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 Pat Buchanan, writing at americanconservative.com, tells readers that on the main issues—Americanism and avoiding nation-building abroad—“America is all in with Trump.”
Trump believes populism and nationalism are the future of America, and wants to keep saying so. Nor is this stance inconsistent with recapturing the ground lost in the weeks since he was running even with Hillary Clinton.
What is the case against Clinton his campaign must make?
She is a political opportunist who voted for a war in Iraq, in which she did not believe, that proved ruinous for her country. As secretary of state, she pushed for the overthrow and celebrated the assassination of a Libyan dictator, resulting in a North African haven for al-Qaida and ISIS.
Her reset with Russia was a diplomatic joke.
Her incompetence led to the death of a U.S. ambassador and three brave Americans in Benghazi, and she subsequently lied to the families of the dead heroes about why they had died.
Her statements about her server and emails were so perjurious they almost caused FBI Director James Comey to throw up in public.
What America has in Hillary Clinton is a potential president with the charisma but not the competence of Angela Merkel, and the ethics of Dilma Rousseff.
On Americanism versus globalism, the country is with Trump. On an America First foreign policy that keeps us out of trillion-dollar, no-win Middle East wars, the country is with Trump.
Americans may not love Vladimir Putin, but they do not wish to go to war with Russia, which we avoided in half a century of Cold War.
Americans do not want to go nation-building abroad, but to start the nation-building at home. On coming down with both feet on rioters, looters, arsonists and Black-Lives-Matter haters who call cops “pigs,” America is all in with Donald Trump.
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 Former CIA bin Laden chief offers some overdue strategic advice to Donald Trump:
Mr. Trump, you have fallen into a snare placed for you by the Republican establishment people on your team, most of the media, and by Hillary Clinton and her advisers.
Mr. Trump, THIS IS REPUBLIC KILLING BULLSHIT!!!
Clear, commonsense, patriotic, and non-complex ideas brought you to the dance and won you the nomination, do not throw that success away by the playing the bipartisan enemy’s confuse-bilk-and-deceive-the-voters game called “complexity”.
Try the following:
Organizing Principle: AMERICA FIRST
• America is broke and its military is broken, no more wars unless attacked.
• ISIS is an American problem only if we are attacked at home; otherwise, let the Islamists’ real enemies fight and win or lose on their own, while we belatedly act to defend North America.
• Kill all of the national government’s student loan programs and force the universities to compete, as well as to decide if they want to lower their extortionate, debt-creating tuition.
• Uncompromising defense of the 2nd Amendment, and talk about the legal and constitutional option it gives all Americans to — as a last resort — offer armed resistance to the tyranny being imposed on the republic by both party establishments, the media, and the academy.
• Build the wall, enforce the law and deport all illegals; and ban all immigration for 5 or 10 years so there is no supportable claim that one group is being discriminated against.
• Repeat, repeat, and repeat, “Only lower taxes for all can pave the road to cutting the debt, creating jobs, and rebuilding the middle class and military.”
• Do not “reach out” to Black Americans, both party establishments want you to look like a fool and fail. Most Blacks have voted like mindless slaves for 50 years and are likely to keep doing so for the foreseeable future. Those who want to de-slave and attain dignity and jobs will have to make that decision for themselves and act accordingly.
• Back the police full-up so long as their actions are lawful, and offer no “sympathy” or “understanding” for thugs, assassins, and looters who are “discouraged”, “frustrated”, “unemployed”, and “without hope”.
• No multi-country deals, only bilateral; (a) no multi-country, trade-regulating organizations that negat
• No foreign, financial and military aid.
• As few allies as possible, none permanent; (b) none that can get us into their wars automatically; and (c) withdraw from NATO.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
Osama Bin Laden
Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq
Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America
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Source: Russia Beyond The Headlines
The renewed Tu-160M2 will be able to fly at an altitude level of 60,000 feet, where no existing anti-aircraft or missile defense system can reach it.
At the end of 2016 the Russian Defense Ministry will receive the first delivery of the renewed NK-32 engines for the Tu-160M2 strategic missile-carrying bombers.
According to the developers, the new engine will help the plane fly up to the stratosphere at an altitude of 60,000 feet.
“The new NK-32 version can work not only as a reactive plane engine but also as a rocket engine. Thanks to this the Tu-160M2 will be able to cruise at a height where no enemy anti-aircraft system can strike it,” said a source at the Russian defense industry.
The modernized plane’s first flight will take place in 2018.
According to Russian air force chief Viktor Bondarev, the Defense Ministry plans to buy about 50 Tu-160M2 planes.
Serial construction of the aircraft will begin in 2021.
Tupolev and GosNIIAS developing avionics for the updated Tu-160
Working out the logic of human-machine interface on the complex glass display.
GosNIIAS (GosNIIAS) and the company Tupolev carried out avionics system integration for the new national strategic bomber Tu-160. Its avionics and its innovative system layout – Modular Avionics – will be the main focus of the updated aircraft system.
Since the fifties of the last century, the US military has designed about a dozen different bombers. “Soviet scientists were much more consistent in the development of basic models like the Tu-95 and Tu-22M3. The emergence of a new aviation complex Tu-160 with its target functions and ability of flying at supersonic speed, particularly of weapons, and the ability to overcome long distances have changed the strategic balance of power in the world “, – says Yevgeny Fedosov, Research Manager GosNIIAS.
Why is Russia recreating the Tu-160?
New Russian bomber PAK DA
Currently Russia is working on the construction of new-generation strategic bombers, the PAK DA (an acronym for “prospective aviation complex for long-range aviation”). However, the development of the new aircraft is being delayed: The first unit will appear only some time between 2020 and 2025.
“The Russian Aerospace Forces Command is now creating a “medium-term” substitution for the PAK DA. A series of long-range aviation planes will soon finish their alert missions and it will be necessary to conduct a planned substitution of the technology with new armed planes,” explained Dmitry Litovkin, military observer at the daily newspaper Izvestiya.
The source in the defense industry told RBTH that the project could become the most expensive program in the Defense Ministry in the 2020s. Its cost is comparable to the construction of new nuclear submarines from the Borei series, which carry the Bulava missiles – $5-7 billion.
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“It’s despicable,” writes Rod Dreher of the American Conservative. As many as 110,000 people lost their homes and losses will mount to nearly $21 billion, according to estimates from flood-ravaged Louisiana. So, asks Mr. Dreher, where’s Hillary?
Do not believe for one second that there’s any reason why Hillary Clinton cannot get here. Donald Trump got here, spent a few hours, then left. So could she, if she wanted to. But she would di$appoint her donor$.
This who Hillary Clinton is. It’s all about money and access. You know I’m not a Trump supporter, but I absolutely can see why people would vote for him to throw a rock through these people’s collective window.
According to CNN:
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, buoyed by rising poll numbers and a sputtering Donald Trump campaign, are using August to raise tens of millions of dollars in cash before the fall sprint.
Clinton will embark on a three-day, eight-fundraiser trip to California next week, headlining a mix of star studded events with tech icons, athletes and movie stars.
On Monday, August 22, Clinton will headline a top dollar fundraiser at the Beverly Hills home of Cheryl and Haim Saban, the billionaire owner of Univision and one of Clinton’s wealthiest backers.
Clinton and her aides will then head down the street to another fundraiser at the Beverly Hills home of Hall of Fame basketball player and businessman Magic Johnson. That event, which according to Clinton donors in California is expected to raise millions of dollars, will also be hosted by Willow Bay and Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation.
The next day, Clinton will headline two events in Laguna Beach, including a $33,400-per-person event hosted by Stephen Cloobeck, the CEO of Diamond Resorts.
Later in the day, according to invites obtained by CNN, Clinton will headline a fundraiser at the home of Leonardo DiCaprio, the Oscar-winning actor known for his roles in Titanic, The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall Street.
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Vanity Fair takes an in depth look:
Google Abdullah Omar Nasseef, the man who set up the Abedins in Jidda, and a host of right-wing screeds pop up. Though he is a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government and sits on the king’s Shura Council, there are claims that Nasseef once had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—a charge that he has denied through a spokesman—and that he remains a “major” figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”
Google Yusuf al-Qaradawi and you’ll find even more right-wing hysteria. Says McCarthy, who has conducted something of a personal crusade on the question of the Abedin family’s purported connections, “The Union of Good is a designated terrorist organization and Qaradawi is the leading global jurisprudent”—a term McCarthy prefers to “cleric”—“of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has issued fatwas calling for suicide bombings in the Palestinian territories and in Israel and has called for the killings of American soldiers in Iraq.”
It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal.
In June 2012, then congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four conservative congressmen wrote to the State Department warning that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government. The letter specifically cited Abedin: “Huma Abedin has three family members—her late father, her mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations,” they wrote.
Over the years Huma has served in several positions, with increasingly important-sounding titles. She has been Hillary’s “body woman,” her traveling chief of staff, a senior adviser, and a deputy chief of staff when Hillary was secretary of state. Now, based in Brooklyn, she is the vice-chair of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign. But whatever the title, the job she performs for Hillary has always been essentially the same: confessor, confidante, and constant companion. It’s safe to say that over the years Abedin and Hillary have spent more time together than either has with her husband.
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On The Issues offers insights on presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s views on education.
No student loans; they cause higher tuition:
Q: How would your plans for education include student loans and grants?
JOHNSON: My plans don’t include doing anything when it comes to student loans. The reason for the higher cost in higher education rests with the fact that there are those student loans available. Because those loans are guaranteed, kids are graduating from college, literally strapped with [the equivalent of] a home mortgage. I’m a believer in free markets. I suggest that if student loans did not exist–and I am not advocating that–tuition would be a lot lower because colleges and universities want to deliver their product, and if there weren’t as many kids going to school because it costs too much, they would find ways to lower their price. They haven’t met that necessity; they don’t see that as a necessity because all students can get student loans. Hence the high cost of college education, where you see the costs of other goods and services dropping.
(Source: Online Town Hall – Web Q&A on UncensoredTV.net , 2 Nov 2011)
Education Dept. takes 16 cents for every 11 cents it gives:
Q: What as president would you seriously do about a massive overreach of big government into the classroom?
JOHNSON: I’m promising to submit a balanced budget to Congress in the year 2013. That’s a 43% reduction in federal spending. I am going to promise to advocate the abolishment of the federal Department of Education. The federal Department of Education gives each state 11 cents out of every dollar that every state spends, but it comes with 16 cents worth of strings attached. So what America does not understand is that it’s a negative to take federal money. Give it to 50 laboratories of innovation, the states, to improve on, and that’s what we’ll see: dramatic improvement.
(Source: 2011 GOP Google debate in Orlando FL , 22 Sep 2011)
Abolish Departments of Education and HUD
Q: Which programs will you terminate?
JOHNSON: There are currently two that I advocate abolishing: the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Q: Do you favor a balanced budget amendment?
JOHNSON: I do–but the problem is that passing balanced budgets for future years is what we do and it takes away the immediate problem and kicks it down the road.
(Source: Interview by Scott Holleran on scottholleran.com blog , 21 Aug 2011)
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Central banks are running this market. It’s not real. It feels like a ghost town. But what are investors to do? Well, you may be aware that pensions are writing puts on volatility. In other words they’re offering downside protection to investors. Nice business in calm markets, but if the markets do go down, pensions will be on the hook. It’s yet another short-sighted view on the part of the so called fiduciaries. Yes, markets are calm. But as we enter the heart of hurricane season New Englanders and those who live on the Eastern Seaboard know it’s better to be wary of the calm and to be ready for the storm. As an investor, your financial survival depends on you being ready and you being patient while others are being antsy. I like what James Mackintosh of the WSJ writes here:
Wall Street has long seen central-bank action through the lens of the options market, since Alan Greenspan’s tenure as Fed chairman. The “Greenspan put” has under current Fed chief Janet Yellen become the “Yellen put,” named for an option used to protect against falling prices.
If the Fed offers free insurance, there is no point buying your own, which ought to keep the price of puts—that is, implied volatility—down.
Faith in how far central banks will protect against losses comes and goes, though. In market-speak, the Yellen put is less out of the money if a smaller price fall pushes the Fed to act. At the moment, investors seem to think the put is barely out of the money at all.
The danger, then, is not so much complacency about markets, but complacency about central banks. The lesson of the past seven years is that policy makers will step in every time disaster strikes. But investors tempted to rely on the central banks should note that disasters did still strike, and markets had big falls before help arrived. The time to buy insurance is when it is cheap, and for the U.S. stock market, that is now.
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Economics may be the dismal science, but international relations is right up there. Even in the wake of that stomach-churning picture of the shell-shocked Syrian boy, ask an international security specialist what he or she thinks about the Syrian civil war, and you’re likely to end up with a list of general research findings like this one, from almost two and a half years ago:
- civil wars last really long;
- the more factions participating, the longer they take;
- most civil wars don’t end with the vaunted “political solution,” but rather a battlefield victory; and
- the ones that do end with political solutions hold better when the settlements reflect the military balance of power and get enforced by interested third parties.
In other words, when it comes to Syria, we’re probably doomed, at least for the short term.
Even the UN Special Envoy for Syria, whose job is to be idealistic, cashiered a humanitarian meeting on Syria after all of eight minutes last week. Why? Because
in Syria what we are hearing and seeing is only fighting, offensives, counter-offensives, rockets, barrel bombs, mortars, hellfire cannons, napalm, chlorine, snipers, air strikes, suicide bombers.
Not one single convoy has so far reached any of the humanitarian besieged areas this month, not one single convoy, and why? Because of one thing: fighting.
The priority clearly at the moment, at least from what we see, is fighting.
The grim truth, gleaned from scholarship and events on the battlefield, is that this terrible war probably is going to end when one side wins it. Not when, after hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced, the sides just sort of shrug and conclude that it was all a big mistake. Enmities are hardening, deepening, as the brutality continues.
It’s into this reality that almost-certain Hillary SecDef Michele Fluornoy growled this to NPR:
I don’t think the Russians or the Iranians or Assad are going to seriously come to the table until they’re convinced that they can’t win this militarily, and that means ensuring that the opposition holds its own.
In this construction, our war aim is to ensure that the Russians and the Iranians and Assad do not win the war. To that end, the opposition doesn’t need to win, which it almost certainly cannot do, but merely “hold its own” such that Assad and Co. feel “they can’t win this militarily.”
What you’ve heard there is a recipe for ensuring that the war wears on even longer.
If our interest in Syria is about high politics: about our, or Russia’s, or Iran’s, position in the Middle East, then the humanitarian disaster in the country is simply an unhappy consequence of our pursuit of the national interest. We’re prolonging a civil war in pursuit of a worse outcome for our adversaries.
If our interest in Syria is humanitarian, you’d like to hear a prospective Secretary of Defense saying something other than that we’re aiming at building up–and bleeding out–the opposition just enough to make the settlement terms a bit more unfavorable for Vladimir Putin.
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Yes, Collin Powell, former U.S. general, did use a private email while he was Secretary of State, but it was at a time when the State Department did not have its own secure server. Now Hillary Clinton’s latest excuse for her notorious use of a private server is that Powell made her do it.
According to Collin Powell, Mrs. Clinton “was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did. … Her people have been trying to pin it on me.”
The WSJ reports that Mr. Powell’s goal in using a private server, as he explains in his 2012 memoir, was “to send a message to the bureaucracy about improving State Department technology.” By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s goal in using a private server has been to hide emails from federal disclosure laws.
These latest emails are further evidence that Mrs. Clinton set up her private server to prevent the public from seeing how Hillary and Bill mixed public power with their personal financial and political ambitions via the family foundation. When she got caught, Mrs. Clinton cherry-picked the emails she’d turn over to State and tried to destroy the rest. Meanwhile, everyone important in the world understood that a gift to the Clinton Foundation was a way to influence the U.S. government.
In a related article in the WSJ, William McGurn points out that voters are asked to believe that “it was somehow an accident that so many of the millions former President Bill Clinton raked in from speaking fees would come from companies, countries or people who had business before a State Department run by his wife. The truth is, this was inevitable under the Clinton Foundation business model. And it beggars belief to think all these dollars were being given out without an expectation of something in return.”
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My friend, Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, explains to readers at nationalinterest.org that “umpires don’t play the game. They don’t swing the bats or throw the balls.”
It was never realistic to think that a single country, even one as great and powerful as the United States, could manage the international system all by itself, and never make any mistakes. But that hasn’t stopped primacists from claiming God-like powers for the policymakers at the White House and in Foggy Bottom. Recall Madeleine Albright’s famous claim to the “Today” show’s Matt Lauer: ”If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”
It is all well and good to love one’s country, and Trump’s suggestion that America has slipped to second-class status warrants a strong response. But to imply that the United States never makes mistakes, and always prevails, is nonsense on stilts. Like any umpire, even the best ones, we’ve gotten some calls wrong.
But there is another flaw at the heart of the idea that the United States can and should be the world’s ump: Umpires don’t play the game. They don’t swing the bats or throw the balls. They don’t run the bases. They wear different colored uniforms. They are, by definition, disinterested in the outcome of the contest. They can think that Alex Rodriguez is a horrible human being—but that doesn’t matter; if he hits the ball out of the park, he still gets credit for the home run.
This essential condition of umpiring—disinterestedness—obviously doesn’t describe the United States’ conduct in world affairs.
Christopher A. Preble is the author of The Power Problem; How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free.
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