Video Of The Week: Louis CK On Hillary

This is great. Really great.

#Politics

Comments (Archived):

  1. Daniel leon

    Fred, I agree it is great. But I hear that alot of women, especially those fighting for gender equality, were offended by the comments. I wonder if Gotham Gal could relate. Cheers from Tel Aviv

    1. William Mougayar

      That’s called humor. Of course, he is being a bit facetious, but it is funny nonetheless.

      1. Greg Kieser

        Actually, I’m not so sure he is being facetious. It seems he really believes that her kick-ass attitude and character flaws are what is needed.

        1. William Mougayar

          As I said earlier, humor is the grease that lets someone insult you smoothly.

          1. Greg Kieser

            True true.

      2. Pete Griffiths

        🙂 right. newsflash – he’s a comedian.And there is a longstanding tradition of the truth telling court jester.

    2. fredwilson

      she loved it and my girls loved it. they all told me to watch it

      1. Guest

        Do you love Mrs. Clinton’s proposed 65% Estate Tax? Do you have a good estate attorney who has helped you shield some of your assets from the Estate Tax? Why?

    3. Mica is awesome!

      Loved it through and through! People have been using the word “bitch” in such a derogatory context for so long. After so many professional women have been accused of being bitches for wanting more, perhaps being a bitch isn’t such a bad thing.Lots of people admit that Donald Trump is an asshole and they still gladly vote for him. For some reason, being an asshole is somehow suppose to be a positive trait because it shows strength.In that case, “Bitch” you may call me.

    4. LE

      were offended by the commentsLouis CK is an entertainer and a comedian. This is his shtick and his humor. His business is getting laughs. That said people like this are given way to much importance in the world. Another example is Jay Z and Beyonce getting out the vote for Hillary yesterday. All of them are easily replaceable by another entertaining person if you don’t like what they say or how they act. And honestly if a voter actually needs someone of this type of ‘stature’ to tell them what they should be thinking hopefully their your wasted vote will be balanced out by a person listening another idiot touting the other candidate. [1][1] Noting that most people honestly are probably voting for the wrong reasons.

    5. Erin

      Louis CK is great, and he meant well, but his comments did come across as a patronizing pat on the head to a lot of women. Vox did a piece on it right after it came out called The Rise of Benevolent Sexism in Liberal Men: http://www.vox.com/platform/amp/cu…The unspoken implication of this bit is that women are these angelic creatures who are more intrinsically pure and moral than them, so “let’s put one in office to clean us all up like our exhausted mother would’ve done instead of relating to her like an adult with foibles on the same level as us”. It’s like a warm and fuzzy defence against having to face the reality that she deserves her job. Clearly he meant well but let me never be hired at a company because I’d be a good mother figure to the guys there.

      1. Pete Griffiths

        I don’t buy that characterization of his position. And btw – he’s a comedian.

        1. Erin

          Well I guess for me to respond, I’d have to know a bit more about why you don’t buy it. And btw, the whole “Just chill ladies, he’s being funny. It’s just a little pat on the head. Just take it”. is a little intellectually lazy. Can you think of why you might disagree?

          1. LE

            Because it’s fiction. That is if you are listening to a comedian, watching a movie (or tv show) or listening to a song it’s implied that it’s made up and defacto protected speech for entertainment purposes. There is wide latitude to say, display and do what is needed to achieve your goal of entertaining people. For that matter this happens in private and in small groups as well. [1] Does some of it have a basis in reality? Definitely I am sure it does.Look at home I have all sorts of perverse things that I say to my wife where she knows I am joking. And she does it right back to me. In fact she started the trend iirc. I wish I could give some examples but unfortunately I am sure it wouldn’t be taken in the right way here on this blog.[1] One of the reasons Howard Stern was so popular was that he said things that others wished they could say.

          2. Erin

            You mean he’s being funny in a vacuum? Making social commentary on a fictional society? I’m not doubting his good intentions, this motherhood metaphor just lands wrong.

          3. LE

            His job, his business, is making a living by saying things that people find funny or interesting regardless of whether true or not. It worked because we are now talking about him. In a sense this is what worked for Trump as well. Creatively stretching the truth to benefit the business that he was in.You and others (but not Gotham girl and Fred’s daughters according to his comment) were bothered by this. Louis doesn’t care he just has to beat alpha. Not come up with the perfectly constructed joke that works for everyone.I think if I ever had the idea to be a comedian I would come up with the most outrageous things that would be sure to offend and get the most attention possible to jumpstart my career.

          4. Erin

            I’m sure you would. But don’t forget you also need friends, LE.

          5. LE

            So you are saying that if someone is a novelist or a song writer and they handle dangerous material they lose all of their friends? Like if you write a screenplay about a rape and abuse all or many or most of your friends will leave you? “I don’t like what you are writing and what you are saying”.Not to mention that with fame comes plenty of people who will want to be friends and hang out with you. Even if some might consider that for the wrong reasons. And what is the right reason anyway?

          6. Erin

            The right reason to be friends? You have some kind of mutual respect for each other, you see a divine spark in each other.

          7. Pete Griffiths

            OK. I guess I’m just going to have to work a little.Here’s a summary of what he had to say:a) I think she’s great – talented, super smart, experiencedb) semi serious points about being a mum, lots of jokes about fathers but serious point about the contribution(s) of women/mothersc) Trump is thin skinned – can’t be criticized whereas Hilary can take abuse and stay at workd) Criticizes people who don’t vote and people who ‘don’t like her voice”e) concludes with ‘If you vote for Hilary your a growup, Trump a sucker, nobody and asshole.”The point about him being a comedian is only a comment on style. As I observed in another comment there is a longstanding tradition of truth telling court jesters. Style of delivery is not to be confused with substance.You say “The unspoken implication of this bit is that women are these angelic creatures who are more intrinsically pure and moral than them” Well – we can agree on one thing here, it is certainly unspoken. In fact I can’t find a single thing in anything he said that implies anything of the kind.Here’s what i took away from the underlying substance wrt the role of women/mothers.a) Women/mothers make a valuable and all too often undervalued contribution to society and it’s time that was recognizedb) Hilary is competent, smart and ready. The fact she is a woman is further cause for celebration precisely because it’s long overdue.I don’t think there was anything patronizing in what he said and whilst it must be admitted that I am not in fact a woman I have many friends who LOVED this piece and didn’t find anything in it that remotely resembles your interpretation.

          8. Erin

            Have you ever gone to an interview when it was down to you and someone else and you’re killing it with bringing home why you’re the best candidate, and point for point answering all their questions with crisp, precise, well-researched answers, and one interviewer turns to the next and says, “You know, he’s right, we really do need a father figure in here, hee hee”. Besides the sex jokes, wouldn’t you be like, “WTF is this place?”

          9. Pete Griffiths

            What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.You asked me to be specific and I was. And now this is your reply?:)

          10. PhilipSugar

            You know Erin this is really shitty.And by that I mean it happens.It disgusts me.I can not even understand???!!! Why not take the best talent???Plain stupid.

          11. Twain Twain

            To borrow the great JLM, I agree with you more than you agree with yourself.Louis CK pays tribute to the LEADERSHIP qualities she has and consistently shows (https://www.entrepreneur.co…* Focus — “We’ve been holding her down and spitting in her mouth and yelling at her and she gets up and goes, “Well, I just think that if children have proper healthcare, education … SHE JUST KEEPS WORKING!”* Transparency — “All her s*** is out there.”* Passion — mothers give 200%.* Patience — she’s been doing this 30 years.* Stoicism — “Hilary Clinton can take abuse. She’s taken it and taken it.”* Decisiveness — “We just need a tough, b**** mother who does s***.”Generosity — “A great father can give 40% tops. A mother who isn’t even trying…200%.”* Persistence* Empowerment — “She gets up and goes, “Well, I just think that if children have proper healthcare, education …”* Accountability — “All her s*** is out there.”Does she have wonkiness (a grasp of numbers)? Yes.What about integrity and the other qualities? Is she flawed and fallible? Yes. Still, she also has the potential to be a GREAT President.When we go through the list of leadership qualities and cross-check it with Louis CK’s comments, he’s underlining her work ethic and problem-solving:”SHE JUST KEEPS WORKING!””We just need a tough, b**** mother who does s***.”@erinm1:disqus — The corporate world devalues working mothers and labels women who are ambitious and doing great jobs as b****, painting those as negative.Louis turns those derogations towards women on their heads.He pays respect to a truth: MOTHERS GIVE 200%. They take care of other people AND GET S*** DONE.Every Chairman of the board, every board, every CEO should watch this video and take on board the message that mothers are resilient and they DELIVER and GIVE MORE than they get credit for.And those boards and CEOs should work out policies of how to ensure equal pay and crèche facilities for working mothers.You may want to read this from Bloomberg on why women succeed in tech investment in China:”Through it all, she raised three children. Her work habits would have been unusual, if not unacceptable, in the West. She brought her first-born son to the office every day for three years. She didn’t have a nanny or a helper so he came to virtually every meeting she had, crawling on conference tables and scribbling on walls.She says that bringing her children helped build a bond with many of the entrepreneurs she backed. Her son did cry and disrupt meetings, but that didn’t stop her. It gave her a chance to develop a more personal relationship with founders.She thinks being a woman gave her another advantage: It was easier for her to tell an entrepreneur he was wrong than a male investor. “It’s very politically incorrect to say this, but as a woman I can say things, THEY DO SHOW A SPECIAL RESPECT TO WOMEN. BECAUSE IT’S SEEN AS MOTHERLY, YOU CAN BE MUCH MORE STERN.”If you haven’t heard the term yet, Chinese women are “tiger mothers” so I’m from a long line of strong women who “get s*** done.”In Nov 2015, Mark Zuckerberg paid tribute to his inspiring pediatrician wife, Priscilla, like so: “I love her expression: intense yet kind, fierce yet loving, leading yet always supporting others.”It may be that the US needs a President Hillary Clinton to put it on a par with China’s philosophy of “Women hold up half of the sky” with a special respect for mothers.

          12. sigmaalgebra

            For a generalization, as mothers, females are much better than males. But I’ve known too many women who were bad parents and their husbands were much better parents.E.g., I well remember a family gathering where the grandfather was thrilled, totally enchanted, devoting all his attention and affection to one of his grandchildren and his wife, the child’s grandmother, was treating the child as a stray dog in from the outside just five minutes before — just ignoring the child and her husband’s attention to the child; she refused even to look in that direction. For the man, that grandchild was one of the greatest accomplishments in his life, but his wife was refusing to acknowledge anything good.I saw a woman who’s idea of motherhood was to do a little housework, smoke cigarettes, mostly not eat (she was badly underweight), and get drunk and put herself to sleep each evening. Her husband was a much better parent, worker, person, etc.I saw another such family, father successful in business, very nice house: Here the mother stayed in her bedroom with four large dogs and ignored her daughter who, starting at age 12, had boys spend the night with her in her bedroom on weekends, usually a different boy each night.Another mother had a husband, very hard worker, with his siblings, built a good business spanning several states, and they had one child. Then the mother retired to her bedroom, lived on chocolates, gained about 150 pounds, and neglected the child and her husband.I saw another mother, with a few children, husband wealthy, good guy, a bit over the top (e.g., Cadillac with bull horns on the hood), and her interest was sex with several poor young men at a time, some of whom liked punching holes in the drywall, soon living outdoors in a tent in a commune, and insisting that her husband give all his money to the commune.Then there was the woman in a very nice house, husband a good guy and quite successful lawyer, five kids together, who up and decides that her life is awful, gets a Master’s degree and a miserable job, and leaves. She should have been there making a good home and enjoying the grand kids, but, instead, she wrecked the family and left. Finally her husband found a much younger woman who looked terrific in a white tennis outfit.And including wives who didn’t have children, I’ve got a longer list of total losers: E.g., one wife was really good friends with Jack Daniels and Jim Beam; her husband was a nice guy and successful, but daily on returning home found his wife passed out on the living room floor surrounded by her Jack and Jim friends.There was one wife, pretty beyond belief, who was bored, with no interest in children, in the house, in a bikini, as workmen were doing renovations, then decides to go to college, then art school, then be a leading horse woman, then an entrepreneur, and then — gone.I’ve seen a lot of women in the world of work, some up close, some farther away, and from all I’ve seen, women, net, on average, as a generalization, are not better than men at work.Yes, women are different. But, too close to reality is from The Viewhttp://www.youtube.com/watc…In the end, have to take people one at a time and mostly f’get about gender.

          13. Twain Twain

            As a father, Donald Trump repeatedly sexually objectifies his own daughter because his bragging ego can’t self-control. That alone tells the world he’s not right, mature or sensible in the head.He sends her to the best schools, pays for an expensive education and then gives permission for the entire world to reduce and DISRESPECT her as nothing more than a “piece of ass”.Why would any intelligent person respect Ivanka when she enables her own father’s sexual objectification of her and doesn’t call him out on it? No amount of Chanel suits or glossy magazine covers will ever erase that she lets her father devalue her like that.https://uploads.disquscdn.c…* http://www.slate.com/blogs/…What type of father lets his teenage daughter be photographed sitting on top of copulating parrots like this: https://uploads.disquscdn.c…What type of father says he’d be dating her if she wasn’t his daughter:* https://www.youtube.com/wat…Look at how awkward she is when she casts her eyes down at 0.18s. It looks like she’s been psychologically conditioned to think, “I have to put up with everything to get his approval” from a very young age.If my Dad had ever spoken about or treated me the way Trump has his daughter, he’d have gotten a serious dressing down by my mother and he would have felt ashamed by his own behavior. My mother wouldn’t have issued a rebuke in which she said she’d accepted his apology the way Melania did — only for her husband to then say during the third presidential debate, “And I didn’t even apologize,” thereby completely dismissing Melania’s rebuke as if she means nothing.It’s not about $billions or rust belts, upper class, middle class or working class.It’s about R-E-S-P-E-C-T and consideration for others.A President Trump would be like a President Berlusconi on the world stage: the US is not to be taken seriously.Sure, people laughed at Berlusconi’s irascibility and brushed aside his misogyny as “boys being boys” too. Sure, he too was a billionaire and had wattages of “TV star power” like Trump. Sure, like a peacock, he blustered to European negotiations “full of hot air” claiming to the electorate he’d fix XYZ and get better deals for the working class people who voted him in against the incumbent incompetents.Sure, people were fooled into arguing that Berlusconi was only playing an idiot but that, underneath, he must be a genius because he’d parlayed small savings into $billions and so that gave them hope they’d become as rich as him if they elected him.Do we know what happened to Italy during that time? https://uploads.disquscdn.c…Do we know what happened to Berlusconi? He increased his $billions of personal wealth and became more “untouchable” by abusing the levers of power and democracy.Foreign direct investment and wealth creation in the country PLUMMETED. Unemployment, especially amongst young people, shot up.* http://www.economist.com/no…* http://www.thedailybeast.co…So the vote on Tuesday is indeed the most important one a generation of Americans have had.The American Dream, American values, America’s moral authority and everything they represent is at stake.

          14. sigmaalgebra

            I hadn’t seen those materials.These days, finally, I just throw away essentially everything by a newsie writer. So, as a special case, in those materials, I throw away the writing from the newsies.But those materials do start to get up to common high school term paper writing standards, that is, have solid references to primary sources. That is, we can see what are purported to be Trump’s actual statements, a GIF image or so, etc. And sometimes we have some appropriately complete context.So, I can take the voice recordings, the video clip from The View, the GIF image seriously.For some of that content, it looks like some context is missing; from one of the video clips, at YouTube, the next clip (as YouTube chains together video clips) happened to be as a repeat but longer with more context than one of the other clips.I will start with yourAs a father, Donald Trump repeatedly sexually objectifies his own daughter because his bragging ego can’t self-control. That alone tells the world he’s not right, mature or sensible in the head. That’s tough to respond to.As background, we have to keep in mind something a lot of parents observe about their sons and daughters but was actually reported recently (sorry, I should have kept the reference but didn’t — I spend too much time collecting references so don’t collect all I might): Already in the crib, the girls are paying attention to people and the boys, to things. In my experience, this is essentially always strongly true with the difference just astounding.Then, girls grow up much more sensitive and insightful into people than boys with boys far ahead of girls in things. Looking back, as I grew up, the girls made me look like a total backward dunce in social skills and insight, and I made the girls look even worse on things, mechanical, electrical, math and physical science. I wasn’t trying to compete with the girls on things, math, etc., and what I did was just natural and effortless; likely the same for the girls and what they did socially.(1) For your statement, in a sense here, I’m on Trump’s side if only because of that background and, in particular, an afternoon from my teen years.For the afternoon, I had a girlfriend (at least I was trying to have her as my girlfriend); call her Susan. I met her when she was 12 and I, 14; that afternoon she was 13 and I, 15. She was by a wide margin the prettiest human female I’ve ever seen, in person or otherwise. I was in love with her and still am.Susan had a friend one year younger, call her Martha. Martha was a very pretty girl; Susan was much prettier.One afternoon I was to walk Susan about a mile to a high end ice cream parlor for a snack. As I arrived at Susan’s house, Martha was also there. So, the three of us went for the ice cream. I had a little money in my pocket so could pay for the ice cream for the three of us and not just two.I sat next to Susan, and Martha sat on the other side of the table. Martha talked a lot to me, and Susan said next to nothing and looked sad. At the end, as I was counting out the tip for the waitress, Martha stayed with me, but Susan, looking really unhappy, ran out of the parlor and waited for us in the parking out front.The rest of the afternoon went okay.I wasn’t thrilled about taking Martha — three is an odd number. But Martha was there and Susan’s friend, so the afternoon about had to be Susan and I hosting Martha. Still a good afternoon at least for me but less good than I had planned.Why’d Susan run out?Took me a long time to figure that out: Martha was flirting with me. I didn’t see that and assumed that she was just making normal conversation. Susan was offended.Susan and Martha saw what was going on socially — I just thought that the ice cream was good and that I was lucky to be with two pretty girls, one I was in love with.For Trump, I can believe (A) that you and a lot of girls/women see things that, for girls/women, are socially not so good but (B) that Trump or I would pass off as just a normal conversation, a joke, a nice time, good ice cream, or some such.For the ice cream afternoon, the difference in the male/female views of the quality of the event might have been a few light years: Without any thought, I was naturally very protective of both of the girls. E.g., to and from the ice cream parlor, in part we walked across our large school campus with no other people around (summer, school was out). If there had been a rabid dog, mad, running, about to attack us, then right away, no hesitation, I would have gotten between the dog and the girls, looked for a stick, tree limb, or something to help me fend off the dog, and screamed at the girls to run and get some police to shoot the dog. I would have risked my life for either of those girls, certainly for both of them. No thought. No hesitation. Lots of adrenaline. Into the fight; try to win.Net, since I would have been willing to risk my life to protect them, can’t say I wasn’t being nice to the girls. Indeed, I was being really, really, really, really nice to the girls. E.g., for the rabid dog scenario, I could have just run, and then maybe the dog would have gone for one of the girls instead of me. I wouldn’t have done that. No REAL boy/man would EVER do that and, instead, would ALWAYS protect the girls/women. I was never told that, or taught that, but that’s what I would have done.For any wuss, pretend boy/man who would not risk his life to protect girls/women, all us REAL men would want to get that wuss a rabid dog of their own.I can believe that Trump would have done the same — risked his life to protect any of the girls/women around him. Then, again, can’t say that Trump wasn’t being nice to the girls/women.IIRC Trump has claimed that he “cherishes,” or some such, girls/women. I can believe that. Indeed, Trump is also risking his life in his run for POTUS.Net, here, some girls/women, like Susan at the ice cream parlor, with their much higher sensitivity to social situations, can get offended about some things about men that even really good men, who cherish and would risk their lives to protect the girls/women, don’t understand.To apply this, your “sexually objectifies” I have to strain to see. Maybe 20 years ago, so did Trump.To me sexually objectifies is an extreme, particular case of hysterical political correctness and an angry, blame the men, radical feminism that men can’t possibly understand or respond to, must just avoid, and hope it goes away soon.Men, ALL REAL men, are 100% ready, willing, able, and eager to take nice, pretty girls/women for ice cream, pay for all of it, open doors for them, protect them from rain, snow, mean men, rabid dogs, etc., even risk their lives to protect them, work hard to make money to buy them impractical, pretty, flimsy fashion frocks, in case of a flat tire, in the rain and/or snow, on the side of the road, while the girl/woman is warm and dry in the car, get out, get the jack, crawl under the car, …, change the tire, etc., and generally cherish, protect, and treasure the girl/woman, regard her as an angel, and treat her like a princess.Look, uh, I’m describing a really good man, one any girl/woman should be thankful for; not all men are like that, and some of the differences are super big biggies.In the face of all that, this sexually objectifies stuff a lot of really good men don’t get. I don’t get it.(2) For yourhis bragging ego can’t self-control.Yup, he does a lot of bragging. I can’t know if that is due to “ego” or not. My guess is that he is selling, NYC style brash, selling. It appears that a lot that he is selling is his brand.Smart: His brand has made him a lot of money. E.g., both Ivanka and Melania have fashion lines that, IMHO, are based heavily on Trump’s brand. IMHO again, when people pay the room rates at a Trump hotel, part of their willingness to take the hit to their credit card is Trump’s brand that lets them assume that the hotel is high quality. So, he’s selling.He’s successful in business; he’s made billions; some of that money is from his selling his brand.In his selling, as in his net worth, he is exceptionally good, and that almost necessarily means different. You seem to want to regard his selling efforts, the way he is different, as an ego defect; I can’t be sure about that and, instead, to me his selling looks like good business. Actually, to me, it looks like often in some circumstances he’s a modest, even self-effacing guy; so, the ego explanation doesn’t really fit.Look, there’s another way to look at his selling: Concentrate on the results. I don’t see Trump as torturing puppies or doing anything seriously wrong on anything serious. So, let’s accept and be thankful for the results and move on.Sometimes people have some wildly wacko views of comparative value, e.g., are willing to pay far too much for something trivial and give up something really important for next to nothing.It appears that a big, huge example was in the Allied invasion of Italy in WWII:So, in Sicily, Ike gave Monty his way and had Patton and Bradley doing the dirty work where Monty would get all the glory.This glory stuff is DANGEROUS because it connects directly to (A) the number of dead soldiers and (B) in whose army the dead soldiers are from.So, Patton knew that he had to prove to Monty, Ike, the newsies, and the world that he and his army should not be tricked into spilling blood to make life easier for Monty, especially when Monty was not even half the military leader he thought he was and wanted others to so think.Sure, in Sicily, the objectives were (A) take the town of Messina that was the closest point and main transportation route to Italy and (B) capture the Axis soldiers on the island before they could get to Messina and escape to Italy.So, Monte was trying to move up the eastern coast of Sicily with Patton trying to move up the center of the island to “protect Monty’s left flank”.Well, as usual, Monty was moving too slowly. Why usual? Monty’s approach to a battle was to have a few thousand artillery pieces, a few thousand tanks, etc. against a much weaker force, all pieces in fixed positions, fire the artillery for a few days, and then move with the tanks. He did that at El Alamein — got the artillery and tanks from the US via the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal. But that approach to battle was too limited for success in much of reality.So, in response, Patton just went west, took Palermo, moved quickly across the northern coast of the island, and beat Monty to Messina. Too many Germans escaped, but Patton showed the world that he was a better commander than Monty.Alas, Patton lost his cool and slapped a soldier in a hospital crying from fear from battle fatigue.In response, Ike gave the invasion of Italy to General Mark Clark instead of Patton.IMHO, that little swap, Clark for Patton to pay for Patton’s slap of a soldier, cost the US some thousands of US lives. Why? As a General, Mark Clark sucked and made a bloody mess of the invasion of Italy.Dumb.To apply this lesson, welcome Trump’s proven abilities to get good, big, important things DONE and f’get about obscure, likely nearly trivial, harder to nail to the wall than jello issues about ego and sexual objectification.Thus, I’ve responded to your first paragraph. It wasn’t easy.(3) For the rest, I can see that maybe 20 years ago Trump lacked some social insight, some polish, some manners, but I see nothing seriously wrong now or even then.Mostly what I see is that in his brand and/or reality, he likes and admires beautiful girls/women. So do I! And he used to like to build a brand image that he is successful with such women — I don’t try to do that!But, is he actually mean to girls/women? Overall, no way: E.g., he encouraged both his daughters to go to Wharton, and has given Ivanka lots of education and responsibility in the family business.How Trump has treated his children, including his two daughters and Melania, definitely looks like a lot of R-E-S-P-E-C-T to me.Maybe, as you suggest, at times Ivanka has worked hard to please her father, but it has appeared to me that that is one of the more effective ways to get a child doing good things. Right, the child might be lost once the father has passed on, but, well ….There seems to be an example in the career of violinist Yehudi Menuhin. He was good; his technique was terrific, and some of his interpretations were among the best, e.g., of the Beethoven concerto — Menuhin makes that concerto sound like a representation of the highest nobility of the human spirit.Menuhin had been good as a child. Then at about age 20, he concluded that he didn’t know how to play violin. Why? Well, he’d long just done just what his teachers told and showed him. I.e., apparently, for a very talented child, it’s actually possible to get them on a concert stage by, line by line of the score, “play it like this”, and the child imitates that. So, without such teaching, does the child really know how to play, say, with good interpretation, good art, a piece of music new to them?Well, after that crisis in his 20s, soon enough Menuhin did well. But, maybe, not all young people do and, instead, get permanently lost, confused, without motivation, etc. when the teacher, mentor, parent, etc. is no longer there.Will this happen to Trump’s children? So far, apparently not. Instead, it looks like he has been a terrific father. Or, it’s tough to “fake being a good parent”.For the tape, you have gone off the track just like the distorting, fabricating, lying mainstream media (MSM) Hillary campaign propaganda machine has attempted:In fact, in that tape, Trump did NOTHING wrong and, instead, did a GREAT favor and acted as a good mentor for the Bush guy. For point by point details, with careful reference to the highly relevant JFK story, see my post here athttp://avc.com/2016/11/vide…There the worst thing Trump did was use a street term for the anatomical term vulva, and that is trivial.I can’t respond to Italian politics and the Italian economy. Moreover, I doubt that there are any significant lessons there for the US economy or Trump and the US economy. To fix the US economy, for 99 44/100% of the work, we have to pay attention, and may I have the envelope please [drum roll, please], presto, bingo, to the US economy!Broadly, you have been tricked by the MSM-Hillary propaganda machine.

          15. Pete Griffiths

            Totally agree. He isn’t patronizing women he’s honoring them.

      2. Salt Shaker

        When maternal instincts are interpreted in a demeaning light rather than as an attribute I just scratch my head. LCK is a commedian, hardly to be taken too literally. He was on Conan, not CNN.

        1. Erin

          I mean comedy is brilliant when it’s a new take on a fundamental truth. Thats what the great comedians are always striving for, always chasing. The point is that LCK was reaching for that fundamental truth about women’s essence and missed, which is why it was on Conan, not CNN. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to laugh about his other stuff.

    6. Kirsten Lambertsen

      I’m a woman, and it struck me as comedy, period.It’s like “Bitches get shit done.” Just funny. Not particularly true or false or offensive 🙂

      1. Twain Twain

        Please see my comment above, Kristen.Louis CK says in 5 minutes what none of Hillary Clinton’s supporters have been able to articulate. And he turns qualities that are portrayed as negatives (mothers, ambitious women = b****, women as abuse victims) into positives:* “Mothers give 200%.” That means they go over and beyond in terms of hard work.* “Tough b**** get s*** done.” Women problem-solve and execute.* “We’ve been hazing her… We’ve been holding her down and spitting in her mouth and yelling at her and she gets up and goes, “Well, I just think that if children have proper healthcare, education … SHE JUST KEEPS WORKING!”

  2. William Mougayar

    If truth cuts like a knife, humor is the tool that makes the cut less painful.

    1. jason wright

      This one is ‘blunt’.Steem price pumping. Cynical.

  3. jason wright

    there must be many people in Washington DC squirming over the outcome of the election. she gets in and they’re safe. he gets in and they’re going to feel very exposed.i didn’t find this comedian funny at all.

    1. Mica is awesome!

      Yeah because Donald Trump thinks he could replace them with all his cronies. Never mind the People’s will. He will make the POTUS office a place to settle all his personal vendettas. Everyone who is not part of Donald Trump’s circle of good friends or family members should be feeling exposed if he were President.

      1. jason wright

        Washington, District of Cronies. On that we can agree.

        1. Mica is awesome!

          You want someone different. Vote Hillary. There are how many men to women ratio in Washington D.C? Women bring a different perspective to the table. We need more of them not less.

          1. jason wright

            When it comes to HRC her suitability has not a lot to do with her gender. A flawed and corrupt person, male or female, is a bad choice.

          2. Mica is awesome!

            Many make her out to be flawed and corrupt because of her gender. It is time to stop demonizing her because of her gender.You want to see flawed and corrupt. Look at her opponent.I am excited about her not because she is female but because she is the most qualified candidate. I have full confidence in her integrity. I have full confidence in her ability. And I have full confidence that she will represent both men and women well. Go Hillary! Go!

          3. LE

            Legally corruption is defined as “The use of public office for private gain”. Hence Trump not being a politician should not be referred to as corrupt. They are both flawed more so than average but that comes with the territory of the life they have decided to live.Trump has operated within the bound of law. He has taken legal advantage of business situations just like any businessman would. Considering his public nature he certainly is not beneath the radar of having a target on his back and people going after him.I have full confidence in her integrity.Of all things that’s pretty scary actually.

          4. Mica is awesome!

            “Trump has operated within the bound of law.”Hmmm….that should be scarier.

          5. cavepainting

            Trump operating within the bounds of the law is a scary statement. If any of the countless number of women saying he abused them had actually pursued it in court before the statue of limitations expired, he may have been convicted for assault. Or what about the Trump University cases, or the violations of the Cuban embargo ?The issue with Trump in my mind is that he is primarily looking out for himself. He is in the bubble of his ego and everything is a means to that end.HRC’s history does show that she is in public service because she wants to have a positive impact on people’s lives. She is by no means perfect, but there is simply no fair comparison with the meanness and pettiness of Trump.

          6. LE

            Assault unproven and pox on them for not filing charges. Perhaps the case wasn’t as clear as it is being presented now.Trump University: When he did that I recognized before anyone else what a sham that was. Pox on him I thought he lost it (back then) actually.Looking for himself: Fine with me I am like that but I also am very fair and do good things for others.Hillary and public service: Was the case when she wasn’t abducted by power. Not the case now. Talks a good game though (I really believe that).Violations of Cuban embargo: Who cares.

          7. cavepainting

            Who you look out for matters more than anything else, for that determines what you solve and optimize for in every decision you take. If there is no larger North Star that guides you, and you want to be President primarily to expand the bubble of your ego, it is the wrong job for you.You are not running for president but he is.

          8. cavepainting

            Also please give me a break on the women not filing charges at that time. Most cases like these are not reported because people feel scared to go up against a powerful man and fear for their own reputation and livelihoods. Look at what he is doing to them now after they have come out.He is innocent until proven guilty, but my personal feeling is that it is more likely than not that the accusers are telling the truth based on his own video admission and his pattern of behavior. He feels he is special and can get away with anything.

          9. Alex Murphy

            Nope. https://www.google.com/sear…(and by the way, DJT has been able to use the power he has from all of those campaign contributions that he talks about to his benefit)(and to your point, gov officials can you use their power for corruption, just not the only source)corruptionkəˈrʌpʃ(ə)n/Submitnoun1.dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.”the journalist who wants to expose corruption in high places”synonyms:dishonesty, dishonest dealings, unscrupulousness, deceit, deception, duplicity, double-dealing, fraud, fraudulence, misconduct, lawbreaking, crime, criminality, delinquency, wrongdoing, villainy; More2.the process by which a word or expression is changed from its original state to one regarded as erroneous or debased.”a record of a word’s corruption”synonyms:alteration, falsification, doctoring, manipulation, manipulating, fudging, adulteration, debasement, degradation, abuse, subversion, misrepresentation, misapplication; rarevitiation”these figures have been subject to corruption”

          10. Donna Brewington White

            Mica, defending and supporting HRC is much more respectful of her if you acknowledge her flaws. Blind allegiance in this election is folly regardless of which candidate. Both are flawed.

          11. Mica is awesome!

            I am not saying she is perfect. No human is perfect. But what I am tired of is that only the negative stuff is thrown her way. Like she somehow owns the authority to lying and she is the only one who does it. They will never acknowledge or point out her accomplishments or the good she has done. She is constantly having to defend herself whereas Trump does not. There was an investigation on her emails and she has been exonerated. And now they are hashing it up again? Really? The double standards is just irritating.What about Trump University? What about him paying off the AG in Florida and Texas? What about him screwing all of these small businesses? What about Trump Foundation? And all they have is rehash emails. Never mind that Trump just wants to Grab Our P**ssy? But why not acknowledge that Donald Trump lies much more then Hillary does?At some point, the haters are going to Hate. And Hillary will just gonna have to shake. Totally WithHER.

          12. sigmaalgebra

            > There was an investigation on her emails and she has been exonerated.Nope. From the C-SPAN URL of Comey’s July statement I gave you above, she is guilty of being “extremely careless” in handling US classified information. She was not “exonerated”, not at all. She just wasn’t prosecuted yet.And as we know now, the FBI has had at least five investigations going for over a year on the Clinton Foundation. As any idiot can easily suspect, the main PURPOSE of Hillary having her own e-mail server was to hide her Clinton Foundation bribery and RICO activities. So, the e-mail stuff connects with the Clinton Foundation investigation.What Comey said in July was no lifetime pardon from her e-mail crimes and, instead, just a decision not to prosecute yet.But, since a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime, it is important to have a really strong case before bringing it. No doubt Comey suspected he’d get data for a much better case later.Why?First, Hillary just STINKS, and anyone in law enforcement can smell the stink from 1000 miles away.Second, there’s a really good chance that there’s no doubt about Hillary’s guilt because very likely the US NSA and CIA, maybe the DIA, all have all of Hillary’s e-mail. So, likely Comey got a hush-hush review (“The NSA can speak to that: I must emphasize the extreme sensitivity of this information and that it not leave the room” or some such) on the details that let him know that much more and much worse was true and maybe on the way via sources that could be used in court. So, to have a good case, wait.Look, the NSA is supposed to be on top of electronic communications around the world. To a large extent, they are: E.g., Go to DC, get on the B-W Parkway going north, and get to Lauel (I used to live there), and turn right. Go to the main NSA shop. Big place. Serious. I interviewed there once — yup, my Math SATs were really up there, and I knew Galois theory and wrote on group representation theory.Next, for Russia, China, etc., Hillary’s e-mail was just trivial to hack. I can give you some hints, but the NSA knows much more, e.g., each line of code in Windows (once they were recruiting for just that) and lots of vulnerabilities. There’s an international market for such vulnerabilities — trust me on this one.So, Russia, China were trying to hack Hillary’s e-mail. So, the NSA knew that — trust me, that’s part of their job. So, as Russia and China hacked Hillary’s e-mail, so did the NSA, if only by intercepting the data as it left the US for Russia or China. CIA, DIA? Likely both.Likely Comey knows a lot of this.Net, Hillary’s very dirty and is going down, one way or another.

          13. sigmaalgebra

            I should add a little more: Look, as we know, in July, Comey reported on a batch of e-mail messages he got from Hillary or wherever. That batch was supposed to include all her work-related e-mail messages.Now, let’s have two facts:Fact 1: As SoS, Hillary was a very active user of e-mail, tens of thousands over just 4 years.Fact 2: Comey found only about 100 e-mail messages that had classified information or ones with information classified at the time.Okay, these two facts are in strong conflict: Why? Out of tens of thousands of work-related e-mail messages, there should have been many more, maybe thousands more, that had information classified at the time and marked as classified. So, we have many, maybe thousands, of those e-mails missing. So, maybe they are part of the 33,000 that Hillary deleted.Okay, let’s keep going: For each of those classified e-mails that Hillary got, it was sent from somewhere, nearly always from a .GOV domain. So, all such e-mail messages were backed up and are still available. So, just have the FBI go to the top 100 or so people with access to classified information and might have sent e-mail to Hillary, get all their .GOV e-mails from the .GOV backups, and, thus, get nearly all the classified e-mails sent to Hillary.Now, maybe mostly the e-mails didn’t go to Hillary but went, first, to Huma, Mills, etc. who stripped the classified markings, etc., and sent the results to Hillary. No matter: Just get the e-mails sent to Huma, Mills, etc. and continue.The FBI HAS to understand such things.Net, there HAVE to be hundreds, maybe thousands, of e-mails with classified information marked as classified sent from .GOV accounts to Hillary and/or her staff and still readily available from .GOV backups. Since the e-mails went to Hillary’s unsecured server, Hillary is guilty of massive violation of section (f) no matter when the e-mails were deleted from Hillary’s home brew server.Hillary’s GOTTA be guilty of mishandling hundreds, maybe thousands, of e-mails with classified data marked as classified at the time,and the FBI chasing through .GOV account backup files can find those.And that data can be used in court. Then there is also the NSA, CIA, DIA, etc. data.About the only way Hillary can get out of this is a blanket pardon from Obama. So, maybe now we understand why Hillary is so happy with Obama in:http://media.breitbart.com/

          14. Pete Griffiths

            “Why? Out of tens of thousands of work-related e-mail messages, there should have been many more, maybe thousands more, that had information classified at the time and marked as classified”Really????How about the possibility that she took the classification system more seriously than you think?

          15. sigmaalgebra

            I’ll try to repeat the argument: You are saying that it’s is credible that in all her four years of work as SoS, where she received thousands of e-mail messages, she received only 100 or so e-mail messages with classified information and only three with classification markings? So, how the heck did she do her job receiving so little classified information? Or, did she receive classified information on paper? Where’s the paper?Or Huma or Mills received the classified information, removed the markings, and forwarded to Hillary?Go to people who would have sent her classified information and ask them how the heck they communicated classified information to Hillary.Two answers become clear:(1) Hillary tried to delete all her classified e-mail; that was mostly what was in the 33,000 she deleted.(2) The FBI didn’t follow the leads of e-mail and the SoS, White House, etc. organization chart and look at the e-mail backups in the .GOV domain and that mostly because Lynch in the DoJ would not give them the needed permissions.My guess is that what will happen is that Obama will pardon Hillary and maybe also Bill. The FBI and IRS can continue to investigate whatever, but about the worst that could happen to Bill/Hill would be a new tax bill from the IRS.JLM is convinced that Trump will win. I hope so. We’ll know on Wednesday.Even if Trump wins, Obama can pardon Bill/Hill and largely shut down this whole issue.Even if Bill/Hill get a pardon, Congress could still investigate. If Trump wins, he would likely help such an investigation. If Bill/Hill are guilty, then the investigation should be able to show full details except for redacted confidential information. Some summary testimony could be wild stuff.Maybe Bill/Hill could still have legal problems in some state cases or some civil cases.I’d bet that Obama will issue big pardons.If there is no pardon and Hillary wins, then I have to believe that Congress will impeach her.If there is a pardon and a pardon does not block impeachment and Hillary wins, then Congress will still impeach her.If there is a pardon, it blocks impeachment, Hillary wins, and Congress uncovers and makes public a lot of dirt, then a lot of people will scream bloody murder. We may get some new laws on pardons.If Trump wins, then I suspect we will get some new laws, etc. to stop future corruption.

          16. Pete Griffiths

            So when you say “trust me” we should trust you and when you say “Like Corney knows a lot of this” you mean he doesn’t now as much as you? Sounds a little presumptive?

          17. sigmaalgebra

            > presumptive?Not really. I may know some things about the NSA that Comey didin’t know before he and the NSA sat down for a chat about Hillary. And Comey may not still understand how much the NSA knows about Windows and it vulnerabilities and how they know it.E.g., could Comey explain some of why at one time the NSA was interested in people with high Math SAT scores and knowledge of Galois theory and group representations? I doubt it.The reason: All that stuff is math for abstract algebra, number theory, etc. promising for cryptography, code breaking, and more. And math in general is crucial for processing the signals that the NSA gets. The US NSA has long taken math very seriously although not seriously enough since RSA beat them badly.When I was in grad school, I was the grader in an advanced math course of only about six students. One of the students was from the NSA — by far the worst student in the class! Soon we didn’t see him anymore.Torture nearly as bad as water boarding is sitting in a math class and not understanding a single word spoken but being supposed to with some of your career bet on it!Nearly all of advanced math is tough stuff that way — can’t just BS your way through it based on generalities from the humanities, and without the prerequisites it’s water boarding (I’m guessing since I’ve never had that) or an unanesthetized root canal procedure (still guessing although at times I have been in math seminars, visiting profs presenting their research, without the prerequisites).That the NSA was recruiting people to go through the Windows source and likely compiled code line by line, maybe instruction by instruction, looking for security holes and that there is an international market for security holes in Windows are both old, public knowledge widely exposed to people long in computing.

          18. Pete Griffiths

            I don’t think the FBI Director need have a higher degree in math to have an appreciation of the capabilities of the NSA.

          19. sigmaalgebra

            Right. But with the math, from common communications in the math community, he would likely know already. Without the math, he would need an explanation, and then still he would have only superficial understanding.Uh, lawyers, prosecutors, and and FBI Director don’t always get a lot of contact with anything technical about the NSA. Besides, long the NSA was super secret, denied it even existed, called itself No Such Agency.

          20. cavepainting

            Donna, she is not perfect and is indeed flawed, just like any of us, but there really is no comparison to Trump. It is a false equivalence. She has the potential to be a great President and is more likely to look out for the vulnerable than Trump.I wrote more here. https://medium.com/@a.j/we-

          21. Donna Brewington White

            I wasn’t trying to make the point that Hillary is flawed or more flawed than her opponent.My point is that deciding to vote for or support a candidate should not mean that we ignore the person’s failings.The mature approach is to make a decision with full awareness, not ignoring the facts or kidding ourselves.(Thanks for sharing the link to your comment.)

          22. cavepainting

            yes, I agree.

          23. Alex Murphy

            Yes, both are flawed. But one is flawed because she followed the protocol established by her two predecessors and took her email out of the State Dept protocol. And while at risk, there is zero evidence that anything was actually lost at all!Meanwhile, you have a self serving, horrible man that wants to block an entire religion from coming into our country, established in his first public speech of his electoral run that immigrants are criminals and racists, and treats women as … well, lets just leave it at that DJT treats women badly.DJT has zero experience running an organization that requires consensus. He runs his orgs as a dictatorship.DJT uses the court system to hold out against his adversaries, uses settlements after doing wrong as a cost of business, and is in bed with people that are too close to too many foreign countries that want to do us harm.DJT is not just the wrong choice today, or a bad candidate today, or a problem for America today … he is the worst candidate to ever run for the office ever. The potential that he could even be elected will be a stain on our Country for many decades to come.And if one chooses to vote for him, you are not be intellectually honest with yourself.

          24. JLM

            .I am at a loss to understand what her gender has to do with legitimate, fact-based inquires into her record, policies, plans.The allegations against her are based on her lack of integrity for which the evidence is steep and mounting.Take something very simple — she said on numerous occasions that she’d “dodged sniper fire” when arriving in Kosovo.This turned out not only to be a lie but one that was preposterous and well known the instant it was uttered. CBS had the actual arrival on tape and it entailed a formal reception with a little girl handing her flowers.HRC categorized it in fictional terms as — “running to the cars under sniper fire.” She did it time and time again.What does that — her incessant lying — have to do with her gender?She is a full partner with WJC in the slush fund known as the Clinton Foundation or Bill Clinton, Inc. It is, in reality, a combined slush fund, blackmail racket, access port of call, pay for play portal, life style supporting, personnel warehousing, SuperPAC, political fundraising operation.Again, what does her gender have to do with it?To use the word “integrity” in a sentence to describe HRC boggles one’s mind. Do you think the next of kin of the Americans slain at Benghazi share that view? Do you think they have confidence in her integrity when she told them their family members had died because of a video when it was, in fact, a coordinated terror attack and she had said as much in emails to family members and leaders in Libya?The President does not “represent” us; he governs us. The Congress represents us in the halls of power.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          25. Mica is awesome!

            She exaggerated that she was under sniper fire. Who cares?No the fact that she is qualified has nothing to do with her gender. The fact that she is incessantly attacked for unsubstantiated claims does.

          26. JLM

            .She “exaggerated” nothing. She lied like a cur. There was no sniper fire.Explain to me why she lied in the first place, please.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          27. Mica is awesome!

            Can you tell me why Donald Trump lied to his wives? Why he is not releasing his tax returns? Why he used Foundation money to pay his personal legal matters. Why he paid the AG of Texas and Florida not to prosecute him for Trump University?Does it matter whether she exaggerated a story about sniper fire a long time ago? Perhaps it was a long time ago and she got it confused with another incident. Frankly I don’t care if this particular instance you are going to nail her on about “lying”. Find something more important that matters.

          28. sigmaalgebra

            If you have any, even one, piece of dirt on Trump that is (A) seriously bad, (B) with credible evidence, and (C) related to his being POTUS, then please trot it out, and I will be an eager reader and find such for the first time. Else we have to move on.

          29. cavepainting

            Dude, you really need to stop putting forward this line of argument that you cannot find any credible evidence of trump unfit to be POTUS. If you cannot see what is out there now, you are never going to find it.

          30. cavepainting

            JLM, Trump’s exaggerations are on a very different scale compared to HRC. He has a history of stretching the truth to outrageous proportions. Just yesterday, he twisted Obama’s support of a Trump-supporting protester’s right to free speech.http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/…Your argument may have more merit, if Trump was not the Republican candidate.

          31. Pete Griffiths

            I know a lot of people make a lot of serious allegations about Hilary. I can’t possibly research all of them. But I did research the Foundation in some depth. I can find absolutely NO evidence at all that would justify calling it a ‘slush fund.’ Is there anything you can tell me or refer me to to justify calling it a” combined slush fund, blackmail racket, access port of call, pay for play portal, life style supporting, personnel warehousing, SuperPAC, political fundraising operation.”?My research suggest that it is fair to call it ‘lifestyle supporting’ in the sense that Bill gets private jets and great hotels’ but what else do you really have? Serious question.

          32. JLM

            .Read this and the Band memo and start digging.http://nymag.com/daily/intehttp://apps.washingtonpost….Note this is NY Mag and the Wash Post, not Info Wars.Note that the tone of the Band memo is one of a former subordinate who is complaining he isn’t getting credit for all the work he’s done for Bill Clinton, Inc and the fundraising (BCI, CF, CGI, and HRC political) he has done on their behalf.Look at the flow of the money and the coordination amongst Teneo, Band, WJC, HRC, Sec of State staff — it’s seamless.This is an insider’s view of things and it reads perfectly consistent with my words.Other insiders have accused Chelsea of having used CF money to pay for her travel, taxes, and part of her wedding. Again, these are legitimate sources.Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, et al, have all been “warehoused” by the Clinton Foundation after State and before the campaign.Huma had permission to get a paycheck from the State Dept, the Clinton Foundation, Teneo — simultaneously and it required HRC’s intercession to make it happen.Read how Teneo co-founder (of which WJC was the Chairman at $3.5MM per year) Declan Kelly used those contacts to turn them into money. He was appointed by Sec of State HRC as specail envoy to N Ireland — a position which never existed in the history of American diplomacy and sent to shake the trees in Europe.What did he actually do?He set up Clinton speeches and events in Ireland for persons who were Clinton Foundation donors.http://www.politico.com/sto…No, this shit stinks and is pervasive.But, you judge for yourself.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          33. Pete Griffiths

            OK. I’ve read them. Staying focused on the topic of alleged corruption wrt CF.As far as I can see all that is being said is that a former consultant, who Chelsea had issue with, stated that he had raised funds for the foundation.There is nothing unethical about raising funds for a foundation. For there to be an ethically questionable issue here one would have to demonstrate that the CF has behaved inappropriately. This is the topic that I have researched in some depth and I have found nothing. I see nothing out of the ordinary for a player like Bill Clinton to twist arms to raise money for CF. The issue is whether anything scummy was done with those funds once raise. There is absolutely nothing in these that suggests any such wrong doing.

          34. JLM

            .The problem is much broader than just corruption which is the use of a position of responsibility for personal gain. Clearly Bill Clinton has done just that in matters as simple as chartering jets, dining expenses, lodging expenses, and using foundation employees and assets to obtain for profit speaking fees.There is the issue of the charitable status of the foundation which has been granted a tax exempt status and a tax deductible donation status on the basis of its promised charitable use of donated funds. The travel abuses and the non-mission critical employees are classic abuses which the IRS routinely jerks the tax exempt status of entities all the time.The coordination amongst Bill Clinton Inc, the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, and Security of State Clinton reads like a Mafia RICO case.Declan Kelly’s saga is just crooked in using US gov’t assets, offices, titles to pimp business for himself, Bill Clinton Inc, and the foundation.This is really not a close call.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          35. Pete Griffiths

            a) Clinton has doubtless (like many other powerful people) enjoyed a nice lifestyle jetting around the world staying in great hotels eating wonderful means and drinking fine wines on CF business. But the key question is whether this (expensive) activity has furthered the interests of the foundation. When Walsh ran GE (and long after he retired) he enjoyed a way more extravagant lifestyle but it was seen to be in the interests of GE. So IF Clinton was pursuing CF interests he is no more than an expensive executive. I don’t for a moment doubt he has had a nice life during his pursuit of CF business but CF has raised a LOT of money and it has done real and valuable work. I read PW’s audit report on CF and their expenses aren’t out of line.b) You can’t talk about ‘travel abuses’ without demonstrating a pattern of such abuses. And btw are they significantly different in kind from countless senior execs using company jets to fly to golf tournies with their buddies and putting it down to some kind of business interest? It’s the same thing. The IRS doesn’t know how to draw the line here. The fact is that the IRS HASN”T revoked their charitable status and the likely reason for that is that (from PW’s audit report) the overwhelming majority of the funds goes to CF projects. BC is an expensive sales person fund raiser. He’s the golden goose.c) “The coordination amongst Bill Clinton Inc, the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, and Security of State Clinton reads like a Mafia RICO case.” Why is that? You’re going to need to be more concrete.d) “Declan Kelly’s saga is just crooked in using US gov’t assets, offices, titles to pimp business for himself, Bill Clinton Inc, and the foundation.” As I read the declaration he was just doing the same kind of high level consulting that hordes of consultants and fund raisers do. What US govt assets was he exploiting?Sorry JLM. I truly don’t get it.

          36. JLM

            . I assume you are speaking of Jack Welch former CEO of GE. If so, he was a notorious penny pincher. I had a decades long relationship with GE Capital in the Gary Wendt days and they were all tight with a buck.You are conflating the practices of a for profit business with a charitable foundation which is tax exempt and whose donations are tax deductible. These are not even remotely comparable and the IRS rules are explicit on these matters.As to Declan Kelly, he was a US Gov’t employee with offices paid for with tax dollars while simultaneously conducting the business of Teneo (of which WJC was the Chairman and a highly compensated business partner) which consisted of soliciting paid speaking engagements for WJC, soliciting donations to the Clinton Foundation, raising campaign donations for HRC, and providing access to HRC in Ireland for CF donors.He was the first such special economic envoy to N Ireland and after his departure, the job was not re-filled. His Irish offices were rented to the US gov’the by a large contributor to the CF who had employed Chelsea as an analyst at an inflated salary.It just keeps getting more intertwined and slimier.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          37. Pete Griffiths

            Penny pincher!!!!??? You have to be joking. For others maybe, but not himself. Did you read about his benefits? The ones that came out in his divorce?http://money.cnn.com/2002/0…His perks were seen, even by those accustomed to the looting of corporations by senior execs as “excessive.”And the practices of a for profit business and a charitable foundation aren’t as different as you suggest. A for profit enterprise isn’t allowed to finance the lifestyle of its executives and represent them as business expense but as I’m sure you know this is incredibly common.Kelly was a ” U.S. Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland at the U.S. Department of State” and it was known to all that he was “simultaneously conducting the business of Teneo.”Was there some way that Kelly and Brand benefited from his role in N Ireland?

          38. Alex Murphy

            88% of the CF funds raised go directly to charity. https://www.charitywatch.or…Just to be clear about the math here … all of the activities, whatever they may be, to raise money, to support the foundation, to fly Bill around the world eating lobster and cavier, is all within that 12% of all the funds brought in to the Foundation. And that makes this foundation “A Rated” because getting 88% of the funds to the mission is simply AWESOME!!There is no scandal here. No Pay to Play. Nothing.

          39. Pete Griffiths

            I have also read the “Memo from Bill Clinton aide on how Teneo Holdings raised money for Clinton’s interests” and I fail to see how this is a problem. I am doubtless mistaken in this. Help? Please clarify what is unethical in having someone represent your interests as a celebrity so you can make money? I truly don’t get it.

          40. sigmaalgebra

            There is the stuff today that Chelsea had the CF pay for some of her wedding and lifestyle. A way to do that is, have Chelsea a Member of the BoD of the CF, which she has been, and receive a fee for that. If the checks for her wedding expenses were written by the CF, then the IRS might want some tax money.Supposedly there has been a serious audit of the CF that showsdirt.I have not followed the CF: A lot of it will be well hidden, e.g., IIRC, some of it in Canada. Dirt will be complicated and. thus, without much impact on the election. For attention to the election, there are more important topics. I’ve also got other things to do.My guess is that Obama will issue a very strong pardon, and that will mean that Hillary dirt will go to the back burner.

          41. Pete Griffiths

            I may be wrong but I see only one specific allegation here; that Chelsea had CF make a contribution to her wedding expenses. Can you post a credible link to that please?

          42. sigmaalgebra

            Again, I’m not well informed on the Clinton Foundation (CF). I REALLY don’t like Hillary, and getting sick in my gut at how many people are willing to vote for her, but have concentrated on her many other nasty, lying, criminal, etc. things. And, since I suspect Obama will soon pardon her, I’m getting still less interested in all of this. This whole thing is awful.But on Chelsea and the CF, I thought I saw a link. Since again I’m not trying to keep up on the CF, I didn’t follow the link. And, since I didn’t follow the link, I didn’t guess if there was any credibility. And, really, for all the stuff about the CF being a slush fund, I can guess it was, and have to suspect it was, but I don’t know enough about tricky tax, tax exempt corporations, uses of funds in a tax exempt corp., other really tricky ways to move money around to know how to make the CF a slush fund. One guy I know in a wealthy family once told me that there is no limit to the ways to hide money, evade taxes, etc. and that, instead, the much harder problem is just getting the money, or, the same, thing, hiding the money and getting a slush fund is easier than getting the money — still I know no details.All that said, in less than 10 seconds, the link was still right where I saw it, at Drudge Report and ishttp://www.zerohedge.com/ne…to Zero Hedge. Below I see a JLM post mentioning Doug Band, and this ZH thing-y seems to also. So, maybe all this CF-slush fund stuff flows through Doug Band, whoever the heck he is.Again, I suspect that the CF thing is too well hidden to be at all easy to chase down so have concentrated on the other dirt. Maybe the CF stuff, if pursued, would make a better legal case. But, if there is to be a pardon, then we’re mostly just pissing to windward anyway. Or the FBI has had five investigations on the CF going for 1+ years. So, likely the AG has known about the progress. So, likely so has the POTUS. Then once one of those investigations got close to pay dirt, presto, bingo, one pardoned bimbo — likely. So, have to guess that the five investigations are still a long way from pay dirt.The John Adams quote is good: We need moral people, and the Constitution can’t be made to work otherwise. So, if the POTUS, the SoC, the AG, and the IRS all get together, tough to get any legal action without a special prosecutor. And a SP, against a Black and a woman? That would be doubly politically incorrect.I believe that Congress wants just to run out the clock on all of this, count on a pardon, flush it out to sea, f’get about it, etc. Maybe I should too, especially on the CF that I really can’t hope to get much info on.I’ll look again on Wed morning!Good luck chasing down the CF.

          43. Pete Griffiths

            You can suspect all you like about the CF but until there is real evidence that’s all it is – your suspicion.The Band allegation is just that – an allegation. I can’t find any reporting that backs it up. And I find it highly unlikely because (a) he’s a disgruntled former ’employee’ and (b) the accounts are audited by PWC who are highly unlikely to miss a multi million dollar expense of that kind.

          44. Alex Murphy

            Well done Pete.

          45. sigmaalgebra

            > hat’s all it is – your suspicion.And the suspicion for over a year of five investigations of the CF by the FBI, common sense, i.e., you really believe that they are in the charity business, how Bill/HIll directed Haiti relief money to their buddies and from them into the CF (taking charity money), the report of a high end law firm that the CF was in trouble (I don’t have the reference handy), and the reports that the IRS has asked the CF to refile taxes for years. That’s a hell of a lot of smoke for no fire.Still, again, once again, over again,yet again, one more time, the Clinton dirt is easier to find elsewhere. Start with P. Schweizer’s book and movie Clinton Cash. Continue with Byrne’s book. Look at the women Bill attacked, e.g., that Trump had at one of the debates and at a press conference before that debate, her wildly illegal home e-mail server used for State business, the 3-100 counts of violation of section (f) of the Espionage Act, the UBS case and speaking fee, the sale of US uranium assets to Russia and speaking fee, the Ericsson case for Iran and speaking fee (on the news, the Ericsson CEO resigned), and much more.Hillary is nasty (Byrne book), a liar (lots of YouTube clips of her statements on her e-mail server, Comey’s remarks to Congress, her statement “that awful YouTube video” to the Benghazi families, etc,.), a crook (section (f), UBS, Ericsson, Russia), a foreign policy disaster (Libya, Honduras, Syria, ISIS, Iran, Benghazi), a national security disaster (NSA SAP classified data on her home e-mail server and leaked to five foreign governments, her use for e-mail of an unsecured wireless device in a foreign country), etc.Hillary can’t point to anything significantly good she did for the US.Hillary is a severe threat to the US and the world.You’ve got until the polls close tomorrow to understand and do your part to save the US.

          46. Pete Griffiths

            To the best of my knowledge there haven’t been any investigations of the CF by the FBI or indeed by anyone else. If you have a link to a credible source I’m listening.You honestly sound like Trump peed in your ear. 🙂

          47. sigmaalgebra

            “To the best of my knowledge there haven’t been any investigations of the CF by the FBI or indeed by anyone else. If you have a link to a credible source I’m listening. You honestly sound like Trump peed in your ear. :)” You are very far behind on the news and sound like a paid Clinton campaign troll although a poorly informed one, maybe poorly paid.Here I get you caught up on the news. In summary there are FBI investigations for 1+ years from five FBI offices into the Clinton Foundation. Here I show a reference reporting four FBI field offices and a another reference reporting five FBI field offices.Below are four references:First Reference.InDevlin Barrett, “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe”, The Wall Street Journal, Updated Oct. 30, 2016 7:59 p.m. ETathttp://www.wsj.com/articles…is in part:New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity. So from this source there is an FBI investigation, “what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort”, of the Clinton Foundation and “began more than a year ago”.Second Reference.Robert Kraychik, “Baier: Indictment Likely In FBI Investigation Of Clinton Foundation”, Daily Wire, November 2, 2016.athttp://www.dailywire.com/ne…has in part:Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier reported on Wednesday that an indictment is likely in the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation and Clinton emails, according to “two separate sources with intimate knowledge” of the agency’s investigations.The ostensibly charitable Clinton Foundation – which is presented by the Clintons and aligned left-wingers and Democrats as a philanthropic enterprise – is alleged to operate as a money-laundering vehicle through which the Clintons sold political influence. It is also alleged to operate as an expense account for the Clintons’ lavish lifestyles.Baier’s sources describe the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation as “expansive” and “very high priority,” with agents “aggressively pursuing the case.” They also claim to have “a lot of [evidence],” with an “avalanche [of new evidence] coming in every day.”Hillary Clinton is also alleged to have been criminally negligent in her handling of national security secrets – including the most classified intelligence – while exclusively using an unauthorized private email server for her and her inner circle through which they conducted government business during her tenure as secretary of state.Baier reported that his sources claimed with high certainty that Clinton’s email server had been compromised by foreign intelligence services. Watch the two segments with Baier below.Below is a partial transcript of the first segment.”Breaking news tonight — two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation tell Fox the following:The investigation into the Clinton Foundation looking into possible pay-for-play interaction between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Foundation has been going on for more than a year. Led by the white collar crime division, public corruption branch of the criminal investigative division of the FBI.The Clinton Foundation investigation is a, quote, ‘very high priority.’ Agents have interviewed and reinterviewed multiple people about the Foundation case, and even before the WikiLeaks dumps, these sources said agents had collected a great deal of evidence. Pressed on that, one source said, quote, ‘a lot of it,’ and ‘there is an avalanche of new information coming in every day.’Some of it from WikiLeaks, some from new emails. The agents are actively and aggressively pursuing this case, and they will be going back and interviewing the same people again, some for the third time.As a result of the limited immunity deals to a number of top aides, including Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, the Justice Department had tentatively agreed that the FBI would destroy those laptops after a narrow review. We are told definitively that has not happened. Those devices are currently in the FBI field office here in Washington, D.C. and are being exploited.The source points out any immunity deal is null and void if any subject lied at any point in the investigation.Meantime, the classified email investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop and have found emails that they believe came from Hillary Clinton’s server that also appear to be new, as in not duplicates.Whether they contain classified material or not is not yet known, but will likely be known soon. All of this just as we move inside one week until election day, in what has become a presidential election unlike any other.New state polls out tonight show movement. Donald Trump has flipped Nevada from Clinton’s column to his own. He’s expanding his lead in Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri. He is narrowing the gap in Virginia and Pennsylvania.” Below is a partial transcript of the second segment (emphasis added).BRET BAIER: Here’s the deal: We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of what’s going on with these FBI investigations. A couple of things. One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported, I think, so far…BRIT HUME: Yeah, because remember Comey last July basically wouldn’t comment on it, and we kinda believed for a long time that there wasn’t much of Clinton investigation.BRET BAIER: Right, and that was basically about Washington ‘s influence in that. Several offices, separately, were doing their own investigations. That’s one. Two: Remember the immunity deal that supposedly Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson – two top aides for Hillary Clinton – got from the Justice Department in which it as believed that the laptops that they had, after a narrow review for classification emails, were going to be destroyed by the FBI. We have been told that those definitively have not been destroyed. They are at the FBI field office here in Washington and are being exploited.Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and reinterviewed many people. They describe the evidence they have as, quote, ‘a lot of it’ and there is an ‘avalanche coming every day’ with WikiLeaks and the new emails.They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about the pay-for-play, the allegations of Secretary Clinton…BRIT HUME: Right. People made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and because of that they were able to extract tension, at least, if not more, from the State Department. Do I have that right?BRET BAIER: Exactly. So they are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.The classified investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently, as Catherine Herridge has reported, combing through Anthony Weiner’s laptop. They are having some success. In other words, finding what they believe to be new emails, not duplicates, that have been transported, if you will, emailed through Hillary Clinton’s server.Lastly, we learned that there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was about a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and they believe that things had been taken from that.BRIT HUME: Sounds to me, Bret, as if what we have here is a much bigger investigation than we thought. What about the role of the Department of Justice in terms of, we know that the Department of Justice resisted some things the FBI wanted to do in the investigation. What about the department’s role in this aspect of the investigation, involving the foundation?BRET BAIER: This source and two sources say it has not been easy. It has not been a smooth process. They believe that they are moving forward effectively now, but there has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch and what she has done or not done. She obviously did not impanel or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015.BRIT HUME: We’re gonna get to that late on, and if he downplayed it today, he said something that suggested he’s changed his tune a bit about Director Comey. This does not sound like something that’s gonna be completed anytime soon which suggests that if Hillary Clinton is elected, she will take office with not one, but two serious investigations of her past conduct hanging over her.BRET BAIER: Definitely. I pressed again and again on this very issue, and these sources said… the investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment. So from this source there is an FBI investigation of the “Clinton Foundation” in several offices” of the FBI.Third Reference.Devlin Barrett, “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe”. WSJ, Updated Oct. 30, 2016 7:59 p.m. ET.athttp://www.wsj.com/articles…has in part: Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter. So four FBI field offices have been involved.Fourth Reference.InRichard Pollock, “Now Five FBI Field Offices Are Probing Clinton Charity, Adding Fuel To The Fire”, The Daily Caller, 9:24 PM 10/30/2016.athttp://dailycaller.com/2016…is a report that the number of FBI offices doing the investigations is five.Apparently all four of these references have been based on leaks. So, there are no solid primary sources. So, for public information, this appears to be about the best information there is.

          48. Pete Griffiths

            I can’t access the wsj one, as I don’t have a paid subscription. But the others aren’t credible sources.If I search for “Has the FBI investigated the Clinton Foundation” the only hits I get are from alt right rags. I can’t find a credible source. If you can find one I’ll read it or if you can find a link to the wsj piece I’ll read that.

          49. sigmaalgebra

            > I can’t access the wsj one, as I don’t have a paid subscription.Take the title of the WSJ article, copy and paste it into the Google one line text box, do the search, see the link to the WSJ article in the search results, click on that link, and then see and read the whole article.Why does this work? Because when you click on the URL link of the WSJ article at Google, the HTTP GET request that goes to the WSJ server includes with it the URL of the page the link was on, in this case, Google. So, the software for the WSJ article in the WSJ server wants to let users that found the article from Google read the article so does.Likely there are no really solid, credible sources for this stuff about the CF because so far all the info is leaks of various kinds.But there is more stuff, some with a little more credibility, e.g., on CF money used to pay for Chelsea’s wedding and her 10 year support thing-y. So, here are some relevant links:Athttps://www.scribd.com/docu…is some stuff from supposedly a high end law firm that reviewed the CF data and concluded that the CF was not so clean. So, the PW accounting review is not the only one.There is more athttp://www.breitbart.com/bi…e.g., on the wedding stuff.For your figure that the CF spends 80+% of their money on the work of the charity and that that is good, you better check what the heck they spend the money on. IMHO the CF is a tax scam (illegal for charities), a scam otherwise, and a Clinton family slush fund — i.e., Hillary is no angel of charity and, instead, stole from the poor people of devastated Haiti. Some of what she did also helped Boko Haram or whatever they are, that is, the African Islamic savages who made sex slaves out of the young girls, we’re talking age 6 or so. That’s Hillary for you.Here we are doing just what JLM said to do in his post — follow the links he gave.Again, yet again, once again, over again, one more time, and I hope the last time, the CF smells and stinks, but for rock solid, granite hard, iron clad evidence on Hillary dirt, the other main topics and sources are for now in public better.I’m not a cop, judge, or jury, but IMHO if Hillary loses the election and Obama does not pardon Bill and Hill, then both of them will be in court and likely jail.I don’t see how Hill could get more than 10% of the vote. Okay, she could get 5% from the drunks, demented, delusional, druggies. She could get another 5% from the Democratic machine. That should be the top.But, it won’t be. Instead, Hill will get ballpark 40% of the vote and may win. In that case, the US will sink deeper into the outhouse Obama built and, if we need a real POTUS, will be at risk of catastrophe, e.g., nuke WWIII style.But a Hill victory likely won’t seriously affect me directly quickly.If the US citizens want to throw away the US on seriously bad Obama just because he is a Black and on comparably bad and worse Hillary just because she is a woman, then so be it. Then political correctness and its absurd hysteria about racism and sexism, the paid off media, etc. will have destroyed the US.I will just “duck and cover” and stay out of the way of the disaster. And, my startup should still do okay. Then I’ll go, say, to Switzerland.After all this campaign, if the US still votes for Hillary, then the US is just destroying itself, and so be it. Let Darwin have his way. Let the US go down as a failure.

          50. Pete Griffiths

            I don’t take breitbart remotely serously.BUTI did read the WSJ article and you’re right. There have indeed been investigations of the foundation. Justice didn’t think there was a case but they certainly did investigate. So…my bad on that one.

          51. sigmaalgebra

            > I don’t take breitbart remotely serously.That’s just a special case of the much more general and true statement that now there is nearly no way to take any newsie or news source seriously.But sometimes from some newsies and news sources you can get some facts, links, references, e.g., links to YouTube videos of testimony before Congress, that you can take seriously, and maybe, based only on data you already have, take some of their analyses, explanations, etc. seriously.An advantage of Breitbart is that they publish a lot of stuff that you won’t find in the mainstream media (MSM) Hillary propaganda machine, and some of it might be important.For now, nearly all newspapers, TV networks, news shows, news Web sites have zero, zip, zilch, and zero, credibility: We’re talking Stalin’s Pravda or Hitler’s Der Sturmer.But, slowly, some newsies and news sites can build a reputation. For now, maybe there are a few newsies that can take seriously — when they sign their work. Some of these you might find at Breitbart but not in the MSM-Hillary campaign propaganda operation, e.g., the highly self-esteemed, formerly revered, going out of business NYT.Here at AVC I’ve given a lot of good references to relatively good sources that show that Hillary is a nasty, lying, crooked, disastrous POS with a lot more wrong with her — with just awful character, judgment, comprehension, temperament, track record, as she put it for her “super-predators,” lacking empathy. To me, she looks seriously neurotic and, in particular, psychopathic.But some people still like Hillary, and she is in line to get ballpark 40% of the popular vote. I can’t do anything about that, certainly not now.I give up: I’ve had my say, and I’ve already voted.If Hillary wins, the country will sink deeper into the outhouse Obama built and be well on the way to ending — the actual end of the US.It will be a Darwinian situation; the US is unfit and ready to fail, die off.That Hillary will get more than 10% of the vote shows that the US is profoundly sick, and in fact the US is much sicker than that, sick enough to be right at the edge of total failure. Rome failed, and now the US is close to the same.Even if Trump wins, the US will still be profoundly sick from all the people who voted for Hillary, profoundly sick that anyone like Hillary could ever be considered for POTUS. Even if Trump wins, the US will still be a very sick country.The US is with astounding determination and no good reason at all extracting miserable defeat from the jaws of magnificent victory.Apparently the material successes have now enabled a fatal lack of discipline. That is, our successes and progress have not been, in total, nearly as good as would appear at first glance.E.g., nukes were terrific progress; they should be giving us electric power too cheap to meter; but by our brain-dead nonsense of setting up ditsy Jane Fonda as our de facto Secretary of Energy at Large we have not.Instead, we are at risk of just blowing ourselves up, especially with Hillary’s big drive to import Muslims too many of whom are dedicated to doing just that to us.Dumb. We are ready for Darwin’s solution.Jane Fonda didn’t belong in a society powerful enough for nukes. Instead, Jane Fonda belonged in a mud hut in a small village, ignorant, barefoot, pregnant, and concentrating on babies, food, and clothing where she could stay busy and be unable to do much harm.Hillary is much worse and much more dangerous that Jane Fonda. 10,000 years ago in a mud hut, Hillary would not have been able to do much harm. Now she can destroy the US and much of the world.

          52. Pete Griffiths

            You have an absolute right to dislike Hilary but Trump isn’t the answer.If you want to burn the system down at least do it with someone who isn’t deranged.There is a limit to how much damage he can do domestically but internationally the President has a huge amount of discretionary power and candidly the prospect of Trump indulging his ill considered ignorant impulses on the international stage is flat out terrifying.

          53. sigmaalgebra

            No, you sucked up the MSM-Hillary propaganda about Trump.The propaganda tried to paint him as some buffoon, out of control, imprudent, reckless, irresponsible, bully, etc. That was ALL just propaganda BS.What was going on?(1) Trump is in part a salesman, one that likes to make a big splash, get attention.(2) Early on Trump needed attention and used whatever to get it. He got maybe $2 billion in attention.He was darned quick and smart about getting the attention: E.g., he didn’t say that he could see blood from Megyn Kelly’s period, but, IMHO, what he did say was deliberately just ambiguous and incomplete enough to be just raw meat for the MSM to distort what he said and claim he meant blood from her period. He got a LOT of attention from that.Actually, if Trump were anything like as imprudent, etc., especially in international relations as the MSM/Hillary painted and you claim, he would have flopped. Instead, he went into foreign countries, with all their tricky cultures, politics, etc. and got good, big projects DONE. For that, he had to be a smart cookie, insightful, well informed, very prudent, rock solidly stable, quite broadly very capable.In foreign trade, the risky stuff is to keep running a $700+ billion trade deficit. What Trump wants to do is actually the traditional, prudent thing to do.In immigration policy, what Trump wants to do is to enforce the long existing laws, policies, and procedures. The risky, imprudent, reckless approach is the open borders stuff, especially Hillary’s deliberate attempt to bring Sunni/ISIS soldiers into the US to threaten the US with nukes unless the US does what the Sunnis, ISIS, Saudis want.It goes on this way.Trump is the capable, prudent one, as he has shown in the bottom line of his business career, his parenting, his nomination fight, and his campaign so far.We’ve had some serious losers — Obama, W, Nixon, LBJ — and some not very good — Clinton, Ford, JFK. Reagan, actually, in the end, maybe from a lot of luck, did quite well. The last solid POTUS was Ike. Trump is in position to do better than Ike.You’ve had such a tough time seeing what is wrong with POS Hillary that I can’t expect to see you evaluate Trump.For far too much of the US, this whole election is advanced college material attempted by not very good grade school students.The US is in deep trouble, on the way of Rome. No joke. As a country, we are not up to keeping our country.

          54. Pete Griffiths

            I can make up my own opinion about people and I judge him to be a deeply flawed narcissist.

          55. sigmaalgebra

            Before the MSM-Hillary propaganda, you would not have been able to make any such comments.He’s a terrific salesman and not deeply flawed at all. In no way is he a narcissist. Instead, when he is not trying to be a salesman, he’s a modest, self-effacing guy. No way could a narcissist have had his successes in business or parenting.You don’t know what the heck you are talking about and, instead, are just spouting the garbage from the propaganda you heard in the campaign.

          56. Pete Griffiths

            That’s nonsense. I don’t pay any attention to news about him. It’s just luminously clear he’s a total asshole. All you have to do is listen to the guy. I’m old enough to make up my own mind.

          57. sigmaalgebra

            On your narcissist stuff, for that, look at Obama who in some recent campaign speeches said “I” more often than once a minute. That’s a narcissist clue. Carter also did a lot of that.Obama thinks he’s really hot stuff. Nope: He was just our first affirmative action POTUS put in there, in spite of his astounding disqualifications, e.g., it was clear that he hated the US, due to the white guilt of the MSM. Period.Okay, you conclude Trump is an “asshole” just by listening to his speeches.Well, immigration? He is just saying he will enforce the long standing laws, etc.Trade? Get it back in balance.The VA? Fix it.Taxes? What is it you don’t like about lower taxes?ObamaCare? IIRC it has a sunset clause and will die automatically early in 2017 if not renewed (the people who passed it were not complete idiots and knew it was just Obama’s play thing-y, along with Nasty Nancy and Frank, so set it up to die as soon as he was gone). But the election reporting tonight concludes that the Republicans have the House. So, no way will ObamaCare be renewed. So, ObamaCare will be gone, no matter who wins the White House. So, your “asshole” can’t be because of ObamaCare.Etc.So, “asshole” is not from his actual policies, proposals, plans, etc.So, there is something about his personality, style, etc. you don’t like.Well, as people noticed early on, he is blunt, tells you what he thinks, and is a “counter puncher” — when he is hit, he hits back 10 times harder. Maybe that was good for him in business, but apparently he has softened that some during the campaign. And he’s strong and powerful so will be able to get a lot of his plans, proposals, etc. implemented.So, maybe you are used to and would prefer “all talk, no action”, some person all bland, full of cliches and platitudes, claims to be for motherhood and apple pie, etc. So, you are not afraid they will do something wrong because you are fairly sure they won’t do much of anything. Actually, as a security blanket, it is thin and full of holes and insects. Instead, we SHOULD have an actual POTUS.But for Trump, it looks like he will do some things. So, in the kitchen, he will make a big omelet, and you are afraid of what eggs and how many eggs he will break in the process.So, net you are afraid of Trump. That appears to be the main reason people vote for nasty, lying, crooked, disaster, “super-predator”, no empathy, psychopathic Hillary.But IMHO Obama will pardon Hillary.If she is elected, then notice that, to serve as Commander in Chief, she will need a security clearance from the FBI, and the Director of the FBI serves for a 10 year term — maybe he is not easy to fire. So, what if Comey won’t give Hillary a security clearance? He should be impeached if he did.Then with a Republican House, if Hillary so much as misuses a paper clip, the House will bring a bill of impeachment. If the Bill/Hill RICO scam takes even 10 cents, another impeachment bill for Hill. Oh, BTW, Comey should not give a security clearance to Bill, either, and should be impeached if he did.Hillary can’t be Commander in Chief because she can’t get a security clearance.Notice also that if Hillary continued the open borders stuff, that is, refused to enforce our laws on immigration, she would be in violation of one of the duties of the POTUS in the Constitution. So, slam, bam, thank you ma’am, impeachment.We’re talking a constitutional crisis here.But in sum, apparently your main objection to Trump is that he is a can-do guy, and you are afraid.Recall JLM’s statement that Obama didn’t get even one piece of legislation passed after ObamaCare. Well, a POTUS Hillary will likely be in that situation from her first to last day in office.Silly. Throw the US away because want a POTUS who can’t and doesn’t do anything.Maybe you would think more of Trump when some of Hillary’s ISIS buddies pop off a nuke in NYC.I say again, the US voters are not up to saving the US. You are a good example.

          58. Pete Griffiths

            Looks like he’s won. Talk to you in four years.

          59. sigmaalgebra

            > I have full confidence in her integrity.And I have one heck of a deal for you, but only if you act fast, on a bridge over the East River.Moreover, I hereby nominate you for the title of the World’s Most Gullible Person! Ever! And I will recommend to the Nobel committee that for you they permanently retire the award!Evidence: Just go to YouTube and look at her statements, e.g., on her e-mail server. Conclusion: She has zero integrity. Done.

          60. jason wright

            She would want voters to believe that to deflect from the realities of her record and policies and persona. It’s an abuse of women and that cause. HRC is deeply cynical.

          61. JLM

            .Hillary Clinton is the status quo from which the country yearns to change. She cannot, simultaneously, be the change.She has a well documented record of failure and underachievement.She was the architect of HillaryCare in the first Clinton administration which went down in flames because of her penchant for secrecy. Now, she wants to continue Obamacare — arguably, the worst single piece of major legislation in the history of the US.She authored THREE bills in the Senate which became law. One was to rename a stretch of highway for Tim Russert. One was to name a post office in NY. One was to name a historic building for a woman political figure.As a legislator, she has been a complete failure.As Sec of State she was the architect of the overthrow of Mo Ghaddafi, the civil war in Libya, the disintegration of Libya as a sovereign nation — all of which led to the debacle at Benghazi.She hailed Bashar al Assad as a “reformer” and a “peacemaker” when he was the entre of the Russians back into the Middle East after their exclusion post-1973 Yom Kippur War.On her watch, Russia went back to its expansionary aggression, China built and fortified twelve islands sitting astride 50% of the Earth’s sealanes, Israel doesn’t trust us, Saudi Arabia doesn’t trust us while Russian, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and, maybe, Turkey are all aligned against us with a very real prospect of Iran getting nuclear arms.[Historical perspective — the last time the Russians had a toehold in the Middle East, they were the sponsors of Egypt and Syria attacking Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war which saw Israel uncovering its nuclear arsenal and coming within hours of turning Damascus into a sheet of glass saved only by the diplomatic genius of Henry Kissinger who managed to pry Egypt from the talons of Russia and thereby entering into 40 years of peace between Egypt and Israel. All of this has now been undone. Some of us are old enough to have seen this movie before.]Hillary Clinton is absolutely right about one thing — we desperately need change in Washington. Unfortunately, she is the status quo from which that change needs to be made.There is no evidence she has any “different” perspective when she says she wants to be the third Obama term. No, that IS the status quo.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          62. Mica is awesome!

            “Hillary Cinton to the status quo”. Yes, she must represent all the branches of the government. Yes she must represent all of agency of the government. Everything that has happened under the government since she was born must be her fault.

          63. sigmaalgebra

            Ah, play the woman card! And if she is nasty, a liar, a crook, and a foreign policy and national security disaster, as long as she is also a really good actress, presto, bingo, bimbo in the White House and our constitution and country into the toilet.

      2. PhilipSugar

        That is what people want. Do not defend her because she is a woman. That is totally and completely irrelevant. She has used Washington DC as her piggy bank. End of story, period. To try and defend her because she is a woman convinces people that they need to vote for the other. No different than defending Trump as anything but a pig.

        1. Mica is awesome!

          Do you have concrete proof that she used Washington DC as her piggy bank? She hasn’t been convicted of anything.

          1. Mica is awesome!

            Why are you sending me these links and not just answer the question. What has she been convicted of?

          2. PhilipSugar

            Because I am not spewing unsubstantiated bullshit.

          3. Mica is awesome!

            More like because she has not been convicted of anything. That is a fact but you somehow can’t seem to say that.

          4. PhilipSugar

            My last comment. People know I hate getting baited on these things. As Salt Shaker says I don’t even need a hook. Do you think the basis of right or wrong is if you have been convicted? Convicted??

          5. Mica is awesome!

            You go through a due process when you are convicted of something. If you are going to base your judgement on allegations and innuendos there are plenty of that against Donald Trump.

          6. JLM

            .Donald Trump has not violated the Espionage Act and has not allowed our enemies to read our secrets.Hillary Clinton is being investigated by the FBI — who only conducts criminal investigations — for violations of the Espionage Act for her conduct in setting up and operating a private server in the basement of her private residence and conducting our national business thereon.It is a very substantial distinction. In both fact and judgment.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          7. Mica is awesome!

            The FBI have proven themselves to be a joke.Again, she hasn’t been convicted of anything. Please tell me what court have determined that she violated the Espionage Act. Tell me? Not the one that you hear on Breitbart?

          8. JLM

            .In a hearing before the US Congress, the FBI Director, James Comey, revealed that HRC had, in fact, lied about many things including specifically whether she’d mishandled classified information and destroyed gov’t records.He characterized her as “extremely careless” and said he did not recommend she be prosecuted solely because of his judged absence of her intent.Legal scholars debate whether reckless negligence requires a finding of intent of any manner.He also promised to report back to Congress if that opinion or the facts supporting it changed.Recently, Dir Comey sent a letter to Congressmen sharing his decision to re-open that criminal investigation once again, based on new evidence contained on the Weiner laptop.Has she been charged and convicted? No, the DOJ has injected itself into the FBI’s deliberations in order to protect HRC. So, the right answer is — not yet.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          9. cavepainting

            JLM, with all due respect, with all the FBI leaks, and the improper communication with the Trump campaign, it is clear that Comey has lost all credibility. By inserting his organization into the election, he has violated all norms of decency. This is now a Comey scandal, not a Hillary scandal.What is this purported evidence on Weiner’s laptop ? You have not seen it, and neither did the FBI before sending the letter. (They would have had no legal basis to do so without a warrant).So, please stop the spewing of the hatred and the nonsense, and take a deep breath. A new president is getting elected next Tuesday and it sure as hell isn’t Donald Trump. At least I hope and pray so.

          10. JLM

            .In July when Dir Comey opined that HRC’s many transgressions did not merit prosecution because she lacked “intent”, Dir Comey could do no wrong. The HRC tribe exhaled a deep sigh of relief when she was found to be “extremely careless” and “unsophisticated” but short on intent.The irony is delicious. A woman running for the American presidency was happy to be judged to be “extremely careless” and “unsophisticated.”At the same time Dir Comey clearly said he would inform Congress if anything changed.Apparently, something changed and he kept his word to inform Congress. Failing to do so would have put him in an equally tenuous situation after the election and he made the decision he did. Perhaps, there was no fail safe decision available to him.He did not hold a press conference; he sent a letter to Congress (members of both parties) referencing specifically the Wiener laptop and its contents as the changed condition. The recipients made the decision to release the letter which would have otherwise been discoverable under FOIA anyway.You are completely in error as it relates to the significance of the “warrant.” Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure a “chain of evidence” must be established for each and every bit of evidence which is contemplated to be used at trial. The chain must start from the earliest point in which the gov’t obtains possession of the evidence in that particular case.When there are multiple criminal investigations which use the same evidence, the chain of evidence must be established independently for each case.The Wiener laptop was surrendered by the Wiener himself as part of the FBI investigation into his circumstances, not HRC’s, and therefore the chain of evidence pertinent to the use of information on that laptop — for the Wiener case — had been established by the receipt of the laptop.The FBI would literally have given a written receipt for the laptop and assign appropriate forensic personnel to weigh and measure the contents. The FBI is really good at forensic accounting and forensic computer work.In order to establish the chain of evidence on the HRC case (a different case than the Wiener case), a warrant was requested — this was literally a formality as the FBI had the the laptop within its possession already. The use of the word is not the same as a “search” warrant which implies forcible entry of a premises and a hostile search for specified evidence.It would be misleading to suggest the FBI hadn’t been actively reading the emails on that laptop in the Wiener case. They had been looking at it for a month having started by indexing the messages. There doesn’t seem to be much disagreement that there are untouched HRC emails and potentially classified material on that computer.Somewhere along the way, somebody saw something which caught their eye on that Friday morning. That afternoon Comey sent the letter to Congress. The next morning they submitted their warrant request and received it back posthaste. The routine nature of such a warrant is attested to by their ability to get it on a Saturday morning.There is widely held opinion that the Dir of the FBI should have simply sent the original information to the DOJ without any recommendation and asked them to convene a grand jury. There was likely a sitting grand jury at that time in Washington and the evidence could have been presented immediately.Given the choice of three different outcomes — Dir Comey’s presentation v being informed the evidence was headed to a grand jury (or the appointment of a special counsel) — I think HRC would have greatly preferred what did actually happen.In retrospect, I am sure the Dir of the FBI wishes it had been sent to a grand jury for their decision. I doubt either the DOJ or the AG or Pres Obama or HRC feels the same way as a grand jury is not something any of them can control.As to leaks within the FBI, the most informative sources of information is from guys like James Kallstrom — former 27 year asst FBI Director. A man widely respected in the days before politics infiltrated the DOJ and, now, the FBI. He knows everybody and if the FBI rank and file wanted to get a story out, they’d likely feel perfectly comfortable talking to JK.Kallstrom reports great disagreement and chaos within the Bureau with a majority of the rank and file having been in favor of pushing for an indictment of HRC. No surprise that “law & order” guys would be in favor of law & order, right?HRC is not out of the woods even if she were to win on Tuesday. The country will be faced with a similar situation as Pres Obama when he lost control of the Congress after the 2010 mid-term elections. She will not be able to enact any of her promises.She will likely find herself under the microscope as it relates to the FBI’s continuing criminal investigation of her buttressed by a thorough prodding and poking into the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton, Inc. That is not going away.You do what liberals always do — attempt to demonize their opponents while attempting to minimize the seriousness of HRC’s transgressions.There is nothing particularly hateful in wanting to know what the FBI knows about HRC, her email debacle, the Wiener evidence, and the rule of law. Is there something in the evidence that is hateful?I will be praying twice as hard for a different outcome.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          11. cavepainting

            JLM,The issue of looking into the Abedin emails unrelated to Weiner without warrant is no slam dunk matter. It might be violating the fourth amendment. See attached. https://www.washingtonpost….Just because you say so does not make anything true.I know you are too eager to call Hillary guilty, but in this country, people are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. By your arguments, Trump should be guilty of sexual assault on the basis of 12 women coming forward and alleging he violated them. Some have multiple witnesses (like the people magazine reporter) who corroborate the story.I love your writing and business acumen and really hate to pick up a fight with you, but cannot for the life of me understand why you are so prejudiced against Hillary. Argue all that you want against her policy and for Trump, but the campaign of tearing her down, threatening impeachment, and making her seem like a monster is outright silly and disingenuous.

          12. JLM

            .Electing a President — for me — is like conducting a job interview. I have hired thousands of people in my life and I am very comfortable doing that.Based on her policies, plans, character — I eliminated HRC early in the process and with the passage of time I have become more convinced of the wisdom of that assessment.You suggest this is “prejudice.” Prejudice is an unfavorable opinion formed without underlying knowledge, thought, or reason.Clearly, my opinion is reasoned from a factual basis, a body of knowledge, thoughtful, and well-reasoned.You do what all liberals do — demonize the opposition. If one opposes a presidential policy of Pres Obama, one must be a racist. If one opposes the candidacy of former Sec of State Clinton, one must be prejudiced.In a binary election, only two choices, the elimination of one candidate leaves me with a single choice.You then make the second common liberal mistake — you charge that if one intends to vote for HRC’s opponent, they must embrace each and every aspect (failing, shortcoming) of her opponent.This is also not true. There is mounting evidence that DJT may have escaped charm school a semester early but for me — I am electing a President, not a Pope.My opposition to HRC is purely based on her track record, her plans, her policies, her character (absence thereof). For you to suggest that is the result of an unfavorable opinion — prejudice — formed absent knowledge, thought, or reason is, simply, not correct.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          13. sigmaalgebra

            In July FBI Directory Comey stated that Hillary was “extremely careless” in her handling of US classified information. The Comey transcript and video are athttp://www.c-span.org/video…But from a standard law dictionary, “extremely careless” is the first case of “gross negligence”, and that is the sole criterion in section (f) of the US Espionage Act as athttps://www.law.cornell.edu…For a voter, that’s much more than ENOUGH — keep her the Hell OUT of DC, certainly the White House.Why no prosecution? A decision on prosecution is up to the Attorney General who serves at the pleasure of the POTUS who in this case likely does not want a prosecution.We’re not talking a traffic ticket here. Instead, we’re talking a constitutional crisis. Our leaders are not supposed to be in deep, hot, bubbling, fuming, flaming, reeking, black and orange toxic sticky stuff. As John Adams outlined and I quoted for you above, our Constitution needs moral and religious leaders and is inadequate otherwise.Again, you’ve got until the polls close on Tuesday to get this material straight in your head. Hint: For voting, it isn’t all about just a trial in criminal court.

          14. Alex Murphy

            Interesting to bring up Comey in July. This was the most reckless account of an investigation ever.He spent 15 minutes tearing apart a private citizen only to say she did not break the law.Did you get that last part … no charges … not in July, not in October, no charges. No charges. No Charges. Satisfied yet? Probably not, because the witch hunt is never over until the witch burns, right!?!(You do realize there is no such thing as actual witches, don’t you?)

          15. sigmaalgebra

            Just reread what the heck I wrote:Once again, over again, yet again, one more time,(1) Comey said that Hillary was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information. He claimed he had found about 100 e-mail messages with data classified at the time and three with classification markings.So, presto, bingo, he said that she is guilty of at least three, maybe 100, counts of violation of section (f) of the US Espionage Act.(2) Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, prosecution is up to the AG, and Loretta sweetie, BFF in the sisterhood, declined to prosecute.It’s not that Hillary was treated unfairly by the system. Instead, it is that Hillary with Obama and Lynch corrupted the system.Got it now?This corruption is a threat to the US — I gave the John Adams quote in this thread somewhere. Our country is at risk. You seem to be really willing to let Hillary propaganda talk you out of your country. You’ve got until the polls close on Tuesday to study my posts here, start to understand, and do your part to save our country. BTW, on witches, how about an existence proof:https://pbs.twimg.com/media

          16. Alex Murphy

            Oh, I got it. They have such power … they must all be witches, Obama too. Thank you for the schooling.

          17. Mica is awesome!

            Totally true! Good bye GOP. May a new party arise after this election to replace the Grab Our Pussy (GOP) Party.

          18. JLM

            .I’m on the Travis Country Republican Party Executive Committee and we never grab OUR own pussy. A few of us don’t even have one. Haha.We do conduct a Satanic sacrifice of a sheep or a goat (depends on what’s on sale at Whole Foods) before we start the meetings.[That was crude and offensive and I apologize as a prophylactic measure. Please accept my apology.]JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          19. Mica is awesome!

            Crude and offensive? The no more Political Correctness party all of a sudden sitting on their high horse telling us women that we are being crude and offensive for reporting your candidate’s words. Please don’t do us any more favors.You are right. By the time you guys are done with this election you won’t have any pussies to grab because all the women will abandon your party. Until you fully denounce Donald Trump as even a viable candidate, there really is nothing more to your platform. Defending an outright misogynist is unacceptable. You sir, and all of the GOP supporters have abandoned women.

          20. Alex Murphy

            Mica, you are awesome.But, he was making a joke of the fact that he doesn’t actually have one to grab. (meaning his own, not his wife’s or any other hot woman that he sees that he thinks he could just grab as DJT may or may not actually do per his own account 😉

          21. Alex Murphy

            Probably more accurate to say “was investigated” and no charges were brought.And given Trump’s record of dragging his own businesses into court over unscrupulous business practices, he would be under investigation within a year if he gets in.

          22. JLM

            .Curious — what would you hazard a Pres Trump would be investigated for?Particularly since he gets to appoint the AG and the top 5 at DOJ?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          23. Alex Murphy

            If DJT is elected on Tuesday, and then in office on Jan 21, I think it will take less than 60 days for him to do something that is in conflict with the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Given his resistance to divest all of the Trump holdings, where there are many negotiations going on in other countries, countries he has said should have Nuclear Weapons, and he will be looking for favorable treatment from those countries, etc, I see a very quick path to “investigations” because if there is anything that DC does well, it is a call for an investigation. As a side bar, if DJT wins, then one has to assume the Republicans hold the house and Senate. While that may look like a great thing for DJT, the best thing for the Republican party will be to throw out DJT and have Pence in his place. All of that is short term thinking, but it fits with the narrative of how the establishment sees Trump.

          24. JLM

            .I was expecting something more substantive than that from an Irishman. Bullshit answer, really.Who initiates the investigation if the Congress is Republican, the DOJ is his appointees, he gets to appoint all the US Attorneys, the FBI is in the bag for Trump (play along, please)?Your scenario sounds suspiciously like the Clinton Gang.He has said he will place his ownership in Trumpland in a blind trust and turn his kids loose to run the show. Hell, I’d give the cubs some of my money to invest.If DJT wins, the GOPe takes a vacation for the rest of their lies to Antiqua or some other warm place. This is a changing of the guard election under any circumstances — the Bushes, et al, ancient history until George P comes of age.Remember when the Republicans were to wander in the desert for the next 40 years after 2012? And, then, 2014 happened and the Republicans won the Senate, added to their majority in the House, swept more statehouses and legislatures into their column — biggest reversal of fortune since the 1920s.Say, thank you, Obamacare and Pres Obama.Keep your day job because political pundit is not your thing, Mick.[Full disclosure, I am a Brennan from the County Cork, not the city. Just screwing with you. I’ll buy you a whiskey on Tuesday and we can toast the winner.]JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          25. Alex Murphy

            What Bourbon are your drinking tonight? It must be good with that rant. I am partial to Basil Hayden. http://www.basilhaydens.com/ <http: http://www.basilhaydens.com=“”/> “Under investigation” … almost anyone can start one in DC. That was my point. It has been the reality for DJT forever. Do you really think the Rs in office like Trump? Even if he gets elected? He is the third rail. The worst thing that can happen for the Republican party is for Trump to get elected. Unless, they turn around and throw him out. And for what its worth, while I love the Irish, I’m American.

          26. JLM

            .I like Garrison Brothers from Hye, Texas but I have a self-serving interest so I’m not completely objective.I wouldn’t brush my teeth in that piss water you sent my way, Alex. [OK, I would brush my teeth in it.]No, it is actually pretty hard to get an investigation under way in DC. For the FBI to open a file (meaning spend money on an investigation by investing resources), they have to get authority from DOJ or a US Attorney.You also have to remember the POTUS can pardon anyone including himself.Who cares if anyone “likes” DJT? This isn’t 3rd grade recess.You think anyone “likes” Obama after that POS Obamacare? It cost lots of Dems their jobs.The question is will they vote for his legislation? He’ll get Ryan and McConnell to carry his water. Hell, they passed Obama’s budgets, no?Good for you, Mick. I’m got a lot of American in me, also, but I love the Irish and love the fact that I’ve got that Brennan blood in my veins.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          27. Alex Murphy

            Small world. That’s right around the corner from Kerrville. I plan to be there next year and will have to go and try a glass (or two). Nice to find common ground.(for what its worth, brushing your teeth with any bourbon will surely do better than crest!)

          28. JLM

            .Play your cards right and you can drink for free — technically illegal but I know a guy who knows a guy. Plus, we’re always looking for tasters.True story — I have dipped my toothbrush in bourbon to disinfect it when I was overseas and couldn’t get clean drinking water. It lathers that Crest up very well.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          29. sigmaalgebra

            True, but you are neglecting a lot. You would be okay with your daughter marrying a Mafia soldier if he had not yet been convicted?You are okay with Hill, who very much looks like a crook, in the White House simply because she has not been convicted yet?See my other post to you on this issue with the John Adams quote.There is a lot of quite solid information about Bill/Hill on the Internet that shows that they are running a RICO scam and that Hillary is a flagrant, shameless, guiltless, fearless, pathological LIAR. E.g., can easily build a rock solid case that Hill is a liar just as I described just from YouTube clips of her actual statements.You’ve got until the polls close on Tuesday to get this material straight in your mind.

          30. Alex Murphy

            yep, like dozens of actual law suits right now where he has completely screwed people!

          31. cavepainting

            That is why you have laws and due process. If the basis for right or wrong is innuendo and how people spin situations, all hell will break loose.

          32. Alex Murphy

            And what of DJT’s legacy? He is disgraceful in every way. He is no statesman. How anyone can actually justify a vote for this person is beyond me.Regardless, I look at the HRC legacy and am more impressed with every deep dive into the data and information I take.In general, I want everyone to vote, but if you are inclined to vote for Trump, please feel free to stay home!

          33. Richard

            You are naive. Sidwell Friends is a private school in DC filled the kids of democrats and republicans politicians who have become wealthy on a politicians salary.

          34. Mica is awesome!

            Once you start with the name calling and insults I am pretty much done talking to you.

          35. Richard

            I’m sorry. You are a little sensitive. Naive and Ignorant are not name calling

          36. sigmaalgebra

            > she has not been convicted of anythingYet.And in simple terms, so what?For more, that Hill is not yet in jail is one heck of a weak reason to make her POTUS. That she is quite likely, except for an Obama pardon, on her way to court and possibly jail is a serious disqualification for POTUS.Yes, Hill seems to like the idea that the only thing she could do that would be seriously wrong would be something that would have her in court under criminal charges, e.g., recently claimed that the FBI had no “case” against her. Yup, Hill went to law school.But, as I show below, more important, did she ever go to Sunday School?I explain more below:In Arkansas, Bill was delivering the favors, and Hill was taking the money. A lot of details are in the old movieHillary Clinton Exposedathttps://www.youtube.com/wat…But Bill was Arkansas Attorney General and later Governor. So, the Bill/Hill RICO act was smart enough to control the prosecution. But, they did have to pay a big bundle to one of the women Bill raped. Since that was a civil case, Bill could not stop it.For whatever Hill did in the White House, Bill was POTUS so could protect her, e.g., as she stole furniture, etc., had her buddies from the Rose Law Firm running things, etc. And then too many people too close to Bill/Hill ended up with gun shot wounds from the mouth to the brain — always fatal.When Hill was Secretary of State, in the RICO act she delivered the favors, and Bill took the money. But Obama and his Attorneys General protected Bill and Hill.How’d Bill/Hill get away with that? the Director of the FBI serves for a 10 year term, thus, necessarily for more than one POTUS but can’t prosecute; the Attorney General can prosecute but serves at the pleasure of the POTUS.So, the Bill/Hill RICO act has been clever enough to be connected high enough to be difficult to prosecute.That doesn’t mean that Bill/Hill are innocent. It does mean that the US is, with crooks in office, vulnerable to one heck of a constitutional crisis. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”John Adams athttp://www.beliefnet.com/re…and otherwise easy to find via Google.So, for the sake of our Constitution and country, in choosing our leaders, we have to judge in part also on morals and religion and not wait for just conviction in a court of law. That Bill/Hill are not yet in jail is not much of a recommendation for turning the White House over to them.So, we come to a key point in the Bill/Hill scam: They are both lawyers and, thus, understand clearly that often it is legal to lie. So, they, especially Hill, lie. And they understand, even when it is illegal to lie, if they are high enough in the system they can still get away with lying. Then Bill is a charming campaigner, and Hill is an astounding actress, so they got by with their lying, most legal, some illegal.E.g., with the Clinton Foundation (CF) — as a nonprofit foundation — they have to give away IIRC ballpark 6% annually. Maybe they do that. But the rest they can spend nearly any way they want to for themselves, their buddies, etc. and get the money tax free, and apparently they do that. Now even the IRS wants several years of their taxes filed again.So, the CF is a clever loophole in the tax laws, a PR stunt, and a huge slush fund. E.g., for a loophole:In the US Constitution (see another post of mine here today), as Secretary of State, Hill could not take money from foreign governments, but maybe she was hoping that Bill and the CF could — loophole. Not “moral”.And, maybe Obama doesn’t want to have to appear in court based on any Bill/Hill prosecutions. So, maybe Obama will pardon Bill/Hill. That still does not give us the “moral” people Adams mentioned.Sure, if Obama does not pardon Bill/Hill, likely they will have some days in court. If Hill is elected POTUS, likely she will face impeachment (IIRC can be impeached for actions before being elected), maybe even if Obama pardons her. And in court, they deserve presumption of innocence until proven guilty.In the meanwhile we need government from leaders like Adams described. And in selecting those leaders, we vote and there, with a secret ballot, can vote however we want for any reason or no reason and don’t have to say, explain, or justify. But, we are all counting on the voters to pick moral leaders — else we might not keep our country.Net, it is necessary that we have moral leaders, and to get them it is both necessary and sufficient for enough of us to vote for such people.So, if you are a US citizen, on Tuesday you get to evaluate if Hill is as John Adams said we need — moral and religious.To that end, elsewhere in this thread today I have outlined evidence that Hillary is nasty, a liar, a criminal, and a US foreign policy and national security disaster — that is, nothing like what Adams had in mind.Now you’ve got until Tuesday to do your part in saving the US.

          37. cavepainting

            Making money after you leave office by writing books and giving speeches is not a crime. Colin Powell, Condaleeza Rice,, and even GWB has done it.There is no evidence that she made any decisions in office because of personal considerations.You are indeed spewing bullshit because you are convicting based on speculation and innuendo, no real evidence.I would respect your decision to want to vote for Trump if you say he represents more change in Washington. A case can be made for that even though I would argue otherwise. But pointing to her net-worth of $111M is as asinine a reason as you can possibly give.

      3. JLM

        .DJT has been running a family owned and family-centric business for almost half a century. It is difficult to imagine who his “cronies” might be. They are certainly not the GOPe (the Republican Establishment) which eliminates much of Washington Republican officialdom.He has outlined a complete slate of conservative Judges he would consider for appointment to the Supreme Court. None of them are even remotely cronies. All of them have been on the bench for a long time and all have received high marks from the Bar Association and other industry groups.You seem comfortable with making utterances which have no basis in fact or for which there is no evidence.There is a lot of evidence that DJT has settled his disagreements with others. More than a handful of his primary opponents ultimately came to his support. Even Ted Cruz has been on the campaign trail with Pence for the last month.I find it refreshing that DJT has made enemies of the likes of the Bushes, Romney, and other RINOs who promised to support the nominee and then failed to do so.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      4. sigmaalgebra

        “Cronies”? Draw the crony graph for Hillary and have lines to Loretta Lynch, James Comey, the FBI guy who headed the investigation into Hillary’s e-mail that Comey reported on in July, to lawyer Khan who worked in the law firm that Hillary has used and has represented the Saudis, Saudi Huma, Mills, and more.

    2. cavepainting

      Jason, I disagree. DC does not operate independent of the rest of the country. Contrary to perception, DC cannot be unbroken because a new President wills that to be the case. There are deeper problems related to governance in the US, relating to prioritizing and rewarding a politics of contempt over a politics of compromise. “Draining the swamp” really does not mean anything without addressing the polarization of the parties, especially the far right that has chosen a course of obstruction and “my way or the highway”. Ironically, Trump symbolizes this extreme divisiveness and is least qualified to solve it. I wrote more here. https://medium.com/@a.j/all

    3. Twain Twain

      There’s definitely a “lost in translation” between this type of American humor and British wit.Now, if Monty Python crew had decided to crack jokes about mothers and how Trump isn’t the right calling for capitalism and democracy …https://www.youtube.com/wat

      1. Twain Twain

        @JLM:disqus @philipsugar:disqus @le_on_avc:disqus @SaltShaker1:disqus @donnawhite:disqus @cavepainting:disqus @sigmaalgebra:disqus @wmoug:disqus @myscrawl:disqus @samedaydr:disqus — Especially funny from 1:30 onwards.

    4. Alex Murphy

      too bad, because he nailed it.a vote for HRC = you’re a grown upa vote for DJT = you’re a suckerno vote = you’re an assholeyep!

  4. Gordon Splete

    Unfortunately we live in a world of people who have to be right and win over a loser. Give and take with strength and integrity is what is needed when dealing around the world and politics. Who can lead our country when we deal in a two party system that fights each other constantly? I like this guys humor…

  5. Vendita Auto

    Sounded more honest than funny

  6. bandolvin

    I’ve enjoyed some of his comedy in the past but this makes it clear that he’s sold-out. Further, it makes me question your judgement, Fred.Clinton for President, because she’s a “mom”? If Louis CK spoke the truth his career would be over — or, on the other hand, if he’d actually be more aware and intelligent, do some research, and truly not give a shit what other people think of him or his “career” and stand up for truth, he could be like George Carlin or Bill Hicks and really help people wake up with comedy.

    1. LE

      There are plenty of bad moms out there and Dads as well. This is just more drivel to get people into some standardized way of thinking. “This is the way you are supposed to be if you are a mom or dad in this society”.You know I am guessing that Donalds kids probably aren’t bothered by how he cheated on their mother. Or that he wasn’t around when they were growing up. At all. I am not even sure she (Ivana) is bothered by it. You get a high powered aggressive testosterone fueled guy out there like that and that is what often happens. [1] Not 100% of the time but probably more so than with a less driven person (non scientifically as an anecdote). If you keep an aggressive dog breed around don’t be surprised if it bites someone.[1] And thank god because we all benefit from these guys and how self centered they are and how they crap on everyone around them to get some benefit for themselves.

  7. BillMcNeely

    “If you don’t vote for someone you’re an asshole” best line.

  8. WA

    Caught it. Loved it.

  9. LaVonne Reimer

    Brilliant! And a great use of humor to drive home massively important points. I read through the other comments before posting. Guys, guys, I know you have this anarchist bone in your bodies. Maybe you had too much sand kicked in your face when you were young or your Mom didn’t let you smash enough of your little sister’s toys. I really don’t know. If you must take it out on anything, keep writing subversive code. Because when you do that you actually introduce new architecture that the rest of us can turn into something brilliant. (Hat tip to William who is a great example of doing this with the underpinnings of bitcoin.) But when you see a segment of the country that is determined to shoot itself and therefore all of us in the foot you have to step back a minute and ask what’s the grown-up thing to do here? And you also have to ask yourself what is really behind all the mud thrown at Hillary? Really, to any woman who has dared to insert herself into key leadership positions. It requires stepping back from knee-jerk responses. You could, say, use your knowledge of computer science to help others understand what it was about government IT infrastructure that prompted the use of a private server because you know it really kind of makes sense then. Try studying the history of the 1970s politics and how that inspired a backlash on women’s rights. Maybe some philosophy because it inspires well-rounded perspectives. Just thinking out loud here.

    1. PhilipSugar

      Really this is the attitude that gets people to vote for Trump. That in no way is an endorsement or saying I am for Trump.People in the non flyover states think that only old angry white men will vote for Trump. Newsflash: White men make up 30% of voters. One third or old, let’s say half are angry. That means Trump gets 5% of the vote.Let me tell you why I see over 100 vote for Trump signs and not one Hillary one on my way to work. They all are on properties that have at least one woman living there.People are angry at Washington D.C. They work hard, damn hard, and they watch their lives get tougher. Meanwhile they see Washington D.C. thrive. They see that people in Washington D.C. think that they are their own class. They see the Clinton’s make a quarter of a billion dollars selling their influence when they should be serving these hardworking people. They see Clinton taking money from Goldman Sachs, they see them taking money from the very countries we are negotiating trade deals with, they see her think she can have her own email server, they see her calling them deplorable. They know that is what is in her heart. They get up and go to work everyday by 7am, they start their second job at 3pm and get home by 7pm, and she thinks they are deplorable and wants to take their money and give it to somebody that doesn’t work.They know Trump is a scumbag, but they think everybody in D.C. is a scumbag. They see that the “elite” people actually like Hillary and that just makes their blood boil. They could understand a vote against Trump but not one for Hillary.

      1. LE

        Ironically of course DE and MD where you live work have greatly benefited from Washington (credit card industry and DC gov industrial complex metro area). In other places in the country, not the case at all. In particular the credit card industry has been on the backs of those in other parts. So it’s a net gain for the area economically. Ditto for big government programs.Look I think it’s impossible to get into politics and not become ‘that person’ once you have a taste of the power that comes with it and get invited to the parties. [1] If anything Trump is the one person that won’t be ‘that person’ because he has been sucked up to his entire life as it is. Unlike someone like Elizabeth Warren who is new to the game and if not already will become ‘one of them’.[1] Plus you have to work with others to get things done. This involves trading favors. No way around that.

        1. PhilipSugar

          Where I live is shockingly blue collar. You know I love my projects. I love the guys that work on them.I was shocked when I heard them talking about Trump:Juan the backhoe operatorLeo the bricklayerJose the painter”Patches” the drywallerJohn the electricianBob the plumberThey work so hard. They are great at what they do. They make a good living. They really resent the Washington elite.And their wives have stronger views than them. (I have completion parties for all of my projects)

      2. sigmaalgebra

        > They know Trump is a scumbag,In this whole campaign, I have yet to see even one at all credible piece of evidence that Trump has anything morally, ethically, etc. wrong with him on anything at all related to being POTUS. If you have some good evidence, I will be an eager reader.BTW, the NYT and nearly all the rest of the mainstream media (MSM) are no longer credible, especially on Trump. E.g., as we know, a few days ago the NYT ran a story about a woman claiming that on a first class flight Trump raised an arm rest and molested her. In hours the debunking came out: The arm rests were wide and fixed.A few months ago the NYT had a story, front page, above the fold, centered, claiming Trump had molested some women. Within hours, some/all of the women said that the NYT was badly wrong.The NYT for years pushed the wack-o nonsense that CO2 from humans is causing significant global warming. Nonsense.NYT has no credibility. Neither do the rest of the MSM.

        1. PhilipSugar

          Seriously? His “locker room” talk (in quotes) was not a dot. It was a big dot on a line. Frankly if he could self edit and keep on topic he would win.

          1. LE

            Referring to it as “locker room talk” was a quick and easy way to get across the point. Milania did a better job calling it “boys talk”. I loved the way athletes came out and said “we didn’t talk like that in the locker room”. The point is it was guys riffing with other guys for a laugh. Trump made a mistake by being to specific instead he should have been more ambiguous. Makes it harder for someone to say “sorry I never heard that in the locker room”.Do guys talk like that and have I heard it? Of course. But if I hadn’t or if you hadn’t is that relevant? No of course not. Girls say shit also. My wife and a gay male friend of hers (before I met her) used to play a game of “guess the penis size”. She let that slip when we were going out for a short time. Who cares?Trumps a horny guy so what. He also acts on it. So did Clinton, JFK and a host of other politicians. It attracts women. Nobody pays any attention to me.You mentioned that you know very well a politician in your state. You probably have never heard that talk from him. Does that mean he hasn’t said things that you haven’t heard? No it just means he controls himself in front of you and/or you don’t appear to be the type that would like that type of discussion. (I am the same way not my thing but I recognize others are not me and I can accept that).

          2. PhilipSugar

            Look. You always talk about me being in a fraternity. Let me give you an example of Locker Room talk. I have a 30 year friend that “shares” a hotel room with me at homecoming and graduation. He has never slept there.He is not married. As a matter of fact when a red head was talking to him he said aren’t you married and she said yes but my husband is not here is that a problem? He said YES.When he comes back the next morning he tells me of the enjoyment and exotic pleasure he had with the Asian woman he went home with, she apparently possessed unique skills that she used on him.In my hotel room, with a friend of 30 years, not in a work environment, and certainly not about assaulting her.

          3. LE

            Honestly I am actually more bothered by what I assume happened with the asian prostitute (gross) than I am what might have happened with the allegedly married redhead. We are also assuming the redhead’s husband never cheated on her and/or they have an accepted relationship for this type of thing. Or it could be payback or whatever.And thinking a bit out of the box consider this. It’s possible the redhead isn’t married and finds that it’s a great way to have men pay more attention to her “you want what you can’t have and/or enjoy the dirty aspect of it”. Now that might be the case here specifically (maybe you knew for a fact the redhead was married (not just wearing a ring but you just knew definitively in some way)). I can see that actually turning some men on more to get another man’s woman. Makes her appear more attractive.

          4. PhilipSugar

            She certainly not a prostitute. She was an MD.

          5. LE

            Well now we don’t know if she was also married, do we!Funny story. When I was growing up I remember my mom saying about a neighbor “they say she was a prostitute”. So I thought “she was a prostitute”. Then I realized literally a month ago that my mom is a bit victorian and maybe this woman wasn’t a real prostitute. So I just asked her about that. Turns out the other woman in the neighborhood said she slept with a great deal of men (who knows if true?) and must have called her ‘a whore’. So my mom (whisper down the lane) turned that into “they say she was a prostitute”. And it stuck with me all of these years.

          6. PhilipSugar

            Look this is exactly why women rightfully get pissed off.1. She was not married2. Why would you assume she was a prostitute?3. Why do we label a woman a “whore” if she sleeps around and a guy as a “player” or whatever. That is bullshit.If you make a commitment to marriage, you have made a commitment. Man or Woman and I don’t give a crap about the combination.I believe having sex is giving the other person a piece of your soul and is not to be taken lightly. But if two consenting adults have a different belief well if they are consenting, then I am ok, not good, but ok.

          7. LE

            Why would you assume she was a prostitute?Priming. The use of “exotic” and to a lesser extent “asian” is the pattern that caused that. Juxtaposed with the previous discussion as well as the fact that sex was involved and the other was ‘wrong’ and with a married woman. Further had you added “a physician that he met at the bar” or even “a secretary that he met at the bar” I wouldn’t have thought that. Or even “an unmarried woman he met at a party”.If we were talking about your friend doing online dating and that he had a great date with “an exotic asian last night” I would not have thought that. So it was a case of priming (really) that did this. I do this in my business writing as well. You want to create a certain mood by the use of words that leads someone in a particular direction. Kind of Rorschach.Why do we label a woman a “whore” if she sleeps around and a guy as a “player” or whatever. That is bullshit.’We’ is not ‘me’. I don’t do that. I never had sex with a woman that I didn’t end up dating. I don’t admire that either but am not bothered by it either. Women being proud that they can sleep with men? Don’t be not hard men will sleep with anyone. Man getting to sleep with anyone, much harder. (Off topic but thought I’d mention..)If you make a commitment to marriage, you have made a commitment.Having done a nice amount of dating prior to getting remarried I have changed my rigidity on this after hearing various stories. I used to think that as well but have heard enough to think there are actually valid reasons when people do this. [1][1] One is oddly enough I have this theory that many people cheat because they want to get caught. Why? Because it’s actually an easier way to end a relationship than telling the partner “I don’t want you anymore”. Many other reasons but that is I think one of them.

          8. sigmaalgebra

            Naw, commonly there’s a much stronger reason: If just want a quickie, can be better to have the other person married because they are less likely to (A) talk and (B) get more involved.Once I was a consultant in applied math and computing, and one of my first customers said she had some survey data she wanted to process and in that data wanted to find sex. She emphasized to me that she was interested in sex.Another time a consulting customer had me in her office, leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk aimed in my direction, and explained that she and her husband had an “open marriage”. Well, I didn’t.Some women like quickies.

          9. LE

            better to have the other person married because they are less likely to (A) talkMaybe not. If the person is married it greatly increases the amount of people that would have motive and desire to say something. Probability wise I would argue the risk might actually be higher.This is always why it strikes me as odd when people hire someone else to murder someone that is close to them. They are still a suspect and there is an additional person (who could tell people) who could flip on them.

          10. JLM

            .I once heard a Colonel threaten a reluctant chopper pilot using very bad language. His language was coarse, profane, inflammatory, and crude. He also threatened to shoot the pilot.The chopper pilot — who didn’t want to land — landed and those who received the ammunition he brought and who were evacuated were grateful for the results. Granted, they had skin in the game.The following pilots also made it in and out because they’d had the example set by the first pilot.In the end, it is results which count.We are electing a President, not a Pope.If in the course of things — such as rebuilding the military, growing the economy, sorting out illegal immigration, dealing with terrorism, killing off ISIS — the President uses a spot of bad language, then I will bite my tongue.Of course, I’ve heard all those words before and used all of them also.Only results count — a phrase dear to the engineers who designed and built the Titanic. Right now, I feel like our country is on the Titanic.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          11. PhilipSugar

            We don’t disagree. But when people say it was not anything other than disgusting they are wrong and give people literally ammunition.The swamp of DC needs draining. I had somebody from D.C. send me this:For those of you not familiar with the culture of DC, it’s very much a small town. Everyone knows everyone. There are only two types of people: those who participate in the business of the city (politics, government) and those who observe. The two groups don’t often mix. It’s also important to note that in the insider crew, there are certain key people around whom everything orbits. Tom is one of these people. EVERYONE knows him. Or knows someone who knows him. And thanks to Annah, now we know him, too.

          12. LE

            What makes someone interesting to me is that they are real. Not some pussy sanitized version of what they think people want them to be.If someone had something negative to say about a group that I belonged to then I would invite them to say it and let me address and discuss it further with them. In some cases they might find out that I actually agree with them.

          13. Donna Brewington White

            We are a desperate people.But as a rule we don’t appear to be critical thinkers.What I appreciate about your viewpoint is that it seems to be well thought through.I’m sure you are influenced by your political leanings as am I, but on more than one occasion I have reconsidered my choice.Never have I been more grateful for the right to vote and never have I taken it more seriously (except perhaps my very first election).I could not vote in this election with a clear conscience if I had not first asked myself “Can I really vote for this person in good conscience?” I have had to ask this question more than once as new developments come to the surface.I have gone back to speeches to research context rather than resort to soundbites. Although my vote will not ultimately be based on what the candidates have said. In my line of work I have learned to make decisions based on actions and behavioral trends. And, yeah, a bit of gut instinct.

          14. JLM

            .The other day I was talking to a surgeon about repairing my ruptured Achilles tendon. He came highly recommended.I asked him several questions:1. How many times have you done this operation? [It is a little complex because the tendon was completely severed and has retreated up and down the leg, so there will be a cadaver tendon inserted which means a much longer incision.]2. Ever been sued for malpractice?3. Ever had a patient die on the operating table?I like to think I considered the element of expertise and tried to get a handle on the downside.It turned out he is a “specialist” on this particular operation. I went with the upside and knew the downside.I did not ask him if he was a misogynist because it was not really relevant to the job. I was hiring a surgeon, not a Pope.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          15. sigmaalgebra

            No. You have swallowed a lot of total Hillary campaign nonsense.If you want to talk sex, kinky sex, underage sex, etc. perverted Hill tolerating, even approving, of “whatever it is that Bill does with women”, look at the recent news about Bill and Hill on the Lolita Express, the reports of Hill in Hollywood getting both male and female sex partners, the claim that Hill had “eaten more” even than Bill, the connections with pervert Whiner Little Wiener Weiner, etc.But, for Trump, in that tape, he did NOTHING wrong. In fact, as I show here, what Trump did was just excellent. E.g., I very much wish my father had given me all such information — he gave me some but not nearly all.Given the propaganda, we have to be clear here:(1) Trump NEVER said that he had ever done any such things to a woman.(2) In the second debate, Trump claimed that he had never done any such things to a woman.(3) There is so far no, none, zip, zilch, zero credible evidence that Trump has ever done any such thing to a woman.(4) Trump was correct, 100% absolutely, totally correct on his description of what some women would accept from some men under some circumstances.For some evidence, what Trump described is EXACTLY what JFK in the White House while POTUS actually did, suddenly, without provocation, to 19 year old, debutante, engaged to be married, graduate of Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut, right, the same school Jackie Kennedy went to, then recent White House intern Miss Mimi Alford. Solid reference and primary source: NBC News “Rock Center with Brian Williams”athttp://rockcenter.nbcnews.c…with an interview of Miss Alford. There is also a corresponding book by Miss Alford.And apparently Miss Alford did accept the attack because soon the JFK and Miss Alford were with their clothes off in a White House bathtub playing with floating, toy, rubber ducks. Indeed, it is fair to say that there was a relationship.(5) What Trump told Bush is very important information for a man to have so that he can better understand life. It is crucial for a father to understand such information so that he can explain (A) to his sons and daughters that some men will try such attacks and some women will accept them, (B) to his sons that they should never do such a thing, and (C) to his daughters that they might get such an attack, should be prepared to defend themselves, should never accept such an attack, and, if attacked, may have a strong legal case.Moreover, the sons might understand that some girls/women will want and expect such attacks. That is, there is a good chance that some mothers tell their daughters that such attacks are just some of what some boys will do, e.g., just as part of a boy “making the first move”, and a girl should not be too surprised, push away the attention they don’t want, and accept the attention they do. Point: This also may be an actual fact of life. I’m not recommending it as a “first move”.(6) But in US society this very important information about REALITY is very difficult for boys/men to get. I very much wish my father had told me all such information when I was 10, 12, 14, etc., but among what he did tell me what JFK did was missing — bummer.So, really, Trump did Bush a big favor, acted like a good mentor to Bush, maybe helped Bush get important information about some of REALITY and, thus, be a better father, uncle, etc.(7) It is, for better or worse, in US society a rock solid, granite hard, iron clad FACT of life that one of the very best ways for a boy/man to get such information is locker room banter where they exchange notes and information they do have.Sorry ’bout that, but it’s just TRUE.(8) Trump did nothing “lewd” and, instead, just described some very important information about the facts of life, about REALITY, about the way some things actually are.The worst thing Trump did was just trivial — he used a street term for the anatomical term vulva.A society that can’t talk about what is true in the facts of life is a sexually and psychologically SICK society.Trump did NOTHING wrong and did some good mentoring for Bush. Congrats to Trump.For the sexual sick-os in society, send them out back of the outhouse where they can amuse themselves, have really nasty, destructive attitudes toward women, make terrible husbands and fathers, be another Bill, Hill, pervert Whiner Little Wiener Weiner, etc.All evidence is that Trump is really good to women, likes beautiful women (so do I!), has done very well as a father for both his sons and daughters, and is a great family man.

          16. Twain Twain

            I wonder what’ll happen when Trump goes into trade negotiations with China or the EU and he can’t self-edit or keep on topic.I wonder how even more “lost in translation” he’ll be.I wonder if he’ll have the political gravitas and respect needed for the US to continue to be “Leading peacekeeper, policeman and model for democracy, justice and all those good things.”According to NYT, his companies are in $650+ million debt to Bank of China and Goldman Sachs. It’s unlikely the Chinese government will take kindly to his portrayals that the Chinese have “stolen the jobs of Americans” when Trump and Ivanka Trump made the choice to source their materials from China.

      3. sigmaalgebra

        For yourthey see them taking money from the very countries we are negotiating trade deals with, in the US Constitution we see:Article. I.Section. 9.No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. So, our founding fathers saw very clearly the threat of a Hillary taking money from foreign governments.As US Secretary of State Hillary was in massive violation of the US Constitution.That’s impeachable, even if done before taking office.E.g., inJonathan Allen, “Clinton’s charity confirms Qatar’s $1 million gift while she was at State Dept”, Reuters, Fri Nov 4, 2016, 8:12pm EDTathttp://www.reuters.com/arti…is in part:The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

        1. PhilipSugar

          This we agree upon.

      4. Amar

        Read this whole tweet stream https://twitter.com/MikeAnd…There is a lot of clarity in these hypothesis. People read this and react as if observing something is the same as condoning it. It is not but only a fool will rush into the future while denying the reality in his/her face.My acknowledging these observations does not change the fact that voting for “Trump” is the presidential equivalent of rolling all my life savings on red 32 because I desperately need a better future. The downside probability absolutely crushes any small potential upside.Pretending that all of Trump’s support can be explained using a thesis of “the small minded, racist, uneducated, angry white american from the fly over states” is absolutely naive at best and fatalistic arrogance to the core. Ignoring all the smoke around HRC and acting as if she is foible free is incredibly condescending as well.Here is to 7 days from now and a whole lot of healing.

        1. PhilipSugar

          Great comment we could not agree more. Well said. +100

      5. Donna Brewington White

        I appreciate this insight, Phil.From what I can see, people are mad as hell.Some of that anger is directed toward Trump, some toward HRC. Both are great targets.

        1. PhilipSugar

          What literally shocks me is the amount of women and working class people that are opposed to HRC.Look at what happened in the chip factories in upstate NY.Now I know I live where people still have roles that are considered traditional. I want my daughter to have a business that outclasses any of mine. I have the highest percentage of diversity by race, gender, and age of any software company there is we can go over the numbers.But I can’t tell you how many working class tradesmen (sorry they are almost always men) have to have their wife’s work as their go-fer’s because they can’t find an apprentice that will work, and they can’t make ends meet. It seriously pisses them both off.

      6. cavepainting

        What you say is true in terms of how many people feel in the hinterlands, but that is a result of spin from balkanized media outlets like fox news, rush limbaugh, etc. , and people wanting easy diagnosis of the problems in their lives.The reality is that DC is not a homogenous entity. There are many different groups and people with varying agendas. Nothing gets done because the Republicans have taken an extreme position of obstructing everything.Your (and others’ criticism of Hillary) is very misplaced and reflects a lack of research into detail. The Bushes have a foundation and have taken capital from a variety of sources. Where was the outrage then ? Where is the real evidence for pay-to-play ? Where is the evidence that any of these emails caused any harm to anyone, or that any secrets were compromised, or anyone was hurt ? Or even that there was any cover up or obstruction of justice ? There is zero evidence and 100% speculation.The answer here is not for everyone to become non-elitist and look for simple answers to big problems ( deport immigrants, kill free trade, build a wall, set up a religious test for muslims seeking entry, refute climate change, etc.). We need to be thoughtful about issues, look out for the people who are vulnerable to the macro changes in globalization and technology, provide more training in new areas of growth, and continue to emphasize education and affordable access to college.Ask yourself who between Hillary and Trump can do any of this. Can Trump think through complex issues, not politicize them and seek solutions ? The past 18 months has shown he cannot be trusted with the weight of this responsibility. If you carefully review Hillary’s history without getting distracted by the noise from her critics, you would find that she is better at governing vs. campaigning and has a genuine passion for making a difference in the lives of other people.

        1. PhilipSugar

          “What you say is true in terms of how many people feel in the hinterlands”I don’t live in the hinterlands.I think Trump is a scumbag.That has nothing to do with what I think of Hillary. Every defense of Hillary always comes with a “look how bad Trump is” That has nothing to do with Hillary.People are totally fine with saying Trump supporters are uneducated, angry, old white men from the hinterlands.Think about that for a second: It is elitist, agist, sexist, racist. You can only say it because it is considered ok to make fun of that group.Could you imagine if people said Hillary supporters are uneducated, single, black, welfare mom’s from the ghetto?Could you imagine? There would be rightful outrage. It really is no different.

          1. cavepainting

            Hi, the truth is that he is stronger in rural areas with higher percentage of white population and she is stronger in urban areas where there is more diversity. He beats her among non college educated men by close to 40 points and she does the same among minorities.This of course does not mean he has no support among other classes but that forms the core of his base. There is nothing wrong in saying that and it is just stating the facts.Please check the cross tabs on any of the high quality polls and you will see a consistent pattern. His support is inversely correlated to increasing college education and diversity.

    2. JLM

      .What have been the results of HRC’s leadership?This is a rhetorical question and I do not want to burden you with the mental gymnastics to answer that intriguing question.In her Senate career, she authored and had signed into law THREE bits of legislation — one the naming of a bit of asphalt after Tim Russert, a post office name, and a historical building name.As a legislative leader, there is thin grist for the mill.In the State Dept, she has handed us a flaming ember which used to be the Middle East, a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, the reentry of Russia (not seen since the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War), a Turkey getting ready to spit the bit as it relates to NATO, and wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan.So, Hillary the Leader — what has she led or accomplished? Take a couple of days to think it through.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  10. pointsnfigures

    Great. I disagree with him on her ability, and her character.

    1. LE

      Given his upbringing he has no idea what it is like to be ‘joe six pack’. [1] He doesn’t understand their pain and how they have been forgotten and are ignored. [2] These are people that are living out there (hand to mouth) whose problems get little attention from the powers to be simply because they aren’t visible and in the face of anyone important or the media. If a story is written it’s a long form piece that is quickly forgotten. Meanwhile if there is a traffic problem in Fort Lee it becomes important enough to block a presidential candidate because it happens in a major media market and with a well know figure and impacts a more well to do crowd. I can fully understand why so many people are voting for Trump even with what I am sure they perceive as his drawbacks.[1] From a quick read of wikipedia it seems his parents were well educated and middle class. He had the luxury of pursuing a career in entertainment and taking his chances.[2] This even happened with people in NY metro with regards to the Sandy storm reparations ironically.

  11. sigmaalgebra

    And, now, for making our democracy successful, which is always our responsibility and now our intense need, and for deciding the future of our country, which we very definitely are doing, anyone as scatterbrained on this election as CK is an idiot — irresponsible, disconnected, delusional, dysfunctional, destructive, dangerous.Okay, CK got some laughs, but this time none from me.Party? I’m registered as Democrat. A lot about the Republicans in the past make me stay far away, e.g., the conservative, true conservative, conservative principles, true conservative principles, rock ribbed, true conservative principles back to Reagan, Goldwater, etc., New American Century, Cheney etc. are buzz words for too many silly ideas, a lot of cruelty, too many wasteful, costly, dangerous wars, wacko economics, etc.So, for party, mostly I’m for the Democrats and not the Republicans. My brother, political science Ph.D. and super nice guy, explained it to me: “To see what is wrong with the Republican party, just look at the people in it.”. He was talking nasty, mean, cruel, brutal, dangerous people. He had a point.Most recently I got totally pissed off at W, and he was a relatively not conservative Republican. But, W listened too much to Cheney in foreign policy and some idiots in domestic policy and, thus, got us the mess in the Mideast, the housing bubble, illegal immigration, and No Child Left Behind. Horrible stuff, especially Cheney’s stuff.But for the candidates, this time I’m a strong supporter of Trump: I like his plans, policies, and proposals, e.g., as in his speeches and the papers on his Web site. He’s not much like the Republicans of the past. E.g., he nearly never says conservative. Each time Hannity says that word, I cringe. Hannity: Just SHUT UP about conservative, Reagan, etc.For Hillary: A disaster. A serious threat to the US, US democracy, and the world. In a word, she’s sick. Two words, very sick. She’s sick from between her ears down to the ends of her toes. She has just one amazing talent — she is an astoundingly good actress.Hillary is nasty, beyond reason, beyond any norms. Details are in Gary Byrne’s book and much more.Hillary is a liar, not just occasionally or by a little but nearly all the time by a lot. She’s a flagrant, shameless, guiltless, fearless, pathological, even psychopathic, liar. Might as well just ignore anything she says or writes because there’s no way to know what she really believes or would do.Hillary is a seriously bad criminal. We’re talking taking bribes, many millions of dollars, violation of the prohibition in the Constitution on taking money from foreign sources, RICO schemes, for many tens of millions of dollars, obstruction of justice, likely tens of thousands of counts, destruction of government property, lying under oath to Congress, lying to the FBI, massive violation of US laws on handling classified information, and more.Hillary is a foreign policy disaster — Honduras, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Benghazi, Egypt, Iran, and more. With very good reason, she is hated in Haiti.Hillary is a national security disaster, e.g., just from mishandling of classified information. Yes, it appears that finally someone looked at the Web site log files on her DIY e-mail server — Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Microsoft e-mail server Exchange — and found IP addresses from connections from five foreign countries!How’d they get in? One very easy way: Just receive the unencrypted wireless signals from her use of a Blackberry as an e-mail client and, thus, get her e-mail server’s domain name, her login name, and her login password and then, from anywhere on the Internet, just login to her server and download all her e-mail. Piece of cake.Hillary hates anyone in a uniform — throws F-bombs by the plane load at anyone near her in a uniform.Hillary is just plain sick between her ears: She is unable to think clearly or objectively and, instead, is driven by some wild, out of control, bitter, ugly emotions.She’s an astoundingly good actress, but essentially everything about her in public is just an act — talented, diligent, polished, seemingly sincere, often convincing, but totally false.So, for party, I’d prefer the Democrats. But for the candidates, overwhelmingly it has to be Trump. I’m sure I won’t like Paul Ryan. And if W, Cheney, Romney, Ron Paul, Little Marco, Lying Ted Cruz, etc. start to rise from their retirement, bummer.Finally, a lot of people seem to be highly concerned that Trump is racist, sexist, a bully, a buffoon, not presidential, speaks with broken syntax and a fourth grade vocabulary, was unfair to Senator McCain, Megyn Kelly, Rosie O’Donnell, a Miss Universe winner, grabs women by their vulvas, etc. But, point by point, this is all just nonsense put out by the Hillary campaign and buddies in the mainstream media.E.g., for the McCain thing, look at the full record: McCain gave a really nasty attack on Trump because of a routine rally speech Trump gave in Phoenix. Then with Trump Luntz asserted that McCain was a war hero because of his time as a POW. Well, Trump was literally correct — being a POW is not sufficient to be a war hero. Trump went on to say that “maybe McCain was a war hero” — which is also correct. Really, Trump was pushing back at McCain, and, really, McCain deserved it.Rosie O’Donnell? She was really nasty to Trump.Megyn Kelly? She is nasty to Trump and was in her question in the first Republican primary debate. And, Trump never said that he could see blood from her menstrual period.For the Miss Universe? She quickly gained 60 pounds which made her in violation of her contract, and Trump worked with her and got her to finish her reign.For the grabbing, there is no evidence he has ever done any such thing. In that tape with Bush, he never said he did such. In the second debate, he said he didn’t. What Trump told Bush about what some women would tolerate from some men under some circumstances was correct and EXACTLY what JFK did in the White House with intern Mimi Alford — see the NBC interview and/or her book. And Miss Alford apparently did not object because soon she and JFK were with their clothes off in a White House bathtub playing with floating, toy, rubber ducks.The racist stuff? The claim seems to have been based on Trump’s intention to enforce long standing US laws, policies, and procedures on immigration. For a POTUS not to enforce the laws is a violation of the duties of office as in the Constitution. Indeed, Trump worked hard and successfully to reverse the long standing, highly racist norms of the high end clubs in Palm Beach.The anti-Trump propaganda went on and on this way. To protect against that stuff, just insist on some solid data. Doing that, the propaganda goes away faster than a snowball in Hell. People who believe the MSM propaganda — distortions, fabrications, lies — are gullible fools.It is sad that the MSM is so bad, but bad newies are not nearly new, and apparently the Internet is rapidly putting the MSM out of business. So, before the MSM finally goes belly up, for ad revenue or whatever, they are willing to be the distorting, fabricating, lying propaganda arm of the Hillary campaign. Okay, so be it; just ignore them.

    1. Twain Twain

      Toronto Star has made a list of Trump’s 500+ lies. That’s right, a journalist from another country with no voting beef with Trump compiled the list (@wmoug:disqus).Trump has no self-control. He’s a spewing volcano of ridiculousness.* https://www.thestar.com/newhttps://uploads.disquscdn.c

      1. sigmaalgebra

        Okay, I’ll nibble a little:But, (A) the burden of proof is on the proposer, and (B) we need quality at least up to common high school term paper writing standards with full context, full quotes, and references to rock solid primary sources. Else used toilet paper is better because it at least can make good fertilizer.(1)Falsely claimed Clinton has “no plan” on the economy. The newsie’s additional response was a good start:He can reasonably allege that it is a bad plan, but it exists in great detail. Here the newsie gets a grade of D- because he gave no reference to any Hillary plan.Without such a reference, e.g., as in common high school term paper writing standards, we just junk the work — into the big, round, wet bowl and pull the chain. Sorry ’bout that, but no way can we trust a newsie even to get 2 + 2 = 4 correct without rock solid references to primary sources, in this, case, say, Hillary’s Web site with her plans.Once I did go to Hillary’s Web site and saw lots of words. Later I saw a conjecture that she had a lot of profs write a lot of those words.But:(A) Hillary doesn’t much talk about her plans for anything. Instead she has just lies about nearly everything and a list of dirt cards (e.g., racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobe, Islamophobe, deplorable, irredeemable) to play, cliches, and emotional grabbers. She certainly doesn’t talk much about her plans for the economy.(B) In the past, any of Hillary’s plans that she tried to implement mostly flopped, some wildly badly, e.g., Libya. Haiti? They hate her in Haiti, and with good reason. Honduras — she dumped another leader and got a bloody mess, again.Supposedly a long time ago she did have a success in an issue of medical coverage for some poor children, but I doubt that she did that alone. That success may have been when she was First Lady, and, really, that doesn’t count since she had no official role in any such legislation.(C) Hillary lies, so much that really we can’t take at all seriously anything she says or writes. So, her plan, no matter what is in it, is DOA.Her lying is costly for her — she is just unable to say anything about the future and have anyone believe it; so, really, she is unable to offer plans at all.Instead of being able to offer plans, she’s just a liar. What she says means nothing, zip, zilch, zero.Maybe a very clear legal contract, with a lot of good success criteria and a lot of rock solid, severe recourse could mean something — otherwise we have nothing meaningful and good from Hillary.Hillary’s ability to say anything about what she would do in the future is DOA. She’s done; stick a fork in her.That lying stuff she had so much fun with for so long is no longer funny.(D) Just from what we all know just from casual attention about Hillary’s plans for the economy, she, if we could believe her, will raise taxes. Bummer.In addition, if we could believe her, she wants open border immigration which will for many US workers shoot their economy in the gut.In addition, Hillary was for NAFTA which appears to have closed a lot of US manufacturing — Ford, Carrier, Nabisco, etc.In addition, Hillary is for the TPP (yes, modulo her lies), and that will be part of her globalism that might be good for Viet Nam but bad for the US economy.Or, to revise Trump’s too short statement, “We can’t believe that Hillary has a good plan for the US economy.”Yes, instead of precise legalistic or contractual statements, it comes down heavily to whom do you trust to have good plans and, then, good execution for the US economy. But Hillary’s track record on lying, corruption, and incompetence is so strong we can’t trust her.So, net, we have to take Trump’s too short statement as true and Hillary’s many words as worthless and “no plan”.Hillary’s lying hurts Hillary’s ability to get anything done.Her wildly incompetent, bloody messes in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Honduras, etc. mean that we don’t want her even running a lemonade stand.Her criminality is a unending monsoon over any confidence we could ever have in anything she might try to do.Or, since we can’t trust Hillary even to run a lemonade stand, no way can we take seriously her “plans for the US economy”.(2)Falsely claimed Al Wilson “wrote” the song The Snake. Trump calls it a poem, not a “song”.The additional detail hasWilson performed it; Oscar Brown Jr. wrote it. So, at worst Trump did poor library research. But so did the newsie — we need a good REFERENCE.Did I mention we need references?(3)Falsely asserted that Clinton has “been fighting ISIS (her) entire adult life.” Without a reference, I can’t take that claim literally. Maybe Trump meant Hillary’s entire time as Secretary of State — at least we need some context.This is newsie failure to make a solid point.(4)Falsely said Clinton’s interest in child care policy has come “all of a sudden.” Clinton made child care proposals during her 2008 campaign and in the Senate. She released her new plan in 2015, a year before Trump released his. Sounds like there is next to nothing wrong with what Trump said.The newsie failed to make a solid point.That’s the first four of the 500. So far the newsie has failed to have anything solid and significant.Toss it in the trash.Done.This stuff about grotesquely incompetent newsies and, thus, having to flush essentially all their words is not funny either.If that’s the best the newsie has, then Trump gets a very clean “bill of health”.

  12. Pete Griffiths

    I loved this.

  13. Mario Cantin

    If I’d live in the US, he’d just have given me reasons to vote for Hillary. Humor is potent indeed….

  14. Salt Shaker

    Either candidate could have locked this up by solely exercising common sense. Trump says stupid things and can’t stay on point. Two steps forward, one step back. Hillary, as a dyed-in-the-wool politician, thinks nothing of gaming the system for personal gain, without appreciating or recognizing the consequences of her actions. A smidgen of foresight would have helped.Neither can help themselves.I can’t wait til this is over, but I’m afraid Nov. 9th is just the beginning. Either way, it’s gonna get uglier and uglier. Our gov’t, its systems and our politicians are a mess, but even so, there’s none better.

    1. LE

      That lack of discipline is actually what had soured me to Trump. Might still vote for him the idea of Hillary is just that distasteful to me (and the democratic social welfare policies).Honestly although I can understand how he wanted to stick with the behavior that brought him to the dance I think it’s a big negative that he wasn’t able to adapt and be a different person when it’s clear he could have really had an excellent chance of winning if he had done so. None of the shit he said really bothers me that much the lack of control does though.

    2. PhilipSugar

      Spot on.

  15. Rick Mason

    Thought this was an interesting counter opinion from another legendary comedian, Dave Chappellehttp://observer.com/2016/11…

  16. JLM

    .This morning is Election Judge training day. Five hours of learning the same thing I learned the last two elections this year. Sheesh.I got a peek at the Travis County early voting numbers — wow! The highest early voting numbers in the history of Travis County. More than 50% of all registered voters have voted and it may be as many as 75% before it’s done. Just ended yesterday, so there are some more numbers to be had.Based on this, turnout will be enormous.One can make a case for it being better for either party but the Republicans clearly have an enormous enthusiasm advantage but they did also during the primary. The primary was won by Cruz so the continuing level of enthusiasm is quite impressive and meaningful.In order to be even handed, I am not going to share my interpretation of what it means.Vote.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. sigmaalgebra

      Yup, there’s that report, and similar ones from elsewhere, the crowd sizes and enthusiasm levels at the Trump rallies, especially compared with the Hillary and her VP flops (they quit the rallies because too few people showed), the huge bucks Trump has raised recently, and just what one would conclude about nasty Hillary versus nearly ANYONE else. E.g., I don’t see how Hillary could get even 5% of the vote. Closer to reality it looks like Trump is about to get close to 60% of the vote and carry 49 or so states.Then, on the other hand, there are the polls where it looks like the race will be a photo finish or a big Hillary victory.I can’t make sense out of this combination of data points.

      1. JLM

        .The polls were all wrong in 2014 when the Republicans ran the table gaining control of the Senate and adding to their advantage in the House.Take the Arkansas Senate race — Tom Cotton beat two term incumbent David Pryor 57% to 39%.The week before the election, the pollsters had it a dead heat to Cotton slightly up.WJC and HRC both went to Arkansas to campaign for Pryor (whose father had held the seat for three terms himself, as close to Arkansas political nobility as one can get).The big issue turned out to be Obamacare.Obamacare has gotten worse in the interim.Everything is going to be fine.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. sigmaalgebra

          > Everything is going to be fine.I both suspect and hope so.Then, how the heck can the polls be so wrong? If Trump wins, for the country that’s a trivial issue and for the pollsters a serious reason to return to the issue of the design of polls, measurement of public opinion, etc.

          1. JLM

            .The polls were horribly wrong in 2014.As a maths guy, you understand that the composition of the polling sample — the number and percentage of Republicans, Democrats, Independents — is critical to the arithmetic result.Oversample Dems and you get a skewed and flawed and inaccurate result. In one of Podesta’s Wikileaks emails, he said just this — ensure the polls are oversampling Dems.If the actual electorate is 38% Dem and you build a sample with 42% Dems, you, of course, get a different result. An inaccurate result.Even in making the Real Clear Politics averages there is no attempt to throw out the outliers (the highest and lowest results).I also think there is a real reluctance for folks to acknowledge they’re voting for Trump. This is also seen in the consolidation of the Republican party itself as folks “return.” It is also seen in the third party candidates dwindling to nothing. The folks want a seat at the main event.What polls can show is a trend. That’s why the Rasmussen and LA Times polls are so valuable.When you see results like 2014 and the Arkansas Senate race, in particular, you become a little skeptical and jaundiced as to their accuracy. How did they get it so damn wrong then and they’re so damn right now?All I see in the country is anger. 2014 was driven by anger. The anger has gotten worse. The country is angry at Obamacare and the political elite. Trump being opposed by the Bushes, Romney, and others is a blessing as they are also the focus of the electorate’s anger.Everything is going to be fine.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          2. PhilipSugar

            We agree completely. People are angry at Washington D.C.And it’s not just old, uneducated, angry white men from the country-side.People don’t like to say they are going to vote for Trump because they think people will label them as the above. So many won’t say it publically.It does really give you an interesting look into the thoughts of some HIllary supporters. Anything is justified.Think about that statement. It is agist, elitist, sexist, and racist.Think about if you said Clinton supporters are black single welfare mom’s from the ghetto.Think about it?! People would be rightfully outraged.We should be about the statement of who supports Trump.

          3. JLM

            .I would make the point that people are not solely mad at Washington but at life of which DC is one component.The working man completely gets the “grifter” angle of the Clintons. They see it for what it is — even while others drink tea with their pinkies extended gazing at their navels wanting the FBI to come up with a signed admission from the Devil.The working man and his wife can smell bull from two states away.Life is rigged in a French Revolution sort of way. The American electorate revolted against the establishment and is going to do the same thing on Tuesday.We are not content to eat cake any longer.BTW, recognize that when Trump wins, all of this baloney about a divided country is nonsense. DJT has a cheeseburger with Ryan and McConnell and they sketch out the next year’s legislation and it gets put into law. Just like that.I don’t know why people don’t see the certainty of change with the White House in Trump’s hands and the Congress in the hands of even these RINO Republicans. The pace of legislation will be warp speed.There WILL be change and it will be huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.Big league!JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          4. sigmaalgebra

            Yup.Where I’m surprised:(1) Would the pollsters be willing to oversample? By Wednesday, their professional reputation may go down the toilet!(2)> I also think there is a real reluctance for folks to acknowledge they’re voting for Trump.Maybe I’m the one who should be scared for being so outspoken here on AVC! So, if Hillary wins, I’ll get a 3 AM knock at the door that I have to answer within 10 seconds or they knock the door down, kill my kitty cat, trash my house, take my computers, tie me up, and cart me off to Gitmo or some such?(3)> Rasmussen and LA Times polls are so valuable.Yes, you are correct. I’m not familiar with just what Rasmussen does, but I did glance at a description of the LA tracking poll. They have a fixed list of people they call once a day.So, usually in polling, if call 2000 people, get their responses and right away call another 2000 people and get their responses, the two results will be different. But with the LA approach, the two responses are the same or nearly so.So, the LA approach tracks better. But the fixed list of people will fail to be fully representative.The usual polling technique — draw new sample of 2000 people each day or week — gets to use the law of large numbers that the averages from the independent, identically distributed samples will converge to the true average of the population (easy to prove in some special cases; easy to prove in the weak version;difficult to prove in the strong version in general; but there is a very easy proof of the general, strong version via martingale theory that has, in elegant form, all the difficult stuff!). But, since that true average is changing during the election, that convergence result is not very helpful.So, on a given day, LA can ask their sample 10,000 times, just get essentially the same result each time (in reality the people would get pissed off!), but never converge to the true average of the whole population.So, the LA technique eliminates variation due to sampling but is also said to be biased, that is, repeat even infinitely often and still never converge to the right answer and, instead, converge (immediately!) to the biased average of that fixed sample. This trick is also used elsewhere in sampling. E.g., in some contexts, this trick is called a swindle.So, right, I’ve been looking a the LA poll.Then there is the point: Suppose Hillary is really popular in NY and all the West Coast. Maybe she is 20 points ahead in those! Then, for Trump to be, say, 5 points ahead in the nation, Trump has to be more than 5 points ahead in states other than NY and the West Coast, and those states have in total way more than 270 electoral votes!

          5. JLM

            .’That’s why the battleground polls — the ones that impact the Electoral College are so important.It is also useful to see where the candidates and their surrogates are spending their time this week. They are where they need to be based on what their internal polls are telling them.Michigan — MICHIGAN — is in play? WTF?Big point about Michigan — no early voting. It’s all in on Election Day and Republicans own Election Day. This is going to be interesting.Pennsylvania — PENNSYLVANIA — is getting a visit from Pres Obama, First Lady, and HRC? WTF?I suspect nobody could pound a ten penny nail up HRC’s butt hole with a sledge hammer. This baby’s tight.DJT is where he needs to be right now.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  17. JLM

    .I am discouraged watching the video and listening to the discussion. Not about the election but about the implications of how we treat women.This video would never be watched in my household.I find it neither funny nor insightful. I do find it to be an insult to women and abusive. Maybe that’s just me.I wonder who we are when we are prepared to use words to describe women — words which are inappropriate and abusive — as long as they are “funny.”That’s the thing about misogyny — it’s not funny. Even when the words come from a comedian. It’s just not funny. Even in a locker room. Not funny.[As a 20-something soldier I did and said a lot worse things and I was wrong then. I am no longer a soldier and I don’t find this a worthy explanation for what is simply bad behavior.]Next week we’ll all be pontificating about opportunities for women and the existence of the glass ceiling but today, we speak with a vernacular which is thinly disguised and somehow justified because it is supposed to be “funny.”I don’t find it funny.Note, please, I am rising to the defense of Hillary R Clinton with these words. She deserves better. I disagree with everything she stands for as a politician. I find her character to be non-existent but she is still entitled to be treated with dignity and respect because that defines who we really are.Not funny. Not funny when said by anyone. Destructive, really.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. LE

      [As a 20-something soldier I did and said a lot worse things and I was wrong then. I am no longer a soldier and I don’t find this a worthy explanation for what is simply bad behavior.]One of the things is that getting older you no longer care as much about fitting in with the others and/or what they think of you. You know enough and are confident enough to not be bothered by others opinions. In the end you think “won’t change my life why care?”.I was kind of always like that (what with not smoking pot etc.) so I am not new to this game.Bottom line for most people is that the reality is it does matter when they are younger to fit in and to be accepted. So they have to adapt to the group they are a member of. This is typically a smart survival skill.

    2. cavepainting

      JLM, interesting that you say this. Have you seen the T-shirts, buttons and the stuff for sale at Trump rallies ? They are as misogynistic as it gets.

      1. JLM

        .I hope Trump is getting a cut of the revenue.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  18. David Semeria

    What kind of country doesn’t a censor a presidential candidate when he offends women, the parents of dead heroes and entire ethnic groups. But does censor a comedian saying “shit”?I don’t think I’ll ever work out the puritanical character of the US.

    1. LE

      That entire “gold star family” moniker bullshit is just the way that the government grants people useless awards and platitudes to get them to risk their lives for the rest of us. They focus a great deal of attention on that, but then in practice ignore the plights of vets and those that have served when they come back that aren’t ‘heroes’. With as only one example the VA system in all it’s mediocrity and mismanagement.

      1. David Semeria

        That may all be true. But anyone who dies for their country deserves respect.

        1. LE

          The father attacked Trump and was paraded out there for political purposes and to pull on heart strings. Trump made a comment about his mother not being allowed to talk (the conclusion he jumped to) and everyone jumps all over him for that (as expected). I also don’t think the comment was a stretch actually. I can see how it would be possible to think that. This is exactly what irks many people (including me) about the entire PC situation. Can’t say what you want. If it’s wrong just say “no it was because she was nervous”. Not “you suck it’s because she was nervous you moron”. How does that make things better? Would you want a school kid to behave like that?Because your son has died in a war doesn’t make you untouchable and mean everyone needs to walk on eggshells around you. It’s not a “get out of jail card” that protects you from anyone and everyone especially in politics. Lot’s of us have had tragedy. The Khan’s loss isn’t any worse than millions of others out there that we don’t know about and don’t care about.

          1. sigmaalgebra

            Khan is a lawyer and worked for the law firm that did the Clinton taxes and represented the Saudis. So, Khan has been in the Clinton camp for years. At the DNC, Khan was put up there, and, IIRC, the Hillary media was given prior information on the scam. So, the whole media pile on was just planned, Hillary propaganda, fabricated, a scam.

      2. JLM

        .The Veterans Administration is like a dog shelter, a bad one.They don’t listen to their customers and put a lot of them to death with their neglect.They are mindless bureaucracy which feeds upon its victims for their own personal financial aggrandizement. They are as corrupt as any element of the gov’t.It is an outrage and a disgrace. It truly reflects what the American leadership thinks about its warriors. It has been made worse by the all-volunteer army as few families really know how poorly veterans are treated.It has been consistently so for the entire term of the Obama administration and it will not get better until we have a President who actually cares about our warriors and our vets.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. LE

          Exactly.It has been made worse by the all-volunteer army as few families really know how poorly veterans are treated.Most likely because the economic makeup of those who serve is not considered an important class of people and they have little voice. This is the same reason that people in poor neighborhoods have shitty services, poor roads and no respect and people in nice upscale neighborhoods gets all sorts of typically special treatment.There are many reasons for this but one is certainly that the more well to do people have access to better voices to press their complaints. [1] They move in more important circles and can higher better lawyers to whine and get action and results. And of course they are just better respected by the media as well.[1] For example if someone wanted to ‘do the nasty’ in that fancy schmancy neighborhood that you were living in (and I think still live in?) they wouldn’t get that far. You and others (with more stature than a postal worker (or no job)) would quickly rope a dope them and mow them over. Most likely they’d never even try. (See what happened with the Blue Route in Philadelphia Suburbs. )

          1. JLM

            .This starts with the Commander in Chief and the 4-stars running the military.The civilian leadership of the Pentagon is focused on sexual orientation, the de-genderizing of nominatives of address, and getting women through Ranger School — not taking care of wounded warriors.I think we may need a soldiers union — which is a felony in the US currently. Of course, I also think NCAA athletes should be paid and get a slice of any revenue which uses their likeness or exploits.I think the 82nd Abn Div should call in sick for two days and see what happens.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    2. JLM

      .In the American Constitution we have something called “free speech” which is enshrined in the First Amendment.Even when we disagree with someone, we defend their right to say what they want to say.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. David Semeria

        Thanks for the history lesson JLM, though I believe Voltaire got there first. In any case I think your comment misses the point: if The Donald can say what he likes, why can’t CK Louis?

        1. JLM

          .Why can’t they both be vulgar?Why do you assume I defend Trump? I WILL vote for him but primarily because his opponent is so unfit for the office.Trump is like a uncouth guest at a dinner party who is the only guy in the room who knows CPR when you’re having a heart attack, no?You going to let him save your life? Or do you prefer to stand on principle and die?Was Voltaire a Rep or Dem?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. David Semeria

            Well, Voltaire came before Reps and Dems existed, which of course you know. We’re in infinite force vs immovable object territory here, JLM. You support Trump because you believe anything is better than Hilary. I support Hilary because I believe anything is better than Trump. You’re a very smart man JLM, and I have a lot of respect for you. Which is why I think we should turn off the game and just have a beer.

          2. JLM

            .I return the compliment and will be buying the first 8 rounds.Good luck to us all. Good luck to mankind. Let’s all oppose the Devil and get on with things.Bravo!JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          3. David Semeria

            Well played!

    1. David Semeria

      This was the most shared video among my English friends, Arnold. It’s an absolute belter.

    2. Salt Shaker

      This should be mandatory viewing for any and all registered voters. It’s incredibly comical and incredibly scary, all rolled into one. One doesn’t even need a hook to bait this guy. No wonder Putin likes him.

      1. LE

        Trump is a world class manipulator that has dealt with all sorts of powerful and unsavory characters including almost certainly members of the mafia, politicians, world leaders, the chinese and survived quite well. I honestly don’t think we have to worry about him being manipulated (now) by Putin as the pundits and CIA are saying. If anything the guy has street smarts. Putin is weird in his way as well. Shirtless on horseback and all of that.Besides if Putin really wanted him to win he wouldn’t be acting obviously as if it mattered to him. If that is what he was doing. Like if you want a particular girl you try not to be obvious about it if you really care. You try to act cool. I did that with my sisters friend and ended up marrying her (big mistake!).The fact is Putin probably correctly feels that Trump will be more likely to allow Putin to be Putin and not care as much what he does on his own turf. Fine with me. Putin by the way the known evil (as well as the russians) are way better an evil than the others that we can’t control in anyway. They are manageable. Ditto for those tin pot dictators that violated human rights but kept their country in order that are now falling apart.

        1. Salt Shaker

          Putin’s economy is highly energy dependent and in bad shape, plus he’s a friggin murderer. Putin is a madman and will play Trump like a fiddle. The int’l community has leverage but Donald will never be able to coalesce.

          1. LE

            plus he’s a friggin murdererQuite frankly, doesn’t impact me. More worried about what happens in our country actually. Tell me why I should care w/o talking about the Nazis if possible.Putin is a madman and will play Trump like a fiddle.Hard to understand how you can be so sure about that actually. The Russians are big on bluster and very predictable. We are not talking about that kid running North Korea. A guy like Trump, unlike, say (to take a weird example) Elizabeth Warren understands people and how they tick. I give the advantage to a guy like that. Despite his shortcomings and whether he is up to the job in general (not sure as I’ve mentioned) I give the edge to him on this type of thing. It’s what he lives and breathes. Strategy. And doesn’t need to be babysat either.

          2. Salt Shaker

            Well, if one of your friends or relatives were on that plane you might think a bit differently about Putin. There’s no accountability for his actions in his own country, let alone internationally. The notion that Trump’s developer skills and strong arming tactics w/ unions and contractors will translate well on a world stage is laughable. The world stage is far less linear than the stage Trump currently competes in. It’s full of nuances and three dimensionality that requires temperament, knowledge, patience and intellect to fully grasp and understand the consequences of one’s actions and decisions, ALL areas I believe where Trump is grossly inefficient. He’s mercurial, juvenile, easily baited and fast to pass judgment, all independent of any assessment of HRC (who admittedly has her own baggage).

          3. LE

            Well, if one of your friends or relatives were on that plane you might think a bit differently about Putin.But that would be an emotional decision and not a rational decision. In general if emotion enters into a decision it can end up distorting what the best overall conclusion is for all parties, not just for specific parties who might be in favor or benefit. For example I was not a fan of all of the money and effort put toward 911 memorials, rebuilding and what not. I can fully understand how someone who was more directly impacted would want that. But on a rational level it really doesn’t make much sense. For one thing if anything it encourages future behavior of the same type. Another is it doesn’t recognize the impact or what that money could be better spent doing (even if some of it and time was donated).Agree with most of the others things you are saying above. But that wasn’t the thing I was addressing. I was just taking issue with “putin will run circles around Trump” not whether I felt Trump could navigate all situations and all world issues. One of my issues with Trump is exactly that. Same as how impossible it will be to turn around ordinary government workers in this big country. Most workers, government or otherwise are mediocre and there are to many of them to be able to change. It really isn’t like owning a business and being able to recruit the best and get rid of ones that you don’t like. Of course I recognize that. Otoh he is creative and so it’s possible that a balls to the wall and not caring the flak thought process could result in some nice changes. Not going to happen with Hillary she is not out of the box in any way.

          4. PhilipSugar

            I was on Air Malaysia four times that year. Four times. I agree.

          5. sigmaalgebra

            You are flying at least 80,000 feet above anything these trolls can or will understand! You are in Human Character 501 in grad school while these trolls are still name calling on the playground in first grade.

          6. JLM

            .The list of people who have played “Trump like a fiddle” doesn’t have any names on it.If Trump were to follow through on his energy policy in the domestic US, the result would be US energy independence and a crushing blow to Russia and declining prices.At $30/bbl, Russia goes broke in less than two years.Reagan broke the USSR by defense spending.The US can do the same with energy if it would expand the energy footprint while achieving US energy independence. The solution to many problems in the Middle East — for the US — is to make it inconsequential to the energy needs of our country.This is just math.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      2. PhilipSugar

        I am stealing that line. What a great line.

    3. Susan Rubinsky

      Me too 🙂

  19. mike

    Drain the Swamp! Trump2016

  20. george

    LCK is pretty darn funny!!! Nevertheless, I’m really concerned about all the emails, investigations and negative accusations going on around HRC, this is serious stuff. I’m not quick to judge, but everyone knows – in Washington, where there is smoke, There’s typically fire…

    1. cavepainting

      in this case, there is more smoke than fire. please look for solid evidence before judging anything.

    2. Mica is awesome!

      Especially in politics. A lot of that “smoke” is normally blown by the GOP, because they are the ones who want to start the fire.

  21. JLM

    .’I applaud and respect your street walking. Anybody who puts skin in the game earns the right to pontificate and has an informed opinion. There are a lot of strap hangers out there, so you get kudos for getting your feet wet (and cold).One of the reasons I force myself to be an Election Judge, a precinct chair, a member of the Travis County Republican Executive Committee and to study the subject.Bravo and huzzah to you!Don’t hold your breath on my jumping into the cesspool (an inflammatory comment added for dramatic impact and as a provocation — I find myself having to ‘splain that to folks these days).I long ago made my decision to side against the liars, cheaters, and stealers. I’m not likely to change now.I sincerely hope all of your candidates win — well, come in a respectable second place.JLM (poorly educated, uninformed, deplorable)www.themusingsofthebigredca…

  22. Mark Essel

    Hah, really enjoyed this thanks Fred

  23. Donna Brewington White

    Seriously?(This is a sincere question.)

  24. Mica is awesome!

    I think you knew who to vote for a long time ago.

  25. Salt Shaker

    No one seeks public service to become rich, and many that do seek such service subsequently return to the private sector to cash in. That precedent was set decades, if not centuries, ago. With respect to speaking fees, for example, Geithner gets $200K, Bernanke $200-400K, Gore $100K, Palin $100K and Cheney $75K. As private citizens I have no problem with that, although any perception of impropriety should be avoided if one subsequently desires to re-engage and run for public office, as is the case w/ HRC. That’s a gamble she may or may not regret on Tuesday.Many think it’s okay for Trump to use the tax code to gain financial advantages not afforded to everyday citizens (e.g., no fed taxes), while they simultaneously criticize HRC for securing six figure speaking fees as a private citizen. Both are just playing by the rules! There’s a perception of impropriety only in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary.Where’s the smoking gun w/ HRC?…it’s all just innuendo. With respect to the Clinton Foundation, it’s just plain stupid that there was any engagement or association while she was SOS, though, again, there’s no hard evidence to suggest there was “pay for play,” even though, shockingly, that’s a daily occurrence in every corner of the cesspool known as DC.Both candidates frankly could use a good scrubbing, but IMO the lack of common decency and respect for others (far too many data points) makes Trump unfit. It starts and ends right there for me. I can’t indict HRC today based on what they may or may not find tomorrow.

  26. Donna Brewington White

    As honest as they come, Phil. Regardless of who you vote for, I trust your process.

  27. Matt Zagaja

    You got a text message. Your inbox is not a supemax; it didn’t get infiltrated.