There’s something almost, well, laughable about how the professional political class stick to their only frame of reference, ‘history’, when it comes to the modern insurgency of non-political candidate Donald Trump.

[For those who were not around in the first 100 days, click the embed links as you read along to enlarge the bigger picture.]

This example is Politico, but the same has been written by scores of other political writers:

[…]  With fewer than 80 days to go and lagging in the polls, the Republican nominee will host a rally Tuesday in Austin, Texas, and another on Wednesday in Jackson, Mississippi. Both cities sit inside strongly Republican states that are safe and uncompetitive. (link)

A well-informed and ‘outside-the-beltway’ follower of current political events laughs at the “lagging in the polls” part. I digress…. “media-polls“, it’s all the Pavlovian Political Class know to guide them.

Pavlovian Journalism: Hear bell – Push Button – Wait for Pellet. “BING” Repeat.

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Wait,… didn’t we just pay them $1.7 billion, including $400 million for ‘ransom”?  You just can’t make this stuff up folks:

Washington – The State Department issued a warning on Monday urging U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to Iran, which has made the detention of Americans a priority.

The latest travel advisory, which emphasizes Iran’s desire to capture U.S. citizens, comes on the heels of a growing scandal over the Obama administration’s decision to pay Iran $400 million in cash on the same day that it freed several U.S. hostages.

The payment has been cast by lawmakers and others as a ransom payment and prompted concern among U.S. officials that Iran is making arresting Americans a priority.

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With Secretary Clinton essentially disappearing from the campaign trail (focusing almost exclusively on fundraising), many people have noted an unusual scheduled event for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appearing on her calendar, a fundraiser in Amsterdam – North Holland, by former U.S. Ambassador Timothy Broas .

If, as the media continue to espouse, Hillary Clinton has an “insurmountable lead” in the presidential race, why so much emphasis on raising money for a contest her team claims is easily already won?  What gives?… and why Amsterdam for a fundraiser?

Let’s take a look, beginning with the guy trying to raise the money for the campaign; the “speaker”, Timothy Broas. 

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By now most CTH readers are familiar with the more notoriously biased polling manipulators.

One of those is Patrick Murray from Monmouth University [@PollsterPatrick on Twitter].

If you want to know where his political affiliations lie, you only need to read his twitter feed. Murray has also been on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly several times selling his polling results to the unwitting audience.

Today, Monmouth via Patrick Murray presents a presidential poll of Ohio voters. The actual raw data (pdf available here – see pg, 6 and 7) showed Donald Trump with a lead in the result; however, Murray changed the data through weighting to show Hillary Clinton with a lead.

“GOUSAAMER114” pointed out the manipulation:

Monmouth just announced that Clinton leads Trump 43-39 in Ohio. But Pollster Patrick actually laid out what he did on pages 6 and 7 of the PDF.

He sampled 402 voters. In the unweighted sample, the split was 33.3R/29.3D/35.6I. With that split, Trump leads Clinton 41-39 in Ohio. But Pollster Patrick re-weighted it to a 29R/33D/37I split. Nothing else was re-weighted.

It’s obvious Murray didn’t expect to be called out on it – because when confronted with what he did, pollster Patrick Murray flat out lied. (more…)

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Huma Abedin, wife of Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner, is the closest confidante and adviser to Hillary Clinton.  Previously described as “Clinton’s second daughter”.

(Via New York Post) Top Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin played no formal role in a radical Muslim journal — even though she was listed as an editor on the hate-filled periodical’s masthead for a dozen years, a campaign rep claimed Sunday.

“My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said hours after The Post broke the bombshell story. “She did not play a role in editing at the publication.”

Merrill said Abedin was just a figurehead and not actually on staff at the Saudi-based and -funded Journal of Minority Muslim Affairs, which featured radically anti-feminist views and backed strict Islamic laws roundly criticized for oppressing women. (more…)

Several recent articles are spotlighting a ridiculous transparency in the way the U.S. media is covering the 2016 Presidential Election.

The New York Post has one such outline titled “American Journalism Collapsing Before Our Eyes“:

[…]  The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America. 

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

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According to several media reports Hillary Clinton has promised to stop taking foreign donations to her Clinton Foundation, ie. bribes, if she wins the presidency.

How very magnanimous of her…

NEW YORK, Aug. 19 (UPI) — The Clinton Foundation will stop accepting all foreign donations and former President Bill Clinton will step down from running the charitable organization if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, the group said. (link)

Leading some to wonder why she never took the same approach while she was acting as Secretary of State for the U.S.?  Then again, even this announcement is fraught with Clintonian parseltongue.   – SEE HERE for EXAMPLES –

Yesterday the official position from the White House and Democrat leadership was that Louisiana didn’t need political distractions as they coped with natural disaster recovery efforts from a historic flood.

Then Trump.

Donald Trump was greeted today in Baton Rouge and Lafayette Louisiana with thanks from volunteers, and cheers of appreciation from residents for “not forgetting” and for drawing “attention to their plight”.

Today the official position from the White House and Democrats is that “leadership is critical”:

WH says @POTUS "eager to get a first-hand look at the impact of the devastating floods" and assess the federal response.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 19, 2016

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The Iranian government specifically said –and broadcast on their television network (Feb)– a $400 million cash payment to them from the U.S. was a successfully extorted ransom payment to secure the release of American hostages.

However, on August 4th, the White House immediately claimed the $400 million cash payment made as part of the “Iran Deal” was not a ransom payment to secure the release of the U.S. hostages.  President Obama went on television to state: “no ransom was paid”:

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