Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden’s associates are setting up interviews for potential staff positions on a Biden presidential campaign, a source familiar with the process tells CNN.
The interviews come as the political world waits for a decision from Biden on whether he will enter the Democratic 2016 presidential primary.
Biden is set to meet with his top political advisers Monday night — the same group he met with at least twice last week.
Also last week, Biden made calls throughout the week to ask Democratic operatives and officials to work for him if he does enter the 2016 race, people familiar with the conversations told CNN.
by ELIANA JOHNSON October 19, 2015 4:00 AM @ELIANAYJOHNSON
It began as whispers in hushed corners: Could it ever happen? And now, just three months from the Iowa caucuses, members of the Republican establishment are starting to give voice to an increasingly common belief that Donald Trump, once dismissed as joke, a carnival barker, and a circus freak, might very well win the nomination.
“Trump is a serious player for the nomination at this time,” says Ed Rollins, who served as the national campaign director for Reagan’s 1984 reelection and as campaign chairman for Mike Huckabee in 2008. Rollins is not alone in his views.
“Trump has sustained a lead for longer than there are days left” before voting begins in Iowa, says Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “For a long time,” Schmidt says, “you were talking to people in Washington, and there was a belief that there was an expiration date to this, as if there’s some secret group of people who have the ability to control the process.”
Rep. Scott Garett: “Each trip is an eye-opening and heart confirming experience, from a personal and religious point of view. We have a true love for Israel…Administrations come and go, but when it comes to the house that I serve, it has always been a strong bipartisan experience in support of Israel.”
5 US Congressmen Visit Israel, Braving Terrorist Violence
By JNI Media October 19, 2015 , 2:00 pm
A bipartisan group of five US congressmen spent the last week touring Israel, despite the daily terrorist attacks. Representatives Alan Lowenthal D-CA, Jim Jordan R-OH, Scott Garrett R-NJ, Raoul Labrador R-ID and Mark Meadows R-NC traveled across the country to learn the facts behind the headlines—and to pledge their support for Israel. The fact finding mission was sponsored by Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a US based Christian organization, and hosted by Yes! Israel.
The congressmen’s jam-packed schedule included briefings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, meetings with fellow legislatures at the Knesset, an IAF helicopter tour, a visit to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a discussion of co-existence in meetings with Israelis and Palestinians in Gush Etzion, a visit to the city of Sderot whose civilian population is a frequent target for Hamas rockets, and tours of ancient Shiloh, and Ariel University.
The congressmen also spent time connecting with some 200 ex-pats, at a Sunday Town Hall meeting at the Inbal Jerusalem Hotel. The congressmen shared their impressions from their trip with their Israeli-American audience:
By Scott Wong and Julian Hattem – 10/19/15 06:00 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one with a lot riding on this week’s Capitol Hill hearing on the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks.
The 12-member Select Committee on Benghazi is loaded with ambitious lawmakers from both parties looking for a breakout moment on the national stage with the Democratic presidential front-runner.
More than half the Republicans serving on the panel have been mentioned as potential candidates to replace Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). And the committee’s chairman, GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy (S.C.), is widely viewed as having a bright political future back home in South Carolina.
Clinton’s Democratic allies on the panel include one declared Senate candidate, Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and another potential one, veteran Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
Here’s a look at seven members of the Benghazi panel who could shine in the spotlight during Thursday’s showdown
Congressional Democrats are accusing Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi of falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton improperly handled some of the government’s most closely kept secrets, days before the former secretary of State appears before the panel.
An email revealed by committee Republicans earlier this month made it seem as if Clinton received and then forwarded the name of a CIA source as part of a 2011 memo from longtime associate Sidney Blumenthal.
The name of that source “is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community,” committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said at the time, “the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives.”
According to the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), however, the CIA told lawmakers this weekend that “they do not consider the information … classified.”
“Specifically, the CIA confirmed that ‘the State Department consulted with the CIA on this production, the CIA reviewed these documents, and the CIA made no redactions to protect classified information,’” Cummings said in a scathing letter to Gowdy.
A State Department official confirmed that Cummings’s letter “describes the situation accurately.” A spokesman with the CIA declined to comment on the matter.
Gowdy insisted that the presence of the name in one of Clinton’s emails is nonetheless damaging, regardless of the CIA’s stance.
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic presidential candidate
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
said his tax increases would “hit everybody” becuse he would raise the payroll tax to pay for paid family and medical leave.
Sanders said, “I think if you are looking about guaranteeing paid family and medical leave, which every other major country has so that when a mom gives birth she doesn’t have to go back to work in two weeks. Dad or mom can stay home with the kids. That will require a small increase in the payroll tax.”
Stephanopoulos said, “That’s going to hit everybody.”
OCTOBER 18, 2015, 11:48 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2015, 9:03 AM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
The biggest challenge candidates for the New Jersey Legislature may have is not persuading people to vote for them, but convincing people that there’s an election this November.
And it’s an election that may prove historic — a possible record high for money spent by the campaigns and super PACs, and a possible record low for voter turnout.
For the first time since 1999, all 80 seats in the Assembly top the ballot. But most eyes are on the 2016 presidential race, and off-year elections are “notoriously” known for little voter interest and lackluster crowds at the polls, said Ashley Koning, assistant director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling.
Yet a fierce battle costing millions of dollars is being waged by candidates, committees and super PACs in a few legislative districts, including Bergen County’s District 38, where one of the candidates still on the ballot resigned in disgrace over a raunchy book he self-published 12 years ago.
Budapest (AFP) – Hungary said Monday its shutdown of the border with Croatia had put a stop to the influx of migrants and refugees.
Only 41 people crossed into the EU member state on Sunday, the government said.
“The border closure is working, it has effectively stopped illegal border-crossing,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs told reporters in Nagykanizsa, close to the Croatian border.
“The Hungarian government is determined to keep the measures in place as long as is needed,” he said.
“We are continuously monitoring the situation at the Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian borders, and are ready to react to any situation which might develop.”
The figure of 41 represents a new daily record low in 2015 for Hungary, which witnessed up to 10,000 people stream across its borders daily since the summer.
The country has been a key transit point on the western Balkan route used by thousands of people who have fled violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Try Something New This Year With Ben & Jerry’s Catering Parties
Hot Chocolate Shake Bar – Employees can warm up with these delicious hot chocolate fudge milk shakes while the fake fire video crackles in the background. Create some fun and healthy competition with board games and an ugly sweater contest and you’ve got yourself a party!
Ice Cream Eating Contest – Create stronger teams this holiday season with our famous Vermonster ice cream eating contests. Get teams of 2 – 4 to register to compete who can eat their mini Vermonster first. Create cheering sections and fan favorites. Get an MC and DJ to host and make sure you have enough ice cream for the fans, they are going to want their own!
Ice Cream Gram Event – Celebrate your employees and let them know how much you care with an Ice Cream Gram event. Employees get their favorite flavor and a customized note from their manager. Ben & Jerry’s will make it easy with a friendly user interface for all managers to submit their employees name, favorite flavor and personalized note. You pick the day to celebrate and we will deliver the WOW and make your employees feel warm and fuzzy.
These fun ideas and more are waiting for you at Ben & Jerry’s Catering. Let us customize your holiday party this year. If you book before October 31, we will waive the set up fee. Use Code: UniqueIdeas.
Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com. Published time: 18 Oct, 2015 10:27
The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic.
Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it.
Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is.
To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West – increasingly looks like a truck being systematically filled with Semtex.
But it’s easy to counter cries of alarm with the fact that the truck is stable – because it’s true: you can hurl more boxes into the back without any real danger. Absent the right detonator, it is no more dangerous than a truckload of mayonnaise.
But add the right detonator and you’re just one click away from complete devastation.
We can see how fragile the U.S. is now by considering just four tendencies.
1. Destruction of farms and reliable food source
The average American is a long way from food when the shops are closed.
The Washington Post reports that the number of farms in the country has fallen by some 4 million from more than 6 million in 1935 to roughly 2 million in 2012.
And according to the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, only about 2 percent of the US population live on farms.
That means that around 4.6 million people currently have the means to feed themselves.
Food supply logistics are extended, sometimes stretching thousands of miles. The shops have nothing more than a few days’ stock. A simple break in that supply line would clear the shops out in days.
2. Weak economic system
The American economic system is little more than froth.
The US currency came off the gold standard in 1933 and severed any link with gold in 1971. Since then, the currency has been essentially linked to oil, the value of which has been protected and held together by wars.
The whole world has had enough of the US and its hubris – not least the people of the US themselves, which the massive support currently for Putin’s decision to deal with ISIS demonstrates.
Since pro-active war is what keeps the US going, if it loses the monopoly on that front, its decline is inevitable.
Fiat economies always collapse. They last on average for 37 years. By that metric the US should have already run out of gas.
Once people wake up and smell the Yuan, the Exodus out of the dollar will be unstoppable.
Here’s the good news: The chaos and upheaval we see all around us have historical precedents and yet America survived. The bad news: Everything likely will get worse before it gets better again.
That’s my chief takeaway from “Shattered Consensus,”a meticulously argued analysis of the growing disorder. Author James Piereson persuasively makes the case there is an inevitable “revolution” coming because our politics, culture, education, economics and even philanthropy are so polarized that the country can no longer resolve its differences.
To my knowledge, no current book makes more sense about the great unraveling we see in each day’s headlines. Piereson captures and explains the alienation arising from the sense that something important in American life is ending, but that nothing better has emerged to replace it.
The impact is not restricted by our borders. Growing global conflict is related to America’s failure to agree on how we should govern ourselves and relate to the world.
Piereson describes the endgame this way: “The problems will mount to a point of crisis where either they will be addressed through a ‘fourth revolution’ or the polity will begin to disintegrate for lack of fundamental agreement.”
He identifies two previous eras where a general consensus prevailed, and collapsed. Each lasted about as long as an individual’s lifetime, was dominated by a single political party and ended dramatically.
First came the era that stretched from 1800 until slavery and sectionalism led to the Civil War. The second consensus, which he calls the capitalist-industrial era, lasted from the end of the Civil War until the Great Depression.
Important Village of Ridgewood Forums – October 21 – November 2 – Hudson Street Parking Deck
Two important forums scheduled in Village Hall – 4th Floor Court Room – to discuss the proposed Hudson Street Parking Deck: Wednesday, October 21 and Monday, November 2 from 7:30pm to 9:30pm. Village professionals as well as the design team from Desmond Associates will be on hand to discuss all aspects of the proposed parking deck, including the design and financials. All are welcome to attend. All questions are welcome!
Reader says Rule 12=why anonymous commenting ticks the three amigos off to no end. They just can’t get at anonymous commentators in a personal way and it drives them bonkers.
Saul Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals
Here is the complete list from Alinsky.
* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
* RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)
* RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
* RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
* RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
* RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
* RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)
* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
* RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)
* RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)
My 13-year-old son told me at the dinner table the other day that Franklin Roosevelt was one of America’s “greatest presidents” because “he ended the Great Depression.” He’s usually a good student, so I checked where he got this tripe, and sure enough, the fairy tale was right there in his American history book.
The textbook tells kids that the New Deal ended the Great Depression and even saved capitalism. Of course, the New Deal exacerbated the pain and financial devastation of a stock market crash, and unemployment lingered in double digits for a decade after Roosevelt was elected until the start of World War II.
We get this kind of rampant revisionism because the left writes the history books—which they are doing right now.
Here’s the latest story line: bailouts, trillions of dollars of government spending and debt, easy money, and re-regulation of Wall Street ended the 2008 Great Recession. The myth took on new life last week when Ben Bernanke took a bow in the Wall Street Journal for, in his mind, saving the economy with his $3 trillion of quantitative easing and zero interest rate policy. No, actually, this is what created the crisis. Don’t be surprised if Bernanke receives a Nobel Peace Prize.
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As my fellow Heritage colleague Norbert Michel and other scholars have thoroughly documented, the crash of 2008 was caused by government policies and regulatory failure, including easy money policies that flooded the markets with debt. Within a decade, these policies led to preposterous mortgage loans being issued, and massive over-leverage of government, companies, and households.
Now the Fed, the White House, and Congress are recreating the very same conditions for another financial bubble. If it pops, we could replay the same devastating effects as occurred during the first bubble in 1999 and 2000. It is doing so in four ways:
First, the Dodd-Frank regulations are exacerbating one of the greatest consolidations of the banking industry since the Great Depression. Those indispensable small banks, like the one Jimmy Stewart operated in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” are disappearing from the American landscape.
This is largely because big government policies are slanting the system in favor of big banks. Because of this, we have created a competitive advantage that allows the sharks to swallow the minnows. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” safety net to Bank of America, Citi, and other titans exacerbates this cost advantage of big banks and thus makes bailouts even more likely in the future.
Second, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are engaged in the same low down payment lending mania of 2004-07, and the Obama administration is on a Bush-like homeownership push. Fannie and Freddie are again guaranteeing mortgages with as little as 3 percent down payment. Have we learned nothing at all?
Fannie and Freddie are again guaranteeing mortgages with as little as 3 percent down payment. Have we learned nothing at all?
Third, the Fed refused to tighten its stance in September, and, hello, that easy money policy is how we got into the mess in 2000 and then in 2008. Wall Street cheered Janet Yellen’s decision to keep the cheap dollars flowing.
Finally, there is the saturation of debt. When the crisis hit in 2008, the national debt stood at a little under $10 trillion. Now we are over $18 trillion. Government is hopelessly over-leveraged, and the interest rate exposure is enormous. With each one-percentage-point rise in long-term rates, the servicing costs of the debt rises by about $1.8 trillion over ten years.
The point is that government and politicians have no learning curve. All of the conditions of financial wreckage are reappearing. The presidential candidates should start warning voters that Washington is rebuilding another financial house of cards.
If they don’t, when the financial crash comes and Americans see their life savings disappear, the media and the history books will again blame conservatives for the destruction from the rampant financial negligence of government.
