YOU DON’T SAY: “‘A DDoS attack could certainly impact these votes and make a big difference in swing states,’ Dr. Simons said on Friday. ‘This is a strong argument for why we should not allow voters to send their voted ballots over the internet.’”
(Via Sissy Willis.)
IN THE MAIL: When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Dyson DC50 Ball Compact Animal Upright Vacuum (Certified Refurbished), $199.99 (33% off).
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WHEN EVERY GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE IS THE WORST REPUBLICAN EVER:
At the Washington Post back in March, Dana Milbank admitted, “Donald Trump makes me miss George W. Bush.” Milbank actually said the same thing in 2014 in response to the rise of the Tea Party. Yet at the same time he claimed that, were Bush still in office, “we might be at war with Iran and North Korea by now, and perhaps Portugal.”
Got that? When it’s convenient, a Republican president can be bad enough to lead us into World War III; when stacked up next to contemporary Republicans, however, that same president can evoke warm fuzzies and good feelings. How nice!
Read the whole thing.
Related: Will the Dem Playbook Survive Trump?
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1262.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead: The Philippine pivot to China is just the latest consequence of Obama’s feckless foreign policy.
As usual, the Obama administration was caught off guard and flat-footed. John Kirby, the spokesman for the State Department, said the move was “inexplicably at odds” with the U.S.-Philippine relationship. “We are going to be seeking an explanation of exactly what the president meant when he talked about separation from us,” Kirby said. “It’s not clear to us exactly what that means and all its ramifications.”
Kirby is right that the outlook in the Philippines is murky; lots of Filipino officials are as appalled by their president’s remarks as anybody in Foggy Bottom. But what isn’t murky at all is that President Obama’s faltering foreign policy has taken another serious hit. It is hard to think of another American president whose foreign policy initiatives failed as badly or as widely as Obama’s. The reconciliation with the Sunni world? The reset with Russia? Stabilizing the Middle East by tilting toward Iran? The Libya invasion? The Syria abstention? The ‘pivot to Asia’ was supposed to be the centerpiece of Obama’s global strategy; instead the waning months of the Obama administration have seen an important U.S. ally pivot toward China in the most public and humiliating way possible.
Duterte clearly thinks that humiliating Obama in this way is a solid career move. He certainly believes that China will support him against the critics at home and abroad who will wring their hands over his shift. He presumably has had some assurances from his Chinese hosts that if he commits his cause to them, they will back him to the hilt.
This points to a broader problem: Obama’s tortuous efforts to balance a commitment to human rights and the niceties of American liberal ideology with a strong policy in defense of basic American security interests have made the world less safe for both human rights and for American security. As the revisionist powers (Russia, China, and Iran) gain ground, foreign leaders feel less and less need to pay attention to American sermons about human rights and the rule of law. Death squads and extra-judicial executions on a large scale: the Americans will lecture you but China will still be your friend. Barrel bombing hospitals in Aleppo? The Russians won’t just back you; they will help you to do it. Obama’s foreign policy is making the world safer for people who despise and trample on the very values that Obama hoped his presidency would advance.
Who could have seen this coming?
RIDE THE MICHAEL MOORE RECURSION!
Shot: Michael Moore Says Anyone Voting for Trump is a ‘Legal Terrorist.’
—Mediaite, yesterday.
Chaser: “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy.’ They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win….I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle…the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.”
—Michael Moore, April 14, 2004.
WHY TAKE A CHANCE? VOTE SMOD IN NOVEMBER! Roger Simon: Will Hillary’s Cyber-idiots Get Us All Killed?
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I DON’T THINK THAT WILL BE A PROBLEM WITH THIS ELECTION: Reporters’ Political Biases Should Be Clear, Jonah Goldberg writes.
See also: 2008 election, and 2004 election.
A TRAILER PARK CALLED CAMELOT: Matriarch Rose Kennedy punished her kids with time outs in her closet and the nanny banged their heads against the wall to get them to sleep, reveals JFK’s only living sibling Jean, 88, in memoir.
(Classical reference in headline.)
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION? Wikileaks: Clinton Foundation Paid Women Less Than Men.
BUT OF COURSE: Ashe Schow: Media focus on Trump’s problems at Al Smith dinner, but not Clinton’s.
The Hill’s Joe Concha is fast becoming one of my favorite media reporters. He attended Thursday night’s Al Smith dinner, and has written an article called “Al Smith Dinner I attended was different than one I read about.”
Concha laid out some of what we’ve all heard in the media today about the zingers told by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. We’re also being told that Trump delivered some truly terrible jokes that resulted in boos and jeering.
But what isn’t being given as much attention — except from a couple outlets — is that Clinton was also booed at times, though not as often as Trump. The Guardian pointed out a couple of jokes from Clinton that received some cheers and boos.
“You notice there is no teleprompters here tonight, which is probably smart, because it may be you saw Donald … dismantle his own. Maybe it is harder when you are translating from the original Russian,” Clinton said.
“I have deep respect for people like Kellyanne Conway. She is working day and night for Donald, and because she is a contractor, he is probably not even going to pay her,” Clinton said in another joke that didn’t do very well.
Concha notes that all the attention being paid to the boos and jeers toward Trump leaves out some important context.
“Republicans — especially those named Trump — aren’t popular in New York, and certainly with the wine and cheese crowd at the Waldorf last night,” Concha wrote. “And even Clinton got some boos and awkward reactions.”
He added that the event raised $6 million for children, more than it had ever raised before.
So while Trump was predictably booed at an unfriendly event, the media ran with it in order to smear him. Further, they ignored this same group booing Clinton. And the media wonder why their trust with the American people continues to plummet.
Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
HILLARY CLINTON, BOOK BURNER:
During the Citizens United arguments, Justice Samuel Alito asked Malcolm Stewart, the deputy solicitor general defending the government’s censorship, whether the law would empower Congress to ban books. Stewart affirmed that books too must be subject to “electioneering communication restrictions.” And thus do our so-called liberals become book-burners. That may be of some interest to organizations far outside of the world of conservative activism — donor-supported feminist publishing houses, say, or grant-funded environmentalist documentarians. The leader of the United States Senate is a conservative from Kentucky, and the leader of the United States House of Representatives is a conservative from Wisconsin. The Left would do well to consider just whom it would be empowering to establish a censorship code. Republicans cannot be trusted with that power. Neither can Democrats. Neither can Libertarians, Greens, Freemasons, Elks, Methodists, or other bad hombres — or even good hombres, absolute power corrupting absolutely and all that.
A liberal society is one in which everybody has free-speech rights. A society in which some people have free-speech rights and some do not, depending on the self-interested whim of people with political power, is a totalitarian society realized to a greater or lesser degree. Heinrich Heine’s advice on the connection between the treatment of books and the treatment of human beings is always and forever relevant.
Read the whole thing.
MORE VIOLENT RHETORIC FROM DEMOCRATS: Biden blasts Trump: I wish ‘I could take him behind the gym.’
What is this, 6th grade? Well, with Biden, pretty much always . . . .
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Why won’t anyone admit that America is fighting 5 wars?
In an election flush with conspiracy theories, here’s one that’s real: Both major party nominees, as well as the journalists who cover the election and moderate the debates, are actively conspiring to avoid talking about the fact that the United States is waging war in at least five countries simultaneously: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.
In the first two presidential debates, our involvement in the Syrian civil war was briefly discussed, as was ISIS in vague terms, and the Iran nuclear deal, and Russia’s mischief-making in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and Libya, though mostly in the past tense, focused on our 2011 intervention to depose Moammar Gadhafi and the subsequent attack on American government facilities in Benghazi a year later.
But our role in “advising” the Iraqi army “a few miles behind the front lines” as it works to take back territory from ISIS? Our “secret war” against Shabab militants in Somalia? Our support for Saudi Arabia’s bloody assault on Houthi rebels in Yemen? Our air strikes pounding positions in and around the city of Sirte on the Libyan coast?
Nada. Zip. Nothing.
And everyone involved has powerful reasons to encourage this conspiracy of silence — in tonight’s final presidential debate, and beyond.
The main reason people aren’t talking about this is that an honest and factual discussion of the Obama/Hillary foreign policy record would inevitably result in the election of President Trump.