AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.
Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.
Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.
And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!
Archive for 2016
October 21, 2016
KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: Hillary and the Book-Burners.
She began by arguing that the Supreme Court, and lesser federal courts, should be political partisans who take sides in disputes rather than adjudicate them according to the law. Many politicians — perhaps even most — believe that, or act in a way that suggests they do, but most of them feel at least the need to shamefacedly insist that judges are there to impartially apply the law. Not Mrs. Clinton. The Supreme Court that exists in her mind is the worst version of the highest judicial body, which is to say the American answer to Iran’s Guardian Council. The justices already wander into American-ayatollah territory too often, and it is only shame that constrains them. It is impossible to overstate the damage this is doing to our constitutional order, and to the legitimacy of the federal government itself.
What is worse — if something can in fact be worse — is that Mrs. Clinton seeks to unmoor the Supreme Court from the Constitution in order to pursue her own repressive and self-interested political program, namely the censorship of publications, organizations, and institutions that are critical of her.
Read the whole thing.
IT’S COME TO THIS: New York Times: Videos Put Democrats on Defensive About Dirty Tricks.
A Democratic operative, wearing a checkered blue shirt and a tie, spoke calmly, explaining exactly how agents could infiltrate the rallies of Donald J. Trump and cause mayhem among the Republican’s nominee team, his security staff and supporters.
Creating an explosive reaction, said the operative, Scott Foval, was “the whole point of it.”
Mr. Foval and Robert Creamer, another operative working for the Democratic National Committee, were the unwitting stars of undercover videos released this week in which they and others were captured discussing unseemly tactics like instigating violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies and arranging for fraudulent voting.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the party committee moved to distance themselves from the behavior described in the videos, and the committee said the two men were no longer assisting it. . . .
Still, the videos were an embarrassment for Mrs. Clinton at a moment when she is trying to frame Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election as nothing more than the fevered dreams of a conspiracy theorist. During Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump referred to the videos, which together have been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, as proof of unfair play.
And just months after the Democratic chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced out of her post after hacked emails revealed party officials discussing how to damage Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, the Clinton campaign was again forced on the defensive because of the actions of the party.
Campaign finance records show that the Democratic committee made two payments, one in July and another in August, totaling about $64,000 to Mobilize Inc., a Chicago-based firm connected to Mr. Creamer, for “communications consulting.” . . .
Both men and others in the videos are seen discussing — or at least nodding along when their undercover interviewers broach the idea — how people could illegally vote. Among the practices described are moving voters across state lines by using cars with the destination state’s plates, and using pay stubs to make illegal immigrants appear to be citizens for voter registration purposes.
Politics, the Chicago way.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Abedin implicated Clinton in foundation trade-off with Morocco amid $12 million commitment.
THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER: No happy warriors to be found at Al Smith dinner.
The rivals showed up Thursday night at a fabled staging post on the final stretch of presidential campaigns — the Al Smith charity dinner in New York.
Smith, the former New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, was once dubbed the “happy warrior of the political battlefield” by Franklin Roosevelt.
But Trump and Clinton looked anything but happy when they limped off the 2016 campaign trail Thursday night.
They struggled to disguise the anger, bitterness and sheer open dislike that has pulsed through their recriminatory White House race, perhaps not surprisingly since he has threatened to throw her in jail and she says he’s a threat to the republic.
Can this really be the government we deserve?
THE TRUTH HURTS: Politico: WikiLeaks poisons Hillary’s relationship with left.
JOURNALISM: ABC’s embarrassing article about Hillary Clinton’s white pantsuit.
That’s right, you weren’t just looking at a woman wearing a white pantsuit, you were looking at a woman who was … standing up for women’s rights by channeling suffragettes, according to the senior fashion editor of the Hollywood Reporter, Booth Moore.
“The choice of a white suit for Wednesday’s debate harkened back to the not-so-distant past, when suffragettes wore white to promote their struggle to gain the right to vote,” she said.
Not-so-distant, indeed.
Clinton also wore a white pantsuit when she accepted the Democratic nomination. At that time, it seemed like she was wearing it because she knew the media would try to make her look like a deity, the way they seem to do with President Obama.
And by the way, remember when Melania Trump wore white to the Republican National Convention? A fashion writer for Philly.com claimed it was racist.
Well, sure, when a Republican does it . . .
DIVERSITY OF OPINION: Leaked Memo Reveals What Mark Zuckerberg Plans to Do About Trump-Supporting Board Member Peter Thiel.
In a leaked internal memo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a stand for free speech and rejected the idea that Thiel should no longer serve as a member of the social media giant’s board because of his Trump support.
“I want to quickly address the questions and concerns about Peter Thiel as a board member and Trump supporter,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We care deeply about diversity. That’s easy to say when it means standing up for ideas you agree with. It’s a lot harder when it means standing up for the rights of people with different viewpoints to say what they care about. That’s even more important.”
Good for Zuckerberg.
SPOILING ATTACK: ISIS Fighters in Iraq Attack Kirkuk, Diverting Attention From Mosul.
Dozens of uniformed Islamic State fighters in vehicles assaulted Kirkuk, setting off gun battles for hours in the heart of the city, according to local officials and to the militant group itself. Imams shut down all mosques in the city, canceling Friday Prayer.
The battle scenes and the sound of automatic gunfire inside the city, broadcast live on local television, were reminiscent of the Islamic State’s brazen march across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014. That offensive also involved multiple suicide attacks on police positions inside the city, and gunmen later took up positions in a mosque and a school, and on top of other buildings.
The attack on Kirkuk — a vital city to Iraq’s Kurds that has been under their control for more than two years — diverted attention, at least for a day, from the four-day offensive on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which has been under the control of the Islamic State for more than two years.
The tragedy is that ISIS could have been nipped in the bud three years ago.
WELL, THEY’RE RIGHT TO: Poll: Voters Have Concerns Over Election Security: Photo ID laws and voter fraud are major issues ahead of Nov. 8.
More than two out of every three U.S. citizens in a recent poll say they are very or somewhat concerned about the security of the nation’s electoral system.
The Economist/YouGov poll was conducted amid Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s recent claims that the November election is “rigged.”
Seventy-two percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about the security of the electoral system while just 21 percent were either not very concerned or not concerned at all.
The survey found that two out of five respondents (42 percent) said they believed that Russia was attempting to influence the U.S. presidential election.
Last week, the White House officially accused Russia of meddling in U.S. elections.
Has anyone accused the Obama Administration of whipping up fears to discredit the election process?
NOPE, NOT BUYING IT: ‘I’m the victim,’ Iowa teacher who had sex with student says on ‘Dr. Phil’
RESET: Russia Holds Missile Drills Near Western Border.
The Defense Ministry said on October 20 that the war games were held at a shooting range near the city of Luga, some 100 kilometers east of the Estonian border.
The exercises featured the deployment of Iskander missiles and preparations for firing them, but didn’t involve actual launches, the military said.
Nuclear-capable Iskander missiles have a range of up to 500 kilometers.
Russia’s recent deployment of Iskander missiles to its Kaliningrad exclave puts Warsaw under a two-minute threat of nuclear annihilation. Russia is also believed to be developing a medium-range nuclear missile in violation of the 1987 INF treaty, appears have kept SS-25 mobile nuclear missile launchers in violation of the 2010 New START agreement, and last year Putin unilaterally withdrew from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.
GEORGE WILL: The modern US campus shouldn’t be a safe space.
A specter is haunting academia, the specter of specters — ghosts, goblins and “cultural appropriation” through insensitive Halloween costumes. Institutions of higher education are engaged in the low comedy of avoiding the agonies of Yale.
Last October, the university was rocked to its 315-year-old foundations by the wife of a residential college master.
In response to a university memorandum urging students to wear culturally sensitive costumes — e.g., no sombreros — she wrote an e-mail saying it should be permissible for young people to be inappropriate, provocative or even offensive because “the ability to tolerate offense” is a hallmark of “a free and open society.”
After the dust settled from this, she and her husband left the residential college. And Yale had trampled in the dust the noble legacy of its 1975 Woodward Report.
Named for the chairman of the committee that produced it, historian C. Vann Woodward, the report was written after Yale’s awkward handling of some controversial speakers. Reaffirming freedom of expression’s “superior importance to other laudable principles and values,” the report said:
“Without sacrificing its central purpose, [a university] cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility or mutual respect. . . . It will never let these values, important as they are, override its central purpose.”
That purpose, as Hanna Holborn Gray, a former president of the University of Chicago, once said, is not to make young adults comfortable, it is to make them think. Since 1975, however, universities have embraced the doctrine that speech that offends people actually harms them, mentally and even physically.
Sad.
HMM: Trump national political director ‘steps back’ from campaign.
Jim Murphy, Donald Trump’s national political director, is no longer playing an active role on the campaign, according to three sources briefed on the move – a troubling development for the Republican nominee coming just 19 days before the election.
“I have not resigned but for personal reasons have had to take a step back from the campaign,” Murphy said in a statement to POLITICO. He did not elaborate on the reasons for his departure.
Several Trump aides said that Murphy has been conspicuously absent in recent days as the campaign mobilizes for the final push.
Turnover has always been high in the Trump campaign, but losing a national political director this close to election day stands out.
THE CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER: Teacher Sparks Controversy After Telling Students, “To Be White Is To Be Racist”
“Am I racist? And I say, yeah. I don’t want to be. It’s not like I choose to be racist,” the teacher is heard saying in audio obtained by KFOR. “But do I do things because of the way I was raised?” The student who recorded the statement says the remarks were made during a lecture on healing the racial divide. The student began recording after finding some of the discussion offensive.
“Half of my family is Hispanic, so I just felt like, you know, him calling me racist just because I’m White…I mean, where’s your proof in that? You start telling someone something over and over again that’s an opinion, and they start taking it as fact,” she told KFOR.
Joseph Siano, superintendent of Norman Public Schools, agrees that the teacher should have handled the discussion differently.
At the very least.
HEY, MAYBE THIS WILL TURN OUT TO BE THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER! WikiLeaks releases messages from Obama.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE. SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED: Gun Control Group’s ‘Toddlers Kill’ Campaign Pads Death Stats With Adults. Did I say shocked?
YEAH, BUT IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO: Hillary Clinton’s security detail laughed when she broke her elbow.
AND THEY’RE THE “SMART” PARTY. OR IS THAT THE EVIL PARTY? I CAN NEVER REMEMBER. Report: Clinton chief probably sent password to hackers.
SHOES THAT WILL DROP: Hillary’s secrets might haunt her if she becomes president.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Are Some Progressive Dads Afraid of Raising Sons?
YOU ARE BEING GASLIGHTED: Alinskyite Tactics, Robert Creamer, and Us.
October 20, 2016
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S PRACTICALLY THINKPROGRESS’S MISSION STATEMENT: Jake Tapper hammers Think Progress for publishing story it knew was false. “One of the things that has become clear in the wake of Wikileaks dump of Podesta emails is that a lot of journalists have a very cozy—one could even say sycophantic— relationship with Democrats.” And it’s not just Glenn Thrush.
Plus: “Yesterday someone on Twitter said Jake Tapper is the only journalist who looks better after the WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s emails. I think that’s probably right.”