Author: A.T.

So you absolutely need to enjoy this Seth Myers clip.  You will laugh, learn, and share it with everyone you know.

My work here is done.

But I should respond to one of you who wrote in regard to this recent post (“Which Of These Republicans Do YOU Believe — I believe all of them.”)

Ronald S.:   “While I understand you are not FOX News Fair and Balanced, perhaps some day you will also include the other side of coins.  Like Colin Powell on Hillary Clinton (‘I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect.  A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not [sic] transformational.’)  So, while I always vote, why would I volunteer or contribute based on your biased presentations?  Less ‘tribe,’ more complete, factual presentation, please.”

☞ I agree about the importance of being fair and balanced; disagree that here I was not.

There is nothing disqualifying about being greedy or ambitious or about not being transformational.  There is something disqualifying about being a “national disgrace and international pariah” (as Colin Powell characterized Trump).  So they are NOT equivalent, and it IS fair (I think) to make the case that many leading REPUBLICANS — not just Democrats — think Trump cannot be President.

Balanced in this case, I think, would have been to quote some of the many prominent DEMOCRATS who have terrible, disqualifying things to say about Hillary.

Except there are none, so I didn’t.

The more fact-based independent thought the better.  If people are thoughtful and fact-based, as Ronald is, we will win by a landslide.

Enjoy that clip.  Seth Myers nails it.

This strikes me as a really big deal: CHRIS CHRISTIE KNEW ABOUT BRIDGE LANE CLOSINGS AS THEY HAPPENED, according to prosecutors in the US Attorney’s office, based on statements from two of Christie’s top people.

So, first off, yes, they purposely caused the citizens of New Jersey tremendous inconvenience — that could even have been life threatening (if you were in an ambulance, say) — which gives an extraordinary meaning to the term “public service.”  Amazing.

And then Christie lied and lied and lied and lied and adamantly lied and dismissively lied and arrogantly lied — and was on the short list to be Donald Trump’s running mate and is to this day adamantly, dismissively, and arrogantly lying on Trump’s behalf.  (Trump, meanwhile, lies at a rate of more than 71 lies per hour.  More than one a minute.  And has become party to a new lawsuit over the last 30 years at a rate on average of one every three days.)

Yes, we know Trump could go into the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot people (and blame it on Hillary, like the “birther” movement) and he would still win, because — as with Trump University and the bankrupt Trump casinos and the bestselling book he didn’t write (the author of which calls him a “sociopath”) — Trump is all about winning! He’s gonna build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.

But it is appalling. Christie should be in jail. Like Trump, he is a liar and a bully and a sociopath.  (Though if Trump wins, he’s a pretty sure bet for a Cabinet post, no?)

Click here to vote, here to volunteer, here to contribute — and here, if you missed it, to see what Republicans are saying about Trump and Clinton.

I believe all of them:

Colin Powell:  Trump is “a national disgrace and an international pariah.”

Barbara Bush: “I don’t know how women can vote for [him]. . . . It’s incomprehensible to me.”

Marco Rubio: “A dangerous con man.”

Carly Fiorina: “A man who seems to only feel big when he’s trying to make other people feel small.”

Bobby Jindal: “An unserious and unstable narcissist.”

Mitt Romney: “A phony . . . playing the American public for suckers.”

Ted Cruz: “A pathological liar [and a] narcissist.”

Karl Rove: “A complete idiot . . . graceless and divisive.”

51 Former GOP National Security Officials: “Not qualified . . . dangerous.”

Lindsey Graham: “A race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot . . . empowering radical Islam . . . undercutting everything we stand for.”

Also Jeb Bush, when he  presented Hillary with the 2013 Liberty Medal: “Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy.”  And Henry Kissinger: “[Hillary Clinton] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” And John McCain: “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world . . . a very effective Secretary of State.” And Condoleezza Rice: “She’s a patriot. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.” Lindsey Graham: “She is one of the most effective secretaries of state, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.” And Paul Ryan: “[If she had become president in 2009], we’d have fixed the fiscal mess by now.”

Click here to vote.  Click here to volunteer.  Click here to contribute.

I believe all of them:

Colin Powell:  Trump is “a national disgrace and an international pariah.”

Barbara Bush: “I don’t know how women can vote for [him]. . . . It’s incomprehensible to me.”

Marco Rubio: “A dangerous con man.”

Carly Fiorina: “A man who seems to only feel big when he’s trying to make other people feel small.”

Bobby Jindal: “An unserious and unstable narcissist.”

Mitt Romney: “A phony . . . playing the American public for suckers.”

Ted Cruz: “A pathological liar [and a] narcissist.”

Karl Rove: “A complete idiot . . . graceless and divisive.”

51 Former GOP National Security Officials: “Not qualified . . . dangerous.”

Lindsey Graham: “A race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot . . . empowering radical Islam . . . undercutting everything we stand for.”

Also Jeb Bush, when he  presented Hillary with the 2013 Liberty Medal: “Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy.”  And Henry Kissinger: “[Hillary Clinton] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” And John McCain: “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world . . . a very effective Secretary of State.” And Condoleezza Rice: “She’s a patriot. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.” Lindsey Graham: “She is one of the most effective secretaries of state, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.” And Paul Ryan: “[If she had become president in 2009], we’d have fixed the fiscal mess by now.”

Click here to vote.  Click here to volunteer.  Click here to contribute.

[Third Estimated Tax Payment Due Today (for taxable income not subject to withholding).  Click here for instructions and the form.]

And speaking of taxes, how outrageous that Trump  will not release his, which in 2014 he said he “absolutely” w0uld if he ran for President.  We know he tells more than one lie per minute and has gotten involved in a new legal action every three days, on average, for the last 30 years.  But still. Click here to force his hand.  My guess: he pays less in tax than you do, gives less to charity than the Clintons, has far less income than he’d like people to believe, and is in bed with the Russians.

And as we now know used his foundation money to buy a $20,000 portrait of himself and illegally contribute $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi four days before she declined to join other attorneys general in investigating his fraudulent Trump University.

Want something to make you feel good for a change? (Average household income rose $2,800 last year, 3.5 million Americans were lifted out of poverty.)  Watch the President in Philadelphia Tuesday. It is a thing of joy.

For those living abroad or who know someone living abroad, there’s this, to make voting easy.

For Jill Stein voters — enough to swing the election as Ralph Nader did in 2000 — there’s this, from Current Affairs: Why Leftists Should Have No Problem Voting for Hillary.”*

And speaking of 2000 — there’s this must-read Paul Krugman column in the New York Times: Hillary Clinton Gets Gored.

Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.

You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.

Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.

And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.

True, there aren’t many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. But it’s hard to escape the impression that he’s being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.

Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.

Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.

But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.

So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.

Read my blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, and follow me on Twitter, @PaulKrugman.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Do you think my card will ever be charged the $10,000 — or that Reid Hoffman’s the $5 million — we pledged to veterans’ groups if Trump releases his taxes? Something he promised in 2014 he “absolutely” would do if he ran for President. Click here to join the fun. Because really, what’s Trump trying to hide?  That he’s not remotely as rich as he claims? That he and Melania pay less tax than you do?  That he and Melania give less to charity than Bill and Hillary? That he’s in bed with the Russians?

The market doesn’t seem cheap these days, but I bought some more GEC at $4.64 yesterday — albeit only with money I can truly afford to lose.

*Even in “safe” states it matters: we need the widest possible majority to show the world — and conspiracy theorists — she won by a mile.

Kevin R.: “It was a mistake for Hillary to make that ‘deplorables’ comment Friday, but click here for more on what many Trump supporters believe (blacks are lazier and less intelligent) and for the parody Donald Jr. chose to post (featuring Trump flanked by noted racists).”

Paul Abrams: “Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all racists are supporting him.”

No?

Parvez Sharma: “Does the malevolent Breitbart even know that the greatest of American Presidents, FDR — elected four times — was always battling grave illness, pain and polio and in a wheelchair to boot? And he lifted an entire generation out of poverty? And what about Camelot? JFK had not a single pain-free day as President. I think we all need to knock on doors in swing states and get every New Yorker to write long letters to their grandparents in South Florida.”

Click here to volunteer!

And, just before I introduce you to a likely Trump voter, may I point out that — horrible as Trump would have us believe things are, and disastrous a job as he would have us believe the President has done — the standard-of-living index, as rated by average Americans, has doubled on Obama’s watch?  We’d be still further along if the Republicans hadn’t blocked putting folks back to work revitalizing our infrastructure; hadn’t blocked refinancing of federal student loans at today’s low rates; hadn’t blocked hiking the minimum wage; hadn’t blocked the comprehensive immigration reform that passed the Senate 68-32. But from the edge of depression we’ve come a long, long way.

And now Roger Huffstetler’s post in case you missed Saturday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“Mama Sue, who you gonna vote for?” I asked my 86-year-old grandmother.

“Trump,” she said, without missing a beat. “I’ve never voted for a Democrat for president, and I’m too old to start now.”

Mama Sue represents generations of Huffstetlers who have worked with their hands for a living. When my grandfather filled out his draft card, he listed “Self Farming’’ as his occupation. A friend who taught me to make a half-Windsor knot jokingly called me “first in your family to tie a tie.” That’s about right.

I can empathize with people who wonder why someone like Mama Sue supports Donald Trump. He divides people into winners and losers. And “You have to be wealthy in order to be great,” he said at a campaign rally in May.

According to his definition of greatness, Mama Sue is a nobody. The rewards from decades of her hard work in mills accrued to others. One of nine children, she lived in rural North Carolina, where cotton mills outnumbered libraries. So when she decided in the ninth grade to leave school forever, no one was surprised. She had six kids over seven years; helped farm 120 acres; and sewed, spooled, or weaved for more than 40 years.

For Mama Sue, her grandchildren are her trophy case. Just as she once worked her hands over garments that found their way to others, she kneaded into all of us a sense of optimism, determination and curiosity.

But what I’m struggling with is simply dismissing Mama Sue because of who she votes for, instead of honoring and learning from her. A person is not who they vote for. That narrow world view is exactly the country Trump is trying to create: one where what separates us is more important than what connects us.

Contrary to Trump’s myopic focus on winning, American greatness is not found only in our victories. American greatness is the enduring pursuit of a more perfect union — together.

So many of us know no one who is supporting a different candidate. Instead of dismissing these people for how they vote, let’s aspire to defeat Trump every day through conversations with each other. By all means, discuss, cajole, twist arms. But most importantly, listen to the values behind people’s choices. You’ll see there’s so much of the struggle we share.

Let’s not become a country where we close our ears and hearts to each other. Let’s get back to the real work of reveling in the struggle together.

Over the years of calling Mama Sue, politics has come up from time to time, but not nearly as often as precipitation. And I always learn something from her. Her most important lesson is also the hardest learned. Over an eight-year period, Mama Sue had to bury three of her six adult children, including my dad. Every night before she goes to bed, using their pictures as a poor substitute, she kisses them goodnight. When she talks about it she’s sad but not bitter or defeated: “Life’s not always easy, Roger Dean, sometimes you just have to keep going even when you don’t want to.” And I admire her fierce dedication to this nation.

“I pray every day for America; I love this country,” says Mama Sue, grandmother to 12 and great-grandmother to a dozen more.

“I know you do,’’ I reply. “I know you do.”

Roger Dean Huffstetler is a Marine veteran and entrepreneur living in Charlottesville. You may contact him at rdhuffstetler@gmail.com.

 

Hillary is one tough cookie.  Can you imagine all the traveling she’s done and speeches she’s given — with pneumonia? 

I spoke for four minutes at the same event she keynoted Friday night — having done nothing much the two or three days before — and was pretty well shot for the rest of the weekend.

By contrast, she participated in the Commander-in-Chief forum (and was solid as a rock, despite her pneumonia), held a press conference the next morning, flew to Charlotte and spoke brilliantly and substantively for half an hour — watch! — then flew to Missouri for another joyful half hour — watch! — sat for photos and posted two deeply personal, affecting stories on Humans for New York — read them! — and who knows what else she did (oh, yeah; she coughed — well, she had pneumonia) — and then showed up at our dinner the next night and greeted 100 guests (that alone would knock me out for the day, but she does it several times a day) — and gave a strong speech, during which she deplored racists and homophobes.

Doesn’t Trump?

She said “half” his voters seemed to fall into that basket — which was a political faux pas she quickly walked back.

But consider: more than half Trump’s supporters think our President is a foreign-born Muslim (this poll put it over 60%).  And more than a few tweet horrible racist or homophobic or Islamophobic things. In 2016, shouldn’t this be deplored?  David Duke doesn’t think so, of course. But is he on the right side of history?  And is it not deplorable that Trump has amplified the message of fringe white supremacists to millions of his followers?

There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim or having been born in Kenya, of course, any more than there would be anything wrong with Trump’s having been born Heidi Drumpf in Essen before undergoing surgery and coming to America. It’s just that neither is true.  Trump and Obama were born in America and neither is Muslim or transgender.

But I digress.  My point is that, yes, Hillary can fall ill.

Who can’t?

(If she ever fell truly ill, we’d still have, in Tim Kaine, a President vastly preferable to Trump.)

But boy is she rugged.

I was at a “panel” 20 or so winters ago whose two participants were: Mr. Justice Harry Blackmun and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.  Some of us were aware that Hillary had the flu.  Justice Blackmun spoke for about 15 minutes — I forget the topic — and then it was Hillary’s turn.  She came up to the standing mike — there was no podium, so you could see her from head to toe — put her hands calmly by her sides and, where I would have begun with excuses, “I hope you’ll forgive me, I’ve been hacking all day and am flying on Sudafed” — she began exactly where Justice Blackmun left off . . . seamlessly segued to her own remarks . . . and then, after 15 minutes — without notes or a script or a single grammatical error, lost thread, or infelicitous phrase — came back to Justice Blackmun’s final thought long after I, at least, had forgotten that’s where she started.

It was a tour de force.  With the flu.

And do you know what?  She recovered from the flu, just as she will recover from pneumonia.

She went on to become a fine Senator and Secretary of State, just as she will go on, I think, to be the most qualified President ever elected.

Trump’s lab results are “astonishingly excellent.”  Bizarrely, he would be the “healthiest.”

But he would also be the least qualified.

We all know Trump has a secret plan to wipe out ISIS shortly after he takes office.  He loves his country, but not enough to have shared the plan when first conceived, to wipe them out a year earlier.  Patriotism has its limits.

And we assumed he wouldn’t share the plan with Hillary if SHE wins because — well, again, patriotism has its limits.

But we’ve been assured it’s an incredible secret plan because, for one thing, Trump “knows more about ISIS than the generals, if you want to know the truth.”

Yet now, as you’ve doubtless seen, he has REVEALED his plan!

(I’m posting this early, before tonight’s 8pm Eastern time NBC commander-in-chief forum, in case he should change the plan in the meantime or make it secret again.)

Here it is:

Immediately upon assuming office, he will summon his generals and give them 30 days to come up with a pan to defeat ISIS!

Trump’s secret plan is to ask the generals what to do.

Even though he knows more about ISIS than they do, “if you want to know the truth.”

So let’s talk a moment about the truth.

Trump lied about having a secret plan to defeat ISIS (or maybe had one but secretly decided, upon reflection, it was a dumb plan), but it helped him win the primary, and he’s all about winning.  Lying and going bankrupt and suing people and buying politicians is the way he rolls!  It’s The Art of the Deal!  Never mind that he lied about writing that book and that Tony Schwartz, who wrote it for him, calls him a sociopath.

Politico checked one Trump’s hour-long speeches and found 71 lies.  He was rattling along at 71 lies per hour.

That may not sound so bad, because we’ve all hit 80 or 90 on an open stretch of highway; but this isn’t miles per hour, it’s lies per hour.

More than a lie a minute!

“Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz told The New Yorker. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”

And — while we’re doing metrics — what about the 3,500 lawsuits he’s been involved with?

Over 30 years, that comes out to one every three days.

And that doesn’t even count the legal actions he managed to prevent, like the ones in Florida and now, we learn, Texas, charging Trump University with fraud.

A lawsuit every three days!

Can you imagine all the depositions he’s endured over the years?  Fortunately, he has “one of the best memories in the world” — a claim, he stated in the course of one such deposition, he can’t remember having made.

More than one lie a minute.

A lawsuit every three days.

A candidate so unfit for the Presidency that the Dallas Morning News just endorsed a Democrat for the first time in more than 75 years:

There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton.

We don’t come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation’s highest office since before World War II — if you’re counting, that’s more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. The party’s over-reliance on government and regulation to remedy the country’s ills is at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation. Our values are more about individual liberty, free markets and a strong national defense.

We’ve been critical of Clinton’s handling of certain issues in the past. But unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service and a willingness to delve into real policy.

Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest.

In Clinton’s eight years in the U.S. Senate, she displayed reach and influence in foreign affairs. Though conservatives like to paint her as nakedly partisan, on Capitol Hill she gained respect from Republicans for working across the aisle: Two-thirds of her bills had GOP co-sponsors and included common ground with some of Congress’ most conservative lawmakers.

As President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state, she helped make tough calls on the Middle East and the complex struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. It’s no accident that hundreds of Republican foreign policy hands back Clinton. She also has the support of dozens of top advisers from previous Republican administrations, including Henry Paulson, John Negroponte, Richard Armitage and Brent Scowcroft. Also on this list is Jim Glassman, the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

Clinton has remained dogged by questions about her honesty, her willingness to shade the truth. Her use of a private email server while secretary of state is a clear example of poor judgment. She should take additional steps to divorce allegations of influence peddling from the Clinton Foundation. And she must be more forthright with the public by holding news conferences, as opposed to relying on a shield of carefully scripted appearances and speeches.

Those are real shortcomings. But they pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups.

We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent’s.

Trump’s values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

After nearly four decades in the public spotlight, 25 of them on the national stage, Clinton is a known quantity. For all her warts, she is the candidate more likely to keep our nation safe, to protect American ideals and to work across the aisle to uphold the vital domestic institutions that rely on a competent, experienced president.

Hillary Clinton has spent years in the trenches doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation. In this race, at this time, she deserves your vote.

Amen, brother.

The last Clinton to hold office gave us eight years of peace and prosperity.  Then a poorly prepared businessman who wanted to cut taxes for the rich led us into a disastrous war and wrecked the national balance sheet.

Most of the — valid! — frustrations of the Trump people and the Bernie people are the result not of competent Democrats like Clinton/Gore, Obama/Biden, Clinton/Kaine, but of the near-treasonous obstruction of Republicans determined to see Obama fail, whatever the cost to the American people.  They wouldn’t pass the American Jobs Act, to put millions to work revitalizing our crumbling infrastructure; they wouldn’t hike the minimum wage; they wouldn’t enact the comprehensive immigration reform the Senate had passed 68-32; they wouldn’t pass universal background checks; they wouldn’t even hold hearings on Antonin Scalia’s replacement.

It’s true that in the 16 years since Bill Clinton left office, he and Hillary have made a small fortune “capitalizing on their celebrity” (though smaller, between the two of them, than Kim Kardashian has made all by herself).  But as sins go in America, why is their success such a big one? Or a sin at all?  Has anyone found a shred of evidence that they compromised America’s interests?  (Or failed to pay their taxes?)

And does it matter that while Trump was building and bankrupting casinos — gambling arguably wrecks more lives than it enriches — the Clintons were working to solve global health, poverty, environmental and human rights problems?

With that in mind, I offer Kevin Drum’s, “Sigh. Yet Another Non-Scandal at the Clinton Foundation.” In part:

. . . Go ahead and read the whole thing. There’s really nothing even remotely blurry or scandalous or shady or anything else. It’s just the standard way anyone operates who has multiple interests, multiple funding sources, and staffers who do work for multiple organizations. There’s no hint that any of the charges were incorrect, or that any of the purchases were misallocated. As near as I can tell, it was all entirely above board, and the GSA was actively involved in scrutinizing everything.

Basically, the reason for headlines like this is because Bill Clinton decided after his presidency to set up a large and active foundation that raised a ton of money for exceptionally worthy causes around the world. If he had decided to just lounge around instead, none of this would ever have come up. It’s a little hard to believe that he’s getting so much grief for this. . . .

Hillary is not perfect; only you and I are.  But she’s spent her entire life trying to help others . . . will be the best-prepared candidate ever to assume the presidency . . . and will be surrounded by really smart people, not thugs, able to continue the progress of the Clinton years, which George W. Bush set back; and of the Obama years, which the Republican Congress did all it could to impede.

Click here.