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Mr. Grenville: There is a small matter of you misinforming her in regard to your intellectual aptitude it might better for Miss Romana (I) to be appraised as to the extent of your family’s property before she learned of the deception.

Reginald Basset: Of course she might not mind being manacled to a chap who was mentally negligible once she’s seen the size of his country estate!

Mr. Grenville: I have observed that this is often to be the case with young ladies sir.

Doctor Who the Auntie Matter 2012

I woke up Saturday morning to the breathless headline that Ladd Ehlinger’s predictions concerning opposition research concerning Donald Trump had come true as per this headline:  Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005.

I suspect the specific phrase that has made folks like Paul Ryan cut and run is this as quoted by Allahpundit:

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

Stacy McCain has declared this game over

This election is over. Write “–30–” at the bottom and file it.

and Allahpundit says this:

If Clinton can’t win the election after this, she was never going to win the election, period.

And in any standard election year with any standard pol as the standard bearer of a party this would be true.

However there are two basic reasons why this isn’t necessarily true

  1. this is not a normal election year and Trump is not a normal candidate.
  2. His Opponent is Hillary Clinton.

Now I concede this is bad, not only in terms of what was said but what it implies.  I strongly disapprove of it as I suspect many others like me do.

And that’s why I’ve chosen this moment, Catholic Blogger that I am, to double down and re-endorse Donald Trump for President of the United States!

Why would I do this?  Quite simple, I’m not going to let myself be played.  Let me explain.

To those who have endorsed Donald Trump, the idea that he is both boastful and vulgar has been a given, it has been factored into the equation concerning him.  Furthermore his public persona has been out there for decades and he has never pretended to be anything other than what he is.  I further suspect the voting public has already factored this into their image of Trump and it is unlikely that this revelation is going to move those who haven’t made up their minds one way or the other despite the shocked faces at CNN.

Furthermore the base reasons why many of us decided to endorse Trump have not changed:

…I know that there will be times that Donald Trump will disappointment me just as I expected Mitt Romney to disappoint me on social issues and John McCain to disappoint me on immigration and George W Bush who disappointed me on spending and the bank bailouts.

But while Trump will occasionally disappoint me (when he does I’ll call him on it) I am convinced he will neither persecute me nor strip me of my rights for holding my Conservative Catholic beliefs and acting on them.

I am very sorry to say I can not make that same statement about Hillary Clinton, and I’m even sorrier to see the day when I would say this about a presidential candidate.

Nothing on that tape changes these truths.  Clinton is going to persecute me, Trump is not.

Furthermore in terms of electability there is one thing that still favors Donald Trump,  Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is the worst candidate for any office that I have seen since Martha Coakley.  There is nothing at all likable about her.  She is disliked and distrusted by the public by huge numbers, including many of those who will eventually vote for her.

Moreover the factor that I mentioned in my Trump endorsement still remains the same

I think that the sight of women and gay men being beaten by leftists because they support the presumptive GOP nominee, having it happen in full sight of police ordered to do nothing AND SEEING THOSE OFFICERS CHOOSING TO LET THEM BE BEATEN means that they can not count on the authorities to obey their oaths of office if they think doing so might cost them their jobs.

Even worse than this is the obvious question it raises: If leftists are willing to resort to violence and boast about it before an election when it might hurt their ability to persuade the people to vote for them, how much more willing will they be to violently suppress their political foes when such behavior is rewarded with electoral victory by the people?

What will that tell a populace that has already been arming itself nonstop for the last 4-6 years?

And that not even counting the basic corruption, the wholesale theft, the selling of the office of the president of the united states and the enabling of both islamic terror and our enemies in Russia, Iran, North Korea and China that will take place and the subsequent nuclear arms race that will follow.

There is also the whole business of Trump’s words vs the Clinton’s actions, my post from August really applies well here: (new emphasis here)

Our friends in the press and in culture say we should judge Donald Trump unacceptable by his words. They don’t like what he’s said about the border, about Rosie O’Donnell, about Kahn, about Islamic Terror etc etc etc. By these words in their eyes Donald Trump is unacceptable as president of the united states

These same people however do not want us to Judge Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama by their deeds. From paying ransoms that finance terror to Iran for hostages (It’s not really ransom), for exposing classified data to the russians and lying directly about it repeatedly, Hillary Clinton actually left people to die in Benghazi, actually blamed a video for it, actually imprisoned the person who made said video.

Clinton’s actual policies turned victory in Iraq into defeat, Syria into a mess, created ISIS, destabilized Libya, enabled Russia in the Ukraine and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

And that’s not even going into using the Clinton foundation for payola or protecting Bill Clinton from the consequences of his actions when it comes to sexually abusing women.

That also gives a clue as to how Trump should deal with this business, but that for a follow up post.

Those two factors along American’s uncertainty in the Obama economy  mean that this tape notwithstanding this race isn’t over and anyone who thinks it is hasn’t been paying attention for the last year.

Closing thoughts:

  1. The irony of course is the truth of Trump’s statement. There is nothing that increases a person of the opposite sex’s tolerance for bad behavior, mediocre looks, advanced age or disgusting habits as wealth power and fame.  It’s the equivalent of beer goggles and has culturally acknowledged as a factor in woman’s selection of a mate since time immemorial.
  2. This release isn’t about convincing the general public that Trump is unacceptable.  If this was the American Culture that I grew up in then Stacy McCain would be absolutely correct, however it not.  Thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the left and the media we no longer have the culture that I grew up with that would have rejected Trump en masse over these remarks.  We have a coarser, more vulgar culture where right and wrong are flexible things and standards are not what they are.  One might even say that the left has enabled the conditions that will allow Trump to get past this with minor if any damage to his prospects.

No this is about convincing those who still have to values to allow the election of someone who not only is directly opposed to all you hold dear but will persecute you on every level.  This is about tricking you into letting go of your one chance to stop your own destruction.  They want you to lose your nerve. Furthermore they want the GOP to lose their nerve and the press will do all they can do enable it.

In other words they are counting on you to be suckers.

I’m still voting Trump and I’m still encouraging you to keep your nerve and do the same.

Update:  It’s clear that many in the GOP are cutting and running in public and urging Trump to pull out of the race, that is sheer idiocy is self evident for three reasons.

  1. No matter how much you dislike what Trump said on that tape, he won the primaries.  He was legally and legitimately chosen as the nominee of the GOP.  Unless he drops dead or has a stroke or something it would be an illegitimate act to replace him on the ticket, particularly with someone, however qualified, who did not draw a single vote in the primaries.
  2. No matter how much you dislike the Trump voters, if you are a GOP incumbent or candidate in any state or country but the most red, you will need their votes to win an election.  Going after Trump is not going to win you any liberal leaning voters and is going to cost you conservative ones, you would be much better off saying something like this

    “I am happy to accept Donald Trump’s apology to America’s women for his intemperate private remarks on that tape and in that same spirit I invite [insert opponent’s name here] to demand that Secretary Clinton apolgize to American people, to america’s women to the woman abused by her Husband and defamed by the Clintons and their surrogates for political gain.”

  3. Finally do you really think the Democrats are going to allow Trump to be replaced on the ballot at this stage?  There will be lawsuits in 50 states challenging any attempt to pull him and the Bob Torricelli precedent notwithstanding you aren’t going to see a judiciary upholding such a move.

Update 3:  For the 2nd time since deciding to support Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination a person I know and respect has asked to be pulled from my email list because of a post.  That’s their right of course and I’ll respect it but I suggest rejecting my opinion is not going to make reality any better for conservatives, particularly under a Clinton administration.

Update 4: I respect Jonah Goldberg whose point is valid:

Either way, this video is not an aberration. It is not a special circumstance. It’s him. There’s no pivot in him. There’s no “presidential” switch to flip. He’s Donald Trump all the way down.

However given the reality that either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States I ask Jonah this question:

If we concede that Donald Trump’s character is bad, Would it be better for the country to have a President of poor character who will be under intense scrutiny by the press, pols and law enforcement agencies (Trump) or to have a President of poor character who will be given a pass and or defended by the press, the pols and apparently the FBI regardless of what they say or do (Hillary).

I submit and suggest the answer is clearly the former.

Update 5: instalanche thanks Glenn. If you like this piece check out my interviews with attendees of a Trump rally in Bedford NH here, but I have to disagree with the word use of “Happy” it’s more like necessary.

Right now a lot of people are forgetting that for good or I’ll the only thing standing between us and the financial, military, security, cultural and constitutional rights disaster that a Hillary Clinton administration would be is Donald Trump.

People are in panic and when the line is breaking someone has to pick up the flag and shout “FORWARD”. And if it costs some me some readers then so be it.

Update 6: Hey look at all those democrats in that video lining up behind Bill Clinton to support him after impeachment on 12/19/1998. I wonder how many of them are now saying Trump is unfit for the presidency due to his words?

Update 7: How to Handle the tape at the Debate Tomorrow? Roy Bean the Clintons and Alinsky their surrogates
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You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.’ But the plans were on display…’ o n display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’ `That’s the display department.’ `With a torch.’ `Ah, well the lights had probably gone.’ `So had the stairs.’ `But look you found the notice didn’t you?’ `Yes,’ said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard”.’

Douglas Adams The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 1979 — Douglas Adams.

On Tuesday I led with a piece concerning the hilarity of crying “security” with Anthony Weiner and Huma when Bill Clinton is about to be let back into the white house. In that piece I had a quote from Donny Deutsch

Panelist Donny Deutsch guessed that Trump would have no problem counter-punching with the Epstein connection whenever he was hit for his own behavior with women, as he was last weekend in a piece in the New York Times.

“Here’s the tennis game,” Deutsch said. “Donald Trump kissed a woman in a bathing suit. Trump hits back: Tell me about the president’s relationship with a guy named Jeffrey Epstein. That’s your tennis match.”

In my original piece I had video from the Washington Free Beacon story containing that entire exchange. You might wonder why I didn’t include said video of Deutsch mentioning Jeffery Epstein and see the reaction of the people at the table.

Here is why

nbc copywright

If you look at the view count you will see that seven minute clip had over 100,000 views before NBC decided to play copyright police game.

Maybe it’s just me but given how often we see stuff at mediaite et al it seems rather unusual for a news network to make a copyright claim over a clip from a news story that used as “fair use” by another news organization. Could this suggest that NBC wants to keep this clip out of the public view because it might hurt Hillary?

I can see the NBC reaction now: Nonsense, we’re not censoring the clip at all. The seven minute clip IS available IF you

Go to the Morning Joe site

Hit search taking you to the MSNBC search engine

Search for Donald Trump

Narrow the field to Morning Joe

Narrow the field to May 16th 2016

and sit through all the videos till you find the right one.

And skip ahead to the 12 minute mark on that video.

If you do so you CAN find the clip and watch the Morning Joe panel’s reaction to what Donny Deutsch says

So,  You’ll have absolutely no problem sharing this clip with people far and wide and giving them a hint about the relationship between Jeffery Epstein and Bill Clinton and how the media views it…provided you are someone like me who

already saw the clip

remembered what show it was on

knew what day it was broadcast

And knew what time segment to look for 

As for everyone else NBC says to you: Beware of the Leopard!

During the Clinton impeachment hearings Democrat pols and the media that serves them knew what Bill Clinton was and what he had done, they had a choice:  They could back him up, despite the facts OR they could pressure him to resign and be replaced by Al Gore.

They choose the former.

DaTechGuy 1/15/2016

Yesterday the Muruna marriage between Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin finally became more costly than it was worth.

Rep. Anthony Weiner has been caught in a “sexting” scandal, and this proved to be the straw that finally broke the camel’s back:

Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, announced today that she is separating from her husband, disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

I’m written plenty about this marriage in the past  but as I was watching Jake Tapper on Monday discussing this and the security implication of blackmail for the husband of a top aide of Hillary Clinton my head started spinning.

We are seriously talking about the security implication of Anthony Weiner due to his sexual peccadilloes when we are talking about letting Bill freaking Clinton back into the White House?

I know the MSM is still trying to pretend that this is no big deal but I have two words to say to such people:

Jeffrey Epstein

Or as Donnie Deutch put it back in may:

“Here’s the tennis game,” Deutsch said. “Donald Trump kissed a woman in a bathing suit. Trump hits back: Tell me about the president’s relationship with a guy named Jeffrey Epstein. That’s your tennis match.”

If I was Donald Trump I’d use the Weiner scandal as an excuse to bring up Jeffrey Epstein, of course the plan might be to wait till first debate to get a reaction out of Hillary and her media guards.

Closing thought: It will be interesting to see if that video still works tomorrow

Update:  Reversed two letters in Jeffrey, corrected

The Mask has dropped from Justice Ruth Ginsberg:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she doesn’t want to conjure up the possibility of Donald Trump in the White House.“I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”Ginsburg, on the high court since 1993, told the Times the prospect of a Trump presidency reminded her of the type of wry comment her late husband might have made.“‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’” Justice Ginsburg said.

Not only did the mask of impartiality drop she refused to put it back on and doubled down:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s well-known candor was on display in her chambers late Monday, when she declined to retreat from her earlier criticism of Donald Trump and even elaborated on it.

“He is a faker,” she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

As you might have heard this got some critique from Donald Trump but it also got a lot of critique from liberals as well:

The New York Times:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling. …

In this election cycle in particular, the potential of a new president to affect the balance of the court has taken on great importance, with the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, other justices are nearing an age when retirement would not be surprising. That makes it vital that the court remain outside the presidential process. And just imagine if this were 2000 and the resolution of the election depended on a Supreme Court decision. Could anyone now argue with a straight face that Justice Ginsburg’s only guide would be the law?

The Washington Post

I first wrote about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s controversial comments about Donald Trump on Monday. Since then, the situation has erupted into an all-out feud, and now the editorial boards of both the New York Times and The Washington Post have weighed in against Ginsburg’s decision to insert herself into the 2016 campaign…I’ll say at the top what I’ve said before: It’s hard if not impossible to find a direct analog to what Ginsburg has said in recent days. Supreme Court experts I’ve spoken to were unaware of any justices getting so directly and vocally involved — or involved at all, really — in a presidential campaign.

Slate:

There is really very little to debate about the ethics of Ginsburg’s comments. They were plainly a violation, the kind of partisan partiality that judicial ethics codes strive to prevent. But Ginsburg, who is a quietly canny judicial and political strategist, surely knows that her comments were an ethical error. That leads to a fascinating question: Why would the justice risk her reputation and good standing—and even her power to hear cases involving Trump—for a few quick jabs at the candidate? The answer, I suspect, is that Ginsburg has decided to sacrifice some of her prestige in order to send as clear a warning signal about Trump as she possibly can. The subtext of Ginsburg’s comments, of her willingness to comment, is that Trump poses an unparalleled threat to this country—a threat so great that she will abandon judicial propriety in order to warn against looming disaster.

To be clear, what Ginsburg is doing right now—pushing her case against Trump through on-the-record interviews—is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. As a general rule, justices should refrain from commenting on politics, period. That dictate applies to 83-year-old internet folk heroes as strictly as it applies to anybody else who dons judicial robes. The independence of our judiciary—and just as critically, its appearance of impartiality—hinges on a consistent separation between itself and the other branches of government. That means no proclamations of loyalty to any candidate, or admissions of distaste of any other.

Even CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin was not happy as reported by Newsbusters:

No, I don’t think there’s any chance she will resign, but I think it’s appropriate to criticize her about this. This is not how Supreme Court justices have talked traditionally. They do not get involved in day-to-day political controversies. They do not endorse or un-endorse candidates.

Describing himself as a “great admirer” of Justice Ginsburg, he then got to the subject of recusal as he added:

And I think there are lots of good reasons for that, not least of which, something involving the election may come before the Supreme Court in a Bush V. Gore type case. And I think she’d have to recuse herself at this point. 

I just think, as someone who is a great admirer of Justice Ginsburg, she is completely wrong in this situation, and she should not be making these kinds of political statements.

And cartoonists as well:

In bashing Donald Trump, some say Ruth Bader Ginsburg just crossed a very important line https://t.co/ys898EjUeT pic.twitter.com/lDYBIu0IMU

— The Patriot (@ThePatriot143) July 13, 2016

A lot of people are upset about this ethical violation.

I’m not.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a complete abrogation of her duty as a judge on the highest court in the land and an action unworthy of her and her position. Furthermore it sets a horrible precedent for the future.

However there is one other consideration.

If there is one thing that anyone who watches the court knows it that any 5-4 decision will involve a “conservative’ justice voting with liberals. You will not and have not seen any of the liberals, Kagan, Sotomayor or Ginsberg being the deciding vote for a case going in the direction of conservatives.

Justice Ginsberg’s public statements make it plan for all to see that our liberal friends on the Supreme Court are simple ideologues and that their vote on any key issue dividing left and right would be no different if every brief in support of the liberal position consisted of the sentence: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” repeated ad infinitum.

Ann Althouse gets it

In the case of Justice Ginsburg, Trump isn’t inferring bias and politics from whatgroup she belongs to. It’s a reaction to her particular statements. It’s individual. She openly displayed her political leanings and her desire for political allies on the Court and her intent, going forward, to use those allies to get to a majority that would overrule cases that recognize important constitutional rights — includingHeller, the case that says there is an individual right to bear arms.

And here’s where it becomes clear that the NYT editorial proceeds upon the second reason I posited above, that Justice Ginsburg’s particular political statements are dangerous and damaging to the political cause she and the NYT support. “In this election cycle in particular,” it’s important to keep voters believing that judges will be impartial and above politics, and here’s Ginsburg “call[ing] her own commitment to impartiality into question.” The Times tries to pass this off as Ginsburg “choos[ing] to descend toward [Trump’s] level,” but she’s not joining Trump, she’s proving him right: Judges are political, and that’s a bad thing. Perhaps Curiel didn’t deserve the criticism, but Ginsburg does, and it’s very irritating to the NYT, it would seem, because the Curiel incident was so effectively used against Trump, and then along comes Ginsburg displaying herself as pleased to be political.

Justice Ginsburg unethical behavior has provided a valuable service to the entire nature by allowing them to see that lie that the NY Times and other want to keep hidden.  The question becomes will the American people react the way the NYT and the left fears they will?

One can only hope but no matter how they do, rest assured the American people will get the president and the justice system we deserve.

Sorta Update: Justice Ginsburg has finally figured out she was not helping her cause.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday she regrets remarks she made earlier this week to CNN and other news outlets criticizing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” Ginsburg said in a statement. “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.”

The best part of this non-apology is it allowed Donald Trump the high ground in response:

“It wasn’t really an apology, but we have to move on anyway. It’s just something that should not have taken place,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said.

“It’s just a very disappointing moment for me because the Supreme Court is above that kind of rhetoric, those words. … But she acknowledged she made a mistake, and I’ll accept that.”

The greatest ally Trump has in this election are the people who oppose him.