Sean Hannity at 10 pm takes first place in September for first time over all rivals at FOX

Good news for Hannity, good sign for Trump.

Story here.

Publius Decius Mus rightly mocks Mark Levin's convention of the states

Not in so many words, but he does nevertheless, here:

"[I]n the federally consolidated super-state, what good do state legislatures do anyway? Does Voegeli or doesn’t he agree with me that federal and administrative state control will become more consolidated rather than less in Clinton II? We could have every statehouse in the nation, and everything we try to do (which, once again, is: not much) would just be overridden by judges and bureaucrats."

It was amusing to hear Mark Levin play an Antonin Scalia audio this evening, in which Scalia ridiculed the parchment barrier of The Bill of Rights, which Levin's grand scheme is to increase the length of with his manifold "liberty amendments". Does Levin even listen to Scalia, or just grovel at his feet?

Scalia clearly expressed in the audio that the separation of powers was key to our liberties, not the Bill of Rights.

Yet, yet, neither Scalia, nor Levin, nor Publius Decius Mus for that matter recognize that it was Abraham Lincoln, their hero!, who destroyed the separation of powers and arrogated all the power to the executive, the very heart and soul of the once and future "federal and administrative state".

That Lincoln did so over slavery was simply the pretext.

Hello Barack Obama. Hello Black Lives Matter. Hello . . . communism.

If I had a Wall Street Journal subscription, I would end it

Here.

Paul Ryan proves again he's the wrong man for Speaker: Gridlock is the constitutional SOLUTION, and he's tired of it

Fire the bum.

Here he is:

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said. “We’re just at loggerheads. We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — poverty, the debt crisis, the economy, health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”

Chris Matthews of PMSNBC sounds like he wants to be for Trump

"[Trump] knows that the average guy out there, the average joe, the regular guy and woman, is very angry about the way this country -- and Hillary is the symbol of the establishment. She is the symbol of the way things are headed... and they don't like that. They are trying to ring the bell and say, 'No!' And Trump is the only way to ring it... If Trump is even smart enough to know this, it would be really dangerous." 

Much more here.

FOX News poll goes from Trump +1 on 9/14 to Hillary +5 on 9/29

More evidence Trump's performance at Debate One is hurting him.

In the news at the top of the hour, the Presidential Debate Commission admits there were problems with Donald Trump's microphone

Friday night news dump, when no one is paying attention.

Trump moves from +1.4 on 9/23 in the LA Times/USC poll to +5.6 on 9/30

That suggests, unlike the Rasmussen poll, that Debate One helped Trump.

Go figure.

Trump's big lead in Rasmussen poll reverses after Debate One

Here:

Clinton took a statistically insignificant 42% to 41% lead over Trump in yesterday’s survey, but she had been trailing by five points a week earlier.

Obama economic growth to date lags Bush by 35%

Obama economic growth to date has expanded by 26.8%.

Under Bush similarly measured it expanded by 41.5%.

Leaked audio shows Hillary is against WMD modernization

From the story here:

“The last thing we need,” she told the audience, “are sophisticated cruise missiles that are nuclear armed.”

Good news: Manual labor must be on the way out ... because the idiot who runs Obama's Navy says "yeoman" isn't gender neutral

And there goes The Man of La Mancha.

Quoted here:

“Lastly, as we achieve full integration of the force … this is an opportunity to update the position titles and descriptions themselves to demonstrate through this language that women are included in these positions," [Navy Secretary Ray] Mabus wrote, according to sources who quoted directly from the letter. “Ensure they are gender-integrated as well, removing “man” from their titles, and provide a report to me as soon as is practicable and no later than April 1, 2016.” 

h/t Chris Plante

Small manufacturer turns his roof into the world's biggest Trump sign ever

Video here. Looks like he used a GoPro camera affixed to a drone.

The answer: CHUMPS

Hillary, here.

Trump has captured the real American spirit, the spirit of the true born sons of liberty who dumped the cheaper taxed tea into Boston harbor.

Hillary drops 20% in PPP poll

She was +5 in the poll a month ago, and tonight is +4.

Heh, heh.

Drudge remains illiterate

New York Times: "Remarkable rebuke to the president"

Here:

WASHINGTON — Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override a veto by President Obama for the first time, passing into law a bill that would allow the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot.

Democrats in large numbers joined with Republicans to deliver a remarkable rebuke to the president. The 97-to-1 vote in the Senate and the 348-to-77 vote in the House displayed the enduring power of the Sept. 11 families in Washington and the diminishing influence here of the Saudi government. ...

Only one senator, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, sided with the president. 

Eighteen House Republicans couldn't find it in themselves to override the president's veto (roll call here):

Benishek Buck Chaffetz Conaway DesJarlais

Grothman Hartzler Issa Jolly King (IA) Kline Nunes

Ribble Sessions Stewart Thornberry Turner Young (AK)

Chris Plante tells Limey interviewer: If Trump becomes president maybe we'll buy England!

Audio here.

Excellent tongue-lashing, Chris!

Commerce Secretary in April 2016 can't understand Hillary's flip-flop on TPP

Here:

PENNY PRITZKER: I don't understand that conclusion. Because frankly, having looked at this agreement, studied this agreement, it is the Gold Standard. It is the toughest trade agreement out there in the world.

Hillary's lyin' again: "This TPP sets the gold standard in free trade agreements"

In 2012, here.

9/26/16:

DONALD TRUMP

You called it the gold standard. You call it the gold standard of trade deals.

HILLARY CLINTON

You know what --

DONALD TRUMP

You said it’s the finest deal you’ve ever seen.

HILLARY CLINTON

No.

Mark Levin makes a fair point: Trump would have been prepared to respond to Clinton had he been a conservative

And he says the most memorable line from Debate One will be "Hannity", which is very funny.

Today's Electoral College snapshot from Real Clear Politics has Clinton winning 292-246

Today's Electoral College snapshot from Real Clear Politics has Clinton winning 292-246

Real Clear Politics shows Trump up 1 in the Electoral College with 165, Clinton down 12 with 188, and 185 too close to call, up 11 from last week Tuesday.

Based only on the polling as of this morning in the toss-up states with 185 Electoral College votes at stake, Trump wins in NV, AZ, CO, IA, OH, NC, and GA, bringing him to 246, 24 shy of the 270 he needs to win.

Clinton wins in MN, WI, MI, NH, ME, PA, VA and FL, bringing her to 292, 22 more than she needs to win.

Trump has picked up NV, CO and NC in the last week in this analysis, but lost FL to Clinton by a hair.

Clinton is polling under +4 in ME, under +2 in PA and under +1 in FL this week.

Trump is much more vulnerable, polling under +3 in NV, AZ and OH this week. He is polling under +1 in CO and NC. In GA he's ahead +4.5, in IA +5.

ME-2 has moved out of the toss-ups in the last week, and ME and MN have moved in.

42 days to election day 2016.

It's funny Hillary mentioned Miss Piggy tonight

Listen up, Sister!

Who you callin' Sister?

After tonight's nothin' burger debate, Hillary has events scheduled each day through the end of September, but . . .

It appears October 1-4 is blocked out for rest, and on the 5th she has an event close to home in DC.

Hillary's own Platte River Networks called her email delete instructions the "Hillary Coverup Operation"

Jake Tapper here:

JAKE TAPPER, CNN: There was a document dump on Friday where we learned from the FBI that an I.T. contractor managing Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server made reference to the "Hillary coverup operation" in a work ticket. 

Just another day working for the Clinton Family Crime Foundation.

Fifty Bushies endorse Trump on eve of Debate One with Hillary

Story here.

Rent seekers.

Clinton surrogates in the media this weekend portray Trump as a liar because that's HILLARY'S problem

So says Gallup, here, where "lie" never comes up in the Trump list of top words used about him (in fact no negative words come up in the list at all), but comes up in the Hillary list six straight weeks along with "scandal" during three weeks:   

Hillary dives 80% in Quinnipiac poll since 9/13

She's +1 in the poll through 9/25, but had been +5 through 9/13.

Meanwhile Bloomberg shows Trump and Hillary tied after not polling since early August when it was Hillary +6.

She's got a real PR problem for calling Trump supporters "deplorable" on 9/10, and for trying to cover up her health problems which were exposed the very next day, on 9/11.

You might say pride cometh before a fall.

Which would be why she's not 50 points ahead.

CIA has been affirmative action employer for communists, like Obama's John Brennan

Brennan, who thinks drone strikes are legal, ethical and wise, quoted here:

"So if back in 1980, John Brennan was allowed to say, 'I voted for the Communist Party with Gus Hall' [in 1976]... and still got through, rest assured that your rights and your expressions and your freedom of speech as Americans is something that's not going to be disqualifying of you as you pursue a career in government."

Maybe the FBI should give Brad Pitt immunity

That way they can find out what really happened.

Clinton drops 75% in ABC News / WaPo poll after 9/11 health debacle

From +8 on 9/8 to +2 on 9/22.

That's gotta hurt.

There she goes . . . just bob bob bobbin' along!

Today's Real Clear Politics' "No Toss Up States" Map has the worst woman since Jezebel winning in the Electoral College by two

Hillary's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills' MO since the 1990s has been to lose, withhold, suppress and destroy evidence, and FBI director James Comey let her do it all again

From Paul Sperry, here:

• During the Whitewater investigation a burglar conveniently stole her notes, obstructing justice
• In a subsequent scandal the House referred her to the Justice Department on charges of obstruction and perjury for withholding documents and lying under oath
• In 2000 she suborned obstruction according to the testimony of a Commerce Dept. official she pressured to withhold evidence
• At the same time she went on to claim that 1.8 million subpoenaed emails involving the Lewinsky Affair were lost due to a technical glitch with White House computers
• In 2012 it was Mills who decided which emails about Benghazi were passed along to investigators, or not
• A deputy US ambassador testified Mills pressured him not to cooperate with investigators
• Mills moved Hillary's emails off the private server onto laptops and then decided which were public and which were private, and in the end had those laptops bleached clean
• Mills ordered the Denver technician to delete Hillary's email archive after the House ordered it preserved

Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal is Jewish, and so is Steve Wynn?

Who knew?

Story here.

Outrageous: FBI gave immunity to Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Clinton executive assistant Heather Samuelson and John Bentel of the State Department

That's how badly James Comey doesn't want Donald Trump elected president.

From the Friday-afternoon-when-no-one-is-paying-attention-news-dump, here:

"No wonder they couldn't prosecute a case," said Chaffetz, R-Utah. "They were handing out immunity deals like candy." ...

The latest revelation brings the total number of people who were granted immunity as part of the FBI's investigation to at least five.

It had previously been reported immunity had been granted to Bryan Pagliano, a tech expert who set up Clinton's email server, as well as Paul Combetta, a computer specialist for a private firm that later maintained Clinton's email setup.

Ted Cruz says he'll vote for Donald Trump as promised, urges you to join him, and says Hillary is wholly unacceptable

Here on Facebook, citing primarily Supreme Court appointments and the fate of the Bill of Rights, then the costs of ObamaCare for millions of Americans, the Democrat war on coal, oil and gas, the lawless executive illegal immigrant amnesty, threats to National Security from Muslim immigration, and Obama's giving up of US control of the internet.

That should also help him get reelected down in Texas.

Smart move. Really late, but a smart move.

Informed Electorate PAC is a scam: It polls your opinion on one question per call, until they ask you for money on the third

They are at: www.votethewill.org

ServiceHostNet says there's no SSL certificate on the website, which is bad for your privacy.

First call: Did you vote in the last election?

Second call: Should the federal government decide stuff or the states?

On the third call they tell you it costs money to collect your opinion, so how about coughing up $20 to help.

Looks like a phishing expedition to me.

















ServiceHostNet also has these details:

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Middle class self-identification has plummeted under Obama says Gallup's CEO: The lives of 25 million adults have "crashed"

The average of those identifying as middle class under eight years of George Bush was 61%.

In 2015 that's fallen to 51%.

Story here.

Globalist elitist Matthew Continetti thinks "a homogenous world", "universal principles" and "hybrid identity" are noble ideas

Here.

He differs not from Obama in holding to them.

Not a conservative, of course. But The Grauniad of all places provided some needed reactionary commentary on this in August here.

Democrat Marissa Mayer of Yahoo mishandles your email but makes Hillary look like a piker

She's just as good at the stonewalling, though. The hack of 500 million accounts was way back in 2014.

Story here and everywhere.

NY Times' story about police shooting in Tulsa never tells you the perp had PCP in the car

Here, even though that information was available a day earlier here.

The perp was blocking traffic, mumbling to himself outside of the car in the roadway, and not responding to the officers' orders.

The first degree manslaughter charge is ridiculous.

Publius Decius Mus imagines there is a transcendence which is outside of religion

Yes, there is. They used to call it "idolatry".

In any event, this excerpt shows that Decius simply fails to take the Protestantism of the American Founding seriously. One could blame the Founders for being too particular in this regard, but that's a different topic altogether.

Here:

The Old Right was, in my view, too particular in that it tried to base everything on tradition, on kith and kin, blood and soil and so on. It rejected any transcendence (beyond the religious) as “universalist” and liberal. This is my ultimate problem with Kirk, Bradford and the like.  They want to say that certain things are good while rejecting any fundamental, permanent ground for the good.  The New Right swung way to the other direction and insists on universals and sees all particulars—at least when asserted by Americans and Europeans—as insular and racist. The truth is that both are true in their sphere and both are necessary. Restoring a proper relationship between the universal and the particular is in my view the paramount theoretical challenge for whatever it is that follows conservatism.

William Voegeli doesn't know that Oliver Goldsmith's perhaps most famous axiom was written by Samuel Johnson

Are we therefore wrong to look to an Oliver Goldsmith, and then to a Donald Trump, "to lead and inspire"?

Here:

Stipulating all that for the sake of the argument does nothing to clarify how a Trump presidency remedies the afflictions catalogued in this sprawling diagnosis. Indeed, since many items on the list are social trends or crackpot ideas, it’s not clear how any president can reverse the damage being done. “How small, of all that human hearts endure,” wrote Oliver Goldsmith, “that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Conservatives invoke this axiom to rebuke liberal social planners, but it also calls into question whether political activity can effect moral and social regeneration. And to whatever extent Americans still look to presidents to lead and inspire through word and deed, Trump’s capacity to advance such causes as virtue, morality, religious faith, and stability is exceptionally doubtful.

What's wrong with America, epitomized by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

He thinks gay libertarian Peter Thiel would be an excellent nominee to the US Supreme Court.

Here.

The libertarian vote is like 1% of the population. LGBTQLSMFT is less than 4% of the population, but there isn't one Protestant on the Supreme Court even though 50% of the country is.  

Down by four two weeks ago, Rasmussen now has Trump +5 over Clinton

The fickle turn on the pneumonia dime.

Story here.

To keep the peace, prepare for war

www.springfieldarms.net

Hillary has nothing on the schedule until the debate on the 26th

Surrogates handle the schedule until she appears five days hence with Trump.

I predict she'll hold her own at the debate, as long as they give her what they gave her on 9/11 to recover so quickly from the health incident at Ground Zero.

And I'll betcha she was on the same cocktail during her Benghazi hearing before the Congress.

Hillary gets the best she can from Janet Yellen: Economy still too weak for the Fed to further normalize interest rates

Actually, the Fed is too weak morally to normalize interest rates, and won't move until after the election. A December hike if Trump is elected may well send the markets tumbling down, which you know will be blamed on his election, not on the Fed.

Meanwhile banks continue to get rich while impoverishing savers $100 billion quarterly since the end of 2008. That's $3.2 trillion they'll have robbed from the American people by the end of 2016.

Government of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks.

Politico reports here:

The Fed’s target rate is now just 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent, a remarkably low figure this late in an economic recovery that gives the central bank little room to maneuver should a new crisis or recession arise. So the Fed’s move avoids a market meltdown but offers fresh rhetorical evidence for Trump and other Republicans who argue that the economy is extraordinarily weak. ... Trump has also said that as president he would replace Yellen, whose term runs until February 2018. And he has ripped the Fed for creating what he has called a “false economy” with high stock prices but only modest wage gains and a very low labor-force participation rate.

Polling schmolling: In September to date it's been from Clinton +8 to Trump +5

Like I'm supposed to believe these polls are doing anything but suppressing the vote, not measuring it.

NBC News and The Wall Street Journal hate Donald Trump, so when they come out tonight with Clinton +7 through 9/19 am I going to believe that when the LA Times/USC poll which cants slightly Republican has Trump +5 through the same date?

Of course not.

The Real Clear Politics average has Clinton +1.9, from polls generally hostile to the threat posed by Donald J. Trump. We're doing OK.

Liberal blogger admits Hillary campaign in 2008 pushed birther issue through Sidney Blumenthal who fed over 60 stories on various subjects

I guess Martha Raddatz is right. The birther issue isn't over . . . for Hillary.

Here.

Liberal blogger admits he was Sid Blumenthal conduit to advance Mark Penn strategy against Obama

Here.

The tyranny of modernity: Obama says it has tolerance for all (except for fundamentalists, racists and ethnic supremacists)

But he repeats himself.

Quoted here and here:

“We must reject any form of fundamentalism, or racism or a belief in ethnic superiority that makes our traditional identities irreconcilable with modernity,” Obama said before the U.N. “It’s a truism that globalism has led to a collision of cultures.”

"Instead we need to embrace the tolerance that results from respect of all human beings," he said.

I'll go along with this analysis when the Amish mafia takes over the country and makes it so violent and undesirable that the foreign hoards suddenly stop trying to come here.

The recently ended El Nino shifted the declining 21st Century temperature trend UP by over 75%, but it's still declining!

Before the El Nino:

After the El Nino (which was already over by the May-June-July measuring period):

Why you should like Donald Trump: None of these men do

Today's Electoral College snapshot from Real Clear Politics has Clinton winning 293-245

Real Clear Politics shows Trump with 164 in the Electoral College, Clinton with 200, and 174 too close to call.

Based only on polling in the toss-up states with 174 as of this morning, Trump wins AZ, IA, OH, ME-2, GA and FL, bringing him to 245, 25 shy of the 270 he needs to win.

Clinton wins NV, CO, WI, MI, PA, NH, VA and NC, bringing her to 293, 23 more than she needs to win.

If Clinton lost NC and NV where the polls are razor thin, she would still prevail with 272. Lose in addition either CO or VA where her lead is under +4 and she's a goner.

Trump is currently under +2 in AZ, OH and FL.

49 days to election day 2016.

Pal of WaPo's Jennifer Rubin blames defeat of Romney on the mistaken idea of the decline of White Christian America

This is pure voter suppression on Jennifer Rubin's part.

White America isn't in decline. It's just that no one appeals to their interests anymore because it has been politically incorrect to do so.

The fact is that Romney received less than 59% of the white vote in 21 states and lost the white vote outright in 8, losing all 21 states to Obama in the process. But even as bad as that was, with just an 8% better performance among whites in only four states in the east Romney would still have defeated Obama.

Robert P. Jones, here, whose numbers are not granular, which is what is required for sound political analysis but not at WaPo (because it's a Democrat typing pool):

In the last presidential election, for example, about eight in ten of Mitt Romney’s supporters were white Christians, compared to only about one third of Barack Obama’s supporters.

Under Obama minorities have been hired to full-time jobs at the expense of whites

Another first under Obama: IEDs in America become the news lede

ELIZABETH — An improvised explosive device in a backpack detonated near the Elizabeth train station early Monday as authorities were using a bomb robot to examine the item, officials said.

Read the whole thing here.

Hillary's polling has pneumonia

This afternoon Hillary is polling +0.9 in the Real Clear Politics average of seven polls. On 9/11 she was +3.1.

The LA Times/USC poll has Trump +7. On 9/11 it was Hillary +1.4. That's a swing of over eight points toward Trump.

The Rasmussen poll on Thursday had Trump +2. A week prior to that it was Clinton +4. That's a six point swing toward Trump.

Les Deplorables: Under Obama full-time employment for Asians, Hispanics and blacks has recovered, but not for whites

Hm. How did that happen?

Maybe because race hiring quotas became de facto mandatory for private employers in late 2013 because of 2010's Dodd-Frank legislation.

Full-time for Asians in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 1,232,000 jobs after eight years

Full-time for Hispanics in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 1,426,000 jobs after nine years

Full-time for blacks in the core 25 to 54 years age group has recovered by 166,000 jobs after nine years

Full-time for whites in the core 25 to 54 years age group has not recovered and is still 4,368,000 jobs behind from 2007

The five warmest years in Grand Rapids, Michigan by average annual temperature weren't the last five

The five warmest years to date in Grand Rapids, Michigan:

2012: 52.8 degrees F

1931: 52.2

1921: 52.2

1998: 51.5

2010: 51.1.

The mean is 48.2.

2016 through August has been running about 6% above the mean. If that continues through the final four months of the year, 2016 will finish the year near 51.1, tied with 2010.

Note that 2015-2016 and 1997-1998 were two of the three Very Strong El Nino episodes since 1950. 1930-1931 was also an El Nino.

Clinton Foundation scam hauls in $178 million in 2014, gives just $5.2 million to "charities"

The Federalist summarizes the scam here.

The biggest single donation to a non-Clinton entity was $700,000 which helped pay for $126,000 in first-class airfare for the actor communist asshole Sean Penn.

Hillary pal Sid Vicious Blumenthal pushed birther story to McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher

McClatchy reported last night here also that there was a birther email sent by a quickly fired Iowa campaign volunteer:

Meanwhile, former McClatchy Washington Bureau Chief James Asher tweeted Friday that Blumenthal had “told me in person” that Obama was born in Kenya.

“During the 2008 Democratic primary, Sid Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Co.,” Asher said in an email Friday to McClatchy, noting that he was at the time the investigative editor and in charge of Africa coverage.

“During that meeting, Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.

“At the time of Mr. Blumenthal’s conversation with me, there had been a few news articles published in various outlets reporting on rumors about Obama’s birthplace. While Mr. Blumenthal offered no concrete proof of Obama’s Kenyan birth, I felt that, as journalists, we had a responsibility to determine whether or not those rumors were true. They were not.”

Blumenthal, who worked in the White House with President Bill Clinton and later was employed by the Clinton Foundation, could not be reached Friday but said in an email to The Boston Globe, “This is false. Period.”

Once again it's Obama who is the original birther: As late as April 2007 his literary agent portrayed him as born in Kenya

Politico story in 2011 blamed birtherism on the 2008 Hillary campaign after Muslim smear failed, so Trump can't say as much?

Read the Politico story for yourself, here.

To this day Hillary must laugh herself silly how this thing has backfired on Republicans, not on her.

George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, who doesn't vote and won't vote, epitomizes everything loathsome about libertarians

It's hard to choose just one thing he says here which is objectionable, since it's all objectionable, but I'll pick this one:

"When I look at voters, I see human beings at their hysterical, innumerate worst. ... [C]onsorting with bad people hurts you deep inside. Politics isn't utterly hopeless, but it's mostly hopeless. The only way I know to escape this darkness is to focus on the tiny corner of the world in my control and make it beautiful and pure. Call me anti-social if you must. Unlike your candidates, at least I'm honest."

Professor Caplan does not know himself, which these days seems to be a requirement of elites and a major cause of modernity's manifold discontents. Clearly he thinks himself above us as if he were a god when he is actually nothing but a wild dog. I pity his students, and his children.

[M]an is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it (like the “clanless, lawless, hearthless" man reviled by Homer, for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover of war') inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece at draughts. ... [A] man who is incapable of entering into partnership, or who is so self-sufficing that he has no need to do so, is no part of a state, so that he must be either a lower animal or a god. ... For as man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice. For unrighteousness is most pernicious when possessed of weapons, and man is born possessing weapons for the use of wisdom and virtue, which it is possible to employ entirely for the opposite ends. Hence when devoid of virtue man is the most unholy and savage of animals, and the worst in regard to sexual indulgence and gluttony.

-- Aristotle, Politics 1.1253a 

Ich bin ein Deplorable

And once again, it's not that Obama wasn't born in the USA, it's that he lied that he was foreign born in order to get preferred treatment in college admissions and financial aide

Which is why his college records remain sealed.

Flashback to Hillary 2008 on whether Obama is a Muslim: There's nothing to base that on . . . as far as I know

Here.

Oh come on Bernie, if Trump wins you'll go to your new $600,000 beach house on Lake Champlain

Stories here and here.

Industry screams "shortage" of illegal construction workers while hundreds of thousands of Americans remain unemployed in the industry

SFGate reports here:

BOSTON — Donald Trump’s pledge to deport immigrants in the country illegaly is stirring angst in many corners of corporate America these days, and nowhere are the jitters more acute than in the home-building business. Not only is it heavily dependent on foreign-born workers, it’s already four years into a shortage of framers, roofers, drywallers and painters. ...

Nationwide, the [construction] sector is third in unauthorized labor, behind the combined farming, fishing and forestry sector, which is No. 1, and a group that includes landscapers, housekeepers, janitors and pesticide handlers, according to a 2015 Pew study. But in all sectors, the occupation with the highest share of undocumented workers is a category Pew classifies as including drywallers, ceiling tile installers and tapers — at 34 percent of the total. ...

There were 454,000 unemployed U.S. construction workers in August, the lowest number for the month in 16 years, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show.

The biggest news of the day is that former SECSTATE Colin Powell thinks Hillary Clinton is dumb

What?! The former Secretary of State thinks the smartest woman in the room is DUMB?!

Too bad for Hillary that we haven't yet made the kind of social progress that would allow us to call out a black man for being a misogynist without having someone play the race card on us.

Colin Powell, magic negro.

The election in book sales: Trump 199,000 v. Hillary 2,912

Forbes reported Trump's sales numbers here.

The New York Times reports Hillary's sales numbers here (where there's no mention of Trump's).

h/t Chris

Mark Levin is right to be upset about Trump's proposal to grant paid maternity leave and childcare, eldercare subsidies

This is the same sort of objectionable thing rammed through by George W. Bush in the Drugs for Seniors legislation. Totally unaffordable, but helpful for reelection purposes.

The difference this time is that it ain't gonna pass, unless of course you idiots out there give the House to the Democrats.

I think it's all politics and will get drastically pared down. Some token thing may pass, but not the full monty.

If Trump wins, which is what this is really all about.

It is noteworthy, however, that other radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are nearly rolling over for this thing. The program is objectionable out of the box, except to people like James Pethokoukis, but those two today were almost paragons of equanimity. I think Laura even took a call praising the pro-family aspects of the plan. The worst argument for the idea being repeated is that it will encourage single mothers to work. So we'll subsidize single motherhood? Yeah, that's a Republican value.

I don't expect the Limbaughs and Ingrahams to diss Trump at this stage of the game, but it is this stage of the game. They could have at least hinted at the politics.

Trump can't defend patriotism without Jimmy Pethokoukis invoking totalitarianism

Donald Trump "One Country Under One Constitution Saluting One American Flag! And ALWAYS Saluting It!

Publius Decius Mus responds effectively to some of his critics, but his own words still condemn him

Namely, these (here):

[Trump] is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Well, so long as you accept the income tax, Decius, as you clearly do in your Flight 93 Election essay, YOU pose no serious challenge to the administrative state, either.

And secondly, you don't even recognize the fact that, or the reasons why, our "representative institutions" stopped being representative a long time ago. Conservatism today, including yours, does not recognize that the income tax is essential to funding the administrative state, and it does not recognize that our representatives are remote from the people by design from the 1920s. 

Trump is adequate for the moment, and necessary if there is to yet be a chance to fix these problems, but there is no one, no one, who is really working politically to restore the Republic either by cutting it down to size or by expanding the input of the sovereign people to a level imagined by the constitution. The people may yet have their day on immigration and trade because of Trump, but after Trump, what?

What an Obama has done by fiat can be undone by a Trump. But that buys you four, maybe eight, years. And then? The next president can undo it, and probably will.

That means we already live under a tyranny.

Conservatism Inc. doesn't have a clue, and neither do you.

Speaker Ryan is still disgraceful, small and weak, still tiptoes up to "regular order" instead of demanding it

And the opposition can smell the weakness.

The job of Speaker is much too big for little Paul Ryan, who appears to have not one single fight in him.

From the story here in Roll Call:

Minibuses would break up the 12 individual spending bills into a few small packages rather than lump them into a single omnibus bill. Ryan has argued that passing minibuses is closer to regular order and would make the appropriations process more digestible. But he's privately acknowledged that such a strategy would likely result in some bills not getting done, leaving the agencies covered by the unfinished measures in need of a continuing resolution to extend funding through the remainder of the fiscal year.

Mark Levin won't tell you Ronald Reagan expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit in the 1986 tax reform

Hey Mark, does that make Reagan someone who "sold out his principles" for liberalism?

Well does it?

Dilbert thinks Hillary just became unelectable

Here.

Mark Levin tonight said something about populism being the province of Congress, not the Executive

Well yes, that's the idea from an originalist point of view, isn't it? Yes it is.

But what did the Congress do in the 1920s?

It tried to limit its own natural growth as required by the Constitution by fixing its number at 435 in the House, thinking that it could thereby enhance its own power. But by doing so it became less and less populist and more and more elitist, so that today no one in a given congressional district is confident his or her congressman knows their own name, let alone represents what they think on Capitol Hill.

So ever since we've been stuck with 435 representatives, and the Census has simply functioned to decide which state gets more and which fewer representatives based on population shifts.

Well that's not how it's supposed to be, dammit! (cue the shouting)

Now we have supremely powerful individuals in the House, like the Speaker and the committee chairmen, who function like co-presidents or consuls on the Roman model. The Romans had two consuls by the way, elected every year to one year terms. At least if we had that we'd have more influence over affairs, but as it is the people have no representative, which is why . . .

Donald Trump.

Fix representation, folks.

To have a ratio of one congressman per 50,000 of population, a House of Representatives numbering 6,460 is called for, instead of the current, elitist, unresponsive House of 435 apportioned in a ratio of one representative to 743,000 people per district on average.

That's the crisis of the Republic. Not the quixotic Donald Trump actually figuring out how to be the voice of so many millions of forgotten Americans.

To be a reactionary is to answer action with action . . . it is the virile part to react

The only salvation is in the recognition of some superior guiding and dividing law of just rule and right subordination, in the perception, that is, of something permanent within the flux. ...

The saying has gone abroad that strength means joy in change and that he who would question change is reactionary and effeminate; and so in the name of progress and virility we drift supinely with the current. If by reactionary is understood only the man who shudders at all innovation and who cries out for some impossible restoration of the past, the charge is well made. Such a man in the social realm corresponds to the metaphysician who would deny the existence of change and the many for an exclusive and sterile idealism of the one. But reaction may be, and in the true sense is, something utterly different from this futile dreaming; it is essentially to answer action with action, to oppose to the welter of circumstance the force of discrimination and selection, to direct the aimless tide of change by reference to the co-existing law of the immutable fact, to carry the experience of the past into the diverse impulses of the present, and so to move forward in an orderly progression. If any young man, feeling now within himself the power of accomplishment, hesitates to be called a reactionary, in this better use of the term, because of the charge of effeminacy, let him take courage. The world is not contradicted with impunity, and he who sets himself against the world's belief will have need of all a man's endurance and all a man's strength. The adventurous soul who to-day against the reigning scientific and pragmatic dogma would maintain no vague and equally one-sided idealism, but the true duality of the one and the many, the absolute and the relative, the permanent and the mutable, will find himself subjected to an intellectual isolation and contempt almost as terrible as the penalties of the inquisition, and quite as effective in producing a silent conformity. If a man doubts this, let him try, and learn. Submission to the philosophy of change is the real effeminacy; it is the virile part to react.

-- Paul Elmer More, SHELBURNE ESSAYS, Seventh Series: Victorian Literature (The Philosophy of Change), 1910, pp. 267ff.

Hillary's doctor Lisa Bardack said Sunday she diagnosed Hillary with pneumonia on Friday

Yea, that's the ticket.

Story here.