Mi-Ai Parrish: The Arizona Republic Responds to Threats

I'm saddened by the intolerance and militancy that's accompanied this campaign.

Of course, I don't much care for the leftist media types who've endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, because they're part of the problem. It's just a bummer that their support for Hillary is being validated, in their eyes, by the unhinged fringe elements issuing death threats to the media, etc.

In any case, this is an interesting read, and something of a sign of the times. If Hillary's elected, I'm not doubting an increase in political violence from the fringes, and it won't just be from "conservatives." We're seeing all kinds of intolerance lately, and it's not breaking down into neat little ideological ghettos.

I just published “How do we respond to threats after our endorsement? This is how” https://t.co/4Wg9f71iP3

— Mi-Ai Parrish (@publishorperish) October 16, 2016

New Polling Ahead of Wednesday's Presidential Debate (VIDEO)

I just don't buy the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finding Hillary Clinton with an 11-point lead. See, via Memeorandum, "Hillary Clinton Extends Lead Over Donald Trump to 11 Points."

And of course, here's the reason: WSJ/NBC reports an ideological breakdown of 43 pecent Democrat and Democrat-leaners, versus 36 percent Republican and Republican-leaners, and 12 percent independents.

See the Conservative Treehouse, "Media Polling Fully Exposed – About That NBC/WSJ Clinton +11 Point Poll..."

In contrast, the new Washington Post/ABC News polls shows a much closer race, with Hillary leading by just four points. See, ABC News, "Enthusiasm for Donald Trump Fades, Yet Partisanship Keeps It Close." And the partisan breakdown at the survey:

Partisan divisions are 33-25-33 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents, in the full sample, 32-29-33 among registered voters and 33-31-31 among likely voters.

Of course most consumers of mass media polls don't know enough to break down surveys by partisanship, much less by registered voters versus likely voters. The most important measure for the November election is the likely voters statistic, which at the WaPo/ABC poll derives from a breakdown of 33 to 31 percent Democrats versus Republicans, with a whopping 31 percent independents (32-29-33 among registered voters). That's light years away from the breakdown for WSJ/NBC, which is reporting registered voters. Frankly, the latter's a bogus poll. But here you have all this whoop-de-do about Hillary's "double-digit" lead following the Access Hollywood scandal, which is totally preposterous.

Well, no need to get too worried about the polling. It's all over the place, dependent on the reporting methods and partisan breakdown.

Meanwhile, here's Newt Gingrich, from ABC's This Week, "Newt Gingrich: If media wasn't lined up against Trump, he'd be beating Clinton by 15 points."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



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

Cartoon Credit: A.F. Branco, "Hillary doesn’t respect everyday Americans."

America’s Civilizational Paralysis

From VDH, at the Hoover Institution:

The Greek city-states in the fourth-century BC, fifth-century AD Rome, and the Western European democracies after World War I all knew they could not continue as usual with their fiscal, social, political, and economic behavior. But all these states and societies feared far more the self-imposed sacrifices that might have saved them.

Mid-fifteenth-century Byzantium was facing endemic corruption, a radically declining birthrate and shrinking population, and the end of civic militarism—all the last-gasp symptoms of an irreversible decline. Its affluent ruling and religious orders and expansive government services could no longer be supported by disappearing agrarians and the overtaxed mercantile middle class. Returning to the values of the Emperor Justinian’s sixth-century empire that had once ensured a vibrant Byzantine culture of stability and prosperity throughout the old Roman east remained a nostalgic daydream. Given the hardship and sacrifice that would have been required to change the late Byzantine mindset, most residents of Constantinople plodded on to their rendezvous with oblivion in 1453.

We seem to be reaching that point of stasis in postmodern America. Once simple and logical solutions to our fiscal and social problems are now seen as too radical even to discuss. Consider the $20-trillion national debt. Most Americans accept that current annual $500 billion budget deficits are not sustainable—but they also see them as less extreme than the recently more normal $1 trillion in annual red ink. Americans also accept that the Obama administration doubled the national debt on the expectation of permanent near-zero interest rates, which cannot continue. When interest rates return to more normal historical levels of 4-5% per annum, the costs of servicing the debt—along with unsustainable Social Security and Medicare entitlement costs—will begin to undermine the entire budget.

Count up current local, state and federal income taxes, payroll taxes, property and sales taxes, and new health care taxes, and it will be hard to find the necessary additional revenue from a strapped and overtaxed middle class, much less from the forty-seven percent of Americans who currently pay no federal income taxes. The Obama administration has tried to reduce the budget by issuing defense cuts and tax hikes—but it has refused to touch entitlement spending, where the real gains could be made. The result is more debt, even as, paradoxically, our military was weakened, taxes rose, revenue increased, and economic growth remained anemic at well below 2% per annum.

Illegal immigration poses a similar dilemma. No nation can remain stable when 10-20 million foreign nationals have crashed through what has become an open border and reside unlawfully in the United States—any more than a homeowner can have neighbors traipsing through and camping in his unfenced yard.

Likewise, there are few multiracial societies of the past that have avoided descending into destructive ethnic chauvinism and tribalism once assimilation and integration were replaced by salad-bowl identity politics. Common words and phrases such as “illegal alien” or “deportation” are now considered taboo, while “sanctuary city” is a euphemism for a neo-Confederate nullification of federal immigration laws by renegade states and municipalities.

Illegal immigration, like the deficits, must cease, but stopping it would be too politically incorrect and painful even to ponder. The mess in Europe—millions of indigent and illegal immigrants who have fled their own failed states to become dependent on the largess of their generous adopted countries, but without any desire to embrace their hosts’ culture—is apparently America’s future.

Keep reading.

Paulina Mikolajczak Adventures (VIDEO)

Via Playboy:



And check her cover pictorial here.

Sexy Outtakes: Caroline Wozniacki's Sports Illustrate Swimsuit Photo Shoot 2016 (VIDEO)

She's wonderful:




PREVIOUSLY: "Caroline Wozniacki Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Bodypainting (VIDEO)."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants

At Amazon, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. From the pre-Madison Avenue birth of advertising to TV's golden age to our present age of radically individualized choices, the business model of "attention merchants" has always been the same. He describes the revolts that have risen against these relentless attempts to influence our consumption, from the remote control to FDA regulations to Apple's ad-blocking OS. But he makes clear that attention merchants grow ever-new heads, and their means of harvesting our attention have given rise to the defining industries of our time, changing our nature--cognitive, social, and otherwise--in ways unimaginable even a generation ago.

Hat Tip: The New York Review, "They’ve Got You, Wherever You Are."

From Yemen to Turtle Bay

From Caroline Glick:

Off the coast of Yemen and at the U.N. Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty.

Since Sunday, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately control the Suez Canal.

Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply greenlighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.

The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the U.S.?

The simple answer is that Iran has challenged US power at the mouth of the Red Sea because it believes that doing so advances its strategic aims in the region...

Keep reading.

Pamela Anderson Visited Exiled WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange at Ecuadorian Embassy in London (PHOTOS)

Well, this is interesting.

At London's Daily Mail, "Pamela Anderson visits WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London ... laden down with snacks and a copy of Vivienne Westwood's new book."

RELATED: At the Independent U.K., "Vivienne Westwood blasts Hillary Clinton as 'evil': I wouldn't vote for Trump or Clinton - they are all the same."

Oh, I can see why Pamela Anderson's carrying along her book.

Donald Trump's Scorched-Earth Campaign (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Donald Trump Slams 'Rigged Election'."

At LAT, "Donald Trump has turned to scorched-earth campaigning. It could affect a lot more than the election":

As he fell further behind in polls and battled allegations of sexual misconduct in recent days, Donald Trump moved to darker corners. He sketched out conspiracies involving global bankers, casually threatened to jail his political opponent, and warned in increasingly specific terms that a loss by him would spell the end of civilization.

The distrust of U.S. institutions that Trump has nurtured among his core supporters is readily apparent.

One North Carolina man predicted in an interview that the military would probably assassinate Hillary Clinton if she’s elected president. A woman at an Iowa town hall for Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, offered to join a revolution if Clinton prevails. Another man at an Ocala, Fla., rally was certain Trump would fire the FBI and scores of other federal bureaucrats in a housecleaning if he wins.

Many who have watched Trump’s campaign warn that the spread of such ideas may be only the beginning. The scorched-earth strategy Trump has adopted risks creating a lasting and bitter divide in American society, they say...

Frankly, I'm not worried.

If we were threatened by revolutionary insurrection, we'd have had it by now. Indeed, the closest we've seen to violent revolutionary unrest has been with the wave of anti-police protests and black lives matter. Where were all the media Cassandras when cities like Ferguson and Milwaukee were up in flames and leftists were agitating "burn it down!"??

Keep reading, in any case.

Donald Trump Slams 'Rigged Election'

At the Boston Globe, "Trump says the election is rigged — and his supporters are furious":

CINCINNATI — In an arena normally reserved for ice hockey, the Donald Trump crowd was on edge.

Some wore shirts with slogans like “[Expletive] Your Feelings” or, in reference to the female Democratic nominee, “Trump that Bitch.” Others had buckets of popcorn, ready for the show. When the media entourage entered, thousands erupted in boos.

Anger and hostility were the most overwhelming sentiments at a Trump rally in Cincinnati last week, a deep sense of frustration, an us-versus-them mentality, and a belief that they are part of an unstoppable and underestimated movement. Unlike many in the country, however, these hard-core Trump followers do not believe the real estate mogul’s misfortunes are of his own making.

They believe what Trump has told them over and over, that this election is rigged, and if he loses, it will be because of a massive conspiracy to take him down.

At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box.

His supporters here said they plan to go to their local precincts to look for illegal immigrants who may attempt to vote. They are worried that Democrats will load up buses of minorities and take them to vote several times in different areas of the city. They’ve heard rumors that boxes of Clinton votes are already waiting somewhere.

And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem...

Well, that wouldn't be good, but you can't say the political class hasn't brought this on themselves.

Keep reading, in any case.

Rhian from Manchester is Today's Page 3 Girl

Here's the lovely Rhian Sugden.

At the Sun U.K., "Rhian is stripping off, bit by bit..."

PREVIOUSLY: "Rhian Sugden Bouncy Bikini on Turkish Holiday."

Britney Spears on Holiday in Hawaii

At the Sun U.K., "GIMME MORE! Britney Spears surprises fans with TOPLESS bikini snap: The singer is enjoying a holiday in Hawaii alongside friends and family."

Is Islam a Religion of Peace? Is It Compatible with Western Liberalism?

I've had far-left students in my classes, when taking about Islam, and its inherent violence, say, "What about Christianity"? And I always say back, "What about it? Where are the Christian holy warriors slaughtering innocent apostates around the world on a daily basis?" And then these students have nothing to say. I don't go on after that, since I'm their teacher and I want to respect differences of opinion, but it's very difficult in our culture to teach politically charged topics, because leftists students have been poisoned by radical left-wing intolerance and political correctness. I've even had groups of students revolt against my teaching, groups of leftist students who protested against my "conservative" syllabus. I make this an example of what's wrong with our culture today, and I point out to the students their own hypocrisy and closed-mindedness. Needless to say, I'm not popular with groups like that, but I get more praise from the other students when this happens than from just about anything else.

It's amazing.

In any case, here's Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And buy her book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

Lisa Damour, Untangled

In bestselling books, at Amazon, Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood.

BONUS: Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, and Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.

Porsche's 2017 911 Turbo S (VIDEO)

Ever since high school, my dream of dream cars was a Porsche 911. Not necessarily a turbo, though, although the new 911 Turbo S is out of this world. (And obviously way out my price range, with a starting price of just over $200,000.)

I still think, when I'm a little older, that I'll find a way to pick up a pre-owned 911 one of these days. I'll save up for a while, if I need to. Gotta check that off my bucket list.

At LAT, "Auto Review: With the 2017 911 Turbo S, Porsche has made the perfect car a little more perfect":

Did the best just get better?

Porsche’s 2017 911 Turbo S is a faintly measurable fraction superior to the 2016 model. It’s so barely better that only a really first-rate driver would even notice.

I didn’t notice. To me, the 2017 version of this delicious sports car is virtually identical to its predecessor. Because that needed no improvement to impress me, I might not have been impressed by the upgrades.

They’re real, even if I can’t feel them. The 2017 911 Turbo S is equipped with bigger turbochargers, with larger impellers, plus modified cylinder heads and a throttle boost device designed to eliminate turbo lag.

Together, they help produce 20 more horsepower in the 2017 than was available in the identical 2016 version (580, up from 560), a 7-mphr increase in top track speed (205 mph, up from 198) and a 0.1 faster pace from zero to 60, (2.8 seconds, down from 2.9 — though the convertible version still takes that 2.9 seconds).

That makes this the quickest and fastest 911 ever built, and the quickest and fastest mass-production Porsche — after the limited-production 918 Spyder, which posted a 2.5-second sprint to 60 and a top track speed of 214 mph.

Somehow, along with the improved performance, the 2017 also offers improved fuel economy — about 2 miles per gallon better EPA mileage numbers — for a combined 21 mpg.

Like many of its Porsche siblings, the new 911 Turbo S is a rear-engine, all-wheel-drive roadster, designed as much for daily driving as for track-level performance...

More.

And be sure to watch that nifty video above.

The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins

From Kim Strassel, at WSJ:

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.

Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”

A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”

Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”

The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.

Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.

The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and money. The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner, suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation official wrote: “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.”

The entire progressive apparatus—the Clinton campaign and boosters at the Center for American Progress—appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome, segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned into silence. We read that Republicans are attracted to Catholicism’s “severely backwards gender relations” and only join the faith to “sound sophisticated”; that Democratic leaders such as Bill Richardson are “needy Latinos”; that Bernie Sanders supporters are “self-righteous”; that the only people who watch Miss America “are from the confederacy”; and that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is “a terrorist.”

The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket. Donna Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of a coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event. Other media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from interviews, worked to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.

Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly changes her position to maximize political gain...

And unless something changes in the next couple of weeks, Americans are about to elect this woman president.

But keep reading, in any case.

Deal of the Day: Save on STERILITE Ultra-Seal Food Storage Set, 36 Piece

At Amazon, STERILITE 03078601 Ultra-Seal Food Storage Set, 36 Piece.

Also, FIFA 17 - PlayStation 4.

And, Save on Seiko Metal Bracelet Watches.

BONUS: ICYMI, Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.

Generation Adderall

This is an excellent essay, from Casey Schwartz, at NYT:

Generation Adderall. https://t.co/gYvyrZNBaZ

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 14, 2016

First Lady Michelle Obama Attacks Donald Trump for 'Sexual Predator' Comments (VIDEO)

She's going low after saying Democrats go high.

It's the Democrat-left that's dragged this entire election through the mud of personal character assassination. They always do. It's the only way they can win elections.

Julianna Goldman reports for CBS This Morning: