Monthly Archives: July 2016

Clinton seems to have gotten a bounce

Featured image It’s too early to say for sure, but recent polling suggests that Hillary Clinton received a bounce from the Democratic convention. The magnitude of her bounce is unclear but looks to be of about the same magnitude as the one Donald Trump probably received from the Republican convention. As I discussed here, heading into the Republican event, Clinton had in led four of the five most recent polls on the »

How HIllary helped U.S. investors fund Russian research for military uses

Featured image Russia has become a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign. It should have been a major issue in the last one, but President Obama countered Mitt Romney’s attempt to inject Russia into the debate with his sophomoric quip that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” Whether it’s ISIS (aka “the jayvee”) or Russia, Obama sure knows how to spot trouble. This year, both »

How Trump Should Respond to Khizr Khan

Featured image Further to Scott’s thoughts this morning about Khizr Khan’s attack on Trump, may I suggest that Trump should respond in full William Shatner mode: Sorry. Couldn’t help it. (Though perhaps this is a good representation of how Trump is in fact responding.) Now, anyone got new ideas on how we mere voting citizens can solve the Kobayashi-Maru scenario of this election? We know Captain Kirk cheated. But that’s a Clinton »

Minimum Wage, Maximum Ignorance (2)

Featured image Regarding my item last Friday about the “expected” poor results from the higher minimum wage in Seattle, a perceptive reader offers the observation that the minimum wage should be better understood as a government ban on low-paying jobs: The term “minimum wage” does not serve us well. Only an employer can decide on a true ”minimum wage,” in the sense of a determination to pay no less than some level. »

Palestinian Father Tries to Get Son Killed

Featured image In this video of a weekly demonstration near Modiin Illit, shot yesterday, you see a Palestinian father urging his young son toward a group of IDF soldiers, yelling at them to shoot him, as explained here. What greater honor for a four-year-old boy than to be on the evening news as a “martyr”? The soldiers don’t take the bait; I interpret their reaction as one of disbelief. One of them »

Yes We Khan

Featured image Khizr Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention has turned him into an overnight celebrity a la Barack Obama, or Wendy Davis. (Surely you haven’t forgotten Wendy Davis.) The mainstream media have gone into a frenzy about the speech, and Trump’s response helps the media keep it going. Here, the beat goes on in the New York Times. I think Trump’s instincts on this are all wrong, and I mean »

Key coalition partner rejects Merkel’s stance on refugees

Featured image Undeterred by recent murders committed by Muslim refugees, Angela Merkel stands fully behind her decision to admit more than 1 million Syrian refugees. She made this clear in a recent press conference the theme of which was “we can still do this.” But Merkel’s key coalition partner, Horst Seehofer the premier of Bavaria, today rejected this view. “‘We can do this’ – I cannot, with the best will, adopt this »

More watched Dems than Repubs, but more watched Trump than Clinton

Featured image We’re still waiting to see how much bounce, if any, the Democrats gained from their convention. But the television ratings are in. The Democrats had larger audiences the first three nights; the Republicans received a larger share for the finale. The degree of the Democrats’ edge varied over the first three nights. On Monday, apparently it was about half a million viewers. On Tuesday, the Dems had approximately 5 million »

In the Immortal Words of Daniel Pipes…

Featured image Daniel Pipes recently gave an interview to Germany’s Global Review. His observations are pithy as always; here are some highlights: GR: Many people say that Islam is not a religion but a reactionary, totalitarian and repressive ideology comparable to fascism and communism; and that Islam cannot be reformed. Other people say that Islamism had nothing to do with religion and Islam. What do you say about relations between Islam and »

Mansfield on Trump

Featured image I’ve been waiting for Harvey Mansfield to offer up his considered judgment about Donald Trump, which he does today in the Wall Street Journal. One reason for this curiosity is not just that he’s Harvey-Freakin’-Mansfield, but because I still recall his terrific takedown of Ross Perot in The New Republic back in 1992 (not available online unfortunately), and figured that there might be similiarities. Here’s an excerpt from his Perot article: »

The (de)iceman cometh

Featured image Yaron Steinbuch reports in the New York Post: “ISIS teen who killed priest passed background check for airport job.” Steinbuch notes that “[t]he bloodthirsty jihadist who executed a Catholic priest in France ‘easily’ passed a background check to become an airport baggage handler[.]” The murderer “worked full time at Chambéry Airport in the Savoie region, which is used by more than 250,000 passengers a year, until just three months ago[.]” »

Venezuela’s new decree

Featured image In his column “Socialism for the uninformed,” Thomas Sowell observed: “socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.” Sowell cited the slow-motion catastrophe in Venezuela as a case in point: “While throngs of young »

The Week in Pictures: Unready for Hillary Edition

Featured image Well, how about that? Maybe the: Worst. Acceptance. Speech. Ever. But here we are. One hundred days to go. More thoughts on that tomorrow. For now, enjoy the amazing spectacle of a plausible Democratic convention marred only by the pathetic speech of . . . their nominee. And once again, the ascent of a Clinton is marked with the wreckage of people ruined along the way—I’m looking at you, Debbie »

Mosby’s futile prosecutions nearly bankrupted police union

Featured image The Baltimore Sun reports that the cost of defending the six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray emptied the coffers of the city’s police union. The union was able to stay afloat only because its members voted to double the dues. The vote was unanimous, according to the Sun’s sources. Marilyn Mosby has finally dropped all charges in these cases. However, the dues will »

Economists For Clinton?

Featured image Yahoo Finance, a site which I believe is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, is currently featuring this graphic which shows how superior Hillary Clinton’s economic plans are to Donald Trump’s. Clinton’s proposals, the graph says, will lead to much more GDP growth than Trump’s: The chart comes from an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. CNN is currently highlighting the same report and its pro-Hillary conclusions. CNN tells us a »

Minimum Wage, Maximum Ignorance

Featured image William F. Buckley Jr. used to speak of the “invincible ignorance” of liberalism, and there’s hardly a better example than the minimum wage. Generally the first thing you learn on the first day of Econ 101 is that if you raise the price of something, you’ll reduce the demand for that something. Including labor. So it’s fun to notice this morning that the city of Seattle, which threw out both »

The economy is slumping at a bad time for Democrats

Featured image National conventions aren’t what they used to be. They have become highly choreographed and lacking in drama (though there was more drama than normal at both conventions this year). But the conventions still serve vital purposes. They enable the two parties and their candidates to make their case directly to the American people in a setting glitzy enough to attract viewers. And they enable voters to discern, albeit not infallibly, »