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

The fickle turn on the pneumonia dime.

Story here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ich bin ein Deplorable

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 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.

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.

Clinton at gay fundraiser: Half of Trump's supporters are deplorable

Yeah, but ALL of Hillary's are.

Bloomberg reproduces the remarks here:

Clinton told an audience of gay-rights supporters at a fundraiser Friday night in New York City: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.”

On 9/11/16 Rasmussen has Clinton +4, LA Times/USC has Clinton +1.4

Rasmussen: Clinton 43%, Trump 39%.

LATimes/USC: Clinton 45%, Trump 43.6%.

The Real Clear Politics average shows Clinton +3.1 from eight recent polls, with an average margin of error of 3.5.

Clinton insults millions: You know it's a new world when Real Clear Politics has a sidebar story which is a Donald Trump tweet

"Clinton insults millions" lights up Trump's Twitter feed