Monday, October 31, 2016

Endorsement: Gary Johnson for president

In an election year where the main issue is character, there are only two choices, and neither of them has an R or D after their name. Between Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein, I have to endorse Johnson based on ideology. But let us look at the whole picture.


First, Republican-in-name-only Donald Trump is an unacceptable candidate on so many levels. For example, how does a businessman who was on the brink of bankruptcy get elected based on his business acumen? And even if you assume the women are lying who have alleged sexual misconduct from Trump, his "locker room" tapes that have been brought forward show he is at the least somewhat perverse. While I don't consider him to be racist, he is clearly a sexist. And his political views, with the exception of his border control policy and other protectionist views, have shifted between Right and Left, sometimes more than once?

Trump is a little boy chasing his father's legacy, and failing miserably. But Trump covers for his failure by talking big. He is a master of marketing, but that is all.

At his worst, Trump might be a closet fascist. But at his best, he may "only" be a Democrat with a Republican label. There is a teeny chance he may be a Reaganite, but that is a longshot, at best.


And then there is Democrat Hillary Clinton, the most crooked politician to ever run for the presidency. Her scandals make Richard Nixon look downright honest. I have been forced to cover her ad nauseam since this blog started, because she has been proven to have broken the law. FBI Director James Comey said as much last July when he said he wasn't pressing charges against her. Bill Clinton may lay claim to the Clinton family's sex scandals, but her fingers were all over every other scandal.

Even if you ignore her scandals, her political views are statist, supporting big government solutions for every problem, even as she ignores how big government created the problems in the first place.

At her worst, Clinton could be the first communist dictator in America. At her best, she may turn out to be a pragmatic president, like her husband. The chance of her reducing the size of government? Somewhere between slim and none, and slim just left town. Most likely possibility is she will be taken down by a scandal in her first term, assuming her health doesn't do it first.

Thirdly, there is the Green Party's Jill Stein. She is a Leftist's dream, without Hillary's scandal baggage. If you want the government to solve all of America's problems, then Stein is the only credible candidate. Of course, Santa Claus government has a price tag. Get ready to pay, with all your money and your job and anything else the government can take from you. Welcome to the USSA.

(hat tip to MemeAddicts for the pic)

This leaves Libertarian Gary Johnson. Feel free to look over his views here, but the one area where he excels is the recognition that government is too big. That is one area where both Republicans and Democrats fail every presidential election, while the Green Party takes the exact opposite approach. At what point of our crushing $20 trillion debt burden will we realize that government isn't solving our problems any more?

While Johnson does have an annoying tendency to shoot from the hip when he isn't pandering, he at least has a positive record of being a good governor in New Mexico. Trump's leadership is questionable at best, Hillary's is non-existent (senators and secretaries of state are not executive leadership positions), and Stein is a doctor.

If you happen to be a political binary who refuses to vote for anything without an R or D after its name, then I will have to recommend Trump, only because he is a clear anti-establishment vote. Our establishment elites deserve a good repudiation for screwing up the economy and ignoring the will of the people with the Obamacare fiasco, not to mention our silly war on Islam which has been going on for the age of a high schooler, without making even the slightest dent in Islamic terrorism. But Trump won't fix these problems, only send a message. To elect someone to fix the problems, America needs Gary Johnson.

The last days of Hillary? Today's news for October 31st

Are we witnessing the final implosion of Hillary Clinton? One can only hope...

CNN:
Hillary Clinton's campaign was jolted when FBI Director James Comey delivered the ultimate October surprise. 
Eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, Comey announced that the FBI had discovered additional emails and is reviewing them to see whether they are related to the bureau's investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information.
So what happened?
It started with the FBI's investigation into Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York congressman who was caught over the summer exchanging lewd and sexually suggestive messages with a 15-year-old girl.

Weiner's estranged wife is Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. And in their look into Weiner's sexting allegations, which began on September 22, investigators from the FBI's New York field office discovered Abedin's emails on Weiner's laptop -- with initial data showing those emails went through Clinton's server.

It was enough to lead FBI Director James Comey to conclude the emails would need to be reviewed to see if he'd need to reopen the investigation he'd closed in July on whether Clinton kept classified information on the private email server she used during her tenure as secretary of state.

Comey was made aware of the emails' existence by mid-October, law enforcement sources have said. He was given a full briefing on Thursday.

Comey decided Friday after a series of "long grueling meetings" with top FBI executives that the FBI needed to review to see whether the emails were related to its investigation into Clinton's server, and a letter would be sent to Congress about the development, a law enforcement source told CNN.

And so, on Friday -- 11 days from the election -- Comey informed eight Senate and House chairmen, who are Republicans, and copied the ranking Democrats on their panels.
However, we probably won't know the results of this new FBI investigation until long after the election.

Needless to say, Democrats are furious:
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Comey on Sunday that he may have violated the Hatch Act, barring political activity by federal officials.

"I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act," Reid said in his letter to Comey. "Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law."

Clinton's campaign is focused largely on the reality that Comey's actions are out of step for the Justice Department and the FBI -- but now that Comey has made his move, the political consequences can't be undone.
The problem with Reid's statement: If Comey had said nothing, he would have been doing a political favor to the Democrats. It would have been a lie of omission. There was no way for Comey to win. Imagine if he announced this AFTER the election? The Republicans could have leveled the same Hatch Act charge at him.

On the other hand, Comey might have seen Donald Trump picking up momentum in the polls leading up to the election, and he might have made the move to get in good with his potential new boss. Comey didn't get where he is without learning how to read the shifting political winds.

Of course, if Hillary loses the election, she can blame her husband once again:

The New Yorker:
Comey’s “original sin” was the press conference he held in July regarding the Clinton e-mail investigation. At that press conference, Comey stated that the F.B.I. had found no reason to bring criminal charges against Clinton for using a private e-mail server to handle much of her State Department business, but that Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, extremely classified information.” Comey made clear that he had decided to make this comment without any sign-off from the Justice Department. Ordinarily, when no charges are brought, such matters are not exposed to public view, let alone addressed at press conferences.

Comey’s supporters argue that he had to act independently, and publicly, because [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch had compromised herself by having an impromptu visit with Bill Clinton late in the investigation. In the ensuing uproar, Lynch promised to accept Comey’s recommendation on whether to bring charges against Clinton. But, as Miller notes, Comey’s press conference triggered a series of other events, including congressional hearings where Comey was forced to defend his decision not to recommend prosecution. Comey’s letter to Congress on Friday updated his earlier statements that the Clinton e-mail investigation had ended.
If not for Bill Clinton's "impromptu" meeting with Loretta Lynch in her plane, this decision wouldn't have been dropped in Comey's lap.

On top of that, Comey's statement that anyone else would have faced "sanctions" for such actions as Hillary committed only further cemented the view that Comey was politically compromised. Both Comey and the FBI got huge black eyes for that. If Comey had let this newest incident go unmentioned, he would have been committing political suicide, not to mention how the FBI would look owned by the party in power.

However, Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a rather intriguing view of Comey and this latest news:

Scott Adams' Blog:
I’m hearing several interpretations for these two observations:

1. Comey seemed pro-Clinton when he dropped the initial email case.

2. Comey seems anti-Clinton this week because he announced a new round of investigations right before the election.

How can both behaviors be explained? Or, as I like to ask, which movie does the best job of explaining our observations and also predicting the future?

Some say Comey is a political pawn in a rigged system. By that movie script we can explain why he dropped the initial email case. But we can’t explain why he’s acting against Clinton’s interests now. What changed?
...My movie says Comey had good evidence against Clinton during the initial investigation but made a judgement call to leave the decision to the American public. For reasons of conscience, and acting as a patriot, Comey explained in clear language to the public exactly what evidence the FBI found against Clinton. The evidence looked daming because it was. Under this interpretation, Comey took a bullet to his reputation for the sake of the Republic. He didn’t want the FBI to steal this important decision away from the people, but at the same time he couldn’t let the people decide blind. So he divulged the evidence and stepped away, like the action hero who doesn’t look back at the explosion.

In the second act of this movie, Comey learns that the Weiner laptop had emails that were so damning it would be a crime against the public to allow them to vote without first seeing a big red flag. And a flag was the best he could do because it was too early in the investigation to leak out bits and pieces of the evidence. That would violate Clinton’s rights.

But Comey couldn’t easily raise a red flag to warn the public because it was against FBI policy to announce a criminal investigation about a candidate so close to election day. So Comey had a choice of either taking another bullet for the Republic or screwing the very country that he has spent his career protecting.

In this movie, Comey did the hero thing. He alerted the public to the fact that the FBI found DISQUALIFYING information on the Weiner laptop. And he took a second bullet to his reputation. 
Read Adams' entire post, but this is easily the best interpretation I have read of why Comey did what he did. I retract every bad thing I ever said about him.

In other Hillary news...

Observer:
On September 5, 2006, Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff writer for the Jewish Press, and Hillary Clinton was running for a shoo-in re-election as a U.S. senator. Her trip making the rounds of editorial boards brought her to Brooklyn to meet the editorial board of the Jewish Press. 
The tape was never released and has only been heard by the small handful of Jewish Press staffers in the room. According to Chomsky, his old-school audiocassette is the only existent copy and no one has heard it since 2006, until today when he played it for the Observer.  
...Speaking to the Jewish Press about the January 25, 2006, election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority), Clinton weighed in about the result, which was a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the U.S.-preferred Fatah (45 seats). 
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
But Hillary would never rig an election in America, right?

Friday, October 28, 2016

Weekly finale: Queen & VonLichten

We all deserve a weekend, especially after another week closer to the worst election in American history.

For this week's musical finale, I offer a little gem I discovered: A remaster of Queen's We Will Rock You, by VonLichten. If it is possible to take a classic rock song and turn it into classical music, this is it:



That is all for me. Until Monday, I am out of here. Have a rocking weekend!

More Clinton stuff: Today's news for October 28th

New York Daily News:

In case you missed the Eric Garner story from last year, watch this video:



Garner died from what police did to him. It is clear from the video that police antagonized him. When they went to arrest him, the out-of-shape Garner didn't stand a chance. The fact they had to use such a violent technique (the chokehold) for a simple crime like tax avoidance (he was allegedly selling cigarettes without paying New York's exorbitant cigarette tax), only made this pointless death a reminder of the police state in which we live.

And that is where our story comes in:
Erica Garner, the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, ripped the Hillary Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday after new campaign emails released by WikiLeaks showed how the Democratic nominee's staffers discussed the death of her father. 
“I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use my dad?” Garner tweeted along with a link to emails released by WikiLeaks. “These people will co opt anything to push their agenda. Police violence is not the same as gun violence. 
“I'm vey (sic) interested to know exactly what @CoreyCiorciari meant when he said ‘I know we have an Erica Garner problem’ in the #PodestaEmails19,” added Garner.
Garner also tweeted links to hacked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta released this week by WikiLeaks that show internal communications among top Clinton staffers about how to best word an editorial piece on gun violence that was slated to run in the New York Daily News.

“I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don't want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece,” Clinton’s traveling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote in a March 17 email.

...Erica Garner endorsed Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary and has, on multiple occasions, used her Twitter account to criticize the Clinton camp.
Eric Garner's name is in the public sector, and the Clinton campaign has every right to use it in political discussions of police violence. It doesn't matter if his daughter supported their opponent.

Get over yourself Erica. Your 15 minutes of fame is coming to an end.

Returning to more Wikileaks stuff...

New York Times:
In the years before Hillary Clinton announced she would run again for president, her top aides expressed profound concerns in internal emails about how foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s own moneymaking ventures would affect Mrs. Clinton’s political future.

The emails, obtained by hackers and being gradually released by WikiLeaks this month, also are revealing how efforts to minimize potential conflicts at the foundation led to power struggles and infighting among aides and Mrs. Clinton’s family.

One top aide to Mr. Clinton, Douglas J. Band, noted in an email that the former president had received personal income from some foundation donors and “gets many expensive gifts from them.”

Chelsea Clinton accused her father’s aides of taking “significant sums of money from my parents personally,” of “hustling” during foundation events to win clients for their own business, and of even installing spyware on her chief of staff’s computer.
It is nice to see there is at least one Clinton with a moral compass. Unfortunately, it isn't Chelsea running for president.

Read the entire article. It is rather enlightening to see how Chelsea worked to try and keep the Clinton Foundation clean, even against the efforts of some the slimier elements in it, such as Douglas Band. While it is possible Chelsea was simply being pragmatic, knowing that her mother would be running for president and not wanting the Clinton Foundation to be an impediment, I personally hope that Chelsea is a good enough person to recognize that unethical behavior eventually comes back to bite you in the butt, mainly because I suspect she will attempt a political career at some point.

Speaking of Democrats...

Washington Free Beacon:

Another day, another lie from the Obama administration...
The Obama administration misled journalists and lawmakers for more than nine months about a secret agreement to lift international sanctions on a critical funding node of Iran’s ballistic missile program, as part of a broader “ransom” package earlier this year that involved Iran freeing several U.S. hostages, according to U.S. officials and congressional sources apprised of the situation.

The administration agreed to immediately lift global restrictions on Iran’s Bank Sepah—a bank the Treasury Department described in 2007 as the “linchpin of Iran’s missile procurement”–eight years before they were to be lifted under last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement. U.S. officials initially described the move as a “goodwill gesture” to Iran.

The United States also agreed to provide Iran $1.7 billion in cash to release or drop charges against 21 Iranians indicted for illegally assisting Tehran. Full details of this secret agreement were kept hidden from Congress and journalists for more than nine months, multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon.
Only 3 more months! Unless Hillary wins...

Speaking of the election...

Politico:
The bottom is falling out of Gary Johnson’s poll numbers.

The two-time Libertarian presidential candidate has shed roughly half his supporters over the past two months. His slide from nearly 10 percent in September to a recent polling average of 5.6 percent — combined with Hillary Clinton’s growing advantage over Donald Trump — means Johnson is increasingly unlikely to be a major factor unless the race tightens in the final two weeks.

The former New Mexico governor, along with other third-party candidates, could still tip the scales in states where minor-party candidates have traditionally run strongest. But despite Johnson’s large national profile, the third-party candidate who now has the best chance of swinging a state result is Evan McMullin — the former House GOP staffer running as an independent who is climbing in the polls in Utah, typically a safe Republican state.

But McMullin is on the ballot in only about a dozen states, while Johnson is on the ballot in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and Green Party nominee Jill Stein is on 45 ballots, including D.C.
I have considered mentioning McMullin before. I chose not to for the simple reason he cannot win the election for practical reasons: Johnson is on the ballot in 50 states, while McMullin is only on it in 12 states. God bless McMullin, and I hope he does pull off the win in Utah. At the very least, it might propel him to greater things in 2020. But in this election, he is not even close to the kind of spoiler Johnson could be.

Unfortunately, Gary Johnson has issues which were obvious when he was running for the Libertarian nomination. He is temperamental, even if he does have a successful track record.

Consider this story:

The Guardian:
...[Gary] Johnson lashed out at Evan McMullin, the conservative presidential candidate who has leapfrogged him in [Utah] and now has a chance of becoming the first third-party or independent candidate for White House to win a state since 1968.

One recent poll showed McMullin almost tied with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Utah. In contrast, Johnson, who set up his presidential campaign headquarters in Utah, is a very distant fourth.

“It’s a bit of a stretch to be comparing my candidacy with his,” Johnson said during a tense interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere But Washington series.

“He’s ensuring that Hillary Clinton will win Utah. You know what? He is what he is, and I begrudge no one for entering the race,” he said.

The Libertarian candidate added of his rival: “I think that he is splitting the Republican vote. And Utah being predominantly Republican, I think he’s splitting the vote, that Hillary will actually win the state.”
Really Gary? You want to go THERE? You are using the same logic that Republicans and Democrats have used against you for months!

Back to the article...
The Libertarian was hovering around 10% in national surveys, but after a series of embarrassing interviews – including one in which he appeared not to have heard of the Syrian city of Aleppo, and another in which he could not name a foreign leader he respects – he is now languishing around 6%. 
Yes, because those things are so much worse than anything Trump or Clinton have been accused of doing. Americans are silly sometimes.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

The cost of being wrong

Have you noticed there is no cost for being wrong in America?

Even the poorest among us face few consequences. Make bad life choices? No problem! We will give you free healthcare, which includes coverage for abortions when you make more bad life choices. And if you know how to work the government's welfare system, you can get everything from free phones to free childcare. Only in America...

Surprisingly, the wealthiest among us face few consequences. When Wall Street crashes the economy, how many banks died? None. Even Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still alive and insuring mortgages, after being taken over by the feds.

How about the most powerful among us? When they make mistakes...they run for president! Hillary Clinton's list of mistakes runs long and wide: She supported the Iraq War, she broke federal email laws and then covered it up, she was against gay marriage (before she was for it), her husband signed into law the legislation which allowed banks to become investment banks and consequently crash the economy (see Wall Street above), and that doesn't even step into the question of how much she supported her husband's philandering ways. Apparent consequences? Based on her potential to win, it seems none.

Even political ideologies don't face consequences. The list of wrong-headed ideas by progressives is impressive: Affirmative action has a few success stories but the black community as a whole hasn't benefitted, the welfare state hasn't eliminated poverty like LBJ promised, and making it easier for people to get mortgages only bankrupted the entire world's banking system, and mismanagement of America's inner cities by progressives of both R and D varieties is legendary. (Yet voting for a third party is a "wasted vote"?)

What about the middle class? Ah, there we go! The ever-shrinking group of people responsible for those at the top and bottom of society. They are the ones where being wrong comes with a price tag. Failure by middle class entrepreneurs ends in a huge debt for the individual(s) to pay (no government bailouts here!). Get laid off? You can fall into the welfare safety nets for awhile. In other words, join the millions of poor and lower income welfare leeches! Most responsible people abhor that option. But the best part: When someone rises from the "welfare class" to the middle class, they are expected to pay back their benefits! Can you say "disincentivize responsible behavior"?

The only people who cannot afford to be wrong in America are the responsible middle class people, who carry all the cost of it. If you want to get ahead in America, you are the insurance policy for the mistakes of both the rich and poor.

Now get back to work.

Obama, Romney and Moore: Today's news for October 27th

Fox News:
President Obama’s high-security BlackBerry used a special process known as “whitelisting” that only allowed it to take calls and messages from pre-approved contacts, two former senior intelligence officials with knowledge of the set-up told Fox News – pointing to the detail as further proof the White House knew Hillary Clinton’s private account was used for government business.

As the administration now acknowledges, Obama and Clinton emailed each other while she was helming the State Department. If received on his BlackBerry, the “whitelisting” safeguard means Clinton and other contacts would have had to be approved as secure for data transmission – covering everything from emails to texts to phone calls. The Obama BlackBerry would have also been configured to accept the communications.

“Think of whitelisting like a bouncer in the VIP line at the party. If you are on the list you get in, if you are not, you get bounced to the pavement,” said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA, and now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm Cognitio.

“Whitelisting happens by design. The IT professionals who whitelist devices at places like the White House only add the email addresses authorized by management. To do otherwise would be to violate policy in ways that could introduce threats to the system,” he added.
In other words, President Obama KNEW what Hillary Clinton was doing, and approved it. Then he lied to the American people when he said he didn't know.

Any bets on Obama facilitated the FBI cover-up?

New Obama motto: "Corruption you can believe."

Speaking of the worst president ever, how is his opponent from 2012 doing?

ABC News:
Mitt Romney today expressed disappointment in the state of the presidential race, joking that he often asks himself why he stayed out of the 2016 bid for the White House.

"I get asked on a regular basis, 'Boy, why aren't you running this year?' I ask myself that a lot too. But I did that once," Romney said.
Maybe he didn't run because he was one of the most disappointing presidential candidates EVER? When he can't beat one of the most disliked presidents running for re-election, then he should be able to find his picture in the dictionary next to the word "lame".

On the other hand, Romney does have this intelligent comment to add:
"I've watched the presidential debates and looked at the give and take," he said, adding that "there's been almost no discussion" of policies, such as the growth of entitlement programs, income inequality and the national debt.
He is right. This entire election has been an argument about character, of which both candidates sorely lack any.

And now, for a prediction:

Salon:
Despite most indicators showing Donald Trump well behind his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the key states he needs to win the Nov. 8 presidential election, populist filmmaker Michael Moore has long argued that the Republican nominee has more support than people may think.

At a recent promotional event for his new film “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” Moore told audience members that he thinks the loudmouthed GOP nominee is going to win, largely because American elites are so cut off from regular people that they don’t realize just how much the middle class has been harmed in recent years.

“I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump, and they don’t necessarily agree with him,” the left-leaning documentarian said.

Many middle- to lower-income people are going to support the former reality TV star because at least he uses language directly pertinent to issues that have affected their lives, Moore argued.

“Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of Ford Motor executives and said, ‘If you close these factories as you’re planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I’m going to put a 35 percent tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s going to buy them.’ It was an amazing thing to see. No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives, and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the ‘Brexit states.’”
While I don't necessarily agree with Moore's political opinions, this one is intriguing. If Trump does win, I would say Moore's analysis was spot-on. At the very least, even if Trump doesn't win, the elite need to sit up and take notice. Their policies have created the "Trump monster", and if they don't get their act in order, the next political monster could be worse.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Wednesday wisdom: Friedrich Nietzsche

"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."--Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
Admittedly, Nietzsche was cynical, even by my standards. I wouldn't say "Everything the State says is a lie". However, when the State speaks a truth, it is generally in service to either a lie, or a self-serving ideal, which will either expand the State's power, or benefit the person or people running the State. Either way, the average individual loses.

Happy birthday Hillary! Today's news for October 26th


Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was born today in 1947, making her 69 years old. And in honor of this event, I am limiting coverage of Donald Trump to only one story today.

Ok, so that is just how the stories fell, but it sounds nicer the other way...

New York Times:
In a March 2015 interview, President Obama said that he had learned about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

But that assertion concerned aides of Mrs. Clinton, who knew that the president himself had received emails from the private address, according to a hacked email made public on Tuesday by WikiLeaks.

“We need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov,” Cheryl D. Mills, a top aide, wrote to John D. Podesta, another senior adviser, on March 7, 2015.

Two days later, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, tried to clarify the president’s remarks, saying that he had, in fact, exchanged emails with Mrs. Clinton through her private account. But Mr. Earnest suggested that the president had no idea the emails could be a problem because he had relied on Mrs. Clinton to make sure that using a private account did not break any laws.

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address — he did — but he was not aware of the details of how that email address and server had been set up, or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act,” Mr. Earnest said on March 9.
...Neera Tanden, another adviser, traded several messages with Mr. Podesta on March 2, 2015, the day The New York Times first reported Mrs. Clinton’s use of the private email address.

...Ms. Tanden also lamented the timing of the revelation and blamed Ms. Mills, a close Clinton confidante who had worked with her at the State Department, calling it a “Cheryl special.” She suggested that Ms. Mills and other members of Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle who knew about the private emails had probably hoped to keep them secret.

“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” Ms. Tanden wrote. “Unbelievable,” Mr. Podesta responded.

Ms. Tanden wrote back: “i guess I know the answer. they wanted to get away with it.”
If I were sitting on a jury, after having viewed all of the evidence which has been made public around the email scandal, including the information above, I would vote "guilty". I would also throw in a conspiracy charge on top of it.

David Harsanyi said it best: "The thing is: once Trump is gone this will still be corruption."

So we know Hillary is corrupt, but what about her health?

Zero Hedge:

This email chain speaks for itself:



So Huma and John, is she perfect in her head now? Or is this just a Weekend at Bernie's scenario?


Ok, now it is time for some Trump...

CNN:
Donald Trump warned in an interview Tuesday that Hillary Clinton's policies as president to address the Syrian conflict would lead to World War III, arguing the Democratic nominee would draw the US into armed confrontation with Russia, Syria and Iran.

"What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria," Trump told Reuters on Tuesday morning at his resort in Doral, Florida. "You're going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton."

The Republican nominee, who has called for a rapprochement with Russia in order to jointly combat ISIS, argued that his Democratic rival's calls for taking a more aggressive posture in Syria to bring the conflict there to an end and combat ISIS will only draw the US into a larger war. Trump's remarks come as he trails Clinton in most national and key battleground state polls just two weeks from Election Day.
While I am personally against any involvement in Syria (the U.S. has no interest in Syria whatsoever), at least Trump's approach makes sense. If we must be involved in Syria, why not toss an olive branch to Russia?

Here is Clinton's view:
Clinton has called for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria to help bring the five-year civil war to an end, a proposal top Republicans in Congress have championed, which President Barack Obama and others have opposed due to the risk of entering into conflict with Russia. A US-enforced no-fly zone would mean the US could shoot down a Russian jet should it enter Syrian airspace.

Clinton addressed those concerns in the final presidential debate, arguing that it would "save lives and hasten the end of the conflict," while cautioning that "this would not be done just on the first day."

"This would take a lot of negotiation and it would also take making it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that our purpose is to provide safe zones on the ground," Clinton said during the debate earlier this month. "I think we could strike a deal and make it very clear to the Russians and Syrians that this was something that we believe the best interests of the people on the ground in Syria. It would help us in the fight against ISIS."
The most likely scenario under Clinton's plan is the Russians say no. Then her plan is toothless, unless she decides to do it anyway, in which case Trump is right. She would be risking World War III.
Who is the recklessly dangerous candidate now?

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Review: "The Dangers of Hillary Clinton"

A great editorial is one which provokes thought, and maybe even forces you to reconsider your views. The New York Times' "The Dangers of Hillary Clinton" by Ross Douthat is such an editorial.

The background:
A VOTE for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, the Clinton campaign has suggested in broad ways and subtle ones, isn’t just a vote for a Democrat over a Republican: It’s a vote for safety over risk, steady competence over boastful recklessness, psychological stability in the White House over ungovernable passions. 
This theme has been a winning one for Hillary, in her debates and in the wider campaign, and for good reason. The perils of a Trump presidency are as distinctive as the candidate himself, and a vote for Trump makes a long list of worst cases — the Western alliance system’s unraveling, a cycle of domestic radicalization, an accidental economic meltdown, a civilian-military crisis — more likely than with any normal administration.
The essay's premise:
Indeed, Trump and his supporters almost admit as much. “We’ve tried sane, now let’s try crazy,” is basically his campaign’s working motto. The promise to be a bull in a china shop is part of his demagogue’s appeal. Some of his more eloquent supporters have analogized a vote for Trump to storming the cockpit of a hijacked plane, with the likelihood of a plane crash entirely factored in. 
But passing on the plane-crash candidate doesn’t mean ignoring the dangers of his rival. 
The brass tacks:
The dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency are more familiar than Trump’s authoritarian unknowns, because we live with them in our politics already. They’re the dangers of elite groupthink, of Beltway power worship, of a cult of presidential action in the service of dubious ideals. They’re the dangers of a recklessness and radicalism that doesn’t recognize itself as either, because it’s convinced that if an idea is mainstream and commonplace among the great and good then it cannot possibly be folly. 
What makes this kind of thinking so dangerous is the elite work hard to put this kind of thinking into the mainstream. By controlling the strings of the mainstream media (MSM), they are able to insert what they think into the mainstream, and then come back later and say, "See? This is what everyone thinks! Aren't we a great democracy?" When you control the public discourse, and decide the topics, and decide how they are to be discussed, this is NOT democracy. Fascism? Communism?Authoritarianism? Oligarchy? Crony capitalism? Pick whatever label you like, but it isn't democracy or republicanism (what the Founding Fathers favored).

Douthat goes on to point out the failings of our elitists, describing them accurately as "elite folly", mentioning such great ideas as the Iraq War, financial services deregulation and housing debacle, the European Union, Angela Merkel's open-door policy, and the war in Libya. He adds:
This record of elite folly...is a big part of why the United States has a “let’s try crazy” candidate in this election, and why there are so many Trumpian parties thriving on European soil.
One can look at Trump himself and see too much danger of still-deeper disaster, too much temperamental risk and moral turpitude, to be an acceptable alternative to this blunder-ridden status quo ... while also looking at Hillary Clinton and seeing a woman whose record embodies the tendencies that gave rise to Trumpism in the first place. 
Indeed what is distinctive about Clinton, more even than Bush or Obama, is how few examples there are of her ever breaking with the elite consensus on matters of statecraft. 
Literally, Douthat proceeds to give Hillary Clinton her highest praise yet, if one would dare call it that: She is very much the candidate of the status quo. If you believe our elites know better than us, she is the candidate for you! Or, as Douthat describes it:
The good news is that she is not a utopian; she is — or has become, across a long and grinding career — temperamentally pragmatic, self-consciously hardheaded. So she is unlikely to do anything that the cosmopolitan capitals of Europe and America would consider obviously radical or dangerous or dumb. 
But in those cases where the cosmopolitan position isn’t necessarily reasonable or safe, in those instances where the Western elite can go half-mad without realizing it, Hillary Clinton shows every sign of being just as ready to march into folly as her peers.
I am reminded of the quote from George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Those who support Hillary Clinton are clearly asking for more of the failures of the past two decades. We aren't even talking about long ago history. This is within our own lifetimes, and people are willing to whistle past the graveyard of elite follies, and vote for more of the same.

This is not an espousal of voting for Trump, but it is very much an understanding of why anyone would consider voting for such an arrogant lout as Trump. Unfortunately, we have to dig deeper into history to find the reasons why Trump is no solution either. But at least the Trump supporters haven't forgotten the lessons of their own lifetime.

Postcards from the Left: Today's news for October 25th

The American Left has finally run off the rails. From Hillary Clinton to George Soros all the way down to college students, there is an insanity which has been fostered by our current president, for whom we can thank for his health insurance solution:

Associated Press:
Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama's health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday...

Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.

Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will have plans only from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.

...Sign-up season starts Nov. 1, about a week before national elections...
You hear that sound? It's the flushing of Obama's legacy, and he hasn't even left office yet.

No worries though. The political binaries have decided our next emperor will either be Caligula or Nixon.

Speaking of the Democratic Party's Nixon...

Daily Mail:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign knew about at least one of Donald Trump’s derogatory statements about ex-Miss Universe Alicia Machado’s weight gain nine months before the Democrat threw a spotlight on them at the first presidential race.

An opposition research file on Trump that was compiled for Clinton’s campaign last year includes a reference to the Venezuelan-born beauty queen, an email stolen from John Podesta’s account revealed.
Don't you wonder how much Clinton paid Machado?

Mind you, this doesn't excuse what happened. Trump was hard on Machado, and beauty pageants are sexist by nature. But put aside the notion that Machado was somehow hurt by what happened. She walked into it, probably looking for the fame and fortune she eventually got from it. And many years later, when the Clinton campaign caught wind of her story, Machado was happy to jump on board for another 15 minutes of fame.

There is plenty of "deplorable" for all the parties involved in this story.

And on to the next Wikileaks story...

Breitbart:
A March 2016 email published Monday by the organization Wikileaks reveals that George Soros, in anticipation of a meeting with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, requested Podesta read a memo accusing President Barack Obama of emboldening radical Islam in Malaysia in order to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) passed.

Podesta received an email in March 2016 from Soros spokesperson Michael Vachon. “I have attached a memo on TPP and Malaysia, as it may come up when you see George and Alex [Soros, George’s son],” he writes. “In general I think George is more interested in talking about policy than the campaign per se, though I can’t imagine you won’t spend some time on politics.”

Podesta later forwards the attached memo in question to another Clinton campaign official. Subsequent emails seem to indicate Podesta met George and Alex Soros for dinner on March 15 of this year.

The attached memo, titled “The TPP and Malaysia’s Corruption Crisis,” argues that President Obama has wrongfully chosen to support the government of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, accused of a variety of outrageous abuses of power and responsible for the dynamic growth of radical Islam in the southeast Asian nation.

The memo appears to have been authored by John Pang, a board member at Soros’ Open Society Foundation. Pang writes that Najib is “a poster boy for the 21st century kleptocracy” who has used “a racial supremacist ideology that is collapsing under the weight of corruption” to perpetuate himself in power. Najib, he argues, has created “a Malay-Islamic state in which Sunni Islam’s supremacy is indivisible from the political and legal supremacy of the Malay race.” The result is a country in which “1 in 10 Muslims there had favorable views of ISIS and that a 53% majority were in favor of implementing Hudud, the Islamic penal code.”
What makes this fascinating is how much trouble to which Clinton's campaign goes in order to handle George Soros. It is also interesting to see that Soros is actually concerned about how Obama tried to appease a leader who supported radical Islamists.

That said, this doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about how sycophantic Podesta can be, or how inept Obama is.

But let us move on to what others on the Left are doing...

Heatstreet:
Left-wing students at the University of California, Berkeley are protesting again. This time, however, these students are calling for “safe spaces” for transgendered people, as well as “spaces of color” at the University (which they already have).

The protesters are also harassing white students trying to study, barring their path across a key bridge while allowing students of color safe passage.

The protest, which began last Friday, blocked Berkeley’s Sather Gate, disrupted studying students in the Student Union, and blocked traffic at the intersection of Telegraph and Bancroft in front of campus.

In video of the protest, the so-called anti-racism protesters were seen denying passage across the bridge to white students — shouting “go around” — while happily allowing students of color to pass through.


So what exactly is a "safe space"? Let's go to that source of all modern information, Wikipedia:
In educational institutions, safe-space (or safe space), safer-space, and positive space originally were terms used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution or student body does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating a safe place for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. The term safe space has been extended to refer to a space for individuals who are marginalized to come together to communicate regarding their experiences with marginalization, typically on a university campus. It has been criticized for being contrary to freedom of speech.
In other words, this is a place where insecure people can go to reinforce their own insecurity. they don't learn how to take any form of criticism by this, and in fact they learn that criticism is a bad thing.

This isn't to suggest there is anything wrong with homosexuality or anything else related to the LGBT movement. But I also believe that NOBODY can be above criticism for any reason (even if the reason is wrong or even hateful). Freedom of speech is far more important than any individual's right to feel good about themselves. If you want to feel good about yourself, then do it. Don't come crying to me about how bad you have it, especially not if you're in college, where real life doesn't seem to intrude upon these institutions of higher babysitting.


Before you start throwing nasty labels on me, consider this: When the haters start talking about you or others, at least you know who and what they are. If you try to shut them up, they will just be forced to be nice to your face, even as they scheme against you behind your back. So let the idiots say what is on their mind. You will have a much more accurate view of reality.

For example, take these UC-Berkeley protesters. By allowing them their freedom of speech, we have learned the following about them:
1. They are racist. Call it reverse racism if you prefer, but I don't. They are nothing more than the modern day version of the KKK, but with preference to darker skin colors. What would you call denying rights to white people for the sake of colored people?
2. They are clearly anti-capitalist.
3. They are against freedom of speech for everyone but specific minority groups. (This is what safe spaces are: Places where freedom of speech is denied for specific reasons.)
Don't let these kids fool you. Freedom of speech is more important than what these children want.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Trump's Contract with the American Voter

Donald Trump issued his own Contract with America, entitled "Contract with the American Voter", wherein he states (from Breitbart):
“On November Eighth, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our country, secure our communities, and honesty to our government,” Trump says. “This is my pledge to you and if we follow these steps we will once more have a government of, by and for the people and importantly we will make America great again. Believe me.”
While I trust Trump as far as I can throw him (maybe 2 feet with a hurricane force wind behind me?), let's consider what he is promising as though it was offered by someone a bit more trustworthy:

1. Propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress: Last time I checked, the president doesn't have any authority to propose Constitutional Amendments. Regardless, this was part of Newt Gingrich's original Contract with America. You notice we still don't have term limits?

2. Institute a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health): Now THIS the president can do! Of course, I wonder how long that freeze will stay in place?

3. Require for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated: Long overdue. One problem: What constitutes a "regulation"? I can already see the bureaucrats taking two regulations and combining them into one.

4. Institute a five year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service: Another good idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't prevent them from taking private sector jobs as payback for favors done while in office.

5. Create a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government: See #4 above.

6. Institute a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections: Good luck selling this to the whores in Washington. Also, even if this were done, money can find a way to get where it wants to go.

7. Announce intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205: NAFTA isn't America's problem, but go for it. But he better make sure Canada and Mexico are willing to renegotiate NAFTA, or else he will be killing economies all across North America. If you think we have too many Mexicans now, wait until Mexico goes into a deep economic recession and see how it goes.

8. Announce withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership: The icing on the protectionist cake. This won't end well.

9. Direct Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator: Because ticking off China will have positive benefits. I can't think of any at the moment...

10. Direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately: Let's find every country we can offend, and do it! All in pursuit of jobs that no longer exist.

11. Lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal: Overlooking the fact "clean coal" doesn't exist (it is created by reducing the energy effectiveness of regular coal, thereby requiring more of it to produce the same amount of energy, hence it is pointless), this is the first bright spot in this Contract.

12. Lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward: I think #11 above covered this, but ok, if he wants to reiterate it.

13. Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure: I don't know if there are billions to be had, but if so, this is brilliant. I am sure the folks in Flint, Michigan can get behind this.

14. Cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama: No complaints about this.

15. Begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States: We will see. The last two presidents were very hit-and-miss with their SCOTUS selections. However, I figure Trump can't be worse than Obama.

16. Cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities: Any city or level of government that blatantly ignores federal law should get all federal funding cut, period.

17. Begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back: Only 2 million? I think he is drastically underestimating the number of illegal immigrants. And yes folks, every single illegal immigrant is a criminal. It is in the definition of "illegal immigrant". One can argue the laws should be changed, but that is another discussion.

18. Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting: If we must have a war on Islam, this is also a must.

19. Work with Congress on a Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act.An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate: I have learned to despise discussions of tax rates. Very few people or businesses ever pay the top rate in their bracket. Until we eliminate all the deductions and go with a simple flat tax rate, discussing percentages will be pointless.

20. Work with Congress on a End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free: Be afraid of this one. It is the first shot in a trade war, which will have unforeseen economic consequences, and could be potentially devastating to economies across the world, including our own.

21. Work with Congress on a American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral: This sounds nice, but getting something for nothing rarely happens. He is trying Obama's "Build America" bonds program, which allowed local governments to finance infrastructure projects with backing from the federal government. Remember, if the local government defaults, the feds are on the tab for the balance.

22. Work with Congress on a School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable: Another bright spot in this list, and long overdue.

23. Work with Congress on a Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications: This is another bright spot. HSA's combined with high deductible health insurance is the only solution to our health care mess.

24. Work with Congress on a Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families: More deductions? Dependent Care Savings Accounts? We need a complete overhaul of our country's dependent care system. The simple fact woman cannot even consider staying home with their own children without bankrupting the family budget should tell us all we need to know. Complex tax deduction schemes won't solve our problem here. This is doubling down on stupid.

25. Work with Congress on an End Illegal Immigration Act. Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first: No Donald, you won't get Mexico to fund this. More protectionist nonsense.

26. Work with Congress on a Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars: More insane "war on drugs" crap, that refuses to recognize drugs as a medical problem, not a legal one.

27a. Work with Congress on a Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice...: There are several different items here that should be addressed separately. First, we should eliminate the VA entirely and allow veterans to have some form of public healthcare, similar to Medicare/Medicaid.

27b. ...protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack: We should be doing this anyway. It is my understanding we already are. This is nothing new he is suggesting.

27c. ...establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values: While we should have a minimum standard for immigration, the "support our values" is concerning. What are our values, and who decides it? If implemented properly, this can be a good idea. Implemented wrong, it becomes neatly disguised fascism.

28. Work with Congress on a Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics: This is a lovely sentiment, with a huge problem. Working with Congress to fix what's wrong with our government is asking the fox to redesign the hen house to best accommodate foxes. We need a major re-think of how our government operates, and the "inside the box" thinkers in Congress seem like the last place to get anything useful for that.

Overall, I see 4 items which I would love to see implemented. The rest is either impossible, dangerously stupid, or stuff we are already doing, with occasional deck reshuffling. The few good items don't make the rest of the garbage worth my vote.

Polls and three kinds of lies: Today's news for October 24th

Donald Trump offered his own Contract with America over the weekend, but that deserves its own post. Feel free to read it here though.

In other news from this "worst election in the history of mankind"...

Fox News:
The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.

Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.

The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in the effort.
Before I get into this, how come political action committees can donate 6 figure sums without a problem, but if you or I do it as individuals, it's against the law?

Back to the story, sure this stinks to high heaven. But if you were Terry McAuliffe, wouldn't you want to provide as much financial support as possible to your state party's senate candidate?

Add this to the story:
The FBI said in a statement that during his wife’s campaign Mr. McCabe “played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her campaign, then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to Deputy, where, in that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”
My conspiracy radar isn't going off on this story. I have more problems with a legal 6 figure campaign donation from a PAC than I do with any connection to Hillary Clinton.

Back to the election, already in progress...

Investor's Business Daily:
With 16 days to go until November 8, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 2 percentage points — 43% to 41% — in a four-way race, according to the latest IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll.

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson saw his support held steady at 7%, while the Green Party's Jill Stein dipped to 3%.

Unrounded, Trump leads 42.6% to 40.8% — a 1.8-point edge — with Johnson at 7.2% and Stein at 3.3%.

Trump also holds a nearly one-point lead in a two-way matchup — 43.2% to 42.3%.
Looks like a tight race, right?

Maybe, maybe not...

ABC News:
Hillary Clinton has vaulted to a double-digit advantage in the inaugural ABC News 2016 election tracking poll, boosted by broad disapproval of Donald Trump on two controversial issues: His treatment of women and his reluctance to endorse the election’s legitimacy. 
...All told, Clinton leads Trump by 12 percentage points among likely voters, 50 to 38 percent, in the national survey, her highest support and his lowest to date in ABC News and ABC News/Washington Post polls. Gary Johnson has 5 percent support, Jill Stein 2 percent.
Huh? One of these two polls is seriously off.

Fortunately, we have Wikileaks to point us to the answer:

Zero Hedge:
Now, for all of you out there who still aren't convinced that the polls are "adjusted", we present to you the following Podesta email, leaked earlier today, that conveniently spells out, in detail, exactly how to "manufacture" the desired data. The email starts out with a request for recommendations on "oversamples for polling" in order to "maximize what we get out of our media polling."  
Some of the oversampling tips in the email include for Arizona:
-  Over-sample Hispanics
-  Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
-  Over-sample the Native American population
For Florida:
-  Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
-  On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.
For national polling:
-  General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts/regions
-  Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed
-  Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed
Back to the 2 polls, how do they get such radical differences? One part is the breakdown between Democrats-Republicans-Independents. For the ABC News poll, the breakdown was 36-27-31 percent, as opposed to the IBD poll, which was 36-28-33. It may not seem like much, but it certainly contributes to a 14 point swing.

Then again, there is no telling what ABC News is doing with the poll "behind the curtains". As Tyler Durden describes it:
As a quick example, the ABC / WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters.  Therefore, even a small "oversample" of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points.  Moreover, the pollsters don't provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to "fact check" the bias...convenient.
So why do Democrats do this? Because you political binaries out there have to vote for the winner. First, you limit your choices to two parties, thereby giving you a 50-50 shot at nailing the winner. Then you look at the polls, see who will win there, and then find a way to logically support that candidate.

Mind you, not everyone does this. But there are enough "joiners" out there to make this a worthwhile practice for Democrats.

As Mark Twain once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Friday, October 21, 2016

Weekly finale: The Pretty Reckless

Another week of blogging has come to an end, so it is time for our weekly musical send-off.

This week brings a new album by my favorite modern rock band, The Pretty Reckless. Their new album, titled Who You Selling For, is a mixed bag. All of it is worth a listen, but there are several songs that stand out.

One of the first songs released was Prisoner, which is a fine piece of bluesy rock:



However, my favorite song on the album is the 1970's-sounding Wild City. It reminded me of the Theme from Shaft, although my wife said it reminded her of a smoke-filled bar. Either way, enjoy:



Enjoy your weekend, and I will return Monday with more truth. Don't get too reckless this weekend!

Debate hangover: Today's news for October 21st

Still more stuff from Wednesday night's debate...

Fox News:
Hillary Clinton’s latest mishandling of sensitive information may have occurred before an audience of 70 million.

Speaking at the presidential debate Wednesday night, Clinton noted that it takes four minutes from the time the president makes the call to use nuclear weapons to their actual launch. The remark came amid questions about the fitness of Clinton and GOP candidate Donald Trump to hold the nation’s nuclear codes, but critics, including former intelligence operatives, told Fox News that level of detail about nuclear response times is “protected information.”

“The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed,” Clinton said. “There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so.”
Nothing to see here folks. Even if this is top secret information, we all know Hillary won't be prosecuted for this slip of the tongue. Laws don't apply to people like Hillary.

In other debate news, remember how the MSM got the vapors over Trump saying he will tell us after the election whether he would concede it? Do you also remember this from November, 2000:

Grabien:
Al Gore, speaking from the White House the week after having lost the general election, explains why he refused to concede the race:

"The effort that I have underway is simply to make sure that all of the votes are counted, and when the issues that are now being considered in the Florida Supreme Court are decided, that will be an important point. But I don't want to speculate what the court will do."
In case you have also forgotten, Al Gore was President Bill Clinton's vice president.

By the way, any wagers on whether Hillary challenges the election results if she loses by a small margin?

In other news...

Reuters:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his "separation" from the United States on Thursday, declaring he had realigned with China as the two agreed to resolve their South China Sea dispute through talks.

Duterte made his comments in Beijing, where he is visiting with at least 200 business people to pave the way for what he calls a new commercial alliance as relations with longtime ally Washington deteriorate.

"In this venue, your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States," Duterte told Chinese and Philippine business people, to applause, at a forum in the Great Hall of the People attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.

"Both in military, not maybe social, but economics also. America has lost."

...Duterte's remarks will prompt fresh concern in the United States, where the Obama administration has seen Manila as an important ally in its "rebalance" of resources to Asia in the face of a rising China.

The administration agreed a deal with Duterte's predecessor granting U.S. forces rotational access to bases in the Philippines and further doubts will be raised about the future of this arrangement.
But...we have Obama? Duterte must be a racist.

Seriously, this is the result of arguably one of the most inept presidents ever. His foreign policy has been nothing but misstep after misstep. (The irony of this is only compounded by seeing his first secretary of state running for president.)

On the bright side, we should get out of Asian politics anyway. Maybe this will lead us to reconsider our inane war on Islam?

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Thursday thought

Nobody ever said you can't have a pickle with lasagne.

Not....another....debate! Today's news for October 20th

I opted for Supergirl re-runs on the CW website over last night's debate. As far as this year's presidential election, if I have to eat dog food for the next 4 years, I would rather let someone else taste it first.

Based on what I saw from the MSM this morning, I think my choice was the right one. Consider this banner from CNN:


"Who won the debate"? Based on the headlines below it, Clinton must have been flawless, since the only negative stories are about Trump. No bias here, right?

Or maybe...

The Daily Caller:
During Wednesday night’s presidential debate, Chris Wallace held Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire over allegations that the Clinton Foundation engaged in “pay-for-play” behavior when she served as secretary of state.

“There have been a lot of developments over the last ten days since the last debate,” Wallace posed. “I’d like to ask you about them. These are questions that the American people have, Secretary Clinton, during your 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, you promised to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with your dealing with the Clinton Foundation while you were Secretary of State.”

“Emails show that donors got special access to you,” he continued. “Can you really say you kept your pledge to that Senate committee, and what happened and what went on between you and the Clinton Foundation? Why isn’t it what Mr. Trump calls pay to play?”

“Well, everything I did as secretary of state was in furtherance of our country’s interests and our values,” Clinton responded. “The State Department said that.”

Clinton then listed what she described as all the “good” the Foundation does across the world before Wallace interrupted her.

“Secretary, respectfully, this is an open discussion,” Wallace noted. “A specific question went to pay for play. Do you want to address that?”

She did not.
(NOTE: Go to the website linked above for the video of this part of the debate.)

I wonder how CNN missed this story? Maybe they were too busy covering this one:

ABC News:
When Donald Trump was asked at the third and final presidential debate if he will accept the outcome of the election, and if he loses, concede to the winner, the real estate mogul refused to say.

"I will tell you at the time," said Trump, who has frequently discussed voter fraud and a "rigged" system.

"I'll keep you in suspense, okay?" Trump told moderator Chris Wallace.

Hillary Clinton responded, "That's horrifying."
Trump had just earlier called the election "rigged." 
"She's guilty of a very, very serious crime," Trump said of Clinton. "She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect I say it's rigged."
As you read here yesterday, the elections ARE rigged. For Clinton to suggest otherwise is the peak of disingenuousness, if not an outright lie.

If you still think vote-rigging is no big deal, consider this:

Gateway Pundit:
In the latest Wikileaks Podesta documents [chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign] John Podesta actually says it is OK for illegals to vote if they have a driver’s license...

 
Almost half of California’s driver’s licenses went to illegal aliens last year. 
12 states and the District of Columbia allow driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Before you say, "What about the nice immigrants from Mexico?", consider what would happen if one of our enemies decided to take advantage of our lax immigration laws to flood our country with voters? Once you open the floodgates to illegal voters, there is no limit to what can happen. It may not be just "nice Mexicans".

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

More Democratic corruption: Today's news for October 19th

It is astounding to see the depth of the dishonesty and corruption of the Democratic Party. Why anyone would even consider voting for Hillary Clinton, or anyone with a "D" after their name, is astonishing. The "Capone Party" would be a more apt name for this group of criminals and liars.

Case in point:

Lifezette:
An email leaked by WikiLeaks Tuesday appears to suggest that Hillary Clinton wants the Affordable Care Act to fail — presumably as a pretense for implementing single-payer, government-controlled health care. 
In a chain between Clinton and her senior policy adviser Ann O’Leary titled “Memo on Cadillac Tax for HRC,” Clinton said she’s open to changing her position on the Cadillac Tax — but that the Republican plan to repeal it must pass.
At least Hillary is smart enough to recognize that any commercial healthcare plan that is really just a third party payment system is inevitably doomed. Unfortunately, she still thinks that socialized healthcare can work (it can, as long as you don't mind turning professional doctors and nurses into DMV-quality bureaucrats).

In other words, the Democrats will more than happily toss Obama and Obamacare under the bus when the time is right. Even his supposed comrades are already planning Obamacare's demise.

Expect the "Obama legacy" to end up being his skin color, because he will have accomplished nothing in 8 years.

Back on the issue of Democratic Party corruption...

The Right Scoop

Next time you hear Democrats whining about voter id laws that are too strict, consider this video where it is explained how to commit mass voter fraud under laws that require an ID and a pay stub to register to vote:



Don't you love the part where they talk about if Trump gets elected, they can still do it, but if Clinton gets elected, it just opens the floodgates? When the crooks love one side, you can expect that side must be the one with their kind in it.

On the other hand, the fact the crooks aren't scared of the Republicans, even Trump, tells you how inept the GOP has become. But hey, you're just wasting your vote on a third party. Then again, you may just be wasting your vote period if enough of this corruption is happening.

However, even with their corruption, some stories about Democrats defy belief...

National Enquirer:

Is this funny or gross? Either is possible...
Hillary Clinton is a secret sex freak who paid fixers to set up illicit romps with both men AND women! 
That’s the blockbuster revelation from a former Clinton family operative who is sensationally breaking ranks with his one-time bosses to speak to The National ENQUIRER in a bombshell 9-page cover story — on newsstands Wednesday. 
“I arranged a meeting for Hillary and a woman in an exclusive Beverly Hills hotel,” the man, who was hired by the Clintons, via a Hollywood executive, to cover up their scandals, told The ENQUIRER. 
“She had come to the studio to see the filming of a movie in 1994.” 
“While I was there, I helped her slip out of a back exit for a one-on-one session with the other woman. It was made to look casual, leaving quietly [rather] that being caught up in the melee … but really it was for something presumably more sordid.” 
What’s more, it wasn’t just Hillary’s flings with women that the shadowy Mr. Fix It helped to orchestrate! 
Hillary’s former bagman finally confessed to The ENQUIRER just how he helped her to cover up her affair with married lover Vince Foster, too!
Just one problem: If they didn't meet until 1994, and Vince Foster died in 1993, how did he help cover up Hillary's alleged affair with Foster?

Excuse me a moment, I think my credibility meter just get overloaded...

Speaking of Leftists...

EAG News:
NORMAN, Okla. – A Norman North High School teacher is instructing students that “to be white is to be racist, period.”

A student at the school who did not want to be identified recently used her cell phone to record a classroom lecture at Norman North High School in which her teacher, who also is not identified, explained how to “heal the racial divide,”

The girl alerted her parents to her teacher’s troubling comments and they in turn contacted district officials to demand answers.

...“To be white is to be racist, period,” the teacher said in the recording. “Am I racist? I say yea. I don’t want to be. It’s not like choose to be racist, but do I do things because of the way I was raised?”
Apparently, they have a problem with allowing self-hating morons to teach in Oklahoma.

In all seriousness, the truth is that ALL humans are racist to an extent. It is part of our instincts to recognize differences in other animals, including other humans. It reacts with our survival instinct, causing the fight or flee reaction to those differences. But we can overcome our instincts if we try.

So contrary to the politically correct pablum from that Oklahoma teacher, there is racism to be found in ALL humans, regardless of skin color. Racism isn't just a "white thing".

Finally, there is yet more news from the Left...

The Deplorable Climate Science Blog:
Texas has been cooling since 1895, but that doesn’t suit NOAA’s global warming agenda. So they keep cooling the past further and further to create the appearance of a warming trend.
Visit the blog above to see the "before and after" charts, showing the obvious manipulation of data by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It seems the Left has been taking lessons from the old Catholic Church, where only they are allowed to decide the issues of universal truth, and facts be damned. So when Florida is sitting under ten feet of snow in a few years, they will still be telling you with a straight face, "I told you it was getting warmer."