Week in review – politics edition

Posted on September 24, 2016 | 501 Comments

by Judith Curry

A few interesting articles from this past week

Last week was a record low number of comments for the presidential politics thread!  I assume it will pick up with the debate on Monday.  Here are some new articles to kick off the discussion.

The Flight 93 election [link]

This one is meaty: Hillary’s policy team [link]

WaPo: How Trump would stimulate the US economy [link]

Trump’s economic plan is a mixed bag [link]

Hillary Takes the Nuclear-Energy Option [link]

Hillary Clinton’s anti-poverty plan [link]

“How Donald Trump can knock out Hillary Clinton in the first debate” [link]

Sanders and Trump represent two different sides of American populism—and the uprisings they sparked could topple the established political order. [link]

WSJ: Sizing up the next commander-in-chief [link]

And finally, in case you have been wondering what the failed  Presidential candidates are up to

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501 responses to “Week in review – politics edition”

  1. rebelronin | September 24, 2016 at 9:41 pm |

    Political evolution.
    Mrs.Clinton struggles to keep her base motivated.
    Her opposition doesn’t follow the rules.
    Whatever Trump is, and whatever emerges from the GOP in the aftermath, It will be a new animal that the political biologists will hardly be able to explain.
    They are in shock.
    It’s been fun watching them squirm.
    For better or worse, a mongrel has arrived with new DNA.

  2. David Wojick | September 24, 2016 at 9:42 pm |

    “We have never before seen a candidate like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump may well break patterns of history that have held since 1860.”

    From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/23/trump-is-headed-for-a-win-says-professor-whos-predicted-30-years-of-presidential-outcomes-correctly/.

    Professor hates Trump but his system picks Trump to win, so Prof hopes his system is wrong. His quote is on the money though.

  3. Wagathon | September 24, 2016 at 10:09 pm |

    re Flight 93 election politics and dorm-room Marxism, The Left — comprised of tribal believers in socialist Eurocommunism (that’s failed every time it’s been tried) — is more than willing to fight to the death of the last productive person in the country if it serves the greater purpose of helping the Left achieve its mythic liberal Utopia. Deep down, Leftist ideology has never been about reform but rather the Left’s view that a free man cannot be trusted.

    • timg56 | September 25, 2016 at 1:31 pm |

      I liked the line about how Hillary becoming President would be playing Russian Roulette with a semi auto.

      And I wonder how many folks who self identify as Progressives understand it.

  4. edbarbar | September 24, 2016 at 11:50 pm |

    For those who haven’t found him, Scott Adams has a very interesting take on Trump. He decided based on the Kelly v. Trump exchange in the first primary debate.

    After Hillary’s collapse/stumble/freeze, he has stated the election is over, and Trump is president.

    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150264994381/the-race-for-president-is-probably-over

    and recently

    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150772972746/how-to-know-an-election-is-over

    From above:

    Whatever Trump is, and whatever emerges from the GOP in the aftermath, It will be a new animal that the political biologists will hardly be able to explain.

    Something Adams has been saying. His theory is Trump is a master persuader, and uses many persuasion techniques that will now become common place in politics. Adams uses the term “Linguistic Kill shot” Trump uses to describe terms such as “Low Energy” and “Stamina” to describe his opponents. The theory is they work on the subconscious level with confirmation bias (much the same as the incessant calling of Trump racist, and recently “Dark” and “Dangerous”, terms Clinton’s team popularized with the world-wide media, and which Adams attributes to a psychology professor he affectionately calls “Godzilla”). Over time, these become synonymous with the truth, regardless of the reality.

    • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 12:22 am |

      Adams said Trump brought a flame thrower to a stick fight. No one has a chance against him. Not 16 experienced opponents in the Republican primary and especially not Hillary Clinton who had to cheat to beat lone opponent Crazy Bernie the socialist senator from Vermont.

      Adams has called it all correctly so far. He believes we’ll see Trump win in a landslide.

  5. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 6:11 am |

    Merkel’s popularity ebbs away as the liberal, cosmpolitan Berlin takes a hard turn to “the right.”

    When are liberals going to learn that screwing working people comes with a price?

    Berlin Election Outcome Signals Merkel’s Tenuous Grip on Chancellorship
    http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17302

  6. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 6:20 am |

    I believe this researcher’s experiment is skewed, because it assumes that, as Kennedy put it, there is a “rising tide.”

    And there may indeed have been a “rising tide” for the past couple of decades in places like China and Russia.

    But what about places like the United States, Mexico, or Europe, where there is no “rising tide” because economic growth has been anemic, and the purchasing power of workers pay has actually shrunk?

    Popular acceptance of inequality due to brute luck and support for classical benefit-based taxation
    http://voxeu.org/article/tax-policy-guided-public-opinion-inequality

  7. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 6:34 am |

    The United States is no longer “the world’s breadbasket.”

    Russia has now surpassed the U.S. in wheat production, as well as wheat exports, with major geopolitical implications, as well as throwing wheat prices into a tail spin.

    Russia is now top wheat exporter, proving sanctions won’t work
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/russia-is-now-top-wheat-exporter-proving-sanctions-wont-work-2016-09-23

    • Ragnaar | September 25, 2016 at 9:42 pm |

      Global warming is causing the corn belt to to move North like into North Dakota where they grow a lot of wheat. Wheat returns less per acre than corn.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 8:19 am |

        Ragnaar said:

        Global warming is causing the corn belt to to move North like into North Dakota where they grow a lot of wheat.

        So it’s GW that’s caused North Dakota farmers to plant more corn and less wheat in North Dakota?

        I would think, besides GW, the relative prices of corn and wheat might have something to do with what farmers decide to plant.

        In addition, this study cites another cause — politics, anti-GMO agitation,t and government regulation — that has motivated farmers to plant more corn and less wheat in North Dakota:

        The recent decline of wheat is even more pronounced in North Dakota as it went from approximately 50% of all plantings to about 30%.

        As in Minnesota, the rapid increase in soybeans came from a combination of more cold tolerant lines and the herbicide tolerance trait. Corn plantings have also increased in the biotech era. For both crops the expansion is mostly in the wetter Red River Valley portion of the state. The expansion of corn and soy at the expense of cereals like wheat, barley and rye may seem like a case where biotech is reducing rotational diversity, but the story is a bit more complex.

        There is a disease of wheat and barley called Fusarium Head Blight, which has been an increasing issue in all five of these states since the 1980s (and again in 2014). Corn, and particularly the crop residue in no-till corn, serves as a source of spores which can then infect the wheat or barley during their bloom period. Head blight is difficult to control and it can lead to significant yield losses. Infection can also lead to contamination of the grain with a mycotoxin called DON– or more colorfully, “vomitoxin.” Throughout the Midwest, wheat does not tend to have as much profit potential as corn or soy even in good years, but the risk of severe yield or quality loss from Head Blight is really what makes wheat much less attractive. Biotech had the potential to help wheat keep a place in the Corn Belt rotation, but that solution was thwarted by anti-GMO campaigning.

        There was a “GMO wheat” in advanced development around 2002 which was much more resistant to Fusarium Head Scab. This product had the potential to reduce the risk of growing wheat, both in the historic wheat growing states like ND and MN, but also in the “I States.” Unfortunately, the trait was never commercialized. Major wheat importing companies in Europe and Japan put pressure on the US and Canadian wheat grower organizations, threatening to boycott all North American wheat if any biotech wheat was commercialized. This was not because of any safety concern, but rather the fact that food companies in those countries didn’t want to have to label wheat-based products as “GMO.” Reluctantly the growers asked Syngenta to stop the development of their disease resistant wheat. Ironically, this is a case where a GMO opposition “fostered monoculture,” when biotechnology could have enhanced rotational diversity. The wheat growers of the US, Canada and Australia have pledged to do a simultaneous release of biotech wheat in the future so that they can avoid this sort of extra-regulatory blockage.

        https://www.biofortified.org/2014/08/do-gmo-crops-foster-monocultures/

      • Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 8:51 am |

        And if we look at aggregate wheat production from the U.S, it has been almost flat for the last 20 years, while Russia’s has more than doubled.

        U.S. corn production, however, has increased.

        And most of this increased corn production has gone to the production of ethanol:

        And once again, the main cause of this increased corn production was government intervention:

        Half of U.S. Corn Crop Now Goes to Ethanol

        The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) began with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and was broadened and extended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). The RFS requires renewable fuel, derived from plants, to be blended into motor fuel in increasing quantities each year, reaching at least 36 billion gallons by 2022.

        From the USDA Economic Research Service:

        Strong demand for ethanol production has resulted in higher corn prices and has provided incentives to increase corn acreage. In many cases, farmers have increased corn acreage by adjusting crop rotations between corn and soybeans, which has caused soybean plantings to decrease. Other sources of land for increased corn plantings include cropland used as pasture, reduced fallow, acreage returning to production from expiring Conservation Reserve Program contracts, and shifts from other crops, such as cotton.

        http://blogs.agu.org/terracentral/2016/06/16/half-u-s-corn-crop-now-goes-ethanol/

        Besides regulation, there is another form of government intervention that has spurred corn produciton: government subisidies for corn production.

        In Mexico, this is a very big deal, because the non-subsidized Mexican farmers can’t compete with the heavily subsidized American farmers:

        On Jan. 1, 2008 the last remaining tariff barriers permitted under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are slated to fall. Corn and beans were given the longest (15 years) liberalization schedule because they are at the core of Mexican culture and subsistence. Other key products—including sugar, milk, and chicken, which had formerly been regulated under a safeguard agreement to protect Mexican production, are also included.

        The tariff removal ostensibly gives full rein to an open-market trade and investment regime between the United States and Mexico. The idea is that all products now enter into a competitive market that will self-regulate to enhance production, efficiency, investment, and, indirectly, the lives of Mexican producers and consumers.

        That’s the idea. But what has happened in the Mexican countryside over the past 14 years of NAFTA shows that free trade has been a disaster for small farmers in Mexico.

        Corn farmers forced out of business by subsidized imports from the United States have swollen the ranks of migrants to the United States, where many of them contribute their poorly paid labor to the same agricultural sector that displaced them. New generations of children in rural areas see their only future en el otro lado, on the other side, where their fathers, mothers, uncles, or cousins earn the money they send home that enables their families to survive.

        Four years ago, on Jan. 31, 2003, nearly a hundred thousand Mexican farmers and supporters from unions, universities, and civil society groups marched in the streets calling for renegotiation of the NAFTA chapter on agriculture and new national farm policy that elevated values of food sovereignty and farm livelihoods above free-trade dictums. The Mexican and U.S. governments not only refused to consider changing the draconian terms of the agreement but the Mexican government continued to allow over-quota imports of corn without charging tariffs, to the detriment of its own farmers.

        The movement represented the first time that farmers viewed their plight as part of an international system—economic integration under NAFTA—and not just in the context of national farm policies. As a result, some of the fundamental myths of the free trade model are being questioned as never before in Mexico….

        The first distortion comes in the form of U.S. government farm subsidies. The 2002 Farm Bill authorizes a whopping $248.6 billion in farm supports. Federal government subsidies now make up 40% of the U.S. net farm income. Though they ostensibly serve to keep family farmers afloat, actually the billions in subsidies flow disproportionately to corporate farmers. Along with export-import financing, they assure that huge food and agriculture transnational corporations increase their profits and global reach. Mark Ritchie of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) notes that U.S. export subsidies end up in the pockets of the world’s largest grain traders, primarily Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland.

        What does this do to the Mexican market? An IATP analysis reveals that in 2001 corn cost an average of $3.41 a bushel to produce in the United States and sold on the international market for $2.28 a bushel.

        You can Google “NAFTA Free Trade Myths Lead to Farm Failure in Mexico” by Laura Carlsen to read the entire study.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 8:59 am |

        Ragnaar,

        For more on the massive subsidies the U.S. government lavishes on U.S. corn producers, you can Google “mexican farmers can’t compete with heavily subsidized us farmers.”

      • Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 9:39 am |

        Our crazy farm subsidies, explained
        http://grist.org/food/our-crazy-farm-subsidies-explained/

        By 2014, the U.S. was on target to spend $972.9 billion on food and farm programs over the next decade….

        In 2014, after much squabbling, Congress approved a new farm bill, more than two years after they were scheduled to. The main emphasis of the federal farm policy is now on subsidized “crop insurance.”

        This sounds promising at first — “insurance” should come with a focus on minimizing risk, right?

        But actually, these insurance plans largely help guarantee that farmers can sell their crop above a certain price (Price Loss Coverage) or make a certain amount of revenue (Agricultural Risk Coverage), and do little to encourage, say, better drought-planning measures or a more diverse spread of crops.

        And with the federal government spending over $5 billion a year to subsidize these insurance premiums, all that corn (and soy and wheat) doesn’t come cheap.

      • Ragnaar | September 26, 2016 at 10:38 pm |

        Hopefully the link animates:

        What to call it? The Minnesota express. Kicks Gulf moisture counter clockwise all the way to us clod kickers. I think usually the low moves more West to East. The Dakotas are west of Minnesota and get less of this precipitation. They are also blocked by the Rockies wringing the water out of the air. Eastern Montana is drier still. I’ve been known to watch radar weather to see if the rain will track onto the family farmland. It’s the amount of precipitation that used to make the difference between corn and wheat. Dry is wheat.

  8. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 6:48 am |

    The peak oilers and neocons were wrong about Russian oil production. It did not crater under the weight of low prices, but continues to rise, reaching a temporary, all-time, post-Soviet high of 11.7 million BOPD recently.

    This has major geopolitical implications, plus contributes to keeping oil markets over supplied and prices low.

    OPEC Under Pressure To Act In Algiers As Oil Surplus Triples
    http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/146748/OPEC_Under_Pressure_To_Act_In_Algiers_As_Oil_Surplus_Triples?utm_source=DailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2016-09-23&utm_content=&utm_campaign=industry_headlines_3

  9. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 6:54 am |

    The game that Obama and Clinton are playing with Russia — red baiting and demonizing it in order score political points against Trump — is an extremely dangerous and counter-productive one.

    Washington’s Hawks Push New Cold War
    http://www.defenddemocracy.press/washingtons-hawks-push-new-cold-war/

  10. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 7:15 am |

    Clinton is under attack from some sectors of both the left and the right for her unapologetic war mongering, unwavering support for permanent war, and constantly keeping the Islamic hornets’ nest stirred up. This one comes from the right:

    Most Dangerous Person On the Planet Today: Hillary Clinton
    https://mishtalk.com/2016/09/23/hillary-claims-terrorists-use-trump/

    The irony of the day, week, month and year is Hillary’s statement “I Know How to Do This“.

    • Hillary supported Bush’s inane war in Iraq.
    • Hillary supported Bush’s inane war in Afghanistan.
    • Hillary was the mastermind of US failed strategy in Libya.
    • Hillary is the single person most responsible for Benghazi.
    • Hillary supports president Obama’s drone policy.
    • There has never been a war Hillary did not support.

    The most surefire way to make a terrorist out of a non-terrorist is to kill an innocent child or bomb an innocent person’s home. Doing so is sure to radicalize friends and family.

    There is nothing more un-American or unconstitutional than bombing other countries indiscriminately with no declaration of war, and with little or no regard to the lives of innocent victims.

    Hillary Clinton supported those policies as Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton, like George Bush, like Dick Cheney, and like president Obama are all guilty of terrorism.

    If you disagree, please put yourself in the shoes of a mother whose 4-year old daughter was “accidentally” killed by a US drone. Envision your neighbor’s house “accidentally” blown to smithereens by drones.

    Is it not terrorism because it’s an accident? What practical difference does it make?

    In the eyes of the families of innocent victims, no words better describe such actions than “US terrorism“. I guarantee that is precisely how you would feel if it was your son or daughter killed, or it was your house blown up….

    How many terrorists did the US radicalize in the process?

    How many innocent civilians died? How much compensation did the US pay? Sorry, that’s classified information.

    Given US drone policy, it’s a wonder there has not been more terrorists incidents in the US. One surefire way to have more incidents in the US is to accept Obama’s plan to take in 65,000 Syrian refugees.

    Hillary’s refugee policies would ensure we would have more terrorist attacks in the US.

    Globally, her statements prove she will continue the disastrous, counterproductive, and illegal policies of the Bush and Obama administration.

    Logically speaking, Hillary Clinton is the biggest threat to world peace and the most dangerous person on the planet.

  11. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 7:18 am |

    UN fears third leg of the global financial crisis – with prospect of epic debt defaults
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/21/un-fears-third-leg-of-the-global-financial-crisis-with-epic-debt/

    The third leg of the world’s intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history.

    It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-market orthodoxies promoted for almost forty years by the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, and the Davos fraternity.

  12. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 7:35 am |

    In April oil prices surpassed the $40/barrel mark that Permian Basin shale oil producers say is now needed to produce a barrel of shale oil.

    The Permian Basin producers responded by quickly putting more rigs back to work after oil prices passed the $40/barrel mark.

    Baker Hughes: US Oil Drillers Add Rigs For 11th Week In 12
    http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=146663

    • Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 10:18 am |

      Besides Russian and U.S. shale oil production being more resilient than many predicted, there’s an additional concern for those like me who have skin in this game, and depend on the sale of oil for their livlihood.

      That is Nigeria and Libya.

      Authorities in both countries claim they now have their internal insurections under control and can return their nations’ oil production to pre-insurgency levels. For Libya, this would add approximately 1.3 million BOPD to world oil supplies, and for Nigeria about 400,000 BOPD. This could push the balancing of global oil markets into 2017 or even 2018, assuming world oil demand continues to grow at 1.0 to 1.5 million BOPD.

      This, however, is only what the leaders of Libya and Nigeria say they can do. It hasn’t happened yet.

  13. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 7:44 am |

    True Grit: Surging Sand Demand Could Boost Jobs in Oil, Gas
    http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=146738

    http://s21.postimg.org/xmoyju4c7/Captura_de_pantalla_1457.png

    [W]hat the industry learned is that the more sand used to prop open the cracks in the rock, the more hydrocarbons spill forth.

    The higher well completion intensity will see higher sand volumes generate higher production – and higher returns for companies. Sand-focused companies have seen enormous gains in stock prices, and more increases are likely.

    “We expect sand volumes to surpass 2014 levels with less than half the rig count by 2018,” analysts at Credit Suisse wrote in a Sept. 7 note to investors. “Sand will be the fastest-growing sub-segment of the OFS market.”

    Credit Suisse anticipates demand for sand will grow significantly from 33.2 million tons in 2016 to 62.8 million tons in 2018….

    All of that means more labor will be required for sand logistics “than ever before,” he said.

    • harkin1 | September 25, 2016 at 9:27 am |

      The US media has had a virtual blackout on the murderer’s ethnicity and immigration status.

      ……meanwhile Obama and Hillary plot to import millions more.

      • timg56 | September 25, 2016 at 12:41 pm |

        Were calling him him Hispanic even though the grainy mall camera photos showed a guy who looked more Middle Eastern than Hispanic.

        Definitely not a terrorist according to official statements.

    • RiHo08 | September 25, 2016 at 12:51 pm |

      Glenn Stehle

      One of the downsides of naming race/ethnicity to a breaking news item, is being wrong. The involved community does get upset when characterized as someone of a particular race/ethnicity being “the shooter” etc.

      In today’s Seattle Times:

      Laura Martínez tweeted, “BREAKING: Cable networks realize ‘brown mall shooting suspect’ is not Hispanic after all.”

      Cascade Mall Shooting

      “Police mistakenly describe Cascade Mall shooting suspect as ‘Hispanic,’ protests erupt on Twitter
      Images from security footage, press conferences, vigils around Burlington
      Other mass shootings in Washington state
      Others suggested that officials and the media were trying to cover up the possibility of terrorism inspired by or sympathetic to ISIS.”

      The fact of the alleged shooter was Turkish of course has nothing at all to do with, in no way, how could you say such a thing with the possibility of being a terrorist attack. The FBI even said that this was not looking like a terrorist attack within the first hours of the investigation.

      Does this mean that the FBI is in cahoots with the Justice Dept’s efforts to quell any anti-Islamic sentiment that may play a role in the up coming election? That the FBI gave a pass to Ms. Clinton on email controversy and gave immunity to one of Clinton’s closet aide regarding her role in the email controversy?

      Really now, how could you say such a thing?

      • timg56 | September 25, 2016 at 8:09 pm |

        Read the Seattle Times this afternoon on the shooting. While the man is Turkish by ethnicity, has lived here since age of seven and so far no evidence presented of any religious motivation. Appears to be a young man with out direction and frequent run ins with the law.

        Need to ban deadly hunting rifles which are meant only to kill.

  15. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 8:07 am |

    Has Chicago now surpassed Ciudad Juárez, Mexico as the “murder capital” of the world?

    Heather MacDonald on Black Lives Matter: Does The Truth Matter?
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/23/heather_macdonald_on_black_lives_matter_does_the_truth_matter.html

    In Chicago, in just the first six months of 2016, over 2,300 people were shot. That is a shooting per hour some weekends.

    The vast majority of the victims were black. During this same period, the Chicago police shot 12 people. All armed and dangerous. That is 1/2 of 1% of all shootings….

    A recent deadly force study by Washington State University researched Lois James found that police officers were less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white or hispanic ones in simulated threat scenarios.

    Harvard economics professer Roland Fryer analyzed more than 1,000 officer-involved shootings across the country. He concluded that there is zero evidence of racial bias in police shootings.

    In Houston, he found that blacks were 24% less likely than whites to be shot be officers, even when the suspects were armed or violent.

    Does the truth matter?

    An analysis of federal police crime statstics and the Washington Post police shooting database shows that fully 12% of all whites and hispanics who die of homicide are killed by cops.

    In contrast, only 4% of black homicide victims are killed by cops.

    But isn’t it a sign of bias that blacks make up 36% of police shooting victims, but onyl 13% of the U.S. population?

    It is not. And common sense suggests why: Police shootings occur more frequently where officers confront armed or violently resisting suspects. Those suspects are disproportionately black.

    According to the most recent study by the Dept. of Justice, although blacks were only about 15% of the population in the 75 largest counties in the U.S., they were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders, and 45% of assaults.

    In New York City, blacks commit over three quarters of all shootings, though they are only 25% of the city’s population. Whites, by contrast, commit only 2% of all shootings, though they are 34% of the population.

    New York’s crime disparities are repeated in virtually every racially diverse city in America.

    The real problem facing inner city black neighborhoods today is not the police, but criminals.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 9:43 am |

      The Charlotte Shooting And The Presidential Election
      http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/24/bill_oreilly_the_charlotte_shooting_and_the_presidential_election.html

      To be fair, the perception that African-Americans are at a disadvantage with the police must be considered.

      However, the stats are the stats and we have laid them out for you time and time again on The Factor.

      According to a recent Harvard study and Justice Department statistics, there is no methodical persecution of blacks by the police.

      But again, you are not going to convince some Americans of that.

      Therefore decisions have to be made.

      Talking Points believes that the social unrest in Charlotte will give North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes to Donald Trump.

      Social order will always be a conservative issue and Mr. Trump is taking a hard line….

      Again, the street protests in Charlotte will help Donald Trump in that state — wait and see.

  16. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 8:12 am |

    Cruz endorses Trump.

    David Cantanese: Cruz Had To Get On Board, Since He Defied Trump He Is Now Losing Senate Primary
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/24/david_cantanese_cruz_had_to_get_on_board_since_he_defied_trump_he_is_now_losing_senate_primary.html

    Ted Cruz had to “get on board” and endorse Donald Trump for president because he is in danger of losing the primary for his seat in the U.S. Senate.

    “He is in trouble in his home state of Texas in a re-election battle where he is now behind Rick Perry, if he were to challenge him in the Texas Senate primary.

  17. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 8:55 am |

    Why does it take a TV station to reveal this? Obviously, governments don’t care in this case. And in a close election, this kind of thing matters – a lot. From the article:
    …
    Local officials in Colorado acknowledged “very serious” voter fraud after learning of votes cast in multiple elections under the named of recently-deceased residents.

    A local media outlet uncovered the fraud by comparing voting history databases in the state with federal government death records. “Somebody was able to cast a vote that was not theirs to cast,” El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman told CBS4 while discussing what he called a “very serious” pattern of people mailing in ballots on behalf of the dead.

    It’s not clear how many fraudulent ballots have been submitted in recent years. CBS4 reported that it “found multiple cases” of dead people voting around the state, revelations that have provoked state criminal investigations.

    “We do believe there were several instances of potential vote fraud that occurred,” said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams. “It shows there is the potential for fraud.”
    …

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2602775

    • Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 10:16 am |

      The entire United States is beginning to resemble Texas, where in the 1948 senate election Lyndon Johnson “received the votes of the dead, the halt, the missing and those who were unaware that an election was going on” — just a handful of votes, but enough to put him over the top.
      http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html

      Nothing has changed in Texas over the last seven decades:

      8 Texas counties list more voters than residents
      http://watchdog.org/236415/texas-voters-residents/

      No law prevents localities from having more registered voters than voting-age residents, and eight Texas counties do.

      Now a vote-watch group accuses the counties of…failing to purge dead, duplicate and ineligible voters.

      “We are deeply concerned (that) voter rolls contain substantial numbers of ineligible voters,” True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht stated in a letter to the eight Texas counties.

      The counties — Loving, Brooks, McMullen, Roberts, Irion, Jim Hogg, Culberson and Polk — list a combined 52,298 registered voters. But the latest U.S. Census data show only 49,457 voting-age residents in those counties.

      Of course it is almost impossible to attribute any malicious intent to the bloated voter rolls.

      TTV spokesman Logan Churchwell said some of the bloating of voter rolls could be due to simple clerical errors.

      And voter fraud, after it has occurred, as anyone who has actually participated in an election contest knows, is almost impossible to prove:

      Greg Abbott says state proved in court that more than 200 dead people voted in the latest Texas elections
      http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2012/jul/24/greg-abbott/greg-abbott-dead-voters-Texas/

      • cerescokid | September 25, 2016 at 7:35 pm |

        I was no fan of LBJ while in office but the volumes by Robert Caro on his life are a fantastic study in power and how to use it. They are chock full of anecdotes like noted above.

    • timg56 | September 25, 2016 at 12:50 pm |

      One of several reasons I do not like vote by mail. In Oregon and Washington it is the only way one can vote.

      Voting is not simply a right. It is a duty and saying you are making it easier is not a good excuse.

  18. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 8:56 am |

    Article clip @jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 8:55 am in moderation

  19. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 9:05 am |

    From the article (idi0t word doctored to avoid mod trap):
    …
    Let’s just put it this way: If Donald Trump’s campaign was found guilty of this crime, the media would pre-emptively announce his resignation and carry him out of town, pitchforks and torches in hand. However, Hillary Clinton is apparently immune to any criticism in the media. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let me fill you in.

    The campaign Hillary4America, a group that advocates for the policies of Hillary Clinton, was searching for recruits to go to the polls and preach the word of Clinton. Two things are wrong with this:

    First, it’s illegal to go to a polling/voter registration place and tell people who to vote for. It’s the reason why candidates can’t go to a polling/voter registration place and talk with voters, despite Bill Clinton doing it anyway and the media staying quiet about it. This seems like a clear cut case of voter manipulation and fraud.

    Second, the idi0ts behind Hillary4America didn’t know that one of their prospective recruits, the very people they were instructing to violate voter laws, had a hidden camera on the whole time and exposed them for the crooks they really are.
    …
    http://usapoliticsnow.com/hillarys-campaign-knew-voter-fraud-didnt-know-cameras/

  20. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 9:06 am |

    Another clip @jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 9:05 am in moderation

  21. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 10:06 am |

    From the article, modified to avoid mod trap:
    …
    When will the Virginian Pilot stop l_y_ing about voter fra*d?

    The Virginian Pilot says that voter fraud doesn’t happen. They l_i_e.

    People know that people cheat if given the chance. That’s why they support voter ID laws. People care about their vote, and don’t want it cancelled out by fra*dsters.

    Here is a story from Colorado about dead people voting.

    The truth is that the Virginia Pilot approves of voter fr*ud, just as it approves of giving convicted fel*ns the right to vote.

    The reason’s simple. They believe that people who commit voter fr*ud and convicted fel*ns are probably Democrats. And they want Democrats to win elections, preferably honestly, but by fr*ud if necessary. The writers, editors and management of the Virginian Pilot are Democrat operatives with a printing press.
    …
    http://tinyurl.com/hs9uojc

  22. ordvic | September 25, 2016 at 10:31 am |

    This seems like a really positive sign especially when you get a statement like this from the National Review about Hillary Clinton:

    “The punchline here is obvious: It doesn’t matter whether you like Hillary Clinton or loathe her. Nor does it matter much whether you adhere to the orthodoxy on climate change. What matters is that finally — finally! — a leading Democrat has acknowledged that we need nuclear energy.”

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440274/hillary-clinton-says-she-supports-nuclear-energy?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=57e3eb9d04d30155fd497904&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

    • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 11:17 am |

      She is, of course, lying about her support of it. It’s a calculated lie based upon a supposition it will win more center votes than it will lose from the left.

      Trump’s message of unleashing the energy sector to create jobs that actually raise GDP (as opposed to bureaucratic gov’t jobs which lower GDP) and make US industry more competitive resonates with centrists. Hillary has to lie her ass off (lord knows she has plenty in reserve, she’s ALL ass, and it comes naturally to her) adopting positions that Trump has held all along in order to compete for those votes.

      • ordvic | September 25, 2016 at 11:21 am |

        Regardless, I still see it as a sea change as does the National Review.

      • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 11:29 am |

        Then you AND at least one author at the National Review are naive.

        This is solely a defensive measure to counter Trump’s rapidly increasing poll numbers in fossil fuel states devastated by the one-two punch of heavy industries relocating offshore and the war on coal which was used to power those industries.

        Trump in within easy striking distance in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan because of his support for coal mining and heavy industry. The linguistic kill shot he’s been using is “It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now the cars are made in Mexican and you can’t drink the water in Flint.” That’s pure gold. Weapons grade persuasion.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 11:37 am |

        Impeach Barry said:

        Trump’s message of unleashing the energy sector to create jobs that actually raise GDP (as opposed to bureaucratic gov’t jobs which lower GDP) and make US industry more competitive resonates with centrists.

        Imagine that, building an economy based on production and not reckless speculation, blowing serial debt bubbles, endless war and criminal activity.

  23. Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 10:32 am |

    @J0shua

    Two black voters in the LAT/USC Daybreak poll changed their minds again. Trump went from 5% to 15% of the black vote overnight. There’s one other flip flopping black voter who might bring Trump back up to 20% very soon.

    http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/

    Are we having fun yet? I hope you’ve managed to wrap your head around a Trump presidency by now. It’s for your own good you know. A boy scout is always prepared.

  24. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 10:41 am |

    A Mexican friend of mine emailed me this article as supporting evidence of his theory about the U.S. presidential election.

    His theory is that the election is not about workers vs. capitalists. Instead, it is a conflict between two sects of elites — two sects of capitalists. On one side is productive capitalism, represented by Trump. On the other side is speculative capitalism, represented by Clinton.

    Here are the passages from the article he highlighted:

    Who is afraid of Donald Trump
    http://www.defenddemocracy.press/afraid-donald-trump/M

    Trump, who represents the interests of the construction business and industrial capital, is interested in forcing the bankers to lend to domestic production at a low rate, and for this to happen the state would have to stop giving money to the banks that ends up in the speculative markets.

    The class meaning of the struggle is clear. If Sanders could, perhaps for the first time in US history, form a Social-Democratic block that would unite the working class with the angry young middle class, Trump heads a revolt of the industrial bourgeoisie against financial capital, with the support of a large section of workers. The only difference is that in the case of Sanders, we see movement based on class (horizontal) solidarity, while Trump proposes corporate (vertical) solidarity.

    Even Trump’s statements that seem ridiculous and anecdotal, such as the promise to build a wall to fence off Mexico, are not totally without meaning.

    Building the wall would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, not only in the US but also on the opposite side of the border. In fact, it’s a Keynesian project, even if fairly absurd from the standpoint of ordinary logic. And Trump’s statement that Mexico will finance the wall is not hair-brained either. For the economy of its northern states the project would not just be profitable, but economical. It will not stop illegal migration, of course, but it will create incentives to develop production in the region, whose livelihood is currently dependent mainly on drug trafficking and illegal migration.

    Imagine that, building an economy based on production and not speculation, debt bubbles and criminal activity.

    • AK | September 25, 2016 at 12:34 pm |

      It will not stop illegal migration, of course, […]

      Maybe they should build an underground wall. Add some airborne agents and a bunch of drones…

  25. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 11:15 am |

    Sharyl Attkisson’s interview of Donald Trump today:
    …
    You see outside, you see the kind of crowds we have. And you just said something, you ought to show pictures of what’s outside, because it’s true, the press is an example. They never show the size of the crowd, ever. The only time they show it is, is a little bit of protest someplace within the crowd, then all of a sudden they show, and then people say, wow, what a big crowd that is.
    …
    http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/donald-trump-interview-part-1

    • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 11:21 am |

      I’ve seen it in person forced to sit in the nosebleed seats in a 10,000 person stadium that the fire marshall had to close when it filled to capacity. There were thousands outside who didn’t get there in time. I arrived one hour early in a calculated effort to both avoid rush hour traffic and not be so late as to get turned away. I cut it close.

  26. Wagathon | September 25, 2016 at 11:44 am |

    The Twitter article, “Incentive malus,” about bad science being hereditary reminds me of the tale of two suitors, one being younger and stronger, the other being older and sickly but perhaps a wee bit “smarter.” During the courtship as it turns out the younger may have been too honest– the sickly suitor took belladonna (a poison) that put a youthful-looking blush on his cheeks and temporarily mask his infirmities whereas the younger man was just being real. In the end, the bride married a man who died early, leaving her alone to raise a child. The child was not robust but instead, small and sickly but… very crafty.

  27. Adam Gallon | September 25, 2016 at 12:09 pm |

    “Last week was a record low number of comments for the presidential politics thread! ”
    Because most folks are heartedly sick of the whole circus?

    • ordvic | September 25, 2016 at 12:11 pm |

      Because most folks are heartedly sick of the whole circus? Ain’t it the truth!

      • climatereason | September 25, 2016 at 1:40 pm |

        Ordvic

        Just think how fed up those of us on the other side of the pond are!

        A British election lasts six weeks. Which ever party head wins on the day Is our prime minister. They move into 10 downing street the same day.

        I think that even after your election day it still takes several months before the President is inaugurated. Can’t you speed it up?

        Tonyb

      • jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:37 pm |

        Some good points there, Tony. I’m wondering how your multiple-party system works over there.

      • cerescokid | September 25, 2016 at 4:09 pm |

        Tony

        As long as it is now after the election, (January 20), inauguration day used to be March 4. The change occurred under FDR. The end of the budget fiscal year used to be June 30 until it went to September 30 in 1977. Hoover had only 4 months to make any changes to the FY 1929 budget, almost impossible.

      • climatereason | September 25, 2016 at 4:21 pm |

        Cerescokid kid

        Does the outgoing president still have the full legal authority to make binding decisions until the inauguration day of the new incumbent?

        Tonyb

      • Jim D | September 25, 2016 at 4:23 pm |

        One of Britain’s two major parties just re-elected a leader (Corbyn) who seems unelectable as PM. Even though Britain doesn’t vote directly for PM, he harms their local hopes for seats too. Some parallels there.

      • climatereason | September 25, 2016 at 4:36 pm |

        Jimd

        Many intellectuals, cultists, politicians and the media live in bubbles. A good example was with Brexit when the intellectual so called elite at Cambridge and other places went into meltdown at the result. There are a small number of extreme left wingers who really believe Corbyn will win a general election. Those outside their bubble look on in wonderment. It’s difficult to know if Jeremy or his brother, piers, are the most deluded.

        I am not sure I see any connection with a serving president who has just seen their successor re elected but who still holds power for two more months whilst the other looks on, impotently.

        Tonyb

      • Jim D | September 25, 2016 at 4:55 pm |

        Running a country is 99% not about what to do with immigrants. Yet, these campaigns spiral in on those side issues and become about them. It is very hard for the public to keep a proper perspective, whether it is a presidential election or a referendum. For so many, it becomes about their own hot-button, race-based, issues that are not about the day-to-day government of the country.

      • cerescokid | September 25, 2016 at 7:53 pm |

        Tony

        Absolutely, he has full legal authority for the entire term up to January 20. However, strictly on a political basis there may be some reluctance to move in some policy areas. The incumbent knows , for instance, any Executive Order could be reversed on January 21 so why bother. One of Obama’s decisions is already in the air to be influenced by the election. Let’s see what happens about his nomination for Supreme Court that the Senate Republicans have buried until the election. If Hillary wins the nomination may go through if Senate Republicans believe they can’t get anything better.

    • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 4:16 pm |

      I’m so sorry that your delicate sensibilities are offended by this thread, Adam. How can we make it easier for you to not succumb to the dark desire to enter this sequestered space?

      • climatereason | September 25, 2016 at 4:18 pm |

        Tom fuller just forecast trump would get 35 percent of the popular vote plus or minus 1 .5 percent.

        Anyone else care to make a prediction?

        Tonyb

      • cerescokid | September 25, 2016 at 8:21 pm |

        I can’t figure this one out. It is the most bizarre election I have followed closely beginning with the 1956 race between Ike and Stevenson. Unprecedented to have Congressional leaders not supporting their party’s candidate. Even more bizarre to have sound bites of those leaders used in the other party campaign commercials.

        Trump will get over 45% if he loses. He is under polling because of a stigma some feel to be publicly for him. The intensity for him far exceeds that for Hillary which will translate into greater showing in the privacy of a voting booth than in pre-election polls. David touched on that and it is happening all across the country.

        Very weird this year is the absence of yard signs and bumper stickers for both candidates. I have been actively looking for both names and never see them.

      • climatereason | September 26, 2016 at 12:57 pm |

        Cerescokid

        In our Sunday papers this week a political commentator made exactly the same point that for the first time he could remember there were no yard or bumper stickers supporting their candidate.

        I made the point earlier that there is probably a hidden few percent of support for trump, just as there was for Brexit.

        Tonyb

  28. Beta Blocker | September 25, 2016 at 12:39 pm |

    Regardless of what each candidate’s position is concerning nuclear power, an expansion of nuclear can’t take place in the United States unless the long-term price of natural gas increases substantially over what it is today, thus restoring parity to the lifecycle costs of gas-fired versus nuclear generation.

    The Democrats call for a 28% reduction in US carbon emissions by 2025, a 32% reduction by 2030, and an 80% by reduction 2050, goals which cannot be achieved unless the US Government puts a price on carbon and unless there is a substantial expansion of nuclear power. However, regardless of which party controls it, the US Congress will never legislate a carbon tax of any kind. All roads to achieving the substantial carbon emission reductions the Democrats say they want pass directly through the US Environmental Protection Agency.

    The EPA has full legal and constitutional authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate all of America’s carbon emissions, not just those of the coal-fired power plants. But the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions is not being utilized anywhere nearly to its full potential. If Hillary Clinton is elected president and doesn’t push the EPA towards comprehensive regulation of all of America’s greenhouse gas emission sources, then she is simply making empty promises concerning the issue of climate change.

    What if Hillary Clinton is elected president but doesn’t make full use of the EPA in forcing steep reductions in America’s carbon emissions? What if Donald Trump is elected president — heaven forbid that such a crazy thing could ever happen — and simply tells climate activists to go stuff it?

    If the environmental activist groups — the Sierra Club, the Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Children’s Litigation Trust, 350.org, etc., etc. — are truly committed to the fight against climate change, they must do what they aren’t doing now, and that is to force the EPA under threat of lawsuit to write a Clean Air Act Section 108 Endangerment Finding for carbon; to set a NAAQS for carbon; and then to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for carbon which forces the steep emission reductions they claim are needed.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 1:47 pm |

      Beta Blocker said:

      …an expansion of nuclear can’t take place in the United States unless the long-term price of natural gas increases substantially over what it is today,

      Nah.

      Price or cost mean almost nothing with a government as interventionist as ours.

      Take the way the government destroyed the coal industry, for instance. It was regulation wot done it, though coal’s demise is often blamed on the low price of natural gas.

      Since 1990 natural gas’s triumph over coal had almost no correlation whatsoever to the price of natural gas. Coal’s rout proceeded along a straight line, regardless of whether natural gas price was high or low.

      When the government decides to regulate an industry out of existence, it just does it, economic costs be damned.

      • George Turner | September 25, 2016 at 9:09 pm |

        One of my main concerns about reliance on natural gas is that the prices are very spiky compared to coal. It that got reflected in electricity prices it would make budgeting much harder for both homes and businesses, which creates uncertainty and causes business to operate much more conservatively, slowing down economic growth.

      • jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 10:02 pm |

        GT – we have tons of nat gas and any significant increase in price will bring forth more from the ground. Demand would have to soar to spike prices now. Hard to see how we could export that much LNG.

      • Beta Blocker | September 26, 2016 at 12:52 pm |

        Glenn Stehle, the widespread adoption of renewable energy mandates is the agent of change which is most responsible for putting considerable pressure on generators of baseload electricity, coal and nuclear alike, to move to a different model for managing supply and demand on the nation’s electric grids.

        These renewable energy mandates are being imposed mostly at the state level, and most of these mandates have been written in ways that target all baseload generation for eventual elimination. Those who write these mandates are just as determined to eliminate baseload nuclear as they are to eliminate baseload coal.

        The variable energy resources (VER’s) of wind and solar require conventional backup in the form of other variable energy resources which can quickly respond to changes in VER capacity supply and demand. From a total lifecycle cost perspective, gas-fired generation is currently the most economical means of supplying the conventional VER’s need to support the oncoming wind and solar VER’s; and market forces aren’t likely to strong enough over the long term to push the long-term price of natural gas high enough to keep nuclear competitive.

        As things stand today, if the adoption of renewable energy mandates continues apace, the US will eventually lose most of its nuclear baseload capacity, unless special economic incentives are adopted to keep that legacy nuclear capacity on line. In any case, coal-fired baseload generation is on its way out, at least here in the United States. IMHO, the economic and political forces which are now driving coal-fired generation off the grid are unstoppable.

        Whether the appearance of Small Modular Reactors (SMR’s) in a decade or so will eventually have a positive effect on the ability of nuclear to economically supply variable energy resources in support of government-mandated wind and solar is a question which is yet to be answered. Only time will tell.

  29. RiHo08 | September 25, 2016 at 12:55 pm |

    Dear Dr. Curry

    My comment is awaiting moderation. I hope this is due to WordPress being cantankerous today, although the weather here is magnificent Fall. I do seem to attract the downside of WordPress’s nature.

    • jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:35 pm |

      It appears the WordPress filter triggers on words that are frequiently used to describe some popular Dimowits. Words like m_u_r_d_e_r, variants of l_i_e, variants of c_r_o_o_k, etc.

  30. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:33 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    The issue of Clinton’s alleged mistresses and accusers was put back in the headlines Saturday when Donald Trump threatened on Twitter to bring Gennifer Flowers to the first presidential debate after Trump troll Mark Cuban said he’d sit in the front row. Flowers, who says she had a 12-plus year relationship with Clinton, responded promptly on social media, writing, “Hi Donald Trump… I’m in your corner. Of course I will see u at the debate!!”

    After first denying any relationship with Flowers during a 1992 60 Minutes interview, Clinton later admitted to one sexual encounter with her in a 1998 deposition for the Paula Jones lawsuit.

    On Sunday, both Broaddrick and Jones stated they would attend tomorrow’s presidential debate if they were invited.

    Meanwhile, the issue of the number of alleged Clinton mistresses and victims has been in the media in recent months.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/25/exclusive-kathleen-willey-clinton-sex-victims-fill-entire-audience-presidential-debate/

    • Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 4:22 pm |

      Newsflash: Hillary joins husband Bill in using a Cuban to screw someone. Monica Lewinsky declined to comment. The public wonders whether Mark will leave the debate with stains on his dress.

  31. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:40 pm |

    Hmmm … blondes in Germany should avoid trains at all costs, I’m thinking. From the article:
    …
    Parenting magazine Baby & Family has told readers to beware of families who are “inconspicuous” and “cheerful”, as these warning signs indicate they are right wing and thus “dangerous”.
    Depicted with illustrations featuring solely blonde women and children, the report says ordinary parents must take action against right-wing families and make clear that their ideology has no place in the world.

    Asserting that the term “right wing” “stirs up anxiety” and brings to mind “burning refugee homes”, skinheads, and the National Socialist Underground (NSU) group who carried out a string of violent attacks on foreign people, Baby & Family notes that people “rarely connect it with women, family and children”.

    This, the high-circulation German magazine declares, “is precisely the great risk” as such people are just as dangerous if not more so as gangs of Nazi skinheads. The identifying features of right-wing families, it contends, are that they are “inconspicuous, blond, cute and engaged”.

    “First of all, [right-wing families] are nice and dedicated” Michaela Köttig, sociologist and researcher of right-wing extremism at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, alleges.

    Researcher of right-wing politics, Eva Prausner, says a huge danger of right-wing families is that they seem normal.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/25/blond-cheerful-families-dangerous-right/

  32. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:41 pm |

    Article clip @jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 2:40 pm in moderation. I missed the n_a_z_i word. Darn!

  33. Impeach Barry | September 25, 2016 at 4:32 pm |

    The friendship of George W. Bush and Michelle Obama

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/24/politics/michelle-obama-george-w-bush-friendship/

    Much as I dislike neocons at this moment for becoming party traitors… GW Bush has more class in his little finger than Barry has in his entire body. You didn’t see GW shamelessly spending half his time campaigning for John McCain in 2008. GW has kept a pretty low profile since leaving office. There’s just no substitute for good breeding. The aristrocrat and the mongrel.

    • timg56 | September 25, 2016 at 8:25 pm |

      There is a lot one might criticize about Bush’s presidency, but not much to criticize about Bush the man. And I am of the opinion that is true in many ways about Obama. Remove politics from the equation and see how he stacks up. Unlike Bush he is arrogant. But he is also a loving husband and father.

    • cerescokid | September 25, 2016 at 8:35 pm |

      Note the contrast between Bill’s ubiquitous political presence post 2000 versus both Bushes and Reagan. Clinton just never shuts up. There is a certain class and dignity in silence. Given that all Obama has done for 8 years is to campaign 24 hours a day we can expect the same energizer bunny act from him for the next 20 to 30 years.

  34. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 6:14 pm |

    If I were Trump, I would invite to the front row; a Benghazi mom, a mom of a child slain by an illegal alien, an out-of-work coal miner, an out-of-work auto worker, an IT worker whose job was outsourced to India, a mom whose child was slain by a Islamic rabid religious fanatic, then Gennifer Flowers. I’m sure there are some others that would have a high impact on Billary’s composure.

    • Impeach Barry | September 26, 2016 at 5:09 am |

      Clinton doesn’t give schit about any of those you mentioned. Trump picked the single class of people that would rattle her; Bill’s Bimbos. There’s enough of them to fill the room too which is why I call them a class of people.

  35. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 6:20 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    That Barack Obama communicated in 2012—under a redacted pseudonym—with Hillary Clinton on the then secretary of State’s permeable home-brew email server and then claimed he did not know of that server’s existence until it was reported in the press in 2014 is far more than the usual politician’s prevarication.

    Since the fish rots from the top—and in this case it stinks to high heaven—the surfacing of this particular presidential lie calls to question the entire FBI inquiry into the Clinton server, an investigation whose credibility was paper thin in the first place and has now completely vanished.

    It’s time to ask that age-old question: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”
    …
    https://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/09/24/obamas-colossal-email-lie/

  36. jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 8:39 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    Do people around the world have a right to move to the United States? It’s a bedrock belief of most conservatives that there is no such right. The U.S. sets its own immigration policy, admits whom it chooses, and foreign nationals in foreign countries have no right — a claim that could be pursued in court — to enter the United States.

    Now, Hillary Clinton says there is such a right, at least if a tweet from her campaign headquarters can be taken for a policy pronouncement.
    …
    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2602573/?platform=hootsuite#!

    • jim2 | September 25, 2016 at 8:40 pm |

      From the article:
      …
      Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions pushed back against Hillary Clinton campaign’s “radical” suggestion that foreign nationals living in foreign countries have a global right to immigrate to the United States.
      As Byron York first reported, earlier this week, Clinton’s campaign indicated that she believes the world has a global right to immigrate to the United States—a position that essentially dissolves the United States’ status as a sovereign nation.

      York explained that on Monday, Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he declared, “We want people to come into our country, but they have to come in legally, through a process. … No one has a right to immigrate to this country.”
      …
      http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/24/jeff-sessions-pushes-back-clintons-radical-suggestion-global-right-immigrate/

      • Impeach Barry | September 26, 2016 at 5:13 am |

        Hillary has become unhinged. I think she popped a blood vessel. A big one. No political calculus in the world could possibly conclude it was a good move for her to announce a desire to raise the death tax. That will alienate virtually every successful professional politician in the country who just about without exception have estates that are above the death-tax exempt ceiling. Political suicide.

    • timg56 | September 26, 2016 at 6:13 pm |

      Of course it is a right. At least it is if you are a democratic politician and/or a one world globalist.

      For the first they represent future voters having a high probability to vote democrat. For the latter, the more you can dilute and weaken the US, the higher your chances of seeing your vision of one world occurring.

  37. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 8:39 pm |

    Anti-oil-and-gas proposals fail to make Colorado ballot
    http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/earth_to_power/2016/08/colorado-secretary-of-state-says-anti-oil-and-gas.html

    Two contentious ballot proposals aimed at changing the state constitution to add restrictions on Colorado’s oil and gas industry do not have enough valid signatures to be on the November ballot….

    Initiative 78 would expand the state’s existing 500-foot buffer zones around oil and gas operations up to 2,500 feet.

    State officials have said expanding the buffer zone to 2,500 feet around homes and “areas of special concern,” which the proposal defined as including parks, dry creek beds, lakes, rivers and open space, would effectively ban new oil and gas wells from about 90 percent of Colorado….

    Opponents reacted immediately Monday to the announcement….

    “The good news is that after this long and unnecessary battle, our state emerges as the winner,” Dan Haley, the president and CEO of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA), said….

    Opponents warned that the proposals could cost thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity if approved.—

    “We are confident that Coloradans will see these measures for what they are: a backdoor fracking ban that would be economically devastating for our state,” Karen Crummy, spokeswoman for the opposition group Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy and Energy, said…

  38. Glenn Stehle | September 25, 2016 at 9:03 pm |

    The Natural Gas War Burning Under Syria
    http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Natural-Gas-War-Burning-Under-Syria.html

    In 2009, Qatar, a leading natural gas producer, approached Syria about routing its planned 1,500 mile pipeline to the gas markets of Europe through Syria’s Aleppo province….

    Syria declined Qatar’s offer, which would have cut the European market share of its partner, Russia, and instead agreed to participate in the “Friendship Pipeline” between Iran and Iraq that was considered a “Shia Pipeline” to some and a target for the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf. Not understood, or ignored, was Syria’s…long relationship with Russia, dating from 1944, which should have been a warning of who might appear if things hotted up….

    In 2011, Turkey provided a home for the opposition Syrian National Council and, in August 2011, the U.S., its allies, and the UN were calling on Bashar Assad to step down.

    In 2011, Syria, Iran, and Iraq agreed to build a pipeline to connect Iran’s South Pars gas field to Europe….

    [Qatar] has a very small military. It does, however, have a healthy check book and was able to use it to help finance the Syrian opposition forces….

    Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and their confederates are in it to win it, and the fighting in Syria has focused on the pipeline routes.

    Aleppo province, which would host the Qatari pipeline, is where Turkey wants to establish a buffer zone to support “moderate” rebel forces. If Turkey can control this territory, it will bolster the Qatari pipeline and ensure its own preeminence as the energy hub in southern Europe,,,,

    But Russia hasn’t been standing still: it has surrounded Turkey on three sides by occupying Crimea, sending more troops to Armenia, and deploying the S-400 air defense system to Syria, creating a no-fly zone, and maybe a “no-buy” zone for potential customers of Qatari gas….

    In the meantime, these pipeline geopolitics have contributed to serious consequences for the Middle East.

  39. John Maurice Herron | September 26, 2016 at 9:55 am |

    Argue if you will. It’s your vote that is counted. At least in my country, when I go into that voting booth, the only one I have to answer to is the man in the mirror. That said, let me tell you all about that fun time at the NOAA campus, during the DC sniper thing, when the protesters showed up and the guy dressed like the admiral from Gilbert & Sullivan was telling all his hundreds of youthful protesters wearing sponge hats like dolphins to fall dead because the NAVY was bad. Now see, this happened and I could go on for more, it was a very long day and then some fool dropped a doe-nut with white powder and everybody screamed ‘anthrax’ and we had the ARMY show up. Did I mention I don’t like politics?

  40. Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 10:28 am |

    From my daily Texas Monthly email:

    Oil company Apache Corporation made a massive oil discovery in West Texas last month, and while that was a huge stroke of good fortune for Apache, it could be bad news for nearby Balmorhea, home of beloved cool-water springs.

    “Most in this city of about 500 would welcome the jobs, investment and tax dollars an oil rush would bring; Main Street has more empty storefronts than open businesses,” writes David Hunn of the Houston Chronicle in a thoroughly reported and gorgeously photographed story.

    “But they also fear their town could be overwhelmed by the influx of people and equipment, and the water that is the lifeblood of the community contaminated by oil and gas drilling.”

    In an effort to appease the community’s fears, Apache has said it won’t drill on or under the town or it’s famous state park. Still, whenever there’s drilling there’s the possibility of contamination. Concerned Balmorhea residents are left without legal options to stop the drilling, so it it seems as though there not much they can do at this point except cross their fingers and hope for the best.

    Will water and oil mix in Balmorhea?
    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Apache-s-oil-discovery-divides-small-town-9241540.php?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Monday%2009.26.16%20SoT&utm_term=The%20State%20of%20Texas#photo-10971654

  41. nickels | September 26, 2016 at 11:14 am |

    Trump’s economic plan is a mixed bag [link]

    If Trump can actually shut down the globalization rip off and bring manufacturing jobs back that will help.

    But I have no delusions that he will do anything to stop the financial industries ripoff of America and the coming middle class tax hikes/austerity that will be required to pay for this asset stripping of America.

    And Hillary will continue along the destructive path in both cases, so a vote for Trump is still the only way….

    • nickels | September 26, 2016 at 11:18 am |

      Of course its all moot, as we are headed straight to thermonuclear with Russia in Syria. Where we have absolutely no interest. Except at the behest of the Israel lobby.

  42. David L. Hagen | September 26, 2016 at 1:13 pm |

    Climate/Energy Policy Shakeup?!
    Trump picks top skeptic to lead EPA transition

    Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign.

    Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump’s transition plans for EPA, the sources said.

    The Trump team has also lined up leaders for its Energy Department and Interior Department teams. Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna is heading the DOE team; former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt is leading the effort for that agency, according to sources close to the campaign. . . .
    Ebell . . .also chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of nonprofits that “question global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies.” . . .
    Ebell has called the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gases illegal and said that Obama joining the Paris climate treaty “is clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate’s authority.”
    He told Vanity Fair in 2007, “There has been a little bit of warming … but it’s been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about.” . . .

    McKenna . . The president of MWR Strategies is well known in Republican energy circles. He was director of policy and external affairs for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality under then-Gov. George Allen (R) and was an external relations specialist at the Energy Department during the George H.W. Bush administration. . . .
    GOP energy expert Mike Catanzaro is also working on energy policy for the Trump transition team.

  43. David L. Hagen | September 26, 2016 at 1:24 pm |

    President Obama’s Clean Power Plan finally goes on trial — what’s at stake

    President Obama’s climate change agenda goes to court tomorrow, where 28 states, the coal industry, and more than 100 other groups fight its legality.. . .
    All agree that electricity rates would skyrocket if the plan becomes law.

    Study: EPA Overstated Benefits And Ignored Costs of Clean Power Plan https://t.co/E5Dlhz2CR9 pic.twitter.com/8Usqus8Iyj

  44. Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 1:47 pm |

    No Fortune 100 CEOs Back Republican Donald Trump.
    Democrat Hillary Clinton has 11 contributors and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney had far more
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/no-fortune-100-ceos-back-republican-donald-trump-1474671842

  45. Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 2:28 pm |

    Killary Klinton and her war mongering minions in the Pentagon and Department of Defense strike again?

    How the Pentagon sank the US-Russia deal in Syria – and the ceasefire
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-pentagon-sank-us-russia-campaign-syria-and-ceasefire-1932525374

    Another US-Russian Syria ceasefire deal has been blown up….

    [T]he politics of the US-Russian relationship played a central role in the denouement of the second ceasefire agreement….

    [W]hat provoked the decision to end the ceasefire was the first ever US strike against Syrian government forces on 17 September.

    That convinced the Russians that the US Pentagon had no intention of implementing the main element of the deal that was most important to the Putin government: a joint US-Russian air campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militant group and al-Qaeda through a “Joint Implementation Centre”….

    [With the Joint Implementation Centre Obama was bucking] aggressive opposition of the Pentagon to Obama’s intention to enter into military cooperation with Russia in Syria. The Pentagon was motivated by an overriding interest in heading off such high-profile US-Russian cooperation at a time when it is pushing for much greater US military efforts to counter what it portrays as Russian aggression in a new Cold War.

    Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter strongly objected to the Joint Centre – especially the provision for sharing intelligence with the Russians for a campaign against IS and al-Qaeda.

    Obama had overridden Carter’s objections…

    Late in the evening the next day, US and allied planes carried out multiple strikes on a Syrian government base in the desert near one of its airbases in Deir Ezzor and killed at least 62 Syrian troops and wounded more than 100.

    The Pentagon soon acknowledged what it called a mistake in targeting, but the impact on the ceasefire deal was immediate. Syria accused the US of a deliberate attack on its forces, and the Russians similarly expressed doubt about the US explanation.

    It is not difficult to imagine, however, the fury with which both Russian and Syrian governments could have reacted to the US blows against both the Syrian army and the deal that had been sealed with Washington. They were certainly convinced that the US air attack on Syrian troops was a clear message that the Pentagon and US military leadership would not countenance any cooperation with Russia on Syria – and were warning of a Syrian campaign to come once Hillary Clinton is elected.

    • timg56 | September 26, 2016 at 5:53 pm |

      Sorry Glen but this is garbage. The Pentagon does not generate orders contrary to those of the President. This is conspiracy belief. A far more plausible scenario is that we dropped bombs either on the wrong location or that it was the correct location but the tactical picture was fluid and changed between the time the mission was given and the aircraft arrived over the target. You try identifying nationality of troops on the ground from 10,000 feet. There is a reason for the term fog of war.

  47. Glenn Stehle | September 26, 2016 at 5:16 pm |

    Climate Change Is Here: Inside the Summer of Hell and High Water.
    With a catastrophic season of wildfires, megafloods and major hurricanes, the climate-change siege is fully upon us
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/summer-of-hell-and-high-water-shows-climate-change-is-here-w441345

    • timg56 | September 26, 2016 at 5:47 pm |

      This is the sort of garbage journalism that convinced me much of what we are told about the issue is BS meant to advance an agenda that has little to do with science or the climate.

      The Seattle Times had a similar piece this Sunday from Seth Borenstein. These people are counting on the public having an attention span measured in days.

  49. Impeach Barry | September 26, 2016 at 10:34 pm |

    So much for Lester Holt’s neutrality.

    He scolded the audience the first time they clapped for Trump asking them to be quiet then failed to do it a single time when they clapped for Clinton.

    What’s up with that, Lester?

  50. jim2 | September 26, 2016 at 11:26 pm |

    This was probably the biggest mistake made in the history of our country. If the Senate were elected by State Legislators like the angry, old, white men, who wrote the Constitution, specified, the Federal government more than likely wouldn’t be the evil behemoth it has grown into.

    From the article:
    …
    The Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures.
    …
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

  51. Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 12:11 am |

    Not a single policy “gotcha” on Trump in the debate.

    No Allepo moment.

    Had him on defensive a long time on issues few people don’t care about – birtherism and his personal income tax return.

    Even president Obama pleaded to the public “please move on we have more important things to discuss than my birth certificate”. Harping on it doesn’t solve a single problem facing the nation.

    Public polling indicates very few people are concerned about what’s on Trump’s taxes. He met all the legal requirements for financial disclosure. Presidents aren’t even required to give up running any companies they own while in office.

    What Hillary failed to do were the very things she needed to do. Trip up Trump on policy issues people care about like national security, terrorism, economy growing at less than 2%, and getting over- extended in borrowing. Didn’t happen. The other thing that didn’t happen is she didn’t get him to take the bait and lose control.

    So we had a super-practiced one-on-one debater, the most qualified presidential candidate evah, couldn’t trip up Trump on policy and couldn’t get him to launch any personal attacks despite launching many of her own.

    As Tucker Carlson remarked tonight “There are no undecided voters. There are just voters wanting to know that Trump isn’t crazy before they vote for him. They want and they want it bad. Trump is change and so long as he isn’t a lunatic, which he isn’t and proved tonight, he’s got the right stuff to break up the status quo.

    • Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 12:24 am |

      I wonder how many people who are so concerned over Trump’s tax return have bothered to look at his 104 page financial disclosure?

      They couldn’t find anything untoward on that? Trump said he’d give the names of any institutions who give him credit lines or other loans. He’s got some $4B in hard business assets and a total of $700M in credit carried by several banks. He says his “Trump” brand is worth $6B in future discounted tax flow. That’s probably exaggerated but maybe not a lot. That’s not an excessive amount of working capital. He earned $680 million last year. That’s a pretty good return on capital. Plus he personally creates tens of thousands of good paying jobs and many billions in cash flow. That’s the kind of financial performance we need from our federal government. Spend less build more.

  52. Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 1:54 am |

    Ahem. Not that it means much but Time and CNBC online polls for who won are 60% Trump, 40% Hillary within 1% of each other at 1AM Central Time Tuesday morning.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/26/vote-who-won-the-first-presidential-debate.html

    http://time.com/4506217/presidential-debate-clinton-trump-survey/

    Hillary failed in her mission to force an “Allepo” moment or to get Trump to lose his cool. Either one would have given her the win and she failed both.

  53. Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 1:59 am |

    Fortune magazine poll: 55% Trump, 45% Clinton on four topical questions then a whopping 87% said it didn’t change their minds.

    http://fortune.com/2016/09/26/presidential-debate-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-poll/

    Again a win for Trump presuming a 55/45 split for the 13% who changed their minds.

  54. Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 3:17 am |

    Nate Silver’s odds are a bit different.

    http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo#now

    All three prediction models have Trump with better than 45% odds.

    • climatereason | September 27, 2016 at 4:18 am |

      I went to your link and as I looked the odds changed to 47.9% for Trump. Guess it is thought he at least didn’t disgrace himself in the debate. Our own commentators said he held his own but thought he looked more tired and fractious than Hillary at the end

      tonyb

      • Nick Stokes | September 27, 2016 at 5:12 am |

        “as I looked the odds changed”
        No, the first figure that shows is the odds for the election (in Nov), and the second is “odds if the election were held today”. But they are based on polls – pre-debate. The actual betting odds for Trump dropped considerably post-debate.

    • Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 12:10 pm |

      Nick, the betting markets are currently giving Trump a one in three chance of winning.

      Let’s say you’re playing Russian Roulette and you are handed a revolver with 4 bullets and 2 empty chambers. How confident are you that you won’t blow your head off on the first try?

  55. Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 7:17 am |

    US murders surged in 2015 to highest rate in two decades
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/09/26/murders-surged-highest-rate-two-decades/F26q2t09aPhzjhChd00rgI/story.html

    Murders in United States jumped nearly 11% in 2015, FBI data shows
    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/murders-jumped-11-2015-fbi-data-shows-article-1.2807429

    Murders nationwide jumped by 10.8% in 2015 and overall violent crimes increased 3.9% over 2014 levels, according to FBI data released Monday.

    [T]he 10.8% spike between 2015 and 2014 represented the largest one-year increase since 1971, The Guardian newspaper reported.

    Rapes also increased by 6.3% in 2015, aggravated assaults grew by 4.6% and robberies ticked up by 1.4%, according to the FBI.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 7:46 am |

      The question of murders in NY City came up last night, with Clinton and Lester Holt both insisting that they have not increased.

      Both Clinton and Holt were wrong.

      According to the “Crime in the United States” reports that the FBI publishes, the number of murders in NY City did increase in 2015.

      • Curious George | September 27, 2016 at 10:15 am |

        Oh my God. Murders increased from 335 (2013) to 352 (2015), a whopping 5% increase over 2 years.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 1:01 pm |

        Curious George,

        The question of whether murders have increased or decreased in NY City is of an empirical nature, and I’m not sure everyone is into Newspeak and doublethink — the form of thinking where up is down, black is white, and ignorance is strength.

        Following are excerpts from the transcript of what was said during the debate last night.

        Notice how Clinton and Holt want to make it all about identity politics — racial bias and discriminaiton by the police — and Trump wants to make it about what has been demonstrated to have worked in the past to bring crime rates down.

        TRUMP: Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago you do stop and frisk, which worked very well, Mayor Giuliani is here, worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down…..

        HOLT: Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men.

        TRUMP: No, you’re wrong. It went before a judge, who was a very against-police judge. It was taken away from her. And our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. They would have won an appeal. If you look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it’s allowed.

        HOLT: The argument is that it’s a form of racial profiling.

        TRUMP: No, the argument is that we have to take the guns away from these people that have them and they are bad people that shouldn’t have them…..

        CLINTON: Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional and, in part, because it was ineffective. It did not do what it needed to do…..

        So we’ve got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system…..

        HOLT: Secretary Clinton, last week, you said we’ve got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias. Do you believe that police are implicitly biased against black people?

        CLINTON: Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other. And therefore, I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, you know, why am I feeling this way?….

        TRUMP: ….when it comes to stop-and-frisk, you know, you’re talking about takes guns away. Well, I’m talking about taking guns away from gangs and people that use them….

        I think maybe there’s a political reason why you can’t say it, but I really don’t believe — in New York City, stop-and-frisk, we had 2,200 murders, and stop-and-frisk brought it down to 500 murders.

        But we went from 2,200 to 500. And it was continued on by Mayor Bloomberg. And it was terminated by current mayor. But stop-and- frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City. Tremendous beyond belief. So when you say it has no impact, it really did. It had a very, very big impact.

        CLINTON: Well, it’s also fair to say, if we’re going to talk about mayors, that under the current mayor, crime has continued to drop, including murders. So there is…

        TRUMP: No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong.

        CLINTON: No, I’m not.

        TRUMP: Murders are up. All right. You check it….

        HOLT: This conversation is about race….

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-transcript-annotated/

    • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 8:43 am |

      The issue of the efficacy of stop-and-frisk also came up last night, with both Clinton and Holt arguing it had not been effective in NY City.

      But again, the crime stats indicate they may be wrong.

      Here’s the history of stop-and-frisk in NY City from wikipedia:

      The Stop-question-and-frisk program, or stop-and-frisk, in New York City, is a practice of the New York City Police Department in which police officers stop and question a pedestrian, then frisk them for weapons and other contraband.

      This power is granted upon the standard of reasonable suspicion.

      In the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and Peters v. New York, the Supreme Court granted limited approval in 1968 to frisks conducted by officers lacking probable cause for an arrest in order to search for weapons if the officer believes the subject to be dangerous. The Court’s decision made suspicion of danger to an officer grounds for a “reasonable search”.

      Stop-and-frisk is not necessarily a new invention. In the early 1980s if a police officer had reasonable suspicion of a possible crime, he had the authority to stop someone and ask questions. If, based on the subject’s answers, the suspicion level did not escalate to probable cause for an arrest, the person would be released immediately. This was only a “stop-and-question”.

      The “frisk” part of the equation did not come into play except on two occasions: (1) If possession of a weapon was suspected, or (2) if reasonable suspicion of a possible crime escalated to probable cause to arrest for an actual crime based on facts developed after the initial stop-and-question.

      That all changed in 1990 when CompStat was developed under then Police Commissioner William Bratton. High-ranking police officials widely incorporated the “stop, question and frisk”.

      Republican former mayor Rudy Giuliani hired Bratton as his police commissioner who adopted the strategy more widely for use in New York City.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 9:14 am |

      Clinton and Holt’s claim that stop-and-frisk has been “ruled unconstitutional” is also extremely iffy, and Trump’s description of the legal status of stop-and-frisk was not that far off the mark. Citing Wikipedia again:

      • On August 12, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the stop and frisk practice was unconstitutional.

      • Mayor Bloomberg indicated that the city will appeal the ruling.

      • On October 31, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit blocked the order requiring changes to the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program and removed Judge Shira Scheindlin from the case.

      • Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who succeeded Bloomberg as mayor in 2014, has pledged to reform the stop-and-frisk program, and is calling for new leadership at the NYPD, an inspector general, and a strong racial profiling bill.

      • The police unions sued, seeking to intervene to stop de Blasio.

      • On July 30, 2014, Southern District Court Judge Analisa Torres issued an Opinion and Order denying the police unions’ motions to intervene.

      • A week later, the City of New York filed a motion to withdraw its appeal.

      • On October 31, 2014, a three judge panel on the Second Circuit unanimously ruled against the unions and allowed the city to proceed with its overhaul of the police department.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City

      From this history, one can see why there is so much enmity between de Blasio and the NY City police.

      New York police turn backs on mayor at officer’s funeral – video
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/jan/05/new-york-police-turn-backs-mayor-officers-wenjian-liuvideo-funeral-video

  56. Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 9:35 am |

    Scott Adams: I Score the First Debate
    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151007796236/i-score-the-first-debate

    Trump and Clinton debated each other for the first time last night. Here’s how I score the night.

    Clinton won on points. She had more command of the details and the cleaner answers. Trump did a lot of interrupting and he was defensive. If this were a college debate competition, Clinton would be declared the winner. I call that victory on the 2D chess board. But voters don’t care about facts and debating style. They care about how they feel. So let’s talk about that….

    By tomorrow, no one will remember what either of them said during the debate. But we will remember how they made us feel.

    Clinton won the debate last night. And while she was doing it, Trump won the election. He had one thing to accomplish – being less scary – and he did it.

    • jacksmith4tx | September 27, 2016 at 11:10 am |

      “But voters don’t care about facts and debating style. They care about how they feel.”

      “Consumer Confidence in U.S. Hits Nine-Year High”
      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/consumer-confidence-in-u-s-rises-to-highest-since-august-2007

      What does this mean?

      • Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 12:21 pm |

        What it means is the same as the doctor telling you that your chances of survival have increased from 14% to 15%. You’re still in a horrible situation and probably going to die if there isn’t vast improvement that happens soon.

        The fact of the matter is there’s a financial bubble been created by the US borrowing and spending $7 trillion dollars over the past 8 years, as much as was borrowed in the 200 years before that. And what we have to show for all that borrowing is an economy growing at a catastrophic long term rate of less than 2%. It needs to grow at double that rate for many years to climb out of the hole that’s been dug.

        Consumers were more optimistic about the outlook for the labor market, as 15.1 percent said more jobs will be available in six months, the most since June 2015
        Share of Americans who see their incomes increasing in the next six months fell to 17.1 percent from 18.5 percent
        A 16.5 percent share of respondents said they saw an improvement in business conditions in the next six months, down from 17.6 percent
        Buying plans wavered, however, with purchase expectations falling for autos, homes and appliances

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 2:11 pm |

        2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index

        The United States is expected to take over the number one position from China by the end of the decade while Germany holds firm at number three: The United States continues to improve its ranking from 4th in 2010 to 3rd in 2013 to 2nd in this year’s study. Moreover, executives expect the United States to assume the top position before the end of the decade while Germany holds strong and steady at the number three position now through the end of the decade (Figure 1, page 5). [bold orig.]

        […]

        US perspective: United States executives were more favorable toward policies in the United States than the last study three years ago. According to US executives, favorable US policies centered on sustainability, technology transfer, monetary control, science and innovation, foreign direct investment (FDI), intellectual property protection, and safety and health regulation help to create a competitive advantage for their businesses. On the other hand, US executives identified policies around corporate tax rates, healthcare policies, labor, and taxation of foreign earnings as disadvantages for manufacturers in the United States (Figure 30, page 39). [bold orig.]

        […]

        How global manufacturers can succeed
        In order to succeed in the rapidly evolving global manufacturing landscape, companies will need to embrace a targeted approach to
        some of the key elements of manufacturing competitiveness, including:

        […]

        2. Embracing advanced technologies to drive competitive advantage: Advanced technologies are increasingly underpinning global manufacturing competitiveness. Leading 21st century manufacturers have fully converged the digital and physical worlds where advanced hardware combined with advanced software, sensors, and massive amounts of data and analytics is expected to result in smarter products, processes, and more closely connected customers, suppliers, and manufacturing. Predictive analytics, the Internet-of-Things (IoT), both smart products and smart factories via Industry 4.0, as well as the development and use of advanced materials will be critical to future competitiveness. [bold orig.]

        […]

        5. Cultivating smart, strategic public-private partnerships: Governments are becoming increasingly aware of the significant benefits a manufacturing industry provides to national economic prosperity. Likewise, manufacturing companies are keenly aware of the role government policy can play in their success. Therefore, many nations with unfavorable or overly bureaucratic manufacturing policies are working to improve and reform those, invest in greater economic development, and strengthen overall manufacturing infrastructure, while seeking to partner in more productive ways with businesses. Leading companies, in turn, are targeting new, smart and strategic public-private partnership models to help drive improvements not possible alone, resulting in non-traditional business-public sector alignments as the global competitive playing field undergoes a significant transformation at both the company and country level. [bold orig.]

        […]

        Among the advanced economies that are investing heavily in talent and technology, the United States has emerged as a clear leader, improving its overall competitiveness going forward. Its rank position has gradually moved up from 4th in 2010 to 3rd in 2013 to 2nd in 2016 and is projected by executives to achieve the top rank in the next five years. The US innovation ecosystem has evolved significantly over the last century, making the United States a global leader in R&D activities as evidenced by its high spend on R&D (estimated US$457 billion in 2013 current prices), presence of top-notch universities, and R&D talent as well as the vast amount of venture capital (VC) pouring in to commercialize advanced technologies.5 In addition, the recent policy change to make R&D tax credits permanent in the United States will foster increased levels of investments in advanced technologies and innovation. In the United States, executives consistently stressed predictive analytics, smart, connected products that support the “Internet of Things” (IoT), and advanced materials as their highest priority technologies and vital to their companies’ future competitiveness (see Table 2).

        One of the advantages of higher boundaries between polities (e.g. “nation states”) is the increased incentive for governments to work together with industry, finance, labor, and the consumer/customer base in competition with other polities.

        Barriers to unrestrained immigration and offshoring of manufacturing and other productive labor allow various polities to experiment with different methods of “recycling” the money spent buying consumer products to consumers so they can buy more. That buying is what drives the competitive production and marketing that, in turn, drives technological improvement.

        During the heyday of “Fordism”, skilled and semi-skilled labor were both the main instrument of manufacturing (and its main expense) and the main consumers. As offshoring of manufacture to foreign workers (including “guest”/remittance workers) diverted the money paid for labor to non-consumers, even as it brought down the prices of the products, the “class” of consumers to buy these lower-priced products shrank, as their jobs disappeared.

        Most of the replacement jobs were low-paid unskilled labor with little support for discretionary spending, which latter was the mainstay of consumer spending.

        As the manufacturing comes home, however, the jobs won’t follow, they’ll disappear. Replaced by automation and a sprinkling of highly skilled jobs that will leave most of the class of displaced workers stuck with low-paid unskilled jobs.

        This will have to be solved, somehow, with a system of recycling (don’t call it “redistribution”) money from the upper side of the manufacturing chain back to consumers so they can buy more. Such a system, however, has no chance at all of working without those national barriers.

        Without them, all the efforts to recycle value to consumers will drain away as remittances, or support of endless immigrant relatives who are all used to a much more “frugal” lifestyle.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 3:59 pm |

        AK says:

        Barriers to unrestrained immigration and offshoring of manufacturing and other productive labor allow various polities to experiment with different methods of “recycling” the money spent buying consumer products to consumers so they can buy more. That buying is what drives the competitive production and marketing that, in turn, drives technological improvement.

        Brazil is the poster child for how not to “recycle” money.

        It did the whole “recycling” thing, including a universal basic income:

        Brazil is the first country in the world that has passed a law on basic income. This law (n. 10.835/2004) was approved by the Brazilian National Congress in 2003 and sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on January 8, 2004. It establishes the right to a Citizen’s Basic Income, which will gradually be implemented.

        http://www.globalincome.org/English/BI-worldwide.html

        However, just as with Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, much of the stimulus leaked off due to, as you say, insufficent impediments to trade and capital flows. Much of the stimulus spending was used to buy more imported goods, and not bolster domestic production.

        The biggest benificiary to Obama’s Recovery Act, it turns out, may have been China:

        The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Section…1603: Providing Federal Support for Energy…through Direct Cash Payments in Lieu of Tax Credits
        http://hallway.evans.washington.edu/public-files/UST_Cash%20Payments_0.pdf

        The Department of Treasury (Treasury) implemented a new approach for providing capital for…renewable energy generation projects. Federal support for renewable energy deployment…has traditionally been delivered through tax credits.

        The Recovery Act included two cash payment programs designed to convert these tax benefits to direct payments which are considered to be more valuable, especially in an uncertain economic climate.

        Section 1603 of Division B of the Act established a…program, “Grants for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax Credits,” directed at private investors who place new renewable energy facilities in service.

        By establishing the Section 1603 ARRA program “Congress hoped to …temporarily fill the gap created by the diminished investor demand for tax credits,” and thereby achieve “…the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs…as well as the long-term benefit of expanding the use of clean and renewable energy and decreasing our dependency on nonrenewable energy sources.”

        Prior to the Recovery Act, federal support for renewable energy included two tax credits known as the production tax credit and the investment tax credit.

        Additionally, investors benefitted from allowances for accelerated tax depreciation in IRC Section 168.
        .
        Section 1603 of the Recovery Act provided investors with a third option for federal assistance in addition to the production and investment tax credits. It established the Payments for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax Credits program to be administered by the Secretary of the Treasury. Under the program, investors could forgo both the production and investment tax credits and instead receive a direct cash payment roughly equal in amount to the investment tax credit.

        The statute required that all qualifying Section 1603 applicants would receive funding.

        Unlike other programs that had fixed amounts of funding, no spending cap existed for Treasury‟s energy payments.

        By September 2010, over $5 billion dollars in energy cash payments had been awarded and disbursed to recipients. Approximately 85 percent of approved applications were for solar electric applicants, while approximately 86 percent of funds were awarded to wind projects.

        An independent study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in April 2010 found that Section 1603 may have helped directly motivate as much as 2,400 MW of wind power capacity to be built that would not otherwise have come online in 2009, and this additional capacity supported more than 55,000 jobs (mostly short-term jobs in the construction phase),

        The Lawrence Berkeley study notes that the 1603 program has been criticized by some for potentially supporting more overseas than domestic jobs. This concern was prompted by various reports, including that a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas would use imported Chinese-made turbines and a large portion of 1603 funding had gone to wind power developers headquartered outside of the U.S., and/or to projects using wind turbines manufactured by companies that are headquartered outside of the U.S.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 5:22 pm |

        Report: Feds Give Billions To Foreign Green Energy Companies
        http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/17/report-feds-give-billions-to-foreign-green-energy-companies/#ixzz4LUdi0B2j

        “[A] large portion of the funds received by the foreign energy firms came from Recovery Act programs such as Section 1603,” according to a report by the left-wing group Good Jobs First.

        Good Jobs First is a partnership between left-wing groups: the Corporate Research Project and the Fiscal Policy Institute. Oddly enough, the report’s attack on subsidies to foreign companies align with complaints by conservative politicians.

        Republican lawmakers have criticized the Obama administration for subsidizing energy projects backed by foreign companies. In 2013, house Republicans put out a report claiming that nearly $4 billion of Section 1603 green energy grants went to a handful of large European and Asian renewable energy companies.

        “Billions of dollars have filled the coffers of overseas firms while the evidence of the promised permanent jobs and economic growth here in the United States is scarce,” Republicans said in their report. “With these grants, foreign companies appear to have unduly benefited from a program ostensibly aimed at stimulating the U.S. economy, growing American businesses, and creating U.S. jobs.”

        Republican attacks didn’t stop with green energy companies. Lawmakers also criticized the Obama administration’s failed loans to automakers and battery companies — these subsidized companies were then sold off to Chinese investors at a huge loss.

        “In 2009, Secretary Chu promised American taxpayers that a $528.7 million conditional loan for Fisker Automotive would create or save 5,000 jobs,” Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

        “The height of Fisker’s employment barely reached over 200 employees,”

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 5:42 pm |

        @Glenn Stehle…

        Thus, we (and voters) can blame “free trade” for the fact that the “stimulus” did so little good.

        After all, if all the given-away money had included restrictions on buying from manufacturers operating in the US, paying US workers, we could have been sued in the WTO.

      • Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 6:30 pm |

        AK,

        I would argue that the entire neoliberal structure that Hillary Clinton is so desperately attempting to sustain — including the WTO — has run its cycle and is now obsolete.

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 6:57 pm |

        @Glenn Stehle…

        It won’t go without a fight. The financial world has a very great deal of money invested based on globalist expectations. I suspect that’s the main reason so many Republican CEO’s are opposed to Trump.

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 7:43 pm |

        @Glenn Stehle…

        Recently I’ve been digging into John A. Mathews’ ideas combining the “long waves and technoeconomic paradigm shifts” of Kondratiev with “neo-Schumpeterian theorizing on technological ‘surges’ of creative destruction,” in the idea of “renewable energy” as an “emergent 6th paradigm […] driven by the technology surge associated with renewable energies, particularly in China where the investment is most intense and the falling costs are driving market expansion.”

        I’m highly skeptical that “renewable” energy alone could drive such a sixth wave, but the rapidly falling prices and emerging notions of “externalities” of fossil carbon might play a major part in that wave.

        The timing of these waves is interesting in comparison with Quigley’s stages of “economic organization” (pp 37-38/52-53), especially the expansion of “Financial capitalism” along with the 2nd Kondratiev wave (railroads and big steel).

        The question is what sort of financial reorganization might accompany the 6th wave? Given the uncertainties, it makes sense that most of the major concentrations of capital/investment would be chary of it. Or any change accompanying it.

        Like most generals, they seem to be fighting the last war.

      • jim2 | September 27, 2016 at 8:09 pm |

        What good is accomplished by shoe-horning human development into “waves”? Does it predict anything of note or usefulness? Just askin’.

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 8:22 pm |

        I’d say it gives us a framework in which to make predictions. Or at least, educated guesses.

      • jim2 | September 27, 2016 at 8:40 pm |

        It’s something of a pattern. Does it tell you how high or long the next wave will be? Does it tell you what will cause it or what the knock-on effects will be? It tells me about as much as the ice core CO2 record, which isn’t one heck of a lot.

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 8:43 pm |

        Does it tell you what will cause it or what the knock-on effects will be?

        No. But it does sort of suggest that we should expect a heavy round of investment, evolving into a bubble, in some new technology.

        Which, if correct, might offer some guidance for the next couple decades.

      • jim2 | September 27, 2016 at 8:51 pm |

        My questions are sincere. We see so much garbage from “science” and other academic fields that one must always ask if its just a case of mental masturbation or actually possesses some utility.

      • AK | September 27, 2016 at 8:59 pm |

        Well, it seems intuitively obvious to me that there are important connections between technological development and economic activity. This, at least, tries to develop some theory of how they interact.

        AFAIK, most economists simply dismiss technology as random, or a predictable result of investment in R&D.

      • jim2 | September 27, 2016 at 11:15 pm |

        The problem with “green” technology is that they require massive infusions of tax payer monies. Past technological revolutions were mostly self propelled because they provided something people were willing to pay for in a free market. They weren’t propelled by subsidies and government mandates.

        For these reason, I don’t believe “green” tech will fuel the next wave.

      • AK | September 28, 2016 at 1:09 am |

        Except for Wright’s “Law”.

      • jim2 | September 28, 2016 at 7:41 am |

        This is a somewhat useful concept, sort of like the tech wave thing you threw out earlier. But, again, the concept is too general to use as a tool to inform us of the economic sustainability of “green” tech.

        We’ve covered ad nauseam all the other expensive pieces that have to be in place to effectively utilize intermittent energy sources. Smart grid, batteries that don’t exist (and might never exist), backup power. Focusing on the unit cost of a solar panel or windmill blade is missing the forest for the trees.

        And, again, this is government-driven, not market driven and that means it’s not something that people naturally are drawn to.

        People saw readily the utility of kerosene and were clamoring to get it. Not so with solar panels.

      • AK | September 28, 2016 at 9:01 am |

        But, again, the concept is too general to use as a tool to inform us of the economic sustainability of “green” tech.

        Not really. It offers a presumptive relationship between deployment and cost reductions. This relationship suggests that large-scale deployment will be accompanied by substantial cost reductions regardless of where the money came from to pay for it.

        In WWII governments built airplanes to deploy and get shot down. Manufacturing costs came down.

        In the “Space Age” the government(s) built rocket-based launch systems to deploy satellites. Manufacturing costs came down.

        The government(s) bought large amounts of cutting edge electronics, including the integrated circuits ancestral to modern IT tech. Manufacturing costs came down.

        The government(s) first bought solar cells/panels, then established subsidies for others to buy them. Manufacturing costs came down.

        It’s true, the process with solar PV has gone much farther than it had to with other technology, but solar PV has almost reached parity for 10-15% penetration alongside CCGT, and it’s unlikely (IMO) that those subsidies will go away before it crosses the tipping point.

        We’ve covered ad nauseam all the other expensive pieces that have to be in place to effectively utilize intermittent energy sources.

        But naysayers like you keep ignoring anything that doesn’t fit your preconceptions.

        Smart grid, […]

        Not really necessary, but, given “Moore’s Law”, probably the cheapest way to accomplish its function.

        […] batteries that don’t exist (and might never exist), […]

        Perhaps, but there are options using pumped hydro that don’t require dams. And the main part, the turbines and motor/generators, are pretty much mature technology.

        […] backup power.

        Nope.

        That’s the wrong perspective. You’re trying to apply logic that only works for base-load and dispatchable power to intermittents. For CCGT, with its very small up-front capitalization costs, redundant solar/wind and CCGT is very different than considering it “backup power.”

        People saw readily the utility of kerosene and were clamoring to get it. Not so with solar panels.

        Well, actually by the ’70’s there were people who saw the utility:

        Dr. Elliot Berman, with help from Exxon Corporation, designs a significantly less costly solar cell, bringing price down from $100 a watt to $20 a watt. Solar cells begin to power navigation warning lights and horns on many off-shore gas and oil rigs, lighthouses, railroad crossings and domestic solar applications began to be viewed as sensible applications in remote locations where grid-connected utilities could not exist affordably. [my bold]

        (I find it very interesting that Wiki’s timeline of solar PV includes no mention of either Exxon or Berman (as of today.)

        At that time, of course, PV and batteries had similar prices, so the combination was suitable for all sorts of isolated applications.

  57. David Wojick | September 27, 2016 at 11:27 am |

    Mild mannered arch-skeptic Myron Ebell is apparently heading Trump’s EPA transition team.
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/.

    What a great choice. Myron normally works the Hill, which will help if he gets to work over EPA. Especially interesting that Trump picked a climate person, not an EPA air & water person. However, his team does a lot on EPA, especially Marlo Lewis, who has been hammering the Clean Power Plan (which is in Court today). Trump gets the whole Cooler Heads Coalition.

    • Beta Blocker | September 27, 2016 at 3:43 pm |

      David, I think the EPA’s Clean Power Plan has a fair chance of being struck down in the courts because it unfairly targets one sector of America’s economy for steep emission reductions while encouraging greater reliance on other GHG emitting sources from other competing sectors.

      If the true goal is to actually achieve the very significant GHG emission reductions the Democrats say they want — as opposed to playing politics with the issue of climate change as a means of gaining the support of environmental activists — the Clean Power Plan isn’t a particularly smart way of going about it.

      If, after the upcoming election, the US Government remains intent on regulating America’s carbon emissions in support of President Obama’s steep reduction targets, it must regulate all carbon emissions across the board, spreading the burdens of compliance as equally and as fairly as possible among all emission sources and among all economic sectors.

      • ristvan | September 27, 2016 at 7:39 pm |

        BB, read Larry Tribe’s brief on same. Harvard Law’s foremost constitutional scholar. He says it is unconstitutional. He is a flaming liberal, whose only greater loyalty is to the Constitution. Available online via Google. Key words ‘Tribe CPP Constitution’ in any order.

      • David Wojick | September 28, 2016 at 11:53 am |

        Beta, I do not think that is among the objections raised by the plaintiffs.

      • Beta Blocker | September 28, 2016 at 3:06 pm |

        Ristvan (Rud Istvan): “BB, read Larry Tribe’s brief on same. Harvard Law’s foremost constitutional scholar. He says it is unconstitutional. He is a flaming liberal, whose only greater loyalty is to the Constitution. Available online via Google. Key words ‘Tribe CPP Constitution’ in any order.”

        David Wojick: “Beta, I do not think that is among the objections raised by the plaintiffs.”

        Lawrence Tribe’s brief doesn’t state so directly, but if one is familiar with past EPA practice, one can only conclude that if the US Government is determined to regulate carbon emissions to the extent that is necessary to achieve President Obama’s long-term GHG reduction goals, the only way it can be done legally and practicably is to regulate carbon as a completely separate pollutant class from all other classes of pollutants — which of course, the Clean Power Plan (CPP) does not do.

        The CPP plays games with Clean Air Act Section 111 in an attempt to bundle carbon with other recognized pollutants. As written, the CPP is in basic conflict with constitutional law and it is a significant departure from past EPA regulatory practice. IMHO, the professional EPA staff who drafted the Clean Power Plan had to have known that the CPP is fatally flawed from these two perspectives. So why was the plan written that way?

        One should never mistake motion for action, and as a realistic means of achieving some good portion of the Democratic Party’s highly ambitious GHG reduction goals, pushing the CPP is motion, not truly action. The Clean Power Plan is a regulatory strategy written mostly for political purposes to assist the Obama Administration in managing its relationships with the environmental activist groups and to keep that constituency inside their camp.

        The lawyers who work for the environmental activist groups also have to know that as written, the Clean Power Plan is in basic conflict with constitutional law and is a significant departure from past EPA regulatory practice. How can they call themselves specialists in environmental law and pollution regulation if they don’t know this?

        If these lawyers and these environmental activist groups are truly committed to achieving President Obama’s highly ambitious GHG reduction targets, why are they not pushing for separate regulation of carbon as its own unique class of pollutant? Why are they not demanding that a CAA Section 108 Endangerment Finding be written for carbon? Why are they not demanding that a NAAQS be set for carbon using a Section 108 Endangerment Finding as the starting point? Why are they not demanding that a truly comprehensive carbon regulation strategy be adopted which is written well enough to be legally sound, to be highly resistant to lawsuits, and to be practicably implemented nationwide at the state and local governmental levels in a reasonably fair and consistent manner?

    • climatereason | September 27, 2016 at 12:10 pm |

      I am turned off by slick and slimy politicians such as Gore, Obama and our own Tony Blair.

      So I would automatically have gone for the less polished performer. Whether I would vote for him is another matter though.

      tonyb

    • Impeach Barry | September 27, 2016 at 12:49 pm |

      I didn’t fact check the article you link but I did note one thing that indicated it needs fact checking.

      The author claims that taking Iraq’s oil is a de facto war crime.

      In point of fact it is not a crime. It’s called war reparations and it’s not only legal it’s common practice. Taking land is a war crime. Seizing assets to cover the winner’s cost of the war is not. It’s like winning in court. The winner can and usually does ask for and receive court costs and attorney’s fees.

      Anyone who can’t bother to look up the legality of war reparations before giving their opinion on it is incompetent at best and likely wrong about a lot of other things.

      Separating the wheat from the chaff outside your narrow field of expertise has never been one of your strong suits, Professor Curry.

      • RiHo08 | September 27, 2016 at 2:52 pm |

        Capt’nDallas

        It seems a bit odd that during the primaries, debates seem to have a great deal of influence on who was the selected nominee. During the Presidential debates, all sorts of gaffs are overlooked. Maybe, during a Presidency, all the gifted oratory of the primaries, the bickering and failure to resolve anything of the Presidential debates, and the jawboning needed during the Presidency represent skill sets have nothing to do with one another.

        I guess the only good way to choose a President is after they have had their stint in office, judge their ability to get things done, adapt and manage. Maybe in a marginal way, the public should look at a future Presidential nominee who has been a president of something, and see how they did. I guess that is why I like Governors as Presidential candidates, and then of course there is Jimmy Carter.

        For the people who seem to be able to, although famously many have not, get things done as President, a view to Congress, someone who has been there for a while, House or Senate, would make a better choice.

        C’est la vie.

  59. Glenn Stehle | September 27, 2016 at 1:53 pm |

    I combed the transcript for what the candidates had to say about CAGW and “clean” energy:

    CLINTON: I want us to invest in you. I want us to invest in your future. That means jobs in infrastructure, in advanced manufacturing, innovation and technology, clean, renewable energy, and small business, because most of the new jobs will come from small business…..

    They’ve looked at my plans and they’ve said, OK, if we can do this, and I intend to get it done, we will have 10 million more new jobs, because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy. Take clean energy. Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.

    TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

    CLINTON: And I think it’s important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad. And here’s what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That’s a lot of jobs; that’s a lot of new economic activity.

    So I’ve tried to be very specific about what we can and should do, and I am determined that we’re going to get the economy really moving again, building on the progress we’ve made over the last eight years, but never going back to what got us in trouble in the first place.

    HOLT: Mr. Trump?

    TRUMP: She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one.

    Now, look, I’m a great believer in all forms of energy, but we’re putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can’t do what you’re looking to do with $20 trillion in debt….

    And, Hillary, I’d just ask you this. You’ve been doing this for 30 years. Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now? For 30 years, you’ve been doing it, and now you’re just starting to think of solutions…..

    CLINTON: ….what I have proposed would not add a penny to the debt, and your plans would add $5 trillion to the debt. What I have proposed would cut regulations and streamline them for small businesses. What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in the economy. And I think it’s time that the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share to support this country….

    TRUMP: She’s going to raise taxes $1.3 trillion…..

    We owe $20 trillion, and we’re a mess. We haven’t even started. And we’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw. Whether it’s 6 or 5, but it looks like it’s 6, $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice.

    And it’s really a shame. And it’s politicians like Secretary Clinton that have caused this problem. Our country has tremendous problems. We’re a debtor nation. We’re a serious debtor nation. And we have a country that needs new roads, new tunnels, new bridges, new airports, new schools, new hospitals. And we don’t have the money, because it’s been squandered on so many of your ideas….

    CLINTON: And maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years…..

    TRUMP: It would be squandered, too, believe me.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-transcript-annotated/

    • timg56 | September 27, 2016 at 2:14 pm |

      That exchange is a clear trump win.

      Of course I am influenced by the nausea inducing rote comments by Hillary on how she has a “plan” to do all these things. With our money of course.

    • Peter Lang | September 28, 2016 at 7:40 am |

      I haven’t followed the debate. they are both dreadful candidates. Trump is an enormous risk. Clinton is guaranteed to be another weak president and do enormous damage to world security and economy because of her weakness.

      However, reading these quotes revealing she would further distort markets to support more solar panels and is CAGW advocate says it all. She’s just another gullible member of the loony left.

      • jim2 | September 28, 2016 at 7:45 am |

        Trump isn’t the great bug-bear presented by the entrenched elites and politicians. His approach is to bring together all the stake holders in a given situation and negotiate, trying to find a win-win.

        If elected President, there will be a seat at the table for the outsourcing billionaires. It’s just that they won’t be able to buy anything they want. They will have to give a little.

        There are things I don’t like about Trump, also, but I think he would be way better for the US and the Western world than Billary.

  62. Wagathon | September 27, 2016 at 3:17 pm |

    What the global hey was Hillary talking about? “Alarmism has encouraged the pursuit of a one-sided climate policy of trying to cut carbon emissions by subsidizing wind farms and solar panels. Yet today, according to the International Energy Agency, only about 0.4% of global energy comes from photovoltaics and windmills. And even with exceptionally optimistic assumptions about future deployment of wind and solar, the IEA expects that these energy forms will provide a minuscule 2.2% of the world’s energy by 2040.” (Bjorn Lomoborg, The Alarming Thing About Climate Alarmism)

    • AK | September 27, 2016 at 3:47 pm |

      The IEA is wrong. Solar PV alone will top 10% well before 2030. By penetration (MWHr), not capacity. Capacity will be a large fraction of the total by then.

  63. jim2 | September 27, 2016 at 10:40 pm |

    Looks like the BBC holds women in deepest regard. From the article:
    …
    The BBC has appointed a “well known and respected” journalist, who once suggested someone should “sh*t” in Sarah Palin’s mouth on American television, as their new religious affairs correspondent.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/27/shock-bbcs-new-religious-correspondent-said-someone-sht-sarah-palins-mouth/

    • Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 6:49 am |

      jim2,

      Hidden away behind all the racism, classism and gross misogeny of the establishment’s identity politics are very concrete economic issues.

      It is these economic issues that the establishment wants to keep safely tucked away and to distract the public’s attention away from. The establishment achieves this by making the debate 100% about identity politics.

      In the case of Martin Bashir, just look what triggered such a vicious attack on Palin. From the article you linked:

      He called Mrs. Palin America’s “resident dunce” and “a world-class idiot” after she said America’s massive national debt was “enslaving” future generations and made them “beholden to the foreign masters”.

    • timg56 | September 28, 2016 at 9:28 pm |

      The funny thing is, Palin was far better qualified for the job than Obama based on actual experience and accomplishment. And she was the VP candidate, not the Presidential one. For me that showed liberal media bias and bankruptcy of Progressives far more clearly than the anti Trump campaign.

      • jim2 | September 28, 2016 at 9:58 pm |

        She was outspoken. I think that was the main thing that made her a target. Of course, she is also Christian – a pariah to the lefties. But even the Redimowits were tossing spit balls her way. I’m very disappointed in the Bushes. It’s as if the nominee isn’t a Bush or at least Bush-approved, they will put that before the welfare of their country.

        Trump hit the nail on the head when he said Billary does have a lot of experience – bad experience.

  64. Wagathon | September 27, 2016 at 10:44 pm |

    Concerning the Twitter link, “What’s the point of tenure…,” we have learned to our chagrin and societal ruin that it is what entices many to do whatever it takes to avoid providing value in a free enterprise economy– the government-education complex is in serious need of downsizing, for the sake of individual liberty and for the preservation of our liberal Judeo-Christian heritage. The hoax and scare tactics of global warming is a wake-up call that we are witness to the fall of Western civilization.

  66. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 7:56 am |

    If Scott Adams is right, then Clinton and her legions of sycophantic “journalists,” “experts,” and other assorted pundits and talking ditto heads may be playing right into Trump’s hands.

    Adams claims that Trump’s main objective in the debates was to come off “less scary.” And by making Clinton’s debate triumph look like Sherman’s march through Georgia, Clinton Inc. may have done just that.

    For instance, get a load of Clinton in this video from CNN, where she’s talking to her supporters at a rally in North Carolina Tuesday, the day after the debate:

    Day after debate, Clinton gloats and Trump fumes
    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/27/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-debate-reaction/index.html

    Or here in the CBS Evening News coverage last night:

    Clinton in North Carolina following heated presidential debate
    http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/clinton-in-north-carolina-following-heated-presidential-debate/

    The Boston Globe joined the orgy of Clinton triumphalism this morning too:

    Hillary Clinton seeks to ride momentum after strong debate
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/09/27/hillary-clinton-seeks-ride-momentum-after-strong-debate/nzQimtmiuyxa9F0JryBCsN/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=

    • timg56 | September 28, 2016 at 9:21 pm |

      Adams comments are ringing true for me. Just caught up on 3 days worth of the Seattle Times. The Trump Hillary articles are 90% in her favor. She isn’t outperforming him by that margin. Which begs the question, why is the press acting like she is?

  67. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 8:17 am |

    Clinton Inc. is certainly playing one identity card — the gender card — in a big way this morning.

    With the establishment it’s 100% identity politics, 100% of the time. After all, we certainly wouldn’t want to make the election about the economy, national security, crime or permanent war.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/27/politics/alicia-machado-donald-trump-2016-election-anderson-cooper/index.html

    And:

    Donald Trump’s interruptions of Hillary Clinton are familiar to women
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2016/09/27/donald-trump-interruptions-hillary-clinton-are-familiar-women-workplace/TNI3V6nfslXvODgobUNYdN/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=

    • Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 9:08 am |

      There’s another issue that the Alicia Machado imbrolio interjects into the debate, one that Milo Yiannopoulos addressed at his speech at LSU last week. And that is sizeism:

      MILO at LSU: “Fat Shaming Works”

      Identity politicians want to create solidarity between fat people, and especially fat women, so that they can add them to their pantheon of victim groups. Thus sizeism takes its place alongside other isms and phobias of identity politics — racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

      The project to unite fat people, and especially fat women, is not new. It’s been around for at least 20 years. Witness, for instance, Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes published in 1994, well before Triggleypuff entered the scene:

      A woman is a person with two X chromosomes. A woman is a person with a vagina and a clitoris instead of a penis and testicles. A woman is a person whose body can bear children. A woman is a person who expects to be judged by her looks every minute of every day.

      A fat woman always carries both of those labels with her; she is always fat, and always a woman.

      https://www.amazon.es/Women-En-Large-Images-Nudes/dp/1885495005

  68. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 9:48 am |

    Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/28/whatever_happened_to_peak_oil_131909.html

    For more than two generations, schoolchildren were assured by their science teachers, elected officials, and the media that the world’s supply of oil—the great fuel of America’s car culture, not to mention U.S. economic prosperity—was finite and would soon be exhausted.

    This perception that we would run out of oil, and sooner rather than later, became more than a theory, one that went by the name “peak oil.” It became a kind of catechism. It was included in the prayer books of the environmental movement and incorporated into the legislative history and language of U.S. federal energy policy. It became an underlying basis for everything from Jimmy Carter’s admonition to turn down the nation’s thermostats, the enactment of 55-mile-per-hour speed limits, and federal mandates on gasoline standards for cars and trucks.

    Today, the question is how policymakers should one react when the conventional wisdom is proven so spectacularly wrong, as is the case here.

    It wasn’t that the peak-oil hypothesis defied common sense. And it wasn’t only environmental doomsayers making the claim… The closer one got to the oil industry, the more talk one heard of peak oil….

    With help from doomsday futurists such as Paul Ehrlich, citing additional work by Hubbert, “peak oil” entered the non-energy sector lexicon as a shorthand for the inevitable exhaustion of the world’s natural resources, most especially fossil fuels.

    But an unexpected development occurred in the 21st century, a century that the naysayers had said would be one with scarce crude oil resources: The supply instead exploded.

    The apocalyptic future promised by the “peak oilers” simply did not come to pass….

    Vast amounts of petroleum – perhaps trillions of barrels worldwide – have been unlocked from shale basins in North Dakota, Texas and elsewhere in North America, thanks to technological innovation. The combination of fast computers, 3D seismic surveys and especially hydraulic fracturing have enabled engineers to find heavily laden source rock thousands of feet underground….

    In 2004 the world produced nearly 84 million barrels of oil a day; by the second half of 2016, roughly 97 million barrels of oil is being produced daily, with more on the way as OPEC, Russian and U.S. oil producers do battle for market share with prices at the gasoline pump more than 40 percent lower than they were two years ago.

    Yet, old creeds die hard…

    Obama…during a speech in Florida at the start of his re-election campaign in 2011…argued that “we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.”…

    One factor the peak-oil adherents never seemed to consider was that the supply of oil, like many commodities, was directly influenced by price—and that drillers and investors previously not searching for it would return to exploration if market prices became high enough.

    “The biggest supporters of Peak Oil almost all are petroleum geologists; almost none of them are economists,” said Ronald Bailey, an author and science correspondent with Reason magazine who has written extensively on climate and energy. “They really don’t understand markets.”….

    But energy policy involves politics, too, and fracking has become a target of environmentalists, who have blocked it in France and Germany, and are seeking to do the same in many parts of the United States.

    What has happened is that conservationists’ arguments have changed, but not their goals. For decades, environmentalists insisted that we had to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels because we had no choice—the resource was finite. Now, global warming apostles such as Jeffrey Sachs concede there is a choice. Sachs agrees that oil and gas resources are not in short supply, at least not in the short run, but says they should be left in the ground—and that we should stop looking for more.

    This is a relatively new argument….

  69. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 10:02 am |

    VIDEO: Newt Gingrich — Trump won the debate. Don’t believe the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” class
    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/27/newt-gingrich-trump-won-debate-dont-believe-intellectual-yet-idiot-class.html

  70. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 10:08 am |

    Another “IYI”?

    Brzezinski: We All Think Hillary Won Debate, But I Wouldn’t Be Surprised If Trump’s Poll Numbers Go Up
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/27/brzezinski_i_wouldnt_be_surprised_if_trumps_poll_numbers_go_up_after_first_debate.html

  71. Joshua | September 28, 2016 at 10:52 am |

    Interesting –

    –snip–

    Donald Trump’s supporters are LESS likely to be affected by trade and immigration, not more.

    –snip–

    http://www.vox.com/2016/8/12/12454250/donald-trump-gallup-trade-immigration-study

    A similar pattern played out with the vote on Brexit…where “leave” voters were not more likely to have been negatively impacted by immigration than “stay” voters, and answers to questions about something like views on the death penalty were highly correlated with views on leaving the EU. .

    –snip–
    What Rothwell found was revelatory, to say the least. He finds that individuals who are struggling economically are not more likely to support Trump, nor are people living in areas that have suffered a loss of manufacturing jobs, an influx of immigration, or competition from China. By contrast, people in areas where whites are struggling health-wise, and in terms of intergenerational mobility (and in areas that are very racially segregated), do seem more likely to back Trump.

    –snip–

  72. Willard | September 28, 2016 at 12:05 pm |

  73. Danny Thomas | September 28, 2016 at 12:10 pm |

    Where’s the enthusiasm?

    In yet another ‘first’ for this election: “Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never. This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles.

    This year is different.”

    http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/editorial/2016/09/27/hillary-clinton-endorsement/91198668/‘

    Probably a problem with the reporting.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 1:14 pm |

      Here’s the “enthusiasm”!!!!

      Clinton’s supporters have such enormous “enthusiasm” that there’s not any left over for the deplorables.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 3:51 pm |

      Danny Thomas,

      There are literally dozens of articles similar to this one out there, but I believe this one does about as good of a job of “splaining’ it as any I’ve seen.

      It goes without saying, however, that this sort of class analysis is krytonite for Clinton Inc., which dismisses it as being part of the grand conspiracy being perpetrated against America by the Russian menace.

      Who is afraid of Donald Trump
      http://www.defenddemocracy.press/afraid-donald-trump/

      Against the backdrop of the numerous discussions of the political agenda, appearance, and vocabulary of the candidates running in the American presidential election, there is almost no demand for one subject: what is the class nature and mass social base of each politician?

      This approach comes naturally to the right-wing and liberal media, but why is it completely alien to the left?

      The reason seems to be that the answers we would get if we were to consider this issue seriously would not be palatable for everyone on the left. For many American intellectuals, the provocative and politically incorrect statements by Donald Trump have become another ideological excuse for them to express “critical support” for the existing order, embodied in Hillary Clinton.

      The fact that Hillary is the candidate of financial capital who would carry out an extremely aggressive foreign policy is no secret. But it’s much less important than political correctness. After all, Hillary never allows herself to insulting any minority, at least, not in the past two decades, since political correctness became the norm in Washington.

      Against this backdrop, accusations of Donald Trump being a fascist have become a constant refrain of the Clinton campaign….

      The discussion is really about how to maintain and increase the current dominant evil for the sake of preventing a certain, hypothetical evil, about which we know nothing except that it is said to be worse….

      Critically-minded intellectuals have largely turned into hostages of the existing system…

      While imagining utopias and “alternatives”, they are unable to think in terms of practical politics, and realize that breaking with the established order involves risk, drama and challenges that require significant courage. Intellectual and moral comfort is guaranteed by a practical conservatism that people hide from themselves, repeating meaningless “progressive” mantras….

      The Republican machine has also fought against Trump, though with less success, unable or unwilling to use the “foul play” of their rivals the Democratic Party….

      [Trump does not] have ties to the financial world, and, in the event of victory, would undoubtedly try to limit, if not halt, the “distribution” of government funds that keep major banks flourishing amid the economic crisis…..

      Trump, who represents the interests of the construction business and industrial capital, is interested in forcing the bankers to lend to domestic production at a low rate, and for this to happen the state would have to stop giving money to the banks that ends up in the speculative markets. The class meaning of the struggle is clear….

      Trump heads a revolt of the industrial bourgeoisie against financial capital, with the support of a large section of workers….

      This situation is natural for the working class, which not only has common social interests, but is embedded in the system of vocational and industrial relations, which in certain situations, leads it to support certain groups of the bourgeoisie, which are related to the working class via production and markets.

      [But this revolt threatens] financial capital by blocking billions of dollars that allow banks and their bribed politicians to exist parasitically at the expense of the real economy.

      Clinton’s policy is a classic example of splitting society into several interest groups, preventing horizontal integration.

      It’s no coincidence that the crisis of the West’s labor movement and class politics is happening together with the celebration of multiculturalism and political correctness. And the spread of political correctness, in turn, historically coincides with the “financialization” of the economy, in other words a massive redistribution of resources in favor of the banking sector. On the one hand, capital won over labor, robbing it of a significant part of the 20th century’s social gains. But on the other hand, the capitalist class has undergone its own redistribution of wealth, with the financial elite appropriating nearly all its fruits.

      It’s not surprising that we’re seeing a rise of not only the working class, but also part of the bourgeoisie. Trump’s attacks on political correctness are by no means a manifestation of his personal feelings, his lack of restraint and rudeness; it’s a deliberate strategy to consolidate the social groups that have suffered under the dictatorship of political correctness.

      They’ve been hit financially, losing incomes, jobs and revenues. Trump’s propaganda is effective, not because, as intellectuals believe, it resonates with the feelings and prejudices of the people, but because it reflects their real interests, even if expressed in a distorted form.

      The billionaire is only bullying groups that would not vote for him anyway. But he consolidates the voices of millions of white (though not just white) working people, who are fed up with political correctness….

      Of course, there is nothing progressive about Trump’s ideology, but this is not about ideology, which is not so much a factor of social mobilization, as a tool for manipulation. The defeat of financial capital, no matter who brings it about, would open a new era in the development of Western society, inevitably strengthening the working class, and reviving its organizations.

      It is Hillary who embodies the most reactionary project in terms of modern capitalist development…. In the current political situation, the attempt to turn Trump into “an absolute evil” is about mobilizing people to protect the status quo.

      The change is under way, not only because of the political and social logic, but also due to the fact that all possibilities of maintaining the current neoliberal model of capitalism have been exhausted.

      If the left is unwilling or unable to fight, it will be the right-wing populists like Donald Trump in the US or Marine Le Pen in France who strike the fatal blow against it. Some people will be outraged at the “prejudice” and ” irresponsibility” of the working class , but the real moral responsibility would still lie with the leftist intellectuals, who, in times of crisis, will have demonstrated their class position by advocating and defending the interests of financial capital.

      • catweazle666 | September 30, 2016 at 2:28 pm |

        In other words Glenn, Clinton (and at this side of the Pond, the Europhiles such as Cameron) are increasingly recognised as representing the ‘banksters’ and their enablers, acolytes and support structures in Government and the media.

        Now Joe Public has had a bellyful of them and is doing all he can to ensure they damn well know it, with – it appears – considerable success, much to the mortification of the usual suspects.

      • climatereason | September 30, 2016 at 2:54 pm |

        catweazle

        Brexit was about our right to rule ourselves and secure our own borders but there were a lot of related things rolled up into it such as an intense dislike of the political, cultural and financial elite.

        Just the last few days we have had examples of utter arrogance from the English Football Manager, Sir Philip Green, Corbyn and his obnoxious sidekick John, and too many others to mention . The sooner they are kicked out of public life the better.

        Trump equates to the yearning of a substantial portion of the American electorate to ‘brexitise’ their own elite. Trouble is, whilst he may have the right message it seems doubtful he is the right person unless he can display considerably more nous than he has done to date. It would help if he would stop shouting at everyone and interrupting them. He also seems to rise to the Clinton bait too readily.

        Clinton represents the sort of politician I detest but Trump needs to do a lot better than he has to date if he is to prevent her enthronement.

        tonyb

      • catweazle666 | September 30, 2016 at 4:00 pm |

        climatereason: “Trump needs to do a lot better than he has to date if he is to prevent her enthronement.”

        Which is exactly what was said about the Brexiteers right up to the time that the result for Sunderland came in. All the pundits, the bookies and the pollsters were absolutely convinced of the outcome of the Referendum

        I suspect a similar set of events will occur on November 8, 2016.

        Plus, I think you’ll find Trump is actually doing very well indeed, he is a much wilier old fox than most of his opponents understand – or, in fact, are capable of understanding. As the day of the vote approaches, just watch his tactics subtly alter…

  74. Impeach Barry | September 28, 2016 at 12:58 pm |

    Here’s the enthusiasm…

  75. Willard | September 28, 2016 at 1:21 pm |

    Nostril enthusiasm:

  76. jim2 | September 28, 2016 at 1:22 pm |

    Huma Abedin’s father says:
    …
    In a separate discussion on the state’s role in a person’s life, Abedin said it is necessary to police the application of Sharia law.

    “The state has to take over” as Muslim countries evolve, he argued. “The state is stepping in in many countries … where the state is now overseeing that human relationships are carried on on the basis of Islam. The state also under Islam has a right to interfere in some of these rights given to the individual by the Sharia.”
    …
    http://freebeacon.com/issues/weiner-father-law-exposed/

  77. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 1:26 pm |

    This is perhaps Trump’s most important policy initiative, his push to rein in the unelected technocrats at the Fed, who are accountable to no one except the TBTF (Too Big To Fai)l Bankers:

    Fed on ropes as Yellen seeks to fend off Trump blows
    https://www.ft.com/content/309aecce-835e-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5

    Mr Trump is throwing punches at a time when the US central bank is under assault from both sides of the partisan divide, and at a time when polling suggests public confidence in its leadership has declined during a subpar economic recovery.

    Some experts say the Fed is vulnerable and that the populist attacks could fuel demands by politicians for tighter constraints on its policy freedoms….

    Mr Trump has…set a new standard for anti-Fed invective — at least when it comes to presidential nominees. The latest salvo came in the presidential debate with Hillary Clinton on Monday night, when he claimed the US was in a “big fat ugly bubble” and that Ms Yellen was keeping rates low to help President Barack Obama. “The Fed is being more political than secretary Clinton,” he said….

    Don Kohn, a former Fed vice-chairman who is now at the Brookings think-tank, says…: “These attacks are worrisome to this extent: you do see polls suggesting the public’s respect for the Fed has fallen substantially relative to the pre-crisis period. These kinds of attacks, which accuse the Fed of acting on political motives rather than pursuing economic objectives, do not help the Fed gain the confidence of the public.”

    Ted Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who also previously served at the Fed, says Mr Trump’s words could fuel demands by those who want to reform the central bank in a number of dimensions, including politicians who want it to set monetary policy according to stricter rules….

    The rise of populists such as Mr Trump has come at a time when trust in institutions and experts has been ebbing among some sections of the public. This will only make life more difficult for technocratic and somewhat mysterious institutions such as the Fed.

  78. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 1:30 pm |

    WTO cuts 2016 world trade growth forecast to 1.7 percent, cites wake-up call
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto-idUSKCN11X0HB

    The World Trade Organization cut its forecast for global trade growth this year by more than a third on Tuesday….

    The data underlined concerns that, after a long period of growth through globalization and reliance on global trade, governments are increasingly seeking to protect their own industries and promote domestic producers at the expense of foreign competitors…..

    This year trade will grow only 80 percent as fast as the global economy, the WTO said, the first reversal of globalization since 2001 and only the second since 1982.

    “I am absolutely convinced that this is not a moment to turn inward,” Azevedo told a WTO conference….

    Azevedo said four out of five job losses in industrialized countries were not due to competition from cheap imports but to automation and efficiency campaigns that allowed firms to cut their workforce….

    European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, speaking alongside Azevedo, said trade had to be efficient, valuable and transparent.

    Many people do not feel included in trade policy debates any more, Malmstrom said. “There’s a growing anti-globalisation movement. There are fears, questions, and we also see the figures that you presented this morning that absolutely give reason to be concerned.”

  79. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 1:39 pm |

    There’s a new report out by the NY Fed that shows how life-cycle real wages of white males born in the 1950s have gotten hammered. This demographic cohort first weathered 15 years of stagnant real wages, which was then followed by 10 years of decling real wages.

    And the researchers predict it’s only going to get worse.

    And the report only takes into account those lucky enough to have a job.

    And the report only takes into account white men. Census figures show Blacks and Hispanics have fared even worse than Whites since 2007.

    Moreover, we argue that the demographic trends predict a slower pace of real wage growth for an increasing fraction of the workforce….

    We…restrict our sample to employed individuals who have a reported or imputed wage.

    U.S. Real Wage Growth: Fast Out of the Starting Blocks
    http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2016/09/us-real-wage-growth-fast-out-of-the-starting-blocks.html#.V-vWWfnhDIU

    • Arch Stanton | September 28, 2016 at 4:09 pm |

      A speck in your eye is looking more & more like a telephone poll…

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/specialreports/solyndra-scandal/

      I got a million or two of them…

    • timg56 | September 28, 2016 at 9:08 pm |

      With that record he should be running as a Democrat.

      • Willard | September 28, 2016 at 9:14 pm |

        Add to this that Redirecting Donald directed $2.3 million owed to him to his tax-exempt foundation instead and he may also run for libertarians.

        Any election with teh Donald should be about which party gets to have teh Donald go ad lib on anything.

      • Danny Thomas | September 28, 2016 at 10:09 pm |

        What is his affiliation history? Maybe those all occurred when that was his registered preference but he’s gotten over it.

      • timg56 | September 28, 2016 at 10:47 pm |

        Not gonna argue that one with you Willard.

      • Ragnaar | September 28, 2016 at 11:33 pm |

        Thank you Willard:
        Trump directed $2.3 million owed to him to his tax-exempt foundation instead
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-directed-23-million-owed-to-him-to-his-charity-instead/2016/09/26/7a9e9fac-8352-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html
        The charitable deductions that individuals and corporations usually offset income. So if Trump or one of his businesses first show the income and then take an equal deduction, all is about the same. About being the key word as there a number of problems with the tax code. He’d raise his personal AGI doing it the safer way. Sometimes that causes problems even with an equal charitable deduction. I’d say doing it the safer way wouldn’t cost him more than 5% of the total.

        But here’s what he did wrong. Rules for charities in order:
        Keep the IRS and state Attorney General happy
        Do not self deal with a charity you are on the board of
        Protect the reputation of the charity
        Accomplish the mission

        Here’s the charity’s CPA:
        Where did that money come from?
        Trump explains in detail.
        The CPA says, Stop doing that this instant. Send the check back, and have them pay you.
        Don’t ever do that again, the loss of my license isn’t worth it.

        I will say, $2.3 million is small time.
        The money to settle lawsuits is completely insane. But then again, using a charity to defend consensus scientists from the media is about as insane. (Mann perhaps?)
        The paintings of Trump. Epic fail. Fire the Treasurer. Paintings of Trump should have set off a CPAs alarm bells.

      • JCH | September 29, 2016 at 12:48 am |

        Ragnaar… trying to narrow down what you are saying. Trump does work for Mr. X; Mr. X owes him 2.3 million. He doesn’t pay, but it appears he will pay it next year.

        Credit income 2.3 million and debit accounts receivable for 2.3 million. Pay income tax.

        So maybe:

        Next year comes, appears no money will ever come. Credit accounts receivable 2.3; debit bad debt expense 2.3 million. Save on income taxes.

        Mr. X calls and says, “I have your 2.3 million.”

        Should be:

        Credit bad debt expense 2.3 million; debit cash for 2.3 million?

        or

        Credit sales for 2.3 million; debit cash for 2.3 million.

        Pay income tax.

        Instead… he tells Mr. to donate the 2.3 million to his charity, and later gives it away? Is that what he did?

      • Ragnaar | September 29, 2016 at 8:12 pm |

        JCH:
        “Credit bad debt expense 2.3 million; debit cash for 2.3 million?
        or
        Credit sales for 2.3 million; debit cash for 2.3 million.”
        I’d go with the second option but I am not at a 100% with that. More like 67%. Another option is recovery of bad debts as an income credit. The bias is to over disclose.

        “Instead… he tells Mr. to donate the 2.3 million to his charity, and later gives it away? Is that what he did?”
        The story is so unclear but there is meat there I think. If he did what you asked, it’s wrong. But an attorney may counter what I think. It was would be wrong unless he paid income taxes on it. Assignment of income usually comes back NO. It is where form can hide substance.

        One of the earliest lessons is Substance beats form almost all the time. But that does mean the tax code is 100% in agreement with that. The charity may have shown the form of Trump doing all the things a board member should do. Like no private inurement.
        “The inurement prohibition forbids the use of the income or assets of a tax-exempt organization to directly or indirectly unduly benefit an individual or other person that has a close relationship with the organization or is able to exercise significant control over the organization.”
        The shark accountants the AG may hire, will be trying to determine substance. I do a few 990s and make sure the treasury and president aware of the above quote. 990s do appear online. I use GuideStar when I want to see what Greenpeace is doing, as much as can be derived from that.

    • Impeach Barry | September 28, 2016 at 10:36 pm |

      It must be really rough losing billions of dollars but still having billions of dollars left. I’m glad my business skillz aren’t that bad.

      Oh wait… he’s still a self-made billionaire. I meant to say I wish I had business skillz that bad.

    • stevenreincarnated | September 28, 2016 at 11:18 pm |

      His financial disclosure form lists him as an executive for 515 businesses. He must have had a lot more than 5 failures. A 99% success rate would seem way too high,

  81. Arch Stanton | September 28, 2016 at 4:27 pm |

    He is a comedian making a living on TV… Trump is going to win big, your holding action is failing and just like in the Winter of ’44-45, you know in you heart it is over. His supporters need to realize it is now an uncertain world for them, for a change. However, they seem to continue having a big problem not being able to see patterns.

  83. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 5:46 pm |

    How Fracking is Re-Calibrating Global Geo-Politics.
    The advent of fracking has precipitated a silent American revolution, allowing the US to leverage its power in the international arena.
    http://thewire.in/67882/how-fracking-is-re-calibrating-global-geo-politics/

    Oil, whether we like it or not, still remains one of the biggest commodities driving the geo-political manoeuvring of nation states, specifically for the US, the lone hegemon….

    While it is true that the world is moving towards alternative energy sources faster than ever, hydrocarbons are expected to remain king for at least another three decades – that is a long time in politics….

    However, the critical role of oil in shaping US foreign policy over the past many decades has now drastically changed, altering the dynamics of the US’s international relations policies. In fact, many of the country’s policies of engagement and dialogue with its traditional foes such as Iran, Russia and Cuba are possible today because the US is close to achieving a significant milestone for its economy and national security – energy independence….

    Today, at $50 per barrel, literally less than half during the 2013-14 peak, the price is seen as ‘stable’ even as analysts and pundits maintain that the markets remain grossly oversupplied. This is quite the departure from the ‘peak-oil’ debates we were having just a few years ago….

    The US shale story is one of the premiere reasons why OPEC members have refused to cut back on production….

    To put it in perspective, American imports of oil under Obama have dropped by a huge 60%. In 2008 the US imported 11.1 million barrels per day (bpd), in 2015 it was down to just 4.5 million bpd.

    US President Barack Obama, whose administration rode into the White House on the back of strong domestic oil and natural gas production – partly thanks to the shale revolution – used this historical anomaly to re-calibrate America’s geo-political requirements….

    Obama did not orchestrate the US shale boom; he merely inherited an economic trend in the US, which was on autopilot. Others who benefited from this price collapse were of course the newly christened developing economies in Asia, who continue to reap the benefits….

    India imports about 80% of its oil needs and more than 55% of its natural gas requirements. Along with South Korea, China and Japan, India still depends and will continue to depend on foreign oil. Both China and India are expected to see strong growth in their import numbers. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for oil in China will grow by 40% and in India by a whopping 55% from 2012 to 2035.

    India pays a mammoth $120 – $130 billion per year to import oil, which saw a significant cut over the past two years thanks to the price crash. In 2015-16, its import bill halved to just about $64 billion – gaining unprecedented savings for the exchequer. Like Obama gained from shale while taking office in 2008, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government walked into a crashing oil market when he won a landslide election in 2014, giving him a much heavier budget to deal with and the cash to launch various schemes and investment plans in the country….

    China’s interests in protecting its supplies are clear; its moves in the South China Sea are also partially to protect its interests situated in the shipping routes of the Malacca Strait. When it comes to the Middle East, China is building its first overseas military base in the tiny African nation of Djibouti from where it will be able to protect its oil interests travelling through the Persian Gulf (Beijing has already built its own airport in Iraq to ferry workers from the country’s southern oil fields).

  84. Glenn Stehle | September 28, 2016 at 5:48 pm |

    Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia in tatters
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/09/barack-obama-pivot-asia-tatters-160922122523631.html

    Over the past few years, the Obama administration, under its “pivot to Asia” strategy, gradually mobilised the region against Chinese maritime assertiveness in the South China Sea.

    Washington hoped that the Philippines’ arbitration case would provide a legal basis for deployment of greater diplomatic pressure as well as military assets to prevent Chinese domination of the world’s most important waterway.

    Yet, this “constrainment” strategy was predicated on constant cooperation and coordination between the US and its regional allies, especially frontline states such as the Philippines and Japan.

    But as soon as it became clear that the Philippines itself was now unwilling to confront China over the South China Sea issue, however, almost all neighbouring countries shunned even mentioning the arbitration case at all.

    Almost single-handedly, Duterte undermined the US’ strategy against China. To the astonishment of almost everyone, all of a sudden Manila and Washington are now at loggerheads…..

    Duterte has described any criticism from the US as a violation of Philippine sovereignty. Most recently, Duterte has upped the ante by even threatening the expulsion of American Special Forces from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. He has also called for cancellation of joint-patrolswith the US in the South China Sea, further complicating ongoing efforts at forging multilateral responses to Chinese assertiveness in the area.

    To assert Philippine independence from the US, the Filipino president has also openly suggested sourcing military hardware from Russia and China rather than the US.

    And these statements seem to be more than mere bluster. In recent days, senior Filipino defence officials and Russian arms exporters have been discussing potential military cooperation.

    It is also highly likely that Duterte will visit China in coming months, where he is expected to discuss possible areas of cooperation and how to peacefully manage the disputes in the South China Sea.

    All of a sudden, Beijing no longer looks like the villain, but instead a magnanimous neighbour, which is welcoming a new era of friendship with a smaller neighbour intent on asserting its independence from the US.

    • timg56 | September 28, 2016 at 9:05 pm |

      Leaving aside the source of the article and only looking at Duarte and the Philippines, all I can say is so what? Duarte is a bit of a loose cannon. (ok, he’s perhaps a 24 pounder rolling around in a typhoon). But loose cannons are nothing new. And good skippers and experienced sailors know how to deal with them. Duarte strikes me as the sort who wants to be stroked and respected. Obama’s refusal to meet did the opposite. But unless he’s an idi0t, he is unlikely to swing towards China unless he perceives them as the ascending power. He may toy with the idea, but that’s more likely a ploy to gain leverage with the US.

  86. Ragnaar | September 28, 2016 at 7:35 pm |

    Total medical expenses are deductible on schedule A to the extent they exceed a certain percentage of the your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). Generally, Congress has raised that percentage over time.

    1954 3% of AGI
    1982 5% of AGI
    1986 7.5% of AGI
    2013 10% of AGI but for Seniors 7.5% of AGI

    The money grubbing establishment politicians did this. Backdoor tax increases for sick people. What is a way to handle the above? Cadillac health coverage that has low deductibles. That costs more. It is the opposite of high deductible health plans (HDHP) that are becoming common. People taking care of their own bills more than with traditional plans. So first Congress contributes to the problem moving us to fuller coverage, then it changes its mind towards disaster coverage with HDHP rules and incentives. Seniors cannot contributes to Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and are still saddled with the 7.5% above. Congress still has a material take of Seniors money with that rule. Seniors unless self employed cannot get a direct write off of their health premiums.

    This is your establishment. Most of Congress.

    1997 – Congress allows the Self Employed to directly deduct 100% their health insurance premiums. This 100% is phased in over a number of years. 1997? Really? For most large employers, either the employers pick up the full cost of the premiums and it’s tax free to the employee. Some pay part, and it’s still tax free and the employees contribution is in effect deducted up front by the employee. Or the Employee pays it all through their employer and gets a deduction for it. Some companies will do it differently so there are cases where it’s not tax free. But the majority of large employers that offer health insurance have smart people running the plans that make things tax free.

    So what did the establishment do for me and all other self employed people before 1997? They milked us for tax money as compared to many employees. While each person has their own level of acceptable risk and health situation, HDHPs and HSAs should be given consideration. HSAs are tax efficient and do those insurance companies need all that money anyways? They get less money when you self insure more. It is true, they were brought to you by the establishment. And it’s about time. But that 7.5% and 10% threshold number is carved in stone. That’s never going to get reduced. Congress needs the money.

    We could say HDHPs were invented for the self employed. To a lessor extent HSAs were too. The two fit together for the self employed. They are being adopted by larger and larger companies. Governments in general are resisting them for their employees. But that comes as no surprise. W-2s recently started showing the cost of employer paid for health insurance. My all time record holder works for guess who? Hennepin County. Over $20,000 a year and he doesn’t have children. No wonder my property taxes are so high. That’s another government establishment and that will change any day now.

  87. Ragnaar | September 28, 2016 at 8:49 pm |

    Warmist skeptic evaluates Invelox:
    https://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/08/invelox-ducted-turbine-latest-long-line-failures/
    They get a number of puff piece new stories. And they seem to do marketing well.

  88. Willard | September 28, 2016 at 9:03 pm |

    For Puppy Dave, Beyond Imagination Donald:

    But imagine it wasn’t Trump who was the conduit for this anger. Imagine it was a woman. Picture a woman up there on the podium last night shouting over her rival, jabbing her finger in the air, denying she’d said things there was ample evidence of online that she had said. Imagine a completely inexperienced woman insisting she had better political nous than someone who had been at the forefront of politics for decades. And, of course, you can’t: it is, literally, beyond imagination.

  89. Stephen Segrest | September 28, 2016 at 10:11 pm |

    Clean Power Plan — Two Harvard Lawyers very much disagree with what Rud has extensively written here at CE: http://www.eenews.net/tv/2016/09/28

    They do believe case will eventually go to Supreme Court in 2018. Big question is will current stay be lifted?

  92. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 8:02 am |

    RASMUSSEN POLL: Police killings are escalating in America: most still blame politicians who are critical of the police for making their jobs more dangerous
    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/july_2016/blacks_whites_disagree_over_whether_there_s_a_war_on_police

  94. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 8:07 am |

    RASMUSSEN POLL: 58% Think There’s A War on Police in America Today
    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/august_2015/58_think_there_s_a_war_on_police_in_america_today

    …most voters now believe the police are under attack in America and blame politicians critical of the cops for fanning the flames.

  96. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 8:35 am |

    Relief arrives for U.S. shale firms as OPEC folds in price battle
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-meeting-usa-shale-idUSKCN11Z0BT

    It was a moment U.S. shale oil producers have been waiting on for more than two years: OPEC nations finally agreed to cut production on Wednesday in a move that lifted low prices ravaging their budgets.

    Two sources in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said the group would reduce output to 32.5 million barrels per day (bpd) from current production of 33.24 million bpd, by around half the amount of global oversupply.

    The agreement effectively establishes a floor on prices near $50 a barrel – around where many U.S. shale oil companies can make money and drill new wells. The floor is twice as high as where oil languished in the depths of the downturn…..

    One U.S. shale oil industry veteran likened the results of the prolonged price war to a bruising 12-round boxing match that ended in a technical draw….

    [I]n the United States the big shale companies – the ones responsible for the bulk of all new onshore domestic crude output – survived. They confounded OPEC by cutting costs and finding new ways to squeeze more oil from rock….

    Many U.S. shale companies, eyeing a rebound, even added acreage this year during a $12 billion land grab in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas.

    At least 32 companies raised a record $20.40 billion in equity markets in the first eight months of this year, with half of them doing so to buy oily land.

    In July, Pioneer Natural Resources Chief Executive Scott Sheffield said overhauled shale companies were now cost competitive with Saudi Arabia….

    The likes of [Pioneer], Anadarko Petroleum Corp, EOG Resources Inc, Apache Corp and more than 25 other companies showed they can weather oil at $40 a barrel and profitably drill new wells as oil ticks toward $60 a barrel.

    The shale revolution, which fracks rock to coax oil from it, lifted U.S. oil production from 4.9 million bpd in 2009 to a peak of 9.6 mln bpd in June 2015.

    The capitulation by OPEC took far longer than many U.S. CEOs had forecast.

    As Rigzone reported yesterday, no one saw this coming:

    “This was unexpected for sure,” Scott Shelton, energy broker for ICAP in Durham, North Carolina, said, referring to the deal. “No one that I know of saw it coming. The market doesn’t seem positioned for it. The fundamentals in the U.S. are already tighter than we expected and is due to get tighter.”
    http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/146828/Oil_Soars_6_as_OPEC_Reaches_Deal_to_Limit_Output_in_Nov/?all=HG2

  97. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 8:50 am |

    After pouring untold amounts of taxpayers’ money into saving the European banking system, maybe the Eurocrats haven’t saved it after all. As Michael Hudson is fond of saying, “Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.”

    If Deutsche Bank goes belly up, will the technocrats be able to control the contagion?

    Why People Have Been Worrying About Deutsche Bank, in 12 Charts
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-28/why-people-have-been-worrying-about-deutsche-bank-in-12-charts

    The International Monetary Fund warned in a late June report that Deutsche Bank appears to be “the most important net contributor to systemic risks” among Global Systemically Important Banks, followed by HSBC Holdings Plc and Credit Suisse Group AG.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 9:01 am |

      Trump is one of the very few politicans who is willing to admit the precarioius position the world’s financial system now finds itself in. From the debate:

      We’re in a bubble right now. And the only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that’s going to come crashing down.

      We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful. And we have a Fed that’s doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed. The Fed is doing political — by keeping the interest rates at this level. And believe me: The day Obama goes off, and he leaves, and goes out to the golf course for the rest of his life to play golf, when they raise interest rates, you’re going to see some very bad things happen, because the Fed is not doing their job. The Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-transcript-annotated/

  98. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 9:14 am |

    Alicia Machado. The perfect mouthpiece for Hillary Clinton.

    Machado caught in lie. She admits to eating disorders to WaPo a year before she became Miss Universe or met Donald Trump. Link below.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/05/16/miss-universe-sizing-up-her-reign/4b76f45c-aaa9-4b44-8acf-39f2d4af7598/

    She stars in Live Sex reality show on Spanish TV channel.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1875985/miss-universe-winner-who-sparked-donald-trump-miss-piggy-row-had-live-sex-on-a-reality-show-called-the-farm/

    Accused of being getaway driver when boyfriend murders someone. Then she threatens to kill the judge hearing the case. Link above.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1875985/miss-universe-winner-who-sparked-donald-trump-miss-piggy-row-had-live-sex-on-a-reality-show-called-the-farm/

    Classy. Great role model for American girls. Top notch immigrant to America. We need so many more new citizens just like her, right?

  100. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 9:49 am |

    http://www.rasmussenreports.co…

    Lester Holt helped rig the presidential debate against Trump. Voters noticed according to Rasmussen poll.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 10:42 am |

      Yep.

      Bozell & Graham: Lester Holt learns his Lauer lesson https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/09/lester-holt-learns-his-lauer-lesson#sthash.0UVCdnId.dpuf

      Washington Post reporter Callum Borchers should win some kind of award for the worst pre-debate spin. He tried to defend NBC anchor and presidential debate host Lester Holt: “It turns out Holt is actually a registered Republican. Trump still might find things to complain about Monday night, but a case for partisan bias against him will be tough to make.”

      Right after the debate, despite all evidence, the Post’s Chris Cillizza doubled down, saying: “Want a testament to how well Holt did? I guarantee you no one is talking about him tomorrow. That’s a win.”

      That is precisely as the press would want this. But that’s not what America saw. Holt’s performance was a partisan disgrace….

      The Rasmussen Reports poll that came out just before the debate showed that based on the historical record, 46 percent of Americans believe most moderators will tilt the debates in favor of Clinton. Only 6 percent think they will try to help Trump. That’s an 8-to-1 landslide.

      Holt confirmed the wisdom of the American people….

      That’s because the liberal media can’t help but slant everything in favor of the left. It’s no wonder most Americans no longer trust them.

  101. Willard | September 29, 2016 at 9:52 am |

    The economic anxiety argument does not seem to explain Demography Donald:

    In its purest form, the economic anxiety argument holds that working-class white men have lost economic ground relative to women and other racial and ethnic groups over the past several decades, sparking feelings of anger and resentment that lead them to support [Demography Donald].

    “White males aren’t the most sympathetic victim group — especially because they still earn more money and have more wealth on average than any other demographic,” Tim Carney writes in the Washington Examiner. “But since we tend to judge our well-being relative to others and relative to the past, white working-class males naturally see themselves as the victims of the new economic order.”

    This, again, is testable. If the economic anxiety argument were true, then measures of support for [Demography Donald] should track with measures of self-reported concern about the US economy. The more one is concerned about the economy, the theory goes, the more likely one should be to support [Demography Donald].

    Klinkner, the Hamilton College scholar, examined exactly this in a study published by Vox. He set up an interaction variable between measures of economic pessimism and “racial resentment.” This tests whether people who were pessimistic about the economy were more likely to be racially resentful and support [Demography Donald].

    Klinkner found bupkis. People who were racially resentful were more likely to support [Demography Donald] regardless of their views of the economy.

    Someone who was not very economically pessimistic but quite racially resentful was as likely to support [Demography Donald] as someone who was equally resentful but much more pessimistic about the economy. Economic stress didn’t appear to be “activating” racial resentment.

    This tracks with a long history of research on the prejudices [Demography Donald] is activating.

    Reading Judy’s may have sufficed.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 10:59 am |

      That’s right, Willard.

      We already know that half of those who support Trump do so because of irrational prejudices, and not bcause of rational self-interest. They are “a basket of deplorables” and are “irredeemable.”

      And if you don’t believe it, just as Hillary Clinton:

  103. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 10:16 am |

    Comey: “I never said Hillary Clinton was truthful about emails”

  104. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 10:20 am |

    Comedy of Errors. Clinton IT guy tries to cover-up the cover-up.

  105. Willard | September 29, 2016 at 10:26 am |

    Discordant Donald Is Often More Hawkish Than Washington Elites

    If you’re a voter who believes that [Discordant Donald] is against foreign wars and regime change, unlike the globalist elites in Washington, D.C., you have been misled. The GOP candidate has undeniably savaged the Iraq War during this campaign. That is to his credit. In doing so, however, he has tried to cover up his record, giving off the false impression that he is an “America First” non-interventionist.To do so, he has lied repeatedly. And this has helped him to successfully obscure the many occasions when he was more hawkish than members of the Washington establishment, including Barack Obama, whom he denounces.

  106. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 11:06 am |

    Hillary caught with teleprompter in her custom made podium.

  107. Willard | September 29, 2016 at 11:23 am |

    No Interdict Donald’s Co Violated the United States Embargo Against Cuba

    Documents show that the [No Interdict Donald] company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without U.S. government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with [No Interdict Donald]’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with [No Interdict Donald]’s company—then called [No Interdict Donald] Hotels & Casino Resorts—how to make it appear legal by linking it after the fact to a charitable effort.

  108. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 11:25 am |

    Duterte Calls for End to US-Philippine Military Exercises, Part of Tilt Toward China
    http://thediplomat.com/2016/09/duterte-calls-for-end-to-us-philippine-military-exercises-part-of-tilt-toward-china/

    If Duterte does make a trip to China next month, that could very well mean he will have a formal meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, before holding a formal sit-down with U.S. President Barack Obama…..

    Meeting Xi first would be another splash of cold water on the U.S.-Philippines alliance.

  109. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 11:29 am |

    Duterte talks big, but the Philippines won’t break ties with the US any time soon
    https://theconversation.com/duterte-talks-big-but-the-philippines-wont-break-ties-with-the-us-any-time-soon-65949

    Some critics are likening Duterte to Hugo Chavez, the staunchly anti-American Venezuelan president who served from 2009 until his death in 2013, suggesting he will plunge an erstwhile American ally into the embrace of Eastern powers.

    But given the depth of economic and strategic ties between Manila and the West, and the hard-to-resolve territorial tensions between Manila and Beijing, it is likely that the Philippines will, at most, move along the path of Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    Erdoğan has had occasional diplomatic dust-ups over democracy and human rights issues with the West, but the fundamentals of military-to-military and investment relations remained intact.

    Just as Erdogan’s Turkey, Duterte’s Philippines is unlikely to decouple from the West, though bilateral relations are no longer sacrosanct.

  110. Arch Stanton | September 29, 2016 at 11:33 am |

    Humiliate Hillary 2016… you irredeemable basket of deplorables.

  111. Willard | September 29, 2016 at 11:55 am |

    Data Breach Donald

    [Data Breach Donald]’s hotel chain agreed to pay a $50,000 penalty and revamp its data security policies after a couple of breaches exposed 70,000 credit card numbers and other personal information of its customers.

    […]

    The high-end hotel chain, which includes the [Data Breach Donald] Soho and [Data Breach Donald] International in New York and properties in Chicago, Las Vegas and Waikiki, Hawaii, knew about the initial infiltration as early as June 2015, but did not warn customers for nearly four months, which the attorney general’s office said violated state laws requiring expedient notification.

  112. Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 12:00 pm |

    So what’s going on?

    Was it the fog of war, an honest mistake?

    Or did Obama give the orders to attack Syria, blowing up the ceasefire?

    Or did the Pentagon disobey Obama?

    Is the left making this stuff up — about the Pentagon defying Obama — in order to give Obama plausible deniability for what he did, using the Department of Defense as a convenient scapegoat, so that Obama can polish his dovish Nobel Peace Prize credentials?

    Rogue Mission: Did the Pentagon Bomb Syrian Army to Kill Ceasefire Deal?
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/20/rogue-mission-did-the-pentagon-bomb-syrian-army-to-kill-ceasefire-deal/

    “Everything suggests that the attack…… was deliberately committed by forces inside the US government hostile to the ceasefire….Claims that US fighters were unaware of who they were bombing are simply not credible, and are flatly contradicted by other accounts in the media…”

    A rift between the Pentagon and the White House turned into open rebellion on Saturday when two US F-16s and two A-10 warplanes bombed Syrian Arab Army (SAA) positions at Deir al-Zor killing at least 62 Syrian regulars and wounding 100 others….

    Many analysts now wonder whether the attacks are an indication that the neocon-strewn DOD is actively engaged in sabotaging President Obama’s Syria policy, a claim that implies that the Pentagon is led by anti-democratic rebels who reject the Constitutional authority of the civilian leadership. Saturday’s bloodletting strongly suggests that a mutiny is brewing at the War Department….

    So warhawk Supremo, Ash Carter, and his Russophobe colleagues want to intensify the conflict, expand America’s military footprint in Syria, and confront Russia directly…..

    The objectives of the hawks, the liberal interventionists and the neocons are the same as they have been from the very beginning. They want to topple Assad, splinter Syria into multiple parts, install a US-puppet in Damascus, control critical pipelines corridors from Qatar to Turkey, and inflict a humiliating defeat on Russia. For this group, any entanglement or cooperation with Russia only undermines their ultimate objective of escalating the conflict, strengthening their grip on the Middle East, and rolling back Russian influence….

    It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the clash between the DOD and the White House. Resistance to Obama’s Syria policy has suddenly escalated into open rebellion between dissenting members of the military hierarchy and the elected representatives of the people. The tragic bombing in Deir al-Zor is probably just the first skirmish in this new war. We expect there will be more confrontations in the days to come.

  113. willard (@nevaudit) | September 29, 2016 at 1:00 pm |

    Our Man in Mexico may confirm the Mexican enthusiasm:

    • Glenn Stehle | September 29, 2016 at 1:23 pm |

      ¡No manches, güey!

      ¿Francis Fukuyama, de la fama del “El fin de a historia”?

      Talk about Western, neo-imperialist utopianism on steroids!

      What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

      — FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, The End of History and the Last Man

      Willard, surely you can do better than that.

  114. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 2:12 pm |

    Linda Tripp comes out of retirement to join the anti-Clinton parade.

    Expect to start seeing them all on multiple interviews on Fox News; Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaderick.

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/29/linda-tripp-reopens-vince-foster-filegate-travelgate-scandals/

    Hillary opened up a YUGE can of worms on Monday bringing that silly soiled c*nt Alicia Machado to the fore. Bad mistake.

  115. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 2:13 pm |

    New Jersey train crash.

    Anyone want to bet that it isn’t another terrorist attack?

    What’re the odds?

    • Danny Thomas | September 29, 2016 at 2:27 pm |

      Can’t be terrorism. Trump knows how to ‘fix’ that and surely he wouldn’t allow folks to continue to be injured.

      Just take a look at Chicago, since Trump can ‘fix’ it there too!

      ““It was yesterday when it was time to do something, maybe two weeks ago when it was time to do something, maybe when we had 19 presidents ago it was time to do something, so the time is now, it’s not tomorrow,” Dowdell said.”
      http://wgntv.com/2016/09/24/two-dead-at-least-12-injured-in-overnight-shootings-in-chicago/

      • Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 6:42 pm |

        He has no authority yet. Of course you knew that you’re just being stupid and irrelevant. It seems to come so naturally to you. Is it an act?

      • Danny Thomas | September 29, 2016 at 6:53 pm |

        But he’s got the ‘know how’ David. Are you planning to hire him to go to Chicago personally conducting ‘stop & frisk’ as well as to manage N.J.’s trains? Or are you hiring him for his abundance of ‘know how’? He could provide the information now. Get tons more votes. All while proving just how good he is at ‘artful dealing’. Where’s your faith?

        “He has no authority yet.” If I had the ‘know how’ I’d share it right now. But I’m too stup*d. It’s only folks lives after all.

        Think you need a new set of pom-poms.

  116. Impeach Barry | September 29, 2016 at 2:19 pm |

    http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/marriage/former-new-york-mayor-claims-hillary-clinton-is-too-stupid-to-be-president/news-story/e42fcf39ff14c18d8751d0303a6879ed

    Former NYC mayor says Hillary Clinton too stupid to be president.

    I must respectfully disagree. There is no intelligence test required by law.

    She’s too stupid to cross the street without bodyguards on each side.

    She’s too stupid to know a [C] designation on state department documents means classified.

    She’s too stupid to know that reading and responding to emails on a Blackberry in in Russia while Secretary of State is going to get intercepted.

    But she’s not too stupid to be president. Let’s hope the electorate isn’t too stupid to vote for someone else.

  118. Ragnaar | September 29, 2016 at 8:38 pm |

    The Trump Foundation 2014 form 990 here:

    https://wordpress.com/post/chaosaccounting.wordpress.com/590

    A surprisingly clean appearing 990. Expenses are minimal and the board is not paid. Rather than spending the money on payroll to educate people about global warming or bias or something, they actually gave the money to other charities it seems. They don’t seem to hold conventions that cost a lot and probably accomplish little and seem to resemble a grand party at times.

    There are still important questions raised here:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-directed-23-million-owed-to-him-to-his-charity-instead/2016/09/26/7a9e9fac-8352-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html

    2012 – 2013 could also be described as A surprisingly clean appearing 990 etcetera as above.

    None of this excuses some of the Washington Post’s charges.

    • JCH | September 29, 2016 at 9:03 pm |

      Assuming accrual accounting, which I think is a good assumption, if he took it into income in a prior year and paid taxes, I don’t see a problem unless they later wrote it off as a bad debt. If never written off and never paid, his receivable would be overstated; I don’t know how he gets rid of that cleanly.

      If he did not take it into income in the year earned, I think it would be called tax evasion. Shifting it to a charity just makes it worse. Better to amend and pay.

      • jim2 | September 29, 2016 at 9:34 pm |

        I believe he mentioned in the debate that he is audited frequently. I’m sure the IRS would have caught it. Maybe. But at any rate, being an IRS target so often, I doubt he would try any funny business.

      • JCH | September 29, 2016 at 10:44 pm |

        And maybe the IRS fishes where the fish keep taking the bait.

      • jim2 | September 29, 2016 at 11:08 pm |

        The IRS, like the government in general, gets its grubby hands in any pocket possible.

      • Ragnaar | September 29, 2016 at 11:40 pm |

        In your scenario where he wrote it off, we’d consider how is that detectible in an audit? I suppose the auditor could contact the source of the revenue that was never received to substantiate the bad debt expense. It’s not uncommon to verify transactions like this. The story they’d get if the source was honest would point them to the Trump Foundation which the IRS might look at anyways. The receivable would sit there indefinetly if not writen off. To get rid of it might be called messy.
        1) Reverse the receivable and it’s gone. Reduce equity for the same amount. The result is the answer where he can say he paid the correct amount of tax. He missed his chartable deduction, but the IRS should not be able to bill him for additional taxes related to this.
        or
        2) Reverse the receivable and it’s gone. Offset that with the charitable deductions account. Here is significant risk. The bottom line answer seems correct. He showed the income and he showed the charitable deduction which can argued to reflect the substance of what happened. He might lose on form though even though I said substance trumps form. Because the IRS has a book of rules that sometimes doesn’t care about substance. That cannot be ruled out. And abnormal entries to the equity account can be scutinized. Quick example. I collect revenue so I debit cash and credit equity. The income ran around the income statement and never shows up as income. It’s best to let your CPA make entries to the equity accounts and not make them yourself.

      • jim2 | September 29, 2016 at 11:42 pm |

        But how do you bring an ambassador back from the dead?

      • JCH | September 30, 2016 at 12:11 am |

        The most likely is he credited income for 2.3 million and debited accounts receivable for 2.3 million, paid the taxes on 2.3 million, and then told the guy to pay the charity instead of him. Dumb, but he’s paid the taxes.

        Wait, he’s smart and never pays income tax…

      • JCH | September 30, 2016 at 8:43 am |

        Ragnaar – if he diverted money to the charity that was owed to his company, then the only way to adjust the receivable would be to pay back his company… credit accounts receivable 2.3 million; debit cash 2.3 million. Clean.

        I suspect the guy is a mess. That is why the IRS is always after him. They make a bunch of money every time they ring his doorbell. Shoots from the hip; asks his accountants later; fires the ones who won’t allow him to be gotta be ME!.

    • JCH | September 29, 2016 at 11:15 pm |

      They go after repeat offenders… especially the smart ones.

  119. willard (@nevaudit) | September 29, 2016 at 10:29 pm |

    Distracted Donald‘s foundation lacks the certification to raise funds.

  120. jim2 | September 29, 2016 at 11:40 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    It’s almost impossible not to correct a lie, especially about yourself, which is why Hillary and Lester Holt’s “baiting” strategy was to make outrageous claims about Trump.

    Hillary, for example, criticized Trump for not releasing his tax returns, saying, “maybe … he’s paid nothing in federal taxes.”

    This is exactly what Sen. Harry Reid stated as hard fact about Romney in 2012 — on the Senate floor, so he couldn’t be sued. After the election was over, Reid was asked about this obvious falsehood. He laughed it off and said, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

    This is the game they play.

    Trump has got to learn to ignore it. The voters have. They don’t care about his taxes. They want jobs, they want a wall and they’d like fewer Muslims showing up, collecting welfare, then killing Americans.

    Trump doesn’t have to do formal debate practice, standing at a podium, facing off against a shorty in pantsuit. But he does need Pavlovian training to stop responding to irrelevancies.

    This isn’t about him! It’s about a movement of the people to take back their government from an arrogant plutocracy.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/28/ann-coulter-avoid-immigration-terrorism-health-care-90-minutes/

    • climatereason | September 30, 2016 at 2:53 am |

      JIm

      I saw parts of the debate and the pavlov analogy is a good one. He must stop taking the bait.. The other noticeable traits were his constant interruptions and what appeared to be bullying-the constant interruptions married to a loud strident voice.

      These traits all need attention but on the other hand Hillary came across as an untrustworthy smarmy weasel. Obama has created a vacuum in world leadership (currently being filled by Russia and China) I can not see either of these two reasserting western leadership.

      tonyb

      • jim2 | September 30, 2016 at 8:37 am |

        Warts and all, Trump is miles better than Billary. He’s not a calibrated politician and isn’t polished. But my take is that he does have the best interest of US citizens in mind. That means a lot after the likes of Obummer who takes every opportunity to rag on my country.

    • cerescokid | September 30, 2016 at 6:19 am |

      Something is very different with this election. For some voters being criticized by the establishment is a badge of honor and a reason to vote for Trump. There are many legitimate reasons to criticize Trump. Those problems with other candidates in other elections would have been enough to torpedo the campaign. Not so now. It is not just antipathy toward Hillary and the Democrats. It is a rejection of anyone and anything associated with the status quo. The American electorate instinctively sense they are getting a screwing with the best days behind them. They are decades ahead of the politicians and see a Rising Sun in their future and it is setting.

  121. willard (@nevaudit) | September 30, 2016 at 12:20 am |


    Drama Queen Donald Pointed to 9/11 Attacks in Asking SEC for Leniency During Fraud Probe    :

    The SEC’s investigation found the company, in an earnings news release, excluded a one-time expense but included an unusual gain of $17.2 million, which it didn’t disclose on the release. That allowed the firm to beat analysts’ estimates for its earnings, the SEC’s order said. Without that gain, [Drama Queen Donald]’s Hotels’ revenue and net income for the quarter would have decreased from the same quarter one year earlier, and the firm would have missed expectations, the SEC’s order said.

  122. jim2 | September 30, 2016 at 8:31 am |

    From the article:
    …
    Attackers used an army of hijacked security cameras and video recorders to launch several massive internet attacks last week, prompting fresh concern about the vulnerability of millions of “smart” devices​in homes and businesses connected to the internet.

    The assaults raised eyebrows among security experts both for their size and for the machines that made them happen. The attackers used as many as one million Chinese-made security cameras, digital video recorders and other infected devices to generate webpage requests and data that knocked their targets offline, security experts said.

    Those affected include French web hosting provider OVH and U.S. security researcher Brian Krebs, whose website was disabled temporarily.

    “We need to address this as a clear and present threat not just to censorship but to critical infrastructure,” Mr. Krebs said.
    …
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/hackers-infect-army-of-cameras-dvrs-for-massive-internet-attacks-1475179428

  123. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 8:40 am |

    The LA Times poll shows Trump continuing to gain in the polls. His momentum wasn’t broken.

    Maybe the debate wasn’t such a triumph for Clinton after all, as Clinton and her legions of sycophantic “journalists,” “experts,” and other assorted pundits and talking ditto heads keep telling us ad nauseaum.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:08 am |

      This is deja vu of the Vietnam War.

      The establishment was all on board for that one too, and had all its mouthpieces in the media spouting pro-war propaganda ad infinitum.

      But it didn’t work. The estalbishment couldn’t get the public on board.

      Hannah Arendt noted in Lying in Politics, her analysis of the Pentagon Papers, that:

      It may be natural for elected officeholders — who owe so much, or believe they owe so much, to their campaign managers — to think that manipulation is the ruler of the people’s minds and hence the true ruler of the world….

      The only limitation to what the public-relations man does comes when he discovers that the same people who perhaps can be “manipulated” to buy a certain kind of soap cannot be manipulated…to “buy” opinions and political views.

      Therefore the psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.

      But such doctrines do not change the way people form opinions or prevent them from acting according to their own lights….

      Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will nver be large enough, even if it enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality. The liar, who may get away with any number of single falsehoods, will find it impossible to get away with lying on principle.

      This is one of the lessons that could be learned from the totalitarian experiments and the totalitarian rulers’ frightening confidence in the power of lying — in their ability, for instance, to rewrite history again and again to adapt the past to the “political line” of the present moment or to eliminate data that did not fit their ideology. Thus, in a socialist economy, they would deny that unemployment existed, the unemployed person simply becoming a non-person.

      The results of such experiments when undertaken by those in possession of the means of violence are terrible enough, but lasting deception is not among them. There always comes the point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive.

  124. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:30 am |

    Clinton Inc. is mashing the pedal on the identity politics thing — sizeism:

    Insults key in Trump’s toolkit
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/09/29/hillary-clinton-campaign-wages-choreographed-assault-donald-trump-over-fat-shaming/tS2aqmeOw5Mh5kw3KyFlQI/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=

    Donald Trump has a history of using weight as a way to make fun of, demean, or express his disapproval of people he wants to punish.

    Alica Machado went from 118 pounds or 117 pounds up to 160 or 170 pounds, and that’s not supposed to be a problem for a beauty queen?
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37488060

    What planet do Hillarymongers live on?

    Here’s what Trump actually said at the time, and as I think everybody can see, he was far from being the monster that Hillary Inc. is trying to make him out to be:

    In 1997, Trump discussed Alicia Machado’s weight

  125. Impeach Barry | September 30, 2016 at 9:35 am |

    http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/

    Dornslife Poll up another point for Trump. Bump looks like it’s coming from women. I guess they didn’t care for Hillary using that troubled Machado girl like a disposable piece on a chess board. That’s Hildebeast. True colors.

    She tried to Swift Boat Trump and it backfired. She’s sinking.

    Trump was supposed to be the low life piece of shhit and Hillary the Love Trumps Hate gal.

    Trump baits Hillary into a race to the bottom then lets her win. Brilliant.

    Glug glug glug…

  126. Impeach Barry | September 30, 2016 at 9:45 am |

    Keep a close eye on rust belt battleground. They aren’t going to like Hillary’s deep-throated defense of NAFTA. Trump’s going to take that home to them. I bet Hillary doesn’t have ground game in Michigan or Wisconsin and it’s in the wrong place in Pennsylvania.

    • cerescokid | September 30, 2016 at 10:46 am |

      After decades of being identified as a bellwether of Presidential elections and being recently identified as such by the NY Times, with Trump leading in Ohio all of a sudden that state has lost its significance. So says the paper of record, the uber leftist Grey Lady.

      Move on . Don’t pay no never mind, the scribe for the intellectual elites, celebrities, academics and power brokers of the world lectures since Trump leads Ohio. A battalion of NY Times investigative reporters is marching off to attack the next pillbox of Trump’s garbage can to get ready for the next debate.

  129. willard (@nevaudit) | September 30, 2016 at 10:21 am |

    Dancing Donald danced around 124 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, and that’s only since June 16, 2015.

    Here is the list.

  130. Joshua | September 30, 2016 at 10:42 am |

    –snip–

    Some of Donald Trump’s biggest whoppers during the US presidential debate were about China

    –snip–

    http://qz.com/792387/presidential-debate-trumps-first-lies-of-the-debate-were-all-about-china/

    • Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 3:03 pm |

      So let’s see.

      According to the article you linked, the Chinese have devalued the yuan by about 12% over the past couple of years.

      But this doesn’t count because “these recent moves remain small, compared with the currency’s historical moves.”

      Thus, the author concludes that Trump’s claim that the Chinese “are devaluing their currency and there’s nobody in our government to fight them” is one of “Donald Trump’s biggest whoppers during the US presidential debate.”

      Lordy! Lordy! Who can argue with Newspeak and doublethink like that?

      • Joshua | September 30, 2016 at 4:42 pm |

        Well, you skipped over quite a bit to get to that part, Glenn. I wonder why?

        Anyway, you might consider a bit less sycophantism:

        –snip– [quoting Trump]

        “[The worst of its sins] is the wanton manipulation of China’s currency, robbing Americans of billions of dollars of capital and millions of jobs. Economists estimate that the yuan is undervalued anywhere from 15% to 40%. Through manipulation of the yuan, the Chinese government has been able to tip the trade balance in their direction by imposing a de facto tariff on all imported goods.”

        On all these points, Trump is patently wrong. Just ask the IMF, which says the yuan is no longer undervalued.

        –snip–

        There’s a lot more:

        http://qz.com/546812/donald-trump-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about-on-china/

      • Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 8:49 pm |

        Josh ua,

        One of the most intriguing facets of this whole spectacle is to watch persons like yourself stake out the most unbelievably conservative, right-wing positions– whatever it takes in order to justify supporting Clinton now that she has made her end run around Trump’s right end.

        The second article you cite relies on no less than the IMF to make its point.

        The IMF! Imagine that!

        Is it possible you are ignorant of what the IMF is, what it stands for, and its long, sordid history of neoliberal advocacy? Heck, even the conservative Fortune Magazine admits it:

        Asking if the International Monetary Fund supports economic neoliberalism is like asking if the Pope is Catholic — the answer is so obvious it seems silly to even raise the question. The IMF has been one of the principle endorsers of neoliberalism—an ideology that promotes free markets, free trade, and small government—for decades.

        http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/imf-neoliberalism-failing/

        But regardless of what spin the IMF puts on things (with something it invented that it calls “nominal effective exchange rates”), real exchange rates are of an objective, empirical nature. And if we look at the real exchange rates, the Chinese “are devaluing their currency” just as Trump claims.

        And in fact, since the second article you cited was published, the Chinese have devalued their currency another 5% , from 6.36 yuan per US dollar to 6.67 yuan per US dollar.

      • catweazle666 | October 1, 2016 at 10:30 am |

        Glenn Stehle: “The IMF! Imagine that!”

        The enemy of Joss’s enemy is his friend, apparently.

        Desperate or what!

      • Impeach Barry | October 1, 2016 at 12:16 am |

        You boys seem to have noticed the issues and the truth are no longer relevant in this election. It’s about strippers and temperament.

      • Impeach Barry | October 1, 2016 at 12:17 am |

        correction: you boys seemed to have NOT noticed

      • Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 10:35 am |

        ‘Issues & Truth’ have never been ‘relevant’ in this election. I’ve been telling you that for months and you just now come out with that diamond of a bit of comprehension?

      • Jim D | October 1, 2016 at 12:40 am |

        Yes, Trump supporters are not particularly interested in the cost of a college education, but they perk up when mention is made of who has been in a p0rn video, so this debate/tweetstorm has now descended to their level.

  132. Joshua | September 30, 2016 at 10:49 am |

    –snip–

    “I am very under-leveraged. I have a great company,” Trump said. “It’s about time that this country had somebody running it that had an idea about money.”

    […]

    In 2000, Trump was estimated to have outstanding loans equal to 69 percent of the money he had himself put into his real-estate projects. That is a very large figure for someone in the real-estate industry, according to John Griffin, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has carefully studied Trump’s business career.

    –snip–

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-fact-checking-and-analysis-of-the-first-presidential-debate/trump-claims-he-runs-his-businesses-cautiously-we-dont-really-know/

  134. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 11:40 am |

    This video starts out pretty good, because they talk about how irrelevant and unimportant the MSM and its endorsements — as well as all of society’s other institutions and their opinions — are in this election.

    But then Rebecca Berg says she can’t understand why Trump keeps pouring gasoline on the Alicia Machado imbroglio.

    The reason Trump keeps pouring gasoline on it, of course, is because he believes Clinton misfired badly, and he believes there is political hay to be made there. The polls seem to be bearing him out.

    VIDEO: Rebecca Berg — Why Is Donald Trump Still Tweeting About Alicia Machado?
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/09/30/rebecca_berg_why_is_donald_trump_attacking_alicia_machado_on_twitter.html

    The elitism and self-absorbtion of the pundit class, combined with their unwavering belief in identity politics — which puts large, diverse groups of people, who have little in common, into little boxes — prevents Berg from seeing that not all women think and feel just as she does.

  135. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 12:24 pm |

    It’s not difficult to see why the left has been such a colossal failure when it comes to representing people who have to work for a living:

    Going back to the mid-20th century, leaders of the social democratic, reformist left envisioned a future “Social Europe.”….

    Figures on the revolutionary left, like the Belgian Marxist economist and Trotskyist leader Ernest Mandel, advocated a “United Socialist States of Europe.” This was an expression not only of revolutionary internationalism, but also of Mandel’s view that the working class could no longer confront increasingly internationalized capital through political action confined to the national level.

    http://triplecrisis.com/social-democracy-the-third-way-and-the-crisis-of-europe-part-1/

    It’s like these people never learn. For as Hannah Arendt noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

    The Rights of Man, after all, had been defined as “inalienable” because they were supposed to be independent of all governments; but it turned out that the moment human beings lacked their own government and had to fall back upon their miniumum rights, no authority was left to protect them and no institution was willing to guarantee them.

  136. Willard | September 30, 2016 at 12:37 pm |

    Donating Donald‘s illegal foundation donated anti-vaxxers money. Even better, he gave it to former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy.

    Just watch the tapes.

  137. Willard | September 30, 2016 at 12:52 pm |

    Disturbed Donald:

    You’ve heard of the 3 a.m. phone call, the one every presidential nominee must be prepared to answer ably. Now we have the 3 a.m. tweet storm, where the would-be leader of the free world melts down at the perfidy of mere women to challenge his political dominance.

    Just watch the tweets.

  138. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 2:04 pm |

    Here’s a video that illustrates identity politics in action.

    It is a debate between two Black women. But when one of the women ventures off the plantation — outside the tidy little box of “black” identity — that the identity politicans have sentenced her to, the other woman attacks her for not representing “black people.”

    In identity politics, any sort of individualism, independence or diversity of opinions, beliefs or feelings is strictly taboo. It is the first commandment of identity politics that these must be sacrificed on the altar of “community” conformity and group think.

    IDENTITY POLITICIAN: At this point, we are pretty clear as a community….

    The hell that we’re dealing with today has a lot to do with how vile this person is against communities that look and feel like mine….

    It’s unfortunate when other African-Americans tout….

    Ma’am, you’re on national television defending Donald Trump…..

    I’m defending black people. I’m here on behalf of African- Americans. OK….

    I just think that it’s really unfortunate when — when other African-Americans tout this line that Donald Trump has kind of crafted in your lap….

    I’m speaking on behalf of masses of black people….

    NON-IDENTITY POLITICIAN: Not all of them [African-Americans], because you’re not here on behalf of me….

    And millions of others who don’t support Hillary Clinton….

    Attack the candidate, don’t attack me. Don’t attack me….

    I am an American citizen and a veteran….

    Someone who went overseas to fight for your right to have your opinion and I have my right to mine….

    I absolutely will not allow her to sit here and vilify me for doing what white Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans do, which is choose a political party, choose a platform, and then stand up for it….

    It’s not fair….

    It’s not fair for you to say that I don’t have the right to vote as I choose as an American citizen.

  139. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 2:11 pm |

    The Marxist thinkers never give up:

    It is now a central challenge for the left, in Europe and around the world, to rescue internationalist politics from the disaster of capitalist globalization.

    The answer to surging nationalism is not to be found in the dream of a peaceful internationally integrated capitalism. There needs to be a radical left alternative that rejects nationalism and racism, that rejects the false equation of capitalist globalization with internationalism, and that fights for a new internationalism founded in workers’ solidarity.

    http://triplecrisis.com/an-historical-perspective-on-brexit/

    But, as Robert Hughes pointed out:

    For the fact is that Marxism lost its main bet at the outset. It wagered its entire claim to historical inevitability on the idea that humankind would divide along the lines of class, not nationality.

    In this it was wrong. Because the bonds of nationhood were so much stronger than those of class, the Revolution could only be exported in three forms: as direct conquest by Moscow, as in eastern Europe; by the reinvention of ancient, xenophobic, authoritarian structures with a “Marxist” veneer, as in Mao’s China; and as a handy form of rhetoric which gave “internationalist” legitimacy to nationalist chieftains and cauldillos, as in Ceacescu’s Romania, Castro’s Cuba, or any number of ephemeral African regimes.

    But the basic promise of Marxism, an internationale of workers joined as a transnational force by common interests, turned out to be a complete chimera.

    Nationalism survives.

    — ROBERT HUGHES, Culture of Complaint

  140. Willard | September 30, 2016 at 2:36 pm |

    Here’s a video that illustrates how Dopamine Donald should take any reference to someone from his past:

  141. Willard | September 30, 2016 at 2:39 pm |

    Fox-(Ex)centric Donald held his last press conference on 2016-07-27.

  142. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 3:30 pm |

    Q&A: Will Deutsche Bank become the next Lehman?
    https://www.mail.com/int/business/markets/4639204-qa-will-deutsche-bank-lehman.html#.1258-stage-hero1-1

    Germany’s biggest bank is looking shaky and some investors fear it could collapse and endanger the wider financial system. Some even wonder whether it might become the next Lehman Brothers, the U.S. bank whose failure heralded the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.

  143. catweazle666 | September 30, 2016 at 5:13 pm |

    Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition

    Choosing Myron Ebell means Trump plans to drastically reshape climate policies

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/

  145. jim2 | September 30, 2016 at 6:33 pm |

    Yup. Billary lets people die in the wee hours of the morning. From the tweeter …

    For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!

  146. jim2 | September 30, 2016 at 7:18 pm |

    From the article (about Ly_i_n Billary and Ly_i_n Politi”fact”):
    …
    The most recent Uranium One fact-check article was researched by Tom Kertscher and edited by Greg Borowski. In July, PolitiFact staff writer Linda Qiu published a piece full of factual errors, glaring inaccuracies, and omissions.

    Breitbart News published a full-scale 13-point refutation of the last Politifact Uranium One piece, which the latest one references.

    Kertscher’s piece, however, is more of the same sloppy script.

    Several of the 13 refutation points still apply to this latest “fact-check” article, but below are two additional points that deserve attention:
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/09/30/again-politifact-fails-whitewash-hillary-clinton-uranium-scandal/

    • Danny Thomas | September 30, 2016 at 10:11 pm |

      Jim2,
      Content smontent. We don’t care about content since we already are aware that the source is disreputable.

  147. jim2 | September 30, 2016 at 7:29 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    Incoming migrants are bringing long-eradicated diseases to Germany and are putting the medical system under extreme stress.

    As well as bringing a rising tide of crime and attitudes towards women that many consider incompatible with modern European values, the over one and a half million migrants who flowed into Germany last year have also brought unheard-of and rare strains of diseases to the continent. The new arrivals and their illnesses are putting pressure on the German health care system, reports Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/30/migrants-bring-diseases-strain-german-medical-system/

    • RiHo08 | September 30, 2016 at 8:45 pm |

      jim2

      At the end of the Viet Nam military exercise, people who had fought the Viet Cong and the Northern Vietnamese from Laos swam across the Mekong River into Thailand and into refugee camps. Whole families came, some of the sick and infirm, didn’t make it.

      From the refugee camps, families were sent to receptive cities in the US, flying first to Seattle, then being redistributed to fly to an awaiting, usually, Catholic sponsored organization, in another city. Our city was one of the recipients.

      In order for a family to leave a refugee camp in Thailand, all members had to be certified by a refugee camp physician to be free of Tuberculosis, primarily identified by Chest X-ray. Well, in the over crowded refugee camps the tuberculosis pestilence was passed from one to another, at no time would all the family be tuberculosis free at the same time. In exasperation, the refugee camp physicians declared the family tuberculosis free and sent them with their chest x-ray on their merry way to America’s heartland.

      In our schools, churches, and community organizations alert county public health nurses began case finding and lo and be hold, “consumption” had returned, and for some, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis became a childhood infectious pathogen. Several children died, others were maimed by tubercular meningitis, and others still would go on to become adolescents, and for the girls, reactivate their latent Tbc.

      Not many of the modern day European refugees that I am aware of have passed through the gauntlet of a refugee camp where immunizations were mandatory. The refugees have just come over en mass. As these refugees may not have had the luxury of vaccinations the Mong people had, maybe we will see another epidemic of multiple infectious disease from re-introduction. We shall see.

      Europe’s and ours health care systems can and will case find the people within our midst burdened with scourges of the past and administer to them through nutrition and drugs and dedicated public health nurses once again.

      For those “anti-vaxers with children in school, I say, wait for the letter from the school principle to let you know that not vaccinating your child was a very very bad whimsical stance. Johnny and Jane will bring home the lesson.

    • Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:06 pm |

      Turkey hoards well-educated Syrians.
      Highly qualified refugees who want to migrate may find themselves barred from leaving.
      http://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-prevent-well-educated-syrian-refugees-from-leaving-migration/

      According to staff at agencies that handle resettlement cases, Turkey is preventing some Syrians from leaving the country on the basis of their educational credentials, as it works out plans to offer citizenship to Syrians.

      A report last week said more than 1,000 Syrians slated to travel to the United States and other countries have been prevented from doing so because they have university degrees. As early as June, German media reported that at least 50 cases approved by Berlin were halted by Turkish authorities for similar reasons….

      A senior Turkish official said it would be incorrect to characterize Turkey’s actions as “preventing some Syrians from leaving,” and instead pointed to the U.N.’s own resettlement criteria, which gives priority to the most vulnerable people, like torture survivors and those with special medical needs.

      “You aren’t supposed to cherry-pick candidates but focus on helping people,” he said.

      In an interview with CNN this week, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu made the same point: “We are against the selective approach to resettlement,” he said. “No one can say ‘I want to get the Christian ones, I want to get the best educated ones, the [able-bodied] ones and not the disabled ones.’ Selective approach is not humane. You cannot select people like you select the sheep and goats from the market.”….

      The EU-Turkey deal struck earlier this year — in which Turkey agreed to help stanch the flow of migrants into Europe in exchange for financial help and accelerated talks on visa-free travel for Turks — did succeed in curbing the mass illegal exodus of Syrians. Yet it also appears that Turkey simultaneously slowed the legal exodus of Syrians as it considers the economic benefits of their integration….

      Piril Ercoban, the director of Multeci-Der, a refugee rights organization in Turkey, said…,“You cannot just tell people that because you are educated and skilled you will not be eligible for resettlement. It is ridiculous … You cannot just prevent their exit from the country, although they have all the documents ready to make regular and legal travel because ‘We need you in Turkey,’ or ‘We may use you in Turkey.'”

  148. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:22 pm |

    The Wholesale Failure of American Foreign Policy
    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-wholesale-failure-of-american-foreign-policy/

    One has to wonder just how much longer the American people will silently permit the categorical failure of American foreign policy, both in theory and in practice. The evidence confirming the totality of our failure is breathtaking in scope and severity. Changes are needed to preserve U.S. national security and economic prosperity….

    Earlier this month, a British Parliament study found that the result of Western military intervention in Libya “was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.”

    Airstrikes and drone attacks are accidentally killing thousands of civilians, aid workers, wedding parties, and now even the troops of a nation against whom we are not at war. Each of these mistakes, repeated hundreds of times over the past 15 years, creates more antagonism and hatred of the United States than any other single event. Whatever tactical benefit some of the strikes do accomplish, they are consumed in the still-worsening strategic failure the misfires cause.

    Bottom line: The use of military power since 2001 has:

    • Turned a previously whole and regionally impotent Iraq that balanced Iran into a factory of terrorism and a client of Tehran;

    • Turned Afghanistan from a country with a two-sided civil war—contained within its own borders—into a dysfunctional state that serves as a magnet for terrorists.

    • Turned a Libya that suffered internal unrest, but didn’t threaten its neighbors or harbor terrorists, into an “unmitigated failure” featuring a raging civil war, serving as an African beachhead for ISIS and a terrorist breeding ground;

    • Contributed to the expansion of al-Qaeda into a “franchise” group, spawned a new strain when ISIS was born out of the vacuum created by our Iraq invasion, and seen major terrorist threats explode worldwide;

    • Joined other nations in battles in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other areas within Africa whose only result has been the expansion of the threat and the deepening of the suffering of the civil populations.

    These continued and deepening failures kill unknown numbers of innocent civilians each year, intensify and spread the hatred many have of America, and incrementally weaken our national security. But these military failures have another, less obvious but more troubling cost.

    Perpetual fighting dissipates the fighting strength of the armed forces….

    It is critical to understand that no insurgency or terror group represents an existential threat to viability of the United States….

    It is discouraging to see the administration, Congress, and the Department of Defense fully tethered to the perpetual application of military power against small-scale threats… [T]he unhealthy focus on the small-scale has weakened—and continues to weaken—our ability to respond to the truly existential threats.

    If the incoming administration does not recognize this deterioration of our military power and take steps to reverse it, our weakness may one day be exposed in the form of losing a major military engagement that we should have won easily. The stakes couldn’t be higher. A change in foreign policy is critically needed. We will either change by choice or we will change in the smoldering aftermath of catastrophic military failure. I pray it is the former.

  149. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:38 pm |

    OBAMA SCAPEGOATS THIRD PARTY VOTERS TO DISTRACT FROM CLINTON’S ENTHUSIASM PROBLEM
    https://shadowproof.com/2016/09/29/obama-scapegoats-third-party-voters-distract-clintons-enthusiasm-problem/

    [T]he polls between Clinton and Trump would not be so close if Clinton did not suffer from a lack of enthusiasm among the base of voters she needs to win….

    Clinton and Democrats are worried about potentially low turnout …

    The enthusiasm problem…has everything to do with the fact that the Democrats nominated a deeply unpopular candidate, who has spent the last month and a half promoting the fact that there are Republicans, including neoconservative war hawks, that support her instead of Trump. It also is related to the fact that Democrats treat progressive voters as captives every presidential election and expect them to vote regardless of what their corporate nominees have to offer….

    [Clinton] is incapable of authentically promoting popular progressive policies, like those advocated by Bernie Sanders, which would energize the base, because she is a corporate Democrat. So all Obama and Democrats really have as an option to stave off disaster is prejudicial rhetoric and the insufferable scolding of principled voters, which probably is not going to work because a record number of citizens are tired of Democrats constantly thinking they can bully them into submission.

  151. Glenn Stehle | September 30, 2016 at 9:47 pm |

    Will you show me how it is in the ECONOMIC INTERESTS of black people, at least the non elites, to have more immigration?

    Why Black People Need to Reject Trump’s Anti-Immigrant BS
    http://www.vice.com/read/dont-let-donald-trump-pit-blacks-against-immigrants

    Trump’s defining issue, practically his only issue, is the idea that immigration is bad—that immigrants bring crime with them and take jobs away from Americans, especially low-skilled workers who used to be able to count on well-paid manufacturing jobs. On this issue, he feeds blacks the same line he feeds everyone else, an outlook that divides marginalized communities….

    When Trump and his ilk make immigration a bogeyman, they conveniently ignore the systemic racism blacks have been facing for decades….

    Closing inequality between black and white can’t be done by building a wall to keep out people, who in many instances, look like you. Instead, it begins with the very real work of addressing the institutional racism that has been essential to this country long before there was even a border to cross.

  152. Willard | October 1, 2016 at 1:12 am |

    Discriminate Donald wanted to fire women who weren’t pretty enough, say employees at his California golf club:

    “[Discriminate Donald] always wanted good looking women working at the club,” said Sue Kwiatkowski, a restaurant manager at the club until 2009, in a declaration. “I know this because one time he took me aside and said, ‘I want you to get some good looking hostesses here. People like to see good looking people when they come in.’ ”

    • cerescokid | October 1, 2016 at 5:34 am |

      I wonder how many millions of times that has been said by other business owners in similar situations. You need to get out more. There truly is a real world out there. Join it.

      • Willard | October 1, 2016 at 10:33 am |

        Discriminate Donald’s only does the best in everything, Kid. And you know what was best? The 70s:

        Alien Lizard Monster was sued for racial discrimination in the 1970s and he’s lying about it now

        Let’s make discrimination great again!

  153. Glenn Stehle | October 1, 2016 at 6:37 am |

    Trump Tees Up a Necessary Debate on the Fed
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-tees-up-a-necessary-debate-on-the-fed-1475102579

    Mr. Trump argued that an increasingly “political” Fed is holding interest rates low to help Democrats in November, driving up a “big, fat, ugly bubble” that will pop when the central bank raises rates…..

    Since the Fed began aggressive monetary easing in 2008, my calculations show that nearly 60% of stock market gains have come on those days, once every six weeks, that the Federal Open Market Committee announces its policy decisions.

    Put another way, the S&P 500 index has gained 699 points since January 2008, and 422 of those points came on the 70 Fed announcement days….

    This is a sign of dysfunction. The stock market should be a barometer of the economy, but in practice it has become a barometer of Fed policy….

    The effect of Fed announcements rose sharply after 2008 when the Fed launched the early rounds of quantitative easing (usually called QE), its bond purchases intended to inject money into the economy….

    Stock prices have held steady even though corporate earnings have been falling since 2014. Valuations—the ratio of price to earnings—continue to rise. With investors searching for yield in the low interest-rate world created by the Fed, the valuations of stocks that pay high dividends are particularly stretched….

    Last week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that “financial instability risks are rising,” in part because easy money is driving up asset prices….

    [A] composite index for stocks, bonds and homes shows that their combined valuations have never been higher in 50 years….

    Mr. Trump was basically right in saying that Fed policy has done more to boost the prices of financial assets—including stocks, bonds and housing—than it has done to help the economy overall….

    Mr. Trump was also right that despite the Fed’s efforts, the U.S. has experienced “the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression.” The economy’s growth rate is well below its precrisis norm, and the benefits have been slow to reach the middle class and Main Street.

    Much of the Fed’s easy money has gone into financial engineering, as companies borrow billions of dollars to buy back their own stock. Corporate debt as a share of GDP has risen to match the highs hit before the 2008 crisis.

    That kind of finance does more to increase asset prices than to help the middle class. Since the rich own more assets, they gain the most. In this way the Fed’s policies have fueled a sharp rise in wealth inequality world-wide—and a boom in the global population of billionaires.

    [R]egarding the ripple effects of the Fed’s easy money, Mr. Trump is directly on point.

  154. ptolemy2 | October 1, 2016 at 7:01 am |

    There has been little discussion of the massive power cut to the whole state of South Australia, which is still not over. SA have recently shut down their last coal power station and have sharply increased their wind and solar generation.

    Needless to say the media have been quick to pronounce denials of any possible link with renewable energy, including a predictable reflexive squirt of verbal diarrhoea from the Grauniad. Here is a slightly less hysterical assessment from the conversation:

    http://theconversation.com/what-caused-south-australias-state-wide-blackout-66268

    “Don’t believe anything till you hear the official denial” might be a little over-cynical but is likely wise advice in this case.

    • jim2 | October 1, 2016 at 9:04 am |

      It appears SA needs to rely less on transmission lines and more on locally produced power. But the article you linked it very pro-“green” energy.

  156. willard (@nevaudit) | October 1, 2016 at 11:03 am |

    Drug Lord Donald admits cutting off medical treatment for his nephew’s sick baby

    Drug Lord Donald admits having acted out of anger.

  157. jim2 | October 1, 2016 at 11:22 am |

    Wow! The people of this town addressed the problem of migrants before it became a problem! From the article:
    …
    The mayor of a small German town has been assaulted and beaten unconscious after receiving threats because he planned to settle migrants in the area.
    Joachim Kebschull, the 61-year-old mayor of Oersdorf near Hamburg, was pushing to house migrants in a property in the town of 900.

    The attack occurred immediately before a meeting of the town’s urban planning committee where migrant issues were due to be discussed.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/01/migrant-centre-plans-tiny-german-town-mayor-attack-bomb-scare/

    • Jim D | October 1, 2016 at 12:00 pm |

      You say “the people” when it was actually more likely a xenophobic minority thug. The people, like the mayor, there had welcomed the idea of housing refugees.

  158. jim2 | October 1, 2016 at 11:24 am |

    From the article:
    …
    The Socialist former mayor said he was “shocked” to see the flyers in the Normandy commune of Bretteville-sur-Laize.

    Titled “No to the reception centre”, the notices appear in several shop windows. Underneath reads: “migrants with nothing to do in Bretteville = incivility, theft, assault, rape, loss of value to our businesses and our property”.

    Mr Lacoste was “appalled” to discover the posters, which call on residents to sign a petition to stop migrants from being moved from the so-called “jungle” camp at Calais to the Normandy commune.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/10/01/former-mayor-suing-welcome-migrants/

    • climatereason | October 1, 2016 at 12:54 pm |

      Frau Merkel invited these refugees so she should take responsibility for them and not expect everyone else to clear up the mess she created in a moment of madness (quite a few moments actually if you include the euro crisis and Greece)

      If Hillary wins, perhaps the US would like to welcome them?

      tonyb

      • Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 3:35 pm |

        Tony,

        Both Trump and Clinton chose her as their ‘most admired’: http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/29/politics/donald-trump-angela-merkel-praise-criticism/index.html
        if not fully on the immigration concern.

        Wondering out loud what exactly a humane world is to ‘do’ with/about refugees going forward? Don’t expect we’ll see fewer. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced-displacement-hits-record-high.html

        One out of 113 in the world? It’s disturbing to consider that figure when visiting any location or event with a high level of population. Then, especially considering this figure: “Distressingly, children made up an astonishing 51 per cent of the world’s refugees in 2015, according to the data UNHCR was able to gather (complete demographic data was not available to the report authors). Many were separated from their parents or travelling alone.” much needs to be done.

        Suggest it’s a ‘wicked problem’.

      • jim2 | October 1, 2016 at 9:35 pm |

        Simple, Danny. Let the Muslim world take care of the refugees, in a country compatible with Islam.

      • climatereason | October 2, 2016 at 3:09 am |

        Danny

        We need to make a clear distinction between refugees and economic migrants the latter of which at varying times have been estimated as some 60% of those reaching Europe. Much of the trouble stems from the enormous birth rate increase in many third world countries which means there are limited economic opportunities for them at home. their country should be helped at source as the UK does. They have few skills that we need and their versions of their religion often appears to be incompatible with modern western values. and European voters increasingly resent being invaded and our border controls over run. We haven’t travelled through Calais for two years because of the lawless and frightening situation there.

        genuine refugees should be held in much more humane camps close by in the expectation they will be needed when the situation stabilises in their country. As jim says, other muslim countries need to do much more as, except for turkey, Lebanon and Jordan they take very few.

        What is noticeable and causes further resentment is how many fleeing are men of army age. is there an equivalent in recent history of so many men avoiding fighting for their country?

        Whatever, Merkel invited them so she needs to take responsibility. It will be interesting to see how the Hungarians vote today on the question. I suspect they will vote overwhelmingly for refusing refugees that Merkel wants them to take as part of their ‘quota.’.

        tonyb

  159. Impeach Barry | October 1, 2016 at 11:43 am |

    Miss California comes out in support of Trump. Big time. She’s pissed off that her words were twisted by the New York Times.

    • Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 12:34 pm |

      Springer,

      How in the world would you choose to post an article which ends with:”Now let’s get back to the issues, which is what should matter in this election.”?

      Thought we were past all that and down to hookers and temperament. Unless those are ‘what matter’ in this election.

      • Impeach Barry | October 1, 2016 at 11:12 pm |

        The election was over a long time ago. Trump hasn’t lost the lead when undecided voters are asked which way they lean. Only one poll I know of does this:

        http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/

        This poll asks voters on a scale of 0% – 100% how likely they are to vote for each candidate. Other polls are just yes/no/undecided.

        When the results are tabulated including which way undecideds are leaning there is a very consistent +6 bias to Trump revealed. In other words you can take the RCP average of polls, add +6 for Trump to it, and you’ll get the result of the LA Times poll that includes which way undecided voters are leaning.

        A rule of thumb from past elections is that when an incumbent party front runner has much fewer than 50% of the votes late in the campaign the undecided voters break for the challenger.

        In other words if a voter hasn’t decided to vote for Clinton by now they are voting for Trump unless something big happens to change their mind. A campaign creating an attack ad that dredges a south american stripper out of the gutter to put her on parade and a few tweets in explanation from the attacked candidate isn’t big. That’s a distraction. Hillary doesn’t want anyone discussing her record, the state of the economy, national security, jobs, and things like that, so she invents PiggyGate for everyone to fret about instead.

        Pitiful. She’s desperate. Her people know that if they haven’t closed the deal with undecided voters by now they are going to break for Trump.

      • Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 11:22 pm |

        Thanks Dave.

        Guess rules are meant to be broken. From your link: “Nonetheless, empirical data suggests the rule may be a myth. Nate Silver notes that it is “extremely common for an incumbent come back to win re-election while having less than 50 percent of the vote in early polls.” In addition, “there is no demonstrable tendency for challengers to pick up a larger share of the undecided vote than incumbents.””

        And point of interest. There is no ‘incumbent’ in the race.

      • Joshua | October 1, 2016 at 11:40 pm |

        And I’m not sure that there’s ever been s challenger that claimed 900 million in losses while stiffing debtors and proclaiming business genius.

      • Danny Thomas | October 2, 2016 at 12:00 am |

        It’s pretty ‘genius’ to get you and I and all his supporters here to finance it.

      • Joshua | October 2, 2016 at 12:18 am |

        You’d think that since losing 900 million proves his genius, he’d be happy to produce his other tax returns. I guess he’s just being most about his genius. He such a humble fella, doncha know.

  161. Impeach Barry | October 1, 2016 at 12:48 pm |

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440399/donald-trumps-conservative-agenda-reason-trumps-gaining-ground

    Trump’s Secret Weapon: The Conservative Agenda BY DEROY MURDOCK
    September 27, 2016 12:00 PM

    From school choice to black outreach to rebuilding the military, he’s running solidly on the right. Why is Donald J. Trump neck and neck with Hillary Clinton? For the most part, he is doing exactly what the Right would want and expect from a Republican nominee.

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440399/donald-trumps-conservative-agenda-reason-trumps-gaining-ground

  162. Willard | October 1, 2016 at 1:06 pm |

    Divorce Donald praised Saudi Arabia’s Shariah Law for making it easy for men to get divorced.

  164. willard (@nevaudit) | October 1, 2016 at 9:53 pm |

    David Post asks two questions to Volokh Conspiracy readers who are Dangerously Unstable Donald supporters, the first being:

    For me, the election conversation really starts, and ends, here, before you get to immigration policy, or climate change, or SCOTUS appointments, or international trade, or law and order, or any of the other issues the next president will have to deal with, and I don’t understand how [Dangerously Unstable Donald] supporters get past this point.

    So my question is: Which part of that formulation do you disagree with? That he’s dangerously unstable? Or that it matters, as a dispositive criterion for choosing a president? [Dangerously Unstable Donald] has a secret plan to deal with the Islamic State; you trust that he will act reasonably and prudently in pursuit of that plan because …?

  165. jim2 | October 1, 2016 at 10:53 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    An RNC memo from chief strategist Sean Spicer spells out the mystery:

    Justin Cooper owns an almost $900,000 home in the lush hills of an upscale Los Angeles suburb.

    But interestingly enough, he doesn’t live there. Roger Clinton does.

    Cooper is Bill Clinton’s body man turned wheeler-dealer. He’s gone from making a modest salary working in the White House to setting up an LLC just to buy a home for the president’s brother to live in.

    But how and why has he suddenly become Roger Clinton’s real estate agent and financier?

    Why would Cooper, despite living in Manhattan, be the one to purchase a home in California that was intended as someone else’s residence? And how did he get the money to do it?

    Before the time of the sale in 2009, Roger Clinton already had over $89,000 in numerous federal and state tax liens against him, which would have made purchasing a property for himself difficult.

    How did Cooper, a career body man, scrounge up the money necessary to pay for a mortgage that no doubt would have been over a million dollars, including interest?”
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/30/rnc-finds-roger-clinton-living-in-house-owned-by-former-bill-clinton-adviser/

  167. Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 11:35 pm |

    Why are we funding Trump’s business losses in such a socialized way when not benefiting from the following proceeds?

    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes-explained.html?_r=0

    It doesn’t make him smart especially since I don’t know if he ‘squandered’ the millions anyway.

    • Danny Thomas | October 1, 2016 at 11:41 pm |

      ““Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement continued. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes. Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.””
      http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-tax-records-new-york-times-229012

      If he were so ‘highly skilled’ and has the ‘know how’ to ‘fix it’ why wouldn’t he do so by providing a plan which will be to his benefit IN CASE he doesn’t get elected………..oh, wait…………
      http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-plan-populist-rich-2016-8

  168. willard (@nevaudit) | October 2, 2016 at 12:03 am |

    Can Republicans be Rational?:

    If you think this is true of other people and not you, consider the example of Peter Thiel, a billionaire technology entrepreneur and investor who co-founded PayPal and funded Facebook. He is an extremely intelligent and well-read person, with mostly libertarian views. He strongly supports [Doublespeak Donald], for a truly bizarre reason. He asserts that [Doublespeak Donald]’s most significant statement during this campaign, revealing his worldview, was “to declare that government health care can work.” He quoted Trump praising the Scottish and Canadian systems — one a nationalized system, the other a single-payer network — as proof of his remarkable willingness to think heretically and challenge Republican dogmas about government.

    Now, another interpretation of [Doublespeak Donald]’s remark would be that it was a stray comment, thrown off the top of his head, signifying almost nothing. Remember that Trump took five different positions on abortion in three days. NBC News calculates that he has changed his position 124 times on 20 major issues since the campaign began. In Monday’s debate, he took two contradictory positions on the “no first use” policy of nuclear weapons in 30 seconds. And most important, after that offhand reference, [Doublespeak Donald] backed down from his support for government health care, instead only reciting Republican orthodoxy about the evils of Obamacare.

    So an intelligent libertarian has chosen to support a man whose main — and utterly consistent — public policy positions are anti-free trade and anti-immigration and who has promised to appoint socially conservative judges to the Supreme Court because he is convinced that [Doublespeak Donald] is actually a closet admirer of Britain’s nationalized health-care system. I cannot think of a better example of Haidt’s thesis that we come to a decision first and reason our way to it afterward.

  169. willard (@nevaudit) | October 2, 2016 at 12:05 am |

    Records Obtained by The Times Reveal that Decadal Donald Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades.

    Boom.

    • Danny Thomas | October 2, 2016 at 12:10 am |

      And socialistically speaking, ‘we’ funded his business operations. Here’s hoping he didn’t ‘squander’ the losses.

      • willard (@nevaudit) | October 2, 2016 at 12:25 am |

        > ‘we’ funded his business operations

        More than that, Danny –
        Double-Dealing Donald‘s buildings were built with tax breaks:

        The hotel, Mr. [Double-Dealing Donald] bragged in “[Double-Dealing Donald]: The Art of the Deal,” his 1987 best seller, “was a hit from the first day. Gross operating profits now exceed $30 million a year.”

        But that book, and numerous interviews over the years, make little mention of a crucial factor in getting the hotel built: an extraordinary 40-year tax break that has cost New York City $360 million to date in forgiven, or uncollected, taxes, with four years still to run, on a property that cost only $120 million to build in 1980.

        The project set the pattern for Mr. [Double-Dealing Donald]’s New York career: He used his father’s, and, later, his own, extensive political connections, and relied on a huge amount of assistance from the government and taxpayers in the form of tax breaks, grants and incentives to benefit the 15 buildings at the core of his Manhattan real estate empire.

      • Danny Thomas | October 2, 2016 at 12:43 am |

        Well. It’s October. So guess this is at least one ‘surprise’. Wonder what will be the discussion of the talking heads on teevee in the morning?

        “They fear Saturday night’s surprise bombshell might lead voters to question another pillar of his candidacy — his claim to be a successful businessman and an anti-politician who, unlike the insiders he maligns in Washington, tells the truth.”

        http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-tax-records-new-york-times-229012

        ” But for now he probably has miscalculated, ignoring the fundamental truth that although Americans may not love paying taxes, what they hate even more is rich people not paying their fair share.”

        http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4419720-155/steven-weisman-americans-dont-mind-paying

        Just saying, in this case, maybe Mrs. Clinton was the ‘smart one’, and Trump not so much.

        Guessing someone will take his Twitter account from him for tonite so he’ll get some sleep.

      • Joshua | October 2, 2016 at 12:30 am |

        My first thought was that the wikileaks thingy is going to have to be big to counterbalance this. My next thought was who am I kidding. His supporters won’t care one iota about this.

  170. Willard | October 2, 2016 at 1:50 am |

  171. Glenn Stehle | October 2, 2016 at 6:06 am |

    Trump continues to move up in the LA Times poll.

  172. jim2 | October 2, 2016 at 10:34 am |

    I’ll never vote for anyone named “Bush” again. They’re in the same sewer as the Dimowits now, along with the elite billionaires who own Billary. From the article:
    …
    Another Bush for Hillary! Barbara Bush spends Saturday night in Paris partying with Huma Abedin at a Clinton fundraiser

    Huma Abedin and Anna Wintour hosted a Clinton fundraiser Saturday

    A $500-$1,000 reception was followed by a $5,000-$10,000 per ticket dinner

    Barbara Bush, 34, one of George W. Bush’s two daughters, attended dinner

    Grandfather George H. W. Bush is voting for Hillary, uncle Jeb isn’t voting
    …
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3817829/Another-Bush-Hillary-Barbara-Bush-spends-Saturday-night-Paris-partying-Huma-Abedin-Clinton-fundraiser.html

  173. Impeach Barry | October 2, 2016 at 5:08 pm |

    A new level of too funny…

    NY Times Didn’t Pay Any Taxes in 2014

    The NY Times yesterday somehow obtained and released a few pages of Trump’s 1995 taxes showing he paid no taxes in that year. He also had a $900,000,000 loss that year which can be deducted from taxable income for up to 18 years.

    The funny part is that anyone who berates Trump over having large write-offs is saying the same thing about the libtards most beloved newspaper The New York Times.

    In case you don’t want to believe Breitbart on principle without reading the article then I provided the proof of NYT not paying any taxes in 2014 in a Forbes article earlier this year.

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/10/02/new-york-times-paid-no-taxes-2014/

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2016/01/31/new-york-times-hypocrisy-on-corporate-taxes-reaches-record-high/#76702c9d6577

    • Danny Thomas | October 2, 2016 at 5:28 pm |

      Why do you care if NYT is paying taxes or not? It’s okay that Trump hasn’t right? Oh, and NYT isn’t running for office of the prez while touting how great they are at ‘business’ while we peruse documentation that shows they may indeed not be so great at ‘business’ after all (unless you consider a $900 million loss as ‘great business’).

      And just to be thorough, 2014 is one single year not 18. Got any proof that Trump paid any for any year?

      I understand if you choose not to respond.

  174. Jim D | October 2, 2016 at 5:21 pm |

    They say it is equally wrong to move operations outside the US to avoid US taxes as for local or state governments to give companies tax breaks for keeping jobs local. How is that equal?

  175. willard (@nevaudit) | October 2, 2016 at 5:43 pm |

    What Puppy Dave may never grasp is that Dirty Donald made money by double-crossing people:

    CNNMoney in August published an analysis of 10 years of [Dirty Donald] corporate documents. The investigation showed that [Dirty Donald]’s company, [Dirty Donald] Hotels & Casino Resorts, lost money every year from 1995 until it went bankrupt in 2004 — more than $600 million in total losses.

    The company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DJT. An investor who put $100 in DJT in 1995 would have lost 90% of that money by 2000, and been left with just $8.72.

    Along the way, DJT paid [Dirty Donald] $39 million in salary, bonuses, options and other compensation.

    […]

    The decade-long saga of DJT began on June 7, 1995.

    That’s when [Dirty Donald] Hotels & Casino Resorts sold stock for the first time. According to corporate filings, [Dirty Donald] raised $140 million in 1995.

    The filings show [Dirty Donald] profited handsomely off the failed business. In addition to $20 million paid out in total by DJT in salary, bonus and options, [Dirty Donald] made an additional $18.5 million off of “other” compensation.

    That included a number of inventive deals: complex consulting contracts that paid [Dirty Donald] for consulting with his own company; licensing deals under which DJT paid [Dirty Donald] to use the [Dirty Donald] name; and reimbursement for the times the company used his personal jet or golf courses for VIPs.

  176. jim2 | October 2, 2016 at 9:38 pm |

    Is Billary out to X Assange? Hmmm … From the article:
    …
    ‘October Surprise’ Thwarted? Wikileaks Cancels Highly Anticipated Tuesday Announcement Due to ‘Security Concerns’
    By Heat Street Staff | 12:56 pm, October 2, 2016

    Wikileaks has abruptly canceled a much-anticipated announcement on Tuesday, according to NBC News. The announcement had been expected to be founder Julian Assange’s long-promised document dump on Hillary Clinton.

    NBC’s Jesse Rodriguez reported that the Tuesday announcement — which was to come from the balcony of London’s Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has sought sanctuary for years – was canceled due to “security concerns”.
    …

    http://heatst.com/politics/october-surprise-thwarted-wikileaks-cancels-highly-anticipated-tuesday-announcement-due-to-security-concerns/

  177. Impeach Barry | October 2, 2016 at 10:36 pm |

    Wikileaks release on Tuesday. Clinton memorial service on Wednesday.

  178. Impeach Barry | October 2, 2016 at 10:37 pm |

    Assange is going to appear by video link as usual instead of live on the balcony.

  179. Impeach Barry | October 2, 2016 at 10:50 pm |

    Tuesday is Wikileaks 10-year anniversary. They won’t not have anything for the anniversary. One should think this will the big one that puts Hillary’s dick in the dirt for good.

  180. Glenn Stehle | October 3, 2016 at 8:28 am |

    Clinton Inc. is still floundering, trying to find that silver bullet that will stop Trump’s momentum with the American people.

    So far, though, neither the Alicia Macado thing nor all the speculation about Trump “not paying taxes” has managed to move the needle.

    It appears most Americans just don’t care about all the irrelevant nonsense that Clinton Inc. is trying to make the campagin about.

    Here’s the RealClearPolitics average this morning. Trump has narrowed Clinton’s lead to 2.5%

  181. Impeach Barry | October 3, 2016 at 9:26 am |

    Thanks

  182. Impeach Barry | October 3, 2016 at 9:40 am |

  184. Ragnaar | October 3, 2016 at 6:22 pm |

    About those Trump Net Operating Loss (NOL) carryforwards. Businesses and rental buildings can generate them. I have never considered not utilizing them by my clients as long as the rules are followed. An NOL is the flip side of taxable profits. We agree they should be taxed.
    Say we have this for a business:
    2010 $100000 loss
    2011 $100000 profit
    2012 $500000 loss
    2013 $700000 profit
    Taxes should be paid on a total $200000
    What was the total profit for the 4 years? $200000
    This is simple. What does a bank consider when evaluating a potential loan to the business? The $200000.
    What does the bank not consider? Some new made up tax law that says the profit and therefore taxes to be paid was higher.
    The profit was $200000. I see nothing unfair about this, but have not considered all possible scenarios. And the NOL rules are not as simple as I have portrayed them.
    I think the attacks on the NOL rules are nothing but populist anti-business unfairness. They have been trotted out as some kind of subsidy for corporations. But I can’t find the subsidy in my example. Some people don’t like businesses.

    • Jim D | October 3, 2016 at 6:47 pm |

      This is where I think there should be a cap for the carried forward deduction such as $1m. This limits the government/peoples liability for huge personal business losses. I heard that Trump accounted for 2% of the total national NOL that year. He cost hundreds of millions of dollars of lost tax revenue because of this failure.

    • Ragnaar | October 3, 2016 at 7:25 pm |

      Another example. You build large buildings and then sell them. Your cash flow is zero in and material amounts out. So you show losses until you finish the thing and it sells. You could say, all the costs should be capitalized anyways so you don’t have a loss. But it is likely some will escape capitalization which means add it to basis to be used upon the sale. So you do have a loss. Say you have an office. It’s kind of hard to capitalize those costs that allow you to build the large building in the large building’s basis. Say you buy some equipment to do your own work on the foundation. Are we really going to put the cost of a backhoe into the basis of the large building? My examples may not be perfect but the idea I am trying to convey is that such timing differences may be fairly reconciled by the use of the NOL carry forward. The lack of the carry forward option can certainly be argued to be unfair.

    • jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 8:01 pm |

      If JimD had his way a lot of businesses would go under. So would a lot of jobs. So would businesses that supply that business. Typical short-sighted dreck from our Socialist friend.

      • Jim D | October 3, 2016 at 8:14 pm |

        If a business goes under just by having to pay income tax like their competitors, they have issues with their business model and don’t deserve to survive.

      • jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 9:02 pm |

        Yep, JimD. Make sure the money-grubbin’ gubmint gets their hands all all the money.

      • Jim D | October 3, 2016 at 10:09 pm |

        jim2, you are supporting welfare for the millionaires.

    • Ragnaar | October 3, 2016 at 8:45 pm |

      Another example. Capital loss carry forwards. You decide to become a day trader with some of your after tax money. You suck at it. You report your gains and losses on schedule D. You lose $100,000 before you decide you better stop being a day trader. The IRS lets you deduct $3000 a year of those losses. Btw, that $3000 has not been indexed up for the COLA in over 2 decades. See, money grubbing Congress backdoor tax increases. The rest of the losses are carried forward to offset future gains and/or give a $3000 loss each year. See the instructions for schedule D and the worksheets. This isn’t too different from what Trump did in substance. All kinds of people do this. Many of the them middle class. Few were actually day traders. Most had lousy financial advisers. Where did this $3000 per year limit come from? Congress. What arguments could be used to support it? They tax gains in full if you don’t have carry forward losses. But losses can be deferred into the future. I suppose it had something to do with balancing the budget that can include such timing differences that sometimes make this accountant cynical.

      First you learning accounting which makes sense, is simple and pure. Then you learn all the screwed up stuff Congress has thought up that disagrees with what accountants first learned.

      What may happen here? Probably nothing. Getting Clinton elected is the only point here. After that, nothing will change. Until the next person with money tries to get elected. It’s like the Democrats laid a trap. If you have money and follow the tax code. We got you.

      • Impeach Barry | October 4, 2016 at 8:57 am |

        Yeah it’s worse than that. Beginning 17 years ago I started whittling down $120,000 in day trading losses @ $3000 per year. I’ll be well over the average lifespan if I manage to deduct it all.

      • JCH | October 5, 2016 at 12:03 am |

        Ragnaar will probably say I’m wrong…

        You can offset long-term capital gains with a capital loss carry forward. Say your loss carry forward is $250,000. At $3,000 per year, you’ll never use all of it. You buy ACME common stock. 20 months later you sell it for a long-term gain of $260,000. 260 minus 250 = gain of $10,000. Pay your capital gains tax on $10,000.

        On NOL, many taxpayers, based upon income, lose deductions many taxpayers get to take. One is college loan interest. Why should a billionaire get to write off business his stewpudity when thousands of Americans can’t deduct college loan interest in the same way millions of other Americans get to deduct college loan interest? We used to deduct the interest on our Rolls Royce loans. Now we can’t. If we lose deductions, why can’t Donnie, the greatest businessman of all time, lose his?

        Lol, so he has to leap buildings that are slightly taller; no problem for the business superman.

      • Ragnaar | October 5, 2016 at 2:41 pm |

        JCH:
        You are not wrong.
        Large capital loss carry forwards might never be used up. Congress can say, they didn’t take it away, they deferred it. Might be page one in their playbook, timing differences. Imagine the revenue gains going from pre $3000 loss limit to limited.
        You mention deductions lost based on higher incomes. Page two to their playbook. We ask the question, did you raise tax rates? No. But they got a backdoor tax increase anyways.
        Say we wanted to limit NOLs. One avenue is to limit the loss taken to 50% of adjusted gross income each year. Here I compromise to deferral hoping not to lose the loss carry forward.
        I came across a situation that may only apply to Minnesota. Client had large NOL. Closed his business. Debt was forgiven which gave him cancellation of debt income. The two offset. No problem right? Minnesota corporate AMT kicks in arbitrarily excluding 10% of his NOL at the state level.
        The Federal AMT was supposed to be about fairness. It is probably one of the most disparaged sections of the code. With the AMT they used to not COLA it. It would creep to capture more people over time. Some people are punished for the terrible act of paying a lot of state income and property taxes by the AMT.
        The establishment hates old people. There are two threshold numbers for, Are my social security benefits taxable? $25k and 32k. They have never increased in the past two decades. No COLA. Creeping capture again.

      • JCH | October 5, 2016 at 3:38 pm |

        Ragnaar – perspective is everything. The reason they did all those duplicitous things was the threat of a veto if they tried to raise marginal rates. Can’t raise marginal rates; you chip away at loopholes. All one has to do to satisfy the angry voter is to call them loopholes. He’ll gladly take one in the shorts to get rid of his own loopholes.

        Also, to simply the tax code, they keep simplifying it by complicating it. Just tell the angry voter they’re simplifying the tax code; print 8,000 pages of instructions; repeat same thing next year; angry voter happy as a clam.

        But seriously, there is no reason to allow the world’s greatest businessman to write off one billion in losses against !!billions!! in his other ingenious business income. The great one will not be disadvantaged by the meager additional challenge of not being on billionaire welfare.

      • Ragnaar | October 5, 2016 at 8:51 pm |

        List of some loopholes that are limited in some cases:
        Student loan interest deduction
        IRA deduction
        State income and real estate taxes
        Medical and dental costs
        Contributions to Health Saving Accounts

        My favorite:
        “Student activity fees and expenses for course-related books, supplies, and equipment are included in qualified education expenses (Tuition and fees deduction) only if the fees and expenses must be paid to the institution as a condition of enrollment or attendance.”
        I can still write of the fees of my graduate student son, but his books? Nope. No benefit. When he claims himself for 2017 as he’ll be supporting himself, nothing for the books again.

        Here it is for the American Opportunity Credit:
        “However, expenses for books, supplies, and equipment needed for a course of study are included in qualified education expenses whether or not the materials are purchased from the educational institution.”

        So undergrads may get a credit for books in some cases. Graduate students – Never! Clamp down on those loopholes. We don’t like TAs. Bunch of loopholers.

    • Ragnaar | October 3, 2016 at 8:58 pm |

      President Obama has over $100,000 of carry forward capital losses. Their 2015 return is simple and straight forward. It’s boring. He took a foreign tax credit. Same as ExxonMobil does. And that’s a subsidy if you are an oil company.
      Secretary Clinton has almost $700,000 of carry forward capital losses. Using a 500 index fund reported on their 2015 return they have about $3 million worth of big bad corporations stock through a mutual fund. In one area they are smart. They use the Vanguard company. Now do as your Secretary does. Use Vanguard. Even though she is a globalist they don’t invest their money in overseas stock as far as I can see from their return.

      • jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 9:03 pm |

        It’s OK if the Socialist Dimowits do it. It’s only bad if a Redimowit or quasi-Redimowit does it.

      • Danny Thomas | October 3, 2016 at 9:17 pm |

        Typical knee-jerk reaction. What JimD suggested was a dollar limit. That limit knows no party affiliation.

        I’m not agreeing with or defending Jim, but thought I’d point a mirror your direction. It’s apparently only WRONG if Jim D or a Democrat does it and only Right if Brietbart or a Republican (no matter their stripes) does it.

        That big bad double headed double standard monster of yours Jim2. Try applying things to both sides even if its not equal.

      • jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 9:28 pm |

        The current tax laws know no party affiliation. The dollar limit is a dumb idea. (Oh, the tax laws know no party affiliation unless it’s Obumbles IRS targeting conservatives. O is much more corrupt than Nixon ever was. He and Lyin’ Billary both belong in jail.)

      • Danny Thomas | October 3, 2016 at 9:40 pm |

        Jim2,
        “The dollar limit is a dumb idea.” Maybe. But that still has nothing to do with party affiliations.

        And you speak with forked tongue and continually prove that you are not trustworthy when it comes to politics. But that’s your choice.

        http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder/2013/0517/Playing-the-IRS-card-Six-presidents-who-used-the-IRS-to-bash-political-foes/President-Calvin-Coolidge

      • Jim D | October 3, 2016 at 9:39 pm |

        You should know that the amount you can claim on capital losses is limited each year and limited a lot. Capital losses include those on stocks. Many had this issue after 2008. NOL has no such limits and can wipe out your whole income tax burden.

      • JCH | October 5, 2016 at 3:40 pm |

        A NOL and a LT capital loss carry forward are not equal.

  185. jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 8:00 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    “I was standing on the Miss USA stage, a dream come true for so many young women and an incredible memory that I will treasure for years to come. But an even greater experience that stemmed from my time at Miss USA was my time with Donald Trump,” Gesiotto wrote.
    …
    http://conservativetribune.com/fed-up-miss-usa-hits-universe/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=THENewVoice&utm_campaign=manualpost

  186. jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 9:00 pm |

    The Obumbles administration cover-up for Billary. Dimowits – if their lips are moving, they’re lyin’. From the article:
    …
    The FBI agreed to destroy two Clinton aides’ laptops after granting them immunity as part of a “side agreement,” according to a letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
    Goodlatte alleges that the FBI promised to destroy the laptops of Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, and Heather Samuelson, an ex-campaign staffer and deputy to Mills, after conducting its search.

    Fox News cites unnamed sources in a report saying that the FBI’s search was also limited in scope, in order to “[prevent] the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice.” Investigators could not review documents created after January 31, 2015:
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/03/fbi-agreed-destroy-clinton-aides-laptops-granting-immunity/

  187. jim2 | October 3, 2016 at 9:05 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    Tax preparer and Forbes contributor Ryan Ellis writes that “professional” journalists’ hot takes about Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return show how little they know about taxes and business.
    From Forbes:

    To state the obvious, political reporters don’t know a damned thing about taxes. I know this–believe me (to channel my inner Donald). Part of what I do for a living is prepare people’s taxes in the Washington, DC area. As an Enrolled Agent, I run into all sorts of clients. The most political (that is, horse race/hot take) clients compete with performing artists for the least amount of knowledge when it comes to taxes. I’ve even had some of them forget to bring their W-2s to a tax session.

    That ignorance was on display in vivid colors over the weekend. We were told that this tricky NOL was some sort of “loophole” that only super-rich bad guys like Donald Trump got to use. We were told that this relieved him of having to pay taxes for 18 years, a laughably arbitrary, made up number that is the tautological output of simple arithmetic and wild assumptions.
    …
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/10/03/tax-expert-journalists-proved-donald-trumps-returns-ignorance/

  189. Joel Williams | October 4, 2016 at 1:25 pm |

    Bill Clinton calls Obamacare ‘the craziest thing in the world’

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/04/politics/bill-clinton-obamacare-craziest-thing/index.html

    Isn’t Obamacare an offshoot of what Hillary was trying to promote under Bill??

  190. Ragnaar | October 4, 2016 at 2:30 pm |

    “On Wednesday, The Times presented the tax documents to Jack Mitnick, a lawyer and certified public accountant who handled Mr. Trump’s tax matters for more than 30 years, until 1996. Mr. Mitnick was listed as the preparer on the New Jersey tax form.”
    “Mr. Mitnick, 80, now semiretired and living in Florida, said that while he no longer had access to Mr. Trump’s original returns, the documents appeared to be authentic copies of portions of Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax returns. Mr. Mitnick said the signature on the tax preparer line of the New Jersey tax form was his, and he readily explained an obvious anomaly in the way especially large numbers appeared on the New York tax document.”

    “A member in public practice shall not disclose any confidential client information without the specific consent of the client.”

    Mitnick might be argued not to be in public practice anymore. I can’t imagine confidentiality requirements stop upon retirement. I would not be surprised if CPAs go after Mitnick. He called himself one. I do not think that what he did is what we are supposed to do.

    I think he should have asked for information from those that presented him the tax documents to determine who they were. Asked for a copy of the documents. Then just explained what he knew for many years about confidentiality, while confirming nothing. Did he have a responsibility to inform Trump of the situation? I think so.

  191. jim2 | October 4, 2016 at 9:46 pm |

    From Guccifer 2.0, October 4.
    …
    GUCCIFER 2.0 HACKED CLINTON FOUNDATION
    Many of you have been waiting for this, some even asked me to do it.

    So, this is the moment. I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ databases.

    Hillary Clinton and her staff don’t even bother about the information security. It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server.

    Here’s the contents of one of the folders that I got from there
    …
    https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/clinton-foundation/

    • Danny Thomas | October 4, 2016 at 10:58 pm |

      “None of the folders or files shown are from the Clinton Foundation.”

      Guccifer 2.0, an online persona widely regarded as a front for Russian intelligence operatives, claimed Tuesday to have hacked the Clinton Foundation, the non-profit organization that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton founded with her family.

      “I hacked the Clinton Foundation server and downloaded hundreds of thousands of docs and donors’ databases,” Guccifer said in a post on the self-proclaimed hacker’s blog. “It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server.”

      “A Clinton Foundation official denied the claim in a statement to Fortune. “Once again, we still have no evidence Clinton Foundation systems were breached and have not been notified by law enforcement of an issue,” the official said. “None of the folders or files shown are from the Clinton Foundation.”

      Guccifer posted screenshots of folders and spreadsheets allegedly pulled from the foundation’s computer network along with an 860-megabyte file of alleged donor information. A photo of the alleged directory included folders named “DCCC,” “DNC,” “Donor Research and Prospecting,” “Large Contributions,” PAC Fundraisers,” and suspiciously, “Pay to Play.”

      “As you can see, the private server of the Clinton clan contains docs and donors lists of the Democratic committees, PACs, etc. Does it surprise you?” Guccifer wrote.

      Guccifer also claimed that one spreadsheet showed how banks like Goldman Sachs contributed some portion of bail-out funds from the 2008 financial meltdown to Democrats. “It looks like big banks and corporations agreed to donate to the Democrats a certain percentage of the allocated TARP funds,” Guccifer wrote.

      For more on political hacking, watch:

      Despite the hacking claim as well as reports that the foundation has been investigating suspected computer network intrusions, the documents posted by Guccifer seem to correspond to files that were stolen in an earlier breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as The Hill noted.

      Among the clues: the listed donors match contributors to the DCCC; the donors do not match the names of contributors disclosed on the foundation’s website; and one of the spreadsheets seems to have been created by a DCCC staffer, Kevin McKeon, in 2009.

      Guccifer has attempted to repurpose DCCC documents before. Last month the person or group behind the alias posted files allegedly filched from a computer used by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In actuality, the documents appeared to have originated with the DCCC.”

      http://fortune.com/2016/10/04/clinton-foundation-guccifer-hack-claim/

      2nd and likely more helpful link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

  192. jim2 | October 4, 2016 at 10:27 pm |

    I would like to share this, but will put it on the political thread even though it doesn’t fit. It might be fun sometime to have a thread to post stupid things from the internet. Get this one.

    …
    To combat the rampant heat loss through a wall of spaced 2x4s, builders place petroleum-based fiberglass insulation
    …
    https://www.good.is/articles/build-a-better-home-with-these-alternative-construction-methods

  193. jim2 | October 5, 2016 at 7:20 am |

    To drop into moderation: Nazi.

    Would a new political thread be OK?

    Regards, j2.