The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Meth Lab

It is truly comical to watch as a growing number of prominent, left-leaning, pro-Hillary Clinton publications produce editorials suggesting the Clintons should either shut down or significantly modify The Clinton Foundation. Whether its The Boston Globe or The New York Times, the progressive editorial boards can't bring themselves to admit that The Clinton Foundation is corrupt, citing instead the "good-works" that the charity has done. What they willfully ignore is that those "good works" are accomplished with a very small percentage of all monies raised, that overhead and administrative costs are staggering (e.g., $21 million for air travel -- most on private jets), that there are direct connections between donors and access to government officials, that Bill CLinton was given lucrative speaking fees after access was provided for foundation donors to Hillary Clinton.

And yet, some in the media want the foundation shut down. Why is that? If the good works are so important and there no scandal, why shut it down? If employees (Huma Abedin comes to mind) can work for both the Foundation and the State Department and any conflict of interest is perfectly okay, why shut it down? If outrageous administrative costs are acceptable and common, why shut it down? If there was no wrong-doing at all, why shut it down?

The reason, of course, is obvious. Clinton supporters are worried, really worried, that something big will come to light in the next 70 days or after the election, and that even the overwhelmingly pro-Clinton media won't be able to cover it up. Although it's highly unlikely, that something just might derail her candidacy now or her infant presidency then. If the Foundation is no more, then revelations about it will be (in the eyes of the pro-Clinton media) "old news." After all, the Foundation is shut down, what more do you want?

Of course that would be like saying that shutting down a meth lab would absolve the drug dealers from any criminal charges that occur after the lab has been shuttered. But never mind.

A Different Way

With every passing day, we sink deeper into the dark world of Hillary's lies. Just yesterday we learned that "personal" emails she unilaterally deleted from her private server contained at least 30 emails on the Benghazi incident. Hmmm. It really doesn't matter what's in the emails (we don't know as yet)—the fact is she hid them and then lied about it. Those of us who suggested that her claims about "personal emails" were a ploy to hide incriminating evidence were accused of being "conspiracy theorists"—another common strategy used by Clinton apologists.

Kerry Jackson comments:
... a new batch of 30 emails possibly related to the Benghazi terrorist attacks has been found. Was she planning a family vacation in Libya? Is that how she's going explain why those emails ended up in the account's trash bin and weren't released with others?

Those emails are among the roughly 15,000 that Clinton did not turn over when she earlier released 55,000 and claimed that she had come clean.

Judicial Watch, which continues to do what Clinton's allies in the legacy media have refused to do, said that the "State Department admitted it had found Benghazi-related documents among the 14,900 Clinton emails and attachments uncovered by the FBI that Mrs. Clinton deleted and withheld from the State Department."

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said "it is astonishing that Hillary Clinton tried to delete and hide Benghazi emails and documents."

But is it really? Doesn't just about everyone at this point expect Bill and Hillary to cheat and lie? Hasn't "Cover-Up" become the Clintons' shared middle name?
At this point, nothing that Hillary Clinton says can be taken seriously. If she is elected (and it's likely she will be) nothing she says as president can be trusted. Even worse, there's far more incriminating information out there that is in the hands of our adversaries, Hacked from her unprotected and arguably illegal server. She can and will be blackmailed by the holders of that information. If she secretly accedes to the blackmailers wishes, she is acting contrary to the interests of this country. And if she tells them to "f*#% off" and the information is released, she very well may be impeached, putting the country through the nightmare of an impeachment proceedings. Of course, Clintonists will accuse anyone who suggests such a thing as a "conspiracy theorist" or "unhinged." But after all of the revelations swirling around Hillary, that accusation is becoming very, very old.

What truly is amusing is that Hillary Clinton supporters tell us that Donald Trump is "dangerous." Hillary is equally dangerous—just in a different way.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Double-Down

From the very beginning, I have been critical of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). It was and is a hyperpartisan piece of legislation that the Democrats rammed through congress in 2010 using legislative rule changes and outright bribery of Democrat legislators (!) to get the bill passed. Each of the promises made for Obamacare has been proven to be incorrect and in more than a few cases, a purposeful lie. It is true that more people are insured, but that insurance has stratospheric deductibles and is subsidized at significant cost to the taxpayer. Enrollments in Obamacare are 50 percent lower than the Obama administration promised with the majority of new enrollees being old and sick. The young and healthy have stayed away. In a moment of candor, a chief architect of the legislation, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, suggested that Obamacare passed because the voting public is too ignorant to recognize its flaws. Critics (myself included) noted in 2010 that the ACA would cost too much, provide weak and overly-expensive benefits, and slowly implode. That's exactly what happened.

Here a description of the ACA from Vox, a pro-Obama, progressive, pro-Democrat website:
Healthcare.gov is on track to offer shoppers fewer options than ever before in 2017.

Major insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealth have, in recent months, taken major steps to sharply reduce participation in Obamacare's insurance marketplaces. The result, a new Vox analysis shows, is a spike in counties served by just one health insurer — and a precipitous drop in ultra-competitive areas.

There are currently 687 counties on the Healthcare.gov marketplace with just one insurer signed up to sell in 2017 — nearly four times the 182 counties that had one insurer this year.

Competitive markets, meanwhile, seem to be disappearing. In 2016, 66.8 percent of Healthcare.gov counties had three or more insurers. In 2017, only 44.3 percent of counties are on track to have this level of competition.
It's amusing to listen to Hillary Clinton discuss Obamacare. She thinks it's still viable and wants to "fix it," rather than replace it with something that works. That seems to be the Democrat credo over the past eight years—double down on failure.

Monday, August 29, 2016

ICANN

The World Wide Web and its underlying network architecture (the Internet) is arguably the most significant technological achievement of the last 100 years. The Internet has grown and prospered under ICANN—Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers—a quasi-governmental organization controlled by the United States.

In what may be the last in a long line of horrendously bad policy decisions, the Obama administration has decided to cede control of ICANN, allowing it to become either a free-wheeling monopoly or even worse, an organization controlled by the United Nations. What could go wrong?

L. Gordon Crovitz comments:
When the Obama administration announced its plan to give up U.S. protection of the internet, it promised the United Nations would never take control. But because of the administration’s naiveté or arrogance, U.N. control is the likely result if the U.S. gives up internet stewardship as planned at midnight on Sept. 30 ...

When the Obama administration announced its plan to give up U.S. protection of the internet, it promised the United Nations would never take control. But because of the administration’s naiveté or arrogance, U.N. control is the likely result if the U.S. gives up internet stewardship as planned at midnight on Sept. 30.

On Friday Americans for Limited Government received a response to its Freedom of Information Act request for “all records relating to legal and policy analysis . . . concerning antitrust issues for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers” if the U.S. gives up oversight. The administration replied it had “conducted a thorough search for responsive records within its possession and control and found no records responsive to your request.”

It’s shocking the administration admits it has no plan for how Icann retains its antitrust exemption. The reason Icann can operate the entire World Wide Web root zone is that it has the status of a legal monopolist, stemming from its contract with the Commerce Department that makes Icann an “instrumentality” of government.
It’s shocking the administration admits it has no plan for how Icann retains its antitrust exemption. The reason Icann can operate the entire World Wide Web root zone is that it has the status of a legal monopolist, stemming from its contract with the Commerce Department that makes Icann an “instrumentality” of government.
I suspect that if reporters asked Donald Trump about his position on ICANN he wouldn't know what it was, and if reporters asked Hillary Clinton ... oh wait ... Hillary doesn't answer questions from reporters because ... well, just because. Even more amusing, those same reporters don't seem to mind -- but I digress.

Better yet, one wonders what the Democrats think about ICANN. Will they continue their Stepford Wives march behind Obama's bad decisions, or for once, will they voice their concerns and put a stop to this?

Crovitz continues:
Without the U.S. contract, Icann would seek to be overseen by another governmental group so as to keep its antitrust exemption. Authoritarian regimes have already proposed Icann become part of the U.N. to make it easier for them to censor the internet globally. So much for the Obama pledge that the U.S. would never be replaced by a “government-led or an inter-governmental organization solution.”

Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, called it “simply stunning” that the “politically blinded Obama administration missed the obvious point that Icann loses its antitrust shield should the government relinquish control.”

The administration might not have considered the antitrust issue, which would have been naive. Or perhaps in its arrogance the administration knew all along Icann would lose its antitrust immunity and look to the U.N. as an alternative. Congress could have voted to give Icann an antitrust exemption, but the internet giveaway plan is too flawed for legislative approval.
The Democrats (and GOP) in the U.S. Congress have acceded to far too many BAD policy decisions by the Obama administration. The Internet works quite well with the current ICANN structure. It's time for congress to stop Obama from modifying that structure.

Barack Obama is opening the door to an Internet that could be censored by rogue regimes, controlled by a corrupt and incompetent UN, and otherwise ruined in ways we can't even imagine. Like everything from Obamacare to the Iran "deal," the ideas floated and implemented by his Team of 2s are poorly thought out and fraught with potential blowback that hurts the United States and its citizens and businesses. But that never stopped them before and certainly it won't stop them now.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Blanche and Hillary

For over 3 years, the State Department and the broader Obama administration did a good job of stonewalling all attempts to access emails from Hillary Clinton's notorious private server and from their own internal files. Hillary, for her part, did everything possible to obstruct justice by deleting thousands of emails that despite her protestations, had little to do with yoga, her grandchild's birthday party, or anything else of personal import. Democrats acting as a veritable monolithic machine, argued against common sense and the facts and suggested that all of this was a right wing conspiracy and that there was no there, there. The mainstream media, despite a few professional exceptions, generally tried to protect their candidate (Hillary) by covering the story half-heartedly at best and investigating the details with all the enthusiasm of an 8 year-old who is being forced to do her homework.

And yet, with every passing week we get more information about Clinton's misuse of government office to enrich herself and her family, influence peddling in an on-going pay-for-play scheme, and the improper and unethical nexus of the State Department and The Clinton Foundation. Austin Bay comments:
“Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” says the frequently delusional Blanche Dubois near the bitter end of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Ah yes, kind strangers. It’s a playwright’s loaded line. Put bluntly, Miss Blanche may practice intermittent prostitution. According to rumors, before her New Orleans travails, Blanche lost her Mississippi hotel digs because her scandalous associations with menfolk tarnished the joint’s reputation. This naughty gossip, Blanche’s louche behavior, her iffy relationship with what we might call the truth—the drip, drip, drip of on-stage evidence—leads many play-watchers to conclude, yeah, right, Tennessee Williams, I get it. That kind of kind strangers, the kind that tip the tart.

Blanche Dubois is a fictional character. Hillary Clinton often inhabits a fictional universe. Claiming she was targeted by snipers in Bosnia and telling Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace that FBI Director James Comey exonerated her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information are just two examples of Hillary’s fictional existence. However, Hillary’s State Department was no cheap Mississippi hotel, and the latest batch of emails confirming close, coordinated contact between Hillary’s top State aides and the kind strangers who donate to the Clinton Foundation ain’t rumors spread by traveling salesmen. Even The Associated Press is troubled by the number of Clinton Foundation donors with quick access to Hillary’s senior staff. The second paragraph in the AP report has numbers, not rumors:

“At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.”

“Released so far.” That’s the AP acknowledging the drip, drip, drip technique. More of Hillary’s emails continue to appear, including emails she swore she destroyed because they were personal.

Indeed, it appears evidence of an axis has emerged, drip by drip, an axis that operationally connected Clinton Foundation donors to Hillary’s State Department. That suggests from 2009 to 2013, when she was secretary of state, Hillary ran a hybrid organization—what we might call the Clinton State-Foundation—which served the needs of Foundation donors, in return for their… kindnesses.

If the Clinton State-Foundation looks like a pay-to-play bribery operation, well, it sure looked like Blanche Dubois was sleeping around a bit with kind strangers, didn’t it?
Of course, the Clintons always strike back when yet another scandal hits. As I have noted in other posts, their M.O. is to change the subject as quickly as possible ... so a few days ago, Hillary called Donald Trump a "racist" and suggested that he is a KKK sympathizer. Trump took the bait and struck back, calling Hillary names. The media gleefully forgot about the damning evidence of Hillary's pay-for-play criminality and jumped into the racism debate.

Hillary Clinton—a politician so corrupt she'd make Tammany Hall pols blush—wins another round and escapes to fight another day. The Democrats, who rarely try to win a political argument on its merits but instead always seem to feel comfortable condemning their opponents as "racists," breath a sigh of relief as they continue forward with a candidate who will bring new meaning to corruption and dishonesty as President of the United States.

UPDATE:
---------------

A.B Stoddard nails it when she writes about Hillary:
Clinton does defiance, denial and deflection but not accountability. Her persecution complex prohibits it, so she instead projects all sorts of terrible deeds onto unknown, even fictional Republicans, whom she has held responsible over the years for everything from her husband’s sexual affair with an unpaid White House intern to an Obama administration investigation into her rogue email server. And when situations call for specifics, like in an FBI interview, well it’s fair game to throw good people like Colin Powell under the bus.

Democrats continue to find this gobsmacking, but it’s nothing new. Who could imagine the gall it would take, while running for president -- a second time -- to take government records and store them on an unsecured server vulnerable to hackers? Did she not think that someday, when those inevitable congressional investigators came poking around, let alone Freedom of Information Act requests from the press, she would be caught not using the government email system she was required to?

Why, as secretary of state, would Clinton permit even the appearance of the co-mingling of foundation business with her official duties, as emails among her top staffers have already demonstrated?

And what moxie did it take for Clinton, upon leaving the State Department and biding her time before another presidential campaign, to go out and give highly paid speeches to corporate and financial interests, some totaling $250,000 for an hour or less?

Observers blame Clinton for being tone deaf. But that’s not remotely the case. She gets it, she just doesn’t care. If she looks greedy, arrogant, above the law and eager to cut corners, so be it. No matter how virulent the storm, there’s a rainbow ahead -- it’s always about the ends and never the means, or the bad press.

There is no good reason to risk tainting her presidency with the foundation’s fundraising, but the Clinton family name, the financial bottom line and a Chelsea-next political dynasty has always been knotted up in the goal of good works. The foundation’s current projects could operate independently of the Clintons by merging with another charity. As the Boston Globe wrote: “If the foundation’s donors are truly motivated by altruism, and not by the lure of access to the Clintons, then surely they can find other ways to support the foundation’s goals.”
Of course they could, but altruism is the farthest thing from the minds of virtually every foreign government and most corporate entities, not to mention oligarchs, Arab princes, and the like, who donate to obtain access and favors. It ain't altruism at all—it's corruption of the highest order.

EpiPen

An EpiPen is a device that allows a person allergic to insect stings to self-inject with epinephrine if he or she is stung by a bee or other venomous insect. The EpiPen helps the person avoid a severe or even life-threatening allergic reaction. In case you missed it, the company that makes EpiPens raised the price of the potentially life-saving device to $600. Cue the moral outrage from the likes of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Kevin Williamson is a firebrand conservative writer.In an epic rant, Williamson comments:
If we were relying on the intelligence, work ethic, creativity, entrepreneurship, scientific prowess, and far-sightedness of the members of Congress to produce treatments for allergic reactions or any other medical problem, we’d still have a million people a year dying from smallpox and preventable infections. We’d also be starving to death.

Bernie Sanders doesn’t have the first clue how an EpiPen works or what went into developing it, but he’s sure he knows what one should cost, and he’s sure who should decide — him ....

Mrs. Clinton is a bum and a crook who used the State Department as a funnel to guide the money of favor-seeking business interests at home and abroad into the Clinton Foundation, a sham charity that exists to pay six-figure salaries to Clintons (Chelsea is full-time executive there) and their courtiers.

These people are parasites. They make: nothing. They create: nothing. They produce: nothing. But they feel perfectly justified — they positively glow with moral frisson — standing between the people who create and build and the people who benefit from those creations. And they don’t just stand there: They stand there with their hands out. I don’t know how much Heather Bresch [president of the company that makes EpiPens] has in the bank, but without checking, I’ll bet you five dollars it is a good deal less than the Clintons have piled up in “public service.”

Thought experiment: Your child is dying. Who do you go to for help? Sanders? Clinton? Or one of the research scientists who made the EpiPen possible? Yes, Mylan [the manufacturer] raised the price of an EpiPen. You know who else raised the price on EpiPens? Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, that’s who, and Joe Manchin, too. You thought Obamacare meant free goodies for you paid for by wicked rich people and evil corporations, right, Sunshine? Remember that medical-device tax? An EpiPen is a medical device. You think the politicians don’t have any self-interest there?

Short of rainbows and redwoods, just about every good thing we have in this world is the result of the fact that somebody, somewhere, worked to create it. Some of those people were philanthropists, like the ones who built so many of our libraries, museums, and schools. Some were in business, like the people who are bringing you awesome electric cars and little pocket devices that have more computing power than a major research university could muster only a few decades ago.

Epinephrine is unstable, and developing a way to store and deliver it reliably isn’t easy. Others have tried and failed; some have tried and been blocked by federal regulators, who of course have only your best interests at heart. (Federal employees care about two things: serving the public and consuming vast amounts of online porn during office hours. Okay, maybe they care about one thing.) You don’t have to love the people who dream and create — that’s why you pay them.
Although Williamson may be overstating things just a bit, the thrust of his rant is on target. It's particularly galling to be lectured to by people who have never worked in the private sector for any appreciable length of time, have never started a company, have never had to deal with the uncertainties and burdens of business ownership, and (this is important) have enriched themselves at the public trough, tell private businesses what they can and cannot charge for their products. Rest assured that the poor can gain access to an EpiPen through a myriad of existing government programs, and the rest of us can pay for it, just like we pay for any other product developed by private enterprise.

One can only wonder how much less EpiPen would cost if politicians like Sanders and Clinton worked on litigation reform, regulatory reform and otherwise made it easier and safer for those who produce life-saving devices to bring them to market. But nevermind—moral outrage over rapacious capitalists is so much more rewarding.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Corrupt

You gotta give the Clinton Campaign credit—they exhibit incredible message discipline and have an awesome response team. You really do need that, given that you're trying to avoid jail time for your candidate and get her elected President of the United States instead. The campaign's approach was never more evident than its response to a devastating AP report (kudos to the AP for doing the job that real journalists are supposed to do) on The Clinton Foundation pay-to-play activities.

When questioned by the trained media hamsters on MSNBC or CNN (to name only two outlets) after the AP report was published, Clinton's people condemned the AP piece by suggesting that it was "cherry picking" and "unfair" and "highly partisan." They and their media allies argue that there is no smoking gun, as if that negates the dozens of irrefutable facts that indict the Clintons for their influence peddling (and personal enrichment) activities. They didn't mention that the AP fought for three years to get Hillary's schedules from the State Department (the department was trying to stonewall the information) and had to sue to get them. Clinton supporters noted, as did the AP, that Clinton met with a few good people who did good works, but they conveniently forgot the dozens of shady characters (many from very shady foreign regimes) who were involved in her pay-to-play scheme. ArkansasOnline provides us with only one example:
Many of those donations come from more than suspect sources--like Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch whose family led a regime notorious for its corruption and repression. He was responsible for contributing between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, lending his private plane to the Clintons and attending Bill Clinton's big 65th birthday extravaganza in Los Angeles.

Douglas Schoen used to be one of Bill Clinton's political consultants, and he set up about a dozen meetings with State Department officials with or on behalf of Mr. Pinchuk between September 2011 and November 2012.

Strange, or maybe not so strange, how the Clinton Foundation and American foreign policy kept intersecting when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Or as a Ukrainian American named Melanne Verveer, who was working for the State Department at the time, emailed Secretary Clinton: "I had breakfast with Pinchuk. He will see you at the Brookings lunch." It's all coming out in the wash, or rather in a lawsuit filed by Citizens United to get a peek at her emails.
But Clinton and her team maintain message discipline—the Clinton foundation does good charitable works (e.g., ridding Africa of AIDS). Unfortunately, the trained hamsters in the media don't follow up a statement like that by asking a simple question—"What verifiable percentage of charitable income is dedicated to those good works?" Or ... why does the Clinton Foundation have a $21 million travel budget, much of which was used for 5-star hotels and private jets?, or "Is Chelsea Clinton $600,000 plus salary plus expense account in line with the salaries provided by other charities?"

I'm not sure any of this will matter in terms of the election. Clinton is protected by a phalanx of media allies (the trained hamsters) and the pay-to-play story is complex. Unlike the AP, few media types have any inclination to dig deep on this story, for fear that they will uncover a smoking gun and then be blamed from derailing her presidential bid.

But as more and more information comes out, Hillary Clinton looks more and more corrupt.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Rigged

California is the bellwether for the blue model—big intrusive (state) government that prides itself on over regulation, over-taxation, and an overbearing countenance that suggests quite strongly that the politicians in Sacramento (the capital) know best. Of course, all of this is supposedly done with the best of intensions. As a consequence, the Golden State is losing businesses at an alarming rate, is in dire financial trouble, has created underfunded state pensions, and is otherwise typical of many states with Democratic governance.

One of the characteristics of the blue governance model is to double down on bad ideas. Instead of fixing a problem (e.g., underfunded pensions), blue politicians expand on the idea, consciously avoiding the inevitable fallout and hoping that they can kick the can down the road so that implosion will be someone else's problem.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest example of doubling down on bad pension ideas:
In 2012 Democrats in Sacramento authorized state-managed individual retirement accounts for some six million employees working in the state without access to 401(k)s or pensions. The legislation required employers with five or more workers that don’t offer retirement plans to automatically enroll employees in a new public option. Employees can opt out.

A board comprised of Democrats and their nominees—namely, union reps and attorneys—has been charged with fleshing out the program’s details, which must be approved by the legislature and Governor. The Senate green-lighted the plan in May, and the Assembly intends to vote this week.

The legislation gives the board carte blanche to design and manage the state IRAs. One of the few rules is that the employee contribution must start between 2% and 5% of wages and can only escalate by one percentage point annually up to 10%. Administrative costs after six years are capped at 1% of program assets, which is greater than the operating expenses charged by 90% of IRA equity mutual funds.

The board could invest workers’ money however it chooses, so politicians would be able to direct billions toward their favorite causes. However, the board is supposed to stick to U.S. Treasurys or “similar investments” during the first three years to prevent the plans from going belly up if markets crash. So early investors may get little return on their savings.

Taxpayers would have to cover the program’s start-up costs (putatively in the form of a general fund loan), which are pegged at $134 million. And while the legislation stipulates that the state “shall not have any liability for the payment of the retirement savings benefit,” nothing prohibits the legislature from bailing out the plans in the future. Have you ever heard of a public fund that didn’t have an implicit taxpayer guarantee?

A legislative analysis notes that “the fiscal impact of this bill is subject to considerable uncertainty.” No kidding. If more workers opt out or contribute less than the board projects, administrative costs could exceed the 1% limit. Taxpayers might have to pick up the difference.

The legislation also contemplates a “reserve fund” to smooth out market returns. This would involve the board siphoning off investment returns when markets are roaring to offset losses during other years. What could go wrong?
The short answer is "a lot." History indicates that politicians in general and Democrats in particular are notoriously bad at managing pension funds. That's not an opinion, it's a fact demonstrated by failed or failing pension funds in Puerto Rico, Connecticut, Illinois and many other blue states and cities across the country.

If, as the Democrats suggest, they have only the best interests of workers at small companies at heart, why not let a leading private sector company (e.g., Fidelity Investments or Vanguard) manage the funds. We all know the reason. That would preclude the politicians from ('legally') skimming huge sums, rewarding financial company donors with contracts, and otherwise putting the workers' money at risk, backed, of course, by the taxpayers of California. And by the way ... when the IRA fails and California whines about bankruptcy, it will be taxpayer's nationwide who are told (not asked) to bail the state out.

Yep ... the system (in California and elsewhere) really is rigged.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Squirm

Today, the pro-Clinton and pro-Democrat Washington Post reports that the FBI found 15,000 new emails that Hillary Clinton either deleted or hid. There is no indication what those emails contained, but it's unlikely that all of them were of the "personal" variety she said were deleted by her team of lawyers.

The trained hamsters of the media seem amazingly incurious about of of this. It's almost as if they don't want to break any important stories about Clinton, her corrupt and irresponsible use of her email server and her serial lies about the subject. But more on that in a moment.

Two elements of the modus operandi that the Clintons use repeatedly as they scamper from scandal to scandal is to (1) confuse the issue by (2) placing blame on someone else. Today, Clinton operatives are trying to tie Colin Powell to Hillary's use of an email server. For over a year, Clinton has made the claim that past Secretaries of State used private email. Make this claim allowed her to successfully attempt to confuse the issue and the public. Using an email account on Yahoo or Gmail is vastly different than using a private server. The reason? All emails produced on public email accounts are archived and discoverable. Not so on a private server, where information can be hidden and destroyed by the owner. It can also be easily hacked by a variety of nasty operators. Even if Colin Powell suggested the use of private email (a highly questionable claim by Clinton), he did not suggest a private server.

But back to the media's relaxed attitude about all of this.

It has been almost 300 days since Hillary Clinton has held a no-holds-barred press conference. Since she clains to be the candidate with the temperament, experience and gravitas to be president, it's rather odd that he hides from a overwhelmingly friendly press. Even if she did hold a press conference, it's likely that softball question would dominate. By maybe, just maybe, a few media outlets would choose to ask questions like these:
  • Did any email on your server make any direct or indirect reference to The Clinton Foundation?
  • Did any email that was deleted make direct or indirect reference to The Clinton Foundation?
  • Did you, or Huma Abedeen, or Cheryl Mills or any other person direct any government employee to make any accommodation for any entity or individual who donated money to The Clinton Foundation?
  • Did you, or Huma Abedeen, or Cheryl Mills or any other person direct any government employee to make any accommodation for any entity or individual who paid speaking fees to either Bill Clinton or yourself?
  • What percentage of the monies raised by The Clinton Foundation go directly to people in need—not to contractors, or go-betweens, but directly to those who need help?
  • In 2008, John McCain released a full copy of his medical records to demonstrate that he was in good health. Will you do the same, and when?
If Hillary followed her usual script during a press conference, she would lie and obfuscate, but never answer any of these questions. It would, however, be fun to watch a corrupt politician squirm.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Both Ways

As I have noted on numerous occasions, The Clinton Foundation is a scam at best and a criminally indictable scheme for influence peddling and personal enrichment (for the Clintons) at the worst. Now we see that a number of left-leaning publications and at least one Democrat politician are urging the Clintons to discontinue the Foundation should she be elected president. Chris Stirewalt comments:
There’s hubris and then there’s the Clintons.

The news is that former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea will stop raising money for the family’s foundation and that the organization would stop accepting foreign contributions if Hillary Clinton gets elected.

Think about that one for a second.

If Clinton’s critics are right and her family’s foundation was little more than a legalized form of bribing the woman who stands poised to become president of the United States, then what would the significance be of the foundation vowing to stop accepting foreign contributions if Clinton is elected?

Why a gold rush of influence buying between now and Election Day, of course! Hurry, hurry everybody, this is a last chance to get in good with the next commander in chief.

If Clinton and her supporters were right that the foundation is a unique and essential global charity that does essential work, why would one change course? Would Jonas Salk have ditched the polio vaccine because people complained about his funding? Would Marie Curie have dropped the radium just because she was getting cash from some unsavory sources?

The answer from Team Clinton would be that the ban on foreign funds and diminished role for the family would avoid the “appearance of impropriety.”

But if it appears that there might be an impropriety on Nov. 8, why not now?

The pressure is growing on Clintons on the left to unwind their massive buckraking efforts. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and the Boston Globe editorial page both added to the weight this week. Rather than swift response though, we get what has been the hallmark of Clinton’s second White House run: caution imbued with arrogance.
This is actually funny. For years, Democrats have been mum about the Clinton's enterprise. Not one questioned how the Clintons achieved a nine digit net worth with no notable source of income except speech making—it's not easy to acquire $100+ million unless ... well, unless you're running a "charity" for yourselves with willing foreign entities providing millions for quid pro quo influence. Not a single trained hamster in the media suggested that possibly The Clinton Foundation was a conflict of interest. Not one did any serious investigative reporting. Not one Democrat legislator said boo, when a book like Clinton Cash (a serious investigative report) was published with copious evidence of wrong doing. Not one supporter questioned whether a reported 90 percent administrative overhead for the Foundation was appropriate or ethical. Not one.

But now that Hillary looks like a lock for the presidency, every one of those supporters is worried that a hack, a leak, or a stray email might expose significant wrongdoing and derail her candidiacy. The solution is easy—shut the criminal enterprise down -- sooner rather than later. That will fix fifteen years of wrongdoing, won't it? The Clinton Foundation will be "old news"—after all, it's shut down -- there's no there there. It's also interesting that no one suggested shutting down the Foundation when she was appointed Secretary of State. Why was it okay for the Foundation to remain in place then, but questionable now?

There's only one problem. As Stirewalt notes, if the The Clinton Foundation is everything that Hillary's defenders say it is, why on earth would anyone want to shut it down? After all, the poor bedraggled little children that benefit from the reported 10 percent of foundation revenues that actually get to them will suffer, won't they? Hillary is either a charitable philanthropist (keep the foundation open) or a money laundering fraud (close it). Dems can't have it both ways.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Obamacare Revised

Way back in 2010 Barack Obama and his Democratic supporters established a Team of 2s and rammed Obamacare legislation (A.C.A.) through the Congress on a purely partisan vote. They did this by constructing a structurally unsound health care program on a mountain of lies:
  • costs would be reduced (false);
  • your current health care coverage would remain (false);
  • you could keep your doctor (false);
  • taxpayers would not be left holding the bag (false);
  • premiums would fall (false, except for those that are taxpayer subsidized);
  • insurers who were complicit in the law's creation would make money (false), and
  • healthy young people would support Obamacare (false).
As things began to unravel, Obama illegally (in my view) delayed implementation of certain aspects of the A.C.A. so that he and the Dems wouldn't be hurt politically.

Today, desperate to put lipstick on a pig, the Democrats claim that 10 million more people are covered by insurance than would have been without the ACA. But here's the problem—the majority are covered at taxpayer expense, making Obamacare an overly complex and unnecessary extension of existing Medicaid entitlements. Those who do pay something for their insurance have deductibles of 5, 8, or even 10 thousand dollars, making coverage for anything but a catastrophic illness an out of pocket expense.

Those of us who opposed the program from the beginning predicted that it would implode. It has. The latest insurer to drop out of the program is Aetna, who lost $430 million under Obamacare. The Wall Street Journal comments:
ObamaCare’s troubles aren’t the result of any business decision. The entire industry is caught in the law’s structural undertow. Despite subsidies, overall enrollment is flat, there’s too much monthly churn, and the exchanges aren’t attracting enough healthy people to make the economics work.

Blame the law’s architects, not Mr. Bertolini [CEO of Aetna], who must wonder what happened to the political goodwill he has tried to bank over the years. Aetna was inclined to accept the exchanges as loss leaders to support ObamaCare’s mission of universal coverage. The company led ObamaCare’s industry pep squad in 2009 and 2010.

The calculation then was that subsidies would open a new market, and consumers would be mandated to buy their products. But in the final frenzy to pass the law, Democrats decided that insurers made too much money and they imposed price controls on profit margins. Now insurers are accused of declining to throw away more money.

The ObamaCare implosion means that about a quarter of U.S. counties will have only one or two plans, and in some zero. Areas in Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas seem to be hardest hit, though the extent of the damage is still emerging.

Democrats figure they have insurers over a barrel because a Hillary Clinton Presidency is coming. She’s running on higher subsidies for beneficiaries, a taxpayer bailout for the industry, and a “public option” akin to Medicare for the middle class. In health care the solution to a problem caused by government is always more government, which will create new problems and beget more government.

Republicans have no obligation to participate. They had no hand in creating this mess and they’ve been mocked by Democrats and the media for years for warning about ObamaCare’s flaws and trying to repeal and replace the law. Assuming the GOP holds at least the House, they should insist that any “fixes”—which are fast becoming inevitable—create a rational health-care market. Democrats deserve to be held accountable for the collapse of their ideas.
Sadly, the Dems will not be held accountable for Obamacare or any of their other egregious missteps during the Obama years. The reason is simple—they are protected by their trained hamsters in the media.

One can only wonder what "Obamacares" await the country as part of a Clinton administration.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Florence Foster Jenkins

As the presidential election campaign plods onward, I've written a number of posts on the abject failure of the western elites. In the main, the elites encompass progressives in the media, senior executives in certain companies in the tech space, movers and shakers in politics, professors in academia, and of course, performers in the arts. These elites view themselves as the smartest gays in the room—sophisticated, nuanced, well-informed, witty, forward-looking, multicultural, left-leaning, and above all, contemptuous of anyone or any group who questions the rightness of their worldview. The elites in the United States are led by Barack Obama, soon to be replaced by Hillary Clinton, but there are other leaders in other places (e.g., Angela Merkel).

Richard Fernandez compares Barack Obama, the leader of the elites, to Florence Foster Jenkins—a Pennsylvania socialite of the 1920s who thought she was an accomplished singer and performer. Her only problem was that she couldn't hold a tune. She performed only among her friends who lauded her work, but never allowed real music critics to listen, lest they tell the truth about her many musical failings. Fernandez writes:
Barack Obama bids fair to be remembered as the Florence Foster Jenkins of politics. Like that socialite he can't perform his job for beans. Like that socialite his friends are covering up for him. According to a Twitter whistleblower the social media giant's CEO ordered the employees to protect Obama from hurtful Tweets. "According to a former senior Twitter employee, Costolo ordered employees to deploy an algorithm (which was built in-house by feeding it thousands of examples of abuse and harassing tweets) that would filter out abusive language directed at Obama. Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter’s public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that this decision was kept from senior company employees for fear they would object to the decision."

But the curtain has gone up and now the audience is in shock. How? How? Even the administration's supporters were left totally surprised by the trail of disasters so intense it propelled Donald Trump to a presidential nomination. Jesse Bernstein in Tablet thinks that the root cause of the blindness was insufferable smugness of the intellectual elite. Jon Stewart’s "Culture of Ridicule", Bernstein wrote, kept the best and the brightest from seeing the train wreck coming. "No single event or trend initiated the takeoff of Space Shuttle Trump. ... but there is one culprit who ... deserves his due: Jon Stewart. Let me explain. ... As Emmet Rensin so perfectly put it:
Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. … Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style … and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid.
But to anyone outside the echo chamber the joke was on Stewart and his cronies. The average person could see the invidious contrast; how easily the email accounts of 100 Democratic bigwigs could be hacked, with what contemptuous ease someone could make off with the DNC's emails, steal all the OPM records. They watched as time after time suspects "well known to the police" executed successful terror attacks in Western cities despite the assurances of the laughing men.

They saw ISIS run off with billions of dollars of foreign military aid; saw the "smartest people" in history rolled. They were regaled by the spectacle of Putin booting Obama out of the Middle East with a midget air force and a rustbucket navy. They witnessed a bunch of armed thugs torch a US consulate in Benghazi without the dying ambassador even able to make that 3 am call to Hillary Clinton. They watched Turkey wobble and Europe overrun by migrant tides.

It hit them: it was these ineffably superior people who were the jokers, the clowns whose only tangible skill was to make fun of everybody so nobody would notice that's all they were good for. In fact the only person they could stop with any probability of success and only if they ganged up on him was Donald Trump. That was it. They can't see the audience in darkness beyond the footlights heading for the exits.
Brexit was a classic example of the blindness of the elites and the viciousness with which they reacted when the vote didn't go their way. Obamacare, a creation of the elites, is imploding before our eyes. Russia and Iran have reached a tentative alliance. Syria is a nightmare and ISIS—well ... heads will role, literally. The smartest guys in the room have demonstrated through serial failures that they deserve neither respect nor allegiance.

Because the elites have been wrong on just about everything over the past decade, their current gleeful dismissal of Donald Trump (and their increasing celebration and relief as he sinks in the polls) makes one wonder whether there's something more to Trump than his idiotic comments and lack of discipline. Is it possible that the elites are frightened of unfiltered, politically incorrect truths? Is it possible that—uncontrolled immigration by people from the Arab crescent is a threat, and "extreme vetting" is in order; the political system is rigged in favor of dishonest and corrupt politicians like Hillary Clinton, who can act with impunity; the media is blatantly biased in favor of the elites' narratives; the trade deals crafted by the elites are poorly constructed, hurting rather than helping many American workers, and need to be revisited; the foreign policy of the current president (aided and abetted by Hillary Clinton) is an unmitigated disaster in almost every respect; taxes do nothing to stimulate the economy and everything to prop up the elites, and government-encouraged dependency is a scourge that keeps those in poverty in poverty.

It just might be that Donald Trump is the only nationally-recognized person willing to speak these harsh truths. He doesn't do it well, he lacks nuance and depth, he is often crude and unfocused, but if you cut through the bluster, he speaks basic truths nonetheless. Maybe that's what had the elites so worried. Maybe that's why they're so relieved by the belief that his message will die along with his campaign. But then again, maybe the message won't die, even if Trump's campaign does. Maybe the smartest guys in the room are nothing more than "the clowns whose only tangible skill was to make fun of everybody so nobody would notice that's all they were good for."

It is tragic that in the end the elites will win. We'll have a dishonest, corrupt, elitist "clown" in the White House in 2017. Or maybe it might be better to say we'll have the 21st century version of  Florence Foster Jenkins, lauded by her sychophantic supporters, protected by a biased media, and singing off-key every step of the way.

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Second Language

South Florida is one of the most diverse regions of the United States. In addition to residents from virtually every South American country, we have many residents from all over the world in numbers that might surprise. In most cases, English is their second language, and many struggle to communicate effectively. It's not that they don't try, it's just that second language skills often lead to a limited vocabulary and consequently, the inability to state ideas with any degree of subtly or nuance. For example, we have friends from Columbia. English is their second language—one that they are still learning. They communicate with no problem, but use simple nouns and verbs to express their thoughts. Their sentences are short and often lacking in the necessary detail to make their ideas fully formed. Their language gets the job done, but it lacks the sophistication to recognize when a subtle joke is offered or when irony or sarcasm is the intent.

Donald Trump speaks as if English were his second language. His admirers keep telling us he's a smart guy, yet with each passing month, it's apparent that he cannot express himself in ways that are fully-formed. In real time, he seems incapable of drawing on background facts and other information to expand on a simple thought, relying instead on ridiculous phrases like "believe me" to provide support for a simple idea. Even worse, he lacks the discipline to treat the media as an enemy who wants to draw him into a comment that, if not properly framed, will lead to days and days of negative coverage.

All of this is unfortunate, because if you can, for just a moment, work past all of the hyperventilating comments about Trump as a racist, a bigot, a mad man and the like, the core of his ideas make sense.

He has punctured political correctness, something that is well worth the effort and has endeared him to millions. The problem is that as a second language English speaker (I jest, but you get the idea), Trump is incapable of providing easy and copious criticism of those in the media, the arts, and politics who grow faint when PC is attacked.

He has rightly condemned the elites of both political parties, suggesting that they have only their own interests at heart and have no understanding of the common person. But, here again, Trump's poor English language skills force him to avoid the appropriate withering criticism of elites like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel in a way that depicts the awful damage that they have done.

He has made open-borders a legitimate topic of conversation, suggesting that it might be a good idea to strengthen border controls and stop immigration from countries with a strong Islamic terrorist presence. The problem is that rather than arguing for a qualified ban on those who want to do us harm, Trump doesn't appear to have the language to provide qualifiers and exceptions, and initially stated that "all Muslims" should be banned. That simple sentence was gleefully used by his political adversaries in the media to brand him a "racist."

Most second language speakers know when to remain quiet, since their command of English is weak. Not Trump. He can be bated into arguments with everyone from a Latino Judge, to a Muslim gold star parent, to a sitting GOP governor of New Mexico. It's not that those conversations shouldn't have happened (although a strong argument can be made for that conclusion) but rather that Trump's very limited command of the English language make his statements strident and therefore, ineffective.

Donald Trump is a blowhard and an egomaniac, but no more so than Barack Obama or for that manner, Hillary Clinton. The difference is that Obama and Clinton are smooth and have the discipline to stay tied to the narrative of the day and focused on words written for them on a teleprompter. That leads to the perception that Obama and Clinton are something they are not—caring and focused on you. On the other hand, Trump has neither the disciple nor the focus to stay on message, allowing his random ad hoc forays into language to create a perception of him as a blowhard and an egomaniac.

It's highly unlikely that Donald Trump can turn that perception around, and it's just as unlikely that he can find the discipline and focus to make the easy arguments against Hillary Clinton—the most dishonest and corrupt candidate who has ever run for the office of President. For Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is mana from heaven. For the citizens of this country, Hillary Clinton is something else entirely.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Operating in Pursuit of Ideals

The Global Elites, represented perfectly by people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have a number of signature characteristics. They worship at the alter of political correctness; their politics is always (or almost always) left of center; they embrace multiculturalism without reservation; they make unilateral decisions that have a profound affect on millions of citizens (a.k.a. common people), but are so out of touch with the common people that they have almost no feel for what is best for those same people. Their work in the private sector has been limited or non-existent, so they have no feel for the struggles of those who run businesses or the people who work in them.

A case in point is Angela Merkel, Germany's beleaguered chancellor. Peggy Noonan comments:
Recently I spoke with an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration. Last summer when Europe was engulfed with increasing waves of migrants and refugees from Muslim countries, Ms. Merkel, moving unilaterally, announced that Germany would take in an astounding 800,000. Naturally this was taken as an invitation, and more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism. From such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling—uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself, which is more charnel house than settlement house.

Ms. Merkel’s acquaintance sighed and agreed. It’s one thing to be overwhelmed by an unexpected force, quite another to invite your invaders in! But, the acquaintance said, he believed the chancellor was operating in pursuit of ideals. As the daughter of a Lutheran minister, someone who grew up in East Germany, Ms. Merkel would have natural sympathy for those who feel marginalized and displaced. Moreover she is attempting to provide a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th. The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority, will be followed by the moral triumph of open arms toward the dispossessed. That’s what’s driving it, said the acquaintance.
It seems that all elites "operate in the pursuit of ideals." That is, they (usually, but not always) have only the best of intentions. When their decisions go bad as they often do, the common man is left to shoulder the burden. A bad economy, a Muslim immigrant "invasion" throughout the EU that has resulted in dramatic increases in violence and sexual assault, not to mention a spike in public assistance (shouldered by the common man) are examples of ideals that went bad—very bad!

But no matter, the elites were "operating in pursuit of ideals."

A recent example of this is represented by media coverage of Ibtihaj Muhammed, an obscure, Hijab-wearing U.S. fencing competitor. At least one commentator suggested that Ms. Muhammed should have been the person who carried the American flag (rather than multiple gold metal winner Michael Phelps). Why? multiculturalism, of course. She was the perfect example of elites' burning desire for inclusiveness, a desire so strong that it overwhelms almost everything else, including common sense.

Ms. Muhammed played right into this image, stating:
"I’m hopeful that, in my efforts to represent our country well as an athlete — that they change the rhetoric around how people think and perceive the Muslim community.”
The media elites swooned with fawning coverage. But since Ms. Muhammed was so interested in changing "how people think and perceive the Muslim community," it's notable that in the media's lengthy coverage of her, they failed to mention that she is virulently anti-Israel and has posted a significant number of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian tweets since 2013.

Ibtihaj Muhammed is a minor story that exemplifies little except the media elite's burning desire to put halos around some who probably don't serve them, and devil's horn on others who dare to call out the elites.

Peggy Noonan expands on this thought:
Nothing in their [the elites] lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.

The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”

... The journalist Chris Caldwell reports in the Weekly Standard on Ms. Merkel’s statement a few weeks ago, in which she told Germans that history was asking them to “master the flip side, the shadow side, of all the positive effects of globalization.”

Caldwell: “This was the chancellor’s . . . way of acknowledging that various newcomers to the national household had begun to attack and kill her voters at an alarming rate.” Soon after her remarks, more horrific crimes followed, including in Munich (nine killed in a McDonald’s) Reutlingen (a knife attack) and Ansbach (a suicide bomber).
In my view, the elites who will likely control our destiny for eight more years should not operate in pursuit of "ideals" unless those ideas also dovetail with the pragmatic interests of our country (its economy, its culture, its pursuit of law and order). Far more important, the elites should consider the impact of their "ideals" (e.g., bad trade deals, open borders, the demonization of police) in the context of the common people who live in it. Finally, the elites should recognize that blatant dishonesty and corruption are corrosive to any "ideal" that they do propose, making their words hollow and their actions suspect.

Noonan continues:
From what I’ve seen of those in power throughout business and politics now, the people of your country are not your countrymen, they’re aliens whose bizarre emotions you must attempt occasionally to anticipate and manage ...

I don’t have it fully right in my mind but something big is happening here with this division between the leaders and the led. It is very much a feature of our age. But it is odd that our elites have abandoned or are abandoning the idea that they belong to a country, that they have ties that bring responsibilities, that they should feel loyalty to their people or, at the very least, a grounded respect.
We are at a tipping point. I fear that we will tip in a direction that will lead to dislocation and heartbreak. But don't worry, our leaders are operating in the pursuit of ideals.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

A Simple Question

With the help of a shameful collection of media attacks precipitated by his own stupidity, the Donald Trump 'brand' is cratering. GOP candidates in purple states are abandoning him, the "old guard" of the GOP foreign policy establishment have condemned the man, and the polls show a election gap that is widening.

As this is happening, an new set of emails have surfaced that shed additional light on the corruption that is Hillary Clinton. These emails were acquired under court order and never released by Hillary Clinton (can you say, perjury?) when they should have been (what a surprise!). The Wall Street Journal comments:
Funny how the word “email” continues to haunt Hillary Clinton even as she dismisses every new revelation as “old news.” The latest new-old news comes in the release by Judicial Watch of 44 emails from her personal server that Mrs. Clinton failed to turn over in the batch she told the State Department included everything that was work-related. The emails paint a picture of top Clinton aides at State eager to do favors for Clinton Foundation donors.

At the heart of these documents is the glaring conflict of interest that Mrs. Clinton carried into the State Department—and then spread to those around her. Only months after the Clinton Foundation agreed to ethics protocols designed to keep Mrs. Clinton’s department from mixing State with foundation business, these new emails show her two closest aides— Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills—doing the bidding of Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band.

On April 22, 2009, Mr. Band emailed Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills to say it’s “important to take care of [name redacted]. The subject line reads: “Fw: A favor.” Far from suggesting the favor was inappropriate, Ms. Abedin responded that the person was on State’s “radar,” and that “personnel has been sending him options.” Shouldn’t Americans know who this person was and why he was so important to Mr. Band?

The ties among Mrs. Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and State would become more incestuous. Two years after Mr. Band sent this email, he founded Teneo, a consulting firm. Ms. Abedin would soon draw a paycheck from Teneo at the same time she was also working for both State and the Clinton Foundation.
Yeah, I know, progressives will circle the wagons and in Stepford Wives fashion (sorry for the mixed metaphor) begin their chant about "old news" and "blah, blah, blah." The interesting thing is not a single elected Democrat of national prominence has condemned the corruption that is glaring in these new emails. Not a single truly progressive pundit has shown even 10% of the outrage that they show daily when Trump says something dumb—remember, all he does is say something dumb -- he does not do something criminally corrupt as Clinton has done. And please, spare me the "she wasn't directly involved and didn't know" mantra. It's not called the "Clinton" Foundation (a.k.a. "Clinton" Global Initiative) for nothing!. As a good Democrat once said—"the buck stops here."

We also learn that the Obama DoJ blocked an FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation a year ago. That's not surprising for an administration that has elevated soft corruption to an art form. It's also not surprising because if the investigation were conducted, a criminal indictment would be slam dunk—inconvenient to say the least.

So as the progressive world celebrates the destruction of Donald Trump, decent people might stop for a moment and ask a simple question: Is it really worth celebrating the pending election of a dishonest, corrupt, and incompetent politician who would probably be in jail if the letter after her name was (R) instead of (D)? 

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Shame

Donald Trump is a difficult guy to defend, and I won't try. He doesn't choose his words carefully, he often appears to be one question deep, he reacts to rather than ignores provocation from the peanut gallery, he gets himself in trouble—so called "self-inflicted wounds." But in fairness, he has raised political issues that need to be discussed; he has challenged conventional wisdom, and surprisingly, he has been shown to be right about his stated concerns of bad trade deals, unvetted immigration from the Middle East (think: the serious and growing problems facing a number of EU countries) and a number of other important political issues.

But that does not justify a concerted effort by the much of the media to destroy him—not just criticize, but destroy him as a candidate. Every word he utters is parsed in attempt to find the most negative interpretation. That interpretation then gets 24 hour coverage for days on end, until another negative interpretation can be found. Context is never provided, irony in comment is never considered. Literalism is the rule of the day. Every policy Trump proposes is twisted to demonstrate how it will hurt, not help, the country; every supporter is characterized as a no-nothing troglodyte. He has been compared to Hitler and Mussolini, called a racist and a bigot, and otherwise demonized in ways that are way, way over the top. In supposedly straight reporting by journalistic icons like the NYT, LAT, ABC, NBC, his positions and statements are regularly characterized "dangerous" or "insane." His mental health is brought into question. The media is, in a phrase, 'piling on.'

And to top it all, the "journalists" who cover him argue that this coverage is somehow justified. Their hatred of Trump (I think because he represents such a threat to their progressive, PC view of the world) is palpable.

Howard Kurtz comments:
... since the conventions, and fueled by his own missteps, Trump has been hit by a tsunami of negative coverage, all but swamping the reporting on Hillary Clinton. Liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald recently told Slate that “the U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president”—and, given his views, he has no problem with that.

Now comes Jim Rutenberg, in his first season as media columnist for the New York Times. He’s a good reporter and I give him credit for trying to openly grapple with this bizarre situation.

But Rutenberg is, in my view, trying to defend the indefensible:

“If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”

Yet normal standards, says Rutenberg, may not apply.

By “closer to being oppositional,” he means openly siding against Trump and thereby helping Clinton. And that’s precisely the kind of thing that erodes our already damaged credibility. If a reporter believes Trump is a threat to America, he or she should go into the opinion business, or quit the media world and work against him. You can’t maintain the fig leaf of neutral reporting and favor one side.

Rutenberg acknowledges that “balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator last year to announce his candidacy."
Whether you like him or dislike him, Trump's job is to run against Hillary Clinton—no pillar of moral virtue herself. Yet, even after being a target of an FBI investigation; even after entire books have been written on the obvious corruption of the Clinton Foundation, even after the abject failure of her foreign policy as Secretary of State, even after reasonable and troubling questions about her health (think: John McCain (R) in 2004), even after she has gone 250+ days without a formal news conference, Clinton remains untouchable and unquestioned.

The media has now gone beyond simple bias and into a whole new area. It's not so much that they are advocates for the democrat world view—that's always been the case. It's that they now feel unconstrained in their effort to destroy a candidate and therefore 'rig' an election before any vote is cast.

I'm no fan of Donald trump, but his treatment by a vicious media is very, very troubling, particularly when that same media would have plenty of fodder for being equally vicious in its coverage of Hillary Clinton.

The main stream media has dishonored itself, and no amount of self-congratulatory moral justification will change that. Shame!

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

The Committee

The overarching influence of the Left and its extreme PC worldview has overtaken common sense, historical perspective, and decency at many American colleges and universities. Roger Kimball reports:
On Aug. 1, Yale University president Peter Salovey announced that he is creating a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming. There has been a craze for renaming things on college campuses the last couple of years—a common passion in unsettled times.

In the French Revolution, leaders restarted the calendar at zero and renamed the months of the year. The Soviets renamed cities, erased the names of political enemies from the historical record, and banned scientific theories that conflicted with Marxist doctrine.

At Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, Harvard and elsewhere, students have demanded that buildings, programs and legacies be renamed to accommodate modern sensitivities. Amherst College has dropped Lord Jeffrey Amherst as its mascot because the colonial administrator was unkind to Indians. Students at the University of Missouri have petitioned to remove a statue of the “racist rapist” Thomas Jefferson. This is part of a larger effort, on and off campuses, to stamp out dissenting attitudes and rewrite history to comport with contemporary prejudices.

But isn’t the whole raison d’être of universities to break the myopia of the present and pursue the truth? Isn’t that one important reason they enjoy such lavish public support and tax breaks?

A point of contention at Yale has been the residential college named for John C. Calhoun, a congressman, senator, secretary of war and vice president. Alas, Calhoun was also an avid supporter of slavery.
Kimball goes on (with tongue planted in cheek) to suggest that the target of the talebaneque "Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming" would more appropriately be Elihu Yale after whom the entire university is named. Kimball writes:
Elihu Yale, the philanthropist whose benefactions helped found the university. As an administrator in India, he was deeply involved in the slave trade. He always made sure that ships leaving his jurisdiction for Europe carried at least 10 slaves. I propose that the committee on renaming table the issue of Calhoun College and concentrate on the far more flagrant name “Yale.”
Great idea. Maybe Yale could be renamed "Che Guevara University"—oh wait, possibly the fact that Che Guevara killed thousands would be a roadblock for the committee. How about "Abdullah Kamel University," after a Saudi Billionaire who recently donated $10 million to Yale and just happens to be a Islamist sympathizer with indirect ties to the 9/11 attack. Probably not—Yale has such a nice privileged ring to it anyway. But I digress.

It's almost as if University administrators are engaged in a mass effort at self-parody, except, they, and the full-time grievance mongers who support these efforts, are deadly serious.

A commenter on Kimball's piece, "Richard Hardin" writes:
These ignoranti (in the root sense of the verb "to ignore"), are no different from the Taliban defacing Buddhist statues. Memoria damnato is nothing more than intolerance and willful destruction of history. History is not always to ones liking, yet reminders of painful history are learning opportunities.. reminders. But not here in PC 21st century devolving America. We destroy our history and invent fables of faux history to suit our needs. Elite colleges uninvite speakers who do not share their partisan political bias, demonize those who dissent. Debate is not tolerated let alone encouraged. Racial and gender bias are the rule of law. The Brownshirts are loose and they claim to be here to help the less wealthy and less healthy. They are "smarter" than us, can see all the dots and connect none.
It would be enlightening to ask Hillary Clinton, a graduate of Yale, what she thinks about all of this, but of course, her trained hamsters in the media would never broach a subject that might put her at odds with her leftist base. Then again, Hillary might wholeheartedly endorse the "Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming". In fact. she might adopt it at a federal level so that she could change the name of the Department of State to the Clinton Conduit. Has a nice ring to it.

Monday, August 08, 2016

Junior Varsity

Nicholas Kristof, a writer for The New York Times occasionally makes a salient point when he writes about foreign policy, but during this election season, he is fully representative of a "journalist/pundit" who projects an aura of objectivity, but is actually is one of the Democrat's trained hamsters. In his column today, Kristof writes:
ONE persistent narrative in American politics is that Hillary Clinton is a slippery, compulsive liar while Donald Trump is a gutsy truth-teller.

Over all, the latest CBS News poll finds the public similarly repulsed by each candidate: 34 percent of registered voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy compared with 36 percent for Trump.

Yet the idea that they are even in the same league is preposterous. If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.
"Preposterous," huh?

For the remainder of his column, Kristof provides examples of Donald's lies, exaggerations, and bloviation (he does all of that, for sure) about his life and times as a private citizen and entrepreneur, and argues that these should cause far more alarm than Clinton's outright deception and criminal activity while she was a paid employee of the U.S. Government. That is patent nonsense, but Kristof is a big-time NYT commentator so I guess we just have to take his word for it. Wrong!

Kristof goes through a litany of meaningless comparisons, suggesting that Clinton's blatant, serial lies are (to borrow a descriptive term from Barack Obama) "junior varsity mendacity." Laughably, Kristoff appears to be too thick to recognize that critics like me are going to say, 'Yeah, just like ISIS was a Junior Varsity threat.'

It's telling that in his piece, Kristof doesn't even mention the Clinton Foundation (a.k.a. Clinton Global Initiative), not once, not even by indirect reference. He appears to have adopted the willful blindness of all of the media's trained hamsters (along with almost every Democrat*) who have chosen to ignore a "charity" founded by the Clinton's—a "charity" that donates relatively little to those in need (estimates posit about 10 percent of all revenue acquired). Instead, the Clinton Foundation has been a vehicle to enrich the Clintons over the past 15 years (Clinton's net worth went from zero to over $100 million during those 15 years, and she held no job nor did she make any investments that would generate that kind of wealth). This "charity" is really nothing more than a combination money laundering scheme and bribery or influence peddling vehicle that allowed a broad array of foreign entities (that are often inimical to the interests of the United States) to transfer large sums of money to the Clintons ($500K+ speaking fees are not normal) in return for favorable treatment by the State Department).

In his righteous indignation about Trump's erroneous statement that Muslim's celebrated 9-11 in New Jersey (after all, there we no Muslim's anywhere in the world who celebrated 9-11, were there?) Kristof thinks he's on to something. When he suggests that the evidence is "unclear" about Hillary's serial lies about the cause of the Benghazi terror attack or her blatant lies about her email server, Kristof thinks he's has demonstrated that her dishonesty is small potatos. Fair enough.

But when hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into an organization formed by Hillary Clinton, managed by Clinton, and her husband, and that the foreign entities who transferred the money to Clinton then received special or friendly treatment, you'd think moral crusaders like Kristof who really, really value the truth might have an interest. No chance.

The trained hamsters, along with Kristof, outright refuse to investigate, ask probing questions or otherwise expose any wrongdoing associated with the Clinton Foundation. The hamsters refuse to interview the Haitians who claim that they received little of the millions donated for use in their earthquake ravaged country, interview Peter Schweizer, the author of the NYT bestselling book, Clinton Cash, who meticulously recounts dozens of cases of criminal corruption and influence peddling (with sources and footnotes), refuse to look into the multiple cases in which donations were followed by favorable treatment that in many cases was not in this country's best interest, and refuse to look into the connections between the Foundation and the now-hated Russians.

Until and unless the hamsters of main stream media along with pundits like Kristof spend a little time looking into the Clinton Foundation their moral indignation about Trump is laughable.

There's a lot not to like about Donald Trump, but by comparison with the criminal wrongdoing that is exemplified by the Clinton Foundation, the Donald is the one who is on the "junior varsity."

---------------------
* An aside: It would seem that the establishment of a worldwide charity, one that helps the downtrodden and "does good" would be a source of pride for Clinton and the Democrats. It's odd, therefore, that the Clinton Foundation wasn't mentioned by Hillary or any other Democrat speaker during the DNC and has been placed in witness protection by the Dems throughout the campaign. I wonder why that is—they should be very, very proud of the Clinton's charitable works, shouldn't they? Unless, of course, they have something to hide.

Saturday, August 06, 2016

Propaganda

I just finished reading The Boys in the Boat—the true story of nine young Americans who won Olympic Gold at the 1936 games in Nazi Germany. The story focuses on the life and times of the men on the University of Washington rowing crew, but it's also a snapshot of pre-war Germany. In the book, the author, Daniel James Brown, writes:
"Joseph Goebbels [the Nazi propagandist] had artfully accomplished what all good propagandists must, convincing the world that their version of reality was reasonable and their opponents’ version biased ... making all of them seem shrill, hysterical, and misinformed."
But what is propaganda? It's lie conceived by national leadership, honed by their underlings, promoted first by their loyal followers and then spread by a complicit media. It is consumed by a public that is often ignorant of the true facts. Propaganda becomes reality if it is not challenged. The most dangerous propaganda is that which remains unchallenged.

That quote got me to thinking. In a way, what we have seen happening during the Obama years is a form of propaganda. It's reasonable to assert that what we've experienced is a collection of lies conceived by national leadership, honed by their underlings, promoted first by their loyal followers and then spread by a complicit media. It is consumed by a public that is often ignorant of the true facts. I have in many other posts considered many of those lies, so I won't revisit them here.

But it might be worth noting something else. Other Democrats are learning that when they are faced with an unpleasant situation that causes many to question their honesty, integrity or competence, the answer is to double down on the lie, and if that fails to double down again.

Over the past few weeks, the American public has witnessed three lies offered by prominent Democrats. The first lie was offered by Hillary Clinton when she suggested that she had been truthful in her statements about her email server and the subsequent release of classified information. The second lie was promoted by Barack Obama when he argued that ransom money paid to the Iranians in return for a hostages was a repayment of seized monies (in unmarked, multiple currencies, delivered at night in an unmarked plane, while the hostages sat on the ground and waited for the plane with the cash to land). The third lie was offered by past DNC chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz who suggested that she had not been booed by her own delegation subsequent to the release of hacked emails. In each case the lie was hilariously false, but it's representative of the kind of propaganda that Daniel James Brown wrote about.

Implementing a propaganda strategy is an insult to the citizens of the United States and a political travesty, but the Democrats don't seem to care.

Now, it is true that politicians -- both Republican and Democrat --spin facts in their favor. But not every politician lies blatantly in the face of irrefutable evidence.—except, it appears, a new generation of Democrat politicians who now believe that they can get away with it -- and they do!

No matter what evidence is offered, no matter what documents appear, no matter who testifies, this new strategy is simple -- lie, and then lie some more. Democrats can do this because compliant train hamsters in the media refuse to probe, ask pertinent and hard questions, and otherwise uncover the truth.

It's very likely that the Democrats will win the presidency. It's also very likely that Hillary Clinton—someone who has and will continue to play fast and loose with the truth—will continue this strategy for the next four or eight years.

Like corruption (something that Hillary Clinton knows a fair amount about), cynical disregard for the truth is corrosive to our country and the rule of law. It fosters disrespect for our leaders, insults the intelligence of the citizenry, and creates a level of cynicism that makes good leadership very difficult.

Much will be written about the Obama legacy. Part of the legacy is a strategy of lies that is far too close to outright propaganda. It's a legacy that will be carried forward by the next Democrat president, if the current direction of this election holds to form.


Friday, August 05, 2016

Bump Her

I spent the past few days in my original home state of Connecticut. CT is a blue state—very blue, and I was traveling near the University of Connecticut (my alma mater) in what can only be characterized as a college town—by definition, very, very blue.

Yet, I noticed something strange. As I drove the roads around UConn and in the small towns that are nearby, I saw lots of Volvos, VWs, Subarus, Mazdas and Nissans along with a few upscale BMWs and Audis. Not one had a Hillary bumper sticker—not one.

Interesting. Isn't it?

Thursday, August 04, 2016

The Truth

Anti-Trump forces are in their glory, suggesting that after a few weeks of self-inflicted wounds, Trump's campaign is in shambles, his poll numbers are dropping, and his negatives are on the rise. They chortle that the presidential race is already lost and that Hillary Clinton will be elected in a landslide.

Okay. Let's assume all of that is true. Might it therefore be time to take the focus off Trump—a loser according to the media, the Clintonistas, and every progressive, and focus a little attention on Hillary Clinton. I don't mean her tedious rants that tell us that Donald Trump is unfit to be president, but rather what her past history has been and what she'd likely do when elected.

But that won't happen, because the trained hamsters in the media refuse to look at HRC's history—a long and disturbing trail of lies, corruption. and incompetence. They instead point us to her campaign website, where policy statements abound. There's only one problem. Since Clinton is a proven liar (again, and again, and again) why on earth should anyone believe a single thing that's written there.

Elizabeth Harrington
takes a look at a few policy proposals:
Hillary Clinton comes up $2.2 trillion short in paying for her policy agenda, despite hiking taxes by $1.3 trillion, according to a new analysis of the Democratic nominee’s campaign platform.

The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute, released a report Thursday finding Clinton’s domestic agenda would “have a dramatic effect on the federal budget.”

Gordon Gray, American Action Forum’s director of fiscal policy, based the report on estimates of policy proposals from the Clinton campaign itself, as well as independent analyses from the Tax Policy Center and the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Gray found Clinton’s policies for expanding government’s role in family leave and student loans would contribute significantly to the deficit, and in turn a growing national debt that stands at $19.358 trillion.

In fact, the amount of debt held by the public alone would reach $25.825 trillion in 2026 under Clinton’s plan. The amount of debt held by the public today is $13.968 trillion.

“Based on these estimates, Secretary Clinton’s proposals would, on net and over a ten-year period (2017-2026), increase revenues by $1.3 trillion, increase outlays by $3.5 trillion, for a combined deficit effect of nearly $2.2 trillion over the next decade,” Gray wrote.

The report notes that Clinton’s proposals would also increase deficits to 5.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product, and the debt held by the public to 93.4 percent of GDP, “well above the current law projection of 85.6 percent.”
But maybe Hillary is lying to her progressive base. Maybe she'll reduce the annual deficit and the national debt; maybe she'll lower taxes and use that to stimulate economic growth; maybe she'll not implement corrupt crony capitalist policy that will enrich her friends and contributors and impoverish the average taxpayer.

Nah. Her existing policy statements may be the only instance in recent memory where HRC is telling the truth.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Doubling Down on Dumb

With every passing day, it appears that Donald Trump is doing everything possible to alienate undecided voters and lose to Hillary Clinton. Whether it's his verbal battle with the Khans (a Muslim gold star family); his less than respectful acceptance of a purple heart from a Viet Nam vet supporter; his off-topic rant about fire marshalls; his lack of support for nationally recognized GOP candidates, or his less-than-thoughtful comments about sexual harassment in the workplace, Trump is doubling down on dumb.

Even if he were a near perfect candidate (he isn't) he would have an uphill battle to defeat Clinton. It's not that she's an impressive candidate—she isn't. Her dishonesty, corruption and incompetence would make her an easy target with someone less 'dumb.' But Clinton has the media, now in full gotcha-attack mode against Trump, who makes it far to easy for the media to do just that. The Democrats have forced lax voter ID laws meaning that votes in the inner cities will be rife with fraud. And of course, the fractured GOP will dilute the vote. It's almost as if Trump wants to lose.

Trump's doubling down on dumb has given rise to much moral preening among Hillary Clinton supporters, the media (but I repeat myself), and the political commentariat. The consensus is that Trump's serial tweets are prima facie evidence of a lack of discipline, a lack of control, a thin skin, and a lack of judgement. All of that may be true, but the moral preening part is laughable.

The reason? Hillary Clinton is worse. GOP commentator Ben Shapiro breaks it down for Democrats who think Clinton is a better choice:
1. Hillary Is Worse Than Trump. Over the weekend, one major political candidate earned a four-Pinocchio rating from The Washington Post. That same candidate slurred Gold Star families as liars. That candidate was Hillary Clinton, who appeared on national television to explain that FBI Director James Comey had fully cleared her – he had even said she was honest! This, of course, was false. Then Hillary went on to claim that Benghazi Gold Star families must have misremembered her comments to them about a YouTube video being responsible for their children’s deaths. Hillary can complain all she wants about Trump’s connections with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, but she’s the one who handed him a reset button, then cut a nuclear deal that allowed the Russians into our uranium mines. For every Trump sin, there’s one just as bad in Hillary’s closet – and usually worse, since she was a government actor at the time.

2. Trump Is Our Black Swan. You Guys Wanted Hillary. Donald Trump, as everybody knows, was a black swan, once-in-a-century aberration. Republicans never expected him to do well, let alone win the nomination. As soon as it became clear that Trump would have a serious shot at the nomination, many [establishment] Republicans announced they would never back him. Today, many Republicans who will back him do so out of the simple calculus that he’s superior to Hillary, not because they like him. The same is not true for Hillary Clinton. Not only do Democrats want Hillary to be president, the Democratic National Committee worked arduously to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination. The media have played fast and loose with Hillary, denying her evils and pushing her all the way to her “historic” nomination. Before you start gloating about Republican moral failures, take a look in the mirror: you begged for Hillary. Most Republicans tried to stop Trump.

3. You Guys Are Still Backing Hillary. There are many Republicans who won’t vote for Trump (including me). Even the ones who will are out condemning Trump today. Where, exactly, are the Democrats condemning Hillary’s corruption? Where is the #NeverHillary movement from the left? Why do leftists get to claim moral superiority for ardently supporting a worse candidate? In a normal world, they wouldn’t. But they can, because the media have been propping up a cackling, corrupt old crone for two decades. And they won’t stop now.
It's Shapiro's second and third points that might be the most compelling. Many in the GOP establishment have criticized Trump with extremely harsh language, condemning his stupid tweets, his lack of depth, and his otherwise crude behavior. But who among the Democrat establishment has criticized Clinton? Who has condemned her serial lies, the continuous whiff of corruption that has followed her throughout her career and during her tenure at the State Department, her failures as Secretary of State? The answer—not a one.

You might characterize that as impressive party loyalty and discipline, and you'd be partially correct. I'd characterize it as willful blindness and the tacit acceptance of dishonesty, corruption, and incompetence in the Democratic party's lust for power at all costs.

So please, Dems, spare those of us in the center from your moral preening. Your candidate is at least as bad as Donald Trump and arguably worse. It's just that she, unlike Trump, doubles down on her lies, but doesn't double down on dumb.

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

50 Times

Any semblance of media neutrality or objectivity disappeared with the 2008 nomination of Barack Obama. In that year's election and in every year since, the media is unashamed to act as the praetorian guard for the Left and the Democrats. No scandal has been too big to bury on the back pages; no administration failure has been too significant to ignore; no domestic or foreign-policy debacle has been too catastrophic to whitewash. At the same time, the GOP has been denounced as "obstructionist" "racist," "bigoted," and or "misogynist." In the words of Marco Rubio, the mainstream media has become a "Democrat SuperPac," always there to protect the Democrats and whenever possible, demonize the GOP. With this as background, we come to the Khan case.

The parents of a slain military hero speak at the Democratic National Convention and lambast Donald Trump for his stance on Muslim immigration. No matter that Trump has been publicly against the war in which Captain Khan died (while Hillary Clinton supported it), no matter that the Captain Khan's death had nothing to do with the current immigration threat from the middle east, no matter that Europe is currently experiencing that thread in real terms. The media lionized the Khans and gave them a national platform from which they demonized Trump. For example, the Khan's story appeared on the front page of The New York Times, above the fold.

Cut to the GOP convention. A gold star mother, Pat Smith, of one of two families who lost sons who heroically defended other State Department personnel in the Benghazi terror attack asserted the Hillary Clinton lied to their faces when she stated that the attack was the result of an anti-Muslim video. She did this after sending emails to others indicating that the attack was all about terror, not about a video. Clinton lied because she was reinforcing an Obama administration narrative (during an election year) that terror was on the wain. She compounded her mendacity by suggesting that the families were confused or grief stricken and didn't hear what she really said. The media did what it always does—it ignored the Benghazi families, bought into Hillary's lies, and didn't ask hard questions about the Benghazi story. No surprise.

The Khans have received 50 times the media coverage (measured in minutes) than Pat Smith. 50 times! Both represent gold star families, both lost sons, but only one is pro-Democrat. Hmmm.


There's no left-wing media bias, is there?

There was a time when an independent media acted as an important check on government wrong-doing, mendacity, and incompetence. Today, the media is no longer independent, no longer asks hard questions when those question need to be asked of Democrats, no longer rejects a political narrative in favor of the truth when the truth might hurt a Democrat, no longer investigates scandals when those scandals happen under Democrat governance, no longer does its job. As much as progressives celebrate the coming dominance of the left and the Dems, enabled by a media that acts as their shill, they really ought to be careful what they wish for. Unchecked political power (left or right) never has a good outcome.