A textbook case of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

When a Pub House Speaker cannot recognize human freedom's mortal enemy, it's time to replace him:

“If I go down to see President Obama, the Right begins to wonder what I’m up to,” Boehner told the Golf Channel. “The Left begins to wonder what the president is up to. The president has suggested, ‘Hey, do you think it is too much trouble if we play golf again?’ And I have to look at him and say, ‘Yes, because everybody gets bent out of shape, worried about what we are up to, when all we are really gonna do is play golf.’”

The resolution by 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

96%

 contends that “the Speaker has, through inaction, caused the power of Congress to atrophy, thereby making Congress subservient to the Executive and Judicial branches, diminishing the voice of the American People.” Instead of using the power of the gavel to push conservative policies, Meadows maintains that the speaker uses it to squash nonconformist conservative members.

Boehner railed against blogs and talk radio in his discussion with the Golf Channel’s David Feherty. He claimed that when Republicans took over the Congress in 1994 “one radio talk show that nobody had ever heard of” broadcasted. He points to the existence today of “hundreds of radio talk show hosts all trying to outdo themselves right—going further right, and further right, and further right.”

He worries what such people would make of an outing on the links with the Golfer in Chief.

Golf Digest ranked Boehner, who played a round with Tiger Woods a few years back, as the ninth best golfer in Congress.

Maybe the Meadows effort isn't the one. But one of these days . . .

Planned Parenthood: extermination of fetal Americans is its only business

Michelle Malkin at NRO on what utter hooey it is for pro-death jackboots to try to foist the mammogram canard on us:

The breast-cancer screening charade casts Planned Parenthood as a life-saving provider of vital health services unavailable anywhere else. You may recall that during the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama himself falsely claimed during a debate that the abortion provider administers mammograms to “millions” of women — and liberal CNN moderator Candy Crowley let him get away with it. On cue, Hollywood activists Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria, and Kerry Washington all attacked the GOP ticket for wanting to “end” funding for “cancer screenings” by cutting off government subsidies for Planned Parenthood’s bloody billion-dollar abortion business. The celebrities in the White House and Tinseltown took their script straight from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, who purported to speak for countless women for whom Planned Parenthood is “the only way” they can gain access to mammograms. (If the name sounds familiar, Nucatola is the same wine-swishing Josephine Mengele who was exposed on video by the Center for Medical Progress two weeks ago lolling through a business lunch negotiating payments for aborted baby parts.)

Once again, it was undercover pro-life journalists who unmasked the truth. An investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, conducted by the pro-life group Live Action, confirmed that the abortion provider does not perform breast-cancer screenings. “We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona confessed on tape. Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kan., admitted: “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine at our clinics.” Even the liberal Washington Post doled out a three (out of four) Pinocchio rating for the White House’s mammogram lies. “The problem here is that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so,” the paper’s resident fact-checker reported. “As such, the organization certainly does not ‘provide’ mammograms in the strict sense. Instead, its clinics provide referrals and direct low-income women toward resources to help pay for the procedure. These services are by no means unique to Planned Parenthood. In fact, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society provide them, as well.”

Even the "referral service" is a smokescreen.

Planned Parenthood is in the murder business.

Subsidized hipness: the staleness of post-American culture

Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air on a Colorado development that takes the wealth-redevelopment concept beyond any kind of the-downtrodden-need-it excuse:

. . . the idea that the good people of Colorado need to spend $50 million of their money to subsidize artist communities during hard times seems, shall we say, silly to the point of irritatingly irresponsible.

This idea of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s—brewer and current beer lover himself—was hatched in Minnesota by a non-profit group called Artspace and exported to Loveland in Colorado, where the group built “30 affordable live and work units for artists and their families.” It’s unclear how much of that project, which is revamping an old feed-and-grain warehouse, is being paid for by the people of Loveland, but they’ve already given the non-profit and developers about $6 million in tax credits. With $500 million in assets across a dozen states, it sounds like Artspace is a big developer with an acceptably socially conscious sounding message that vacuums up subsidies just like, you know, other big developers.

The statewide Colorado project Hickenlooper announced will be a public-private partnership with an “uncertain price tag” for taxpayers, according to AP reporting. Super. The housing projects, scattered across the state, will cost about $5 million each, require residents make no more than 60 percent of the median area income, and have no real definition of artist. Hence, the craft brewers and liquor distillers’ inclusion. What about artisan marijuana cultivators?

The housing, if it looks anything like the proposals for Loveland, will be modern and hip, and we will be incentivizing a bunch of people to keep their incomes low to live in it.

Hey, all you dreadlocked brewers, sculptors, poets, interpretive dance types: you lose your hipness cred when you take the hard-earned money of the squaresville taxpayer across the state.

And there are still people who tout this person as presidential material

Hillionaire, what has thou wrought?

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.

The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.

We gave her one job.

Just guidelines, doncha know

The speech jackboots are out in full force at the UNH:

The College Fix today highlighted a "Bias Free Language Guide" released on the University of New Hampshire website that has some pretty stringent advice on how to speak and think without being offensive. Their biggest "problematic"? The word "American."

Yes, it seems that using the word American is offensive because it doesn't specify that there is more than one country in North and South America. Like how saying "European vacation" is offensive to people who don't know whether you visited Big Ben or the Louvre. Very. Problematic.

The guide is full of such inanity, not least of which is the fact that it begins by quoting America's "foremost intellectual" Melissa Harris-Perry. Seriously. As a further example of the absurdity: just above (as in directlyabove) the entry saying not to use "American" and only a few entries above the prohibition on using the word "African" the guide recommends using "African-American.' Seriously, take a look:

The university prez got in front of the growing dustup over this today, with a statement reassuring one and all that this is not official policy.

But the "guidelines" are still there on the website.

Once in a while, a federal judge does something really cool

Emmett Sullivan, has had it with the IRS not delivering the goods:

The IRS is in hot water once again with no-nonsense federal district court judge Emmet Sullivan over Lois Lerner’s emails. A year ago, Judge Sullivan ordered the IRS to explain in writing and under oath how some of Lerner’s emails went missing, and to detail any potential methods for recovering them. 

The IRS managed to recover 1,800 emails that it previously claimed “inadvertently” were destroyed. Now, it has again incurred Judge Sullivan’s wrath.

Today, he threatened to hold the Commissioner of the IRS and Justice Department attorneys representing the government in contempt of court because they failed to produce status reports and newly recovered emails of Lois Lerner, as the judge had ordered on July 1, 2015.

Sullivan told the government that its excuses for not following his July 1 order were “indefensible, ridiculous, and absurd.” He reminded Justice Department lawyer Geoffrey Klimas that he had the ability to detain him for contempt. And he added, “I will haul into court the IRS Commissioner to hold him personally into contempt” if there is any more non-compliance with the July 1 order.

In that order, Sullivan directed the IRS to begin producing, every week, the nearly 1,800 newly recovered Lerner emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The IRS did not produce any Lerner emails until July 15. It also failed to provide Judicial Watch the status report regarding the Lerner email production that Sullivan had ordered.

Judge Sullivan was not amused. And he was as scathing in his written order as he was from the bench.

When President Cruz signs the bill a solidly conservative Congress sends him dismantling the IRS, we won't have to worry about further acts of persecution and sleaze from this agency that ought never to have existed.  Cleanup will be about the last bit of business regarding this horrid instrument of  tyranny.

Will this finally break post-America's Trump fever?

Ben Shapiro at Breitbart says this particular example of The Donald's all-over-the-map non-core of non-values is just plain wacky:

Has Donald Trump made his first serious boo-boo of the campaign?

For weeks, the media have trumpeted the supposed death of the Trump campaign. First, they claimed, Trump’s campaign imploded on launch thanks to his comments about illegal immigration. Then they claimed that Trump was finished because of his slap at Senator 

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

43%

’s (R-AZ) war service. But neither of those comments alienated Trump’s base – he’s maintained his seven point lead over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the 2016 presidential polls, with no other candidate breaking double-digits in the polls. In fact, his original comments about illegal immigration launched his candidacy to prominence, with many Americans relieved that a major candidate had finally touched the media third rail and talked openly about illegal immigrant criminality.

Now, however, Trump may have damaged himself with the very people excited by his candidacy. Asked point blank about his immigration policy, Trump dropped the brashness and the blurting, and suddenly went completely Hillary-vague on CNN. After blathering about deporting criminal illegal immigrants – even President Obama pays lip service to this idea – Trump continued:

We have to bring great people into this country, okay? And I want to bring — I love the idea of immigration, but it’s got to be legal immigration. Now, a lot of these people are helping us, whether it’s the grapes, or whether it’s jobs, and sometimes it’s jobs, in all fairness, I love our country, but sometimes it’s jobs that a citizen of the United States doesn’t want to do. I mean, there are jobs that a lot of people don’t want to do. I want to move them out, and we’re going to move them back in, and let them be legal, but they have to be in here legally.…Otherwise, you don’t have a country. You don’t have a country, if people can just pour into the country illegally, you don’t have a country, but I would expedite the system.

Trump later stated he would give such illegal immigrants “legal status” but not citizenship, then said that “later down the line, who knows what’s going to happen…[citizenship is] something I would think about, but I would say right now no. I’m not open to it. I would say legal status.” With regard to President Obama’s so-called DREAMERs, Trump explained with remarkable vacuity:

We’re going to do something. I’ve been giving it so much thought, you know you have a — on a humanitarian basis, you have a lot of deep thought going into this, believe me. I actually have a big heart.…I mean, a lot of people don’t understand that, but the DREAMers, it’s a tough situation, we’re going to do something, and one of the things we’re going to do is expedite — when somebody’s terrific, we want them back here, but they have to be legally…They’re with their parents, it depends. But, look, it sounds cold, and it sounds hard. But, we have a country, our country’s going to hell. We have to have a system where people are legally in our country.

Trump said he would be able to expedite the system because other politicians are dumb: “Politicians aren’t going to find them because they have no clue. We will find them, we will get them out. It’s feasible if you know how to manage. Politicians don’t know how to manage.”

Um, wut?

If this sounds incoherent, that’s because it’s more incoherent than a raging alcoholic after a night of shots who just crashed his Chevy Impala into a lamppost. Trump isn’t famous for his well-considered, well-informed policy proposals. Perhaps this is why.

Yay.  Maybe this will once and for all show the radical middle, enamored as it is of get-things-done tycoon blowhards, that The Donald has no substance at his core, and that it manifests itself on an issue about which that radical middle is looking for substance.

Hope this one has legs.

God help us - today's edition

Another Planned Parenthood video.

Dr. Savita Ginde makes another appearance. Here, she discusses how to skirt the law:

“Because if you have someone in a really anti- state that’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught,” she says.

Ginde talks about how she’s very confident that Planned Parenthood lawyers had worked out the details on how not to get caught. “We talked to him in the beginning, you know, we were like, ‘we don’t want to get called on,’ you know, ‘selling fetal parts across states.’ I’m confident that our legal will make sure that we are not put in that situation.”

In a previous video Ginde is caught talking about the prices of intact body parts and, looking at the body of a child in a petri dish, concluded that the pieces sold separately would run to $200-$300.

In this new video there are more scenes in the pathology lab where Planned Parenthood personnel and picking through body parts in a petri dish. At one point there is a cracking sound and a medical assistant says it’s the cracking of the baby’s skull.

Dr. Ginde laughs and says, “It’s a baby.”

Referring to the value of an intact heart laying in the dish, a medical assistant is heard to say, “five stars.”

Looking for legs and finding them, the assistant announces, “Another boy.”

With this new video it will become increasingly difficult for Planned Parenthood to avoid the suspicion that they knew they were skating close to the line between legal and illegal. Ginde is caught talking about their concerns and how their legal team is working to help them avoid getting caught.

Todd Starnes at Townhall has a piece today in which he mentions that last night, Bill O'Reilly, on his FNC program, asked the question, "Are we becoming a barbaric nation?"

Starnes says it's a little late for such a question:

 We are long past barbarism -- but I don't believe there's a word to describe the hellish monsters we've become.

Exactly.

With the Left, it's always about their intentions, never results

And organic farming is a perfect example:

The organic community and USDA offer two explanations for such minimal testing. First, they emphasize that organic farming is process-based, not product-based, meaning that what counts for organic certification are the approved organic system (production) plan and the farmer’s intention to comply with that plan as reflected through record-keeping obligations.

Second, widespread testing would impose substantial costs on organic farmers, thereby increasing production costs beyond the already greater expenses that organic farmers incur. Organic farmers offset these higher productions costs by earning large premiums for organic products, but there is always a price point beyond which consumers will shift to cheaper non-organic.

Few organic consumers are aware that organic agriculture is a “trust-based” or “faith-based” system. With every purchase, they are at risk of the moral hazard that an organic farmer will represent cheaper-to-produce non-organic products as the premium-priced organic product. For the vast majority of products, no tests can distinguish organic from non-organic—for example, whether milk labeled “organic” came from a cow within the organic production system or from a cow across the fence from a conventional dairy farm. The higher the organic premium, the stronger the economic incentive to cheat.

Think such nefarious behavior is purely theoretical? Think again. USDA reported in 2012 that 43 percent of the 571 samples of “organic” produce tested violated the government’s organic regulations and that “the findings suggest that some of the samples in violation were mislabeled conventional products, while others were organic products that hadn’t been adequately protected from prohibited pesticides.”

How do organic farmers get away with such chicanery?  A 2014 investigation by the Wall Street Journal of USDA inspection records from 2005 on found that 38 of the 81 certifying agents–entities accredited by USDA to inspect and certify organic farms and suppliers—“failed on at least one occasion to uphold basic Agriculture Department standards.” More specifically, “40% of these 81 certifiers have been flagged by the USDA for conducting incomplete inspections; 16% of certifiers failed to cite organic farms’ potential use of banned pesticides and antibiotics; and 5% failed to prevent potential commingling of organic and non-organic products.”

Speaking of trust and faith—or lack thereof–in organic foods, there was the example of holier-than-thou Whole Foods importing large amounts of its supposedly “organic” produce from China, of all places. Those imports even included Whole Foods’ house brand, “California Blend.” (Yes, you read that correctly.) 

They have such an investment in the nobility of their fantasy - that their methods are morally superior to those of the squaresville "corporate world" - that they're willing to jive the very folks consuming what they produce.

Where have we seen this phenomenon before?

Has Representative Meadows found a cure for Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome?

LITD certainly finds this an encouraging move:

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)

96%

 has filed a motion aimed at unseating Boehner immediately as Speaker of the House.

“Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) has filed a motion to try to force Speaker John Boehner from his leadership post,” Politico wrote in a breaking news alert. “The move, called a motion to vacate the chair, represents a new level of opposition to GOP leadership from the conservative wing of the House Republican Conference. The motion can be postponed for several days before consideration.”

It’s unclear if this will be successful, but over the past few years there have been two major coup attempts at Boehner. Both were unsuccessful—but extraordinarily close to succeeding—and centered around plays at the beginning of this Congress and the beginning of the last Congress.

This move will focus on centering around a different strategy, and it all comes after Boehner’s leadership team unsuccessfully attempted retaliation against Meadows for opposing Obamatrade. They had tried to pull a subcommittee chairmanship from Meadows—and did so, but then reversed themselves under enormous pressure from the GOP conference and the American people, turning Meadows into a conservative movement hero of sorts.

Wouldn't it be glorious to see the utterly worthless weeper from Cincinnati sent packing?

The smell of civilizational rot wafting off Global-Test's daughter's wedding dress

Here's who she married:

You not might be aware that in 2009, the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed, an Iranian-American physician.

Of course you’re not aware of it.

Brian (Behrooz) Nahed is son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it is now shortened and Americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time his engagement to Bradford Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years.

Here's some backstory:

Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise. I have to say, connecting the dots gets more and more frightening.
But it gets even worse. Guess who was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed? Javad Zarif’s son.

 

That's right. The guy yelling at Global-Test at all those patty-cake sessions in Vienna and Geneva over the past many years, the guy representing the regime that has never wavered from its determination to obliterate Israel and post-America, has this long informal history with the son of a bitch.

Post-America's butt is in the air, waiting for an ICBM to be squarely shoved up it, and the payload atop it detonated.

You overlords value their mad vision more than the simple objective of your safety.

"An Armageddon-like 'end of the world'"

As we all know, the West has two Islamic enemies - one Shiite, with Tehran as its nerve center, and one Sunni, comprised of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the al-Nusra Front, etc..

The focus has been on the former the last week or so, but it behooves us to give proper attention to this development:

An apparent Islamic State recruitment document found in Pakistan’s lawless tribal lands reveals that the extremist group has grand ambitions of building a new terrorist army in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and triggering a war in India to provoke an Armageddon-like “end of the world.”
The 32-page Urdu-language document obtained by American Media Institute (AMI) and reviewed by USA TODAY details a plot to attack U.S. soldiers as they withdraw from Afghanistan and target American diplomats and Pakistani officials.
AMI obtained the document from a Pakistani citizen with connections inside the Pakistani Taliban and had it independently translated from Urdu by Harvard researcher and translator Mustafa Samdani. The Pakistani's identity was shared with USA TODAY, which has agreed not to identify him publicly because of concerns for his safety.
The document was reviewed by three U.S. intelligence officials, who said they believe the document is authentic based on its unique markings and the fact that language used to describe leaders, the writing style and religious wording match other documents from the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. They asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The undated document, titled “A Brief History of the Islamic State Caliphate (ISC), The Caliphate According to the Prophet,” seeks to unite dozens of factions of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban into a single army of terror.  It includes a never-before-seen history of the Islamic State, details chilling future battle plans, urges al-Qaeda to join the group and says the Islamic State's leader should be recognized as the sole ruler of the world’s 1 billion Muslims under a religious empire called a “caliphate.”

Whether we have the will to thwart this is by no means a certainty.

God help us

The third video from Center for Medical Progress:

Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist, said she “unsuspectingly took as job as a ‘procurement technician'” at the fetal tissue company StemExpress, which was allegedly the primary buyer of fetal body parts from Planned Parenthood.

She said she fainted on her first day on the job when she was asked to dissect a “freshly aborted” baby.

Concerning Planned Parenthood’s repeated denials that they make any money from the exchange of body parts for cash, something that would be illegal under federal law, O’Donnell said, “For whatever we could procure, they would get a certain percentage. The main nurse was always trying to make sure we got our specimens. No one else really cared, but the main nurse did because she knew that Planned Parenthood was getting compensated.”

The new video also shows undercover footage of Dr. Savita Ginde, vice president and medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, who operates abortion clinics in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nevada.

She was secretly videotaped in the Planned Parenthood pathology lab, where babies are taken after being aborted. She also talks about making money for body parts: “I think a per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.”

Dr. Katherine Sheehan, medical director emerita of Planned Parenthood in San Diego, talks about their relationship with Advanced Bioscience Resources, a company that allegedly buys and sells baby parts into the abortion aftermarket. “We’ve been using them for over 10 years, really a long time, you know, just kind of renegotiated the contract. They’re doing the big government-level collections and things like that.”

I repeat, I assume you earn some percentage of your income - hopefully, all of it.  The fruits of your efforts as a supposedly sovereign individual created by Almighty God are, among other things, financing this.

Has he ever used his billions to champion any kind of discernible core principles?

National Review Online has been pretty uniformly against Donald Trump's campaign (for which it has LITD's admiration). Lots of its big guns - Rich Lowry, John Fund, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg - have weighed in.

For my money, the most razor-sharp arguments have come from the great Kevin Williamson, who contributes another salvo to the cause today.

He expresses his dismay with the fact that one in five Republicans is in this charlatan's camp, and then takes on the "we're-behind-him-because-by-God-he's-a-fighter" reasoning they so often toss out in defense of their position:

The Trumpkins insist that this isn’t about Trump but about the perfidious Republican establishment, which is insufficiently committed to the conservative project. Fair enough. But what of Trump’s commitment? Being at the precipice of his eighth decade walking this good green earth, Trump has had a good long while to establish himself as a leader on — something. He isn’t a full-spectrum conservative, but he seems to have conservative-ish instincts on a few issues. What has he done with them? 

Williamson cites some other billionaires who have used their fortunes to speak for things they stand for.  The most relevant example he offers is the Koch brothers, who have financed such free-market organizations at the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity.  They have written about the free market as the obvious solution to what vexes the economy in various journals.

Trump has written many books as well. What is the common theme running through them? Basically it's "protect your brand, cultivate ruthlessness and arrogance, and view everyone and everything that is not you in terms of how it can be leveraged for your advantage.

This man must never be US president.  Meanness and solipsism are immediate disqualifiers.

How serious are Hillionaire's troubles?

Well, no less an NBC luminary than Chuck Todd calls her current numbers "dismal."

Phillip Bump at WaPo says that her current situation substantiates the oft-repeated observation that she's more popular when she's not running for something.

The Hill says that top Freedom-Hater strategists are sweating - one even calling the current situation "the canary in the coal mine."

Among the most alarming findings, from a Democratic perspective, was the indication that Clinton, widely considered the party’s front-runner, would lose Colorado by 9 points to Walker and would lose by at least 6 points to any of the three candidates in Iowa.

Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic consultant who has worked with Clinton in the past but is not involved with her current campaign, described the findings as “absolutely dangerous” for the party. 

“The electorate is very volatile. They are not happy about anybody [in politics], and this is just another indication of that.”

Some Democrats — and presumably the Clinton camp itself, which declined through a spokesman to comment for this story — will take solace from the fact that the 2016 election is more than 15 months away. They argue that this makes hypothetical match-ups largely meaningless.

“At this time in 2007, John McCain was ahead of everyone,” Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked in former President Clinton’s White House and on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, said of the GOP nominee that cycle.

Some independent experts agree — at least to some extent.

“It’s never good to be trailing in a poll or to have numbers that don’t show you in a particularly good light, but at the same time it’s July 2015,” said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The general election is a political century away.”

But it is not just the head-to-head match-ups where Clinton struggles. Other findings are also poor for her, including on the question of whether voters trust her. Those results seem ominous given that the former first lady has been in the public eye for around a quarter-century, making impressions of her more difficult to change. She has also struggled on questions of honesty before.

The Quinnipiac poll showed Coloradans asserting by an almost 2-1 margin that Clinton was not honest or trustworthy: 62 percent said she was not, whereas only 34 percent she was. The findings were not much better in either Iowa or Virginia. Respondents distrusted Clinton 59 percent to 33 percent in the former, and 55 percent to 39 percent in latter.

DC Whispers says it's hearing mutterings of a certain c-word:

The term “Clinton Collapse” is apparently an increasingly common one these days for those whose job it is to continue insulating their candidate from media scrutiny and try and push Mrs. Clinton across the eventual finish line that is the Democratic Party nomination – no easy task given Clinton herself appears increasingly unstable, politically speaking.

Yikes.

It's important to state for the record that LITD is not imparting any kind of certainty to these observations.  But come on, all you drooling Kool-Aid drinkers, she is not where you assumed she'd be in mid-summer 2015.

I also still assume that Donald Trump will implode, or have his doors blown off by an actual conservative, but, as an academically trained historian, I know how wacky this world can get before it even begins to right itself, so consider nothing about this post to be a ha-ha-there's-no-way-your-successor-to-anointing-as-dictator-of-post-America-can-get-over-the-finish-line gesture.  I'm well aware that it can get even darker for us.

Still, it's a delicious moment for those who cherish liberty and harbor hope.

UPDATE: Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC faces the truth:

MSNBC host and NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell stated that when she spoke to intelligence officials at a security conference, “nobody can give an explanation for why a cabinet secretary would have a private email system other than to thwart inquiries, FOIAs” on Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Mitchell said that it’s possible that the impact of Clinton’s emails on her campaign has been underestimated. She continued, “Look, you have two inspectors general, and they are referring to this to the Justice Department. Now, you can try to confuse it, and there’s been a lot of misdirection. There’s been inaccurate reporting significantly, on Thursday night by the New York Times, it’s not a criminal referral, not at this stage. It could become, and it could become nothing. But, what they are suggesting is that there were classified — four out of the 40 randomly selected, had classified information, and it was not information that was later upgraded to be classified. It was information that was classified as ‘secret,’ which is a level of classification, at the time. This gets very confusing. And it can be confused further by statements on all sides. That said, the original sin, if you will, is having a private email system.”

Mitchell added, “I was at a security conference speaking to intelligence officials on all sides, and the attorney general, we’ll talk about that later. But nobody can give an explanation for why a cabinet secretary would have a private email system other than to thwart inquiries, FOIAs, and had someone who spent 20 years fighting off many investigations, many of which were unwarranted and which led nowhere. And so, you understand the defensive crouch that a lot of Clinton people were in. But it still doesn’t explain why, going from the Senate, into a cabinet level position, there was a private email system.”

National Journal Senior Political Columnist Ron Fournier stated, “they can’t brush away the fact that the secretary said, when this first was revealed, that there was no confidential information that was given out. We now know that’s true, she’s parsing it now by saying ‘at this time.’ But we know it happens when the Clintons parse, and it’s happening again.”

Sure to add some wrinkles to that famously furrowed brow.

Post-America's partner in patty-cake - today's edition

The Most Equal Comrade, Secretary Global-Test, Wendy Sherman et al offer the outstretched hand.  What Ayatollah Khameini offers in return is this:

US president has said he could knock out Iran’s military. We welcome no war, nor do we initiate any war, but..

And Foreign Minister Zarif offers this:

Iran hit out Friday against US Secretary of State John Kerry, accusing him of threatening military action against Tehran if it fails to respect a historic nuclear deal sealed on July 14.
"Unfortunately the US Secretary of State once again talked about the rotten rope of 'the ability of the US for using military force'," said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a statement.
Zarif decried what he called the "uselessness of such empty threats against the nation of Iran and the resistance of the nation of Iran", and said such remarks should be consigned "to the last century".
Despite the agreement reached with Iran on putting the nuclear bomb out of Tehran's reach, several US officials, including Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, have signalled that military force remains on the table to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Kerry and other American officials "have repeatedly admitted that these threats have no effect on the will of the people of Iran and that it will change the situation to their disadvantage," Zarif claimed. 

So after the deal, an enfeebled post-America has to make faint noises of keeping a military option up its sleeve, when the time to make clear our will to use force was way before a done deal was anything like a probability. And then Iran gets to make noises about how post-America is not proceeding in good faith.

Congress has to shoot this deal down.  Now that Russia and China, by virtue of their UN Security Council seats, have given it international weight, that won't have the impact it ought to have, but somebody had better start standing for a West free of incinerated cities.

President Kenyatta to the Most Equal Comrade: Don't start in with that "homosexuals can get married" stuff in our country

The Kenyan president makes it crystal-clear that there's to be no attempt to dress down his society for maintaining the same standards of normalcy and morality that post-America still upheld as recently as less than a decade ago:

In a rare public display, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta strongly disagreed with President Obama’s call for the African nation to prioritize gay rights, saying it is currently a “non-issue.”

Obama arrived in Kenya Friday, his first visit to his ancestral homeland since becoming president. While the visit was mostly intended to focus on trade issues and terrorism, Obama has said he planned to deliver a “blunt message” on the issue of gay rights in Kenya.

That message was delivered — and then swatted down by Kenyatta — during a joint Q&A session in Nairobi held Saturday.

“I believe in the principle of treating people equally under the law, and that they are deserving of equal protection under the law and that the state should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation,” Obama said.

"If you look at the history of different countries around the world, when you start treating people differently — not because of any harm they’re doing anybody, but because they’re different — that’s the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen,” he added.

Asked the same question, Kenyatta said Kenya has more pressing issues than gay rights.

While acknowledging that Kenya and the U.S. share many of the same values, Kenyatta said that “there are some things that we must admit we don’t share — our culture, our societies don’t accept.”

“It is very difficult for us to be able to impose on people that which they themselves do not accept,” Kenyatta said.

“This is why I repeatedly say that, for Kenyans today, the issue of gay rights is really a non-issue,” he added. “We want to focus on other areas that are day-to-day living for our people,” Kenyatta continued, citing the economic inclusivity of women and the improvement of education, infrastructure and entrepreneurship.

How's that for irony? An African nation embraces traditional Western values even as the former exemplar of such standards jettisons them at breakneck speed.

And the exquisiteness of a race-obsessed dictator of post-America getting straightened out on human sexuality by the president of the land of his roots is a challenge to articulate.

Reason number gazillion and nineteen why minimum wage is bad and wrong

Some brain-dead supporters of the idiocy are now saying, "whoa!"

Of all the unintended consequences of the minimum wage hike - I actually didn't even THINK about this one. Then again, I'm not addicted to government welfare, so it never occurred to me.

The minimum wage debate rolls on and on, even with several cities, including Seattle, imposing the job-killing $15 wage on employers. And we've already seen the impact it's had on businesses in those cities. But this - it's so sad that it's actually funny (and then it's sad again).

According to this, employees of a non-profit group in Seattle who've achieved their glorious goal of the $15 minimum wage are actually asking their employers for FEWER hours. The reason? Now that they make more money, they no longer qualify for subsidized housing. So they figure if they work fewer hours, they'll make less money and they can stay in their government-provided cheap apartments -

Nora Gibson is the executive director of Full Life Care, a nonprofit that serves elderly people in housing and nursing facilities and is also on the board of the Seattle Housing Authority.

 

She recently had five employees who earn $13 and hour request to reduce their work hours in order to remain eligible for housing subsidies.

 

“This has nothing to do with people’s willingness to work, or how hard people work. It has to do with being caught in a very complex situation where they have to balance everything they can pull together to pull together a stable, successful life,” Gibson said.

BUT WAIT! (as they say) THERE'S MORE!

Justine Decker is a full-time student with a 3-year-old son and a part-time job, says she doesn’t want to work full time because if she makes too much, it cuts into her subsidies for rent and childcare. 

“A one-bedroom can cost upward of $1,200. And so imagine paying that, and paying childcare which can be $900 something dollars,” Decker said.

Sooooo... the point of a higher minimum wage wasn't necessarily so you could provide things like housing and food and childcare for yourself - it was just to have more money for whatever else you wanted while the government continues to provide all the free/cheap stuff they were giving you BEFORE you got the minimum wage raise? You mean that even when people don't have to be totally dependent on the government, they still WANT to be?

Listen to that rumble; it's the sound of cattle stamping their feet.

Let's check in on Hillionaire

What's the latest with the second most prominent Alinskyite in the Freedom-hater party?

Well, she wants to double the capital-gains tax rate for top earners.

She saw the ass-whuppin' O'Malley came in for at Netroots and decided to get in front of the race issue,  making sure to use the approved "Black Lives Matter" phrase at recent campaign appearances.

And she reaffirms her support for Planned Parenthood at the same moment when corporate donors are fleeing as fast as they can.

And she has two inspectors general breathing down her neck over the private-email-account matter

Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.
The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.
It is not clear if any of the information in the emails was marked as classified by the State Department when Mrs. Clinton sent or received them.
But since her use of a private email account for official State Department business was revealed in March, she has repeatedly said that she had no classified information on the account.

Oh, and she's having poll number troubles:

If this news doesn’t have Joe Biden, Al Gore, or Elizabeth Warren seriously considering entering the presidential race — and serious Democrats urging them to do so — then nothing will. According to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll, Hillary Clinton trails Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker in Colorado, Iowa and Virginia.

Two of the three Republicans Clinton trails are neither well known nor in possession of a well known name. Thus, the poll results should be viewed mostly as a referendum on Hillary. 

This assessment is confirmed by Clinton’s favorability ratings. In Virginia, they are 41-50. In Colorado, they are 35-56. In Iowa, where Clinton has been a fairly constant presence, they are 33-56 — a tribute to her skill as campaigner. 

Hey, Hillionaire, try tripling down on the class warfare and identity politics. That ought to turn things around.

No prez love for the Most Equal Comrade

Well, outside of his ate-up base.

I know the MEC has had a string of wins for his agenda this year, and I know about the Paul Krugman piece in the latest Rolling Stone saying the MEC may be the most successful president in the history of the universe, but the fact is that it wouldn't take much for his mediocre standing with the post-American people to crater and send him to the bottom of the heap:

Barack Obama is not popular. This plain and simple fact may surprise those who read only legacy journalists, who often elide this inconvenient truth. A recent Associated Press write-up is illustrative:

Even as the public remains closely divided about his presidency, Barack Obama is holding on to his support from the so-called “Obama coalition” of minorities, liberals and young Americans, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows, creating an incentive for the next Democratic presidential nominee to stick with him and his policies.

Obama’s job approval in this poll was a paltry 43 percent, with 55 percent disapproval. This is hardly a public “closely divided,” but it is typical of the media’s approach. They prefer to gloss over his bad numbers, point out the weakness of the GOP, or emphasize how popular he is among Democrats. 

But ignoring a fact does not make it any less true. Obama is unpopular, and he has been unpopular for a while. The most straightforward definition of a popular president is one who garners at least 50 percent approval in public opinion polls. The last time Obama hit that mark in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls was April 2013. Excepting brief boosts corresponding to his reelection and the killing of Osama bin Laden, he has consistently been under 50 percent in the RCP average since December 2009. This makes him one of the least popular presidents in postwar history. 

Pair this with the results of that ABC / Washington Post poll we discussed the other day, in which 63 percent of post-Americans were not happy about the SCOTUS decisions on Freedom-Hater-care and homosexual "marriage," and one begins to see that we have not all decided to become cattle.

Forget the loudmouth with the weird hair; We have a principled conservative with the heart of a warrior

The thrust of right-leaning analysis of Trump's continued high numbers has been that, to a swath of the post-American public to which ideological consistency is not as importance as pit bull attitude, Trump represents the only non-Dem candidate with a real fighting spirit. Rush Limbaugh and Eric Erickson have posited thusly, but I think the clearest analysis of it comes from Matthew Continetti at the the Washington Free Beacon:

Two decades ago, in the spring of 1996, Newsweek magazine described a group of voters it called the “radical middle.” Formerly known as the Silent Majority, then the Reagan Democrats, these voters had supported Ross Perot in 1992, and were hoping the Texas billionaire would run again. Voters in the radical middle, Newsweek wrote, “see the traditional political system itself as the country’s chief problem.”

The radical middle is attracted to populists, outsiders, businessmen such as Perot and Lee Iacocca who have never held office, and to anyone, according to Newsweek, who is the “tribune of anti-insider discontent.” Newt Gingrich rallied the radical middle in 1994—year of the Angry White Male—but his Republican Revolution sputtered to a halt after the government shut down over Medicare in 1995. Once more the radical middle had become estranged from the GOP. “If Perot gets in the race,” a Dole aide told Newsweek, “it will guarantee Clinton’s reelection.”

Well, here we are again, at the beginning of a presidential campaign in which the Republican Party, having lost its hold on the radical middle, is terrified of the electoral consequences. The supporters of Reagan and Perot, of Gingrich and Pat Buchanan, have found another aging billionaire in whom to place their fears and anxieties, their nostalgia and love of country, their disgust with the political and cultural elite, their trepidation at what our nation is becoming.

A brash showboat and celebrity, self-promoter and controversialist, silly and mocking, a caricature of a caricature, Donald Trump is no one’s idea of a serious presidential candidate. Which is exactly why the radical middle finds him refreshing. Not an iota of him is politically correct, he plays by no rules of comity or civility, he genuflects to no party or institution, he is unafraid of and antagonistic toward the media, and he challenges the conventional wisdom of both parties, which holds that there is no real cost to illegal immigration and to trade with China.

This radical middle actually finds his inconsistency appealing:

That Trump is not a conservative, nor by any means a mainstream Republican, is not a minus but a plus to the radical middle. These voters are culturally right but economically left; they depend on the New Deal and parts of the Great Society, are estranged from the fiscal and monetary agendas of The Economist and Wall Street Journal. What they lack in free market bona fides they make up for in their romantic fantasy of the patriotic tycoon or general, the fixer, the Can Do Man who will cut the baloney and Get Things Done. On social questions their views tend toward the moderate side—Perot was no social conservative, either. What unites them is opposition to elites in government, finance, culture, journalism; their search for a vehicle—whether it’s a political party or an outspoken publicity maven—that will displace the managers and technocrats and restore the America of old.

And there are some slightly to the right of this radical middle, who have indeed thought through the basic Judeo-Christian, economic and foreign-policy principles championed by conservatives who have been momentarily intoxicated by the Trump Kool-Aid, and it's somewhat understandable, given the utter uselessness or worse of supposed "GOP leaders", such as John Boehner:

 Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is throwing cold water on several House Republicans' efforts to immediately defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of the group's undercover video controversy.

Boehner said Thursday that he will not yet commit to blocking funding for Planned Parenthood after an anti-abortion-rights group produced two videos that attempt to portray the group as illegally profiting from fetal tissue donation. 

"Facts first," Boehner said when asked twice about Planned Parenthood funding during his Thursday news conference.

Boehner's remarks, which come several days after he ordered a congressional probe into the videos, put him at odds with the 80 House Republicans who have backed a new bill from Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) that would immediately block Planned Parenthood's funding for one year while the government investigates. A similar bill has been introduced in the upper chamber by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).

Black's spokesman said Wednesday that her legislation had been received favorably by House leadership and hoped to see a vote "as soon as possible." 

Or Mitch McConnell:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is clearing the way to restart the Export-Import Bank, an expired corporate-welfare agency he has voted against, as part of the highway bill in the Senate this week.

Conservatives say McConnell's actions show he never really opposed the agency — that deep down, McConnell takes the K Street position rather than the free-market stance. McConnell's office contends that pragmatic politics are more complicated than that, and that keeping Ex-Im dead is beyond the majority leader's power.

In the labyrinthine world of Senate procedure, it's hard to get a clear picture of what's going on, but this much is clear:

1) There are more than 60 votes in the Senate to restart Ex-Im,
2) McConnell, nevertheless, has the power to keep Ex-Im dead by blocking a vote.
Here's the background:
In late May, McConnell, in order to get enough votes to pass Trade Promotion Authority, cut a deal on the floor of the Senate with a group of Boeing-state senators, led by Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington. McConnell had pledged to allow an Ex-Im vote "on an amendable vehicle in June," his office told me then.

Something like that happened June 10. Sen. Kelly Ayotte got a vote on an Ex-Im amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment passed, but for procedural reasons, supporters then withdrew it. Ex-Im's charter then expired on June 30, and the agency is currently in liquidation. 

This last onset of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome was too much for the magnificent Ted Cruz, who let loose on the Senate floor today with this barrage:

In the speech, Cruz says—calling him out personally—McConnell lied to the entire Republican conference. Cruz’s speech stemmed from how McConnell—despite telling the entire GOP conference there was no such secret deal with the Democrats during the Obamatrade process to later bring up Ex-Im reauthorization—actually did cut a deal with Democrats, specifically 

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

0%

.

“Today is a sad day for this institution,” Cruz said on the floor.

The Senate operates based on trust. Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, these 100 Senators have to be able to trust that when a Senator sys something, he or she will do it. Even if we disagree on substance, that we don’t lie to each other. What we just witnessed this morning is profoundly disappointing.

Cruz then proceeded to expose comments McConnell made to Republican senators in a private lunch, showing that McConnell lied to his entire conference. The comments Cruz talks about were around the time of the first Obamatrade votes in the Senate, when McConnell told Republicans—something that has since been proven to be untrue—that there was no deal with Democrats to vote on Ex-Im later in exchange for the necessary votes to pass Obamatrade.

Cruz voted for Obamatrade’s Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) the first go-around in the Senate based on McConnell’s word—and he famously turned against the fast-track trade authority later.

“I want to describe the context of two preceding discussions. A number of weeks ago when this Senate was considering Trade Promotion Authority, a group of Senators gathered on this floor and blocked TPA for many minutes because they were pressing for the Export-Import Bank,” Cruz said.

They huddled on this floor and negotiated a deal in front of C-SPAN, in front of the world. Then when they had their deal, TPA had the votes to pass. Shortly thereafter, we had a Senate Republican lunch where I stood up and I asked the Majority Leader very directly what was the deal that was just on TPA and was there a deal for the Export-Import Bank. It was a direct question. I asked the Majority Leader in front of all the Republican senators. The Majority Leader was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the Majority Leader looked at me and said there is no deal.

Cruz noted that McConnell made the promise that “there is no deal” three times in public and then again in a private discussion with him and 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

100%

.

“There is no deal. Like St. Peter, he repeated it three times,” Cruz said.

He said the only thing I told the proponents of the Export-Import Bank is like any other Senator in this body, they could offer any amendment they liked on any amendable vehicle, but I gave them nothing. There is no deal. He was emphatic. And he was repeated. Following that Republican discussion, Sen. Mike Lee and I approached the Majority Leader afterwards in which he emphasized again there is no deal, I will do nothing, I oppose the Export-Import Bank. All I said is they can offer an amendment like any Senator can to any bill. Madam President, I went back to my office and I sat and had a long discussion with my staff.

In those discussions, Cruz said his staff told him that McConnell was lying to him. But he couldn’t believe right off the bat that the Senate GOP majority leader would lie like that to his face or to the faces of all other GOP senators.

This towering champion of liberty, decency and American revival wasn't done, not by a long shot. Went on to excoriate the "GOP leadership" for its non-action on including an amendment in the Iran Review Act insisting that Iran recognize Israel's right to exist, on repealing Freedom-Hater-care, and its cave on Cromnibus.

We don't need to give one second of our attention to a charlatan who is on record as supporting single-payer health care and the "right" to choose to exterminate fetal Americans.

Right before our eyes, we have an absolutely consistent conservative who thunders the truth and who takes the war for America's soul not only to the enemy on the other side of the aisle but to the Vichy-style sellouts to whom we've been entrusting our fates.

Ted went there today, and it was about time.