We conservatives and Alt-Right deplorables are acutely aware of the appalling corruption of the Clintons, from the pay-to-play Clinton Foundation money laundering scheme to the tens of thousands of deleted emails, and from the anti-Islam video as pretext for a riot in Benghazi, Libya to the trail of mysterious deaths of dozens of people who ran afoul of the Clintons.
But the most effective lies in Hillary's arsenal, the ones that could get her over the top and into the White House, may be the most conventional ones that are hiding in plain sight, the ones that are not criminally prosecutable; the platitudes and pejoratives that simply capitalize on the economic ignorance of the American people, thanks to fifty or more years of progressive dominance of our education system, and the transformation of our society away from business ownership and toward corporate or government employment. Put another way: What she just said may not technically be a "lie," but seriously, do people really/still believe that?
Following are a few of the worst offenders during the Las Vegas debate:
[Continue reading at AmericanThinker.com]
Extended and detailed version here below:
Let us give credit where it is due: She is polished, refined, well-rehearsed, and expert at hitting all of the focus group-tested-and-approved notes. Her performance in the third debate was a masterful culmination of forty years of preparation for such a time as this.
We conservatives and Alt-Right Deplorables are acutely aware of the appalling corruption of the Clintons, from the pay-to-play Clinton Foundation money laundering scheme to the tens of thousands of deleted emails, and from the anti-Islam video as pretext for a riot in Benghazi, Libya to the trail of mysterious deaths of dozens of people who ran afoul of the Clintons.
But the most effective lies in Hillary's arsenal, the ones that could get her over the top and into the White House, may be the most conventional ones that are (not) hiding in plain sight, the ones that are not criminally prosecutable; the platitudes and pejoratives that simply capitalize on the economic ignorance of the American people, thanks to fifty or more years of progressive dominance of our education system, and the transformation of our society away from business ownership and toward corporate or government employment. Put another way: What she just said may not technically be a "lie," but seriously, do people really (still) believe that?
Here are a few of the top offenders:
"I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people. Not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy."
The brilliance of this statement lies in its genericness, the fact that there's very little any of us could disagree with so far. So the less-guarded of us are drawn in: "Yeah, that's reasonable." But then she gets to some real meat:
"For me, that means that we need a Supreme Court that will stand up on behalf of women's rights, on behalf of the rights of the LGBT community, that will stand up and say no to Citizens United, a decision that has undermined the election system in our country because of the way it permits dark, unaccountable money to come into our electoral system."
So, unless Hillary is elected, the Supreme Court will go out of its way to persecute women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.
Next time a liberal tells you about "dark money," ask them if they think the NAACP should have been compelled to turn over its member and donor lists to the state of Alabama when it was organizing for civil rights for negroes in the deep South in the 1950s. At issue with Citizen's United are two things: 1) The right of corporations to participate on an even footing with (Democrat-controlled) labor unions in politics, and 2) the right to anonymity in politics, which is a necessary protection against retaliation, persecution and intimidation, as exemplified by the NAACP v. Alabama case. It was Democrat's reaction ("conniption fit" might be a better word) to Citizen's United that led to the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups for rectal exams and other manifold abuses of government power against conservative citizens by the FEC, the FCC, the SEC and just about any other federal agency that Obama could telegraph his displeasure with these pesky upstart citizens to (read Kimberly Strassel's book "The Intimidation Game: How the left is silencing free speech.")
So yes, we'll keep Citizen's United, and we'll ask for a proper investigation of Lois Lerner and every other unpunished abuser of regulatory power too, while we're at it.
Over 90% of money spent in elections is already disclosed. If Hillary wants to talk about "dark money" and outsized influence by wealthy people, she should look no further than her own cronies like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg (who single-handedly outspends the NRA), and her own foundation. The fact of the matter is the Democrat party is the party of, by and for the rich. The richest senators are Democrats. Nineteen of the twenty richest zip codes in the country vote Democrat. The wealthiest counties in the country surround Washington, D.C.
"I support the Second Amendment." Clinton has praised countries like Australia that have implemented gun confiscations. The policies she advocates, which are steaming full ahead in California, do nothing to disarm criminals or terrorists, and everything to disarm law-abiding citizens and to criminalize those who take their civil rights under the Second Amendment seriously. They do so at a time when Democrat politicians are releasing actual violent criminals onto our streets before their sentences have been served.
"33,000 people a year die from guns." More than half of those are suicides. The lion's share of murders committed with guns in America are concentrated in just four cities, all controlled by Democrats for fifty years or more, with the strictest gun laws in the nation. There is an inverse relationship between the rate of gun ownership and "gun violence."
"Roe v. Wade very clearly sets out that there can be regulations on abortion so long as the life and the health of the mother are taken into account...I have met with women who have, toward the end of their pregnancy, get the worst news one could get. That their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term. Or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. So you can regulate if you are doing so with the life and the health of the mother taken into account."
The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973 was written, and has been upheld to mean, a virtually unlimited "right" to abort babies. The "taking into account of the health of the mother" includes such vague and malleable terms as "emotional health." The fact is that over 90 percent of abortions are elective. Democrats always seize upon the most rare cases (like rape or incest) to justify their support for the unlimited cases, which they don't talk about. Hillary says she doesn't want government interference in the most personal decisions, but Democrats have been unwavering in their pursuit of government funding of abortion, among other ways via support of the crony socialist progressive pet corporation Planned Parenthood. This means forcing all Americans, including the majority who have moral and religious objections, to pay for other women's abortions with their tax dollars.
Next time you are debating abortion -- what Hillary calls "Women's Health Care" with a liberal, ask the following: Do you think that laws pertaining to abortion should be decided by:
A) State legislatures,
B) Votes of the people,
C) The U.S. Congress, or
D) Nine appointed judges with lifetime tenure?
If the answer is D), then why should we bother having any of the other ways at all?
"[Trump] used undocumented labor to build the Trump tower." That may or may not be true, but note the deviousness: Democrats foster a society in which illegal immigrants comprise a substantial proportion of the workforce. They create an economy in which no one may compete or survive without taking illegal labor into account. Indeed, they confer de facto "rights" upon illegals to health care, welfare, driver's licenses, sanctuary cities etc. to the point where the term loses its meaning. And then they selectively criticize or prosecute Republicans who hire illegals (paying someone for services rendered being the least of the evils of illegal immigration). It is a naked ploy which was very effective against Meg Whitman in her bid for Governor of California.
"What is really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions [blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah.]" No, Hillary, what's really important about Wikileaks is whether what it reveals about the depths of corruption in your campaign, your party and your foundation are true. Congratulations on a master stroke of misdirection. She doesn't address the allegations against her camp, but blames others without offering evidence, in a manner that could inflame relations with a major world power with whom we are increasingly on the brink, thanks to repeated failures of Obama's, Kerry's and Hillary's State Department. Are you going to wave a magic wand -- hit another Putin "reset" button -- when you get into the White House?
"The United States has kept the peace through our alliances." True enough as far as it goes. But above all, the U.S. has kept the peace by being a strong, resolute and dependable defender of liberty. You and your pals have projected weakness and fecklessness, desecrating the graves of our servicemen and women in Iraq, giving the opening to ISIS, dooming the thousands of Iraqis who helped us to violent reprisals and death, and letting the world's tyrants know that it is open season on vulnerable people.
"Well I think the middle class thrives, America thrives. So my plan is based on growing the economy, giving middle class families many more opportunities." So far, so good. But then: "I want us to have the biggest jobs program since World War II." Interesting choice of words. Was WWII a "jobs program"? No, it was a war. The "jobs programs" that she is really referring to are the New Deal programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's never-ending Great Depression.
Here we get to the heart of the difference between the conservative and "progressive" visions of how economics actually works, and between Hillary's and Donald's experience. Government can create no net new jobs. Any jobs that government creates are offset by the destruction of other jobs by the removal of resources from other parts of the economy. Hillary has never created a single job in her entire life. Donald has personally created thousands. Hillary talks of "investing in the American people," by which she means taxing any economic activity that moves in order that government may redirect the resources to where Hillary prefers; but the only actual investing that Hillary is noted for is buying $1,000 worth of cattle futures and then selling them at a profit of $100,000 a short time later, with the help of a creative broker crony.
"New jobs in clean energy. Not only to fight climate change, which is a serious problem but to create new opportunities and new businesses. I want us to do more to help small business, that’s where two-thirds of the new jobs are going to come from. I want to us raise the national minimum wage because people who work full time should not still be in poverty. And I sure do want to make sure women get equal pay for the work we do. I feel strongly that we have to have an education system that starts with preschool and goes through college. That’s why I want more technical education and community colleges, real apprenticeships to prepare young people for the jobs of the future. I want to make college debt-free and for families making less than $125,000, you will not get a tuition bill from a public college or a university if the plan that I worked on with Bernie Sanders is enacted. And we're going to work hard to make sure that it is. Because we are going to go where the money is. Most of the gains in the last years since the great recession have gone to the very top. So we are going to have the wealthy pay their fair share. We're going to have corporations make a contribution greater than they are now to our country."
Let us score her credit for honesty about her intentions in this one. But you have to believe in Santa Claus to think that she can conjure the wealth to pay for all of this without exploding the national debt and perhaps more destructively, destroying economic growth and employment.
Any company that thinks they can pay women 75% of what they pay men can increase their profits 20% simply by firing all their male employees and replacing them with women. Why don't they do that?
"Because it [Trump's economic plan] truly will be Trickle Down economics on steroids." There is no such thing as "Trickle Down economics" except as a leftist pejorative for free-market (and perhaps "Supply-side" as opposed to demand-side or Keynesian) capitalism. But let us defend the real instead of the straw man: People with a dollar more than you advance you wages and salaries in exchange for some work. If the work creates more wealth than it consumes, the entrepreneur can continue to employ you, possibly give you a raise, or give you the opportunity to become an entrepreneur yourself. If more wealth is consumed than produced, then the business owner goes bankrupt, goes back begging to the banks for more loans, or becomes the employee of some other entrepreneur who made better decisions. But you and I get paid while we are employees whether the company wins or loses in the long term. Many entrepreneurs fail, but they do so on their own account and on the account of others who have voluntarily participated, as opposed to government boondoggles like Solyndra that put taxpayers on the hook for the government's losses against their will.
"The fact is, he is going to advocate for the largest tax cuts we've ever seen. Three times more than the tax cuts under the Bush administration." We certainly hope so. If he does, we'll credit Hillary for a truth told.
"[W]hen you inherit the level of economic catastrophe that President Obama inherited..." Slander. The crash of 2008 was caused by undue long-running government intervention in the mortgage lending market through the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Fed, and the alternately cozy and coercive relationship between all of the above and the destined-to-be-too-big-to-fail crony socialist banks -- all of which was set in motion before Bush ever set foot in the White House. Score him down for failing to fight it, but be honest about who and what was driving it. (See The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell and The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure by John Allison.)
"He went after Mr. And Mrs. Khan, the parents of a young man who died serving our country, a gold star family because of their religion." Mr. And Mrs. Khan's son died honorably serving his country. Mr. Khan is a pro-Islamic Sharia activist who attacked Trump for sounding the alarm about allowing in thousands of un-vettable Muslim immigrants, more than half of whom are from countries other than Syria and two-thirds of whom are military-age single males, whom ISIS has openly boasted about using for infiltration and Jihadi purposes.
We are at war, declared or not, with ISIS and Islamic Sharia supremacist jihadis of all stripes. Trump (and we) recognizes this. San Bernardino, Orlando, Fort Hood, Paris, Nice and Brussels have suffered acts of war. Obama, Kerry and Clinton are in denial and dereliction of leadership and duty to the American people.
"Of course, there's no way we can know whether any of that is true because he hasn't released his tax returns." You mean a presidential candidate caused information about him or herself to be withheld from legitimate disclosure? Say it ain't so!
Better yet, look in a mirror.
Clinton's answer on Syria strategy was relatively long, detailed and somewhat plausible, except that one may fairly ask, why haven't all of your smarts added up to a better outcome in the last eight years? You are not the outsider taking over from an incompetent prior administration. You are substantially responsible for the mess we are in! Trump should channel his inner...Donald Trump to say, "You failed; you're fired."
"I will not cut benefits. I want to enhance benefits for low-income workers and for women who have been disadvantaged by the current Social Security system...We’ve got to go after the long-term health care drivers. We've got to get costs down, increase value, emphasize wellness." More Santa Claus. Unbeatable!
"I will stand up for families against powerful interests, against corporations." Hillary, you OWN the corporations. The most powerful interests arrayed against families are the public-employee unions that you run and that are the backbone of the Democratic party's funding.
"Everything I did as secretary of state was in furtherance of our country's interests and our values." Grand prize.
Read the transcript. You'll find twice as many as I listed here.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/full-transcript-third-2016-presidential-debate-230063