Coming next on VH1's I Love the 90s . . . the 2016 Republican ticket? 
Hm. Another Day, Another Poll Showing Hillary With a Small Lead Over Trump From this morning's fresh NBC News/Gravis tracking poll: Attention is now rapidly moving to the hypothetical match-up between the leading candidates with an emphasis on a Clinton and Trump contest. In this week's poll, Americans are nearly split between their choice of Trump or Clinton; her margin over Trump narrows from 5 points last week to 3 points this week . . . At this moment, independents break for Trump 44 percent to 36 percent. You have to look to the actual results to see the survey results are Hillary 48 percent, Trump 45 percent. Some Democrats will complain that the sample is 33 percent Republican, 28 percent Democrat, 36 percent neither; this poll has included more Republicans than Democrats pretty consistently this year. (Exit polls in 2012 showed an electorate that was 38 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent.) But when you take this tracking poll, and then the PPP survey showing Hillary up 42 percent to 38 percent and the Gravis poll showing Hillary up 48 percent to 46 percent and the Quinnipiac poll showing swing states looking close . . . doesn't that indicate that the general election battle between two candidates with high disapproval numbers is shaping up to be a lot closer than most Hillary fans or Trump critics, myself included, expected? Clinton-Warren: Hypocrisy You Can Believe In! The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson is hoping for a Hillary Clinton-Elizabeth Warren ticket: "As Clinton's running mate, Warren could erase this potential weakness with the Democratic base. She has spent her Senate career becoming known as the scourge of Wall Street. No political figure is more closely identified with efforts to curb the excesses of the financial system." Colin Reed, the former campaign manager for Scott Brown now with America Rising PAC, argues that inoculation doesn't work that way: First, Warren routinely decries the influence of the "army of lobbyists" in D.C., while Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, co-founded a lobbying firm with his brother that The New Yorker described as "one of the most successful in Washington." Second, as the self-confessed intellectual "founder" of the radical Occupy Wall Street movement, Warren was one of the pioneers of the "system being rigged" rallying cry, while Clinton has benefited immensely from said "rigged system." Bill and Hillary Clinton practically invented the kind of crony capitalism Warren so despises by using their political influence to enrich their personal portfolio, behavior perhaps best personified by Clinton earning more than $21 million in paid speeches after leaving the State Department. Third, despite her enormous Harvard salary nearing half a million dollars, Warren has repeatedly complained that college graduates are "drowning in debt." The Clinton Foundation took at least $1.8 million in speaking fees from colleges and universities during a nine-month time period. Clinton's standard fee to address universities was a staggering $200,000 or more, even to cash-strapped and taxpayer-funded public colleges. Wait, it gets better. Guess who accused Hillary Clinton of changing her vote in exchange for donations? Then there's Warren's bombshell accusation that Clinton was bought off by campaign donations from the credit-card industry. As the controversy over her paid speeches has raged on, Clinton has claimed there is no correlation between campaign contributions and legislation. But that's precisely the explosive charge Warren leveled in her 2004 book, "A Two-Income Trap." As the Washington Post reported earlier this year: "Warren blames Clinton's about-face as senator on the impact of campaign contributions. 'The bill was essentially the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not,' Warren wrote. 'Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position. Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn't coming from families in financial trouble.' " I'm sure that if Warren is selected, she will assure that Hillary Clinton is the corrupt oligarchic pathological liar that we can believe in! That Allegedly 'Do-Nothing' Congress Keeps Doing Things The U.S. House of Representatives that allegedly never does anything passed two broadly-supported bills Monday; the first directs the Department of Homeland Security to form a board to ensure counterterrorism intelligence is more coordinated among agencies; the second instructs the Secretary of DHS to create a Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium. I can hear the yawning already. But it wasn't that long ago that we were shouting and righteously furious about cyber-security; apparently the OPM hack has been forgotten already. The problem's still not fixed, of course. More than a year after a hack of Office of Personnel Management systems compromised more than 22 million records, the agency has not been able to encrypt all the sensitive data on 4 million federal employees, including Social Security numbers. "There are still elements of OPM systems that are difficult to encrypt," acting OPM Director Beth Cobert said during a May 13 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This isn't particularly sexy news, it doesn't generate a lot of calls to talk radio, it doesn't get you outraged, and it won't get linked on Drudge. But it's more or less what a Republican Congress is for -- looking at mistakes made by the Obama administration's poorly-selected crony hacks and figuring out how to fix them in order to protect the country. ADDENDA: From Morning Jolt reader Ken, how last night's series finale of Castle should have ended: "Malcolm Reynolds wakes up in his quarters onboard Serenity and tells Inara about the crazy dream he had about being a writer on Earth in the 21st century."  | 
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