KURT SCHLICHTER: “Let’s be absolutely clear – Donald Trump is entirely the fault of a GOP establishment that lied to conservatives and refused to do what it promised it would do. Trump is no secret Machiavellian genius cunningly outmaneuvering his enemies from his super-classy Atlantic City volcano lair. He’s a finger-to-the-wind charlatan who will say whatever he needs to say to maximize his own personal adulation. And he would still be merely a tiresome reality TV catch-phrase generator if the GOP establishment had not treated the rest of us like dirt.”
Archive for 2015
August 17, 2015
IT’S CERTAINLY TRUE THAT THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE CROSSES PARTY LINES, AND UNITES TRUMP AND SANDERS: Floodgates Open: Top Democrat Professor Says ‘I’ve Never Seen any Politician’ with Better Immigration Plan than Trump.
Demonstrating the broad appeal of his in-depth immigration plan released Sunday, Trump’s proposal has won the accolades of one of the nation’s leading experts on the H-1B visas program. The H-1B is a visa designed to provided corporations with cheaper and less experienced guest workers to fill technology jobs.
Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis, has written extensively about H-1B visa abuses, and his work is widely cited in the H-1B reform community.
Matloff, a self-described Democrat and “longtime admirer of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT),” gave Donald Trump’s H-1B policy “an A+” and was pleased that the Republican frontrunner was willing to take aim at the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Rubio is pushing a plan to triple H-1B visas so that corporations can more easily import substitute guest workers.
Other politicians take note.
REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS WERE THE PARTY OF CIVIL LIBERTIES? Dianne Feinstein Worries That Net Neutrality Will Block ISPs From Censoring ‘Terrorist’ Content She Doesn’t Like.
YOUR BAND SUCKS: Jon Fine on How the Indie Cultural Revolution Changed America for the Better: “If you’re telling me Amazon is bad for culture, like seriously, f*** you,” memoirist of ’90s alt-music scene Fine tells Nick Gillespie in a new Reason TV video:
“If there’s anything that will turn you into a foaming-at-the-mouth Tea Party[er] and get you throwing stones at every liberal shibboleth you can get your hands on, it’s going to Oberlin,” Fine says. At the same time, his urge to create radically different music far beyond anything that was being played on MTV or commercial radio.
But then, it’s not a coincidence that the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker and Exene Cervenka of the punk band X saw an affinity with the Tea Party. Or as somebody once sang, “When things get so big, I don’t trust them at all. You want some control, you’ve got to keep it small.” (Though curiously enough, somehow as a man of the far left, Peter Gabriel doesn’t extend his “DIY” advice to the size of government.)
WELL, THIS PIECE HASN’T BECOME ANY LESS TRUE OVER THE PAST YEAR: Let’s Examine The Many Signs That Mike Judge’s ‘Idiocracy’ Is Nearly Upon Us.
WAIT, I WAS TOLD BY THE PRESS THAT THEY WERE OBVIOUS WHITE SUPREMACISTS: Oath Keepers Announce Plans for #BlackOpenCarry March in Ferguson: ‘We’re going to demonstrate to the world that black people have the same rights as white people.’
AND THAT’S PRETTY AWESOME: There is a Ned Flanders-themed metal band called Okilly Dokilly.
NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS: 5 Reasons Robot Sex Could Be Good For You.
AT AMAZON, Fall deals on Men’s Jeans and Clothing.
USA TODAY: Clinton’s shaky email defenses: Campaign proves she doesn’t lie by citing fact-checkers who point to clever deceptions. “After Hillary Clinton provided her much-discussed private server to the proper authorities last week, her campaign sent out an email blast to supporters and posted on its website a fascinating briefing to bring all the ‘facts’ about the email “nonsense” together. Yet, the links the briefing provided to clear Clinton’s good name are a bit curious. If you follow them, you’ll find that when Clinton is given every benefit of the doubt, she is innocent of specific deliberate falsehoods. At the same time, the links indict her for a campaign of deliberately misleading statements, dating to a news conference in March.”
TEST DRIVE: 2017 Jaguar XE S.
VIDEO: JOIN INSTAPUNDIT, PJTV STARS AT ‘BULLETS AND BOURBON’ IN DECEMBER.
Click the link for more information and for reservations: http://bullets-and-bourbon.com
You have the right to own a gun in the United States. Unfortunately, there is a push to take away your second amendment rights. Co-host of PJTV’s Trifecta, Stephen Green and author Kevin Williamson join host Glenn Reynolds to talk about gun rights in America. You’ll also learn about a special event taking place in December at Rough Creek Lodge near Dallas, Texas. It’s Bullets & Bourbon — a weekend long retreat dedicated to the second amendment and fine bourbon, which in addition to Glenn, Steve, and Kevin, will also feature PJ Media’s CEO Emeritus Roger L. Simon, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, Dana Loesch of Glenn Beck’s The Blaze network, strength training expert Mark Rippetoe, and Dr. Helen Smith. (And I’ll be there as well, of course.)
Be sure to make a reservation to join your favorite PJTV stars in December.
TOO HAPPY, WHITE AND FEMININE? Yep, that’s what an angry AL.com writer seems to think about a sweet and upbeat sorority recruitment video posted by the University of Alabama’s chapter of Alpha Phi sorority. The writer, A.L. Bailey, complains:
No, it’s not a slick Playboy Playmate or Girls Gone Wild video. It’s a sorority recruiting tool gaining on 500,000 views in its first week on YouTube. It’s a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses. It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It’s all so … unempowering. . . . Yes, sororities are known for being pretty and flirty; they aren’t bastions of feminist ideologies. But perhaps they shouldn’t completely sabotage them either.
Why do I get the impression that A.L. Bailey is either an ugly, angry feminist who is jealous of the obviously pretty, happy, All-American college girls displayed in the video, or a nerdy, self-righteous progressive male hipster who could never get a date with one of these lovely young ladies? They seem fully empowered to me, and it’s not their responsibility, as college-age sorority girls, to fly the flag of radical, liberal/progressive feminism. In fact, A.L. Bailey seems utterly unaware of the possibility that these young women might think of feminism in very different ways from his/her own antediluvian stereotype.
According to Scott Greer of the Daily Caller:
What this author is really saying is that these women shouldn’t be so darn white, happy and feminine.
Unfortunately, Bailey is not a fringe outlier. Her article is only the latest salvo in the left’s war on sorority girls.
Last Friday, The Washington Post published an article urging the removal of “the Southern belle from her inglorious perch.” A noted ideal for sorority women in the southeast, the belle in the eyes of the Post is instead a horrific icon of white supremacy.
Thankfully, according to WaPo, southern schools like the University of Georgia are taking the bold step in banning the southern belle’s dreaded “hoop” skirt. This skirt, as the author Elizabeth Boyd believes, is just as much of a “racial symbol” as a noose or Confederate battle flag. That’s why it must go — and so must the belle herself.
Well, I’m certainly no big fan of the hoop skirt, having worn them several times for proms and sorority events when I was a young woman living in Atlanta. But to suggest that the hoop skirt–or being a Southern “belle”–is a “racial symbol” is patently ridiculous. Hoop skirts are uncomfortable and inconvenient, which is why they are no longer worn very often. But they have nothing whatsoever to do with any racial beliefs, anymore than wearing cotton clothing does. Just because cotton was grown principally in the South and harvested by slaves, does this make cotton a “racial symbol”?
C’mon people, grow some common sense, and maybe a little self esteem. Not everything associated with “the South” is racist, and certainly being a southern “belle” or gentleman–i.e., someone of good manners, grooming and education–is something we should be encouraging, not disparaging. And yes, such individuals can come in all races, religions and ethnicities. And a sunny disposition–on anyone–is always preferable to the depressing, too-serious angry liberal/progressive attitude of perpetual grievance.
JEFF BEZOS RESPONDS TO BRUTAL NYT STORY, SAYS IT DOESN’T REPRESENT THE AMAZON HE LEADS.
If only Bezos had a publishing platform available to him with its own history of investigative journalism that would be willing to explore the strange labor practices at the Times…
RELATED: Why would the socialists at Salon (who repeatedly express the desire to nationalize everything!) think that a comparison to 1984’s Big Brother is a bad thing?
EVERYTHING IS SEEMINGLY SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Actual AP headline: “AP Exclusive: California fails on promises to create green jobs, energy savings.”
Gosh, other than half the country, who could have seen that one coming?!
AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.
Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.
And please remember: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support this blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. I very much appreciate it when you do.
ACTUAL CNN HEADLINE: ‘HILLARY CLINTON REVIVED AMERICA’S REPUTATION IN WORLD.’
Yet another reminder that as in 2008, the Democratic operatives with bylines at Time-Warner-CNN-HBO will be going all-in to get their party’s boss over the finish line.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Erik Gilbert: Does Assessment Make Colleges Better? Who Knows? “Assessment is one of those things that we keep telling ourselves will pay off if we could just get it right, but we never seem to get there. It’s time for us to demand that the accreditors who are driving assessment provide evidence that it offers benefits commensurate with the expense that goes into it. We should no longer accept on faith or intuition that learning-outcomes assessment has positive and consequential effects on our institutions — or students.”
CONFERENCE VIDEO: Artificial Biochemistry with DNA.
AN INSTA-READER ON HILLARY’S EMAIL SCANDAL: With Glenn on the road today, he forwarded a letter from an Insta-reader:
I am a federal employee and I would appreciate you not referring to me by name.
The appearance of TS/SCI information in Hillary Clinton’s unclassified email led me to immediately ask, “who down-domained the information?”
Classified material with SCI caveats only resides on JWICS. That is an air-gapped computer network. While there are systems that allow users to send file from lower domains to higher ones, there is no such system to take information and send it to a lower domain.
If I have unclassified information on a classified system, I have to burn the data to a CD and carry it (“sneaker-net”) to an unclassified computer. Of course, this was after a second party reviewed the data and it was electronically scanned for hidden data. This is all logged on paper. The network also logs every time something is burned to CD.
Who burned the classified data found on Clinton’s email and used sneaker-net to email it to her? If I was investigating this, that is the person that I would like to ask some questions.
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward is comparing the Hillary scandal to Watergate on MSNBC, much to the chagrin of the rest of the Post and NBC. And as with Watergate, look for the president to stonewall any Congressional investigation. “Just in case you thought Hillary might be indicted, Obama spent the weekend socializing with her and Bill,” Allahpundit writes at Hot Air. “Not just socializing, I should note, but socializing in public, an implicit reminder to the DOJ and intelligence community that Hillary Clinton’s prospects are important to him and his party. When was the last time the subject of an FBI investigation that’s on the front page of newspapers across the country got to party with the president the same week?”
SCURVY: Horrific as It Was Deadly for Sailors. “Scurvy starts with lethargy before causing achy joints, swollen limbs, and loose teeth, according to Real Clear Science. From there, sufferers get swollen gums, bad breath, and bruising. The skin turns yellow, then black, just before sufferers die from internal hemorrhaging. The tragic part is scurvy is ridiculously easy to cure.”
I wonder what present-day diseases will be similarly regarded in a hundred years.
VIDEO: SCOTT WALKER CONFRONTS UNION HECKLERS AT IOWA STATE FAIR: “I am not intimidated by you, sir, or anyone else out there. I will fight for the American people over, and over, and over, again. You want someone who’s tested? I’m right here. You can see it. This is what happened in Wisconsin. We will not back down. We will do what is necessary to defend the American people going forward.”
DIRECTOR BLUE, DONALD TRUMP, SAD PUPPIES AND NICHE MARKETS: “Donald Trump is horrifying the media, the GOP elites and those who have been the gatekeepers…It reminds them that in the end we are a niche market, [and] Donald Trump is beyond our niche:”
Final thought, there was a study quoted at Ace of Spades & Hotair that downplayed Donald Trump’s social media power noting that only 39.4% of Trump’s Twitter followers are currently eligible to vote as opposed to say Jeb Bush with 85.5%
Just remember 85.5% of Jeb Bush’s followers is 244,530, 39.4% of Trump’s followers is 1,477,500 that’s six times more.
Read the whole thing.