Friday ~ The Front Page Cover

 The Front Page Cover 
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
Double Suicide: The Presidential Campaign of 2015
Charles Krauthammer
 
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"Rise up together as one voice"
"Be careful where you stand"
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 backstabber Boehner Failed to Lead  
On Friday, conservatives celebrated backstabber John Boehner's announced resignation. After all, the trouble with congressional Republicans isn't the lawmakers elected in the sweeping victories of 2010 and 2014, it's leadership that is more interested in the position of power than the principles of good governance. As we noted Friday, backstabber Boehner's likely successor is current Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He is arguably more conservative than backstabber Boehner though largely cut from the same cloth. That said, if elected speaker, he will undoubtedly face pressure to move the congressional agenda to the right. Option B is for House conservatives to rally around an alternative candidate, but backstabber Boehner's surprise announcement left little time for a successful campaign.
          backstabber Boehner also had some parting words over the weekend, echoing the biblical warning to "beware of false prophets." He was referring to those who think holding congressional majorities means getting your way all the time, even with a president of the opposite party. So far as that goes, he's correct that expectations have sometimes been too high. For example, shutting down the government to stop nObamaCare was never going to succeed. But what has grassroots conservatives outraged is, again, the failure of principled leadership. backstabber Boehner was such a failed leader and negotiator that he made nObama stronger than he should have been after two electoral "shellackings." Conservatives don't expect to roll back most of nObama's overreach until we retake the White House, but Democrat majorities didn't have much trouble getting things done with George W. Bush at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Is it too much to ask that a Republican Congress do likewise? Certainly we expect more than preemptive surrender at every opportunity.  -The Patriot Post  
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 Email Scandal Deepens While Hilly Clinton Laughs  
On Friday, the State Department announced that it handed over 900 emails to the House Select Committee that Hilly Clinton had sent and received regarding Libya and Benghazi. Last December, the Department of Defense discovered email conversations between then-Gen. David Petraeus and Clinton dating back to Jan. 2009. The Pentagon handed the documents over to State and the revelation was reported Friday. This news contradicts three of Clinton's lies: First, that she is fully cooperating with the investigation. Second, she previously claimed she operated her homebrew server from March 2009 onward. And third, that she only deleted emails that were private in nature. Just last week, Clinton said, "When I did it, it was allowed, it was above board. And now I'm being as transparent as possible, more than anybody else ever has been." As the revelations have grown more damning, Clinton has become more dismissive — one of the only rhetorical tricks she has left. Last week, she joked, "You can count on me not to have a private email server," in response to a question about how transparent her administration will be if she attains the White House. When Chuck Todd of "Meet the Press" grilled Clinton Sunday on her email use, Clinton replied, "Another conspiracy theory?! Ha ha ha ha." It's no laughing matter, though, Clinton's dishonesty is on display, and the fact that she's continuing to be dishonest indicates that this scandal may hide a larger one that may have hurt the nation.   
-The Patriot Post  
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 nObama's Deal With China: Cyber Security in Our Time  
Barack nObama just made the easiest cyber-security agreement in the world. From the administration that brought you the Russian reset, the red line in Syria and the nuclear deal with Iran comes an agreement with China that is billed as protecting American trade secrets and intellectual property. In the past, the U.S. has accused China of stealing billions of dollars' worth of information through hacking — for example, information about America's F-35 fighter jet from the plane's manufacturers. When China's President Xi Jinping visited nObama in Washington last week, they agreed: No more cyber stealing. "Both countries affirm that states should not conduct or knowingly support misappropriation of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information with the intent of providing competitive advantages to their companies or commercial sectors," reads a White House Fact Sheet on the agreement. "Both countries affirm that states and companies should not by illegal methods make use of technology and commercial advantages to gain commercial benefits." But here's the catch: Both countries deny spying on the other. So why make the agreement in the first place? As The Washington Post points out, this agreement doesn't stop attacks against the information held by the two governments, like the theft of federal employees' data from the Office of Personnel Management. The Chinese are too good at cyber espionage to give up simply because nObama made a pinky-promise with them.  -The Patriot Post  
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GOP 2016 POWER INDEX: JEB JOLTED FROM TOP SPOT  
There’s been a seismic shakeup this week, knocking Jeb Bush from the top spot for the first time since the race began and putting Sen. Ted Cruz at the top.
          The latest WSJ/NBC News poll has Donald Trump and Ben Carson tied for the lead with Sen. Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina tied for third place. But few would imagine that those rankings will be predictive. Bush and Cruz in are farther behind, but the Fox News First Power Index is about more than just the latest polls. It’s about who has the best path to their party’s nomination.
          What put Bush at the top of the list from the start was that his superior organization, enormous cash reserves and united support from the GOP establishment would allow him to do what the last two GOP nominees did and outlast and outspend insurgent rivals in the springtime.
          But now it’s clear that Bush has some serious problems and seriously doesn’t seem to know how to fix them.
          In an interview on “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace” Bush acknowledged his struggles saying, “Candidates have to get better, and that’s what I intend to do.” But, as he has done before, Bush said that his deep financial resources would keep him in the race and help deliver a victory.
          But if Bush is at the point of reassuring jittery donors that he can make it for the long haul at the very moment that his former protégé Rubio is having his second moment in the sun, it’s not a good thing. While Ohio Gov. John Kasich can rustle some Bush money on Wall Street and K Street and poses a serious threat for a New Hampshire win, it is Rubio who could actually knock Bush out nationally.
          The Bushies call Rubio “Judas,” so at least they get how big a threat he is.
          Fox News First still believes that the race will still come down to two candidates by March 15 or immediately afterward. Maybe it will be a five-way brawl all the way to the convention, but we’ve heard that before.
          And as of today, the best bet for the insurgent side, Cruz, looks like a stronger choice than the establishment favorite, Bush.
          Money matters for Cruz, too. The super-duper PACs backing Cruz guarantee he will be in the game well into March, but his campaign is also raising well online.
          Although Cruz trails Bush in the RCP average, but as we often discuss, at this point, we care as much (or more) about voters’ net favorable views of candidates as we do actual ballot preferences. And in that measure, Bush is a disaster.
          Among all voters in the latest Fox News poll, Bush turns in a net favorable score of negative 21 points. That’s nearly as bad as Donald Trump who sits at -25 points and worse than Hilly Clinton, who registered at -18 points.
          With Republican voters Cruz isn’t the top of the class, but shows his strength with +21 points. It’s better than Trump’s +12 and soars over Bush’s meager +1 point.
          Ben Carson has the highest favorability at +52 points, far and away the most popular guy in the field. Other top spots for favorability go to Rubio (+35 points) and Carly Fiorina (+30 points).
          But here we go back to fundamentals. Can these candidates, particularly Carson, endure as top-tier contenders? Are they gifted enough politicians and do they have the operational wherewithal and fundraising depth to fight in what will be the fastest-moving GOP primary cycle in memory.
          When you have a candidate that has both favorability and money though, that’s when you have a viable challenger.
          Cruz, as we discussed earlier, has the money but he also his self-described“grassroots army,” including a stable niche among evangelical groups. He took the top spot in the straw poll at this weekend’s Value Voters Summit in Washington for the third year in a row.
          Now, all that sounds good at the end September, but will it sound so good at the end of the year?
          The stakes are higher for Cruz in the coming congressional showdowns over spending, abortion and leadership, then any other candidate. If Cruz finds a way of keeping the faith of his core supporters, but not acting like a “false prophet” then it could be the start of something big.
          But if the 2013 Cruz-centric showdown and shutdown is the model for what’s coming, Cruz won’t hold the top spot for very long.  -Fox News    
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 Ted Cruz Outraged Over Planned Parenthood Failure  
{totalconservative.com} ~ Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz had harsh words for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McCon-nell and House Speaker backstabber John Boehner on Thursday, criticizing them for their failure to defund Planned Parenthood... Cruz, never shy about opposing the establishment, said Republicans were making a big mistake by promising to avoid a government shutdown. “When you have a radical in the White House who will exploit that promise, what it means in effect is that Republican leadership will support every failed big government policy of President nObama,” Cruz said. That appears to be the case yet again, as the Senate prepares to vote on a new short-term spending bill that would keep the government open until December 11. The new continuing resolution is identical to the one voted down on Thursday with one exception: it allows taxpayer money to fund Planned Parenthood.       http://totalconservative.com/ted-cruz-outraged-over-planned-parenthood-failure/
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 After this decision by the U.S. Army, NO ONE should enlist  
{Lt. Col. (Retired) Allen West} ~ There are some decisions which I simply cannot fathom how anyone could make... We’ve discussed here the issue surrounding U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets Captain Dan Quinn and Sergeant First Class Charles Martland. These men were relieved of their positions by the chain of command because they physically assaulted an Afghan police officer who had raped a young boy and beaten his mother. We reported on SFC Martland’s appeal regarding his involuntary discharge from the Army because of the adverse actions taken against him and placed in his personnel record. Captain Quinn left the Army. We shared with you earlier this week how the U.S. Military has issued orders to troops in Afghanistan to disregard the instances of sexual abuse of young boys by Afghan officials – even if they occurred on U.S. Military bases. We know three Marines lost their lives in Helmand province when one of these “chai boys” took the AK-47 of the pedophile Afghan police chief and gunned them down while they worked out in the FOB gym. And now we get this news.        http://www.aim.org/guest-column/after-this-decision-by-the-u-s-army-no-one-should-enlist/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email092815&utm_medium=email
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 nOBAMA FREES 20TH 9/11 HIJACKER  
{Matthew Vadum} ~ The nObama administration quietly shipped Osama bin Laden's bodyguard back to the Wahhabist Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last week despite warnings that the Muslim terrorist remains a serious threat to the United States... The newly released terrorist detainee is Abdul Shalabi, 39, who trained to be the 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Shalabi was set free even though military officials deemed him too dangerous to be unleashed on the world and too valuable as an intelligence asset to be released from U.S. custody. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said last week that the liberation of Shalabi, whom he referred to as a "dangerous detainee," is "another example of President nObama playing politics with national security and putting campaign promises ahead of U.S. national security interests." Shuttering the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has long been a goal of President nObama, going back at least to the campaign trail in 2008.
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 The Dismal nObama “Strategy” Failure In Syria... 
{rickwells.us} ~ With results that can best be described as beyond pathetic, the nObama regime’s supposed strategy for countering ISIS, that of training proxy fighting units known as the NSF... the New Syrian Force fighters, has succeeded only in arming and staffing our enemy. Those of us who have experienced the nObama and Bush economies are likely to have some familiarity with the markings on an occasional check returned as being insufficient. NSF seems like a very appropriate designation for this “fighting force.” Apparently moderate Syrians aren’t the dedicated jihadi-haters John McCain and Lindsey Graham told us they were. As dismal as the current results are, and they’re awful, how bad could they have been if those two had been successful in persuading us to accept a much larger effort to recruit and train what are essentially terrorists or mercenaries in disguise? They have proven to have little ambition to fight on our behalf or theirs against the ISIS terrorists.        http://rickwells.us/the-dismal-obama-strategy-failure-in-syria-more-surrenders-of-us-supplied-weapons-by-cowards-we-trained/
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 AP Uncovers Proof Hilly Clinton May Have Perjured Herself  
{Onan Coca} ~ More bad news for Hilly Clinton came out on Friday when the AP reported that the nObama administration had discovered a chain of work related emails between Hilly Clinton and David Petraeus... that she had not turned over previously. Clinton had told Congress (and the nation) that she had turned over ALL work related emails and that the email scandal was simply a Republican witch hunt. However, the discovery of these work related emails makes her story far less compelling. Over the last few months it has become obvious that Clinton is not telling the whole story when it comes to her private email server.
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 Republicans Help MSNBC Create “Global Citizens”  
{Cliff Kincaid} ~ Stephen Colbert, Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), the Chair of the Democratic National Committee... were among those appearing at the Global Citizen Festival on September 26, broadcast by cable channel MSNBC. Incredibly, despite the left-wing slant of the event, Republican Senators Thad Cochran (MS) and Bob Corker (TN) lent their names to the Honorary Congressional Host Committee for the gathering, while Republican Rep. Charlie Dent (PA) was listed as a participant. Labeled as an effort to eradicate poverty by 2030, the movement to create “global citizens” is actually designed to make the U.N. into a world government to manage a transition to a new worldwide economic system. It’s being called “sustainable development” but amounts to a system of global socialism—redistributing wealth from the United States to the rest of the world.       http://www.aim.org/aim-column/republicans-help-msnbc-create-global-citizens/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email092915&utm_medium=email
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 U.S. Should Not Take Syrian Refugees, Lebanese American Says  
{Tyler O'Neil} ~ It is vital for American national security not to accept the huge influx of Syrian refugees because the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) has infiltrated them... according to Brigitte Gabriel, founder and president of ACT for America, the largest grassroots national security organization. “We know ISIS infiltrated them, they were coming here under the disguise of refugees, but they are actually ISIS recruiters and ISIS sympathizers,” Gabriel told PJ Media in an interview at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday. She added that the refugees “are making up names — they can tell us anything, and there is nothing we can do to check it.”       http://pjmedia.com/blog/u-s-should-not-take-syrian-refugees-lebanese-american-says/
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GOP, LET nOBAMA SHUT IT DOWN AND OWN IT  
{David Limbaugh} ~ Establishment Republicans inside and outside Washington miss the grass roots’ point. Even if we don’t eventually prevail with defunding Planned Parenthood, we need to take this issue to the American people... Establishment types believe that just as we are finally poised to recapture the White House, crazy tea party extremists are about to mess everything up because voters would blame and punish the GOP in 2016 for a shutdown. But they always tell us to wait until the next election. When we didn’t control the House, they told us to wait until we did. Same with the Senate. Now they say we have to wait until Jeb Bush is president. They’ve cried wolf so long that conservatives no longer believe them. The conservatives aren’t idiots. They knew when they elected these majorities that they would have great difficulty advancing the conservative agenda with President nObama in office. But they didn’t expect them not to even try.
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 nObamaCare: Rising Deductibles, Even More Than Premiums  
{Michael Tennant} ~ Prior to the passage of nObamaCare, President Barack nObama repeatedly promised that his healthcare overhaul would reduce health-insurance premiums by as much as $2,500 per family... But according to a recent report, not only have premiums continued to rise under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but deductibles have grown dramatically, often to the point that having insurance isn’t a guarantee of affordable care. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)/Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) 2015 Employer Health Benefits Survey, released September 22, reveals that family premiums for employer-based health plans rose 4.2 percent this year, up from three percent in 2014. This relatively small increase is part of a trend that began in 2005, well before nObama took office, so at best nObamaCare can be said not to have caused premiums to rise at a much faster rate than they were rising beforehand. The president, however, did not promise slower growth in premiums; he promised to reduce them. Moreover, noted Investor’s Business Daily.
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 Pulosi: Planned Parenthood Videos Aren't Real  
{Mark Tapson} ~ Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pulosi told interviewer Jake Tapper... that the controversial undercover videos by the activists at Center for Medical Progress showing Planned Parenthood doctors negotiating prices for fetal tissue are not real. So she hasn't seen the videos but they can't be real, because that's not a reality Pulosi is willing to accept, much less defend. It's called being in denial. She continued. As Pulosi went on she grew increasingly incomprehensible: No, she became more blind plus being an idiot.     http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/pelosi-planned-parenthood-videos-arent-real
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Double Suicide: The Presidential Campaign of 2015
Charles Krauthammer
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{freedomsback.com} ~ Meanwhile, on the Democrats’ side:

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— They are running a presidential campaign decrying wage stagnation, income inequality and widespread economic malaise — as if they’ve not been in office for the past seven years.

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— Their leading presidential candidate is 27 points underwater on the question of honesty and is under FBI investigation for possible mishandling of classified information.

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— Her chief challenger is a 74-year-old socialist with a near-spotless record of invisibility in 25 years in Congress. The other three candidates can hardly be found at all.

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— The only plausible alternative challenger, loose lips Joe Biden, has run and failed twice and, before tragedy struck (to which he has responded, one must say, with admirable restraint and courage), was for years a running national joke for his endless gaucheries and verbal pratfalls.

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For the GOP, this has all been a godsend, an opportunity to amplify the case being made every day by the Democrats themselves against their own stewardship. Instead, the Republicans spent the summer attacking each other — the festival of ad hominems interrupted only by spectacular attempts to alienate major parts of the citizenry.

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The latest example is Ben Carson, the mild-mannered, highly personable neurosurgeon and one of two highest-polling GOP candidates. He said on Sunday that a Muslim should not be president of the United States.

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His reason is that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. On the contrary. Carson is incompatible with a Constitution that explicitly commands that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

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Ever. And it is no defense of Carson to say that he was not calling for legal disqualification of Muslims, just advocating that one should not vote for them. But that defense misses the point: The Constitution is not just a legal document. It is a didactic one. It doesn’t just set limits to power; it expresses a national ethos. It doesn’t just tell you what you’re not allowed to do; it also suggests what you shouldn’t want to do. The First Amendment allows you to express whatever opinion you want — even, say, advocating the suppression of free speech in others. But a major purpose of the Constitution is to discourage and delegitimize such authoritarian thinking.

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Carson later backtracked, saying that he meant opposing someone not because of his identity, ethnicity or faith but because of his ideology — meaning that he wouldn’t want in the White House an Islamist who seeks to impose Shariah law.

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Neither would I. Unfortunately, that’s not what Carson had said. In the original interview, he said, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” It would not have been hard to attach any of the appropriate restrictive adjectives — radical, extreme, Islamist — to the word “Muslim.” He didn’t.

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Indeed, Carson gave the correct answer minutes later when he said he wouldn’t apply his presidential religious test to congressional candidates. In that case, “it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are.” Which is, of course, the right answer, the American answer, the only possible answer to the same question about a candidate for the presidency.

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Carson is not one to cynically pander. Nor do I doubt that his statement about a Muslim president was sincerely felt. But it remains morally outrageous. And, in a general election, politically poisonous. It is certainly damaging to any party when one of its two front-runners denigrates, however thoughtlessly, the nation’s entire Muslim American community.

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Particularly when it follows the yeoman work done by the other leading GOP candidate to alienate other large chunks of the citizenry. Three minutes into his campaign, Donald Trump called Mexican-American immigrants rapists who come bringing drugs and crime. He followed that by advocating the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. And sealed the deal by chastising Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish in answer to a question posed in Spanish.

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Trump’s contretemps with women enjoy even more renown — his attacks on Megyn Kelly (including a retweet calling her a bimbo) and his insulting Carly Fiorina for her looks.

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Muslims, Hispanics, women. What next? Who’s left?

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It’s a crazy time. One party is knowingly lurching toward disaster, marching inexorably to the coronation of a weak and deeply wounded presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the other party is flamboyantly shooting at itself and gratuitously alienating one significant electoral constituency after another. .
And it’s only September. Of 2015.

. http://freedomsback.com/charles-krauthammer/double-suicide-the-presidential-campaign-of-2015/

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