HALF-FULL REPORT 06/10/16
I’m delighted to be able to fill in for Jack Wheeler on the HFR while he’s off on his latest adventure. But this week the glass seems more than half empty.
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Hillary Clinton won the California and New Jersey primaries by larger than expected margins Tuesday (6/7). President Obama endorsed her, made plans to campaign with her in Wisconsin next week.
The president met yesterday (6/9) with Bernie Sanders, who immediately afterward toned down his rhetoric about continuing the fight. 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.
“The best we realistically can hope for is that (FBI Director James) Comey will make an honest call (those who know him believe he will); that he will do it soon; and that if Lynch overrules him, we’ll find out promptly,” said Paul Mirengoff of Power Line.
The “mainstream” media moved into hagiographic mode, hailing Hillary for her “historic achievement.”
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It’ll be interesting to see if Hillary gets a bump in the polls from the effective end of the Democrat primary race, the way Donald Trump got one last month when the GOP race ended.
In a Fox News poll conducted June 5 thru 8, Hillary was at 42 percent, same as last month. Trump was at 39 percent, down from 45 percent in May. In a Rasmussen poll yesterday, Hillary led The Donald, 42 percent to 38 percent. In a Rasmussen poll May 19, Trump had led Hillary, 42 percent to 37 percent. Here, from another pollster, is a chart of the trend.
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It was the Mother of All Corrections which, predictably, has gotten little attention from the “mainstream” media. In 2012, the Journal of American Political Science published an article by three professors at Virginia Commonwealth University, which claimed that “psychoticism” is “associated with social conservatism and conservative military attitudes.”
Turns out the authors had their data exactly reversed. It’s liberals who are more prone to “psychoticism.”
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A mob of about 400 waving Mexican flags and chanting “Make California Mexico again” assaulted people leaving a Donald Trump rally in San Jose June 2. The video and the photos are revolting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ITP5-efLY
“Protesters” threw eggs, bottles and punches, vandalized vehicles, started fires. They followed Trump supporters to their cars as they left the convention center, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco reported. They “thumped Trump supporters’ cars in the parking garage as they tried to leave.”
“This was one of the most violent scenes I have ever witnessed,”said ABC News reporter Tom Llamas. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Trump backers were “running for their lives,” some San Jose police officers said.
About 150 police officers watched the assaults for half an hour before moving in.
“People were getting beat up right in front of them,” Mr. Llamas reported. “And these were not clashes, these were pure attacks.”
“While several physical assaults did occur, the police personnel on scene had the difficult task of weighing the need to immediately apprehend the suspect(s) against the possibility that police action involving the use of physical force under the circumstances would further insight (sic) the crowd and produce more violent behavior,” San Jose police said in a “media advisory” the next day.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo praised the “restraint” of his officers, blamed the violence on the victims.
“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for his irresponsible behavior,” he told the Associated Press.
I’ve made clear what I think of The Donald and his Trumpkins. But they’ve a right peacefully to assemble without fear of physical assault.
Mayor Liccardo, a Democrat, natch, is a textbook illustration of the worst sort of public official. Those who choose not to perform their duty to protect all their citizens for ideological or partisan reasons are more despicable – and far more dangerous to democracy – than the swine who go into politics to rich peddling influence to special interest groups.
Leftists have an obnoxious tendency to describe violence they don’t like as “speech,” speech they don’t like as “violence.”
Bull. There is a point at which speech and violence intersect. “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said in his famous opinion in Schenck v. U.S. Inciting to riot is a crime in almost all jurisdictions. But 99.9 percent of the time, it is clear speech is speech, violence is violence.
Each time thugs attack peaceful Trump supporters, they turn more undecided voters toward him. The thugs probably neither know nor care that their rioting is counterproductive. They’re thugs. But that’s why President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders felt compelled to issue weasel-worded condemnations of the violence.
Which means nothing unless the rioters shown on video to be committing assault or other criminal acts are arrested and severely punished, and unless those in the media and elsewhere who make excuses for their violence are harshly criticized.
When government, for whatever reason, fails to keep order, it loses legitimacy. Each time police respond to a riot with the “restraint” exhibited by the San Jose police, more Americans become willing to embrace a caudillo, a strong man who promises to restore order with little regard for the law or civil rights.
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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that “concealed carry” is not protected by the Second Amendment.
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Her Hillaryness granted the reporters covering her campaign an eight minute audience in California Monday in which they could ask her questions. It was her first “press availability” in a month.
During that month, the State Department’s inspector general issued a damning report on her use of a private email server. A former Secret Service agent who served in the White House during the Clinton administration has written a tell all book in which he said Secret Service agents had discussions about the possibility they’d have to protect the president from his wife’s physical attacks.
If you thought the journalists might have had a question or two about those things, or the slackening economy, or anything else important, you’d have been mistaken. Larry O’Connor of Hot Air lists the embarrassing softball questions they asked here.
I don’t blame Her Hillaryness for having contempt for the press. Their behavior is contemptible.
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“Crisis of Character,” by former Secret Service Agent Gary Byrne, is slated for release June 28. It already is number one on Amazon’s best seller list.
Hillary repeatedly screamed obscenities at her husband, Secret Service personnel and White House staffers — all of whom lived in terror of her next tirade, Byrne wrote.
Hillary “lacks the integrity and temperament to serve (as president),” Byrne said.
In his book, “The First Family Detail,” investigative reporter Ron Kessler said Secret Service agents saw her as one of the most detested assignments and believed her marriage to Bill was “fake”.
Hillary “was just really rude to almost everybody,” former agent Lloyd Bulman told Kessler. “She’d act like she didn’t want you around, like you were beneath her.”
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Hillary’s bullying may have been what drove White House Counsel Vince Foster to commit suicide in 1993, said Jim McDougal, a long time member of the Clinton inner circle in Arkansas and a central figure in the Whitewater scandal.
FBI agents who investigated Foster’s death think Hillary triggered his suicide when she attacked and humiliated her mentor from their former Rose Law Firm in front of other White House aides a week before he took his own life.
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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.
Curiel “hates” him because he’s “Mexican,” Trump said in a 12-minute rant during a campaign appearance in San Diego May 27. He repeated the accusation in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. That racist statement has been condemned even by Newt Gingrich, who lusts to be The Donald’s running mate.
Curiel was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama, which suggests he has many opinions with which I disagree, some of which I may abhor. But Jim Geraghty’s examination of Curiel’s record found no instance in which he has abused his authority as a judge.
Curiel “was just doing his job,” when he denied the motion for summary judgment, said Daniel Petrocelli, lead attorney for the firm defending Trump in the lawsuit.
“Judge Curiel has repeatedly ruled in Trump’s favor on other motions and was obligated to deny his motion for summary judgment,” said Nat Hentoff. “He had no other choice.”
The biggest favor Curiel has done for Trump is to postpone the trial until after the election in November.
“It would seem that the only people who dislike Judge Curiel are Donald Trump and the Mexican drug cartels that wanted to kill him,” wrote Aaron Goldstein in the American Spectator.
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Trump’s racist attack on Judge Curiel was a chilling wakeup call for members of the Republican establishment (hereafter, GOPe) who told themselves “he’ll change,” and “we can control him.” He won’t. They can’t.
“We have been down this road before, said Tim Carney in the Washington Examiner. “Whenever Trump has been in a good position, he has said or done something self-destructive.”
The Donald’s initial response to the criticism he received was to order his surrogates to double down on attacks on Judge Curiel. After criticism mounted, he issued a factually challenged statement saying he wouldn’t talk about the judge anymore. But a few hours later he was talking about the judge again on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. At 69, Trump has the emotional makeup of a six year old. He is who he is. What he is has been obvious since the campaign began.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell frets Trump could alienate Latinos from the Republican Party as Barry Goldwater alienated blacks when he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Richard Nixon got 32 percent of the black vote in 1960. Goldwater got just six percent in 1964. Barry was in a distinct minority. Eighty percent of Republicans in Congress – as opposed to just 60 percent of Democrats – voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the vast majority of blacks who left the GOP over Goldwater’s vote never came back.
It was unfair of blacks to hold all Republicans responsible for Goldwater’s vote. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Hispanics to extend their disdain for Trump to those who’ve endorsed him, however tepidly.
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President George W. Bush got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Mitt Romney got just 27 percent in 2012. Trump may get barely half of what Romney got. If so, Republicans will be unable to win a national election for at least a generation, if ever.
The grim electoral arithmetic has triggered belated panic among the GOPe. There is “fear and loathing” of Trump among his Senate GOP colleagues, said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
A bellwether of GOPe thinking is radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who Erick Erickson describes as “the epitome of the company man.” Neutral in the primaries, Hewitt now says Republican delegates should replace Trump as the nominee.
“It’s like ignoring stage-four cancer. You can’t do it, you gotta go attack it,” Hewitt said. “And right now the Republican Party is facing — the plane is headed towards the mountain after the last 72 hours.”
There’s still time to dump Trump. But do Republicans have the balls to do it? I wouldn’t bet on it. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the GOPe will continue to believe Trump will “pivot,” because it’s too painful to admit he won’t. But waiting for the Trump “pivot” is like waiting for Godot, says Matt Lewis.
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If The Donald were an adult rather than a petulant child, he’d never have brought up the Trump University lawsuits. When others do, he’d have dismissed it as small potatoes compared to the nefarious doings at the Clinton Foundation (which it is), noted that Bill and Hillary have a fake university fraud problem of their own.
Trumpkins say they support the Donald because they think he’d be tougher on Hillary than a real Republican would be. Many Republicans who don’t like him plan to vote for Trump because they think Hillary would be worse.
To win, Trump needs to talk about Hillary’s shortcomings, because the Lying Swine sure won’t. Instead, he’s talking about a personal vendetta, demanding his surrogates defend the indefensible. When House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) rolled out a policy agenda, no one paid attention, because of the Curiel flap.
The foremost issue in this campaign is going to be Donald Trump, because that’s what Hillary wants, that’s what the Lying Swine want, and that’s what The Donald wants.
“This 2016 presidential race could have been a referendum on Clinton and the Obama White House,” said Chuck Todd of NBC News. “Instead, it has turned into a referendum on Trump.”
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Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson supported President Obama’s (unconstitutional) executive amnesty, said he agrees with Socialist Bernie Sanders 73 percent of the time. I guess I won’t be voting for him either. Sigh.
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In the sole bit of good political news I could find this week, Warren Davidson, a staunch conservative, won Tuesday the House seat vacated by former Speaker John Boehner.
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In keeping with this week’s mostly grim news, my heroines of the week are the 19 Yazidi girls who chose a horrible death rather than become sex slaves to ISIS thugs. If only Republican “leaders” had a tenth of their courage and character.
Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration. He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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