Ryan Tells Republicans He Will Focus on House Races, Won’t Help Trump

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House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., told fellow Republicans on Monday that he has washed his hands of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and will focus on maintaining the Republican majority in the House.

“The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities,” said AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman.

According to those involved with the call, Ryan said he will not defend Trump or in any way support the billionaire’s campaign. He also said that he will not publicly withdraw his endorsement of Trump.

Ryan said he will devote “his entire energy making sure that Hillary Clinton does not get a blank check with a Democrat-controlled Congress,” the Associated Press reported, taking Ryan’s means to words he does not believe Trump can defeat Clinton in November.

As for other members of the House, Ryan told them “to do what’s best for you in your district,” the Associated Press reported.

Republicans currently hold the majority in both houses of Congress. Throughout the campaign, Republican leaders have worried whether a lackluster showing on Election Day for Trump could put those majorities at risk.

The Republican National Committee is also having a conference call with its members on Monday.

Ryan issued a statement Friday condemning Trump’s conduct in a leaked 2005 video in which Trump spoke graphically about his pursuits of women.

“Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified,” Ryan said Friday. “I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Since that video was leaked, many Republicans have withdrawn their support for Trump.

CNN reported that during the call, Ryan’s decision to back away from Trump was met with disapproval by some congressmen. Ryan then made it clear that although he would keep his distance from the presidential campaign, he would not publicly break with his party’s nominee.

Earlier Monday, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, told CBS This Morning that she hoped Ryan would stand by Trump. She also said that Republicans abandoning Trump may have a political price to pay, noting that Ryan was booed by Trump supporters over the weekend after disinviting Trump from an event in the wake of the controversial video’s release. (For more from the author of “Ryan Tells Republicans He Will Focus on House Races, Won’t Help Trump” please click HERE)

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Donald Trump Charges, Hillary Fades in Second Debate

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Good news, America: Contrary to the tension and expectation at the start, the earth didn’t open up under the last night’s debate stage, and send the candidates and the country into the fiery flames.

In fact, what started with high dread and more mud than a monster truck competition ended with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton complimenting each other. And in between they actually talked a little bit about policy.

However, most importantly, Donald Trump showed why he was able to write a book called The Art of the Comeback. In fact, his Secret Service code name might well have to be changed to Lazarus. What was supposed to be Trump’s political funeral instead may have brought his campaign back to life. “Donald Trump Lives,” blares the headline from Forbes.

“The Question”

Going into the debate, nothing less than the future of the election was at stake in the wake of a firestorm over a 2005 video of crude-talking Donald Trump.

There would be no talk of ISIS or taxes, and certainly not private servers and open borders, until the matter was addressed. How would Donald Trump handle the controversy? With contrition or with combativeness? Could he take a rotten lemon of a story and turn it into Trump lemonade?

Well … a nervous Donald Trump picked up the lemon, apologized for it, said he was embarrassed about it, and then proceeded to lob it at Hillary like a grenade. He brought up the woman who’ve accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, and one raped by one of Hillary’s clients.

Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously. Four of them here tonight. One of the women, who is a wonderful woman, at 12 years old, was raped at 12. Her client she represented got him off, and she’s seen laughing on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped.

The four had taken part in a stunning press conference with Trump before the debate.

Anderson Cooper would bring the video up again, accusing Trump of having committed sexual assault. Trump again insisted it was “locker room talk,” again said he was embarrassed, denied assaulting anyone, and the issue at least for the night was as good as dead.

Trump Beyond The Video

Trump survived “the question,” and then got busy. He spent the rest of the debate prowling the stage, controlling the conversation, not letting Hillary or the moderators make a move against him without a comeback.

Trump pounded on Clinton for the “33,000 emails that you had deleted and that you acid-washed” after they had been subpoenaed. He made several appeals to Sanders voters, reminding them of what Hillary and the DNC had done to their guy and how Sanders repeatedly attacked her “bad judgement.”

Trump promised to launch an investigation of her if elected. Hillary replied, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the laws in our country.” “Because you’d be in jail,” Trump said.

When Clinton said “I take classified material very seriously,” Trump replied “Yet she didn’t know that ‘C’ meant classified.”

And Trump had the best line of any of the debates this year.

A questioner challenged Hillary on the WikiLeaks transcript where she talks about how it’s fine to say one thing in private and tell voters something else. “Is it OK for politicians to be two-faced?” “As I recall,” Hillary said, “that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln.”

At his first opportunity, Trump pounced: “She lied, now she’s blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln.” He went on. “Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.”

While Trump did get into policy at times, as in his discussion of his tax policy, and fact-checkers are sleeping in this morning after a long, busy night, that was hardly the point of the evening. Donald Trump had one goal last night: to emerge still standing. He did more than that. Partisans can bicker over the particulars, but Trump owned the room and he delivered under enormous pressure.

Hillary Clinton

Did Hillary Clinton have a bad night? Only to the extent she didn’t kill the wounded beast.

She gave her typically deep, involved policy answers on matters such as Syria, energy and taxes. She admitted there were problems with Obamacare, offered her suggestions and when it was noted her husband called Obamacare the “craziest thing,” she brushed it off like lint on her pantsuit.

Clinton eloquently defended her years of public service, talking about her decades of work assisting families and children. (She left out the rapists.)

Hillary also defended her private server use by saying there’s no proof anyone actually hacked into it. Neither the moderators nor Trump pointed out that while “no harm, no foul” is okay for pick-up basketball, that’s not the case with national secrets.

She repeated her tactic of showing bemusement at Trump’s answers, denying his words have any truth to them. She even said at one time, “There he goes again.”

Which gets to this fun fact: During the course of the debate, Clinton evoked Lincoln, quoted Reagan and praised Bush. Meaning, Hillary Clinton had more nice things to say about Republicans last night than Donald Trump.

Yet there was a problem: Sunday night she was the Hillary Clinton often seen on the campaign trail: Wonkish and somewhat weary.

Clinton was clearly not as sharp or energetic or effective as she was in the first debate, and seemed to tire as the debate went on. While Trump bounced around the stage the whole time like a gangsta rapper Hillary tended to sit when she wasn’t speaking. She seemed content to let Trump talk rather than engage him. And her attacks weakly drifted through the auditorium like campaign balloons.

In fact, as Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz interjected themselves more and more into the debate against Trump, Clinton seemed to become an afterthought. (Were Cooper and Raddatz simply biased or was it something more interesting? I’ll answer that later today.)

Finally, to the amusement of the Twittersphere, Hillary had the misfortune of having a fly land on her forehead while delivering an answer.

The Good News

The debate opened in an atmosphere so tense it made bomb-disposal work feel a yoga class. Fortunately it didn’t stay that way. The spirit broke. Sure, Clinton and Trump said some tough things about each other, but the tone grew less belligerent and almost relaxed. It’s not like they broke out into song, though it looked like it at one point.

Then came the final question from an audience member: “My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?”

“Look, I respect his children,” replied Hillary, whose daughter is indeed BFF’s with Ivanka Trump. “His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald.”

Trump also gave an earnest answer.

I will say this about Hillary. She doesn’t quit. She doesn’t give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She’s a fighter. I disagree with much of what she’s fighting for. I do disagree with her judgment in many cases. But she does fight hard, and she doesn’t quit, and she doesn’t give up. And I consider that to be a very good trait.

At the end of the debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shook hands, which they pointedly did not do at the start of the debate.

Who won? The Frank Lunz focus group of undecideds gave it to Donald Trump by more than a two-to-one margin. It was enough of a win for Lunz to declare Trump back in the race.

The third and final Presidential debate takes place Wednesday, October 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The moderator is Chris Wallace of Fox News. What happens in Vegas definitely will not stay in Vegas; we can only pray it stays out of the gutter. (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Charges, Hillary Fades in Second Debate” please click HERE)

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Americans Agree: Big Government Sucks but They Aren’t Willing to Cut Any of Its Programs

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If you think the federal government is too big, most Americans agree with you.

The latest Gallup poll reveals that a majority of Americans (54 percent) think the federal government is trying to do too much. In the 25 years that Gallup has gauged “Americans’ Views of Government Role,” the American public has always answered the same, with two exceptions. In 1993, when concerns about the economy were especially high and Bill Clinton came into office, and immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Americans thought that government should do more.

But that feeling didn’t last long.

In the Clinton and Obama years, the percentage of Americans who thought government is doing too much stayed at higher levels than in the George W. Bush years. Gallup says that “[t]his most likely reflects a counteraction to perceptions that the two Democratic presidents were oriented toward increasing the government’s role.”

And indeed, the size and role of government has increased unabated the past 25 years, even under President Bush. (Remember Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind? Oh, and trillion-dollar budgets.)

While a majority of Americans think government is too big, studies repeatedly show that when it comes down to actual solutions, answers are sparse. Americans don’t want cuts and major reforms to entitlement spending — specifically Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending — which is the main driver of our $19 trillion national debt.

A 2011 New York Times/CBS News poll found that seven out of 10 Americans thought increasing deficits were a “very serious” problem, but “when asked to choose among cuts to Medicare, Social Security, or the nation’s third-largest spending program — the military — a majority by a large margin said cuts to the Pentagon.”

A 2016 Public Policy Poll shows that a staggering 88 percent of Americans oppose cutting Social Security benefits. A majority of Americans also said: they oppose privatizing Social Security by investing retirement money in the stock market (68 percent), are less likely to vote for a politician who thinks Social Security benefits should be cut (80 percent), and oppose raising the retirement age for Social Security eligibility (62 percent).

While Americans don’t want to see cuts to entitlement programs, something will have to change — and soon. As The Daily Signal reported, entitlement spending, on the current trajectory, will absorb all federal revenue in just 17 years. That means there will be no money to pay the interest on our national debt, for national security and defense, for anything.

When will things change, though? The Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, rarely ever talks about entitlement spending. When he does, he says he doesn’t want to make cuts, particularly to Social Security; he wants to find a way to save it. Naturally, Hillary Clinton also opposes cuts to entitlement spending.

Our presidential nominees aren’t the only ones who don’t want to do anything substantive to avoid the impending cliff — neither does Congress. As National Review has noted, the number of times “debt” or “deficit” was mentioned in Congress dropped sharply between 2011 and 2015, and Congress has left entitlement spending largely untouched.

Regardless of how many politicians, Republican or Democrat, want to avoid the inconvenient topic, in a few years they won’t be able to ignore it anymore. And the American voters shouldn’t ignore it, either. In order to lessen the impact of Social Security or Medicare going bankrupt, it would be better to start addressing the inevitable now. That requires courage, though, and when you look at Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or the “leaders” in Congress, is that the first word that comes to mind? (For more from the author of “Americans Agree: Big Government Sucks but They Aren’t Willing to Cut Any of Its Programs” please click HERE)

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Alinsky’s Daughter: Here’s the Truth About Hillary the Media Won’t Tell You

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In 1993, the president of Wellesley College approved a new rule upon being contacted by Bill Clinton’s White House. The rule stated that all senior theses written by a president or first lady of the United States would be kept under lock and key. The rule was meant to keep the public ignorant about the radical ties of the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the radical Marxist organizer, Saul Alinsky. The 92-page thesis was titled, “There is only the fight…: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.”

The thesis became unlocked after the Clintons left the White House and is now posted online. After being ruled by Barack Obama, another Alinskyite, for 8 years, perhaps one might think the fact that the modern Democratic Party is completely taken over by Alinskyites is old news, but the connection between Alinsky and Hillary is special.

Hillary describes Alinsky as a “neo-Hobbesian who objects to the consensual mystique surrounding political processes; for him, conflict is the route to power.” Alinsky’s central focus, she notes, is that the community organizer must understand that conflict will arise and to redirect it and, as she quoted him in her thesis, be “…dedicated to changing the character of life of a particular community [and] has an initial function of serving as an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions… to provide a channel into which they can pour their frustration of the past; to create a mechanism which can drain off underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. When those who represent the status quo label you [i.e. the community organizer] as an ‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function–to agitate to the point of conflict.”

The thesis in and of itself is limited to whether or not “social justice” can be attained through the tactics described by Alinsky in “Reveille For Radicals,” and the numerous speeches he gave on hundreds of college campuses in the 1950s and 1960s. What had become clear was that Alinsky’s previous organizing had fallen apart and almost all attempts to recapture the original intent had gone by the wayside.

Hillary noted that, “Alinsky’s lessons in organizing and mobilizing community action independent of extra-community strings appear to have been lost in the face of the lure of OEO money.” Pointing out that the power of the government took away the work of the “local organizer.” It is here that we see her light bulb illuminate. With this reasoning, the better approach would be to be the government who had the power to force social change.

But just because Hillary criticized Alinsky’s model in 1969 doesn’t mean she disagrees with his politics. In fact, it could very well be that Hillary’s model, which was to gain political power and wield it to gain social change, is simply her thesis finally realized. She criticized Alinsky, not so much for his tactics, but for his focus on organization. What is possibly the best way to put Hillary’s philosophy is what she told the Black Lives Matter movement, saying, “I don’t believe you change hearts, you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.”

Hillary questions whether organizing as Alinsky did in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago and eventually across the country was effective enough because of the unanticipated results. She pointed to other lefty thinkers that criticized Alinsky as a “showman rather than an activist.”

It should also be noted that while Alinsky’s “Reville for Radicals” was directed at labor organizing, “Rules For Radicals” was directed at middle class youth, instructing them how to carry out his model in a new age. Ever the social observer, Alinsky recognized that the blue-collar workers of the 1930s were no longer, “where it’s at,” but that middle class youth of the 60s was ripe for organization. But also, the emphasis in the prologue of working within the system is eerily similar to Clinton’s argumentation. In her 2003 book, “Living History,” Clinton wrote, “He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn’t. Alinsky said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within.”

At the end of Clinton’s thesis, she includes correspondence she received from Alinsky, and notes the personal interviews she conducted with him: twice in Boston in October 1968 and once at Wellesley in January 1969. She followed his organization, Industrial Areas Foundation, which was a training institute for communist radicals. She credited Saul Alinsky for both “providing a topic” and “offering me a job.” She never questioned the organization’s ultimate goal to achieve a Marxist utopia. What drove Hillary was how to get there.

Hillary’s whole life has been dedicated to socialist/communist ends. The fact that the arguments and the anger fomented by Alinsky in the 40s, 50s and 60s are the same arguments and anger of today’s Obama/Clinton model is telling. For 75 years, inner city blacks have been poor, labor unions have worked to put their members out of a job, and everyday there is some new group claiming it doesn’t have equality. All of these groups have been targeted by these so-called organizational geniuses. No matter what happens, either by the power/conflict ideals of Alinsky and Obama or by power grabs/money laundering of the Clintons, the lives of the people get worse. It is not whether Saul or Hillary are right about how to “achieve democratic equality,” or whose tactics are more effective, but of the failure of the philosophy behind it.

Hillary kept in contact with Alinsky throughout college and while in law school, she wrote him a letter claiming that she missed corresponding with him. The letter began, “Dear Saul, When is that new book [Rules for Radicals] coming out — or has it come and I somehow missed the fulfillment of Revelation? I have just had my one-thousandth conversation about Reveille [for Radicals] and need some new material to throw at people,” — she added, a reference to Alinsky’s 1946 book on his theories of community organizing.

David Brock, in his 1996 biography, “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham,” called Hillary “Alinsky’s daughter.” That is an apt label. Where Alinsky tactics are used now on both sides to confuse and agitate, Hillary is poised to become the supreme leader with all the power and tools of our monstrous government at her fingertips.

Saul’s daughter has it all figured out. (For more from the author of “Alinsky’s Daughter: Here’s the Truth About Hillary the Media Won’t Tell You” please click HERE)

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Carson: Dirty Trick Video a Tactic Born of Desperation to Derail Trump

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To Ben Carson, the release of the 2005 video in which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump uses vulgar terms to describe pursuing women is part of the smear campaign America’s political class will continue to wage against Trump to keep him from the White House.

“I’m not seeing anything that I didn’t totally expect,” Carson said Saturday during an interview with Newsmax. “The political class and the media has to make this about Donald Trump. They cannot make this about the issues.”

Carson said the fact the tape was leaked at the same time WikiLeaks exposed damaging comments made by Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton in closed-door speeches is more than a coincidence.

“They’re getting desperate because they’re seeing the crowds that Trump is attracting. They see the enthusiasm gap between the candidates and they know how that’s going to translate on Election Day. Their goal is now is to dribble out all of these things like this tape,” said Carson, who added, “This won’t be the last thing, by the way.”

He said the flood of Republican denunciations since the tape came out shows the success of the tactic.

“They’ve been waiting to drop these things out periodically because for one thing, this Hillary open borders thing came out. This is obscuring that.

“Why aren’t we talking about what the implications of that are?” he said, referring to comments Clinton made about expanding free trade.

“It will change the nature of everything in this nation. They were very clever, and because they have the arm of the media it makes it very easy for them to get across what they’re doing. Unless people understand what’s going on,” he said.

Carson said the election is not a referendum on Trump or Clinton, but about the “direction of the country.”

“It’s about the elites and the status quo being desperate to maintain their position and this direction versus a change in direction that’s desperately needed,” he said.

“Their (Democrats) strategy will have some impact. Some people will always capitulate instead of fight. But by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans think we’re on the wrong track. That’s what you need to be talking about,” he said.

Carson, who throughout the campaign has distinguished between his opinion of Trump’s private style and the country’s need for change, said there is no argument that Trump “made some mistakes.”

“He concedes that,” Carson said. “Those are not good things to say, what he said in that tape. He’s not going to try to defend that. And he’s not going to allow this to become about him. The issues are too important.”

Carson characterized Trump Saturday as “resolute.”

“I think Donald has a very good understanding what’s going and why it’s imperative that he carry the torch for the people in terms of the issues and not allow him to be sidetracked by any of this,” Carson added. (For more from the author of “Carson: Dirty Trick Video a Tactic Born of Desperation to Derail Trump” please click HERE)

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Christian Leaders React to Trump Video Scandal

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Donald Trump’s newest scandal is causing some top Republicans to withdraw endorsements and call for him to step down as the party’s presidential nominee. The Republican National Committee appears to be stopping some of its election efforts on behalf of Trump, and both Trump’s wife and running mate have criticized comments made a decade ago by Trump about how he tried to have sex with a married woman, and how his fame allowed him to do largely whatever he wanted with and to women.

Others are noting that liberal and Democratic critics of Trump may not have a moral or legal leg to stand on:

So what are Christian leaders – many of whom backed Trump enthusiastically while others more grudgingly – saying? Below are more than a dozen statements, with credit to Sarah Bailey at The Washington Post for collating many of the Tweets, as well as other statements.

From Bailey:

Ralph Reed, a conservative Christian activist and the head of Trump’s religious advisory board, said that as the father of two daughters, he was disappointed by the “inappropriate” comments.

“But people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, grow the economy, appoint conservative judges and oppose the Iran nuclear deal,” he said in an email.

He contrasted Trump with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, saying that her “corrupt use of her office to raise funds from foreign governments and corporations and her reckless and irresponsible handling of classified material on her home-brewed email server, endangering US national security, that will drive the evangelical vote.”

“I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of their concerns,” he said.

Franklin Graham:

The crude comments made by Donald J. Trump more than 11 years ago cannot be defended. But the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended. I am not endorsing any candidates in this election. I have said it throughout this presidential campaign, and I will say it again — both candidates are flawed. The only hope for the United States is God. Our nation’s many sins have permeated our society, leading us to where we are today. But as Christians we can’t back down from our responsibility to remain engaged in the politics of our nation. On November 8th we will all have a choice to make. The two candidates have very different visions for the future of America. The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court. That impacts everything. There’s no question, Trump and Clinton scandals might be news for the moment, but who they appoint to the Supreme Court will remake the fabric of our society for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come.

Tony Perkins:

“As a husband and father of three daughters, I find this behavior deeply offensive and degrading. As I have made clear, my support for Donald Trump in the general election was never based upon shared values rather it was built upon shared concerns. These concerns include the damage the Supreme Court would continue to do to this country through the appointment of activist justices, concerns over the security of our nation because of our government’s refusal to confront the growing threat of Islamic terrorism, and concerns over the prospects of continued attacks by our own government upon religious freedom.”

“At this point in the political process, because of our lack of engagement and involvement as Christians, not just in this election but in the government and culture as a whole, we are left with a choice of voting for the one who will do the least damage to our freedoms.”

“This is far from an ideal situation, but it is the reality in which we find ourselves and as difficult as it is, I refuse to find sanctuary on the sidelines and allow the country and culture to deteriorate even further by continuing the policies of the last 8 years,” concluded Perkins.

Via Reuters:

“Naturally I’m disappointed,” said Steve Scheffler, head of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “But, you know, the Bible tells me that we are all sinners saved by grace and I don’t think there’s probably a person alive that I know of that hasn’t made some mistakes in the past.” He said Clinton has peccadilloes of her own, most notably marital woes with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

“So yes, I will vote for Donald Trump. I’m not excusing his behavior at all. It’s disgusting,” he said.

(For more from the author of “Christian Leaders React to Trump Video Scandal” please click HERE)

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Hillary Loves Religious Freedom… Only for Muslim Foreign Nationals

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Hillary Clinton called for fact checkers to help her out tonight. At the risk of staying up the entire night debunking every word she spoke on policy, lets address what is perhaps the most scandalous part of the debate from a policy perspective. Hillary managed to flip two of the most foundational principles — religious liberty and sovereignty — upside down and inside out.

Early on in the debate, a Muslim voter, who was allegedly undecided, asked the following question:

There are 3.3 Muslims in the United States and I’m one of them. You’ve mentioned working with Muslim nations, but with islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being a threat to the country after the election is over.

After a brief back-and-forth between the candidates on refugee policy — one of the few moments when Trump was fully on message — Hillary made the following laughable, hypocritical, outrageous, and dangerous comment:

But it is important for us as a policy, you know, not to say as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you do that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty.

How do we do what he has advocated without causing great distress within our own country … are we going to have religious tests?

Remember folks, Hillary is the leader of the party that believes religious Christians and Jews (or Muslims or anyone else) must service homosexual or transgender events with their own private property. They must engage in involuntary servitude or have their livelihoods terminated unless they agree to violate their conscience; the “most sacred of property” rights, as Madison put it. They believe unelected judges can force a grocery store to include every type of contraception in their pharmacy section when 30 other pharmacies within driving distance sell the products. And they believe a county clerk who has served her jurisdiction for 27 years — predating the concept of a gay marriage –—should be thrown in jail for requesting that someone else sign the license, which in itself runs country to state law that was never changed statutorily.

No, Mrs. Clinton, our country wasn’t founded upon the notion that foreign nationals have an affirmative right to immigrate to this country. But it was founded upon the self-evident truth of natural law and nature’s God — the very God you rejected with your defense of judicial tyranny tonight — that Americans and those accepted into our society through mutual consent have the right to secure their property, earn a living, and practice their religious liberty. They most certainly have the right to not have their religion debased with their own business and property.

So how about those litmus tests? Hillary seems to have figured out how to implement religious tests when it comes to the religions she doesn’t like. Oddly, she has no problem replacing the real religious freedoms of Americans with a phantom and dangerous right for any particular immigrant or groups of immigrants to come here against the will of the people, even though many of them come from cultures that will not disagree with her chosen religion — the sexual revolution — in an agreeable and cordial fashion.

Under Hillary’s dangerous conception of the First Amendment, a view shared by the majority of the modern legal profession, an American Christian has no right to run a business without violating his religion, yet a Pakistani national can sue for discrimination for not being allowed to immigrate to our shores in the first place. This position is not only dangerous, especially during a time of war; it’s ignorant.

Given that Hillary will not read my book, which debunks her premise on both accounts of religious liberty and sovereignty, she would be wise to read one court case: Turner v. Williams, [194 U.S. 279, 290 (1904)]. In Turner, which was unanimous and is the most accepted area of settled law, the Court stated, “[R]ested on the accepted principle of international law, that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”

This is one “precedent” from the courts liberals don’t like to abide by.

That we have a presidential candidate who is this ignorant of our most foundational values of sovereignty and religious liberty should scare us all. Then again, it’s not like we have a Republican Party beating the drums on behalf of true religious liberty either. (For more from the author of “Hillary Loves Religious Freedom… Only for Muslim Foreign Nationals” please click HERE)

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Fraudulent Hillary Blasts the Very Tax Loopholes She Uses

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Today, Hillary Clinton stood before the nation to outline her vision for the American economy. During her speech, she was resolute in her differences with political nemesis, Donald Trump.

Clinton was correct; the policy positions she shares with Trump are few; their policy differences, many. Clinton would like to increase taxes, regulations, and labor union membership. Trump wants the exact opposite.

Yet, Clinton was most emphatic in highlighting the difference between the two candidates’ tax policies. Of course, Clinton took a page from the ole’, outdated Democratic playbook, claiming her Republican opponent is proposing tax cuts for the rich. And this time, Clinton can point to her opponent, a billionaire himself, who will benefit from his own policies.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, the “tax cuts for millionaires” line is an easy talking point for Democrats, since it plays into the emotions of the middle class that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. Yet, the facts paint a different picture: The rich pay more than 70 percent of all federal taxes; the top one percent of Americans pay 25 percent of all taxes. On the other hand, those at the bottom of the income ladder pay only 0.8 percent (yes, that’s zero point eight) of all taxes.

So, any tax cut at all will almost always have a larger impact on those who pay most in taxes.

Clinton would like to increase taxes on millionaires. Her proposal, as studied by the Tax Policy Center, will increase taxes by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. Among her liberal tax policies, Clinton would like to impose an “exit” tax on corporations seeking more favorable tax rates in other nations and a special “American Dream Tax” — meaning those who make millions will be levied a new special tax.

But perhaps NO ONE hates paying taxes more than the Clintons. In fact, the Clintons go to such lengths to avoid the very taxes they propose for others that some believe they are engaged in tax fraud.

First, Clinton highlighted (vigorously I might add) that Trump wants to eliminate the estate tax. The estate tax, otherwise known as the death tax, is a transfer of wealth to the federal government after a family member dies. Currently, the death tax has a relatively high threshold: Taxes apply to assets over $5 million per individual, or $10 million per couple. So, of course, they mostly apply to upper income families — Trump’s and Clinton’s included.

Conservatives have long believed the death tax is unjust since it re-taxes all those assets that had already been taxed. It’s a long-standing tradition for conservatives to propose its elimination, as Trump has done.

Today, however, Clinton trashed Trump for such a proposal. The true irony, of course, is that Clinton has set up legal tax shelters to avoid ever paying the death tax — the very tax that she thinks rich Americans should pay. Bloomberg News reported in 2014:

Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it.

How righteous of them.

Bloomberg also found that in 2010 the Clintons shifted their mansions into residential trusts. By doing so, any appreciation in the house will not be valued in the tax base. Experts believe this could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. In addition to their residential trusts, the Clintons also participate in life insurance trusts (also created in 2010). A life insurance trust allows the Clinton’s to avoid paying any death taxes.

How many of the ordinary Americans Clinton is supposedly “championing” on behalf of can place their homes into tax exempt residence trusts? Yah, me neither. Of course, these tax loopholes are legal, but the Clintons could have avoided such tax schemes in order to fulfill their “patriotic” defense of breaking up wealth held by the country’s top performers.

Yet, this is only the beginning of the Clintons’ hypocrisy.

The Clintons have been known to utilize five different shell companies, all registered to an address in Wilmington, Delaware, for the purposes of avoiding taxes. Actually, the Clintons aren’t even that discreet about it. The one address their shell companies use is also shared by 280,000 other companies for the purpose of avoiding taxes.

Bonnie Kristian writes in The Week:

[T]wo of the five [businesses] are tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton specifically. One, WJC, LLC, is used by the former president to collect consulting fees. The other ZFS Holdings, LLC, was used by the former Secretary of State to process her $5.5 million book advance from Simon & Schuster. Three additional shell companies belong to the Clinton Foundation.

And that brings us to the mother of all tax farces: the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation. In fact, a charity watchdog, the Sunlight Foundation, called the Clinton Foundation a “slush fund.” For starters, the charity work by the Clinton Foundation is suspect. In 2013, the Clinton Foundation raised more than $140 million, yet only spent $9 million on charity. Interestingly enough, the Foundation spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits, $10 millions of luxury office space; another $10 million for “conferences and conventions,” while the rests sits in coffers presumable awaiting a Clinton retirement.

In numerous instances, the Foundation has been questioned as to whether it’s merely been a scheme to pay off friends. The New York Post reported that Chelsea Clinton’s friend, Eric Braverman, took over the Foundation in 2013 and made a killing — earning $275,000 in just five months.

In addition to paying exorbitant salaries to friends and family, a typical tax avoidance technique by the rich to shelter taxes, the Clintons use the Foundation to subsidize travel expenses, office space, and rental properties that would make a king jealous.

The profits that the Clintons realize through their foundation have been suspicious for some time. Take for example Hillary’s 2012 push for the US—Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Included in that agreement was the ability to facilitate simplified financial transactions between the United States and Panama. That agreement may have paved the way for Panama to become one of the world’s largest tax shelters, as we now know came to fruition in the great world-wide offshore havens set up by the firm Mossak Fonseca.

As The Nation highlights in one article, “Although Hillary denounced Mossak Fonseca’s dealing on cue after the Panama Papers story broke, a number of individuals and multinationals that have contributed to the foundation used MF to establish offshore accounts.”

Furthermore, in May, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the Clinton foundation was shelling out millions in untaxed donations that didn’t fit the charity definition, per se, but their friends. In that article, the WSJ revealed that more than $2 million was committed to a for-profit company, Energy Pioneer Solutions, founded by Scott Kleeb, a close friend of the Clintons. But it gets juicier. Brietbart news reports,

Not only did the [Clinton Foundation] potentially violate tax-exempt charitable foundation law by acting for private benefit, but Bill Clinton personally endorsed the company’s request to former Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a federal grant of $812,000.

This anecdote is just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless stories of Hillary selling political favors while she was Secretary of State for donations to her very own Foundation. For example, the less than democratic and perhaps American-terrorist endorsing state of Saudi Arabia, donated between $10 to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. Fishy? I’d say so.

This is the difference between the two candidates. Whether you like Trump or not, you get the transparent attempt to lower taxes for both the rich — and the poor. Yet, Clinton will sell the American public a policy that makes the tax code fair by increasing taxes on the rich or closing tax loopholes only the wealthy can access. The sad fact is that Clinton is a dishonest human being who herself has been living off tax loopholes and exploiting the tax code perhaps more than anyone. My bet is that Clinton is interested in a tax code that benefits her wealthy buddies far more than you can ever imagine. (For more from the author of “Fraudulent Hillary Blasts the Very Tax Loopholes She Uses” please click HERE)

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New WikiLeaks Document Dump Targets Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s Campaign Chairman

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WikiLeaks published more than 2,000 documents Friday that it said are emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the emails focus on Podesta’s “communications relating to nuclear energy, and media handling over donations to the Clinton Foundation from mining and nuclear interests.”

One of the major topics of the emails is the State Department’s support for the Russian takeover of the U.S. firm Uranium One in 2010.

The book Clinton Cash alleged that Uranium One shipped millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Further, The New York Times reported that $2.35 million was donated to the Clinton Foundation from Uranium One.

“Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors,” The Times reported.

The Times also noted that not long after Russia moved to acquire the majority of Uranium One, former President Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.

Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary of state for economic, energy and business affairs, has said Clinton played no role in the deal.

However, an email released by WikiLeaks shows a link between Fernandez and the Clinton campaign.

“John, It was good to talk to you this afternoon, and I appreciate your taking the time to call. As I mentioned, I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton, and would welcome your advice and help in steering me to the right persons in the campaign,” the email reads.

The email dump also includes an email with snippets from remarks Clinton made at various speeches.

In speaking to a Goldman Sachs event, she noted that in terms of middle America, “I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten [my past].”

A speech to General Electric touched on politics and money.

“I really admire the people who subject themselves to it. Even when I, you know, think they should not be elected president, I still think, well, you know, good for you I guess, you’re out there promoting democracy and those crazy ideas of yours,” Clinton said.

” … in my campaign — I lose track, but I think I raised $250 million or some such enormous amount, and in the last campaign President Obama raised $1.1 billion, and that was before the super PACs and all of this other money just rushing in … So we’re kind of in the wild west, and, you know, it would be very difficult to run for president without raising a huge amount of money and without having other people supporting you because your opponent will have their supporters,” she said. (For more from the author of “New WikiLeaks Document Dump Targets Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s Campaign Chairman” please click HERE)

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EPA Issues 57-State Climate Warning!

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Strike that. It’s a 50-State warning. That 57 came from elsewhere in the Obama administration.

Well, 50 is less than 57, so the warning is not as dire as you might have thought. Yet it’s still serious. Everybody knows that our beneficent government knows best and that all its cautions should be heeded. This is why you should listen to its bureaucratic experts, who are saying “climate change” will have “impacts.”

Impacts!

“Very real impacts,” says the EPA. And what is real is not a fantasy. So get ready to rumble, weather wise. But before thinking about that, we have to understand what “climate change” is.

Here is a scientific fact. In 1936, a typical year, the climate of the earth was perfect. Every afternoon everywhere was sunny and a clement 78 degrees on Mister Fahrenheit’s scale, even in winter. The rain fell in amounts sufficient to water every crop, fill every stream, and extinguish every forest fire — and then it stopped. Floods didn’t happen. There was just enough wind to loft every kite, and no more.

Of course, it’s true that an anomalous heatwave killed over 12,000 Americans in 1936. But still, since there was quite a lot less carbon dioxide in the air then than now, the climate was necessarily better.

The climate was also better in 1886, long before people were burning gasoline on their commutes to work. It was better because there was less atmospheric carbon dioxide, even less than in 1936. And it was better even though the USA was hit by seven hurricanes, the most since records began to be kept (which wasn’t that long ago).

The climate continued to be better than it is now, right up through the 1960s and 1970s when the consensus was that global cooling was going to kill many people. Good thing it never happened (the government had not yet reached its current state of perfection).

Then the climate changed sometime in the mid 1980s into what it is now, with death, doom, destruction on every side. Consult the media for the latest horror. Why did this happen? As hinted at above, a miniscule increase in the atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide caused the climate to change.

Scientifically speaking, all climate change is bad. Nothing good can ever come of the climate changing. The climate in the past was always better than it is now. The government and environmentalists are in agreement that any change whatsoever to the climate must necessarily be towards greater evil. This is why we must “fight” climate change.

So it’s 2016 and the climate has changed, and will continue to change unless the government can control all aspects of the economy. Sure, you might not think it’s so bad where you live, and that the weather hasn’t been anything unusual. But if you concentrate only on the good news, you’ll miss the important scientific fact that things could be worse. And they will be if the climate continues to change.

And that’s where the EPA comes in, to tell of the “implications of climate change.” The outlook is bleak.

For instance, the climate has changed since 1980, and all climate change is bad. Corn production in 1980 was about 7.5 billion bushels, changing to around 14 billion bushels in 2015 amidst the changing climate. Statisticians call this kind of signal a “correlation.” The EPA warns that climate change in corn-growing Michigan could exacerbate the risk of increased production. Farmers might run out of bushels if the correlation persists, a disaster caused by climate change.

The EPA warns of climate change in Iowa. They say “Hot days can be unhealthy — even dangerous.” Cold days can be unhealthy and dangerous, too. Climate change puts Iowans in danger of both, whereas before climate change such calamities were not possible; or at least they were not caused by climate change. A significant problem, as in Michigan, are “bumper crops” of corn, soybeans, and other foodstuffs. This is causing prices for food to drop. Climate change is thus bad news for those wanting higher prices.

It isn’t only agriculture. Take Texas, where the state GDP was $815 billion in 1997, a time of rapid climate change, according to the EPA. By 2015, amidst a still-changing climate, the GDP had changed to $1,475 billion. The EPA warns “Texas’s climate is changing.” If the observed correlation between GDP and climate change holds, we could see even more changes like these to the GDP.

We could do each state, but you have the picture now. Ravage after ravage. This is why it is a good thing the EPA warned of the dire consequences of climate change a month before the election. Voters will have the chance to choose between Hillary, who has vowed to cease climate change, and Trump, who has said climate change is not especially worrisome. (For more from the author of “EPA Issues 57-State Climate Warning!” please click HERE)

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