LIKE MANY OF US, FOR WHOM THE ELECTION RESULTS WERE AN UTTER (AND WELCOME) SURPRISE, THE RUSSIANS BELIEVED THE POLLS: Russia’s election hack aimed to hurt Hillary — not help Trump.
Archive for 2016
December 16, 2016
AND FEMINISM THE ENEMY OF THINKING: ‘Rogue One’ Makes White Guys the Enemy of the Future.
MORE LIKE THE DEATH OF CHILDHOOD: Modern Childhood and the Death of the Seesaw.
I THINK THEY CONFUSE “HEROES” AND “TRAITORS”: Celebrities beg electors to be ‘heroes’ and vote against Trump. Delegates are not elected to do anything but carry the will of the people. They certainly are not given the right to nullify elections. Good grief. You’d think these infants would know that.
December 15, 2016
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ADVICE TO THE DEMOCRATS from Eric S Raymond. “Donald Trump’s victory reads to me like a realignment election, a historic break with the way interest and demographic groups have behaved in the U.S. in my lifetime. Yet, Democrats, you so far seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Indeed, if I were Donald Trump I would be cackling with glee at your post-election behavior, which seems ideally calculated to lock Trump in for a second term before he has been sworn in for the first.”
Plus:
Do not be fooled into thinking otherwise by your popular vote “win”; that majority came entirely from the West Coast metroplex and disguises a large-scale collapse in popular support everywhere else in the U.S. Trump even achieved 30-40% support in blue states where he didn’t spend any money.
County-by-county psephological maps show that your base is now confined to two major coastal enclaves and a handful of university towns. Only 4 of 50 states have both a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor. In 2018 that regionalization is going to get worse, not better; you will be defending 25 seats in areas where Trump took the popular vote, while the Republicans have to defend only 8 where Clinton won.
Your party leadership is geriatric, decades older than the average for their Republican counterparts. Years of steady losses at state level, masked by the personal popularity of Barack Obama, have left you without a bench to speak of – little young talent and basically no seasoned Presidential timber under retirement age. The fact that Joseph Biden, who will be 78 for the next Election Day, is being seriously mooted as the next Democratic candidate, speaks volumes – none of them good.
Your ideological lock on the elite media and show business has flipped from a powerful asset to a liability. Trump campaigned against that lock and won; his tactics can be and will be replicated. Worse, a self-created media bubble insulated you from grasping the actual concerns of the American public so completely that you didn’t realize the shit you were in until election night.
Your donor advantage didn’t help either. Clinton outspent Trump 2:1 and still lost.
Read the whole thing.
JILL STEIN AND VOTER FRAUD GO TOGETHER LIKE, WELL, JILL STEIN AND VOTER FRAUD: Green Party signature gatherer charged with submitting false information in Nevada. “A signature gatherer for the Green Party was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Las Vegas on 15 felony counts for allegedly faking names on a petition seeking to qualify the minor party’s presidential candidate for the Nevada ballot. The indictment handed up by the Clark County grand jury charged Renaldo Johnson, 55, of six counts of misconduct in signing, filing or altering a petition; six counts of obtaining and using personal information of another; and three counts of perjury. It alleges Johnson falsified signatures to qualify the Nevada Green Party for general election ballot access in last month’s election, then submitted the false petitions to be filed with the secretary of state’s office, swearing under penalty of perjury the signatures were legitimate.”
STANDING UP FOR DUE PROCESS: Minnesota football players announced Thursday night that they were boycotting all football activities in the wake of the suspensions this week of 10 teammates. “While the school did not specify the reasons for the suspensions in Tuesday’s announcement, Ray Buford Sr., the father of defensive back Ray Buford Jr., one of the suspended players, said Wednesday the suspensions resulted from an investigation conducted by the university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action into an alleged sexual assault, which was separate from earlier investigations into the alleged assault in the early hours of Sept. 2. . . . In a statement read by senior wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky, the players said: ‘The boycott will remain effective until due process is followed and suspensions for all 10 players involved are lifted.’ The statement said the players were forced to take action after an unsatisfactory meeting with athletic director Mark Coyle in which they ‘wanted answers but received misleading statements.'”
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Who Really Leaked The DNC And Podesta EMails To Wikileaks?
THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIALIZES: The bloodbath in Aleppo will haunt humanity — and Obama’s legacy. “Above all, Aleppo represents a meltdown of the West’s moral and political will — and in particular, a collapse of U.S. leadership. By refusing to intervene against the Assad regime’s atrocities, or even to enforce the “red line” he declared on the use of chemical weapons, President Obama created a vacuum that was filled by Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.”
And to think the WaPo made fun of Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” skit.
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OBITUARY OF THE YEAR: Irishman Dies From Stubbornness, Whiskey. “Chris Connors died, at age 67, after trying to box his bikini-clad hospice nurse just moments earlier. Ladies man, game slayer, and outlaw Connors told his last inappropriate joke on Friday, December 9, 2016, that which cannot be printed here. Anyone else fighting ALS and stage 4 pancreatic cancer would have gone quietly into the night, but Connors was stark naked drinking Veuve in a house full of friends and family as Al Green played from the speakers.”
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Census Bureau: 4 Richest Counties in U.S. Are Suburbs of D.C.
Time to Make DC A Swamp Again.
REPORT: Trump names David Friedman his ambassador to Israel.
Here’s a profile of Friedman last month in Haaretz:
Friedman has, on various occasions during the campaign, been asked to respond to charges of anti-Semitism among Trump supporters. He has largely dismissed these allegations, insisting that hatred of Jews is far more prevalent among the Left.
Friedman delivered a particularly scathing attack on The New York Times, after a tape recently surfaced in which Trump was caught boasting about sexually assaulting women. “The New York Times ran with the story with all the journalistic integrity of the worst gossip rag,” Friedman wrote in a column in The Jerusalem Post. “If only the Times had reported on the Nazi death camps with the same fervor as its failed last-minute attempt to conjure up alleged victims of Donald Trump, imagine how many lives could have been saved.”
Ouch. But as a wise community organizer is wont to say, get in their faces and punch back twice as hard.
ROBERT GATES: Tillerson’s ties to Putin are a ‘completely false narrative.’
Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s reputed friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a completely false narrative” that shouldn’t hurt his nomination, according to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“I think it’s a mistake to think that because Rex Tillerson successfully did business in Russia that he’s best friends with Vladimir Putin,” Gates told PBS’ Charlie Rose on Thursday. “I think that’s just a completely false narrative.”
Gates, who served under President Obama and George W. Bush and is now a partner in a consulting firm that advises ExxonMobil, first recommended Tillerson for the Cabinet position after President-elect Trump failed to settle on a secretary of state nominee.
Dems: So Putin got to Gates, too!
DOESN’T EVERYTHING? Does Cajun music really get better after beer?
TAKE THAT, SANTA-DENIERS: Story of Santa who granted a dying boy his last wish checks out.
HUFFPO: North Carolina Republicans Lost An Election, So Now They’re Trying To Undermine The Results.
Who do they think they are — Democrats?
LUIS AND THE REAL GIRL: Lawmaker’s Inflatable Sex Doll Gift Sparks Outrage.
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND OBAMACARE STATISTICS: It’s Not True ObamaCare Insures 20 Million.
The Department of Health and Human Services claims that 20 million people have gained health coverage since the enactment of Obamacare in 2010 through early 2016.
Of those people, 2.3 million are said to be young adults (ages 19 to 25) that gained coverage between 2010 and 2013 as a result of the Obamacare provision allowing them to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26.
The remaining 17.7 million people gained health insurance from Obamacare’s first open enrollment period between October 2013 and early 2016.
However, it is important to note that the administration’s coverage estimates are based on survey data rather than calculating the actual change in coverage in different markets. Though surveys can provide useful information, they are not as precise as using enrollment data taken directly from insurance companies.
A recent analysis by The Heritage Foundation’s Edmund Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski uses the more accurate method, taking actual enrollment data from Medicaid and private insurance companies to assess the impact Obamacare has had on coverage.
The researchers found that just over 14 million people gained coverage from the end of 2013 to the end of 2015. Of those 14 million, 11.8 million gained their insurance through Medicaid and 2.2 million through private coverage.
ObamaCare was sold in part as the only way to “save” private insurance, when it fact its only real success was massively expanding the welfare state.