Kimberley Strassel Explains the Intimidation Game

Here's her book, at Amazon, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.

And for Prager University:

Forget the F.B.I. Cache; the Podesta Emails Show How America is Run

From the interesting Thomas Frank, at the Guardian U.K., "WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it looks after itself":

The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.

The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.

They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.

Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable digging through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a crime, after all, and it is outrageous that people’s personal information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesn’t seem to have redacted the emails in any way. There is also the issue of authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility they aren’t.

With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty...

Well, he's on to something here, no doubt.

The Podesta emails, and all the salacious, scandalous, and unsurprisingly outrageous revelations therein, should be getting near non-stop coverage on the television and cable networks, and should be leading the newspaper headlines each and every morning.

I'm glad Frank's laying it out like it really is. Others have said virtually the same thing about this unaccountable political class (Angelo Codevilla, for one), although it's refreshing to see this coming from the far-left Guardian U.K.

In any case, more here.

Democrat Donna Brazile Shared Second Debate Question with Clinton Campaign, Hacked Email Indicates

These ghouls literally make me sick.

At WSJ:

A second hacked email has surfaced that appears to show Democratic consultant Donna Brazile sharing a debate question with Hillary Clinton‘s campaign in advance of a March primary debate.

Ms. Brazile—then a CNN contributor and Democratic Party official—warned one day before a March primary debate hosted by CNN in Flint, Mich., that a question would come “from a woman with a rash.”

“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the [people] of Flint,” Ms. Brazile wrote in an email addressed to Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri and campaign chairman John Podesta.

The email was stolen from Mr. Podesta’s inbox and posted by the website WikiLeaks. Ms. Brazile currently is the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee.

The Clinton campaign has declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the stolen emails and has pointed to possible links to the Russian government as evidence of foreign tampering in the election...

And it's no wonder huge numbers of Donald Trump supporters say the system's rigged, and they expect rioting if not a revolution if Hillary's elected.

It's going to be rough out there on election night.

Still more.

Kylie Jenner for Halloween

At Egotastic!, "Sexy Little Sister Kylie Jenner Wears Eye-Popping Bikini and Chaps Costume for Halloween."

Kelly Rohrbach Sexy in Iconic Red Swimsuit for Reshoots of New 'Baywatch' Movie (PHOTOS)

At Egotastic!, "Kelly Rohrbach Swimsuit Hottie for 'Baywatch' Reshoots."

Kendall Jenner in Daring Latex for Halloween Party at Kate Hudson's

Happy Halloween everybody!

At London's Daily Mail, "Kendall Jenner flaunts her legs in a dominatrix dress at Kate Hudson's Halloween party."

Clinton and Trump Are Shuffling the Electoral Map

From Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic.

Charles Murray, Coming Apart [BUMPED]

I've finished Frederick Douglass' autobiography, which, as noted, sat on my shelf for over 20 years unread (and what a mistake that was).

So, I'm picking up some other books that have been sitting around, the most relevant of which (for the moment) is Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. (I had it linked as a bonus book at yesterday's Deal of the Day post.)

Murray is cited at the survey, "The Vanishing Center of American Democracy."

I'm also ordering my copy of J.D. Vance's, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Thanks for all the support everybody. I appreciate it.

Democrats Erupt With Fury at Anthony Weiner's Return

Well, I'm just all shaken up about this.

At NYT, "For Democrats, Anthony Weiner Makes an Unwelcome Return":

Dems acknowledge ppl helped Weiner in various ways out of respect for his wife. Now call him variations of "sick" https://t.co/MWu3kL5bnk

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 30, 2016

Carolyn B. Maloney, a congresswoman from the Upper East Side, was riding in a taxi on Friday when she heard the news: Emails discovered in an investigation into Anthony D. Weiner’s sexting had revived the F.B.I.’s interest in the case of Hillary Clinton’s private server.

“I said: ‘Oh, no, not this, not happening now,’” she said.

And then Ms. Maloney’s thoughts turned to Mr. Weiner. “I can’t stand him — even before this,” Ms. Maloney said.

On the West Coast, John L. Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, informed of Mr. Weiner’s inadvertent intrusion into the election on Friday evening, let loose an emphatic expletive.

“We’re still talking about that guy during a presidential election?” Mr. Burton fumed, using a profane seven-letter word instead of “guy.”

Weiner — the name became almost a curse word among senior Democrats over the past two days, as the disgraced congressman unexpectedly surfaced in the final stretch of the presidential contest. The news resurrected memories of previous Weiner scandals.

“He is like a recurring nightmare,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton. “It’s like one of those ‘Damien’ movies — it’s like every time you think he’s dead, he keeps coming again.”

The fury that many leading Democrats feel toward Mr. Weiner had been building for years. His sexting habits embarrassed them. His attempted political comeback in 2013 disgusted them.

But their high regard for his now-estranged wife, Huma Abedin, always kept them from going public. On Friday that was over.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and an influential Clinton supporter, said she had long held her tongue out of “enormous respect and love” for Ms. Abedin.

But Ms. Weingarten said Mr. Weiner’s treatment of women demanded forceful censure.

“I don’t care who it is, no one should be a sexual predator,” Ms. Weingarten said. “I think we all have to take a stand about that, and I think what’s happening now is that people are.”

Mr. Weiner, who lost his seat in Congress and his mayoral hopes after repeated episodes in which he sent lewd messages to women, is now under federal investigation for allegedly sending sexual messages to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. In that inquiry, the F.B.I. this month seized a laptop that contained thousands of messages belonging to Ms. Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress on Friday that investigators will now review those messages for possible relevance to the Clinton inquiry, news that rattled the Clinton campaign and stung her supporters.

For some, the development touched off more worry than anger: former President Bill Clinton, who learned of the news en route to his last event of the day, in Pennsylvania, fretted that it would draw hostile attention to Ms. Abedin, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Around the country, former aides to Mr. Weiner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, traded emails and texts throughout the weekend, fuming at the “collateral damage” inflicted by their onetime boss....

Keep reading.

Will Hillary's Email Investigation Cost Her the Election?

I don't think so, although the angst on the left following the Comey announcement is pretty delectable.

At the Guardian, "Will Hillary Clinton lose the election because of the FBI's email investigation? Pollsters and observers think not, but as election day looms the Democratic nominee is losing support just as Donald Trump is experiencing a resurgence."

Also, at CBS News, "CBS battleground poll: Partisans divide on news of FBI, emails":

News of the FBI’s decision spread quickly through the battleground states – eight in ten likely voters had heard about it by Saturday – and partisans quickly went to their respective corners: Republicans think it’s bad and expect the emails to contain things damaging to Clinton, and most Democrats say too much is being made of it. While a sizeable third of Democrats also say it’s bad, we found yet another reminder that the election has become a relative choice between the two candidates: those same Democrats also feel the email matter is not as bad as things they dislike about Donald Trump, so they aren’t re-evaluating their vote.

The survey was done following the announcement, across the thirteen “battleground” states.

There’s a suggestion the new email issue could limit Clinton’s chances of growing beyond the base that already supports her. Only 5 percent of Democrats say it could make them less likely to vote for Clinton, and among voters overall, 71 percent say it either won’t change their thinking, or in some cases, they’re already voted.

Most of those who say they’re less likely to vote for Clinton are Republicans, who are not supporting her anyway. Just 5 percent say it all depends on what is in the emails, a wait-and-see approach. Overall, 52 percent of battleground voters expect the emails to contain “more of what we already know” and 48 percent - the largest group of which are Republicans – expect things that are additionally damaging to Clinton...

Keep reading.

Huma Abedin Laptop May Contain Thousands of Emails Sent To or From Hillary's Private Server

Comey's really busted some Democrat balls, heh.

At WSJ, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe":

As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.

The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.

The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.

The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter...

Keep reading.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Cartoon Credit: A.F. Branco, "Democratic Decay."

The Vanishing Center of American Democracy

This report may well be the best thing I've ever read on American political ideology, or at least the best on the current plague of political polarization.

It's a keeper, for sure.

From the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, "The Emergence of a New Culture War."

Read "The Vanishing Center of American Democracy," a revealing report on American political culture, here: https://t.co/ZaB589EDtq pic.twitter.com/8FZubi4T8M

— IASCulture (@iasculture) October 12, 2016

From the press release:

The Vanishing Center of American Democracy, a report based on an in-depth survey just completed by the Gallup Organization for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, suggests that the depth of public disaffection exhibited during the 2016 presidential election may reveal the emergence of a new culture war, one marked by both divergent values and social divisions.

The dramatic twists and turns of the 2016 presidential race exposed profound shifts in America’s political culture that challenge the legitimacy of the governing institutions of our democracy, according to report authors James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman. The Vanishing Center reveals the multiplying fault lines of a culture war that pits many of America’s highly educated and prosperous against the less-educated and economically struggling.

The Institute's 2016 Survey of American Political Culture limns the contours and depths of Americans’ dissatisfaction not only with the economy, electoral politics, and our political leaders but with the very underpinnings of our political culture.

The full results of the survey, along with The Vanishing Center, were released at noon Oct. 12 at the Gallup headquarters in Washington, D.C. The report’s authors, James Davison Hunter, author of Culture Wars, and Carl Desportes Bowman, IASC survey research director, as well as New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall, and Professor Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

The nationally representative survey took place between Aug. 8 and Aug. 31, with more than 1,900 Americans taking part.

Read The Vanishing Center of American Democracy here.

Sunday Morning Rule 5

Here's a quickie to get the Rule 5 juices flowing.

At 90 Miles from Tyranny, "Morning Mistress."

⚡⚡⚡⚡#TheGirls ⚡⚡⚡⚡ pic.twitter.com/bCfq9ZEjtQ

— Best Trim & Tail100K (@carlosdelgado28) October 22, 2016

Also, at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

And from Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Evil Blogger Lady has "Raquel Welch Rule 5."

From Dana Pico, "The left are shocked, shocked! that the Affordable Care Act isn’t working the way they thought it would."

The Right Way has "Friday Babe."

And the Last Tradition has "Rule 5 Laenn Amos."

More, at Egotastic!, "Bella Hadid Bra Peeks."

Also at the Chive, "Sunday is for the Triple-B: Beers, Babes and Burgers (46 Photos)."

At Last Men on Earth, "LINDSEY PELAS BIG GUNS OUT," and "LARSA PIPPEN IN SHORT SHORTS AND OTHER BLESSINGS OF THE INTERNET."

Ella Dawson, the Woman Tackling the Stigma of STDs

Leave it to Robert Stacy McCain to go where no rational man has gone before.

See, "Feminism and the Cult of the True Self."

That thing when you're a herpes-infected Gender Studies major and someone notices your bisexuality is mostly fake. https://t.co/x7xRXw7yDr pic.twitter.com/Hv48MF0M3F

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) October 30, 2016

Blink 182 Recreates 'What's My Age Again?' (VIDEO)

At the Independent U.K., "Blink 182 recreate 'What's My Age Again?' music video with naked women for new single 'She's Out Of Her Mind'."

Today's College Students

And other media-whacked know-nothings.

Today a sweet college student asked me what impact social media had when I was in college, bless his heart. pic.twitter.com/fY06IxZ5rW

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) October 24, 2016

On a Mt. Vernon tour, a millennial just asked if George Washington had electricity. SMH.

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) October 23, 2016

Cautionary Note on the Election's Public Opinion Polls

I don't know?

I remember the arguments in 2012, and even that one website called "unskewed polls," or something like that, that said Mitt Romney was going to win the election. And of course Gallup saw a Romney surge to 51 percent a couple of days before the election.

I've forgotten which ones, but some or the other polls also had Romney winning Ohio. It was looking really good for the GOP.

And then what? I remember the networks calling Obama's reelection by 6:00pm on the West Coast. There was no cliffhanger. No all night of recounts. Nothing. It was over before it had barely begun.

So, I'm not going to over-analyze the polls this year. I expect Trump's doing better than is shown in most polls, but I'm not going to underestimate the enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. The Democrats have a ground game. Trump's campaign not so much.

In any case, at IBD, "What Explains the Wide Range of Poll Results Between IBD/TIPP and Others?":

What Explains The Wide Range Of Poll Results Between IBD/TIPP And Others? https://t.co/mOisA3xK4n #tcot #tlot #polls

— IBDeditorials (@IBDeditorials) October 24, 2016

IBD/TIPP is fairly transparent. The typical poll is intended to have between 750 and 900 respondents, a random sample of registered voters. Those are then further winnowed by identifying likely voters, as opposed to just registered voters, through both targeted questions and demographics of the respondents.

The Oct. 24 poll is pretty typical: It yielded 815 likely voters with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.6 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. That means, based on the sample, there's a 95% certainty that the "true" support levels for the candidates are within 3.6 percentage points of the reported results.

TechnoMetrica, IBD's polling company, conducts the survey by telephone. It uses both landline and cellphones, with about 35% coming from landlines and 65% coming from cellphones. All of the interviews are done live — no "robocalls" or other dodgy techniques that might bias the outcome.

The numbers are not reported raw. They are adjusted to match the presumed registration percentages of the political parties. That way no party is systematically underrepresented. The same is done for race, gender, region, and party affiliation.

This ensures a more accurate end result than simply relying on raw poll responses. On party affiliation, the presumed mix is as follows: Democrats 37% of likely voters; Republicans a bit over 29%; and independents at 34%.

In the end, that latter category may be key. IBD/TIPP in its latest poll has Trump ahead among independents and "other" by 41% to 32%. That's much wider than most other polls, and one possible explanation for why the poll differs from others.

Polls are, by their very nature, approximations. They use a wide variety of means to guess what literally tens of millions will do, based on just a small sample. Sometimes that yields very big differences, as it has this time.

What about political bias, as some darkly allege? Well, no pollster wants to be wrong. If any poll is really out of whack, it's likely because they missed something in their polling — not political bias.

The Political Environment on Social Media

At Pew Research:

New report @pewinternet: The Political Environment on Social Media https://t.co/blGn6apAVT pic.twitter.com/FUITJoLmBW

— PewResearch Journo (@pewjournalism) October 25, 2016

Some users enjoy the opportunities for political debate and engagement that social media facilitates, but many more express resignation, frustration over the tone and content of social platforms.

In a political environment defined by widespread polarization and partisan animosity, even simple conversations can go awry when the subject turns to politics. In their in-person interactions, Americans can (and often do) attempt to steer clear of those with whom they strongly disagree.

But online social media environments present new challenges. In these spaces, users can encounter statements they might consider highly contentious or extremely offensive – even when they make no effort to actively seek out this material. Similarly, political arguments can encroach into users’ lives when comment streams on otherwise unrelated topics devolve into flame wars or partisan bickering. Navigating these interactions can be particularly fraught in light of the complex mix of close friends, family members, distant acquaintances, professional connections and public figures that make up many users’ online networks.

A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that political debate and discussion is indeed a regular fact of digital life for many social media users, and some politically active users enjoy the heated discussions and opportunities for engagement that this mix of social media and politics facilitates. But a larger share expresses annoyance and aggravation at the tone and content of the political interactions they witness on these platforms. Among the key findings of this survey...

F.B.I. Announcement Was Like an '18-Wheeler Smacking Into' the Clinton Campaign

Well, I think it's great.

Hillary's stroll to the finish line got knocked off like a blitzing linebacker blindsiding a quarterback. I love it.

For Democrats, the new focus on Hillary Clinton's emails is "like an 18-wheeler smacking into us" https://t.co/w1nNqLunxD pic.twitter.com/7W1jc9k42L

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) October 29, 2016