RUTHFULLY YOURS

An internal investigation by the Obama State Department discovered information that a top State Department aide to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin, while working as a government employee was involved in activities that could be construed as serious conflicts of interest.The investigation also discovered evidence of overpayments by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her alleged “closest aide.”

In an unanswered letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated that a special probe by the State Department’s inspector general uncovered possible leveraging of a State Department job by Huma Abedin that appears to have benefited her other employers while she worked for Mrs. Clintion. The two paid positions were with the now infamous Clinton Foundation and a consulting firm called Teneo Strategies that is also tied to former President Bill Clinton.

It’s not her, it’s them. According to a report in The Hill, young women are just not that into Hillary Clinton:

An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released on Friday showed Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who is running as a Democrat, received 48 percent of support from young voters between the ages of 18-29, compared to Clinton’s 33 percent.

While the poll did not break down millennial support by gender, efforts by Clinton’s campaign to reach out to young women suggests it is a demographic the former secretary of State’s team is seeking to strengthen.

The idea that Clinton would sweep the votes of women, including young women, is not going as well as some Clinton supporters would hope:

Hillary Clinton continues to gain ground against her presidential rivals in key polls. Surveys released this week show Clinton regaining the lead in New Hampshire, dominating in Iowa, and opening a two-to-one national lead over her closest rival, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

A strong showing at the Democratic debate, vice president Joe Biden’s decision not to challenge her for the presidency, and her performance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi have all contributed to a spike in Clinton’s poll numbers over the last three weeks. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday shows her earning 62 percent support among likely Democratic primary voters to Sanders’s 31 percent. It’s a four-point increase from the lead she held in mid-October, when she had 58 percent support to Sanders’s 33.

A Monmouth poll also released Tuesday gives Clinton 48 percent support in New Hampshire to Sanders’s 45 percent — a razor-thin lead, but the first time in months she’s come out on top in a state next-door to Sanders’ native Vermont. If it holds, it would be a body blow to the Sanders campaign, which has led Clinton in the Granite State since late August.

Trump, Clinton, and VA Reform Hillary is in denial about the VA’s problems; Trump at least has a plan.

If you want to know how far out of touch Democrats have become, consider that Donald Trump is starting to make more sense on VA reform than Hillary Clinton.

Faced with the ongoing scandal of veterans’ health care, Hillary’s instinctive reaction was to defend the government bureaucracy. Appearing on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Hillary dismissed problems with the troubled agency, declaring they have “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be.” Criticism of the VA, she maintained, was just part of the Republicans’ “ideological agenda.” In Hillaryworld, it is simply inconceivable that a government program could fail.

Hillary’s comments came just weeks after a new report from the VA’s own inspector general revealed that, if anything, the department’s problems have actually grown worse since they were first uncovered in 2010.

According to the IG, there was a backlog of some 560,000 veterans waiting for their applications to be processed as of September 2014. Another 307,000 were still on the list, though they had died while their applications were pending. That sounds pretty widespread to me.

Politics is a breeding ground for martial metaphors, starting with the word “campaign” itself. Politicians “under fire” “take flak” as their consultants sit in “war rooms” and launch ad “blitzes” in “targeted districts” and “battleground states” to put their clients “over the top” — with the help of their “troops” in the field. When that doesn’t work, the generals sometimes resort to some dreaded “nuclear option.” Even if it succeeds, the pundits often declare it a “Pyrrhic victory.”

Most of us don’t even realize we’re using bellicose language. For instance, I’d guess most people think “over the top” is a term from football, not a reference to First World War trench warfare.

Still, there’s a reason politics lends itself to such language. Watching Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio emerge from the pack after last week’s CNBC debate, I was reminded of my favorite character from Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

“The strongest of all warriors,” Field Marshal Kutuzov explains, “are these two: Time and Patience.”

Of all the presidential aspirants who are at present scrabbling their way up the White House wall, Donald Trump is by far and away the best, the classiest, and the most handsome. He doesn’t pander or kowtow to the special interests. He doesn’t back down or apologize. He doesn’t sweat, or even drink water. Instead, he makes great deals and knows the smartest people. He writes fabulous books and anchors top-rated TV shows. He makes great gobs of hard cash, sleeps on nothing less than the finest sheets, and imports only the most beautiful women to join him under them. He’s richer than Solomon, more elegant than Jackie O, and he has the hair of an exquisite racehorse. (Not Secretariat.) He wins each and every debate with ease and style. Everybody agrees with him, and they tell him so: publicly, privately, and via the most superb online polls. All ethnic groups love him in equal measure, and females up and down the land yearn for his protective hands. He’s number one; a winner; the tops.

What’s that? Ben Carson is now leading the Republican pack, beating Trump by six points nationally? And Carson is ascendant in more than one poll?

Marco Rubio’s recent habit of missing votes in the Senate is suddenly an issue in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

The kerfuffle started with a question from CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla, one of the moderators running last Wednesday’s third Republican primary debate. Quintanilla asked Rubio about a Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial that sternly criticized Rubio’s lack of attendance in the Senate as he runs for president, and called on him to resign his seat. Rubio turned his answer into a complaint about “the bias that exists in the American media today,” which won the audience to his side — and allowed him to beat back the ill-advised attack that followed from rival Jeb Bush.

“Jeb, I don’t remember . . . you ever complaining about John McCain’s vote record,” Rubio said, to more applause. “The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.”

If you’re going to call on Marco Rubio to resign his Senate seat, you’ll have to do better than that.

Yes, Rubio has missed a lot of votes this year — 99 out of 294, to be exact. But running for president requires an intense travel schedule, and there’s no indication that Rubio regularly missed votes before launching his campaign. Prior to this year, Rubio had missed only 77 of 1143 votes — 6 percent of them — as a senator. Even with this year’s spotty attendance record, Rubio’s overall attendance rate remains high — he’s only missed 176 of 1,437 votes in almost five years in the Senate.

Writing with uncharacteristic acidity in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan offered up an explanation as to why Jeb Bush has thus far failed to deliver on his promise. “Reporters,” Noonan proposed, have tended to assume without cynicism that Bush must be a “national candidate” because he is part of a “national family.” The last few weeks have served to disabuse us of that notion.

We have learned, Noonan records, that Jeb is “only a governor” — no more guaranteed success or assured of greatness than any aspirant with a less recognizable surname. Certainly, his pedigree has ensured that the supply side of his campaign would be taken care of: For almost half a century now, America has been furnished with an ample supply of ambitious, well-funded Bushes. On the demand side, however, things have been far less rosy. If, as I consider likely, Bush eventually recognizes that his overtures have been met with jaded indifference, he will have struck an inadvertent blow for meritocracy and demonstrated an age-old truth, to boot: However much polish and gold the masters of the universe can dispense, there is no easy way to sell a superfluous product. Surveying the present scene, critics of both the “establishment” and that protean supervillain “money” should be breathing a touch more easily.