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.