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Friday, September 30, 2016

Why a Terrorist Attack Could Make Trump President

Does Trump Really Want to Win?

(Steven Hayward)

From the very beginning I’ve wondered whether Trump was really running for president thinking he’d be a real contender, or whether this was just a yuuuge business branding exercise. Because once again the Trump presidential campaign is looking more like a college frat prank that got out of hand.

I thought that Trump’s Twitter feed had been brought under control, but in the middle of the night last night Trump couldn’t resist continuing what John called yesterday “Trump’s off-message detour” with a series of tweets about the expanding Miss Universe Alicia Machado. Every moment spent prolonging this sideshow is a moment lost with a decent attack message on Hillary Clinton.

trump-4trump-2trump-1

Later this morning, he adds this:

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States Sue Obama Administration in Last-Ditch Effort to Stop US From Giving Up Control of Internet

Republican attorneys general from Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma are suing the Obama administration in a last-ditch effort to stop the U.S. from giving up control of the internet’s domain name system.

“Trusting authoritarian regimes to ensure the continued freedom of the internet is lunacy,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “The president does not have the authority to simply give away America’s pioneering role in ensuring that the internet remains a place where free expression can flourish.”

The AGs … asked a judge late Wednesday to step in and stop the transition to an international oversight body, after GOP lawmakers failed to stall the move as part of a short-term spending bill. 

Paxton was among the four Republican AGs who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas, Galveston Division. 

The U.S. government has been in charge of domain names for more than three decades, thanks to a Commerce Department agency's oversight of an obscure, but powerful, Los Angeles-based nonprofit called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). 

The lawsuit argues that if the transfer takes place, as it’s scheduled to on Oct. 1, people will “lose the predictability, certainty, and protections that currently flow from federal stewardship of the Internet and instead be subjected to ICANN’s unchecked control.” 

The suit argues the looming transfer violates the property clause in the U.S. Constitution which prohibits handing over government property without Congress’ approval. The suit also claims the handoff would violate First Amendment rights and says ICANN, the nonprofit owners in control, would be unchecked and could start to censor speech. […]

Republicans in Congress, though, have long-objected to the transfer, which they called a “giveaway” to the rest of the world. They argue that handing over control to a non-government entity would give countries like Russia and China the ability to control online speech – something supporters categorically deny. 

The new lawsuit also claims ICANN “has a documented history of ignoring or operating outside of its governing bylaws.”

“Nothing protects the Plaintiffs from additional occurrences of ICANN oversight failures,” the suit says.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warned Americans on the “Sean Hannity Show” Wednesday that giving up control to ICANN should be worrisome for anyone who values “free expression and free speech rights generally.”

Memo to Trump: No cable news or Twitter until debate homework is done


By Joe Concha - 09-30-16 09:38 AM EDT

The poll numbers on Monday night's debate are now all in. And for Republican nominee Donald Trump, they ain't pretty.

NBC News sees 52 percent of those polled saying Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won, compared to just 21 percent for Trump. CNN has it at 62-27, Clinton. YouGov clocks in at 57-30, Clinton. PPP sees a slighter tighter, albeit still double-digit margin of victory for Clinton, with a 51-40 split.

Other polls basically tell the same story: Trump survived, but it wasn't even close.

The moderator can be partially blamed for the result and rightly so, sure. Trump's top vulnerabilities - tax returns, birther comments, comments about women - were all broached. Clinton's top vulnerabilities - mishandling of emails/classified information, destroying evidence, Clinton Foundation controversies, transparency issues - weren't even brought up by NBC's Lester Holt.

But given the open format Holt provided that let the candidates go at each other back and forth, Trump's inexperience showed by not broaching those topics himself. And when Holt did introduce cybersecurity as a primary topic, Trump whiffed badly by not going after Clinton putting top secret and/or sensitive information at risk, instead going off the rails about 400-pound hackers and his 10-year-old son's computer prowess instead.

Those sympathetic to the Trump cause will say his inexperience simply showed in missing those kind of opportunities. And while that's true to a small extent, another big factor showed as well.

He got badly outworked by Clinton on the preparation front.

Simply put, Trump spends far too much time watching cable news. The evidence behind making such a statement is proven by the fact he's seemingly always attacking its content. CNN's Don Lemon and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski have now taken the Megyn Kelly mantle as the biggest targets in the past few months, with the Lemon getting it again Thursday night.

Attacking the media can work well in the primary season; not so much in the general. So for Trump moving forward, this basic rule from parent to student needs to apply if he wants to avoid a debate repeat: No TV, no Twitter until your homework is done.

For Trump, he has arguably the most target-rich opponent in history to do his homework on for the next two debates. Given all the opportunities missed in Round 1, he'd be wise to put down the phone, stop tweeting, stop watching and lock himself away with an unapologetic debate coach for six to eight hours per day while flying from rally to rally.

Mark Halperin summed up Trump's perception issue perfectly on Bloomberg:

"He plainly lost the debate. The big difference to me between this and 2012 when Barack Obama failed in Denver in the first debate, he confronted mass panic among his supporters," Halperin, also an MSNBC "Morning Joe" regular, explained.

"He had to admit that he lost and that he would do better the next time because Democrats were freaking out. Trump fans are not freaking out. Trump fans saw a different debate than we saw last night. They think he won."

To Halperin's point, most polls about who won the debate showed Obama losing by even wider margin to Mitt Romney in 2012 than Trump to Clinton. But Obama was also comfortably ahead in national polling at that point and could afford to lose a few points across some battleground states. Trump doesn't have that luxury.

The president also was infinitely more prepared in his next debate with Romney. And because of that - along with some help from a Candy Crowley fact-check on Benghazi that she later admitted was wrong - he won that debate, and the final one as well, on his way to reelection.

Trump can do the same by learning from his experience.

He can also stop getting outworked after outworking Clinton so often since the conventions.

No TV or Twitter until your homework is done.

The question is: Are there any adults in the room to actually enforce the rule?

India launches attacks into Pakistani territory and Pakistan threatens nuclear retaliation to ‘destroy India’

The reality of Chicago’s murder rate

The Debate Schedule Helps Trump

USA Today in scathing editorial: Trump is 'unfit for the presidency

USA Today in scathing editorial: Trump is 'unfit for the presidency'
By Jesse Byrnes - 09-29-16 19:36 PM EDT

The USA Today editorial board is opposing Donald Trump's candidacy, taking a position in a presidential election for the first time in the newspaper's 34-year history.

Describing Trump as "erratic," "ill-equipped" to be commander in chief and a "serial liar," the newspaper slammed him for trafficking in "prejudice" and having a "checkered" business record.

"This year, the choice isn't between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences," reads the editorial published Thursday.

"This year, one of the candidates - Republican nominee Donald Trump - is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency," it states.

The editors wrote that Trump "has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents."

"Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts," they wrote. "He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections."

But the harsh editorial was not an endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

"Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service - as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State - and believe she'd serve the nation ably as its president," the editorial read. "Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton's sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information."

The paper said it's bottom-line advice was for voters to follow their convictions.

"Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump," they wrote."

Trump's running mate Mike Pence penned an op-ed in USA Today outlining his case for the GOP nominee Thursday.

Several other national newspapers have similarly rejected Trump. The Washington Post said in an editorial last week that "it's beyond debate that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. The New York Times over the weekend also officially endorsed Clinton.

A number of smaller papers have also bucked tradition in not endorsing the GOP nominee.

The Detroit News on Thursday endorsed Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, the first time it has not endorsed the Republican presidential candidate in its 143-year history.

The Cincinnati Enquirer similarly backed Clinton last week, the first time it's back a Democrat in roughly a century. Earlier this month, The Dallas Morning News endorsed Clinton, the first time it had recommended a Democrat for president since before World War II.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Reports: Frustrated Trump Advisers Grumble About Debate 'Disaster,' Campaign Mood 'Dark'

Guy Benson

Separate reports, similar message via exasperated campaign aides: Trump blew it under the brightest lights, and set himself up for failure. Before you read on, why would multiple advisers leak such dirty laundry to the likes of the New York Times and NBC News -- outlets that embody what the GOP nominee derides as the 'disgusting' and 'corrupt' media? Perhaps because they know their candidate won't listen to them unless a negative narrative lights a fire under his rear end, which is apparently what happened before his big (and generally successful) August pivot. If his yes-men keep telling him he won -- look at all of these "polls!" -- then there's nothing to worry about it. But if the media, which Trump tracks obsessively, starts talking about how badly he whiffed, he might get angry enough to change. That, I suspect, is why seven different campaign sources whispered these gripes to the Times.  Note the word 'convince' in the first paragraph here:

A delicate approach to the candidate is now in the works. Before his advisers can shape Mr. Trump’s performance for the next debate, on Oct. 9 in St. Louis — which, contrary to speculation, he does plan to attend, a top aide said — they need to convince him that he can do better than he did in the first one and that only a disciplined, strategic attack can damage Mrs. Clinton with voters. Advisers said that Mr. Trump had been prepped to handle Mrs. Clinton’s attacks on Monday but did not effectively execute responses to them...Even as Mr. Trump’s advisers publicly backed him on Tuesday and praised his debate performance, they were privately awash in second-guessing about why he stopped attacking Mrs. Clinton on trade and character issues and instead grew erratic, impatient and subdued as the night went on. In interviews, seven campaign aides and advisers, most of whom sought anonymity to speak candidly, expressed frustration and discouragement over their candidate’s performance Monday night. They blamed his overstuffed schedule, including a last-minute rally in Virginia that was added days before the debate. They blamed the large number of voluble people on his prep team, including two retired military figures with no political background. And they blamed the lack of time spent on preparing a game plan in the first place...

Almost all of his advisers rejected the idea that the debate was a failure for Mr. Trump, noting that he landed some punches and insisting that Mrs. Clinton looked more polished than she was because of her opposition. But all of them described the debate as filled with missed opportunities. And they openly expressed frustration that Mr. Trump seemed unable to stop chasing chum that Mrs. Clinton tossed at him...There were early efforts to run a more standard form of general election debate-prep camp, led by Roger Ailes, the ousted Fox News chief, at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J. But Mr. Trump found it hard to focus during those meetings, according to multiple people briefed on the process who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. That left Mr. Ailes, who at the time was deeply distracted by his removal from Fox and the news media reports surrounding it, discussing his own problems as well as recounting political war stories, according to two people present for the sessions...The team had primed Mr. Trump to look for roughly a dozen key phrases and expressions Mrs. Clinton uses when she is uncertain or uncomfortable, but he did not seem to pay attention during the practice sessions, one aide said, and failed to home in on her vulnerabilities during the debate.

In other words, they're not trying to sabotage him; they're begging him to listen to them, delivering their concerns through a conduit that will get his attention. NBC News is hearing similar things:

Will Trump himself wake up to the reality that the general election is meaningfully different than the primary, and that more or less winging it didn't cut it on Monday? The nuggets about Trump losing focus and evincing little interest during debate preparation sessions indicate that the man Republicans have nominated lacked either the focus or the seriousness of purpose to adequately prepare for arguably the single most watched and most important event of his life.  So long as he remains in an "I won!" bubble, he won't adjust his approach for the final two debates.  Then again, his blamestormingabout the moderator, his microphone, etc. suggests that he doesn't really believe his adulatory echo chamber's hosannas this time.  Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who has earned her keep as a pollster for decades, can surely sit him down and explain the difference between his beloved internet polls, and these real numbers:

Stripping away the spin and braggadocio, Hillary won on Monday night, and they know it.  How will the campaign respond?  Or are reportedly warring internal factions hampering Team Trump's ability to focus and adapt?  This guy's already on his third campaign manager.  The kids can't seriously believe another change at the top is a wise move, can they?

I'll leave you with two links. First, here is Allahpundit once again marveling that in addition to woefully under-preparing for his monumentally important first debate with Hillary, America's most famous alleged "self-funding" billionaire still hasn't cut an unprecedentedly humongous check to his own campaign. With the stroke of a pen, he could finance an operation that would overwhelm Hillary's ground game and come close to matching her on-air.  He hasn't, but there are reports floating around that he's contemplating doing so. Tick tock, Donald. Second, we told you about Trump's self-destructive decision to raise Hillary's "Miss Piggy/Miss Housekeeping" attack the morning after the debate. Setting Trump's related conduct off to the side, did Team Clinton bother to vet this woman?  This is their new poster-woman-slash-surrogate?  This is their new character witness against Donald Trump?  Good Lord:

Colin Kaepernick: Who's the real racist?

Surprise! Administration does not vet refugees for extremist ideological views

Ferguson’s Violent Crime Rate Skyrockets in Aftermath of Brown Shooting

1Ferguson-Rioting

The city that saw Michael Brown's death in 2014 experienced an almost 65 percent increase of violent crime in the year following the fatal shooting.

Ferguson, Missouri experienced 900 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2015, a sizable increase from 545 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2014. This represents a surge of 65 percent, as noted by Heather Mac Donald in National Review.

Compared to Ferguson, the national averages for violent crime were far lower. The national average was 362 per 100,000 residents in 2014, and rose to 373 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2015, according to FBI statistics.

In 2014, the year Brown died, Ferguson had a total population of 21,090. FBI crime statistics revealed that the city experienced 115 violent crimes and two murders.

The year after Brown's death, 2015, the city had a population of 21,059 and saw 190 violent crimes and five murders.

Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014. Prosecutors and the Department of Justice investigation found that despite the clear instructions, "Hands up, don't shoot," Brown tried to grab Wilson's gun. Wilson fatally shot Brown after he tried to charge Wilson.

The Ferguson protests that occurred thereafter contributed to the Black Lives Matter movement, with protesters chanting, “no justice, no peace" in the streets.

The year after Brown's death also saw a rise in robbery and aggravated assault.

Aggravated assault went up 58 percent in Ferguson; there were 60 aggravated assaults committed in 2014 and 95 aggravated assaults committed in 2015. Robberies rose 60 percent as well. Ferguson saw 51 robberies committed in 2014 and 82 robberies done in 2015.

Ferguson witnessed an increase in the rise of violent crime the year before Brown's death, though not at the rates seen after his death. From 2013 to 2014, Ferguson experienced an almost 14 percent increase in violent crimes.

 

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Send tips to amber@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Copyright 2016 Daily Caller News Foundation


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Do Lives Have Value Only If We Say So?

Now that scientists have developed 3-D ultrasounds, it is no longer tenable to claim that the preborn are not human or that a child inside the womb is somehow less human than a child outside of it. Ever since then, and now with the Center for Medical Progress unveiling to the world exactly what goes on inside Planned Parenthood, the abortion lobby’s defense of abortion has shifted dramatically.

There is no more denying the humanity of the preborn. The only thing abortion supporters can do now is claim that a human life only has value if they say so.

“The unborn person has no constitutional rights,” declared Hillary Clinton on CNN a few months back. Notice she readily admits the preborn is indeed a unique, individual human person.

“So what if abortion ends a life?” writes Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. Williams goes on to say the preborn child is “a life worth sacrificing.”

In April, pro-abortion students at the University of North Georgia made cookies shaped like children and bit the heads off while laughing hysterically. In June, a San Diego abortionist was filmedsaying that he “loved” dismembering babies.

We Know It’s a Person; We’re Still Killing Him

Many in the pro-life movement have long thought that if we could get people to see that the preborn child is indeed a human life, and not merely a clump of cells, we could win the argument. However something strange, almost surreal, has happened. Abortion supporters have moved the goalposts in a shocking way. They continue to kill even as they acknowledge the humanity of their victims.

“Our arguments were predicated on the hope that by just getting people to realize that a life was being killed, they would become pro-life. What we forgot was that history is filled with examples of the powerful preying on the weak, fully knowing that their victims were alive,” writes Ardee Coolidge of CareNet. “Whether it was the slave owner in the Antebellum South or the Nazi prison guard in World War II, few believed that the slave on the auction block or the prisoner on their way to the gas chamber was not a person. They were persons worth selling and sacrificing. They were alive, but only partly human.”

Just as there is no logical distinction between a child inside the womb or out, there is also no logical distinction between sub-humanizing Jews and black people and sub-humanizing unborn persons. Abortion simply perpetuates the human tradition of putting personal ambitions and desires before others’ lives.

In the 1860 presidential election, Democratic nominee Stephen Douglas argued that, regardless of the morality of slavery or the humanity of black people, it would be wrong to force citizens to accept black people as fully human. He said that despite personal opposition to the practice, state territories should decide for themselves whether slavery would be legal.

He was making the “pro-choice” argument for slavery just as today’s abortion supporters make the “pro-choice” argument for abortion. To Douglas, the slave trader, and the abortion lobby, the value of a human life is subservient to personal freedom. The inherent worth of a human being can be negotiated based on preference and circumstance. Just as the slave’s rights to life and liberty were worth sacrificing in order to provide slave-traders a wealthy, slothful lifestyle, today’s abortion supporters believe the preborn are worth sacrificing so they can maintain their promiscuous, self-centered lifestyle.

Either We All Have Value Or We’re All Up for Interpretation

Abraham Lincoln, Douglas’ opponent, argued that freedom of choice cannot justly be used to take away another person’s freedom or rights. This is the non-aggression principle of governance. One is free to do as he or she wishes, so long as he or she does not infringe on the freedom or natural rights of fellow human beings.

It is crucially important that every unborn human being can claim his or her inalienable, natural rights to life and liberty. If instead the value of an unborn human life is up for interpretation, as the Left claims, then the value of all our lives is up for interpretation.

The callousness of this shift in leftist rhetoric reveals nothing, save for the grace of God, could convince these people to give up killing babies. Even if they become wholly convinced of the humanity of the preborn, which they now are, they will not loosen their grasp on abortion.

As Dinesh D’Souza puts it, leftists know that abortion is the glue holding their failing sexual revolution together: “Liberals understand that abortion-on-demand is the debris of the sexual revolution. If you are going to have sexual promiscuity, then there are going to be mistakes, and many women are going to get pregnant without wanting to do so.” Babies are the “uninvited guests” of the sexual revolution who must be erased so adults can have their fun.

Abortion Supporters Need to Become Human Again

The pro-life movement, with help from scientific advances, has effectively humanized the unborn. Now we just have to humanize abortion supporters. They deny they have consciences. They deny that they feel guilt, and tell women to celebrate and #ShoutYourAbortion, but study after study on post-abortion trauma reveals that women are suffering.

Compared with women who give birth, women post-abortion have significantly higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts, and a host of other mental ills. These consequences are so prevalent they have a name: Post-Abortion Syndrome, which is considered a strain of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

For healing, we have to help abortion supporters recognize their own consciences, which scream at them to acknowledge the human blood they have shed and the lives they have sent into depression. That conversation is going to be a very difficult, but necessary one. The increase in hateful, shameless pro-abortion rhetoric suggests it has already begun.

We must foster a culture that recognizes the inherent value of every single person. We must throw all forms of devaluing human life into the ash heap of history. We must all understand that the value of a human life is not up for interpretation or subject to personal feelings. Salon, Clinton, and the abortion lobby are finally conceding that the preborn is a human person, but they still believe that other rights come first.

Call me an extremist, but I still hope we can all agree that every human person has the right to not be violently killed, and no right that any other person may claim supersedes it.


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