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