No, I didn’t watch it. So here are some reactions from people who did:
Vodka Pundit Stephen Green: “I’ve never seen one candidate come on so week, then reverse course — in his own limited, almost demented fashion — so strongly. I’ve never seen another candidate, so thoroughly programed, act as though her various subroutines had been corrupted by one of those nasty Russian viruses.”
Scott Adams: “Trump won bigly. This one wasn’t close.” Also:
The best quotable moments from the debate are pro-Trump. His comment about putting Clinton in jail has that marvelous visual persuasion quality about it, and it was the laugh of the night, which means it will be repeated endlessly. He also looked like he meant it.
Clinton’s Abe Lincoln defense for two-faced politicking failed as hard as anything can fail. Mrs. Clinton, I knew Abe Lincoln, and you’re no Abe Lincoln. You know that was in your head. Or it will be.
Powerline’s John Hinderaker: “Some of the rats might want to consider returning to the ship. Donald Trump came through pretty well tonight, mainly because the focus was on the issues. As long as issues are being discussed, Trump wins….In short, Trump won. In my opinion, he won big. We will see whether it matters.”
Another week, another bumper crop of links on Clinton corruption:
That amazing thing about the Clinton web of corruption is that there are tentacles of the Clinton Foundation you’ve likely never even heard of, including the Clinton India Foundation:
Three months after leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton arrived in India to cheering throngs to help those who had just lost a million homes in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that killed 20,000 and injured 166,000.
In classic Clinton style, he solemnly promised that his new nonprofit — called the American India Foundation (AIF) — would rebuild 100 villages. Rajat Gupta, his millionaire co-chairman, pledged $1 billion for the victims.
It never happened. Years later, AIF’s annual reports were reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation and show only seven villages were partially rebuilt by Clinton’s group, and a mere $2.7 million of $53 million raised over a decade went to the earthquake victims.
It gets worse:
The sheer number of AIF executives who ran afoul of the law is dramatic. Clinton’s handpicked AIF co-chairmen — Rajat Gupta, then head of McKinsey & Company and Victor Menezes, then Citibank chairman — were both convicted of insider trading. Gupta served 19 months in federal prison and Menezes was fined $2.7 million.
Gupta was close to the Clintons. He hired Chelsea Clinton right out of college for a six-figure salary to work at McKinsey and he donated between $10,000 to $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Raj Rajaratnam was perhaps the most notorious AIF trustee. He was convicted of 14 counts of security fraud in one of the largest and most spectacular Wall Street prosecutions in decades. He is currently serving serving a sentence of 11 years in prison. Gupta passed on insider tips to Rajaratnam.
Then there’s Vinod Gupta, an AIF director who the Securities and Exchange Commission helped remove as CEO of InfoUSA because he used company funds to support a lavish lifestyle. He was forced to resign and pay $9 million in restitution.
Vinod also bestowed large financial rewards to Clinton. He paid Bill $3.3 million and gave him 100,000 stock shares of his company without prior approval from the board of directors. Vinod allowed the Clinton family to use the company’s jet, also without board approval. The Clintons got $900,000 worth of air travel. And Vinod gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Vinod had spent a night in the White House Lincoln bedroom when the Clintons opened it up to donors.
Sant Singh Chatwal, another AIF trustee, pleaded guilty in 2014 to funneling more than $180,000 in illegal contributions to candidates for federal office, including Hillary. The Times of India reported the close relationship Chatwal had with the Clintons.
“Chatwal and his wife Daman were regular visitors to the White House during the Clinton presidency. A fortnight after the Clintons left for their new home in Chappaqua, New York, Sant Singh Chatwal and his elder son, Vikram, dropped in to meet them,” the newspaper wrote.
Naveen Jain, an AIF trustee, was accused of buying and selling stocks with insider knowledge as CEO of InfoSpace. He eventually paid $107 million in a civil suit over insider trading.
Ajay Shah, another trustee was forced to pay $14.8 million for contributing to the collapse of the Trust Bank of Kenya. He fled the country to avoid the Kenya High Court decree.
Sudesh K. Arora, president of Natel, entered the criminal plea for a major Department of Defense fraud investigation. He settled and his company paid a $1 million fine.
A new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department offered fresh evidence Wednesday of the pains Clinton’s staff took to accommodate her husband’s paid speeches and her family’s foundation — just hours after Sen. Tim Kaine dismissed the possibility that the Clinton Foundation had wielded influence over his running mate.
Emails showed Clinton’s aides teamed up with the foundation to perform donor maintenance, craft messaging on key policies and put together guest lists for both diplomatic and philanthropic events. State Department staffers were often asked to advise Clinton’s husband on how to handle politically-fraught speaking engagements or foundation events, such as an effort to bring the new Libyan president to a Clinton Global Initiative meeting that was held less than two weeks after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
The trove of roughly 200 pages of records made public Wednesday was just the latest and most convincing indication that, rather than operate as an independent organization, the Clinton Foundation leaned heavily on the State Department to expand its global reach.
But the four-star rating had hardly been announced before the Associated Press reported that Charity Navigator was a member of the CGI from 2012 to 2014. The CGI is one of the Clinton Foundation’s best-known programs, as it regularly convenes glittering gatherings of celebrities, government officials and philanthropic stars.
The $20,000 CGI membership fee was waived for Charity Navigator, which reported it as an in-kind contribution, according to the AP. The news organization said Charity Navigator chairman Michael Thatcher claimed his group joined CGI “to mingle with world leaders and promote its ratings.
Photograph evidence suggest that Hillary Clinton suffers from permanent double vision. On the bright side, that means she’s probably not a shape-shifting reptoid. Probably. (Hat tip: Dircetor Blue.)
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm. On a personal note, I am once again looking for a Senior Technical Writing position in the greater Austin area. If you have any leads in that direction, please let me know.
Republicans cave on everything and leave town. But somehow it’s Trump that’s going to sully the spotless reputation of the Grand Old Party…
But at least congress overrode Obama’s veto of bill allowing 9/11 survivors to sue the Saudis 97-1. One wonders why Obama even bothered vetoing the bill, given how he had already stabbed the Saudis in the back with the Iran deal.
Apparently, some in this party really do think they’re going to hand the election to Hillary, and, bizarrely, they think this will bully the rest of us into knuckling under to their agenda in 2020.
Rather than simply getting payback and tanking their candidate in return.
This party is on the verge of self-destructing. The upper class of the party is upset that the lower class has finally had its say, and they’re determined that should never be permitted to happen again.
Why then would anyone of the lower class ever vote for the GOP again? Are they required to sign a piece of paper confirming that they are Lessers who should know their place in order to have the privilege of voting against their own interests?
He’s also turns his fire on #NeverTrump:
we have a hundred people who claim to be #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary but, strangely enough, never talk about the downsides of a Hillary presidency. Oh, they’ll talk up how much of an authoritarian Trump is, but not Hillary’s sense of entitlement, grievance, vengeance, and her own history of authoritarianism and lawlessness in covering up her crimes.
They talk all day about “Principles,” but discard the most basic principles — such as keeping a proven lawbreaker out of the White House, or just honestly admitting which candidate they’re actually supporting to their readers — as convenience may recommend.
In fact, right now they’re howling about Ted Cruz’ “calculations” in endorsing Trump, while not admitting their own pose of “Being Against Both Equally” is in fact a completely contrived lie they’ve calculated will permit them to agitate for their candidate (Hillary) while not compromising their career prospects within Conservatism, Inc. too much.
How much can I agitate for Hillary while still retaining plausible deniability?
How much can I agitate for Hillary to appease my anti-Trump donors while still keeping enough pro-Trump readers that my anti-Trump donors will feel they’re getting enough eyeballs per dollar of their patronage?
The party — not just the party;the writers who are supposed to have telling the truth as their first mission, but instead of become nonstop liars all the time decrying Trump as a liar himself — has declared war on all of the Lessers beneath their station, those not in The Media and who should, therefore, not have quite as much of a say in things as they themselves have.
They’ve made themselves into exactly what they pretend to oppose — and exactly what I do in fact oppose.
Canada launches prescription smack. Part of me wants to see how the experiment turns out. And part of me wants to start offering junkies one-way bus tickets to the Great (China) White North.
There’s a proper and an improper way to turn down an orgy. Proper: “No thank you.” Improper: Getting stabby. Don’t they teach kids basic manners these days?
Yesterday I had to go through a “spite password reset” for Twitter in the wake of the Instapundit banning and unbanning. I’m sure it had something to do with Twitter’s ongoing attempt to drive all non-liberal thought off the platform. This may have been the Tweet that did the trick:
This may be why so many conservatives are talking about moving to Gab.
Believe it or not, there is just a tiny bit of non-Twitter news going on:
So many people are talking about this angry, shrill, shouty Hillary Clinton video that I’m not going to put it off to the next Clinton Corruption Update:
When Donald Trump gets angry, he seems to get angry about things happening to America. When Clinton gets angry, she gets angry about what’s happening to her personally, because of the things she believes she’s entitled to (popularity, the presidency) being denied her. She comes off as shrill and unhinged.
Scott Adams. “There is still some mystery about how large the margin will be, but Trump is already the President of the United States unless something big happens in the next few weeks.”
“Swedish police are losing the battle against increasing levels crime and violence in the country as now 55 areas have been labelled as ‘no-go’ zones.” Also, three police officers a day quit and 90% are considering changing professions. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
This just in: Anthony Weiner is a pervert. “The disgraced former congressman sexted a 15-year-old high school girl for months, allegedly writing her lewd messages and sending her shirtless pics of himself, according to a report Wednesday…Weiner tried to get her engaging in ‘rape fantasies.'”
Crazy feminist publically shames her suicidal son for having non-feminist thoughts about “rape culture.” You know, the largely imaginary, non-Anthony Weiner, non-illegal alien rapist kind…
Hillary Health Watch: What’s the deal with her eyes? “Her eyes did not always move in the same direction at the same time. It appears that she has a problem with her left sixth cranial nerve. That nerve serves only one function and that is to make the lateral rectus muscle contract. That muscle turns the eye in the direction away from the midline.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instpundit.)
There are a lot of good, somber Memorial Day posts around the blogsphere today. I don’t think I have anything profound to say on that topic that hasn’t already been said far better by others, so by way of counter-programming, here’s Scott Adams on Bill Maher explaining just how Donald Trump’s persuasion techniques work, and why Hillary sucks so hard as a candidate.
I expected to spend the weekend at the Levitation Music Festival here in Austin, but it got cancelled when it looked like t was going to be rained out. However, I did see a makeup show by Slowdive, which was the biggest reason I was attending anyway.
Scott Adams: “I give Clinton a 50% chance of making it to November with sufficiently good health to be considered a viable president.”
It’s good for the sake of the world that Islamic State fighters are no-talent assclowns. Maybe they should have drilled them more on military tactics than reciting the Koran. See how many basic military squad function mistakes you can count them making in this video.
“More than two decades ago, we heard the ‘misplaced fears’ and predictions of shootouts in the streets of Texas because of the CHL law. It didn’t happen — and it won’t happen because of SB 11, either.”
Rabid Puppies dominate the Hugo nominations again. The science fiction establishment was given the opportunity to address Sad Puppies concerns, but instead they continued to doubled down by backing the Social Justice Warriors at every turn. This has turned Sad Puppy voters into Rabid Puppy voters. The 2015 Hugos: “There are problems, but Vox Day is an odious troll.” The 2016 Hugos: “You know what? Fuck them. They deserve Vox Day.”
Have you seen the anti-Trump video that features women quoting Donald Trump’s most offensive statements about women?
I just showed it to a woman. She thought it was funny. Apparently nothing that Trump says comes off as offensive to her.
The reason I checked with a woman is because I didn’t trust my own reaction. To me, the video looked like the most tone-deaf ad of all time. I would rank it as among the worst I have ever seen in terms of persuasion. I’m guessing it worked in Trump’s favor.
On the 2D level of reality – where we pretend people are rational – the video makes perfect sense. The makers of the video figured women voters would not like a candidate that says bad things about women. That seems totally logical. I can see why they made the video.
But on the 3D level of persuasion, what the viewer sees is several average-looking women in bad moods complaining about a guy being, well… a guy. I assume men won’t be offended by the video because Trump is no more of a jerk than most men. And men probably don’t get a warm feeling from the judgmental, angry messengers in the video. That video looks like a huge fail to me.
While I’m not on-board with Adams’ “people are just moist robots” thesis, I think he’s right about this video.
“Oh look, Reginald! That uncouth vulgarian is distressing his class betters again!”
The ad ignores the reality that a great deal of Trump’s appeal is his willingness to transgress against the unspoken shibboleths of the overclass. People are voting Trump because they can’t punch an NPR host in their smug face over the radio.
When a whole bunch of dour middle-aged feminist scolds (which is what it comes off as) read Trump quotes in the manner of “celebrities read mean tweets,” the result is laughter, not outrage. The real tone of the ad is “We know better than you, and Trump offends our finely-tuned sensibilities! Doesn’t our naked contempt dissuade you from voting Trump, you dim-witted flyover country rubes?”
No wonder they disabled video comments on YouTube.
So the Our Principles PAC (headed up by ex-Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush staff) should stop running this thing, as it’s only helping Trump.