TWO LONDON DAILY MAILS IN ONE!
I have to say, if I were a teacher and a student had a device that looked like this and started beeping during class, I’d be a little nervous too. Imagine how the Secret Service would react if it had been mailed to the White House:
ROLL CALL: Predictive Markets Still Bullish on Bush.
Seasoned political operatives are dismayed at Donald Trump’s staying power in the Republican presidential primary.
But for those Republicans waiting for Trump’s surge to crest and more establishment candidates to rise to challenge him, there’s reason not to dump their Jeb Bush stock.
At least, that’s what political prediction markets suggest.
Going into the second GOP debate, PredictIt, an online political prediction site, shows the former Florida governor leading the GOP pack, followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Contrast that with the double-digit lead Trump holds over Bush in Real Clear Politics’ polling average, and it looks like prediction markets know something the rest of America doesn’t.
Well, or they just have faith in the establishment’s continuing power.
WATCH: Hip Hillary Does ‘Tonight Show’ Skit with Faux Trump.
Between now and November 2016, Comcast-NBC-Universal will be going all-in to help Hillary limp over the finish line to reap the corporatist rewards to follow.
NOBEL PANEL SAW OBAMA PEACE PRIZE AS ‘MISTAKE,’ NEW BOOK CLAIMS. “The former director of Norway’s Nobel Institute revealed this week that he regrets the committee’s decision to give the 2009 Nobel Peace award to President Obama:”
Geil Lundestad, director at the institute for 25 years, said in his just-published memoir that he and the committee had unanimously decided to grant the award to Mr. Obama just after his election in 2009 more in hopes of aiding the American president to achieve his goals on nuclear disarmament, rather than in recognition of what Mr. Obama had already accomplished.
Looking back over Mr. Obama’s presidency, Mr. Lundestad said, granting him the award did not fulfill the committee’s expectations.
“[We] thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn’t have this effect,” he wrote.
Unexpectedly.
The elites guffawing the loudest over this year’s Trumpmania have the most to be embarrassed about in 2008 and early 2009.
THIS IS A NICE GESTURE, BUT THE GUY WHO OVERSEES THE TSA DOESN’T OCCUPY THE HIGH GROUND WHERE SECURITY IDIOCY IS CONCERNED: Obama invites suspended Muslim teen to the White House.
Note, though, how quickly the story pivoted from “zero tolerance idiocy” (makes unionized public schools look bad) to “police racism” (fits Obama narrative).
IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER ALGORITHM:
● Hillary Clinton Is Stuck In A Poll-Deflating Feedback Loop.
—Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEightPolitics.
● Jake Tapper to Jimmy Kimmel: Hillary Could Get Coverage Like Trump’s If She’d Do Interviews.
—Jeffrey Meyer, NewsBusters.
How bad is Hillary as a retail politician? As with Al Gore in 1999, the same media that anointed Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and would love nothing more than to clear the decks for his successor are all complaining about her lack of interviews and robotic tone. But how many reboots does she have left?
THE VOTE-BUYING REDISTRIBUTIVE STATE: Overall, there was a transfer of roughly $1 trillion in economic resources from the top 40 percent of households to the bottom 60 percent. This sum represents about 9.5 percent of total national income in 2004. I’m sure it was much worse in 2014.
Remember this when you hear people complain that “the rich” aren’t doing their fair share.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: Sexbots: Why Women Should Panic.
Another reason men might be enthusiastic about female-free sex is obvious: the sociopathic, man-hating feminism we see so much of on television and in our newspapers today is turning men off dealing with women altogether. Constant whinging about “toxic masculinity,” “manspreading,” “mansplaining,” the bogus gender pay gap and the absurd campus rape culture myth are pushing the sexes apart, fostering mistrust and fear.
The fact that wacky, misandrist intersectional feminists are an unpopular minority — as a result of their horrid influence, just 18 per cent of women now call themselves feminists — doesn’t matter because they hold court in the media and on campuses, and young women are starting to parrot discredited and absurd nonsense about the “oppressive patriarchy,” picking up on a victimhood script they believe they can leverage for social and professional advantage.
In response, men are simply checking out, giving up on women and retreating into porn and video games. I call it the “sexodus,” and its immediate victims aren’t men, but women, who are being consigned to singledom as men lose interest in them or are simply too exhausted or fearful of the social consequences of approaching girls romantically. The truth is, men get along okay without women, unlike women, who become shrieking, neurotic messes if they’re still single in their 30s.
Sorry, no offence, but it’s true: women have been getting steadily unhappier since the Second World War, when they first entered the workplace in large numbers. It sounds bizarre, but ever since the rise of feminism, every decade has seen another slump in female morale. Women now report themselves more generally depressed and more likely to think about suicide than at any time in history. (The vast majority of suicides are still men, by the way. Women talk about it endlessly, but rarely pull it off.)
Gee, somebody should write a book on this.
WHO WON THE REAGAN LIBRARY DEBATE? Roger Simon lists his winner(s) here; leave yours in the comments.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE: Barack Obama’s Half-Clocked Tale of Islamophobia. “As usual, the president assumed Americans are bigots before the contrary facts were in about Mohamed’s suspicious-looking device and uncooperative behavior.”
Obama never misses a chance to call America racist. His post-presidency will be worse than Carter’s. But, then, so was his presidency.
WANT VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DEBATE? Right Scoop has you covered.
WELL, THAT’S COOL. Video Retrieved From GoPro Balloon That Soared to Nearly 100,000 Feet. You know, we take it for granted already, but these small rugged digital cameras have let us see all sorts of things we’d never seen before.
SOMEBODY SLIP A COPY OF THIS STORY TO DONALD TRUMP DURING A COMMERCIAL BREAK: Elusive crime wave data shows frightening toll of illegal immigrant criminals.
The federal government can tell you how many “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders” stole a car, the precise number of “American Indian or Alaska Natives” who were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year.
In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined a patchwork of local, state and federal statistics that revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, rapists and drug dealers are crossing into the U.S. amid the wave of hard-working families seeking a better life. The explosive figures show illegal immigrants are three times as likely to be convicted of murder as members of the general population and account for far more crimes than their 3.5-percent share of the U.S. population would suggest. Critics say it is no accident that local, state and federal governments go to great lengths to keep the data under wraps.
More at the link.
ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW HE’S RUNNING APPLE INTO THE GROUND? Tim Cook Talks Charity, Coming Out As Gay on the ‘Late Show.’
STEVE GREEN’S LIVER IS TANNED, RESTED AND READY: Drunkblogging the Second GOP Presidential Debate.
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REAGAN LIBRARY REPORT #2: THE DOCTOR ANSWERS THE IRAN QUESTION: “Ben Carson answered my question about how he would deal with Iran as president in a far different manner from Rand Paul, or even Donald Trump,” Roger Simon writes in his latest update from the Reagan Library.
PEAK GUARDIAN REACHED:
Yes, this tweet links to a real article — real and spectacular. Key passage:
Companies like Blue Origin are using money and resources to push outwards, to expand the worlds of their rich customers all the way into space. But those same customers – and some of the owners – are making their terrestrial money in the classic capitalist terrestrial way: by working around any obstacle to profit, including environmental regulations and conservation efforts. Almost all industry is environmentally disastrous, after all; truly prioritizing earth-friendliness would destroy most companies.
If the Guardian truly believes this, they should cease printing and deactivate their Website’s servers immediately. Set the example for the rest of us!
THE INSTA-WIFE: Kris Jenner’s Dilemma: “Now that Bruce has come out as a woman, his feelings are treated with care and people, including Kris are walking on eggshells. Why? It is socially unacceptable to trashtalk women and transgender women in particular. Kris must feel angry inside but can’t really express it. She has to pretend to be happy for Cait. To profess otherwise makes her into the bad guy. Now, if he were a man, she could talk with abandon and her anger would be justified. But she has been one- upped by Caitlyn. Maybe more men should transition to women as an act of self-defense as misandry spreads. Bruce joined the winning team and really, who can blame him?”
A SNEAK PREVIEW OF TONIGHT’S DEBATE: “In lieu of your exit question, a terrifying thought from Sonny Bunch: “Oh God. There’s going to be a clock bomb question [at the debate] tonight isn’t there.” Probably. And someone’s going to flub the answer and that’s all the media will be talking about tomorrow.”
EARLIER: The Debate We Were Supposed to Have.
WHAT TO DO when the Heimlich Maneuver doesn’t work. “When all attempts to rescue a choking victim fail and emergency medical help is unavailable, there is a treatment of last resort: a cricothyrotomy, which is easier and quicker to perform than a tracheotomy. With the victim lying flat, tip the head back and locate the bulge of the Adam’s apple. Using a sharp knife, make a half-inch horizontal cut a half-inch deep between the Adam’s apple and the bulge an inch below it, the cricoid cartilage. Insert something like a straw or casing of a ballpoint pen (first remove the ink cartridge) and breathe into it. In case someone’s life depends on your ability to do this, review an illustrated description of the procedure at www.tracheostomy.com/resources/surgery/emergency.htm.“
THERE’S ONLY ONE QUESTION TO ASK ABOUT TONIGHT’S DEBATE, Jonathan S. Tobin writes at Commentary:
But [if] next week’s polls show Donald retaining his spot at the top with none of the more established candidates breaking out of single digits, then it may be time to recognize that debate performances don’t matter all that much and that the normal rules of political gravity don’t apply to either him or this Republican contest.
In that case, it will really be time for the party establishment and mainstream activists who don’t want the GOP to become Trump’s personal property to panic. It won’t be possible for them to wait until after Iowa and New Hampshire to settle on a single, viable non-Trump alternative. That’s why the only question to ask about tonight’s debate is whether it will produce some sort of shift in public opinion that will create a stumbling block for Trump. Anything other than that will mean he continues cruising to the nomination while the party he seeks to lead starts to collapse in chaos.
Actually, there’s another question that you should be asking about tonight’s debate: Will Steve Green, your friendly neighborhood Vodkapundit be drunkblogging tonight’s debate?
A MAJOR BRANDING FAIL: Xignite Picks Brutal Founder Of Firing Squads And Labor Camps As Icon Of New API Ecosystem.
Earlier today, Xignite announced the co-launch of a fintech API ecosystem, claiming it to be a “revolution” for the financial tech industry. No doubt in search of an iconic revolutionary figure to be emblematic of the new ecosystem, Xignite selected Ernesto Che Guevera. Pictured above with a Xignite logo super-imposed over his beret, Guevara was widely regarded as Fidel Castro’s right-hand man and a key figure in the overthrow of Cuba’s Batista-led government in the 1959. The image of Guevara appears on both the press release as well as a Web page on Xignite’s Web site. The only problem is that Guevara is also known as a brutal murderer who also founded Cuba’s firing squads and labor camps. . . .
The complete list of founders includes Xignite, Advisor Software, ChartIQ, Insight360, PlanWise, QuantConnect, Autochartist.com, EdgeLab, Estimize, Nasdaq, PsychSignal, StockTwits, TopRanks, vetr, Yodlee, SR Labs, Streamdata.io, Tradier, Level39 and ValueStream.
Che was a virulent racist and a homophobe, too.
HOW OBAMA HAS FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED POLITICS: Michael Barone writes, “In this presidential cycle voters in both parties, to the surprise of the punditocracy*, are rejecting experienced political leaders:”
They’re willfully suspending disbelief in challengers who would have been considered laughable in earlier years.
Polls show more Republicans favoring three candidates who have never held elective office than 14 candidates who have served a total of 150 years as governors or in Congress. Most Democrats are declining to favor a candidate who spent eight years each in the White House and the Senate and four as secretary of state.
Psephologists of varying stripes attribute this discontent to varying causes. Conservatives blame insufficiently aggressive Republican congressional leaders. Liberals blame Hillary Clinton’s closeness to plutocrats and her home-brew email system.
But in our system a widespread rejection of experienced leaders ultimately comes from dismay at the leader in the White House. In 1960 Richard Nixon, after eight years as vice-president and six in Congress, campaigned on the slogan, “Experience counts.” No one is running on that theme this year.
Well, America abandoned the notion that “experience counts” as a presidential resume enhancer in 2008. As CNN admitted in late November of 2008 after it was too late to make a difference, “The Americans who are comparing [Obama] to those remarkable predecessors [Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton were name-dropped in the article] are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know.” Why would voters start caring about that sort of minutia now?
* Unexpectedly!
(Via Betsy Newmark.)
HEY LIBERALS, #ISTANDWITHAHMED ISN’T ABOUT RACISM. IT’S ABOUT SCHOOL ZERO TOLERANCE INSANITY.
To be fair, given what the kid’s DIY clock looked like – as compared to a Pop Tart chewed into the shape of an imaginary gun — I’m willing to cut the (likely) left-leaning school administrators some slack on this one.
RELATED: Race-Grifters Unite: 14 Year-Old Ahmed Mohamed Arrested Over Suitcase Clock.
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