Who is Alicia Machado?

If you don’t know, don’t feel bad. She’s the most recent example of the “mainstream” media’s determination to talk about anything other than what you want them to report on.

News coverage should focus on “candidates’ policy positions,” say 63 percent in a Huffington Post poll.

You care most about the economy and terrorism, multiple polls indicate. Also “very important to their vote” are foreign policy, health care, gun policy and immigration, say 70 percent or more in a Pew Poll.

Yet we heard more about someone named Alicia Machado than any of these issues in the “reporting” on the first presidential debate.

[ssba]As a young reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, I covered the trials of two of the smaller fry in Watergate. What’s going on now makes me wonder what all the fuss was about back then.

The Clinton Foundation and associated email scandals dwarf Watergate – and every other political scandal in American history.

Besides Watergate (1973-74), the other biggies are Iran-Contra (1985-87), Teapot Dome (1921-22), the Whiskey Ring (1875), and Credit Mobilier (1872-73).

These five combined together don’t come remotely close to the massiveness of the Crooked Clinton Foundation.  Why then was all we heard about it in the debate last night was… crickets?

Donald Trump is utterly unfit to be president, the New York Times and the Washington Post said in editorials on the eve of the first presidential debate.

Trump “dwells in bigotry, bluster and false promises,” said the Times. He’s “amply demonstrated his unworthiness,” said the Post.

Though of course neither the Times nor the Post mentioned it, Hillary Clinton also has amply demonstrated her unfitness to be president – and far more so than Mr. Trump..

In 24 years as a national public figure, Hillary’s most significant accomplishment was to orchestrate smears of women Bill molested. As First Lady, she botched the only big job Bill gave her (a health care “reform” that presaged Obamacare). The only bill she got enacted into law during eight years in the Senate was to rename a courthouse. She was the worst secretary of state ever.

A novice can get better with experience. Incompetence is incurable.  So is a complete lack of morality.

On a visit to Bombay (aka Mumbai) in April, 2013, Bill Clinton praised Indian generic drug companies Ranbaxy and Cipla for their “stellar contribution in the fight against the HIV/AIDS scourge.” Their cheap drugs saved millions of lives, the former president said.

Surely Mr. Clinton knew by then – if he hadn’t from the beginning – the antiretroviral (ARV) drugs Ranbaxy sold were cheap because they were frauds. Their useless medicines did little to help HIV/AIDs patients.

The beginning was in 2002, when Clinton aide Ira Magaziner approached Ranbaxy with a proposition.

“They could put the developing countries together to form a sort of ‘buying club’ that could ramp up economies of scale and lower cost,” said Profs. Ethan Kapstein and Joshua Busby in their 2013 book, “AIDS Drugs for All.”

The World Health Organization had suspicions about Ranbaxy in 2004. A whistleblower told the Food and Drug Administration in 2007 how the company fabricated data to win FDA approvals. The fraud was made public in a Justice Department filing in 2008.

In 2012, the Justice Department banned Ranbaxy from selling in the U.S. drugs manufactured at several Indian plants. A month after Mr. Clinton’s lavish praise for the firm in 2013, Ranbaxy pled guilty to criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud.

“Who cares? It’s just blacks dying.” That’s how a senior Ranbaxy executive dismissed concerns expressed by other executives the company was manufacturing defective medicines, Fortune magazine reported in a lengthy expose that month (May, 2013).

If you left a little early for the Labor Day weekend, you may not have heard about the FBI’s data dump  Friday (9/02) about its interview with Hillary Clinton on her handling on classified information.

It was remarkable for the new information contained in it, for Hillary’s excuse for violating security rules, for what the FBI didn’t ask her – and for the timing of its release.

Politicians release bad news late on Friday afternoon, because it’s sure to receive less attention. But the FBI is supposed to be non-partisan.

“To release this on a Friday as if (FBI Director James Comey) is an arm of the Clinton campaign, I’m just stunned, because there’s a lot of information in here that’s of great public interest,” said Mark Halperin of Bloomberg News.

It gets worse.  James Comey is ruining the FBI.

The Clinton Foundation is “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud ever,” says the investigator who uncovered the financial discrepancies at General Electric before its stock crashed in 2008.

It “wasn’t organized lawfully and it isn’t operating lawfully. There’s never been an audit,” says Charles Ortel, described by the London Sunday Times as “one of the finest financial analysts on the planet.”

Mr. Ortel has examined every public filing by the Clinton Foundation and its donors. He’s found major discrepancies between what the Clinton Foundation reported receiving and what donors say they gave.

For instance, between Sept, 2006 and Dec. 2008, the UNITAID consortium reported giving $100 million more than the Clinton Foundation reported receiving, Mr. Ortel told me in an interview.

“The business model of the Clintons is to stand between misery and the donor community and allow millions – maybe billions – of dollars to get diverted,” Mr. Ortel says. “Where there’s misery, they figure out a way to profit from it.”

Where can you go to get accurate, timely, unbiased information about what’s happening in America and the world? Where can you find news reported in depth and in context, without spin?

Except for TTP -- nowhere.

The two things essential for the preservation of a free society are an educated populace and a free press, Jefferson said.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be,” he said. "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

Liberty is on life support chiefly because (most of) those responsible for the education of our children are not teaching them what they need to know to be good citizens, and because so many in the news media are lap dogs, not watchdogs.

The news media are intentionally biased, said 70 percent of respondents to a survey conducted last year by USA Today and the Newseum Institute, a 15 percent increase over the year before.

Many journalists abuse trust placed by pushing agendas. They strive to shape public opinion rather than simply to inform it. The vast majority of presstitutes shill for Democrats and left wing causes.

Hillary Clinton thinks she has little to fear from Donald Trump. But she may be casting nervous glances over her shoulder at Preet Bharara.

You may not have heard of Mr. Bharara. Sheldon Silver, former speaker of the New York State Assembly, a Democrat, and Dean Skelos, former Majority Leader of the New York State Senate, a Republican, wish they hadn’t. In May, they were sentenced to 12 years and 5 years in prison, respectively, for corruption.

Preet Bharara is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He’s a Democrat, but appears to be one of the few “public servants” these days who puts the responsibilities of his office ahead of partisan politics. Since his appointment in 2009, Bharara “has launched a one-man crusade against evil-doers, ranging from corrupt politicians to the Mafia,” said Prof. Alan Chartock.

Currently, Mr. Bharara is disturbing the sleep of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Will he have Hillary tossing and turning too?  Here’s how he could turn Hildebeast into an insomniac.

At a rally in Florida Monday (8/08), Seddique Mateen, father of Omar Mateen, who murdered 49 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, sat behind the podium where Hillary Clinton was speaking.

Seddique is not responsible for his son’s horrific crime. But he has some fishy associations. Evidently Hillary – or at least some on her staff – have difficulty distinguishing between Moslem patriots such as Army Capt. Humayan Khan, and Islamist terrorists such as Omar Mateen.

A top official at the Clinton Foundation told State Department aides to give special access to a Lebanese businessman who pled guilty to laundering funds for a Nigerian dictator, emails released Tuesday (8/09) revealed.

Why?  Because Gilbert Chagoury pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009.

Handed two big clubs with which to pound his opponent, Donald Trump chose instead to beat his own brains out.

Everything in America is pretty much hunky dory, President Barack Hussein Obama said in his speech at the Democrat National Convention, during which he mentioned the candidate he was endorsing 43 times, himself 119 times.

Most Americans don’t agree.

The people running the country don’t really care what happens to them, say 82 percent of respondents in a Harris poll. Most people in power are trying to take advantage of people like them, say 70 percent.

An alliance of politicians, media pundits, lobbyists and interest groups runs the country for their own gain, say 83 percent, according to pollster Pat Caddell.

“The old ways don’t work. It’s time for radical change,” agreed more than 70 percent in Quinnipiac swing state polls in July.

And who’s going to provide that – The Donald or the PIAPS?

The Democrat National Committee collaborated with the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie Sanders, emails published by Wikileaks on the eve of the Dem convention indicated.

The news infuriated Sanders supporters, already grumpy because Hillary selected Sen. Tim Kaine, D-VA., who is what passes for a “moderate” among Democrats these days.

The firestorm swiftly consumed Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, D-FL, the DNC Chair, who was canned and blew town before the convention was gaveled in. Then in a stunning display of cluelessness, callousness, or both, Hillary made Debbie Dimwit honorary co-chair of her campaign.

Every mention of Hillary’s name Monday (7/25) was booed, beginning with the benediction (!). Some Sanders supporters chanted “lock her up,” as Republicans had in Cleveland.

Here’s a heads-up: Donald Trump will run as if he were in a Democrat primary. He’ll be to Hillary’s left on some economic issues, in sync with her on most social issues. He’ll aim his pitch at Sanders supporters, and the white working class Democrats abandoned.  Witness yesterday (7/26) his advocating raising the minimum wage in total ignorance of basic economics.

George W. Bush fears he’ll be the last Republican president. Ever. He has reason to worry, given the circus this week in Cleveland. Imagine the Marx brothers and the Keystone Kops running a convention of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

At a breakfast Monday (7/18), campaign chairman Paul Manafort took a shot at Ohio Gov. John Kasich, for skipping the convention. Kasich has a 60 percent approval rating – about 20 points higher than Trump in the Buckeye state. No Republican has been elected president without carrying Ohio.

The convention secretary actually went into hiding Monday afternoon so anti-Trump Republicans couldn’t present her with petitions from 11 delegations (7 were needed) to force a roll call vote on the Rules Committee report.

Once they found her, Obersturmgruppenführer Reince Priebus, armed now with the names of the rebels, sent bullies to browbeat them to recant. When not enough did, Priebus ignored the rules.

“This is a meeting of Brownshirts,” former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-NH, told MSNBC.

“Scores die in Nice, France as Truck Plows into Bastille Day Crowd,” said the headline in the New York Times.  “Tune in to MSNBC for continued live coverage of the deadly truck crash in Nice, France,” the network tweeted.

I hadn’t been aware trucks drove themselves, or any had gone rogue.

There was someone at the wheel of the truck, a “Tunisian born Frenchman” said the New York Daily News, a “Frenchman of Tunisian origin,” said the New York Times.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, ate pork, smoked, and drank alcohol, his relatives said. He couldn’t have been a Muslim.

Donald Trump has chosen Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to be his running mate. A former Congressman with national ambitions, Pence was once a conservative darling. But he lost a support in Indiana and a cred with conservatives last year when he first backed a state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and then backtracked after pressure from gay activists and big business.

* * * *

The list of speakers at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week was released yesterday.  There are six Trumps on it, four billionaires, four reality tv stars, two soap opera stars.

The prominent politicians on the list – Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark – all expect Hillary to beat Trump, hope to use their convention speeches to jump start their campaigns for 2020.

* * * *

A “Tunisian born Frenchman,” Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, drove a heavy truck into a crowd in Nice, France celebrating Bastille day, then opened fire, killing at least 84, two of them Americans, and at least 10 children. It would have been worse were it not for this guy.

* * * *

Theresa May became Britain’s prime minister Wednesday (7/13). Ms. May, 59, Britain’s longest serving Home Secretary, is “unpredictable and moralistic,” said the Guardian, a left-wing British newspaper, “but in time of national crisis, her calm consistency and sense of moral duty may be just what is called for.”

* * * *

President Obama now wants to have the U.S. military work with the Russians in Syria. The Pentagon thinks it’s a bad idea.

* * * *

It’s starting to dawn on foreign policy “experts” that North Korea is building nuclear weapons because it plans to use them.

* * * *

In a breach of decorum so shocking the New York Times felt compelled to denounce it, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a public attack on Donald Trump.

* * * *

According to Social Justice Warriors, the Obama administration and the Lying Swine, this couldn’t possibly have happened.

* * * *

“To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Black Lives Matter after five Dallas police officers were killed during a BLM protest.

Here’s who the Dallas Police Five were, murdered simply for the color of their skin.

Black Lives Matter doesn’t practice what it preaches. Neither do President Obama or most in the news media.  Jumping to conclusions before the facts are known also is dangerous and irresponsible.

Black Lives Matter was begun in 2013.  Participants in BLM’s often violent protests have called for the murder of police.

Was Micah Xavier Johnson, the cop-killer in Dallas, who said he “wanted to kill white people,” listening?

Was Lakeem Keon Scott in Bristol, Tennessee listening?  Last Thursday (7/07),  he shot four whites at random, murdering one, because he was angry about police violence against African-Americans. Since the shooting in Dallas, blacks have ambushed cops in Georgia, Missouri and Indiana.

Black Lives Matter “is a radical hate group,” said El Paso police chief Greg Allen, who is black. BLM is “a vile, vitriolic hateful movement,” said Milwaukee County (Wis) Sheriff David Clarke, who is black.

Yet at a memorial service yesterday (7/12) for the slain Dallas police officers, President Obama had the unconscionable gall to defend the BLM protests.

The president is trying “to calm racial tensions that his own behavior has done much to aggravate,” said former Fox News anchor Brit Hume. He “reminds me of a pyromaniac who sets a fire and then calls 911,” Sheriff Clarke said.

Snipers killed five Dallas police officers, wounded seven others and two civilians last night (7/7). One suspect has been killed, three are in custody. Others may still be at large.

One suspect told police negotiators “he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” said police chief David Brown, who is black.

* * * *

In his statement today, Mr. Obama blamed the Dallas shootings in part on lack of gun control.

“When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist,” Ben Shapiro noted. “But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops (or when Islamists murder gay people) the left suggests that gun control is the issue.”

* * * *

FBI Director James Comey spent 12 minutes laying out in exhaustive detail how Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state endangered national security, violated at least three criminal statutes. But then the FBI Director said he wasn’t recommending prosecution, because Hillary hadn't intended to harm the United States.

Some of the statements Hillary made under oath were “not true,” the FBI Director told the House Oversight Committee yesterday. That’s perjury, Republicans said.  Comey also said Hillary is “not sophisticated enough” to understand classified markings.  She was, however, sophisticated enough to order classified markings to be removed from documents she sent via her private server.

In must see TV, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, a crackerjack prosecutor before being elected to Congress, leads Comey through the evidence Hillary intended to break the law.

* * * *

After Comey handed him a club with which he could have beaten Hillary all week, The Donald Tuesday retweeted from a neo-Nazi web site an anti-Semitic cartoon, and praised Saddam Hussein.

This was at least the fifth time Trump has diverted the news media’s attention from a breaking anti-Hillary story by saying something stupid or obnoxious. 

* * * *

Austria’s constitutional court has thrown out the results of the presidential election in May, narrowly won by the leftist candidate, due to massive voter “irregularities.” The court ordered a new election for September. If Norbert Hofer, who opposes massive Muslim immigration, wins the rerun, he would be "the first far-right head of state in the European Union," Reuters whined.

We used to expect more of our presidents than that they not have been indicted for major felonies.

There were no new “bombshells” in the Report of the Benghazi Committee.  But there were exhaustive, chilling new details about a foreign policy gone awry, about gross negligence and deliberate deceit.

Ousting Muammar Khadafy has turned Libya into a base from which ISIS infiltrates Europe and other countries in North Africa.

*Senior State Department officials were warned repeatedly about Islamist danger, but ignored or rejected pleas from Ambassador Chris Stevens on down for more security.  The Diplomatic Security Service staff in Libya was cut from 34 to 6 the month before the attack.

“This was a suicide mission,” a DSS officer assigned to the consulate told a superior in Washington. “There was a very good chance that everybody here was going to die.”

“Everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi,” responded the DSS desk officer in the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau. “Nobody cares, and nobody is going to care until somebody does die.”

Four somebodies did die – and Hillary still didn’t care.  She still doesn’t to this day.

Three ISIS suicide bombers killed 43 and injured 239 at Turkey’s Ataturk International airport Tuesday (6/28). The three-part attack “was carried out in a way that suggests the kind of advance intelligence, careful study of a target, and cool execution that would normally be practiced by Western special forces.”

America isn’t on this list of countries where ISIS claims to have covert units in place.  But CIA Director John Brennan said he’d be “surprised if (ISIS) is not trying to carry out that kind of attack in the United States.”

* * * *

Gunmen have taken at least 20 hostages today in a café popular with diplomats in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh.  You’ll never guess what they were shouting.

* * * *

One of the guns used in the terrorist attack in Paris last November was purchased illegally from a gun owner in Phoenix. The seller committed at least two federal firearms violations, but hasn’t been prosecuted. Judicial Watch suspects the seller was participating in the infamous “Fast and Furious” operation in which ATF deliberately permitted “straw purchases” for Mexican drug cartels and let guns “walk” across the border.

* * * *

There were no new bombshells in the report of the Benghazi Committee Tuesday. But there were chilling new details confirming what those who were paying attention already knew. 

“Benghazi was a foreseeable disaster (the administration) failed to prevent,” summed up Richard Fernandez of PJ Media. “And in the aftermath it was a catastrophe whose lessons they were determined to ignore.”

* * * *

Donald Trump was in Pennsylvania Tuesday to deliver a speech on trade so profoundly economically illiterate it could have been given by Bernie Sanders.  It was also profoundly hypocritical, since the merchandise Trump sells – including those stupid hats -- is manufactured abroad.

* * * *

Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton met for half an hour Tuesday on her government airplane at the airport in Phoenix.  They didn’t discuss the FBI investigation of Hillary, Ms. Lynch said. Not even the Lying Swine believe that.

If Donald Trump were a referendum, like Brexit, he’d win in a walk.

It came as a shock that Brits voted to leave the European Union because almost the entire ruling class/establishment/elite opposed Brexit.

“Levels of dissatisfaction with leadership have reached revolutionary levels,” wrote Gerard Baker in the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s a paradox of mass modern democracy that voters feel themselves governed by rulers who ‘neither see nor feel nor know,’ a political-business nexus that feeds on itself and promotes its own interests while mouthing platitudes at election time to keep the populace at bay.”

Three-fourths of the American people believe the government in Washington no longer operates with the consent of the governed, wrote Greg Orman and Pat Caddell in RealClear Politics June 5. Two-thirds think America is in decline.

Britain’s vote yesterday (6/23) to leave the European Union is the most significant international political development this century, the first good news for lovers of liberty in a very long time.

What was revolted against was the attempt by globalist elites to impose an undemocratic and unworkable political union.  I think the turning point in Brexit’s upset victory were the efforts of EU honchos to force member countries to take in hordes of Muslim “immigrants,” and the rioting in Calais Monday and Tuesday by “immigrants” demanding to go to Britain.

* * * *

Democrats gave us a vivid illustration this week why here as well as in Britain, “levels of dissatisfaction with leadership have reached revolutionary levels.”

In support of President Obama’s efforts to conceal from the American people that the killer in the worst mass shooting in American history was a radical Islamist, a registered Democrat and a fan of Hillary Clinton, Democrats conducted a series of stunts to blame the murders on a rifle Omar Mateen didn’t use, Republicans, Christians, and the NRA.

Democrats are fighting for a “bad, stupid bill,” said Gawker.  “The use of error-prone and unfair watch lists is not the way to regulate guns in America,” said the ACLU.

* * * *

President Obama got smacked around by the Supreme Court, and by a U.S. District court judge, an Obama appointee.

* * * *

The political prosecutions of Baltimore police officers is backfiring on racist demagogue States Attorney Marilyn Mosby.

* * * *

Hillary Clinton is more unpopular than ever, but her lead over Donald Trump is growing.

It was the Keystone Kops version of George Orwell’s dystopian novel of a dictatorship in which the past is rewritten to suit the political masters, words are robbed of their meaning.  “War is peace.” “Freedom is slavery.”  “Ignorance is strength.”

The Justice Department released Monday morning (6/20) a partial transcript of Omar Mateen’s 911 call from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.  All references to ISIS and Islam were deleted.

“OM: ‘I pledge of allegiance to [omitted]. ‘I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].’”

This effort to drop the killer’s motive down the Memory Hole was hilarious. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was redacted.  Especially since it had been widely reported that Mateen had described himself as a “soldier of Allah” who declared his allegiance to ISIS.

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” Orwell said.

That the real reason for the redactions was to deceive Americans about the killer’s motive is made clear by the strenuous efforts of the president and his minions to blame the massacre on Christians, Republicans, the NRA -- everyone but radical Islamists.

As we argue over whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would be a worse successor, we got a vivid reminder yesterday (6/16) that the worst president America has ever had is in the White House now.

Yesterday his CIA Director issued a chilling rebuttal to President Obama’s claim ISIS is on the run. ISIS is more “formidable” than ever, is planning more Paris, Orlando-style attacks, John Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Yet those in government who are responsible for our safety are unable, or unwilling, to protect us from Islamist terror.

* * * *

Britons will vote next Thursday (6/23) on a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave the European Union.  Current polls show Brexit (a conflation of the words “Britain” and “exit”) with a slight lead.  This is remarkable, because virtually every major British politician opposes Brexit.

* * * *

If Brexit wins, the EU may be doomed, because other countries – chiefly Sweden, Norway, Denmark and France – are likely to follow.

* * * *

The Taliban controls more of Afghanistan now than at any time since it was toppled from power in 2001, said our new commander there.

* * * *

Donald “Trump is building up hostility, shedding prospective supporters, and alienating – or worse, frightening – entire voter groups at a stunning rate, wrote GOP strategist Ed Rogers in the Washington Post Tuesday.

Trump is on track to get a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Goldwater in 1964, McGovern in 1972.

Who is the biggest wuss in journalism today?

Gersh Kuntzman of the New York Daily News went to a firing range in Philadelphia to shoot the AR-15, the most popular semi-automatic rifle in America.  For him, it was a harrowing experience:

“It felt to me like a bazooka – and sounded like a cannon,” he said. “The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD.”

Mr. Kutzman bruises easily.  The AR-15 shoots a .223 caliber cartridge, just a smidgen bigger than the .22, the smallest caliber of ammunition sold.  Recoil is negligible.  If Mr. Kutzman thinks an AR-15 “sounds like a cannon,” he’s never heard a cannon fired.

In the wake of the Orlando shooting, many gun control advocates call for reinstatement of the “assault weapons ban” in effect from 1994 to 2004.  They are idiots, or think you are. 

When Omar Mateen killed 49 and wounded 53 at an Orlando nightclub last weekend, it was the worst terror attack in America since 9/11, the 86th instance of Islamic terror here since then.  

The FBI investigated Mateen in 2013 and 2014. But he wasn’t on a terror watch list; worked for a security firm that has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.

“The most disturbing aspect of recent terror attacks is that the authorities were taken by surprise each time despite advance warning,” said Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club. “This serial failure undercuts the administration's claim to competence.”

President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton, made plans to campaign with her in Wisconsin next week. He met yesterday with Bernie Sanders, who immediately afterward toned down his rhetoric. The more important meeting Obama held Thursday was with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.  It’s safe to assume, now, that Hillary won’t be indicted, no matter how powerful the evidence the FBI has gathered.

* * * *  

It was the Mother of All Corrections which, predictably, has gotten little attention from the “mainstream” media.

* * * *

A mob of about 400 attacked people as they were leaving a Donald Trump rally in San Jose June 2. Trump backers were “running for their lives,” some San Jose police officers said.  Police watched the attacks for about half an hour before moving in.

* * * *

Her Hillaryness granted the reporters covering her campaign an eight minute audience in California Monday in which they could ask her questions. If you thought the journalists might have had a question or two about scathingly critical report by the State Department’s inspector general on her use of a private email server, or about a new book by a former Secret Service agent who said she “lacks the integrity and temperament to serve as president,” you’d have been mistaken.

* * * *

Donald Trump is a shameless bigot…who ought to be our next president.  That’s the official position of GOP “leaders” in the wake of The Donald’s bizarre rant against Judge Alfonso Curiel, who will preside over the trials of two of the three class action suits accusing Trump University of fraud.

“The media have reached a turning point in covering Donald Trump,” says Paul Waldman of the Washington Post (6/03).  “He may not survive it.”

“Mainstream” journalists who think The Donald will pay a price for attacking the news media may be as lacking in self awareness as they are in ethics.  In Gallup’s annual survey of trust in American institutions, “television news” ranked 12th, barely ahead of big business and Congress.

“Eighty percent of Americans believe that an alliance of politicians, media pundits, lobbyists, and interest groups runs the country for their own gain at the expense of the American people,” said Greg Orman and Pat Caddell in calling for “a real independent candidacy that offers a path apart from the establishment Democrat and Republican parties.”

Orman and Caddell claim what they advocate “isn’t a whimsical fantasy” – but if you read their plea that’s precisely what it is. 

Democrat Party leaders who couldn’t care less that Hillary Clinton is a liar and a crook who has gravely endangered national security will drop her in a New York minute if they think she’ll lose the election.

If the FBI recommends Hillary be indicted, party leaders plan to ease her out and replace her with Vice President Joe Biden, a billionaire friend who is wired into their thinking told Jack Wheeler, he reported in the HFR last week.

Millions of Americans would greet the Biden Switcheroo with sighs of relief.  Slow Joe would be a terrible president.  But he doesn’t lie nearly as often as do Hillary and Trump; isn’t being sued for fraud or investigated by the FBI; hasn’t committed or enabled sexual assault, and nobody has questioned his sanity.

Yet there are many obstacles lying in wait for the Biden Switcheroo.  Let’s discuss them.

If Hillary wins in November, the people she has most to thank are those who voted for Trump in the primaries, for nominating the only candidate more unpopular than she is.

That I think Hillary will win doesn’t mean I want her to win.  Trumpkins seem confused about that.

I could be mistaken. I grossly overestimated the intelligence and character of Republican primary voters (40 percent of them, anyway), grossly underestimated the selfishness, greed, cluelessness and cowardice of GOP “leaders” (upwards of 80 percent of them, apparently).

But I’m pretty sure the only way Trump could become competitive is if Bernie Sanders decides to accept the Green Party nomination and runs in the fall.

There’s a fair possibility this will happen.  Sanders is no more a Democrat than Trump is a Republican. 

Democrats should unite against “prattling demagogue” Donald Trump, who is “a lightning rod for the politically disenfranchised and marginalized who trust in nothing but their misplaced biases,” Rob Biller wrote in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette May 19.

I’ve a newsflash for Mr. Biller: Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries are neither smarter nor more moral than the bigots, thugs, morons and gullible fools who voted for Trump in the Republican primaries.

It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could be less qualified to be president of the United States than Donald Trump.  But he’s not the one who more than 100 FBI agents are investigating for multiple security violations and public corruption.

Hillary has been a national figure for a quarter century…which makes it all the more remarkable that her public record is devoid of anything resembling accomplishment.

It’s difficult to lie more often than Donald Trump, but Hillary trumps him (can’t resist the pun). The “mainstream” media have  downplayed evidence of Hillary’s wrongdoing, and her lies about it. But in the wake of the damning State IG report issued yesterday (5/25), that’s changing.  Fast.

No independent since George Washington has been elected president.  Only former president Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 has been competitive (and that gave us Woodrow Wilson – thanks, Teddy…).  But both Trump and Hillary are so wildly unpopular that for the right independent, victory isn’t out of the question.

For there’s more than one way to skin a victorious cat.  My candidate for cat-skinner is Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.

Even if he finishes third in the popular and electoral votes, Sasse could be elected.  All he need do is best the two lying leftist scoundrels in enough states to keep either of them below 270 electoral votes.

If no candidate wins a majority in the electoral college, the House of Representatives will choose the president: the 12th Amendment which supersedes Article II, Section 1, Clause 3.  Each state delegation will have one vote.  California and Wyoming will be equal.  Among Hillary, Trump and Sasse, for whom do you think the current Republican majority in the House would vote?

Burke did say: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”

Here’s what we who can do only a little better start doing right now:

The danger is greater today than it was in July of 1863 that government “of the people, by the people, for the people” may perish from the earth.

I’ve survived a long battle with cancer to find my country afflicted by twin deadly cancers.  The election of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump spells doom for the constitutional republic for which – during my service in the Marine Corps and Army Special Forces -- I was willing to lay down my life.

Even if he weren’t a liberal Democrat, a con man, a boor, and an ignoramus on public policy, I’d never vote for Trump because he’s the antithesis of everything my parents taught me a good man should be.

Hillary Clinton is even worse.  If they weren’t the presumptive nominees of their parties, neither Hillary nor The Donald could get a security clearance.

In their desperation to stop her, some conservatives refuse to recognize how little difference there is between the political views of Hillary and Trump, and none whatsoever in their (lack of) ethics.  Arsenic is as deadly a poison as cyanide.  I don’t plan to take either.

Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee, Republicans should unite behind him, say, among others, (Republican National Chairman) Reince Priebus and (over the hill blowhard) Newt Gingrich.

Fat chance of that.  I wonder who (besides themselves) they think they’re kidding?

A conservative columnist I admire, former Army colonel Kurt Schlichter, despises Trump almost as much as I do, but plans to vote for him, because he thinks Hillary would be worse.  Hillary is a fascist, Kurt says.  Trump is more of a clown.

Rick Wilson, one of the few GOP consultants I think is worth a hoot, said he may vote for Hillary because he thinks Trump would be worse.

I don’t see how a principled conservative could vote for either.  To choose between Trump and Hillary is like taking sides in the Iran-Iraq war.  America wins only if both lose.

I’ve written often about how the Lying Swine betrayed the fundamental principles of journalism to shill for Democrats.  I’ve written recently about how (much of) the “conservative” media betrayed conservatism to shill for Donald Trump.

Where can a conservative go to find out what’s really going on?

If you’re reading this, you know the most important part of the answer. 

We know from the nasty things they say that some Trumpkins don’t care what the truth is.  But I doubt that 38 percent of Republican primary voters are cultists, or racists, or morons.  They’ve been misled.  The truth about Donald Trump and his dismal electoral prospects has been concealed from them.

The Trump candidacy is a product of his total domination of the news media.  He’s been given billions of dollars worth of free publicity, hours upon hours of nearly uncritical coverage.

The “mainstream” media have an ulterior motive.  They want Republicans to nominate the weakest possible candidate to run against Hillary in the fall.  But most conservatives learned long ago not to put too much trust in the Lying Swine. 

The worst offenders have been in the so-called “conservative” media, especially Fox News and (much of) talk radio.  From Hannity to Rush to Drudge and so many more, they’ve sold out their country in persuading their listeners to support a liberal Democrat crony capitalist pretending to be conservative. 

In their support of Trump, they have exposed themselves to be only pretend conservatives like him.

At the conclusion of a news conference in Jupiter, Florida on March 8, Michelle Fields, a reporter for Breitbart News, a webzine deeply in the tank for Donald Trump, approached the candidate to ask him a question about affirmative action.

Someone grabbed her arm from behind and yanked her backward.  Ms. Fields stumbled but didn’t fall.  She didn’t see who grabbed her.  Washington Post reporter Ben Terris told her it was Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager.

This was a thuggish thing to do.  But it wasn’t a big deal.  Ms. Fields was shaken and her arm was bruised, but she’d suffered no serious injury. In a sane world, Mr. Lewandowski would have apologized to Ms. Fields, perhaps while offering a self-serving explanation for his behavior.  She would have accepted his apology.  End of story.

That isn’t what happened.  What did is yet another example of the weirdness of the Cult of Trump.

“God looks out for widows, orphans and the United States of America.”

If you add up the amazing number of seemingly miraculous events that had to happen to bring our constitutional republic into existence, and to preserve it during the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II, it’s easy to believe this is true.

But a presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton makes me fear we’ve tried God’s patience once too often, that America as we have known it is about to disappear into history.

Trump’s nomination would mean the effective end of the Republican Party, and could mean the end of the Bill of Rights.

But the Lord works in mysterious ways.  It’s possible we could wake from the Trump nightmare closer to the republic our Founding Fathers gave us than we’ve been in generations.

It’s now more likely than not the Donald will fall short of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination; that Sen. Ted Cruz will win it on the second ballot.  If that’s so, Trump’s candidacy will have made possible the election of a more conservative president than Ronald Reagan.

Would you invite someone into your home who you knew to be a thief and a rapist?

Of course not. So why are Republicans permitting the Lying Swine liberal media to pick their nominee for president?

If Donald Trump prevails in Cleveland, it’ll be all she wrote for the GOP, and for the constitutional republic our Founding Fathers gave us. But if we’re spared this awful fate – and I think we will – we need to examine why we came so close to catastrophe, and to figure out what we must do to keep this from happening again.

The Lying Swine have given Trump about $2 billion worth of free publicity, roughly six times as much as they’ve given all the other Republican presidential candidates combined. As the propaganda arm of the Democrat National Committee, the “mainstream” media do this mostly because they want the GOP to nominate the weakest possible candidate for the general election.

There isn’t much Republicans can do about media bias. But it is imperative for GOP leaders to stop pretending it doesn’t exist. The Lying Swine are the enemy – our foremost enemy.  They must be treated as such. 

History is pre-determined by prevailing economic conditions, said Karl Marx, which indicates he knew as little about history as he did about economics.

History has been shaped by what people who could influence events did or did not do.

Because men like Walsingham and Washington are rare, and men like Ewell and Chamberlain are not, human events are determined more by the ignorance, stupidity, cowardice, vanity, selfishness and greed of people in a position to influence them than by their virtues.

That’s why a thin-skinned misogynist demagogue who largely shares the “Progressive” views of Hillary Clinton (and lies as often as she does) could become the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president.

I’m writing to wish TTPers a Merry Christmas, and to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making mine more merry.

My Christmas figures to be merry, because the odds are now substantial – and are rising – that it won’t be my last.

When I saw in July the blood test numbers that led to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, they were all very bad.

The turn around began in late August, after the first 3-week round of outpatient chemotherapy. The decline in my cancer symptoms was spectacular, said my oncologist, who couldn’t keep the amazement out of his voice. The worst of my bad numbers plunged from 93 to 5.

There’ve been further declines, some of them substantial, in chemo rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5, which was completed last week. I don’t know why I responded so spectacularly well to outpatient chemo, but I’m sure the prayers of TTPers and others who’ve been praying for me have had a lot to do with it.

Enough about my cancer. Jack Wheeler asked me to comment on the cancer afflicting the GOP. Here we go.

“We have to respect the tradition in this country of people who want to defend themselves and their family from violence…. There are people at high levels in this government who have bodyguards 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The average American does not have that, and deserves the right to be able to protect their family.”

That was former Virginia senator Jim Webb making the most sensible comment during the Dem presidential candidate debate on Tuesday (10/13). In response, the audience sat on its hands.

The last thing in the world Democrats want to hear is common sense on guns, gun-control, gun-free zones, crime, and mass murderers.

All but two mass shootings since 1950 have taken place where ordinary citizens are forbidden to carry guns, says John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

As gun ownership in the U.S. has risen, violent crime rates have fallen. Violent crime is rampant in cities with strict gun control laws. There is very little of it in Vermont, which has none. This is very embarrassing to socialist gun-control freak, Bernie Sanders.