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 Would you want your daughter working at a Clinton White House?
Michael Scheuer, former CIA bin Laden unit chief, spent two decades hatching strategies to keep Americans safe. If there is a single person I would rather have on my team to safeguard the interests of America, I would certainly include former New York police chief Ray Kelly. And America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And there would always be a seat for former CIA legend Gary Berntsen. In the end, however, I come back to Dr. Scheuer every time.
OK then so Mike is a voice of experience every American should pay attention to with virtual reverence. And I am afraid Clinton supporters will not like what they read here about the dreadful Clintons.
Dr. Scheuer labels Hillary as a “corrupt liar” and a “debauched Wall Street madam” And as for her husband, “the white Bill Cosby.” Most Americans would recoil with horror at any thought of Bill Clinton, once again prowling the corridors of the White House.
 
 
  
 
Here’s how Mike sees things, and it is not a pretty picture. Truly quite shocking.
This month the two parties’ identical foreign policies were highlighted when two centurions of the elder Bush’s New World Order – and therefore endless war for Americans – endorsed Hillary Clinton for the presidency. Brent Scowcroft and Richard Armitage have hopped on that female felon’s gangster-filled train…
Mrs. Clinton’s only “relations” with foreign leaders are ones of peddling her influence to them and thereby serving their interests not America’s, while enriching herself and he husband, the white Bill Cosby. Her “strong and reliable” nature is one of deceit, arrogance, and bloodthirstiness, best shown by her letting four Americans die in Benghazi rather than admit her Libya policy was a reeking failure, and by her eagerness to get U.S. Marines killed in multiple wars to ensure that every Mrs. Muhammad around the world can vamp, vote, and abort. As to being uniquely qualified to be president, she is unique only in her lack of any qualification but relentless failure. In all of this, Scowcroft follows the path of the execrable Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama for the presidency, thereby inflicting on his countrymen a man who, while Powell was a general, would not have been given the command of a squad.
Hillary Clinton is simply a corrupt liar who is obsessed only with money, Huma Abedin, and wars waged to make sure women retain and expand the right to murder human beings. The doddering and clueless socialist Bernie Sanders, and that screeching, ever-on-the-warpath virago Elizabeth Warren have proven themselves to be complete political whores, who eagerly ditched their so-called anti-Wall Street “movement” to seek the favor of that dowdy, greedy, and debauched Wall Street madam, Hillary Clinton.
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Cato Institute’s director of polling, Emily Ekins, explains to Americans exactly what must happen to get the Libertarian party’s Gary Johnson into the debates.
I have been writing in support of a multi-party system for America much the same as exists in France and Austria as good examples. America has outlived the two-party system where both entrenched major parties are on the payroll of the neocon-centric military/industrial complex. You and I no longer have a meaningful place at the table. This situation must change and 2016 is the year to bring about the change most Americans know must come.
Fifteen percent is the magic number Libertarian presidential candidate and former governor Gary Johnson needs to reach to earn his voice in the 2016 election.
By capturing the support of 15 percent of voters in national public opinion polls, Johnson could join the major party’s presidential candidates on the primetime debate stage. With both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates disliked at historic levels and a rising share of political independents frustrated with the two major parties, this is the year a third-party candidate like Johnson has a realistic chance of getting onto the debate stage.
Johnson would need to receive an invitation to participate in the debates from the Commission on Presidential debates (CPD), a private, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) organization that has sponsored the general election presidential debates since 1988. The CPD is not a government entity, nor does it receive government funding. But it is a creation of the two major parties, co-chaired at its inception by both the Republican and Democratic parties’ national chairman.
Next, Johnson would need to have the support of at least 15 percent of “the national electorate” as determined by the average of five selected national public opinion polling organizations’ most recently publicly reported results, at the time eligibility is determined.
The key for Gary Johnson is to convince the major polling organizations to include him in their polls—and to continue to do so. He may be in luck. The 2012 organizations that are polling the 2016 election have included him in their match-ups against Clinton and Trump, with Johnson garnering: Fox (12 percent), CBS (11 percent), NBC/Wall Street Journal (10 percent), ABC/Washington Post (7 percent), an average of roughly 10 percent. Other highly regarded pollsters such as CNN/ORC (9 percent) Quinnipiac (5 percent) and Monmouth (9 percent) have also asked about Johnson this cycle, although they were not included in CPD’s 2012 recognized polls.
He’s not there yet. But Johnson absolutely has a chance of getting to 15 percent in the polls.
If Johnson is on the eligibility cusp, then the CPD may exercise subjectivity in determining whether or not he is allowed to participate in the debates. For instance, it is unclear how the CPD defines “support…of the national electorate” since in practice pollsters have different methods of determining who likely voters are and thus what is the national electorate.
Read more from Gary Johnson in his books America’s Best Hope: A Libertarian President, and Seven Principles of Good Government.
 
 
More from Emily Ekins here:
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  “Help Isn’t Coming!” heads the introduction to
The Ultimate Situational Survival Guide. “It may sound harsh, but the reality of most crisis situations is that you’re going to have to be your own first responder.” And that in a nutshell is how I want you to think about your money and your investments. As your survival guy I’m taking full responsibility to provide you with all of the information I believe is necessary to help make you a better survivalist.
The minute you start thinking this way, as a survivalist, the minute your entire view of the world changes. It happens that fast. Your job is to take hold of this mindset and make sure you maintain it in good times and in bad. It’s not complicated. But it’s hard to do. One of the wonderful rewards of a survivalist mindset is you get to think in terms of how things work. For example, how do you make a fire last 8 hours? You make a plan, you do the work, hope for the best and plan for the worst. You make things happen. You believe in yourself. Help isn’t coming. And that’s OK. I believe in you.
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Who is Rajiv K. Fernando, you might ask. Mr. Fernando, explains Kimberely A. Strassel in the WSJ, is a “one-time Chicago securities trader who in July of 2011 somehow found himself sitting on the International Security Advisory Board, with the ability to access the nation’s most sensitive intelligence.”
Mr. Fernando had no background that would have qualified him to sit on the ISAB alongside the likes of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, former Defense Secretary William Perry, a United Nations chief weapons inspector, members of Congress, and nuclear scientists. That Mr. Fernando didn’t belong was apparent. “We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News. So how exactly did he get there?
Thanks to Citizens United, a watchdog group, and ABC News, Americans are finally finding out. As Ms. Strassel reports:
Mr. Fernando, before his plum appointment, had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation. He had been a top bundler for Mrs. Clinton in her 2008 presidential run, and later a major Obama fundraiser. He gave tens of thousands more to a political group that helped Hillary pay off her 2008 campaign debt by renting her email list.
The 2011 emails reveal that the State Department knew it had a problem on its hands. “We must protect the Secretary’s and Under Secretary’s name,” the press aide warned. Ms. Mills, the messages say, asked staff to “stall” the news organization. Damage control came in the form of Mr. Fernando’s quick resignation, on grounds of “additional time needed to devote to his business.” Uh huh.
This is how Hillary Clinton operates. Donald Trump, for all the trouble his out-loud musings cause him, can nonetheless take credit for perfectly distilling, in five short words, what would be the defining nature of another Clinton presidency: The politics of personal profit. Give money to the Clinton Foundation; get special favors. Figure out a way to slip the Clintons some speech money, or cattle-futures trades, or donations; get rewarded in the political arena.
Mr. Fernando continues to donate. He has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. If he keeps that up, “he’ll likely be in the running to become President Hillary’s own secretary of state.”
In a related article on the Foundation, Ms. Strassel writes, “Clinton allies are insisting to all who listen that the foundation exists to do good. It does. It exists to do very good things for Hillary and Bill and all their longtime allies. And in that, it has succeeded beautifully.”
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Nay! The governing document of the United States of America, the Constitution is only 4,000 words long. Thanks in large measure to Chief Justice John Marshall (1801/1835), the Constitution has, all too often, been twisted and shaped like wax (see Jefferson) into any form the supreme court wished.
 
The TPP agreement comprises 30 chapters. The Cato Institute produces a back-pocket booklet Constitution that includes the Declaration of Independence, an excellent Preface by Cato’s director for it’s Center for Constitutional Studies, and the Constitution, Roger Pilon. The section on the Constitution alone covers but 30 pages!
What can any logical American imagine will be the fate of a 5,500, 30-chapter managed agreement?
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Debbie and my home away from home is in Boston, by far and away our favorite big city in America. I started visiting the old Ritz Boston, now the Taj Boston, (not the current ghastly Ritz rendition) in 1964 after Ed Rosenberg, a prior Babson professor, had given me my entry job in the securities industry. And note I said visit! Certainly on the micro salary Ed was paying me, I could not afford one of those luxurious, strato-priced Ritz suites.
In the sixties, the Ritz had elevator operators using a great brass wheel as the control. Lovely. In later years, while beavering away at the international research and trading investment house Model Roland & Co., I held forth with memorable breakfasts with many of Boston’s premier institutional analysts and portfolio managers. It was so long ago that both Jack Bogle and John Neff were still at Wellington Management Co., my favorite institutional account. I remember like it was yesterday one wintry night in particular at the Ritz. I had scheduled what I had hoped would be a most magnificent and productive dinner party. Well, one of the worst snowstorms in history reduced my guest list to only a handful of the heartiest, thirstiest in-town souls.
I now go back almost 55 years at the Taj/Ritz. I have known all the marvelous Taj employees pictured here since each’s earliest days at Taj Boston. And that even includes Lindsey “Mr. Taj Front Door Ambassador,” who first came through the Taj/Ritz front door over 31 years ago. I rely on concierge desk facilitators Sarah and James for all our Boston/Taj special situations. Sarah was the first person I introduced family members to on the occasion of each’s initial visit to Taj/Boston. Vaughn and James are usually the two old Taj friends Debbie and I greet first after our welcoming assistance by Lindsey. We also look forward to seeing Ray and Giovanni when we visit the Taj. We would have been greatly distressed had any of our favorite Boston people left the Taj to move over to the new Ritz, but none, thankfully, made the move. Nor, of course, did Debbie and I.
Click to view slideshow.
Warm Regards,
Richard C. Young
Chairman
Richard C. Young & Co. Ltd (Naples & Newport)
Young Research & Publishing Inc. (founded 1989)
Richardcyoung.com (the insight and incite site)
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The Newport Daily News had a wonderful feature on Middletown, RI resident, Pete Babcock, whose 42-year career in the NBA culminated in a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Babcock got his start when he dropped out of law school. “I always was enamored with the NBA, and the Phoenix Suns were a relatively new team,” Babcock said. “They started in 1968 as an expansion team. In those days you could buy a general admission ticket for $3.50 and there were like 3,000 people at the game, so you could go sit anywhere you wanted to sit. I just thought if there were anything in the world, this would be what I would do. But I had no idea how to get there. So I thought I would teach myself about the NBA.” And that he did.
Making use of his fundamental basketball knowledge, Babcock spent a year familiarizing himself with the professional game.
“I started videotaping NBA games that were on TV and writing reports on teams just for myself,” Babcock said. “I had a Bulls file, a Celtics file and a 76ers file, about 10 teams total. I charted their plays and I wrote reports on their players’ strengths and weaknesses just for myself — just to learn.
“At the end of the year, I thought the people who would know if the reports were any good were the teams themselves. So I wrote letters to teams and basically said, ‘You don’t know me. I’m a high school coach in Arizona. Here is the report I wrote on your team this year. If you think there is any validity to it, I’d like to scout for you for free. It won’t cost you a penny.”
Several teams wrote back and turned down his request. But the New Orleans Jazz gave him the thumbs up.
More on Pete Babcock here:
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Carlos Arredondo is an immigrant from Costa Rica whose 20 year old son Alexander was killed in the Iraq War in 2004. When the Marine casualty assistant officers showed up at his home to tell him his son had been killed, Arredondo broke into the Marines’ van and set himself on fire, covering much of his body with second degree burns.
He took up antiwar activism, and during an antiwar protest in 2007, he was confronted by members of the “Gathering of Eagles,” a pro-war group. One of the pro-war counterprotesters snatched away a portrait of Arredondo’s deceased son, because he felt that Alexander’s death shouldn’t be used for the political purposes Arredondo intended. When Arredondo attempted to retrieve his son’s photo, several of the Eagles attacked him, reportedly “kicking him in the head, legs, stomach and back.”
People don’t behave like this over tax policy. What is it about hot-button nationalist issues like war and peace that make people so exercised?
Nationalism is about identity. Questions regarding Who We Are have caused mankind anxiety and difficulty since the dawn of time, and as the national state has risen to such prominence, in a sense it is natural that our national identity would become a large part of our own identities.
But as Arredondo’s encounter with the Gathering of Eagles suggests, the 330 million people who make up the United States do not always share answers to questions about who we are. To tell a militarist that his national tribe is really about peace and humility, or to tell a cultural conservative that his national tribe is about pushing outward the boundaries of normalcy, is to tell someone that his most cherished beliefs clash with one of the most basic elements of his identity.
Creating even more tension is the fact that nation-states are Imagined Communities. The broker in Connecticut and the line cook in East L.A. actually share almost nothing that would bind them together independent of the federal government. Their culture, their hobbies, their beliefs, and their religious faiths are different. So contemporary American nationalism by definition must elide these glaring differences or risk revealing that all that we really share is an Olympic team and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. It has to create something both bigger and more abstract.
And whatever happened to Arredondo? His younger son Brian, who had thought of joining the Marines after Alex’s death, instead committed suicide in 2011. Arredondo later took up anti-suicide activism in addition to antiwar activism, which led him to attend the Boston Marathon in support of those running in memory of his two deceased sons. It happened to be the 2013 Boston Marathon, though, and when the bombs went off, Arredondo became one of the most iconic figures of that tragedy as well.
Seems like Arredondo’s lived through about as much America as anyone.
Arredondo speaks here:
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Many conservative groups continue to scold American voters for supporting Donald Trump because Mr. Trump is “an existential threat to conservatism.” As Tucker Carlson noted last January in Politico, voters are being scolded for supporting Trump because it would be bad for conservatism.
And who is doing the scolding? Those think-tanks pushing for open borders and nation-building, for TPP and various trade deals at the expense of American jobs; groups that have an addiction to the neocon-centric military-industrial complex. Heading the list are AEI, the Hoover Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Rand Corporation and Heritage Foundation, to name a few. Notably absent from this group is the Cato Institute, which may be the only think-tank in America whose philosophical footing is based on preserving basic liberties that are the foundation of a free society and to secure that liberty “through limited government and the rule of law.”
In explaining Mr. Trump, Mr. Carlson argues that “Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though, the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn’t.”
Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. … Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.”
Frederick W. Smith, chairman and CEO of FedEx Corp., wrote this about the Cato Institute: “There is no institution that, person for person, dollar for dollar, idea for idea, has been even close to the Cato Institute in advancing fundamental principles.”
More from Carlson here:
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