2016 Oct 17^th

Three weeks and a day to go; can it get any uglier? I’ll bet it does.  Now the Republican headquarters in Hills borough North Carolina was firebombed; graffiti called on the Nazi loving Republicans to go home. Never mind that the Republicans were not immigrants. In short order Democrats had contributed 13 thousand dollars to help repair the firebomb damage.

In an interview, a cowboy hatted man said that if Hillary Clinton won the election she should be “taken out.” When asked if that was a threat he replied with a line taken straight from his hero Donald Trump, “You tell me.” The Secret Service folks are surely earning their pay this year.

Sometimes it is instructive to watch Fox News, their reporting is predictably anti-Clinton. (But of course it is fair and balanced.) The big news was that Under Secretary Kennedy had wanted the FBI to change the classification on some Clinton documents in return for nice career opportunities. That’s a stupid ploy if it’s true. We’ll hear more of this line of chat.

Fox gets some interesting ads. One of these in particular is a serious minor actor who explains that these are perilous times. That the world is awash in paper currency and that the prudent person will convert their paper assets to gold or silver.  The advertised dealer will provide the buyer with hard assets at the cheapest possible price and will help you convert your IRA  so you can hold gold and silver in that too. OK, you can make a case for having some gold and silver in a retirement account, but it is curious that I’ve never seen this ad on any but the Fox News channel. I wonder why that is. Could there be more folks with a paranoid streak watching Fox News? (You tell me.)

This morning we have a column by the ever-unhappy Mona Charen. She says, “It has been only a week since the Hollywood tapes… persuaded key parts of the nation that Donald Trump might have a character problem. Would you vote for a sexual predator? asked the New York Magazine. ‘Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton, choose your sexual predator,’ headlined the Federalist.” Choose your sexual predator? Really? And the evidence that Hillary Clinton has grabbed men by their privates is what? Oh, I see; she’s a more ladylike predator.

What is “The Federalist” that headlines this smear? According to Domenech, a founder, the site has "a viewpoint that rejects the assumptions of the media establishment" and says it is dedicated to discussing "the philosophical underpinnings of the day's debate" instead of focusing on what he calls "the horserace or the personalities". Labeling sexual predators is now part of “the philosophical underpinnings of the day’s debate” My, how philosophy has changed.

Meanwhile, poor Julian Assange has had his email blocked at his long-time temporary residence at Ecuador’s London embassy. The blocker was the Ecuadorean Government which might have had enough of their guest after over four years of hosting him. If Julian can’t get continuing feeds from his Russian buddies how will he continue to fuel WikiLeaks? Let’s face it. Julian isn’t digging out these emails all by himself.  Assange is violently opposed to Clinton because he sees her as likely to start wars; he isn’t happy with Trump either, but he reserves his attacks for Hillary Clinton. Now he might go after Ecuador!