Happy Trump Day. I mean Monday.

I got home late last night after the second show at Merriweather last night in Maryland. The Iowa State fair started up Friday and it continues there this week. And, 'The Summer Of Trump' Moves along...


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The Trump Organization helicopter lands on the course during a practice round prior to the start of the World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral on March 5, 2014 in Doral, Florida.

This weekend, the Iowa State Fair is teeming with presidential hopefuls giving speeches atop a hay bale, stuffing their faces with greasy, fried foods, and enjoying carnival rides.

But real-estate tycoon and Republican candidate Donald Trump, true to form, is taking it a step further, becoming perhaps the first candidate to arrive by helicopter. He also fulfilled a promise by offering kids helicopter rides over the fair grounds. 

Trump and company may be having fun now. But after his Iowa trip, he is due back New York City to appear for jury duty. The real-estate mogul, who claims his personal fortune is in excess of $10 billion, will face a $250 fine for missing jury duty five times over nine years.

Trump is also slated to release his platforms on immigration and tax policy soon, he has told The Washington Post For now, he seems to be enjoying a sunny weekend in Iowa — and a commanding lead in the polls.
Jeb Bush’s gigantic Iraq fail: Why he’s handling his brother’s toxic legacy in just about the worst way possible. Instead of running as fast as he can from George W.'s cataclysmic failures, he's doing...well, exactly the opposite. Considering the level of clownish extremism in the Republican primary during these mangy dog days of August, it’s probably inevitable that we would start to see headlines like this one from the Washington Post on Friday:
Jeb Bush's gigantic Iraq fail: Why he's handling his brother's toxic legacy in just about the worst way possible
At Iowa State Fair, Jeb Bush plays the sober adult in a summer of anger

Ah yes, the proverbial “grown-ups are back” story from the beltway press. The last time they characterized Republicans that way they were talking about the mature, serious leadership of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. You remember, the president who engaged us in a decade-long war under false pretenses and the Vice President who said that waterboarding was a no brainer? Those adults.

This time, however, the press seems to be indicating that “adult” means lifeless, dull and incoherent, at least as it pertains to the third in line for the throne, Jeb Bush. The article in question tells the story of Jeb’s trip to the Iowa State fair, where he’s just an “awe shucks” sort of guy hanging with the folks:

“I’m tired of the divides,” the former Florida governor said. “I campaign the way that I would govern — out amongst everybody, no rope lines, totally out in the open.”

Then the fairgoers started asking Bush questions. They asked about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And his foreign policy adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of his brother’s Iraq war. And about the war itself. And about the Common Core educational standards that have become a lightening rod for Bush with conservatives.

“The term Common Core is so darn poisonous I don’t even know what that means,” Bush replied. “So here’s what I’m for: I’m for higher standards — state created, locally implemented where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum.”

Bush parried the questions with ease and energy, appearing to avoid the kind of gaffes that have plagued other candidates at the soapbox, which is sponsored by The Des Moines Register. In 2011, after all, Mitt Romney stood on the same stage and declared, “Corporations are people” — a line that dogged him seemingly forever.

Can you see the problem there? First, let’s get the Common Core thing out of the way. Bush has been a proponent of the program since its inception. His name is intimately associated with it. Perhaps it’s not as big a gaffe as “corporations are people” but it’s far more dishonest. Basically, he’s disowning something that he’s been in favor of for years without admitting it.

But it’s the other set of questions about using his brother’s advisors and his current thinking about the Iraq war that are of interest. After all, there is no foreign policy decision more controversial in the last several decades than the decision to (virtually unilaterally) invade Iraq on a very thin legal pretext and based on intelligence that was dubiously obtained and disseminated.

He was specifically asked about his repeated statement that he would call upon one of his brother’s most dubious advisors, Paul Wolfowitz — which, as I’ve written here at length, should be a problem for anyone running for president. Paul Waldman describes his ever evolving rationales about the current problems in Iraq in this piece and it’s clear that Bush’s understanding of what happened is either very rudimentary or he’s being deliberately dishonest. Saying that getting rid of Saddam was “a good deal” is not going to smooth over the the searing reality that the region is in chaos, and blaming Obama for the fallout doesn’t change the fact that the invasion was the most disastrous foreign policy decision in modern memory.

Bush brushed off the question with an answer that should set off alarms in the minds of anyone who’s been following politics for the past 30 years:

“I get most of my advice from a team that we have in Miami, Florida. Young people that are going to be … they’re not assigned, have experience either in Congress or the previous administration.

“If they’ve had any executive experience, they’ve had to deal with two Republican administrations. Who were the people who were presidents, the last two Republicans? I mean, this is kind of a tough game to be playing, to be honest with you. I’m my own person.”

Who were the last two Republican presidents, you ask? Well, they were both named Bush and they both temporarily experienced sky high approval ratings when they decided to wage war in the middle east and then both left office in disgrace, loathed by nearly everyone in both parties. Jeb’s insistence that the only people with “any executive experience” already worked with his dad and his baby bro makes it seem like he has no choice in the matter, except to take advice from the guy who was arguing for invading Iraq on Sept. 15, 2001. Uh huh.

Jeb Bush Blames Obama For Creating The Mess In Iraq. Just after launching his bid for president earlier this year, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush struggled to answer questions about whether he — like his brother George W. Bush — would have invaded Iraq in 2003. A few days later, he flipped, saying: “Knowing what we know now, I would have not engaged.”

But this week, a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, Bush flipped yet again, calling the Iraq War a mere “miscalculation” and arguing that the true mistake was withdrawing U.S. troops in 2011.

“So why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary? That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill — and that Iran has exploited to the full as well.”

In Bush’s retelling of the last decade-plus of war, everything was going great in Iraq until President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took office, saying they were “so eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers. It was a case of blind haste to get out.”
Jeb Bush failed to mention, however, that it was his brother George W. Bush who decided that the U.S. military should withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. The Obama Administration continued those negotiations, and pushed for some troops to remain in the country to support and advise the new government. But because the U.S. insisted its remaining soldiers have legal immunity if they committed crimes in Iraq, the Iraqi government demanded most troops withdraw by the end of 2011. Thousands of U.S. soldiers are still there, as well as thousands of private military contractors.
Bush has repeatedly stressed that he he is “own man” independent from the legacies of his brother and father. Yet he has brought the architects of the Iraq War onto his campaign as advisers, and has even said he turns to George W. Bush for foreign policy feedback.

The plans he laid out in the Reagan Library speech reflect this influence: from rejecting the diplomatically-negotiated nuclear power deal with Iran to vowing regime change in Syria to suggesting stepping up airstrikes in Iraq. He also called for giving U.S. soldiers and marines “the go-ahead” to embed with the Iraqi military.

Jeb Bush Says The Iraq War Was A ‘Good Deal’ Because Saddam Was Ousted. Here’s What It Cost. In recent days, Jeb Bush has decided to focus his campaign on Iraq. Earlier this week he pinned the blame for the current instability in the country on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Speaking at a national security forum yesterday in Iowa, Jeb Bush asserted that “taking out Saddam Husseinturned out to be a pretty good deal.”

In his remarks, Bush also refused to rule out the use of torture as an interrogation tactic and mimicked his brother’s famous declaration, saying that the “mission was accomplished.” Many of the architects of the Iraq War are currently advising Jeb Bush on foreign policy.
Jeb’s remarks appear to be another shift on his assessment of the war. Early in the campaign he said that, knowing what he knows now, he would still have launched the Iraq War. Then he claimed he misunderstood the question and it would be a disservice to families of the fallen. Under heavy criticism, he switched his position, saying, “I would not have gone into Iraq.” By saying the ouster of Saddam — and, by extension, the Iraq War — was a “good deal,” he appears to be reverting back to his initial position.
But just what was the cost of the Iraq war?

More Than 4,424 American Lives

Counts vary but according to the Department of Defense there have been at least 4,424 U.S. military fatalities connected to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Watson Institute at Brown University notes that “[o]fficial Pentagon numbers do not include the many troops who return home and kill themselves as a result of psychological wounds such as PTSD.”
There is no centralized reporting but, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, hundreds of Americans — including contractors and U.S. military — were killed while involved in reconstruction efforts.

About 319 Coalition Lives

As part of the Iraq invasion, George W. Bush assembled a small “coalition of the willing” which included the UK and a few other countries. About 319 people from those countries died in the Iraq war.

More Than 115,000 Iraqi Lives

Iraq Body Count, a UK based group that aggregates news reports, morgue records and other data, estimates that 115,000 civilians were killed as a direct result of violence. A group of public health researchers, taking into account indirect causes of death, estimates that about 500,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war.

More Than $1.7 Trillion

The Iraq war has cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion in direct expenses. It owes an addition $90 billion in benefits to war veterans. Ultimately, expenses could grow to more than $6 trillion, including interest.

Zero Weapons Of Mass Destruction

The public justification for the Iraq war was to eliminate the country’s weapons of mass destruction. Despite searching for years, the U.S. did not find any such weapons.
Hillary Clinton Fires Back at Jeb Bush for Supporting Brother's Iraq PoliciesDemocratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton answers reporters questions about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after announcing her college affordability plan, Aug. 10, 2015, at the high school in Exeter, N.H. Hillary Clinton said Americans would have to be suffering from "amnesia" to believe Jeb Bush's uncharacteristic support for his brother's Iraq War policies and critique of Clinton's own handling of Iraq.
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“I do think it’s a little bit surprising to hear Jeb Bush talk about this,” Clinton said Friday to a crowd of roughly 400 people at a town hall meeting in Dubuque, Iowa, while discussing Iraq. "You know, he expects the American people to have a collective case of amnesia.” Clinton’s remark comes just one day after Bush came out in favor of many of his brother’s Iraq policies, an uncharacteristic show of support. He told voters at a campaign event in Iowa on Thursday that George W. Bush taking out Saddam Hussein “turned out to be a pretty good deal.”

Earlier this week, Bush also delivered a foreign policy speech where he blamed Clinton for the rise of ISIS and criticized her for supporting the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and for visiting the country only once while Secretary of State.

Clinton’s foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters Bush’s speech was a “pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility.”

And on Friday, Clinton, who voted for the Iraq War as a Senator, but later admitted it was a mistake, fought back, saying a deal signed by George W. Bush was largely the reason the troops left the country in 2011.

Jeb Bush’s campaign quickly responded to Clinton’s claim, with a video, titled “Hillary Clinton: A Case of Amnesia,” that includes a 2011 news report discussing Clinton’s support of the removal of the troops.

Clinton, who is currently facing a new round of questions about her use of a personal email address while at the State Department, did not address her emails or take questions from reporters. Instead, she stuck to her talking points as she rolled out a new policy proposal to help students who are also parents.

Notably, Clinton did make more mentions of George W. Bush than she typically does. So much so, that at one point she even appeared to accidentally mix the two brothers up.

“When George W. Bush. Oh." Clinton said, pausing to correct herself. "I confuse. Jeb Bush."

As the audience erupted in laughter, Clinton just shrugged and said, “Oh well.”

Hillary Just Wanted To Send Emails From Her Phone Like A Normal Person. Then The Trouble Started. In what’s likely to be one of the major controversies of her campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s desire to use her phone for both work and personal communications like the rest of the world has sparked a federal investigation and controversy that may likely set the tone for her campaign — and serve as a warning to the prevailing nominee.

We have a complicated relationship with our phones: They are simultaneously the center of all attention and the bane of a technologically enhanced existence. Ideally, everything from one’s personal and work lives can be done — or ignored — from a single device neatly squared away in a pocket or tote.

But this isn’t an ideal world.

Clinton or any other appointed or elected figures can’t be “normal” and use technology to make their lives a smidge easier, according to Stewart Baker, a former Department of Homeland Security administrator and national security attorney with Steptoe and Johnson in Washington, D.C.
“Security is the enemy of convenience, and the effort to find the compromise between the two is always risky. It’s not for the faint of heart and it’s not for amateurs,” he said.
After months of refusing, Clinton agreed Tuesday to submit her personal email server to the Justice Department in an effort to silence national and cybersecurity concerns.

Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails sent during her secretary of state appointment between 2009 and 2011. The more than 31,000 personal emails she sent were wiped from her private Clintonemail.com server, and weren’t among the batch submitted to the DOJ. Republicans have been requesting complete access to Clinton’s emails to get to the bottom of the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya.

There aren’t many specifics available regarding the contents of Clinton’s emails, but criticism is mounting. Republicans have repeatedly denounced the use of her behavior sending classified or potentially classified information from an insecure server poses a national security risk.

Beyond the two emails identified as having top secret content, Clinton’s email scandal illustrates the contentious relationship between security and convenience in technology that becomes more pronounced in the upper ranks of government.

Given the minimal available information, Baker said Clinton only would have violated her oath if she knowing sent an email with classified information, such as a summary of classified briefing. But Clinton wouldn’t be culpable if she received and responded to an email from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that lacked overtly classified context. “It would be much harder to fault her for assuming,” he said.

“There are always temptations when you only have access to one communication system,” said Baker, adding that government employees often rationalize ways to use unclassified systems “by making the easy assumption a message isn’t classified even if there’s evidence to the contrary.”

Presidential hopeful and self-proclaimed Luddite Lindsay Graham (R-SC) suggested cutting off access the next president’s email access in the interest of national security. That idea has been floated around by security experts and foreign governments looking to duck international spy agencies. But completely cutting off access wouldn’t work completely because society is so technology-dependent, and at least a staffer would have to send out emails.
For government leaders, the priority is to secure communications and keep them from being intercepted. “The higher ups are going to discover that when they take office, they’re going back 15 years in time,” Baker said.

“The [technological] delay is built in,” he said. “Typically, we find the technology, fall in love and then we find the security flaws…There are always undiscovered security problems. There are going to be instances when [officials] can’t use the tech in their daily lives,” and be somewhat normal. But then again, he quipped, “A normal person doesn’t get to be secretary of state.”
In a Business Insider Report, Authorities are finding more classified info in Hillary Clinton's emails. At least 60 emails that passed through Hillary Clinton's private server contained classified information, officials told The Washington Times.
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The State Department is sifting through more than 30,000 emails Clinton handed over earlier this year.

Over the weekend, Clinton reiterated that she "never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified."

The Washington Times on Sunday reported that among "the first 60 flagged emails, nearly all contained classified secrets at the lowest level of 'confidential' and one contained information at the intermediate level of 'secret.'"

The 60 emails did not include two emails discovered by the intelligence community's inspector general, Charles McCullough III, which allegedly contained information classified as Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, the government's highest levels of classification.

Those emails reportedly included communications intercepted via satellite or drone, which is protected under the law 18USC798 — meaning they are protected by tighter rules and higher penalties.

Massimo Calabresi of Time notes that the law "makes it a crime not just to knowingly mishandle such secrets, but also to use them 'in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States.'"

The FBI is looking into the configuration of Clinton's private server, which she handed over to investigators last week. Authorities are seeking to determine who at the State Department passed highly classified information to Clinton's account in 2009 and 2011. Clinton's unusual email system was originally set up by a staffer during Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, replacing a server used by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The new server was run by Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the IT director on Hillary Clinton's campaign before joining the State Department in May 2009. In 2013 — the same year she left the State Department — Clinton hired the Denver-based company Platte River Networks to oversee the system.

Platte River "is not cleared" to have access to classified material, Cindy McGovern, chief public affairs officer for the Defense Security Service, told The Daily Caller. It's unclear whether any sensitive information was stored on the server while under Platte River's oversight.

In Iowa, Clinton asserted that the recent scrutiny was "not about emails or servers either. It's about politics."

Nevertheless, a longtime Clinton adviser and confidant recently told The Washington Post that Clinton's campaign was "worried about it. They don't know where it goes. That's the problem."


And, Julian Bond, former NAACP chairman and activist, dies at 75. Julian Bond's life traced the arc of the civil rights movement, from his efforts as a militant young man to start a student protest group all the way to the top leadership post at the NAACP.
Year after year, the calm, telegenic Bond was one of the nation's most poetic voices for equality, inspiring fellow activists with his words in the 1960s and sharing the movement's vision with succeeding generations as a speaker and academic. He died Saturday at 75.

Former Ambassador Andrew Young said Bond's legacy would be as a "lifetime struggler."

"He started when he was about 17 and he went to 75," Young said. "And I don't know a single time when he was not involved in some phase of the civil rights movement."

Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, after a brief illness, according to a statement issued Sunday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that he founded in 1971 and helped oversee for the rest of his life. His wife, Pamela Horowitz, said Bond suffered from vascular disease.

Her husband, she said, "never took his eyes off the prize and that was always racial equality."

The son of a college president burst into the national consciousness after helping to start the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, where he rubbed shoulders with committee leaders Stokely Carmichael and John Lewis. As the committee grew into one of the movement's most important groups, the young Bond dropped out of Morehouse College in Atlanta to serve as communications director. He later returned and completed his degree in 1971.

Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but fellow lawmakers, many of them white, refused to let him take his seat because of his anti-war stance on Vietnam. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor. Bond finally took office in 1967.

"If this was another movement, they would call him the PR man, because he was the one who wrote the best, who framed the issues the best. He was called upon time and again to write it, to express it," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was Bond's colleague on the student committee and later wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for the American Civil Liberties Union when Bond's case was before the high court.

President Barack Obama called Bond "a hero."

"Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life," Obama said in a statement. "Julian Bond helped change this country for the better."

In 1968, he led a delegation to the Democratic National Convention, where his name was placed in nomination for the vice presidency, but he declined because he was too young.

He served in the Georgia House until 1975 and then served six terms in the Georgia Senate until 1986. He also served as president of the law center from its founding until 1979 and was later on its board of directors.

Bond was elected board chairman of the NAACP in 1998 and served for 10 years.

He was known for his intellect and his even keel, even in the most emotional situations, Young said.

"When everybody else was getting worked up, I could find in Julian a cool serious analysis of what was going on," Young said.

In the most intense debates, Bond was "always a gentleman" and never mean, his wife said.

Bond was often at the forefront of protests. In 1960, he helped organize a sit-in involving Atlanta college students at the city hall cafeteria.

"We never thought that he really would participate and be arrested because he was always so laid back and cool, but he joined in with us," recalled Carolyn Long Banks, now 74, who said Bond never sought much recognition in those early years.

Bond was "a thinker as well as a doer. He was a writer as well as a young philosopher," said Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a journalist who struck up a friendship with Bond in the early 1960s, when she was one of the first two black students to attend the University of Georgia. At the time, Bond was an activist in Atlanta with the newly formed committee.

His eloquence and sense of humor "really helped sustain the young people in the civil rights movement."

Hunter-Gault said she hopes a new generation of activists draws lessons from Bond's life and work as they embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Everybody is not going to be out there in the street with their hands up or shouting," she said. "There've got to be people like Julian who participate and observe and combine those two things for action and change that make a difference."

Morris Dees, co-founder of the law center, said the nation lost one of its most passionate voices for justice.

"He advocated not just for African-Americans but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all," Dees said.

After leading the NAACP, Bond stayed active in Democratic politics. He also made regular appearances on the lecture circuit and on television and taught at several universities.

Horace Julian Bond was born Jan. 14, 1940, in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to his wife, a former staff attorney at the law center, survivors include five children. - Holland reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press Race and Ethnicity Editor Sonya Ross, also in Washington, contributed to this report.