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OCTOBER 16,  2016

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

THIS JUST IN – FROM LONDON'S EXPRESS:   POTATOES and cereals increase the risk of heart disease while high fat dairy products cut the risk, according to a new study which rejects accepted wisdom on a healthy diet.  The research, which looked at dietary habits in 42 European countries over 16 years, conflicts with current government nutrition guidance and has led to calls for new advice to be issued.  The work, published in the journal of Food and Nutrition Research, examined food consumption, heart disease and cholesterol levels in the most up-to-date international statistics and raised questions about the reliability of traditional data, much of which was carried out decades ago.  Dr Pavel Grasgruber, a sports scientist and lead author of the study, from Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, called for current dietary advice to be overturned.   I am throwing out the potatoes and immediately buying all the Friendly's chocolate marshmallow swirl that I can find.  This is truly inspiring research.  Er...of course it will probably be contradicted in a week or two, so have fun while it's still current.  Does the term "settled science" come to mind?

DISGRACEFUL! - FROM FOX:  Top Hillary Clinton aides were upset a Muslim man was publicly named as the shooter in a 2015 massacre that left 14 people dead, and a longtime Clinton confidant even expressed regret that the terrorist wasn’t a white man, according to purported emails released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.  The emails were part of a trove of messages stolen from the gmail account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, who has had a long association with the Democratic presidential nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The email chain began on Dec. 2, when digital operative Matt Ortega forwarded a tweet from MSNBC host Christopher Hayes that named one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., attack as Sayeed Farook. Consultant Karen Finney forwarded the email to Podesta, commenting, “Damn.”
Podesta responded: “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk [sic] was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”  I guess they consider themselves advanced intellectuals, the kind who would have described the Japanese pilots over Pearl Harbor as "sincere multicultural activists responding to their oppression by Western capitalist warmongers."

A CLASS ACT IN EVERY WAY – FROM FOX:  A beloved junior high school music teacher battling cancer took her last breath after her students sang a Christian song of love to her in tribute.   A video of Wednesday’s touching performance for Mariana Walker was posted on Facebook and let the teacher know how much she meant to students at Alvin Junior High School in Texas, KTRK-TV reported.  The students performed Hillsong United’s “Oceans” outside the home of the 69-year-old Walker who was in bed under hospice care.  “We had the windows open. We had the screen door open and she could hear that,” Walker’s daughter Alyx Vesey told the staion. “I think that gave her a lot of peace.”  The students also said a prayer for Walker before they left. She then passed away.  We hear so much about "bad" kids or irresponsible kids, or spoiled college students.  These are good kids, and there are plenty of them. 

October 16, 2016       Permalinks

THE PERILS OF POLLING – AT 12:38 P.M. ET:  We publish regular warnings here about becoming too dependent on a single poll, or even a series of polls.  That warning is emphasized by an excellent piece on polling at The Hill:

Virtually all the opinion polls right now give Hillary Clinton a firm lead over Donald Trump in the race for the White House this November. The latest poll average compiled by RealClearPolitics puts her at least five points ahead of Trump, with or without Gary Johnson and Jill Stein included as choices; the Huffington Post Pollster projects a better than 99-percent chance that “Clinton is very likely leading;” and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives her an 85 percent chance of winning.

It looks like the race is decided.

But that was the same sentiment that led the major pollsters 68 years ago to stop polling several weeks before the 1948 election. Tom Dewey’s lead was so firm and consistent that there was no way Harry Truman would be able to win. At least, so it seemed. The man from Missouri did win, of course, thrust to victory by a late surge of votes sparked by his whistle-stop campaign.

If, as Harold Wilson’s once said, a week in politics is an eternity, what do we call three weeks left until Election Day? More than ample time to squander a lead or to catch up.

Polling would never again be suspended weeks before Election Day, no matter how big the lead in the polls. Yet this has not proved to be a guarantee that polls would get it right in the end.

In the most recent presidential election, Gallup’s final estimate of likely voters, issued on the eve of Election Day in 2012, projected Mitt Romney as the winner. A day later, Obama was the winner by nearly 4 percentage points.

Soon after this debacle the Gallup Organization, the inventor of scientific polling in the 1930’s, fell on its sword and quit the election horse-race business altogether. Rasmussen got it wrong in 2012 as well, but they opted to stay in the business.

But in all fairness to those polling giants, they weren’t alone. Three pollsters wimped out, projecting a tied vote, and of the four remaining polls on the RealClearPolitics summary, only two predicted an Obama victory, and those two did so with minimal confidence.

COMMENT:   Read the whole piece.  There could still be surprises and turns of luck.  On the other hand, luck is often created by skillful candidates.  Do any names pop up?

October 16, 2016       Permalinks

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 11:33 A.M. ET:   Grown-ups know that there are critical events happening as we fight our adolescent-level presidential campaign.  And what is happening now can easily result in American casualties in the future.  Anyone in the press interested?  From NBC News:

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Mason was fired on again in international waters off the coast of Yemen, but the ship deployed countermeasures and the vessel was not struck, two U.S. officials said.

The incident occurred late Saturday or early Sunday local time. At least one missile was fired, the officials said.

"The Mason once again appears to have come under attack in the Red Sea, again from coastal defense cruise missiles fired from the coast of Yemen," Navy Admiral John Richardson, chief of naval operations, told reporters at an event in Baltimore Saturday.

The destroyer was targeted by missiles fired from rebel-controlled areas in Yemen twice earlier this week, prompting the U.S. military to launch cruise missiles that destroyed three radar sites in response.

After the earlier attempted missile attacks this week, a Defense Department official warned that those who fire on U.S. vessels do so at their peril.

Yemen is embroiled in a two-year-long conflict between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to the President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed since the conflict escalated in March 2015, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Monday.

COMMENT:  And it's being reported that Obama, probably against his own instincts, is considering further American action in Syria.  The world is a serious place, and we're talking about the weight of a Miss Universe contestant and whether Donald Trump, no Boy Scout he, did some vulgar things years ago.

We'll pay the price for the breathtaking immaturity of this era.

October 16, 2016       Permalinks

THAT'S ALL? – AT 11:08 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton leads by only four points in the Washington Post/ABC News poll out today.  With all the pounding Trump has taken, and his own disorganized, sometimes bizarre defense, you'd think Clinton would be running away with it.  From WaPo: 

With three weeks until Election Day, Hillary Clinton holds a four-point lead over Donald Trump in the race for the White House, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with the Republican nominee hobbled by persistent perceptions that he is not qualified to be president.

The poll was conducted during one of the most tumultuous periods of Trump’s candidacy, after the release of a video in which he spoke about taking sexual advantage of women and during a time when numerous women have accused him of sexual misconduct.

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents believe Trump probably made unwanted sexual advances, and a majority say his apology for boasts about forcing himself on women on a hot-mic videotape was insincere. Nonetheless, the controversy appeared to have had only a minimal impact on his overall support.

Overall, Clinton leads Trump by 47-43 percent among likely voters, a slight edge given the survey’s four-percentage-point error margin. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson has the support of 5 percent, and Green Party nominee Jill Stein is at 2 percent. Among registered voters, the poll shows a similar four-point margin, with Clinton at 44, Trump at 40, Johnson at 6 and Stein at 3. In a two-way matchup, Clinton leads Trump by 50-46 percent among likely voters and by 50-44 percent among registered voters.

COMMENT:  Trump is running a pathetically poor campaign.  As Karl Rove suggested, he should have answered the charges of women who have suddenly come forward to accuse him of improper sexual advances, announced he would discuss the matter no further, and gone on to hit the issues of deepest concern to the American people, the economy and terrorism.

As we've said before in this space, any decent Republican candidate would have probably put Clinton away by now.  Everything that comes out about her in the Wikileaks releases shows a deeply flawed, conniving individual with little regard for the truth.  She won't "win" the election, but Trump will probably lose it because of his sheer obnoxiousness.  What a pathetic situation for a great nation.

The last presidential debate is Wednesday night.  Trump will have to have the debate of a lifetime to turn this around.  He did well in the last debate, and maybe he can pull it off.  But the election is three weeks from Tuesday.  He's running out of time, and the liberal press probably has more ammo ready to fire against him.

October 16,  2016     Permalinks

OCTOBER 15,  2016

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

THE TOLERANCE OF LIBERALS – FROM PAGE SIX:   Be careful what you say about Donald Trump at New York restaurants.  Allan Block of Block Communications — owner of swing-state outlets the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio — and his wife, Susan, owner of Vendome Pastry, and friends were dining at white-hot eatery Le Coucou when there was a “mention of the merits of Trump’s performance at the second presidential debate” at the table, a spy said.  “That drew requests from staff to quiet down due to their upsetting vocal support for the nominee,” the spy added.  Who would want to go into a place like that?  Oh so Soviet.

SOUTH AFRICA DOWN THE DRAIN – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Reason’s Robby Soave reports that at South Africa’s University of Cape Town this past week, students known as “Fallists,” which stands for (hashtag) “Science Must Fall,” told university officials that “the whole thing” — as in science — “should be scratched off, especially in Africa.”  “How do we even start to decolonize science?” a Fallist panelist asks those assembled.  She follows up by saying that if one is “personally committed to enforcing decolonization,” since science is a “product of racism,” it all “should be scratched off.”  I guess that will be the next big thing in the Ivy League.  No more Salk Vaccine.  No more Einstein.  Let's race forward.

IS IT NUTTY OR WISE? – FROM REALCLEARPOLITICS:   At a campaign rally in Portsmouth, NH on Saturday afternoon, Donald Trump challenged Hillary Clinton to take a drug test prior to competing in the third presidential debate. Trump promised he was clean, saying: "I'm willing to do it."  He mocked Hillary Clinton's memory, saying she told the FBI "I don't remember" 39 times when questioned about her private email server. "Maybe that's why she has to do debate prep," Trump quipped. "Cause she's got a bad memory."  "A lot of things are going on folks," he continued. "I think she's actually getting pumped up if you want to know the truth."  "She's getting pumped up. You understand?"  Aside from drug tests, what about lie detector tests?  They may be imperfect, but compare please to the mainstream media.

October 15,  2016     Permalink

WHAT DID CHELSEA KNOW, AND WHEN DID SHE KNOW IT? – AT 12:52 P.M. ET:   There are indications that Chelsea Clinton, who might be first daughter for the second time, had suspicions about the workings of the Clinton Foundation, and made them known.  From Daily Caller: 

Chelsea Clinton’s bold decision in 2011 to launch an “internal investigation” into the finances of the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative was the equivalent of a declaration of war by the first daughter and a bombshell about the financial mess she discovered at the foundation.

The latest revelation came out Tuesday in a new batch of WikiLeaks emails sent to and from Clinton confidant John Podesta, who now is Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman.

Two emails — one dated Nov. 12, 2011 and another dated Jan. 4, 2012 — show Chelsea was aggressively looking into the foundation’s money flows and talking to others about it.

Her actions worried President Bill Clinton’s long-time handler Doug Band, who complained to Podesta about Chelsea’s intervention into the internal operations of the foundation.

The disclosure suggests that Chelsea was shocked by what she found inside her parent’s organization that secured millions of dollars from despots, Eastern European tycoons, Arab Sheiks and foreign billionaires — all of whom also were seeking favors from her mom and dad.

COMMENT:  Hillary Clinton may well be in a position to pay those favors on January 20th.  I hope the despots can wait that long.  We don't want to make anyone angry.

October 15, 2016       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  We are seeing increasingly aggressive moves by hostile powers around the world – Iran, Russia, China, to name the stars.  And one reason must be the contempt their leaders feel for the leadership class in the United States.  We should feel the same contempt.  Peggy Noonan comments, in The Wall Street Journal: 

But nothing is more dangerous than this: that Mr. Putin and perhaps other world leaders have come to have diminished respect for the morality, patriotism and large-mindedness of our leaders. Nikita Khrushchev had a rough respect for JFK and his men and that respect, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, helped avert nuclear war. Mikhail Gorbachev was in the end half-awed by Ronald Reagan’s goodness and idealism; the world knew George H.W. Bush and respected his integrity, and so he was able to build coalitions that were real coalitions, not just names. Now, whoever wins, we are in a different place, a lesser and more dangerous one.

She also writes: 

Here I would like to say a word for the spectacular illusions under which American voters once were able to operate. You used to be able to like your guy—to admire your candidate and imagine unknown virtues he no doubt possessed that would be revealed in time, in books. Those illusions were beautiful. They gave clean energy to the engine of our politics. You can’t have illusions anymore. That souring, which is based on knowledge and observation as opposed to mere cynicism, is painful to witness and bear. The other day a conservative intellectual declared to her fellow writers and thinkers: “I’m for the venal idiot who won’t mechanize government against all I hold dear.” That’s some bumper sticker, isn’t it? And who has illusions about Mrs. Clinton? No one.

COMMENT:  A wonderful column, filled with experience and wisdom.  Please read.

October 15, 2016       Permalink

THE WAR ON RELIGION – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  Americans often forget, and the press is not inclined to remind them, that freedom of religion is the first American freedom.  Not only is it enshrined in the First Amendment, is the main reason why many of the first colonists came to this land in the first place.  Yet, it is often trashed.   From the Washington Times:

In public, Hillary Clinton talks about how she would represent all Americans and pushes the “Stronger Together” campaign theme. But behind closed doors, there is no room for people of faith in her America. Privately, the Democratic nominee and her campaign advisers are pushing a liberal agenda hostile to religion and targeting faith organizations that do not adapt to their liberal “religion.”

The Clinton campaign is no friend of the cause of religious liberty. Internal emails exposed by WikiLeaks showed how her top campaign aides mock believers and view evangelicals and Catholics as backward in their beliefs. Mrs. Clinton herself even said publicly “deep-seated cultural codes and religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

Well, her staff certainly seemed ready and willing to do just that, particularly Chief of Staff John Podesta.

Top Hillary Clinton advisers ridiculed individuals for raising their children Catholic, referring to Catholics as being “systematic in thought and severely backwards.” It was disturbing to read about how liberals characterize conservative Catholics as being responsible for an “amazing bastardization of faith.”

Catholics and evangelicals should be troubled by Mrs. Clinton’s hidden agenda to influence and alter the tenets of Christian and Catholic orthodoxy. Perhaps what is most disturbing is that Mrs. Clinton’s team will pander publicly on the stump to Catholics, Christians, Southerners and Hispanics, and then take a very different stance behind closed doors from the comfort of their keyboards. There they express vicious contempt for the very voters they need to win the election.

COMMENT:   Read the whole thing.  It's worth it.  One of the great lies of leftists is that they care about the "common man and woman."  I have yet to see that demonstrated.  In fact, the leftists I know are more likely to refer to average Americans as "the flyover people," and to show contempt for the work they do and the country they serve in uniform.

Religious groups are not perfect, and many have a history of bigotry.  But, at its best, the Judeo-Christian ethic provides our moral sense.  "Though shalt not kill" is not a Democratic Party talking point.

October 15,  2016     Permalink