Posts Tagged ‘polls’

LinkSwarm for August 3, 2018

Friday, August 3rd, 2018

I’m hoping that this week is Peak Busy for me. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Rasmussen: “Today’s [President Donald Trump] approval ratings among black voters: 29% This time last year: 15%.” Overall Trump approval rating at 50%.
  • Related: “President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the ‘most pro-black president’ in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.” (Hat tip: Da Tech Guy via The Other McCain.)
  • ObamaCare is now optional:

    At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued Wednesday reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent. And unlike President Barack Obama’s implementation of his signature healthcare legislation, it works within the confines of the law.

    Federal law exempts “short-term, limited duration” health insurance from having to carry the unwanted coverage and hidden taxes Obamacare requires. Many consumers have understandably taken refuge from soaring Obamacare premiums in short-term plans.

    Hoping to force those consumers into Obamacare plans, the Obama administration sabotaged short-term plans by stripping them of crucial consumer protections. It cut the maximum plan term from 12 months to three months, and forbade issuers from offering “renewal guarantees” that allow the sick to continue purchasing short-term policies at healthy-person rates. State insurance regulators protested that these restrictions literally stripped sick patients of their coverage.

    Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.

    You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Yesterday’s controversy de jour: “Sarah Jeong: NY Times stands by racist tweets reporter.”
  • Andrew Sullivan on the same topic:

    Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

    From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

    A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

    Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.

  • Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro admits that socialism doesn’t work. Just think how much pain could be avoided if he had admitted this before people had to eat their dogs…
  • California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her staff for nearly 20 years. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Mistaken police call for an active shooter at a McAllen mall turns out to be an illegal alien robbery gang. Result? Seven illegal alien criminal suspects arrested.
  • Fort Myers, Florida: “Police Officer Dies After Being Shot By Illegal Alien.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Noncitizens across U.S. find it easy to register to vote, cast ballots.” And some have even had other people do it for them without their knowledge… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sheldon Silver Sentenced: Seven in Sing Sing. (Actually, it’s not clear the former New York Assembly speaker will be serving his sentence in Sing Sing, but we can only hope, for the sake of the alliteration…)
  • Maryland forces 90-year old woman to tear down wheelchair ramp she built for he own home.
  • Kane bodyslams Democratic opponent in Mayor of Knox County race.
  • Tommy Robinson freed in the UK.
  • Related tweet:

  • Woman rams car for having a Trump bumper sticker.
  • China cracks down on illegal coffins. Which is to say, any coffins, since cremation is now mandated. Including seizing and destroying coffins old people have spent their entire lives saving for.
  • He Made the Most Beautiful Films of All Time and They Put Him in Prison For It.” He being Sergei Parajanov and they being the Soviet Union. (Hat tip: Don Webb on Facebook.)
  • Liberal NYC lawyer who worked under both Bloomberg and De Blasio talks about just how bad De Blasio sucks:

    When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.

    Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.

    She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.

    Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.

  • Comics video blogger Jeremy Hambly attacked at GenCon. “The Quartering also provided another update claiming five eyewitness have identified the attacker as Matt Loter, the owner of Elm City Games.” GenCon promptly expelled Loter. Ha! Just kidding!

  • Liberal Chicago Sun-Times reporter: “Donald Trump is going to be re-elected in 2020. The Democrats don’t have anyone who can touch him. Bank on it.”
  • “Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Get Avocado Toast In Venezuela.” The Babylon Bee has just been tearing it up recently. I probably need to add them to the blog roll.
  • Immigration: Did Liberals Fall Into Yet Another Trump Trap?

    Thursday, July 19th, 2018

    According to this Gallup poll, immigration is now the top national issue, probably because Democrats took a temporary break from their Russian collusion fantasy to splash “OMG! Look at these heart-rending pictures of illegal alien children!” across the nightly news for a month.

    The 22% of Americans in July who say immigration is the top problem is up from 14% in June and is the highest percentage naming that issue in Gallup’s history of asking the “most important problem” question. The previous high had been 19%.

    There’s just on tiny little problem for Democrats:

    The YouGov poll shows that registered votes prefer stricter immigration policies by roughly two-to-one. Forty-seven percent of the registered voters in the poll of 1,000 adults said they want stricter policies, while only 25 percent said they want less strict policies.

    Seventy-three percent of GOP-identified adults want stricter policies, as do 45 percent of independents, and 19 percent of Democrats. Thirty-one percent of Hispanics want stricter policies, while 30 percent want looser policies, said the poll.

    So they spent a month hyping an issue that plays directly into President Donald Trump’s hands.

    Also note that there’s no guarantee that a majority of that minority of 25% believe in the most extreme open borders position of abolishing ICE.

    I see no sign that their chants of “No ban. No wall. No borders at all.” have even the tiniest shred of popularity with American voters at large. Border Control is President Trump’s signature issue, one that pries far more voters from the Democrat’s coalition (blue collar works, blacks, etc.) than it does from Republicans.

    If the Democrats keep letting the lunatic nutroots tail wag the rest of the party, expect them to experience the same electoral joy they enjoyed in 2010, 2014 and 2016.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Democrats’ Hispanic Panic Fizzles

    Thursday, July 5th, 2018

    I assume Democrats ginned up the border separation issue for the same reason George Soros bankrolled Black Lives Matter: To motivate an important part of the Democratic Party’s ethnic pandering coalition to go to the polls to vote for Democrats.

    One tiny problem: Just as Black Lives matters failed to get black voters to the polls to drag Hillary across the line in the same out-sized numbers they gave Obama, so too has the Hispanic Panic Ploy failed to energize Hispanics:

    Democrats counting on President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies to spark energized Hispanic turnout and a wave against GOP candidates in this year’s midterms will be surprised to see what’s transpiring. Even during the heat of the family-separation crisis, Democrats are underperforming in heavily Hispanic constituencies, from GOP-held border battlegrounds in Texas to diversifying districts in Southern California to the nation’s most populous Senate battleground in Florida.

    If immigration affects the battle for Congress, it will be because of the anti-Trump backlash among suburban women as much as any increased mobilization in the Hispanic communities. The early returns are a sobering reminder for Democrats that, even as the Republican Party is becoming a more nativist institution, GOP candidates are still holding their own in diverse battlegrounds by distinguishing themselves from Trump.

    Rep. Will Hurd of Texas once looked like one of the most vulnerable House Republicans, representing a border district where Hispanics make up 70 percent of the population—a seat Hillary Clinton carried by 4 points in 2016. Hurd has long been an independent GOP voice, emerging as a critic of Trump’s border-wall proposals and a supporter of a path to citizenship for Dreamers. But, as Democrats frequently bring up, he’s also a congressman whose partisan affiliation will help keep Republicans in charge of the House.

    He’s in surprisingly good shape as he vies for a third term against Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones. Despite holding one of the 25 GOP seats that Clinton carried, he’s not on the list of The Cook Political Report’s most endangered 31 members. His Texas colleagues John Culberson and Pete Sessions, representing suburban Houston and Dallas districts where Republicans traditionally dominate, are in deeper trouble. It’s a crystal-clear sign that the anti-Trump anger is concentrated within whiter, affluent suburban communities, not the Hispanic battlegrounds with the most at stake.

    There are also plenty of other clues suggesting Hispanic voters won’t be rushing to the polls this November. In a special election to fill the vacant seat of former Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas last Saturday, there were few signs of a Democratic wave. The reliably Republican district is majority-Hispanic, yet GOP candidates on the ballot tallied the same 60 percent vote share that Trump did in 2016. There were no signs of increased Hispanic engagement—even with the border crisis raging not far away.

    Those results mirror the results from the March Texas primaries, in which the Democrats’ Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke, a progressive favorite, badly underperformed in many border towns with large Hispanic populations. O’Rourke carried 87 percent of the vote in millennial-friendly Travis County (Austin), but fell well short of a majority in most counties along the border.

    That confirms what we already know from the most recent Harris poll:

    70 percent of registered voters, including 69 percent of independents, think we need stricter enforcement of the country’s immigration laws. Sixty-nine percent of those polled said ICE should not be abolished. Further, the survey found tremendous opposition, 84 percent, to the sanctuary city practice of not notifying immigration authorities when an an illegal immigrant has been arrested for crimes and taken into custody.

    That includes increased support for President Donald Trump among Hispanics.

    Open borders are deeply unpopular, no matter how much intra-Democratic Party dynamics push them toward that extreme. I suspect they’ll find that out in November.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    White Working Class to Democrats: Die In A Fire

    Thursday, August 3rd, 2017

    Democrats commissioned a poll from Expedition Strategies, and the resulting report, “House Majority PAC White Working Class Voter Project,” is well worth reading.

    First let’s cover the methodology:

    1000 total interviews in targeted House districts with a sample of likely 2018 voters. All of the voters were White, over the age of twenty-four and did not have a college degree or higher education. The interviews were conducted June 27–July 13, 2017. The margin of error for overall results is ± 3.10% and higher among subgroups.

    Next, let’s see where those interviews were conducted by regional breakdown:

  • The Midwest (MW) is 40% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota or
    Wisconsin.

  • The Northeast (NE) is 35% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Maine, New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania.
  • The South/West (SW) is 25% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida or
    Texas.
  • Notice the ways those samples were constructed? MW includes four swing states plus heavily Democratic Illinois. NW includes one swing state (Pennsylvania) and three heavily Democratic states. The SW (an odd way to combine two quite disparate regions anyway) includes two solidly Republican states (Arizona and Texas), two swing states (trending blue Colorado and trending red Florida) and heavily blue California. Why, it’s almost as though they cherry picked the state targets to give the appearance of fairness while oversampling heavily Democratic states. (It also suggests Democrats already think that most of the South and West are gone and aren’t coming back anytime soon.) To learn how badly this skews the poll I would need to know which congressional districts they were targeting.

    Which makes the poll results all the more damning for Democrats. Let’s take a close look at some of those results

    White voters without a college degree made up 34% of the electorate in 2016. Their share was stable since 2012 but our
    margin got 12% worse.

    12% worse in this case means going from -25% to -37%. That is indeed “worse.”

    A majority (57%) said a college degree would result in more debt and little likelihood of landing a good paying job, while 43% said a college degree was a necessary step to get ahead. 83% said a college degree was no longer any guarantee of success
    in America, while 17% said people who have a college degree are able to get ahead.
    ➢In short, when these voters hear people tell them that the answer to their concerns is college, their reaction is to essentially say –don’t force your version of the American Dream on me.

    So it appears that the white working class has figured out that “Step One: Put yourself $100,000 in debt” isn’t a surefire path to success. Good for them.

    While Democrats have a small advantage on health care with this group, Republicans have major advantages on middle class
    tax cuts, ensuring people are rewarded for hard work, and improving the economy and creating jobs. We have a small advantage on health care despite the unpopularity of the GOP health approach, but our deficit on the economy and jobs is overwhelming.

    I wonder just how much of an “advantage” Democrats have on health care, and what language was used to achieve that advantage. I doubt terribly many people whose premiums have doubled under ObamaCare would agree…

    A narrative about villains did not test as well nor did the Wall Street Republican negative–this reinforces the need to emphasize solutions over villains. Our most important villain–Congressional Republicans. It’s worth keeping in mind, Democratic leaders will be a significant villain highlighted by the GOP.

    Translation: The old scaremongering isn’t working any more, and Nancy Pelosi is less popular than Ebola.

    Despite a majority of these voters being pro-choice, they are more concerned about cuts to infrastructure than cuts to Planned Parenthood.

    I’m betting the “pro-choice” finding is oversold, thanks to this lying frame: “Democratic concerns that the Republicans significantly cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood that supports breast-cancer screenings and contraception.” It’s well documented that Planned Parenthood doesn’t perform breast cancer screening. So they even have to lie in their polling questions to get remotely close to the results they want. And even with that lie Planned Parenthood cuts are less of a concern for those polled than infrastructure spending.

    The poll also contains bad news for the Democratic Party’s powerful ecoweenie faction: “The Democratic candidate for Congress opposes building new oil and gas pipelines and opposes fracking for natural gas: This was the only positive that made a majority (54%) of voters less likely to support the Democratic candidate for Congress.” I still bet Democrats will brag about bankrupting coal and preventing fracking, because they just can’t help themselves. (See also: Tom Steyer.)

    This was moderately popular among the targeted demographic: “The Democratic candidate for Congress supports punishing Federal contractors who are caught cheating taxpayers by putting them in a penalty box–banning them from any federal contracts for five years.” Note that they didn’t ask about penalizing companies caught hiring illegal aliens. I bet they didn’t dare…

    Then they did the pollster testing thing: “Sure, you say you hate us, but what if we told you [insert finely-honed, focus-tested Democratic talking points here]?” After all that, all that demographic sample cherry-picking and question slanting, they manage to produce a 40%/40% tie. They finally get in positive territory with “What if we told you Republicans want to murder your baby and bath in its blood?” type questions.

    But their conclusions were suitably bleak for Democrats:

  • We suffer from the lack of an identifiable positive agenda. Without it, voters will turn to Trump for progress. With it, we can make significant gains.
  • Our economic deficit is devastating. Voters don’t see special interests as the problem we need to fix.
  • Success means better jobs that pay well, not a new campaign finance system. Let’s not confuse the end and the means.
  • Success means when you work hard you should be able to: get medical care and afford prescription medicine
    and have a secure retirement. And when you work harder than your co-workers by doing overtime, you should
    get paid for that overtime.
  • Translation:

  • All this Trump Derangement Syndrome #Resistance is making us even less popular.
  • Which part of “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” (not Russia! Russia! Russia) and “It’s the economy, stupid” was unclear? I know, there are so many tranny bathrooms to implement, random white people to accuse of racism, illegal alien criminals to prevent from being deported, unvetted Muslim “refugees” to welcome and Christian bakers to sue into baking gay wedding cakes to worry about trivia like “jobs” and “the economy.”
  • Does this mean you’re finally going to shut up about Citizens United?
  • “Overtime protection” polls well and gets mentioned all the hell over this doc, so expect Democrats to start yammering about that incessantly.
  • Anyway, there’s a lot more to digest in that report, so take a look, if only to confirm that Democrats are finally starting to realize they have a problem.

    (Director Blue has additional thoughts on the same report.)

    LinkSwarm for February 24, 2017

    Friday, February 24th, 2017

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas, Spring has sprung, full stop.

  • The elites are revolting:

    It’s no coincidence that the most vocal outcry against President Trump’s measures have come from urban elites and the corporations that cater to them. It’s easy to spot the class divides in the scoffing at Andrew Puzder, CEO of the company behind Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, getting a cabinet position instead of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg who had been tipped for Treasury Secretary by Hillary.

    Carl’s Jr and its 4 Dollar Real Deal are a world away from Facebook’s Gehry designed Menlo Park headquarters. Or as a WWE tournament is from Conde Nast’s Manhattan skyscraper.

    It’s hard to imagine a clearer contrast between coastal elites and the heartland, and between the new economy and the old. On the one side are the glittering cities where workforces of minorities and immigrants do the dirty work behind the slick logos and buzzwords of the new economy. On the other are Rust Belt communities and Southern towns who actually used to make things.

    Facebook’s top tier geniuses enjoy the services of an executive chef, treadmill workstations and a bike repair shop walled off from East Palo Alto’s Latino population and the crime and gang violence. And who works in Facebook’s 11 restaurants or actually repairs the bikes in the back room? Or looks through the millions of pictures posted on timelines to screen out spam, pornography and racism?

    Behind the illusion of a shiny new future are Mexicans getting paid a few dollars an hour to decide if that Italian Renaissance painting you just shared violates Facebook’s content guidelines.

    If you live in the world of Facebook, Lyft, Netflix and Airbnb, crowding into airports shouting, “No Borders, No Nations, Stop The Deportations” makes sense. You don’t live in a country. You live in one of a number of interchangeable megacities or their bedroom communities. Patriotism is a foreign concept. You have no more attachment to America than you do to Friendster or MySpace. The nation state is an outdated system of social organization that is being replaced by more efficient systems of global governance. The only reason anyone would cling to nations or borders is racism.

    The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.

    This isn’t a revolution. The revolutions happened in June in the UK and in November in the US. Brexit and Trump were revolutions. The protests against them are a reaction.

  • In the midst of freaking out, Instapundit notes that our elites are displaying why they’re unfit to rule:

    Why all the anger over Trump?

    As I’ve pondered this, I’ve gone back to Tyler Cowen’s statement: “Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.”

    I think that a lot of the elite hatred for Trump, and for his supporters, stems from just such a sentiment. For decades now, the educated meritocrats who ran America — the “Best and the Brightest,” in David Halberstam’s not-actually-complimentary term — have enjoyed tremendous status, regardless of election results.

    An election’s turn might see some moving to the private sector — say as K street lobbyists or high-priced lawyers or consultants — while a different batch of meritocrats take their positions in government. But even so, their status remained unchallenged: They were always the insiders, the elite, the winners, regardless of which team came out ahead in the elections.

    But as Nicholas Ebserstadt notes, that changed in November. To the privileged and well-educated Americans living in their “bicoastal bastions,” things seemed to be going quite well, even as the rest of the country fell farther and farther behind. But, writes Eberstadt: “It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then — and broke down very badly.

    “The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it.”

    Well, now they’ve heard it, and they’ve also heard that a lot of Americans resent the meritocrats’ insulation from what’s happening elsewhere, especially as America’s unfortunate record over the past couple of decades, whether in economics, in politics, or in foreign policy, doesn’t suggest that the “meritocracy” is overflowing with, you know, actual merit.

    In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy. From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A military coup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.

    In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”

  • You have to read this Glenn Greenwald piece on what’s wrong with the Democratic Party. “The more alarmed one is by the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, have enabled many to ignore just how broken and failed the Democrats are as a national political force.” Never mind that Greenwald ignores one of the big elephants in the room (the Social Justice Warrior/victimhood identity politics brigade doing such a bang-up job alienating American voters). His description of the other elephant in the room, the party’s fundamentally corrupt and anti-Democratic nature, is fairly acute.
  • The number of Republicans passes the number of Democrats in Gallup’s Party ID tracking poll. This has happened a few times before, but the mere 25% for Democrats does appear to be the lowest rating ever.
  • All the Trump Derangement is masking the Democratic Party’s own civil war. “There is no Barack Obama among the ranks of current Democrats. He simply does not exist. That truth, and Hillary’s defeat, means the years ahead will be ones of rebuilding and rebranding. So far, it’s not going well.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Seven days in February. “Why were former Obama-administration appointees or careerist officials tapping the phone calls of an incoming Trump designate and then leaking the tapes to their pets in the press?” Also this: “The Democratic party has been absorbed by its left wing and is beginning to resemble the impotent British Labour party. Certainly it no longer is a national party.”
  • “The Social Security Administration paid $1 billion in benefits to individuals who did not have a Social Security Number.”
  • “This is what Chuck Todd and others like him fail to accept or comprehend: The mainstream media have delegitimized themselves. Republicans and independents watched for eight long years as Todd and others of his ilk did their best to help and support the last administration; not only refusing to hold President Obama to account (the way they are imploring each other to do with Trump) but providing cover for him.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Turns out that patiently explaining to the deplorable redneck freaks of JesusLand why they’re ignorant rubes that need to be ruled for their own good doesn’t win votes.
  • MSNBC: Controlling what people thing is our job.
  • A look at the shell games played by the dark money left. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • With President Trump, America has an administration that is finally willing to name radical Islam as the enemy.
  • Women celebrate being liberated from the Islamic State. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • President Trump contemplates designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and the New York Times freaks out. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Texas preschool teacher fired for tweeting to “kill some Jews.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Marine Le Pen is winning over French women. In addition to refusing to wear a headscarf, “Le Pen again vowed to protect French women after the mass sexual assault by groups of men in Cologne, Germany, just over a year ago in an op-ed that tied together immigration and women rights.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Part of Geert Wilders’ security detail has been suspended for possibly leaking details of Wilders locations to Jihadest groups. “Secret Service chief Erik Akerboom said he could not confirm the man’s identity but confirmed media reports he has a ‘Moroccan background.'”
  • Fourth circuit court decides to just ignore Heller.
  • The AFL-CIO is is cutting staff “amid continuing declines in union membership.” Faster, please. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Paul Krugman, the Cleveland Browns of economists. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • If you’re looking for a pundit with a clear-eyed vision of where President Donald Trump is going, Ross Douthat is not your man.
  • NASA contemplates a bold leap forward to 1968.
  • Men who SWATed, sent heroin to Brian Krebs’ house sentenced.
  • Cahnman’s Musings has a roundup of what various school district Superintendents make. It’s an interesting list, though I personally would not have broken it up by Texas House committee chairman. I’m not surprised that they average a low six figures, or that the Superintendents of Houston and Dallas ISD make in excess of $300,000. Why I don’t understand is why the Superintendent for Galena Park ISD, a working class school district with 22,549 students and a single 4A high school, makes $270,531, or 90% of the what the HISD Superintendent makes…
  • Feminist derangement syndrome: “I was walking into a gas station for a bottle of water when the man behind me stepped up to open the door for me. With that act of kindness, something inside me snapped and I flew into a blind rage. I began screaming at him at the top of my lungs.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Trump Administration to Social Justice Warriors: No tranny bathrooms for you!
  • “I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women” says ex-WNBA player Candice Wiggins, who says she was bullied and harassed for being straight. This is not exactly a surprise, thought that 98% number may be slightly high. I casually followed the WNBA back when the Houston Comets were dominating the league, but haven’t paid attention since they folded. Today half of the teams still lose money. But I’m sure their popularity will skyrocket any day now…

  • Vice President Mike Pence helps repair vandalism at a Jewish cemetery.
  • I have heard the bots reverting, each to each. I do not think that they will revert for me…
  • Are you smuggeling illegal butter, comrade?
  • Election Roundup Part 1: Just the Facts, Ma’am

    Friday, November 11th, 2016

    Time, finally, for something vaguely resembling a comprehensive post-election roundup.

    As this keeps threatening to turn into a very long and unwieldy post, I’m going to break it up into chunks, with this installment centered on vote totals, race outcomes, and statistical facts about the election. We’ll save analysis, implications, and the saltiest examples of liberal tears for another time.

  • Assuming the current results hold, Trump flipped six states Romney lost (Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan), plus Maine’s second congressional district, which gives Trump 306 electoral votes.
  • That’s the highest electoral vote totals for a Republican since Bush41 blew out Dukakis in 1988 (426).
  • Hillary might still edge Trump in the popular vote (right now she’s up by 3/10ths of 1%).
  • Clinton lost over 5 million votes from Obama’s 2012 totals. Trump was down less than a million from Romney’s totals.
  • Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson pulled in over 4 million votes, triple his 2012 showing. Green Party candidate Jill Stein pulled in over 1.2 million votes, which was almost triple her 2012 showing as well.
  • Evan McMullin (or, as Ace of Spades refers to him, “Egg McMuffin”) pulled in less than half a million votes, about a third of which came from his native Utah, where he beat Johnson and Stein. He did not win any counties in Utah, though he did beat Clinton in a few.
  • 1996 was the last time West Virginia (formerly a reliable Democratic state) went for the Democratic presidential candidate. This year they went for Trump by nearly 69%, including every county in the state. Despite that, WV Democratic Senator Joe Manchin says he’s not switching to the Republican Party. Machin, 69, is up for reelection in 2018.
  • Republicans lost two seats (in Illinois and New Hampshire) but maintain control of the Senate. Louisiana will have it’s top two runoff December 9, where Republican John Kennedy will be heavily favored, likely giving Republicans a 53-47 edge.
  • Senators Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) both won reelection is historically blue states.
  • Republicans only lost six House seats, easily maintaining control. Three Dem pickups were in Florida (where Republicans flipped two sets themselves), two in Nevada, one in New Hampshire, one in Virginia, and one in New Jersey. Republicans also picked up one House seat in Nebraska. Republicans are guaranteed to retain control of Louisiana’s third congressional district (two Republicans in the runoff) and likely to retain control of the 4th as well.
  • Not a single U.S. House seat in Texas flipped parties, which means that incumbent Republican Will Hurd retained the 23rd Congressional District over Democrat Pete Gallego. CD23 is the only true swing U.S. House district in Texas these days, and Gallego had been the incumbent when Hurd ousted him in 2014.
  • Senator Tim Scott was reelected to a full term. Scott still remains the first black Senator from the South since reconstruction.
  • Republicans control the House, Senate and White House for the first time since 1928.
  • Republicans also picked up three governorships, in Missouri, Vermont and New Hampshire, giving them 33 to the Democrats 15.
  • The North Carolina Governor’s race may not be decided until November 18. If Democrat Roy Cooper’s razor thin lead over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory holds, that will be the Democrats’ only gubernatorial pickup this year.
  • “Eastern Kentucky voters rejected [Democrat] House Speaker Greg Stumbo on Tuesday as Republicans appeared poised to take control of the Kentucky House of Representatives for the first time since 1921.”
  • Democrats pick up four seats in the Texas House.
  • Texas county-by-county Presidential race results. Clinton taking Fort Bend county is a surprise to me; Romney won that by six points in 2012, and Clinton beat Trump by about that much this year.
  • Libertarians maintained automatic ballot access in Texas because their railroad commission candidate pulled in 5.3% of the vote, over the 5% threshold. The Green Party, however, did not, and will have to submit 50,000 petition signatures to make the ballot in 2018.
  • National Review (ad blocker blocker warning) notes that the “Trump won because of racism” talking point is demonstrably wrong:

    Mitt Romney won a greater percentage of the white vote than Donald Trump. Mitt took 59 percent while Trump won 58 percent. Would you believe that Trump improved the GOP’s position with black and Hispanic voters? Obama won 93 percent of the black vote. Hillary won 88 percent. Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote. Hillary won 65 percent. Critically, millions of minority voters apparently stayed home. Trump’s total vote is likely to land somewhere between John McCain’s and Romney’s (and well short of George W. Bush’s 2004 total), while the Democrats have lost almost 10 million voters since 2008.

    And all this happened even as Democrats doubled-down on their own identity politics.

    But all this is based on exit polls. How do we know they’re any more accurate at capturing the electorate than those other faulty polls?

  • More exit poll analysis from Oren Cass. The thrust is that Trump did better among nonwhites than Romney. But when he gets down to differences of less than 2%, he’s counting angels on the heads of pins.
  • Remember all that MSM talk about Trump turning Texas into a swing state? Instead he turned Michigan and Wisconsin into swing states.

    Here’s a Tweet that encapsulates a New York Times interactive map indicating which areas of the country voted notably more Republican or more Democratic in the Presidential race than in 2012. Note the strong surge of Trump voters in the rust belt.

    As far as the senate, things don’t get any easier for Democrats in 2018:

    Clinton Corruption/Election Update for November 7, 2016

    Monday, November 7th, 2016

    The election is tomorrow, so let’s just combine the Clinton Corruption update with the election news update:

  • FBI punts again.
  • Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 million for Bill Clinton’s birthday while Hillary was head of the State Department, in violation of Department policy and Clinton’s own “ethics agreement,” and without Hillary informing the State Department. “While Qatar was obvious engaged in pay to play, what makes this instance even worse, is that Hillary and Bill were confident enough they could simply get away with it by never telling the State Department of the new influence money.”
  • Impending calamity for the Clintons:

    When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, pilfering over $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, and furniture as they cleared out, they claimed they were flat broke. Their net worth today is now in excess of $150 million, accumulated not by traditional means of work and investment, but rather by pay-for-play influence peddling through speeches and Clinton Foundation fundraising — with the tacit understanding that the Clintons would be in a position to return favors to donors after Hillary won the 2016 presidential election.

    The Clintons symbolize the institutionalization of corruption in Washington, which now permeates almost all the government agencies. Even the so-called independent Federal Reserve has been corrupted by politicians whose profligate deficit spending puts pressure on the Fed to maintain a zero-interest policy that artificially masks the real cost and risk of a growing unsustainable level of debt.

    For the better part of eight years of the Obama administration, polls have consistently shown that nearly 70% of Americans believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Separately, a recent MSNBC poll shows “liar” is the most common word that comes to mind when voters think of Hillary Clinton. Another recent NBC poll shows that only 11% think of Hillary as honest and trustworthy. Even if one doubts the accuracy of these polls, how is it possible for a majority to think the country can get on a better track by electing as the next U.S. President a liar who embodies the corrupt status quo?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Normal people don’t see Islamic State military oilfield gains as an “opportunity”. But Clinton cronies aren’t normal people.
  • Chelsea Clinton used the Clinton Foundation as her own personal piggy bank to pay for her wedding. “If true people (then) worth well into 8 figures used 501c3 $ to pay for a wedding.”
  • The mystery of the Clinton Foundation’s missing $20 million in Haiti relief funds. Money that came from Frank Giustra and Carlos Slim. Also involved: Jean Marc Villain, who oversaw the fund while going through his own bankruptcy, and who “violated state laws in 2001 when he did not file donation reports for the Haitian-American Political Caucus.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Hey Hillary? Think you could stop mentioning classified war information in emails from your illegal private server? KThxBye – John Podesta”
  • Clinton News Network gonna Clinton News Network.
  • Scott Adams shows you how to unhypnotize a Clinton supporter.
  • “Market Indicator Gives Trump An 86% Chance Of Winning The Election.”
  • Chris Wallace: “I think the media could not do a worse job than this year….It’s like watching a badly refereed basketball game where we’re seeing make-up calls and we’re seeing particularly print going – and I’m not a Trump defender at all – but going after Trump in ways that I think violate every canon of ethics for news reporting.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Bill Clinton tells donors borders are going to be porous “for a very long time.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Clinton advisor Jennifer Palmieri admits that some Clinton Foundation donors wanted pro quo for their quid. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Hillary’s coughing fit returns.
  • Sunday Trump held rallies in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Notice how neatly those stops align with Michael Moore’s contention that Trump will sweep the rust belt. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The fact that the Clinton campaign is panicing over Michigan, deploying both Bill Clinton and Obama there, also lend credence to the theory. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • False story alert: That story about a “murder suicide” of an FBI agent who leaked Clinton scandal info from the non-existent “Denver Guardian” is a hoax.
  • Noted without comment: “Farrakhan compares Hillary Clinton to Hitler.”
  • LA Times Poll Has Trump Up By 5.4 Points

    Saturday, November 5th, 2016

    The latest Los Angeles Times poll has Donald Trump up over Hillary Clinton by 5.4 points. That’s the largest lead Trump had since the “Clinton collapse” story broke.

    Polls are screwy this year, and Trump has a way of defying all conventional wisdom, but given the in-the-tank media loudly proclaiming “No, Hillary’s polls are just fine, I tell you! Just fine!” in the wake of the FBI and Wikileaks revelations, the LA Times poll seems significant.

    (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)

    LinkSwarm for November 4, 2016

    Friday, November 4th, 2016

    Believe it or not, there is some non-Presidential race news. But yeah, I’m starting with that:

  • Trump takes lead in Florida.
  • Tied in Colorado. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Another poll shows Trump leading in Virginia. Trump jumped 10 points from early October, and Hillary dropped 5 points.
  • Trump up 13 with independents in D+7 poll. That’s a Trump rise of 6 points and a Clinton fall of 7 points. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • And he’s within the margin of error, down only one point in Michigan.
  • Michael Moore on why Trump will win: “He is the human Molotov Cocktail that they’ve been waiting for; the human hand grande that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.”
  • “Former Democrat pollster Pat Caddell says this year’s election could be like 1980 – a 40 state Trump landslide.”
  • Early black voting is down this year. Bad sign for Hillary? Maybe.
  • Why Trump will win, and what comes after:

    Trump will win because:

    • The polls pervasively understate his support (the “shy Trump voter”).
    • Enthusiasm for Clinton is low, enthusiasm for Trump is high. Early voting is showing a pattern closer to 2008 than 2012 (high turnout). Given the enthusiasm gap, this is bad news for Clinton and supports the Shy Trump Voter hypothesis.
    • This (like 2008) is a “Change Election”. Three quarters or more of voters think that the country is on the wrong track. Clinton is the insider, Trump is the outsider. Advantage: Trump.
    • The Clinton camp is paralyzed by the emerging scandals. It’s been 5 days [post is from 11/2 – LP] and there’s no coherent reply to the FBI reopening the email investigation. The paralysis says that Clinton’s inner circle is divided on what to do, and she has poor leadership skills – and so the campaign twists in the wind. This is a very, very bad sign for her.
    • The Marc Rich announcement today is almost inexplicable. There’s no reason that a FOIA request announcement couldn’t wait until after the election. Instead, it came out 4 days after the previous FBI announcement. My take is that Obama has polling showing that she’s going to lose, and lose big. It’s no secret that the Obamas and the Clintons despise each other – this is his chance to dismantle the Clinton machine in the Democratic party (and hill the resulting power vacuum with his people).
    • The UK betting markets are showing the same pattern as before the Brexit vote – a few big money bets on Clinton (as with Remain), but a huge number of small bets on Trump (Leave).
    • Independents are leaving Gary Johnson and breaking hard for Trump. The latest poll from North Carolina has Johnson down 5 and Trump up 5. This feels like more confirmation of the Shy Trump Voter hypothesis.
    • There is very little or no equivalent data pointing to a strengthening by Clinton. If she were actually as far ahead as we’ve been told, there would be evidence dropping from the trees. There isn’t.
  • Florida paper apologizes to readers for such biased, anti-Trump coverage.
  • Things are getting really, really bad in Turkey. This is not a surprise, and the writing was on the wall when the “coup” failed and Erdogan’s crackdown began. But Erdogan’s purge is even more extensive than I anticipated.
  • And Iraq is threatening war with Turkey over Turkish troops in Iraq.
  • Speaking of Iraq, the good news is that Iraqi forces seem to slowly but surely be taking back Mosul from the Islamic State.
  • There’s already a no fly zone in Syria: Russia’s no fly zone.
  • But the press’ instance on focusing on trivia means that we’re not talking about the five wars America is currently involved in.
  • Indeed, the press prefers to talk about Trump’s sex life instead of Hillary’s corruption or the massive failure of ObamaCare.
  • Estonia prepares to defend itself from Russia.
  • “Sheriff Clarke: Gun Control Was Meant to Keep Arms Away from Black People.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Do most felons obtain their gun illegally? Yes. Says who? The felons themselves. (Hat tip: Hsoi.)
  • What China learned from the Gulf War. And what they then unlearned: “China did try adding more officers selected for skills rather than loyalty but since 2010 have shifted back to the “loyalty first” model. This was necessary because of problems eliminating the corruption in the military and the realization that the military would more likely be needed to deal with an internal threat rather than an external one.” (Hat tip: Austin Bay at Instapundit.)
  • ESPN lost 621,000 cable subscribers in October. “Of we’re very conservative and project that ESPN continues to lose 3 million subscribers a year…within five years ESPN will be bringing in less subscriber revenue than they’ve committed for sports rights.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Science” has its own superstitions. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • America’s first airplane hijacking, from 1939. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Topless, under-age drunk, taking a selfie and crashing into a cop car are no way to go through life, Aggie girl.
  • LinkSwarm for October 24, 2016

    Monday, October 24th, 2016

    The latest Clinton Corruption update pushed the LinkSwarm to Monday:

  • National Review published Victor Davis Hanson’s endorsement of Donald Trump. And the moon became as blood…
  • Trump leading in poll that has best track record over last three elections.”

    The poll with the best track record over the last three presidential elections gave Donald Trump a 2-percentage-point edge over Hillary Clinton on Saturday.

    The Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP tracking poll has Trump with 42.1 percent and Clinton at 39.7 percent.

  • Thoughts on #NeverTrump: “They are putting a great volume of energy into bringing about a disaster, for which they will not take any ownership.”
  • No one trusts the media anymore. “Only one in nine Americans believes that Hillary Clinton is ‘honest and trustworthy.’ They don’t trust the media’s cover-up of her misdeeds, and the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Why I Now Feel Compelled To Vote For Trump“:

    More than anything, I can’t sit idly by and allow these perpetrators of fraud to celebrate and leak tears of joy like they did when they helped elect Barack Obama in 2008. I have to know I weighed in not only in writing but in the voting booth. The media needs to be destroyed. And although voting for Trump won’t do it, it’s something. Essentially, I am voting for Trump because of the people who don’t want me to, and I believe I must register my disgust with Hillary Clinton.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • And speaking of media bias, the Rolling Stone campus rape hoax case goes to trial. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Here’s a New Yorker piece on the failure of the Euro. It provides a good, but incomplete, overview of the Euro’s failure (nowhere does it note that Europe’s cradle-to-grave welfare state is unsustainable, and it fails to note that none of the nations practicing “austerity” in southern Europe have cut outlays to match receipts). And the myopic policy prescription offered is, of course, more central planning. But there are some good bits. Like this:

    The U.S. unemployment rate hit ten per cent for a single month in 2009 and is now below five per cent; the eurozone unemployment rate hit ten per cent around the same time, and is still in double digits. In some European countries, youth unemployment is more than forty per cent. America’s economy is bigger than it was when the crisis hit. The eurozone’s is smaller. To take just one example, Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone, has a per-capita G.D.P. that’s lower than it was at the end of the last century.

    Also this:

    Stiglitz observes that if the countries that committed to the single currency in 1992 had known what they know now, and if people had had the chance to vote on the proposal, “it is hard to see how they could have supported it.” That’s a hell of an indictment.

  • Hey, remember how we were told California’s assisted suicide law would only apply to terminally ill people who wanted to die? Now insurance companies are enouraging suicide rather than pay for life-extending drug treatments.
  • Even The New York Times figures out that new gun laws wouldn’t prevent most mass shootings.
  • Russia is conducting nuclear survival drills. (WSJ hoops apply.) Good thing we have Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama running things rather than that warmonger Bush… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • College isn’t for everyone:

    But if you’re not sure yet what you want to do, then take time to decide before you spend $30,000, $50,000, or $100,000 you don’t have for something you don’t need. In the meantime, start working. You’ll probably only find low-paying, hard-working jobs at first, but guess what? If you go to college, you’ll be working those same jobs when you get out, only you’ll be four years older and fifty grand poorer.

  • Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have discovered a chemical reaction to turn CO2 into ethanol. Better idea than corn subsidies…
  • The Large Hadron Collider “nightmare scenario has come true:

    For the last ten years you’ve been told that the LHC must see some new physics besides the Higgs because otherwise nature isn’t “natural” – a technical term invented to describe the degree of numerical coincidence of a theory. I’ve been laughed at when I explained that I don’t buy into naturalness because it’s a philosophical criterion, not a scientific one. But on that matter I got the last laugh: Nature, it turns out, doesn’t like to be told what’s presumably natural.

  • Hamilton County, Tennessee doesn’t monitor parole tracking devices outside business hours. A good thing people never commit parole violations nights and weekends… (Hat tip: Fark.)
  • This just in: Democratic Representative Shelia Jackson Lee is still an idiot.
  • AT&T trying to buy Time Warner. I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
  • Internet-connected CCTV cameras made by Chinese firm Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology seemed to make up the heart of the botnet used in Friday’s DDoS attack.
  • Yuan hits all time low against the dollar.
  • Microsoft Surface sucks.
  • Texas is goat country.