Pun Salad

Another week closer to the election! I'm getting pretty good at using TiVo to dodge brain-rotting political ads.

PredictWise gives Hillary a 91% probability of winning, unchanged since last week. While FiveThirtyEight gives her a mere 83.9% shot.

At right, my second-choice candidate gives its acceptance speech.

In the phony standings this week, the Donald continues to dominate, but Hillary cuts into his lead some:

• We need more Hayekian insight in this election, sure, but this? "Salma Hayek shot down Trump for a date so he planted a phony story in the National Enquirer" And that phony story was…

  The actress said that her rejecting Trump then led to a story in the National Enquirer, which instead claimed Trump said he wouldn’t date the actress because she was “too short.”

  Ms. Hayek is, indeed, short; 5 foot 2, according to IMDB. Is that s a credible excuse for not dating her? We're only hearing her side of the story, sure, but Trump sounds like a high school petulant loser.

  Oh, right: he always sounds like a high school petulant loser.

• At the WSJ, Greg Ip does a reality check on Hillary's tax claims:

  “We are going to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share,” she said at Wednesday’s debate. “And there is no evidence whatsoever that that will slow down or diminish our growth.”

  Aside: to repeat a point I've made in the past, I despise the intelligence-insulting lie embedded in that small word "ask". If/when a tax increase is passed, nobody will be "asked" to cough up more money to the US Treasury. That money will be demanded. By implying otherwise, Hillary might as well add: "I'm wording things that way because I think anyone listening is stupid enough to believe me."

  That lie is nearly always accompanied by the bullshit phrase "fair share", which I've also loathed for a long time. Exactly how much is that fair share? Why, my friends, it always really means "more than they're paying now".

  The Tax Foundation's most recent analysis of income tax data:

  In 2013, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs below $36,841) earned 11.49 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid approximately $34 billion in taxes, or 2.78 percent of all income taxes in 2013.

  In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers (taxpayers with AGIs of $428,713 and above), earned 19.04 percent of all AGI in 2013, but paid 37.80 percent of all federal income taxes.

  In 2013, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $465 billion, or 37.80 percent of all income taxes, while the bottom 90 percent paid $372 billion, or 30.20 percent of all income taxes.

  It's my devout wish that someone would corner Hillary, or anyone else braying about "fair share", show these numbers, and ask: Is that "fair"? What would the numbers have to look like to make them "fair"?

  But I've been wishing that for a long time, and I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime.

• Er, where was I? Oh, yeah. Continuing with Hillary's claim that there's "no evidence whatsoever" enacting her proposals "will slow down or diminish our growth": that turns out to be a lie as well:

  Two independent analyses conclude that by raising taxes so dramatically on the wealthy, her program will crimp investment and economic growth, though they disagree on how much.

  Details at the link.

• Is Gary Johnson happy that Hillary Clinton's geography gaffe didn't get the "Aleppo Moment" treatment? Find out the shocking answer in Anthony L. Fisher's Reason article, titled "Gary Johnson's Not Happy That Hillary Clinton's Geography Gaffe Didn't Get the 'Aleppo Moment' Treatment".

  Clinton, whose candidacy is largely built on her foreign policy experience, described the Iraqi city of Mosul as a "border city," when it is in fact, 75 miles from the nearest border in one direction, and 100 miles from the border of Syria in another direction. As U.S. News and World Report's Steven Nelson noted, "Ireland is closer to Wales. Montreal is nearer to New York state and Damascus, Syria's capital, is closer to Israel – either its de facto or internationally recognized borders."

  Speaking of "fair", shouldn't all candidates get asked the same set of "gotcha" questions? Again, not holding my breath.