American World War II poster by Seymour R. Goff, also known as Ess-ar-gee. –  Public Domain

It was a week after Director Comey blasted Ms. Clinton for her carelessness I found myself chuckling at the documentary, Apocalypse: Stalin. In the late 1930s with over 5 million people and most of the Politburo dead, the narrator says that Stalin’s closest friends had begun to think that they were careless in the way they handled Stalin’s rise to power. I could not help but wonder whether there was something that Stalin’s closest friends could have been done differently? That is when I started to wonder whether someday Ms. Clinton’s closest friends will feel the same remorse. Did Ms. Clinton and her advisers learn anything from Director Comey’s tongue lashing?

I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt until she opened her mouth and removed all doubt. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday she said:

WALLACE:  After a long investigation, FBI Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American public were true.

CLINTON:  Chris, that’s not what I heard Director Comey say, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity, in my view, clarify.

Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.

I was communicating with over 300 people in my e-mailing.  They certainly did not believe and had no reason to believe that what they were sending was classified.

Now, in retrospect, different agencies come in and say, well, it should have been, but that’s not what was happening in real time.

It came as no surprise that this claim received four Pinocchios from the Washington Post. She had to know every journalist wanted to ask her this question so there is no excuse for her not being prepared. This would have been the perfect time for her to explain that she made a mistake and assure the American people that this will never happen again. This was the time for her to hit this issue out of the ball park. Instead she reinforced the commonly held perception that as one Clinton supporter said recently, she is a stone cold liar. At some point you have to wonder whether her friends and allies who were careless in letting her use a private email server for confidential emails have learned anything. Ms. Clinton acts like national security policies are a farce so how would she improve them? If the only thing Ms. Clinton and her advisers have learned from the email server debacle is that they got away with it, what does that say about her qualifications to be President? Is she too careless to be President?

In response to Avik Roy’s article, The GOP’s White Identity Politics Problem Goes Way Beyond Donald Trump, I wrote:

In the last seven year phrases like identity politics, white privilege, racism, and comparisons to Hitler have become stop words to me. I assume that intelligent conversation is over and without even thinking about it my mind translates everything into blah, blah, blah. This time I will overlook my natural instincts so that I can remind you that the primary focus of these political attacks is the middle class and their idea that every person should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. White identity politics is just another attempt to dumb down the American Dream. The American Dream is color blind but you have to work hard for it.

On the other hand the primary threat to the political class is that as more people of color embrace common sense, personal responsibility, and meritocracy in pursuit of the American Dream, the more likely they will become politically independent. The biggest threat to the Democratic party is that Blacks and Hispanics might start asking Democratic Party leaders what have you done for me recently so that I may achieve the American Dream, too? To maintain party loyalty the Democratic Party is more than willing to whitewash the American Dream to avoid talking about policy failures.

The biggest problem I have with white identity politics is that it diverts your attention from more important issues affecting people of color. It may come as a surprise to some readers but blacks have a bigger problem than other ethnic groups with social class struggles. In his book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed, Mr. Riley makes the point that even some black middle class families have kids who are under performing in school because they do not want to accused of being  “white”.  Despite their parents success these kids would rather fail than be seen as “white” or middle class. This is one of many places where black fathers can make a big difference. Then we have the ongoing debate over charter schools versus public schools. Mr. Riley points out that charter schools have been dramatically more successful than public schools at educating black students. Part of their success has to be attributed to their embrace of hard work and meritocracy versus the identity politics plaguing public schools. Ironically identity politics can work against ethnic groups, too.

The second biggest problem I have with white identity politics is that it allows both the Democratic and Republican parties to divert attention away from failed policies and necessary remedies. Whether we see ourselves as Democratic, Republican, or Independent we should be focused on the policies and the political wrangling necessary to build the compromise. Instead the various forms of identity politics divides us and makes the political wrangling much more difficult. It has become passé to say that nothing gets done in Congress nowadays. Identity politics is a pox on both parties and the political process.

My advice to the GOP is to focus their attention on passing policies that reinforce the common sense, personal responsibility, and meritocracy of the American Dream. The American Dream and the economy are issues all ethnic groups support. Never lose sight of the fact that the middle class is the only group who has a vested interest in a well functioning government and economy. Regardless of our ethnic background we all agree, we want our money to be spent wisely. Learn from Mr. Gruber and Ms. Clinton’s failures, do the right thing. If you have to lie to justify your action, you probably do not need to do it.

I was fascinated with an Instapundit post about Hillary Clinton and autofill. In the Instapundit screenshot the search terms “hillary clinton indictment” appeared before “hillary clinton”. Although autofill(autocomplete) primarily uses your web browser cache to offer suggestions, it also looks at what people in your region have been searching for. In the post the author was using the Bing search engine so I was curious what Bing and other search engines would show for me. Here is my Bing and Google search screenshots.

Bing Search Form for Hillary

Google search for hillary

The three most interesting search terms for me was “hillary clinton email”, “hillary indictment”, and “hillary fbi” since I was pretty sure I had never used those search terms. So I went over to Google Trends to see why the search engines are including those search terms.

From this Google Trends chart we can conclude that the public has significantly increased their interest in fact checking Ms. Clinton and the media’s version of the story. To put the significance of this chart in perspective I created one more chart to show the relative size of searches versus a generic search for “hillary clinton”. We can see that although there has been significant increase of interest in Ms. Clinton’s legal problems, it is a relatively small portion of the searches for “hillary clinton”.

I am ambivalent about Mr. Trump’s chances of being elected president but I have always wondered whether he would have that presidential moment that brings people different groups of  people together for a common cause. Tonight I heard a very good speech by Mr. Kasich about Israel. There was a lot of stuff he said that I could agree with. My wife gushed over the speech. She voted for him in the primary but I have to agree with her, it was a very good speech. It was everything we would want from a presidential candidate.

Then Mr. Trump spoke and something mysterious happened. My wife, a Kasich supporter, gushed over it even though he said approximately the same stuff as Mr. Kasich. There was something about his delivery that conveyed that he actually meant it. Something that connected with her. She actually thought Trump’s speech was better than Mr. Kasich’s speech! Based on the audience response I think he connected and won some people over. I was kind of surprised.  After all of these weeks he was sounding presidential. He may not be Bill Clinton but we have to start to recognize that he has some of Bill’s magic of connecting with the common man and woman. Sorry Hillary, but Trump and Bill Clinton have it and you do not. He won my wife over! At some point Peggy Noonan has to wondering if Mr. Trump has finally found his presidential voice like Reagan did. Are we in for something special?

I have to chuckle when Bernie Sanders supporters try to make the moral argument that the Citizens United ruling is corrupting the democratic process at the same time they are get short changed delegates due to Super Delegate rules. Obviously the democratic process is no match for the brutal reality of Democratic party politics. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

It is amazing that Bernie Sanders continues to talk about Citizens United. I understand that this is a hot button issue for Democratic voters but you have to wonder whether this is a good time to talk about this issue considering the success of both his and Donald Trump’s low budget political campaigns. Since Hillary Clinton is the only big money candidate left in the presidential campaign when Bernie Sanders criticizes big money in politics he is criticizing her with a Democratic party hot button issue. Oops!

It is too bad the folks at ABC used questionable judgement to exclude Carly from the debate. She is definitely one of the best debaters this election cycle and belongs on the stage as much as Kasich and Christie. Including here would make the debate more interesting and probably help the ratings. The easy choice for ABC was to have eight people on the stage. Oh, well! Maybe in the next debate CBS News can show us what fair and balanced really looks like. 😉 In classic fashion the Carly for President campaign fired back with some humor. For those who have not seen the Anybody But Carly parody here it is.

Anybody But Carly from CARLY for America on Vimeo.