Conservatives Describe Donald Trump As 'Mental Patient' After Cincinatti Speech

GOP Accidentally Does Clinton A Favor MSNBC

I honestly have no idea what Republicans thought they were going to achieve with this spectacle. Did GOP lawmakers expect Comey to declare, “Now that you’ve yelled at me for a few hours, I’ve changed my mind and now support criminal charges against Clinton”?
Before the hearing Republicans had a series of fairly specific talking points: Clinton lied to the FBI; she created a national security threat; she plays by a different set of rules than everyone else. But instead of simply repeating those talking points, GOP lawmakers invited the FBI director – a lifelong Republican, whom GOP officials have repeatedly praised for his honesty – to testify about how wrong the party’s arguments are.
“We have no basis to believe she lied to the FBI,” Comey said. Asked about Clinton benefiting from a different set of rules, he responded, “It’s not true.” Asked about classified emails, Comey said there were only three messages – each of which were not properly marked classified when she received them.

Is Donald Trump Losing It? The New Yorker

Watching Donald Trump Wednesday night, I find myself agreeing with conservative Republicans the day after -- an event that rarely happens today. I agree that Donald Trump appeared unhinged and nearly pathologically possessed at moments. HE needs an exorcism, not that I support them. But with exorcisms on the rise in America, the Catholic bishops should focus on Trump, not progressive women.

In the political-campaigning industry, there is a tactic sometimes referred to as the “I am not a child molester” strategy. With no real evidence necessary, one makes a damaging claim about your opponent, forcing him or her to deny it. Trump doesn't just fall into this trap of defending himself and taking comments seriously. If you watch him carefully, you note that he takes personal offense at everything, unable to stay focused on more important talking points. According to a tally by the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale, who tweeted a partial transcript of the speech, Trump said the word “star” twenty-eight times Wednesday night, unable to contain his anger over major complaints about last weekend's tweet of Hillary against a six-pointed star with plenty of cash behind her image. Trump ended his tirade with a new twist to the story. Referring to the decision to replace the star with a circle, this would-be US president said that he had told some of his campaign workers, “Too bad, you should have left it up. I would have rather defended it.”

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Michael Barbaro, and Jonathan Mahler, described the Trump spectacle as “a striking display of self-sabotage from a presumptive presidential nominee.”

Others were less kind. Live-tweeting his response to the speech, John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a New York Post columnist, wrote, “Trump whining that anyone would say he praised Saddam Hussein last night. The man is a mental patient.” Later, Podhoretz, a confirmed member of the Never Trump movement, added, “Just send the delegates this speech and lock them in a room and make them watch it all the way through.” He wasn’t the only one to wonder aloud if Trump had lost his marbles. Kyle Foley, a commentator for the conservative Web site Red State, wrote, “If you choose to support Trump, that is absolutely your prerogative, but he has proved tonight (and pretty much every night) that he is absolutely and certifiably insane.”'

Hillary Clinton Headlines July 2016

Jewish Groups Condemn Hate After Donald Trump Defends 'Star of David' Tweet TIME

Bernie Sanders Makes His Last Stand With Democratic Platform MSNBC

Poll: Clinton Ahead Nationally Amid Widespread Dissatisfaction The Hill

Clinton Campaign Expands Latino Operation To Take On Trump BuzzFeed

Britain will have first female prime minister since Margaret Thatcher Washington Post

One month later, California finishes its vote count, and Clinton wins Washington Post

Clinton, Sanders delegates demand stronger anti-TPP language in platform Politico

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Strike Different Tones After Dallas Shooting Politico

Darrell Issa Calls For Government Shutdown If Hillary Clinton Is Not Charged Think Progress

Green Party candidate: Prosecute Clinton The Hill

Trump Supporters Claim They Will Murder Hillary Clinton

There Will Be Blood: At a Donald Trump rally, supporters call for the death of Hillary Clinton The New Republic

They've got murder on their minds now.
At the previous Donald Trump rally I'd attended, in Greensboro, North Crolina, Hillary Clinton was called a 'bitch' more times than I could count. 'Trump That Bitch' was the most common refrain. They shouted it from the rafters, wore T-shirts emblazoned with it. But at a rally in Raleigh on Tuesday night, a new cry rang out:
'Hang that bitch!'
The anger among Trump supporters toward the presumptive Democratic nominee apparently had escalated in the past month, perhaps especially so after FBI Director James Comey announced on Tuesday morning that he would not seek criminal charges against Clinton over her email scandal. This was a travesty against justice, obvious proof of corruption. As Trump said on stage, “Today is the best evidence ever, that we’ve seen, that our system is absolutely, totally rigged.”
Clinton might have escaped criminal justice, but this mob had a different kind of justice in mind. Trumping that bitch was no longer good enough. Now they wanted her dead.

Trump's son-in-law under fire from family Politico

Donald Trump's Jewish son-in-law and husband of Ivanka Trump Jared Kushner has stirred up a hornet's nest in his own family for invoking the memory of their grandparents in his assertion that Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic.

Kushner attempted to defend his father-in-law from what the Trump campaign says is a journalistic mob propelled by political correctness. Specifically Kushner was responding to an open letter to him as owner and publisher of the New York Observer from writer Dana Schwartz.

Related and Just IN!: An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees The Observer

In a piece published Wednesday, Kushner revealed his grandparents' story World War II survival story because, he wrote, “it’s important to me that people understand where I’m coming from when I report that I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points.”

Kushner’s relatives are very upset about his decision to invoke their grandparents’ story as Holocaust survivors.

“I have a different take­away from my Grandparents' experience in the war,” Marc Kushner, a New York City-based architect and first cousin, wrote in a Facebook post Thursday morning with a link to his cousin’s Op-Ed. “It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. [Sic] Anti­semitism or otherwise.”
Jacob Schulder, another cousin, went even further in a comment on Marc Kushner’s post, writing: “When an out of touch with reality nominee hires an out of touch with reality campaign manager, who is also a son­-in-­law, you get the BS Jared wrote. I don't think Trump is an anti­Semite; I think he's a lying idiot (among other things) with little to no experiences outside his teetering fiefdom of failed development projects, divorces, bankrupted sports leagues, fraudulent "Universities" and golf courses (and the list keeps going). The very first thing a responsible campaign manager should do, I'd think, and I mean the very first thing, would be to take away his father-­in­-law's Twitter account. Even Joseph Kushner would've had the street smarts to figure that one out while living on boiled potatoes in the forest.”
He continued: “That my grandparents have been dragged into this is a shame. Thank you Jared for using something sacred and special to the descendants of Joe and Rae Kushner to validate the sloppy manner in which you've handled this campaign. From the references to "Palestine" at the AIPAC conference (which got Donald jeered) to the justification of the itchy Twitter fingers your father­in­law has, you've managed to further prove what so many of us have known for many years. Kudos to you for having gone this far; no one expected this. But for the sake of the family name, which may have no meaning to you but still has meaning to others, please don't invoke our grandparents in vain just so you can sleep better at night. It is self serving and disgusting.”

The Hillary Clinton Email Case Will Never Be Over Mother Jones

It's not likely that the email fuss will go away. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and his minions will not stop pointing to the matter as evidence of Clinton's supposed crookedness—and the right-wing calls to imprison her will not be silenced. (There's too much money to be made off "Hillary Clinton for Prison 2016" T-shirts.)
The blame for the scandal—or scandalette—remains with Clinton and her team. It was a dumb move for her to use private email servers—especially when she and her aides could have assumed that Clinton, as a potential presidential candidate, would face greater scrutiny. And when her attorneys destroyed 30,000 or so emails they deemed personal before turning over the rest to the State Department, they guaranteed this matter could never be fully settled, because her critics could always charge that incriminating material had been erased to protect her.
The email controversy will not now be deleted. It is too good of an attack line for Clinton's opponents, especially Trump. Only Election Day results can put this matter to rest. Then again, maybe not.

Related: Donald Trump Lashes Out At FBI Over Decision Not to Recommend Charges Against Hillary Clinton Mother Jones

Netanyahu vs. the Generals Politico

In his speech, Barak accused Netanyahu of cowardice, opportunism and fear-mongering. He warned that Israel's current government, arguably the most right wing in its history, was showing “signs of fascism,” and that if Netanyahu wasn’t stopped, Israel was on course to become an apartheid state. “The entire Zionist project is in grave danger,” he proclaimed. And the main source of that danger wasn't Israel’s external enemies, but rather its own democratically elected leader.

Barak hasn’t let up since. “Netanyahu,” he said in a televised interview broadcast a day after his angry speech, “has gone off the rails. He needs to go.”

Hillary Clinton Headlines July 7, 2016

Hillary Clinton: Ma'am Survivor New York Times

How the FBI's Clinton E-Mail Decision Just Changed the 2016 Race Bloomberg Politics

Clinton Seizes Opening As Trump Alienates Big Business CNN

'President Hillary Clinton?' She Wants Progress on Immigration and to Drink With GOP New York Times

Snoop Dogg to Headline 'Unity' Event After Democratic National Convention' MIC

The Clintons and the press are caught in a pointless, toxic cycle of scandal VOX