Is 'lurking' Hillary about to jump into 2020 race?

Is 'lurking' Hillary about to jump into 2020 race?

'When she'll announce is the big question'

Art Moore By Art Moore

Published August 27, 2019 at 2:14pm

https://www.wnd.com/2019/08/is-lurking-hillary-about-to-jump-into-2020-race/

Two-time loser Hillary Clinton says she isn't running for president in 2020, but she just announced a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee at her Washington, D.C., mansion with tickets as high as $50,000, and establishment choice Joe Biden isn't inspiring confidence at the moment.

American Thinker columnist Richard K. Davis also noted that a couple of weekends ago she was at the de Rothschilds estate on Martha's Vineyard to celebrate Bill's birthday with an "A-list cast of characters, including many Democratic party stalwarts."

And recently Clinton, 71, and daughter Chelsea announced they were publishing a book in October about "gutsy women."

While even a former aide has vowed to "ankle dive at the door" to stop her from running, "the doddering campaign" of Joe Biden could implode, meaning the establishment will need a replacement, Davis reasoned.

He noted that New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin is convinced that Clinton -- who is five years younger than Biden -- wants a third go-round.

In a July 2018 column, Goodwin wrote that Biden has never been a viable candidate, and doubters "should recall the line about pols who get the presidential itch: There are only two cures — election or death."

"Besides, the third time could be the charm," he said.

A former Hillary Clinton campaign strategist, Adrienne Elrod, reacted to Goodwin's column at the time, dismissing the rumors of another run as a "pipe dream."

"It's silly. It's a pipe dream. I mean, look, she's made it very clear that after this last run she's done," Elrod, who served as Clinton's strategic communications director, told Hill TV's Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on "Rising." "It's time for new faces to come in."

But Elrod also said in the June 2018 interview that the party had a "very deep bench of strong candidates."

Earlier this month, Greta van Susteren, the former Fox News host and current host of "Full Court Press" on Gray Television, took into account that no strong front-runner had emerged when she tweeted that Clinton shouldn't be counted out.

"Here is my WILD guess (and I have NO inside information..this is just a wild guess looking at the political landscape and following politics for years): Hillary Clinton gets into the race between now and Dem Convention," she wrote Aug. 2.

In a February tweet, Van Susteren suggested Clinton "could jump in towards the end if all the other D's have split up so many of the D votes."

'She'll run again'

Author and columnist H.A. Goodman wrote in June that he believes Clinton will run again and raise even more funds than the $1.2 billion she amassed in 2016.

He pointed to a May 1 interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in which she expressed her belief that the Russians cheated her of a chance at the White House and are still rooting for Trump.

Goodman argued Democrats can't approach the "outrageous fundraising total" of 2016 with any other candidate, and "if they don’t win Florida and at least one major state in the Rust Belt, the Democratic Party has no chance of defeating President Trump."

"In addition, once Clinton makes the case that only she can outspend and beat Trump, the shock (among Democrats) of another Clinton run at the White House will be overshadowed by the prospect of a Trump reelection."

Goodman pointed out that Clinton is younger than Biden, who also has lost numerous elections.

"In terms of political clout, only Clinton is capable of surpassing the 20% support threshold held by Bernie Sanders and Biden, especially with the reverence afforded to the former nominee by CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and most media," he wrote.

In a CNN piece in May 2019 titled "Hillary Clinton is OUT of the 2020 race. (Or is she?)," New York Times political reporter Maggie Haberman was quoted saying she spoke to someone close with Clinton who said the former secretary of state "wasn't trying to be emphatic and close the door on running" when she spoke to a local reporter.

Goodman concluded: "She'll run again, but when she'll announce is the big question."

Flag on the Play: Media Promotes Gun Confiscation Laws by Exaggerating “Study” Results

Flag on the Play: Media Promotes Gun Confiscation Laws by Exaggerating “Study” Results

Monday, August 26, 2019

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20190826/flag-on-the-play-media-promotes-gun-confiscation-laws-by-exaggerating-study-results

“Researchers from the University of California, Davis, have found that, in the three years since California implemented the nation’s first law allowing guns to be taken from individuals who pose an extreme risk, the so-called red flag orders have prevented at least 21 mass shootings. 

That’s how the Sacramento Bee summarized a research paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine earlier this week. The paper, titled “Extreme Risk Protection Orders Intended to Prevent Mass Shootings: A Case Series,” was produced by a team of researchers at the UC Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento led by Dr. Garen Wintemute.

Wintemute is one of the most well-known anti-gun researchers in the country. As a man with a professional reputation to protect, his own explanation of the study’s findings is significantly less dramatic than the Bee’s summary.

“It is impossible to know whether violence would have occurred had ERPOs not been issued, and the authors make no claim of a causal relationship,” Wintemute admitted.

In conducting the study, Wintemute’s team requested court records for all 414 ERPO cases in California from 2016 through 2018. Yet the published paper included a case study analysis only of the 21 incidents in which the subject of the order had threatened to commit a mass shooting and had or would soon have access to firearms.

These incidents are nothing to make light of, and that is not the intention of this critique.

The point is instead to draw attention to the fact that emotional arguments are being advanced as “scientific” evidence of public policy.

The 21 incidents included two suspected terrorist plots, and nearly all of the cases involved specific threats, which are already crimes in California and can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony. A felony conviction or even indictment would itself result in a federal prohibition on the acquisition or possession of firearms.

Some of the case subjects included in the study claimed they were “just joking” or were clearly in mental duress (examples include subjects having previously attempted suicide or making a threat against those perceived to be responsible for the death of the subject’s child).

The bottom line, though, is most, if not all, of these cases – based on the brief information provided in the Annals paper – concerned behavior that seemingly could have led to serious criminal charges in California, even absent the state’s “red flag” law.

In 11 cases, the subject was in fact arrested. In another five cases, arrest data is missing from the court records.

That, of course, raises questions about the other five study subjects issued an ERPO. Did they receive help, treatment, or punishment after the order was issued?

It’s also worth noting that the methodology used to determine that none of the subjects had gone on to commit post-ERPO violence was a Google search for the subjects’ names, locations, and date of order issuance. 

While it’s likely that any act of mass violence would have generated some media coverage, a Google search is not the same thing as an actual arrest or criminal records inquiry.

Perhaps Wintemute and his team are working on further analysis of all 414 cases. If so, we hope that their work will include a more detailed examination of what happens to the subjects of these orders. Are the appropriate subjects charged with crimes? Do those who need help receive it? Or does the intervention end with the seizure of firearms?

Wintemute told the Sacramento Bee that his team had submitted the paper for publication last spring and that the timing of its public release was not related to the criminal mass attacks in Gilroy, El Paso, or Dayton. Still, it’s hard to ignore the coincidental timing and easy to wonder why Wintemute and his team did not wait until they had analyzed all 414 cases before publishing.

In the meantime, this paper represents a notable trend in emerging “gun violence” research. There is no real scientific analysis nor an estimate of the law’s impact. There is merely a list of cases presented as anecdotal evidence that “this urgent, individualized intervention can play a role in efforts to prevent mass shootings.”

In other words, it bears more of the hallmarks of political advocacy than actual science, especially in the way it is presented by a mass media eager to promote any anti-gun narrative.

We know that there are monsters out there that wish to do harm and who would emulate the deranged individuals that have attacked innocent people. No one doubts that.

We just hope that efforts to prevent tragedies protect the rights of all involved, deliver the help people clearly need, and do not come to rely on scare tactics or mere anecdotes that may not actually represent broader trends.

'Progressive' fantasies about guns

'Progressive' fantasies about guns

Two presidential wannabes seem willing to take the step others have avoided. Confiscation.

By David Keene - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 20, 2019

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/20/progressive-fantasies-about-guns/

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The idea that Americans have a constitutional right to own and possess firearms appalls today’s progressives. They believe that if they could just rid the nation of guns, then armed robberies, gang violence, mass shootings, rape, violent crime and maybe even suicide would vanish and we could all live peacefully ever after.

The problem they have faced is not just the National Rifle Association or the reluctance of non-progressive politicos to advance their cause, but the fact that tens of millions of voting Americans support private firearms ownership and that Founders in drafting the Constitution and Bill of Rights shared their view.

Progressives are prepared to pack the Supreme Court to do away with Second Amendment roadblocks, but have been forced to accept the fact that they’re never going to get the public to voluntarily surrender their firearms to a benevolent government. They know too that there is only one foolproof way to get their “deplorable” fellow citizens to bend to their wishes — and that is to mobilize the force of the state against them.

Two Democratic presidential wannabes seem willing to take the step that the others have thus far avoided. Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten Gillibrand, struggling to attract support that continues to elude them, have come out for what other candidates may secretly support: Firearms confiscation.

This week the Texan endorsed what those who don’t like to use the word now term a “mandatory buyback” of what Democrats call “assault weapons.” If a rose is a rose by any other name then confiscation by any other name is, well, confiscation. Mr. O’Rourke may not be a clear speaker or a clear thinker, but that is what he says he wants. Sen. Gillibrand has already suggested she would like to see guns taken away from citizens, and if Beto’s proposal resonates with the Democrat’s leftist base, others can be expected to advance similar proposals in the near future.

Asked about the proposal by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, has said it is an idea that, as he put it, “does not offend me” and which he could support, decrying a world in which “we” can ban plastic straws but not guns.”

Various cities have had “voluntary buyback” programs for years, but as President Obama’s National Institute of Justice concluded, they have been largely ineffective. A few years ago in Milwaukee, feds tried a different approach. They set up a storefront to buy firearms from bad guys and indict the sellers for illegally trafficking in guns. One of their “customers” quickly discovered he could buy guns at Gander Mountain, an outdoor store, haul them down the road and sell them at a profit to the feds. He was one of the “traffickers” they caught.

The evidence suggests any “voluntary” buyback program is doomed as expensive and ineffective. The firearms turned in for cash are turned in because the program is willing to pay more for them than the guns are worth. Studies indicate they are rarely the sorts of guns used to commit crimes. The guns purchased by the cities that run these programs come not from criminals but from law-abiding citizens who realize they can dump unwanted cheap or broken guns at a profit.

The Obama administration concluded that to be effective, a buyback program would have to be “mandatory,” requiring gun owners to turn in their guns or be charged with a crime, but was unwilling to go quite that far. Today’s left is far less squeamish about things like the Constitution. The result is open support for simply confiscating firearms, but calling it some temporarily palatable euphemism that polls well.

Folks like Beto would start with “assault weapons,” but would at the same time require everyone to register their handguns and long arms, so that if they decide to expand “mandatory buybacks” in the future they will know just where the guns they want to “buy back” are to be found. It’s hard to visualize or for many gun owners to imagine federal agents going door-to-door to demand that free citizens turn in their guns or face fines or jail time, but this is what people like Mr. O’Rourke are working toward. It is hard to imagine the feds going door to door to confiscate guns, but that’s where what he is proposing would lead.

The National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment supporters have faced criticism over the years for arguing that seemingly commonsensical proposals from gun control advocates are likely to lead to a slippery slope ending with confiscation. It is increasingly obvious that the slope looms before us and today’s progressives Democrats are greasing it.

• David A. Keene is an editor at large for The Washington Times.