Category Archives: 2016 presidential campaign
McCain Trump Term of Endearment
John McCain called Trump’s supporters “crazies”. He now says it was a term of endearment. At least he didn’t call them “whacko birds“.
The Donald stepped in it when he hit back with his own term of endearment questioning McCain’s war heroism. He said McCain was a hero for getting captured. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
Now everybody hates him. Except the poll voters.
Trump Top
Trump has moved to the top of one poll for the Republican nomination. Establishment Republicans are not happy with The Donald. Peggy Noonan’s approach is that “sometimes an ill wind feels like a breath of fresh air”.
Hillary Email
Sid Blumenthal turned over email he had sent to Hillary Clinton. This was email Hillary had apparently failed to turn over to the committee herself. This is interesting because Blumenthal’s emails advised Hillary on taking credit for the fall of Qaddafi in Libya. The Obama administration had banned Hillary from hiring Blumenthal as an advisor. Also, the email was sent to Hillary’s private server in violation of State Department rules.
Hillary Email
Hillary claims she turned over all the email from her private account related to her work as Secretary of State. A WSJ editorial says, “This must depend on the definition of “all”… “
Trump
Donald Trump threw his combover into the presidential ring this week. Kevin Williamson of National Review didn’t seem impressed. He called him a “witless ape” and an “ass”:
…grunting like a baboon about our country’s “brand” and his own vast wealth…
Trump did point to his wealth as a qualification. Williamson pointed to Trump’s bankruptcies:
The Trump conglomerate is the Argentina of limited-liability companies, having been in bankruptcy as recently as 2009. To be sure, a lot of companies went bankrupt around then. The Trump gang went bankrupt in 2004, too, and in 2001.
Then Williamson brought up another rich guy who financed his own campaign and caused a Bush to lose to a Clinton:
We’ve been to this corner of Crazytown before. If we’re going to have a billionaire dope running for the presidency, I prefer Ross Perot and his cracked tales of Vietnamese hit squads dispatched to take him out while Lee Atwater plotted to crash his daughter’s wedding with phonied-up lesbian sex pictures.
Financial Struggles of Rubio and Hastert
The NYT is on Marco Rubio’s case. The paper reported he’s had 4 traffic tickets in 17 years! Not only that, he used an $800,000 book advance to pay off $100,000 in student loans and buy an $80,000 fishing boat – or a “luxury speed boat”. All this packed into not one, but two stories. The second story appeared on Wednesday’s front page under the headline Rubio Career Bedeviled by Financial Struggles.
The editors seem unaware that Rubio’s financial struggles are the same struggles bedeviling a lot of normal people. Jon Stewart is on The Times’ case.
Meanwhile a picture directly above the Rubio story, in the print edition, features the financial struggles of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert’s struggles aren’t so much like those of normal people. He’s accused of agreeing to pay $3.5 million in blackmail. Paying blackmail isn’t illegal, but using your own cash to do it is, if you withdraw over $10,000. Hastert tried to avoid that by taking out less than 10 grand more often. Apparently that’s illegal too.
Jon Kass of the Chicago Tribune is not happy with Dennis Hastert.
