Archive for 2016
November 11, 2016
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: My latest Observer essay.
ROGER SIMON: Hate In The Time Of Tantrums. “Ironically, the more calm and collected Trump is, the more presidential he behaves—which he has pretty much done so far, today contacting Theresa May to revive the Reagan-Thatcher ‘special relationship’— the more likely these children are to escalate their hateful activities. They are trying to get a rise out of Donald, get him to react and prove their point, but it is probably too late. He’s won already and holds the whip hand (more of that in a moment). This may actually cause them to go postal.”
Related: Did the United States just elect a monster? “No. Clinton’s team of cognitive scientists and professional persuaders did a terrific job of framing Trump as scary. The illusion will wear off – albeit slowly – as you observe Trump going about the job of President and taking it seriously. You can expect him to adjust his tone and language going forward. You can expect foreign leaders to say they can work with him. You can expect him to focus on unifying an exhausted and nervous country. And you can expect him to succeed in doing so. (He’s persuasive.) Watch as Trump turns to healing. You’re going to be surprised how well he does it. But give it time.”
The election is over and Trump supporters are trying to mind their own business, as usual. Meanwhile, Clinton’s supporters are on the streets to protest people who act the way they are acting. How did things get this crazy?
Well, most of it has to do with Clinton’s persuasion experts and supporters framing Trump and his supporters as the next coming of Hitler. . . .
With this kind of messaging you should not be surprised to see crowds attacking Trump supporters. The attackers feel they have the moral authority to do so. Here’s a fresh example where a group of Clinton supporters repeatedly beat an older Trump supporter on camera. The scary part is that they appear to be proud of it, as though it is morally justified.
My observation of the anti-Trump protests is that it mostly involves young people. This is their first fake-Hitler scare. They don’t realize that Reagan was compared to Hitler, both Bush presidents were compared to Hitler, and Romney was compared to Hitler. I assume lots of European and other leaders have also been compared to Hitler. You might want to point that out to any young person who thinks this is the first time we’ve seen this.
When everybody is Hitler, nobody is Hitler. And yes, I know I’ve posted these last two excerpts before, but they bear repeating.
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Freakout At General Mills. I wonder if this VP in charge of “inclusion” will include Trump supporters in his dialogue.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
I worked over 15 years at General Mills, and what’s critical to note is that the addressing of Ken Charles’s note – “Employee Network & WIL Network” – means that everybody but white males is invited to his little soiree. The Employee Networks are all the racially delineated corporate support groups, and WIL is Women in Leadership.
This is appalling and embarrassing – but not at all surprising. The company’s latest news is that their Chief Marketing Officer, Ann Simonds, has launched a search for a new ad agency that requires the applicants to have 50% women and 20% women of color in their creative departments to even be considered. Seeing that in the news, and knowing how horribly their US sales have tanked, made me think repeatedly of your quip about the business results of companies that go full-SJW.
Feel free to use my words but not my name – I still have to make a living in the corporate world, where this kind of talk is double-plus-ungood, unfortunately.
When SJW-talk comes in, profits go out. Also, events that exclude people because of race and gender are illegal. We need some folks willing to file lawsuits.
NYT’S WORLD ENDS — WOMEN, STUDENTS, PEOPLE ABROAD HARDEST HIT.
Related: EXCLUSIVE VIDEO – MUST CREDIT INSTAPUNDIT – which was smuggled out of Pinch Sulzberger’s office, as Trump was declaring victory on Wednesday morning:
ASHE SCHOW: The Left’s hypocrisy on accepting election results.
Remember just a couple weeks ago when the Left went apoplectic when Donald Trump said he would “accept the election results … if I win”?
How many angry think-pieces and tweets were written by journalists and lefties foaming at the mouth over Trump’s comments? At the time, these writers assumed Hillary Clinton would win, and worried Trump would try to contest the election a la Democrat Al Gore in 2000 or congressional Democrats in 2004 (sure seems like Democrats are the ones who try to officially contest elections when they lose).
They mocked and derided Trump for presumably throwing a temper tantrum if he lost and refusing to accept such a loss.
But that was weeks ago.
Since the election Tuesday night, we’ve had two days (and counting) of leftists literally taking to the streets to shout and cry and burn flags because their preferred candidate lost. More such protests are planned.
In New York City, protesters chanted, “Not my president!” from the streets of midtown Manhattan around Trump’s home on Fifth Avenue. In Oakland, Calif., rioters set garbage on fire, blocked traffic, attacked police and damaged local businesses. Because this is what the Left does when it doesn’t get its way.
Colleges and universities have proven even more embarrassing. The front page of the Harvard Crimson at the time of this writing is full of articles about the “anxiety,” “disbelief” or “shock” being felt by students and faculty over Trump’s win. Cornell students hosted a “cry-in” that allowed students to “console” each other. . . .
Now who’s refusing to accept election results?
Related: Maybe stop calling Trump supporters dumb. “Having an alternative view doesn’t make someone ‘dumb,’ and dismissing those without a college degree who voted for Trump as such is precisely part of what motivated them to vote for Trump in the first place.”
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Anti-Democracy Protesters Hate On Company That Makes Sneakers In America. “Calls to boycott Boston shoemaker New Balance lit up social media late Wednesday night after a Wall Street Journal reporter quoted a company spokesman praising Trump.”
First the riots, now this. Funny that the consequences of all the anti-Trump hysteria seem to land on blue states and cities.
DON’T YOU HATE IT WHEN THE LAW PROTECTS REPUBLICANS? GrubHub’s CEO may have opened the company up to massive liability by telling Trump supporters to quit, due to California law against “political discrimination.” If I were a hungry California lawyer, I’d set up a specialty in lawsuits against employers on behalf of conservative employees under this law. There’s money to be made. (And note similar laws elsewhere).
UPDATE: Oops, my mistake: Grubhub’s headquartered in Chicago. The law-practice point stands, though.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Still legally at risk, it seems, which is probably why they’ve backed down, though massive public anger is probably just as big a reason.
SO DESPITE MY EARLIER PETER THIEL REFERENCES, isn’t Ted Cruz the obvious Supreme Court pick for Trump? Trump owes him (there may even be a deal, like with Ike and Earl Warren), the Senate will confirm (partly out of Senatorial courtesy and partly to get rid of him) and whoever replaces him in Texas will be a Republican and, if it’s handled properly, grateful to Trump for the opening.
MIDNIGHT REGULATIONS: EPA rushing through regulations after Trump election.
TRUMP WINS, BLUE AMERICA TEARS ITSELF APART: Riot declared in Portland, Oregon amid new wave of anti-Trump demos.
UPDATE: Tolerance mob triggered by unfavorable election result vandalizes Minnesota GOP HQ, blocks highway.
Plus: ‘Die whites die’ spray painted on Lee Circle Monument in New Orleans; MSM silent.
I’m sure Loretta Lynch will be right on all these hate crimes.
UNEXPECTEDLY! As Ratings Plummet, N.F.L. Considers Reducing Ads and Length of Games. As unexpected as Hillary losing.
Sing it: If you live in this world, you’re feeling the change of the guard.
THE GREAT PROGRESSIVE REPUDIATION:
A remarkable thing just happened. The presidential candidate that voters believe less, like less, and think less qualified won the election. In other words, rather than endure four more years of elite progressive rule, the American people chose to gamble on a reality-television star with well-known and openly notorious character flaws. That’s how much they were ready for change.
Let’s be very, very clear: This election ultimately wasn’t about defeating the “establishment.” It was about defeating the progressive establishment. The Republican establishment — the hated “GOPe” — ends this year with more power than it’s enjoyed in a century, and perhaps since Reconstruction. Mitch McConnell is more powerful. Paul Ryan is more powerful.
The Republican party will control the White House, Congress, judicial nominations, and the vast majority of the states. The Republican party runs the United States. The GOP presidential landslides of 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988 were inconsequential by comparison, resulting in divided government and with Democrats far more ascendant at the state level. By contrast, there is now a Republican governor of Vermont. And if you think that Trump carried down-ballot Republicans to victory, think again. He undoubtedly helped secure victories in states such as Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, but in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin, the Republican Senate victor won more votes than Trump. In close losses like Nevada and (perhaps) New Hampshire, the GOP Senate candidate also out-polled Trump.
Tea-party Republicans won. Establishment center-right Republicans won. And they won not just because Republican voters turned out — GOP turnout wasn’t particularly heavy, and Trump is likely to win roughly the same number of votes that Romney did — but because Democrats stayed home by the millions. In 2012, Mitt Romney received almost 61 million votes. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Donald Trump has slightly over 59 million votes. Clinton is winning the popular vote count by roughly 200,000 votes but has so far turned out 6.5 million fewer voters than Obama did.
In other words, GOP voters kept voting while millions of Democrats voted with their feet — they walked anywhere but the polling place. In spite of an avalanche of apocalyptic anti-Trump rhetoric, an astonishing number of Democrats didn’t find Hillary Clinton or her progressive agenda worth lifting a finger (literally) to support.
Well, who can blame them?
November 10, 2016
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I WONDER HOW MANY OF THEM VOTED: Tennessee students protest Trump’s election.
About a hundred students sat on the ground on the pedestrian walkway, and others stood around them, linking arms. They held signs that read “I will not stop speaking Spanish,” “Hate is not an opinion” and “Silence is violence.”
Elizabeth Stanfield, a senior from Jackson, Tenn., who helped organize the protest late last night, said she wanted to create a space for people who are frustrated and struggling to gather.
“This campus is already incredibly violent to people of color, to LGBT people,” she said. But after the election, “there was a shift in the atmosphere, and walking around campus, you could feel it in the air.”
There was no advertising on social media and news of the plan spread by word of mouth, she said.
The protest, loosely comprised of the campus’ Diversity Matters student coalition, started near the amphitheater outside the humanities building at 12:30 p.m. The group marched along around the building and up pedestrian walkway.
I saw complaints on social media that they were blocking the path and making it hard for people to get to class, but I guess the university didn’t think it was a big enough problem to do anything.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVE WITH BYLINE LINDA GREENHOUSE WEIGHS IN: “I’m just trying to imagine what Linda Greenhouse would have said if President-elect Hillary Clinton were set to nail in that 5-justice progressive majority. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s name would have come up, I think, as the rising leader of that progressive majority. Would Greenhouse have warned her that she’d better take pains to eradicate the impression that the Supreme Court follows partisan politics?”
Ha, ha, I love that.
BRUCE KESLER, USMC, VIETNAM: Has the media no shame? Of course not!
RIP LEONARD COHEN, EPIC AND ENIGMATIC SONGWRITER, DEAD AT 82.
I think my first exposure to Cohen’s music was through Jennifer Warnes’ CD covering his songs, Famous Blue Raincoat, and the video for “First We Take Manhattan,” with a roaring guitar solo courtesy of Stevie Ray Vaughan. From the song’s production to the video’s staging and cinematography, this is 1986’s pop culture, right here:
THERE AREN’T ANY! IT’S A HOVERCAR! What Isn’t Faraday Future Telling Us About Its Wheels? Okay, probably not, but I can wish.
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THE LA TIMES SAYS OBAMACARE CAN’T BE REPEALED: OK, this is columnist in the LA Times arguing repeal of ObamaCare is well nigh impossible. He makes several good points about legislative roadblocks. But — but he’s ultimately wrong. We have a president and congress ready to get rid of it. Why? Because the stupid legislation’s chickens have come home to roost in middle America’s wallet. We’re also into nuclear counter-strike — nuking the Senate filibuster. Stay tuned.
OUCH: Sanders Campaign Has ‘Nothing Polite to Say’ About Hillary’s Crushing Loss.
UPDATE: DNC Staffer Screams At Donna Brazile For Helping Elect Donald Trump. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
If this is their demographic future, well, I wouldn’t rely too much on it helping recapture power anytime soon. Related: The Democratic Party is now a rump “regional party.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Van Jones is legitimizing progressive panic. “You don’t calm people by giving them more space for panic. You tell them to sober up and stop behaving as if the world had ended when it really hasn’t. You point out that some of the things they are worried about (interment camps?!) are not reasonable concerns. . . . What former communist protester Van Jones is doing is legitimizing the grievances and the reaction in the streets. That’s not going to calm the panic it’s going to insure it spreads.”
Cui bono?
Related: “People have to die” – Post-election protests fueled by Dems’ “Trump is Hitler” rhetoric.
TRUE: Joe Battenfeld: The Media Failed Us At A Crucial Time. If by “a crucial time,” you mean, basically, my entire lifetime.