Will an after school Satan Club be coming to your child's elementary school?

Katherine Stewart has a rather comprehensive (and favorable) look in the Washington Post at the Satanic Temple's plans.

Khizr Muazzam Khan is a Muslim Brotherhood agent

Bookworm writes,

Even if America doesn’t want war, Islam does, leaving America with two options: fighting the war or preemptively surrendering. The Democrats wish to do the latter, but they don’t want the American people to know, so they engage in the endless “religion of peace” charade. Trump wishes to do the former, and I’m with him on that point, primarily because I don’t want to be beheaded, stabbed, crucified, shot, blown up, burned alive, drowned, tossed from a building, torn apart, crushed, electrocuted, or anything else that the degraded jihadist imagination comes up with when it comes to destroying civilians.

Read more here.

Theodore Shoebat and Walid Shoebat add,

The Muslim who attacked Donald Trump, Khizr Muazzam Khan, is a Muslim Brotherhood agent, working to bring Muslims into the United States. After reading what we discovered so far, it becomes obvious that Khan wanted to ‘trump’ Trump’s Muslim immigration. But not so fast. Trump we have your back.

Khizr Muazzam Khan graduated in Punjab University Law College, as the New York Times confirms. and he specialized in International Trade Law in Saudi Arabia. An interest lawyer for Islamic oil companies Khan wrote a paper, called In Defense of OPEC to defend the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an intergovernmental oil company consisting of mainly Islamic countries. Khan is a promoter of Islamic Sharia Law.

Khan’s fascination with Islamic Sharia stems from his life in Saudi Arabia. During the eighties Khan wrote a paper titled Juristic Classification of Islamic [Sharia] Law. In it he elucidated on the system of Sharia law expressing his reverence for “The Sunnah [the works of Muhammad] — authentic tradition of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him).”

Read more here.

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water

Here's Paul Simon singing off key at the Democrat Convention as the hypnotized crowd sways back and forth.


Here is Art Garfunkel flawlessly singing the same song before Simon became one of the Democrat elites.

Taking the Clinton narrative

"He's not distracted. You are focusing on the wrong thing," Paul Manafort tells Chuck Todd. "The issues are in front of you; you are just taking the Clinton narrative!"

The impact of automation and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Image by Danomyte, via Shutterstock

Alan Boyle writes at Geek Wire about job automation,

“Job losses due to automation and robotics are often overlooked in discussions about the unexpected rise of outside political candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders,” Moshe Vardi, an expert on artificial intelligence at Rice University, said before this month’s conventions.

Vardi pointed out that manufacturing employment has been falling for more than 30 years, and yet U.S. manufacturing output is near its all-time high.

“U.S. factories are not disappearing: They simply aren’t employing human workers,” Vardi said.


Historically, employment in routine jobs has bounced back after recessions. But the past three recessions and recoveries have shown significant declines in routine jobs, which makes for “jobless recoveries.” (Credit: Jaimovich and Siu, 2015, via Artificial Intelligence Now)

...even if the next generation is in for a work-free utopia rather than a robo-apocalypse, it’s high time for policymakers and programmers to address how the automation revolution can work for us – instead of against us.

Read more here.

Drowning out the truth about cities Democrats have run into the ground

Dan O'Donnell writes an exhaustive piece about how black lives have fared in cities run by Democrats. The piece is filled with relevant facts, and ends this way:

By every conceivable metric, black lives are worse off in Democrat-controlled cities.

Murder rates are higher, violent crime rates are higher, poverty rates are higher, child poverty rates are higher, black unemployment rates are higher, schools are worse, and populations are more segregated. Black lives are even more likely to be lost in police shootings in Democrat-controlled cities.

Yet politicizing police shootings is how the Democratic Party tells the nation that black lives matter, joining a chorus of misinformation that drowns out the truth about the cities that they have run into the ground: If black lives really mattered in those cities, then why haven’t black lives improved in the decades that Democrats have controlled them?

Read more here.

He did it! No parachute!

He accomplished this stunning feat yesterday.

What does it mean to be a parent?

Alison Gopnik writes in the Wall Street Journal,

Let’s recall that “parent” is not actually a verb, nor is it a form of work. What we need to talk about instead is “being a parent”—that is, caring for a child. To be a parent is to be part of a profound and unique human relationship, to engage in a particular kind of love, not to make a certain sort of thing.

After all, to be a wife is not to engage in “wifing,” to be a friend is not to “friend,” even on Facebook, and we don’t “child” our mothers and fathers. Yet these relationships are central to who we are. Any human being living a fully satisfied life is immersed in such social connections.

The most important rewards of being a parent aren’t your children’s grades and trophies—or even their graduations and weddings. They come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.

...Instead of valuing “parenting,” we should value “being a parent.” Instead of thinking about caring for children as a kind of work, aimed at producing smart or happy or successful adults, we should think of it as a kind of love. Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. Love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny but to help them shape their own.

What should parents do? The scientific picture fits what we all know already, although knowing doesn’t make it any easier: We unconditionally commit to love and care for this particular child. We do this even though all children are different, all parents are different, and we have no idea beforehand what our child will be like. We try to give our children a strong sense of safety and stability. We do this even though the whole point of that safe base is to encourage children to take risks and have adventures. And we try to pass on our knowledge, wisdom and values to our children, even though we know that they will revise that knowledge, challenge that wisdom and reshape those values.

In fact, the very point of commitment, nurture and culture is to allow variation, risk and innovation. Even if we could precisely shape our children into particular adults, that would defeat the whole evolutionary purpose of childhood.

Perhaps the best metaphor for understanding our distinctive relationship to children is an old one. Caring for children is like tending a garden, and being a parent is like being a gardener. When we garden, we work and sweat and we’re often up to our ears in manure. We do it to create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish.

As all gardeners know, nothing works out the way we planned. The greatest pleasures and triumphs, as well as disasters, are unexpected. There is a deeper reason behind this.

A good garden, like any good ecosystem, is dynamic, variable and resilient. Consider what it takes to create a meadow or a hedgerow or a cottage garden. The glory of a meadow is its messiness: The different grasses and flowers may flourish or perish as circumstances alter, and there is no guarantee that any individual plant will become the tallest, or fairest or most long-blooming. The good gardener works to create fertile soil that can sustain a whole ecosystem of different plants with different strengths and beauties—and with different weaknesses and difficulties, too.

Unlike a good chair, a good garden is constantly changing, as it adapts to the changing circumstances of the weather and the seasons. And in the long run, that kind of varied, flexible, complex, dynamic system will be more robust and adaptable than the most carefully tended hothouse bloom.

As individual parents and as a community, our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it is to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows. Our job is not to make a particular kind of child but to provide a protected space of love, safety and stability in which children of many unpredictable kinds can flourish.

Read more here.

Debunker gets debunked

At Instapundit Glenn Reynolds points out that websites that debunk alleged facts are actually often bunk themselves. Case in point:

Snopes Caught Lying About Lack Of American Flags At Democratic Convention

Read about it at The Daily Caller.

Which of the following terms do you feel best describes your gender?

Woman: A person born as a female, and who identifies as female.

Man: A person born as a male, and who identifies as a male.

Transgender Man: A person who was assigned female at birth, but now identifies as a man. Some trans people choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Others prefer not to, but still identify as a different gender.

Transgender Woman: A person who was assigned male at birth, but who identifies as a woman. As above, some trans people choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Others prefer not to, but still identify as a different gender.

Trans person: This can mean transsexual or transgender. A transsexual is a person who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex.

Trans Man: A trans man is someone who was assigned female at birth, but now identifies as a man.

Trans Woman: A person who was assigned male at birth, but who identifies as a woman

Female to Male: This term is often abbreviated to ‘FTM’ and refers to a transsexual or a transgender man.

Male to Female: This term is often abbreviated to ‘FTM’ and refers to a transsexual or a transgender female.

Transsexual: A person who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex. Transsexuals are people who transition from one sex to another, usually through dress, hormone therapy, etc.

Cisgender: A person who identifies with the gender of which they were born. For example, if someone is born as a female and identifies as a woman.

Cis Female: Cis is short for cisgender. So a cisgender female is a female who identifies as a woman.
Cis Male: Cis is short for cisgender. A cisgender male is a male who identifies as a man.

Gender Non-Conforming: A person who does not identify with either the male of female genders.

None Gender: A person who does not identify with any gender in particular.

Non-Binary: A person who does not identify entirely with either the female or male genders. They may identify somewhere on a spectrum.

Neutrois: Neutrois is a non-binary gender identity which is considered to be a neutral or null gender.

Genderfluid: A person who does not identify entirely with either the female or male genders.

Genderqueer: An overarching term used to describe people who do not identify exclusively as either male or female.

Demigender: This term, (demi means half) is an umbrella term for nonbinary gender identities that have a partial connection to a certain gender.

Demigirl: A person (can also be called a demiwoman or a demifemale) who identifies partially with being a woman or has feminine characteristics. They may have been assigned female as birth, but they could also have been born as a male.

Demiboy: A person (can also be called a demiman or demimale) who identifies partially with being a man or masculine characteristics. They may have been assigned male at birth, but they could also have been born as a female.

Agender: This literally means ‘without gender’, so a person who doesn’t identify with any gender.

Intergender: Intergender people have a gender identity that is in the middle between the binary genders of female and male, and may be a mix of both.

Intersex: A person who is born with the reproductive anatomy of both a man and a woman. For example, they might appear to be female on the outside, but have mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. These people were previously referred to as hermaphrodites, but that term is considered rude and outdated.

Pangender: A person who identifies as more than one gender.

Poligender: Translates to ‘many genders’. A person who identifies as more than one gender.

Omnigender: Translates to ‘all genders’. A person who identifies as more than one gender.

Bigender: Translates to ‘two genders’. A person who identifies as both male and female genders. Some bigender people have two distinct male and female personas.

Androgyne: A person who doesn’t identify with either gender. They are both feminine and masculine.
Androgyny: The combination of masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny can apply to many things - someone’s gender identity, sexual identity, and even fashion.

Third Gender: People who identify as neither a man nor a woman. Some cultures refer to some of their people by a third gender.

For example, in Samoafa’afafines are male at birth, but if a family had more boys than girls and needed more women to help with housework, they male children would be raised as a fa’afafine.

Trigender: Translates to three genders. A person who shifts between the male, female and third genders.

h/t Rebecca Sullivan
news.com.au

Wake me when she's done

If she were a NASCAR driver

Bias? Nah!

CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Gloria Barger celebrate the nomination of Hillary Clinton.

Dick Morris says Bill left out a few things

Go here to see a few things left out in his ode to Hillary this week.

What's that spot on her tongue?

h/t Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse

An enormous persuasion mistake

Ann Althouse is

extremely interested in the way equality/inclusiveness/diversity is supposed to substitute for actually doing well and becoming prosperous.

Read more here.

Scott Adams adds,

...if you’re an undecided voter, and male, you’re seeing something different. You’re seeing a celebration that your role in society is permanently diminished.

...As Michelle Obama said, we now take for granted that a woman can be president. That sale is made. But Clinton keeps selling. And that’s an enormous persuasion mistake.

...Based on what I know about the human body, and the way our thoughts regulate our hormones, the Democratic National Convention is probably lowering testosterone levels all over the country. Literally, not figuratively. And since testosterone is a feel-good chemical for men, I think the Democratic convention is making men feel less happy. They might not know why they feel less happy, but they will start to associate the low feeling with whatever they are looking at when it happens, i.e. Clinton.

Read more here.

Concealed carry saves an officer's life in Ohio

Bob Owens reports at Bearing Arms,

A concealed carrier in Ohio has been presented with the Citizen’s Award of Valor for stepping in with a drawn handgun to stop a meth abuser who was fighting a Mount Vernon officer for control of the officer’s gun.

Read more here.

What happens when children ingest marijuana edibles?

Although we Coloradans love our sunny days, Daniel Greenfield notes at Front Page Magazine,

Life isn't altogether sunny in the legal pot utopia. The usual victims of adults behaving irresponsibly are unsurprisingly children. And this entire issue is summed up as adults behaving irresponsibly.

“Here at Children’s Hospital Colorado we saw an increase from one child we saw in the emergency department in 2009 to 16 in 2015,” said Dr. G. Sam Wang, the lead author of the study, in a press release. “And at the regional poison center, we had nine calls for kids between [ages] zero and nine in 2009 increase fivefold to 47 in 2015.”

Dr. Wang said that the majority of the cases happened at home, with the children later presenting symptoms of “lethargy” and “sleepiness.” Some cases were more serious, he added, requiring tracheal intubation to treat coma or respiratory depression...

Two more findings shore up this hypothesis: Not only did Colorado’s increase in marijuana-related calls for young children outpace such increases in the rest of the country, but nearly half of the cases after legalization involved recreational rather than medical marijuana.

A new study shows marijuana poisoning in young children has risen 150 percent in Colorado since the substance was legalized in 2014... According to the study published by the JAMA Pediatrics Journal Monday, the mean rate of marijuana poisoning increased at Children’s Hospital in Denver from 1.2 per 100,000 two years before legalization to 2.3 per 100,000 after legalization.

The majority of those cases involved children who had ingested marijuana edibles.

Dr. Sharon Levy, director of the adolescent substance abuse program at Boston Children’s Hospital, said excessive marijuana exposure can cause psychotic episodes for both children and adults.

The long-term effects for young kids are unknown.

“They could have acute psychotic reactions, which is why they would need to be admitted to intensive care units in some cases,” she said. “They have a change of mental status and become very lethargic.”

She put him to sleep

Tim Kaine checks on snoozing Bill at the twelve second mark.

"I'm trying to show that it can be done!"

He's made 18,000 parachute jumps, helped train some of the world's most elite skydivers, done some of the stunts for "Ironman 3." But the plunge Luke Aikins knows he'll be remembered for is the one he's making without a parachute. Or a wingsuit.

Or anything, really, other than the clothes he'll be wearing when he jumps out of an airplane at 25,000 feet this weekend, attempting to become the first person to land safely on the ground in a net.

The Fox network will broadcast the two-minute jump live at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT) Saturday as part of an hour-long TV special called "Heaven Sent".
Read more here.

Nixon in a pantsuit

At National Review Jonah Goldberg writes,

Barack Obama was a blank slate for most Americans, so his status as the first black nominee and president was inextricably part of his identity. Hillary Clinton is a known quantity. She’s Nixon in a pantsuit. She’s been a tedious, grating, cynical, corrupt presence in our lives for nearly three decades.

Who wants to accept that after a lifetime of public exposure people have concluded they just don’t like you or trust you?

Read more here.

Promise me you'll laugh and sing and dance a bit today

At A Holy Experience Ann Voskamp asks,

Do we ever really know which mark we make — that will matter the most? The extraordinary things happen nowhere else but in the everyday and today can always be the beginning:

...we don’t know when and how we are leaving the greatest marks on the world. It all matters.

...Just For Today — take these words, words of Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary-General of the United Nations, words that you can take to the bank, take to eternity: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.”

...The most exquisite marks anyone makes with their life — are the marks done in secret. The mark that no one — but One — will ever see.

And tell yourself this when you feel forgotten and invisible and unimportant: So the celebrities get their celebration here.

But the wise are the hidden who hold out for heaven — and the applause that comes from God.

...Dear Self, tuck this away to read again whenever you need to know it again — and promise me, you’ll laugh and sing and dance a bit today?

Pathological altruism

Ed West writes at Lapidomedia,

...as Christianity has declined in Europe, its ideas have lived on and sort of mutated into the social justice religion which still derives much of its logic from the old faith.

The transgender cause, for instance, partly rests on the idea we each have a ‘soul’, rather than just biological mechanisms.

...Anti-racism has at its heart St Paul’s idea that we are all united in Christ, whatever our ethnic group, and the anti-racist story, epitomised by Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, would not have been possible without Christianity.

This universalism is what makes European Christian countries so nice to live in, but the downside is what is called ‘pathological altruism’; that is, altruism that harms the interests of one’s own group and favours people who might not reciprocate. This did not matter while the simple fact of geography kept different parts of the world distant, and when newcomers were expected to conform, but in the jet age – and especially the smart phone age – it presents a serious weakness.

The downside of Christian universalism is that it invites settlement from people who are themselves clannish and divide the world into an in-group and out-group, often between the believers and non-believers.

And for all the sympathy one might feel for the migrants as individuals, there is no way such large-scale movement of clannish people into decadent societies will not cause social unrest.

Importing significant numbers of people from outside Europe is clearly not in our continent’s interests, yet it is hard to make the moral argument because of the logic that we should not discriminate against the outsider, something ingrained in us by Christianity.

In some ways this is a misreading of the faith, for Christianity is about voluntary altruism, whereas forcing one’s poorer countrymen to make the sacrifices (and it would inevitably fall on the poor, whose neighbourhoods would be home to the refugees), is not.

But that is a complex argument to make, and it is one that no bishop does.

In fact the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have long campaigned for more immigration to Britain, despite the evidence that it reduces social solidarity and harms the poor they are supposed to champion; the Catholic Church even campaigned for an immigration amnesty, even though similar schemes in Spain and the United States led to a huge increase in subsequent migration.

...It is sad and strange that the country that almost destroyed Europe with pathological nationalism now threatens it with pathological altruism; but one cannot ignore the role that Christianity and the churches have played in this debacle.

Read more here.

"If that's possible!"

Dave Boyer reported in the Washington Times,

Philadelphia’s police union is blasting Hillary Clinton for inviting relatives of victims of police shootings to speak at the Democratic National Convention next week, but failing to include relatives of slain police officers.

John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said the union was “shocked and saddened” by the planned choice of speakers at the convention, which opens Monday in Philadelphia.

“The Fraternal Order of Police is insulted and will not soon forget that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are excluding the widows and other family members of police officers killed in the line of duty who were victims of explicit and not implied racism,” Mr. McNesby said in a statement.

He said it’s “sad that to win an election Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country.
“Mrs. Clinton, you should be ashamed of yourself, if that is possible.”

Jump!

h/t Christopher Buckley

Breaking down the final barriers

To learn more about this fellow, click here.

Rigged!

Grim writes at Grim's Hall,

Is a "Trainwreck" Ever Good?
To answer Ed Morrisey's question, there is one really positive aspect to the trainwreck in Cleveland. It proves, again, that the Republican party is not rigged.

The Democratic Party really is. We've seen the fix in for Clinton from the DNC's own internal messaging, from the way in which they structured the debates to favor Clinton's interests, and especially from the handling of her criminal troubles by the Justice Department. The whole system, up to and including the criminal justice system, was rigged to deliver her as nominee. When a substantial number of Democratic voters said, "No, thank you, we'd really prefer Bernie," the DNC bent itself backwards to make sure that he failed. The voter fraud was so bad that even Snopes can't bring themselves to fully deny it.
WHAT'S TRUE: Two researchers (presumably graduate students) from Stanford University and Tilburg University co-authored a paper asserting they uncovered information suggesting widespread primary election fraud favoring Hillary Clinton had occurred across multiple states.

WHAT'S FALSE: The paper was not a "Stanford Study," and its authors acknowledged their claims and research methodology had not been subject to any form of peer review or academic scrutiny.
That's funny stuff -- 'OK, the part about the study proving widespread voter fraud is true, but it's not really a 'Stanford Study,' it was just done by students at Stanford... and, er, nobody's going to check their work, because nobody wants to know if they're right.'

So, democracy is messy. The RNC had a rules fight, a floor fight, Ted Cruz's excellent speech on principle, and then nominated Donald Trump. Donald Trump, I mean, and not Jeb Bush. If the Republican party were rigged like the Democratic party, Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee this morning.

Factor that in to the choice, I suppose. The Democratic system is rigged from stem to stern. The Republicans are really taking this democracy thing seriously, even at the cost of losing control of the party, even at the cost of public embarrassment. Even, possibly, at the cost of what should have been an easily-winnable election.

Maybe that commitment to democracy ought to mean something. I leave it for you to decide.

"Let's shake hands and reach across those party lines!"

Bernie dumps the Dems

Bernie Sanders is dumping the Democrat party. He is returning to the Senate as an Independent, Read more here.

So, what will his supporters do in November?

Abortion!

V the K asks at Gay Patriot,

...isn’t it peculiar that in a party so fanatically pro-abortion that they actually oppose health and safety standards for place where abortions are performed, that they won’t actually say the word ‘abortion.’ It’s always ‘right to choose,’ ‘reproductive rights,’ or even ‘family planning?’ If abortion is such a great and important thing, why not just come out and say the word?

Secondhand marijuana smoke more harmful than second hand tobacco smoke

CBS in Pittsburg reports about a new study conducted by the American Heart Association.

In the study, arteries in rats that inhaled secondhand marijuana smoke for one minute carried blood less efficiently for at least 90 minutes.

Similar exposure to second hand tobacco smoke cause blood vessel impairment for 30 minutes.

In a news release the AHA says, “While the effect is temporary for both cigarette and marijuana smoke, these temporary problems can turn into long-term problems if exposures occur often enough and may increase the chances of developing hardened and clogged arteries,” said Matthew Springer, Ph.D., study senior author and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco’s Division of Cardiology.

Researchers say arteries of rats and humans are similar in how they respond to second hand tobacco smoke.

Researchers also found the mere burning of the plant material appears to cause the impaired blood vessels, not chemicals like nicotine and tetrahydrocannabinol.

What accounts for the Clintons' inordinate greed?

Victor Davis Hanson asks at National Review,

Wall Street profiteering aside, why, while decrying soaring tuition and student indebtedness, would Hillary Clinton charge the underfunded University of California, Los Angeles, a reported $300,000 — rather than, say, $50,000 — for a 30-minute chat?

...The Clintons discovered that one could become very rich from a host of sources and still be considered quite progressive; indeed, liberal pieties both assuaged any guilt about one’s privilege and in a more public manner provided exemption from the logical ramifications of one’s own redistributionist rhetoric.

After a decade of loud liberal pronouncements, a Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or Steyer brother is likely to be seen as coolly progressive rather than inordinately wealthy and exploitative. So the Clintons had unprecedented opportunities to shoulder-rub with liberal financial titans without suffering the class invective reserved for the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson.

Former vice president Al Gore is emblematic of the progressive contradictions in leveraging politics to get rich. After winning the popular vote in 2000 and losing the presidency, he discovered that the road to multimillionaire status was to mouth green and progressive pieties while monetizing his political contacts and celebrity among new networks of the global liberal rich. Fearing that new capital-gains taxes of the sort he supported would kick in, Gore then rushed to sell a failed cable station to the often anti-Semitic Al Jazeera, a Middle East media conglomerate funded from the carbon-exporting wealth of the right-wing royal autocracy in Qatar.

...the Clintons had found a way to exploit the idea that both of them would return to the White House. That reality gave them access to quid pro quo opportunities, often funneled through a philanthropic foundation, of a sort unknown to any past American president. Most important, the Clintons had long since discovered that public outrage at their impropriety could be dismissed as the empty and vindictive charges of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” be they allegations of sexual assault or criticisms of Bill’s becoming the highest-paid “chancellor” in the history of higher education, hired by private for-profit Laureate University at some $4 million a year.

But if the Clintons’ opportunities for lucre were unique — in both what the couple had to sell and the huge resources of those who wished to buy — and if they could peddle myths that they were perennial victims of right-wing witch hunts, still, what accounts for their inordinate greed? Why not settle for a fortune of $50 million — in Obama’s formulation that “at some point you’ve made enough money” — rather than risk the public opprobrium of Bill’s globetrotting shakedowns or Hillary’s efforts to hide personal e-mails that were tangential to her job as secretary of state? Their previous embarrassments, from the mundane to the existential (Whitewater, the Clinton Foundation troubles, writing used underwear off as IRS deductions, the all-but-impossible odds of making a $100,000 profit in cattle futures from a $1,000 initial investment, etc.), all reflect a nonstop drive for lucre.

...The Clinton litany of whiny victimization and excuse-making reflects that sense of entitlement — one not uncommon among academics, journalists, and politicians who believe that those in the business world hardly deserve to enjoy more opulence than do those who are more refined and cultured. In sum, the Clintons left the presidency at a historic moment of globalized wealth creation, especially in fields considered progressive and green. They were unique in that, unlike other retiring first families, who could offer wealthy profiteers little more than nostalgic signed group portraits, they could provide an avenue to the buying of influence in a second Clinton presidency. They felt no shame about their drive for riches, not just because they were liberals who sacrificed for the underprivileged and therefore deserved their belated rewards, but also because they were convinced that, as correct-thinking elites, they needed a vast fortune commensurate with their sense of self-worth.

For now, the Clintons again have avoided the final wages of the classical sequence of overweening greed (koros) leading to arrogance and disdain (hubris) descending into a sort of recklessness (ate) and ultimately earning divine retribution (nemesis). But the tragedian Sophocles reminds us that for such people there is never self-reflection or enough money — and thus nemesis is still on the Clinton horizon.

Read more here.

It's time to let Michelle's slaves go free

Daniel Greenfield writes,

...As the Democrats continue their circus of hate in Philly, it ought to be remembered that this was where Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were inalienable rights and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments do not gain their authority from any innate superiority, but from consent. The Obama theory that government gains power in proportion to its historical moral superiority is slavery wrapped in hypocrisy. The attempt to perpetuate a new slavery by invoking 19th century slavery, as Michelle Obama did, is a moral obscenity.

It is time to end slavery all over again. It is time to free Michelle Obama’s taxpaying slaves.

The first step to ending slavery is to recognize its fundamental injustice. It is unjust that a working family ought to work its fingers to the bone so that Michelle Obama can enjoy yet another sightseeing tour. It is unjust that a class of parasites claiming to be public servants can draw unlimited amounts of money on the credit of people trying to make ends meet. It is unjust that Michelle Obama can own hundreds of millions of people as slaves.

And it is an injustice that must end.

Nineteenth century slavery ceased to be an issue in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first century slavery is the issue that we must tackle today. Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves have been freed. It’s time to let Michelle’s slaves go free.

Read more here.

We feel your pain, Joe

"Entitled" Hillary

Da Tech guy believes Trump could have come up with a better word for Hillary than "Crooked."

The word to associate with Hillary Clinton that would doom her campaign is “entitled.”

Through the primaries, she’s held the air of someone who felt entitled to the nomination. The recent revelations from the Wikileaks email release verify that the DNC felt the same way about her.

Her campaign portrays her as entitled to the White House for the sake of history. They don’t come out and say it, but the subtle messaging they’re using is that she should win because she’s a woman, she has political experience, and she’s been there before. More importantly, they are painting Trump as the type of person who should not be entitled. He can use this against her.

She acted like she was entitled to not be “flat broke” when they left the White House in 2001. The way she treats the media exudes a sense of entitlement; they only get to talk to her when she deems it. Even her famous speaking fees put on display a level of entitlement. After all, she’s Hillary Clinton. She’s entitled to every penny she earns when talking to room full of Wall Street bankers.

Read more here.

A police officer's job would be a lot easier if...

Ann Coulter writes,

The police are trying to get these criminal gangs off the street! And their job would be a lot easier without thugs like Mike Brown violently attacking them.

It would be a lot easier if they weren't being constantly harassed by BLM and their lunatic accusations of racist policing.

It would be a lot easier if they were not being targeted for assassination and mass murders by homicidal nuts ginned up by BLM. (Shooting deaths of police are up 78 percent so far this year.)

And it would be a lot easier without a group -- officially supported by the Democrats -- leading marches down city streets, chanting, "What do we want? DEAD COPS! When do we want it? NOW!”

Why does the Democratic platform endorse Black Lives Matter? And, most importantly, why was Mike Brown's mother on stage at the Democratic National Convention?

As absurd as BLM's other cases are, none have been so authoritatively disproved as the yarn about "gentle giant" Brown begging for his life from Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson before being shot in the street like a dog.

Within a few weeks of the "hands up, don't shoot" narrative being broadcast as fact from every media outlet, we saw the video of the "gentle giant" robbing a store and roughing up the clerk shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson.

This was followed by extensive investigations by both a grand jury and a Department of Justice led by the most racist, anti-police attorney general we've ever had, Eric Holder. But even Holder's Justice Department had to concede the whole "hands up don't shoot" story was a bald-faced lie.

Officer Wilson was completely cleared in the shooting of Mike Brown. As the investigations proved, Big Mike had violently assaulted Wilson, grabbed for his gun, and was charging the officer when Wilson shot and killed this raging behemoth.

However half-heartedly, Hillary claims to oppose cop-killing, so why is she using her convention to promote the biggest lie in the pantheon of anti-cop lies, and to celebrate a man whose most famous act was to violently assault a police officer?

Because of the despicable lies put out by BLM agitators, Wilson had to give up his career, move his family and will be forced to live in fear for the rest of his life. The town of Ferguson was destroyed, businesses burned to the ground, police officers attacked, people injured, the National Guard called in, and massive taxpayer money expended to contain the riots.

But at the Democratic Convention, Lezley McSpadden (mother of Mike Brown) was wildly cheered.

Eric Holder said Brown tried to kill a cop. Are Democrats insane?

If Brown's mother had done something noteworthy, apart from raising a hoodlum -- perhaps pioneering a cardiac stent that will save people's lives -- then one could understand her being a "headliner" at the Democrats' convention. But, as I understand it, her sole claim to fame is giving birth to, and then carefully nurturing, a violent, cop-assaulting criminal.

Donald Trump, along with every other Republican ever to run for president, is required to repeatedly "disavow" David Duke -- someone he's never met, never mentioned, never thought of— and certainly didn’t invite to speak at his convention.

But Hillary invites to her convention the mother of a man whose criminality destroyed a police officer's life, tore the country apart and gave birth to a murderous cop-hating movement. Will a single reporter ask Hillary to disavow that?

The Obamas' addiction to indignation

At American Thinker Eileen F. Toplansky reacts to Michelle Obama's speech at the 2016 Democrat National Convention:

...the Obamas hate the progress that America has made. They distort history to make it appear that America of the 21st century is the same America of the 18th century.

...So what does this have to do with Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama? She and her husband have never evolved from their strident, all-consuming race-consciousness and "addiction to indignation."

Read more here.

Ted Cruz speaks plainly about Donald Trump, and the crowd at the Republican National Convention turns on him.

h/t Althouse

Cuba and Venezuela will be absorbing much of Obama's remaining time in office.

William Russell Mead writes at The American Interest about the failing economies of two of America's neighbors, Cuba and Venezuela. Mead thinks these two countries will absorb a lot of Obama's remaining time in office. Read more here.

Democrats: A party breaking in half

Ace of Spades writes today,

I hate to be right about everything all the time -- believe me, it's a tedious existence when the world holds no surprises for you -- but my prediction of two or three years running that the college-educated cohort's absolute refusal to throw any bones to their non-partners the working class -- and the working class' inevitable revolt -- and then the college crowd's emotionally-wounded counter-revolt, would break this party in half seems to be coming true, exactly as predicted.

Now quick someone tell me there is no "class" in America and certainly no class-based politics.

Unified Democrats? Not so much.

So you think the Democrats are unified behind Hillary? This video by James O'Keefe might make you rethink that assumption. O'Keefe deserves an Academy Award for pretending to be a Hillary supporter trying to persuade unpersuadeable Democrats.

We is teachin our kids good

If you are a good speller, you could graduate from High School in Deltona, Florida and get a job painting words on roads.

All charges dropped against the pro-life heroes who showed that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in fetal body parts for compensation.

Bizzy Blog reports,

On Tuesday, Harris County’s prosecutor in Texas dropped the remaining criminal charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress. This ended a clearly politically motivated attempt to turn the tables on the pro-life heroes who showed that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in fetal body parts for compensation.

Read more here.

Trey Gowdy for Attorney General?

Donald Trump tweeted today that he wants Trey Gowdy to be his Attorney General. That would please a lot of conservatives.
Read more here.

Their own pet president?

Ace of Spades writes,

Today, Trump -- half-jokingly, but, I think it's fair to say, only half -- said he hopes Russia searches its records for the emails it already hacked from Hillary and lets the rest of us see them.

This has provoked the standard scheduled howl of outrage from the liberal press -- and from the increasingly poorly-named conservative press as well.
...

This is one of the most popular parlor games in GOP circles -- asking:

1. Did Russia hack the emails? Almost everyone thinks they certainly did, as did the Chinese and other factions.

2. Will they keep the emails to hold over Hillary as blackmail material -- keeping their own pet president, compromised or controlled -- or will they release them? I have long thought they'd do the former, and have said so repeatedly. But now that they're leaking all the DNC emails, I think I was wrong. I guess they are going to release them.

Or maybe the DNC leak is a warning shot: This is just a taste of what we could release, if we wanted.
And:
3. Wouldn't it be delicious if Russia (or China, or Julian Assange) released the emails and proved that Hillary was a liar and Comey a stooge?

We thought, instead, we were speculating about the best possible outcome of an already bad situation. It is too late to hope that Russia doesn't hack Hillary's servers -- they already did.

Thus, the only remaining outcomes possible -- once "I hope the hack doesn't happen" has been mooted -- are the following:

1. Russia helps Hillary get elected, then holds blackmail material over her head to turn her into an Agent of Influence.

2. Russia rips Hillary and hurts her election prospects by revealing what she's concealed from no one at all, except the US courts and US public.

Read more here.

Which is it, Hillary? Yoga, or national security?

Sean Davis reports in the Federalist,

On Wednesday morning, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to turn over the tens of thousands of e-mails deleted by Hillary Clinton. The scandal-plagued former Secretary of State maintained for months that the e-mails were personal, not work-related, and that they were in no way classified.

But in a press release issued on Wednesday, Clinton’s top campaign spokesman suddenly declared those e-mails to be a “national security issue”

Read more here.

One of my buddies

My youngest son (who is several inches taller than I am, and way better at basketball than I, turned 15 this week. Morgan Miller took these photos of him at the Cheesecake Factory on the 16th St. Mall in Denver, and posted them on Facebook.

He can see it coming

David Ramsey writes at Oxford American about The Perfect Man. Well, at least he is the perfect Pac-Man player, and perhaps the world's greatest video game player.

h/t American Digest

You want a conversation? You got it!

Is it dark yet?

h/t American Digest

Tim Kaine's gubernatorial edict in 2008 prevented police chaplains from praying "In Jesus name."

In 2008 The Christian Newswire reported

Five Chaplains Lose Jobs for Praying 'In Jesus' Name'...Virginia Governor Tim Kaine Urged to Stop Persecuting Christians
Contact: Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, 719-360-5132 cell, chaplaingate@yahoo.com

RICHMOND, Virginia, Sept. 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is defending why his administration forced the sudden resignation of five Virginia State Police Chaplains because they prayed publicly "in Jesus' name." Police Superintendent Col. W. Steven Flaherty single-handedly created then enforced a strict "non-sectarian" prayer policy at all public gatherings, censoring and excluding Christian prayers, then accepted the resignation of five chaplains who refused to deny Jesus or violate their conscience by watering down their prayers.

House Republican Leader Morgan Griffith and Delegate Charles W. Carrico, (R-Grayson) both issued public statements defending the chaplains, questioning Governor Kaine's role in terminating the chaplains, and vowing to introduce legislation protecting police chaplains' right to pray according to their own conscience.

Defending Flaherty's persecution of Christian Chaplains, Governor Kaine pretended he himself was being persecuted, saying through his spokesman: "It is disappointing that Del. Griffith would make such a political attack on Gov. Kaine about his faith."

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who was also fired in 2007 for praying "in Jesus name" in uniform (but won the victory in the U.S. Congress for other military chaplains), weighed in:

"Governor Kaine campaigned like a Christian to get our votes. But now, instead of governing like a Christian, or respecting his own chaplains' First Amendment rights, his administration forced the resignation of five police chaplains, simply because they prayed publicly 'in Jesus' name.' These five chaplains lost their jobs for honoring Christ. They're heroes of the faith, because they refused to deny Jesus when ordered to by the Kaine administration. If they contact me, they will be honored through my web-site: www.PrayInJesusName.org. And now Governor Kaine pretends he's the martyr, because we question why his administration forced them to resign for praying to Jesus? He's still got a job, they don't. Governor Kaine isn't the martyr, he's the persecutor."

Citizens are urged to call Governor Kaine's office at 804-786-2211, to insist the chaplains be reinstated and the policy reversed, and also email him through his web-site:
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm

Chaplain Klingenschmitt is available for interviews at 719-360-5132 cell or chaplaingate@yahoo.com

h/t Derrick Wilburn

The "I's" will have it tonight in Obama's speech

Tonight will be Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Tim Kaine night at the Democrat National Convention. Commenter Guy Mohawk writes at Ace of Spades,

I am pretty sure the "I's" will have it in the Obama speech.

Who wants to count how many times he says "I" tonight? There is a pretty good chance I'll miss his speech tonight.

Update: Ace of Spades counted 119 times Obama referred to himself in the speech. Thanks for watching it for me Ace.

No heavy lifting from Bill

I missed Bill Clinton's speech last night, because I was playing a glorious game of basketball with my sons. So I turned to Ace of Spades, a man whose analytical abilities I respect greatly, to get some idea of what happened in Philadelphia last night.

Last night wasn't particularly useful for Hillary. Bill Clinton, I would argue, basically swung the election for Obama in 2012. After all the good work Romney did in his convention, Bill Clinton came out and rebutted every claim made.

For a week I was pulling my hair out insisting the GOP must now rebut Clinton's rebuttal. They didn't. (Naturally.)

But Bill Clinton went on stage last night to do the impossible -- to humanize the inhuman. Instead of talking about policy and economics, about which he has some credibility, he instead chose to speak of love, commitment, and marriage, about which he has none.

I think their idea is that Biden and Obama will carry the policy-reinforcing load, and that Bill Clinton was therefore more useful in humanizing the woman he has been all but separated from for 15 years.

But Bill Clinton presided over a roaring economy. Biden and Obama have presided over a dismal one. What authority do they have to speak about good economic policy?

In addition, both men are exceeding arrogant. Obama has one mode, and that mode is contemptuous condescension. He is a deeply mediocre man who has confused himself for a world-beating intellect, and cannot lower himself to speak to people whose IQ and insight actually exceed his own.

The idea that Biden the idiot and Obama the vicious narcissist are capable of giving the folksy policy rebuttal that Clinton could have is just one more bad idea Hillary has had.

Maybe it was ego that caused her to refrain from asking her husband to do the heavy lifting for her. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, you may have heard.

Either way, we are now two days through this, and both days have been marked by discord and bitter feuding within the Democrat Party, with no appreciable help done for Hillary's side.

I can't see Obama's chin-arrogantly-lifted-eyes-gazing-heroically-into-the-middle-distance stage-whispering claims of how great we've all got it doing much to change that trajectory. We've heard it all from this failure before.

The only guy I see which any chance to do some damage is Tim Kaine, simply because he's new and doesn't (yet) have the stink of failure all over him.

Okay, okay, we'll get some flags!

There is considerable discussion on the internet today about the lack of American flags at the Democrat National Convention yesterday. That is being rectified tonight. They went out and bought some flags.

Approval voting

Have you ever heard of "approval voting?" What would the ballot look like?

Approval voting requires no substantive change to ballots. The printed directions simply change to indicate that the voter may select any number of candidates. Here is an example ballot where the voter has selected three candidates by darkening the circles next to their names.


More expressive
No vote splitting or spoilers
You can never get a worse result by voting for your favorite
Significantly fewer spoiled ballots
Ballots look the same, except the rules indicate that you may vote for any number of candidates
Results are still easy to understand: a simple list of the candidates along with how many votes they received
Tends to elect candidates who would beat all rivals head-to-head
Tends to elect more moderate winners
Alternate candidates get a more accurate measure of support

h/t Jon Caldera

Will he get into trouble?

In what may be the understatement of the year, New York Times writer Patrick Healy states,

Historically, when Mr. Clinton does not have a job to do, he gets into trouble.

It was during the government shutdown in 1995 that Mr. Clinton began his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It was in the early years after he left the White House that his friendships with wealthy playboys became tabloid fodder. Sidelined by Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Clinton went rogue and started lashing out at Barack Obama. More recently, his dinner with the businessman Mark Cuban and his tarmac encounter with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch were reminders that when Mr. Clinton has time on his hands, he can create dangerous distractions for his wife.

Putting Mr. Clinton to good use, while containing his less helpful impulses, would be a major test for Mrs. Clinton as president, given the spotlight and pressure they would be under and her limited ability in the past to rein in his excesses.

But, maybe we are getting just a bit ahead of ourselves here? Can we wait until some votes are cast?

Read more here.

Thinking about anger

There’s no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger. Anger greets most of us every day – in our personal relationships, in the workplace, on the highway, on airline trips – and, often, in our political lives as well. Anger is both poisonous and popular. Even when people acknowledge its destructive tendencies, they still so often cling to it, seeing it as a strong emotion, connected to self-respect and manliness (or, for women, to the vindication of equality). If you react to insults and wrongs without anger you’ll be seen as spineless and downtrodden. When people wrong you, says conventional wisdom, you should use justified rage to put them in their place, exact a penalty. We could call this football politics, but we’d have to acknowledge right away that athletes, whatever their rhetoric, have to be disciplined people who know how to transcend anger in pursuit of a team goal.

...

Mandela used to tell people a little parable. Imagine that the sun and the wind are contending to see who can get a traveller to take off his blanket. The wind blows hard, aggressively. But the traveller only pulls the blanket tighter around him. Then the sun starts to shine, first gently, and then more intensely. The traveller relaxes his blanket, and eventually he takes it off. So that, he said, is how a leader has to operate: forget about the strike-back mentality, and forge a future of warmth and partnership.

Read more here.

Five emails showing coordination between the media and the Democrat National committee.

Aaron Bandler reports at Daily Wire,

Co-nservatives have alleged for years that the media is slanted in favor of Democrats, a charge that is normally met with scorn and eye rolls from the elitist left. But the Democratic National Committee emails exposed by WikiLeaks have proven that the DNC did in fact collude with the media.

Bandler then proceeds to give five examples here.

Terrorists slit throat of elderly priest in Normandy

Today's terror killing in France occurred in Normandy. Two teenage ISIS wannabees slit the throat of an 84-year-old priest. From the Daily Mail:

The two men held the priest and congregation of four - which included two nuns - hostage for almost an hour before being shot as they emerged on to the courtyard of the church.

A nun later gave a chilling eyewitness account of her escape. She was at the church when the terrorists stormed in, but managed to escape before the clergyman was murdered.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous when talking to Le Figaro, said: 'They came suddenly. They took space. They spoke Arabic. I saw a knife.

'I left when they began to attack Father Jacques. I do not even know if they realised that I was leaving.'
Another nun, identified as Sister Danielle, who witnessed the horror said: 'They forced him to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that's when the tragedy happened.

'They recorded themselves. They did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It's a horror,' she told BFM television.
Father Jacques was deputising while the regular parish priest was on holiday, it emerged this afternoon.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Paris had earlier said that the men had crept into the church via a back entrance during a morning service, soon after 9am. The two men seized the priest, two sisters from a local order, and two parishioners.

...

Eulalie Garcia, who works in a beauty parlour, is on the same road as the church, and told reporters that she knew the priest, who had taught her the catechism as a young girl.
'My family has lived here for 35 years and we have always known him,' she said.
'He was someone who was treasured by the community. He was very discreet and didn't like to draw attention to himself.'
She said she was very shocked by the death of the priest, who lived opposite his church. 'It can happen to anyone,' she said.

Read more here.

When principles mattered

Did Reagan endorse Ford in 1976? No, says Reagan biographer Craig Shirley.

In Kansas City, by every estimate, Reagan was finished politically. The only thing he could control was how he said goodbye. He was comfortable leaving quietly but Ford pushed him into a spotlight he never sought. In that moment he chose to go out, not publicly bitter, defeated, or angry but hopeful. He went out affirming “a platform of bold unmistakable colors with no pastel shades.” He chose to leave the stage, not a supplicant to a party line or to an accidental president, but as a principled man affirming a party that had chosen someone else. He knew there was no limit to what this movement could do or where it could go, and it didn’t matter who got the credit. The principle mattered most and the Party and conservatism mattered, not the person.

Read more here.

Her record

Hackers vs. journalists

How's that working out?

h/t James Woods

Wikileaks' release of emails from Democrat National Committee

Derrick Wilburn brings us some of the items revealed by Wikileaks' release of emails from the Democrat National Committee:

DNC refers to Latino outreach as "Taco Bowl engagement"
Bringing up Sanders religion to scare the southern voters.
Possible money laundering by moving money back and forth to bypass legal limits.
Politico writer sending his stories to the DNC *before* he sending them to his editor.
DNC feeding CNN the questions they want to be asked in interviews.
Creating a fake job ad for a Trump business to paint him as a sexist.
Hillary funding 2 million dollars in a cooridanted campaign in battleground states to win back the Senate.
DNC is upset that their “allies” didn’t send in protestors so they sent out interns.
“Clinton Foundation quid-pro-quo worries are lingering, will be exploited in general.”
"Some chick" is angry she hasn’t been given more stuff from the Obama administration …might be interesting to follow up.
Consultant calling Megyn Kelly a "bimbo".
DNC trying to get away with violating the Hatch Act
Democrats using interns to organize fake “protests.”
DNC member killing horses for insurance money.
DNC making fun of black woman's name.
DNC telling each other, “I love you too. Not Homo"
DNC requesting to pull an MSNBC commentary segment.
DNC controlling the narrative with time released stories.
DNC conspiring to create false Trump information via release with Reuters.
DNC Hillary supporters infiltrated Sanders campaign.
DNC members going to complain to Morning Joe producers about his mentioning of a “rigged system.”
DNC discussing their relationship with NBC/MSNBC/CNN and how to get better treatment.
Super PAC paying young voters to push back online Sanders supporters

Latest cop-killing

Shayne Heap brings us news of the latest cop killing, this time in Texas:

Sergeant Craig Hutchison was shot and killed when he interrupted a burglary in progress as he arrived home, in Round Rock, at the end of his shift at approximately 1:20 am.
Sergeant Hutchison, who was still in uniform, contacted dispatchers via radio and reported that several subjects were running out of his backyard. Responding deputies located Deputy Hutchison suffering from fatal gunshots in the yard as they arrived approximately 10 minutes later.

The subjects fled the area and remain at large.

Sergeant Hutchison had served with the Travis County Sheriff's Office for 32 years and was scheduled to retire in two months. He is survived by his wife.

Sgt. Hutchinson was set to retire in September.

Opening day schedule for the Democrat National Convention

Mis. Hum at Ace of Spades gives us the opening day schedule for the Democrat National Convention:

Democrat Convention Schedule
Monday, July 25, 2016
11:15 AM

Free lunch, medical marijuana, and
bus ride to the Convention
Forms distributed for Food Stamp enrollment.
1:30 PM

Group Voter Registration for Illegal Immigrants.
3:15 PM

Address on "Being the Real You"
Rachel Dolezal, former Head of the
Seattle NAACP and Caitlyn Jenner
4:30 PM

"How to Bank $200 Million as a Public
Servant and claim to be broke"
Hillary Clinton
4:45 PM

How to have a successful career without ever
having a job, and Still avoid paying taxes!
A Seminar moderated by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson
5:00 PM

Medal of Freedom presentation to Army deserter Bo Bergdahl for serving with Honor and Distinction
National Security Advisor Susan Rice
5:30 PM

Invitation-only Autograph Session Souvenir photographs
of Hillary and Chelsea dodging Sniper Fire in Bosnia
6:30 PM

General vote on praising Baltimore rioters,
and on using the terminology "Alternative
Shoppers" instead of Looters"
7:30 PM

Breakout session with Bill Clinton for
women on avoiding the upcoming draft
8:30 PM

The White House "Semantics Committee" Meeting
General vote on re-branding "Muslim Terrorism"
As "Random Acts of Islamic Over-Exuberance"
9:00 PM

"Liberal Bias in Media How we can make it work for you!
Tutorial sponsored by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS,
The Washington Post and the New York Times
With Guest Speaker, Brian Williams
9:15 PM

Tribute Film to the Brave Freedom
Fighters Still incarcerated at GITMO
Michael Moore
9:45 PM

Personal Finance Seminar -
"Businesses Don't Create Jobs"
Special guest Pocahontas aka Elizabeth Warren
11:00 PM

Short film, "Setting Up Your Own Illegal
Email Server While Serving in a Cabinet
Post and How to Pretend It's No Big Deal"
Hosted by Hillary Clinton
11:30 PM

Official Nomination of Hillary
Bill Maher and Chris Matthews

Somebody spent a lot of premium time putting
this agenda together. Don't let it go to waste.

h/t The Internet

The tip of a very big iceberg

Steve House writes,

Over the coming days I will be providing some suggested talking points on why Donald Trump is the right choice for president. In the mean time I have been reading Clinton Cash and I went to Dinesh D'Souza's movie, Hillary's America, with Donna last night and wanted to share one story that all American's deserve an answer on.

Here is a very summarized high level view of what is known:
Bill Clinton worked with his friend Frank Giustra, a wealthy Canadian businessman, to secure a Uranium mining deal in Kazakhstan worth hundreds of millions of dollars that Giustra had failed to do on his own. Giustra's company was called UrAsia and according to industry experts had no business getting any of the business in Kazakhstan because they were barely a player in the Uranium industry. Kazakhstan has trillions of dollars of resources under ground including a large amount of uranium.

The deal required sign off from the government of Kazakhstan which was run by a long standing dictator named Nazarbayev who was worth billions himself and had a terrible human rights record.
Bill was dealing with Kazakhstan on an AIDS mission through the Clinton foundation even though the AIDS problem in Kazakhstan was estimated to be only .1-.3%. As a reference there were countries in Africa at 24% that could have used a lot more help.

Giustra gets the deal done but a couple of strange things happen in 2009 just prior to it(Hillary transitioned from US Senator to Secretary of State during 2009 so she was never off US Government payroll). The first is that Hillary Clinton pressured government officials from Kazakhstan to complete the Uranium deal with Giustra and his investors and shortly there after she said that she will no longer meet with them until the Kazakh officials approved the deal with Frank Giustra.

There was at least an implied threat to withhold Aid from Kazakhstan, a number in the tens of millions and even as high as $100 million previously if this deal wasn't completed.

Bill Clinton then goes to Kazakhstan and publicly supports the dictator including the idea that K-Stan would be the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This guy was a well known human rights disaster and dictator yet the former president legitimized him right before they approve a deal with Giustra and his investors that was ultimately worth more than $300M.

So what happened? Giustra donates $31.3M to the Clinton foundation within a few weeks after the deal. He then commits to $100M over a period of time after merging his Uranium company with Uranium One. A total of $145M was donated to the Clinton foundation directly associated with this deal.

Uranium One grows dramatically by 2010 and then is later acquired by the Russians. Many more investors associated with the deal were involved in donating to the Clinton Foundation who also had to later amend its' tax returns for not reporting donations coming from Canadian investors.

How could anyone think this was proper or think that we should allow Hillary to be president. For money she sold out our security involving Uranium to the Russians. Yes Uranium is used for nuclear reactors and to make nuclear weapons. How much of our Uranium here in Colorado will end up in Iran's nuclear plans via this deal?
Global corruption and this is the tip of a very big iceberg.

The biggest solar system ever found

Sarah Fecht reports at Popular Science

Scientists used to suspect a giant planet named "2MASS J2126-8140" was a rogue world, wandering the galaxy without a star to orbit. But it turns out the planet isn't homeless after all: its star is just very, very far away. Like, a trillion kilometers away (or about 621,000,000,000 miles).
To put that number into context, that's around 6,900 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Its orbit is 140 times wider than Pluto's. At that distance, the dim red dwarf star would look like just another moderately bright star in the sky.
Astronomer Simon Murphy from the Australian National University and his colleagues uncovered the secret relationship between the planet and star after noticing that they were both located 100 light-years from Earth. Further analysis showed they were moving together as well.
The planet is believed to be a gas giant 12 to 15 times the size of Jupiter, and takes nearly a million Earth years to circle its star.

Read more here.

Violence against Christians escalating in Egypt

Breitbart Jerusalem reports,

Violence against Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian minority, one of the largest and oldest groups of Christians in the Middle East, has escalated at an alarming rate in the last several weeks, with little official response.

Read more here.

Living in totalitarian Iran

Breitbart Jerusalem reports that

Iran destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes and receivers on Sunday as part of a widespread crackdown against the illegal devices that authorities say are morally damaging, a news website reported.

The destruction ceremony took place in Tehran in the presence of General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, head of Iran’s Basij militia, who warned of the impact that satellite television was having in the conservative country.

Go here to read more.
I find it interesting that Breitbart Jerusalem uses the word "conservative" throughout the article to describe Iran. Wouldn't totalitarian, fascist, or statist be more accurate terms?

Who is more likely to be a fascist, Hillary or Trump?

Bookworm leads a discussion on how the essence of fascism and communism is statism.

...So now that you’ve gotten a handle on the only two types of government that actually exist — more state control or less state control — let’s zero in on “fascism.” It started in Italy, so a good beginning is Mussolini’s classic description of fascism: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Boom! Statism writ large.

Except that, if it’s statism writ large, why did the communists, who are obviously statists, hate it? Progressive/Democrat academia and politicians say that this hatred arose because communism is a warm, cuddly, sharing kind of statism, while fascism is a mean, nasty, right-wing Republican kind of statism. Not even close and definitely no cigar.

Both communism and fascism are statist belief systems that reject individual liberties. American conservatives (many of whom identify with the Republican party), being all about the Bill of Rights, small government, and individual liberty, aren’t playing in the communist and fascist sandbox. Heck, they’re not even in the same playground.

Communism, the “purest” form of socialism, says that there should be no private ownership. Everything should be owned by the people for the benefit of the people.

...If you dig just a little way down into the Trump agenda, you find out that when he talks about “making America great again” he’s mostly talking about enforcing laws and policies already on the books. Was Clinton a fascist when he signed into effect some of those laws? Is the history of America right up until Obama fascist because we actually had laws, most of which Obama ignores? The answers, naturally, are no. There’s nothing fascist about enforcing our immigration laws, our national security laws, and our criminal laws, or about elevating the constitution as the primary document from which American law flows. We’re not charting new territory here. We’re returning America to its natural mostly-free state.

Doesn’t that sound all nice and equal? It’s not. The only way to achieve “everything owned by the people for the benefit of the people” is to place ownership in the government as the people’s representatives. However, once you’ve placed everything in government hands, you’ve created a government class.

Government classes with total power are scary. Everything that is bad in individuals — greed, carelessness, stupidity, corruption, nepotism, bullying — is magnified beyond all imagination when it’s concentrated in a single all-powerful government.

...concentrating power in government, contrary to people’s expectations, never leads to a golden age of wealth, morals, and generosity. Instead, it invariably leads to economic and moral collapse, as we’ve seen in Europe, and too often leads to despotism (e.g., Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, and on and on).

Okay, that’s communism. But what about fascism? It’s communism’s opposite, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Just as with communism, fascism is predicated on complete state control. To repeat Mussolini, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” The difference is that the state does not nationalize industry. Instead, it leaves ownership in private hands, while vesting control in the state. Fascism gives the illusion of capitalism because individuals still “own” and “run” the companies, but in fact, the government and these individuals are in cahoots for both control and profit. What’s missing entirely is a free market. It’s all in the state and for the state.

For ordinary citizens, the difference between communism and fascism is like the difference between wearing ugly stainless steel handcuffs and stainless steel handcuffs with some sparkly rhinestones. The citizens are still wearing handcuffs because the state is still calling the shots. It’s just that in the fascist state, at least before the state really gets the bit in its teeth, there’s an illusion that things are nicer.

In other words, communism and fascism are just different flavors of statism. Moreover, when they’re not fighting for power, they’re inclined to support each other, as was the case with Hitler and Stalin, right up until Hitler decided he wanted Stalin’s territory too. Likewise, in Spain, there was a civil war not because communism and fascism are natural enemies, but because they were jealous rivals both seeking the throne.

Given all this, how did American conservatives, the people who oppose statism and believe in individual liberty, end up being tarred constantly as fascists? Well, look to the Leftist takeover of Hollywood, academia, and media.

After World War II, the American Left needed to elevate communism’s s status and, Leftists hoped, give the Soviet Union the upper hand in the Cold War. What better way to do that than to attach to conservatives, those who cherish individual liberty, the “fascist” label, a label closely associated with Hitler, the ultimate madman? It didn’t matter that the label was completely inapposite. The only thing that mattered was that it stick, along with all the ugly associations surrounding it.

Trump is also promising to get the government out of American businesses, another policy that is the opposite of fascism. Remember, fascism is all about a government/industry partnership to further state control. It’s communism with cash. So Trump’s promise to decrease regulations and lower taxes to weaken government’s ability to interfere with private citizens is a step towards freedom, rather than its opposite.

Another Trump promise is to respect the Second Amendment, keeping guns in the hands of private citizens. Remember: The single biggest barrier to total state control is an armed citizenry.

...Even if Trump isn’t a despot in the making, are his supporters fanatics who would like him to be a despot? Doubtful. I think what most Trump supporters hope Trump means when he talks about “fixing things,” is that he’ll take our sclerotic government and say “You’re fired” to corrupt, redundant, useless, or lazy bureaucrats who suck at the government teat but provide no benefit for America’s citizens. What we imagine him doing is taking broken institutions and either destroying them (bye-bye, abusive EPA), cleaning house (IRS, you’re next), or returning them to their original mission (the military is not a social justice experiment). GOP politicians, despite their invariable promises to “clean up” government, seem incapable of making the tough calls necessary to purge or fix what’s broken in the existing system. Trump’s history and rhetoric make it seem possible that he’s finally the one with the courage to make those hard choices and tame the federal beast.

Go here to read why Bookworm believes it is Hillary, rather than Trump, who is the likely fascist.

Look who is supporting Trump!

That is Obama's brother Malik. Read about his support of Trump here.

Did Cruz follow the paths of Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney?

Lexington Green writes at Chicago Boyz,

Rockefeller and Romney, rising stars, refused to back the doomed Goldwater bid in 1964. They ended their careers by trying to save them, by disloyalty. Two guys who fought for the team in 1964, knowing it was doomed, earned the respect of the party faithful and each went on to dominate the party and be elected and reelected in 49 state landslides — Nixon and Reagan. There is a right and a wrong way to play it when there are intra-party differences. You respect the voters and you respect the process, you fight for yourself in the primaries, and when you lose you fight for the team, you take the hit for the team, and your teammates remember your loyalty and reward it. Ted Cruz is a fool, who apparently thinks he can help Hillary win, then be in position to win in 2020. But he has shown brutal disloyalty, and even violated an express, public pledge to back the nominee. He can never be trusted again. He has, I hope, destroyed his political future. I liked Ted, if he won I would have supported him. But there is no going back from this decision.

...This is what Ted should have said:

I took a pledge to support the party’s nominee.

I will keep that pledge.

I would be lying to you if I said this is easy.

My race against Donald Trump became personal, and ugly, and painful, in ways I won’t repeat tonight.

Many people who supported me, people close to me, people I love, cannot forgive him.

And I understand that.

But there is too much at stake to dwell on the past.

The race is over, it’s in the history books now.

And the history of America’s future is unwritten.

It is up to us to write it, together.

What we need to do as a party is come together, and find the conservative values we do share.

What we need to do as a party is come together, no matter how bitter the race was, no matter how much we may disagree, no matter what personal animosities we may still feel, and defeat Hillary Clinton.

So, my fellow Americans, my fellow Republicans, tonight I keep my pledge, and I endore my party’s nominee for President, Donald J. Trump.

Read more here.

What America needs now

Becker said they believe Pooper is what America needs now, because there’s too much dog waste on the streets. “It’s not our intention to ostracize,” he said. “It is our intention to solve a problem in a unique way.”

...“It speaks to a human truth,” Becker said. “If [dog poop] wasn’t such a problem I don’t think we’d get a response that we’re getting.”

Karin Brulliard writes in the Washington Post,

What do you get when you combine a population too busy to look up from its smartphones, a “one-tap economy” and 78 million pet dogs?

You get Pooper, an app that summons someone to scoop your pooch’s waste off the sidewalk or neighbor’s lawn.

Perhaps you have enough time to own a dog, feed a dog and take it on walks, but you are just too darn busy to reach down to pick up its poop. You are Pooper’s target customer.

...In a phone interview from Los Angeles, co-founder Ben Becker, 32, insisted that he and Pooper are sincere.

“I am a real human being and a dog owner,” he said, adding that the other co-founder, Elliot Glass, is also a legit dog dad. They are techy types, naturally — Becker described himself as an integrated creative director and Glass as a web designer and developer.

Read more here.