Tag: politics

Why Trump passed up the kill shots

Judgybitch explains how Donald Trump avoided the minefield of defeating Hillary Clinton in the first presidential debate:

He understands he can’t win a fight with a woman, and certainly not with a woman who signals her femininity as strongly as Clinton did last night. Trump has some massive strikes left in his arsenal. Benghazi. The Clinton Foundation. Her private server. Immigration. The Second Amendment. Death Taxes. Bill’s rape roster. Big strikes. If and when he pulls them, he is risking the paradox of fighting with women. Nailing her to the wall can backfire on him badly, because many people simply cannot stomach seeing a woman take a massive punch from a man. No matter how much she begs for it. No matter how justified. For many people, you simply don’t hit women.

Trump is walking a fine line, and he is taking his cues, it appears, from Hillary, which is the smart thing to do. He stood on the debate stage, and let her walk up to him. He’s the alpha, she’s the supplicant. That was perfect. He is very gently laying on a spanking, but only with her consent, and again, that’s exactly how you do it. I’m not an advocate of spanking children ever, but grown women are another story altogether. She may not know she needs it, but she probably does.

As long as Hillary never seems staggered by Trump’s blows, he can hit her. The minute the public perceives that he is actually hurting her, he loses. She gains the pity vote. Trump looks like a bully. A few whiny feminists insist he is a bully, because anyone who disagrees with a woman is a bully, period. But average people are watching to see if Trump can constrain himself and not lose it and just beat the crap out of her. If Trump were up against Bernie Sanders, it would be no holds barred, but he can’t do that with Hillary.

Trump won, because he spanked Hillary just enough to let her know her place, but not so hard he triggered the latent white knight in undecided viewers.

As irritating as this is, Judgybitch is probably right to advise restraint. While most of the readers here would like to see Trump unleash on Clinton and trigger her into collapsing in convulsions on stage, the fact is any such action might well render him unelectable in the eyes of most women and more than a few men.

Beyond tone deaf

Seriously, who is advising Hillary Clinton? It’s like a parody of a presidential campaign:

Hillary Clinton trolled two White House opponents with a single response, dinging Gary Johnson and Donald Trump by naming Angela Merkel as her favorite world leader.

The Democratic presidential nominee on Thursday joined the discussion about politicians’ favorite world leaders, a topic that went viral when Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, drew a blank when asked Wednesday to name a world leader he looks up to and respects.

“Oh, let me think. Look, I like a lot of the world leaders,” Clinton said, bursting into laughter initially when asked about her favorite world leader during a gaggle with reporters aboard her campaign plane in Chicago. “One of my favorites is Angela Merkel because I think she’s been an extraordinary, strong leader during difficult times in Europe, which has obvious implications for the rest of the world and, most particularly, our country.”

Clinton praised the German chancellor’s “leadership and steadiness on the Euro crisis,” while adding that “her bravery in the face of the refugee crisis is something that I am impressed by.”

Hillary might as well have promised that she’ll import 2 million Syrian refugees next year. Merkel is HATED in Germany to such an extent that I’ll be surprised if she even tries to remain as the CDU party leader in the next election cycle.

The thing is, Hillary is a nanny-state Mutti Merkel-style politician. Trump is more in the mode of Putin and Duterte. The former is a globalist who has lost half her historical support. The latter are nationalists who are both extremely popular in their countries.

That’s why the Trumpslide is inevitable.

A warning shot

Mike Cernovich Verified account ‏@Cernovich


Sick Hillary’s people fired warning shot at me. ALL accounts (multiple banks) simultaneously frozen. Had to talk to “senior operations.”


Speaking of warning shots, didn’t the Alt-White just declare war on Milo yesterday? The FBI determined that a “credible threat” was made against him today.

A credible threat to MILO’s event and Florida Atlantic University students has forced the cancellation of the Breitbart editor’s scheduled talk today.

According to the FAU Police Department, student organizers received a communication threatening to bring firearms to the talk or plant explosives at the venue.

Threats were also made to FAU students.

The threat was relayed to the F.B.I, which after investigation deemed it to be credible. The F.B.I. contacted Florida Atlantic University this morning recommending cancellation of the event and the university took the decision to pull MILO’s event.

MILO was due to give a lecture this evening entitled, “How Feminism Hurts Women.”

It is not clear who is responsible for the threat.

The timing doesn’t necessarily indicate that it was anyone connected with Mr. Anglin, however, given that Milo has been dealing with bomb threats since the first one was telephoned into the venue of GGinDC more than a year ago.

The petty evil of William F. Buckley

Anonymous Conservative exposes the thought policeman of the conservative establishment to have been a malignant narcissist:

Jonah Goldberg recently said it was time to John Birch the Alt-right. Good luck with that, numbnuts, as an economic apocalypse approaches and the nation finds itself overrun with your Establishment-approved, religion-of-peace amigos. You’ll be lucky to one day escape the mob that is coming yourself. I look on this piece as my get out of jail free card, should I ever have the misfortune to be captured in Jonah’s vicinity.

So I am free to discuss things like this openly now. If the Cuckservative Establishment wants to attack the Alt-right, lets take a look at their saintly standard bearer through the lens of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Our source material will be the piece written by his son in the New York Times. At the time I read it, I was repulsed by what appears to be a case of pretty severe Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Here I will explain why, after quotes from the article.

First is the picture of him. Notice how despite his youth, you can still see the glassy, disconnected eyes. And the sneer of contempt, almost to the point of a growl with an upcurled lip, which is manifest on the left side of his face, and masked on the right side. That facial asymmetry always seems to hold when I see something aberrant. Faces are handed, and the left side almost never hides the demons within as well as the right.

Now the article.

Pup’s self-medicating was, I’d venture, a chemical extension of the control he asserted over every other aspect of his life. The term “control freak” is pejorative. Put it this way: Few great men — and I use the term precisely, for Pup was a great man — do not assert total control over their domains…


He was invariably the sunniest and most pleasant creature in the room. The moods of those in attendance upon him — Mum’s, mainly — did not always match his.


A TV remote control in the hands of an autocrat of the entertainment room becomes a “Star Trek” phaser set on stun. He and Mum might be watching “Murder on the Orient Express” with a half-dozen guests when, just as a key plot point was being introduced, suddenly the screen would fill with a documentary on Che Guevara or the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara…


There, the three of us would eat one of Julian the cook’s delicious meals on trays and watch a movie. I say “a movie,” but “movies” would be more accurate, since several minutes in, without bothering to say, “Let’s watch something else,” he’d simply change the channel. One day, when I was out of town and called to check in, Danny reported, with a somewhat-strained chuckle, “We watched parts of five movies last night…”


Once or twice during the convalescence, I became so splutteringly frustrated after the fourth or fifth channel change that I silently stormed out of the room.

I know what Buckley was doing because I have seen this mind in action. That storming out was what Buckley wanted. Think about it. He was watching those shows. Was he not drawn into them? Was his interest alone not piqued to see the climactic resolution unfold? Was his boredom climaxing at the exact moment everyone else’s interest was maximally invested?

The satisfaction he felt when everyone else was enraged at that critical moment was more pleasurable to him than seeing the plot twists revealed…. Buckley was not a great man. He was, like all narcissists, an insecure, mentally damaged coward, elevated to his position by an establishment that saw him as a useful idiot who would happily suppress the most fierce advocates for freedom, from John Birch to Ayn Rand.

I never, ever liked Buckley’s writing. There was always something that was distinctly off about it to me. There was never any depth or substance to it; there is more meat to a single chapter of Sam Huntington than there is in Buckley’s entire oeuvre. His columns never seemed to hit the target, and his novels were meandering and pointless. Yes, he was intelligent and influential, but always in the most shallow and superficial manner. It is not even remotely surprising to me that the establishment he constructed and policed has not long survived his death. In a different situation, he would have been a dictator, and probably have met with much the same fate as a Mussolini.

Read the whole thing. The incident with the boat at Christmas makes it very clear that there was definitely something seriously psychologically wrong with the man. He was basically the real-life version of Ricky Bobby’s father in Talladega Nights, if the father had punched out the waitress and burned down the Applebee’s instead of just mouthing off to her and being thrown out.

AC explains the driving motivation of the intelligent malignant narcissist:  This is the cerebral narcissist’s dream – tangible proof which they can handle in their brain, that everyone else is an idiot, and they are the smart one. It relieves the great insecurity which drives them unrelentingly to try and one-up everyone else.

This is why I don’t worry about to those who can admit that they have failed, admit that they are wrong, and don’t feel the need to inappropriately flaunt their intelligence at all times, but keep a very wary eye on those who are never wrong, always win, and claim even the most abject defeat to be a victory in disguise. They’re not all malignant narcissists, they may only be garden-variety Gamma secret kings, but in no circumstances can any of them be trusted in any way.

Notice how often Christopher Buckley tried to reason with his father, to absolutely no avail. That’s an unwinnable scenario with malignant narcissists, it is the Kobayashi Maru. Don’t argue with them, don’t try to correct them, don’t try to fix things for them, don’t enable them in any way, just keep your distance, keep them out of your life, and leave them to their delusional hellholes.

Trumpslide: 292 and counting

The Trumpslide cometh:

UPI/CVoter state polls: Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton in Electoral College

Donald Trump would earn enough votes to win the presidency in the Electoral College based on UPI/CVoter’s state tracking poll released Monday.

Trump would amass 292 votes and Clinton would get 246 with 270 needed to secure the oval office.

But the candidates’ leads are narrow enough — 5 percent or less — in 12 states to classify them as swing states, meaning 156 electoral votes could be up for grabs.

So do the TRUMPSL!DE t-shirts from Dark Lord Designs, by the way. Among others. Meanwhile, Politico reports that the Clinton campaign is in disarray over Florida:


Clinton campaign in ‘panic mode’ over Florida black voters

First Trump-Clinton debate takes

The Democratic line, courtesy of the Cajun Rattlesnake himself, James Carville:

I can’t imagine that after what we saw tonight the needle doesn’t move some.

He was just bad.

I’ve talked to a lot of people that have done a lot of research and these sort of instant things, these dial groups. I think what you hear around this panel is pretty much shared by the research that I’ve seen tonight.

Yeah, she was prepared, she was solid, she did a good job. He just kind of — as he went further into it… He just — the further they went, the worse it got. They almost wanted to throw the towel in after 90 minutes. That’s enough.

The Neocon take, as per Charles Krauthammer:

It was not exactly the knock out fight that we thought. It was a spirited fight. I think in the end it was something like a draw. But I do believe that the draw goes to the challenger in the sense that Trump did not go over the line. And the very fact he could go 90 minutes on the same stage ultimately elevates the challenger, that’s just automatic for any debate of that support.

I think he did allow himself to get very defensive and she exploited that. She kept coming back for things where he wasted a lot of time on taxes, on some of the other issues he felt personally about, and, as a result, he missed a lot of opportunities. She presented herself as she always does. Solid, solid, knows her stuff, not terribly exciting but reliable. I think that is the best she can do. Likable, she couldn’t but that is not something within her reach.

He contained himself in the sense that I don’t think he committed any gaffes but he allowed himself — she could find out something personal about him that would make him down rabbit holes at a time when he had wide openings to go after her on e-mails and other items, and let them go.

The Master Persuader impression, from Scott Adams

Trump only had to solve one problem at the debate: Seem less scary. He did. Think about it. Clinton won the debate on points but looked like a recently turned zombie learning to smile for the first time. Trump was Trump. Tie.

My perspective, which should be largely discounted because, as is my habit, I did not watch a single moment of it. Partly because it’s not worth staying up for, but also because I think I get a better take on the reaction to the debate by not having any personal impression to discount.

My verdict: a minor Trump victory that will not get in the way of the polls continuing to gradually move in his favor towards the predicted Trumpslide. 

This is a testable conclusion. If I am correct, the polls will continue to move modestly Trumpward. A minor Hillary win will arrest the polls at the virtual tie point that was reported pre-debate. A big Hillary win would start gradually reversing them, and a big Trump win would trigger the preference cascade and see Trump rapidly move into an unassailable lead.

The important thing to remember is that the substance of the debate, the actual words, the stuff that the media discusses, is only about one-third of the effect of the debate. Hillary clearly won the words portion thanks to Trump allowing himself to be distracted and failing to take advantage of the numerous openings she gave him. But with the non-verbal aspect, the candidates each had to meet a separate objective. Trump had to appear convincingly presidential and look as he merited being on the stage. Hillary had to appear healthy and sane.

Trump did the former. While Hillary didn’t collapse, go on a coughing jag, or go into full bobblehead mode, words such as “creepy” and “zombie” and “weird”and “Nixon” appeared often enough in reactions to the debate that it is clear she failed the optics element.

Remember, people’s reactions are cemented at distinct and unique moments that vary considerably from one person to the next. I was both mystified and amused by the reactions of some people to my debate with Robert Murphy; I couldn’t relate to their perceptions of either party and I was not only there, I was one of them! So, don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s even possible to isolate two, or three, or ten factors that will trigger the decision response in a viewer, as it could be a weird smile, a convincing phrase, or a momentary look of confusion that does it.

Peter Grant wasn’t impressed with either candidate’s performance, but noted a substantive distinction between the two:

What did strike me was the contrast between the candidates’ approaches to the rest of the world.  Donald Trump was emphatic about protecting American jobs and our national economy, if necessary by renegotiating international trade agreements, restricting immigration, etc.  Hillary Clinton was much more globalist in orientation, looking to admit more refugees, work together with other nations (whatever that means), and so on.  She basically saw the United States as just one nation among many, whereas Donald Trump saw it as the ‘first among equals’ with the right to put its own interests first.

And Scott Adams’s considered conclusion:

The most interesting question has to do with what problem both of them were trying to solve with the debate. Clinton tried to look healthy, and as I mentioned, I don’t think she completely succeeded. But Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.

Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy. And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals. In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.

Trump wins Florida requested ballots

Trump takes at least 43.2 percent of the ballots requested for Florida early voting to Hillary’s 37.3 percent. This election IS NOT GOING TO BE CLOSE. It’s going to be a Trumpslide, as predicted. Republicans had never previously requested more early ballots in Florida than Democrats.

In 2012, Democrats dominated early voting in Florida. In 2016, that domination has been reversed, as Donald Trump is now poised to carry the critical battleground state. Check out the numbers below, and remember, Trump also dominates the share of Independent votes as well, meaning he likely already has a 200,00+ vote lead over Hillary in Florida.

The key statistic isn’t the increase in Republicans requests from 40 percent to 43.2 percent, but rather, the massive decline in Democrats from 43 percent to 37.3 percent. While there is genuine enthusiasm for Trump, what will turn a victory into a Trumpslide is the fact that Democrats have no enthusiasm for Hillary whatsoever.

Scott Adams endorses Donald Trump

Scott Adams demonstrates his courage and his willingness to put his life on the line for America in endorsing Donald Trump for President:

As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety, because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it’s bad for business too. But recently I switched my endorsement to Trump, and I owe you an explanation. So here it goes.

1. Things I Don’t Know: There are many things I don’t know. For example, I don’t know the best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don’t know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither do you. I don’t know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. My opinion on abortion is that men should follow the lead of women on that topic because doing so produces the most credible laws. So on most political topics, I don’t know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you probably think you do.

Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government.

I’ll say more about that, plus some other issues I do understand, below.

2. Confiscation of Property: Clinton proposed a new top Estate Tax of 65% on people with net worth over $500 million. Her website goes to great length to obscure the actual policy details, including the fact that taxes would increase on lower value estates as well. See the total lack of transparency here, where the text simply refers to going back to 2009 rates. It is clear that the intent of the page is to mislead, not inform.

So don’t fall for the claim that Clinton has plenty of policy details on her website. She does, but it is organized to mislead, not to inform. That’s far worse than having no details.

The bottom line is that under Clinton’s plan, estate taxes would be higher for anyone with estates over $5 million(ish). I call this a confiscation tax because income taxes have already been paid on this money. In my case, a dollar I earn today will be taxed at about 50% by various government entities, collectively. With Clinton’s plan, my remaining 50 cents will be taxed again at 50% when I die. So the government would take 75% of my earnings from now on.

Yes, I can do clever things with trusts to avoid estate taxes. But that is just welfare for lawyers. If the impact of the estate tax is nothing but higher fees for my attorney, and hassle for me, that isn’t good news either.

You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children. Fairness isn’t an objective quality of the universe. I oppose the estate tax because I was born to modest means and worked 7-days a week for most of my life to be in my current position. (I’m working today, Sunday, as per usual.) And I don’t want to give 75% of my earnings to the government. (Would you?)

3. Party or Wake: It seems to me that Trump supporters are planning for the world’s biggest party on election night whereas Clinton supporters seem to be preparing for a funeral. I want to be invited to the event that doesn’t involve crying and moving to Canada. (This issue isn’t my biggest reason.)

4. Clinton’s Health: To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead” video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn’t be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.

5. Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump “paces” the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to “lead,” which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That’s how I see him.

So brave. Thank you for this, Scott. Scott Adams is a true American hero.

When Hillary loses

Democrats are likely to be in trouble, because whites are being eradicated from the party leadership:

The shock for Democrats if Clinton loses will likely be more severe than for Republicans if Trump loses.

One option for Democrats would be to moderate their policies, as the New Democrats urged in the 1980s and Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. After all, that proved pretty successful.

Two decades ago, lots of self-described moderates and even conservatives voted in Democratic primaries. Not so these days. The slump in Democratic primary and caucus turnout, from 38 million in 2008 to 31 million in 2016, was due to a sharp decline in turnout by self-described moderates.

Hillary Clinton’s move from her husband’s 1990s triangulation to her near-total acceptance this year of Bernie Sanders’ left-wing platform was a rational response to changes in the Democratic primary electorate.

One lesson of recent presidential primaries is that Democratic voters are transfixed by identity politics, having elected the first black president and chosen the first female presidential nominee. Another is that there’s a large constituency for left-wing candidates.

What they haven’t been interested in is cisgendered white male liberals. The largely forgotten John Edwards fell by the wayside quickly in 2008, and Martin O’Malley, with credentials similar to those of Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis, attracted zero support in 2016.

That leaves them with no obvious choices if Clinton loses this year. Their most visible and attractive left-wingers, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will be over 70 in 2020. Prominent black and Hispanic officeholders tend to represent overwhelmingly Democratic constituencies and have made few of the bows to moderation that made Barack Obama a plausible national candidate in 2008.

It’s amusing that everyone is focused on the changes that identity politics will make to the Republicans, when the much more serious change is taking place in the Democratic Party. Just like in local Minnesota politics, where the bigamist Somali woman pushed out the long-serving Jewish representative, there isn’t going to be any more white Democratic leadership.

And that’s when even the most stauch white liberals will start to drift Republicanward.