SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET: 

THE NEED TO SMILE – FROM DAILY CALLER:  Newly leaked emails reveal that Hillary Clinton had to be told when to smile while she was speaking.  The emails, hacked from the campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and published by WikiLeaks Tuesday, reveal that campaign staffers prompted Clinton to smile at certain times while she was preparing for the Democratic primary debates.  “[Smile] My goodness, I was having a lighthearted moment when I said that,” the talking point reads. “Look, my dad was a Republican.”   I'm sure she never had to be told to take the check.

DISGRACEFUL – FROM FOX:   Justice Clarence Thomas marks his 25th anniversary on the Supreme Court this month, and befitting the man, it likely will be a low-key affair.  But while Thomas has broken barriers his entire professional life without seeking the limelight, the 68-year-old justice is being conspicuously ignored by a powerful new showplace for black heritage. The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened last month in Washington – and missing from the four floors of exhibits is any reference to Thomas's personal and judicial legacy, shocking for perhaps the second most powerful black political figure in America, after President Obama...What the museum does have is a prominent display of Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of creating a hostile work environment while her supervisor at a federal agency. She outlined her allegations during Thomas's 1991 confirmation hearings, and the candid discussion rocked the nation.  Pure politics and political correctness.  And the black community will be the loser. 

OUR SOARING ECONOMY – FROM NEWSMAX:    Bankruptcy filings by U.S. businesses soared 38 percent in September from a year earlier in an ominous sign of a weakening economy, says Wolf Richter, editor of the Wolf Street blog.  Last month’s bankruptcies reached 3,072 to bring the year-to-date total to 28,789 and marked the eleventh straight month of increases from 2015, according to data from the American Bankruptcy Institute.  “Rising bankruptcies are an indicator that the ‘credit cycle’ has ended,” Richter says in a commentary about the limits of the Federal Reserve’s ability to help an economic recovery. “The Fed’s policy of easy credit has encouraged businesses to borrow – those that could. But by now, this six-year debt binge has created an ominous debt overhang that is suffocating these businesses as they find themselves, against all promises, mired in an economy that’s nothing like the escape-velocity hype that had emanated from Wall Street, the Fed and the government.”   The new president may have to face a recession, or worse.  Another legacy of the indifferent Obama.

October 11, 2016