Time for another Texas vs. California update:
Most 538 Scenarios Show Trump Failing to Clinch 1,237 Delegates by the Convention
March 23rd, 2016For all that Donald Trump has roiled this primary season, he’s still far from clinching the nomination. In fact, the consensus scenario over at FiveThirtyEight shows him falling short at 1,208 delegates. More discussion of their methodology is here.
Note, however, that they had Trump picking up 4 delegates from Utah, when he actually picked up zero, meaning here’s already fallen (slightly) off their projected pace.
Trump could still win on the first ballot of the convention without an absolute majority of delegates going in, but that’s far from a sure thing. We could very well be headed for a brokered convention, and then all bets are off.
Cruz Wins Utah, Trump Wins Arizona
March 23rd, 2016Ted Cruz won Utah by over 50 points, with 69.2% of the vote to John Kasich’s 16.9%, with Donald Trump pulling 14% for third place. This means that Cruz picks up all 40 of Utah’s delegates.
Trump won Arizona by 46.9% to Ted Cruz’s 24.9%, which means he picks up all 58 of Arizona’s delegates.
Presidential Election Update for March 22, 2016
March 22nd, 2016Another important primary day, part of what seems a never-ending stream of them. There’s a republican primary in Arizona and a Republican caucus in Utah today. Mots recent polls have Cruz with a big lead in Utah, and Trump with a small er lead in Arizona.
The Democrats are kidding themselves if they think they are going to be able to rely on their usual attacks on Republicans with Donald Trump at the helm. They aren’t going to be able to launch into the tired war on women or talk about how Republicans hate poor people and sick people, etc., and make that stick. Nothing even close to those charges has stuck to Donald Trump so far. On CNBC, I recently likened Donald Trump to the dark force from the movie “The Fifth Element.” He seems to absorb attacks and grow in strength rather than be wounded.
Trump isn’t just a counter-puncher; he uses rhetorical counter-force weapons to deprive opponents of their favorite attacks. Remember how Trump stifled and silenced Hillary’s attempt to launch an attack on Trump as sexist? I would guess we will be hearing a lot more in the general election about Bill’s indiscretions and her complicit role in helping him concoct the lies and demonize his victims. But that will just be Trump getting warmed up. Trump will routinely go after Hillary Clinton in ways the Democrats have always thought would be off-limits. And he will do so to her face. The email controversies, the odd arrangements Hillary staffers had with the private sector, the coordination between the State Department and the Clinton foundation, the money that poured in from foreign and corporate sources who wanted easy access to the Clinton world, a variety of Clinton’s flaws and previous gaffes – even Chelsea’s employment – will all come roaring out of the Trump campaign. The Clinton campaign will spend a lot of time on their heels.
Democrats try to comfort themselves with the idea that there is no such thing as an Obama voter from 2008 or 2012 who will turn around and vote for Trump in 2016. It is easy to say Trump can’t win a general election. But that is the kind of rational thinking that has been applied to Trump ever since his campaign started. And it’s the kind of thinking that has been proven wrong time and time again. I can imagine Donald Trump pulling into a predominantly poor African-American neighborhood, standing on a platform, pointing to his wealth and saying, “If you want a chance to get rich, vote for me – look around, and if you want the status quo, vote for Hillary!” It could strike a chord with some young black voters who want a shot at a better life, not promises of incrementally more dependence and servitude to the Democratic establishment. I don’t dismiss the idea that Donald Trump could find a foothold in the African-American community.
Bomb Explodes in Brussels, 30+ Dead
March 22nd, 2016Twin blasts hit Zaventem airport at about 07:00 GMT, killing 11 people.
Another explosion struck Maelbeek metro station near the EU’s headquarters an hour later, leaving a further 20 people dead.
The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind the attacks in a statement issued on the IS-linked Amaq agency.
An Islamic group responsible for a terrorist bombing? Inconceivable! Quick, someone Photoshop Brussels with a peace symbol! It’s vital Western Europe continue its Sacred Meaningless Gesture Rituals!
The New York Times has put the current death toll at 34. So in one day, Islamic terrorists have killed as many people as the Baader-Meinhof Gang/red Army faction killed in three decades.
One wonders if a bombing on its doorstep will finally shock the EU out of its complacency and denial regarding both the current wave of unchecked Islamic immigration and its refusal to deal systematically with the threat of jihad.
Merkel and the Revolt Against a Heedless Elite
March 21st, 2016Instapundit tweeted a link to this Der Spiegel piece on the success of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party against Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. It’s a lengthy and illuminating piece.
The immigration crisis is just the final straw for conservative German voters who have watched the Christian Democratic Union drift leftward. “He then lists all of the things that the CDU has done wrong in recent years: abandoning nuclear power, introducing a minimum wage, same-sex marriage…It is a rebellion targeting a CDU leader who has continually led her party to the left.”
But it’s more than that.
At its core, the rise of the AfD is the story of strife and of growing alienation between the chancellor and a portion of the German electorate. The triumph of the AfD is nothing less than a revolt against Angela Merkel.
It is a rebellion targeting a CDU leader who has continually led her party to the left, stripping many conservatives of a political home. It also targets a chancellor whose open borders policy in the refugee crisis may be attractive to left-leaning Germans, but is one which strikes more conservative voters as high-handed. Hotelier Schäfer, for his part, thinks it is naive to believe that so many Muslim refugees can be integrated into German society. “We are endangering our freedom when we take in too many people who don’t want this freedom,” he says.
Above all, however, the revolt is aimed at the chancellor as a symbol of the country’s elite — an elite which has supposedly lost sight of the people and their concerns. For many in Germany, Merkel has become the personification of a “ruling class” — a class that not only includes the CDU, the center-left Social Democrats and the Greens, but also business leaders, union leaders and the media.
Sound familiar?
When Merkel took over the CDU, she took a dispassionate view of the doctrines and rites that defined her party. She cleaned out the CDU’s political platform the way others dispose of worn socks from their sock drawer.
Old CDU traditions were of secondary concern for the new party chairwoman; she was more focused on expanding her party’s electorate. Instead of seeing politics as the great battle over the shape of society and grand ideas, she reduced it to strategy and the consolidation of power. She moved her party so far to the middle that it soon became difficult to distinguish it from the Social Democrats. She didn’t wrestle with the SPD over political positions, she simply copied theirs — and took over popular elements of the Green Party platform as well. Under her leadership, the CDU became a kind of Germany Party that leaned neither right nor left. Rather, it was “alternativlos,” as Merkel liked to say — there was no alternative.
Snip.
A vital part of any healthy democracy is having alternatives and parties that are distinguishable from each other. At the moment, it’s no longer possible to tell what it is that separates the CDU from the SPD or the Greens. The party is whatever Merkel says it is. There are close to no correctives left in Germany and there is no longer a balance of power. The more Merkel tries to peddle her policies as being without alternative, the greater the anger within the populace will grow.
The entire political situation in Europe arises from elites doing all they can to insulate their institutions and power from the crass rabble know as “voters.” But voters across Europe and America are sick and tired of the Permanent Incumbent Party doing what’s best for elite interests and ignoring the will of the voters.
And the longer elites refuse to change course, the more terrible the reckoning will be when it comes…
Garland Jihad Shooting Conspirator Convicted
March 19th, 2016A jury on Thursday convicted an Arizona man of conspiring to support Islamic State in one of the first trials in the U.S. involving charges related to the terrorist group.
Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem also was found guilty on other counts stemming from an attack last spring at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas. Kareem was stoic when the verdict was read.
Authorities said Kareem bankrolled and motivated two Islamic State followers who were killed in a shootout with police while trying to carry out a rampage at the anti-Islam event in suburban Dallas.
Kareem also was convicted of providing guns used in the May 3 attack. Authorities say he and the two gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, had researched travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State fighters.
I wouldn’t say the event was anti-Islam per se, but rather pro-freedom of speech.
Abdul Squared had previously “abandoned his birth name of Decarus Lowell Thomas and legally became Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem in 2013.”
So what’s the over/under for when “Free Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem” t-shirts start showing up at left-wing rallies?
Gawker Found Guilty, Owes Hulk Hogan $115 Million
March 18th, 2016It couldn’t happen to a nicer “news outlet“:
A jury sided with ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan on Friday and awarded him $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media.
The jurors reached the decision Friday evening, less than six hours after they began deliberations. The trial lasted two weeks.
Earlier Friday, in spirited closing arguments, lawyers for Hogan and Gawker discussed themes of personal life versus celebrity, and freedom of speech versus the right to privacy.
Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker for $100 million for posting a video of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife. Hogan contended the 2012 post violated his privacy.
Hogan’s attorneys told jurors this is the core of the case: “Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape and put it on the Internet.”
Are there circumstances where a secretly recorded sex tape is of legitimate news interest? Sure! Say, if it’s a President sleeping with his intern, a famous anti-gay crusader having sex with a man, or a Department of Defense official in bed with a member of the KGB. The Hulk Hogan sex tape did not even remotely rise to that level of newsworthiness.
The problem with Gawker proving an absence of malice is that Gawker is malice all the way down…
LinkSwarm for March 18, 2016
March 18th, 2016I hope you’re not too hung over from St. Patrick’s Day (and didn’t get stabbed to death on the Ides of March). Here’s a Friday LinkSwarm:
Contrary to his expectations of finding a pliable ally in Iran, he found the Iranians in control, glad to borrow his air force, arrogant and disdainful in Damascus (and Baghdad) and well on the path to dominating a vast stretch of strategically vital territory. And Iran has no interest in playing junior partner to anyone—least of all a traditional Christian enemy.
Suddenly, Putin had a vision of a nuclear-armed, radical-Shia empire on Russia’s southern flank. Those Iranian missiles that can reach Israel? They can reach major Russian cities, too.
Putin’s initial bet on Shia Iran also backfired by turning the Islamic world’s Sunni majority against him — not least Saudi Arabia, which can continue to hold down the price of oil and gas, punishing Russia’s economy far more than it wounds American fracking efforts. And Sunni terrorists have taken a renewed interest in Russia.
Gawker is poison AIDS cancer. In the same way that the Cross is the symbol for the redemptive power of Christ’s blood, Gawker is the symbol of a metastasized social media. Gawker is Nidhogg, the dragon which gnaws at the root of the World Tree. The causes they enunciate are tarnished, just for being in their mouths.”
I don’t wish ill on anyone who works there, obviously. I mean, I guess their every action technically does sustain a legitimately evil beast of legend, some Revelations type shit, and they ruin lives for profit whenever they aren’t simply wasting your time.
