* No Tuxedos Required *
(With Sincere Apologies to Pat Benetar)
Up to now, the political media has devoted its focus to the human wrecking ball that is Donald Trump. The near myopic fixation of the press is understandable; they are in the eyeballs business, and Trump got them 24 million pairs of them who tuned into the last Republican debate. But the race for the GOP nomination isn’t the only exciting presidential primary.
The Democratic primary race that was once a sleepy coronation with a predetermined outcome has suddenly become not only competitive but also interesting and substantive. It is curious that the many in media have declined to give the contentious contest due notice.
Just to establish a baseline level of wonderment, it seemed likely Hillary Clinton’s strongest challenger for the Democratic nomination would be former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley as recently as March. The former secretary of state was a juggernaut who enjoyed astronomical levels of support from a committed base of Democratic voters. Those who challenged her were seen as engaged in an endeavor that could most charitably be described as quixotic. If you were inclined toward sympathy, you might have characterized a challenge to Clinton’s dominance as a kamikaze mission. And suicidal is exactly what socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ frontal assault on the frontrunner initially looked like.
Flash forward six months, and that assessment of a leftwing populist candidate’s ability to exploit progressive frustration seems downright naïve. Sanders has achieved the impossible in that at least one survey of a critical early primary state, New Hampshire, now shows him leading Clinton by a considerable margin. While Sanders’ surge is certainly due in part to the candidate’s unique brand of far-left politics, his rise is almost certainly also attributable to Clinton’s self-inflicted wounds. Her candidacy has been hamstrung by the slow and constant drip of scandalous revelations regarding her mishandling of classified information on a secret and unauthorized email system while she served as secretary of state.
Clinton has also been hurt by the implication that her family foundation solicited high-dollar donations from foreign patrons and governments with the implication that America’s chief diplomat would happily provide quid pro quo. When asked about these matters in the press, Clinton routinely fudges the truth, and her trust ratings in the polls have correspondingly plummeted.Read More
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has intervened in a lawsuit over Palestinian terror attacks that have killed Americans, advising a judge that requiring a hefty bond payment in the case could financially destabilize the Palestinian government.
The filing comes in a case in New York City, where a jury this year awarded $218.5 million to Americans affected by the attacks in a lawsuit brought against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. That amount is automatically tripled under the Anti-Terrorism Act, lawyers have said.
By intervening, the government said it was trying to strike a balance between its support for the rights of terrorism victims to be compensated in court and concerns that a large bond imposed while the verdict is on appeal would weaken the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority and undermine "several decades of U.S. foreign policy."
Lawyers for the Palestinian Authority have argued that the group is effectively insolvent and have asked the judge, George Daniels, to waive the bond requirement. Gassan Baloul, a lawyer for the Palestinians, said Tuesday that the defendants were studying the government's filing and would respond at a hearing later this month.And why is the Palestinian Authority insolvent? Because they spent their massive amounts of foreign aid to feed and educate their people? To build and prosper for their people? To create an engine for an economy that could revival their neighbors, the Jews? No, because the Palestinian Authority is nothing but terrorist thugs in silk suits, ragheads with $50 hair cuts and large Swiss Bank accounts full of money meant for the people.
Twelve years ago, in August 2003, Joe Lieberman led in most polls of the Democratic primary. Eight years ago, in August 2007, Rudy Giuliani maintained a clear lead in polls of Republicans, while Hillary Clinton led in polls of the Democratic nomination contest. Four years ago, in August 2011, Mitt Romney began with the lead in polls of Republican voters, but he would be surpassed by the end of the month by Rick Perry, the first of four Republican rivals who would at some point overtake Romney in national polling averages.
Lieberman, Clinton, Giuliani and Perry, as you’ve probably gathered, are not the faces atop Mount Rushmore. Only Clinton came close to winning the nomination.
But the problem isn’t just that the national polls at this stage in the race lack empirical power to predict the nomination; it’s also that they describe a fiction.
I don’t mean to suggest that Donald Trump’s support in the polls is “fake.” I have no doubt that some people really love him or that he’d be the favorite if you held a national, winner-take-all Republican primary tomorrow. However, the “election” these polls describe is hypothetical in at least five ways:
* They contemplate a vote today, but we’re currently 174 days from the Iowa caucuses.
* They contemplate a national primary, but states vote one at a time or in small groups.
* They contemplate a race with 17 candidates, but several candidates will drop out before Iowa and several more will drop out before the other states vote.
* They contemplate a winner-take-all vote, but most states are not winner-take-all.
* They contemplate a vote among all Republican-leaning registered voters or adults, but in fact only a small fraction of them will turn out for primaries and caucuses.
This is why it’s exasperating that the media has become obsessed with how Trump is performing in these polls.
So you should ignore those national polls entirely? In a literal sense, they do have some correlation with election outcomes: Even this far out, a candidate near the top of the polls is a somewhat better bet to win the nomination than one near the bottom. But that’s like projecting a major league pitcher’s numbers from high school stats:READ MORE
When Booty Calls:
Barvetta
Singletary |
CNN - A White House staffer was arrested Friday on charges of assault and reckless endangerment after allegedly threatening and shooting at a Capitol Hill police officer with whom she had been having sex, according to arrest records.
Barvetta Singletary, a special assistant to the President and House legislative affairs liaison, has been placed on unpaid leave and had her access to the White House revoked, a White House spokesperson told CNN on Monday.
Singletary was released Monday from jail in Prince George's County, Maryland, after posting a $75,000 bond, according to spokesman John Erzen of Maryland's state's attorney's office.
The incident began early Friday morning after Singletary texted the officer "asking him to come to her residence...for sexual intercourse," according to charging documents, which classified the incident as domestic violence.
After "a brief sexual encounter," Singletary began asking the officer about another woman he was dating and tried to access his cell phones.
Singletary then grabbed the officer's service weapon from a bag and pointed it at him, before firing one round toward him.