Posts Tagged ‘polls’

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.
  • LinkSwarm for October 14, 2016

    Friday, October 14th, 2016

    This year…

  • Rasmussen has Trump ahead.
  • Italy’s economy is a mile high house of cards.
  • Citigroup, parent of Citibank, had a huge role in staffing and shaping the agenda of Obama’s first term.
  • Cracked on the country/city divide fueling Trump’s rise.
  • Wisconsin Senate candidate Russ Feingold admits that he and Hillary Clinton want to disarm Americans.
  • Competitive shooter stopped Minnesota mall jihad rampage. (Hat tip: KR Training.)
  • Social Justice Warriors hate women’s magazines.
  • Peak New Hampshire.
  • Lawyers file fake lawsuits against fake plaintiffs to obtain fake judgements to take down real comments off the Internet, then pressure Google to deindex the offending article, all evidently at the behest of a “reputation management” firm. Presumably The King in Yellow is not involved…
  • Scandal claims another Andrew Cuomo advisor. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Liberalism has lost the loyalty of the downtrodden that once, with admittedly mixed motives, it set out to help. That’s a loss it’s unlikely to survive.”
  • Library addition: Nine William F. Buckley, Jr. non-fiction books, seven signed.
  • Shorter than usual, for Reasons.

    Have a nice weekend.

    More Signs of Hillary’s Enthusiasm Gap

    Monday, September 19th, 2016

    Going into this Presidential race, we already knew Hillary Clinton was possibly the least popular Democratic Presidential candidate in modern history. (Say what you want about George McGovern, but he had a huge cadres of young volunteers, not a graying army of paid toadies.) Now we’re seeing yet more signs of just how little enthusiasm there is for Granny Lich outside the demographic of rich millionaires who need political favors:

  • There’s an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats this year. “A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 46 percent of Trump backers were “very enthusiastic,” compared with only 33 percent of Clinton supporters. And a New York Times/CBS News poll saw Trump outperforming Clinton by the same metric, 45 percent to 36 percent.”
  • While Republicans are seeing a surge in voting registration, Democrats are not. (Note: That’s from August, so ignore the stale poll data.)
  • The Clinton/Kaine campaign book Stronger Together is bombing. “After a week on the shelves, the book has sold fewer than 3,000 copies.” Those are pretty good numbers for a first-time novelist; they’re a disaster for a formerly “inevitable” Presidential favorite.
  • Trump is even making inroads into Clinton’s key demographic of black voters. “Trump saw a 16.5 percentage-point increase in backing from African-American voters in a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California tracking poll, up from 3.1 percent on Sept. 10 to 19.6 percent through Friday. Meanwhile, the same poll showed Clinton’s support among that group plummeting from 90.4 percent on Sept. 10 to 71.4 percent.” Hillary’s campaign path to victory was always predicated on getting near-Obama level black voting participation, something that was already going to be difficult; now it looks impossible. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Expect to hear more about some of these topics Real Soon Now…

    LinkSwarm for September 16, 2016

    Friday, September 16th, 2016

    It’s Friday! Something to be thankful for!

    Its 52 days until the election! At least we can be thankful it isn’t more! (Alternate theory: We’ve all died and gone to Hell, and will be watching this Presidential race for the rest of eternity…)

  • Donald Trump widens lead in LA Times poll. “The poll shows Trump leading Clinton, 47%-41%.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • Another poll puts Trump up by eight in Iowa. Downside: Same poll has Trump up by only seven in Texas. There’s no way in Hell or Terlingua that’s happening, but let’s hope Battleground Texas cons some national Democratic donors into throwing more money down that particular rathole based on that poll… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • Scott Adams on Hillary’s 9/11 collapse: “The optics of a potential commander-in-chief collapsing at that holy place, and on an important anniversary, rendered her unelectable in my opinion.”
  • Hillary Clinton has stage-three Parkinson’s disease and suffers from seizures, according to three sources who have had a personal relationship with the Democratic Party presidential nominee.” Grains of salt, anonymous sources disclaimer, yadda yadda.
  • Did I miss this from 2015? “The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.” Including Frank Giustra. But why would you trust such a notoriously right-wing news outlet as The Guardian? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “It Was Easier To Cure Trump Of His Trumpiness Than Hillary of Her Hillaryness.” “For Hillary, the problem runs deeper. People think she’s corrupt and dishonest. That’s because she’s corrupt and dishonest.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Email leak exposes Democratic Party Pay-for-Play scheme, despite cleverly hiding their intent by actually using the phrase “pay-for-play.” Just think: This would have been a major story dominating the news for months if it were a Republican Administration. In the age of Obama and Hillary, it’s just another selection on a vast buffet of corruption. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • America’s trust in media hits all time low:

    Well, what did they expect when they went all in for Hillary? And now Trump is climbing in the polls — 6 points up in the new L.A. Times poll — and they’ve already squandered their credibility. They can’t help her now. They tried too hard before. Too bad the Democratic Party didn’t give us a democratic experience this time. They foisted a candidate on us, they rigged it, with the assistance of the media. And now the candidate we didn’t want zombie-walks and stumbles to the finish line, and there is nothing the Party or the media can do to stir up our affection. Meanwhile, the man the media loved to hate is powering through to the Presidency, looking only stronger for all the shots he took.

  • More Americans murdered in Chicago since 2001 than U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
  • The European Dream gives way to nightmare:

    Viktor Orbán, together with the prime ministers of the Visegrad countries and the Ukrainian prime minister, took part in a discussion where he highlighted: a whole generation of European politicians had a “secret dream”, that they can use the EU to achieve the weakening of the member states’ national, religious, and historic identities, and that all this would be replaced by a new European identity. But we found out there is no such identity that could replace the old ones, he said. He added: now it is proven that the only successful countries are the ones with strong identities.

    (Hat tip Director Blue.)

  • Someone is learning how to take down the Internet.

    Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services. Who would do this? It doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It’s not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes — and especially their persistence — points to state actors. It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar… The data I see suggests China.

  • Former Ohio mayor arrested for raping a 4-year old. Guess which party they were a member of, and guess how deeply the Washington Post buried that information.
  • Have an Android? Enjoy your Big Brother inside.
  • Happy Land Social Club arsonist dies in prison. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The end of the Euro?
  • Austin to hire an official Social justice Warrior.
  • Local Texas school districts try to reduce or repeal Local Option Homestead Exemptions, get smacked down by Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton.
  • Clinton Corruption/DNC/Election Update

    Wednesday, July 27th, 2016

    Yeah, I’m in a rush, so it’s going to be one big list tar-ball. (Or if you prefer, tarball. Call it clintoncorruption.tar.gz.)

  • Nate Silver at 538 now gives Donald Trump a 55% chance of winning the presidency over Hillary Clinton. This is a big, big reversal, given he had Clinton up by over 87% chance of winning at one point.
  • The Wikileaks drop of DNC emails is starting to yield some very interesting information, especially about just how far in the tank the MSM was for Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders.
  • “The e-mails confirm the party establishment was in the tank for Clinton long before the primaries were decided.” To which I can only reply: Duh. Also this: “In one oddball e-mail chain, a DNC deputy communications director plotted to create a fake Craigslist ad that portrayed Donald Trump as sex crazed.”
  • Here are some quick and dirty highlights. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Washington Post and DNC hold joint fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Despite that being, you know, illegal.
  • Did CBS News actually change poll wording to be more favorable to Hillary and less favorable to Sanders?
  • Indeed, the emails reveal a pattern of the DNC not hesitating to bully news organizations for daring to mention Sanders favorably. “DNC communications director Luis Miranda, expressing his displeasure with “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough in a note to DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach, wrote: “(Expletive) Joe claiming the system is rigged, party against (Sanders), we need to complain to their producer.”
  • DNC confiscates the signs of Bernie Sanders supporters.
  • “Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to get this close to becoming president of the United States.”
  • Is the Clinton Foundation next up on the FBI investigation list. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Man admits to helping funnel illegal foreign contributions to Obama campaign.
  • Sanders supporters file suit over DNC and DNC law firm Perkins Coie LLP illegally favoring the Clinton campaign before Sanders dropped out. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Now it’s time for Hillary’s Thought Police to begin the hard work of grinding those kids down.”

    The idea is to turn those kids into useful political beings by using their own slogans and reference points against them. First, though, they must be softened up by shaming. And the pro-Hillary media (and most of the media is decidedly pro-Hillary) has been relentless at shaming them to keep them in line since that DNC leaks story broke.

    Shaming has been going on relentlessly on social media since these kids first touched a keyboard. They know how it works, they understand its conventions, if not its real purpose, which is to herd stubborn political ideas.

    They’ve been described by some pundits as spoiled children, as whiny babies too witless to understand simple arithmetic, even though the party arithmetic was rigged from the onset. The DNC supplied Superdelegates for Hillary, all but guaranteeing her victory, something first explained months ago by columnist Paul Jacob.

    And now many in my business who consider themselves progressives — even as they cleave to the Establishment Queen — are telling those Sanders kids two things:

    Shut up and behave.

    The goal is to take these scraggly revolutionaries, break them down and deliver zealots in November.

    And so now what you’ll see over the next few days from Philadelphia is the Democratic National Convention transformed into Operation Trust Hillary.

    Also this:

    Those leaked emails tell a story of supreme cynicism: The email asking that Sanders’ religious status be attacked in southern states; the emails outlining collusion between top officials and the Hillary camp. There are more to come.

    The most fantastic part of this moving story is that Hillary decided to blame it all on a singular villain: Russian strong man Vladimir Putin. Team Hillary said Putin was doing it to help Trump.

    (Full disclosure: Putin rode over and insisted on writing my column but my editor just said no.)

    Hackers targeted the DNC emails. And if hackers got Hillary’s vanished emails from her time as secretary of state, let’s hope they have the decency to release them before the presidential election.

    I must admit, there may be a Putin connection with the DNC leaks.

    But here’s the thing:

    Putin didn’t write the emails from the Democratic National Committee. Putin didn’t make fun of a black woman’s name; Putin didn’t scold American journalists and expect them to jump and help shape the news or offer government jobs to donors.

    The DNC officials did all that.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Disruption at the Texas Democratic delegation breakfast.
  • Yes, Hillary does want to ban guns.
  • Lifelong Democrat explains why he’s voting for Trump:

    Clinton Global (and its related entities) is a department store of political, multinational, corruption. The charity is under investigation, it was the middle man in weapons deals to foreign nations, it brokered a treasonous uranium deal to Russia, it stole money from Haiti and small contributors after the earthquake, it was deeply involved in a larcenous private college, Laureate University, it has allied with some of the worst dictators in the world and it may unravel slowly as the greatest charity fraud in history.

  • Hillary’s VP pick Tim Kaine is all over helping big banks dodge regulations.
  • So Paul Simon sang at the DNC. I love Simon’s work, but he’s not exactly the performer I’d pick to connect with today’s voters. However, Ann Althouse’s Meade came up with this inspired rewriting of Bernie’s theme music “America”:

    Let’s not be suckers, we’ll marry extortions together
    I’ve got some emails right here in my bag”
    So you’ll pay all of my campaign debts and I’ll buy your Wall Street lies
    And we’ll walk off and sell out America

  • DNC Day One: Soviet flags and Palestinian flags, but no American flags. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • A wall around the conevntion center wasn’t enough: Democrats actually built a makeshift wall around their own stage.
  • Clinton Cash dominates Facebook trends.
  • Sanders Refuses to Climb on the Cart

    Wednesday, May 11th, 2016

    Hillary Clinton and her sycophantic media have declared the Democratic presidential race over. Clinton has stopped spending money on primary advertising and her proxies have called for Bernie Sanders to drop out.

    Evidently Sanders hasn’t gotten the memo. Last night he beat Clinton by 16 points in the West Virginia primary. Sanders is less than 300 pledged delegates behind Clinton, and says he’ll continue the fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention.

    And a lot of Sanders supporters seem very, very bitter over Clinton’s dirty tricks and corruption, possibly far more than I’ve ever seen on the Democratic side of the race, at least since 1972 or so. Which may be the reason “a third of those who voted in West Virginia’s Democratic primary say they plan to back Trump in November, according to NBC News exit polls. Sanders won those voters by a wide margin. In fact, 39 percent of Sanders voters said they would vote for Trump over Sanders in the fall. For Clinton, nine percent of her voters say they plan to come out for Trump in the general election.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    In other Presidential race news:

  • Hillary helps out a Swiss bank, and the bank gives millions to the Clintons.
  • Trump surges in a new Reuters poll, now in a statistical dead heat with Clinton.
  • Other polls are also showing a tightening race. “A Harvard poll finds Clinton ahead only 46 percent to 40 percent nationwide and 45 to 41 in swing states; Quinnipiac finds Clinton leading by one point in Florida, leading by one point in Pennsylvania, and trailing by two points in Ohio.”
  • Rick Perry endorses Donald Trump.