On October 22, 1964, philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turned down the honor — establishing a precedent that should have been followed by numerous Peace Prize winners, including Barack Obama and the European Union.
Trust must be earned; Hillary Rodham Clinton hasn’t earned it.
And yet, if the polls hold, Mrs. Clinton will be elected the next president of these United States — the first-ever female commander-in-chief, sure, but viewed by a clear majority of Americans as untrustworthy.
Part of the problem is her husband Bill. The former president has been accused of inappropriate sexual advances and liaisons . . . and even sex crimes. Hillary’s campaign rightly keeps reminding people that he is not on the ballot. But wasn’t Hillary going to have Bill “run the economy”?
Besides, what’s most relevant is how she defended her philandering husband against his women accusers, with threats, intimidation, and a decided lack of feminist solidarity.
Older folks remember “Travelgate” (a self-serving gaucherie); even Millennials should recall the Bosnian “sniper fire” (self-aggrandizing fib). Then there’s Benghazi. Documents obtained by Congress show Mrs. Clinton immediately telling her daughter that the attack was a planned terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate. Nonetheless, Hillary publicly blamed the attack on an Internet video.
It was “extremely careless” for Hillary to have set up a private email server, vulnerable to foreign hacking. But how sly to use BleachBit to destroy her hard drive, erasing any money trail. And then, she responded to reporters asking if she wiped her server: “Like with a cloth or something?” Chutzpah.
Ugliest, though, was one of the earliest: cattle futures.
Evidence convinces me that Hillary took a nearly $100,000 bribe disguised as profits from trading cattle futures that she did not actually trade. James Blair, “who at the time was outside counsel to Tyson Foods Inc., Arkansas’ largest employer,” helped Clinton supposedly “out of friendship, not to seek political gain for his state-regulated client.”
The windfall profit was more than lawyer Hillary and Attorney General (and then Governor) Bill earned together annually from their two fulltime jobs. Quite a risky “gamble.” Does Hillary seem like a reckless gambler?
So many scandals and lies. From the next president.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn’t exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn’t possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Temps modernes, 1961.
On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivered the first speech by a sitting U.S. President against lynching in the deep South.
This week, Krist Novoselic, rock-n-roll bassist of Nirvana fame and fellow board member of FairVote.org, appeared on Fox Business’s Kennedy to explain ranked choice voting.
Krist compared a single ranked ballot under the proposed system to two ballots under the current method. Often, a voter will mark the ballot for one candidate in the primary, and, if the candidate doesn’t make the cut, for another in the general election.
Ranked choice voting sort of collapses multi-candidate primaries and the shorter list of the general election into one, allowing voters to rank their choices so that when their first choice doesn’t make it, their less valued candidates get counted.
So if you prefer a candidate unlikely to win you aren’t “wasting” your vote by marking that candidate first, as today in most American elections, because your vote goes to your second choice.
The current system encourages “strategic voting,” where we deny our preferences to work around the defects of the electoral system. We end up voting for candidates we do not like, to avoid even worse, promoting mediocre and downright bad elected officials.
In Maine, Question 5 on the November ballot, sets up a ranked-choice ballot system for “the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative to Congress, Governor, State Senator and State Representative for elections held on or after January 1, 2018.” It has a not insignificant amount of support, from Mainers across the political spectrum.
But not from the state’s governor (and voicemail-performance-artist) Paul Le Page. He dubs it a way for “loser” candidates to get a “second chance.”
Just like a politician! He focuses on politicians’ chances not voters’ options.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor.
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, “The Story of Lin Ho and the Treasure of Fang-Tso” (1928)
On October 20, 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.
Exactly 15 years later, the Convention of 1818 signed between the United States and the United Kingdom which, among other things, settled the Canada-United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length.
A dark cloud hangs over tonight’s debate.
Not the sex assault scandals. Not the WikiLeaks email apocalypse. Not even the banning of Gov. Gary Johnson from the debate stage. I refer, instead, to the obvious failure of American foreign policy.
Last week, U.S. warships in the Red Sea received missile fire. Not from a “policy disaster” country, mind you, but flowing from the fruits of our flagship foreign policy success!
In September of 2014, President Barack Obama spoke directly to the nation about how he would fight ISIS, pointing to the “strategy . . . we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”
Roughly four months later, Yemen’s U.S.-supported government fell to Houthi rebels allegedly backed by Iran. Still, the Orwellian oasis that is the state department continued to “stand by” the president’s declaration of success there.
Then, Saudi Arabia and a number of other Sunni-run states began bombing and blockading (and then invading) Yemen. With U.S. military support. Amnesty International, aid groups and Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) allege war crimes, as the bombing campaign targets civilians and medical facilities. Barely a week ago, an errant strike killed 140 members of a funeral party.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. shoots Tomahawk missiles at Yemeni radar installations, our war department spokesman refers to the return fire as “not connected to the broader conflict in Yemen.”
Sure.
And what of Somalia, Obama’s other success? In recent weeks, al-Shabab fighters have twice attacked U.S. soldiers, and a U.S. air strike mistakenly killed 22 Somali soldiers in the country’s north.
Blindly pursuing a failed strategy, Obama’s undeclared wars go on and on. So where does the likely next president stand?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over.
In 1918 on this date, conservative writer Russell Kirk was born.