President Known for Twitter and Headlines Denounces Interest in Twitter and Headlines
President Obama is denouncing Donald Trump on his overseas trip. President Obama said world leaders were right to be 'rattled' by Donald Trump. "They are rattled by (him) -- and for good reason," said Obama of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The president was speaking Thursday in Japan on the sidelines of a Group of Seven conference, a two-day event focused on the global economy. "A lot of the proposals he has made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude, or an interest in getting tweets and headlines," said Obama. A cavalier attitude, interest in getting tweets and headlines, hm? That reminds me of Obama's recent declaration, "This is not a reality show."     Gee, Mr. President, where would anyone get the idea that the presidency is a reality show? Yes, Virginia, Our Governor Is a Crook and a Liar The editors of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review concur with my assessment that Virginia governor Terry McAullife has, prima facie, taken money from a foreign government. Wang Wenliang is a Chinese citizen. He has permanent resident status in the United States and is chairman of Dandong Port Group. Mr. Wang also controls a New Jersey construction firm whence the donation originated. While federal law prohibits foreign donations, McAuliffe says Wang's green card entitles him to contribute. Oh, did we mention that Wang also is a delegate to the Chinese parliament? And as Jim Geraghty makes the point in National Review Online, that makes Wang an "agent of a foreign principal." "I don't care what Wang's visa status is," Mr. Geraghty says. "How on God's green Earth can it be legal for Chinese government officials to donate to American candidates for governor?" Simply put, it's not. And this could be the tip of an iceberg, considering reports that the McAuliffe inquiry might be an outcropping of the outcropped investigation into Hillary Clinton's email mess. McAuliffe, of course, is a dyed-in-the-wool Clintonista. Just what all the FBI now is looking into is a matter of much speculation. But Terry McAuliffe's legal parsing surely raises more questions than it answers. If you doubt that a member of the Chinese Parliament qualifies as an "agent of a foreign principal," ask yourself: How likely is it that Wang does anything that the Chinese leaders above him don't like? How likely is it that Wang would begin making donations to U.S. politicians if it did not serve the priorities of the Chinese government? McAuliffe, Monday: "This has nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation. This was an allegation of a gentleman who gave a check to my campaign. I didn't bring the donor in. I didn't bring him into the Clinton Foundation. I'm not even sure if I've ever met the person, to be honest with you," McAuliffe told reporters. "I know the folks that worked at his company." Time, this morning: Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe invited the Chinese businessman whose donations to him have been named as a focus of Justice Department investigators to a 2013 fundraiser at Hillary Clinton's personal Washington, D.C., residence. Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national with U.S. permanent residency, briefly shook Clinton's hand at the Sept. 30 event, a representative for Wang told TIME. An American company controlled by Wang made a $60,000 contribution to McAuliffe's campaign three weeks before the fundraiser. Less than a month later, a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several donations that eventually totaled $2 million. The fundraiser was one of at least three interactions between Wang and McAuliffe, according to the businessman's representative. The safest bet is that everything McAuliffe says about this is a lie. Wait, it gets even better. If you go looking for photos of Wang Wenliang, you can find one of him at a deal signing ceremony in China in 2011, finalizing an agreement to ship Perdue soybeans to the Dandong Pasite Grain and Oilseed Co, a subsidiary of Wang's Rilin Enterprises. The person signing the deal? Bob McDonnell. You know, the last Virginia Governor convicted of taking bribes. 
Hey, what did Dandong's general counsel Mark Fung say in a Chinese state television interview in 2012? "State government matters more than I had originally understood it be. States have a lot of power. If you really want to influence, let's say, U.S.-China policy, it's almost worth it to have emphasis and influence on the state level." No, the Issue of Hillary's E-Mail Server Will Not Go Away Before November The Washington Post editorial board -- perhaps cranky that the guy they endorsed in 2013 is under the most easily predicted FBI investigation ever -- rakes Hillary Clinton over the coals: HILLARY CLINTON'S use of a private email server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has been justifiably criticized as an error of judgment. What the new report from the State Department inspector general makes clear is that it also was not a casual oversight. Ms. Clinton had plenty of warnings to use official government communications methods, so as to make sure that her records were properly preserved and to minimize cybersecurity risks. She ignored them. The 83-page report declares that "beginning in late 2005 and continuing through 2011," the department revised its Foreign Affairs Manual and "issued various memoranda specifically discussing the obligation to use Department systems in most circumstances and identifying the risks of not doing so." Ms. Clinton didn't. During her tenure, State Department employees were told that they were expected to use approved, secure methods to transmit information that was sensitive but unclassified, or SBU. If they needed to transmit SBU information outside the department's network, they were told to ask information specialists for help. The report said there is no evidence that Ms. Clinton ever asked, "despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information that was marked as SBU." On June 28, 2011, a cable was sent to all diplomatic and consular posts over her signature warning that personal email accounts could be compromised and officials should "avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail accounts." At the time, Ms. Clinton was doing exactly that. The editorial concludes, "We urge the FBI to finish its own investigation soon, so all information about this troubling episode will be before the voters." The Clintons don't think the rules apply to them. We've seen it, over and over and over and over again. If you want to elect them, America, you have to take them as they are. ADDENDA: An interesting theory from Tyler Cowen, that a lot of our current political trends stem from modern society changing in a way that is hostile to what he calls "brutes" but might be better described as traditional masculinity: The contemporary world is not very well built for a large chunk of males. The nature of current service jobs, coddled class time and homework-intensive schooling, a feminized culture allergic to most forms of violence, post-feminist gender relations, and egalitarian semi-cosmopolitanism just don't sit well with many . . . what shall I call them? Brutes? Quite simply, there are many people who don't like it when the world becomes nicer. They do less well with nice. And they respond by in turn behaving less nicely, if only in their voting behavior and perhaps their Internet harassment as well. Female median wages have been rising pretty consistently, but the male median wage, at least as measured, was higher back in 1969 than it is today (admittedly the deflator probably is off, but even that such a measure is possible speaks volumes). A lot of men did better psychologically and maybe also economically in a world where America had a greater number of tough manufacturing jobs. They thrived under brutish conditions, including a military draft to crack some of their heads into line. To borrow a phrasing from Peter Thiel, perhaps men did better in the age of "technological progress without globalization" rather than "globalization without technological progress," as has been the case as of late. The great irony is that the country has enormous problems to tackle, and enormous amounts of talent metaphorically sitting on the bench.  | 
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