SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2016
Today’s Good News And Bad News
From Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call “Cincy Dave”

NEWS FLASH
After only an hour and a half standing in the sun at the 9/11 Memorial in New York this morning, Hillary left early.  Aides said that she had become “overheated.”  This can only mean one thing – that opponents will seize upon the incident to claim that she is indeed on death’s door, way too sick to serve as president.  Nothing short of her winning the Boston Marathon would convince them otherwise. Well, even that wouldn’t do it – they would just say she cheated.

MORE ON BONDI BRIBE
Trump’s bribe, some say donation, of $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to be in the news.  Besides the clear-cut case of Bondi, Trump also gave to 3 other States’ Attorneys General in the attempt to head off fraud cases against Trump University.  One of these was New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who was not deterred by the meager sum of $12,500 offered by Trump and continued the case anyway.   When the bribe didn’t work on Schneiderman, Trump launched a public relations and legal counterattack against Schneiderman. He accused him in a Twitter barrage of being a “lightweight hack” who brought the suit for political purposes and then filed a complaint against Schneiderman with the New York ethics agency (since dismissed).  In 2014, the conservative group Citizens United sued Schneiderman.  Now it has come out that Trump, through his “charity”, The Trump Foundation, donated $100,000 to Citizens United, to support the lawsuit.  This was the first time the foundation had ever given anything, much less a huge amount, to Citizens United.  That suit was also dismissed.   There is a pattern with Trump – when he gets in trouble with the law, he first tries donating to politicians to get them to drop whatever charges may be pending and if that doesn’t work, then he goes on offense – complaints and lawsuits, acting like he’s the victim of overzealous prosecution.  When all these fail, he eventually settles whatever it is with money. 

SCHLAFLY FUNERAL
The Donald spoke at the funeral of long time conservative anti-women’s rights activist Phyllis Schlafly yesterday.  “We are here today to honor the life and legacy of a truly great American patriot,” Trump said, reading prepared remarks from the podium. “A movement has lost its hero. Believe me, Phyllis was there for me when it was not at all fashionable. Trust me.”   Schlafly threw her support to Trump early in his campaign. This past week, her latest book, titled “The Conservative Case for Trump,” was released. She argued that conservative Christians should support Trump’s candidacy and follow in the steps of leaders such as Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr.  Her first book, promoting a presidential candidate was “A Choice, Not An Echo”, which supported the 1964 candidacy of Barry Goldwater.  Liberals, and especially liberal women, are pleased that she followed Jerry Falwell herself (but just not soon enough) and are sure that they are both now looking all over hell for each other. (Read more)

HILLARY WALKS BACK HER “DEPLORABLES” COMMENT
Hillary Clinton partially walked back comments she made on Friday night, describing half of Donald Trump’s supporters as being ”in a basket of deplorables who were driven by “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic sentiments.” She got a lot of heat from many of the deplorables, mostly because they objected to being put into baskets. Many, including Trump himself, demanded an apology.   They received less than that.   “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying ‘half’ — that was wrong,” Hillary said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.  So she regrets saying “half” – did she mean only 47 percent of Trump supporters are deplorable?  If not, what percentage are deplorable? Maybe it’s only 25 percent but what if it’s more than half?  Reporters should try to pin her down on an exact figure.  And about the baskets, shouldn’t she apologize for putting them in baskets?  Didn’t she know that deplorables hate to be in baskets?  Realistically there aren’t enough baskets to hold all of the deplorables anyway.   Seriously though, Hillary’s remark wasn’t intended for the deplorables because they aren’t going to vote for her anyway.  The remark was intended for those who may be fence-sitters and who may have reservations about getting into bed (or a basket) with those from the Alt-Right, the Breitbarts, David Dukes and other disagreeable, i.e. deplorable, types.  We like the word “deplorables” (pl.)  and think it should be used more often, especially with regard to politics.  It sounds so much better than all the other words like racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes and islamophobes – besides, it saves a lot of time and print space. It also describes a lot of politicians – local, state and national.   We nominate “deplorables” as the word of the year.   (Read more)  

JOHN HINCKLEY IS OUT!
John Hinkley Jr. , now 61, the wanna-be assassin of President Reagan was released from the nuthouse for good yesterday, after 35 years. He said he shot the President to impress actress Jodie Foster.  During his trial back then, Hinckley’s lawyers argued that he was crazy and the prosecution argued that he was sane.  The verdict was “crazy” and he was sent to the loony bin.  Shortly thereafter, to get him out, his lawyers started arguing that the was not crazy.  Therefore, to keep him in, the government prosecutors were forced to argue that he was crazy.  We don’t know how crazy he is now but he’s gonna be really crazy when he finds out that Jodie Foster is gay and married to a woman.  She also has 2 kids by another woman.  We don’t know exactly how that works, but if you want to know you could ask Dick Cheney’s daughter.

BAD NEWS FOR STRICKLAND
Former Governor Ted Strickland is trailing incumbent Rob Portman badly in the race for Ohio Senator.  So badly that the Democrat Senate Campaign Committee is considering cutting him loose as a lost cause and not wasting any more money on him.  Strickland must be short of funds himself because he has supposedly cut back on TV ad buys in SW Ohio to concentrate on more Democrat areas like Franklin and Cuyahoga counties.  The Ohio Senate seat was once considered a possible pick-up by the Democrats.

POLLS
Even though it is supposed to be God’s day off, NBC isn’t and they released 4 new state polls are today.   They show that (surprise) Trump is leading in Arizona and Georgia but Hillary has a slight edge in Nevada and New Hampshire among likely voters, even though all of them are close.

— More Good News And Bad News Tomorrow —