Why Trump might do better than expected in winning votes from black Americans

Lawrence Person analyzes here why Trump might get more black votes than has been heretofore assumed.

Russia has created a no fly zone over Syria.

Micah Halpern reports that there already is a no fly zone in Syria. It was created by the Russians.

...Israel and Russia have gone to great lengths to make certain that, at least when it comes to their air-forces flying over Syria, they are on the same page and there will be no problems. There have been face-to-face meeting between Putin and Netanyahu to iron out any issues and to secure lines of communication. Putin has said that Israel can and should defend herself. Israel has said that they are not taking a side, but they will certainly prevent weapons from being transferred into the hands of Hezbollah. If need be, they will also retaliate when necessary. Russia will be informed by Israel in advance but may not pass a warning on to Israel’s target. These are the terms of Israeli and Russia’s agreement.

That leaves 11 other countries, including the United States. The US and Russia are on opposite sides of almost everything when it comes to Syria. And given the current status of the Russian defense system, the other air forces are, effectively, now grounded.

Read more here.

Total absurdity

Eugne Volokh reports,

You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use. That’s the official legal guidance from the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

Read more here.

Hillary's extreme irresponsibility

David Foster writes at Chicago Boyz,

Sharam Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, was executed by the regime on August 3 after being convicted of providing secret information to the Americans. Sharam Amiri was also discussed in emails that were found on Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server.

Did Clinton’s negligence lead to Amiri’s execution? Possibly not: the regime was suspicious of him for other reasons, and we don’t know for certain that the Clintonmail bathroom server was hacked by the Iranians. But discussing a foreign intelligence contact on a system that is not certified for classified information can easily lead to the deaths of American agents and other individuals, whether or not it happened in this specific case.

...Clinton’s extreme irresponsibility may have led to Amiri’s execution or it may not; it may have led to the execution or murder of others of whom we were unaware. This case provides one more piece of evidence about Hillary’s utter lack of concern about the lives and well-being of actual, particular human beings

Read more here.

“No one is listening to me,” means “no one is agreeing with me.”

Any blogger who calls himself Assistant Village Idiot must be worth reading. This post by him is very clever. Enjoy!

Do you have your own script, or are you following someone else's?

At Observer Ryan Holiday interviews Mike Cernovich. I have seen Twitter quotes by Mike a lot, so I wanted to learn about him without actually going to Twitter. apparently he writes a lot about the mainstream media:

If 90% of mainstream media went away, no one would notice. You’d have fewer sites to visit, but you’d still read the same stories. You’d read the story one time rather than re-worded 100 times by 100 “writers.”

Individual writers do not stand out. They have a bylines as “prestigious” publications, but no one goes to those websites for the writer. Most writers today are commodities. They are fungible. There’s a surplus of 24-year old English majors who all think and write the same.

...I may seem mean online, but I am mean to people who work in the media – the same people who are mean to others for a living. They simply call themselves “journalists” and dismiss all critics as “trolls.” Journalism is trolling, full stop.

...Live video is the future of journalism. Soon we will have drones with GoPros on them doing “reality journalism.” The RNC and DNC both banned drones or else I’d have done that.

...Most of what the liberal media does is outright hoaxing. We’ve gone from a world where journalists are biased to a world where journalists fabricate stories, as Sabrina Erdely and Rolling Stone did.

...Traditional media hates on Breitbart, but I attended the RNC and DNC. Breitbart had reporters in the field providing coverage. Where were the New York Times and other “legitimate” publications? They were inside the media tents drinking hot chocolate and sucking up to each other.

Will Weiner surrender his warrant-less communications to obtain some sort of a deal?

Victor Davis Hanson writes,

...With the Clintons, farce is the desert to scandal: the profiteering Clinton Foundation as a humanitarian treasure; Hillary the former corporate attorney as child and little-guy crusader; Bill Clinton, both sexual predator and feminist hero.

...no one thought discredited deviant Anthony Weiner could much harm Hillary—except of course “conspiratorial” Donald Trump. He warned months ago that Clinton aide Huma Abedin might have been passing on classified materials to her dissolute husband. Because Weiner couldn’t repress his electronic libido with young girls, he ended up on the FBI’s radar—and by extension his smartphones, tablets, computers, and by further extension supposedly his estranged wife’s confidential communications. It was thought that Weiner might have stopped his sexting addiction when he lost his House seat, when he lost his mayor’s race, when he lost his wife, when he lost his jobs—or, at the very least, before he might lose Hillary (who supposedly fixed Abedin up with Weiner) her election.

Hillary’s team dared Comey to put up incriminating e-mails or shut up about investigating Hillary, hoping that the Obama Justice Department might quash any request for court-ordered warrants. But that demand assumed that Weiner is a loyal Clintonista and will put his fealty to Hillary and the Democrats above his own fear of federal prison and its supposed cultural intolerance for supposed predators. For now, the Clinton attack on the FBI might be not only futile but stupid—antagonizing her inquisitor, without the ability to apply pressure to silence him—if Weiner voluntarily surrenders his warrant-less communications to obtain some sort of deal.

Should we laugh or cry when Barack Obama’s Department of Justice warns about mixing politics with the Weiner investigation, after Attorney General Loretta Lynch had stealthily met on the tarmac with Bill Clinton while her office was supposedly investigating his spouse? Normally the nation’s lesser federal prosecutors don’t have chats about grandchildren on airport runways with the husbands of suspects under investigation. Should we weep or smile when Hillary and John Podesta decry a federal official’s 11th-hour disclosure of possible criminality—this from a party that rejoiced over Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’s indictment (later dismissed) of George H.W. Bush cabinet official Caspar Weinberger a week before the 1992 election, won by Bill Clinton. As far as last-minute election surprises go, Democrats themselves have turned it into an art form. In 2000, it was the leaked George W. Bush DUI arrest; in 2004, it was the “fake but accurate” forged National Guard Memos.

Experts and Clinton officials dismiss the Weiner disclosures as either insignificant or not significant enough to affect the election. But that assumes that Weiner was loyal, sane, and ever committed to his marriage with Huma Abedin. There is no evidence that any of those three assumptions is true.

Read more here.

There are four FBI investigations related to the Clintons.

Sharyl Attkisson reports that there are actually four active FBI investigations related to the Clintons.

1. Clinton Foundation: Four FBI field offices– New York, Los Angeles, Little Rock and Washington DC– have been involved in a lengthy probe of the Clinton Foundation charity. “Pay to play” allegations include the charity soliciting donations from corporations and foreign countries in exchange for access and policy considerations from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which she denies. Emails published this month by Wikileaks reflect consternation among various Clinton allies about the possible appearance of conflicts of interests.

2. Anthony Weiner sexting: ...The FBI began a probe into whether Weiner had traded sexually explicit texts with a minor, and in the process of examining his computers, investigators ran across evidence of Abedin emails sent to and from Clinton’s insecure private server(s), which the FBI had previously investigated.

3. Hillary Clinton email: In July, FBI Director Comey said that Hillary Clinton had been “grossly negligent” in the mishandling of classified emails on private servers as secretary of state, but that there was no basis under which to charge her with a crime. However, the revelations of new Abedin emails that could be relevant to the investigation have returned the status of the case to “open.”

4. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Longtime Clinton ally, former Clinton Foundation board member, and former head of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe is also said to be under FBI investigation (led by the Washington Field Office).

Read more here.

The fix was in

Do you know how many Congressmen went into the secure room to review the evidence in the impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton? 65. How many of them voted to impeach Clinton? 64. How many US Senators accepted the invitation to inspect the evidence? Zero. The Senate voted not to impeach.
Read more here.

“This is an issue of the federal government restricting crucial information from the public ahead of a presidential election and it is unacceptable."

Brandon Darby reports at Breitbart,

A record number of illegal aliens have crossed the U.S.- Mexico border and are in U.S. Border Patrol custody in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV), according to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC). Border Patrol Agent and NBPC President Brandon Judd spoke exclusively with Breitbart Texas and condemned the leadership of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for allegedly “keeping this information secret” ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.


“We are at breaking point. We have the highest number of illegal aliens in custody in history inBorder Patrol’s RGV Sector and this information has been kept from the American public,” said Agent Judd. “The talk of amnesty has once again created pull factors and encouraged people from all over the world to cross Mexico and then cross our porous southern border to illegally enter the U.S. We are simply overwhelmed.”

Agent Judd told Breitbart Texas that Americans should vote their conscience, but they should do so with all of the information available. “This is an issue of the federal government restricting crucial information from the public ahead of a presidential election and it is unacceptable. Americans deserve to know the truth. Our Border Patrol agents deserve for Americans to know what they are really facing. Too many Border Patrol agents have given their lives and left loved ones to grieve for CBP leadership to play these types of political games ahead of such an impactful election.”

"Free speech under threat in America"

"Ask me a question that is less disingenuous." "The AltRight is energized by three issues, political correctness (free speech), immigration, and trade." "It isn't radical Islam, it's Islam, that is the problem." "I'm talking about culture, not race. It's typical of the BBC to conflate the two. What they want to do is say that if you are proud of your country and the ideals on which it was founded, that somehow makes you a racist. It doesn't!"

"The regressive social attitudes of Muslims in the west are terrifying. Organizations like yours won't report honestly, accurately, or fairly on Muslims."

"The only people who are still feminists are journalists!" "The patriarchy is a conspiracy theory."

Some must win states for Trump

At The New York Post Michael Walsh delivers an in depth analysis of what states Trump must winn in order to win the election.

Disappeared

Fears are growing for the safety of North Korea’s first lady, who has vanished from public view for the past seven months.

Ri Sol-ju is thought to have tied the knot with her food-loving fella Kim Jong Un in 2009 and soon after she gave birth to his child and heir to the hermit state.

Sporting designer clothes and pricey handbags, she has since appeared alongside her hubby as he tours factories and theme parks.

But now the slim and attractive spouse has vanished from public view after last being seen at a sporting event in March.

North Korea observers fear she could have fallen foul of her despotic husband or incurred the wrath of his equally menacing sister, Kim Yo Jong.

Experts believe Yo Jong is the power behind the throne and is even more deadly than her brother.

Concern is also mounting for Kim’s wife because of the gruesome fate of people who cross the loony leader.

In August, it emerged he had executed one of North Korea’s top officials with an anti-aircraft gun after the man fell asleep in a meeting.

Read more here.

18-year-old- teen beats up his principal.

Can we go ahead and put this guy in prison now, or do we have to wait until he kills someone?

It's all about DNA...Or is it?

Joshua Rhett Miller has the latest on the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case here.

CNN fires cheater; nobody asks Clinton why she had not reported the cheater

Donna Brazile has been fired by CNN.

WASHINGTON — CNN said Monday it’s “completely uncomfortable” with new leaked emails that Donna Brazile fed debate questions to Hillary Clinton and announced it has accepted her resignation as contributor.

Fresh WikiLeaks emails show that Brazile — previously accused of leaking to Team Clinton for a CNN town hall — also gave the Democratic nominee a heads-up before her Democratic primary face-off with Sanders.

...WikiLeaks earlier revealed a separate email in which Brazile told Team Clinton that the former secretary of state would get a question about the death penalty before a March 13 town hall on CNN.

Read more here.

Update: Joel Pollak reports at Breitbart,

Trump challenged journalists in the room to ask Hillary Clinton why she had not reported Brazile after being provided with the debate questions.

"If a presidential election is as much about the people as it is about the candidates, then we'll learn plenty about ourselves in the coming days, won't we?"

John Kass writes,

FBI director James Comey's announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.

...What if she is elected? Think of a nation suffering a bad economy and continuing chaos in the Middle East, and now also facing a criminal investigation of a president. Add to that congressional investigations and a public vision of Clinton as a Nixonian figure wandering the halls, wringing her hands.

The best thing would be for Democrats to ask her to step down now. It would be the most responsible thing to do, if the nation were more important to them than power. And the American news media — fairly or not firmly identified in the public mind as Mrs. Clinton's political action committee — should begin demanding it.

...But what will Hillary do?

She'll stick and ride this out and turn her anger toward Comey. For Hillary and Bill Clinton, it has always been about power, about the Clinton Restoration and protecting fortunes already made by selling nothing but political influence.

She'll remind the nation that she's a woman and that Donald Trump said terrible things about women. If there is another notorious Trump video to be leaked, the Clintons should probably leak it now. Then her allies in media can talk about misogyny and sexual politics and the headlines can be all about Trump as the boor he is and Hillary as champion of female victims, which she has never been.

Remember that Bill Clinton leveraged the "Year of the Woman." Then he preyed on women in the White House and Hillary protected him. But the political left — most particularly the women of the left — defended him because he promised to protect abortion rights and their other agendas.

If you take a step back from tribal politics, you'll see that Mrs. Clinton has clearly disqualified herself from ever coming near classified information again. If she were a young person straight out of grad school hoping to land a government job, Hillary Clinton would be laughed out of Washington with her record. She'd never be hired.

As secretary of state she kept classified documents on the home-brew server in her basement, which is against the law. She lied about it to the American people. She couldn't remember details dozens of times when questioned by the FBI. Her aides destroyed evidence by BleachBit and hammers. Her husband, Bill, met secretly on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for about a half-hour, and all they said they talked about was golf and the grandkids.

FBI's Comey acted out of 'obligation' to lawmakers, fear of leak to media
FBI's Comey acted out of 'obligation' to lawmakers, fear of leak to media
And there was no prosecution of Hillary.

That isn't merely wrong and unethical. It is poisonous.

And during this presidential campaign, Americans were confronted with a two-tiered system of federal justice: one for standards for the Clintons and one for the peasants.

I've always figured that, as secretary of state, Clinton kept her home-brew email server — from which foreign intelligence agencies could hack top secret information — so she could shield the influence peddling that helped make the Clintons several fortunes.

The Clintons weren't skilled merchants. They weren't traders or manufacturers. The Clintons never produced anything tangible. They had no science, patents or devices to make them millions upon millions of dollars.

All they had to sell, really, was influence. And they used our federal government to leverage it.

If a presidential election is as much about the people as it is about the candidates, then we'll learn plenty about ourselves in the coming days, won't we?

Read more here.

Don't get overconfident, folks!

Ann Althouse makes another important point this morning. She asked,

Do you remember how Watergate looked on the eve of the 1972 election? We knew about the Watergate break-in when we went to the polls. Here's how we voted:


Here's a Watergate chronology. The break-in occurred in June 1972. The burglars, caught in the act, were indicted on September 15th. Nixon had made an announcement on August 30th that his counsel John Dean had done an investigation that determined that no one in the White House was involved, but on September 29th, WaPo reported that Attorney General John Mitchell "controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats." On October 10th, WaPo reported:
FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon's re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.
So that's what people had to think about when we reelected Nixon in the biggest landslide ever. (I was 21 and it was the first time I was eligible to vote, though the voting age was suddenly 18. All that youth vote — which represented a lot of opposition to the war (and, especially, the draft) — wasn't enough to stop Nixon. Like everyone I knew, I voted for McGovern.)

The news that there were audiotapes of White House conversations didn't come out until July of the following year, and without these tapes, Nixon would have hung onto the presidency. The slow roll out of the Watergate scandal went on for more than a year after that before Nixon resigned. It was August 8, 1974. Almost 2 years after that landslide election.

So let's look back in 2 years and see how Hillary's big trouble looks compared to Watergate. But if you want to compare it to Watergate now, try comparing it to how Watergate looked on the eve of the 1972 election. And think about what it was like to go through those 2 years from landslide election to forcing the President to resign. What an ordeal! But I'm not saying that if Hillary Clinton gets elected — even by a slim margin — that she'll be swamped by scandal the way Nixon was. The press won't be straining to take her out, and for all the wars we are fighting, there's nothing like Vietnam.

"A conflict between freedom of speech and the freedom from discrimination."

This morning Ann Althouse blogged about the trial of Gert Wilders in the Netherlands.

"His remarks touched the very being of this population group. You cannot choose to be part of a population group or not; it’s a group that’s decided by birth, so it’s a whole different matter."

Said Frans Zonneveld, the prosecutor in the hate-speech trial of Geert Wilders (in the Netherlands).
As Mr. Zonneveld put it, the case is about a conflict between freedom of speech and the freedom from discrimination. “These are two essential rights in the Dutch rule of law,” he said, “and it’s clear that these two rights are conflicting in this case.”...

“It is a travesty that I have to stand trial because I spoke about fewer Moroccans,” [said Wilders, who refuses to attend the trial]. “Not because they despise all Moroccans or want all Moroccans out of the country, but because they are sick and tired of the nuisance and terror caused by so many Moroccans.... If speaking about this is punishable, then the Netherlands is no longer a free country but a dictatorship.”

Speaking about discrimination should be countered by speech against discrimination, and let people decide which is the better viewpoint. The prosecution is relying on the argument that speech about discrimination is discrimination. But anyone who smashes those 2 ideas together is quite simply rejecting the idea of free speech.

A song to sing

Bookworm writes,

Pedophiles do not fare well in prison, something Weiner — who gave the name #Dickileaks to this most recent Clinton scandal — knows well. Indeed, anonymous rumors (so take them for what they’re worth) are that Weiner knows so well his fate should he go to prison that he’s singing like a bird and has quite a song to sing.

Then Bookworm adds some posters:







Read more here.

"Why doesn't Huma Abedin just put her emails out? Why does the Hillary campaign think the missing information should come from the FBI? If they sincerely want transparency, why don't they get transparent?"

One of the services Ann Althouse provides her blog readers is that she watches the Sunday "news" shows, so we don't have to. For example, Meet the Press. Ann writes,

Mike Pence was also a guest on the show. (And Todd really interrupted the hell out of him, but Pence kept his relentlessly on-task, solemn demeanor.) Pence brought out a point that I hadn't seen elsewhere: "[T]he F.B.I. director is keeping his word to the Congress that if new pertinent information came forward that justified the reopening of the case, that he would alert the Congress." If that's correct, that's the answer to the question why Comey came forward when he did.

Picking up the idea that Comey was keeping his word, that he had no choice, but a duty, Todd asked: "Do you think think Director Comey has a duty, though, to share more information of what's known?" Pence, ever somber, came out with: "I think he has a duty to move forward professionally and in a timely way on this." So, basically, no, Comey doesn't need to say anything more. In fact, Pence added, why doesn't Huma Abedin just put her emails out? Why does the Hillary campaign think the missing information should come from the FBI? If they sincerely want transparency, why don't they get transparent?

Read more here.

Pinon nuts

Pine cones full of pinon nuts grow on the top half of pinon trees, reaching for the sky. The actual nuts are inside the dark brown shells.

Canyon suddenly appears

You can be walking along, and all of a sudden you are on the edge of a canyon, going very far down very fast.

Ancient trees

I hope you will bear with me. I am fascinated by these ancient trees. I think they are junipers, but if you know differently, please don't hesitate to correct me.

Rush hour

The chickens all rush toward me, but they don't know that I am coming for their eggs, and have nothing to feed them. Someone else will do that later in the morning.

It's about Wikileaks!

In a poorly written post, Sean Hannity argues that the reopening of the FBI investigation into Hillary's emails hd nothing to do with Huma Abedin or Anthony Weiner. Hannity believes the FBI Director acted because he knows Julian Assange and the Wikileakers have more damning evidence to come in the days leading up to November 8. Try to read more here.

Happy (day before) Halloween!

h/t Mike Miles

Two rallies in Florida on the same date

h/t Mike Miles

Yes, it is sad.

h/t Mike Miles

"Why would she say something that is so flatly untrue?"

Smiley face Robby Mook is on script.

I like Kellyanne Conway!

Kellyanne Conway went after CNN host Jake Tapper for attempting to “besmirch” millions of Trump supporters by bringing up one anti-Semitic man shouting at a Trump rally over the weekend.

It must be that they are all reading blogs!

The major television networks are all losing audience share. James Hibberd reports at Entertainment,

Here’s how the networks themselves are faring overall compared to this point last year in the adult demo: NET ..THEN .. NOW
NBC… 2.8 2.5…-11%
CBS… 2.5 2.2…-12%
ABC… 2.1 1.8…-14%
Fox 1.9 1.7…-11%

Read more here.

Bloc-voters

Ann Coulter writes,

Every ethnic group except whites bloc-votes for the Democrats. Coincidentally, the Democrats have brought in another 30 to 40 million nonwhite immigrants in the last few decades.

...When it comes to multiculturalism, you can't say, We love the empanadas -- but we don't want 40-year-old men raping their nieces. This isn't an a la carte menu. We get ALL the attributes of the cultures we're importing.

As described in excruciating detail in Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, our media already have a totally "open mind" about incest and child rape -- and murder! -- when it's committed by immigrants.

Thus, for example, where I would have chosen the headline: "Illegal Alien Convicted of Incest, Child Rape," The Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press went with the less catchy: "Man guilty in case of human smuggling.”

And where I would have used the headline, "Illegal Alien Repeatedly Raped 14-year-old Girl at Job Site," The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi, went with the more subtle, "Columbus resident charged with molestation.”

Immigrant women arrive in America, thrilled to have escaped cultures where rape, incest and spousal murder are acceptable, only to discover that those crimes are perfectly acceptable in this country, too -- provided the perpetrator is from the very culture they fled.

In 1989, Brooklyn judge Edward Pincus sentenced a Chinese immigrant to probation for a premeditated murder of his wife, on the grounds that the murder flowed from "traditional Chinese values about adultery and loss of manhood." The female head of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Margaret Fung, applauded the ruling.

Somewhat amazingly, newspapers are more likely to report black crime than immigrant crime. (Anything to keep the Third World immigration flowing!)

...Manifestly, the purpose of our immigration policies is not to help Americans -- or the immigrants who wanted to live in a place like America. They are designed to funnel welfare-dependent voters to the Democrats and cheap labor to the rich.

Our country will be Zimbabwe, but -- if all goes according to the Democrats' plan -- they'll get to be Mugabe!

That's Hillary's dream. If she wins, Joe Sobran's parody of the typical New York Times headline (about anything) will come true: "Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.”

Read more here.

New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function

Science Alert reports,

Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

If a person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.

...Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

The team reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.

"We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics," one of the team, Jürgen Götz, said in a press release. "The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach."

The team says they’re planning on starting trials with higher animal models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway in 2017.

Read more here.

h/t Cindy Schaeffer

Good question

One of Instapundit's readers emails him:

“You need to put out there the real scandal: how did FBI not seize laptop used by Clinton’s top aide until now? Suggests DOJ obstructionism/hamstringing.”

Glenn Reynolds replies, "Yes, yes it does."

Who are these people?

h/t Andrew Kaczynski on Twitter

YouTube censors Prager U. video explaining how the left censors the right!

Bre Payton reports at The Federalist,

YouTube just censored another one of Prager University’s educational videos, and this time YouTube went after one criticizing censorship.

Prager University also goes by Prager U. The video in question features Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel, who explains common tactics leftists use to shut down free speech from conservatives, including intimidation, harassment, and blackmail.

...Beginning in 2010, the IRS intentionally targeted conservative nonprofit groups and delayed approving their tax-exempt non-profit status an attempt to render them politically impotent during the 2012 election, Strassel explains.

In Wisconsin, a Democratic prosecutor went after conservatives in a shadow campaign finance investigation. The real reason for the pre-dawn raids on conservative activists’ homes and the subsequent gag orders legally compelling them to stay quiet about it all were to enact revenge for their support of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, she says.

These are two of several examples she highlights in this five-minute-long video decrying censorship of one’s political opponents, which YouTube decided to censor by placing it on “restricted mode.”It’s common for schools and parents to place their YouTube account on restricted mode to keep obscene or graphic content away from children. But PragerU’s videos, including the aforementioned one about censorship, are G-rated, so it’s unclear why the video platform is placing these videos on the naughty list.

...This isn’t the first time YouTube has censored one of PragerU’s videos. At least 21 others produced by the conservative, nonprofit educational organization have been placed on “restricted mode.”

PragerU is circulating a petition to stop the censorship. At the time of publication, it has more than 76,000 signatures.

Read more here.

What is going on?

Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes write at the Lawfare blog,

Does the letter mean the FBI has found something explosive and seriously incriminating about Clinton?

No. A lot of commentators, particularly on the conservative side, are assuming that these emails must contain something really big for Comey to have acted as he did. We think that misreads the situation.

The more likely scenario, in our view, is that Comey’s actions simply reflect the volume of new material and the consequent uncertainty as to what it might mean. The New York Times reports, citing a senior law enforcement official, that we are dealing with tens of thousands of emails. That means the Bureau will have to figure out how many are duplicative of emails they’ve already looked at, how many are potentially relevant to an investigation limited to the mishandling of classified information, and whether any at all contain classified information. And as noted above, email investigations are extremely complex.

Read more here.

Do you really need to extract that impacted wisdom tooth?

Some scientists are questioning the necessity of routine extractions of impacted wisdom teeth. Read more at Science Alert.

"...this may have only come about because they were embarrassed to realize that the FBI had spent more time interviewing Brad Pitt than Hillary."

At an Ace of Spades open thread, open blogger CDR M writes,

Well this is turning out to be quite the October for an election. I should've bought more popcorn. It's going to be fun watching all the MSM folks that supported Comey's decision these past few months now say he is a partisan hack. But seriously, I'd really be surprised if anything really happens to Clinton and this may have only come about because they were embarrassed to realize that the FBI had spent more time interviewing Brad Pitt than Hillary.

We have a puppy whom this makes me think of!

The Broken Way

Katelyn Beaty writes for Christianity Today about Ann Voskamp, who has written a new book entitled The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life.

As the news breaks about the FBI reopening the investigation into Hillary's emails, neither of these two people look very happy about it.

Weiner, Abedin, and Clinton

The Daily Mail is the publication that revealed in September Anthony Weiner's online sexting relatioship with a girl he knew was fifteen-years-old.

He told her he was 'hard'; that he 'would bust that tight p****'; sent her unclothed pictures; and told her he had rape fantasies about her. Wiener knew she was 15 - the girl had told him.

At the time of the sexts, Weiner was still married to Abedin - although he complained about their lack of a sex life to the girl - and caring for their son while she campaigned intensively for Clinton.

New York police and the FBI moved in on Weiner quickly after DailyMail.com's revelations - and it now transpires that when federal authorities investigated, they took the former couple's shared laptop. It is unclear if they also took mobile devices.

In fact Abedin, 40, was already separated from Weiner, 52, by the time the FBI moved in, as she had announced the end of their marriage in August, when he was hit by another sexting scandal.


Sexting: The 15-year-old girl who DailyMail.com revealed had received sexually-charged messages from Weiner, with her father

The former couple are assumed to have started the task of unraveling their life together, but then, in September, came a bombshell which put the past sexting in the shade: DailyMail.com's revelations of sexual messages and pictures to a 15-year-old girl - at a time when he was married to Abedin.

He carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl during which,she said, he asked her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits for him on a video messaging application and pressed her to engage in 'rape fantasies'.

The girl, whose name is still being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January while she was a high school sophomore.

Weiner was aware that the girl was underage, according to DailyMail.com interviews with the girl and her father, as well as a cache of online messages.

This time Weiner was T-Dog - and an avid user of the sort of instant messaging technology which does not leave a trail. Precisely the sort of technology Clinton had once joked she liked, in the wake of her email scandal emerging.

In Clintonworld, there was no comment, and although Abedin was not on the trail in the immediate aftermath of the story, she was soon back at Clinton's side.

She may have thought that ending the marriage would keep her safe from the fallout from the revelations.
But on Friday she learned that Weiner's fallout is now a danger not just to her - but to Clinton herself.

The FBI had long since said that Clinton - and by extension Abedin - would not be prosecuted for their handling of classified information on the secret email server when an entirely different investigation was launched, this time into the sexting.

What became clear within hours of the dramatic announcement by the FBI Director James Comey on Friday morning that there were new emails relevant to the investigation was where they came from: either Abedin or Weiner's devices.
Both, a New York Times report made clear, had been taken by the FBI in the course of their investigation - and the new material was found.

Read more here.

Zing!

Not a lot of color in last night's sunset, but I like those three pointy peaks in the center background.

Fuzzy

This was the best I could do as far as flower pictures today.

Time to search for piñon nuts!

This is the time of the year in the New Mexico high country when people come up to collect piñon nuts. See how they tend to grow in most abundance at the very top of the tree?

These two are not about to give up their prime spots in the shade!

.

Ready to charge!

This one is not going to take this photography lying down.

"Irony: a sexual predator brings down the Clinton machine!"

Breitbart commenter "Cat" writes,

..I think they found all 33,000 on Huma's home computer! Now suddenly Hillary and her minions are "demanding" to see all the emails…that THEY thought were acid-washed into oblivion.

Commenter Johnny writes,

their whole scam is falling apart,, huma had the 33K emails for safe keeping on the laptop the pedophilic masturbator was using for his trysts with minors

in essence, a guy with a masturbatory addiction saved the world form the eventual WWIII hillary would have lead us into ,,, now thats a "hands on" proposition LOL.

Commenter RT writes,

Methinks Comey got bombarded by honest FBI agents and with the race closing, needed to get behind both wagons. If HIlary loses she goes to prison, there's no doubt about that. Trump's first move in office will be to fire Lynch and half the DOJ and turn it over to Rudy Guiliani who will prosecute the Clintons under RICO statutes for running an ongoing criminal enterprise.

Johnny again:

the FBI and DOJ were getting shredded ,,, they had to do something,,, i think obama gave the nod ,,, give up hillary ,, just save my legacy

big b the deplorable writes,

what irony a sexual predator brings down the Clinton Machine...Karma's a bitch!!

Hillary tells FBI to come clean! She also urges voters to hurry up and vote, before more damning information is released.

It is so ironic that Hillary is demanding that the FBI come forward with more information about the new investigation they have started on her. Bookworm points out that the key point she made in her brief appearance yesterday was to urge voters to vote early, before the actual damning evidence is revealed.

Hillary supporters attack homeless woman at Walk of Shame

I am sure you have heard about the homeless woman who has been guarding the defaced Trump Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. HIllary supporters came to see her today and tore up the home made pro-Trump signs she had made.

Obamacare architect

h/t JJ Sefton

Comey saving face?

The day's big story is that the FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that the FBI is reopening its investigation of Clinton emails. Here is how the Washington Post reported the story.

Corrupt? Who cares?

Bookworm writes,

Hillary supporters, both Left and Right, know exactly how corrupt Hillary is. They don’t care. They support her because they support her ideology about the government’s central role in every aspect of America life. They support her because they want open borders, whether for cheap labor or to create a permanent Democrat governing class. They support her because she envisions a one world government (no borders) run by an elite. On on the Left (as opposed to the #NeverTrumpers) they support her because the one thing she’ll go to the wall for, no matter what, is abortion. And so they don’t care that she is quite possibly the most corrupt person in American political history.

Essentially pleading the Fifth

Adam Kredo writes at the Free Beacon about the refusal of the Obama administration and Attorney General Lynch to cooperate with Congressional inquiries into the details of the Iran deal.

"It’s not American strength that’s provocative; it’s American weakness that’s provocative.”

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton told Breitbart News,

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state “will go down as part of the larger Obama foreign policy of seeing American influence weakened all over the world.”

“I think their fatal mistake – I mean, they made so many, we don’t have time to go through them all – but their fatal mistake was not understanding the Arab Spring, not understanding that it was not an outbreak of democratic sentiment,” Bolton judged. “It was really the rise of radical Islam to an even more significant level than anywhere else. And so their policies during the four years she was at the State Department, and in the time since then, have been incoherent. They can’t seem to get a grip on just exactly what it is they want.”

“In Syria, we’ve seen the extraordinary circumstance of Russia building a new airbase in Latakia, just a few minutes’ flying time from the northern border of Israel. Unfortunately, whoever the next president is, it’s not enough just to say, ‘Okay, I guess we’ll reverse the Obama administration’s policies’ because the Russians, among others, have created facts on the ground that you can’t just snap your fingers and wish away. We are in a worse position today, across the Middle East, than we were on January 20, 2009, and I don’t think Hillary has a clue how to change that,” said Bolton.

...“When they think we’re growing weaker, they see the chance to advance their agenda,” Bolton said. “I think it’s a miscalculation on their part of fundamental American strength, and maybe even a miscalculation of the steel and the spine even of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. It’s when you’re sending mixed signals, and signals of weakness, that your adversaries are most likely to miscalculate, and it’s a miscalculation that’s most likely to lead to war: an incident at sea of a Russian plane buzzing our ships, of coming too close in firing missiles from the Houthi rebels at U.S. destroyers in the Red Sea. You can see how these incidents can escalate.”

“If they faced a strong president, they wouldn’t even engage in this kind of harassment, and the risk of a miscalculation would be lower,” Bolton contended. “So I think continued American decline does increase the risk of hostilities because it’s not American strength that’s provocative; it’s American weakness that’s provocative.”

Celebrity Hypocrisy

Guest post by Suzann Darnell

Hypocrisy often factors into things I consider to be among my pet peeves. Liberals and celebrities are frequently steeped in hypocrisy. In sooo many areas! But, I am opting to sorta kinda confine myself to just one. Okay, maybe it bleeds over a bit into two areas . . . however, they are closely connected. Ummm, maybe three. But, really who’s counting?

Anyone supporting abortion I find annoying enough. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I find them rather appalling. But, the liberal celebs who showcase all their social and political views for the entire world to see at all times, really tick me off with their contradictory stances on sanctity of life. It very much depends on which lives are being considered worth saving. Even as they get on board with Blacks Lives Matter or All Lives Matter, they are fully supportive of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics which are all too often set up in minority neighborhoods.

So many of the liberal celebrities are involved in charities to save some endangered animal, their favorite animal, or even ALL animals. This ranges from wildlife protection projects to pushing for worldwide veganism. There are those who think we should not wear fur or leather, should not eat animal products of any kind, or even keep pets and livestock.

Another favorite mission of some liberal celebrities is protecting Mother Nature. They will protest logging, mining, pipelines, and all manner of businesses that they deem to be the raping and pillaging of our planet. Some go so far as to chain themselves to trees to save the trees, the owls, the lizards, or whatever is the celeb cause of the week. There are even those who claim trees feel pain when being chopped down.

Yet, these people who want to protect animals, trees, and even the land, do not not care about unborn human babies! They will protest the killing of baby seals one week, then go out to campaign for someone who is Pro-Choice, which means pro-abortion and in favor of murdering unborn children the next week.

Let me get this straight? Trees might feel pain, but unborn humans don't??? It is absolutely wrong to eat unborn chicken fetuses (AKA: eggs), but perfectly fine to kill unborn human fetuses (AKA: babies)? Using milk or cheese, which does not require the killing of a cow or a goat, is inhumane, but abortions which do require killing of human babies are humanitarian? Hmmm? Seems entirely illogical and contradictory to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love trees, animals, and Mother Earth. But, I also love babies. I further acknowledge that the Lord put plants, animals, and the earth here for the use of all mankind. While we have a duty to be good stewards, we also have a right to make use of the abundance given to us by the Lord. Most importantly, I do not consider humanity to be a blight upon the face of the earth. I consider people to be God’s crowning achievement in creation. We are His children. And, everyone one of those little unborn human fetuses (AKA: babies) is a child of God! Who are we to take the life from any of His little ones???

But, the hypocrites who are the liberal celebrities trying to make social policy, consider animals, the earth, and even trees to be far more important than even a single human baby. In fact, they are fighting for abortions to be more widespread and less humane with each and every Progressive politician they put in office. I am truly more than just peeved about this. I am angry. Angry for the lost little lives. I hope you are too. Angry enough to vote for Trump and help keep Hillary and her ilk from enacting legislation that will allow wholesale, unrestricted slaughter of America’s future generations.
Read more by Suzann here.

"You do not have to hide from God one moment longer."

"Ignorance in this area is unacceptable, because ignorance in this area costs the lives of millions of babies, and jeopardizes the lives of many Catholics."

"The media...has covered this entire election in terms of scandal"

Ace of Spades writes,

...The media -- not just the Queen Bey of Cable Newsreaders Megyn Kelly -- has covered this entire election in terms of scandal. Occasionally (grudgingly) Hillary's, and mostly Trump's.

We have not talked about issues at all.

And you know why that is, of course.

Because the Hillary Clinton campaign has decided that the issues cut against her, and she's decided to make the election exclusively a referendum on Trump.

All three of her debate performances -- with the partial exception of the Wallace debate, because Wallace permitted it less -- have been singularly focused on attack lines against Trump.

And the media never objected to this. They never offered up the criticism, "Ms. Clinton did not bother to announce her agenda or defend her resume, instead focusing singlemindedly on a memorized oral-recitation oppo dump on her rival."

Consider this: If the roles were reversed -- if it were a Republican Party currently holding the White House, and the Republican nominee had a poor record of her own, and a worse record of the current occupant of the White House to defend -- and that Republican candidate decided to ignore all policy issues and all talk about actual results to deliver a tabloidy oppo dump on her opponent at every appearance --

Would the media join this crusade and amplify it? Or would it start chattering incessantly about the "relentlessly negative, personal, and empty campaign" of the Republican candidate?

Elections are about what the media decides what they're about -- and the Democrat party decides for the media what they'll decide it's about.

In 2006, the Democrats decided the campaign was about a "Culture of Corruption," and the media dutifully parroted this theme.

In 2008, the Democrats decided the campaign was about youth, hope, optimism, and "change," and the media carried this water, or this Pepsi commercial of an "agenda."

In 2012, the Democrats decided the election was about the #WarOnWomen. For this one, former Clinton media-massaging operative George Stephanopolous actually agreed to launch the first strike.

Now, in 2016 -- rather than talking about the five wars we're in and how badly we're faring in all of them, or the 1% "growth" economy (where 2.5-3% is needed just to keep pace with population expansion),and the rigging of the FBI itself, and Obamacare blowing up like a Samsung battery made entirely of Space-Age Kerosene, and the murderers' row at the VA, and the graft and corruption, and on and on and on -- Hillary has decided that the only issue in this campaign is Trump's Moral Failings, and wouldn't you know it, the media has agreed.

Only this time, the "conservative" media has agreed as well, and isn't even bothering to talk about other issues.

Isn't it funny that every campaign is fought on the precise battlefield the Democrats have adjudged to be most advantageous for them, and every campaign cycle, the media conducts an encircling action around the Republican to guarantee he can only fight on that unfavorable field.

The dark art of political intimidation

Another one

"In the Bay Area and elsewhere, firms are delving into promising fields including autonomous vehicles, machine learning, artificial intelligence, financial technology, biomedical research and even space exploration."

Joel Kotkin writes

...Rather than thrilling tweens with their first Tweets, technology companies may be shifting to far more important callings. In the Bay Area and elsewhere, firms are delving into promising fields including autonomous vehicles, machine learning, artificial intelligence, financial technology, biomedical research and even space exploration. These endeavors do more than simply keep people entertained and informed about their friends. They may create the basis for longer-lasting growth in the productive economy, not only here in California, but around the nation.

Read more here.

Those Hillary emails might not be missing after all!

Neil Munro reports at Breitbart,

FBI documents show that Hillary Clinton’s missing 33,000 personal emails were copied and stored in at least four previously unknown extra locations, but federal officials are refusing to search those locations, says Paul Sperry, an investigative journalist and author.

The conservatism of big things

David Goldman writes,

America won’t stumble its way back to national greatness. We have to hit on all cylinders at the same time, something we have not done since Ronald Reagan was in office. America’s decline in productivity, competitiveness, and skills is so advanced that nothing short of a focused national recovery plan will save us from a decline like that of the post-war United Kingdom. We need a national initiative to restore American technological supremacy, basic infrastructure, labor force participation, and above all a sense of national purpose and morale.

Our point of reference should be Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a mustering of intellectual and entrepreneurial resources to leapfrog the Asian competitors who now threaten to gain a technological edge that we may never reverse unless we reverse it soon. This is the conservatism of big things: the melding of national defense and space exploration with an opening of opportunities to a new generation of entrepreneurs.

...Our national security requirements and economic needs are complementary. America’s technological edge in defense is under severe challenge. We confront a host of new prospective threats: satellite-killer technologies, ship-killer missiles, hypersonic missiles designed to defeat our air defenses, new radar designed to defeat existing stealth technology, and cyberwar, to name the most visible. Russia’s S-400 and S-500 may now be the best air defense systems available. China’s anti-ship missiles and stealth submarines may neutralize American aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. Quantum computing and other technologies threaten the security of communications. Our power grid is vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse weapons. It is easy to talk about getting tough with Russia and China. But it is not clear that we would win a sea war with China in the South China Sea or a land war with Russia in the Ukraine, for example.

Goldman goes on to show by graphs and words what has been happening to our economy, and he concludes,

We are in a depression in all but name.

...It is a slippery slope. If we continue to lose ground, we may never have the chance to come back. Nothing short of a great national effort will give us the chance to come back. And the first thing that is required is for an American president to declare that a great national effort is underway, with the sense of purpose that informed the Eisenhower and Kennedy responses to Russian gains in space during the 1950s, or Reagan’s commitment to win the Cold War and defend America from missile attack. There are many individual things that must be done, but there is one big thing that must be done. That is to identify a national goal and commit the full resources of the United States to achieving it.

Read more here.

Clinton encourages her supporters to bully Trump supporters

Scott Adams writes,

Trump isn’t encouraging his supporters to bully Clinton supporters. But Clinton has painted Trump and his supporters as Nazi-like deplorables, and that creates moral cover for the bullying you see all over the country against Trump supporters. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to bully a Nazi, would it? That’s the dangerous situation Clinton has created.

...Huffington Post, Salon, Daily Kos and other liberal outlets “coincidentally” ran hit pieces on me on the same day. That’s a sign of media coordination with the Clinton campaign. (Or a big coincidence.)

Hordes of either paid or volunteer Twitter trolls descended on me with two specific types of attacks. The similarity of the attacks suggests central coordination. One attack involves insults about the Dilbert comic (an attack on my income) and the other is a coordinated attack to suggest I am literally insane or off my meds (to decrease my credibility).

You’re also supposed to think I’m crazy for seeing these “coincidences” as coordinated attacks. You’ll probably see this blog post retweeted as evidence of my further spiral into madness. The same happened when I noted that Twitter was shadowbanning me for talking about Trump. Shadowbanning is real, and well-documented in my case and others, but it sounds preposterous, so it is easy to frame me as crazy. Expect more of that.

Read more here.

Millionaire vandal

Here is the vandal who destroyed Trump's Star last night. He is Beverly Hills millionaire James Lambert Otis. Read more here.

How did he get equiment from the LA Department of Transportation to vandalize Trump Star?

The man who destroyed the Trump Star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame used equipment from the Los Angelos Department of Transportation. How did he get it? Read more here.

"Nothing changes."

David Warren writes,

By the nature of Christ’s claims — and they are not modest — we cannot “fit in” to a non-Christian, or “post-Christian” society. At most we can hope to be tolerated. If we are not tolerated, so be it. The hardships will then have to be endured, as they have been endured, in many times and places.

In his composition of the phrases “Culture of Life” and “Culture of Death,” Saint John Paul laid out the alternatives. We cannot choose both. It would be well to state clearly that a Catholic who advocates for abortion, or votes for someone who does, excommunicates himself. For that is an issue of life or death. The same extends throughout the “life issues” on which Christians have been comprehensively defeated. We are pariahs not only in the eyes of a Clinton, but those of Podesta, Biden, Pelosi, Kaine, Anthony Kennedy, Justin Trudeau — apostate Catholics, collecting “ethnic” Catholic votes, as Chichikov collects “dead souls” in Gogol.

Nothing changes. The Christians of the first centuries had to decide whether they would bow to the divinity of Caesar. They would pay taxes, but those with courage would not bow. The same choice confronts us today, when we are asked to bow before the State’s new ideological and “gender” gods, in rejection of Christian teaching. This is not a small matter, and we must show it is not small, by refusing to do it.

Let the Church shrink; let her become more “exclusive” to those who profess a genuine Christian faith. We are not in a contest for numbers. Our strength is rather in the living Christ; and him crucified.

Read more here.

What fun we're having!

h/t MOTUS

To lift your mood today

You're welcome.

"Immigration policies are designed to funnel welfare-dependent voters to the Democrats and cheap labor to the rich."

When it comes to multiculturalism, you can’t say, We love the empanadas — but we don’t want 40-year-old men raping their nieces. This isn’t an a la carte menu. We get ALL the attributes of the cultures we’re importing.

As described in excruciating detail in Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, our media already have a totally “open mind” about incest and child rape — and murder! — when it’s committed by immigrants.

Thus, for example, where I would have chosen the headline: “Illegal Alien Convicted of Incest, Child Rape,” The Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press went with the less catchy: “Man guilty in case of human smuggling.”

And where I would have used the headline, “Illegal Alien Repeatedly Raped 14-year-old Girl at Job Site,” The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi, went with the more subtle, “Columbus resident charged with molestation.”

Immigrant women arrive in America, thrilled to have escaped cultures where rape, incest and spousal murder are acceptable, only to discover that those crimes are perfectly acceptable in this country, too — provided the perpetrator is from the very culture they fled.

In 1989, Brooklyn judge Edward Pincus sentenced a Chinese immigrant to probation for a premeditated murder of his wife, on the grounds that the murder flowed from “traditional Chinese values about adultery and loss of manhood.” The female head of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Margaret Fung, applauded the ruling.

Somewhat amazingly, newspapers are more likely to report black crime than immigrant crime. (Anything to keep the Third World immigration flowing!)

...Compare these headlines about the same brutal sexual attack:

— “Two held in attack on child” — Austin American-Statesman (Texas), July 19, 2013

— “Two Mexicans placed on immigration detainers as third man is arrested over five-day gang rape hell of teenage runaway during which she smoked crack” — Daily Mail Online, July 24, 2013

Needless to say, The New York Times did not cover the Mexican illegal alien gang rape at all.

...Manifestly, the purpose of our immigration policies is not to help Americans — or the immigrants who wanted to live in a place like America. They are designed to funnel welfare-dependent voters to the Democrats and cheap labor to the rich. (The Chinese immigrant who got probation for murdering his wife, for example, came to America based on his specialized skill of being a dishwasher.)

Read more here.

Is Trump womanly?

He does often speak softly. Ann Althouse goes into the subject is some detail here.

Trump calls Rush

Donald Trump called the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday. Here is the transcript.

Surge in immigration on southern border

"Steering the masses' thinking"

John Stossel has been

stunned by how thoroughly the media have distorted Trump's position. That's a privilege you get when you're part of the media elite: You get to steer the masses' thinking.

...The ruling class has its themes, and it sticks to them.

When Clinton wore white to a debate, the Times called the color an "emblem of hope" and a Philadelphia Inquirer writer used words like "soft and strong ... a dream come true." But when Melania Trump wore white, that same writer called it a "scary statement," as if Melania Trump's white symbolized white supremacy, "another reminder that in the G.O.P. white is always right."

...The ruling class decide which ideas are acceptable, which scientific theories to believe, what speech is permitted.

...We are lucky that now we have a lot of information at our fingertips. We don't need to rely on the ruling class telling us what to believe. We can make up our own minds.

Read more here.

Michelle Malkin for Trump

Michelle Malkin explains here why she plans to "take her chances with Trump."

Chateau Heartiste provides a summary of some othe things we have learned from the Wikileaks releases:

What happens on November 9?

"O’Keefe has embarrassed the mainstream media and enraged their political allies. Now the whole lot of them wants his head."

Jack Cashill writes at American Thinker,

Investigative reporter James O’Keefe is admittedly a repeat offender. Over and over again he has committed old-fashioned gumshoe journalism. Worse, he has gone after targets grown fat, soft, and corrupt from years of media protection. In the process, O’Keefe has embarrassed the mainstream media and enraged their political allies. Now the whole lot of them wants his head.

...James O’Keefe should have won a Pulitzer Prize long ago. The undercover work of his fledgling organization led to the collapse of the community organizing cartel known as ACORN, earned him praise from Governor Chris Christie for his work exposing corruption in New Jersey’s teachers’ unions, forced the resignation of major players at National Public Radio, and led to the reform of voter laws in New Hampshire -- all of this before he turned thirty.

No one in the major media has anything like this track record.

Read more here.

Today is the day!

I never thought I would see the day when I reposted something from Michael Moore. Today is the day.


h/t Gerard

"Another successful start!"

The pilot was Bob Hoover. He escaped Nazi captivity in a stolen plane. He died yesterday at the age of 94. Read more about him here.

Watch Donald Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame Star get destroyed by Clinton-supporting vandals

Give forward the grace you've tasted...

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy Experience,

If I lay close enough to her at night

I can hear my baby girl’s literal broken heart beating under her scars.

And under stars, I pull her closer,

and tell her a secret she’s got to know about this blue spinning marble of a planet:

Though this World is broken, it is beautiful.

Though your heart will break, that’s where the love will get in,

and though you may feel kinda broken, that’s right where the kindest love will leak out.

...The world needs us who will wage love in the face of war.

The world hurting for people who will daily choose intentional acts of kindness to preemptively destroy acts of violence.

...Listen today, listen — the broken beat of the world needs a bit of the grace of you, of Him.

– be the GIFT — give forward the grace you’ve tasted, the comfort you’ve known, the love you’ve felt, give forward a bit of the kindness you have found and the gifts you’ve seen and the wounds of the world are counting on the people of the Word to bind up the brokenness with broken off bits of their own heart.

Read more here.

Once again, Pence holds his own quite well

"You're ill-prepared for this interview!"

"You are fascinated with sex, and you don't care about public policy!"

You'll never believe what happened!

"The risk is the point."

Open Blogger Warden at Ace of Spades writes about the War on Women Boys!

It may not be a surprise to many of you that after decades of a leftist controlled public education system that regularly denigrates and shames boys for their masculinity, that boys are now lagging behind girls in school.

Women now comprise 60% of college graduates and are trouncing boys across all measures of academic performance, save one--SAT scores where the boys beat the girls by a significant margin in math and slightly in reading.

The response to this disparity, of course, is to label boy's superior SAT scores to, you guessed it, gender biased testing that favors boys.

It cannot be the case that boys are better at something. Boys are never better at anything.

Our schools are stuffed full of left-wing, female educators who largely despise boys and see their very nature as a problem to be corrected. They've beaten them down, broken their spirits and stuffed them full of Ritalin to shut them up. Is it news to you that 20% of 14 year old boys have been diagnosed with ADHD? It shouldn't be because it's a goddamned outrage. They've literally pathologized masculinity.

I have two boys, aged 5 and 10 and I'm mad as hell about how this garbage culture treats them. But here's the thing--I can't change how others act toward me and my family. I can only control what we do.

We need solutions--all of us who wish to raise our boys into strong, confident, masculine men rather than the limp and effete pajama-boys we're beginning to see dominate our culture.

First, grab yourself a copy of Wild at Heart. It's not a book about raising boys, per se, but all of it is dedicated to examining the true nature of masculinity from a Christian perspective. If that turns you off, then just think "nature" and "evolution" instead of God and you'll still find quite a bit of valuable reading here.

Secondly, I think we need to actively and purposefully encourage masculinity in our boys. Men, particularly, should be aware that every single day they are modeling what it means to be a man to their sons--how you interact with your wife, your reaction to problems, your physical and mental toughness, your ability to problem solve, and your strength and courage in navigating life.

I am, quite frankly, a radical reactionary when it comes to this feminized culture. I seek to neutralize its effects in my boys by emphasizing and encouraging masculinity in all walks of life. I think that exposing your boys to all of the things that the left hates is a good start--contact sports, martial arts, guns, working with your hands, fishing, woodworking, etc... I can't fill all these roles myself--for example, I'm not the most handy fix-it guy in the world, but I am able to fill in these gaps with other strong male role models like the boys' uncles, grandparents and in-laws.

I also take the boys to stereotypically masculine events--car racing, monster trucks, regional pro wrestling, rodeos, football games, etc... If it's loud, dirty or dangerous to the participants, we're there.

More importantly, though, I believe that men--fathers particularly--need to push back against the kind of helicopter parenting that so many mothers engage in. This means giving your boys, or even someone else's, the space to adventure, roughhouse, explore, and challenge themselves. It also means accepting a relatively higher level risk of injury.

My wife is generally good with letting our boys be boys, but I do have to fight against her protective instincts at times. And this is okay. Parenting used to be a push-pull between husband and wife, finding the right balance between protectiveness and the freedom to explore, learn, test limits and sometimes get injured in doing so. Somewhere in the last 30 years or so, this balance shifted radically to the feminine side. We must shift back to a more healthy state of affairs. I'm not afraid to tell her to back off and let the boys go. It sometimes upsets her, but she also respects it and realizes that I understand them in ways that she doesn't.

One of the ways I push back is by giving my kids a lot of room to roam. When we go to the supermarket, I let my 5 year old wander from site when I'm in a fixed location like waiting at the deli. He knows where everything is and where I'll be. He'll wander off, chat with the sample lady, check out the lobster tank and investigate any sales specials in the fruit bargain bin and return with what he discovered. I think it's good for him to explore and gain a sense of independence.

It's always interesting to see how startled adults are when they see a kid this age walking alone. It's a mixture of concern and judgment. I don't care about what they think. This was normal when I was a child and things aren't anymore dangerous now than they used to be. The odds of a stranger snatching your kids are next to nil.

I've weighed that tiny risk and found it to be acceptable for the simple reason that boys have an innate need to explore and conquer. Whether climbing trees, flailing at each other with stick swords, or tromping through an unknown creek, boys need to feel like adventuring heroes. They cannot do this while someone is constantly shielding them from risk. The risk is the point.

Does all of this mean that I spend all my time yelling macho rah-rah slogans at my boys? Of course not. My older one is both thoughtful and sensitive and loves to do artwork. I recognize who God made him to be and also--and this is important--that these things do not negate his masculinity. He can paint a beautiful picture one day and go tearing around the neighborhood on his bike the next. That's who he is, that's what he does, and I'll be damned if I'll let anyone make him feel badly about it.

The National Enquirer is now the New York Times, and the New York Times is now the National Enquirer!

"If I can get you an interview, will you kill your story?"

"The ceaseless tightening of the coils of the anti-free-speech python."

David Foster writes at Chicago Boyz,
Regulators retaliate against Tea Party activist for his free speech–and get away with it. People’s political views are being attacked by threatening their employment; there is more and more of this.

Various people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are advocating a boycott of businesses in which Peter Thiel is involved because of his $1.25MM donation to the Trump campaign. Ellen Pao of ‘Project Include,’ a group which says it focuses on improving tech-industry opportunities for women and minorities, has already cut ties with the Y Combinator (startup incubator) because Thiel is a part-time partner there. Not very helpful to the people you are claiming to want to provide opportunities for, I’d say, Ms Pao.

Video has been released in which Democratic operatives admit to inciting violence at Trump rallies. According to this, one of the major players is Robert Creamer, co-founder of something called Democracy Partners. Creamer is the husband of Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky. He also has a guilty plea for financial fraud on his record, and has visited the White House 342 times since 2009.

If Hillary wins...

Michael Kennedy asks, "What will we see if Hillary wins the election? Go here to read his ideas.

Will she be prosecuted?

TM Lutas writes at Chicago Boyz,

In Madison Square Garden, Madonna just offered oral sex to anybody who votes for Hillary Clinton.

The NY law violation is a misdemeanor, fine set between $100-$500 and/or imprisonment not less than one year.

The Federal law violation is a felony, fine set at not more than $10,000 and/or imprisonment for up to five years.

Left behind

At the Wall Street Journal Brett Stephens laments that the Republican party has left him. On immigration he remembers a debate between George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan:

At a 1980 Republican primary debate in Houston, candidates George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were asked whether the children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend public schools for free. Mr. Bush said they should. “We’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law,” he lamented.

Reagan agreed. Instead of “putting up a fence,” he asked, “why don’t we . . . make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here.” For good measure, Reagan suggested we should “open the border both ways.”

Where, in the populist fervor to build a wall with Mexico and deport millions of human beings, is that Republican Party today?

Trade: In one of his final radio addresses as president, Reagan warned “we should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.”

Where, in the tide of Tea Party opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and all those other “disastrous trade deals” that Donald Trump never fails to mention, is that Republican Party today?

Foreign policy: In 1947 Harry Truman asked Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to support his efforts to shore up the governments in Greece and Turkey against Soviet aggression. Vandenberg agreed, marking his—and the GOP’s—turn from isolationism to internationalism.

Since then, six Republican presidents have never wavered in their view that a robust system of treaty alliances such as NATO are critical for defending the international liberal order, or that the U.S. should dissuade faraway allies such as South Korea and Saudi Arabia from seeking nuclear weapons, or that states such as Russia should be kept out of regions such as the Middle East.

Where, amid Mr. Trump’s routine denunciations of our allegedly freeloading allies, or Newt Gingrich’s public doubts about defending NATO member Estonia against Russian aggression, or the alt-right’s attacks on “globalism,” or Sean Hannity’s newfound championship of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, is that Republican Party today?

Culture, civility and character:

For decades, conservative publishers have issued a long succession of titles on the importance of personal character to the preservation of democratic institutions. Notable on the list is William J. Bennett’s “The Book of Virtues,” whose first chapter deals with the importance of self-discipline. The former secretary of education followed that one up with “The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals,” timed to the Lewinsky scandal.

Where, in the apparently limitless forgiveness GOP voters are willing to extend to Mr. Trump for his public affronts to “that face” Carly or that “nasty woman” Hillary Clinton, is that Republican Party today?

... I don’t see the point of belonging to a party on the increasingly dubious assumption that it’s slightly less bad than the opposition. If I can’t get my Grand Old Party back, I’d rather help build a new one.

Read more here.