GEORGE KORDA: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and the Truth Not Spoken.
Archive for 2016
August 1, 2016
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Harry Reid admits to violating election law, but FEC won’t prosecute.
The Federal Election Commission, which considered legal action against former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for joking about fundraising, won’t punish Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid for admitting to violating an election law.
The reason: It’s not worth the effort.
The agency voted 4-0 against pursuing action after FEC lawyers wrote a four-page memo that said Reid’s fundraising committee admitted to failing to comply with an election law requirement, but that it wasn’t worth the time or money to prosecute.
Boy, people in the government sure reach that conclusion a lot when powerful Democrats are involved.
GOAT RODEO: Republicans denounce Trump as confrontation with Muslim parents escalates.
This incident wouldn’t have been such a big problem if Trump hadn’t fallen for the same kind of trolling he specializes in.
THE CHOICE THIS NOVEMBER: NOPE AND NOPER.
HOPE: Not much love at Florida delegation breakfast for U.S. Senate candidates.
[Patrick] Murphy, of Jupiter, has been plagued by résumé-inflation woes. [Alan] Grayson, of Orlando, has become consumed by scandals, most recently over domestic-abuse allegations from his ex-wife.
It’s not that Democrats don’t want to defeat Rubio (or his primary rival, Carlos Beruff, who wasn’t mentioned). Speaker after speaker at the breakfast, including Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, highlighted the importance of flipping Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat. But their comments were mostly generic.
Somewhere, Rubio is smiling.
RCP has Florida trending for Trump, too, if only barely.
CHUTZPAH ALERT: MEET HILLARY CLINTON, ADVOCATE FOR TRANSPARENCY!
CHANGE: EU Calls Turkey’s Crackdown on Media “Worrying”
Authorities have issued warrants for the detention of 89 journalists. Dozens of media organizations—most of them also linked or formerly linked to Gulen—were ordered shuttered late Wednesday. They include 45 newspapers including the daily Taraf newspaper, 16 television stations, including a children’s channel, 23 radio stations, 15 magazines and 29 publishing houses.
Gulen was a close ally of Erdogan until tensions between the two came to a head with corruption allegations against Erdogan’s inner circle in 2013. For years, media affiliated with Gulen had been vocal supporters of Erdogan’s government.
Leon Trotsky once worked closely with Joseph Stalin, too.
DEMOCRAT JOEL KOTKIN ASKS: What Happened To My Party?
The nomination of Hillary Clinton has been secured, but the future of the Democratic Party is far from certain. Despite the patina of unity at the end, the Democrats, like their GOP adversaries, seem divided as to their future direction. Each party is being pulled to the extremes by an increasingly unruly base which regards its own establishment as a cesspool of corruption, influence-peddling and naked opportunism.
The devolution of the parties is reflected generally in the record distaste among the electorate toward the two nominees. Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse recently remarked, “There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these awful candidates.” Count me among those looking for some smoldering garbage.
For virtually all of my adult life, I have been a registered Democrat. But as the party has abandoned critical commitments to color-blind racial equality, upward mobility and economic growth, I have moved on to become a registered independent. This makes me part of the fastest-growing “party” in America – the politically homeless.
We hear more about the GOP’s problems, but that’s because the media wants to help the Democrats.
GEORGE FRIEDMAN: “The point I am making is that the impression that there has never been an election like this one is common in every election cycle. And charges that one of the candidates is a criminal and the other is psychotic have been standard fare in American elections. My standard is whether electing either candidate will cause a civil war. Short of that, it is safe to conclude that the republic will survive either of them and the one elected, whoever it is, might surprise us. The question is not why Americans regard this particular election as apocalyptic. The question is why Americans routinely regard presidential elections as apocalyptic, without realizing they are simply acting out an old script.”
It would be healthier if the presidency mattered less.
MONUMENTS TO IDIOCY: Let’s honor the public servants responsible for giving us the TSA.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF BULLYING AND EXCESS?
“Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter Kerry is ‘unhinged’ and acts like the dictator of a banana republic at her father’s eponymous Human Rights charity while she enriches herself off its coffers and has no real direction or talent — at least according to several former employees.
* * * * * * *
‘Her staff fear her, as she has a wicked temper and is quite entitled and belligerent,’ one of thee-employees source told the Post, ‘She has become bitter, mean and angry – and now, clearly, publicly depressed.’
* * * * * * *According to the report, Kennedy treats staff poorly, acts erratically and her actions have led to nine employees to leave the charity in the past year alone. The [New York Post] reports that tax filings show she paid herself a whopping $357,340 in 2014. She also flies only business class, changes and no-shows on tickets at costly whims and only stays at four star hotels, including when in Paris staying at the same $500-a-night hotel as John Kerry — all billed to the charity. And the Paris trip was for the sole purpose, the disgruntled former employees claim, of screening a movie with Javier Bardem.”
I hope her brother isn’t aware of that last item, given that he’s on record as stating in 2014 that he wants a law to “punish” (his word) global warming skeptics: “They are contemptible human beings.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students – I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.
Howard Zinn: Mission Accomplished.
CLINTON ON BENGHAZI MOTHER: She May Not Fully Recall What I Told Them About The Video.
I’m old enough to remember when the mothers of those killed in war enjoyed absolute moral authority.
WHY DID HILLARY’S STATE DEPARTMENT URGE U.S. INVESTORS TO FUND RUSSIAN RESEARCH FOR MILITARY USES? Peter Schweizer on the Clinton Foundation, State and Kremlin Connections.
THE HILL: Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s problems aren’t over yet. “Her House seat is on the line in a primary race against well-funded challenger Tim Canova, and the battle is heating up amid the fallout from her resignation following the leak of hacked emails that showed DNC officials plotting to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign in the Democratic primary.”
HYPERGAMY IS REAL: Don’t Blame Divorce on Money. Ask: Did the Husband Have a Job?
Financial stress and fights over money can eat away at a marriage. But do they cause divorce? That’s a more complicated matter.
A Harvard University study suggests that neither financial strains nor women’s increased ability to get out of an unhappy marriage, starting in the 1970s, is typically the main reason for a split.
The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband’s employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. . . .
“Wives have more freedom in how they ‘do’ marriage,” Killewald said, but husbands are still expected to be the breadwinner.
The study, published in the American Sociological Review, didn’t include same-sex couples. Nor did it address men who choose to stay home with the kids. The vast majority of men without a full-time job in the sample were involuntarily unemployed.
This doesn’t surprise me.
WAIT, WHAT? Abbas Sues History. Not a Parody.
DYING FROM THE INSIDE: Protect Vermont MDs’ Right to Not Push Assisted Suicide!
WHOSE CONSTITUTION? Byron York: Khizr Khan, Donald Trump and the debate over Muslim immigration.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee drinking tied to lower risk of suicide.
WAITER, THERE’S SJWs IN MY ART! ARTICLE: The Death of University Arts Programs, Part 2: The Corcoran Collapse