The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Can Democrats Make Nice with Deplorables?
by Kay S. Hymowitz
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Comey's Double Standard?
So the latest news is that four of the seven memos former FBI Director James Comey wrote following his meetings with Donald Trump contained classified information — "secret" or "confidential," but not "top secret." Whether any of them were the ones he then subsequently leaked to The New York Times is unclear. If that were the case, it
could land Comey in hot water — or at least it should.
At the time of his testimony before the Senate, Comey insisted that his memos were personal and therefore he did not consider them to be government documents. However, the FBI concluded that all of the memos were in fact deemed to be government documents, and therefore government property. The Hill reports, "FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and it mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property." It would appear that Comey was playing fast and loose with the rules. We certainly know his intent from his own mouth — he wanted to bring about a special prosecutor.
In an interview with Fox News, White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway said, "The boy scout, choir boy defense doesn't hold up here because if it contains classified information, he is apparently violating, at the very least, what all FBI members sign. They sign a document saying you will not do something like this. He was the director of the entire bureau." She continued, "The irony, to me anyway ... is that this is exactly the problem that liar-Hillary Clinton had with her illegal server — the handling of classified and confidential information that Jim Comey was meant to investigate, if not prosecute."
Far from being an apolitical law-and-order kind of a guy, Comey is looking more and more like an individual who was heavily invested in securing his own position of power in the Swamp. His application of rules regarding those he deemed to be the political power players like liar-Hillary Clinton reveal why he bent over backwards to let her off. It also now appears that he saw himself as one positioned above the rules. It will be interesting to see where this news leads. ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/digests/50117
https://patriotpost.us/digests/50117
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Democrat Threatens Don Jr. With
Espionage Act – Get Mean, President Trump
by Rick Wells
{Irickwells.us} ~ t’s helpful anytime one is listening to or enduring the pain of looking at Richard Blumenthal, the reptilian Democrat Senator from Connecticut, to remember how he blatantly lied about having served in the Vietnam War... Blumenthal received five deferments, from 1965-1970, ultimately enlisting in the Marine Corps Reserve. He was never deployed overseas during his six years in which he was stationed in the DC Swamp. While others were wading snake and leech infested rivers he was dispatched to less hazardous duties, such as , such as a Toys for Tots drive. The Senator, who is now himself a swamp snake and a leech residing in the swamp had a history of exaggerating his time as being under fire...These jerk Dems don't see their own involvement with Russia. They should keep their eyes on China. http://rickwells.us/democrat-threatens-don-jr-espionage-act-get-mean-president-trump/
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Trump Jr. emails show amateurishness,
but not “collusion” or illegality
by William A. Jacobson
{legalinsurrection.com} ~ In a preemptive move, Trump Jr. published the email exchange on Twitter (here and here) just before the Times published its story..
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789418455953413 and https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166 The emails are highly embarrassing and politically damaging, but as usual, the media and other Trump opponents are overstating the case. The media overstating the case and popping the champagne corks are probably the best things Trump Jr. and the Trump administration have going for them. The emails show no actual evidence of “collusion” or illegality. There is nothing indicating the information to be offered was stolen or otherwise improperly obtained, or that other than being willing to listen, the Trump campaign was involved in how the information was obtained. To the contrary, the promised information was “official records and information.”... http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/07/trump-jr-emails-show-amateurishness-but-not-collusion-or-illegality/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
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New Information In A Bizarre Story About A
Quest To Hunt Down liae-Hillary Clinton’s Deleted Emails
by Chuck Ross
{dailycaller.com} ~ New details have emerged about a Republican opposition researcher’s failed attempt to get liar-Hillary Clinton deleted emails from Russian computer hackers who claimed to have the documents... Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that a longtime political operative named Peter Smith formed a team of researchers, investigators, computer experts and attorneys to obtain 33,000 emails that liar-Clinton deleted from the email server she used as secretary of state. Smith hoped to show that liar-Clinton’s server had been hacked, an allegation she repeatedly denied during the campaign. Suggested to associates that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn may have been involved in the liar-Clinton email hunt... http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/11/new-information-in-a-bizarre-story-about-a-quest-to-hunt-down-hillary-clintons-deleted-emails/.
UNESCO Supports Terrorism
The Tomb of the Patriarchs of Hebron
by Bassam Tawil
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ What do Hamas and UNESCO have in common? Both believe that Jews have no historical, religious or emotional attachment to the Holy Land... The recent UNESCO resolutions concerning Jerusalem and Hebron are precisely what terror groups that deny Israel's right to exist, such as Hamas, have long been hoping to hear from the international community. The first resolution denies that Israel is the sovereign power over Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, while the second one designates Hebron and the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs as an "Endangered Palestinian World Heritage Site." The two UNESCO resolutions, in fact, back the position of Hamas and other Palestinians -- namely that Israel has no right to exist. These decisions provide Hamas and other terror groups with ammunition with which to destroy Israel, killing as many Jews as possible in the process...UNESCO is wrong. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10661/unesco-supports-terrorismThe Tomb of the Patriarchs of Hebron
by Bassam Tawil
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Ed Rollins’ Less Than Diplomatic
Advice To Don Jr – “Shut Up,” Stop Digging
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Fox News Host Trish Regan asks political consultant Ed Rollins if Donald Trump Jr. “did the right thing by releasing the emails and trying to get ahead of the New York Times and ahead of the story.”... Rollins replied, “You’re not going to get ahead of the New York Times and this story at this point in time and the advice that I would give him, which, obviously I’m sure his good lawyers have given this advice – shut up.” He says, “Because basically you have a Justice Department investigation going on. You keep feeding this thing, you can’t knock it down. Whether you should have met with them or not is irrelevant at this point in time. You have now given the case to make this thing go on for months and months and months.”...http://rickwells.us/ed-rollins-less-diplomatic-advice-don-jr-shut-stop-digging/
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by Kay S. Hymowitz
{city-journal.org} ~ Since early June, when voters in Georgia’s sixth congressional district rubbed yet more salt in their 2016 election wounds, Democratic pols and sages have been pondering why, as Ohio congressman Tim Ryan put it, “our brand is worse than Trump.” That’s a low bar, given the president’s nearly subterranean approval ratings, but so far the Blue party has mostly been turning to an inside-the-box set of policy and political memes: jobs programs, talk of a mutiny against House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi, and better marketing—or, in Ryan’s words, “branding”—of the Democratic message.
What’s missing from this list is the most important—and most challenging—item of all: solving the liberal “deplorable” problem. The white working class that hoisted Donald Trump to an unexpected victory may not always admire the man, but they know that he doesn’t hate “people like me,” in the pollsters’ common formulation. And they have good reason to think that Democrats, particularly coastal and media types, do hate them: consider Frank Rich’s snide and oft-cited article, “No Sympathy for the Hillbilly.” It’s possible that white working-class voters would back a party filled with people who see them as racists and misogynists, with bad values and worse taste, because they all want to raise taxes on Goldman Sachs executives, but it seems a risky bet.
So it’s worth noting that a few prominent liberal writers have been venturing out of the partisan bunker and calling attention to the “deplorable” issue over the past few months. In late May, for instance, progressive stalwart Michael Tomasky, former editor of Guardian America and now of Democracy, published an article frankly titled “Elitism is Liberalism’s Biggest Problem” in the New Republic. The West Virginia native called “the chasm between elite liberals and middle America . . . liberalism’s biggest problem.” The issue “has nothing to do with policy,” Tomasky writes. It’s about different “sensibilities;” “bridging the gulf is on us, not them.” To most conservatives, Tomasky’s depiction of Middle Americans will seem cringingly obvious. The group tends to be churchgoers “Not temple. Church”, they don’t think and talk politics from morning till night, and, yes, they’re flag-waving patriots. Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum, an influential though occasionally heterodox liberal, seconded the argument.
A more complex analysis of liberal elitism comes from Joan Williams, a feminist law professor whose best-known previous book is Unbending Gender. In White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Williams takes her fellow liberal professionals to the woodshed for their indifference to the hard-knock realities of working-class life and for their blindness to the shortcomings of their own cosmopolitan preferences. Married to the Harvard-educated son of a working-class family, Williams is astute about the wide disparities between liberal and white working-class notions of the meaning of work, family, community, and country. One of her proposals for solving class cluelessness is a conservative favorite: reviving civics education.
A final recent example of deplorable-détente comes from Atlantic columnist Peter Beinart’s “How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration.” Noting that the unofficial open-borders philosophy of the Democratic Party is far more radical than the restrictionist immigration policy it espoused just a few decades ago, the former New Republic editor acknowledges that there is more than nativist bigotry behind white working class immigration concerns. He concedes that mass immigration may have worked to the disadvantage of blue-collar America by lowering wages for low-skilled workers and undermining social cohesion. Beinart concludes by “dusting off a concept that liberals currently hate: assimilation.” Liberals should be “celebrating America’s diversity less, and its unity more,” he writes.
These writers are engaging in healthy critical self-reflection, but in the course of describing the Democrats’ class dilemma, the liberal truth-tellers unwittingly show why a solution lies out of reach. They understate Democrats’ entanglement with the identity-politics Left, a group devoted to a narrative of American iniquity. Identity politics appeals to its core constituents through grievance and resentment, particularly toward white men. Consider some reactions to centrist Democrat John Osoff’s defeat in Georgia’s sixth district. “Maybe instead of trying to convince hateful white people, Dems should convince our base—ppl of color, women—to turn out,” feminist writer and Cosmopolitan political columnist Jill Filopovic tweeted afterward. “At some point we have to be willing to say that yes, lots of conservative voters are hateful and willing to embrace bigots.” Insightful as she is, even Williams assumes that all criticisms of the immigration status quo can be chalked up to “fear of brown people.”
No Democrat on the scene today possesses the Lincolnesque political skills to persuade liberal voters to give up their assumptions of white deplorability, endorse assimilation, or back traditional civics education. In the current environment, a Democratic civics curriculum would teach that American institutions are vehicles for the transmission of white supremacy and sexism, hardly a route to social cohesion. As for assimilation, Hispanic and bilingual-education advocacy organizations would threaten a revolt—and they’d only be the first to sound the alarm.
Appeasing deplorables may yet prove unnecessary, though. Democrats’ strategy of awaiting “inevitable” demographic change in the electorate, combined with the hope that Trump and the Republican Congress will commit major unforced errors, may allow the party to regain control of the country without making any concessions to the large portion of the U.S. population whom they appear to despise.
Can Democrats Make Nice with Deplorables?
{city-journal.org} ~ Since early June, when voters in Georgia’s sixth congressional district rubbed yet more salt in their 2016 election wounds, Democratic pols and sages have been pondering why, as Ohio congressman Tim Ryan put it, “our brand is worse than Trump.” That’s a low bar, given the president’s nearly subterranean approval ratings, but so far the Blue party has mostly been turning to an inside-the-box set of policy and political memes: jobs programs, talk of a mutiny against House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi, and better marketing—or, in Ryan’s words, “branding”—of the Democratic message.
What’s missing from this list is the most important—and most challenging—item of all: solving the liberal “deplorable” problem. The white working class that hoisted Donald Trump to an unexpected victory may not always admire the man, but they know that he doesn’t hate “people like me,” in the pollsters’ common formulation. And they have good reason to think that Democrats, particularly coastal and media types, do hate them: consider Frank Rich’s snide and oft-cited article, “No Sympathy for the Hillbilly.” It’s possible that white working-class voters would back a party filled with people who see them as racists and misogynists, with bad values and worse taste, because they all want to raise taxes on Goldman Sachs executives, but it seems a risky bet.
So it’s worth noting that a few prominent liberal writers have been venturing out of the partisan bunker and calling attention to the “deplorable” issue over the past few months. In late May, for instance, progressive stalwart Michael Tomasky, former editor of Guardian America and now of Democracy, published an article frankly titled “Elitism is Liberalism’s Biggest Problem” in the New Republic. The West Virginia native called “the chasm between elite liberals and middle America . . . liberalism’s biggest problem.” The issue “has nothing to do with policy,” Tomasky writes. It’s about different “sensibilities;” “bridging the gulf is on us, not them.” To most conservatives, Tomasky’s depiction of Middle Americans will seem cringingly obvious. The group tends to be churchgoers “Not temple. Church”, they don’t think and talk politics from morning till night, and, yes, they’re flag-waving patriots. Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum, an influential though occasionally heterodox liberal, seconded the argument.
A more complex analysis of liberal elitism comes from Joan Williams, a feminist law professor whose best-known previous book is Unbending Gender. In White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, Williams takes her fellow liberal professionals to the woodshed for their indifference to the hard-knock realities of working-class life and for their blindness to the shortcomings of their own cosmopolitan preferences. Married to the Harvard-educated son of a working-class family, Williams is astute about the wide disparities between liberal and white working-class notions of the meaning of work, family, community, and country. One of her proposals for solving class cluelessness is a conservative favorite: reviving civics education.
A final recent example of deplorable-détente comes from Atlantic columnist Peter Beinart’s “How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration.” Noting that the unofficial open-borders philosophy of the Democratic Party is far more radical than the restrictionist immigration policy it espoused just a few decades ago, the former New Republic editor acknowledges that there is more than nativist bigotry behind white working class immigration concerns. He concedes that mass immigration may have worked to the disadvantage of blue-collar America by lowering wages for low-skilled workers and undermining social cohesion. Beinart concludes by “dusting off a concept that liberals currently hate: assimilation.” Liberals should be “celebrating America’s diversity less, and its unity more,” he writes.
These writers are engaging in healthy critical self-reflection, but in the course of describing the Democrats’ class dilemma, the liberal truth-tellers unwittingly show why a solution lies out of reach. They understate Democrats’ entanglement with the identity-politics Left, a group devoted to a narrative of American iniquity. Identity politics appeals to its core constituents through grievance and resentment, particularly toward white men. Consider some reactions to centrist Democrat John Osoff’s defeat in Georgia’s sixth district. “Maybe instead of trying to convince hateful white people, Dems should convince our base—ppl of color, women—to turn out,” feminist writer and Cosmopolitan political columnist Jill Filopovic tweeted afterward. “At some point we have to be willing to say that yes, lots of conservative voters are hateful and willing to embrace bigots.” Insightful as she is, even Williams assumes that all criticisms of the immigration status quo can be chalked up to “fear of brown people.”
No Democrat on the scene today possesses the Lincolnesque political skills to persuade liberal voters to give up their assumptions of white deplorability, endorse assimilation, or back traditional civics education. In the current environment, a Democratic civics curriculum would teach that American institutions are vehicles for the transmission of white supremacy and sexism, hardly a route to social cohesion. As for assimilation, Hispanic and bilingual-education advocacy organizations would threaten a revolt—and they’d only be the first to sound the alarm.
Appeasing deplorables may yet prove unnecessary, though. Democrats’ strategy of awaiting “inevitable” demographic change in the electorate, combined with the hope that Trump and the Republican Congress will commit major unforced errors, may allow the party to regain control of the country without making any concessions to the large portion of the U.S. population whom they appear to despise.
