Megan McArdle – idiot

If you would like to see an example of unpersuasive, this one is near the top of the line: How can Trump voters possibly trust this guy? It’s a short article that focuses on how we cannot be sure what a Donald Trump will do as president. I am happy to concede exactly that if she will concede you cannot say what any of the others will do either. And a large part of the reason is that while we ask people running for office what they would do in known circumstances and deal with already existing problems, when they arrive things suddenly spin out of control. But let us look at the issues of the moment through her eyes. She starts by characterising people who lean towards Trump in the following way:

You are sick to death of well-paid folks in Washington and New York and California calling you bigots because of your stance on immigration, trade or foreign policy.

If they did so, I would be offended and such people would have no influence on me. But then writes in the very next sentence:

I don’t happen to agree with you on immigration policy.

Well that’s that. You can now take your snooty condescension and be on your way, you buffoon. And then she concludes with this:

Trump voters seem eager to ignore the fact that their candidate is theirs only until he doesn’t need them.

Well listen, Megan. It is still a political system that needs to work through Congress and the public service. Although Obama may have given you this impression, you are not electing a king, but an administration. There is plenty of politics after an election. And with the media filled with shrews and scolds like yourself, doing things, even the kinds of things people would like done on immigration, will not be as easy as all that.

Hillary – the worst imaginable successor to Obama

That there has been more controversy around Donald Trump than around Hillary Clinton is further evidence, if more were needed, of the deeply corrupt nature of the media, and the American media in particular. Hillary should go to jail. She illegally used a personal server for her correspondence as Secretary of State because in this way nothing she wrote could be subpoenaed by the American Congress. Instead, every email she sent could be read by governments around the world. Just think of this:

The ex-CIA official said there is “zero ambiguity — none” about the impropriety of SAP-level intelligence being housed on an unsecure private email server. Faddis added that the very existence of that information on her server means that highly classified information must have been moved off of a “completely separate channel” under a process that is “specifically forbidden.” If you had done this while working at the CIA, Hemmer asked, what would’ve happened to you? Faddis’ response: “My career’s over, I lose my clearance, I lose my job, and then I go to prison, probably for a very long time.” Faddis explained that the “consequences are enormous” when information at this level of secrecy is made vulnerable to foreign penetration. “The reason this stuff is in this channel is because it’s going to do incredible damage to US national security if it gets out in the open. That’s why we protect it this way.” When Hemmer inquired whether Hillary’s conduct could have cost lives, Faddis didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. Without question,” he asserted.

That she protected her husband from harassment charges and highly plausible accusations of rape in order to protect Bill’s presidency and her own political prospects is known to everyone without it becoming the impediment to ought to be. But to go even beyond the personal disgust everyone ought to have in seeing her in public, here is a story from The Oz yesterday reprinted from The Times that ought to disqualify her if we have even an ounce of self-preservation left in our collective veins: Sex scandal dogs Hillary’s ‘surrogate daughter’ Huma Abedin. A big Hillary problem, it seems, in the movie that is being released on Huma’s marriage to former Congressman, Anthony Weiner, who became notorious for exposing himself on the internet. Weiner is a Jew, so the following ought to be more than of passing interest, which comes as a throw-away in paragraph 22:

Abedin’s mother is Pakistani; her late father was Indian. She was born in Michigan but when Abedin was two her family moved to Saudi Arabia, where her father establish­ed a think tank, the Instit­ute of Muslim Minority Affairs. Some alleged the family had connections to figures inside­ the Muslim Brotherhood, which has fuelled conspiracy theor­ies.

They certainly have “alleged” these connections and with good reason. Here’s just one example: Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood Ties which are a good deal more significant, you would think, than her marriage ties. It is the absence of controversy about her background that needs to be accounted for. From the story, which appeared in National Review:

Huma Abedin’s mother, Saleha, who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s female division (the “Muslim Sisterhood”), is a major figure in not one but two Union for Good components. The first is the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR). It is banned in Israel for supporting Hamas under the auspices of the Union for Good. Then there’s the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC) — an organization that Dr. Saleha Abedin has long headed. Dr. Abedin’s IICWC describes itself as part of the IICDR. And wouldn’t you know it, the IICWC charter was written by none other than . . . Sheikh Qaradawi [“the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief sharia jurist”], in conjunction with several self-proclaimed members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It’s not that Abedin is a close friend and confidant, but that she is Hillary’s closest political advisor that should make you think about what is going on in the US. Possibly the most interesting thing about the times in which we live is that everything is known but nothing seems to matter. The media is the fourth estate, more powerful than whatever might be classified as numbers two and three. What makes Donald Trump so important is that he is able to say things the media would murder anyone else for saying and remain viable. Anyone who thinks of Hillary as anything other than near enough the worst imaginable successor to Obama really has nothing to add to a conversation about the politics of the United States.

AND IN NEWS JUST TO HAND: Former House Oversight chairman: ‘FBI director would like to indict Clinton and Abedin’.

California Congressman Darrell Issa, who previously led an investigation into Benghazi as former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says the FBI “would like to indict both Huma [Abedin] and Hillary Clinton” for conducting sensitive government business on an unsecure, private email server.

“I think the FBI director would like to indict both Huma and Hillary as we speak,” the Republican heavyweight told the Washington Examiner Thursday, during a debate watch-party at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s New Hampshire campaign headquarters.

“I think he’s in a position where he’s being forced to triple-time make a case of what would otherwise be, what they call, a slam dunk,” Issa said, referring to FBI Director James Comey, who previously told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would conduct a “competent,” “honest” and “independent” probe into Clinton’s handling of classified information during her tenure as secretary of state.

The Bills are overdue

clinton cosby

cosby he said she said

The picture on the left is more than just a bringing together of two Americans last really famous in the 1990s. Both have had credible accusations of abuse of women levelled against them – and that is to put it very mildly – but both have, up until now, been protected by a refusal within the media to attack anyone on the left no matter how great the scandal might have been. The barriers against protecting Cosby are falling and might well have completely vanished. The same is not true for Bill Clinton, and this is all the more so since the credible evidence is also that Hillary perfectly well understood Bill’s character and did what she could to allow him to become president and understands it still, but again remains silent so that she can become president. The media is already a pathological institution. But with the similarities between Bill 1 and Bill 2 so obvious, there will come a time when Hillary will have to answer for what had been done with her obvious compliance.

This is Ann Coulter discussing Bill Clinton and his association with Jeffery Epstein last January. Elites forming a circle of the wagons is the one constant that may be depended on for a Democrat sex scandal.

 

 

Media again fanning the winds of political change

Are we looking at more media meddling in politics? These are both from today’s Oz.

First we have Shorten in a parlous state as Turnbull turns Victoria against Labor. Which we may contrast with this article by Anthony Albanese which may be found on the editorial page: Let’s return to rational infrastructure spending.

Turnbull was always going to be easier to beat than Abbott since if you like Malcolm you are really going to love Albanese.

The media and constitutional government

I am like many in seeing the dangers of a President Donald Trump, but I am also like many others in thinking he is the only cure for what is wrong with the American political system. The rush from constitutional government to government by executive decree has been astonishing. Obama decides what he wants and does everything he can to impose the outcome by executive order. The fear expressed below is that Trump will continue the approach that has been driven by Obama:

Cruz believes our constitutional arrangements are basically sound but that the leadership class that manages those arrangements has got to go. Trump, on the other hand, seems to reject those arrangements altogether – Rich [Lowry’s] “post-constitutional” label, or even “post-republican” (small-r).

Trump’s support comes from people who have given up on our existing “regime,” in the political science sense of the word. The Tea Party’s efflorescence of constitutionalism was, as Rich writes, “a means to stop Obama” – in other words, to stop lawlessness and rule by decree, which is what constitutions are for. But, as Rich continued, constitutionalism “has been found lacking” – Obama, and the Supreme Court, have pursued extra-constitutional (i.e., illegal) tactics and prevailed. Repeatedly. On momentous issues that immediately affect every American.

As I have written before, politics is what you can get away with. In the US, you can get away with whatever the media allows you to. If it does not call a president out in a prolonged and intensive way, there is nothing, it seems, a president cannot do. The only limits are what can actually be done, not what can be attempted. Some things fail because they go so far against the grain of society that no writ will run no matter what a president might wish to do. But for most – such as the wrecking of the medical system in the US, or the effective introduction of open borders – the absence of a watchdog media has permitted every illegal action and inaction to occur.

This will never happen under a Republican president. The media will never give a President Trump the pass. Look at this from CNN where it is fine to attack Trump (R) but not Clinton (D).

If Americans want a constitutional presidency, they need to elect Republicans. It’s as simple as that, although simple it definitely is not.

Trump v Clinton head to head

So far as any reports I have seen, Trump has not replied to Obama in spite of the opening Obama provided by criticising Trump. I find that inexplicable, but I am not going to go around telling him how to run a campaign, since he seems quite capable of doing things on his own. Where Trump did go head to head is here: Presidential Front-Runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Face Off. And the issue is this:

The crossfire between the two leading presidential candidates intensified Monday, as Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign stood by her claim that Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s rhetoric is being used as propaganda by terrorist groups, though there is no evidence Islamic State has put him in videos.

Mrs. Clinton said in Saturday’s Democratic debate that Mr. Trump “is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter,” and that he was being used in videos. Mr. Trump angrily denied the former secretary of state’s charge and demanded an apology from her. The Clinton campaign refused to provide one, pointing to comments from several counterterrorism experts and social media posts by terror groups to support the claims.

That she didn’t have evidence for what she said is the way of the world, not that the American media will ever mention it. But Gateway Pundit has a posting on Somebody Tell Hillary… ISIS Recruitment Video Featured Bill Clinton the “Fornicator” (VIDEO). It also shows John Kerry and Obama himself. The video has quite some production values, and is interesting as an artefact of our own times. It obviously will only repel, and I hope frighten the likes of us. So on the narrow issue of who can be used as part of an ISIL recruitment drive, Hillary is lying again. But the wider and more important issue is that only you and I will even know of such videos that expose Hillary as dangerously and badly informed. This is part of the sickening nature of the modern political process, where to find out the kinds of things you might wish everyone to know requires you to move beyond mainstream sources of news and make the effort yourself to see what’s going on, assuming it is now even possible to find out what is going on.

And as an afterthought, there is this to consider as well: Obama, Clinton may be setting up Trump to win Republican nomination because they think he would be the easiest one among the Republicans to beat.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton have intensified attacks on Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, accusing him of manipulating voters’ “fear and ignorance” and using anti-Muslim rhetoric that helps recruit Islamic State terrorists — jabs that appear to be energizing his supporters and strengthening his campaign.

But campaign strategists say the attacks are not aimed at knocking down Mr. Trump. Instead, the smears are part of a calculated ploy by Democrats who want to help him win because they are convinced the billionaire businessman will lose in the general election.

That Hillary might be president makes you wonder how this is even possible in a country of 300-million-plus people: Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton?

“He hasn’t done much yet”

I can no longer get through a Janet Albrechtsen column since she like so many others over at The Oz has gone beyond ridiculous as shills for our new PM. But really, this is just stupid.

The current PM deserves an A ­because so far so good.

Malcolm Turnbull earns early good marks too for setting a new tone and focus. Positive words are no substitute for good policy but there is undeniable power in a dose of upbeat leadership.

Turnbull’s can-do attitude (even if he hasn’t done much yet) makes a change from the wet blanket worn by Tony Abbott as PM, whose whingeing about the Senate grew tiresome. Turnbull’s approach to the still recalcitrant Senate is different, and welcome. But again, it’s only so far so good.

I don’t know whether she caught her paper’s front page this morning, you know, where it talks about debt and the never-to-arrive surplus. Well we shall see how Mr Positive deals with all of this.

The government is on track to spend more than $21 billion a year on interest payments on commonwealth debt — more than it spends on public hospitals — as it puts off a budget surplus until early next decade.

A grim update to the federal budget shows that government spend­ing is growing faster than planned while tax revenue has fallen short of forecasts issued just seven months ago, widening this year’s deficit to $37.4bn and inflicting greater damage in later years.

Scaling back its ambitions, the government yesterday talked of delivering budget surpluses “as soon as possible” but abandoned a forecast by Joe Hockey in May that promised a surplus by 2019-20. Instead, small surpluses would be delivered from 2020-21.

Well, Janet, what do you think about all of that? And how do you suppose fixing any of it can be done with the Senate the way it is? Such muddled reasoning really is an irritation and not the best way to start the day.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!

The inability of the ABC to see itself as others see it continues to astonish. That Ray Martin is as blind as the rest makes you wonder where he and they think the middle of the road is. This from Tim Blair: the ABC clears itself of any left bias on Q&A or in his own chosen title, LUVVIES DECIDE. The story is from the Guardian Weakly: Q&A does not have ‘leftwing anti-Coalition bias’, leaked report finds.

The ABC’s Q&A program does not have a “left wing anti-Coalition bias” and is equally a challenge to both sides of politics, according to a draft report of the long-awaited review of Q&A obtained by Guardian Australia.

The key criticism by former prime minister Tony Abbott that the popular panel program hosted by Tony Jones is a “lefty lynch mob” was effectively dismissed by the report’s authors broadcaster Ray Martin and former managing director of SBS Shaun Brown. . . .

According to the the document seen by Guardian Australia, Martin and Brown studied six months’ worth of programs aired this year and concluded that while Q&A was a “challenge” to the Coalition government in 2015 it was also a challenge to the Labor government in 2012.

Far from finding that it had too many local panelists from the left, the report said the program needed to have more Greens and independents.

The title of this post, by the way, is the title of a poem by Robbie Burns which has the appropriate title, To a Louse.

The media and Mr Trump

As big a problem as anything that now exists for the United States and the West in general is the far-left media who work hand and glove with the politicians of the left to pollute political debate. The genius of Donald Trump is that he is able to transcend the media and get through to the actual population in a way that no one else has previously been able to do.

Trump said it himself, the media are “unbelievably dishonest”. He says things that are so outrageous from the perspective of the left that they made him the formidable presence he is by publishing everything he said on the assumption that telling people what he says will be instantly discrediting. Yet finding out that Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump’s new press secretary, is black Tea Party activist, is quite astonishing and revealing.

Pierson says her alliance with The Donald is “perfect.”

“This is a nontraditional campaign,” the outspoken Republican and Dallas tea party activist said. “I can be a little bit more who I am. That’s what I mean when I say it’s like a perfect fit. [Trump’s] sort of not politically correct. He sort of calls it like he sees it. I’m kind of that way, too,”

Rush Limbaugh discussed all of this yesterday: How Donald Trump Plays the Media. If Trump is unique in what he is doing, non-transferable to anyone else for whatever reason, then it is a serious problem. But in the meantime he is changing the rules of the political process.

You Republicans, you can denounce Trump all day, all week, all month, and the Democrat Party and the media are still gonna say you laid the table for it. You can condemn Trump all you want, but it is not going to buy you any love or respect or admiration from the Drive-By Media and the Democrats. Now, folks, the conventional wisdom is that Trump is scum, that Trump is a reprobate, that Trump is dangerous, that Trump is obscene, Trump’s insane, Trump’s a lunatic, Trump’s dangerous, Trump’s got to go. Why join in with that phrase? Why join that crowd? We never fall in with conventional wisdom here. . . .

Meanwhile, I’ve never said anything like anything Trump says. But despite it all they can’t take him out. They can’t stop covering him. They can’t humiliate him. They can’t embarrass him. They can’t diminish his support. They’re powerless, and this has them in a panic. The media that can make-or-break anybody cannot touch Trump, and every time they try, all they do is make him bigger. They can’t explain this. They are frustrated to no end, and so are both political parties who rely on the media to be the great equalizer in all of this.

Nothing’s working. No matter what Trump says, the media is there, and every member of the media is there. Every network, every camera, every microphone is there. Last Friday night Trump was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Reuters lied. Reuters even tried lying to destroy Trump. They ran a story claiming that Trump’s performance and his appearance were shut down by Black Lives Matter protesters. MSNBC ran with it. . . .

Donald Trump is condemning ISIS. Donald Trump is condemning illegal immigration. Donald Trump is condemning a weak, stupid United States leadership. Over here, everybody else is not. They are condemning Donald Trump. In a political sense, Donald Trump, leading the presidential campaign, is the sole occupier of his position. He has no competition for it. Just in a political sense, that’s pretty brilliant positioning to me. He owns the media. They can’t stop talking about him.

And what’s it costing him?

Zero.

Unbelievably dishonest

The press is certainly unbelievable, and she is unbelievably good at getting the message across.

UPDATE: Katrina Pierson: Donald Trump’s new press secretary is black Tea Party activist.

Pierson says her alliance with The Donald is “perfect.”

“This is a nontraditional campaign,” the outspoken Republican and Dallas tea party activist said. “I can be a little bit more who I am. That’s what I mean when I say it’s like a perfect fit. [Trump’s] sort of not politically correct. He sort of calls it like he sees it. I’m kind of that way, too,”