TRUMP'S FIGHT FOR WOMEN
DONALD TRUMP has not been doing so well with female voters. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, women view him unfavorably by a margin of three to one. Plus, Trump's recent stumbles on abortion are unlikely to help. In an interview with MSNBC last week, he said women who receive abortions should be punished, but men who were involved in the circumstances leading to the procedure should not be. Within the next two days, Trump and his campaign clarified his stance on abortion four more times, finally settling on the position that abortion laws should stay the way they are until he is president, when he will help change them.
Trump brought his wife, Melania, onstage for a rally in Wisconsin on Monday night. She said her husband is a great communicator, negotiator and leader.
"As you may know by now, when you attack him, he will punch back 10 times harder," she said. "He's a fighter, and if you elect him to be our president, he will fight for you and for our country."
The next day, Trump insisted that women love him because they know he will protect them from terrorists. "That's protecting women," he said, "but it's also protecting everybody." (WILSON CRISCIONE)
HELL IS OTHER POLITICIANS
Dante Alighieri's epic poem Divine Comedy imagines hell like a nine-layer bean dip, but with the damnation and torture instead of, say, pico de gallo and sour cream. But in a comment on KIRO radio's Jason Rantz Show on Monday, Washington state gubernatorial candidate BILL BRYANT suggested that GOV. JAY INSLEE's decision that allowed a legislative fix to keep charter schools open to pass into law, without a veto or signature, was worthy of special shame.
"Dante said the hottest circles in hell are reserved for those who maintain neutrality, and I think there is a circle waiting," Bryant said.
Democrats tut-tutted in response, criticizing Bryant for "outrageously" implying that Inslee was going to hell. They also used Bryant's statement as an opportunity to lambaste Inslee's gubernatorial rival for his neutrality — and even acceptance — of Republican frontrunner DONALD TRUMP. (Trump's well-documented lust, greed and dishonesty theoretically make The Donald a contender for the second, fourth and eighth circles of Dante's Inferno, respectively.)
Bryant, for his part, refrained from pointing out that mismanagement by Inslee's Department of Corrections resulted in the improper early release of numerous criminals found guilty of violent crimes — acts punished in Dante's seventh circle of hell. (DANIEL WALTERS)
