Hillary Clinton's favorability rating hits 25-year low

Melissa Quinn  "The public’s image of Hillary Clinton is the worst it’s ever been since Gallup started tracking her favorability more than two decades ago, according to a new poll.

"Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, has a favorable rating of 36 percent, according to the poll from Gallup released Tuesday. Sixty-one percent of adults have an unfavorable view of Clinton, a new high.

"The current favorable rating for the former secretary of state is a new low, and the worst it’s been since 1992 when Gallup first began tracking the public’s image of Clinton just before she became first lady.

"Clinton’s previous low came at the end of August/early September during last year’s presidential campaign, when just 38 percent of adults polled had a positive image of her.

"Her favorable rating also hit 38 percent in April 1992, according to Gallup.

"During the 2016 election, about 40 percent of adults viewed Clinton positively, and though her image was better than Donald Trump’s, Gallup said her favorable ratings were among the “worst ever measured for presidential candidates.”

"In the year after the election, however, Clinton has failed to boost her public image, unlike other presidential candidates who lost, according to Gallup." . . .

A Democratic ‘Blue Wave’ In 2018? Not So Fast

Tony Branco

The Federalist   "A string of recent GOP defeats suggest a 'blue wave' in next year's midterms. It's a nice theory, but Democrats simply aren't up to the task."

. . . "But the main problem with the blue wave theory of 2018 is that it asks too much of the Democratic Party, which is riven by as much division and confusion as the GOP is, if not more. As Ed O’Keefe and Dave Weigel reported recently in The Washington Post, Democrats “can’t agree on what the party stands for. From immigration to banking reform to taxes to sexual harassment, many in the party say it does not have a unified message to spread around the country.”

"The left-wing base of the Democratic Party seems content to go out and run on a promise to impeach the president on some grounds or other, even as centrist Democratic candidates that don’t toe the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren line on everything from health care to Wall Street regulations are left to fend for themselves. What’s worse, they have no economic message. (Remember the Democrats’ “Better Deal” rollout back in July? Sort of had to do with the economy? Me neither.) 

"Anti-Trump Sentiment Won’t Be Enough For Democrats"

"Democrats might do well next year in certain swing states and districts, but they won’t sweep Republicans out of power simply by being against Trump — especially since Trump, despite his inveterate tweeting, actually has some legitimate accomplishmentsto point to at the end of his first year in office. If they want to win in deep-red states next year, Democrats will have to offer a positive vision for the country. There’s no sign so far they have one to offer." . . .

Obama's obstruction of Hezbollah drug-trafficking investigation to not offend Iran

The following posts are following up on the Politico story by Josh Meyer: The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

By David French at National Review: How Obama Appeased Iran by Turning a Blind Eye to Hezbollah’s Crimes  . . . "It all seems so quaint now. When Obama pulled back, our enemies surged. When he gave them an inch, they took a mile. There was no good-faith response, only the gleeful exploitation of newfound strategic advantage. When Obama finally re-engaged, American force was able to stop our enemies’ advance. But by then, the damage was done, and we’re still learning the extent of it today. We already knew that Obama gave Iran piles of cash, prisoners, an immense economic stimulus, and access to international arms markets in exchange for signing the nuclear deal. We now know — thanks to Politico — that the administration’s mercies extended even to Iran’s vicious terrorist allies.

"And for what? Obama’s defenders cling to the hope that Iran’s nuclear program has been delayed (a hope that relies a great deal on trusting Iran, which has never proven wise in the past), but in the meantime we’ve merely strengthened our enemy." . . .  Keep reading.

Now, this is presidential obstruction

(At the time of this posting we find nothing about this on NBC, nor CBS, ABC.)

. . . "The message the task force received was that their work could not interfere with a diplomatic charm offensive directed at Iran and Russia. By the time Trump took office, US efforts to stop Hezbollah had been derailed. Worse than that, as it became clear that Obama had zero leverage in the negotiations, there was little he wouldn’t do to keep the ayatollahs happy.

"In order to win the release of US citizens being held hostage by Tehran after the nuclear deal had been concluded, the United States was no longer just turning a blind eye to Hezbollah transferring criminal profits there. In 2016, Obama sent $400 million packed onto wooden pallets as part of a ransom payment to Iran of unfrozen assets." . . .

Hezbollah, narco-terrorism, and the Awans  "Yesterday, Scott called attention to the blockbuster story in Politico about how President Obama derailed a law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Obama did so because he was desperate to secure a nuclear deal with Iran.

"I agree with Scott that the Politico story is well worth reading in full, despite its length. The report is, as Scott says, “incredibly rich.”

"I want to call attention to one small potential nugget. Part I of the story is called “A global threat emerges.” It is subtitled “How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.”

"The “used cars” reference made me think of a post I wrote about the Awan scandal. This scandal, readers may recall, involves House staffers, most notably staffers of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, with ties to Pakistan who are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.

"In my post, citing George Raisley of Richard Viguerie’s Conservative HQ, I wrote:" . . .

Mainstream media silence on Politico report that Obama allowed Hezbollah drug running to appease Iran

Legal Insurrection   "Meanwhile, Trump is vigorously going after Hezbollah’s criminal networks, particularly in Latin America."

"So far there is near silence from the mainstream media about the blockbuster Politico Magazine investigative report on how the Obama administration from the top down interfered with U.S. law enforcement efforts to take down Hezbollah’s drug running of cocaine into the U.S. in order to facilitate the Iran nuclear deal.

"I summarized the Politico findings in my post, Obama allowed Hezbollah cocaine running into U.S. in quest for Iran nuke deal.

"I cannot find any mentions of the Politico story in any of the major newspapers or networks (except for Fox News). The same people who endlessly repeat shoddy reporting by other mainstream outlets when it comes to anti-Trump conspiracy theories, don’t feel the need to report on the Politico story. My hunch is that they are devoting resources to try to question the Politico story.

They don’t know what to do because this reflects so badly on the person they spent 8 years defending and covering for. Obama sacrificed Americans addicted to and dying from cocaine in order to appease Iran. That should be on the front page of every major newspaper and on every major newscast, but it’s not." . . .

Obama protected Hezbollah drug ring to avoid ‘rocking the boat’ on Iran deal: Report  "A Drug Enforcement Administration team says they were tracking a $1 billion per yer drug-and-weapons ring run by Islamist terrorists, only to have the Obama administration kneecap them to avoid “rocking the boat” with Iran.

"U.S. officials told Politico for a report Monday that a 2008 task force called “Project Cassandra” was undermined by the former president as he tried to seal a nuclear deal with Iran." . . .

Communism-loving journalists shaping our news accidentally outed themselves UPDATED

Thomas Lifson  "Two decades after the fall of the USSR and the rejection of communism throughout Eastern Europe, where captive nations were virtually enslaved by Stalin and his Soviet successors, major media institutions employ jornalists who admire the monstrous system. Communism was every bit as viciously bloody as its socialist brother Nazism, and by most reckonings has been even more lethal in its death toll, at roughly 100 million.

No remotely influential media organ would employ an open Nazi, but Buzzfeed seems to have a soft spot for admirers of communism.  Buzzfeed’s UK Science editor Kelly Oakes foolishly exposed her inner totalitarian on Twitter: “All I want for Christmas is full communism now,” only to withdraw the tweet when the monstrousness was exposed.

James Woods, however, captured it, and passed it along to his many followers:

. . . "So far, Buzzfeed has not responded to the incident, and so far as we know, Ms. Oakes remains in her position, where she influences coverage of many issue related to science. She, evidently, escaped inclusion in the list of 100 Buzzfeed employees laid off recently." . . .


Socialism is crushing and killing Venezuela's poor  . . . "What we are seeing here is the most obvious thing in the world: not only does socialism fail every time it's tried, eventually running out of other people's money when there's nothing left, but it has a special way of targeting and harming the poor, first taking away their freedom, then taking away their food, and then lying about it.  It's effectively violence reinforced by lies and lies reinforced by violence, as Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote." . . .

Some ask, could the Seattle train wreck be terrorism?

Apparently not, but the  terrorist warning is necessary. Anyway, here is the latest on the train: Train Was Going 80 MPH In A 30 MPH Zone According To The NTSB

Brian C. Joondeph  . . . "Al Qaeda has its own magazine. Call it Vanity Fair for the jihadist. The magazine is called Inspire. Check out the cover of issue number 17."

. . . "They devoted an entire issue to teaching followers how to derail trains in the U.S. and Europe. Detailed instructions. From Business Insider:

The magazine also features a detailed 18-page-long guide on how to build a "derail tool" with cardboard, an empty plastic container, part of a rubber tyre, pipes, iron wires, screws, sheet metal, and cement. The apparatus does not require any electronic or construction tools so followers can "remove any traces for suspicion."

When placed on train tracks, the tool is expected to interfere with the train's movement and cause it to divert from its tracks.

As the perpetrator does not physically need to be on the train during the derailment, the operation "is not a martyrdom op" and "can be repeated," the magazine said. It will also be "easy to hide your tracks from forensics" after the attack, it boasted. . .

 UPDATE: Immediately Following Amtrak Derailment, The Conspiracy Theory Trolls Began Their Campaign . . . "Whether the cause for the increased speed was operator error or some mechanical malfunction is one of those questions we’ll have to wait on the answers to.

"Whatever the case, the conspiracy theorists – Russian bot accounts and mindless purveyors of “fake news” – were out in force, cooking up social media tales designed to exacerbate the masses." . . .

Still, this is still doable as a terror tactic, but let's not go into detail.