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Service sector employee, nurse at a hospital. (Photo: REUTERS)

U.S. service sector growth sped up in July by its fastest pace in ten years, fueled by a surge in business activity, employment and new orders. An industry report released Wednesday by the Institute for Supply Management said its services sector index rose to 60.3, its highest reading since August 2005,

While it is a sign that the non-manufacturing, lower-paying service sector was growing faster than expected, it now accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. Economists’ expectations were for a reading of 56.2, according to a Reuters poll. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the service sector, while readings below 50 point to contraction.

The business activity subindex rose to 64.9, compared with expectations for a reading of 61. It was the best reading for that index since December 2004. The employment index rose to 59.6, its strongest since August 2005.

U.S. service sector growth sped up in

Los-Angeles-Mayor-Eric-Garcetti

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, right, speaks as Police Chief Charlie Beck listens at left at a news conference to discuss mid year crime statistics in Los Angeles Wednesday, July 8, 2015. Crime has increased 13 percent in Los Angeles in the first six months of the year, ending more than a decade of declines in the nation’s second-largest city, according to statistics released by the Los Angeles Police Department on Wednesday. Garcetti said “this is bad news” but that Los Angeles remains one of the safest large cities in the U.S. Beck partially attributed the crime spike to increases in homelessness, gang crime and domestic violence.(AP Photo/Nick Ut)

I was forced to watch CNN Monday morning while sitting in a professional’s waiting room. The subject of discussion was the explosion in murders in New York, Los Angeles and other cities in the last year. I laughed as the pundits agreed that throwing more money at the problem was the answer, while discussing how these inner-city police departments are “under-resourced.” The problem may be resources to some extent. However, the real problem is belief in liberal policies, which essentially remove accountability from one’s actions.

It’s no secret that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has significantly reversed former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s policies of community policing. It is no secret that the Left has been on an anti-racist jihad against police in general. Do Democrats really believe that this agenda will lead to less crime and to a safer society? I think not. This is because at its core, Marxism is simply extreme irresponsibility.

What we are seeing today in our society with its anti-police, politically correct focus is a type of cultural Marxism. The root of this belief is that you can do anything you want, no matter the consequences, because society should not hold you accountable personally. If someone tells you otherwise or points out your foolishness, call them a racist and shame them in public. That is the Left’s agenda, freedom from accountability and milking the public coffers, not public safety.

This cultural Marxism is bred in our universities as the liberal, tenured faculty re-educate our youth to believe all this crap. Today’s graduates can’t compete in the job market, but they can sure carry a mattress around all day complaining of victimhood that never happened. The result of these decades of Marxist teaching has led to a generation of young adults who will believe anything they are told. This belief holds regardless of in-your-face evidence to the contrary.

For instance, you can borrow and spend all you want; there will be no consequence to mountains of long-term, sovereign debt. Our youth really believe the party will never end. They just won’t even open the minds to an alternate reality, even though they will be the ones most likely to suffer the consequences. Our Leftist leaders know that this financial strategy won’t work but they simply don’t care. They want to get as much as they can from others before the lights go out. Of course, events in Greece, the Eurozone, Puerto Rico and elsewhere are non-issues to them. Did they watch as University of Texas visiting professor Yanis Varoufakis just destroyed the Greek economy, putting these theories into practice? No, of course not.

The American way of life, which historically has included the rule of law, capitalism, individual responsibility and peace through strength, is eroding. There will be significant consequences to this “change.” The rise of totalitarian regimes who use a kind of managed capitalism can exist and prosper for a while. That is, until reality smacks them in the face. Look at what is going on in China. The Chinese have been actively attempting to usurp the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. They have been actively petitioning the IMF to include the yuan in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, a kind of basket of reserve currencies in the world. The problem is that little thing called free markets. With a massive bubble in equities generated by the Chinese to keep their populations constituents in the money and therefore buy social cohesion, reality has happened and the bubble has popped. It was unsustainable as all bubbles are. What do the Chinese do? Arrest the sellers, of course! That will stop a stock market crash!

These kind of managed circuses cannot go on forever, as in the end, someone is left holding the bag. Unfortunately, this is exactly the type of government management of the economy the Obama administration is attempting to install here. It won’t work. It never has worked in the history of the world. Europe, which the Left holds up as the socialist model, is crashing. They have finally run out of other people’s money. Just watch the evening news. But that doesn’t matter because our youth won’t pay attention to that. They just keep going to Bernie Sanders rallies.

Finally, our leftist ostriches have their heads in the collective sand regarding national security. Give Iran, the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism, the bomb! Of course there will be no consequences! Obama told me so! Tell Vlad I will be more flexible after the election why don’t you! There will be consequences to this denial of reality as well, only it will be much more severe and existential.

I’m reminded of the scene in Will Smith’s “Independence Day,” when the loonies are on the top of the skyscraper, smoking dope and having a party, welcoming the alien spaceship, as the weapon is lowered which will, in a few seconds, vaporize them.

What we are seeing with this anti-police,

Andrew-Cuomo-SAFE-Act

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signing the SAFE Act, which further hindered gun rights in New York, including a restriction on the number of rounds allowed in a magazine was not. (Photo: Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times)

My town, New York City, enforces rigid gun laws. Police refused to assign me a gun permit. The law doesn’t even let me hold a fake gun on TV to demonstrate something.

But New York politicians are so eager to vilify gun ownership that they granted an exception to the anti-gun group States United to Prevent Gun Violence. New York allowed States United to set up a fake gun store, where cameras filmed potential gun customers being spoofed by an actor pretending to be a gun-seller.

“This a nine-millimeter semi-automatic. It’s a very handy gun. It’s easy to use,” he says. “You can carry it in a purse like that gal from Wal-Mart. Her two-year-old son reaches into her pocketbook, pulls it out, shoots her. Dead, gone, no Mom!”

States United then made that footage into an anti-gun public service announcement. “Over 60 percent of Americans think owning a gun will make them safer. In fact, owning a gun increases the risk of homicide, suicide and unintentional death,” says the video.

It’s a powerful message. But it’s a lie, says John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He says that gun control advocates lie all the time.

Lott acknowledges the tragedies. Sometimes a gun in the home is used in a homicide or suicide, or leads to accidental death, but he adds, “It also makes it easier for people to defend themselves — women and the elderly in particular.”

Lott says, “Every place in the world that’s tried to ban guns … has seen big increases in murder rates. You’d think at least one time, some place, when they banned guns, murder rates would go down. But that hasn’t been the case.”

I pushed back: what about people harming themselves?

“There are lots of different ways for people to commit suicide,” Lott said, and researchers have looked at how those tragedies are affected by access to guns. “We find that people commit suicide in other ways if they don’t have guns.”

What about accidents? Lott replies that accidental shooting deaths are relatively rare: “about 500 a year.” That sounds bad, but about 400 Americans are killed by overdosing on acetaminophen each year (most of them suicides), and almost as many Americans drown in swimming pools.

“It would be nice if it was zero (but) consider that 120 million Americans own guns,” Lott says.

Often those guns are used to prevent crime. The homeowner pulls out the gun and the attacker flees. No one knows how often this happens because these prevented crimes don’t become news and don’t get reported to the government, but an estimate from the Violence Policy Center suggests crimes may be prevented by guns tens of thousands of times per year.

Add politics to the mix and the anti-gun statistics get even more misleading. Gang members in their late teens or early adulthood killing each other get called “children.” Fights between gangs near schools get called school “mass shootings.”

The number of mass shootings in America has been roughly level over the past 40 years, but the New York Times still runs headlines like, “FBI Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000.” That headline is absolutely true, but only because they deceitfully picked the year 2000 as their start point, and that was a year with unusually few mass shootings. It’s as if the paper wants to make it seem as if mass shootings are always on the rise, even as crime keeps going down.

It all helps stoke paranoia about guns. Some people respond by calling for more controls. Others, fearing the government may ban gun sales, respond by buying more weapons. The number of people holding permits to carry concealed weapons has skyrocketed to 12.8 million, up from 4.6 million just before President Obama took office. Since 40 percent of American households now own guns, anyone who wants to take them away will have a fight on his hands.

Has the increased gun ownership and carrying of guns led to more violence? Not at all. “Violent crime across the board has plummeted,” says Lott. “In 1991, the murder rate was about 9.8 (people) per 100,000. (Now) it’s down to about 4.2.”

I can’t convince my friends in New York City, but it’s just a fact: More guns — less crime.

My town, New York City, enforces rigid

Republican-debate-candidates-FOX

Top 10 Republican debate line-up and podium order. (Photo: FOX News)

Fox News has announced the top 10 candidates who have qualified for the Republican debate during prime-time Thursday in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Top 10 Republican Presidential Debate Qualifiers:

The prime-time debaters include current frontrunner and real estate mogul Donald Trump; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

The seven who did not make the top 10 but will be invited to a separate 5 p.m. ET debate are former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal; former HP head Carly Fiorina; South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham; former New York Gov. George Pataki; and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.

Kasich, the governor of a must-win state for the eventual nominee, which just so happens to be the very state where the Fox News debate will be hosted, bumped Perry for the final slot following his recent campaign announcement. In fact, each candidate has received a bump in the polls thus far — save for Trump, who has yet to come down — but Fox did not factor in whether the Buckeye state leader would even maintain what little momentum he has enjoyed.

“As governor, I am glad to welcome my fellow debate participants to our great state and I look forward to discussing the issues facing our country with them on Thursday,” Kasich said in a statement following the announcement.

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Fox News has announced the top 10

Water-Tower-The-Walt-Disney-Co-HQ

The famous water tower at Walt Disney Co HQ. (Photo: REUTERS)

Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) revenue missed Wall Street expectations for the first time in eight quarters, despite the success of “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. The report pushed shares down more than 2 percent in extended trading.

Walt Disney Co reported a drop of operating income at its parks and resorts outside North America, fueled by lower attendance and occupied room nights at their Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, as well as higher operating costs at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort. However, total operating profit at its theme parks, the largest contributor to revenue and profit, rose 9 percent to $922 billion in the third quarter ended June 27.

Operating income at the company’s largest unit, media networks, rose 4 percent to $2.38 billion in the quarter, as cable channels brought in higher fees from pay TV distributors. The media networks segment includes sports channel ESPN, the Disney Channels and the ABC broadcast network.

Disney’s studio business recorded a profit of $472 million, up from $411 million a year earlier. The company’s overall net income climbed to $2.48 billion, or $1.45 per share, from $2.25 billion, or $1.28 per share. Excluding items, the company earned $1.45 per share. Revenue rose to $13.10 billion from $12.47 billion.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.42 per share on revenue of $13.23 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Disney shares fell 2.01 percent to $119.25 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The stock had risen 29 percent this year, making it the best performing among the 30-member Dow Jones industrial average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) this year.

Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS) revenue missed Wall

Jeffrey-Katzenberg-Dream-Works

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation. (Photo: REUTERS)

Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (NASDAQ:DWA) reported an unexpected 40 percent jump in quarterly revenue, largely fueled by the box-office success of “Home” and strength in its television business.

The company reported on Tuesday it earned $23.9 million in the second quarter ended June 30 from “Home”, which earned $54 million in its opening weekend of March 27, alone. It was the only original DreamWorks movie released this year, and performed second only to “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted,” which was released in 2012.

According to Box Office Mojo, a website that tracks theater ticket sales, the movie “Home” starring singer Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez and Emmy-award winning actor Jim Parsons, grossed roughly $386 million worldwide as of Aug. 2.

The earnings report no doubt marks a staunch turnaround for the film studio, which took impairment charges of $57.1 million related to the performance of “The Penguins of Madagascar” and “Mr. Peabody and Sherman”, among others in the quarter that ended December.

Revenue from DreamWorks’ television business more than doubled to $54.5 million, helped by higher number of episodes delivered under its content licensing arrangements. Total revenue rose about 40 percent to $170.8 million, beating the average analyst estimate of $166.7 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

However, net loss attributable to DreamWorks widened to $38.6 million, or 45 cents per share, in the three months ended June 30 from $15.4 million, or 18 cents per share, a year earlier. Costs jumped 32 percent to $99.9 million. Excluding items, the company reported a loss of 13 cents per share.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc reported an unexpected

[brid video=”12856″ player=”1929″ title=”Planned Parenthood Official Willing to Sell Whole Baby Bodies For Intact Parts”]

The fifth and most damning undercover Planned Parenthood video released by the Center for Medical Progress shows an official willing to sell whole, 20-week baby bodies for intact baby body parts. The disturbing video shows the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, advertising the Texas Planned Parenthood branch’s track record of fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact fetuses.

“This is now the fifth member of Planned Parenthood leadership discussing payments for aborted baby parts without any connection to actual costs of so-called tissue ‘donation,’ said David Daleiden, project lead at The Center for Medical Progress. “Planned Parenthood’s system-wide conspiracy to evade the law and make money off of aborted fetal tissue is now undeniable.”

In the video, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Farrell at the Gulf Coast Houston headquarters to discuss a potential business partnership to harvest fetal organs at the abortion-clinic. The new footage comes one day after the Senate, by a vote of 53 to 46, failed to advance a Republican-led measure to halt federal funding of Planned Parenthood. However, leaders of the GOP-controlled upper chamber vowed to continue the fight.

“Where we probably have an edge over other organizations, our organization has been doing research for many many years,” explains Farrell. When researchers need a specific part from the aborted fetus, Farrell says, “We bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this, so we deviate from our standard in order to do that.”

Farrell is asked by one of the investigators specifically if she and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast could change abortion procedures to better harvest intact baby body parts. Federal law prohibits any alteration in the timing or method of abortion, particularly for the purposes of fetal tissue collection (42 U.S.C. 289g-1).

“Some of our doctors in the past have projects and they’re collecting the specimens,” Farrell responds. “So, they do it in a way that they get the best specimens, so I know it can happen.”

The Center for Medical Progress investigators ask Farrell how she would frame the business contract, in which they pay a higher price for higher quality fetal body parts. “We can work it out in the context of–obviously, the procedure itself is more complicated,” suggesting that “without having you cover the procedural cost” and paying for the abortion, the higher specimen price could be framed as “additional time, cost, administrative burden.”

“If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this,” Farrell says in summing up how affiliates handle transactions. “It’s all just a matter of line items.”

Farrell also indicates to the investigators over lunch that the specimen sales from her department contribute significantly to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s overall finances: “I think everyone realizes, especially because my department contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States. Larger than any the other affiliates’ combined.” In a Texas Senate hearing on July 29, former Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast clinic director Abby Johnson estimated that the affiliate had previously made up to $120,000 per month off of aborted fetal tissue.

“Anyone who watches these videos knows that Planned Parenthood is engaged in barbaric practices and human rights abuses that must end,” Daleiden added. “There is no reason for an organization that uses illegal abortion methods to sell baby parts and commit such atrocities against humanity to still receive over $500 million each year from taxpayers.”

The video is the fifth by The Center for Medical Progress documenting Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal parts. The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).

The fifth and most recent undercover Planned

Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate, real estate mogul Donald Trump, speaks at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Saturday, July 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

If I asked you what Donald Trump and Bono have in common, the easy and accurate answer is that they both have lots of money. But if I asked you to identify a shared perspective by the two men, at first glance that would seem to be a much harder question.

After all, it seems like a rock star and a real-estate tycoon are about as different as two people could possibly be. Yet the answer should be obvious. I’ll give you a big hint. You probably have the same perspective as well.

At least if you answer “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second question.

  1. Do you ever voluntarily pay extra tax?
  2. Or do you, like John Kerry or Bill and Hillary Clinton, take prudent steps to minimize the amount of your income confiscated by government?

In other words, the perspective shared by Donald Trump and Bono is one that is widely held by every sensible person. Simply stated, your income belongs in your pocket, not in the grasping hands of politicians. This irks politicians such as David Cameron in the U.K., who seem to think we have some sort of moral obligation to help finance their vote-buying efforts.

But I bet almost all of us agree with Trump’s view. Here are some excerpts from a CNN report.

Trump was unambiguous. “I pay as little as possible,” he said. “I fight like hell to pay as little as possible, for two reasons. Number one, I’m a businessman, and that’s the way you’re supposed to do it, and you put the money back into your company and employees and all of that.” “But the other reason is that I hate the way our government spends our taxes. I hate the way they waste our money. Trillions and trillions of dollars of waste and abuse and I hate it,” Trump said. “And I’ll be probably the first candidate in the history of politics within this country to say, I try — by the way, like every single taxpayer out there — I try to pay as little tax as possible, and again, one of the big reasons is I hate what our country does with the money that we pay.”

Amen.

As an economist, I don’t want tax increases because the economy will be hurt and workers will suffer. But what upsets me at a visceral level is the notion of sending more money to DC when there’s so much waste, fraud, and abuse. And I suspect tens of millions of other Americans agree that it would be foolish to reward the wasteful antics of Washington politicians with more of our money.

Which is why almost all of us also agree with Bono’s view. As reported by the U.K.-based Mirror, Bono says it is very “sensible” to minimize tax and that it would be “stupid” to behave otherwise.

Members of U2 have hit back at claims they shield millions of pounds in overseas tax havens – claiming they are just “being sensible”. In an interview with Sky News, lead singer Bono insisted the band pays a fortune in tax and it was the right decision to move some of their business to the Netherlands. “It is just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we are taxed,” he said. …“Because you’re good at philanthropy and because I am an activist people think you should be stupid in business and I don’t run with that.”

Bingo, he’s exactly right.

Indeed, even though I’ve praised Bono’s economic analysis in the past, I suspect he doesn’t even understand how right he is. Because he’s not just doing what’s right from his band’s perspective, he’s also doing what’s right for the rest of us as well. P.S. While I’m glad lots of leftists seek to minimize their tax burdens, it would be better if they weren’t such total hypocrites.

If I asked you what Donald Trump

Obama-Biden-Iran-Deal

President Obama delivers remarks to announce a historic nuclear deal he says will verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon on July 14, 2015.

President Obama’s sordid Iran nuke deal is looking more and more like the foreign policy version of ObamaCare. It’s duplicitous, secretive, destructive and legacy-driven, and he’s going to have to go full community organizer to get it passed.

This deal was born in hell. It is the culmination of Obama’s dangerously flawed philosophy that you enhance national security through appeasement. If we can secure a deal with Satan’s stepchild, after all, we can remake the globe into the peaceful utopia progressives romantically envision.

Never mind that this terrorist theocracy, by its own admission, is immune to rehabilitation. “Death to America, death to Israel.” Even in the midst of negotiations with the Obama regime, the mullahs didn’t bother to pretend they had goodwill toward us.

It was as though Iran’s leaders were trying to validate the deal’s opponents, demonstrating their contempt for America and Israel, showing their intention to continue sponsoring global terrorism, and signaling their unwillingness to submit to legitimate inspections.

Throughout, the Obama regime’s denial of Iran’s malevolence grew in direct proportion to Iran’s confessions. Obama’s essential message to us was: “Don’t listen to the Iranians; they will comply with the terms of the agreement despite insisting they won’t. We must close this deal and make it easier for them to get nukes because they will respond favorably to our magnanimity.”

Obama’s problem is that you can only fool part of the people part of the time. His propaganda machine doesn’t always succeed, as some facts are too stubborn to ignore. Whether there are limits to the Democratic Party’s loyalty to party over country, on the other hand, is another matter. It may approve this deal despite its undeniable flaws and the public’s opposition.

Yes, polls show that just as with ObamaCare, Obama has been unable to fool the majority of Americans into believing that this deal is good for America. A Quinnipiac University poll shows that 57 percent of Americans oppose it, whereas only 28 percent support it. By similar majorities, Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling the situation in Iran and believe that the deal makes the world less safe.

Don’t assume this gives Obama a second’s pause; it simply inspires him to push harder. But he is growing desperate. Bloomberg reports that “administration officials are increasingly finding themselves on the defensive against criticism from Republicans and some Democrats, as well as vehement opposition from Israel, according to three officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal political deliberations.”

So Obama has launched an intense lobbying effort of congressional Democrats. As with the 2012 presidential election, he knows he can’t win GOP support, so he has shucked any pretense of bipartisanship and turned to the far left for support. And like a seasoned community organizer, he is isolating and demonizing his opponents and distorting facts that damage his cause.

As such, Obama is arguing that opposition to his deal is coming from the same groups that led us to war in Iraq, by which he is not so subtly implying Jewish groups. It’s not enough for him to slander Israel’s leaders; he must target Jewish supporters in America, as well, playing to the worst of the old stereotypes.

Meanwhile, Nobel Prize seeker John Kerry is telling us that Iran’s supreme leader wasn’t serious when he called for “death to America.” Secretary of State Kerry assured the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he has “no specific knowledge of a plan by Iran to actually destroy us.” Swell.

The Obama administration wants us to believe it instead of Iran concerning Iran’s intentions. Not to worry, because Obama claims he’s tougher than Ronald Reagan. He’s pursuing a “don’t trust but verify” strategy with Iran. Yet the specifics of the deal scream otherwise. Not only are “anytime, anywhere” site inspections absent from the deal but also the United States has a subordinate role in the inspections process.

The deal results in the likely acceleration of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, and it frees up billions to Iran, which can and will use the funds to sponsor global terrorism.

Just as with ObamaCare, everything about this deal is wrong and the American people oppose it, which is why Obama will become more militant and deceitful in trying to cram it down our throats.

Have we learned nothing from the ObamaCare nightmare, especially about Obama’s character and designs?

Now is not the time to mince words about the evils we face; now is not the time to pull our punches in deference to the false gods of bipartisanship and compromise — which only one party (the GOP) honors, in any event.

Some reasons for optimism exist. For example, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is said to be wavering.

Perhaps our side can take a page from Obama’s playbook and pull out all the stops in opposing this deal. The stakes are too high to sit this one out.

Just as with ObamaCare, we can’t rely on America’s waning rule of law to save us from this unconstitutional and reckless monstrosity.

President Obama's sordid Iran nuke deal is

Donald-Trump-Arizona

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to thousands at a political rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on July 11, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: Getty)

With Hillary Clinton’s multiple misdeeds coming to light and causing her political problems, reflected in her declining support in the polls, both she and the Democratic Party have reason to be concerned. But both of them may yet be rescued by “The Donald,” who can turn out to be their Trump card.

Donald Trump has virtually no chance of becoming even the Republican Party’s candidate in 2016, much less being elected President of the United States.

The reason is not hard to understand: Republican voters simply do not trust him, as the polls show. Nor is there any reason why they should trust him, given his chameleon-like changes in the past.

Why then is he the “front-runner” in the polls?

One reason is arithmetic. When there is a small army of Republican candidates, each with a tiny set of supporters, anyone with enough name recognition to get the support of a fifth or a fourth of the Republicans polled stands out, even if twice that many Republicans say they would never vote for him.

When both kinds of Republicans are counted, Donald Trump is both the “front-runner” and the leading pariah. The danger is not that he will get the nomination, but that his irresponsible talk will become the image of the Republican Party, and that his bombast will drown out more sober voices that need to be heard, thereby making it harder to select the best candidate.

More is involved than arithmetic, however. Many Republican voters are so disgusted with their party, especially over its repeated betrayals of them, and of the country, especially when it comes to immigration, that they are immediately attracted to anyone who voices the outrage they feel.

Donald Trump has turned this opening phase of the 2016 primaries into The Donald Trump Show. All of this might be very entertaining, if this were not a crucial juncture in the history of the country and of the world.

But, while all this political theater is going on, the world’s leading promoter of international terrorism — Iran — has gotten a “deal” that all but guarantees that they will have nuclear bombs and, not just incidentally, intercontinental missiles to deliver them.

Iran doesn’t need intercontinental missiles to reach Israel, which is closer to Iran than St. Louis is to Boston. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

We can only hope that, somewhere among the many Republican candidates, there is someone who can, as president, make the hard decisions and take the hard steps required to undo the utter disaster that looms ahead, as a result of Barack Obama’s feckless foreign policies.

If ever there was a time to carefully sift through all the aspiring Republican candidates, in hopes of finding just one who might be up to the superhuman task ahead, in order to head off a nuclear catastrophe, this is surely the time to look for a solid, wise and steadfast leader.

A shoot-from-the-hip, bombastic show-off is the last thing we need or can afford. As for the Democrats, their leading candidate — Hillary Clinton — was one of the architects of the foreign policy disasters that can turn into world-changing catastrophes.

As for the Republican mob scene, it is a challenge just to remember all the names of the candidates. These include many who must know, in their heart of hearts, that they have no real chance of getting the nomination. But, unless they withdraw, the public’s attention may well be fragmented over too many candidates for them to find a truly promising candidate for president.

My own view is that the last thing we need is another great talker with no track record of actually taking responsibility for running a government at any level. Among the Republican candidates are some governors whose records are worth scrutinizing. But the sooner the talkers are gone, the better. We can only hope that Donald Trump will be leading the procession of talkers headed for the exit. But don’t count on it.

Worse yet, 36 percent of Republicans polled recently say that they would vote for Trump if he ran as a third-party candidate. That would virtually guarantee victory for Hillary Clinton. “The Donald” could definitely be the Democrats’ Trump card.

Sowell: Hillary Clinton, plagued by scandal, and

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