"... President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are essentially the same person... both men utterly without shame, backed by parties utterly without spine, protected by big media outlets utterly without integrity."

"They are both funded by a Las Vegas casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. They are both making support for Israel a 'Republican' cause — no longer a bipartisan one. And they each could shoot an innocent man in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue and their supporters would say the victim had it coming. As a result, they are each free to cross red lines that their predecessors never dared to. Which is why I believe that four more years of Netanyahu, which is almost certain after Israel’s election on Tuesday, and six more years of Trump, which is a real possibility, will hasten the emergence of an America and an Israel where respect for civility, democracy, an independent judiciary and independent media are no longer examples for others to follow.... Both men have no close friends. The one major difference between them is that Bibi is very smart, an avid reader and a deft tactician in managing relations with Israel’s neighbors and big powers, such as America, Russia, India and China. Trump is clever but probably has not read a book in years.... Neither man is interested in being a leader for all their people....  Bibi’s strategy was to demonize Israeli Arabs, and Trump’s was to demonize Muslims and Mexicans and immigrants from what he called 'shithole' countries. Both men have rebuilt their parties around themselves and their personal politics, and both believe that as long as they can hold their bases by stoking enough fear and cultural division, they can win — and they’re willing to sacrifice any values or norms to do so."

Writes Thomas Friedman — he's not "stoking... fear and cultural division," is he? — in The New York Times.

"Having Owned Up to Buying Newspaper, Adelsons Go Silent."

NYT headline.

"Owned up"... like you're doing something wrong if you buy a newspaper!

From the OED:

c. intr. orig. U.S. colloq. to own up: to make a full admission or confession, esp. when challenged or pressed; to confess frankly (to something)....

1844 ‘J. Slick’ High Life N.Y. II. xxxii. 242 A feller..must be a sneakin shote if he can't pick up courage tu own up tu the truth, like a man.
1848 E. Bennett Renegade iv. 37, I 'spect I mought as well own up, being's I've got cotched in my own trap....
1890 Boston (U.S.) Jrnl. 23 May 1/6 On being arrested he owned up to his crime....
2000 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 18 June 81/2 Your response if you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar is either to say it wasn't me and keep denying it, or own up and take it.

"Jeb Bush on Friday ordered a wholesale restructuring of his struggling campaign after suffering miserably in the polls despite massive spending and a deep donor network."

Politico reports today.

Although campaign officials insisted they're still in strong shape, the cuts — combined with Bush's stagnant poll numbers — suggest otherwise.... While there were signs the campaign faced trouble, Bush's team didn't know the depths of its problems until it got to look at the other campaigns' finance reports.... Aside from Donald Trump, Bush also has the highest burn rate, spending 86 percent of what he raised last quarter....

Among establishment donors, Bush has fought hard to stave off Rubio, whose superior abilities on the stump and comparatively lean campaign operation have impressed kingmakers like Sheldon Adelson and others. Another Bush donor, the CEO of a large financial firm, said the campaign is in fact scared of Rubio and rightly so. “Marco is a very real and very dangerous candidate in this race,” the donor said.

Hey, I said it yesterday: "It's time for Jeb Bush to withdraw and endorse Marco Rubio." Don't fight him. Help him. It's too late and too dire for anything else. Now's your chance to help the moderate GOP cause. Fighting Rubio is not the answer! Be practical and realistic.

Mitt Romney steps up to the role of keeping Republicans from attacking Republicans.

From yesterday's "Meet the Press":

CHUCK TODD: There have been some reports that you and Sheldon Adelson, the big, Las Vegas casino mogul, that you want to avoid a repeat of the primary chaos you went through in 2012. What does that mean? What was the chaos of 2012 that you don't want to see repeated for the Republican field in 2016?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, I think that's a comment I'll make very broadly, which is I think it's harmful in a process if you have Republicans attacking Republicans. And so I think it's very effective if instead we can talk about the differences between our views to help people in the middle class and help the poor versus the views in our opposition, as opposed to going after one another. And I'm not saying I was perfect in that regard either. But going back to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, that kinda makes a lot of sense for our party.

Embedded in Romney's answer is an assumption that Republicans did go too far attacking Republicans in the 2012 primaries and unwisely burdened the Romney campaign. When you think about that now, what do you remember? What hurt him? What stifling of vigorous debate would — in retrospect — have been a better idea? I have trouble calling to mind anything specific. I asked Meade, and he came right up with this:



By the way, Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" has its own Wikipedia page:

Isn't it heartening that $3 billion was spent on the presidential election?

Each major-party candidate's campaign spent $1 billion and there were also over $1 billion spent by outsiders to the campaigns. But I'm looking at the bright side, which is hinted at by the headline for the NYT article on the subject: "Little to Show for Cash Flood by Big Donors."

So much money is spent that no one is big enough to be big. Everyone — all the way up to Sheldon Adelson, who dumped $300 million into the ocean of money — is diluted into smallness.

More speech is the classic remedy for whatever is considered the bad speech in the marketplace of ideas. Think about whether more money can work as the remedy for whatever you're thinking is the bad money in campaign finance.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee apologizes for saying Republicans had obtained "Chinese prostitution money."

The DCCC admits to making "unsubstantiated allegations," which "was wrong." (Note the grammatical correctness of the verb "was." They don't admit the allegations were wrong, only that making them was wrong.)

The DCCC had seized on an Associated Press report indicating that a former executive at the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in China alleged in legal documents that [Sheldon] Adelson was aware of prostitution at the casino’s location in Macau. Adelson is CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. “What will Speaker Boehner, Leader Cantor and House Republicans do with their Chinese prostitution money?” the DCCC had asked on its website, according to ABC News. The taunt was referring to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader.

Their Chinese prostitution money!

Fighting for reelection, Obama spent $58 million — $38 million on TV ads alone.

According to this L.A. Times article, which is illustrated, for some reason, with a photograph of Sheldon Adelson — a Romney donor — gesturing at some lit-up models of what are presumably models of casinos. (He's identified as a "casino mogul.")

A "mogul," which originally referred to "the successive heads of the Muslim dynasty founded by Zahīr-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (1483–1530), which ruled an empire covering a large part of South Asia from the 16th to the 19th centuries," now denotes "An important, influential, or dominant person; an autocrat," according to the OED, which gives the early example "I am the Sultan of this place: Mr. Limberham is the Mogol of the next Mansion" — a line spoken by a character named Brainsick, in the play "Limberham (or The Kind Keeper)," by John Dryden.

The photo of Adelson in the L.A. Times makes him seem capable of moving skyscrapers like big chess pieces. What a manipulative fellow! He gave $10 million in June to a Romney super PAC called Restore Our Future. ("Restore" means to bring back. Back to the future.) Restore Our Future raised $20.6 million in June. Meanwhile, Obama's super PAC, Priorities USA Action took in only $6 million.

Romney's campaign raised much more money than did Obama — $106 million to $70 million (in June). So Obama is lagging in the fundraising and also spending much more.

Heading into July, Romney and his party allies were left with nearly $170 million on hand, while Obama and the Democrats had $147 million.

That's not that huge of a difference, but Obama is such a big spender. And what did he get for all that spending? I think the idea was to frame Romney as an evil capitalist, and it hasn't worked out that well. 1. Despite the heavy attack on Romney, Obama hasn't moved up in the polls, and 2. The attack on capitalism went too far and touched off an effective counterattack. Not only has Obama depleted his funds, he's depleted his argument against Romney.

The Obama campaign’s attempt to portray Mitt Romney as the villainous Bane from “The Dark Knight Rises” appears to be a big flop. And the problem for Obama is, he really doesn’t have a Plan B.

 ADDED: The Obama campaign spent more than $2.6 on polling alone, just in June. What are they finding out? Why isn't that information giving them more useful ideas about how to win? Reminds me of the stimulus program, dumping huge amounts of money on things that done even pan out.