LinkSwarm for August 11, 2017

August 11th, 2017

North Korea is making crazy threats again, which at this point is a dog-bites-man type story if ever there was one. They’ve done this sort of crazy lunatic invalid sabre-rattling before and, if President Trump doesn’t end up wiping them off the map entirely, will undoubtedly do it again. But it doesn’t change the underlying dynamic of the situation: North Korea can hurt us, but we can completely erase North Korea from the Prime Material Plane. So unless actual military action occurs, I doubt I have much to say (or link to) on North Korea…

  • NSA says no Russian hack of DNC computers. “Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.” Will the Trump Derangement Brigades finally let go of their Russian hacking fantasy? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Why Does the Left Suddenly Hate Russia?”

    The new progressive hatred of Russia is baffling. Of course, Vladimir Putin is a thug and a killer who in the grand tradition of Russian autocracy has no intention ever of holding free elections. But he is perhaps no more a murderer than are the Castro brothers in Cuba, with whom we have concluded a détente and who have no arsenal capable of destroying the U.S.

    Putin is no more or less trustworthy than are the Iranians, with whom in 2015 we cut a deal on nuclear proliferation and who are far more likely than the Russians to send a nuclear missile into Israel someday. Putin’s brutal suppression of the press recalls the ongoing repression by President Recep Erdogan of Turkey — a linchpin member of NATO.

    There is no freedom in China. The Communists still in control have the blood of 50 million Chinese dead on their hands from Mao’s brutal revolutions and genocides. Yet we enjoy all sorts of cultural, political, and economic bipartisan relationships with China, whose nuclear patronage of North Korea has done more damage to U.S. security than any plot from the dark mind of Vladimir Putin.

    In terms of Russia’s macabre history, Putin is a piker compared with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who may have orchestrated the deaths of 20 million Russians. After December 1941, the United States concluded a “Big Three” wartime pact with Stalin and supplied 20 percent of the Soviet Union’s wartime resources and arms — some of it later lavishly recycled to post-war Communist uprisings around the globe.

  • “Australian terror suspect planted plane bomb on brother.” And of course the BBC puts this information 17 paragraphs into the story: “The two suspects – Khaled Khayat, 49, and Mahmoud Khayat, 32.”
  • Democrats are screwed in 2018…and beyond:

    Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty good midterm by historical standards — they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.

    Snip.

    In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.

    Snip.

    Consider: In 1980, there were 18 states where the presidential margin was at least 5 points more Democratic than the national result, 18 states where it was at least 5 points more Republican than the national result and 14 states in between. Hypothetically, over three successive election cycles, all either party needed to do to win a Senate majority was win all 36 of the seats in the friendly states plus at least 15 of the 28 swing-state seats.

    Today, Republicans don’t even need to win any “swing states” to win a Senate majority: 52 seats are in states where the 2016 presidential margin was at least 5 percentage points more Republican than the national outcome. By contrast, there are just 28 seats in states where the margin was at least 5 points more Democratic, and only 20 seats in swing states.

  • 23% of federal prisoners are illegal aliens.
  • Former “sanctuary cities” in Clark County in Nevada and Miami-Dade County in Florida have confirmed they’re now in compliance with federal immigration law. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “For Fear Of Leaks, Google Cancels All-Hands Meeting Over Engineer Firing Fiasco.” Google went full Social Justice Warrior. Never go full Social Justice Warrior…
  • Christina Hoff Sommers: “Google has excommunicated James Damore for crimes against the Pink Police State.”
  • Trump Appoints More Judges in 200 Days Than Obama, Bush, Clinton.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Perhaps the Second Amendment is the black man’s ultimate sign of full citizenship.” Also this: “The National African-American Gun Association he founded has grown from 800 to 20,000 members since 2015.” Though the piece is marbled with the usual leftwing “America the racist” framing. (Hat tip: Shall not Be Questioned.)
  • This is, I think, a grave miscarriage of justice: man convicted of DUI for driving in and out of his own garage while drunk, never leaving his own property, which strikes me as a takings clause violation.
  • Julian Castro forms a PAC. Possibly eyeing a 2020 Presidential run? Well he’s certainly not going to win statewide…
  • Democrats “pro-worker” policies hurt workers. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Why is Spain arresting European journalists on Turkey’s behalf? Swedish citizen Hamza Yalcin is in jail for “treason” which seems to mean “criticizing the Erdogan regime.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • How Japan could have won World War II. “Win” in this case is not “pummeling America into submission” (impossible) but “making the costs of a protracted war so high that it avoids defeat.” Not striking Pearl Harbor was one key possibility. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Giant mech fight! Finally, the 21st Century I was promised! (The headline says “robots” but the video clearly shows piloted vehicles.) Now, from an actual military standpoint, that under-armored, under-powered mech is going to last about 15 seconds on a real battlefield and could be taken out by a single RPG (or any 8-year quick enough to jam a crowbar into the exposed, undersized tread gears), much less a real tank…
  • NY Times Editors Deny Reading Their Own Newspaper.”
  • “Emails Show WaPo, NYT Reporters Didn’t Want to Cover Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting.”
  • Paper beats rock. Rock beats Mexican. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • I hate linking to ESPN given its SJW turn, but this profile of fighter Conor McGregor was too good not to.
  • Neanderthal cave structure dated to 176,500 years ago.
  • The fate of Viking settlers in Greenland. (Hat tip: Jerry Pournelle.)
  • Tweets:

    I encourage Antifa to buy a Soviet tank. They’ll discover tanks are cool, which will be a gateway drug to learning that guns are cool, after which it’s only a matter of time until they’re eating BBQ, driving pickup trucks and listening to Garth Brooks…

  • Abbott Raises $41 Million and His Democratic Opponent Owns a Gay Leather Bar

    August 10th, 2017

    Having contributed to a few Republican candidates over the years, I’m on all sorts of email solicitation lists. Including Governor Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign.

    Most election campaigns, I received 1-2 pieces of email a week. The Abbott campaign, by contrast, seems to send out at least 1-2 piece of email a day. By my count I’ve received some 90 email solicitations from the Abbott campaign this year, and the pace picked up notably in June.

    In fact, Abbott has amassed a campaign warchest of $41 million, despite no prominent Democrat having stepping forward to challenge him.

    That doesn’t mean no Democrats have stepped forward to challenge Abbott. Meet the de facto 2018 Texas Democratic Gubernatorial front-runner Jeffrey Payne of Dallas, the owner of The Dallas Eagle, a gay leather bar.

    Here’s his official photo as judge of “Internatonial Puppy Trainer Contest.” (Hint: No actual dogs are involved in this contest.)

    There are political races where being owner of a gay leather bar would not be a huge obstacle; say, a Mayoral race in San Francisco.

    A Texas Gubernatorial race is not one of them.

    It’s like the Texas Democratic Party went “We can’t possible do worse than Wendy Davis did in 2014!” and Fate said “Hold my beer!”

    Payne is the front-runner for having filed and for his willingness to loan $2.5 million of his own money to his campaign. But look for the Texas Democratic Party to desperately coax an old warhorse out of retirement, ala Paul Sadler in 2012, to avoid a complete down-ballot wipeout.

    More On Google’s Ritual Heretic Burning

    August 9th, 2017

    There’s more news on the memo that got Google engineer James Damore fired.

    Now that I’ve read it, while I don’t agree with everything, there’s nothing in it that a rational person would regard as “crazy” or a “hate crime.”

    Of course, Social justice Warriors are not rational, and there’s plenty in the memo that offends their holy dogma. Like this:

    Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies. For the rest of this document, I’ll concentrate on the extreme stance that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and the authoritarian element that’s required to actually discriminate to create equal representation.

    Or this:

    “On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed.”

    Or this:

    “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.”

    Or this:

    The harm of Google’s biases
    I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

    • Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race
    • A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates
    • Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
    • Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)
    • Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination

    Or this (from a footnote):

    Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”

    And from his concluding recommendations:

    • De-moralize diversity: As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”
    • Stop alienating conservatives.
      • Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
      • In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
      • Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

    Also this: “Microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence and isn’t backed by evidence.”

    Be nice to conservatives? Speech isn’t violence? For Social Justice Warriors that’s like someone in Saudi Arabia declaring that Mohammed is not the prophet of God. No wonder they had to purge him for his heresy.

    The Damore affair proves yet again that no matter how many ritual nods towards liberalism and diversity you make, the moment you go against their sacred dogma, all the good intentions and prior good works in the world won’t save you from a ritual witch burning.

    Now comes word that Damore intends to file a lawsuit against Google. “He filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board before publishing his memo, and the NLRB protects people against firing once they’ve lodged a complaint.” I’m sure an Obama Administration NLRB would be only too happy to bury that lawsuit. But a Trump Administration NLRB is an entirely different kettle of fish. Stay tuned…

    Also: Stephen Green on how to how to de-Google your life.

    Read the Google Memo

    August 8th, 2017

    Yesterday I was recovering from Armadillocon, but since I still had a zillion things to do, I guess I’m still recovering today as well. Which means blogging will be a little on the lite side.

    So let me jump on the story that every other single blogger in the world is talking about, that of Google firing the author of an internal memo whose (literal) “tl;dr” conclusions were as follows:

  • Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
  • This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
  • The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
    • Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
    • Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
  • Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
  • Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.
  • I don’t want to comment more until I’ve actually read the entire memo, which you can do right here.

    But one bit of personal fallout: It looks like I’m going to have to start using Bing as my search engine of choice. Do you know how painful that is?

    Light Attack Aircraft: A Niche That Doesn’t Exist

    August 7th, 2017

    The Air Force has an experimental program to deliver a low-cost light attack aircraft for ground support duties. The light attack aircraft experiment, or OA-X project, has produced propeller-driven aircraft that look like a cross between a Diamond DA40 and a rejected ME-109 prototype with modern weapons on underwing hardpoints.

    The program theoretically exists because it’s not cost-effective to use an F-35 (at $32,000 per hour of flight time) to kill poorly-armed insurgents.

    I think the entire program is bunk. (And not just because John McCain is pushing for it.)

    It’s not that the need for a light, low-cost aerial attack platform doesn’t exist, it’s just that there’s no military or technological justification (at least in the American armed forces) for that platform to be a manned aircraft. Those mission parameters are already satisfied by cheaper drones whose capabilities continue to improve by leaps and bounds. The problem isn’t that the Air Force can’t fly drones (the MQ-9 Reaper is extremely capable), but that the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the CIA can all fly them as well.

    The entire Light Attack Aircraft program exists because of an inter-service political issue: The Air Force neither wants to do close air support, nor wants to give up that role to the Army. Put a pilot in a fixed-wing aircraft, and the Air Force gets to keep the mission, along with the money and headcount that go with it.

    And as for why the Air Force keeps trying to kill the one plane they already have perfectly suited for ground support, the A-10 Warthog, well, I and others have already written about that at length. As Jerry Pournelle once put it, “USAF will always retire hundreds of Warthog to buy another F-35. Always, so long as it exists. And it will never give up a mission.”

    Ann Althouse Reads the Trump Transcripts So We Don’t Have To

    August 6th, 2017

    This week’s example of the perpetual Deep State war against President Trump includes illegally leaking transcripts of his private discussions with world leaders. (The leakers, of course, should be found and prosecuted.)

    Well, Ann Althouse has read the entire transcript so you don’t have to.

    I thought we were going to see many, many articles picking into the details here, but the story seems to have already blown over. On the front page of the NYT website, the only reference to the transcripts is a little teaser under the heading “More in Politics.” Coming in third after “Kushner Firm Said to Be Under Inquiry Over Visa Program” and “Trump Cites Familiar Argument in Ban on Transgender Troops” is “Trump Called New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den.’” Trump’s calling New Hampshire a ‘Drug-Infested Den'” is incredibly inconsequential, but it’s what I broke out too when I was reading the news yesterday.

    Why are we not seeing more? I noticed some stories claiming the transcripts show Trump is an idiot, but every day I see stories saying Trump is an idiot. And from what I’ve read of the transcripts (not every word), I don’t think they show idiocy, and I think they’re going to take careful reading to understand how Trump was trying to work with the 2 leaders. I suspect that Trump-haters who undertook serious study of the language have decided it’s best not to try, that a close examination of the text will only help Trump, and therefore the transcripts have rapidly become a non-story.

    The transcript Althouse covers is President Trump negotiating with Mexican president Pena Nieto. There are lots of persuasion techniques (pacing, framing, “win-win” messaging. etc.) on display. I find it interesting how president Trump hops from one topic to another, then circles back around to what he really wants (a way to say he fulfilled his campaign promise of getting Mexico to pay for the border wall). There’s also a pretty significant and consequential discussion of Mexico’s drug war.

    I would be most interested in seeing Scott Adams dissect this transcript to analyze it for the persuasion techniques on display…

    Game of Thrones: Libertarian Edition

    August 5th, 2017

    Pretty much what you’d expect…

    LinkSwarm for August 4, 2017

    August 4th, 2017

    Friday! LinkSwarm! The day is already packed, so let’s get this puppy out the door…

  • West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice announced at a rally with President Trump that he’s switching to the Republican Party. Since Trump won West Virginia by over 40 points in 2016, that seems less “smart” than “inevitable.” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin says he’s still staying a Democrat. We’ll see…
  • Do Democrats realize how much trouble they’re in?

    By tomorrow, 164 million Americans will live in the 26 states that are wholly controlled by Republicans, 109 million will live in states where power is shared between the parties, and only 50 million will live in the six states controlled by the Democrats.

    Those who run the Democratic Party spend their time overwhelmingly in Washington, California and New York, and they read the New York Times and the Washington Post. They watch CNN and MSNBC, along with network news. As a result, I am not sure they are fully attuned to how unpopular their party has become in most of America. They may win a tactical victory against President Trump, whose inexperience and personality make him vulnerable. But I suspect that very few voters are responding to the Democrats’ daily assault on the administration by saying, In the next election I am going to change my mind and vote liberal! On the contrary, it may be that the Democrats’ hysterical, unprecedented assault on the president will prove to be a distraction that actually retards their ability to address their party’s long-term decline.

  • Lawyers in DNC Class-Action Suit ‘Perplexed’ by Media Blackout. Press ignores fraud case brought by 2016 Sanders backers against Democrat Party.” How severe a blackout? “A search on Google News for the name of the case in quotes “Wilding v. DNC” yields zero results.” Why, it’s almost as if the MSM considered itself an extension of the Democratic Party… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Trump Has Quietly Accomplished More Than It Appears.” All this liberal and #NeverTrump talk about how the Trump White House is in “chaos” is like someone talking incessantly about what the magician’s right hand is doing while completely ignoring his left… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Media keep overplaying their hand, especially with the Trump/Russia delusion. Even Democrats are getting tired of it…
  • “Trump pushes to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants and move U.S. to a ‘merit-based’ immigration system.” Expect this to be widely popular with the public and DOA with those congressional Republicans still freebasing “comprehensive immigration reform”/illegal alien amnesty…
  • Speaking of that proposal, here White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller delivers a brutal smackdown to CNN’s rude and clueless Jim Acosta, who seems painfully ignorant of the history of the Statue of Liberty.
  • And speaking of people Miller smacked down, he also corrected New York Times’ Glenn Thrush (who you may remember from such movies as I Sought Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Approval on All My Copy About the 2016 Election) that low-skilled immigrants do indeed drive down wages for native workers. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Four Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicle clerks charged with making fake IDs for illegal aliens and registering them to vote. Remember: When Democrats tell you there’s no such thing as voter fraud, they’re not only lying, their party is the one committing the fraud. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Illegal alien apprehensions up almost double since President Trump took office. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
  • Liberals: “We can’t let ICE pick up illegal aliens just because they’re breaking the law!” Ice: “OK, then, we’ll just pick them up at the courthouse.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Putin expels 755 American diplomats in retaliation for new sanctions. If they’re Obama holdovers, that could be a net plus…
  • “Twitter’s “burn rate” has increased in the past year to the point that they’re now losing $38.8 million each month.”
  • The Twitter account of Breitbart London editor in chief Raheem Kassam has been suspended by the platform, just days after he announced the forthcoming publication of his new book on Radical Islam.” The book in question is No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You, due out August 14.
  • “Your boyfriend raped you.” “No he didn’t.” “Shut up and say you were raped. USC knows what’s best.”
  • The rise of the illiberal media:

    We aren’t dealing with a liberal media anymore, but an illiberal media. The liberal media was content to use its institutional power as a megaphone to broadcast its views. But you could debate those views. Actual conservatives were allowed to write columns, and not just as a strategic attack on some element of the GOP the way it is now, and appear on television to offer opinions, and not just as punching bags.

    The liberal media was convinced it would win the argument because it was right.

    The illiberal media isn’t interested in winning an argument, but in silencing the opposition. It doesn’t just want to shout louder than you. It wants to use its institutional power to shut you up.

    This isn’t just a media phenomenon. It’s what happened across the social spectrum when the people we used to call liberals became illiberal leftists. It’s why colleges censor controversial speakers and punish dissenting faculty. It’s why the environmental debate went from scientific discussions to calls to punish, fine and even jail those who question the left’s Luddite alarmism on Global Warming.

    It’s why the debate over gay marriage shifted to punishing Christian bakers and florists, the arguments about Israel tilted to preventing musicians from performing in Tel Aviv and civil rights turned into a call to create “safe spaces” that ban everyone else. Diversity is no longer dressed up as an expansion, but is now explicitly a contraction. Don’t read books by white authors. Don’t hire more men. Kick Jews out of the gay rights rally. Send the IRS after conservative groups. Punch a Trump supporter in the face.

    Nearly every leftist cause these days is expressed by punishing someone. Arguments are won by force. The illiberal totalitarian lurking inside the liberal, as David Horowitz described it, is out of the closet.

  • “A local council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi [Australia] because it could be a terrorist target.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Three months after inauguration, French President Emmanuel Macron is now less popular than President Trump. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Dallas: It’s another attack by a group of people on a single train rider where the racial characteristics of the attacker are clearly visible in the video, but never mentioned
  • Good: Government realizes the Internet-of-Things is deeply insecure. Bad: Trying to pass a law to fix it. That’s like trying to darn a sock with a pipe wrench…
  • “Apple Now Owns $51.5 Billion In Treasurys, More Than Mexico, Turkey Or Norway.”
  • Tam: “How to Carry Concealed In a Purse (If You Must).” (Hat tip: Shall not Be Questioned.)
  • Zero Hedge has another of those the auto industry is doomed pieces, but this time it’s about longevity surpassing demand, not the usual one about off-lease vehicles…
  • MRE reviewed. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Tweet:

  • Man, the pollen is just brutal this time of year.
  • White Working Class to Democrats: Die In A Fire

    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.)

    Dukes Plea Deal Expires, Headed for Trial

    August 2nd, 2017

    The plea deal for Austin Democratic State Rep. Dawnna Dukes on corruption charges has expired.

    The Travis County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday said its offer to drop all corruption charges against state Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, in exchange for her agreeing to resign immediately had expired.

    In a statement sent to The Texas Tribune after 5 p.m. Tuesday, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore said she’d had no contact from the attorneys for Dukes.

    “The offer to resolve this matter has expired and is no longer available,” Moore said in a statement. “We will be ready for trial.”

    As a part of the deal, Dukes would’ve had to also pay $3,500 in fines and restitution and agree to a drug and alcohol assessment. Dukes has previously denied charges that she had her legislative staff run personal errands and that she was compensated for days she did not work at the Texas Capitol.

    Dukes seems awful confident of beating the rap, especially since her previous legal team bailed:

    On July 25, two of Dukes’ Houston-based lawyers filed a motion to withdraw as counsel, citing an inability to “effectively communicate with the defendant on matters essential to the representation.”

    State Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, put out a statement Tuesday night indicating he was representing Dukes, writing that the 12-term representative rejected the Travis County DA’s proposal because she “strongly reiterates her innocence,” adding that the “inexplicable request that she undergo some drug assessment is absurd.” He said neither Dukes nor her attorneys plan on commenting further.

    Oliveira has been practicing law since 1979, so presumably he knows what he’s doing.

    Maybe Dukes saw that John Wiley Price beat a federal rap and figured she could so the same for the comparatively piddling local charges. Given how quickly DA Margaret Moore was willing to sweep away the cobwebs of the Ronnie Earle/Rosemary Lehmberg era at the DA’s office, she may have miscalculated.

    The trial is currently scheduled to start October 16.