Influence of Potomac Water. Prager Responds.Vinny Pazienza Think Supreme Court.

You can keep your doctor but your doctor can no longer afford to practice.
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Something has to be wrong when senior DC appointees seem to display  contemptible regard for appearances.  Once they drink from The Potomac all sense of propriety seems to disappear. (See 1 below.)
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Dennis speaks out regarding the banning of some of  his Prager University postings.  (See 2 below.)
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Response to my posting of a proposed speech Trump might make from a dear friend, former neighbor and fellow memo reader: "Dick, did like your speech and hope thru Newt he will at least read it. What I would add, maybe thru TV ads, is a simple comparison chart.ie bigger govt vs smaller, higher taxes vs lower taxes, repealed and revised healthcare program vs a higher cost Obamacare failed program etc. To me simple bullets should get the message across to the dumbest of the dumbest so to speak. B---"
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When Trump said The Clinton's were sending goons to attack his supporters the immediate response, from the mass media, was to attack him and call him nuts.  We now find out from WikiLeak releases Trump was correct.

Two consistent techniques the mass media employ against those they wish to defeat (read conservatives) is to put out false information and/or attack the veracity of the opposition .  When Trump states the election is rigged  the anti-Trumpers swing into action from Obama down or up, depending upon what you think of Obama, and they begin spouting Trump is destroying an historical tradition that in America we change leadership peacefully.  Then when The Clinton's are caught doing everything they accuse Trump of there is silence.

We will not know until the final results are in but I continue to believe the anger, the contempt and the angst directed against the mass media and voter  distaste for Hillary could result in a Truman-Dewey type backlash vote tally.

I will never forget Truman holding up the New York Times report of his defeat and his mocking, in staccato fashion,  Kaltenborn.
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This from one of my friends who is a liberal but he cannot bring himself to admit it: "Trump did not create the conditions ripe for his candidacy," Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy and Pamela Engel argue. “The conservative media industrial complex successfully managed over the years to lock the Republican Party away from access to its own base. Those who consumed conservative media were taught not to trust politicians or, even worse, the mainstream media. As a result, party leaders were beholden to a handful of individuals who controlled the conservative media and, thus, held the keys to their voters. Republicans allowed their base to be held captive by a conservative press that moved their base further right, pushed conspiracy theories … and set unrealistic exceptions for them while in office. So it should not be surprising that when Trump came along in 2016 and aggressively echoed this rhetoric, a significant portion of the base accepted him.”"

My response: "And the same is happening to Democrats as the radical left swings/controls them. This is why we have become a country of divided extremism when it comes to campaigns and political rhetoric.  Controversy keeps the public upset and pissed and this means ad rates can rise. Corporate control of mass media outlets is harming our nation.  Entertainment wins over veracity and unbiased reporting.

You always see one side and that is why I place less faith in what you send me and your commentary but I agree with this. However, it is only one side as I continue to point out so keep trying "Mr. One Note" and I will try opening your eyes to see the other side of the coin."

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I do not buy all that is claimed but I do agree Trump's programs are preferable to Hillary's which will be economically stultifying. (See 3 below.)

My advice to anti-Trumpers when you go into the voting booth think about The Supreme Court and even if, as Bret Stephens pointed out in his latest op ed,  he is prepared to rebuild his party, he might be able to do so but with a totally changed and vastly increased liberal court I wish him good luck because it will all be for naught

Trump is due credit for campaigning hard and not giving up but he proved, in the end, to be his own worst enemy. He plowed forward as far too many in The Republican Party sat on their hands and/or went anti-Trump. When the election is over and should Trump lose they too will have his blood on their hands.

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Bozell on the media. (See 4 below.)
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The SCAD Savannah Film Festival has been going on and I went to my first feature film this evening and it was Bleed For This and is a true story about a prize fighter.(Vinny  Pazienza.) Outstanding, gripping and excellent acting.  The lead male actor who played the prizefighter, the director and the Paz were there and answered questions. You can watch the trailer if you click on Google.
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Dick
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1) The FBI’s Clinton Probe Gets Curiouser

New evidence of a conflict of interest and a double standard.

ENLARGE

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in Washington July 20, 2016. PHOTO: REUTERS

Hillary Clinton may win the election in two weeks, but the manner of her victory will bedevil her in the White House. Specifically, evidence keeps turning up suggesting that the FBI probe into her emails was influenced by political favoritism and double standards.

The latest news is the Journal’s report Monday that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend of Hillary and Bill, steered money to the campaign of the wife of a top FBI official. Political organizations under Mr. McAuliffe’s control gave more than $675,000 to the 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of Jill McCabe, the wife of FBI deputy directorAndrew McCabe. Mr. McCabe, director James Comey’s right-hand man, helped oversee the probe into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information on her server.

Some $467,500 of the money came directly from Mr. McAuliffe’s political action committee, Common Good VA, while $207,788 came from the Virginia Democratic Party, which the Governor essentially controls. The funds amounted to more than one-third of all the money Mrs. McCabe raised.

Mrs. McCabe announced her candidacy the same month (March 2015) as the news broke about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. Mr. McCabe was running the FBI’s Washington field office at the time, and he was promoted to the No. 3 FBI slot not long after the formal FBI investigation began in July 2015.

The FBI said in a statement that none of this is an issue because Mr. McCabe wasn’t promoted to the No. 2 position until February 2016, months after his wife lost her race, and only then did he assume “for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

All of this asks voters to believe that Mr. McCabe as the No. 3 official at the FBI had nothing to do with the biggest, most sensitive case at that agency. This strains credulity. Before he became No. 3 at the FBI Mr. McCabe ran the bureau’s Washington, D.C. field office that provided resources to the Clinton probe. Campaign-finance records show that 98% of the McAuliffe donations to Mrs. McCabe came after the FBI launched its Clinton probe.

Director Comey, the self-styled Boy Scout, somehow didn’t think any of this would look suspicious? Add this to the list of special treatment for Mrs. Clinton: no grand jury, grants of immunity to her aides, no interview until the last minute, a special exonerating public declaration, and a pre-Labor Day dump of damaging FBI notes.

The contrast couldn’t be greater with the FBI and Justice Department determination to convict retired Gen. James Cartwright—former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—of a felony for lying to the FBI. The general told a federal court last week he regretted he didn’t tell the bureau the truth about conversations he’d had with reporters about a secret cyberattack disrupting Iran’s nuclear program. He could serve up five years in prison.

“People who gain access to classified information after promising not to disclose it must be held accountable when they willfully violate that promise,” said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein in a press release.

“We conducted a thorough and independent investigation included [sic] collecting tens of thousands of documents through subpoenas, search warrants and document requests, and interviewing scores of current and former government employees. The evidence showed that General Cartwright disclosed classified information without authorization to two reporters and lied to federal investigators. As a result, he stands convicted of a federal felony offense and faces a potential prison sentence.”

This is comical coming from the same folks who gave away immunity deals like candy in their probe of Mrs. Clinton. Gen. Cartwright wasn’t even the original source of the Iran leaks. The general says he confirmed details the reporters already had in an effort to prevent them from publishing information that could harm America’s national security.

Though Mrs. Clinton didn’t leak to reporters, her personal server exposed national secrets to potential hackers, and she gave a number of people (including some of her attorneys) without proper clearances access to that information. When Gen. Cartwright became the subject of an investigation, he was stripped of his security clearance—which never happened to Mrs. Clinton.

Maybe the general should have run for the Democratic nomination. Enough red flags have been raised about the McCabe-Comey investigation of Mrs. Clinton that it deserves to be the subject of an investigation by Congress. Let’s get some of the FBI agents under oath and see what they think of the Comey procedures. If it’s all on the up and up, they have nothing to fear from public transparency.

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2)

YouTube vs. 

Conservative Speech

By Dennis Prager

Last week, The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial about YouTube restricting access to 16 videos -- down from 21 -- that were created and posted online by my nonprofit educational organization, Prager University. The subheading read, "YouTube thinks Dennis Prager's videos may be dangerous." The Journal said:

"Tech giants like Google and Facebook always deny that their platforms favor some viewpoints over others, but then they don't do much to avoid looking censorious. ... Dennis Prager's 'PragerU' puts out free short videos on subjects 'important to understanding American values' -- ranging from the high cost of higher education to the motivations of Islamic State.

"The channel has more than 130 million views. ... As you might guess, the mini-seminars do not include violence or sexual content. But more than 15 videos are 'restricted' on YouTube ... This means the clips don't show up for those who have turned on filtering -- say, a parent shielding their children from explicit videos. A YouTube spokesperson told us that the setting is optional and 'based on algorithms that look at a number of factors, including community flagging on videos.'

"PragerU started a petition calling for YouTube to remove the restriction, and more than 66,000 people have signed. YouTube is free to set its own standards, but the company is undercutting its claim to be a platform for 'free expression.'"

It is a good sign that YouTube's censorship of respectful and utterly nonviolent and nonsexual videos made it to The Wall Street Journal editorial page. It is a very bad sign that it had to. And it is a very bad sign that it made the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal but not that of The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or any other mainstream newspaper that still purports to support the classic liberal value of free speech.

To understand what YouTube, which is owned by Google, has done, it is necessary to briefly describe what it has restricted access to.

Every week, PragerU (the generally used name for Prager University) posts at least one 5-minute video presentation online. These presentations are on just about every subject and are given by important thinkers -- some very well-known, some not. The list includes dozens of professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, Princeton, Dayton, Boston College, Stanford, UCLA, Harvard, and West Point, among other universities; a black member of South African Parliament; comedians Adam Carolla and Yakov Smirnoff; two former prime ministers (one of Spain, and one of Denmark); Pulitzer Prize winners George Will, Bret Stephens and Judith Miller; Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs"; Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Arthur Brooks; Jonah Goldberg; Alan Dershowitz; Nicholas Eberstadt; Larry Elder; Steve Forbes; Walter Williams; Christina Hoff Sommers; George Gilder; Victor Davis Hanson; Bjorn Lomborg; Heather Mac Donald; Eric Metaxas; Amity Shlaes; Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan; and many others. I also present some videos.

Any responsible person, left-wing or right-wing, would have to acknowledge that this is a profoundly respectable list of non-bomb-throwing presenters. It's hardly conducive to censorship.

YouTube placed restrictions on the following videos.

--Two videos on race: "Are The Police Racist?" and "Don't Judge Blacks Differently."

--Six videos on Islam: "What ISIS Wants," "Why Don't Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?" "Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do," "Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?" "Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology" and "Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?"

--Two videos on abortion (the only two offered): "Who's More Pro-Choice: Europe or America?" and "The Most Important Question About Abortion."

--Two videos on Israel: "Israel: The World's Most Moral Army" and "Israel's Legal Founding" (the latter video, presented by Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, was reinstated after much publicity).

--Three videos on America: "Why Did America Fight the Korean War?" "Did Bush Lie About Iraq?" and "What is the University Diversity Scam?"

--One on politics: "Who NOT to Vote For."

--And one on men and women: "He Wants You" (a video I present about men and women).

Think of these topics, and consider the list of presenters. Do you see any violent content or sexual content? Do you see anything you wouldn't want your minor child to view? The only possible "yes" might be to the video titled "He Wants You." Though void of any explicit content, it deals with the subject of men looking at other women yet most still wanting their own wives. It has almost 4 million views and has helped a lot of couples.

Obviously, then, the explanation is not that "algorithms" catch violence and sex. Rather, YouTube doesn't want effective conservative videos to be posted (each video has at least 1 million views). Does that mean that it has left-wing censors looking for every widely viewed conservative video? If so, it doesn't have to. Left-wing viewers simply flag our videos and others' as inappropriate, and YouTube does the rest.

I have never devoted a column to PragerU. But I have done so today because if YouTube gets away with censoring as big a website as PragerU -- after a major editorial is published in The Wall Street Journal, after coverage in the New York Post, The Boston Globe, Fortune, National Review and many other places, and after a petition signed by over 70,000 people (which is on the PragerU website) -- what will happen to other conservative institutions?

For the probable answer, see your local university.

The question, then, is this: Will YouTube do to the internet what the left has done to the university?

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3) A Vote for Trump Is a Vote for Growth

The Republican’s policies will create 25 million new jobs, boost incomes and generate trillions in additional tax revenues.

By  WILBUR ROSS and PETER NAVARRO

Which candidate has the best economic plan to get America growing again? This is the most important question of the 2016 presidential campaign, yet think tanks and journalists keep getting the answer wrong.

Donald Trump will cut taxes, reduce regulation, unleash our abundant energy and eliminate our trade deficit through muscular trade negotiations that increase exports, reduce imports and eliminate cheating. These policies will double our economic growth rate, create 25 million new jobs, boost labor and capital incomes, generate trillions of additional tax revenues and reduce debt as a percentage of GDP.

Hillary Clinton’s plan points in the opposite direction. Her tax hikes on businesses and “the rich” reduce incentives to work and invest. She will increase the already staggering $2 trillion annual regulatory burden on the U.S. economy. She vows to put coal miners out of work and oil and natural gas on the back burner—raising energy prices and reducing America’s competitive advantage. After giving us three of the worst trade deals in U.S. history—Nafta in 1993, China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, the 2012 South Korea fiasco—the Clinton team is primed to pass the worst deal yet—the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would decimate the American manufacturing base.

How this adds up to a better economic plan than Mr. Trump’s is as mysterious as it is counterintuitive. Yet economic pundits keep popping up like bad pennies to make the claim.

One reason is that most think tanks only consider the competing tax plans, not the overall economic plans. This has an inherent Democratic bias because Republican tax cuts viewed in isolation almost always reduce revenues. However, by failing to calculate the substantial positive revenue offsets of growth from the Trump plan’s other reforms, these tunnel-vision “experts” are missing the bigger picture.

Consider the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It dynamically scored a revenue reduction under the Trump plan of $2.6 trillion and a modest $663 billion surplus for the Clinton plan over the next decade. These numbers suggest the Clinton plan is more fiscally responsible.

But in our dynamic scoring of Mr. Trump’s plan, we found that the positive revenue offsets from increased growth derived from reduced regulatory burdens, lower energy costs and the elimination of the U.S. trade deficit amount to $2.4 trillion. A rapid acceleration of growth also leads to a significant reduction of our debt burden relative to GDP, and when Mr. Trump’s spending cuts are added the plan achieves full revenue neutrality.

What one gets with the Clinton plan is even slower growth than we are experiencing now during the worst economic recovery since World War II. As the Tax Foundation notes, the Clinton plan “would lead to a 2.6 percent lower level of GDP” and “lower levels of wages and full-time equivalent jobs.” Yet reporters keep writing summaries like these: “The Trump plan blows a hole in the federal budget . . . Clinton’s plan, when coupled with her spending ambitions, would leave the budget deficit about where it is today.”

Even those few analysts who concede the need to model energy, regulatory and trade reforms have concocted arguments to say it doesn’t matter. Some falsely assert that the U.S. and other developed countries have settled into a “new normal” of slower economic growth due to greater competition from developing countries and demographic changes beyond our control.

But to quote Mr. Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, “People in Scranton know different. People in Fort Wayne know different.” Just two years ago, according to a 2014analysis by Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee, nearly one in four Americans in their prime working years (ages 25-54) were jobless. This is not the new normal. It’s the new dismal.

Others argue that any Trump growth will be choked off by deficit-driven higher interest rates that will “crowd out” private investment and bring the Trump economy back to earth. Never mind that our scoring of the Trump plan found it to be revenue neutral, or the $1.3 trillion in corporate and personal savings generated by growth under the plan that will be used to fuel investment. This raises the question: Why have interest rates gone down over the last eight years as the Obama-Clinton regime has doubled our national debt from $10 trillion to nearly $20 trillion?

Another line of argument insists that reducing the regulatory burden and unleashing energy resources would have no impact on growth. Apparently, extending permitting and construction times, delivering products more slowly to markets, and facility shutdowns have no efficiency effects. Apparently, lifting prohibitions on resource extraction can’t reduce costs and improve American competitiveness. Apparently, it is better to keep employing armies of regulators rather than let them find jobs in more productive occupations.

Finally, there is the trade-war straw man used to forecast Armageddon. This is an alarmist misread of the bargaining table in trade negotiations.

Most of America’s $766 billion annual trade deficit in goods is with a few countries, all of which need our markets far more than we need theirs, including China, Germany, Japan, Mexico and South Korea. A 10% change in the mix of U.S. international trade could eliminate that deficit, through smart, tough negotiations. As the biggest market in the world, we have all the leverage. No one makes better deals than Mr. Trump.

Analysts and journalists are doing voters a tremendous disservice by not analyzing the complete Clinton and Trump economic plans. It should be obvious to any reasonable observer that the integrative and synergistic Trump plan offers this country a very bright future. The Clinton plan merely saddles us with more of the dim past we have suffered under Obamanomics. It’s a very clear choice on Nov. 8.

Mr. Ross is a private-equity investor. Mr. Navarro is a business professor at the University of California, Irvine. Both are senior policy advisers to the Trump campaign.
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4) MRC's Brent Bozell Blasts Media Collusion With Clinton Campaign

By NB Staff 

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell appeared on Fox Business, Tuesday, to condemn the media’s collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign, exposing secret dinners between top journalists and Clinton staffers. Regarding the new WikiLeaks e-mails, Bozell named names: “Six reporters from ABC, including George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Diane Sawyer. They are superstars. Nine from CNN.... Four from Politico, including Glenn Thrush.” 

Bozell explained, “These were no ordinary receptions. These were working meetings. Look at the agenda. One of them is ‘Give reporters first thoughts on campaign in advance of announcements.’ In other words, work them before the announcements.”

Bozell and Varney and Co. host Stuart Varney also discussed another other big story, that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe donated $500,000 to the campaign of the wife of an FBI official who eventually oversaw the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal. The MRC President blasted, “This is bribery. This is bribery of the FBI and it’s not even covered. This is astounding. So, the bottom line is Donald Trump is 100 percent correct that this is a rigged media against him.” 

A transcript of the segment is below: 

STUART VARNEY: Donald Trump blasting the media. It is a rigged system, he says. Now, in recent leaks it has been revealed the media was, indeed, actively colluding with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Prominent reporters holding fancy parties, dinners, that is the bunch right there on your screens. Come in, Brent Bozell, Media Research president. Are there any big names I should know about? We had a full screen. I couldn't identify individuals. Big names? Any there? 

BRENT BOZELL: Probably lots of big names. Let's start here. There's nothing wrong with a campaign doing a reception for the media. Both sides do it. I don't have a problem at all with that. But these were no ordinary receptions. These were working meetings. Look at the agenda. One of them is “give reporters first thoughts on campaign in advance of announcements.” In other words, work with them before the announcement, “Frame the Clinton message and frame the race.” This is my favorite: “Enjoy the Friday drink before working more.” So, this was a working meeting. Who was important? Who is at these receptions which shouldn't have been there? This is what I looked at. Six reporters from ABC, including George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Diane Sawyer. They are superstars. Nine from CNN. And his CNN is the Clinton News Network, four from Politico, including Glenn Thrush one who subsequently in another WikiLeaks had email, we found out was submitting news articles to John Podesta for his approval before publishing them. Six from MSNBC including the president, Phil Griffin of that network. But my favorite, I gotta tell you. You will recall the first CNBC debate. You will recall John Harwood, arrogant, aloof, condescending, snide, completely one-sided. He was there. 

VARNEY: Okay. I want to bring one more subject to your attention. I know you know about this. The bombshell report that Terry McAuliffe, governor of Virginia, ran both the Clinton campaigns, got it, he donated a half million dollars to the campaign of an FBI agent's wife and that agent was the man who oversaw, at least in part, Hillary's email investigation. I have not seen much mention of what I think this is, a major scandal. And I have not seen much mention of it in the media. Am I right, Brent? 

BOZELL: The only mention is from that network that, by the way, was not invited to these dinners, Fox News. There is cause and effect going on. Fox News is persona non grata in the working Hillary Clinton campaign  because Fox News is reporting the news everyone else is covering up. This is a huge story! 

VARNEY: Yes, it is. 

BOZELL: This is like the head of the Justice Department meeting with Clinton on a plane before this decision. It’s hugely —  

VARNEY: It is the compromising our institutions. The IRS is compromised. The Justice Department is compromised. In my opinion, the FBI is compromised, that is a huge story. What has become of our country? 

BOZELL: This is called bribery. This is bribery. This is bribery of the FBI and it’s not even covered. This is astounding. So, the bottom line is Donald Trump is 100 percent correct that this is a rigged media against him. 

VARNEY: Brent, you are always welcome. Come back soon. 

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