Video - Jon Voight's plea to save America

Been There - History never repeats itself....but it often rhymes.

Been There - History never repeats itself....but it often rhymes. By rabbipruzansky. HT CarlInJerusalem.

Imagine for a moment a US presidential election between two candidates, neither of whom is particularly beloved to the populace. One candidate is an undistinguished former Senator and lackluster Secretary of State who had few if any accomplishments in office but is breaking a social barrier by running for the presidency, and the other is a wealthy businessman with dictatorial tendencies and a populist streak and inspires devotion in his followers and fear and loathing in his adversaries. Even members of his own extended family support his opponent. Imagine also that exactly four years after one of these individuals is elected – after four years in office of abject failure, with simmering problems and no solutions – that utter catastrophe befalls the nation.
We need not let our imagination run that wild because such was the fateful election of 1856 that pitted James Buchanan against John C. Fremont. Buchanan, a Democrat, had served without distinction in the House and Senate, and as Secretary of State under President Polk.

Democrats accused Fremont of being unfit for the presidency and claimed that he would surely provoke a civil war. In the end , of course, it was Buchanan who won and whose failures as president made the Civil War, the bloodiest in American history, inevitable. The election was closer than it seemed.  Buchanan won 45% of the vote to Fremont’s 33%, but the anti-immigrant Fillmore earned a startling 22% of the vote as the third-party candidate.

 Is past prologue? There has never been an election in American history as the one we are enduring this year, in which both major candidates are despised and distrusted by large majorities of the populace – the crank versus the crook. It is fair to say that this is the first election in which few, if any, supporters can make a plausible argument for the candidacy of their favorite, and must suffice with the contention that the other candidate is simply awful and whose election will be catastrophic. And perhaps everyone is correct.

Welcome to the election of 2016, whose analogies to an election 160 years ago should not be ignored. Somewhere, Buchanan, Fremont and Fillmore are smiling. Or, maybe, given the outcome of their election process and the horrendous war that broke out several years later, they too are crying. Read the full story here.


Related:  Black Lives Matter cashes in with $100 million from liberal foundations. (Watimes)

The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy recently announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund [BLMF], a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition.

That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.

“It’s about time people woke up to the fact that big money is using people as pawns to stoke racial hatred and further their global agenda,” said the Federalist Papers Project’s C.E. Dyer. Read the full story here.

Video - Uncensored DNC Hillary Intro

Actual, unedited feed of Hillary Clinton's first appearance after receiving the Democratic Party Nomination. The media does not want you to see what really happened in Philadelphia.

Trump skipping Fox GOP debate to attend AIPAC conference.

Trump skipping Fox GOP debate to attend AIPAC conference. (TOI).

Republican front-runner says he’s ‘doing a major speech in front of a very important group of people that night’

Republican front-runner Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he would skip the upcoming Republican debate to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference.

 The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC has not yet released its schedule of speakers for the upcoming policy conference, but has confirmed that Trump, along with former secretary of state and Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden, will the address over 18,000 attendees expected at the conference, which runs March 20-22.

Trump said he had only recently found out about the Fox News debate, and wasn’t able to cancel his appearance at the AIPAC conference.

On Tuesday, an AIPAC staffer sent out an email missive to student activists warning them that any disruption during Trump’s appearance at the conference could result in the rescinding of their conference credentials and blacklisting from all future AIPAC events.

The organization later distanced itself from complaints that it was unfairly targeting students, and said that the email was sent in error and without authorization. Hmmm.....Unbeatable as a salesman. Read the full story here.

French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen endorses Trump.

French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen endorses Trump. (TOI).

French far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, kicked out of his own party for racist and anti-Semitic comments, has given controversial Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump the thumbs up.

“If I was American I would vote for Donald Trump… may God protect him,” tweeted the fiery 87-year-old founder of the National Front, now led by his daughter Marine.

Trump’s unlikely juggernaut in the US presidential primaries on the back of comments tinged by racism and veering towards demagoguery, has stunned observers and shaken the American political establishment to its core.

Le Pen’s endorsement comes after former Mexican president Felipe Calderon compared the real estate mogul to Adolf Hitler and said he was “frankly racist.” Read the full story here.

Are Americans ready to elect a Muslim president? New poll suggests maybe

More info on the US Muslim Brotherhood can be read here.

Are Americans ready to elect a Muslim president? New poll suggests maybe. (religionnews).

A recently released Gallup poll found “tidal shifts” over the past 60 years in Americans’ willingness to support a well-qualified black, female, Catholic or Jewish candidate for president.

But the study also found that 60 percent of Americans would be willing to vote for a president who was a “generally well-qualified person who happened to be Muslim.”

Throughout the month of Ramadan, which concludes Thursday (July 16), American Muslims have been serving their communities — including raising more than $80,000 for black churches burned across the South and serving 1,000 homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles — public service that they are called by their faith to do. But as they look forward to Eid al-Fitr, the three-day celebration beginning Friday, they are also wondering whether Americans are more willing to accept their service.

“If the 60 percent is to be used as a proxy of acceptance of Muslims, I am encouraged by an upward trajectory,” wrote Saud Anwar, the mayor of South Windsor, Conn., and that state’s first Muslim mayor.

Anwar said he believes that “religious labels are less critical” at the local level, where “people have a better opportunity to know a candidate and thus vote based on capacity to do the job and performance.”

In national elections, he said, “the labels may become more important for people.”

But Amaney Jamal, a professor of politics at Princeton University who’s done significant research on the civic engagement of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S., said the poll also shows how much worse Muslims are doing than other religious and racial groups.

“Sixty percent isn’t a bad number on average,” she said, but when compared with American support for Catholics, blacks, Jews and Mormons — where there’s a 20- to 30-point difference — it’s “troubling.”

Americans haven’t embraced the idea “that a Muslim can be a loyal person to the United States, a Muslim can be a very good president, a dedicated president,” said Jamal. “There’s a lot of Islamophobia.”

The good news is that young people are more willing to vote for a Muslim presidential candidate — 76 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds would, as would 67 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds, according to the poll.

The higher youth numbers she attributes to the likelihood they have had direct daily interactions with a Muslim at work or school.

Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said he was struck that Protestants, according to the poll, would be much less likely to support a Muslim candidate (44 percent) than U.S. adults overall.

“The narrative that we are in a religious war with the Middle East I think has an impact on evangelical communities’ views of Muslims,” said Al-Marayati.

Tlaib, Al-Marayati said people have sometimes asked if he’s really Muslim.

“Just because we’re Americans doesn’t mean we’re less Muslim,” he said. “In fact, we say the opposite: Being a good American citizen makes me a more devout Muslim. And being a devout Muslim makes me a better American citizen.”

In 2008, former Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized elements of his party for allowing comments that “President Obama is a Muslim” to be answered only with “He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been Christian.”

“The really right answer,” said Powell, “is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”

But could there be a Muslim president in our lifetime?

“Why not?” said Tlaib, noting that we now have a biracial president.

“If somebody told me 10 years ago … I’d say, ‘Nah, it’s never going to happen.’ So I’m a true believer.”

Al-Maryati said that more important is having a president who demonstrates a commitment to pluralism and who includes Muslims as equal citizens in this country.

“I think if we achieve that, that’s a great achievement for America. That will make America stronger and will make the American Muslim community more secure.” Hmmmm....I thought they already did, i'm still waiting to see the Baptismal certificate of Hussein Obama. Read the full story here.