"From coast to coast, conservatives score huge victories in off-year elections."

A WaPo headline.

Did that much really happen? There's Matt Bevin, elected governor in Kentucky, and there's the failure of the Houston Equal Right Ordinance, but what else? Ohio's rejection of the weird marijuana legalization scheme wasn't necessarily a conservative matter, because of the odd way it would have empowered an elite group of growers. Democrats in Virginia couldn't pick up even one seat to get to a majority in the state Senate, and San Francisco voted out the sheriff who stood for the "sanctuary city" policy.

Is that so huge? The linked article offers "eight takeaways" from the Bevin victory, which I'll summarize as briefly as I can: 1. outsider, 2. Kim Davis, 3. The South!, 4. Rand Paul, 5. Right to Work, 6. maybe not that radical, 7. pollsters wrong, 8. low turnout. 

That 8th point seems to explain why a bunch of liberal victories are tucked away down at the bottom of the article. Readers are supposed to panic.

"Which doctor is smarter about Hillary Clinton: Matt Drudge or a doctor?"

Asks WaPo's Philip Bump, who consults a doctor, his own doctor, to question whether Hillary Clinton has hypothyroidism.

"One would expect if they were hypothyroid there would be an inability to function under duress for an extended period of time because the level of octane in the bloodstream is low," [Philip Bump's doctor] said. "The fact that she was able to withstand that intensity for 11 hours is probably a test to show that she has normal thyroid function."

But, as Bump's update admits, it's an easily researched fact that Hillary Clinton has been diagnosed by her own doctor as having hypothyroidism. So who's smarter, indeed?

The top-rated comments at WaPo are cruel: "How embarrassing. The Washington Post didn't do their fact checking and Drudge had to inform them. Pathetic." "It's LITERALLY linked on their website... 'In summary, Mrs. Clinton is a healthy female, with hypothyroidism.'" "Wow, you'd think someone who calls himself a reporter would do a little bit of fact-checking before scurrying to prop up Democrat talking points."

Even the best propping-up of Hillary comes from the comments: "If Hillary... by chance were unwell, what would it say about the Committee that a sick old lady whupped them?" That was written, by one "Owkrender" at 10/23/2015 11:07 AM CDT. Approximately 3 hours later, WaPo put up "Clinton’s curse and her salvation: Her enemies":

That was proved once again during her 11-hour inquisition by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, a Republican-engineered train wreck from which she emerged without a scratch.

Pale, hoarse and weary as she was, the former secretary of state left the hearing room looking stronger than she has at any point since she announced her second campaign for president....

I'm completely distracted by "Pale, hoarse." I mean, don't people have the kind of basic knowledge of The Bible that would keep them from putting those 2 words together?



The "Pale Horse" is death!

I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Pale, hoarse... as she was....

Did you get the memo?

The NYT sure did.

Hillary won that debate. She met the test. The nomination is clinched. All true Democrats stand down. Accept destiny. It is won.

The Washington Post got the memo:



Now, I've got to admit... the memo is kind of correct. It's too late for Biden to jump in. Without a significant stumble by Clinton, the debate drives home how wrong it would be for Biden to step on her now. Bernie Sanders can't be President. He's a socialist! He gave a wonderful paean to socialism last night. And who were those other guys on the stage? I mean, really, who the hell were they? Other than Martin O'Malley. Gee, he looked handsome and tall, and he was really trying to register an impression. And you've got to give him credit for at least being a Democrat, which is not a distinction any of the other men on the stage seem to have. You'd think that would be a bare minimum for the Democratic nomination. We'll see if O'Malley gets any traction in the polls, now. It's unlikely. The acceptance of Hillary is jelling. So sayeth the memo.

Here's Bernie's paean to socialism (from WaPo's nicely annotated transcript), in response to Anderson Cooper's question whether a "democratic socialist" can win:

Well, we're gonna win because first, we're gonna explain what democratic socialism is. And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent -- almost -- own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have -- we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.

ADDED: CNN got the memo:

Did I slight Adam Liptak? His NYT Supreme Court piece is titled: "Supreme Court Prepares to Take On Politically Charged Cases."

My first post of the day — my first-Monday-in-October post — focuses on the Washington Post article "because the headline so perfectly sums up the reason mainstream media think you could or should care: 'Supreme Court faces politically charged election-year docket.'"

But now I see the NYT article has nearly the same headline: "Supreme Court Prepares to Take On Politically Charged Cases."

Politically Charged!!!

Is that some kind of secret code or do court-focused reporters just naturally end up there? The idea — as observed in the earlier post — is, I think, that ordinary reader will only be interested in the court if they feel that it's really politics. That's simple titillation. But, of course, I must also suspect The Washington Post and The New York Times of continually massaging its readers into voting for liberals, and creating anxiety about the Court's effect on political issues is the longstanding convention.

But "politically charged" is a great phrase, one I'm going to watch. It lets you call things political without taking responsibility for charging anyone with responsibility for the politically charge. For example, it was said that the Pope's visit to the U.S. was "politically charged," but that didn't mean the Pope is a politico. He might be, but the headline wasn't saying so.

ADDED: The New York Times celebrates the tweeting expertise of Donald Trump in "Pithy, Mean and Powerful: How Donald Trump Mastered Twitter for 2016."

In an interview at his office — interrupted repeatedly by Mr. Trump’s picking up his Samsung Galaxy cellphone, loading new tweets with his index finger and marveling at his nonstop mentions (“Watch this!” he implored) — the candidate compared his Twitter feed to a newspaper with a single, glorious voice: his own.

“The Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters,” he said, quoting a fan.

In the past, Mr. Trump said, when dealing with a dishonest rival “there was nothing you can do other than sue.”

“Which I’ve done,” he added. “But it’s a long process.”

Now, he simply tweets. Caustically, colorfully and repeatedly.

Suddenly, he said of his foes, “I have more power than they do. I can let people know that they were a fraud... I can let people know that they have no talent, that they didn’t know what they’re doing. You have a voice.”

Much more at the link.