Foundations of Pay to Play

 

The Clinton Foundation, or should we call it the Clinton’s Fundnation, where donations of varying sizes were deposited often in direct correlation to the length of time they were granted with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Well, not all the visits with Secretary of State Clinton were linked to contributions to the Clinton Foundation; some were linked to very impressive payments for speeches by one former President William Jefferson Clinton. Of course we are told that there is no smoking gun or definitive proof or actual links, well, provable links. It is remarkable the degree to which far too many highly placed law enforcement agencies and individuals voluntarily develop tunnel vision. It is a miracle they can drive a car safely with such obstructed eyesight. Yet the news has been filled with reports about the horrors and downright dastardly practices and unconscionable business relations which apparently have plagued Donald Trump over the years. We can only assume that previously law enforcement and business oversight and enforcement departments have suffered an equal measure of tunnel vision when it came to policing the business deals of Donald Trump. Of course the surprising item is the lack of law suits brought against Donald Trump if so many of his business dealings were actually as fraudulent as we have been led to believe. There was one business venture though which truly could have qualified as fraudulent had it actually made the guarantees or promises claimed by the media, and that was Trump University. Fortunately for Donald Trump the only actual guarantees given by Trump University were that one might be able to benefit and enrich themselves with the lessons and they would receive a diploma and a picture of them with the facsimile of Donald Trump. The picture with the cardboard Mr. Trump was only worth slightly less than the wisdom one might have gleaned from the lessons. So, there has seemingly been loads of the blind leading the blind in law enforcement around both Presidential candidates if the media reporting on one and the claims of ignoring direct evidence on the other are to be believed. This leads to one big question, which one is the least crooked and least seriously soaked in criminal behavior and thus the lesser choice to be President.

 

I know what you’re thinking, where am I going with this and that I sure started with some twisted and tortured lack of logic. Well, why should editorial commentary here be any less confusing and in the dark than the rest of the media? If you answer is because you have come to expect better, then thank you for your confidence and read on, it will hopefully be worth your time. The problem is that far too many of the politicians are crooked as a broken and twisted ancient oak tree with the varieties of corruption, insider trading (which is actually legal for members of Congress and the members of the Administration of the President), bought and paid for political hacks, politician turned lobbyist and other crimes of unimaginable complexity and criminal behavior obvious even to the most casual of observers which reach out from the rotting central core of the political tree in the ever outward reaching branches seeking new and more imaginable ways to deceive and steal. Are there some politicians who are clean, respectable and trusted to work for their electorate? Astonishingly, yes. Unfortunately they are also the politicians shunned by the opposition party and their own party and unfortunately cannot seem to get together on issues due to their different beliefs and political orientations. If only there were some means of getting the true representatives of the people to work to clean up the rest of the political quagmire, that would be simply grand. Unfortunately most of the truly honest representatives of the people fall into one of a few categories, socialists even bordering on communist, religious conservatives often referred to as the religious right, and the true believers of causes which are as varied as often separate be the narrowest of degrees yet still chasing mutually exclusive dreams as one can paint. There are likely more than a dozen of causes which come under the ecological umbrella from save the whales or the seal cubs to save the rain forests as well as stop acid rain who sometimes protest with the save the oceans and even save the polar bears who have been taking care of themselves quite well. Then there are those who want electric cars, hydrogen cell cars, universal transports which take everyone to their destinations, public transport such as busses, light rail or subways and those who want to ban all vehicles which run on petroleum even including aircraft and the rigs without which we would soon have less choices of food and other goods, but that is not their concern. There are some who desire making the United States a Christian based nation where Christianity would become the recognized religion of their state or even the nation. And then there are our favorites, the constitutionalists who simply desire to have the United States return to the limitations intended by the Founding Fathers.

 

Founding Fathers of the United States

 

Those chasing causes, dreams some call them, are probably the least harmful as they are easily predictable and can be clearly understood. The less than honest politicians are also predictable once their motivations and those who own their pocketbook are understood. There are those who have so many positing bribes, sorry, contributions and charitable donations, which work their way back to the politicians through nefarious and twisted paths making them not so obvious. Let us say that a politician or group of politicians receive contributions to their campaigns and to supportive political action committees (PACs) as well as donations to charities or other groups who also contribute to the election campaigns where all this cash finds its way back to the politicians and they simply promote a bill which provides funding for some aid package helping the poor or the sick in impoverished nations which in turn buy drugs or food using much of the aid from the United States from those who initially arranged the funding from the varied sources for their campaigns. The twisted paths and the indirect funding leads to crossing the eyes of any investigations such as there is nothing directly untoward making these actions prosecutable. There are thousands of scams which have been operating for more years than any care to admit. Ask historians or political studies professors and one can learn that these problems assisted in the fall of empires past and have predated writing. There are theories about what is the oldest profession and it very well may turn out it was politician and the first politician was the individual who convinced the leader of their clan that they needed a religion and they should be the priest or medicine man or any position which did not require brawn as much as brains. That politicians got to eat without having to hunt as hunting was dangerous and too often the hunting parties came back minus one or more members while priests or medicine men stayed at the camp near the fires and out of the rain.

 

We have come a far way since then and now we have entire echelons of politicians in layers upon layers doing all sorts of functions. But in modern society the politician is not the greatest menace, just the most efficient ones where the greatest concentration of money can be found. The menace are those faceless individuals who sit in offices and cubicles making up rules and regulations and even law in some instances when directed to flesh out legislation which is all too often loosely written and paints broad swipes leaving room for interpretations and that leads to mischief. There was a temporary position a number of years back which was referred to as the Regulations Czar whose lead individual was Cass Sunstein known officially as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. The position was directed to review laws and legislation from the last fifty years or so and define or formulate new regulations which could be enacted with a special emphasis to use these reviews to enact and formulate regulations supporting policies the Administration was having difficulty passing through Congress. How many thousands of additional regulations were discovered hiding in laws recent or ancient we probably will never discern. Things have gotten to a choking point with the numbers of regulations, requirements and other rules holding an equivalence of laws that the average citizen cannot be expected to even have knowledge of the extents and depth of what is considered illegal and can place one on the wrong side of the law in court. The sad truth is difficult to put one’s arms around but be it the United Statesor be it Briton or any nation in Europe or potentially the entire world, the reality is we all break laws as part of our normal everyday lives and the criminality of living increases by thousands of new laws and regulations annually. This is the real criminal output of politicians who are paid to pass laws which outright or through inferred regulations give those who can pay an advantage over the rest of the population. This is the crooked legacy which is almost as criminal as the money stolen from our pockets through taxes, fees or higher prices so that others can benefit from corrupt politicians. This is why elections matter and primary elections this year proved to be the surprising ones which mattered. In the United States the choice is between two political forces either of which will provide the media, and especially us if we choose, more to cover than they will know what to do with. One will have half the media screaming about the illegalities with the other half excusing it while the other will have half most of the media claiming they are completely lost as to what are the motivations of the actions from the White House and others will play the game of guess what’s up next. Either way we will have plenty of news we just as soon would rather tune out, but it will affect our lives and the effects will be anywhere from minor inconveniences to drastic enough to threaten the entire planet. The real problem is none of the candidates, including third party, have even an inkling about the state of the world and what needs be done to repair the most egregious of the difficulties or threats, and it will be some of the threat which will offer the greatest danger if not mitigated and mitigated right out of the gate. Many will claim that will simply cause more difficulty but indifference to the world of problems has worked so well that we’ll gladly risk actually addressing threats and problems over leading from so far behind you may as well not be there at all, which too often was the case, Benghazi anyone? Please America, choose well.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Bloodletting is About to Strike Election Rhetoric

 

The combination of Donald Trump’s infamous acceptance of personal attacks against his business acumen and denials about his self-worth in billions of dollars and Hillary Clinton’s lack of real qualifications other than gender and susceptibility to attacks on her integrity, honesty, and dedicated corruption, there will be much muckraking, ridiculing, disparagement and name-calling. Both sides will trade blow for blow, assault for assault, insult for insult, derision for derision and snideness for snideness. The effect of both candidates taking to the low road will simply act to snowball the crudeness and vulgarity of the exchanges until it serves the purpose one side has intended, driving people from voting for either candidate and going shopping at the mall, watching movies at home, cleaning out the garage or even cleaning the gutters and windows; anything to take their minds from the elections due to the disparaging carnage of the campaigns. You want to ask why either candidate would desire forcing people to be so revolted from the nature of the campaigns such that they prefer not voting or voting third party just as long as they are not responsible for electing either candidate as both would appear unacceptable as the leader of the free world. It would be a campaign gone so low that no revulsive act or revolting comment or other conduct beyond the pale would be left out as each candidate tries to out-defame the other with all decorum left long behind. So, why would either candidate take this as their planned campaign strategy? Because one of the candidates will need for the turnout to be as low as can possibly be forced and may be willing to do whatever it takes to reach such a point.

 

Donald Trump would like to keep diehard Democrats from voting and would desire to have what has been identified as the Trump voters get out and vote. Still, he would not desire for low turnout all the way across the board. Donald Trump may have a core group of voters who would come out to vote for him no matter what, but such voters would make up but a minor set of the public. On the other side, Hillary Clinton is fully supported by the power elite in the Democrat Party and they have core constituencies which would vote for the Democrat candidate regardless of any distraction or detraction. This means in a super low turnout where only the core voters from each camp came out to vote, Hillary Clinton would swamp Donald Trump and coast to possibly the largest Electoral College wipeout even possibly surpassing the Reagan near sweep in his second election to the Presidency. With a depressed turnout of a general and sweeping measurable amount where record low turnout was recorded in every state, Hillary Clinton could conceivably even win in Oklahoma and Texas only losing in Wyoming to Donald Trump. So, we have a reason for taking the election campaign to such a low point that large sectors of the electorate was so revolted by the nature of the campaign they refused to support either candidate. So, that raises the question of whether or not Donald Trump could show the class not to respond in kind to such a berating assault on all levels from an intentional classless campaign by Hillary Clinton. Many claim that he would lack the necessary self-control to resist such attacks.

 

We have already seen Donald Trump at his worst during most of the republican primary campaign especially in his exchanges with FOX’s Megyn Kelly and the exchanges about the size of his hands in relations to something far more crass and even an attack on the wife of Ted Cruz or about the facial attractiveness of fellow candidate Carly Fiorina. These were definitely Donald Trump at his worse. We can only wonder if we have seen Hillary Clinton at her worst.

 

Blame Game Starring
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

 

The problem and main reason that the campaign of Hillary Clinton for President would be going low is because of her lack of a laudable record which she can tout. Her short stint as Senator of New York was about as lacking in highlights as any on record. Her record as Secretary of State is fraught with problems as it brings into the conversation Benghazi, e-mails and the record with Libya and the Arab Spring; all of which her campaign probably would rather avoid. Even her time as First Lady there was her disastrous attempt to secretively fashion a healthcare system which even the Democrats in Congress refused as well as the entire bimbo explosions including Monica Lewinsky who could also be referred to as the “devil in the blue dress.” For those with really good memories for trivia, they may even remember Hillary Clinton making a comment about how she could have settled for staying home and baking cookies as a disparaging remark. Truthfully, Hillary Clinton has more challenge potential than accomplishments in her political history with some definitive explosive mines which if triggered could prove devastating. Many a political advisor had pointed to disparaging Donald Trump as a look at how horrible and distasteful a person Trump is and would be as President and he is completely unmanageable and unpredictable and sell herself as stable by comparison without ever pointing to any qualifications on her side and simply throwing accusations at Trump hoping he explodes and self-destructs. The less reaction the Clinton Campaign elicits out of Donald Trump or his campaign personnel, the more radical and shrill the Clinton campaign and echo-chamber mainstream media will become claiming ever more absurd and insane accusations against Donald Trump. Every last bankruptcy any organization, company or other business interest has ever experienced, every little old lady who may have been evicted to make room for any project which Trump or any related group was involved in and the thousands coming out of the woodwork filing suits against Trump over Trump University false representation and other suits over anything conceivable will be filed hoping to bury Trump under quantity of assaults even if many have absolutely no quality or substance. Everything will be launched at Donald Trump hoping anything sticks while the lawsuits will expose Trump to bad media coverage and hoping to tie him up with so many lawsuits such that he has no time to campaign. The assaults will be ever escalating only to evaporate as soon as Election Day arrives.

 

Ugly, ugly, ugly, thy cause is Clinton and everything ugly which can be implied, applied, decried or provide to shame candidate Trump claiming his being unfit to hold the office of President. All will be pulled from the deck in order to deflect any and all attention from the suitability of Hillary Clinton holding the office of President. The entire Clinton campaign will be composed around the unsuitability of Donald Trump and some light suitability qualifications pertaining to Hillary and of course the fact that she would be the first woman President, probably her only true qualification, if being the first is something the Americans should use as the singular qualification for President. Rather than beat this dead horse, possibly the only thing that Donald Trump will not be accused of killing, we should just bow aside and let the candidates test one another and see if Donald Trump can remain calm and scripted and how completely out of her mind a calm Donald Trump will send one Hillary Clinton and how the media will blame her meltdown on Donald Trump’s misogynistic tendencies.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israeli Possible Futures and American Elections

 

There have been many numbers of articles predicting the fate of Israel should one party or the other take the White House next January. Where this early on it is a bit futile to be second guessing the American people, there are some concrete facts we can observe more generally and some rather specific. The most obvious fact is that Israel will likely fair better with virtually any Republican in the White House than either of the Democrat frontrunners. This has been the trend which has steadily become absolute starting with President George H. W. Bush who was far less Israel friendly than President William Jefferson Clinton. The Republican side is the most undecided; so we will begin with them, though there are some tantalizing consequences for discussion on the Democrat side.

 

The knowledge that Israel would be better served by any Republican than with either Democrat frontrunner is a no-brainer; there are still sufficient untested Republicans which leave things unsettled there as well. The top three caucus winners in Iowa are a case in point. Ted Cruz is as pro-Israel as anyone could ask for and would likely increase whatever aid Israel claimed to have or needs identified by United States Military assessments. Mr. Cruz is also the one most likely to ignore the current State Department being fully aware that the United States Department of State is closer to being an enemy foreign agent than an American foreign policy agency. They are so far into the pocket of whatever Islamic forces appear dominant at any given time ignoring the small fact that the United States can alter that picture with the slightest influence added by clandestine units in their military. Truth be known, even with Russian influence, the United States can alter any reality on the ground should it so choose. The drawback would be risking a general confrontation with the Russians which would require active duty forces in numbers sufficient to require Congressional approval and thus general media coverage. Much of the American as well as European and the World media will bend left as the media is generally more an agent of leftist ideological proponents and similarly predisposed on reporting on the Middle East which had been made evident by their misreporting or bias and slanted reporting on the Arab Israeli conflict which is decidedly anti-Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

Next down the caucus line is Donald Trump followed by Marco Rubio. Mr. Trump is completely untested in any and all policy positions and this is even more pronounced on foreign policy. Mr. Rubio is only slightly less of a mystery. The advantage Rubio has is he will likely follow the mainline Republican positions which had become more pro-Israel. Mr. Trump has talked a good game but his true heart is unknown and he is more likely to allow the State Department and the Pentagon along with whatever foreign advisors already exist within the government initially for his positions andthis would produce a period of time where he could damage Israeli relations even further. The question is how and if that would change when he received different and pressing information from the Israelis themselves and other contacts even to include business influence from people he has dealt with and gained a degree of trust. Rubio would also be somewhat untested and known to follow the advice he receives which then would rest heavily on his choice for Secretary of State and the weight he would put on Military and other foreign policy influences against the State Department. The one thing we know is Rubio is the candidate most likely to allow others from the Republican hierarchy to set his foreign policy. The decision, if one is honest, is still out on these two candidates who were definitive winners in Iowa.

 

Of the remaining herd of contenders who at this point are not even sufficient to be second tier and are closer to third tier with the one exception, the sole other Republican candidate to clear 2%, Ben Carson. Dr. Carson would necessarily need to rely heavily on experts and thus his positions would depend completely on who he appoints with the one obvious difference, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Our feelings are Dr. Carson would be very similar to President George W. Bush than any other predecessor. Hopefully Dr. Carson could look at a map of the areas surrounding Israel and the Middle East and realize that Egypt is currently stable, Jordan is stable with a few big ‘if’s’ sitting on her northern and eastern borders and might need to rely heavily on Israeli intelligence and potentially military support should the Islamic State turn their eyes westward seeking a border with Israel which Jordan would provide. We hear the people with their maps out pointing to the fact that such a move would still leave the West Bank and Jordan River as impasses to an Islamic State assault on Israel. We feel it would be a near certainty that not only Israel would aid Jordan but so would Saudi Arabia and the other member nations to the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). Currently the three main challenges which would face anyone stepping into office would be, in descending order, from the greatest threat down three steps are, Iran, Islamic State and the Iranian controlled terror networks of Hezballah, Islamic Jihad, to a lesser extent Hamas, and soon to be acquired Palestinian Authority which is likely to see a leadership change within two to three years as Abbas and family will take off for safer climes, probably somewhere in the United States under the witness protection agency’s assistance.

 

 

The remainders of the Republican herd who we can take the measure of are Jeb Bush and Chris Christie who both talk a good pro-Israel game but remain untested as being governors they had little to deal with outside their States and were able to leave the big foreign policy decisions to Washington D.C. Both would likely play Republican ballgame until they were able to put their own people in place. This would mean heavy reliance on the State Department and its Arabist and Islamist leaning viewpoint and having a disparaging and deleterious effect on Israeli ability to trust any recommendations initially from the White House. The long term relations would be heavily dependent on the people placed in positions such as Secretary of State, State Department Middle East experts and department leaders, Ambassador to Israel, Ambassador to the United Nations, Security Advisor and on.

 

The Democrat side of the equation has one twist and is otherwise underwhelming. Bernie ‘Feel the Bern’ Sanders has a voting record only the Muslim Brotherhood would applaud. He has proven to have adopted the erroneous leftist view that Israel is guilty of the two greatest sins, colonialization and capitalism. On the latter, Israel can only plead guilty and proud of it. On the foremost charge Israel is provably not guilty. First piece of evidence is the Holy Bible and in particular, Torah. The Torah other than the five books which chronical the early life from Abraham forward of the Jewish people but is the deed of ownership of all the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and south of the Litany River, though the current border with Hezballah, oops, sorry, Lebanon will suffice. Don’t you just hate when that happens. Then there are the treaties, Mandates and conferences which resulted in the League of Nations declaration of intent and right of the Jews to their own state located where the Biblical accounts define their Holy Promised Lands. Bernie may have been born into a Jewish family but that little fact never softened his heart nor gave him an appreciation of the necessity for the Jewish People to have a place of refuge where they may defend themselves if again the world decides it is best to either actively slaughter the Jews or simply not lift a finger to save those few where offers are provided for their potential to save such as the SS St. Louis. We can place Senator Sanders on the State Department side and likely to continue the Obama aggressive policies concerning Israel and even supporting an Iranian centric Middle East and North Africa. Bernie Sanders has not proven to be a friend of Israel.

 

Hillary Clinton is an easier story. She really does not think all that highly of Jews. This was most evident when after Bill lost an election she angrily screamed at the campaign manager calling him some kind of derogatory form of Jew with questionable parenting engaged in a lewd act and the campaign manager was not even a Jew so the word Jew in this racy and lewd epithet could only have been included as a further form of insult. This episode has been known in political circles and in Israel for quite some time, since early in Bill Clinton’s Presidency and is chronicled here. Additionally there is e-mailgate, really, e-mailgate? Haven’t we beat the gate means scandal after Watergate back during President Nixon’s administration where Hillary Clinton did a part of the research on this case which might mitigate this and no that did not mean miti-gate conspiracy though somebody from some conspiracy website will see gate and jump ugly to conclusions. Hillary has to win the Democrat nomination and the election or she is toast and the FBI is the toaster. Any normal individual, we know that normal can never be used when the Clintons are involved, would have been detained, tried, convicted, appealed, lost and be serving time in a Federal Penitentiary. Should she lose anything leading to the White House she will be indicted immediately. As far as Hillary and Israel, could we simply state oil and water for the comparison. No, need more? Sure, Hillary is the water and Israel is the highly flammable oil floating above and Hillary lights a match above the liquid line causing all the oil to disappear in a burst of flames and smoke and the water barely gets any warmer. Hillary fully supported every Obama policy regarding Israel and with gusto. Yes, she pandered to the Jews in New York when she ran for the Senate from New York. She wanted to get elected and also have additional campaign funds. Any pro-Israel comments can be placed as purely political and playing a particular audience though probably not that necessary as most of the Jews supporting Hillary do not support Israel either. Having met too many such leftist Jews, by birth only, who line up lockstep in the parade of the Democrat mainstream which has been as hijacked. This claim can be validated by inspecting after terrorists strike and they attempt to mitigate any terror act claiming the person was hijacked and does not represent the Islam they are familiar with. Hillary will only be less of a detriment to Israel because she will pay little if any attention to foreign policy decisions leaving the majority to aids and reliance on the State Department, need more be said. The big question is rapidly becoming who will be placed replacing Hillary should she become toxic either by actual arraignment or simply too much stacked against her and her base, as fickle as it may be, simply melts away and she becomes an unviable candidate. Joe Biden has ruled out a run and in keeping with the first woman President motif, we would suggest they would have Hillary give her delegates to Elizabeth Warren who would sweep Bernie Sanders aside in a tidal change potentially notifiable from the ISS, from the International Space Station. The tide would sweep across the Democrat primary voters and her coronation would take place at the Democrat National Convention. Her likelihood of taking the Presidency would be a complete lock should she decide to choose Bernie Sanders as her running-mate as that addition to her ticket would cement the youth vote, a vote which proved so vital to President Obama. Lastly, Elizabeth warren polls excellently with Democrats and the population as a whole. We expect this last scenario to play out as it appears that the FBI has built their case and are waiting for her to falter to pull the pin on the indictment grenade which would finish her candidacy, something the Democrat main controlling interests just might prefer as they watch her national polling numbers tank.

 

 

 

 

There remains one critical position which almost nobody from either side is likely willing to take except one. The position is that there is not and never has been an honest partner for peace from the Palestinian Authority and most definitely not from Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Fatah, the PLO or any other Arab influence with the possible exception of Egyptian President Sisi whose efforts to force a reformation for Islam with the transformative impact greater than that of the Protestant Reformation in Europe and definitely more dangerous and threatening to President Sisi’s continued health. One can only hope for his success and pray for his continued health. As far as Israeli policy, any administrations pushing any deal other than the full annexation of the territory of Judea and Samaria with a weeding out of the most dangerous of the terror operatives and their leadership. Additionally, Israel could offer any Arab desiring to leave and never return, meaning never ever return, in exchange for a generous dispensation including purchase of their properties and holdings and a generous award of separation which would likely to exceed their expected lifetime earnings with the understanding that should they or any member of their family return they would be executed on sight. Any pushing of the deader than a doornail policy of two states living side by side in peace, security and prosperity is not realistic especially looking around the Middle East and North Africa and one sees a sea of turmoil and conflict with little comfort in sight for most of these conflicts and with all eyeing attacking Israel as a potentially solid option. How erroneous and self-destructive such a policy decision would prove, the fact it bears mention is a testament to the insanity which has soaked the region.

 

Beyond the Cusp