Posts Tagged ‘Elect’

LinkSwarm for January 26, 2018

Friday, January 26th, 2018

President Donald Trump is pitching America at Davos (and evidently doing well). Meanwhile, a lot of this week’s news has focused on the still-developing FBI scandal, which will probably wait until the next Clinton Corruption update.

  • Trump vs. the mainstream media:

    The country’s top news organizations have targeted Trump with an unprecedented barrage of negative stories, with some no longer making much attempt to hide their contempt. Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president’s own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp and is appealing to an anti-Trump base of viewers and readers, failing to grasp how deeply it is distrusted by a wide swath of the country.

    (Hat tip: Chuck Glasser at Instapundit.)

  • Liberals on shutdown fight: “Our leaders betrayed us!” Stephen Green: “Welcome to our world.”
  • Why Schumer’s shutdown gambit failed: “Seeing the media commit itself to plainly stating the facts and resisting its usual role as the Democrats’ built-in spin machine was genuinely refreshing.” More:

    Democrats love to pretend that the media doesn’t routinely shield them from inconvenient truths. But the freak-out that ensured the second that shield was removed exposed just how badly they rely on positive press coverage to accomplish their political goals.

  • West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (who recently filed for re-election): “We do need a wall.”
  • “NFL Ratings Plunge As 23 Million Fewer Viewers Watch Divisional Playoffs.” How’s that anthem protest working out for you? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • 5 Great Floor Finds at SHOT Show 2018.” Including this mainly so Dwight sees the bit on the 1400 round full-auto BB gun, which I know scratches an itch of his… (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Minnesota Public Radio releases statement that no, actually, Garrison Keillor is a complete perv. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • The lights are going out in Europe:

  • Andrew Sullivan commits heresy by noting the obvious: sex is not a social construct.

    For today’s progressives, humans are the sole species on this planet where gender differentiation has no clear basis in nature, science, evolution, or biology. This is where they are as hostile to Darwin as any creationist.

    And this is stupid. The alternative explanation — that these core natural differences between men and women have been supplemented by centuries of conscious oppression — is staring us in the face. The fascinating conundrum is where one ends and the other begins. How much of this difference is natural and how much is social? That is the question. And the answer is a tricky one. Is the fact that the vast majority of construction workers are male and the huge majority of nurses are female a function of sexism or nature? Is male sexual aggression and horniness a function of patriarchy or testosterone? Is the fact that women now outnumber men among college graduates a function of reverse sexism or nature?

  • You might want to scratch Vang Vieng, Laos off your tourist destination list. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “I love you…you love me…very, very slow-ow-ly…”
  • “Your Tears, Kos! Let Me Drink Your Tears!”

    Thursday, December 1st, 2016

    The chief Kossak is still enraged at the election results, and just let his bile spew in an epic rant about that continued enragement (which is pretty much a textbook case of “anger issues”). A bunch is the usual “racist/sexist/white supremacist” crap, but much takes square aim at his own side for such an epic cock-up.

    Some of the tastier bits:

  • I’m angry at Hillary Clinton for losing. Plain and simple, her campaign had one job. And it should’ve been an easy job! And yes, they won the popular vote, and let’s never forget that. But they weren’t even polling in Michigan! It was rank incompetence.
  • I’m angry at Clinton for running an old-world campaign. She was in California TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE ELECTION raising money. She was in CALIFORNIA! TWO WEEKS before the election! Clinton’s campaign raised $500 million for itself, and another $175 million through Priorities USA. Donald Trump’s campaign raised about $250 million total. But Clinton, who lived through both the Obama campaign and the Bernie Sanders one, was still stuck in that old way of thinking, that more money meant more victory.
  • And speaking of the Obama and Sanders campaigns, Clinton still didn’t learn the obvious lessons from a people-powered campaign. I mean, spend time in front of crowds in battleground states, and the money will come in, easily! You don’t have to have a rich-people fundraiser in California weeks before the election to raise the money.
  • Oh, and what was all that money spent on? The biggest chunk was on worthless TV ads that did nothing to move the needle. Donald Trump knew that, and spent almost nothing on TV. Yes, he was on TV a lot, but that’s because he gave the media reasons to cover him. Meanwhile, the Michigan Democratic Party had to scramble to raise $200,000 for its GOTV efforts, completely ignored by the Clinton campaign.
  • I’m angry at the Democratic consultant class, who really shit the bed this year in epic, glorious fashion. All that money you donated? Either pissed away by these assholes, or tucked into their pockets. It’s on Clinton for letting them run the asylum. And related, I’m angry at myself for thinking that campaign manager Robbie Mook—a decent guy—heralded a different way of running the campaign. Either he went along with the bullshit, or he got sidelined. Either way, any top consultant working for this campaign should be blacklisted into eternity. Not the staffers who toiled away! Those people are heroes. But the assholes at the top making the decisions.
  • But most of all, he seems really angry that people are allowed to express opinions he doesn’t agree with:

  • I’m angry at those who are angry at me for trying to tamp down the Clinton criticism after the primary, as if endless sniping from the left, through Election Day, would’ve done anything to improve her chances. Goddam liberals, why couldn’t we wait until after she was elected to snipe at her? She ran the most explicitly liberal campaign in Democratic history, yet that was never enough. Meanwhile, the religious right never took their eye off the ball, and rallied fiercely behind Trump despite his overt moral failures. Now they get that Supreme Court, and we don’t. Congrats!
  • I’m angry at the media, who thought endlessly harping over a non-scandal email story was clever and smart and necessary. Then, after Trump announced he would kill the White House traveling press corps, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer declared that Trump had “gone too far!” Fuck you. NOW he had gone too far? Fuck them all. I hope Trump kills the White House press corps altogether, so maybe the assholes will be properly motivated and incentivized to hold the presidency accountable, rather than playing “stenography” from inside the White House.
  • Remember when the Clinton Foundation was a BIG STORY, despite there being ZERO evidence of wrongdoing, while a single reporter at the Washington Post dug up example after example of wrongdoing at the Trump family foundation? Remember? Yup. Fuck those assholes.
  • I’m angry at ME. It was easy to trust the data, and I expected it to continue working. And then it didn’t, and fuck that shit. So I built an entire narrative around what the data said, and it was wrong. And I still don’t know how else I would’ve handled it, so that makes me angry as well. I know what we must do in the future—organize with a vengeance—but when it comes to covering the election, I’m at a bit of a loss.
  • I’m angry at me because I don’t know what I could’ve done better. I know there are people who want to scream “you shouldn’t have squelched Clinton dissent!” And to that, I say that’s one of the things I did RIGHT. Heck, maybe I should’ve tamped it down sooner. I don’t know how anyone can argue that having liberals diarying about “Clinton’s imminent email-related indictment” was in any way helpful. Clinton Derangement Syndrome was strong, and it cost us.
  • Takeaways:

  • “Spend time in front of crowds in battleground states, and the money will come in.” Really? Have you seen Clinton speak? There more she speaks, the less people like her. Hillary’s great at scarfing up big bundled donations from special interests expecting political favors. Drawing donations from small donors thanks to her electric personality? Not so much.
  • How dare Bernie Sanders supporters not fall in line and do the Party’s bidding?
  • Saint Hillary is pure as the driven snow! How dare you investigate those silly email and Clinton Foundation scandals?
  • Clinton got the most biased coverage in her favor ever in Presidential election history, and Kos is screaming that it just wasn’t fawning enough.
  • Note that Kos is screaming about both how was he to know all the polls were wrong and how he should have squelched dissent harder! Don’t see a little disconnect there, Commissar Kos? Like how your side’s ruthless insistence on squelching dissent skews polls, or having a press so in-the-tank for Hillary dangerously impaired your side’s situational awareness? Ever hear the term “preference cascade”?
  • Take a nice refreshing drought of Kos’ anger, and liberal self-delusion, at the same time.

    (Hat tip: Kurt Schlichter’s Twitter feed.)