The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Insight: “Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

For the record: “Here’s the truth: Trump isn’t a Republican in anything other than name. His politics are statist, and he donated more money to Democrats than Republicans between 1980 and 2010. He’s a Hollywood insider, a man who appeared at the Emmy Awards alongside Megan Mullally of ‘Will & Grace.’ He’s a media member, too — NBC paid him for years. All of these groups knew what Trump was for decades. But they’ll punish him because he’s a Republican. That’s how social standards work for the left: If you have the right politics, you can get away with anything. If you have the wrong ones, it’ll ignore its own hypocrisy to nail you to the wall.” —Ben Shapiro

Observations: “[T]he candidates talk and talk, and there is so much they don’t say. Neither candidate will say much about how huge government bureaucracy has gotten. They never talk about the Constitution and what it says presidents cannot do. … Instead, we get promises. Trump ‘will make American great again.’ Clinton will ‘get your kids the opportunities they deserve.’ Platitudes. But voters prefer them to ugly truths. If you look at the details, you realize the candidates can’t be trusted to do very much. Our government is already broke. Someone should level with the public about that instead of promising new free stuff.” —John Stossel

The BIG lie: “Hurricane Matthew was likely more destructive because of climate change. Right now, the ocean is at or near record high temperatures, and that contributed to the torrential rainfall and the flash flooding that we saw in the Carolinas. Sea levels have already risen about a foot — one foot — in much of the Southeast, which means that Matthew’s storm surge was higher and the flooding was more severe.” —Hillary Clinton

Dezinformatsia: “[Hillary Clinton] held together a family while she had a young daughter. People tend to forget about that all the time. … Did Hillary Clinton sleep with any of these women? I mean, did she allegedly rape any of these women? This is so amazing that we’re talking about this and Hillary Clinton went through more than any woman should and she’s still here standing strong.” —CNN’s Bakari Sellers

Late-night humor: “Facebook has a new ‘secret conversations mode’ that lets you automatically set messages to delete — or as Hillary put it, ‘Like.’” —Jimmy Fallon