Sleepless in Midland

But her emails - Hillary Clinton's fund raising hat

With her new cap Hillary boasts about escaping any serious DOJ treatment for her shenanigans regarding the emails and smashed computers. Let's not forget about the wiped hard drive as she played dumb with the quip “Like with a cloth?”

It's as if a thief released by one of those soft on crime prosecutors thumbs her nose at those miscreants who are jailed in jurisdictions that doesn't subscribe to the “catch and release” program.

Hillary's fame comes from her marriage to a smart, politically astute politician who dodged scandals that sunk a lot of politicians in the past. But there are not a lot of people who share her pride in this particular accomplishment.

Strzok and friends make it hard to look at that whole FBI thing dispassionately

It's hard to remain objective about Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Sometimes I have to step back from the news and question whether I'm merely getting caught up in the lynch mob atmosphere, or whether there really were some serious shenanigans going on with that whole top level FBI tilt in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump.

Peter Struzok and Lisa Page certainly don't help their cause when they play cat and mouse with Congress. For details, see the following:

US Marshals served subpoena on FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Goodlatte says, threatening to hold her in contempt; and
BREAKING: Goodlatte Says FBI's Peter Strzok Will Be Recalled For Contempt

I recall how joyous a Democrat acquaintance was when Scooter Libby was convicted. It's high time some of those nefarious FBI agents received some well deserved justice.

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3:47 PM 7/12/2018

Matt Taibbi -- the msm despise Trump, but dammit, he sure is good for the news business

Matt Taibbi isn't every conservative's cup of tea, but he does make some insightful observations. See, for example, The Media Is the Villain – for Creating a World Dumb Enough for Trump. Excerpt:

For more than two years now, it's been obvious that Donald Trump is a disaster on almost every level except one – he's great for the media business. Most of us who do this work have already gone through the process of working out just how guilty we should or should not feel about this. ...

Trump's monstrousness is ironic, since the image of Trump as the media's very own Frankenstein's monster has been used and re-used in the last years. Many in the business are of the opinion that, having created Trump and let him loose in the village, we in the press now have a responsibility to hunt him down with aggressive investigative reporting, to make the world safe again.

That might indeed be a good idea. But that take also implies that slaying the monster will fix the problem. Are we sure that's true? ...

Taibbi tells us that Trump has been a ratings bonanza for the msm. And they brought that about themselves, as anyone who watches TV news can attest. More from Taibbi:

We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to pretend this is an innocent coincidence?

So Trump is the "lowest common denominator?" Taibbi appears to be in the camp that thinks Trump supporters' proper place is in that basket of deplorables made famous by Hillary Clinton. Clive Crook may have a better answer in Why People Still Support Trump:

[A] large majority of this large minority are good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions, who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they'll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he's on their side, he vents their frustration, he afflicts the people who think so little of them -- and that's good enough.

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12:46 PM 8/31/2017

Hillary is trying to wring the last drop of sympathy out of alleged invasion of her personal space

NPR the other afternoon played the soundbite of Hillary Clinton reading an excerpt from her newest book. She sounded angry as she read her account of an event in the debate with Donald Trump. In her mind, Trump invaded her personal space, but in my recollection of the event it was Hillary who invaded Trump's space. And she planted herself directly in front of him.

In the broadcast of her reading the excerpt, she got very shrill and imagined a scenario in which she turned around and called Trump a creep. Since it was all imaginary anyway, we can imagination how Trump would have responded to that. "You invaded my space, lyin' Hillary."

Meanwhile, her complaint about the space invasion should remind everyone of the campaign in the year 2000 in which she got a tremendous amount of sympathy from the usual sources for an alleged violation of her space by Rick Lazio, her opponent in the Senate race. That was all we heard about for days, and Hillary went on to win the election.

So here she is on that same band wagon about invasion of her personal space. Will her fans buy into that again? Or will they see her as a loser left only with dreams of what might have been?

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1:47 PM 8/25/2017

Hillary Clinton might follow Chuck Colson's path -- she could have a worse role model

Emma Green gives the subject a sympathetic touch in Hillary Wants to Preach. Or more to the point, she wants to preach to us. It seems like a natural progression, after all, she was defeated by a basket of deplorables, so the least she could do is try as she might to redeem them.

A less sympathetic take on it comes from Ben Shapiro in Pastor Hillary Wants to Preach to You wherein he reminds us of our typical skepticism of pious progressives who use religion for political purposes. An even less sympathetic take comes from Scott McKay in Our Sunday Visitor, The Church Lady.

OK, we could bash Hillary's dalliance with religion until the lambs come home. But it brings to mind another converted sinner, Chuck Colson. He was one of Nixon's cronies who actually did time in the slammer for crimes committed in the Watergate matter. He underwent a jailhouse conversion and went on to found The Prison Fellowship which actually does some real good in the world. Hillary Clinton would do well to emulate Mr. Colson.

I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee -- Huma Abedin files

So Huma Abedin finally filed for divorce from Anthony Weiner. They separated last year, but there's a waiting period in Islamic law. We talked about this on these pages at Huma and Anthony, divorce Islamic style in which I speculated that she would wait the required period and even then would have to get permission from Hillary Clinton.

Hillary is famous for standing by her man, but with Hillary having lost the election, there was little to gain by forcing Huma to do it, too.

Meanwhile, NYPost.com almost expresses a small degree of sympathy for Weiner in The tragedy of Anthony Weiner but does acknowledge that New York dodged a bullet after Weiner refused to restrain his fetish and eventually lost the respect of the electorate.

His fetish was that he liked taking pictures of himself in his skivvies and texting them to women, at least one of whom was underage. He just had the wrong fetish. If only he liked to wear women's clothes he probably could have have been a keynote speaker at last summer's Democratic Party convention.

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1:36 PM 5/22/2017

Order appointing Mueller very narrow, unlikely to include Hillary's known misdeeds

Those of us who thought Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel might result in some focus on the Clinton Foundation and any other shenanigans committed by the Clintons in the run-up to or during the 2016 campaign will likely be disappointed. The order creating the special counsel is too narrow. To see it click here.

Here are the guts of it, as follows:

ORDER NO. 3915-2017
APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COUNSEL TO INVESTIGATE RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE WITH THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND RELATED MATTERS

By virtue of the authority vested in me as Acting Attorney General, including 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, and 515, in order to discharge my responsibility to provide supervision and management of the Department of Justice, and to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, I hereby order as follows:

(a) Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice.

(b) The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017, including:

(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and

(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and

(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).

(c) If the Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.

(d) Sections 600.4 through 600. l 0 of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations are applicable to the Special Counsel.

"Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump." Very narrow. Too bad.

It's very unlikely Mueller will step beyond those bounds. It seems as if the Clintons and Obama can get away with anything.

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1:54 PM 5/18/2017

FBI says Russian op involved bots spreading news through Twitter and Facebook

This is the sort of thing that is best remedied by exposure, if it's true.

The claim is that bad news about Hillary may have been disseminated to a broader extent by this method than if news customers were totally reliant on the main stream media. See FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites:

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said.

Couple of observations: Anyone watching the msm blitz downplaying Rep. Devin Nunes' disclosures about surveillance on Trump team members has to wonder why the MSM hasn't tried to pommel trump over this one. Secondly, if the Russian objective was to cast doubt on our political system, the msm probably does more to achieve that particular goal than the Russians could.

1:06 PM 3/24/2017

Why the big cities vote for Democrats

I recall reading years ago about how animal behaviorists showed that rats forced to live in an environment with too many other rats tend to get hostile and aggressive. The implication was that the phenomenon applies to people, too.

Fast forward to 2013 when writers were explaining how it was that Obama beat Romney in the big metropolitan areas, and Romney won in the wide open spaces of flyover country.

One theory was expressed in How the Density of Your County Affects How You Vote. This article argued that the more dense the population was the more likely the people were to vote for Democrats. Excerpt:

People who live close to one another are more likely to know someone of a different color, a different income group, or a different sexual orientation. They therefore rely upon and appreciate the provision of public goods and public services (transit, parks, garbage collection), even as they consume fewer public dollars than their less-densely populated counterparts.

That suggests the race turned on prejudices and public services. But looking back at the rats, the tight pack may have made them meaner. And it was easier to strike out at someone who is different, someone belonging to another tribe, someone who they wouldn't likely have to share an elevator with. That would be Republicans.

Fast forward again to 2016 and the same thing happened -- the big cities voted for Clinton for the most part. Now listen to Democrats, and you sure can hear that mean streak.

Dems want to blame Putin but it was so easy there had to be others who pilfered their data

The common refrain among Democrat pundits these days is that Russia hacked Hillary Clinton and the DNC for the purpose of helping Trump win the election. There are a lot of problems with that narrative. One of the main ones is that Putin would have been better off keeping the information secret for use against Hillary Clinton for Russia's advantage if she won. Furthermore, Russia would benefit from a U.S. president who opposed fossil fuel production.

But here's another issue. It seems that the Hillary's server and DNC's computers were easy to hack. And Podesta was such a novice any half witted trickster could have gotten him to divulge his password at a fake site.

So here's a theory. There was a lot of hacking going on because Hillary, the DNC, and John Podesta made is so easy for them. There must have been several entities and individuals who did it. The next two questions are who passed the information to Wikileaks and why.

It could have been the Russians. But Democrat pundits who grab onto that and say the intent was to get Trump elected need to produce some evidence of the actual intent.

After all, the one thing we learned from the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton is that intent is paramount.

Maybe all this vote recounting will lead to voter registration reform

The Clinton/Stein vote count project will likely focus on finding only two things -- uncounted Clinton votes and unqualified Trump votes. That's unfortunate, because just about every rational person suspects that there were a lot of people voting for Clinton who shouldn't have been voting. If the numbers are small, they may not affect the ultimate outcome. But we really don't know.

Americans would like to think the system is solid and reliable. But local registrars in Blue states are loyal Democrats. And let's face it. Most of us have become suspicious of government whether run by Democrats or Republicans.

Hopefully, all this focus on recounting votes might reinvigorate the movement to reform voter registration in spite of all the claims that purging the dead from voter rolls and requiring proof of citizenship are discriminatory.

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Of interest here is an article from dailysignal.com. See More Than 800,000 Noncitizens May Have Voted in 2016 Election, Expert Says. That "expert" is merely extrapolating from information voluntarily given in previous years. And it wouldn't take an expert to expect the motivation this year would be stronger. But the point is there. Many non-citizens vote when there is no one to stop them.

Expect calls to do away with the Electoral College -- don't listen to them

It's too soon to get the 2016 vote totals, however some reporters contend that Clinton got more votes than Trump even though he achieved the Electoral College win.

There will be people (Democrats) who will revive the call to do away with the Electoral College and adopt a system whereby the winner of a plurality wins the election.

If the total vote count was all that mattered, presidential candidates would concentrate all their get-out-the-vote efforts on the major metropolitan areas. Voters in the big cities tend toward Democrats for reasons that we won't go into here. But the fact that they do would be bad news for those of us in flyover country without some way of spreading the vote count over a larger area.

The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they put the Electoral College in the Constitution. Let's leave it there.

Where were you when you learned that Donald Trump won?

I was in bed. Woke up around 1:45am cst and turned on the radio to hear a man speaking to a crowd. After a moment it was clear this was a winning Vice Presidential candidate, but which one?

Then a bunch of male voices in the audience chanted "U S A, U S A, U S A." That's not exactly a signature line. But I just couldn't imagine a crowd of Clinton supporters chanting that. Can you?

So Trump won. Make America great again!

BTW, thehill.com has a list of celebrities who claimed they would leave the country if Trump won. Why do they say that? Is it to demonstrate that they have so much emotion invested in the election? BFD. Go ahead. Move. Show us you really mean it. Here's the list at Celebs who said they’d leave country if Trump won.

Did anyone really wait until election day to decide for whom to vote?

This post is being written on the morning of the election after seeing an interview on one of the TV shows. A reporter interviewed patrons of a breakfast diner somewhere in flyover country. At one table of three, only one claimed to have decided for whom to vote. The two others claimed to be undecided.

How can that happen? There really isn't much left to reveal about either of the candidates or, more importantly, what they plan to do if elected. Those guys demonstrated a level of indecisiveness that was truly baffling.

If they need an issue, the Supreme Court is up for grabs. And we all know which candidate will present the most danger to the Constitution as we know it.

Maybe they weren't very comfortable making decisions -- they don't trust their own judgment. They probably need a strong leader at their workplace. And so far neither of the candidates have demonstrated much leadership.

But in reality, they probably have made up their minds, they just don't want to tell anyone. If a fellow says he's voting for Clinton, his conservative friends will think he's stupid. If he says he's voting for Trump, his Democrat friends might try to get him fired or ruin his business. He has a right to remain silent. Anything he says can and might be used as an excuse to do him harm.

Who is stealing the Trump yard signs in Midland Texas?

Observant commuters saw something different on their route Monday morning. Where there were Trump yard signs last week, now nothing.

Some miscreants with low level ambition -- whether drug or alcohol induced -- had an idea. But creativity was lacking*. All they could come up with was stealing Trump/Pence signs. It's as if they thought that people with jobs driving to work without seeing Trump signs would be inspired to vote for Hillary Clinton. Poor creatures. There are your deplorables, Hillary.

But to be fair, even Shepard Fairey is uninspired by Hillary Clinton.

*For more creative misbehavior, see the Sabo's imaginative graffiti.

Hillary Clinton should steal Gerald Daugherty's campaign commercial

If you haven't seen Gerald Daugherty's campaign commercial for Travis County Commissioner watch it at this Youtube video.

It purports to show his exasperated spouse pleading with voters to reelect her husband because he's driving everyone crazy around the house droning on and on with minutia from the office. It's a clever ad.

Here's what Team Hillary* should do. Steal the idea.

Imagine the scene. Bill Clinton is whiling away his time reading magazines, and Hillary is in the background screaming like a banshee, laughing hideously, then coughing uncontrollably. Close up on Bill and we see he's wearing ear plugs. Scene change. They are in the back yard while the chef cooks them some bar-b-q. Hillary grabs a fork, spears a steak, and throws it at Bill. He ducks, and it hits a secret service agent.

Bill Clinton looks into the camera and pleads, "Put Hillary in the White House. Please." End ad with boilerplate language.

*On the other hand, instead of Team Hillary, maybe an anti-Clinton PAC should produce the ad.

A bombastic, blowhard, billionaire versus a greedy, corrupt, multimillionaire -- Guess which one the Occupy Wall Street crowd supports

Remember Occupy Wall Street? All those idealistic Democrats were out there demonstrating their disgust with Wall Street. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was pulling in big bucks from speaking engagements to the biggest Wall Street investment bankers, brokers, and financiers.

Now those happy campers from Occupy Wall Street are proudly displaying their "I'm for Hillary" badges.

Are they forgiving, or are they forgetful? In either case it's all partisan politics.

 

Hillary: "I'm sick and tired ..."

Actually the full quote is as follows:

I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and the anger of people who support Donald Trump.

Found at Deplorables 2: Hillary shouts herself hoarse in tirade at Trump supporters calling them 'negative, dark and divisive with a dangerous vision' after a heckler shouts 'Bill is a rapist' at rally.

Although she really is sick and tired, that's the least of her problems. Brings to mind that fabulous quote from Cal Thomas, "If she can't stand the heat, maybe she should go back to the kitchen."

So there is already a grand jury impaneled that can hear the Clinton email issue?

For so long we've only heard rumors about the possibility of a grand jury actually hearing evidence against Hillary Clinton. But maybe there is one already in place.

I'm no expert on federal grand juries, but there may be relevant information set forth in James G. Wiles' article titled Don't Be Fooled: Hillarygate Probe Is Now a Formal Federal Criminal Investigation.

Mr. Wiles notes the news reports that the FBI has obtained a search warrant for Anthony Weiner's laptop for information beyond the initial warrant which was related only to his sexy texts. That tells us that the same grand jury is now able to look into the Hillary mess. That sounds like a pretty big deal. Here is a tiny capsule of Mr. Wiles' points:

A federal judge has found probable cause that a crime or crimes were committed.

The grand jury already seated can issue subpoenas for testimony, papers, hard drives, etc.

The case has been upgraded from a preliminary inquiry to a formal criminal investigation.

The Criminal Division of the DOJ must be on board with the investigation in spite of all we're hearing about Loretta Lynch's opposition to the whole process.

Hillary Clinton will probably never see the inside of a prison cell. But it's very satisfying to know that there's at least a possibility that law enforcement may be able to get to the point of actually proving something against what some call the Clinton Crime Family.

You know, it's possible to believe that Comey was right both times, and your head won't explode

I feel so lonely sometimes. There are plenty of people who believe that James Comey was right to do what he did when he announced no charges would be brought against Hillary Clinton. And there are plenty of people who believed him wrong then but now that he's reopened the investigation think he's the smartest investigator since Sherlock Holmes. But there are few who believe he was right both times.

Democrats had a big change of heart after Director Comey told Congress last week that he wasn't quite done with the case after all. As we all know, that announcement landed like a Goo Gone bomb, because Democrats came unglued.

His original decision not to prosecute Hillary was based on the belief that he shouldn't be making new law in a case like this. Even though she may have violated the letter of the law, he said there had been no previous prosecutions under the statute, and with such weak precedent he wasn't going to start now. Plus he was probably getting tremendous heat from the Executive Branch. His decision made sense to me. I sympathized with him. He has his talents, but he isn't Superman.

Things turned around when he issued the letter to Congress about investigating of newly found emails on Anthony Weiner's computer. It makes perfect sense to investigate those newly found materials. Had he not promised Congress to keep them posted on the matter then the announcement may not have occurred. But he kept his promise, and presumably the investigation will continue till all Hillary's emails have been found and investigated.

Democrats screamed so loud that everyone on the planet has to know by now that they aren't interested in justice but only power.

There probably aren't that many of us who believe Comey was right both times. But he was right both times.

Clinton is going to be a nasty lady when it comes to the Supreme Court nominations

I've been a one-issue voter since this campaign season got into full swing, that issue being the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices the new president will appoint.

Last week the very articulate Kevin D. Williamson put into precise language why it's going to matter in The Book-Burners. His focus is on free speech and how Democrats of Hillary Clinton's ilk seem ready to chisel away the 1st amendment because they so oppose the ruling in the Citizens United case which held that prohibition of a movie critical of a political figure was unconstitutional.

Let's get beyond that particular case and draw out some of Mr. Williamson's words about Clinton's attitude about the Supreme Court and its role in America. Here's an excerpt:

She began by arguing that the Supreme Court, and lesser federal courts, should be political partisans who take sides in disputes rather than adjudicate them according to the law. Many politicians — perhaps even most — believe that, or act in a way that suggests they do, but most of them feel at least the need to shamefacedly insist that judges are there to impartially apply the law. Not Mrs. Clinton. The Supreme Court that exists in her mind is the worst version of the highest judicial body, which is to say the American answer to Iran’s Guardian Council. The justices already wander into American-ayatollah territory too often, and it is only shame that constrains them. It is impossible to overstate the damage this is doing to our constitutional order, and to the legitimacy of the federal government itself.

What is worse — if something can in fact be worse — is that Mrs. Clinton seeks to unmoor the Supreme Court from the Constitution in order to pursue her own repressive and self-interested political program, namely the censorship of publications, organizations, and institutions that are critical of her.

Mr. Williamson is rightly concerned about the 1st amendment. But those of us out here in flyover country are concerned about the entire bill of rights. Once the court is "unmoored" from the Constitution, Obama would have been deemed correct, our great nation is indeed unexceptional.

Bless her heart - Chelsea Clinton worried that family foundation might risk its nonprofit status

Oh, the poor dear. WikiLeaks: Chelsea Clinton worried family's foundation would lose nonprofit status.

Don't worry your pretty little head, Chelsea. IRS Commissioner Koskinen would never let that happen, at least not in the one year left in his term. And if Momma gets elected president you're home free.

Equalism, no, make that Equalitarianism -- a new word for Hillary so she doesn't have to defend socialism and communism

A news show was playing a scene from a Hillary Clinton speech on the subject of income equality. More particularly, it was the old theme of women's earnings vs. men's earnings. They should be equal, you see.

In the dreamland Hillary wants us to imagine, one has to assume that when taken to the ultimate end, the ideal paycheck would be exactly equal to every other paycheck issued in the nation during a given time.

Equalism. The Centre is not dictating output, and the government isn't managing the economy. It's not socialism, and it's not communism. It's a hybrid. Actually, "equalism" is too simplistic a word for someone of Ms. Clinton's prestige. "Equalitarianism" might better convey the complexity of it since most people won't understand it.

The work a person performs or the product he/she produces, and the demand for that work or product is irrelevant*. It turns human nature on its head, but it's utopia, and everyone is happy because equality is its own reward.

*Of course, exceptions must be made for government leaders who would earn more because their work is so important.

John Podesta provided us with an opportunity to learn how to avoid getting hacked

Boy, did he pay a price! But it's a learning opportunity for us.

Apparently John Podesta had his email hacked, and as a result some emails that proved very embarrassing to Hillary Clinton and her campaign became public knowledge. The best I can determine is that he opened a phishing email, then opened an attachment containing malware. Big mistake.

Peter Mackenzie at Sophos.com provided a helpful lesson on how to avoid that outcome at Why you should be cautious of emails from friends or colleagues. He used a real life example with a bogus email that purportedly came from his solicitor.

It worked this way. A hacker hijacked his lawyer's email address and sent phishing emails to Mr. Mackenzie and maybe other clients. The email contained what looked like a legitimate attachment, e.g., a contract for the client's approval. He rolled his cursor over the attachment link and found something suggesting it wasn't what it seemed. The pdf had an additional suffix: pdf.htm. Clicking on that led him to a link for a fake Gmail login page, but it didn't really go to a website, it was code included in the HTM file. If he had entered his login information it would have been forwarded to the hacker which would have given the hacker access to his email account.

The important take-away from this is to be especially wary of any pdf with an additional suffix, e.g., pdf.htm.

Read the whole thing and you'll be more knowledgeable than Hillary Clinton's most trusted adviser.

If Ted Cruz or Ben Carson had gotten the Republican nomination, would the MSM be hauling out old embarrassing videos about them?

We recently learned from the released emails that Team Hillary, aided and abetted by the msm, targeted Donald Trump as their preferred winner of the Republican nomination for president, because they thought he would be the easiest to defeat in the national election.

With the msm releases of video of Trump's offensive language and new sexual assault complaints, independents and wavering Dems are supposed to be ready to abandon Trump in favor of Clinton. If it happens, then Team Hillary bet on a winning strategy, however underhanded it might seem to those of us at whom it was aimed.

But there were two others on Hillary's wish list: Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. What if one of those other two had won the primary? Democrats probably have already dug up the dirt on them, but we may not learn their worst secrets unless/until either of them runs for president again, and then not until Democrats and the msm decide disclosing them will do the most damage.

As for Trump, conservatives who fear Clinton don't have much choice but to vote for him now that Ms. Clinton herself has facilitated his primary election. But it's hard to forgive Trump for self sabotage like this: Trump Said to Block Campaign’s Requests to Do Self-Opposition Research. Presumably, he had an inkling of what might come out, but he was so confident in his own power of persuasion that he didn't want any help. After all, he's going to make America great again, right?

Ten-HUT! The Texas militia may be recruiting if President Clinton bans guns

Gun owners are assuming that a Supreme Court packed with Hillary Clinton's appointees will probably ratify a law or executive order banning most if not all guns from possession by private citizens.

So what to do? Start digging holes in the back yard? Stock up on ammo and plan to go out in a blaze of glory when they come to your house like they did at Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound?

Michael Filozof has an idea. See The Coming National Gun Ban – and How the States Can Resist, to wit:

Should Stevens’s dissent [in Heller] become the majority opinion in a future case, conservative, pro-gun state legislatures could turn the “militias only” argument against the gun-banners by passing legislation expanding the membership of their state militias to all adult residents of the state, and specifically empowering all adults to purchase military-style semi-automatic rifles and magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds.

Governor Abbott should get started on that right away.

Post Script: It would only be a stop-gap. Once it hit the Supreme Court those "living constitutionalist" on the bench would suddenly be saying, "Hey, it's not that alive!"

With all those hillaryclinton.com emails now public, how can Comey say there was no evidence Hillary got hacked?

There have been some interesting revelations from the Wikileaks release. See for example, 14 things we learned from WikiLeaks' new Clinton-related emails for one list. However, there's something that hasn't yet been highlighted by the big league bloggers.

FBI Director James Comey declared that they had no proof that Hillary Clinton had been hacked. Specifically, he said:

"With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked."

But here comes thehill.com with WikiLeaks releases third batch of Podesta emails. Go there for a Wikileaks hyperlink to the purloined emails.

When you do, look at the addresses in the emails. There certainly are a lot to or from someone at hillaryclinton.com. For example, see the one that can be read here:

From:[email protected] To: [email protected], [email protected]

Doesn't that put the lie to Comey's remark? The only way Comey's statement can be correct is with a claim that the hack wasn't by a "hostile actor." Well, Comey would know. But unfortunately, we're at a point where we need corroborating evidence before we can believe a talking bureaucrat.

Meanwhile, there having been no court case, there would be no double jeopardy involved should the case against Clinton be reopened. Will Comey do anything? Doubtful. Will the Attorney General do anything. We can probably assume "definitely not" on that one. Will Barack Obama pardon her? Now that one is a possibility.

Careful what you wish for Hillary -- turns out she wanted Trump on the ticket

Team Hillary was yearning for Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination as part of her grand strategy, although Ted Cruz or Ben Carson would do. The goal was to try to help build up these conservative Republicans to help them get the nomination so that Hillary Clinton could more easily roll over them. What? Another Mitt Romney would be too hard to beat?

This information comes from a Wikileaks leak which Redstate.com tells us about in Leaked Emails Show That Trump Was a Tool Used by the Hillary Campaign From Day One.

Democrats are remarkably wily politicians, and this is a good example of the type things they do. Saul Alinsky would smile. Make the opposition take an extreme position, then brand them with it.

Donald Trump was the ideal candidate for "Operationalizing the Strategy" to draw in primary voters for a candidate that could be painted as too extreme for the populace.

One of the goals was quite functional: muddy the waters against any attacks against HRC.

Do Republicans do this? If so, with the msm as Democrat operatives, Republicans are working with one hand tied behind their backs.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been counted out before, and if his boasts about sexual conquests don't score a knock out for Hillary, he's still got a chance. So Hillary, be careful what you wish for. If you lose, you could end up Operationalizing a new theme: "I fought the law, and the law won."

Trump is like the rodeo bull hell bent on ripping the rider to shreds but distracted by a clown

Someone once made the observation that rodeo bulls must be easily distracted. A rider tries to ride out the time on the back of one of those bad boys. The bull is mad as hell, and once the rider is off, the bull is ready to rip the guy apart, then trample the guy into the ground.

Hey wait. Where did that rodeo clown come from? In an instant the bull forgets about the rider and goes after that clown.

Donald Trump is that bull. Strong and focused, until he gets distracted by that clown in the colorful suit. The Clinton campaign has figured it out and applied it to their advantage. Remember that first debate between Trump and Clinton? All it took was a reference to alleged remarks he made about Alicia Machedo. And there went Trump like a bull after a rodeo clown. The rider calmly walked away and watched from behind the fence.

There are probably more clowns hidden away, waiting for the bull to throw the rider.

P.S. Maybe all those strange clown sightings we hear about are actually Clinton supporters simply rubbing our noses in bull manure.

Town Hall? Clown Hall.

We recently learned that team Hillary had a young actress prepped to ask her a question at a recent event. The kid performed perfectly, Hillary answered perfectly, the audience was moved, and the msm dutifully reported this example of Hillary Clinton's skill on the hoof.

Now we are getting ready to watch the second debate, called a town hall meeting. We know that Hillary is working harder than a KGB spy to stack the deck in advance. But those of us out here in flyover country aren't going to be as easily impressed as the reporters are.

If I were in charge I would publish the questions in advance. Not 13,000 random questions, but the actual questions to be used that night. Let the candidates prepare their best answer, and we'll hear what they've got. After all, we want to see them at their best. Sure, they would have had help, but impromptu speeches are fine as far as they go. However, we expect the best from the president. And we want to know what that is, not how good they are at improv.

Editor's note: Send in the clowns. Scary clowns, HA HA!. -- Robo-ed.

Paging Dr. Gruber -- Bill Clinton needs a lie we can believe

The Hill tells us about it in Bill Clinton goes way off message on ObamaCare. He sets the trap:

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have healthcare and then the people that are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half,” Clinton said. “It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

Then he springs the trap:

He then called for more a government-driven system in which people could buy into Medicare and Medicaid. Without that option, Clinton said, the law “doesn’t make any sense” and “the insurance model doesn’t work here.”

People calling for more enrollees in Medicare and Medicaid are misleading their listeners. Many doctors won't take new Medicare patients. And even more refuse Medicaid patients. It isn't just because of the increased paper work. It's because the government price controls are so stingy with money that a doctor simply can't afford those patients.

Tough luck, progressives may say. Doctors should learn to do with less money. No one would dare point to the Veterans Affairs as an example of how it might work. But they might point to the government health care in Britain. So maybe this is what we might look forward to: Junior doctors go on strike AGAIN forcing another 5,000 operations to be cancelled during the 48-hour walk out.

Progressives might say "it couldn't happen here." Well, they've been wrong on just about everything about Obamacare, and if history repeats, they'll be wrong about this.

But if the Clintons tell their fans a lie they can believe, then we may be in the thick of it before we know what hit us.