KABUKI UPDATE: Bernie Sanders, Set for Rally With Hillary Clinton, Says Campaigns Are ‘Closer and Closer’
These two crazy kids just might make it work after all.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
July 11, 2016
CONTINUITY WITH CHANGE: Majority Disapproves of Decision Not to Charge Clinton on Emails.
The FBI had its say last week, but American voters will have their say in November.
BYRON YORK: After all that’s happened, Trump fares no worse with Hispanic voters than Romney or McCain.
In the new survey, Clinton leads Trump among Hispanic registered voters on all issues. Just as with overall electorate, Trump performs best on the questions of which candidate will do a better job dealing with the economy and which will do a better job keeping the country safe from terrorist attack. On those issues, Clinton has a 18- and 17-point lead, respectively. Given the realities of this race, that’s close.
On which candidate will better deal with immigration, Clinton has a 48-point lead, 70 percent to 22 percent.
One fascinating note in the Pew survey. Pollsters found that about 57 percent of Latino registered voters are either bilingual or more proficient in Spanish than in English. Forty-three percent are more proficient in English than in Spanish. Among the bilingual and Spanish-dominant group, Clinton has a huge lead, 80 percent to 11 percent. Among the English-dominant group, it’s a genuinely close race — 48 percent for Clinton to 41 percent for Trump. After all that has happened, Trump polls as well or better with English-dominant Hispanic voters than with the electorate as a whole.
Fascinating, yes — but surprising?
REACTION: Dallas protesters embrace the force that took bullets for them.
LBJ gave us Nixon.
July 7, 2016
BECAUSE APPARENTLY WE’VE RUN OUT OF GENUINE CONCERNS: “Great beer is too cheap.”
ROADSIDE DRUG TESTING: Faulty, Misunderstood, Antiquated, and as Popular as Ever.
Mostly it’s excellent source of revenue.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD? Ryan formally urges Clapper to block Clinton from classified briefings.
It’s a start:
Ryan, in a letter to Clapper, said he wants Clinton prohibited from receiving classified information “for the duration of her candidacy for president.”
“There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings,” Ryan wrote.
A letter won’t do. If the GOP were smart (I know, I know) Ryan’s idea would be a party talking point during every press appearance. The Democrats are great at this kind of messaging; the GOP, not so much.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: 20 veterans a day committed suicide in 2014, new data show.
FLASHBACK: VA secretary compares long hospital wait times to lines at Disneyland.
July 6, 2016
ROBOTS WON’T REPLACE YOUR BARTENDER — YOU WILL: ‘Pour-Your-Own Beer Bar’ set to open in Chicago.
I’ll pass. Great service starts with a great pour.
IRON TRANS: Marvel’s New Iron Man Is a Black Woman.
She’s also 15 years old.
This pretty much guarantees to do what Ultron, the Mandarin, and Loki could never do — suck the fun out of Iron Man.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: GM built a force-multiplying robotic glove, and I got to try it out.
HEARTBREAK EXPRESS: Dolly Parton said she is not endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
EXPIRATION DATE, REACHED: Obama says Afghanistan troops levels won’t be cut as he once pledged.
REUTERS: Clinton leads Trump by 13.
Even assuming her lead is real — and that Reuters poll appears to be a outlier — voters might be damning Clinton with faint praise, judging by this little gem buried at the bottom of the report:
Among Clinton’s supporters, nearly half said they were backing her because “I don’t want Donald Trump to win.” A further 39 percent said they “agree with her positions,” and about 13 percent said they “like her personally.”
Hardly a ringing endorsement.
CASTING THE FIRST STONE: Hillary Clinton to trash Donald Trump’s business record in Atlantic City.
Clinton once turned $1,000 into $100,000 in only 10 months, just by reading the Wall Street Journal.
HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: Colorado ‘Bias Response Team’ Threatened Prof To Change His Lessons.
The University of Northern Colorado administrator had no idea he was being recorded last fall as he sat down with an English professor, asking him to change his lessons after a student complained to the school’s controversial “Bias Response Team.”
Heat Street has exclusively obtained this recording, provided by the adjunct professor, who does not have tenure and asked to remain unnamed to avoid retaliation. The conversation’s tone was warm and informal—but its basic message, far less so: Avoid talking about transgender issues or face possible investigation or legal repercussions.
The professor’s transgression? He’d asked his class to discuss controversial social issues, including transgender rights. A student complained to the University’s Bias Response Team. “I would just like the professor to be educated about what trans is and how what he said is not okay because as someone who truly identifies as a transwomen I was very offended and hurt by this,” the student wrote.
Offended, hurt, and privileged is no way to go through life, son.
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S SMOKE: Another Clinton ‘scandal’ goes poof.
Funny how that keeps happening.
I THOUGHT THE CABAL WAS SETTLED: The imploding cabal to criminalize climate dissent.
CHANGE: The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences.
A no less and possibly more significant player is Iran, which ever since 1979, under its own Shiite brand of populist Islamism, has repositioned itself as a main contender for regional domination. Carefully cultivating downtrodden Shiite populations across the Middle East, Iran has successfully replaced their former Arab allegiances with a Shiite sectarian one. A pointed illustration of this shift is the recent report that Iran-supported Iraqi Shiite militiamen assaulting the IS-held Sunni Arab city of Fallujah had plastered their artillery shells with the name of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the prominent Shiite Saudi cleric executed earlier this year by the Saudi regime.
Today, the Iranian regime’s tentacles are to be seen everywhere from Yemen’s Houthis (who actually belong to a different Shiite sub-sect) to Sunni populist organizations like Hamas, which it assists in anti-Israeli aggression. But the main Iranian effort has been directed at establishing Shiite hegemony in Iraq and Lebanon. If successful, this, combined with a strategic alliance with Alawite-controlled Syria, would indeed create the “Shiite Crescent” across Mesopotamia and the Levant feared by Jordan’s King Abdullah, driving a stake through the heart of the Arab world and establishing Tehran’s undisputed dominion from the Indian Ocean to the shores of the Mediterranean.
And success is by no means impossible: Iran’s military buildup, including its growing nuclear-threshold infrastructure, is today abetted by Russia—and, if opposed by the U.S. at all, only in the most desultory fashion.
Read the whole thing.
July 5, 2016
THIS MIGHT BE TOO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH TO BE AMUSING:
BREAKING: FBI finds John Wilkes Booth "extremely careless" in discharge of firearm.
— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) July 5, 2016
WARGAMING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Clinton with the early advantage (thanks, FBI!) and Trump with two dangerously interesting routes to victory.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA: NASA’s Juno space probe arrives at giant planet.
“Welcome to Jupiter!” flashed on screens at mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. The Juno team cheered and hugged.
“This is phenomenal,” said Geoff Yoder, acting administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
The probe had to conduct a tricky maneuver to slow down enough to allow it to be pulled into orbit: It fired its main engine for 35 minutes, effectively hitting the brakes to slow the spacecraft by about 1,212 miles per hour (542 meters per second).
“NASA did it again,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator.
“We’re there, we’re in orbit. We conquered Jupiter.”
Not taking any unnecessary risks, in the photo at the link the entire NASA team is wearing identical gray tennis shirts.