Archive for 2016

SCOTT ADAMS:

Do you remember way—-way—-way—back in July, when the public thought Trump was the candidate they couldn’t trust with the nuclear arsenal? That was before we realized he could moderate his personality on command, as he is doing now. We’re about to enter our fifth consecutive week of Trump doing more outreach than outrage.

It turns out that Trump’s base personality is “winning.” Everything else he does is designed to get that result. He needed to be loud and outrageous in the primaries, so he was. He needs to be presidential in this phase of the election cycle, so he is.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has revealed herself to be frail, medicated, and probably duplicitous about her health. We also hear reports that she’s a drinker with a bad temper. Suddenly, Clinton looks like the unstable personality in this race. Who do you want controlling the nuclear arsenal now?

You probably thought Trump was the bigot in this contest, until Clinton called half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” That’s the point at which observers started to see a pattern. Trump has been consistently supportive of American citizens of all types – with the exception of the press and his political opponents. The main targets of Trump’s rhetoric are the nations that compete against us. In stark contrast, Clinton turned her hate on American citizens. That’s the real kind of hate. Trump is more about keeping America safe and competing effectively in the world. That is literally the job of president.

If this is the message, Trump wins.

THIS IS BASICALLY MATERNAL OP-ED-RAPE: Jody Allard: My teen boys are blind to rape culture.

“Oh boy,” my son said, rolling his eyes. “Not rape culture again.”

We were sitting around the dinner table talking about the news. As soon as I mentioned the Stanford sexual assault case, my sons looked at each other. They knew what was coming. They’ve been listening to me talk about consent, misogyny and rape culture since they were tweens. They listened to me then, but they are 16 and 18 now and they roll their eyes and argue when I talk to them about sexism and misogyny.

“There’s no such thing as rape culture,” my other son said. “You say everything is about rape culture or sexism.”

I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these.

I’m proud of them. And you’re a terrible mother to write this column. Especially stuff like this: “And in this broken system, anyone who isn’t with us is against us. Particularly, and especially, men. Even my own sons — even yours. It’s not enough to teach our sons about consent; we have to encourage them to have the courage to speak out against rape culture, too.”

You’re a feminist activist first, and a mother second. You should drop to your knees and give thanks that your boys still speak to you, if, in fact, they still do after this column.

CITIZENS OF EARTH, WE COME IN PEACE! If Hillary loses to Trump in November, her future as a galactic ambassador is assured, based on the interstellar togs she wore to last night’s Congressional Black Caucus event. Who wore it best?

hillary_space_ambassadors_9-18-16-1

(Click to enlarge; center photo by Rex Features via AP Images.)

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed,” notes the Washington Post, astonishingly enough:

The recent surge of progressive activism on college campuses across the country has led to many debates on the merits of concepts such as “microaggressions” and “safe spaces” in educational settings that should respect free speech and dialogue. Student uprisings against racial injustice and discrimination at Yale, the University of Missouri and dozens of other universities have shown the power of students who have banded together against institutionalized racism in academia and the student body.

But little has been said about how the idea of “intersectionality” — the idea that all struggles are connected and must be combated by allies — has created a dubious bond between the progressive movement and pro-Palestinian activists who often engage in the same racist and discriminatory discourse they claim to fight. As a result of this alliance, progressive Jewish students are often subjected to a double standard not applied to their peers — an Israel litmus test to prove their loyalties to social justice.

Why are Democrat monopoly institutions such cesspits of anti-Semitism? For a primer on the leftwing conspiracy theory that is “intersectionality,” Christina Hoff Sommers has you covered:

ANGELA MERKEL’S VIRTUE-SIGNALLING WAS A TERRIBLE BASIS FOR POLICY: Tensions Rising in Germany: Citizens clash with Syrian refugees–and each other.

Germany is blowing up again over migration. The Saxon town of Bautzen has, like dozens of similar places across Germany, a barracks for some of the million or two Middle Eastern migrants who have been streaming across the Mediterranean for the past year-and-a-half. People in Bautzen aren’t used to foreigners, and now groups of young men have taken to congregating in city’s central square, the Kornmarkt. The migrants say they come there for the free internet. This upsets the locals, 80 of whom waged a pitched battle against 20 teenage migrants on Wednesday evening. Alcohol was involved on both sides. To judge from the video at FAZ.com, accounts differ on who is to blame. The Germans say that the young migrants (whom they refer to as UMAs, the German acronym for unaccompanied minors seeking asylum) are harassing women and smashing things. The UMAs, in turn, say the locals (whom they refer to as “Nazis”) accost them every day with shouts of “Foreigners out!”

The confrontations take place against the background of a more general society-wide anger in Germany. Last Saturday, Bautzen’s right-wingers and left-wingers confronted each other on the streets, rather as they did a century ago in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Germany’s defeat in World War I. On Thursday night, following the fights, 350 people, most of them natives, were on the streets again. A cordon of police was required to separate the pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant sides—again, much as they once tried to separate the Communists and anti-Communists. More protests are planned for this weekend.

The anger overflows in all directions. Here is a picture of a kid kicking a TV cameraman. At a European Union summit in Bratislava, German chancellor Angela Merkel, who issued the invitation to the Middle Eastern migrants in the summer of 2015, said the EU was now in a “critical situation.” Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg politician who serves as the EU president, blamed forty years of British “lies” for the union’s problems. Someone tweeted that the summit looked like a funeral from the old Soviet politburo.

“What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”

WHY MODERN MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS ARE SO FORGETTABLE.

I’ll add that the sound itself, too-loud and with absurdly over-hyped low frequencies, is annoying.

WE’LL KNOW WHO IS CORRECT SOON ENOUGH.

Shot: Black voters are turning from Clinton to Trump in new poll.

—The New York Post, today.

Chaser:  Trump Will Get as Many Black Votes as ‘Negroes in the National Hockey League,’ Cornel West tells PJM, adding Trump can change as “neo-fascists can change into something else.”

PJ Media, today.

Oh, that fun that would ensue if West was asked to define what fascism is…

Related Update: Among Democrats, deep concern about Clinton’s Hispanic strategy.

JUST DON’T MENTION THE WAR. CIA Director: Terrorism a ‘Distorted Interpretation of Various Religious Faiths.’

Not a gaffe — CIA Director John Brennan used “faiths” in the plural twice, and paraphrased Obama’s infamous morally equivalent interpretation of American exceptionalism during his speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies forum Wednesday, which marked the 10th anniversary of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Bridget Johnson writes at PJM.