Saturday Politics : Tightening Polls, Corrupt Government, Smug Hillary Progressives, and Donald Trump's America

Saturday Politics is always about politics, right? ~~~~~~ Hillary Clinton held a video conference on Tuesday to address a Las Vegas convention of the Laborers International Union of North America. She duly noted her pro-union stances, saying : "I will fight back against so-called 'right to work.' Right to work is wrong for workers and wrong for America. Now having said all this, why aren't I 50 points ahead, you might ask." Donald Trump answered Hillary's question on Thursday morning during a phone interview with Fox and Friends : “Because she’s terrible. I mean, she’s had a terrible record. Everything she touches is bad...it’s just a mess. And she’s spending a lot of money and so far it’s not had much of an impact because I guess I’m winning in most of these states and we’ll see what happens in the end, but she is [terrible]." ~~~~~~ But, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted this week and released on Friday found Clinton leading Trump by six points nationally. While the two are running neck and neck in the RealClearPolitics national average and Trump is up by 6 in the latest national Rasmussen poll, the NBC News-WSJ survey found that : "Trump has failed to meaningfully cut into Clinton’s significant advantages with Hispanics, African-Americans, young voters, women or those with a college education. Instead, Trump’s recent polling strength appears to have energized Clinton’s supporters, who now match Trump’s supporters in enthusiasm. And Clinton’s ace-in-the-hole is a battleground map that will require Trump to draw a near-perfect hand. The GOP nominee will have to run the table on states where the race is currently a toss-up -- Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada among them -- and then pull out victory in a traditionally blue state." New surveys out of New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia and Colorado show that Clinton is the favorite and will win the White House if that blue wall holds. ~~~~~~ Wait a minute -- to report the poll facts, in Wisconsin, Hillary is losing ground, continuing to hold a shrinking lead over Trump in the crucial state. The Marquette Law School survey released Wednesday shows Clinton at 44% and Trump at 42% among likely voters, with 12% showing no preference. Clinton has lost one percent of her support since the last Marquette survey, when Clinton had a 45%-42% edge among likely voters. The Marquette poll has a 4.8% margin of error for likely voters, so the race is really a toss-up in Wisconsin. [Beware of mainstream media reports that routinely give Hillary the edge in polls that are actually statistical ties because of margins of error.] Clinton is also falling in data guru Nate Silver’s 538 model, which now gives Clinton a 59% chance of winning, up from 56% earlier this week, but way off of her highs in August of nearly 90%. Silver still awardss 286 electoral votes to Clinton, compared to 251 for Trump. In the Silver model, Trump makes things interesting by hanging on in Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and North Carolina. But Clinton’s blue wall holds and she achieves victory by winning in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan New Hampshire, Virginia and Colorado. ~~~~~~ Trump has a path to winning. A victory in Pennsylvania, where the RCP average shows he trails by 5, would completely reshape the map. He campaigned there Thursday, in Democratic stronghold Pittsburgh, because he needs to expand his appeal beyond the rural areas if he’s going to take Pennsylvania. And pollsters are confounded by Colorado, where surveys have been all over the map. Most still believe it will go blue in 2016, but Libertarian Gary Johnson is routinely drawing double-digit support there and keeping Trump in the race. Much of the lead Clinton built up after the Democrat convention in July has vanished. The polling trend lines moved aggressively against her as she dealt with questions about her health, never-ending controversies over the Clinton Foundation and her use of a private email server as Secretary of State. And then Hillary attacked Trump’s supporters as “deplorables." Election experts say they are noticing a trend between the two historically unpopular candidates. GOP pollster David Winston says : “Whichever candidate is in the news is the one that is falling. Neither has been able to make a positive case for why they should be President. Maybe that will change at the debate.” ~~~~~~~ While Hillary is dogged by her email scandal and the pay-for-play relationship the State Department had with the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State, it is her health problems -- and those cobalt blue 'sunglasses' said by experts to be used to prevent seizures in Parkinson patients -- that are more immediately weighing down her campaign. TheHill reported on Friday that a Tampa, Florida, ABC News reporter asked Hillary Clinton whether she would be willing to take neurological exams in the wake of recent health concerns. The Hill says Clinton laughed off the question by ABC Action News reporter Sarina Fazan, who said some doctors had called on her to take "neuro-cognitive" tests. Clinton's answer was evasive in the extreme : “I am very sorry I got pneumonia. I am very glad that antibiotics took care of it and that’s behind us now. I have met the standard that everybody running for President has met in terms of releasing information about my health.” Hillary then said she sees no need for such tests : "The information is very clear, and the information, as I said, meets the standards that every other person running for president has ever had to meet." ~~~~~~ Not so clear as Hillary would have us believe. Last month, Dr. David Scheiner, a former physician to President Obama, told CNN he saw a number of questions about Clinton's health : "For example, she's on Coumadin, a medication to prevent blood clots. You have to monitor that and it says she's being monitored regularly, I'd like to know how well she's being controlled. That's a difficult drug to use. Also, I think she should have had a neurological examination, a thorough neurological examination in 2016. We know what happens to football players who have had concussions, how they begin to lose some of their cognitive ability." Transparency about Hillary's health came to the front of the campaign when she suffered what an amateur video showed to be a serious medical episode as she left a 9/11 memorial service. After video of the incident surfaced, Clinton’s campaign disclosed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier. Dr. Bob Lehita, chairman of the Department of Medicine at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, raised questions in Fox News in August about Clinton’s past diagnoses of two blood clots : "This is a very unusual story with Hillary. The very fact that she’s having these clots and she’s had two bouts of thrombosis is disconcerting, to say the least." A recent Morning Consult poll showed that 79% of those surveyed said they have heard "a lot or some about Clinton’s health concerns." And only 29% of those polled believe Clinton has given accurate information about her health. ~~~~~~ In an effort to alleviate Hillary's worries about why she isn't "50 points ahead," the Obama administration may be hemping. An email released by Fox News shows that immigration officials may be literally working overtime to swear in as many new “citizen voters” as possible before the November 8 presidential election. The email, from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services field office chief and part of a chain of correspondence within the agency, urges the unnamed recipient to swear in as many citizens as possible "due to the election year" : "The Field Office due to the election year needs to process as many of their N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016." The email, which was disclosed to FoxNews.com by Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs went on to instruct DHS : “If you have cases in this category or other pending, you are encouraged to take advantage of the OT if you can. This will be an opportunity to move your pending naturalization cases. If you have not volunteered for OT, please consider and let me know if you are interested.” The email was sent by the branch chief of the Houston Field Office District 17. It was not clear to whom it was addressed, but the Houston chief forwarded it to someone in his group, saying : “I couldn’t have said it better! It’s the end of the year crunch time, so let’s get crunchy! Go Team Houston! Thanks for all your hard work!” Senator Johnson and Senator Charles Grassley, in a Wednesday letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, said it appears the agency is trying to swear in new citizens as the election between Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton and GOP choice Donald Trump approaches : “Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the brakes and reviewing past adjudications." Johnson was referring to a report this week from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General that found at least 858 people from terror hotspots and other countries of concern had been mistakenly granted citizenship despite facing orders of deportation under other identities. Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies says : "Considering that USCIS already has a troubling record of inadequate review of naturalization applications, and mistakenly giving away citizenship to terrorists, criminals and other fraudsters, it is disturbing that they are now in full and blind rubber stamp mode to crank out new citizens." In a USCIS planning document submitted to Congress earlier this year, USCIS reported it expected to receive 828,000 total applications this year, up from a planned 815,000 last year, an increase of 13,000, Vaughan said. Claude Arnold, a retired US Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, says the effort is reminiscent of a similar bid to bring in new voters when Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996. Arnold said : "I am not at all surprised by this revelation. This is a repeat of the Clinton election playbook. Then, it was to help re-elect Bill Clinton; this time, it is to help elect Hillary Clinton." And Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform, says the all-out push shows the Obama administration is using levers to help Clinton win : "In the pursuit of a partisan advantage, one party has decided integrity in the system is irrelevant. They don’t really care about checking backgrounds or verifying status and eligibility – it is more about increasing the number of eligible voters in the upcoming election." ~~~~~~ While the Obama administration is busy trying to manufacture votes for Hillary by creating new US citizens, Hillary dug a big hole for herself when she referred to Donald Trump supporters as "deplorables." Her remark was not only 'deplorable' in itself -- it contradicted her promise to bring Americans of all political persuasions together. Hillary revealed to a select guest list of Progressive high-donation supporters how she really feels about a quarter of Americans. And were her Progressive big-dollar contributors shocked by her remark? No. A video shows them laughing and applauding. They agreed with her. Trump's response was that at first he didn't think it was within the "realm of possible" that Clinton called half his followers a "basket of deplorables," but now he says : "When I saw this in its full form, and I saw the anger with which she said it, the way she spoke, I think it's the single biggest mistake of the political season," Trump told Fox News. Clinton has said she regrets making the generalization about Trump's supporters, but Trump said when someone is President, "you have to be President of everybody. You are President of all the people. You are not President of 50% or 75%. You are President of all the people. You are President of everybody and somehow it has to get out there that it's not a certain group of people that's going to be left behind. They have already been left behind with jobs and lots of other things." ~~~~~~ American Thinker published an article by Bob Weir titled "Pulling the Plug on America." Weir wrote : "Once upon a time, if politicians were caught in a corruption probe, they would quickly resign their offices and attempt to hide from the embarrassing publicity, while praying that they would not go to jail. In addition, when public officials were exposed as incompetent, reckless, or negligent in the performance of duty, they’d step down amid a swirling tide of public outrage. Not anymore! These days, it takes a lot more than bribery, mismanagement, or mendacity during congressional hearings to remove these reprobates from office. It seems as though we’ve arrived at a time in which those in power have rigged the system to keep from being penalized for their reckless disregard for the law." Weir was writing about the FBI debacle of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email scandal, but his points reach far beyond that. Weir said : "If The Donald becomes the next President and fulfills his campaign pledges, one of the first items on his agenda will be the systematic dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Secondly, he could begin overturning, or making ineffective, many of Obama’s executive orders. In addition, he might hire an A.G. to investigate the Clinton Foundation and the “pay to play” bribe-taking by Ms. Clinton during her suspicious wealth-gathering career as Secretary of State. Moreover, the newly elected commander in chief could initiate a probe of the money-laundering scheme involving $400 million to Iran that Obama denied was a ransom payment for release of US prisoners, in violation of the law. And the foregoing could be just the beginning of a massive exposé of the systemic corruption in the political establishment that runs this country like an organized crime empire." The key conclusion reached by Weir is frighteningly correct : "The attempt by highly placed people in the government on both sides of the aisle to scuttle Trump’s ambition is unprecedented in the history of politics in our country. Why are so many insiders conspiring to keep an outsider from pushing the curtain aside and looking in the tent? Is it possible that the level of corruption is so immense that if uncovered, elected officials from coast to coast could end up wearing orange jumpsuits? Is it unfathomable that top officials in our government have created an alliance with corporate giants and underworld figures to make exposure impossible? When I see an IRS director taking the Fifth during a congressional probe, I’m reminded of Mafia goons smirking at the law." ~~~~~~ Dear readers, in the speech President Kennedy never gave -- because he was assassinated just hours before -- he had written : "We, in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than by choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom." The corrupt gang mentality of some GOP leaders who have been bludgeoning their own nominee and thereby helping Hillary Clinton is an anomaly in that "watchman" perspective that Americans have struggled to understand. If Weir's analysis is right -- I think it is -- perhaps it is as simple as the GOP insider elite wanting to keep the lid on their questionable rise to power and wealth. But, despite their disgusting efforts, Trump’s popularity with a large portion of the electorate continues, despite the knife in his back from those he beat in the primaries. Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld explained President GHW Bush's apparent statement that he will vote for Hillary as an indication that "he is getting up in years." I find it as spiteful and mean as anything any Republican leader has ever said. It mirrors the libel coming from the dishonest, biased media that distorts every syllable Trump utters. What the Founding Fathers put together is now in jeopardy, and criminal collusion and left-wing dogma are ready to bring down America. The late, great British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge famously observed : "Other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over -- a weary, battered old brontosaurus -- and became extinct." In today's world where the uncivilized killer instincts of real people outstrip the films and computer games that struggle to match reality's viciousness, we would do better to rely on Charlton Heston’s famous words at the 2000 NRA convention. Speaking beyond the audience to Al Gore, then the Democratic nominee for President, Heston cried: “From my cold, dead hands,” as he hoisted a musket into the air. Heston's prophetic words can now be directed at Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most flawed and foul-smelling presidential nominee in the Republic’s history, whose adult existence -- along with her partner in crime, Bill -- has been one, big self-serving spree. But, Donald Trump and his supporters have a message for Hillary and Bill Clinton and all the Progressives who feed at their trough -- "you will have to 'snatch' America and its immortal ideals from our 'cold, dead hands.' We will not go quietly."