THREE STATES SET TO REDRAW HOUSE DISTRICTS

The House redistricting process, as set by the Constitution, is supposed to happen once every ten years. Ambiguous federal statutes and federal judges armed with Periclean fantasies means a few states are often forced to “redo” their Congressional maps.

Before the 2016 elections, some voters in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina will likely find themselves moved into new Congressional districts.

It should come as no surprise that the lawsuits challenging the maps in the three states were brought by the National Democrat Redistricting Trust. The organization is run by former staff members of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. It is a blatant attempt to litigate what was lost at the ballot box.

In Virginia, a federal judge has ordered the legislature to redraw the 3rd Congressional District, which has been represented by Rep. Bobby Scott since 1993. The district has been a majority-black district since 1991. In the last redistricting, the GOP controlled legislature changed the make-up of the district from 53 percent black to 56 percent black. That small change apparently offended the sensibilities of a Federal judge. The legislature has been ordered to make the district slightly less majority-black.

In Florida, the Democrats claim that “politics” guided the state legislators in drawing the new districts. The plaintiffs, who, again, are national Democrats, point to the use of “mapping principles” to protect DNC Chair 

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

4%

 and increase the number of “safe” Democrat seats. Among the witnesses is the Executive Director of the Florida Democrat Party, who said he tried to influence the political make-up of the districts.

So, the Democrats are using the fact that they themselves tried to politically influence the make-up of the Republican-drawn districts to argue that the districts should be tossed. Unsurprisingly, a Federal judge agreed. At the heart of the issue are four House seats, two held by each party, that must be redrawn.

The state Legislatures in Virginia and Florida are currently in special session to redraw the districts. In North Carolina, the state Supreme Court is preparing to hear arguments in a similar case. It is likely that state will also have to redraw some of its districts.

In Washington, DC, where every political story is viewed through the prism of Capitol Hill politics, some pundits are conjecturing that the remapping process in these states will eliminate three GOP members who are thorns in the side of House GOP leadership.

In Florida, one of the seats that must be redrawn is occupied by 

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL)

63%

, a Republican who challenged Boehner in the Speaker’s race. Republican

Rep. David Jolly (R-FL)

45%

, a key Boehner ally, who occupies another seat set to be redrawn has already announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate.

In Virginia, 

Rep. David Brat (R-VA)

100%

t, who unseated Rep. Eric Cantor in a primary last year, occupies the House seat neighboring Rep. Scott’s district. 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

96%

, who recently filed a petition to vacate the election of 

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)

35%

 as Speaker, could potentially have his district redrawn in North Carolina, if the state Supreme Court scraps the existing map.

“These conservative members should definitely assume that they are enemy No. 1 on the list,” Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of the Conservative Review told National Journal. “If you’re going to redraw the maps, who’s going to be your first priority? … If the establishment could kill two birds with one stone—comply with the courts and pick off a conservative—they would absolutely take that opportunity.”

I think Horowitz sees the world too much through DC’s glasses. Having worked on redistricting, decisions have far more to do with state politics, and the ambitions of state legislators, than the drama within the federal House caucus.

The Congressional districts surrounding Rep. Scott’s district in Virginia, for example, are so Republican that tweaks to the lines are very unlikely to jeopardize Rep. Bratt or 

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA)

60%

, who also borders Scott’s district. It is hard to envision any changes to the district lines that would make either Bratt or Forbes vulnerable in a primary, never mind a general election.

It is possible that Rep. Webster in Florida and Rep. Meadows in North Carolina face existential changes to their districts. If they do, it is likely to have very little to do with their standing in the U.S. House GOP caucus. Their political futures lay in the hands of legislators in the state capitols, not Washington.

The larger story here isn’t really about the GOP leadership in Washington. It is yet another example of how far Democrats will go to overturn the results of elections. That federal judges are even involved is testament to how freely that party feels it can ignore even plain Constitutional text.

Via: Breitbart

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EXCLUSIVE: Hillary's email firm was run from a loft apartment with its servers in the BATHROOM, raising new questions over security of sensitive messages she held

• Democratic White House front-runner used Platte River Networks of Denver, Colorado, to maintain her controversial 'home brew' server
• 
  
• Up to 60 emails with classified material have been found in a sample of those she did not delete - meaning there could be many more
• 
  
• Now Daily Mail Online reveals new questions over security of her emails when Platte River was involved in maintaining server
• 
  
• 'Mom and pop' firm used converted residential apartment and had its own servers in a bathroom closet 
• 
  
• Links between 'local' IT company and Clinton remain unclear but its VP of sales and marketing, who was sued for 'fraud' is said to be 'big Democrat'

The IT company Hilary Clinton chose to maintain her private email account was run from a loft apartment and its servers were housed in the bathroom closet, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Daily Mail Online tracked down ex-employees of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado, who revealed the outfit's strong links to the Democratic Party but expressed shock that the 2016 presidential candidate chose the small private company for such a sensitive job.

One, Tera Dadiotis, called it 'a mom and pop shop' which was an excellent place to work, but hardly seemed likely to be used to secure state secrets. And Tom Welch, who helped found the company, confirmed the servers were in a bathroom closet.

It can also be disclosed that the small number of employees who were aware of the Clinton contract were told to keep it secret.

The way in which Clinton came to contract a company described as a 'mom and pop' operation remains unclear.

However Daily Mail Online has established a series of connections between the firm and the Democratic Party.

+10

Home to the home-brew server: This is the apartment complex where Platte River Networks was based until this year. It used a residential apartment as its base

+10

'Mom and pop': Platte River Networks was housed in this apartment. The servers were in a closet off the bathroom, former employees tell Daily Mail Online

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Rising tally: A report suggests State Department Investigators have already found 60 emails sent from Hillary Clinton's private server with classified information on them. She is pictured at the Iowa State Fair

Platte River Networks worked for Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper - once heavily tipped to be Clinton's 2016 running mate - during his election to be mayor of the city in 2003

The company's controversial vice president of sales David DeCamillis is also said to be a 'big Democrat' supporter who offered his house to Joe Biden for the party's convention held in Denver in 2008.

It will be the small scale of the firm and its own home-made arrangements which will raise the most significant questions over security and over what checks Clinton's aides made about how suitable it was for dealing with what new transpires to be classified material.

Daily Mail Online spoke to former employees of the firm, including Tera Dadiotis, who was a customer relations consultant between 2007 and 2010.

Describing it as 'a great place to work, but kind of like a mom and pop shop', Tera reacted with disbelief that her former company was hired to manage the email system of Democratic juggernaut Hilary Clinton.

Speaking to Daily Mail Online at her home in Castle Rock, Colorado, Tera said: 'I think it's really bizarre, I don't know how that relationship evolved.

'At the time I worked for them they wouldn't have been equipped to work for Hilary Clinton because I don't think they had the resources, they were based out of a loft, so [it was] not very high security, we didn't even have an alarm.

Via: Daily Mail

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305 Hillary Clinton emails flagged for possibly classified information

The State Department, which is reviewing Hillary Clinton's emails from her tenure as secretary of state, has flagged 305 emails for further review to determine if they contain classified information.

In a court document filed Monday, the State Department said it would be able to meet a schedule for publicly releasing the Clinton emails, since just 305 -- or about 5 percent of the emails reviewed so far -- need further examination.

• Clinton dismisses latest controversy over her emails
• O'Malley: "Legitimate" questions surround Clinton's email

The agency is in the process of reviewing 30,000 emails for public release in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The flagged emails will be sent to the intelligence agencies from which the information in question originated for further review.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter on Friday to David Kendall, Clinton's private attorney, asking about his security clearance and his handling of Clinton's emails. Kendall was previously in possession of a thumb drive that held Clinton's emails.

Following the revelation that at least four of Clinton's emails should have been marked asclassified, Grassley wrote, "it appears the FBI has determined that your clearance is not sufficient to allow you to maintain custody of the emails."

Grassley asked Kendall to respond to a series of questions, such as, "Which government entity granted you and your associates a security clearance to be a custodian of Secretary Clinton's emails?

Via: CBS News

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California Voted to Raise Taxes on Corporations to Create ‘Green Jobs.’ Here’s How That’s Working Out Three Years Later

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Three years after California voters passed a ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations and generate clean energy jobs by funding energy-efficiency projects in schools, barely one-tenth of the promised jobs have been created, and the state has no comprehensive list to show how much work has been done or how much energy has been saved.

Money is trickling in at a slower-than-anticipated rate, and more than half of the $297 million given to schools so far has gone to consultants and energy auditors. The board created to oversee the project and submit annual progress reports to the Legislature has never met, according to a review by The Associated Press.

Voters in 2012 approved the Clean Energy Jobs Act by a large margin, closing a tax loophole for multistate corporations. The Legislature decided to send half the money to fund clean energy projects in schools, promising to generate more than 11,000 jobs each year.

Instead, only 1,700 jobs have been created in three years, raising concerns about whether the money is accomplishing what voters were promised.

“Accountability boards that are rubber stamps are fairly common, but accountability boards that don’t meet at all are a big problem,” said Douglas Johnson, a state government expert at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

The State Energy Commission, which oversees Proposition 39 spending, could not provide any data about completed projects or calculate energy savings because schools are not required to report the results for up to 15 months after completion, spokeswoman Amber Beck said.

Via: The Blaze

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[VIDEO] Donald Trump calls out Mark Zuckerberg on immigration

Donald Trump has a new target for his criticism of the nation's immigration policies - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Trump said he wants to require employers to pay H-1B workers much more money, which he said would discourage companies from hiring them and boost job prospects for Americans. He also wants to have tech jobs offered to unemployed Americans before they can be filled by workers with H-1B visas.

"This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg's personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities," Trump wrote in his immigration plan. Rubio is also seeking the Republican nomination for president.

Zuckerberg started a public interest group called Fwd.us to push for immigration and lobbying reform along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Neither Facebook(FB, Tech30) nor Fwd.us had an immediate comment on Trump's criticism of Zuckerberg.

Trump says that there are plenty of graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, to fill tech jobs. That means that employers don't need H-1B visas to fill jobs, and are using them instead to keep wages low.

Employers are supposed to pay a typical wage to anyone hired under a H-1B visa. But in reality, employees on these visas are typically paid 20 to 45% less than U.S. workers who they are are often replacing, said Ron Hira, a Howard University public policy professor who has studied the visa's pay scale.

"I don't think you should eliminate the H1-B program. The problem is it's being abused and it's a source of very cheap labor," said Hira.

Via: CNN Money

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IRS says more than 300,000 may have been hit by cyberattacks

WASHINGTON--The Internal Revenue Service said identity thieves' penetration of one of its computer databases was much more extensive than previously reported, with more than 300,000 taxpayer accounts potentially affected and more than 600,000 breaches attempted.

The IRS reported in May that cyber crooks used stolen Social Security numbers and other data acquired elsewhere to try to gain unauthorized access to prior-year tax return information for about 225,000 U.S. households. That included about 114,000 successful attempts and 111,000 unsuccessful ones.

On Monday, the agency said its review showed that an additional 390,000 taxpayers were potentially affected. That includes about 220,000 additional households "where there were instances of possible or potential access" to prior-year return data, the IRS said in a statement. It also includes about 170,000 additional instances of "suspected attempts that failed to clear the authentication processes," it added.

As before, the IRS said it would move immediately to notify affected taxpayers and take other steps, including offering free credit protection and special identification numbers to reduce instances of tax-refund fraud.

The breaches occurred in an online application called "Get Transcript" that allowed taxpayers to obtain prior-year return information. The system was shut down when the problems came to light.

"The IRS takes the security of taxpayer data extremely seriously, and we are working to continue to strengthen security for `Get Transcript,' including by enhancing taxpayer-identity authentication protocols," the agency said.

Via: Morning Star

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Actual CNN Headline: ‘Hillary Clinton revived America’s reputation in world’

Weird how CNN can devote space to such nonsense from someone who served as ambassador to Hungary during Grandma’s reign of error at state and who’s reportedly a Clinton mega-donor.

In a recent opinion piece posted on CNN, Carly Fiorina launched a deeply unfair and profoundly inaccurate attack on Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of state. Fiorina went so far as to insinuate that Hillary Clinton did not have even one single accomplishment in that role. She could not be more wrong. I should know; I served with her as U.S. ambassador to Hungary and watched her fight for the American people every day.

Her record of achievement is as diverse as it is historic. Clinton pushed hard for the United States to “pivot” to Asia. She established the tough sanctions against Iran that led to the recently signed nuclear agreement. Sheshined a light on the plight of Burmesepolitical prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, helping to orchestrate her release.

These are all historic achievements. But to name any one, single event of Clinton’s tenure is to overlook her most important contribution: rebuilding America’s relationships with friends, allies and partners around the world.

Weird, could’ve sworn we’ve had sanction of some kind against Iran dating back decades. But Hillary did it all by herself! And tell us, where in the world is our standing improved since 2009? How can anyone possibly write this with a straight face?

As a diplomat, she wielded the star power of one of the world’s most well-known female leaders. And finally, she had the right kind of work ethic, the right brand of wonkiness, to be embraced quickly by her 70,000 new employees at the State Department.

Now she’s in a world of trouble and under FBI criminal investigation. But she’s got star power! Weird how she totally ignores the Benghazi disaster that Mrs. Clinton still has not been held accountable for.

For three and a half years at my post in Budapest, I started my mornings reading Clinton’s daily schedule. Hillary Clinton traveled to more countries than any other secretary in the history of the department, logging nearly a million miles and visiting 112 nations.

We’ve heard this all before. You can fly a gazillion miles and still be an abject failure, like Mrs. Clinton. Sigh:

Via: Jammie Wearing Fools

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Scott Walker RESPONDS to protesters LIKE A BOSS!

Scott Walker stood on the Soapbox in Iowa today and responded to several protesters by saying that he’s stood up to 100,000 protesters and their union bosses and he won’t be intimidated by them. Awesome!

Watch:

Via: The Right Scoop

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NLRB boots idea of unionized college atheletes

When an NLRB director in Illinois made the decision last year to allow student athletes at Northwestern University to organize as a union it raised a lot of eyebrows. (How does one organize the labor of people who don’t get paid?) But that question has now been effectively scrapped as the full NLRB has said no to the proposal.

The National Labor Relations Board on Monday overturned a historic ruling that gave Northwestern University football players the go-head to form the nation’s first college athletes’ union, saying the prospect of union and non-union teams could throw off the competitive balance in college football.

The decision throws out a March 2014 ruling by a regional NLRB director in Chicago who said that college the football players are effectively school employees and entitled to organize. Monday’s decision did not directly address the question of whether football players are employees.

The labor dispute goes to the heart of American college sports, where universities and conferences reap billions of dollars, mostly through broadcast contracts, by relying on amateurs who are not paid. In other countries, college sports are small-time club affairs, while elite youth athletes often turn pro as teens.

From the beginning of this brouhaha I’ve felt that this was a solution in search of a problem. It seems to me that we either have to jointly decide that college athletes are amateurs or they are professionals. It’s a distinction which applies outside of colleges as well, and you can still compete in other sports at the highest levels while retaining amateur status. (The US Open in golf, for example. Also, almost all boxers start out as amateurs for a while before they can take their first professional fight.) If they are amateurs then they need to put in their time until they can turn pro. But if we are to treat college athletes as professionals who are owed some sort of compensation – particularly the football and basketball players – then the entire idea of this being a “side activity” in support of their education pretty much goes out the window.

But at the same time, it’s getting rather hard to ignore the hypocrisy inherent in the system. We’ve seen far too many stories about student athletes who graduate and receive a degree and some of them can barely read. This is something of an embarrassment for those who wind up in the NBA or the NFL, but it’s an absolute disaster for the kids who can’t make the cut and find themselves out on the streets with a sheepskin, but no skills and no ability to get a decent job outside of sports. Still, it seems like setting them up with some cash while supposedly being amateurs working on their studies compounds the problem rather than confronting it.

One last point to note is the reaction of the NLRB themselves. If they say no to unionizing somebody… it must be a really bad idea.

Via: Hot Air

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HOT TOPICS: 2016 PRESIDENTIAL RACE HILLARY CLINTON PLANNED PARENTHOOD CUBA Like ... Follow 151K Share on rss News Corporations/Executives Have Deep Ties to Planned Parenthood

Joseph Schaeffer documented many major media outlets' connections to abortion giant Planned Parenthood in a Wednesday item for Crisis, an online Catholic magazine. Schaeffer, a former managing editor for The Washington Times National Weekly, spotlighted how Planned Parenthood's "surprisingly close ties to major media corporations can help explain why leading disseminators of the news in the U.S. have shown so little interest in the [fetal organ harvesting] controversy."

The writer first pointed out that "some media outlets were so brazen in their support for Planned Parenthood that they were directly listed as donors on the sites of local affiliates." Schaeffer cited how the abortion group's local affiliate in the Washington, D.C. area "listed Gannett, the owners of USA Today and several other major newspapers...as financial supporters." He continued that "as recently as 2014, the San Jose Mercury News and Yahoo, which runs the popular Yahoo News site, were listed as donors to Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo in Northern California."

Schaeffer also pointed out other major newspapers' connections to Planned Parenthood:

Discover the Networks, a website run by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, lists the New York Times Company Foundation as a PP donor.

And while there is no evidence that new Washington Post owner Bezos is a personal donor, customers at his Amazon.com site can directly support an abortion clinic with a portion of their purchases via the Amazon Smile program.

The former editor later spent much of his article detailing how several of the abortion giant's major donors are tied to media corporations:

Beyond these overt acts of support, however, there lies a far more elaborate network of personal connections, business ties and charitable foundation links between Planned Parenthood and a stunning number of major media outlets, including all four of the major television networks.

The Ford Foundation has been a major supporter of abortion rights and Planned Parenthood for decades, with the data on its financial support of the organization running far too long to detail....

In fact, sitting on Ford's Board of Trustees at this moment is none other than Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

The foundation has made a major effort to involve itself in U.S. media in recent years, even giving grants to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post in 2012 as part of what it called "an investment in quality journalism."

Ford also sponsored an NBC News report on "Poverty in America," as foundation "Media Officer" Barbara Raab, a former "senior newswriter for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," proudly reports on the group's website.

Near the end of his item, Schaeffer spotlighted how "former and even current Planned Parenthood officials themselves are also currently part of the management teams at corporations that own major American media outlets." Most prominently, the "senior program officer" for the Hearst Foundations, "the charity arm of the Hearst Corporation, which owns the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle and a dizzying array of television and radio interests," once worked for Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Via: Newsbusters

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[COMMENTARY] Contentions The Right’s ‘Hope and Change’ Moment

For years, many self-professed conservatives mocked and derided Barack Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns as substanceless self-affirmations that exposed the vapidity of many in the voting public. It should be clear now that a few of those conservatives really only wanted an Obama of their own. 

The genius of Obama’s image-makers was to craft a candidate with malleable policy positions just vague enough to allow the voter to project onto him their individual hopes and aspirations. Obama was whatever you wanted him to be whenever you wanted him to be it. Donald Trump is the right’s Obama, insofar as his policy preferences are ill-defined, pliable, and reflective of whatever the audience immediately before him wants them to be. Not everyone eats this act up, but those who do have access to booming microphones that create the impression they represent more than a modest plurality of the Republican primary electorate. Nevertheless, that even this small number of self-identified conservatives has become swept up in the right’s “hope and change” moment is dispiriting.

Those conservatives that continue to support Trump’s presidential bid are now doing so in spite of an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that indicates he was an orthodox liberal until only recently. Those voters who consider themselves down-the-line conservatives and cannot stomach a moment’s heresy from the 2016 field’s more accomplished Republican candidates seem perfectly comfortable embracing a figure who was once to the left of Hillary Clinton on virtually every weighty policy matter. That Trump remains impervious to this criticism suggests that his fluid policy preferences are of no interest to the 20 or 30 percent of the Republican primary voters that back him. What’s more, those who contend that Trump stands boldly athwart political correctness cannot support this contention: He has embraced PC rhetoric and emulated liberal scolds on issues related to race, gender, and identity as well as any of The New Republic’s scribes. All that matters is his enormous personality and the cult around it.

A recent dispatch from a New Hampshire campaign stop via Bloomberg’s Melinda Henneberger sheds light on this tendency. “[V]ery little of what the conservatives in the hall were going wild over could be characterized as conservative,” she noted while nevertheless adding that the rapt audience remained enthralled by the candidate’s whistle-stop ramblings. Henneberger, a keen observer of politics, seemed vexed by the fact that “many heads nod” when Trump floats proposals that were, until yesterday, traditionally liberal policy positions.

When Trump vowed to compel American automotive manufacturers to dismantle manufacturing operations in Mexico and return them to the United States, his argument was that he could make this policy manifest by sheer force of will. “This is too easy, too easy!” Trump averred. “This is a couple of phone calls.” In their hearts, Trump voters know that there are economic forces at work that would render this misguided project a bit harder than simply making a phone call, but they want to believe that the avatar of their rebellion can move mountains. They want to comfort themselves with the notion that ill-defined wreckers within the Republican firmament are working against them. They want to think that displays of resolve are sufficient to create positive “change,” however they as individuals define it. Indeed, victory for the Trump backer cannot be defined as the pursuit of traditionally conservative solutions to vexing policy problems. Conservatism is of secondary interest to the Trump supporter. All that matters now is sticking it to a variety of perceived enemies; liberals, establishment Republicans, globalization, economic integration, foreign workers, et cetera. Trump is an outlet that facilitates venting.

Deep down, the Trump backer cares little for about what comes out of the candidate’s mouth; his support is derived not from what he says but what he represents. The Republican media consultant and political professional Rick Wilson recently performed a compelling dissection of Trump’s stylistic approach to campaigning. He noted accurately that the reality television star’s methods are virtually indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s circa 2008.

“You hated Barack Obama’s cult-like followers, with their mindless stares of adoration, their impervious barrier between emotion and reason, and their instant fury when confronted with the facts about his record, his history, or his philosophy,” he wrote to Trump supporters. “You hated Obama’s shallow, facile rhetoric, with its hollow promises and loose, lowest-common-denominator word-vomit disconnected from any real policy.”

“But you love it from Trump,” Wilson added.

Wilson’s admonition was dismissed by those who needed to hear it most. As a member of the enemy class of Republican campaign consultants – a group partly responsible for electing more Republicans to state and federal office in the Obama era than at any point since the 1920s, mind you – he can be safely ignored until the revolution is complete, and its nemeses are purged for their deviationism. The salience of his observations is, however, confirmed by the hollow and emotional objections it yielded from Trump supporters.

Those on the right who have convinced themselves that there is some value in this void vessel into which they pour their discontent are sacrificing one of the most compelling arguments in opposition to Barack Obama’s administration: its self-evident incompetence. Trump’s backers have earned their anxieties — they are the product of the years of mismanagement over which this president has presided. Trump’s success, however, reveals that a significant number of conservatives do not merely seek remedy for their years of suffering; they want revenge. The right’s “hope and change” moment does differ from the one that Democrats are only just beginning to awaken from in one critical aspect: for those backing Trump, his appeal is as much aspirational as it is about score settling. And after almost seven years of “hope and change” there are a lot of scores to settle before we can “make America great again.”

Via: Commentary

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Dr. Ben Carson Says Iran Deal Proves U.S. President Obama Is 'Anti-Semitic', Encourages Americans to Demand a 'Better Deal'

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson recently asserted that "divider-in-chief" U.S. President Barack Obama's controversial nuclear deal with Iran proves he is anti-Semitic and encouraged American citizens to demand a "better deal" from Congress.

On this week's broadcast of "Fox News Sunday," the retired neurosurgeon further elaborated on earlier comments he made criticizing Obama's decision to significantly limit Tehran's nuclear ability in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.

"Well, all you have to do, Chris, is, like I have, go to Israel, and talk to average people, on all ends of that spectrum. And I couldn't find a single person there who didn't feel that this administration had turned their back on Israel," Dr. Carson told host Chris Wallace. "And I think the position of president of [the] United States should be one where you begin to draw people together behind a vision, not one where you castigate those who believe differently from you. I think it's a possibility for great healing, if it is used in the correct way."

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When asked what specifically is anti-Semitic "in what the president is saying," Carson, who is currently a top contender for the GOP nomination, responded, "I think anything is anti-Semitic that is against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies, and by people who want to destroy them. And to sort of ignore that, and to act like everything is normal there, and that these people are paranoid, I think that's anti-Semitic."

In an August op-ed for the Jerusalem Post titled "White House Employing Ugly Tactics to Sell a Rotten Iran Deal," Dr. Carson warned that the deal will enable $150 billion to "flow into the coffers of a rogue regime that systematically abuses the human rights of its own citizens, foments violence in the Middle East, funds terrorist proxies who have killed hundreds of American soldiers and whose leaders decry the United States as the 'Great Satan' and lead mass rallies featuring chants of 'Death to America.'"

He also criticized the Obama administration for failing to secure the release of four American hostages, including U.S. pastor Saeed Abedini, while negotiating with Iran, writing, "And let's not forget the American hostages who continue to suffer in captivity just as they did while talks proceeded apace and concluded with handshakes and smiles."

As Congress will vote next month on whether to approve or reject the deal, Dr. Carson encouraged the American people to "continue to demand a better deal with Iran that will dismantle Tehran's nuclear program and strengthen, rather than threaten, our nation's long-term security."

Dr. Carson is not the only Republican presidential hopeful to condemn the Iran deal: in a recent interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called such negotiations "insane."

"I think it is one of the most dangerous situations that we face, not just for the Middle East but for the rest of the world in a long time," the 2016 candidate said on Sunday.

"This is essentially arming and equipping a terrorist state," added Huckabee, who will travel to Israel this week to talk about the deal with leaders there, according to the New York Daily News. "The Iranian government is not to be trusted and we're being pushed to get into a deal that gives us nothing but gives the Iranians the capacity to ultimately end up with a nuclear weapon."

Via: Gospel Herald

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