants, is left with the alternative of complying with this unwanted subpoena by producing its entire file or arguing to a federal judge why it should not be compelled to do so.

On the Senate side, matters are even more out of hand. There, in response to a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI sent both classified and unclassified materials to the Senate safe room. The Senate safe room is a secure location that is available only to senators and their senior staff, all of whom must surrender their mobile devices and writing materials and swear in writing not to reveal whatever they see while in the room before they are permitted to enter. According to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI violated federal law by commingling classified and unclassified materials in the safe room, thereby making it unlawful for senators to discuss publicly the unclassified material.

Imposing such a burden of silence on U.S. senators about unclassified materials is unlawful and unconstitutional. What does the FBI have to hide? Whence comes the authority of the FBI to bar senators from commenting on unclassified materials?

Who cares about this? Everyone who believes that the government works for us should care because we have a right to know what the government – here the FBI – has done in our names. Sen. Grassley has opined that if he could reveal what he has seen in the FBI unclassified records, it would be of profound interest to American voters.

What is going on here? The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton has not served the rule of law. The rule of law – a pillar of American constitutional freedom since the end of the Civil War – mandates that the laws are to be enforced equally. No one is beneath their protection, and no one is above their requirements. To enforce the rule of law, we have hired the FBI.

What do we do when the FBI rejects its basic responsibilities? 

The Democratic Party is trying to pretend there’s nothing seriously wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health. But there obviously is. She is very ill, and could not fulfill the onerous duties of a president of the United States.

She is also widely disliked, hopelessly incompetent, deeply dishonest, disreputable, corrupt, and dangerous to the security of the nation.

So why is the Democratic Party prepared to do and say anything to keep Hillary campaigning for the highest office when they could find a healthier candidate?

We suspect the idea is that Hillary must win the election FOR BILL. They may speak of substituting Joe Biden or Tim Kaine for Hillary as the Democratic candidate if it is absolutely necessary, but they are fervently hoping it won’t be. Neither Biden nor Kaine would do at all, because they won’t get Bill back in the White House. (Apart from the fact that neither Biden nor Kaine can be sure of the votes of the multitudes of silly women who want “the first woman president”.)

Bill (in our supersensitive hearing): “Just get there, Hill, and I’ll do the rest.”

She has already said that she would put the economy in his hands.

In fact, he will do the whole job.

Sick as she is, she must drag herself on to get elected. Once back in the White House, he’ll  take over. She may sit at the Oval Office desk when she can sit upright, but he will be the power.

They see themselves, and the Democratic Party sees them, and about half the electorate sees them, as the natural rulers of “progressive” America. Never mind all their character faults. Never mind their corruption. Never mind that they are thieves. Never mind that he is a rapist. 

They will carry on where Obama has to leave off. They will proceed with the enlargement of government and the augmenting of federal power; the weakening of the military; the humbling of the nation in the eyes of the world; confiscatory and punitive taxation; the alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood; the aid to Iran to become nuclear armed; the importation of millions of Syrian Muslims and Latin American migrants; central government economic planning; strengthening the power of the United Nations in the name of saving the earth from catastrophic “man-made global warming”; stealthily putting an end to individual liberty, objective justice, and freedom of speech; abandoning the Constitution.

Clintons rule, okay?

A Christian child – one of many thousands – burnt to death in Nigeria by Boko Haram

The Nigerian Muslim group Boko Haram (meaning “book-learning – ie Western education – is forbidden”) is as savage as ISIS, of which it has declared itself an affiliate.

While she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton blocked all attempts to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organization. Why?

Patrick Poole writes at PJ Media:

In January 2015, I was one of the first to report on a massive massacre by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram in Borno State in northwest Nigeria, with reportedly thousands killed. Witnesses on the ground reported that bodies littered the landscape for miles as towns and villages had been burned to the ground, their populations murdered or fled.

By that time, Boko Haram had already become the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, now responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. …

And yet, as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa.

Also, other donors to the Clinton Global Initiative are deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry.

Were they the motivation behind Hillary’s inexplicable position on Boko Haram?

As PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson has previously asked, is Boko Haram Hillary Clinton’s biggest scandal? … Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?

It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

Members of Congress discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.

As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but then a group of 21 American academics rallied to the State Department’s aid by sending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.

The letter offers weak arguments. Our suspicion is that it was solicited.

We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence — obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid — that revealed Boko Haram’s direct connection to al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012. In other words, Hillary’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections, that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat, even though the Obama administration — and likely Clinton herself — knew that was false.

And Mindy Belz and J. C. Derrick, writing at WORLD, answers Patrick Pool’s question. They find that – yes, “donors to the Clinton Global Initiative” who are “deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry” were indeed “the motivation behind Hillary’s [otherwise] inexplicable position on Boko Haram”.

The attacks on Jan. 20, 2012, began not so much as an explosion but as an earthquake.

“Whole buildings were shaking,” said secondary school vice principal Danjuma Alkali. “There was so much vibration that some people collapsed from it.” When the jolts stopped, with smoke rising and fire igniting all over the city of 10 million, it became quickly apparent the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram had pulled off the unthinkable.

In coordinated bombings at 23 separate locations in the city of Kano, including police headquarters and military barracks, the group left one of Africa’s largest cities in disarray and panic. The January attacks killed more than 185 people — Africa’s worst terrorism since the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. …

Boko Haram leader Imam Abubakar Shekau took responsibility for the Jan. 20 attacks in a video posted on YouTube …

It would be difficult for Washington to look away: Nigeria at the time was the third-largest source of U.S. crude oil imports. Further, the same day, American Greg Ock was kidnapped in Niger Delta, and Boko Haram announced “an arrangement” to kidnap 22 other Americans.

The next day, Jan. 21, the U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens “to review personal security measures”, and it prohibited government personnel from traveling to northern Nigeria. But tracking and cutting off the insider flow of funds propping up Boko Haram was what was needed—and the Kano attacks presented one more overwhelming reason the United States should have designated the group a Foreign Terrorist Organization, or FTO.

A strong chorus rose in Washington for FTO designation — from bipartisan members of Congress to Pentagon officials (including then-head of U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Carter Ham) to a coalition of faith-based human rights groups. At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to resist it and other rudimentary steps against the terror group.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram often showed up better equipped than the Nigerian military: “Boko Haram was extorting even government officials in the north, state and local officials, and certainly the military,” said an American working in the area for more than a decade, who spoke to WORLD and is not named for security reasons. “Very wealthy Muslim businessmen totally have been backing Boko Haram. There was huge money involved. Money used to purchase arms — it was crazy.”

Where were the funds and support coming from? In part from a corrupt oil industry and political leaders in the North acting as quasi-warlords. But prominently in the mix are Nigerian billionaires with criminal pasts — plus ties to Clinton political campaigns and the Clinton Foundation, the controversial charity established by Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton in 1997.

The Clintons’ long association with top suspect tycoons — and their refusal to answer questions about those associations — takes on greater significance considering the dramatic rise of Boko Haram violence while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Did some Clinton donors stand to gain from the State Department not taking action against the Islamic terrorist group?

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home—a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000—the most allowed—to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.

Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot. He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief”. A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

About the time of the Kano bombings, a lucrative potential for new oil opened up in Nigeria’s North — precisely in the Borno State region where Boko Haram has its headquarters.

Between 2011 and 2013, the Nigerian government allocated $240 million toward oil and gas exploration in the Lake Chad Basin, a petroleum reserve stretching from western Chad across Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon. Largely unexplored until recently, oil production hit 100,000 barrels a day in 2013 on the Chad side of the basin.

On the surface Boko Haram violence halted exploration in Nigeria. Despite the millions it was investing, Nigeria’s government geologists and technical staff fled the region in fear of their lives. Using verified incidents provided by the Nigeria-based Stefanos Foundation and other sources, WORLD documented 85 separate terrorist attacks between 2011-2016 in the Lake Chad Basin areas of Nigeria.

The attacks ranged from market bombings that killed half a dozen to the January 2015 Baga attacks, which killed an estimated 2,000, destroying Baga plus 16 other towns and displacing more than 35,000 people (while the world fixated on Paris after the Charlie Hebdo attack).

Beneath the surface … Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.

The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent — the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

The more unstable an area is, the more such traders can control supply and pricing, explained an oil analyst who asked not to be named for security reasons: “Terrorism is the poor man’s weapons of mass destruction. You want the land and what might be beneath, not the people, so you kill them.” …

Christians are the predominant victims of Boko Haram in Borno and surrounding states. Among 85 documented attacks in a five-year period, Boko Haram killed at least 11 pastors and destroyed more than 15 churches. They also destroyed about five mosques. In all, Boko Haram and its affiliated militants have killed an estimated 6,300 people and displaced  2 million in the Lake Chad Basin area since 2011.

The 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls from a Chibok Christian school catapulted Boko Haram into the international spotlight and sparked first lady Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign.

Hillary Clinton once again demonstrated her superhuman ability to exonerate herself from blame for something for which she was eminently responsible:  

Hillary Clinton called the mass abduction “abominable” and “an act of terrorism”. Clinton said “It really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.”

Critics argue it was Clinton herself who has led the way on U.S. indifference, spurning the standard FTO designation (issued 72 times since 1997) that could have bolstered U.S. efforts against Boko Haram years before the infamous kidnappings.

While it’s become increasingly clear that oil and corruption are fueling Boko Haram, the full story will take a serious U.S. investigation. Yet even now there is no evidence it’s happening. The Chibok girls, for example, are known to be in the Sambisa Forest with Boko Haram, but authorities have not pursued them. …

“Besides military intervention, the United States has many tools for aiding Nigerian authorities. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — the unit tasked with enforcing key aspects of FTO designations — purportedly doesn’t have enough staff to focus on Boko Haram financing. The administration maintains that Boko Haram raises its funding through local means, such as robbing banks and pillaging villages, even though WORLD obtained evidence the militants have access to international bank accounts.

“There has not been an investigation that has had any positive consequences,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House Africa subcommittee. He said he plans to convene a hearing to find out why U.S. inattention persists: “It’s time to have people come up and testify.”

How likely is it that the truth about the Clintons’ protection of Boko Haram will become known to the American public?

Will people come and testify before the House Africa subcommittee?

If they do, will they tell the truth?

If they tell the truth, will the media report what they say?

If the media report the truth, will Hillary Clinton have to answer for her part in the story?

No. Whether or not Hillary becomes president of the United States, she will remain powerful enough for the rest of her life to evade any attempt to bring her to justice, because she is the leader of the Good People, the ones who care about the underdogs of the world, the poor, the persecuted, the oppressed …

It takes a special band of brigands to divert sums from needy souls for private gain and for political benefit. A vast record already in the public domain suggests this is exactly what members of the extended Clinton family and their associates have done for nearly 20 years, hiding their rampant criminality in plain sight. At present, the IRS is, at best, stalled while a bitterly divided political system awaits the outcome of a pivotal national election. For the Clinton Charity Network to be brought and then held to account, the American public and citizens in other countries where taxpayer funds have been improperly solicited and deployed must raise their voices in a true call and commitment to action. – Charles K. Ortel

Charles Ortel is a Wall Street analyst who uncovered financial discrepancies at General Electric before its stock crashed in 2008, and whom the Sunday Times of London described as “one of the finest analysts of financial statements on the planet”. Ortel spent the past year and a half digging into the Clinton Foundation’s public records, federal and state-level tax filings, and donor disclosures.

Read his paper False Philanthropy: Summary Review of Selected Intentionally False Representations in Clinton Foundation Public Filings here.

We quote from an article on the paper at Zero Hedge by Tyler Durden:

[Charles Ortel writes:]

To informed analysts, the Clinton Foundation appears to be a rogue charity that has neither been organized nor operated lawfully from inception in October 1997 to date … It is a case study in international charity fraud, of mammoth proportions.

In particular, the Clinton Foundation has never been validly authorized to pursue tax-exempt purposes other than as a presidential archive and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moreover, its operations have never been controlled by independent trustees and its financial results have never been properly audited by independent accountants.

In contrast to this stark reality, Bill Clinton recently continued a long pattern of dissembling, likening himself to Robin Hood and dismissing critics of his “philanthropic” post-presidency, despite mounting concerns over perceived conflicts of interest and irregularities. …

[Charles Ortel’s] summary:

An educated guess, based upon ongoing analysis of the public record begun in February 2015, is that the Clinton Foundation entities are part of a network that has defrauded donors and created illegal private gains of approximately $100 billion in combined magnitude, and possibly more, since 23 October 1997. …

Ortel leaves us with some critical questions:

Why was the Clinton Charity Network allowed to expand the scope of its illegal activities between 20 January 2001 and 20 January 2009, when George W. Bush served as president?

Why has the administration of Barack Obama allowed the Clinton Charity Fraud Network to grow even more, in bold violation of state, federal, and foreign laws from 20 January 2009 to present?

Why did Valerie Jarrett and the Obama Administration bother with the pretense of signing a legal document, late in 2008, purporting to regulate potential conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton in her role as Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation, when this document was false, misleading, incomplete, and manifestly unenforceable?

Why is the IRS still resisting full-scale audits of the Clinton Charity Network?

The answer is surprising and simple – once again, Americans and regulators around the world appear to have fallen victim to the “Big Lie” strategy.

These posts of ours explain why it is a Big Lie that the Clinton Foundation dispenses charity to worthy causes:

The great good works and wonky dilemmas of William J. Clinton, April 18, 2015 (here).

What needs to be know about the Clinton’s charities, April 25, 2015 (here).

Touched by the Clintons, May 1, 2015 (here).

The Clintons’ blood money, May 26, 2016 (here).

How the Clintons deal drugs, August 3, 2016 (here).

To vote for Hillary Clinton and side with the Democratic Party is to side with America’s worst enemy – Islam.

Donald Trump made this clear in the speech he gave yesterday in Ohio.

Frank Gaffney writes at Breitbart:

Yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio, Donald Trump delivered the best speech of his campaign to date. Newt Gingrich rightly called it the most important since Ronald Reagan left office.

In fact, in many ways, it was very Reaganesque. After all, long before he became president, Mr. Reagan warned that every generation faces an existential threat to freedom. Mr. Trump made clear that he recognizes the threat to freedom in our time, which he explicitly characterized as “Radical Islam” and its guiding, supremacist ideology, Sharia.

The GOP nominee also channeled President Reagan by espousing a comprehensive strategy highly reminiscent of the one the Gipper formally adopted in his National Security Decision Directive 75 and employed to defeat freedom’s last existential threat: Soviet communism. Mr. Trump recognizes that now, as then, we must bring decisively to bear all instruments of national power – economic, military, intelligence, information and ideological.

The last element, which was emphasized repeatedly in the Trump speech, reflects an essential understanding that has eluded past administrations of both parties and some of the candidate’s most vociferous critics, Democrats and Republicans alike: Jihadists who seek the destruction of our country, its Constitution, and people employ different tactics – including violence, migration, material support for terrorism, recruitment, indoctrination, conversions and stealthy subversion. But they are all motivated by the same ideology: Sharia. Donald Trump declared yesterday that if you embrace that supremacist doctrine, you must seek to supplant our Constitution and, therefore, you are not welcome here.

Specifically, the speech adopted a basic principle: As a foreign national and would-be immigrant to this country, you must share our values to gain admission. That filter has for too long been absent and has greatly contributed to the ominous demographic trends facing not just Europe, but this country, as well: growing numbers of transplanted and inherently hostile populations, most of whom have no interest in assimilating and, rather, insist that freedom-loving Americans accommodate their demands and, ultimately, submit to Sharia.

Finally, the Republican candidate to be our next Commander-in-Chief spoke of a reality that can no longer safely be ignored: There are “networks” in America that support “radicalization”. In so doing, he recognized another hard lesson from Europe’s experience. Violent jihadists rely upon and exploit the infrastructure (including Islamist mosques, societies, cultural centers, front groups, influence operations, etc.) that has been systematically put into place in the West over the past fifty years by Islamic supremacists, notably those associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. …

Much encouraged by President Obama, who has numerous Muslim Brothers advising his administration – to what ends we have seen in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya …

We have no choice but to identify, designate and roll-up such operations. …

At no point since 9/11, and arguably for thirteen years before, has there been a better articulation of what’s at stake and what needs to be done to secure freedom, namely by seeking and achieving Victory over Jihad. We desperately need more such visionary and collaborative leadership.

The other candidate for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, wants to import many more Syrians – that is, many more devotees of Sharia – into the US. (According to Politifact, 550% more.) She is being massively helped to achieve her aims with funds by billionaires who do not understand that they, along with all non-Muslims, will be the victims of her pro-Islam policy.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

A massive hack of socialist billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations suggests that his various nonprofit organizations are little more than fronts for his many political activities. His growing closeness to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton should be a warning to all.

The hack by a group called DC Leaks, includes 2,576 files from various Soros groups from 2008 to 2016. The DC Leaks website says the attack was “launched by American hacktivists who respect and appreciate freedom of speech, human rights and government of the people.”

Apart from the ease with which the Soros group’s computer system was breached, what we’re learning so far fills in the troubling details of how Soros goes about his business. No doubt, in coming days, more revelations will emerge as researchers comb through the thousands of documents.

But what’s emerged so far is eye-opening. In one of the purloined memos from 2011, titled “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civil Discourse”, a nonprofit Soros group proposes conducting opposition research on a number of highly prominent American critics of radical Islam, including Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer. It also targeted conservative activists and intellectuals David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Cliff May and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney. All of them are strongly pro-Israel and have warned about the threat of radical Islam.

The memo suggests that the research was outsourced to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a leftist think tank that has “received millions of dollars in grants from Soros’s groups”… 

Oh yes, CAP also happens to have been founded by John Podesta, Hillary’ Clinton’s campaign chief. One of many close ties between Soros and Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post notes that some of the hacked emails show that the Soros Open Society Foundations’ stated goal was “challenging Israel’s racist and anti-democratic policies,” in part by “questioning Israel’s reputation as a democracy”.  This is an old Soros trick: He spends money to delegitimize governments and others with whom he disagrees. It’s not about debate, and certainly not “open”, as his groups’ names all suggest. It’s political subterfuge in service of a far-left agenda.

So remember the next time Hillary postures as a pro-Israel Democrat – her campaign has ties to groups that actively undercut the Jewish state, our only real ally in the Mideast. 

But it goes well beyond just Israel. In yet another revelation from the doc-dump, a memo called the “List of European Elections 2014 Projects” details the elaborate efforts of Soros’ well-funded global network to manipulate election outcomes in Europe. The memo includes over 90 Soros projects in Europe to influence election outcomes. Now, through Hillary, he wants to do the same here. And Soros has the clout. …

Happily, he does not always succeed. He tried to influence the British referendum on withdrawal from the European Union, hoping to keep Britain in that corrupt bureaucratic dictatorship, and he failed. 

Fox News reports that Soros has given an estimated $9 million to Hillary-favoring super PACS in 2015 and 2016, more than anyone else. But he’s not Hillary’s only billionaire. Not by a long shot. “Within the past year,” Fox News reported earlier this month, “a total of 24 billionaires have donated more than $42.5 million to two Clinton campaign arms and three allied super PACs”. 

So while Soros and other billionaires fund Clinton’s campaign and other left-wing causes, the Clinton Family Foundation focuses on extending the Clintons’ political clout both here and abroad by trading political access for cash. The Clintons have together pulled in more than $240 million since leaving the White House “dead broke”, as Hillary once put it. Now the Clinton Foundation reportedly is under federal investigation for its questionable fundraising practices.

“It’s a way, effectively, to get around those campaign laws,” noted Peter Schweizer, author of the extensively documented book Clinton Cash, in a recent interview. “Hillary Clinton running for president in 2008, if you’re a foreign oligarch, you can’t give to her campaign, but you can have Bill Clinton give a 20-minute speech for half a million dollars, or you can make a $5 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, and you’ve got access every bit as much as if you had raised money for their political campaign. That’s really what the Clintons have done.”

As the saying goes, between the fire and the fire engine you cannot be neutral.

The fire is Islam, stoked by Soros, Podesta, the Clintons …

The fire engine is manned by Donald Trump, Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer, David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Cliff May, Liz Cheney …

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

At the recent Democratic National Convention, the party of the donkey worked overtime at remaking Hillary Clinton’s image from one of an ethically challenged political operator to one of a caring champion of children and families. But as new revelations about her shady dealings with Russia emerge, it may all be for nought.

New revelations from Peter Schweizer, the author of the meticulously documented book “Clinton Cash,” and Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart, show that Hillary’s campaign Chairman John Podesta “sat on the board of a small energy company alongside Russian officials that received $35 million from a Putin-connected Russian government fund.”

Making things worse, Podesta never fully disclosed the relationship, as the law requires. But of greater concern than Podesta is what it says about Clinton’s strange and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia that led to Clinton lending a hand in helping Vladimir Putin build Skolkovo, a high-tech community meant to be “the Russian equivalent of America’s Silicon Valley.”

This is not some sort of free-enterprise experiment. As the authors detail in a study published by the Government Accountability Institute, some 30,000 workers toiled in the state-of-the-art tech hub “under strict governmental control.” While Clinton was in charge at the State Department, the U.S. recruited a bunch of U.S. high-tech powerhouses — including Google, Cisco and Intel — to take part in the project.

Of the 28 companies from the U.S., Europe and Russia that took part, 17 were donors to the Clinton Foundation or paid for Bill Clinton to give speeches.

It’s yet another stunning example of the Clinton Foundation’s growing list of conflicts of interest, suggesting that Hillary used the State Department’s offices to line her family’s pockets through the Clinton Foundation. Don’t forget that, with her email carelessness on her home-brew server during her tenure as secretary of state, Hillary has already exposed the United States’ most secret information to the Russian government. As radio talk show host and law professor Hugh Hewitt noted Monday: “Hillary is already a Putin pawn.”

This was no accident. Nor was it innocent. FBI Assistant Special Agent Lucia Ziobro in 2014 sent a letter to several U.S. corporate participants in the project warning: “The (Skolkovo) foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application. … The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by the government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies.”

Which brings us back to Podesta. He sat on the board of a tiny energy company named Joule Unlimited, write Bannon and Schweizer. A mere two months after he joined the board, Rusnano, founded by Vladimir Putin in 2007, invested $35 million in the company. Podesta sat on three separate boards of Joule-affiliated corporate entities, but only reported two.

Moreover, Podesta’s own leftist think tank, the Center for American Progress, got $5.25 million from a group called the Sea Change Foundation in the four years ending in 2013. Sea Change, in return, had received what the authors call “a large infusion of funds from a mysterious Bermuda-based entity called ‘Klein Ltd.'”, which appears to have Russian ties.

This puts Clinton’s actions while in office under deep suspicion – including her enabling a “reset” with Russia that seems to have led to a resurgent Russia expanding its military, diplomatic and economic power in Eastern Europe and the Mideast.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Hillary suggested that Donald Trump “has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it’s saying that NATO wouldn’t come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia’s aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.”

Anyway much remarked upon, with pretense of shock and horror, by the US media. Whereas her commercial collaboration with Putin, and her exposing of state and military secrets to his government hackers, is unlikely to be remarked upon at all. In any case, such things make no difference to her followers and fans. They gave up caring about the character, morals, criminal behavior, and treachery of their present candidate for the presidency long ago; from the very beginning of her “political career” as the wife of a governor.

Hillary Clinton will not release the texts of the speeches she made to Wall Street institutions, for fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars, while she was secretary of state.

However, an article of hers, published on November 1, 2010, in Foreign Affairs, provides a sample of what she had to say at the time.

We quote from Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining American Diplomacy and Development by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Today’s world is a crucible of challenges …

She is – or her ghost writers are – not good with metaphors. They obviously didn’t think about what a crucible is or how it can contain challenges, or if it could what it might do with them. The style of the whole article is pompous, dull, full of over-used and ill-thought-out phrases – not the writing of a thinker. It is the writing of a deceiver, trying to pull the wool over her reader’s eyes.

But those faults are small compared to the message she is trying to convey and its implications for US policy and action.

 … testing American leadership. Global problems, from violent extremism to worldwide recession to climate change to poverty, demand collective solutions, even as power in the world becomes more diffuse. They require effective international cooperation, even as that becomes harder to achieve. And they cannot be solved unless a nation is willing to accept the responsibility of mobilizing action. The United States is that nation.

Translation: The world must sing in perfect harmony – under the baton of the US administration, specifically Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I began my tenure as U.S. Secretary of State by stressing the need to elevate diplomacy and development alongside defense – a “smart power” approach to solving global problems. To make that approach succeed, however, U.S. civilian power must be strengthened and amplified. It must, as U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has argued in these pages, be brought into better balance with U.S. military power. In a speech last August, Gates said, “There has to be a change in attitude in the recognition of the critical role that agencies like [the] State [Department] and AID [the U.S. Agency for International Development] play . . . for them to play the leading role that I think they need to play.”

The State Department (Hillary Rodham Clinton) and USAID must play a leading role. And because President Obama is against a strong military and very much against military intervention in foreign affairs, the military must step aside and let Hillary Rodham Clinton and USAID act for America to deal with violent extremism, as well as recession, climate change, and poverty. And if you think it’s just her saying so, and you still feel the military may be best at dealing with violent extremism abroad, she has some words from the secretary of defense to back her up.

This effort is under way. Congress has already appropriated funds for 1,108 new Foreign Service and Civil Service officers to strengthen the State Department’s capacity to pursue American interests and advance American values. USAID is in the process of doubling its development staff, hiring 1,200 new Foreign Service officers with the specific skills and experience required for evolving development challenges, and is making better use of local hires at our overseas missions, who have deep knowledge of their countries. The Obama administration has begun rebuilding USAID to make it the world’s premier development organization, one that fosters long-term growth and democratic governance, includes its own research arm, shapes policy and innovation, and uses metrics to ensure that our investments are cost-effective and sound.

But we must do more. We must not only rebuild – but also rethink, reform, and recalibrate. During my years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I saw how the Department of Defense used its Quadrennial Defense Review to align its resources, policies, and strategies for the present – and the future. No similar mechanism existed for modernizing the State Department or USAID. In July 2009, I launched the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a wholesale review of the State Department and USAID to recommend how to better equip, fund, train, and organize ourselves to meet current diplomatic and development priorities and how to begin building the people, structures, processes, and resources today to address the world’s challenges in the years ahead.

The QDDR is not simply a review. It defines how to make diplomacy and development coordinated, complementary, and mutually reinforcing. It assesses what has worked in the past and what has not. And it forecasts future strategic choices and resource needs.

Although the State Department and USAID have distinct roles and missions, diplomacy and development often overlap and must work in tandem. Increasingly, global challenges call for a mix of both, requiring a more holistic approach to civilian power. …

Now recall, as an example of her “diplomacy and development overlap”, what she did in Haiti as explained in the film Hillary’s America posted immediately below. The cell-phone racket she worked in Haiti has been exposed as one where the Clinton Foundation was the link between “civilian” interests and state-provided “development aid”. The provider of the cell-phones was a crony of the Clintons. One can see how this “diplomacy and civilian development” linkage is community organizing for power and perks globally. It is an enormous over-reach of government function for the benefit of officials. It is the linking together of two activities that should be kept apart. The diplomacy is the activity of the US government, with control of tax-payers’ money; the “civilian development” is private commercial activity. If the private commerce is assisted by an “investment” of US tax-payers’ funds, for the enrichment of the CEOs of the companies involved and of the broker – who is also the secretary of state – there is a clear case of corruption. A clear case of theft from the tax-payers. “Diplomacy and development” is, in this context, a kind of oxymoron. And it encapsulates the self-contradiction of the Left: claim to be doing good using your office to dispense state aid – but profit personally from it.

Diplomacy has long been the backbone of U.S. foreign policy. It remains so today. The vast majority of my work at the State Department consists of engaging in diplomacy to address major global and regional challenges, such as confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, facilitating negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, enhancing stability on the Korean Peninsula, and working with other governments to bring emergency relief to Haiti. And President Barack Obama and I certainly relied on old-fashioned diplomatic elbow grease to hammer out a last-minute accord at the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December.

In annual strategic dialogues with a range of key partners – including China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa – the United States aims to deepen and broaden its relationships and to establish a stronger foundation for addressing shared problems, advancing shared interests, and managing differences. The United States is investing in strengthening global structures such as the G-20 and regional institutions such as the Organization of American States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This is part of a commitment to building a new global architecture of cooperation that includes not only the East and the West but also the North and the South.

To call Hillary Rodham Clinton ambitious is to understate the reach of her desires and designs. Ambition aims for the high, the distant, but the attainable. It is her ambition to become president of the United States; and – appallingly – that is a possibility. But to desire to rule the world? That is the urge of a fevered brain.

Although traditional diplomacy will always be critical to advancing the United States’ agenda, it is not enough. The State Department must expand its engagement to reach and influence wider and more diverse groups using new skills, strategies, and tools. To that end, the department is broadening the way it conceives of diplomacy as well as the roles and responsibilities of its practitioners.

Of its chief practitioner she means. Herself.

The original Foreign Service, as its name implies, consisted of people trained to manage U.S. relations with foreign states, principally through consultations with their counterparts in government. This has been the main function of U.S. ambassadors and embassies, as well as the staff at the State Department. But increasing global interconnectedness now necessitates reaching beyond governments to citizens directly …

By “citizens” she means her brother and her friends in manufacturing and mining businesses. Grateful tycoons who repay her patronage with donations to the Clinton Global Initiative. In other words, kick-backs. 

The wool-pulling continues. Now you see the cronies, now you don’t, as the noble ends are spread before you. Don’t look at the provenance of the cell-phones; look at how this state-citizen partnership will improve the world economy, cool the earth and make the seas recede, stop drug trafficking, cure disease, reduce crime, and feed the hungry:

… and broadening the U.S. foreign policy portfolio to include issues once confined to the domestic sphere, such as economic and environmental regulation, drugs and disease, organized crime, and world hunger. As those issues spill across borders, the domestic agencies addressing them must now do more of their work overseas, operating out of embassies and consulates. A U.S. ambassador in 2010 is thus responsible not only for managing civilians from the State Department and USAID but also for operating as the CEO of a multiagency mission. And he or she must also be adept at connecting with audiences outside of government, such as the private sector and civil society. …

Consider the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.

Yes. Consider it in the light of the film.

The mission includes 800 staff members; about 450 are diplomats and civil servants from the State Department, and 100 are from USAID. A large portion of the work there consists of traditional diplomacy – Foreign Service officers helping Americans traveling or doing business in the region, issuing visas, and engaging with their Pakistani civilian and military counterparts. But the U.S. ambassador there also leads civilians from 11 other federal agencies, including disaster relief and reconstruction experts helping to rebuild after last summer’s historic floods; specialists in health, energy, communications, finance, agriculture, and justice; and military personnel working with the Pakistani military to bolster Pakistani capacities and to help in the fight against violent extremists.

We do not know if any of her friends and relations made money out of last summer’s floods in Pakistan, but we have ample to reason to suspect that some did. And if so, more tokens of gratitude will have been dropped into the Clinton receptacles.

Back in Washington, my responsibility as secretary is to ensure that the Foreign Service and Civil Service personnel within the State Department and USAID are working together and with their colleagues across the federal government. The United States’ strategic dialogue with Pakistan involves ten separate working groups that bring together cabinet secretaries and experts from a range of agencies in both governments. The U.S. dialogue with India engages 22 different agencies …

See the section on India in the film below. (It starts at 44.33 minutes.) It does not support Hillary Rodham Clinton’s preferred self-image (at the time this article was written) as one who dislikes military strength. It reveals how she helped India become a nuclear power. And how she and Bill Clinton profited by it.

… and when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and I traveled to Beijing in May for the second round of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, our delegation included civilians from over 30 agencies.

Foreign Service officers, Civil Service personnel, and local staff at the State Department and USAID form the backbone of our global engagement. By drawing on the pool of talent that already exists in U.S. federal agencies and at overseas posts, the United States can build a global civilian service of the same caliber and flexibility as the U.S. military.

So you see? She can conquer without firing a shot.

With staff members and experts from a variety of institutions – including the State Department, USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Peace Corps, and many others – the U.S. foreign policy apparatus must reward teamwork, promote collaboration, and support interagency rotations.

She goes on to tell a story  of Hillary the Woman of the People. As if the “civilians” she is concerned with are really the locals in dear little villages.

Engagement must go far beyond government-to-government interactions. In this information age, public opinion takes on added importance even in authoritarian states and as nonstate actors are more able to influence current events. Today, a U.S. ambassador creates ties not only with the host nation’s government but also with its people. The QDDR endorses a new public diplomacy strategy that makes public engagement every diplomat’s duty, through town-hall meetings and interviews with the media, organized outreach, events in provincial towns and smaller communities, student exchange programs, and virtual connections that bring together citizens and civic organizations. Indeed, in the twenty-first century, a diplomat is as likely to meet with a tribal elder in a rural village as a counterpart in a foreign ministry, and is as likely to wear cargo pants as a pinstriped suit. …

But he or she will meet with business people too, of course. And philanthropists. She says as much – and without missing a beat, keeping a straight face as it were, she comes directly to the cell-phones in Haiti:

We can also leverage civilian power by connecting businesses, philanthropists, and citizens’ groups with partner governments to perform tasks that governments alone cannot. Technology, in particular, provides new tools of engagement. One great success this year was a partnership forged almost overnight among U.S. and Haitian cell-phone companies, the Red Cross, social entrepreneurs, the U.S. Coast Guard, and, eventually, the U.S. Marines to create a platform that used text messaging to broadcast the locations of earthquake victims in need of rescue. The State Department also launched a program to facilitate the texting of $10 donations to the Red Cross for Haiti, which drew contributions from 31 million Americans. At the State Department and USAID, we continue to develop new ways to use the world’s 4.6 billion cell phones to improve the lives of people living in remote areas and arduous circumstances.

More profit, more and more and more, for her Irish friend who supplies the cell phones. A very grateful friend.

The article goes on (and on), but what we have quoted is all that’s needed to show what it’s about: a justification of the sort of deals described in the film. It is a long ponderous self-vaunting screed intended to make Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal corruption look like a marvelous new way of using American power to benefit the world in a charming spirit of co-operation with ordinary people. All and only for the benefit of the people. So much nicer than an America that presides over a world order maintained by the fact of  its military might!

But what it actually displays is the deception, the venality, the corruption, the hypocrisy of the Obama administration, of Hillary Rodham Clinton personally, and of the Left in general.