Monday, July 4, 2016

Happy 4th Of July Catoons






Clinton's supporters, potential veeps defend presumptive nominee on emails, Benghazi, FBI probe

Rep. Becerra talks Clinton email probe, Benghazi report
Top Hillary Clinton supporters blanketed the TV airwaves Sunday, trying to build voter trust for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee amid her evolving email controversy and other issues, while also appearing to audition for the role of vice president.
“She understands that she's got to earn people's trust,” California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra said of Clinton on “Fox News Sunday.” “She's going to work very, very hard to do that. And I give her credit for saying that she's made some mistakes.”
Becerra was one of four Democratic lawmakers purportedly on Clinton’s vice presidential short list to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows.
He deferred on the question about being vetted for the job by saying, “That's a question that has to be asked of Secretary Clinton. … We’ll see.”
Becerra was joined on the Sunday shows by New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker (CNN,) Labor Secretary Tom Perez (NBC) and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (ABC.)
Clinton appears qualified to become president, considering she is a former first lady, secretary of state and U.S. senator for New York.
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
However, her campaign has been slowed from the start by questions about her trustworthiness.
Such questions date back to the Clinton administration and more recently are about donors to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state -- including the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks and her use of a private email server for official correspondence while at the State Department.
A Gallup survey released Friday found 27 percent of Americans don’t trust Clinton.
On Saturday, Clinton was interviewed by the FBI regarding the agency’s investigation into whether her using a personal server for official communication violated government rules regarding the handling of classified information.
Earlier last week, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, held an impromptu meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who will decide whether to bring criminal charges in the FBI probe.
Even Lynch acknowledge the meeting “cast a shadow” over the investigation. She also said that she “fully expects” to accept the recommendations of the FBI director and career prosecutors.
However, a Justice Department spokeswoman clarified Lynch’s remark by telling Yahoo News that “the attorney general will be the ultimate decider.''
Also last week, Republicans on the special committee investigating the attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, issued a final report on the matter that concluded Clinton as secretary of state and others in Obama administration told the public that the attacks were inspired by an anti-Islam video, despite eyewitness accounts that they were terror attacks.
U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attacks.
Booker told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the FBI interview was merely “routine” and that Clinton being indicted over the emails is “just not going to happen.”
“We're going to be seeing an investigation closing up,” he said. “And I think she, like most Americans, wants this thing to be concluded and so we can move beyond it and focus on the real issues of this campaign.”
Booker dismissed the Clinton-Lynch conversation as little more than a chat about grandchildren and golf.
“This is nothing that in any way undermines this case,” said Booker, who also deferred to the Clinton campaign regarding a question about being a potential 2016 running mate. “I know a lot of it is coming from the Trump campaign … trying to whip up conspiracy theories.”
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, another potential Clinton running mate, told ABC’s “This Week” that he doesn’t think Clinton will be indicted.
“I'm not worried. I see what Clinton has done,” he said. “She's always been willing to talk. The story that is missing is what we don't know about (presumptive GOP presidential nominee) Donald Trump.”
He called the Clinton-Lynch encounter “unfortunate” and focused his answers on criticizing Trump and touting Clinton’s knowledge on key issues, including the future of the U.S. auto industry.
“She clearly understands these issues, and she talks in great depth about them in individual interviews and rallies. You get none of that from Donald Trump,” said Brown, also deferred to the Clinton campaign regarding a question about being a potential running mate.
Trump said this weekend on Twitter about the FBI investigation: "It was just announced -- by sources -- that no charges will be brought against Crooked Hillary Clinton. Like I said, the system is totally rigged!"
Labor Secretary Tom Perez on Sunday also showed his potential to be a good running mate in attacking the general election rival.
“Donald Trump is a fraud. He's the outsourcer in chief. And listening to him talk about how he's going to put America first again, he spent his entire career putting his own profits first,” said Perez who has already joined Clinton on the campaign trail, in part to bring progressives around to her trade policy.
Perez, in the pre-taped interview Friday with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” even responded to a vice president question by touting Clinton over Trump.
“Trump is such a volatile individual, and what I have seen working with Secretary Clinton is that she is a steady hand,” he said. “And I think she is exercised sound judgment throughout.”

Spokesman: Indiana governor had 'warm' meeting with Trump


Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and his wife met with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his wife Saturday as Trump considers potential running mates, but a Pence spokesman told Fox News on Sunday that "nothing was offered."
"The Pences enjoyed spending a warm and productive time with the Trumps," Pence campaign spokesman Marc Lotter told Fox News. "They talked about policies that are working in Indiana and the future of this country."
Pence is running for re-election against former Democratic state House Speaker John Gregg.
Asked whether Trump and Pence had discussed the possibility of Pence becoming Trump's running mate, Lotter said "nothing was offered." Lotter declined to discuss Pence's level of interest in the position, echoing a comment from Pence last week that he did not want to comment on "a hypothetical."
Lotter referred other questions to Trump's campaign, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has never held public office and is considering a small group of political veterans as potential running mates.
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
People with direct knowledge of Trump's vetting process say the list includes Pence, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions.
In addition to serving as governor, Pence served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years.
He also at one time had his own presidential ambitions but last year ruled out a run after his popularity fell in the wake of criticism over his handling of the state's religious objections law.

Suicide attack carried out near US diplomatic site in Saudi Arabia


A suicide bomber carried out an attack early on Monday near a U.S. diplomatic site in the western Saudi city of Jiddah, according to the Interior Ministry.
The ministry said the attacker detonated his suicide vest when security guards approached him near the parking lot of a hospital. The attacker died and two security men were wounded with minor injuries, according to the ministry statement, which was published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Some cars in the parking lot were damaged.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki was quoted in the statement as saying the attacker caught the attention of the security guards, who noticed he was acting suspiciously at an intersection located on the corner of the heavily fortified U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, located by the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital. Most of the consulate's staff had reportedly moved offices to a new location.
The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia confirmed there were no casualties or injuries among the consular staff. The embassy said it remains in contact with Saudi authorities as they investigate the attack.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for attack.
The Interior Ministry did not specify if it there are indications the bomber intended to target the U.S. diplomatic compound, saying an investigation was underway to determine his identity.
A 2004 al-Qaida-linked militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah killed five locally hired consular employees and four gunmen. The three-hour battle on the compound came amid a wave of al-Qaida attacks targeting Westerners and Saudi security posts.
More recently, Saudi Arabia has been a target of Islamic State group attacks that have killed dozens of people. The extremist Sunni group views the Western-allied Saudi monarchy and government as heretics. Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks had taken place in the kingdom in the last two years. Local affiliates of the IS group have targeted minority Shiites and security officials.
Monday's attack comes just days before the end of the holy month of Ramadan, during which observant Muslims fast daily from dawn to dusk.
The U.S. Embassy regularly issues advisory messages for U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia. In a message issued Sunday and another one issued after the attack Monday, the embassy urged Americans to "remain aware of their surroundings, and take extra precautions when travelling throughout the country." It also advised citizens to "carefully consider the risks of traveling to Saudi Arabia."

Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us

President Abraham Lincoln
When clicking on the fox news web site I came upon this article which had a small picture of the founding fathers of America. But when you go to the actual article it only shows a picture of Lincoln and not the Founding Fathers. Is the fox news network afraid to show the photo because the founding fathers were a bunch of old white guys and they do not want offend anyone? Fair and Balanced or once again political correctness gone crazy?

Founding Fathers

Founding Fathers
And now here is the article:

It is remarkable that Abraham Lincoln never delivered a Fourth of July speech.
The closest he came was on July 10, 1858, in Chicago during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Lincoln spoke of the Founders as “iron men.” He remarked how, every July 4, Americans celebrate those “iron men” and their extraordinary achievement, because we are “historically connected” with it.
Lincoln meant this literally. He was speaking to those who were old enough to remember the Founders from their youth and those descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
But then Lincoln spoke about another set of Americans, the ones whose families came here after the great Revolution was over. In a word, immigrants. Of these, Lincoln said:
“If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.
Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the “moral sentiment” for which those iron men fought and died — “That all men are created equal.”
Lincoln would fight and die for it, too.
Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that “historical connection” with men who in all other things bear no relation to us. Or, as he puts it: “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
As this speech was delivered in response to Stephen Douglas, a congressman from Illinois, Lincoln connects the “electric cord” in the Declaration with the question of slavery.
“If one man says [the Declaration] does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?”
In a few short paragraphs, Lincoln eviscerates Douglas’ contention that the ideals of the Declaration were reserved for only the true descendants of the American Revolution. It is remarkable that there was a time when Lincoln’s idea, now so central to our American mindset, was not dominant.
And yet we find our present culture riven by a hypersensitive strain of identity politics. We are told, even by some who belong to Lincoln’s party, that we should provide this group of Americans with one kind of government handout and that group with another.
We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex  determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.
Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.
But it is not enough to believe this. We must do more than reread those words this Fourth of July in between the barbeques and fireworks. We must do what the Founders did, and what Lincoln did in his own time, and fight against the insidious notion that those words mean other than what they say.
Lincoln believed the Founders asked this of him and his generation. It is what the Founders ask of us still.

CartoonsTrashyDemsRinos