RUTHFULLY YOURS

Kevin Williamson is a fierce #NeverTrump member…..His words are hollow if he cannot choose #NeverHillary….rsk

The politics of blame are a funny thing. We will blame anybody and everybody for any and all imaginable problems — except the people who actually have blame coming.

Nobody really cares very much about evidence, reason, argument, etc. What they care about is telling a story with good guys and bad guys, and that the right people are cast in each role.

For the left, that shapes everything from economic thinking to foreign policy.

For example, we hear a great deal about economic “inequality,” a term that, in an open and dynamic society, means almost nothing. What the Left wants it to mean is that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, and that the middle class is struggling because corporate profits are high and billionaire playboys forget how many yachts they have. But that simply is not the case, as anybody who has even a passing familiarity with the actual economics literature on the subject can tell you. A $10-an-hour job pays $10 an hour because $10 an hour gets you somebody who can do that job. If both Bob and Sam can do the job and Bob wants $12 an hour while Sam will do it for $10 an hour, it’s a $10-an-hour job, and Sam has it.

It’s not the case that it would have been a $12-an-hour job if only the CEO made $500,000 a year instead of $700,000. (The average salary for a U.S. CEO is in fact a little less than $200,000 a year; those wild numbers you see in the news are for the CEOs of a relatively small number of very large global firms; in the same way, the compensation figures for the category “basketball coaches” can go very different ways depending on whether you’re talking only about the NBA or including high-school coaches.) It is true that costs get shifted around within and between companies, and it’s probably true that they get shifted more onto lower-wage workers than higher-wage workers, because those workers are, generally speaking, less in demand. (That’s why they are lower-wage workers.) But CEO pay usually isn’t a real big chunk of a corporation’s financial picture. In 2011, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, was the highest-paid CEO on God’s green Earth, and his paycheck, large though it was ($376 million), amounted to about three-tenths of 1 percent of Apple’s revenue that year. The groundskeepers and secretaries in Cupertino don’t get paid what they get paid because of fluctuations within an approximately 0.3-percent-of-revenue outlay.

You might see some compensation-rejiggering effects from a proportionally much larger outlay, such as the 24.2 percent of its profit Apple paid in taxes that year.

Because we have a free market in labor, it isn’t always clear or straightforward how changes in companies’ expenses affect workers’ compensation. It’s not like Apple or Walmart or GE can simply declare a wage and expect programmers, warehousemen, and engineers to just show up. Workers have choices, too, though some have more choices than others. But if you think that paying the CEO a lot drives down workers’ wages, wouldn’t you also think that other expenses would put downward pressure on wages, too? And which would produce the heavier pressure: $376 million for the CEO or $8.3 billion for the IRS?

Instead of trashing Trump and complaining that he has alienated some Republicans, why doesn’t the WSJ question why Hillary gets almost universal support among Democrats, the media and Hollywood no matter what she says or does? Isn’t supporting a scandal ridden congenital liar more troubling than alienating some Republicans?

We are constantly told by Democrats and the media that Hillary is so smart and the most qualified person to run for president but what they never do is list actual accomplishments because they have trouble thinking of any.

When Trump says something, Republicans and Democrats alike are asked to comment. Yet when Hillary says or does anything the media does not trot out its microphones for comments. Why the discrepancy? For example, when Hillary called Gold Star Mom Samantha Smith a liar, no one went to Reid, Obama, Durbin, Pelosi, Schumer et al and asked: what do you think of Hillary treating a Gold Star Mom like that? The media obviously doesn’t really care about all Gold Star families.

Does the WSJ or the politically entrenched Republicans in DC actually believe if Trump changed his verbiage that the media would love him? The Clinton team called Pence the most extreme VP candidate in the last century so would he be treated respectfully?

The media loved McCain until he was the Presidential candidate and then they trashed him. They also trashed Romney and Bush. They are for the Democrat no matter what they do. Facts do not matter.

Hillary’s economic policy could be summed up in one sentence. The government should tax more, spend more, and regulate more because the fair share for the government vs. the governed is never enough.

Hillary supports continuing Obama’s economic policies which have resulted in a 38-year low on the labor participation rate, the slowest economic recovery in almost 70 years, a 50-year low on home ownership and a 40 year low on productivity. Why would anyone think that continuing and expanding those policies would yield better results?

We know what Hillary has said and done. Could Trump be worse?

It is a shame the WSJ climbed on the bandwagon.

In the land of NeverTrump, it turns out one American is more reviled than Donald Trump. This would be the Donald Trump voter.

Lincoln famously described government as of, by, and for the people. Even so, the people are now getting a hard lesson about what happens when they reject the advice of their betters and go with a nominee of their own choosing. What happens is an outpouring of condescension and contempt.

This contempt is most naked on the left. No surprise here, for two reasons. First, since at least Woodrow Wilson progressives have always preferred rule by a technocratic elite over democracy. Second, today’s Democratic Party routinely portrays its Republican Party rivals as an assortment of nasty ists (racists, sexists, nativists, etc.) making war on minorities, women, foreigners and innocent goatherds who somehow end up in Guantanamo.

Thus Mr. Trump confirms to many on the left what they have always told themselves about the GOP. A New York Times writer put it this way: “Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.”

Still, the contempt for the great Republican unwashed does not emanate exclusively from liberals or Democrats. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s run for office, it is now ascendant in conservative and Republican quarters as well.

Start with the fondness for the word “Trumpkin,” meant at once to describe and demean his supporters. Or consider an article from National Review, which describes a “vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles” and whose members find that “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Scarcely a day goes by without a fresh tweet or article taking the same tone, an echo of the old Washington Post slur against evangelicals as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

We get it: Trump voters are stupid whites who are embittered because they are losing out in the global economy. CONTINUE AT SITE

Donald Trump made another pivot back to the issues on Monday, this time laying out his strategy to fight radical Islam. As usual it included some good ideas and some bad, but if we’re lucky he’ll stick with the subject long enough to force Hillary Clinton to debate something other than his temperament.

The polls show Mr. Trump still has a slight edge over the Democrat in fighting terror, thanks in large part to President Obama’s eight-year record. Islamic State incubated in the vacuum left by American retreat in Iraq and Syria, and its poison has spread throughout the world. Mrs. Clinton is promising to continue Mr. Obama’s strategy, which gives the Republican an opening.

“The failure to establish a new Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq, and the election-driven timetable for withdrawal, surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS,” Mr. Trump said as he read from a prepared text in Youngstown, Ohio. That’s exactly right, though he should have added Mr. Obama’s decision to let the Syrian civil war rage out of control.

Then again, Mr. Trump has sometimes said the U.S. should stay out of Syria’s civil war because it amounts to the “nation-building” that Mr. Trump again promised to end. That’s a good applause line on the right and left these days, but setting up safe zones in Syria so millions of refugees won’t flood Turkey, Jordan and Europe is a long way from nation-building. The U.S. did that for the Kurds after the first Gulf War, and the Kurdish territory of Iraq is a rare American success in the Middle East.

If Mr. Obama had kept 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011, the critics might have called that nation-building too. But it would have blocked the march of Islamic State and spared us from having to refight the war in Iraq today. Mr. Trump’s caricature of nation-building is closer to Barack Obama’s view than he would like to admit.

The better news is that Mr. Trump seems to be warming to the idea that the U.S. needs coalitions to defeat radical Islam. Most notably, he reversed course on NATO in his speech, praising its role in fighting terrorism. He also called for “an international conference” on fighting radical Islam and he cited Israel, Egypt and Jordan as particular allies in the fight.

Mr. Trump still seems naive in expecting Vladimir Putin’s Russia to assist in this effort, but then so were Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in 2009. Mr. Trump hasn’t seemed to notice that Mr. Obama recently agreed to share intelligence with Russia in Syria over the vociferous objections of the Pentagon. The Republican nominee would have to learn the hard way that Mr. Putin is a hard man who only responds to the logic of hard geopolitical facts. CONTINUE AT SITE

Representative Tom McClintock is a conservative star in Congress…..rsk

This is the 10th annual Tuolumne County Republican Party Salute to Reagan Dinner. For 36 years now, I have looked back on 1980 as the most important election of my lifetime. I’m beginning to realize that it was the second most important. The election that looms just 171 days from now is the most important election in the lifetimes of any of us in this room, and in fact, it is one of the most important elections in the life of our country.

I believe this is it for our country: there are no do-overs or “wait-for-the-next­ elections” this year. I believe we are at the precipice, and we must take back our country THIS YEAR, or risk losing it forever.

Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Rosie O’Donnell and Al Sharpton all say that they’ll move to Canada if Donald Trump wins this election. But ladies and gentlemen, there are plenty of other good reasons to elect Donald Trump president! And I’d like to talk a little about them tonight.

Of course, it’s important not to over­ promise. The fact is, when Canada sees this mass influx of pretentious, pampered, obnoxious leftist celebrities flocking to the Canadian border, THEY’LL build a wall and gladly pay for it! But it’s fun to think about.

Let me put all my cards on the table. I am not a lock-step Republican. My loyalty has never been to the Republican Party or its candidates. My loyalty has always been solely to the principles of the American founding. My loyalty to the Republican Party and its candidates extends only as far as THEY are loyal to those principles. I have occasionally voted against Republican candidates who have traduced the principles of our Constitution or who have tried to turn our party away from those principles and I would do so again.

And let me also say that Donald Trump was not my first choice for our nominee. I first endorsed Scott Walker for President. When Scott Walker withdrew, I endorsed Ted Cruz. So Donald Trump wasn’t my second choice either.

But ladies and gentlemen, the voters of our party have spoken — I can sure as hell tell the difference between a fire and a fire man!

In 1960, Barry Goldwater first ran for the Republican nomination for President, only to be swamped by the overwhelming choice of Republican primary voters: Richard Nixon. Some conservatives wanted Goldwater to run anyway. That’s when he mounted the convention rostrum and spoke these words (that are just as applicable to us today as they were when he spoke them). He said:

“We’ve had our chance: we’ve fought our battle. Now let’s put our shoulders to the wheels … Let’s not stand back. This country is too important for anyone’s feelings: this country in its majesty is too great for any man, be he conservative or liberal, to stay home and not work just because he doesn’t agree (with the nomination). Let’s grow up, conservatives:’

Today, it is time for Republicans to GROW UP and defer to the opinions of the vast majority of Republican primary voters across our nation.

And if the self-appointed royal families of the Republican Party don’t approve, well tough!

This is clearly a choice between a fire and a fireman. It ought to be self-evident that we can’t keep going down the road we’ve been on these last 8 years, and Hillary Clinton offers nothing more than Barack Obama’s third term. Four more years of debt and doubt and despair. Four more years of Obamacare and Obamanomics. Four more years of the very taxes and regulations that are killing our economy.

If you have any hesitation over Donald Trump, just do the math of the Supreme Court. Barack Obama has already chosen two Supreme Court justices, and so has Bill Clinton. Those four justices have all proven themselves to be devoted leftist activists who vote in lockstep on every important issue coming before the court.

A few months before he died, I had the honor to attend a small dinner with Antonin Scalia. As he reflected on his nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, he noted somewhat bitterly that in this last session, he had written more dissenting opinions than he had ever written in his entire career. And he said, “If you want to know where the center of the court is today, Stephen Breyer has written the fewest dissenting opinions this session:’ And that was with Antonin Scalia still on the court.

There is not going to be any criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

Get used to the idea. It’s not going to happen. Yes, hopes are yet again stirring that there might at long last be a reckoning for this living, breathing monument to mendacity and Washington-insider corruption.

Don’t get swept away. It’s bad for your blood pressure … and it’s futile.

The latest revelations about Clinton Foundation pay-to-play shenanigans are the most outrageous thing since, well, the prior revelations about Clinton Foundation pay-to-play shenanigans. Judicial Watch, which tries to do the oversight the Republican Congress won’t do, has uncovered 44 more Clinton “private” emails related to State Department business that Mrs. Clinton failed to preserve and tried to destroy in violation of federal law. They illustrate — which is to say, they re-illustrate the long established reality of — the incestuous relationship between the State Department under Mrs. Clinton’s stewardship and the “charitable” foundation set up by Bill and Hillary Clinton to monetize their political influence.

In a nutshell, then-Secretary of State Clinton, through her two closest aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, used her influence to benefit top Clinton Foundation donors with access to political movers and shakers, international economic opportunities, and possibly government employment. The foundation donors gave copiously, enabling Bill and Hillary Clinton to earn tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees, live off the fat of “charitable donations” (comparatively little of which actually went to humanitarian relief), and turn the foundation and its offshoots (like Teneo Consulting) into an administration-in-waiting with high-paying jobs for Clinton cronies. Some, like Ms. Abedin, managed to draw foundation salaries even as they drew State Department paychecks underwritten by taxpayers.

And of course, because these are the Clintons we’re talking about, there is an even seamier underside to the barely camouflaged corruption. One of the Clinton donors for whom the Clinton State Department was pulling strings was Gilbert Chagouri. He’s a shady Lebanese-Nigerian whose family businesses thrived under Nigeria’s military dictatorship and who later had to pay a $66 million settlement to avoid prosecution on the millions he allegedly stole from the country. Naturally, he has donated somewhere between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, in addition to pledging $1 billion — that’s billion with a ‘b’ — to the Clinton Global Initiative.

As you would expect, he’s also behind one of the innumerable Clinton speech-making paydays — in this instance, as the Wall Street Journal’s editors note, it was $100,000 for Bill to spread his pearls of wisdom in the Caribbean.

Does all this stink to high heaven? Well, yes … but “stinks to high heaven” would not necessarily amount to a criminal case, even if you had a Justice Department that was open to the idea of prosecuting Mrs. Clinton.

As it happens, the incumbent attorney general — who was first appointed to a prestigious U.S. attorney position by Bill Clinton, and who just happens to be in line to keep her job if Hillary Clinton is elected president — would not approve an indictment of Hillary if the latter robbed a bank at high noon on national television.

Look at it this way: Mishandling classified information in a grossly negligent manner is a crime very straightforward to prove, and the evidence against Mrs. Clinton was overwhelming. The only felony that may have been more of a slam-dunk in Mrs. Clinton’s case involves her destruction of thousands of government records. Yet, the Justice Department and the FBI chose not to indict her.

By comparison, political corruption is very difficult to prove, especially if it is of the inchoate variety exemplified by the Clinton scheme — the peddling of access and influence under an intricate web of charitable giving, political consultancy, and speaking engagements.

Moreover, these hard-to-make criminal cases have been made all the harder by the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling just a few weeks ago in McDonnell v. United States. There, a mountain of evidence demonstrated that a donor provided $175,000 in gifts and personal loans to the former governor of Virginia (and his wife) in exchange for political influence. Yet, the justices held that the governor’s opening of doors to key decisionmakers and less-than-subtle pressuring on behalf of the donor was insufficient to establish a prosecutable case of bribery and corruption. (The case involved an unsuccessful effort to convince Virginia’s public universities to perform research studies the donor needed in order to market a nutritional supplement.)

There are reasons good, bad, and obvious for the difficulties these corruption cases pose for prosecutors. To start with the obvious, the statutes are written by the politicians against whom they will be applied, so there is a certain built-in looseness in the joints. While some of that is cynical, there is also some justification in constitutional and policy considerations.

In representative government, elected officials are supposed to be influenced by the concerns of constituents, and voters must be free to provide financial and other support to the candidates who will fight for their concerns if elected. It is challenging to write laws targeting corrupt pay-to-play arrangements without sweeping in legitimate campaign support and representative government. If the laws we have are too expansively construed, we come dangerously close to what the framers sought to avoid: an executive branch check against legislative efforts that reflect legitimate concerns of citizens.

Of course, if the laws are too narrowly construed, you end up with what we see in the McDonnell case: a free pass given to palpable (albeit ultimately unsuccessful) bribery — which signals to elected officials that they can shake down constituents and push the agendas of well-paying insiders with impunity.

That is everything that everyone claims to hate about Washington. But here’s the thing: We keep sending the same people there over and over again — now, even appearing poised to elect to the nation’s highest office Mrs. Clinton, whose only known accomplishment is the raising of pay-to-play, wheeler-dealer government to an art form.

The Supreme Court, in the McDonnell case as in the Obamacare cases, seems to be conveying a blunt political message clothed in legal parlance: “If you, the American people, do not want corrupt public officials and ruinous public policy, stop voting for them. Don’t expect us judges to do your heavy lifting for you.”

Concededly, this message would be a lot easier to take if the courts were promoting liberty across the board rather than imposing elements of the “progressive” political program. Nevertheless, it is worth the look at the mirror. If someone as squalid as Hillary Clinton is a viable political candidate, that is not a failure of our legal system. It is a failure of our culture.

In the past few weeks, the media has desperately struggled to construct Trump outrages out of thin air. The media hit a new low with its phony outrage over Trump calling Obama and Hillary the founders of ISIS. There was no similar outrage when Hillary Clinton called Trump an ISIS recruiter.

But then there are moments like this when the media makes it really obvious that it’s not just biased, it’s just trolling for one political campaign.

“Trump backs off his backpedal on Obama terror claim,” is the Politico headline. “Hours after stating his claim of Obama as the founder of ISIL was “sarcasm,” Trump says maybe it wasn’t” is the subheader.

A. This reads like it was written by an obnoxious robot incapable of understanding colloquial human language

B. Politico and the rest of the press are very obviously manufacturing fake scandals and reaching new lows to do it.

Trump had eased off the claim Friday morning, blasting the media for seriously reporting what he suggested was a sarcastic comment. “Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) ‘the founder’ of ISIS, & MVP,” Trump tweeted. “THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?”

But during an afternoon rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump said his initial remark wasn’t “that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”

Hillary Clinton has never won an honest election. And she isn’t about to start trying to win one now.

Her favorite kind of race is rigged. Deeply unpopular and deemed untrustworthy by huge numbers of voters, she plans to win by panicking Republicans into abandoning Trump to “save” themselves.

Hillary is an insider and her weapon of choice is the media. The weapon has a limited impact on the average Republican voter, but has a great deal of impact on the establishment Republicans who are her targets. Their weaknesses are position and respectability. From the very beginning some establishment Republicans preferred to see Hillary win to maintain the status quo.

For some that meant the policy status quo in which illegal alien amnesty, mass immigration, support for the Muslim Brotherhood and nation-building remained the deranged staples of GOP policy. For others it was about maintaining their privileged positions and access to power regardless of how badly they lost.

But a much larger wing of the party was uncertain about whether Trump could or should win. It was this demographic which Hillary’s people have been hammering with widespread coverage of defections by establishment types. The campaign’s goal has been to convince them that Trump is doomed and that his victory might even be more dangerous than a win for Hillary.

Hillary’s strategy is to split the Republican Party. Cut off the head from the body. Convince the establishment to starve Trump of resources while rallying Republican candidates to disavow him. Pit elements of the GOP against each other while Hillary cakewalks to victory and then inherits a conflicted and broken Republican Party incapable of presenting a coherent opposition to her agenda.

It’s a good plan. And only Republicans can let it happen.

Hillary Clinton did not want to face an actual opponent in the Democratic primaries. She does not want to face Donald Trump or anybody else with a national profile and name recognition in an election.

That’s what worked for her in New York. It’s the strategy she’s hoping will work for her one more time.

Short of diving head-first from atop his eponymous tower, Donald J. Trump seems unable to satisfy the Never Trump crowd.

Perhaps the most aggravating thing about Trump’s mortal enemies on the right — many of whom I have known and admired for decades — is that they refuse to take “yes” for an answer.

Mitt Romney, Senator Ted Cruz, columnist George Will, and others complain that Trump is a non-conservative, crypto-Democrat — Hillary Clinton with orange hair.

No doubt, Trump’s trade policies violate conservative doctrine on the free exchange of goods and services across borders. Still, it was good to hear Trump say on Monday, “Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.”

Also, Trump’s frequent inability to mute his internal monologue maddens even his most avid supporters.

However, on policy issues and political judgments, Trump has done the Right thing — only to hear catcalls from the very conservatives who should welcome his major strides in their direction.

Start with Trump’s most important choice: his pick for vice president.

As the person who would serve a breath from the presidency, Trump could have tapped a blowhard governor who barely has improved the Garden State. Thankfully, Chris Christie remains trapped in Trenton. Trump could have recruited Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), a milquetoast moderate whose convoluted legislative strategy against President Obama’s dreadful nuclear deal with Iran made it virtually unstoppable.

Instead, Trump selected Governor Mike Pence. The Indiana Republican was the Right’s True North in Congress. He earned a 99 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. This darling of the pro-market Club for Growth repeatedly cut taxes as governor and resuscitated the Hoosier State’s economy. This socially conservative economic libertarian unites the GOP’s twin wings.

Recognizing that the Supreme Court has devolved into America’s election-free über-legislature, Trump unveiled eleven prospective justices. The conservative Heritage Foundation recommended several of these stalwart constitutionalists. They all are affiliated with the Federalist Society, the Vatican of rightist jurisprudence. Confirming his originalist intent, Trump said Tuesday on Hannity that he wants nominees “as close to Justice Scalia as we can get.”

Trump’s foes moaned that he had raised too few donations to battle the magnificently funded Duchess of Chappaqua. And then, in July, Trump collected a competitive $80 million, averaging $69 per contribution, versus Clinton’s $90 million, averaging $44.

Trump on Monday calmly delivered a serious, focused speech to the Detroit Economic Club. With the very significant exception of its trade-policy language, Trump’s address could have been written by Bill Kristol, Charles Murray, or any other conservative thinker now sticking red-hot needles into his Donald Trump voodoo doll. Declaring “We will Make America Grow Again,” Trump passionately tied Clinton’s left-wing faith to Detroit’s (and America’s) economic disease and then prescribed nearly every major conservative economic reform.