John McCain is dead, the so-called conservative politician who relied on independents and liberals to win

From the 2004 story here about the South Carolina primary in 2000 against George W. Bush:

McCain’s overall strategy relied heavily on the state’s 400,000 veterans and military retirees’ siding with the war hero, and on his appealing, as he had in New Hampshire, to independents and liberals. He thought a high turnout in the open primary would favor him.

The turnout on Saturday, February 19, was huge—573,000 voters, more than double the previous high in a primary—but Bush still won by 11 points, 53 to 42. (Alan Keyes got a little less than 5 percent.) The veterans’ vote split evenly; Bush was buoyed by a two-to-one margin among Christian conservatives, a third of total voters. McCain outpolled him only in the more liberal coastal counties. Remarkably, a majority of voters saw Bush as the one who had run the more positive campaign, despite the attacks from pro-Bush groups.

Reality Winner wins 63-month sentence with reality for espionage

Reality Winner sentenced for leaking top secret U.S. report:

(Reuters) - A federal judge sentenced former U.S. intelligence contractor Reality Winner on Thursday to more than five years in prison after she admitted leaking to a media outlet [The Intercept] a top secret report on Russian interference in U.S. elections, her attorney said. ...

The NSA document she gave the news outlet contained technical details on what it said were Russian attempts to hack election officials in the United States and a voting-machine company before the November 2016 presidential election, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the case have said. ...

Betsy Reed, editor in chief of The Intercept, said in a statement that Winner should be honored, and that her sentencing and other prosecutions of whistleblowers were attacks on freedom of speech and of the press.

“Instead of being recognized as a conscience-driven whistleblower whose disclosure helped protect U.S. elections, Winner was prosecuted with vicious resolve by the Justice Department under the Espionage Act,” Reed said. 

The Intercept laughably maintains that publishing Winner's leaked document long after Election 2016 in June 2017 helped alert US states to Russian interference in the 2016 election when, as The Intercept itself admits, Russian hacking attempts of US elections have been and are "still front-page news almost two years later":

The federal government kept several states allegedly targeted by hackers in the dark about the specifics of these attacks until The Intercept published its story.

In fact, the day after The Intercept’s story came out, the Election Assistance Commission — the federal agency in charge of assisting state election officials — wrote an urgent bulletin to states, calling the report “credible” and urging state officials to read it. The EAC then provided advice on how to take action. (The commission, unbelievably, tweeted the hashtag #RealityWinner to promote its bulletin on social media).

Christina Warren of Microsoft mistaken for a white person

Most Americans see the difference between out-and-out lies and Trump's self-evident hyperbole

Yeah, but mostly only in flyover country where there is still a connection with reality. Contemporary liberalism is untethered to reality and is incapable of such distinctions. That's why liberalism is rightly seen to be coterminous with the "creative" class on the coasts and in the academy, the spinners of yarns and fictions and fantastic tales.

Trump would gain more traction in the current contretemps if he made more fun of them.

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon".

Lee Edwards, here.

Bradley Smith, former head of the Federal Election Commission, doesn't think Trump's payments were campaign expenditures

Here in WaPo, amusingly turning the matter back on Mueller at the end:

However, regardless of what Cohen agreed to in a plea bargain, hush-money payments to mistresses are not really campaign expenditures. It is true that “contribution” and “expenditure” are defined in the Federal Election Campaign Act as anything “for the purpose of influencing any election,” and it may have been intended and hoped that paying hush money would serve that end. The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an election,” from buying a good watch to make sure he gets to places on time, to getting a massage so that he feels fit for the campaign trail, to buying a new suit so that he looks good on a debate stage. Yet having campaign donors pay for personal luxuries — such as expensive watches, massages and Brooks Brothers suits — seems more like bribery than funding campaign speech.

That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate. ...

Cohen is not the normal defendant, and prosecutors almost certainly squeezed him to plead guilty on these charges, in part, for the purpose of building a case for possible criminal or impeachment charges against the president, or even, daresay, “influencing the reelection” of Trump.

Michael Savage is as lazy as Rush Limbaugh, shoots off his mouth about Obama without reading Obama's full speech in South Africa

Far from stirring up race hatred, Obama was attacking it.

We covered it here. WaPo had the full transcript of Obama's remarks in July. Too bad Savage is too lazy to read it.

Another irresponsible person with a microphone.

Paul Manafort found guilty and Michael Cohen pleads guilty on same day Ann Coulter releases Resistance is Futile

I seem to remember In Trump We Trust was released in August 2016, just as Trump started backtracking on illegal immigration in Arizona.

Do Coulter book releases make the sky fall?

Today's reasons for hating Republicans (I don't need any to hate Democrats)

1) 52% of Republicans support Medicare for all.

2) 41% of Republicans support free college tuition.

Story here.

CNBC thinks rising number of murders of whites and of farm seizures in South Africa is a fringe talking point, not news

Trump is hyping a fringe talking point about South African government 'seizing land from white farmers':

'At the start of August, Ramaphosa announced plans by the ruling African National Congress to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation. ...

'The notion that white farmers are persecuted in South Africa largely stems from a fringe group called AfriForum. Some far-right commentators and pundits have picked up on the idea, suggesting that there could be a "genocide" of white people in the country.' 

Separately, the Australian press puts the number of whites murdered on farms in the last 15 months at 70.

The relatively small number is not important to liberals, any more than is the murder of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa by an illegal alien, because they claim others who put the number at 400 are exaggerating.

Yeah I know, the Holocaust wasn't 6 million, either. 

Elizabeth Tin Ear Crockagawea smoke pipe, say murder of Mollie Tibbetts by illegal alien not heap big problem

Keep it up, Lizzie.

Quoted here:

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): My, I’m so sorry for the family here and I know this is hard and not only for the family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa. But one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are.

FBI soft-pedaled first Hillary e-mail probe, Loretta Lynch, James Comey and Peter Strzok out-and-out suppressed the second probe of Weiner laptop e-mails

So says a special investigation by Paul Sperry for Real Clear, here, which suggests the 30,000 missing e-mails which Hillary originally deleted are still on it:

Although the FBI’s New York office first pointed headquarters to the large new volume of evidence on Sept. 28, 2016, supervising agent Peter Strzok, who was fired on Aug. 10 for sending anti-Trump texts and other misconduct, did not try to obtain a warrant to search the huge cache of emails until Oct. 30, 2016. Violating department policy, he edited the warrant affidavit on his home email account, bypassing the FBI system for recording such government business. He also began drafting a second exoneration statement before conducting the search.

The search warrant was so limited in scope that it excluded more than half the emails New York agents considered relevant to the case. The cache of Clinton-Abedin communications dated back to 2007. But the warrant to search the laptop excluded any messages exchanged before or after Clinton’s 2009-2013 tenure as secretary of state, key early periods when Clinton initially set up her unauthorized private server and later periods when she deleted thousands of emails sought by investigators.

Far from investigating and clearing Abedin and Weiner, the FBI did not interview them, according to other FBI sources who say Comey closed the case prematurely. The machine was not authorized for classified material, and Weiner did not have classified security clearance to receive such information, which he did on at least two occasions through his Yahoo! email account – which he also used to email snapshots of his penis.

Many Clinton supporters believe Comey’s 11th hour reopening of a case that had shadowed her campaign was a form of sabotage that cost her the election. But the evidence shows Comey and his inner circle acted only after worried agents and prosecutors in New York forced their hand. At the prodding of Attorney General Lynch, they then worked to reduce and rush through, rather than carefully examine, potentially damaging new evidence. ...

[C]onducting a broader and more thorough search of the Weiner laptop may still have prosecutorial justification. Other questions linger, including whether subpoenaed evidence was destroyed or false statements were made to congressional and FBI investigators from 2014 to 2016, a time frame that is within the statute of limitations. The laptop was not searched for evidence pertaining to such crimes. Investigators instead focused their search, limited as it was, on classified information.

Stock market return in the last 18 years has been better than during the Great Depression and WWII, but not by much

Flashback: Obama campaign fined $375,000 for keeping illegal donations, hiding donors in 2008

Obama Campaign Fined Big for Hiding Donors, Keeping Illegal Donations

Obama 2008 campaign fined $375,000

Another beautiful American girl murdered by an illegal alien, this time in Iowa

Mollie Tibbetts case: Undocumented immigrant charged with murder:

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, has been in the area for four to seven years, officials said. Charges were filed in Poweshiek County court. He is being held on a $1 million cash bond. 

Unlike most violent crimes, this kind is entirely preventable by not letting illegal aliens stay here in the first place.

Ann Coulter agrees Cohen's "crimes" aren't crimes

If you haven't been listening to Mark Levin tonight, you are probably panicking about the Michael Cohen plea for no reason

Mark Levin says the myriad talking heads out there, especially Jonathan Turley, have the Cohen plea all wrong. In fact, he says Cohen stupidly pleaded guilty to things which aren't crimes. The special prosecutor wants it to appear that there are campaign crimes involving Trump, but there are not. And because this is a plea, this isn't a finding of a court. So there is no effect, setting a new precedent. Cohen's plea comes to avoid more serious charges.

Levin even had the former head of the Federal Election Commission on to explain how there was no violation involved.

Good stuff.

Watch for the synopsis later, here.

Hooah Rand Paul: Edward Snowden is no traitor, he didn't sell secrets to anybody, he proved Clapper a liar

Quoted here in July:

"He didn't sell secrets to the Russians, he wasn't a traitor. He revealed something that revealed the highest ranking member of our intelligence community lied. I think he did it as a whistle-blower, he was reporting malfeasance," Paul said.

Paul, who previously joked about Snowden sharing a prison cell with former intelligence director James Clapper, whose inaccurate testimony Snowden exposed, doubled down after polling students, finding a similar number viewed Snowden as a traitor and a whistleblower.

"I don't see him as a traitor at all," Paul added about Snowden, saying later, "People have to decide on Snowden. My preference has become stronger and stronger that he was revealing the government was lying to us in a big way." Paul said he'd like to see a deal struck where Snowden can return from Russia without a long prison sentence.

The five-year statutes of limitations for prosecuting Clapper expired in March 2018.

Our feckless Congress let him off.

One rule for Clapper, another for Snowden, who marks his fifth year in Russian exile this summer.

Should have executed more of them when we had the chance

"Prisoners nationwide go on strike to protest 'modern-day slavery'":

Inmates plan to abstain from reporting to their assigned jobs, halt commissary spending, hold peaceful sit-in protests and refuse to eat during the strike.

Al Sharpton dresses down Donald Trump, tells him to show Omarosa a little R.E.S.P.I.C.T.

Here in "Sharpton misspells 'respect' while quoting Aretha Franklin to Trump".

Who knew Omarosa was Hispanic?

The Tobin Q ratios for Germany and America tell us Elizabeth Warren and David Dayen are wrong

Louis Woodhill, here:

Put simply, a Tobin Q ratio higher than 100% means that a company is creating economic value, and a Tobin Q below 100% means that a company is destroying value.  The most fundamental social responsibility of a company is to add value to the capital it employs, so the most fundamental job responsibility of a corporate CEO is to keep the Tobin Q ratio of the company he or she leads above 100%. 

Writing for The New Republic, progressive David Dayen argues:

“There’s proven evidence that this model of corporate governance [Warren's] can work. “Co- determination,” the term for worker representation on corporate boards, has created a form of capitalism in Germany where workers are far more equitably compensated and decisions are made with an eye toward long-term goals.”

The problem with this argument is that Piketty’s data shows that, since 1995, America’s Tobin Q ratio has averaged more than 100%, while Germany’s Tobin Q ratio has averaged about 55%.  In other words, America’s evil, rapacious corporations are creating economic value, while Germany’s enlightened companies are doing the equivalent of burning 45% of the euros entrusted to them.