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OCTOBER 7,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

TRUMP – It's the talk of the town, a Trump tape from years ago featuring Trump's vulgar comments about women.  It is stunning in its sleaziness, and there is no defense.  Some Republicans, like Representative Jason Chafffetz of Utah, are withdrawing their support for Trump, and Speaker Paul Ryan disinvited Trump from an upcoming event.  Hillary Clinton tweeted her sense of horror at Trump's taped comments, demonstrating that her hypocrisy generator is alive and well.  She's married, after all, to Mr. Vulgarity himself.  Trump released a brief video offering a half-hearted apology for his behavior, but otherwise remaining his usual defiant self.  Is this a turning point?   Is this the body blow that will finish Trump?  I don't know.  The next presidential debate is Sunday night, and maybe that will make a difference.  But for the first time we're hearing talk, just talk, of replacing Trump on the ticket.  This is serious.

HILLARY – Wikileaks released a new batch of Clinton emails, and the transcript of some of her private speeches.  Clinton had the good luck to see these new releases on the same day that Donald Trump is enveloped in scandal.  The releases, though, reveal Clinton as a soulless manipulator, openly bragging that she says one thing in public and another thing privately.  She also is caught calling for open borders, not the most popular idea, and sucking up to Wall Street, which will not help her with the Bernie Sanders crowd.  A new batch of Clinton material is expected from Wikileaks soon.  With these revelations, and Trump's sex scandal, we can truly say that America has been given the worst choices for president of any recent election.  Whoever is elected will also be despised.  New polls still show Clinton ahead, and a likely winner.  If the GOP had nominated any of its other choices, things might well be going heavily the other way.  I hear people talking of the 2020 election already, as if this one is worthy of being forgotten.

I AM SHOCKED – FROM DAILY CALLER:  Liberal activist groups are mobilizing their supporters to stack Sunday night’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with questions designed to be hostile to Trump.  The debate is a “town hall style” event, with questions coming from the audience. But those questions and the questioners will be pre-screened so as to not be out of left field or redundant. As part of the process for picking questions and topics, CNN and ABC News have “agreed to consider the Top 30 questions voted up” on the website “Presidential Open Questions.”  Liberals are attempting to vote up questions that they think would entrap Trump.  I'm just shocked that our liberal friends would do something like this.  It must be a mistake.  We know that the Clintons are renowned for their fairness and openness.

October 7, 2016       Permalink

A MYTH ABOUT ISIS DESTROYED – AT 11:20 A.M. ET:   Not exactly the downtrodden.  From London's Daily Mail: 

Recruits into the Islamic State group are better educated than their average countryman, contrary to popular belief, according to a new World Bank study.

Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group, said the newly released study titled "Economic and Social Inclusion to Prevent Violent Extremism".

The study, which aimed to identify socioeconomic traits that might explain why some are drawn to the Syria-based extremist group, made clear that poverty and deprivation were not at the root of support for the group.

Almost without exception, fighters joining IS's Syria and Iraq-based forces had several more years of education in their home countries -- whether in Europe, Africa or elsewhere in the Middle East -- than the average citizen.

The data shows clearly, the report said, that "poverty is not a driver of radicalization into violent extremism."

Out of 3,800 recruits described in a leaked Islamic State database, only 17 percent did not finish high school, while a quarter had university-level educations.

Only those from Eastern Europe were below the average, and only marginally so, according to the study.

"Foreign recruits from the Middle East, North Africa and South and East Asia are significantly more educated than what is typical in their region," the Bank report said.

About 30 percent of the recruits told the extremist group what positions in the force they wanted. Around one in nine volunteered for suicide operations, and their educational levels were on par with those who sought to be administrators, the report said.

"The proportions of administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education," it said.

Most of the 3,800 recruits also reported having a job before traveling to join the Islamic State group, also known as Daesh, according to the study.

COMMENT:  Why should anyone be shocked?  Education isn't a guaranteed good.  It depends on what's being taught and who's doing the teaching.   Many colleges and universities have become cesspools of hate, where professors are frightened of their students. 

It is said that every genocide begins on a college campus.  The horror movements of the 20th century all had substantial support from "scholars."  We're revisiting the nightmare.

October 7, 2016       Permalink

BUT WILL ANYTHING HAPPEN? – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  We keep hearing that there'll be a revolt of FBI agents in connection with the Clinton e-mail coverup, but will anything actually happen?  From the New York Post:   

Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.

Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”

But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.

The immunity agreements came with outrageous side deals, including preventing agents from searching for any documents on a Dell laptop owned by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills generated after Jan. 31, 2015, when she communicated with the server administrator who destroyed subpoenaed emails.

Comey also agreed to have Mills’ laptop destroyed after the restricted search, denying Congress the chance to look at it and making the FBI an accomplice to the destruction of evidence.

And...

Comey has turned a once-proud institution known for its independence into one that bows to election pressure, hands out political immunity to candidates and effectively pardons their co-conspirators. He’s turned the FBI into the Federal Bureau of Immunity and lost the trust and respect of not only his agents but the country at large. He ought to step down.

COMMENT:  It's sad, but true.  The FBI has never been a pristine institution.  There have been problems along the way, including the excesses of its first director, J. Edgar Hoover, who also did brilliant things.  But the Bureau had made great progress...until now.  Now, in the minds of many, it lives in a shadow.

October 7, 2016       Permalink

DISAPPOINTING JOBS REPORT – AT 9:28 A.M. ET:  The September jobs report did not meet expectations.  We are barely keeping up with population growth.  From CNBC:

Job creation edged lower in September as the labor market showed there still may be room to run.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 156,000 for the month and the unemployment rate ticked up to 5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Economists surveyed by Reuters had expected 176,000 new jobs and the jobless rate to hold at 4.9 percent. The total was a decline from the upwardly revised 167,000 jobs in August (compared with the original number of 151,000).

"This is within the broad range of expectations," said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com. "The main point is, slow and steady does win the race for this recovery, which began in the summer of 2009."

COMMENT:  Kind of a long recovery, don't you think?  That's seven years by my numbers.   Yearly economic growth is well below the standards of a strong economy.

But not to worry.  The mainstream media will spin every report as a great addition to the legacy of Barack Obama.  Americans will be taught how happy they should be.

October 7,  2016     Permalink

OCTOBER 6,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

THE SUDDENLY TASTEFUL HILLARY – FROM FOX:   The Hillary Clinton campaign has delayed a planned Florida ad buy on the Weather Channel after facing criticism for targeting voters in the path of Hurricane Matthew.  “We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes,” spokesman Jesse Ferguson said in a statement Thursday.  Politico first reported that the Clinton campaign had planned to spend $63,000 on Weather Channel ads in Florida over a five-day stretch starting Thursday, just as the storm nears the coast.  Politico noted that Donald Trump and other candidates have advertised on the same channel this year. But the bid to capture support from anxious Florida residents in the path of a deadly storm that has triggered mass evacuation orders and is expected to strengthen soon into a destructive Category 4 created a bit of an optics problem.   For the Clintons, their whole lives are a big optics problem.  But at least Hillary is showing a bit of taste.  Just a bit.

THE LEFT AND ITS SCHEMES – FROM FOX:   The Obama adminstration has delayed deportation proceedings against more than 56,000 Central American immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally since 2014, The New York Times reported Thursday.  Federal officials told the Times that some deportation cases have been pushed as far back as 2023, creating what one retired immigration judge called "docket chaos."  Some of those whose cases have been delayed failed to report to government offices to be fitted with GPS ankle bracelets, the Times reports. Now, federal officials admit that many immigrants with delayed cases may never report for their court dates.  In June 2014, the White House said it would work to process and deport illegal immigrants quicker after a surge of families and unaccompanied minors crossed the southern U.S. border over the previous months. The Times reported Thursday that deportation proceedings for unaccompanied minors are still being expedited.  A total disgrace.  The bottom line is that the Democrats like illegal immigrants.  It hopes to turn them into Democratic voters, and the strategy may work.

CORRUPTION MARCHES ON – FROM THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:    Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to arrange Pentagon and State Department consulting contracts for her daughter’s friend, prompting concerns of federal ethics rules violations.  Clinton in 2009 arranged meetings between Jacqueline Newmyer Deal, a friend of Chelsea Clinton and head of the defense consulting group Long Term Strategy Group, with Pentagon officials that involved contracting discussions, according to emails from Clinton’s private server made public recently by the State Department. Clinton also tried to help Deal win a contract for consulting work with the State Department’s director of policy planning, according to the emails.  Deal is a close friend of Chelsea Clinton, who is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. Emails between the two were included among the thousands recovered from a private email server used by the secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. Chelsea Clinton has described Deal as her best friend. Both Clintons attended Deal’s 2011 wedding.  I'm so glad that Chelsea is learning the family business. 

October 6, 2016       Permalink

IS TRUMP EDGING BACK? – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  We always urge readers to look at polls carefully, and with some skepticism.  However, there does seem to be a bit of a trend back to Donald Trump and Mike Pence this week, fueled partly by Pence's debate performance.  Again, read with care.  From Rasmussen:

Donald Trump has gained another point on Hillary Clinton in the wake of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump with a 43% to 41% lead over Clinton. Yesterday, he was ahead 42% to 41%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson again earns eight percent (8%) of the vote, while three percent (3%) prefer the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Trump has been edging back all week. He was five points ahead of Clinton going into their first debate last week but then fell behind by three after widespread criticism of his debate performance. By this past Monday, however, the two major party candidates were in a near tie, and Trump has gained a point on Clinton each day since then.

COMMENT:  This all leads into Sunday's debate, three days from now.  These polls will be washed away by the outcome of that contest.  It will be a town-hall format, where citizen questions are asked.  Theoretically, that should be better for Trump, but there are no guarantees.

At this point, it's still a close race.  But, bottom line, most polls still show Clinton ahead.

October 6, 2016       Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  The level of our journalism is diving.  Outright fantasy sometimes replaces news, especially when the legacy of Barack Obama is involved.  From Newsbusters:   

President Barack Obama spoke to reporters on Wednesday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden commenting on the required number of nations having ratified the Paris climate change agreement and, almost on cue, NBC’s Ron Allen connected global warming to Hurricane Matthew set to bear down on the Bahamas, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

Speaking on MSNBC Live to host Kate Snow, Allen first gushed about how the President “believes so deeply in protecting the environment” that the deal marks “one of the most significant aspects of his legacy” before bringing in Hurricane Matthew as a intriguing “practical matter.”

In making the following comments, Allen failed to realize that there hasn’t been a major Atlantic Hurricane to crack the top ten in intensity in nine years and if it comes ashore, Matthew would be the first major hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Wilma in 2005:

It’s very interesting that this is happening a day when there’s a hurricane bearing down on the United States and in the Caribbean because these severe storms, beach erosions, intense weather episodes that we’ve had is perhaps the most practical sample of what the president was talking about as the threat that the planet faces.

Allen further made his comments seem even more out-of-touch with the reality of the issue concerning broad and long-term trends in our climate when he ruled that hurricanes like Matthew “is what this whole climate agreement signed by 190 nations and now ratified by 60 or so is designed to stop.”

COMMENT:  It not only is the corruption of journalism, it's the corruption of science.  Why aren't science organizations and leaders outraged by that kind of crazy, unscientific logic?  Maybe fame and fortune are involved.  Just sayin'.

October 6, 2016        Permalink

A FINE ROMANCE – AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  The United States and Russia are heading for disaster.  Any talk of a "reset" in relations with Moscow is long gone.  Putin is now making demands on us, something we never thought we'd see when the old Soviet Union was defeated in the Cold War.  From Bloomberg:

The next U.S. administration will inherit the worst relationship with Russia since Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire. Judging from the list of grievances that President Vladimir Putin has laid out, even a relatively Putin-friendly Donald Trump will have a hard time satisfying him.

Putin delivered his message to the future U.S. president Monday, just as the U.S. State Department announced it was suspending negotiations with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria and Russia-backed Syrian troops moved to take more ground in Aleppo. In a bill submitted to parliament, Putin threatened to end a joint U.S.-Russian disarmament program -- in which surplus weapons-grade plutonium is processed into fuel -- unless the U.S. meets certain conditions:

Roll back North Atlantic Treaty Organization infrastructure and reduce NATO personnel to September 2000 levels;

Repeal the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials involved in human rights violations;

Repeal all U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals and businesses;

Compensate Russians for damages incurred by U.S. sanctions and by Russia’s “forced countersanctions”;

Present a “clear plan of irreversible destruction” of U.S. surplus plutonium.

Putin might as well have said the program will resume when hell freezes over. “He asked for too little,” Leonid Volkov, an anti-Putin politician, wrote sarcastically on Facebook. “He should have asked for Alaska back, eternal youth, Elon Musk and a ticket to Disneyland.”

COMMENT:  That Putin would present this list of demands just shows how little he thinks of Barack Obama.  Our president is laughed at and ridiculed.  He always loses, and we really wonder if he ever wants to win.  He is, after all, an old leftist himself.  Obama probably thinks the Cold War was America's fault, especially the fault of those Americans who, as he said, cling to their guns and their religion.

October 6,  2016     Permalink