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OCTOBER 3,  2016

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

BE ADVISED – FROM THE L.A. TIMES:  Even in our increasingly partisan society, you might have figured that your doctor’s office would be neutral territory. But that just goes to show how naive you are.  A new study from researchers at Yale University details significant differences in the way primary care physicians from across the political spectrum approach medical issues that touch on hot-button topics, such as abortion and gun control.  For instance, doctors were more likely to say that they would counsel a patient seeking an abortion to consider the mental health consequences of going through with the procedure if they were registered to vote as Republicans than as Democrats. Likewise, doctors registered as Democrats were more likely to urge patients who owned guns to keep them out of their homes, while doctors registered as Republicans were more likely to ask if the guns were stored safely.  Democratic doctors are also more likely to say that Hillary Clinton just has a cold.

IS THIS MAN NUTS? – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:    Former President Bill Clinton stumped for his wife’s campaign on Monday in Michigan by deeming the Affordable Care Act a “crazy system.”
President Obama’s signature piece of legislation was framed as nonsensical public policy that punishes middle-class Americans by doubling their health-insurance premiums, according to video footage of the event.  “You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Mr. Clinton told voters. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.”  The footage was immediately posted on the internet by the Republican Party, which has made similar critics of the industry overhaul since its inception. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act when it was passed in 2010.  “The people that are getting killed in this deal are small businesspeople and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies,” the former president added.  Just who is Bill Clinton campaigning for?  And how soon does he expect to be invited back to dinner at the White House? 

BAILING ALREADY? – FROM THE HILL:   Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) is predicting that congressional Republicans will be more willing to work with Hillary Clinton than they have been with President Obama, should she be elected president.  "Barack Obama was somewhat of an unknown – he was a senator, but only for a year-and-a-half before he was elected president. She is a known commodity, and I think there’ll be more camaraderie in terms of working together, than there might have been in the early days of Obama," Isakson told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  Isakson, who is running for reelection and has endorsed GOP nominee Donald Trump, added, "I don’t think it will be like the post-Obama election at all." Democrats have repeatedly blasted Republican tactics under the Obama administration, arguing that GOP senators have reached a record level of obstruction on legislation and nominations.  I guess some Republicans are polishing the Clinton apple a bit because they sense she'll be elected.  I won't be shocked if we see more comments like this.

October 3, 2016       Permalink  

RUSSIA IN CONTROL – AT 10:20 A.M. ET:  Another famous victory for Field Marshal Barack Obama and Grand Admiral John Kerry.  Let us celebrate these magnificent strategists.  From AFP:

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered a halt to an agreement with the United States on plutonium disposal, citing Washington’s “unfriendly actions”.

The deal, signed in 2000, was meant to allow both nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium from their defense programs, a move seen as a key step in the disarmament process.

The two countries recommitted to the deal in 2010.

The Kremlin indicated Monday that it would stick to the agreement if Washington lifts sanctions and ends other policies seen as unfriendly to Moscow.

Putin charged earlier this year that the United States was not honoring the agreement by disposing of plutonium in a way that allowed it to retain its defense capabilities.

The suspension is symbolic of the breakdown in nuclear nonproliferation cooperation, an expert said.

The decree published Monday states that Russia is pulling out of the agreement “due to a drastic change in circumstances, the appearance of a threat to strategic stability due to unfriendly actions of the United States toward Russia”.

It claimed that Washington was “unable” to carry out the terms of the agreement and that Moscow “must take urgent measures to defend Russian security”.

COMMENT:  This should be brought up during the debate on Sunday.  Clinton must be pressed on her failures as secretary of state.  And it's fair to press Trump on his praise for Vladimir Putin.

Clearly, Putin is reaching for superpower status again, and achieving it in the face of a weak Obama administration.

October 3, 2016      Permalink

STATE OF THE RACE – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  Clinton has a small edge.   The race is still competitive.  But the self-inflicted wound known as Donald Trump has not yet regained the initiative he lost with the first debate.  From The Hill:

Hillary Clinton has a small but meaningful edge over Donald Trump with a little more than five weeks to go until the election.

Clinton has moved onto firmer ground over the last week, thanks to her performance in the first primetime debate and ongoing troubles for Trump. She has led in every significant battleground state poll conducted in the debate’s aftermath.

The race remains competitive, however.

Clinton’s lead in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) national polling average is hovering between two and three percentage points. Trump still leads in the polling averages of several battleground states, including Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada. The data forecasting site FiveThirtyEight gives Trump about a one-in-three chance of prevailing.

But if Trump is to triumph, even Republicans acknowledge that their nominee will have to exert more discipline than he has shown in the past week. In a speech on Saturday night, he departed from his prepared text repeatedly, mocking Clinton's recent battle with pneumonia and saying he did not think she was "loyal" to her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

That came at the end of a week that had begun with a debate performance that drew considerable criticism and apparently halted Trump's momentum.

Even more alarming, to some Republicans, was Trump’s prolonged focus on one of the most damaging episodes from that debate, his criticism of a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado.

At the debate, Clinton noted that Trump had once called Machado “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” the latter term an apparent reference to her Latina heritage. Machado was born in Venezuela, though she is now a U.S. citizen.

COMMENT:  Trump is an amateur.  Clinton, for whom we have little regard here, is a professional.  A professional politician, that is.  She's a terrible candidate with a tin ear, but, in a debate, she knows how to present herself.  And she knows how to avoid the press.

My sense is that the debate on Sunday is make-or-break for Trump.  If he cannot regain the initiative, Clinton might well revert to her original strategy of just running out the clock, and it might work.  For a person of her mentality, it won't matter how much she wins by.  Like Obama, she'll consider one vote a mandate.  And we'll be the victims.

October 3, 2016       Permalink 

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  The vice-presidential debate is tomorrow night.  The next presidential debate is Sunday.  I do hope that neither will center on the plight of Miss Universe. 

Maybe they should at least mention terror.  Terrorism is increasing, and rarely a day goes by without our president doing more to cozy up to the world's chief sponsor of terrorism, Iran.   From Gatestone Institute: 

On September 14, the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote in the New York Times that, "coordinated action at the United Nations to cut off the funding for ideologies of hate and extremism" is needed along with "a willingness from the international community to investigate the channels that supply the cash and the arms" to terrorists. He concluded with an appeal to "join hands with the rest of the community of nations to eliminate the scourge of terrorism and violence that threatens us all."

Given that in 2015 alone there were some 11,774 terrorist attacks in 92 countries, killing 28,300 people, one can agree that such action is needed. The irony, of course, is that the US Department of State released its annual report in June on state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran was the gold medalist for the world's number one terrorist nation -- an honor it has held since 1984. Only two other countries were listed as state sponsors of terror: Syria and Sudan.

Having Iran's Foreign Minister call for an end to terrorism is like having Bonnie and Clyde call for law and order.

The report makes clear, along with other available evidence, that much of the terrorism in the world is Iran's handiwork -- especially the terrorism directed at America.

The report emphasized that Iran "remained the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015, providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to [terror] groups around the world."

Iran provided arms and cash to terrorist groups and to nearly 30 Shia terrorist militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, especially Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Shia militias in Bahrain.

On September 13, 2015, the US Central Command officially reported that Iran is specifically responsible for killing at least 500 American soldiers through the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

COMMENT:  And yet Iran is hardly discussed in the presidential campaign.  Hillary Clinton backs the Iran nuclear deal.  Trump opposes it.  They don't bother with it much.  There's Miss Universe to discuss, and Trump's perfectly legal use of the tax system. 

Don't blame the candidates.  They're negligent, but they're not alone.  It's the mainstream media that ultimately sets the agenda for discussion.  Today's journalism is worthy of our deepest contempt.

October 3,  2016     Permalink

OCTOBER 2,  2016

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

TRUMP OFF MESSAGE AGAIN – FROM WAPO:   ANHEIM, Pa. — Donald Trump's campaign announced Saturday evening that the candidate would soon deliver a nine-sentence critique of comments Hillary Clinton made months ago about many of the millennials supporting her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. It was an attempt to latch onto a new headline in hopes of finally escaping the controversies that had consumed his week.  It didn’t work.  It took Trump nearly 25 minutes to read the brief statement because he kept going off on one angry tangent after another — ignoring his teleprompters and accusing Clinton of not being “loyal” to her husband, imitating her buckling at a memorial service last month, suggesting that she is “crazy” and saying she should be in prison. He urged his mostly white crowd of supporters to go to polling places in "certain areas" on Election Day to "watch" the voters there. He also repeatedly complained about having a "bum mic" at the first presidential debate and wondered if he should have done another season of “The Apprentice.”  He cannot take the pressure.  He is losing the election single-handedly.  The next presidential debate is a week from tonight.  If he cannot get his act together by then, I fear, and so do other writers, that he'll be toast.  Hillary cannot win an election, but Trump can lose one.  Same result.

THIS DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:   CAIRO — Two men who found a travel bag containing a bomb on a Manhattan street last month — and then walked off with the bag but left the bomb — were not just employees of EgyptAir but in-flight security officers for the carrier, two officials at the airline said on Friday.  Surveillance footage showed two men finding the bag on West 27th Street on the evening of Sept. 17, soon after a bomb exploded on West 23rd Street, injuring 31 people and triggering terrorism fears across the region.  In the video, the men were seen pulling from the travel bag a white plastic bag that contained a pressure cooker connected to wires and a mobile phone. They left the white bag on the sidewalk and walked away with the travel bag. The bomb did not explode, and investigators have said that the men may have inadvertently disabled the device.  The two men, identified as Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan, had flown to New York from here, serving as unarmed security guards on the flight, the officials said.  The bag they found contained one of several homemade bombs that prosecutors say were planted that day in New York and New Jersey by Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan-born American citizen.  They were security guards and didn't recognize a bomb?  Gimme a break, would you?  And, by coincidence, they found the bomb?  I want to know more about these two birds.

ANOTHER ODD DEVELOPMENT – FROM THE HILL:   WikiLeaks has canceled an unknown announcement it had planned for next week due to security concerns, according to an NBC News reporter.  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was scheduled to make an announcement Tuesday from the balcony of London's Ecuadorian Embassy. It was expected to be connected to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.  However, NBC News reporter Jesse Rodriguez reported that because of security concerns at the embassy, the event has been canceled. WikiLeaks hasn't said whether the announcement will be rescheduled.  Over the summer, Wikileaks published a trove of emails which appeared to show top officials at the Democratic National Committee planning how to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.   Assange has promised to release more emails from the massive hack of the Democratic National Committee.  Last month, Assange said more Clinton leaks would be coming soon.  What security concerns could there be?  Obviously, the Clinton people would prefer that Assange release nothing, but...security concerns?  Seems to me this may be a major story waiting to break out.

October 2,  2016     Permalink 

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, THE TRUTH COMES OUT – AT 1:31 P.M.  ET:   The New York Times, defender of the left, gets its comeuppance.  From Breitbart:

The New York Times has excited the Clinton campaign and the rest of the media with a revelation that Republican nominee Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 that might have resulted in him not paying taxes in some subsequent years.

The implication, reinforced by CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday morning, is that Trump “avoided” paying taxes, when in fact his tax liability was zero.

But the Times itself has “avoided” paying taxes — in 2014, for example.

As Forbes noted at the time:

… for tax year 2014, The New York Times paid no taxes and got an income tax refund of $3.5 million even though they had a pre-tax profit of $29.9 million in 2014. In other words, their post-tax profit was higher than their pre-tax profit. The explanation in their 2014 annual report is, “The effective tax rate for 2014 was favorably affected by approximately $21.1 million for the reversal of reserves for uncertain tax positions due to the lapse of applicable statutes of limitations.”

If you don’t think it took fancy accountants and tax lawyers to make that happen, read the statement again.

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani defended Trump on Sunday, telling NBC News’ Meet the Press that Trump was a “genius” in business who was simply doing what the tax code allows every American to do by counting losses against tax liabilities, and bouncing back from failure to success.

That would include the New York Times — which, however, is still struggling.

COMMENT:  Any good business person will try to pay the minimum tax legally allowable.  What, precisely, is wrong with that? 

October 2, 2016       Permalink

MIDEAST HORROR – AT 12:44 P.M. ET:  As we fight our election, a horrible war is raging in Syria.  Not only are the local forces involved, but Russia is involved, and tensions are growing between Washington and Moscow.  Field Marshal Obama and Grand Admiral Kerry have no clue.  This is dangerous stuff.  From AP:

BEIRUT (AP) — Russia warned the United States Saturday against carrying out any attacks on Syrian government forces, saying it would have repercussions across the Middle East as government forces captured a hill on the edge of the northern city of Aleppo under the cover of airstrikes.

Meanwhile, airstrikes on Aleppo struck a hospital in the eastern rebel-held neighborhood of Sakhour on Saturday, putting it out of service, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. They said at least one person was killed in the airstrike.

Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying that a U.S. intervention against the Syrian army "will lead to terrible, tectonic consequences not only on the territory of this country but also in the region on the whole."

She said regime change in Syria would create a vacuum that would be "quickly filled" by "terrorists of all stripes."

U.S.-Russian tensions over Syria have escalated since the breakdown of a cease-fire last month, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes have launched a major onslaught on rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

Syrian troops pushed ahead in their offensive in Aleppo on Saturday capturing the strategic Um al-Shuqeef hill near the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat that government forces captured from rebels earlier this week, according to state TV. The hill is on the northern edge of the Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial center.

The powerful ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham militant group said rebels regained control Saturday of several positions they lost in Aleppo in the Bustan al-Basha neighborhood.

State media said 13 people were wounded when rebels shelled the central government-held neighborhood of Midan.

COMMENT:  More bloodbaths are expected.  And next door, in Iraq, there is an imminent attempt being planned to take back territory now controlled by ISIS.  It is estimated that there might be as many as a million new refugees from the impending fight.

Obama will leave a mess.  But the liberals are more interested in non-gender restrooms.

October 2, 2016       Permalink

TRUMP IN TROUBLE – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  Donald Trump is losing it, in many ways.  After weeks of superb campaigning, under the guidance of excellent new advisers, he blew the first debate big time, and followed that loss with a bizarre campaign against a former Miss Universe.  He was baited by Hillary Clinton, and, like the political amateur he is, Trump took the bait.  He is now losing in every poll, and the losses could mount.

The excellent Michael Goodwin, who has been remarkably fair to Trump, sums it up very well in the New York Post, noting the Miss Universe distraction: 

Compounding a debate performance where Trump missed golden opportunities, his bizarre behavior exacted a price. The first polls show he is back on a road to defeat, and the damage is likely just beginning. He’ll keep core supporters, but he’s making it very hard for undecided voters to back him.

Clinton isn’t saying much, in keeping with the maxim to step aside when your opponent is committing political suicide.

Some call her lucky, but her luck is the kind the late baseball executive Branch Rickey described as the “residue of design.” The way Clinton and her team used the Khans and Machado amounts to a clinic on how to exploit an opponent’s weakness.

It might be the only way she could win. Burdened by scandals, branded a liar, suffering a charisma deficit and hobbled by health issues, she is making Trump an unacceptable alternative.

Still, she couldn’t do it without his help. Although he has the change message that best matches the moment, he is beating himself.

Previous predictions of his demise were wrong, but time is running short for another comeback. Besides, if the armchair shrinks are correct that he fears victory, Trump would always find a way to secure defeat.

Then again, a deep dive into his psyche may not be necessary. His behavior could be proof that Clinton and the NeverTrumpers were right all along — that he’s not temperamentally fit to be president.

Whatever the reason for his conduct, we could be witnessing the beginning of the end.

COMMENT:   An extraordinary comment from the very measured Michael Goodwin.  I'm afraid it's true.  October 8th will arrive this week.  The election will then only be one month away.  October 9th is a week from today, when the second presidential debate will be held, in St. Louis.  The moderators will be the very liberal Anderson Cooper of CNN and the equally liberal Martha Raddatz of ABC.  (Once again, the Republican Party aids in the suicide by agreeing to absurd moderators.  Lester Holt, moderator of the first debate, acted like Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.)

Unless there's a dramatic change, Trump is on his way to handing the election to Hillary Clinton.  If her victory is large enough, she might bring in a Democratic Senate.   And this was supposed to be a change election.

Miracles do happen.  Americans are forgiving.  But Donald Trump is wearing out his welcome.

October 2,  2016     Permalink