Saturday Night Live did a skit on the Democratic Presidential debate:
On the surface it’s a skit that ostensibly takes a shot at everyone equally (and even touches on Hillary’s email scandal). However, take a look at one central visual fact:
Hillary Clinton, who is 67 years old (68 on October 26) is played by Kate McKinnon, who is 31 years old.
Bernie Sanders, who is 74, is played by Larry David, who is 68.
So Sanders is played by someone Hillary Clinton’s age (old), and Hillary Clinton is played by someone half her age (young). The skit is constructed to reinforce the false Sanders old, Clinton young impression, which suggests the reason why SNL choose non-cast-member Larry David to play Sanders. David did write for the show during the 1984—1985 season (where he worked with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who he would later cast in Seinfeld); to put it another way, David worked on SNL the same year McKinnon was born.
Why Hillary’s email scandal (still) matters: “Ignoring the fact that ordinary people are deciding that Hillary Clinton is an untrustworthy liar won’t actually make that issue go away for the Democrats.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to work her special brand of magic at the DNC. “I’ve begun to deeply question whether she has the leadership skills to get us through the election. This is not just about how many debates we have. This is one of a series of long-running events in which the chair has not shown the political judgment that is needed.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™ and an estimated 800% inflation rate, Venezuela is now the most expensive place to live in the world, at least going by the official exchange rate. “Depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela can either be one of the cheapest countries in the world, or the most expensive.”
Democrats last year: “All those gun-toting white racist redneck freaks from Jesusland will be lining up to vote for Hillary!” Pollsters this year: Not so much.
“Let’s take Malcolm Turnbull at his word that it’s only “a very very small percentage of violent extremist individuals”. What is the actual percentage? In the aforementioned Malmo, where up to a thousand mostly young male “refugees” arrive each day, suppose the “very very small percentage” is two per cent. That’s 20 brand new “violent extremists” per day. During the Northern Irish “Troubles”, MI5 estimated that there were no more than a hundred active members of the IRA at any one time – that’s to say, people actively involved in shooting and killing. So Malmo is taking in the equivalent of the entire IRA every week.”
The Nairobi mall attack revisited. If this report is to be believed, armed civilians actually contained the threat, then army and security forces showed up and promptly managed to start shooting each other.
“In zombie world, the man who relies on the government for his safety will be zombie chow in short order…In zombieland, there are three kinds of people: those who know how to use guns, those who learn how to use guns, and zombies.”
“So we know that 99% of the data has been adjusted, and we know that over 80% of the reported warming in the lower 48 States over the entire 20th Century was due to adjustments – the raw data simply do not show this warming.”
Mark Steyn offers another dispatch from post-Jewish Europe. Bonus: Facebook is going to “do more” to suppress anti-“refugee” posts.
Islamic State fighters start defecting because ISIS can’t make payroll. Time to consider marrying Len Trexler…
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he’s no longer bound by Oslo Accords. Because why should you let a little piece of paper get in the way of the all-important task of exterminating the Jews?
Theory: The people flooding into Europe are innocent families of refugees fleeing war. Reality: “young men [heaving] rocks at the authorities and showing up on YouTube videos shouting Allahu Akbar.”
“There is something shallow and decadent about a pontiff who prioritizes “climate change” even as every last Christian is driven from the Archeparchy of Mosul. What will they say of such a pope? That he fiddled with the thermostat while Rome burned?”
I increasingly think the Democrat/Muslim union has to do with old-fashioned relativism. Democrats don’t actually believe that women’s rights and gay rights apply to everyone; white people: sure. Arabs? Well, who am I to judge? And Muslims know this.
When Robby George is just dumbfounded as to why all these Muslims support the party of abortion on demand and gay marriage, the answer seems pretty clear to me: They’re supporting the party of abortion on demand and gay marriage for infidels
Another:
I think the issue is more that they see Muslims as a new potential mascot group that they can champion and therefore obtain that cheap sense of moral superiority that comes with riding in like a white knight. I think a lot of liberal attitudes towards minorities aren’t actually based on the good of the minorities, but how good it makes the liberals feel to champion them. Muslims are (as of now) a tiny, insignificant minority. They’re mostly kinda swarthy, so the “it’s racism” meme is easily transferable, and a significant chunk of liberals loathe Christianity.
The opaque, dishonest nature by which ObamaCare was passed ensured that the full brunt of many provisions wouldn’t be felt before Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. While that stratagem worked for Obama, it also ensured that ObamaCare would turn into an unending supply of timebomb policies with unpleasant consequences which would continue to plague Democrats (and America) long after the bill’s passage.
And those bombs continue continue to explode:
“The more time Americans have had to experience the health care reform legislation first-hand, the more obvious it has become that, like virtually all government-controlled social experiments, Obamacare’s waste of taxpayers’ money has grown to epic levels. And there’s no sign the poorly managed program is improving.”
ObamaCare deductibles are now rising seven times faster than inflation. “Premiums have risen nearly $5,000 since Obama promised to cut them.”
Even Democrat’s own direct-mail advertising admits that “fewer than half of all U.S. doctors accept Medicaid,” a direct consequence of ObamaCare’s “cost control” features while dumping millions more patients into Medicaid.
All of which explains why ObamaCare remains deeply unpopular with voters, with 52% viewing it unfavorably, and 36% very unfavorably.
The solution is obvious: Reduce federal coverage mandates to reduce premiums and deductibles. Instead, Mrs. Clinton wants even more mandates that are guaranteed to make premiums and deductibles rise even higher.
First, on Tuesday in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton released her plan to make prescription drugs more “affordable.” (Sound familiar?) She proposes capping patients’ monthly out-of-pocket prescription costs at $250. Making insurers pay more toward retail drug costs ensures those costs will be passed on to employers and policy holders through premium increases, forcing the young and healthy to further subsidize the old and the sick. And Mrs. Clinton wants to stick it to drug makers by prohibiting them from deducting the cost of advertising on their taxes (as other kinds of businesses can) and shortening their patents, which will give them shorter horizons to recover their sizable investments. Making it more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to do business will either increase the costs of drugs or prevent their development in the first place.
Then, on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton said she wants to expand the “free” services mandated under Obamacare to include three doctor visits per year, on top of preventive care such as vaccines and screenings. When Democrats were selling Obamacare to taxpayers, they said fully covered preventive care would help reduce overall health care spending by giving Americans an incentive to take better care of themselves and not avoid seeking care because of cost concerns. But the law of supply and demand can’t be suspended by Congress; increasing demand for health care increases costs. Now Mrs. Clinton wants sick care to be fully covered as well, which will — wait for it — increase demand for a limited supply of doctors and providers, and increase costs through higher premiums and deductibles. She also wants to deny insurers the ability to charge higher out-of-network costs for hospital care when those very networks help insurers keep costs down.
And there’s plenty more time for more ObamaCare-fueled rate and deductible explosions between now and the 2016 election…
The Advisory Board will be made up of Naomi Aberly, Jeremy Bird, former Dallas Mayor and Ambassador Ron Kirk, Congressman Joaquin Castro, Eric Johnson, Austin Ligon, Jennifer Longoria, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez, Eddy Morales, Amber Mostyn, Carrin F. Patman, Carrin Mauritz Patman, Marvin Ragsdale, Kirk Rudy, and Lynda Tran. Jenn Brown, who started as executive director for Battleground Texas, is now chairwoman of the advisory board.
Sure, that’s Battleground Texas’ big problem: Not enough advisers.
The real news here, I think, is the demotion-by-promotion of Jenn Brown.
Ron Kirk might back Hillary (who he’s donated to), or he might back Biden.
I think the advisory board may be a move to cement Battleground Texas more firmly in Hillary’s orbit, thus foreclosing the possibility that Bernie Sanders might start picking up activist support in Texas. After all, she still needs to win the primary before getting to the general…
So Hillary’s Super Secret Secure Server was actually hosted on the same server as the not secret and not particularly secure Clinton Foundation email system.
Which means any hacker that could pwn the Clinton Foundation server (and why wouldn’t they?) could almost certainly pwn Hillary’s private e-mail server, chock full of illegal classified national security information, through any number of exploits or privilege escalation attacks.
And evidently she was running her emails off an Exchange 2010 Server, which meant it was running on top of Windows, which means there were no end of exploits by which a dedicated hacker could gain control.
“Oh hey! I’m hosting this list of ISIS secret agents on my Doom III deathmatch server! I’m sure there’s no way that could possibly backfire on me!”
Or to put it in non-computer terms, she was storing classified information in an unlocked tin box under her bed that everyone in her neighborhood also knew contained bundles of unmarked $100 bills, and she was just hoping no one broke in.
She’s a major security risk that should never, ever be in the oval office…
