Posts Tagged ‘Rasmussen’
Thursday, November 7th, 2024
Fallout from Trump’s decisive victory over the Obama Machine continues to land fast and heavy. So let’s do a roundup before the Friday LinkSwarm gets unwieldy.
Harris officially conceded. In a sane world, this would be the end of Democrats “we have to keep Trump out of office by any means necessary” efforts, but alas, the TDS-wrecked Democratic Party is far from sane…
“David McCormick Wins Pennsylvania Senate Seat, Ousting Longtime Incumbent Democrat Bob Casey.” Casey’s team says they still think they can win, so don’t put it past Pennsylvania Democrats to “discover” a whole bunch of “uncounted” ballots…
Tablet’s Park MacDougald calls Trump’s win a landslide.
For months now, they have been saying that mainstream pollsters and pundits predicting a Harris victory were full of it. They were right. The late Harris surge in the polls was a mirage. The stories that recently appeared in outlets such as Politico about massive last-minute swings to Harris among independents, Hispanics offended by a comic’s Puerto Rico joke, and educated women—all of it was bullshit, invented out of whole cloth by Harris campaign operatives and repeated by journalists such as Jonathan Martin as if it were fact. In the end, none of it was real. The election wasn’t even close.
How did Trump do it? We’ve seen some suggestive exit polls showing, for instance, Trump winning more than 40% of the Jewish vote in New York City; that sounds right, but we’d caution that exit polls are notoriously unreliable. County data, on the other hand, is rock-solid…
To put that in simple terms: Pretty much the entire country shifted toward Trump. That includes deep-blue strongholds. The New York Post reported Wednesday morning that Harris was leading New York by a little more than 11% with 95% of votes counted—the worst performance by a Democrat in the Empire State since Michael Dukakis in 1988. Trump cracked 30% in New York City—also the best performance by a Republican since 1988, driven by a 35% improvement in the Bronx relative to 2020 and improvements of 20% and 16.5% in Manhattan and Queens, respectively. Finally, Trump blew the doors off of several heavily minority counties across the country, flipping Florida’s Osceola County (home to a large Puerto Rican population) and Texas’s 97% Hispanic Starr County. He won the latter by nearly 16% after losing it by 5% to Biden—a 21-point swing in four years. It was, as Ryan Girdusky observed on X, the first time Starr County had voted for a Republican since 1892.
We’ve seen some talk of a “realignment election,” with the Republicans broadening their appeal among the multiracial working class while the Democrats become more entrenched in affluent white suburbs. We’ll have to wait for more detailed demographic breakdowns to say for sure, but what the above table suggests to us is something different: a “whole of society” (to borrow a term) rejection of Kamala Harris and her party. Punchbowl’s congressional reporter, Max Cohen, cited a Democratic House source this morning who summed up the result nicely: “This was a total and complete repudiation of the Democratic Party. People are not buying what we’re selling. Period.”
“This was a marriage gap election, not a gender gap election.”
Now that we have the election results, it appears that the gender gap actually shrunk.
In 2020, President Joe Biden won women by a 15-point margin, 57% to 42%. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris won women by a much smaller 8-point, 53% to 45% margin.
But while the gap between men and women actually shrank this year, another gap widened. In 2020, married voters narrowly chose President Donald Trump by a 7-point, 53% to 46% margin. This year that margin grew to 13 points at 56% to 43%.
For all the talk of Trump’s problem with women, Trump actually won married women by three points, 51 to 48. To repeat, Trump won a majority of not just married white women, but a majority of all married women.
Trump also handily won married men 60-38 and he even eked out a victory among unmarried men 49-47. Where Trump got crushed was among unmarried women, who chose Harris (who didn’t get married until age 50, by the way) by a 60-38 margin.
Republicans trimmed the Democratic advantage in Harris County. Harris won Harris County by 5 points, but four years ago Biden won it by 12. Likewise, Ted Cruz lost Harris County (where he lives) by 9 points, but in 2018, the year of Betomania, he lost it by 17 points. As I keep reminding people, Harris County was a competitive Republican county not that long ago, and Bush43 won it in 2004.
Speaking of Harris County, Houston voters actually turned down a $4.4 billion HISD bond package.
Well, this is mighty curious, isn’t it?
…or C.) Call voters racist and sexist?
“California Voters Overwhelmingly Say ‘No’ to Soft-on-Crime Policies and Prosecutors.”
Voters in the state [reversed] course after previously supporting a measure that lightened penalties for theft and otherwise gutted crime-control efforts in this state. California Proposition 36, also known as the “Allows Felony Charges and Increases Sentences for Certain Drug and Theft Crimes” measure, passed with over 70% of the vote.
Proposition 36 would walk back much of the decade-old Proposition 47, turning some theft misdemeanors into felonies, requiring a warning about a possible murder charge for selling or providing drugs, and creating a new “treatment-mandated felony,” according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
…[T]he Family Business Association of California has called Proposition 47 “catastrophic” for the state, saying homelessness has gone up by 51% and smash-and-grab crimes have cost businesses nearly $9 billion a year. It says Proposition 36 will fix a loophole in Proposition 47 that allows thieves to take less than $950 in property from different stores and remain a misdemeanor.
Under Proposition 36, theft would be classified as a felony offense if the suspect has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes, such as shoplifting, burglary and carjacking. The sentence would then be up to three years in county jail or state prison.
A leftwing initiative to impose rent control on all of California backfires spectacularly.
With 51 percent of the vote reported, Proposition 33—which would have repealed all state-level limitations on local rent control policies—is capturing the support of just 38 percent of voters. The New York Times is declaring the initiative done and dusted.
This is the third failed ballot initiative sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) that would have loosened or repealed California’s state-level limits on rent control. Prop. 33 could also be the AHF’s last ballot initiative.
That’s thanks to the apparent (narrow, but not yet confirmed) victory for Proposition 34, which would effectively prevent AHF from spending money on political activism.
Prop. 34 requires beneficiaries of federal discount prescription drug programs to spend 98 percent of their revenue on direct patient care.
AHF benefits from just such a federal program that requires pharmaceutical companies to sell their drugs at discounted rates to hospitals and other organizations that primarily serve low-income patients. Those discount drug–buying organizations are then allowed to bill federal insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid the standard reimbursement rates for those drugs.
The AHF has benefited handsomely from this program through its network of discount pharmacies serving AIDS patients. It has spent the proceeds on the heterodox pet causes of AHF President Michael Weinstein, which includes supporting rent control policies.
This deserves a Nelson.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
And the beat goes on. “Leftist Arrested for Threatening to Kill Trump and Conservative Christians if Trump Wins.” “Isaac Sissel, a 25-year-old from Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been charged by the Department of Justice following an online threat of political violence.”
https://thetexan.news/elections/2024/voters-resoundingly-reject-4-4-billion-bond-for-houston-independent-school-district/
Rasmussen crows about getting things right, including trump winning the popular vote. “What you probably heard on the media, over and over again like a mantra, is that Donald Trump has a hard ceiling at 47%. No, he’s been at 49% this entire time. Turns out Kamala Harris is the one with the ceiling. And the reason that it came out that way is because all of their polls are bogus, they’re leftward leaning, they always show that Donald Trump has a favorability disadvantage.” Also:
This is the shill period right here. Boom! All of a sudden Trump dropped a point when Kamala Harris went in the race. It’s like everybody gave her a shove to get her over the starting line, and then they massively shift left. They shilled for Harris all fall, and then right at the end they decided ‘Well, it’s time to save our credibility,’ and Trump, look at that, all of a sudden Trump got this great momentum. Where’d it come from? Oh, he never lost it. This is all fake all here this whole period, and Trump was actually up in the national popular vote and nobody said sorry.
“Fort Bend County Commissioner Meyers Defeats Democratic Challenger Indicted Over Faked Racist Messages. Democratic candidate Taral Patel, who faces nine criminal charges, took 41 percent of the vote.”
“America Unburdens Itself From What Has Been.”
“Kamala Calls For Peaceful Transfer Of Power To Adolf Hitler.”
Tags:2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Race, Babylon Bee, Bob Casey, California, Crime, David McCormick, Donald Trump, Florida, Fort Bend County, Harris County, Hispanics, Houston Independent School District, Isaac Sissel, Kamala Harris, Laura Helmuth, LinkSwarm, Osceola County, Park MacDougald, Pennsylvania, Proposition 36, Proposition 47 (California), Rasmussen, rent control, Starr County, Taral Patel, Ted Cruz, Texas, Trump Assassination Attempt, Trump Derangement Syndrome
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 5 Comments »
Friday, September 13th, 2024
Happy Friday the 13th! Harris continues to slip behind Trump despite (because?) of their debate on the network of her Best Friend Forever, Haitian immigrants in Ohio accused of eating roof rabbit, Texas blasts Biden Administration overreach (again), Conor McGregor steps into a different kind of ring, a worse than usual remake idea, and American cats meet a variety of grisly ends.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
You know that Harris bounce? Nate Silver says not so much. “I’d also note that Harris’s raw polling averages have DECLINED in most swing states since the start of the DNC. This data is NOT subject to the convention bounce adjustment. She’s had a run of pretty mediocre state polling.”
Harris minions replace her blank issues page with a mix of liberal pablum and blatant lies.
Yes, Kamala Harris does support taxpayer-funded genital mutilation surgery for illegal alien children.
“Kamala’s Condescending and Mocking Debate Faces May Be What Voters Remember.”
It’s not surprising that the snap polling, including by groups that conservatives trust, like Trafalgar, is showing that Harris “won” the debate. And I think that’s true. She was more polished, more prepared; she had her canned barbs. But there’s something strange going on here. While she won the debate, Democrats always come across in snap polling as winning the debates. I saw people sharing on X the history of snap polling after debates with Donald Trump, first with Hillary and then with Biden. In every one of those debates—six in total—clear majorities said that Trump lost the debate. I’m not sure what to read into that.
So, it was anger at the moderators, frustration that Trump wasn’t making a lot of the points I thought he could have made, but he was being Trump. And I’ve misjudged his appeal to voters and his electoral success so many times, so it is what it is.
But there’s something else I took away from this—and it’s showing on the screen just to the side of me here. One thing I really noticed throughout was the faces that Harris was making—very condescending, very mocking, very childish, actually. I think that’s the one thing I remember more than anything about the debate.
Now, I think Trump did a very good job, even though he didn’t make the points I thought he could have, like showing how she flip-flopped. He hit hard on the border and the economy, and I think that may have a lasting impact.
What’s showing up in the focus groups—ones I’ve seen not by right-wing groups, but CNN, Reuters, NBC—there seems to be a disconnect between who they think won the debate and how they’re reacting substantively.
Trafalgar was consistent with the others, showing a 15-point win for Harris in terms of who won the debate, but no movement in who people were going to vote for. CNN was interesting—they had an even larger, 20-plus-point win for Harris, but found that on the key issue—voters’ most important issue—the economy, Trump actually improved over pre-debate polling. Similar findings came from Reuters and NBC.
“The woman who oversees ABC News is Kamala Harris’s best friend, Dana Walden.”
Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, is one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ “extraordinary friends,” according to a report in the New York Times.
Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands, Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff, have known each other since the 1980s.
Dana Walden has donated to dozens of Democrats and contributed to Harris’ political campaigns since at least 2003, when she ran for district attorney in San Francisco.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“National Fraternal Order of Police Endorses Trump.” You would think it would be an easy pick over someone on record as wanting to defund police.
“Trump Unveils Plan To ‘End All Taxes On Overtime’ Work.” Eh. I feel like a better policy would be a bigger personal and family member exemption.
In Montana’s senate race, Republican challenger Republican Tim Sheehy takes a big lead over incumbent Democrat Jon Tester.
“Immigration Crisis On Display In Springfield, Ohio: It’s Not Just About Haitians Eating Pets.”
While the legacy media has yet to find any evidence of pet consumption that it’s willing to accept, there are some much larger issues regarding the crisis that has been created in Springfield through the importation of nearly 20,000 Haitian illegals.
Former Ohio State Representative Kyle Koehler has sounded a warning regarding the consequences that have followed the Biden administration’s policy that gave temporary protected status to more than 100,000 Haitian migrants, including those relocated to Springfield.
Among the concerns raised by Koehler are the strain on the local school system with more than 1,600 non-English speaking students now enrolled and Haitian refugees who are 20 years old being placed Freshman High School classrooms with 13 year old kids.
Koehler also voiced concern over an individual who is renting his 63 homes to the relocated Haitians for as little as $250 per month, with 20-25 individuals living in each home.
Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) has also weighed in on the controversy, saying that he too has heard from Springfield residents complaining that pets and wildlife were being abducted and that health services are being severely strained by an influx of individuals with communicable diseases like TB and HIV.
The community of 60,000 residents is clearly facing serious issues related to the open border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Robert Stacy McCain thinks that Springfield got what it deserved.
When tales of Haitian immigrants eating cats emerged on social media this week, it suddenly focused attention on the city of Springfield, Ohio, but now we are learning there’s more to the story:
“Those 20,000 Haitians did not show up overnight or uninvited. Though flown in by the federal government, they were not forced on the city by the federal government. Elections have consequences. Springfield voted for this. They signaled their virtue, their signal was seen, and virtue arrived. This is what they wanted. This is what they got. They’ll have to deal with the consequences.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Much commentary has focused on whether it’s true that pets are being killed and eaten by the Haitians, but that’s not really the point. The point is why Springfield became the destination for thousands of Haitians (who may or may not eat cats).
It’s a long story. First of all, you’ll find liberals insisting that these Haitians are not illegal immigrants. Research further, however, and you learn that most of them entered the country illegally, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after making their way through Central America. After Haiti descended into its latest crisis, the Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to all Haitians in the U.S., so you may say that they have been retroactively (but temporarily) “legalized.”
Now let’s talk about Springfield, which is a “blue” island of liberalism in a sea of Republican “red.” Ohio was once a battleground state, closely contested in every presidential election, and then Trump came along and the Buckeye State has now become a GOP stronghold. Springfield was a city of 58,662 residents before the Haitian influx, and the city sits in Clark County (population 136,000) which voted 61% for Trump in 2020.
You see that, if the Democrats can turn these Haitians into voters, they can make Clark County “blue,” and a similar calculus is being applied nationwide by the Biden administration’s immigration policy. Democrats insist that the “Great Replacement” is a right-wing conspiracy theory, but we can see them doing it — blatantly, deliberately, in front of our eyes — in places like Springfield. And this brings us to the late Warren Copeland.
For most of the past three decades, Copeland was the mayor of Springfield. He was a professor at Wittenberg University, a local institution affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Anyone who knows anything about the ELCA will tell you it is the pluperfect example of degenerate liberal Protestantism. “The ELCA has drifted so far into pagan goddess worship that to call it ‘Lutheranism’ is an insult to Luther; to call it ‘Christian’ is blasphemy,” as I wrote in 2016. Copeland was a radical obsessed with “social justice,” and the fact that Springfield repeatedly elected him as their mayor tells you something about the politics of the city. Indeed, Springfield eagerly welcomed the influx of Haitians. Read this article from December 2022:
A surge in the number of Springfield residents from Haiti has resulted in an outpouring of language assistance and additional forms of help from the Springfield City School District and others who are trying to meet their needs.
Social Justice destroys everything it touches.
Citizens have questions to City Council about vetting of Haitian refugees in Sylacauga, Alabama. City Council: “Meeting adjourned.”
Kamala Harris confirms that yes, she does want a giant illegal alien amnesty.
Trump thumps Harris in the latest Rasmussen poll.
Two more “election interference” charges against Trump thrown out.
It looks like Germany has finally had enough, as they’ve instituted border controls for immigration.
For the first time in EU history, Germany is at the forefront of immigration suspension. Other EU countries will follow.
The Schengen Area…is an area encompassing 29 European countries that have officially abolished border controls at their mutual borders.
Reuters reports Germany Tightens Controls at All Borders in Immigration Crackdown.
Germany’s government announced plans to impose tighter controls at all of the country’s land borders in what it called an attempt to tackle irregular migration and protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.
The controls within what is normally a wide area of free movement – the European Schengen zone – will start on Sept. 16 and initially last for six months, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday.
The government has also designed a scheme enabling authorities to reject more migrants directly at German borders, Faeser said, without adding details on the controversial and legally fraught move.
The restrictions are part of a series of measures Germany has taken to toughen its stance on irregular migration in recent years following a surge in arrivals, in particular people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East.
Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.
Polls show it is also voters’ top concern in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.
Scholz and Faeser’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are fighting to retain control of the government there, in a vote billed as a test of strength of the SPD ahead of next year’s federal election.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Seems like Germans are getting tired of all that vibrant raping and stabbing diversity…
“Elon Musk’s X wins case against California over ‘content moderation’ law.”
On Wednesday, a federal court ruled in favor of Elon Musk’s X Corp in its case challenging California’s content moderation laws, citing free speech violations. X Corp filed a lawsuit to block the controversial law, which took effect on January 1, 2024.
The legislation requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state or face civil penalties.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous lower court’s decision that ruled against pausing enforcement of the state law. The panel of three judges decided the law facially violated the First Amendment, Reuters reported.
“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his case opinion.
In the complaint filed in Sept. 2023, X Corporation argued that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
Ex-UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is the smiling face of global censorship.
For free speech advocates, we often feel that other citizens have become passive observers as an anti-free speech movement grows around us, threatening our “indispensable right.”
One of the most infamous figures in this movement has been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been the smiling face of censorship. As the head of the Labour Party, Blair pushed through some of the early crackdowns on free speech in the United Kingdom. He is now calling for global censorship to expand these efforts.
In an interview on LBC Radio, Blair declared:
“The world is going to have to come together and agree on some rules around social media platforms. It’s not just how people can provoke hostility and hatred but I think… the impact on young people particularly when they’ve got access to mobile phones very young and they are reading a whole lot of stuff and receiving a whole lot of stuff that I think is really messing with their minds in a big way.”
Remember, when the want to crackdown on “misinformation,” the sort of things they want to ban are opinions contrary to their social justice agenda. Such as “the Chinese coronavirus came from a lab” or “there are only two biological sexes.”
More of that voting fraud Democrats swear doesn’t exist. “Illegal Alien Charged With Stealing U.S. Citizen’s Identity to Vote in Elections. She voted in the 2016 and 2020 primaries and general elections.”
“US Marshals Help Recover Dozens of Missing Children in Ohio.”
The Biden Administration wants Texas to cede Fronton Island to federal control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott told them to get stuffed.
I am in receipt of a letter from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) … given that it concerns actions taken under Operation Lone Star to secure Texas’ southern border around Fronton Island against the ongoing invasion of Texas by transnational criminal cartels — a crisis created and incentivized by your Administration,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott added that the letter “alleges that GLO has altered the flow of the Rio Grande by engaging in activities on Fronton Island without USIBWC’s approval.”
“It also alleges that [the] GLO trespassed on federal land in the process of facilitating cleanup and security efforts on the Island … That agency responded in a letter … detailing that GLO has not engaged in construction activities at all, and, in any event, Fronton Island is state-owned land.”
Abbott then responded to the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner’s request that Fronton Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions: “You are either unaware of, or indifferent to, what those ‘pre-construction conditions’ were.”
Before Texas secured Fronton Island, Abbott wrote, “[T]ransnational criminal cartels had assumed practical control of the densely vegetated Island and used it to terrorize Texas communities.”
He recounted occasions when authorities found the criminal cartels to be using the “thick vegetation” to “stash weapons, plant explosives, evade apprehension, and engage in open warfare against rival cartels and against state and federal officers.”
“Are you aware that your appointee is asking Texas to return grenades and rocket launchers along with IEDs to the Island?” he asked the Biden administration.
Abbott continued, “Your open-border policies have allowed an invasion at the southern border and incentivized criminal activity that threatens the lives of Texas law enforcement, soldiers, and citizens.”
“Yet … the federal government has refused to enforce federal laws — even in dangerous areas like Fronton Island.”
“I determined that Texas could not ignore an ongoing invasion of its sovereign territory,” Abbott said of his decision on October 5, 2023 to move a “heavily armed invasion force” onto Fronton Island.
He then addressed USIBWC’s complaint that Texas had built “two sediment bridges.”
“Your Administration’s letter betrays a basic misunderstanding of facts on the ground, and its claims are unsupported by either science or common sense.”
Dwight has been sending me tidbits on the ongoing meltdown among government officials in New York City following FBI raids. Like this: “Paranoid police officials meeting in parking lots as fed raids leave NYPD, City Hall in shock.” “Law enforcement sources telling The Post that they’re afraid NYPD headquarters is bugged and their words are being recorded.” Plus New York City Mayor Eric Adams evidently has several burner phones, which is both highly suspicious and probably justified. And since Adams is reportedly using the messaging app Signal, presumably they’re modern Android or iPhones, which are: A.) More expensive than classic burner phones, and B.) Probably not conducive to quick SIM card swaps, ala Stringer Bell on The Wire.
Anyway, NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban just resigned.
“A Los Angeles car rental company brought in South American criminals to steal millions in cash and property from businesses and homes in Southern California and nationwide.”
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dead at 86. Fujimori revived Peru’s economy and destroyed the Maoist Shining Path guerillas, but in the end he too fell prey to Peru’s long history of government abuse of power and corruption. In the end, he too was corrupt and committed human rights abuses…and was still arguably the most successful (and important) President in Peru’s troubled history.
MMA fighter Conor McGregor runs for president of Ireland.
Spain built a giant sea of plastic greenhouses to grow produce year round. But: They also use illegal aliens to keep the price down.
“The head of the UN wants to create a fake bank that will circumvent EU and US sanctions against Russian banks.”
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham pushed back against a Biden-Harris administration proposal to “lease nearly 150,000 offshore acres to an energy company (Hecate Energy) with no experience in wind projects.” But it’s easy to understand why the Biden Administration wants to hand the assignment to Hecate: They donate lots of money to Democrats.
Big Lots declares bankruptcy. The Biden Recession is wrecking retail.
Alan Dershowitz announces he’s leaving the Democratic Party over its “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist convention.” One wonders what took him so long.
California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom vetoes the home loans for illegal alien bill, presumably to avoid attack ads for a presidential run in 2028.
Remember Taral Patel the Ft. Bend democrat who faked hate crimes against himself? Now he’s facing even more felony charges. “Last week a grand jury indicted him on four felony counts of Online Impersonation and four misdemeanor charges including Online Impersonation and Misrepresentation of Identity with intent to ‘harm.'”
Former U.S. army sniper relocates to Russia. Turns out he was wanted for sexual assault of a minor.
Florida’s post-tenure review law is working. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Self-cleaning litter box has the unfortunate downside of killing your cat.
Rick Beato interviews bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. It’s an interesting interview, especially the part about how he sold all his stuff to go on tour with Buddy Rich, only to find out that Rich’s old bassist had agreed to come back, so he was out of a job…
“Optronic Technologies, Inc., better known to backyard astronomers as the parent company of both Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Meade Instruments, has shut its offices and storefront in Watsonville, California.” Actual manufacturing was done in Tijuana, so I’m not sure how much California’s new minimum wage law had an effect.
Boeing workers vote to strike.
Sony’s new Playstation5 Pro doesn’t come with a disc drive despite costing $700. Evidently they’re climbing aboard the “we don’t want you to own any games, just pay a monthly fee” bandwagon.
There are rumors that Barbie director Greta Gerwig wants to make an all female Fight Club remake. That’s about as good an idea as an all-male reboot of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Comedian Kevin Hart’s chain of vegetarian restaurants in LA closed down. 1. How’s that minimum wage working out for you, California? 2. Vegetarian restaurants aren’t even profitable in LA. 3. Stick to comedy. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Kamala Quietly Asks Aides If She Should Just Try Sleeping With The Economy.”
“Harris Campaign Admits Tim Walz Was The Only Candidate That Answered Their Craigslist Ad.”
“‘Stop Foreigners Meddling In Our Elections!’ Says Party Inviting Foreigners To Meddle In Elections.”
“Bluey Reported Missing After Haitian Migrants Move In Next Door.”
“Ohio Cats Take To The Streets To Protest Immigration.”
“Media Assures Americans That Migrants Haven’t Killed Any Cats, Just Women And Children.”
Good dog.
Still between jobs, so hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Tags:2024 Presidential Race, ABC, Alabama, Alan Dershowitz, Alberto Fujimori, amnesty, anti-semitism, Babylon Bee, Biden Recession, Boeing, Border Controls, California, cats, censorship, Conor McGregor, corruption, Crime, Dana Walden, Dawn Buckingham, dogs, Edward Caban, Elections, Elon Musk, Eric Adams, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Fani Willis, farming, Florida, Foreign Policy, Fort Bend County, Fronton Island, Georgia, Germany, Greg Abbott, Haiti, Hecate Energy, Illegal Aliens, Ireland, Israel, J. D. Vance, Jon Tester, Kamala Harris, Kevin Hart, King Crimson, Kyle Koehler, LinkSwarm, Los Angeles, Media Watch, Military, minimum wage, Montana, Nate Silver, National Fraternal Order of Police, New York City, NYPD, Obituary, Ohio, Peru, police, polls, Rasmussen, Rick Beato, Robert Stacy McCain, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Schengen Zone, Social Justice Warriors, Sony, Spain, Springfield (OH), Sylacauga, Taral Patel, Texas, Tim Sheehy, Tim Walz, Tony Blair, Tony Levin, Ukraine, UN, unions, vegans, video games, voting fraud, Warren Copeland, William A. Jacobson
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Welfare State | 5 Comments »
Friday, October 23rd, 2020
The third and final presidential debate is in the books, Trump breaks 50% approval, and the hard left plans another riot and arson spree if they lose. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Consensus opinion seems to be that president Trump won last night’s debate with Joe Biden.
That appeared to be one lesson from a Zoom focus group conducted after the debate by messaging expert Frank Luntz. Speaking to 15 undecided voters — and yes, they appeared to be really undecided — Luntz asked for a one- or two-word description of the candidates’ debate demeanor. For Biden, the words were mostly bad: among them were “vague,” “very vague,” “non-specific,” “cognitively impaired,” “old,” “uncomfortable,” “elusive,” “grandfatherly,” and “defensive.”
For Trump, they were mostly much better: among them were “controlled,” “composed,” “constrained,” “reserved,” “poised,” “con artist,” “surprisingly presidential,” “calmer,” and “restrained.”
There will be more coverage of the debate, of Biden’s promise to end the oil industry and, indeed, more about Mr. Luntz, in Monday’s BidenWatch.
President Trump just hit the “Holy Grail” of breaking the 50% approval rating, hitting 52% approval in Rasmussen polling. All the usual poll caveats apply.
The left is currently planning on how to peacefully protest if President Donald Trump wins. Ha, just kidding! They’re going to burn everything down:
An activist group is planning large-scale and widespread ‘disruptive activity’ starting on the night of the election, in an attempt to stop what it predicts will be an “attempted coup” by President Trump in the form of a refusal to accept the election results.
“Shut Down D.C.” is setting the stage for mass gatherings in D.C., noting that the “resistance” must begin during the “muddied” legal and political debate over the election outcome.
More on the same theme:
“We need to show that we’re ungovernable under a continued Trump administration…That can mean blocking traffic at major intersections and bridges, shutting down government office buildings (why should ICE or the FBI be able to keep doing Trump’s bidding when he’s leading with a coup?!?), or blockading the White House.”
The document bases its action plan upon the scenarios projected by the establishment leftist “Transition Integrity Project” for election night and sketches these activists’ response to each, explicitly rejecting the possibility that Trump could legitimately win. It continues:
We’ll keep it going until Trump concedes. We could be in the streets throughout the fall and into the winter– maybe as lots of rolling waves of action or possibly as a few major tsunamis! In other parts of the country, as vote counts conclude, our focus will turn from protecting the vote counts to themselves being ungovernable.
As it becomes clear that Trump’s coup is failing, institutions and the elites will start to abandon him – or we will approach them as part of the problem. Either Amazon will shut down AWS for the Trump loyalists in the government or we’ll shut down their fulfillment centers. Either governors will tell their national guards to stand down or we’ll shut down their state capitals as well. Over time, Trump will grow increasingly isolated and his empire will crumble down around him.
Victor Davis Hanson on the Progressive Medusa:
The new-old leftist aim is not to operate within either the existing parameters of the Constitution as written or the customs and traditions of America—a 150-year-long nine-justice Supreme Court, the Electoral College, a 50-state nation, a Senate filibuster, two senators per state, and a secure border. All are obstructions to the drive for power.
Given its redistributionist creed, socialism cannot afford to be patent and honest. If socialism were transparent, it never would gain majority support. Joe Biden cannot talk about the Electoral College or court packing, unequivocally condemn the violence in our urban centers, discuss the Green New Deal, name his likely Supreme Court appointments, be honest about his plans for fracking, or explain his views on the borders, because he is now owned lock, stock and barrel by the hard Left whose agendas were rejected even in his own Democratic primaries.
The Left seeks to transform America into something never envisioned by the founders, a huge all-encompassing, panopticon state, one run by anointed Platonic guardians. Our elite watchmen will use their unlimited power to force upon us an equality of result society—with themselves properly exempted.
The hard Left’s defense is that its mission is so critical, so morally superior, that all means can be justified to achieve its noble ends. And so almost every institution that the Left has in its line of vision is now petrifying.
Large swaths of the downtowns of America’s large cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland—are becoming unhygienic, unsafe, and uninhabitable. Substantial corridors swarm with the homeless. Crime is increasing but commensurately redefined as a sort of cry of the heart, no-bail social activism. The cities are broke and yet demand more bailouts to spend more money that will ensure things get worse.
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination unanimously approved by Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats failed to show up. The senate confirmation vote is expected Monday. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Great Southern Democratic Hope:
Back in 2018, I wrote about the phenomenon of Great Southern Democratic Hopes — candidates with not-so-great chances of success running in a Republican-learning state who receive wildly optimistic coverage from national media organizations and reporters desperate to discover a Democrat who can win statewide races in the South and someday end up on a presidential ticket.
Prime past specimens of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes include Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, and Michelle Nunn and Jon Ossoff in Georgia. But 2018 brought the modern king of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes, Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke.
You notice none of those candidates actually won, although O’Rourke deserves some credit for performing better than any other Democrat in decades. Still, next spring, Ted Cruz will be in the third year of his second term, and O’Rourke, having completed a presidential bid that also didn’t live up to the initial hype, will be teaching at Texas State University.
This cycle: Amy McGrath.
after McGrath won the primary, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin declared, “Democrats serious about winning chose Amy McGrath.” The Frankfort State Journal concluded, “McGrath has the name recognition and financial backing to give McConnell, well, a run for his money.” Fueled by Democrats across the country who are itching to see McConnell defeated, McGrath’s fundraising has been off the charts — $37 million in the last quarter, more than $82 million overall.
And yet it is mid October, and McConnell does not appear to be running for his money. The newest Mason-Dixon poll puts the Republican ahead, 51 percent to 42 percent. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives McConnell a 96 percent chance of winning. In a year when Democrats are finding themselves in surprisingly strong shape from Maine to Colorado and from Montana to Arizona, McGrath is an afterthought and on pace to turn out like the last Democrat who took on McConnell. In 2013, Politico wrote of Grimes, “The fresh Democratic face could give the Senate minority leader the fight of his political life.” Mitch McConnell won reelection in 2014, 56 percent to 40 percent, in what was not the fight of his political life.
President Trump is not having any of Leslie Stahl’s bias. I’m so old I remember when 60 Minutes was a revered journalistic institution…
“Meet NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny — The Woman In Charge of Doxxing and Destroying Trump Supporters.” Bonus: “While Zadrozny is passionately committed to doxing and silencing her political foes, there’s another group she is more sympathetic toward: Pedophiles.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Even Obama Administration officials were not believing the Steele dossier’s Russian collusion bullschiff…
How Facebook uses Chinese nationals to work on technology to censor Americans:
China is one of the most censorious societies on Earth. So what better place for Facebook to recruit social media censors?
There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’”
The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.
When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”
Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.
To illustrate the mechanics, the insider took me as his typical Facebook user: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”
Facebook engineers test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to shape an optimal outcome — and root out what bosses call “borderline content.”
It all makes for perhaps the most chillingly sophisticated censorship mechanism in human history. “What they don’t do is ban a specific pro-Trump hashtag,” says the ex-insider. Instead, “content that is a little too conservative, they will down-rank. You can’t tell it’s censored.”
(Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)
Texas joins DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Google. Oh, and the DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. I probably should have led with that. I blame this Topsy Turvey year.
Intel to sell it’s NAND business to South Korea’s Hynix. It’s a weird deal:
In a joint press release issued early this morning, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK Hynix. The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at $9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling their overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to their Optane memory technology as they continue to develop and sell that technology.
Per the terms of the unusual agreement, SK Hynix will be acquiring Intel’s NAND memory business in two parts, with the deal not expected to completely close until March of 2025. Under the first phase, which will take place in 2021 once all relevant regulatory bodies have approved the seal, SK Hynix will pay Intel the first $7 billion for their SSD business and Intel’s sole NAND fab in Dalian, China. This will see Intel’s consumer and enterprise SSD businesses transferred to SK Hynix, along with the relevant IP and employees for the SSD business, but not any NAND IP or employees. Similarly, while SK Hynix will get the Dalian fab, the first phase does not come with the employees that operate it.
Following the first phase, Intel will continue to develop and manufacture NAND out of the Dalian fab for roughly the next four years. This period is set to last until the rest of the deal fully closes in March of 2025. At that point, SK Hynix will pay Intel $2 billion for the rest of their NAND business. This will finally transfer all of Intel’s NAND IP and related employees over to SK Hynix, along with the Dalian fab employees.
NAND = Flash memory, and it’s a very profitable business to be in most times, but not part of Intel’s core microprocessor business. In Intel’s case, NAND is what you run once your fab is too old to crank out Microprocessors, and Fab 68 in Dalian was built in 2010 as a 65 nanometer fab. With Intel’s cutting edge currently at 7nm, you can see how it would be easy for them to part with, especially since the flash division was losing money despite record revenue in 2019. What Hynix gets out of the deal is harder to fathom. They’re buying a revenue stream in a sector that should be profitable, add another fab to their stable, and maintain parity with DRAM rivals Samsung and Micron. But that’s an awful lot to pay for a small revenue stream bump, a ten year old fab and no NAND IP until 2024.
Twitter backs down after Hunter Biden brouhaha.
Rapper 50 Cent endorses President Trump, says Biden’s tax hikes are too high.
Colorado Democratic Party committee member calls for killing political opponents on camera.
“U.S. Sanctions Have Caused ‘Serious’ Damage to Iran, Tehran Says.” Good. Maybe they could stop being jihadist scumbags who oppress your people with a brutal theocracy? Just a thought…
Armenia-Azerbaijan truce breaks down within hours.
Poland signs $18 billion nuclear power deal with the U.S.
Chairman of the Georgetown County (South Carolina) Board of Voter Registration and Elections resignes after stealing Trump signs. Note: Repeatedly stealing the signs of political opponents isn’t a “lapse of judgement.”
Detailed, even-handed analysis of the charges leveled at Ken Paxton.
The Nate Paul scandal has, at its heart, allegations that federal and state law enforcement officials abused the rights of an American citizen. The facts from all sides seem to indicate an unwillingness by the OAG staff to investigate Paul’s complaint; their unwillingness to do so must be explored.
If the 2019 raid was properly conducted, why has that not been confirmed? Why delay an investigation into the raid? If the raids were legitimate, why, after more than 13 months, has Nate Paul not been charged with a crime?
On the other hand, Nate Paul might—indeed—be a notorious villain. But in the current environment, shouldn’t state investigators be willing to double-check that the actions of law enforcement officials are conducted properly? Even accused criminals have constitutional rights.
Just as important, what if Mr. Paul is not a villain and merely a businessman targeted for less than honorable reasons? Is it merely a coincidence that U.S. Attorney Bash resigned from office three days after Mateer tendered his own resignation?
Likewise, it is possible—as the seven OAG employees allege—that Paxton was acting “under duress” in pushing for this investigation into the complaint made by his friend Mr. Paul. Whether or not Nate Paul’s allegations have merit, Texans need to be certain their elected officials are not acting improperly or unethically in the course of their jobs. Was Mr. Paxton simply pursuing justice for a Texan, or was he acting under undue influence?
Bill Burr’s Saturday Night Live monologue.
Bret Weinstein kicked off Facebook, presumably for daring to voice anti-Social Justice Warrior thoughts.
Max Boot manages to dig past the next level of the Hollow Earth in talking about just how swell China has handled the Wuhan coronavirus. Time to dig this out again:
“Half Of Europe’s Small Businesses Face Bankruptcy.” I bet a number of Eurocrats overseeing their Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns see that as a feature rather than a bug.
Dwight has an interesting link up on the Quebec Biker War.
Phil Collins ex-wife took over his mansion with her new boyfriend and armed guards. He should su-su-sue them all.
Johnny Rotten on the antifa Borg. “This collectivism wrapped up in the ideology and dogma of communism is the exact opposite [of punk rock].”
Today’s Hollywood star dragged by the left for not bowing to their wokeness: Chris Pratt
Since Starlord is an integral lead in two blockbuster franchises, I would say the chances of this costing him work are pretty much nil…
Australia bans all hentai. This doesn’t seem like a winning strategy in the Internet era…
Burning Zambonis give you so much more.
Happy Halloween!
Tags:2020 Election, 2020 Presidential Race, 50 Cent, 60 Minutes, Amy Coney Barrett, Amy McGrath, antitrust, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bill Burr, Brandy Zadrozny, Bret Weinstein, Canada, CBS News, China, Chris Pratt, Colorado, coronavirus, Democrats, dogs, Donald Trump, Facebook, Foreign Policy, Frank Luntz, Google, Hynix, Intel, Joe Biden, Ken Paxton, Leslie Stahl, LinkSwarm, Max Boot, Media Watch, Mitch McConnell, Nate Paul, NBC, Phil Collins, Poland, polls, punk rock, Rasmussen, Saturday Night Live, Semiconductors, Sex Pistols, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Twitter, Victor Davis Hanson, Wuhan
Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 5 Comments »
Monday, July 27th, 2020
Biden’s Florida campaign is miffed, everything is racist, and a rundown on Biden advisors. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
Biden’s campaign in Florida sucks so badly that his own team is accusing him of suppressing the Hispanic vote.
Over 90 field organizers for the Florida Democratic Party signed a scathing letter Friday to the party’s leadership, claiming among other things that the campaign is “suppressing the Hispanic vote” in Central Florida.
The seven-page internal letter, obtained by the Miami Herald, contains eight allegations from field organizers about what they say is a lack of a “fully actionable field plan” from the Biden campaign as it transitions into the Florida party to coordinate voter outreach efforts.
This letter comes 100 days out from the general election and as recent polls show enthusiasm about voting among Latinos in battleground states like Florida could be waning in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among the claims: mistreatment of field organizers, relocating trained staff members without explanation, lack of organizing resources and taking on volunteers who are then left in limbo.
In a battleground state where elections are historically won by thin margins — and as presidential campaigns ramp up outreach efforts in Florida’s Hispanic communities — organizers claim that the Coordinated Campaign lacks key infrastructure and perpetuates a “toxic” work culture that is hurting morale among on-the-ground staffers.
One big issue is that at least a handful of organizers were recently transferred from a heavily-Puerto Rican part of the state to counties with a small percentage of Hispanics.
“Four of five Spanish-speaking organizers along the I-4 corridor who were moved to North Florida were Puerto Rican,” the letter says.
Field organizers add that input from staffers connected to Puerto Ricans living in Central Florida is often dismissed.
“The [Coordinated Campaign of Florida] is suppressing the Hispanic vote by removing Spanish-speaking organizers from Central Florida without explanation, which fails to confront a system of white-dominated politics we are supposed to be working against as organizers of a progressive party,” the letter adds.
A Democratic official familiar with internal discussions who asked not to be named said the letter comes amid negotiations between the Coordinated Campaign in Florida and the field organizers’ union, the IBEW Local 824.
So the Biden campaign is plagued by internal dissension thanks to Social Justice pandering, ethnic identity groups, and unions.
“Trump neck and neck with Biden, 45%-47%, approval equal with Obama’s in 2012.” The usual “polls are meaningless” caveats apply, along with the perception that Rasmussen favors Republicans. As opposed to all the other polls, which favor Democrats by about 3% in a good year… (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
So where are all these invisible Biden voters we keep hearing about?
We’ve all heard the rumors. Joe Biden is running for president. Joe Biden has a huge lead in the polls. Joe Biden can tie his own shoes.
All are difficult to prove or understand.
I know that Joe Biden’s Twitter account is running for president. It’s a horrible candidate, by the way, maybe worse than he is in person. As for the shoe-tying thing, I’d wager good money that, if you asked Joe to tie his shoes he would try to shove a peanut butter and jelly sandwich up his nose.
The lead in the polls is the most mystifying, however. It’s true that many of us have a well-founded distrust of pollsters. In the past, however, when they’ve been deliberately skewing things one could at least find the occasional supporter of the candidate they were trying to prop up. They were ridiculously off about Granny Maojackets in 2016, but most of us at least met some Hillary voters.
Joe Biden is a different thing altogether. Last week, a friend of mine who is well-placed on Capitol Hill remarked that no one in D.C. is talking about Joe Biden. In the ensuing four days, three other friends whose opinions I also respect mentioned that nobody ever meets a Biden supporter in person.
I live in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the most liberal city in Arizona. It’s left-wing bumper sticker (Coexist!) and yard sign hell here. None of them mention Joe Biden. Bernie bumper stickers abound, however. Heck, I have a neighbor up the street who still has a Bernie 2016 sign up, so it’s not like the local folk aren’t dedicated.
This is all anecdotal, of course, but so were the rumors about flyover country support for Trump in 2016.
Snip.
What we’re looking at now is a candidate who is, according to polling, a juggernaut but one whose real world support is nigh on invisible. It hasn’t been that long since the national pollsters were really, really wrong, of course. However, this disconnect between Biden’s poll numbers and the nonexistent enthusiasm for his candidacy is weird even when you factor in the plague year and Trump Derangement Syndrome.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The leftist loons that run the New York Times editorial board wonder who Biden listens to. It’s pretty tiresome, but it does let us capture the names of some of Biden’s advisors.
The Democratic Party’s activist base, especially its younger members, harbors grave doubts about Mr. Biden and has vowed to keep the pressure on as he charts a path forward. One big, basic question on many people’s minds is, Just how far left will Joe go?
Snip.
Skepticism about Mr. Biden runs deep on the left. During more than four decades in public office, he earned a reputation as a pragmatic centrist (sorry!) — the guy President Obama sent to negotiate deals with congressional Republicans that no one else wanted to be in the room with. Some progressives regard him as just the sort of compromised, compromising, politics-as-usual establishment tool standing in the way of meaningful change, and they fear that he has surrounded himself with other establishment tools who see the activist base as a threat to the existing power structure that must be neutralized.
“There’s a whole wing of the Democratic Party establishment that doesn’t simply want an electoral victory,” they want it on terms that let them “weave a narrative” to discredit the left, said Mr. Mitchell. “They want to defeat Trump and progressives in one fell swoop.”
Conversely, the Social Justice Warriors in the party’s insane wing are just as willing to lose this election if it means getting to control the party’s levers of power.
As the saying goes: Personnel is policy. But the campaign has been cagey about who is advising it and how the policy sausage gets made. Members of its extended economics team, for instance, were ordered to keep quiet about their campaign work. They can tell friends and colleagues, according to a memo acquired by The Times, but should not mention their affiliation “on social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn or in your professional bio.” And they should steer clear of the news media. Period.
Some names have trickled out. Progressives are not happy that Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff/congressman/mayor of Chicago is advising the campaign on economic policy and political strategy. (The left’s grievance list against this former Clintonite is long, and his mayoral tenure was marred by serious police scandals, including the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, which prompted protests and an investigation by the Justice Department.) “Not the sign we want to see,” said Rahna Epting, the executive director of the grass roots group MoveOn.
Even more explosive was the April news that Lawrence Summers has been offering his economic insights. A veteran of the Clinton and Obama White Houses, Mr. Summers is viewed as a neoliberal, business-cozy monster by the left, his name invoked with a level of distaste normally reserved for child predators.
In early May, more than two dozen progressive groups sent an open letter to Mr. Biden, demanding that he remove Mr. Summers from any campaign advisory role and “exclude him from a future Biden administration.” Charging that Mr. Summers had “put the interests of large corporations ahead of working families in the United States and around the world, fueled the climate crisis, and undermined efforts to ensure gender equality,” they declared it “hard to imagine a worse person than Larry Summers to guide the next President toward an economy that works for all.”
The Biden campaign has met such criticisms with assurances that it is listening to a wide range of voices.
Translation: “Run along, little girl, the adults are trying to speak.”
With Mr. Biden having spent the last half-century collecting friends, aides and advisers, not to mention this campaign’s fast-growing official staff, the org chart for Team Biden can be hard to decipher. His inner circle is defined differently depending on whom you ask, and even reasonably senior staffers aren’t always clear about who does what. But whether you think in terms of concentric circles or Venn diagrams or pyramids of power, there are legions of people offering counsel.
For instance, the campaign is consulting with more than 100 left-leaning experts on economic policy. The nominee’s regular briefings are conducted by a smaller core of liberal economists, former Obama officials and advisers to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Former Clinton 2016 advisors: There’s a surefire recipe for victory!
On foreign policy, the nominee has a large network of working groups subdivided according to specialty: nuclear proliferation, the Middle East, China, etc. Who is running these groups, and how much real influence they have, is hard to pin down. For all Mr. Trump’s ravings about China, international matters typically receive less play in presidential races than do domestic issues such as jobs or health care — meaning the Biden campaign is facing relatively little leftward pressure. When Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders formed a collection of working groups in the spring to hammer out joint proposals on various policy issues, foreign policy was not even among the topics tackled.
This likely suits Mr. Biden just fine. Foreign policy is kind of his thing. His expertise runs deep. He knows the players and the issues. As vice president, his instincts were more cautious and minimalist than those of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Times once described the two as representing “the yin and the yang of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.”
But, in this as in so many areas, Mr. Biden is a solidly establishment player, and he relies on a clutch of trusted hands, including Julie Smith, Tom Donilon and Tony Blinken, who sits atop the campaign’s foreign policy shop. Mr. Blinken has been with Mr. Biden for nearly two decades and served as his national security adviser in the Obama White House.
Don’t expect his team to be taking on the military-industrial complex or taking up calls to slash funding for the Pentagon. The nominee’s message thus far has been mainstream and soothing, with talk of rebuilding frayed alliances and restoring American leadership on issues ranging from nuclear arms to the Middle East to global warming.
Other top policy dogs: Stef Feldman is the campaign’s official policy director, while Jake Sullivan serves as a combination gatekeeper and air traffic controller, gathering input, coordinating info and bringing order to the chaos across fields and working groups. Bruce Reed, one of Mr. Biden’s chiefs of staff in the Obama White House and a former head of the now-defunct centrist Democratic Leadership Council, also plays a central advisory role. (He used to brief Mr. Biden on campaign trips — in the pre-Covid days when people could still travel.)
Many of those with the most influence operate outside any official lines of authority. Mr. Biden’s inner circle includes longtime loyalists like Mr. Klain; Mike Donilon (brother of the aforementioned Tom), Mr. Biden’s political guru; Steve Ricchetti, who was another of his chiefs of staff in the Obama administration, and Ted Kaufman, who has been with Mr. Biden since his 1972 Senate race. These are the kitchen cabinet folks who make progressives super nervous. They are considered establishment fogies unlikely to challenge the nominee or push him to think big.
The inner ranks are not entirely closed to newcomers. Anita Dunn, a veteran of Obamaworld, effectively took control of Mr. Biden’s primary campaign in the shake-up following his loss in Iowa, and continues to wield serious clout. But Ms. Dunn is herself a Washington fixture and an object of suspicion for some on the left.
“He’s not listening to the folks he needs to listen to,” said Yvette Simpson, who leads the political action committee Democracy for America.
“Wah! He’s not listening to the right leftwing lunatics! Wah!”
It’s all tedious inside baseball stuff, but I’m harvesting and tagging those names so I can track them for future reference if, say, one of them testifies at a future congressional hearing on illegal Chinese contributions to the Biden campaign, just to pluck a random hypothetical out of thin air.
Also mentioned: Sister Valerie Biden Owens and wife Jill Biden.
Bush43 speechwriter thinks President Trump should stop making fun of Slow Joe.
Instead of telling people Biden is not competent, let Biden continue to show it. The former vice president will misspeak a lot in the coming weeks and months. Let the American people see by his words and actions that he’s not all there. Leave it to surrogates to draw attention to his gaffes. They should do so with sadness rather than ridicule. The message should be: We’ve all seen loved ones struggle with memory loss as they age. No one likes to see it, or point it out. But in Biden’s case, it can’t be ignored. Because our loved ones aren’t asking to be given the nuclear codes. Biden is.
“Joe Biden’s worst campaign moment, revisited.”
It all started when, after about 40 minutes of an almost-continuous Biden monologue at an April event, Frank Fahey, a Claremont, N.H., teacher, asked Biden: “What law school did you attend and where did you place in that class?”
Here’s Biden full answer:
“I think I have a much higher IQ than you, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship — the only one in my class to have full academic scholarship. The first year in law school, I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class. And then decided I wanted to stay and went back to law school and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class. I won the international moot court competition. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits; you only needed 123 credits. I would be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, Frank.”
Biden didn’t even mention where he went to law school, but it was at Syracuse University. The problem was, as Newsweek revealed:
- Biden did not go to Syracuse Law School on a “full academic scholarship.” It was a half scholarship based on financial need.
- He didn’t finish in the “top half” of his class. He was 76th out of 85.
- He did not win the award given to the outstanding political science student at his undergraduate college, the University of Delaware.
- He didn’t graduate from Delaware with “three degrees,” but with a single B.A. in political science and history.
Gallup says there’s little reason Biden will appeal more or less to Catholics, being the first Catholic Vice President and supporting abortion. Maybe. But it’s pretty obvious that Social Justice is the only allowed religion of the Democratic Party…
“Senate Republicans secure impeachment witness who flagged concern about Hunter Biden.” That would be George Kent. Remember that the Burisma scandal never went away…
YOUR BRAIN ASPLODE!*
President Trump was willing to sit down and answer hard questions from Chris Wallace. Joe Biden? Not so much. He’s “not available.”
Biden says President Trump is more racist than actual slave-owning Presidents.
Speaking of racism:
The difference in enthusiasm for Trump vs. Biden:
I wonder what odds you could get in Vegas:
Tara Reade would still like to look at Biden’s records at the University of Delaware. So would Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of itself and the Daily Caller News Foundation against the University of Delaware for former Vice President Joe Biden’s Senate records, which are housed at the university’s library (Daily Caller News Foundation v. University of Delaware (N20A-07-001 CEB)). The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware.
The university said it will not release the records until two years after Biden has retired from public life.
The Daily Caller and Judicial Watch filed requests on April 30 for all of Biden’s records and for records about the preservation and any proposed release of the records, including communications with Mr. Biden or his representatives.
“Protesters Pull Down Joe Biden After Mistaking Him For Old Racist Statue.”
“Biggest Idiot Democrats Ever Nominated.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Ricky Bobbyed:
Predictions:
Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:
*Yes, that is a Homestar Runner reference. Welcome to the coolest in-jokes of 2009…
Tags:2020 Presidential Race, Anita Dunn, Antony Blinken, Burisma, Catholics, China, Chris Wallace, Democrats, Elections, Florida, Gallup, George Kent, Hispanics, Hunter Biden, Jake Sullivan, Jill Biden, Joe Biden, Julie Smith, Lawrence Summers, Mike Donilon, polls, Rahm Emanuel, Rasmussen, Social Justice Warriors, Stef Feldman, Steve Ricchetti, Tara Reade, Ted Kaufman, Tom Donilon, Ukraine, unions, Valerie Biden Owens
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, unions | No Comments »