New Poll Shows Trump Cut Clinton’s Lead in Half in Just One Week

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump grew up with a fellow New York City icon proclaiming that “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

That adage of New York Yankees great Yogi Berra is ringing true on the presidential playing field as another poll shows that a late rally by Trump is bringing him closer to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday showed that in one week, Trump sliced Clinton’s poll lead in half, as independent voters increasingly flock to the billionaire.

The Fox poll found Clinton leading Trump 44 percent to 41 percent, with 10 percent of the voters supporting another candidate and 4 percent undecided.

The 3 percent margin for Clinton represents a continued erosion of her lead, which was six points last week and seven points the week before.

In a head-to-head contest, Clinton leads Trump 49 percent to 44 percent. Clinton’s five-point lead is down from the seven-point lead she had a week ago.

Independents are changing the dynamics of the contest.

Trump leads Clinton among independent voters, 41 percent to 28 percent. That’s almost double the seven-point lead Trump held last week. Two weeks ago, each candidate had 35 percent of the vote from independents.

Independent voters also are a main source of support for third-party candidates. Fourteen percent support Libertarian Gary Johnson and 7 percent back Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The poll also found that Trump’s supporters are more committed to their candidate than are Clinton backers, with 68 percent of Trump backers supporting him “strongly,” compared with 61 percent for Clinton.

“To be competitive, Trump needs to consolidate support among Republicans and carry independents,” Republican pollster Daron Shaw told Fox News. “That’s where he’s made in-roads in the last week, mostly by focusing his attention on the economy and Obamacare.”

Trump has focused his argument that voters have their only chance to defeat the “rigged” system by electing him.

“Remember folks, it’s a rigged system,” Trump said at a rally Friday. “That’s why you’ve got to get out and vote, you’ve got to watch. Because this system is totally rigged.”

“I believe we’re actually winning,” Trump said Tuesday in Florida. “It’s a rigged system.”

“The media isn’t just against me. They’re against all of you,” he later said in St Augustine. “They’re against what we represent.” (For more from the author of “New Poll Shows Trump Cut Clinton’s Lead in Half in Just One Week” please click HERE)

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Bill Clinton Reveals What He Wants to Be Called If Hillary Wins the White House

Former President Bill Clinton is entertaining a new title he might be called if his wife wins the White House in two weeks.

During a campaign stop in Kinston, N.C., Tuesday afternoon, Clinton revealed what his preferred name would be.

“What I hope I’ll be is the first volunteer,” he told the Daily Mail. “I hope to be the best free labor she’s got.”

“I don’t care what they call me as long as she wins,” he added as he greeted supporters on a Kinston sidewalk.

The former president was on a two-day bus tour through eastern North Carolina.

During the campaign, Clinton and his wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, have toyed around with a couple of ideas for what his title would be. Since Clinton has an Irish heritage, “first laddie” was jokingly mentioned, as was “first dude.”

When Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska, her husband, Todd, preferred to be called the state’s “first dude.”

Hillary Clinton has stated she prefers the term “first gentleman.”

If the former president ends up being the “first volunteer,” his wife already has made it known he won’t be picking out the White House china pattern.

Clinton’s plans aren’t all that clear if his wife manages to win the White House. Over the past couple of months he has stated he will distance himself from the family’s charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation.

“While it would be presumptive to assume a victory in November, now that Hillary is her party’s nominee, it would be irresponsible not to plan for it,” he wrote in August.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has often referred to the Clinton Foundation as “criminal enterprise,” slamming the charity for accepting money from countries with severe human rights abuses.

“You talk about women and women’s rights?” Trump asked rhetorically during the third and final presidential debate, referring to contributions accepted by Clinton from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “These are people that push gays off of buildings.” (For more from the author of “Bill Clinton Reveals What He Wants to Be Called If Hillary Wins the White House” please click HERE)

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Satanism, Child Torture, Mind Control — What Is on Hollywood’s Mind?

Who’s up for some child torture? No, seriously. Wouldn’t strapping a boy into a chair and frightening him with satanic rituals, then electrocuting him, then doing something worse be loads of fun?

It’s what happens in the new video LA Devotee by a band called Panic! At the Disco, perhaps the most unapologetically evil entry of pop culture today.

The video opens with a girl being abducted by what appears to be a witch. The view switches to a boy being strapped to a chair by more witches. The chair is in a dungeon filled with gruesome images, like a bloody skull, Baphomet-like masks, and so forth. A video camera is shown to be filming the affair. Who is watching? Witches terrorize the boy, and at one point display a large knife before they disappear behind the boy, emerging later with a fresh heart.

The girl who was earlier kidnapped feeds the boy a drink; after drinking the boy goes in and out of a trance. Later, witches strap electrodes to the boy and then — what else? — electrocute him. The boy is shown in great pain.

Now throughout all this are interspersed images of Panic’s singer, who appears on a screen in the dungeon, sometimes with a maniacal look, sometimes with Satanic imagery overlaid on his face. The video closes with the singer, demonically grinning, emerging from the screen while snapping on rubber gloves. The last scene shows the singer lurching towards the boy, clenching his gloved fists.

Except perhaps for the lyric hinting of “the black magic on Mulholland Drive,” the music is utterly incongruous with the video. There is nothing redeeming in it. Nothing. It is pitiless, brutal, boastful. It is immoral.

It is evil.

Mainstreaming Satanic Music

Panic! is not a fringe group: they are as mainstream as they come. The group, which has other Satanic-themed videos has won many awards. Billboard is running a poll for who will sing at next year’s Super Bowl. At this writing, there is a near tie between Panic! at the Disco and another group. The NFL has already teamed with the band to produce a commercial.

Panic! is not overtly Satanic, but there are plenty of bands which are. Such as Golgoroth, with lead noise maker Gaahl, a man accused, convicted and imprisoned for torture and drinking the blood of his victim, and Watain, which features music which sounds like a dump truck run in reverse, vomiting its contents on the street. But these and those like them, given their explicit praise of Satan, are on the edges of society and sought after by only a few.

It is the mainstreaming, the normalizing of Satanic imagery which is of interest. This is occurring not only in music, but in all areas of entertainment (as we have seen before), and even in fashion. This includes perfume.

Doesn’t Smell So Good

A well known fragrance company created an advertisement for its new Kenzo World line. The commercial was so appealing that it was written about (among other places) on Britain’s The Guardian.

The video opens with a pretty girl bored by some hotel banquet. She slips out of a ballroom and, suddenly, set to horrid music, an unwanted change comes upon her. Is she being possessed? Is she suffering the after effects of a mind control program? Whichever: she is overcome. She dances spasmodically, she is overtly sexual, she causally and even proudly snaps the neck of an innocent man chatting on his cell phone.

At one point she tries to recover her true self, but whatever is inside wins the battle. And at the end, she flies into a giant all-seeing eye which has appeared from nowhere. The perfume bottle is the last thing we see, which also takes the form of the all-seeing eye.

Conspiracies and Theories

The all-seeing eye, in occult lore, is said to be Masonic and Illuminati imagery; indeed, that which is taken to be of the Illuminati is rife in the entertainment world. Put away the tinfoil hats, dear reader. I said “that which is taken to be,” and I did not say “that which is.” There is a world of difference here.

What is plain is that occult symbols, whether based in reality or only imagined, are showing with greater frequency. These are a mixture of the Satanic, of tokens from secret societies like the Illuminati, and of mind-control programs, all of which are mixed together in some black soup, and which are most popular in the music industry.

Mind control? Certainly. There was, dear reader, a genuine conspiracy, and not a theory, centered around our beneficent government’s MKUltra program, which ran experiments on unwitting Americans testing various mind-control techniques, mostly using drugs and forms of torture.

In 1979, ABC News’s Closeup devoted a program to exposing the CIA’s involvement. In 1973, then CIA Director Richard Helms, fearing discovery, ordered MKUltra files destroyed. For that and for other cover ups, Helms was convicted for misleading Congress.

The CIA said it abandoned MKUltra after claiming that the techniques it discovered were unreliable. Not that they didn’t work, but that they were unreliable, another notable difference. Given the history and natural distrust of our government, it is thus no wonder that many believe the program, or ones like it, are still in existence. Many are convinced — again, it doesn’t matter whether this is real or not — that something called Monarch programming exists. It is always accompanied by butterfly imagery and is said to be MKUltra perfected. See also the recent movie American Ultra.

The Plan Comes Together

If one wanted to characterize the dark framework around which Hollywood and the rest of the ephemeral industry is coalescing, not necessarily by design, but by merely copying what is popular, it is this. The Illuminati, a secret Satanic organization, uses mind control techniques on the innocent, especially children, because of the pain it causes them, and women, for sexual purposes. The aftereffects of mind control is the theme behind Katy Perry’s Wide Awake (notice the butterflies and her imaginary young, innocent self).

If one wants to become a success, one must be initiated into the occult world. This video by The Weekend, the first of a trilogy (part two, three), tells us the (necessary) deal made with the Devil is irrevocable.

I emphasize that this is the story they are telling, and am making no claims whatsoever about its veracity.

But with that story in mind, the Kenzo World video suddenly starts to make sense. At its start, the woman is sitting next to our doomed heroine. Look at her necklace. When the girl in green licks the statue, notice her bracelet. These symbols are not there by accident.

Now re-watch LA Devotee, if you can. The boy, who is, as some might have recognized, the same boy who is kidnapped by underworldly forces in Netflix’s Stranger Things, is being tortured for the viewing pleasure of others. And just like in Stranger Things, mind control is intimated.

Conclusion?

The examples given in this article can be multiplied with ease. If anything, the pace of using dark imagery by the ephemeral industry is accelerating. Doubtless like all fads, it will fade in time.

We haven’t reached the peak yet. So far, nobody is complaining; instead, there is every indication people are enjoying what they’re seeing.

But you have to wonder what the public reaction would be to a Satanic ritual, or an episode of torture, performed at the 2017 Super Bowl were Panic! at the Disco elected to host the half time show. A few years ago, such a suggestion would have seemed crazy. But given current trends, it’s not out of the question. (For more from the author of “Satanism, Child Torture, Mind Control — What Is on Hollywood’s Mind?” please click HERE)

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Levin Smokes Lying Obama and His Highway Robbery Health Care Sham

President Obama and his Obamacare “experts” have been lying to the American people all along about the destructive nature of their signature health care plan. Now, it is all unraveling right before our eyes.

“You like your Obamacare? Well, guess what, you’re stuck with it,” Levin quipped Wednesday night on his radio show before absolutely tearing into the sham health care plan. “This is highway robbery … the ONLY thing getting more powerful and richer is the federal government.”

You won’t want to miss this EPIC monologue:

“Ladies and gentlemen, for God’s sake, do you want more of this?!” (For more from the author of “Levin Smokes Lying Obama and His Highway Robbery Health Care Sham” please click HERE)

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Hillary’s Climate of Hate

\Who are the haters? Who are the autocrats? Who are the serial abusers of power?

Only one presidential candidate has wielded the sledgehammer of government against personal enemies.

Only one presidential candidate has exploited a spouse’s public office to exact revenge on political dissenters.

Only one presidential candidate has a quarter-century track record of taxpayer-subsidized demagoguery and class warfare.

And as the most recent undercover investigation by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas revealed this past week, only one presidential candidate has been directly linked to a scheme to foment chaos and violence at her opponent’s rallies.

Ignore the kindly grandma with the “Stronger Together” backdrop warbling about her happy family and singing the praises of diversity and inclusion. Look beyond the carefully manufactured semblance of bipartisanship and moderation.

Remember history — or rather, “herstory.”

Hillary Clinton isn’t just a nasty woman. She’s a ruthless hatemonger devoted wholly to two corrupt pursuits while on the federal teat: tearing down and cashing in.

To clueless millennials, “bimbo eruptions” might sound like a Trumpism. But it was vintage Team Hillary’s misogynistic moniker for horndog Slick Willie’s accuser outbreaks in the 1990s.

Respect for women? This is the snarling elitist who attacked Gennifer Flowers, a paramour of her cheating husband, as a “failed cabaret singer” whom she would verbally “crucify” if she had the chance.

Just how vindictive can Crooked Grandma be? Ask the people who know her best. David Watkins, a former top administrative aide from Arkansas in the Clinton administration, laid out the then-first lady’s central role in the crony-motivated White House travel office firings.

The Clinton’s old pal, Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, had pushed for wholesale dismissal of travel office staff in favor of their connected friends.

“We both know that there would be hell to pay,” Watkins informed Chief of Staff Thomas McLarty if “we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”

Indeed, Hill unleashed hell. Watkins was sacked under the guise of punishment for using a government helicopter as transportation to a golfing event — something that’s a privilege for presidents, not peons.

He was far from alone. Bill and Hill’s IRS (two for the price of one, don’t forget) targeted conservative think tanks and nonprofits. Bill and Hill’s FBI improperly and illegally accessed the files of countless citizens who inconveniently ruined the Clinton narrative.

And the woman who just weeks ago mauled millions of Trump supporters nationwide as “irredeemable” and “deplorable” is a pro at sweeping demonizations.

Remember: She made a name for herself attacking life-saving drug companies as greedy profiteers in the 1990s, even as she and her husband raked in their campaign donations.

Money-grubbers never change. While walloping drug companies again last year, she took more money from the nation’s top-15 largest pharmaceutical firms than all the other GOP candidates combined.

The two-faced, split-tongued politician who mocked Trump for calling out America’s rigged system came to power decrying the “vast right-wing conspiracy” to deflect from that blue dress her husband stained. She’s a menace to alternate media, to entrepreneurs, to honest, hard-working people, to the rule of law, public safety and national security.

When you tune out the manufactured noise and distractions, when you ignore the media squirrels and engineered scuffles, when you rip up the gender card and contemplate nearly 25 years of the politics of personal destruction and private enrichment — not to mention the standalone disqualifying scandals of Benghazi, Emailgate and the WikiLeaks disclosures — the choice should not be difficult.

You can take a gamble on the imperfect businessman who has never held public office. Or you can go with the guaranteed continuation of Hillary Clinton’s entrenched climate of hate and culture of corruption. Left, right or center, if you are opposed to Clintonian history repeating itself, you’ll take your chances with Trump. I am. (For more from the author of “Hillary’s Climate of Hate” please click HERE)

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How Hillary Pandered to the Press

The WikiLeaks email trove is revealing more than the servility of “objective” reporters trying to please Hillary Clinton and her aides. It’s revealing the press strategy of Clinton and her aides — how they seek to praise reporters, even as they arrogantly stonewall them.

One internal campaign email exchange is salient. It discusses Clinton speaking at a Syracuse University event for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, which is so named for the deceased liberal New York Times political correspondent Robin Toner. Clinton had been invited as a keynote speaker.

Her aides discuss how she should try to please the journalists she’d been ignoring by mocking her tendency to avoid journalistic scrutiny. Press secretary Nick Merrill liked the draft of jokes that was sent around as a strategy that never surrenders, saying, “What I liked about it is that it provided a rare opportunity for her to show some contrition and self-awareness but do it under the guise of humor so as not to cede any ground.”

The Clintons never cede any ground and never relinquish their kung-fu grip on their own narrative and imagery. “Guise of humor?” Their contempt for their friends is astounding. The media may not like this, but it doesn’t stop their never-ending cooperation, hence the contempt.

Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri proposed that they “pretend everyone in the audience is a serious, on the level journalist trying to get the story right and cover serious issues in an absurdly difficult environment where speed and mass appeal are over valued.”

And she scripted the rest of the media-pandering approach: “Have her commend them on how hard they all work in this difficult environment to tell the facts, unearth important stories … if (Clinton) acknowledges that and says she and all thoughtful people appreciate the struggle the reporters in the room face, and how (important) it is that they keep at it, how needed they really are — (I) think that would go over really well.”

Clinton did exactly that. First, she admitted she was a control freak with the press, saying, “My relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated.” And she proclaimed: “I am all about new beginnings: a new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press? So here goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy.” She joked that they all had a nondisclosure agreement from her lawyer under their chairs.

Clinton slathered on praise. “You are facing fundamental questions that may not fit into 140 characters but are nonetheless vital to our democracy,” she said. “Too many of our most important debates occur in what I call an evidence-free zone, ideology trumping facts, made-for-cable shoutfests, Twitter storms, drowning out substantive dialogue and reporting that often leads to shallower more contentious politics and even no, or not the best, public policy.”

Clinton closed her remarks with a pitch for the media elite. “We need, more than ever, smart, fair-minded journalists to challenge our assumptions, push us toward new solutions and hold all of us accountable,” she said.

The result? A standing ovation.

Never mind that the Clintons resist at every turn any half-hearted efforts to hold them accountable for all of their scandalous behavior. The only journalism they really respect is the “journalism” that rips their enemies apart or blatantly promotes them as they dishonestly see themselves — as incredibly smart and compassionate public servants with no moral flaws worth noticing. (For more from the author of “How Hillary Pandered to the Press” please click HERE)

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The Astonishing Ignorance of Young Adults

Do you wonder why Sen. Bernie Sanders and his ideas are so popular among American college students? The answer is that they, like so many other young people who think they know it all, are really uninformed and ignorant. You say, “Williams, how dare you say that?! We’ve mortgaged our home to send our children to college.”

Let’s start with the 2006 geographic literacy survey of youngsters between 18 and 24 years of age by National Geographic and Roper Public Affairs.

Less than half could identify New York and Ohio on a U.S. map. Sixty percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East, and three-quarters could not find Iran or Israel. In fact, 44 percent could not locate even one of those four countries. Youngsters who had taken a geography class didn’t fare much better.

By the way, when I attended elementary school, during the 1940s, we were given blank U.S. maps, and our assignment was to write in the states. Today, such an assignment might be deemed oppressive, if not racist.

According to a Philadelphia magazine article, the percentage of college grads who can read and interpret a food label has fallen from 40 to 30. They are six times likelier to know who won “American Idol” than they are to know the name of the speaker of the House. A high school teacher in California handed out an assignment that required students to use a ruler. Not a single student knew how.

An article on News Forum For Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed over 75 percent of two-year college students and 50 percent of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks.

About 20 percent of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30 percent of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.”

Reported by Just Facts, in 2009, the Pentagon estimated that 65 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. were unqualified for military service because of weak educational skills, poor physical fitness, illegal drug usage, medical conditions, or criminal records. In January 2014, the commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command estimated this figure at 77.5 percent, and in June 2014, the Department of Defense estimated this figure at 71 percent.

A few weeks ago, my column discussed the dishonesty of college officials. Here’s more evidence: Among high- school students who graduated in 2014 and took the ACT college readiness exam, here’s how various racial/ethnic groups fared when it came to meeting the ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects: Asians, 57 percent; whites, 49 percent; Hispanics, 23 percent; and blacks, 11 percent.

However, the college rates of enrollment of these groups were: Asians, 80 percent; whites, 69 percent; Hispanics, 60 percent; and blacks, 57 percent.

What I am labeling as dishonest, fraudulent, or deceitful comes from the fact that many more students are admitted to college than are in fact college-ready. Admitting such students may satisfy the wants and financial interests of the higher education establishment, but whether it serves the interests of students, families, taxpayers, and the nation is another question.

To accommodate less college-ready students, colleges must water down their curricula, lower standards, and abandon traditional tools and topics.

Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein writes in his book “The Dumbest Generation”: Tradition “serves a crucial moral and intellectual function. … People who read Thucydides and Caesar on war, and Seneca and Ovid on love, are less inclined to construe passing fads as durable outlooks, to fall into the maelstrom of celebrity culture, to presume that the circumstances of their own life are worth a webpage.” (For more from the author of “The Astonishing Ignorance of Young Adults” please click HERE)

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In Desperate Push to Save Dying Obamacare, President Wants to Bail out Insurers

The death knell for Obamacare has been rung. President Barack Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services confirmed this week that Americans will experience double-digit premium hikes on their health care plans beginning Nov. 1. In fact, the average increase will be 25 percent.

And while costs are going up, choice is going down: 1 out of every 5 Americans will have only one health insurer to choose from. More costs, less choice—so much for the “affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act.

No doubt about it: Obamacare is dying. But don’t count on it going gently into that good night. Instead, count the billions of dollars Obamacare is trying to rob from the American taxpayer on its way to the grave.

As health policy expert Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation explained in a recent commentary, Obamacare is “like a patient suffering from multi-organ failure [and] … central planning is the disease.”

But instead of pulling the plug, Obama and the insurance companies want to put Obamacare on a costly life-support line of cash, all on the taxpayer’s dime.

One symptom of the central planning disease, and indicators of Obamacare’s death spiral, is that the insurance companies haven’t made money by offering qualified health plans on the Obamacare exchanges.

Instead, the insurance companies are losing money hand over fist, despite “risk mitigation” programs baked in by Obamacare architects to sweeten the deal for large insurance companies.

Now, the Obama administration is signaling it wants to find any way it can to funnel as much as $170 billion of taxpayer money to the insurance companies, in hopes of keeping the law alive.

In other words, the administration wants to bail out insurance companies in order to bail out Obamacare.

So what exactly are these risk mitigation provisions, and how might they result in a taxpayer-funded bailout? If you’re in a hurry, you can watch this 2-minute video from The Daily Signal’s Melissa Quinn.

Got some more time? Read this detailed memo from Heritage Action for America, titled “How Congress Can Stop the Impending Obamacare Bailouts.”

But for situational awareness, the main three risk mitigation programs are called 1) cost-sharing subsidies, 2) the traditional reinsurance program, and 3) the risk corridors program.

Cost-sharing subsidies. They required insurers to artificially reduce deductibles and copays for low-income Obamacare enrollees. The administration was caught making illegal payments to the insurers to compensate for the discounts, essentially shelling out billions of dollars that weren’t authorized by Congress.

Thankfully for your wallet, a federal judge has put a pause on any more payments under this program.

The reinsurance program. It was a new tax on employer-provided health insurance, collected to create a pot of money to redistribute to insurance companies that lost profits from covering high-risk individuals. However, under this section of Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services also was required to make $5 billion in deposits into the Treasury and back to the taxpayers.

Want to guess how much HHS officials have paid so far? Zero. Why? Because they have broken the law by prioritizing payments to the insurance companies.

Which is why Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have introduced the Taxpayers Before Insurers Act to force HHS to pay the American people back the $5 billion owed.

Getting Congress to prioritize the taxpayer over the insurance companies hasn’t made the insurance companies happy—especially when they want Congress to continue their gravy train past 2016.

As Ed Haislmaier, another health policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, writes in his appropriately headlined piece, “Grand Theft Health Insurance”:

Recently, the national Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has been aggressively lobbying Congress to ignore the Obama administration’s illegal diversion of tax dollars into the pockets of—you guessed it—health insurers. … To be sure, it is the Obama administration, and not the insurers, who perpetrated this heist. But for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association to now lobby Congress to keep getting the money puts them in the unseemly (to say the least) position of the guy caught with stolen merchandise demanding that he be allowed to keep his ill-gotten goods because he wasn’t the one who originally stole them.

The risk corridors program. It was supposed to create another temporary funding stream to transfer money from insurance companies that made profits to insurance companies that suffered losses from selling Obamacare plans.

The problem is that we’ve seen much higher losses than profits. So the insurance companies that feel stiffed have sued the Obama administration for the difference.

Sadly, the administration seems only too willing to find a way to get the insurers the money they want. Even if it means paying them through the legally questionable method of settling the lawsuits and making payments out of the “Judgment Fund”—something the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says the administration doesn’t have the authority to do.

But when has lack of authority ever stopped Obama before? Especially when it comes to the law that bears his name.

That’s the bad news. The bailouts are coming and Congress must act to stop them. The good news is that, unsurprisingly, the American people really don’t like the government’s giving their money to insurance companies in an effort to prop up Obamacare.

According to market research conducted by American Perceptions Initiative, which is affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, the vast majority of Americans strongly opposes using taxpayer dollars to bail out Obamacare.

Fully 87 percent of those surveyed agreed when asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “If private insurance companies lose money selling health insurance under the Obamacare program, taxpayers should not have to bail them out to cover their losses.”

I repeat: 87 percent. That’s what’s known as a mandate. Which means members of Congress and their staff can have complete confidence that Americans support action to stop the impending bailouts.

Or, put another way, if congressional Republican leadership is looking for a unifying issue after the election, it isn’t going to be passing a new internet sales tax or a massive omnibus spending package (like last year). Stopping illegal payments to insurance companies would be a unifying issue.

What’s more, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and Congressional Research Service also have thrown flags on the Obama administration’s play of paying insurers at the expense of taxpayers. Both found that the payments under the reinsurance program are illegal—just like they found using the Judgment Fund to make risk corridor payments would be illegal.

So when it comes to the legality of bailing out Obamacare, the Obama administration is 0-3 against a federal judge and two of the government’s own watchdog agencies.

For Congress, the choice couldn’t be clearer: Protect Obamacare or protect the American people.

The only question left to answer is who Congress will side with. The rule of law and its constituents? Or the insurance companies and the president?

As brutal Obamacare premium hikes hit families again in less than a week, and we head into the dangerous waters of a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, it’s as good of time as any to remind Congress that the American people don’t plan on going gently into the night either.

Especially not while their tax dollars are at risk of being used to bail out Obamacare. (For more from the author of “In Desperate Push to Save Dying Obamacare, President Wants to Bail out Insurers” please click HERE)

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The Reason This Pastor Isn’t Handing Over His Sermon Transcripts to the Government

A public health official who also is a lay minister says he will not turn over his sermons and related documents to the state of Georgia, which he contends fired him for what he preached from the pulpit of his church.

“My faith has fueled me,” Dr. Eric Walsh, who served as an associate pastor and still preaches, said at a press conference Wednesday at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. “I want to be able to protect the faith of others, so I really have no intention of turning over the sermons.”

Walsh, 45, accepted a job as district health director with Georgia’s Department of Public Health in May 2014. He expected to start work around the middle of June, according to his lawyers at First Liberty Institute.

But a week later, officials with the health agency requested copies of sermons Walsh had preached before congregations of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

After reviewing the contents of the sermons, the agency fired Walsh, according to First Liberty, a legal organization that defends religious freedom.

Walsh’s sermon topics include compassion for the poor, health, marriage, sexuality, world religions, science, and creationism, his lawyers say. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times noted a controversy over his sermons on homosexuality and evolution.

Walsh previously served as director of the Public Health Department in Pasadena, California, for four years. He has a medical degree and a doctorate of public health and is a former member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

As The Daily Signal previously reported, Georgia Department of Public Health spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said Walsh’s religious beliefs “had nothing to do with the decision to withdraw the [job] offer.” In an email to The Daily Signal, Nydam wrote:

During the background check process, DPH learned Dr. Walsh failed to disclose outside employment to his previous public health employer, which also was in violation of California law. Due to violation of both California state law and DPH policy, the offer to Dr. Walsh was rescinded. During his interview, Dr. Walsh disclosed his religious beliefs to DPH staff and indicated that he preached at his church in California. Dr. Walsh’s religious beliefs had nothing to do with the decision to withdraw the offer.

Walsh has said the situation was “devastating.”

“It has been and would be very difficult for me to work in public health based on the things that have transpired,” Walsh told The Daily Signal in a phone call Wednesday before his press conference.

On behalf of Walsh, First Liberty Institute and the Atlanta law firm of Parks, Chesin & Walbert sued the Georgia Department of Public Health in April for religious discrimination.

“What’s really shocking right now is the state of Georgia is requiring this pastor to turn over his sermon notes and transcripts,” Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute and counsel for Walsh, told The Daily Signal. “There’s no subject limitation. There’s no time limitations … every sermon he’s produced since he was about 18 would have to be turned over to the state of Georgia.”

In late September, the state of Georgia requested as part of the legal case that Walsh hand over copies of his sermon notes and transcripts, along with other documents related to his ministerial training, service as a pastor, and publication or postings of his sermons online.

“Any document that has a note or a transcript having to do with his sermons are required to be produced,” Dys told The Daily Signal. “That means that the notes he writes in the margins of his Bible—the Bible has to be produced now. Anything he’s written on his computer has to be turned over. … This is an incredible intrusion upon the sanctity of the pulpit.”

Walsh’s lawyer added:

I think every pastor, every rabbi, every church leader in the state of Georgia should be very concerned when their government is refusing to pass laws that would protect their religious liberty and now ransacking the pastor’s study to try to find information and evidence that they can use to justify their illegal behavior in firing Dr. Walsh. That’s wrong. It’s illegal.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health told The Daily Signal Wednesday the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

In a press release, Dys said it was “clear” the Georgia agency “fired Dr. Walsh over his religious beliefs, which is blatant religious discrimination.”

Also Wednesday, the Family Research Council, a Christian policy organization based in Washington, called on Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, to “correct this egregious overreach of the state into church affairs.”

“This is something that I would have expected to see in a communist country, not America,” Tony Perkins, president of the council and an ordained pastor, said in a written statement. “The pulpit is to be governed only by the word of God. Government scrutiny of speech in the pulpit is unconstitutional, and unconscionable.” (For more from the author of “The Reason This Pastor Isn’t Handing Over His Sermon Transcripts to the Government” please click HERE)

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New Wikileaks Release Shows Obama Knew About Clinton Email Use, May Have Lied to Public

More than 18 months ago, President Barack Obama said he learned of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

Within hours, Clinton aide Cheryl Mills told campaign chairman John Podesta that “we need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov.”

While it has been known for some time that Obama knew of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail and even corresponded with her on it, this is the first evidence that Democratic operatives were concerned that the president had lied to the public.

A White House spokesman denied Tuesday that Obama had been dishonest:

“What the president said was an entirely factual response,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters during gaggle in Los Angeles, where the president was attending fundraisers.

“I recognize that some of the president’s critics have attempted to construct some type of conspiracy about the communication between the president and the secretary of state,” Earnest continued. “But they’ve failed to put forward a conspiracy that withstands any scrutiny, so I guess they are back to recycling thoroughly debunked conspiracies.”

Shortly after Obama addressed the e-mail issue in March 2015, Earnest insisted that Obama was unaware that Clinton was engaged in practices that violate federal policy and law. Mills’ comment indicates that this may not be the case.

Earnest also reiterated the Democratic talking point about not trusting the veracity of the e-mail leak. “I can’t verify the integrity of these emails,” he said, describing the e-mails as “stolen” and released “to undermine our democracy.” (For more from the author of “New Wikileaks Release Shows Obama Knew About Clinton Email Use, May Have Lied to Public” please click HERE)

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