IT’S COME TO THIS: Parents Plan to Carry Guns on Halloween Amidst Clown Fears.
Archive for 2016
October 31, 2016
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1271: President Obama Lied About The IRS’s Targeting Of Conservatives. From the excerpted article:
At least President Obama is honest. Or so goes the common perception. He tried, maybe he made mistakes, the other side was mean to him, but through it all, he didn’t lie.
That view got smithereened this week. It was always hard to believe the president’s repeated claim that he didn’t know his own secretary of state was using an off-the-books e-mail server to avoid public scrutiny, in the process virtually guaranteeing that she would commit multiple felonies by taking classified information into the open.
Now we know Obama was lying. His own aides said so, in e-mails uncovered by WikiLeaks and made public this week. …
Obama lied about the IRS’s targeting of conservatives, even contradicting his own statements that the harassment was “inexcusable” and made him “angry” on May 15, 2013. Less than a year later, when the heat was off, he said there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” and the IRS’s vendetta against right-leaning groups was totally excusable as a bureaucratic snafu.
Rigged.
CRASHING BY DESIGN. Clarence Thomas: We’re ‘Destroying’ and ‘Undermining’ Our Institutions.
OUR FRIENDS IN ANKARA: Turkey’s Erdogan seeks to begin executing his enemies.
Jazz Shaw:
We’ve been covering the rise of tyranny in Turkey with considerable dismay ever since the failed coup attempt earlier this year. President Tayyip Erdogan has, without question, used the 24 hours of unrest as an excuse to consolidate his power and eliminate his perceived enemies. While roughly 100,000 people have been “detained” with their whereabouts unknown, the party line thus far has been that they are at least alive, though their condition is in question. But that may be about to take a turn for the worse. Though the death penalty has been officially banned in Turkey for years, Erdogan is pushing to have it revived so he can begin executing those who he views as a threat to his power.
It wasn’t a failed coup; it’s a successful, and soon perhaps deadly purge.
ANNALS OF SMART DIPLOMACY: As Duterte Pivots, Uncertainty Reigns in Asia.
Duterte has upended the balance in Asia, and it remains unclear where the chips will fall in his wake. The Philippine president has had a busy diplomatic schedule of late, with trips to Japan, Vietnam, Laos and Brunei, plus an upcoming visit to Malaysia. So far, these countries have largely adopted a “wait and see” approach toward Duterte, neither endorsing nor condemning his China policy, but the climate of uncertainty is not good news.
According to regional leaders, the United States shares some blame for the uncertainty in the region. . . .
Washington must attend to these regional dynamics if it hopes to be a credible player in Asia. The problem is bigger than Duterte. Obama’s pivot to Asia was good policy in theory, but the follow-through has left something to be desired. Consider the current track record: one of Washington’s strongest Asian allies is led by an anti-American demagogue, China and the Philippines are working toward a mutual understanding on the South China Sea, Malaysia is leaning toward China, and the landmark Pacific trade deal supported by the U.S. languishes due to populism at home.
Relax. Obama and Kerry are on the job.
DEEP IMPACT: NASA’s New ‘Intruder Alert’ System Spots An Incoming Asteroid.
A large space rock came fairly close to Earth on Sunday night. Astronomers knew it wasn’t going to hit Earth, thanks in part to a new tool NASA is developing for detecting potentially dangerous asteroids.
The tool is a computer program called Scout, and it’s being tested at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Think of Scout as a celestial intruder alert system. It’s constantly scanning data from telescopes to see if there are any reports of so-called Near Earth Objects. If it finds one, it makes a quick calculation of whether Earth is at risk, and instructs other telescopes to make follow-up observations to see if any risk is real.
NASA pays for several telescopes around the planet to scan the skies on a nightly basis, looking for these objects. “The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night,” says astronomer Paul Chodas of JPL.
But then the trick is to figure out which new objects might hit Earth.
The ability to deflect or destroy them might be nice, too.
THE SIMPLEST WAY TO EXPLAIN THE BEHAVIOR OF ANY BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION IS TO ASSUME THAT IT IS CONTROLLED BY A CABAL OF ITS ENEMIES: The NFL’s continued push for a team in England. Are they trying to kill their brand?
(Classical reference in headline.)
ROGER SIMON: Who’s Huma? The Mystery of Our Times. “Kimberley Strassel calls the Clintons ‘grifters,’ which of course they are,” Roger writes. “But what are Huma and Anthony? Also-ran grifters, I think.”
Read the whole thing.
UNDERREPORTED STORY OF THE DAY: Did Moscow Botch a Coup in Montenegro?
This is real cloak-and-dagger stuff, Balkan style — worth a read.
NOT IF LORETTA LYNCH CAN HELP IT: Will the Weiner email cache revive the investigation of the Clinton Foundation? “The discovery of the Weiner cache — and isn’t it huge? — has overshadowed the Podesta emails, which contained what I thought was the October surprise: Chelsea Clinton’s alarm over the pay-to-play structure of the Clinton Foundation. I cannot understand why the Clinton Foundation hasn’t been a much bigger issue. And now here’s the news that the Department of Justice blocked the FBI’s investigation into the Foundation.”
EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA, AND NOW YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT THIS? James Fallows: James Comey and the Destruction of Norms.
Also, when you’re citing Jamie Gorelick on how responsible government officials should operate, well, it doesn’t help your credibility.
Related: Seven Cases Of DOJ Investigations ‘Getting Involved’ With Political Campaigns.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: A President Clinton would be out of control. “‘Someone somewhere should have told her no.’ Those are the words of a Clinton ally quoted in a roundup of Democratic reactions to Hillary Clinton’s FBI news by congressional newspaper The Hill. And, despite the fact that they come from a Clinton supporter, albeit an angry and disappointed one, they may illustrate the best reason for choosing Donald Trump instead of Clinton.”
They want you to think of Hillary as a safer choice than Trump because she has a track record. But upon examination, her track record doesn’t inspire confidence.
HOWARD FINEMAN ON JAMES COMEY: His carefully maintained nonpolitical image is now starting to fray.
Seeking to protect his reputation for impartiality, the FBI director instead revealed his obsession with politics: the politics of his own image.
He sent Congress a vaguely worded letter about how the bureau had come across new information that “appeared to be pertinent” to the “completed” investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.
It soon became clear what he was talking about: emails, the contents of which the FBI hadn’t seen, on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The decision for a new investigation, he said in an internal letter that was quickly leaking, was an agonizing one ― though not nearly as agonizing as it was to the presidential campaign of the woman he had put back in his sights.
Hillary Clinton is, as ever, a victim of sinister forces.
David Burge nails it.
FBI finds 650k Hillary State Dept emails on PC of notorious dickpic pervert. Headlines: "Comey Embroiled in Controversy"
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 31, 2016
BREAKING NEWS FROM 2008: Obama told us he’s honorable — but he’s just another liar: “Now we know Obama was lying. His own aides said so, in e-mails uncovered by WikiLeaks and made public this week. In March 2015, Obama made the ridiculous claim that he had learned about Clinton’s e-mail server ‘the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.’ In fact, not only did he know she was using a private e-mail address for state business, but he had corresponded with her via that address.”
SEEKING VOLUNTEERS: “Republican Jennifer Little of Bean Station said the Mighty American Strike Force, a self-funded grassroots effort to elect Donald Trump for president and Republican congressional candidates, will go to North Carolina on Friday and Saturday.” That’s from Knoxville. I wonder how many others are beefing up Trump’s shaky ground game this way?
PROF. JACOBSON: Democrats are responsible for politicizing FBI and DOJ: The Clintons corrupt every institution they touch. Well, that’s certainly their goal.
HUMA ABEDIN: “I Have No Idea How The Emails Got On Weiner’s Computer”
“She says she didn’t know they were there,” a source familiar with the investigation said. This is a sensitive topic for Abedin and the Clinton campaign, because on previous occasions, Huma – under oath – disclosed that all the emails in her possession had been accounted for and handed over to the FBI.
As CNBC adds,”there are a number of scenarios that would explain how the emails got onto the laptop without Abedin’s knowledge, including that they were somehow automatically backed up from the cloud. But investigators will want to know how this happened and if there is any indication that Abedin misled them about the existence of emails.
If Clinton is still going down in history, “Brought down by a top aide’s sexting estranged husband” would make for a first-of-its-kind political epitaph.
THE HILL: Conway: Clinton ‘playing the victim now.’
“She set off this chain of events and she can’t escape that. She’s playing the victim now. They’re doing an all-out assault on FBI Director James Comey, I mean really shooting the messenger plus a full body slam all day yesterday.”
It’s all sexism. No man who violated classification rules, used an illegal server to cover up influence-peddling, and then tried to destroy the evidence would be treated this way.
YES, BUT THEY WON’T, BECAUSE THEY’RE STILL HOPING FOR PLUM JOBS: “The military and intelligence people who endorsed Clinton should be apologizing to the country for their poor judgment right about now.”
ABC/WAPO POLL: 34 percent ‘less likely’ to vote for Clinton after new email revelations.
This morning, RealClearPolitics put Florida back into the Trump column for the first time since September. This week’s “Wargaming the Electoral College” column might have to come early.
Related (from David Sirota!) “Comey may or may not be screwing up. But Eric Holder is an unconvincing voice on how law enforcement should act.” Also true! But hey, they’ve got Jamie Gorelick, too, so . . . .
CLINTON CAMPAIGN ASKS EX-PROSECUTORS TO CRITICIZE FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY.
“Aka job application,” John Podhoretz tweets. “You don’t sign, no US attorneyship for you.”
CHANGE: Clinton loses popularity edge in tight race with Trump, new Post-ABC Tracking Poll finds.
Registered voters see Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a nearly identical negative light, mirroring a persistently close split in overall vote preference in a new Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll.
Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters have an unfavorable impression of Clinton (59 percent), and an identical percentage see Trump negatively. Nearly half of registered voters, 47 percent, have a “strongly unfavorable” view of Clinton and Trump alike.
The parity in basic popularity undermines a key advantage for Clinton throughout most of a presidential campaign where Trump set records as most unpopular presidential candidate in polling history. Clinton’s ratings were consistently negative, but were only rarely as troubled as her opponent.
Vote preferences among likely voters continue to be closely divided in the Post-ABC Tracking Poll, with Clinton at 46 percent and Trump at 45 percent, the same split as the previous wave reported Sunday. In a two-way matchup excluding third-party candidates, voters split 49-47 between Clinton and Trump; the margin was 49-46 percent in the previous daily tracking poll.
Stay tuned. And if you don’t like either of them, then you should vote for the one least likely to get away with things.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: In Syria, the U.S. may need more troops to manage shaky alliance.
U.S. commanders in the Middle East are trying to determine whether 300 U.S. troops on the ground inside Syria will be enough to oust the Islamic State group from its self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa.
It’s not a question of combat power. The U.S. has plenty of local allies willing to fight ISIS there. The challenge is convincing those groups to fight the militants rather than each other.
“The biggest problem with Raqqa will be managing the coalition,” said J. Matthew McInnis, a Middle East security expert with the American Enterprise Institute. “If you get an extra six hundred or an extra one thousand troops, that doesn’t dramatically change the situation from a military standpoint, but it does from a political standpoint. You gain a certain amount of ability to manage the situation when you have a little bit larger number troops there.”
“He got us out of Iraq,” and then into Libya, and Syria, and back into Iraq.