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?

Ed Klein has just published a new book, Guilty as Sin, in which he describes how details of FBI Director James Comey’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illegal personal email server were delivered to the Oval Office in a briefcase by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The Conservative Tribune reports:

In an excerpt of Guilty As Sin, published on Newsmax, Klein says that Comey realized his investigation was being undermined when he saw White House press secretary Josh Earnest indicate during a news conference that the administration had details of the FBI’s investigation:

It was Jan. 29, 2016, and an aide had just handed Comey a printout of today’s White House press conference by Josh Earnest, the president’s spokesman. There, marked for Comey’s attention, was Earnest’s response to a reporter who had asked whether Hillary Clinton was likely to be indicted as a result of the FBI’s investigation into her personal emails.

“Based on what we know from the Department of Justice,” Earnest said, “it does not seem to be headed in that direction.”

Based on what we know!

“How does Earnest know anything?” Comey asked.

Enter Loretta Lynch, who acted as Hillary Clinton’s guardian angel.

Uniformed FBI agents on Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s protective detail had informed Comey that Lynch had locked an armful of documents on the FBI investigation into her briefcase and delivered them to the White House. More than once, Lynch had brought along a Justice Department prosecutor who was working on the Hillary case to brief the president’s staff. These briefings between Lynch and the White House (which Lynch publicly denied because they were unethical) had been going on since Comey’s investigation began in the summer of 2015. Comey was aware, of course, that his criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton was inevitably linked with the highest possible stakes in American politics. If his agents turned up evidence of criminal wrongdoing on Hillary’s part, it would ignite the greatest political firestorm since Watergate. And more likely than not, that would derail Hillary’s candidacy for the White House.”

… Klein’s book could [does – ed] indicate just how deep Obama was willing to go in order to ensure that Hillary Clinton stayed out of trouble.

This is why we can’t have four more years of Democrats making sure that laws aren’t enforced.

All the chief officials elected or appointed to enforce the law, breaking it!

The protection of Hillary Clinton requires ever more defiance of the rule of law.

Now a report at Politico reveals that an accused law-breaker is freed from charges in order to avoid “embarrassing” her:

The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.

Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion. The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.

Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi’s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case.

A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants. …

Turi adviser Robert Stryk of the government relations and consulting firm SPG accused the government of trying to scapegoat Turi to cover up Clinton’s mishandling of Libya.

“The U.S. government spent millions of dollars, went all over the world to bankrupt him, and destroyed his life — all to protect Hillary Clinton’s crimes,” he said, alluding to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. …

Turi was indicted in 2014 on four felony counts: two of arms dealing in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and two of lying to the State Department in official applications. The charges accused Turi of claiming that the weapons involved were destined for Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, when the arms were actually intended to reach Libya.

Turi’s lawyers argued that the shipments were part of a U.S. government-authorized effort to arm Libyan rebels. …

Turi’s case had delved into emails sent to and from the controversial private account that Clinton used as Secretary of State, which the defense planned to harness at any trial. …

Turi’s defense was pressing for more documents about the alleged rebel-arming effort and for testimony from officials who worked on the issue the State Department and the CIA. The defense said it planned to argue that Turi believed he had official permission to work on arms transfers to Libya

Every time the law is flouted to save Hillary, she is more tainted, more disreputable.

And so are the officials in the FBI and the DOJ who cover her corruption.

The editors of American Greatness held a symposium of scholars and writers who are for Donald Trump’s presidency.

We select some contributions and quote what we judge to be the most salient points.

The full texts of all the contributions can be found here:

*

I always thought that Donald Trump was perfect … [being] the only person who could defeat Hillary Clinton. What with her corrupt ways, her alliance with the most destructive policies imaginable, and especially the manner in which through her immigration policies she’d render it impossible for any conservative to win in my lifetime, this was an easy one. It became easier still when I saw the fainéants and milquetoasts on stage with Trump at the first candidates’ debate in Cleveland in 2015. But on the positive side I also saw in Trump someone who could rescue what is living from what is dead in conservatism. And by dead I mean what passes for the higher thinking of today’s conservatism, the contempt for the poorest Americans, the indifference to mobility, the compromises with corruption, and mostly the sense of failure, the small-souled man’s belief that our best days are behind us. Against that, I take my stand. – F.H. Buckley is a law professor at George Mason University and the author of The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America.

*

There are many reasons for Americans of varying political persuasions to support Donald Trump for President. Among these reasons, three are especially important: First, Donald Trump has a plan to re-energize the U.S. economy after more than a decade of slow growth, stagnating incomes, and rising government debt. He will slash corporate taxes to encourage businesses to repatriate more than $3 trillion that they are holding offshore because of the current corporate tax rate that is the highest in the industrial world. Those funds once brought back home can be invested in American enterprises to provide jobs and incomes for American workers. He will cut individual income taxes to encourage work and investment, and economic growth. Just as important, he will cut regulations that have accumulated during the Obama years and that are discouraging investment and the hiring of U.S. workers. Second, Mr. Trump will focus on national security in all of its dimensions by attacking the interlocking problems of terrorism, illegal immigration, and rising crime in the inner cities. He is committed to restoring America’s borders as an essential feature of national sovereignty and to fulfilling the first duty of government, which is to protect the security of its citizens. Third, Donald Trump is by far the preferred alternative to Hillary Clinton who promises to entrench further the failed economic and foreign policies of the past eight years. For conservatives and moderates who hope for a stronger and more dynamic America, and a nation of rising incomes, strong communities, and secure borders, the choice could not be clearer. Donald Trump … is the candidate in this race who promises to restore American greatness. – James Piereson is, most recently, the author of Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Post War Political Order. His essays appear in many newspaper and journals, including The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and The New Criterion.

*

I register my support on this list not as a conservative partisan, but rather as a young academic with a critical perspective on the prevailing left-right political paradigm — a subject I have taught at the university level both in the United States and in Europe. … The Bush-Clinton politics of the past 30 years is the rotten carcass of a politics that perhaps made sense in the past but has proven woefully inadequate to address the contemporary challenges we face. Donald J. Trump is the first major politician to reflect an understanding of this post-Cold War reality and to point boldly toward an alternative — for this he has my admiration and my support. – Darren Beattie is Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Political Science, Duke University.

*

Donald Trump shows an intuitive grasp of what most politicians must have explained to them: here in America, the people rule. Popular sovereignty requires borders, and it requires security. The people cannot govern by reflection and choice if they must forever respond to accident and force. Popular sovereignty also requires that the people not be slaves to an unelected and unrepresentative administrative state. The laws as well as the agencies of government must be trimmed and tamed so that they once again serve the people. Donald Trump grasps this too: the Supreme Court is the least republican branch of the federal government, and the people cannot rule if they are subjected to capricious judicial edicts masquerading as constitutional interpretation. Trump has put forth a serious list of judicial nominees who would only go where the text, tradition, logic, and structure of the Constitution — rather than currently fashionable political preferences — point. Beyond this, Trump has wisely called for the resignation of a transparently political Supreme Court justice, thereby reminding us of constitutionally legitimate political checks against an overweening judiciary. – Bradley C. S. Watson is Professor of Politics and Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where is co-director of the college’s Center for Political and Economic Thought.

*

No other presidential election in my lifetime has had so much at stake. The differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could not be starker. If Clinton wins, she has promised that the Supreme Court Justices that she will appoint will overturn Citizens United. Few people seem to understand that would mean that the federal government would be able to ban movies and books deemed too political during election years. It is hard to believe that we could soon be living in a country where movies and books could be banned because of their political positions. The judges that Trump has listed as the ones he would appoint would protect the 1st Amendment and would not allow the government to ban movies or books based on politics. – John R. Lott, Jr. is President of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

*

Of all the contenders for the office of president in the primaries and general, Donald Trump was alone in recognizing the seriousness of our national condition, and declaring that his goal was to make America great again. He understands that our national standing is on the line. A third of our adults do not “participate” in the labor force. Entrepreneurship and innovation are frozen. The stifling tax and regulatory policies of the last eight years have left us with the lowest productivity and family income growth in three generations. These are big problems, and Mr. Trump is willing to apply big solutions. Small-ball economics won’t save us. In national security matters, he has had the courage to break with past Republican mistakes and focus on America’s national security interests. We still have an opportunity to reverse course; after another four years of Democratic governance, it may be too late. Donald Trump is our last, best hope. – David P. Goldman (Spengler) is a columnist for Asia Times and PJ Media, and the author of How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). 

*

America has become unmoored from the constitution that has maintained and encouraged her freedom, justice, and prosperity and has entered a period of post-constitutionalism that imperils the natural rights of her people  Coincident with the decline of American constitutionalism has been the rise of a ruling class that exercises authority through control of the state and elite cultural institutions without regard to the interests or consent of the sovereign people.  The ruling class is insensible of, when they are not openly hostile to, the legitimate interests of the American nation and her people.  They long for a post-national millennial utopia and will use whatever means necessary to achieve it.  Trump’s candidacy has already done the nation a great service by giving voice to the nagging, sometimes urgent, concerns of ordinary people imperiled by ruling class hegemony.  They said only Nixon could go to China so perhaps only a billionaire could name the peril posed by the globalist ruling class.  Only Trump, of the two candidates running this year – or of any candidate running since 1984 – has shown an innate understanding of the challenges the country faces and a willingness to name them publicly and face them head-on. – Chris Buskirk is the publisher and a senior editor of American Greatness.

*

There are three basic principles of government in America, and only Donald Trump is likely to maintain them. These are that government exists to protect our rights and not to redistribute our property, that the only legitimate source of authority is the American people themselves, and that the sovereignty of the people cannot survive without adherence to the rule of law. These principles can only be secured if we have a judiciary committed to implementing the original understanding of our Constitution and laws, and not one committed to altering the meaning of the Constitution and laws to shift resources to groups or causes particularly favored by elite opinion. These were the views of the late Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court Justice whose recent passing has left the United States Supreme Court precariously divided and unable to fulfill its responsibilities. Donald Trump has made clear that his potential Supreme Court nominees would be in the mold of Justice Scalia, and any of them would begin the necessary process of restoring the Supreme Court and our nation to a point where the federal leviathan can be restrained, and where the American people can once again enjoy our ultimate Constitutional right, self-government. – Stephen B. Presser is the Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History Emeritus at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, and the author of the forthcoming Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law.

*

America’s influence is in tatters, thanks to Obama and Clinton’s feckless foreign policies. Our friends no longer trust us. Our enemies are emboldened. This leadership vacuum has made America — and the world — far worse off than we were eight years ago. Terrorist attacks occur near-daily due to incompetent border-enforcement. ISIS is growing, thanks to Obama and Clinton’s suicidal policies. Trump has pledged to reverse these dysfunctions — through protecting our borders, fighting Islamic terrorism, and returning national-security-critical industries to America. At home, Trump would expand the economic pie for lower- and middle-income Americans through lowering taxes and reducing regulations. America’s dignity can be restored. But not if we continue the liberty-threatening, economy-killing policies championed by Obama and Clinton. Americans crave a change. Donald Trump alone can bring it. – Thomas K. Lindsay, has served as a university dean, provost, and college president. He was Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2006-2008. He is co-author and editor of the college textbook, Investigating American Democracy. 

*

Donald Trump is the only choice for those that look around the world — and at home — and see something very much wrong going on.  What is that wrong?  The inversion of common sense.  We conservatives have long-lamented the increasing state of political correctness and multiculturalism, the “kick me” sign on our country’s back, and the increasing hostility to our allies and appeasement of our enemies.  Donald Trump stands athwart the latter and has staked his campaign on reversing all of the former — in a way no other Republican has, in a very long time.  I will vote and urge others to vote for Donald Trump. – Seth Leibsohn is a Contributing Editor at American Greatness, a Senior Fellow of The Claremont Institute, and the host The Seth Leibsohn Show on KKNT in Phoenix. He is the co-author with William J. Bennett of The Fight of Our Lives.

*

I am for Trump not only because of what he is not but because of what he is. He is not a progressive ideologue like Hillary and so there is greater reason to believe his nominations for the federal courts and executive branch will help extend the lives of these key freedoms. But I am also for Trump because he has shown great fortitude in insisting on the need to discuss topics of truly existential import like the growing influence of radical Islam in the United States. – Tiffany Miller is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas

*

The political amateur Trump was the only one in 2016 who could assemble a majority for the elementary principles of American democracy — the sovereignty of the people, the consent of the governed, and standing on one’s rights as Americans. Political correctness had prevented conventional partisans from making obvious objections to nonsensical policies ranging from restrooms to terrorism; objectors were derided as bigots or dog whistlers. But “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” is absurd if government continues to ignore real people. That is the open secret of Trump’s victorious message. – Ken Masugi has been a speechwriter for two Cabinet members and for Clarence Thomas, when he was Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He has taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy,  James Madison College of Michigan State University, the Ashbrook Center of Ashland University, and Princeton University.

*

One contributor to the “Against Trump” forum in the Feb. 15 issue of National Review wrote, “Should [Trump’s] election results match his polls, he would be, unquestionably, the worst thing to happen to the American common culture in my lifetime.” If Wikipedia is to be trusted, the author of this sentence was born not yesterday but in 1961, since which America’s common culture … has been nearly obliterated. The same issue of NR contained a review of two books on Bush 41, whose break with the politics of Reagan hurried America down the road of globalist post-constitutionalism and initiated three decades of bipartisan political ineptitude … that has driven America from a high point in its history to its knees. It read in part: “If ever there was an indispensable man at an essential time, it was George H. W. Bush.” The publication of such rubbish in National Review indicates that not only has conservatism failed to conserve a way of life consistent with our founding principles … but that too many conservatives have been co-opted by the administrative state or have grown so accustomed to it that they have forgotten what that way of life looked like and are incapable of imagining its recovery. Hence the realignment we see occurring, long overdue, for which we have Trump to thank. – Douglas A. Jeffrey is vice president for external affairs and editor of Imprimis at Hillsdale College.

*

All the contributors state or imply that Hillary Clinton MUST be kept out of the presidency, and only a majority of votes for Donald Trump will do that.

In addition, taken together, they cover the most important positive reasons why Donald Trump is needed now, urgently, to be president of the United States.

The Golden Rule for every citizen of a (comparatively speaking) free nation is: “Pay as little tax as you possibly can, preferably none.”

The New York Times – through long years one of the most despicable organs in the world – ILLEGALLY obtained Donald Trump’s tax returns.

What they reveal, and what the NYT is trying to make a scandal out of, is that Donald Trump pays as little tax as possible, preferably none.

For nearly twenty years he managed to make billions and pay no tax. That makes him a tax hero in our eyes. 

The hypocritical New York Times itself tries to pay as little tax as possible, preferably none. 

The Clinton Foundation made false declarations on its tax returns. Broke the law. When found out, hastily refiled “amended” returns. But that doesn’t interest the Clinton-serving, habitually lying, shamelessly thieving – altogether deeply immoral – NYT.

Wayne Allyn Root writes at Breitbart:

The Old Gray Lady (the New York Times, not Hillary Clinton) just attacked Donald Trump for supposedly paying no income taxes.

The New York Times knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s called fraud. It’s also called bait and switch. They are trying to distract you from the real crimes committed by Hillary Clinton.

They know Clinton is a criminal. They know she and her scheming husband Bill have committed terrible crimes against the American people. They know the Clinton Foundation is a charity scam. They know almost none of the money collected ever goes to charity. Any one of us running a charity scam like this would be in prison.

They know that the Clinton Foundation is basically a mafia extortion scheme set up to extort bribes from foreign leaders, foreign companies and foreign countries. They know Hillary put the Secretary of State’s office up for sale to the highest bidders. They know she took those bribes disguised as “donations” and repaid the “donors” with access to government awards, contracts and sweetheart deals. She took in billions of dollars, in a foundation in her name, then used our taxpayer dollars to reward the criminals buying access.

Hillary was running the CCC – the Clinton Crime Cartel.

Give Hillary credit. This scheme was more audacious than any mafia family has ever dreamed of. And more lucrative than even the mafia’s favorite products- drugs, booze, prostitution or pornography. Hillary is the new role model for the Gambinos.

Hillary’s scam was like printing money. No risk. Pay no taxes on the billions she collected – because it’s a “charity”.  Use the money for fancy dinners, 5-star hotels, private jets, big salaries and even penthouses for Chelsea Clinton. And pay no expenses either – because the payoff for the bribe is paid by taxpayers.

The New York Times doesn’t care. They don’t have any interest in investigating or reporting on the CCC – The Clinton Crime Cartel.

They are owned lock, stock and barrel by the CCC. They need Hillary in the White House. Who knows what favors they’ve been promised to keep the spotlight off Hillary’s serious crimes. Her crimes certainly include fraud, extortion, theft of taxpayer money, running a charity scam and income tax evasion.

And don’t forget purposely erasing 32,000 emails after hearing the FBI demanded to see them. You can bet those emails were about The Clinton Foundation and The Clinton Crime Cartel.

So the New York Times needed a cover-up to fool and distract the voters. They chose Donald Trump’s taxes. Their goal was to drown out Hillary’s real crimes by accusing Trump of LEGALLY reducing his taxes according to the letter of the law. The New York Times wants you to believe following tax law and LEGALLY reducing your taxes is a crime.

But what Hillary did … extorting bribes … selling out the country … selling the Secretary of State’s office … stealing our taxpayer money … and running ac charity scam … none of that should be an issue. “Move along sir … nothing to see here.”

Back to Trump’s taxes. The only possible tax issue is, of course, if a candidate cheats on his taxes. Donald Trump has been audited by the IRS for 20 years in a row. Not once has he ever been accused of cheating on his taxes. If he’d EVER had one irregularity, it would have been leaked by Obama and Hillary’s many friends in high places at the IRS.

You know, the same IRS agents who tried to destroy the Tea Party movement and conservative critics of Obama (like me). By the way, the New York Times never investigated the massive IRS scandal involving political targeting, intimidation and persecution. I have direct evidence obtained by Judicial Watch that the IRS targeted me for my political beliefs. But The New York Times had no interest. “Move along sir … nothing to see here.”

Since there has NEVER been even a hint of Trump cheating on his taxes, the desperate New York Times is trying to make LEGAL tax reduction strategies, advised by the smartest tax lawyers in America, into a crime. Donald Trump LEGALLY took advantage of every tax deduction offered by the tax system … and LEGALLY applied tax losses to future gains.

Every American … Republican or Democrat … has a right to take legal deductions and to apply and carry forward tax losses against tax gains. The New York Times knows this.

Last I checked if you lose a billion dollars in real estate (or stocks, or business investment) … then you make a billion … you owe zero. That’s a wash for tax purposes. Every businessman friend I’ve got has used the same math … and same LEGAL tax reduction strategy.

What’s the crime? There is none.

But extorting $2 billion at the Clinton Foundation from foreign countries and foreign companies through “donations” and $250,000 speaker fees … putting the State Department up for sale … and giving out billions in contracts and awards to the very people that donated to you … is a true crime. What the Clintons did is pure fraud upon America and the taxpayers.

LEGALLY taking tax deductions based on business or real estate losses to LEGALLY reduce your taxes is not only kosher … and legal … but it’s as American as apple pie.

Interesting that The New York Times ignores the real crime … and tries to make LEGAL tax reduction strategies a crime.

This is called fraud. This is also called “bait and switch”. …

Oh, one more thing. It turns out Hillary Clinton (in 2015) and the New York Times (in 2014) both used the same legal tax reduction strategy as Donald Trump to avoid paying any taxes.

It turns out these two gray old ladies are birds of a feather – frauds, liars, scam artists and hypocrites too.

Every sane tax-payer so arranges his affairs as to attract a MINIMUM amount of tax. What sort of fool would so arrange his affairs as to attract a MAXIMUM amount of tax?

Not even the evil fools at the New York Times.

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.

The “moderator” – more accurately called the “challenger” – at last night’s presidential candidates’ debate did a very bad job.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

Lester Holt’s actions at the first presidential debate were inexcusable. And also unsurprising.

The day when media lefties were patient enough to believe that the system would work without being this blatant are over. They’ve been open this election about rejecting even the illusion of objectivity.

The only question is why do Republicans continue to allow mainstream media figures to moderate presidential debates? Lester Holt decided to debate Trump. But you can increasingly expect this kind of behavior from any media figure below a certain age to whom the concept of journalism is a dead and incomprehensible notion. Or rather, to them it means that it’s their duty to attack Republicans.

2012 should have buried this. And I don’t know why we’re still dealing with this in 2016.

A debate between two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican, is the only time that the GOP has unquestionable leverage to get its way by rejecting mainstream media moderators. There are still a handful of journalists working for the big news networks who could be trusted to be fair, but most of them are over 70. There’s obviously no future in that. I can’t think of a single media figure who has any remote credibility in this regard except maybe Tapper.

It’s the right of Republicans to demand independent, professional moderators who can be trusted to do their job of asking questions and checking the time, instead of offering false fact checks and trying to debate the candidates. Lester Holt’s antics should be the final nail in the coffin of the mainstream media moderator.

Hillary Clinton’s replies were so glib, so well rehearsed, it seemed obvious to us that either her campaign had supplied the questions to Holt, or Holt had let her campaign know them in advance. Or perhaps they colluded even more closely. 

Holt baited Donald Trump. But Trump should not have let himself be put on the defensive. He could have brought up Hillary’s easily hacked private server when she talked about cyber attack. She opened the door wide for him to talk about her insistence on bombing Libya. Then he could have attacked her on Benghazi. He repeated himself too much, wasting time. He should have raised the Clinton Foundation corruption without waiting for a question about it.

Still, some good news came out of the fiasco. This is our abstract of a Breitbart report:

From a “flash poll” after last night’s debate by Pat Caddell, the Democratic pollster: “95 percent of the people we contacted told us they were not going to change their vote based on the debate. Two percent of voters, previously undecided, switched to Trump after the debate. No undecideds went to Clinton. Trump won on the most critical factor, on whether Clinton or Trump was more ‘plausible’ as president, 46 percent to her 42 percent. That for him is really what this debate was really about. On ‘Who showed that they care about people like you?’ Trump won 49 percent to 44 percent for her. Trump, as the challenger in this race, gained what he needed. Like most debates, this debate did not shift the race. What it did do was show Trump as a strong leader. Trump really helped himself out tonight.”

Hope so!

Will tonight’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton decide the election?

Will Trump win and civilization stand a chance of survival? Or will the US superpower and hence the world fall into the hands of a traitorous twosome, a couple of crooks and their DEMonic gang?

As America and the world wait tensely for the outcome of tonight’s debate, the outspoken and witty Kurt Schlichter, who was slow to become a Trump supporter, urgently offers sound advice to him. It is unlikely to reach him, but is probably what he’s going to do anyway:

Hi Donald. I hope you’re taking this debate seriously because it’s pretty important. It’s important to you because I can’t even imagine your personal humiliation if that tired, wheezy, old half-wit the Democrats will be rolling out on stage in a Hannibal Lector dolly beats you. It’d be like losing the tango competition to Stephen Hawking on Dancing with the Stars. …

And it’s important for your family. Yeah, your family. Because what do you think that evil harpy and her friends in the elite will do to your kids if you lose? You don’t think Hillary’s IRS is going to just let them be, do you? The sadly corrupted FBI? But they haven’t done anything? It’s cute how you think guilt or innocence matter under Benedict Comey. Don’t look for an immunity deal here, Donald – you think Mr. Integrity won’t keep doing what he’s ordered to do by whatever Dem is in the Oval Office? No, your kids – your family – is in danger if you blow this, because Hillary hates you just as she hates all who defy her, and persecuting, even jailing your kids, will be a wonderful way to send the message about the price of defiance.

Oh, and it’s important to the country. There’s that whole potential for this hateful, stupid woman sparking a second Democrat-caused civil war with her power-mad executive decrees outlawing our constitutional freedoms …

Maybe you got into this campaign for fun, as a lark, but it’s serious now. It’s your reputation. It’s your family. It’s your country. You gotta win, and to win Monday you gotta put on the performance of your life.

So how do you win? By remembering how you got here.

You got there speaking for the deplorable people who the establishment is doing everything it can to exile from their own self-determination. You are speaking for the people Hillary and her media gestapo want to force into obedience. And all they need is one loud voice who will not be intimidated to stand up to these bastards and say “No.” …

That’s your demo. The people who are afraid to speak. The people who are supposed to shut up and take it. The people Hillary wants to segregate into a basket and toss into a bottomless pit. Speak for them on Monday. Speak for everyone who Hillary and her goose-stepping pals try to gag, silence and shame.

And speak forcefully and clearly. Now, she’s trying to psych you out with talk of an army of consultants and shrinks working to pack her stroke-ravaged brain with one-liners and charges to unleash on stage. Typical limo lib play – go consult some hack experts. You are consulting your gut, and even if I recommended another way to prep it’s too late. So double down on the intuition that got you this far. You know people; Hillary doesn’t. Talk to them. We both know the media is much worse than anyone imagines – Hillary will absolutely have all of the questions in advance, and the “moderators” will be under orders to destroy you. Ignore them. Ignore her. Talk to us. Talk to the People. …

Stop Hillary on Monday. Be tough. Be disciplined. Be ready to ignore the shills and that loathsome felon and speak to us.

All that’s at stake is your reputation. Your family’s safety. Your country’s future.

No pressure.

The whole thing is to be found here.

So the light of reason has broken over Senator Ted Cruz. He has seen at last that Donald Trump MUST win the presidential election.

Any vote not cast for Trump helps Hillary Clinton into power. Another presidency of the Left will do all it can to change the demographic composition of America with the intention of creating a permanent Democratic-supporting electorate.

This election is very probably the last chance Americans – those who value the liberty their country was founded to preserve – will have to save themselves from the tyranny of full-blown socialism, the advance of Islam, the dissolution of the nation-state, the end of the rule of law, and a life that is collective, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

The enlightened Ted Cruz writes:

This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.

In Cleveland, I urged voters, “Please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

If “voting your conscience” means preserving your moral purity while your free nation crashes round you, you are making a vain and foolish choice. Your nice clean little conscience, brother, doesn’t matter a damn when your civilization is at stake. 

Fortunately, Cruz brought his conscience in line with political good sense.

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

If Jesus advised him to vote for Trump, then Jesus has at last developed some degree of useful intelligence.

I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.

Six key policy differences inform my decision.

First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”

For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.

Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it.

Third, energy. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s war on coal and relentless efforts to crush the oil and gas industry. Trump has said he will reduce regulations and allow the blossoming American energy renaissance to create millions of new high-paying jobs.

Fourth, immigration. Clinton would continue and even expand President Obama’s lawless executive amnesty. Trump has promised that he would revoke those illegal executive orders.

Fifth, national security. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s willful blindness to radical Islamic terrorism. She would continue importing Middle Eastern refugees whom the FBI cannot vet to make sure they are not terrorists. Trump has promised to stop the deluge of unvetted refugees.

Sixth, Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.

These are six vital issues where the candidates’ positions present a clear choice for the American people.

If Clinton wins, we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.

My conscience tells me I must do whatever I can to stop that.

We also have seen, over the past few weeks and months, a Trump campaign focusing more and more on freedom — including emphasizing school choice and the power of economic growth to lift African-Americans and Hispanics to prosperity.

Finally, after eight years of a lawless Obama administration, targeting and persecuting those disfavored by the administration, fidelity to the rule of law has never been more important.

The Supreme Court will be critical in preserving the rule of law. And, if the next administration fails to honor the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then I hope that Republicans and Democrats will stand united in protecting our fundamental liberties.

Hoping that Democrats will protect fundamental liberties is like hoping for rain in the Sahara desert.

Our country is in crisis.

Hillary Clinton is manifestly unfit to be president, and her policies would harm millions of Americans. And Donald Trump is the only thing standing in her way.

A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him.

Bravo, Ted!

Hear him, all you obstinate conservatives and Republicans!

On November 8 you will pass through Last Chance Gate. Go through it and turn Right.

If you turn Left, the next gate is the one displaying the immutable instruction: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

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?