Tag: politics

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.

“Self-righteous Churchian Pharisaism”

Scott Morefield annihilates the feeble anti-Trump arguments of the Republican Party’s Prince of Cucks, Erick Erickson on WND:

Erick doubles down on the insanity as the column devolves into self-righteous Churchian Pharisaism while ultimately rejecting both of the choices God Himself has obviously put before us.

And the logic he uses to do so is horribly, fatally flawed.

Erickson contrasts Clinton’s “tyranny of the minority” with Trump’s “tyranny of the majority” and his “corrupting the virtuous and fostering hatred, racism, and dangerous strains of nationalism.”

Since when, Erick, is putting America and Americans above globalist interests a “dangerous strain of nationalism”?

Trumpism, the movement Trump represents, can essentially be defined as taking our country back from foreign, globalist, corporate and establishment interests by securing our border and limiting immigration, establishing a fair, sensible trade policy that protects American jobs, and limiting foreign interventions overseas, among other things.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

By constantly bringing up the “racist” canard, people like Erickson not only lose credibility – because there is not one single shred of evidence that Donald Trump is a racist – but they insult, like Hillary Clinton did, the millions of Americans who passionately support Trump. It’s tired, old and increasingly ineffective, and yet just like the left, who see a “raaacist” behind every tree, hand-wringers like Erickson continue to deploy it to serve their rhetorical ends.

Further, the attacks on the supposed hypocrisy of prominent Christian theologian Wayne Grudem are beyond the pale, especially given the fact that Grudem made it clear that he did not support Trump in the primaries, just as he didn’t support Giuliani in 2012. However, he most certainly would have supported Giuliani over Obama had he won the primaries, just as he is supporting Trump now, with good reason.

Erickson uses the fact that a fellow parishioner at his church tried to make the argument for Trump based on other flawed men in the Bible God has used, like David, Abraham and Samson, as evidence that Trump has “poisoned” the church from within. He believes that while Clinton will do “long-term damage to the country,” Trump will “do far more damage to the church.”

Ironically, Erickson later writes of the church, “But Christ has already risen, so the true church is in no danger of falling. The gates of hell shall not prevail.”

So, which is it, Erick? If you believe that Christ will protect and keep His church, surely you aren’t worried about a mortal human like Donald Trump wrecking it, are you?

You see, unlike our country, the church IS, at root, a spiritual institution impervious to the machinations of man.

It’s really remarkable what a horrible, and horribly dishonest individual Erick Erickson is. It does not speak well of those Christians who insist on continuing to pay attention to the man and his incessant posturing.

Better late than never

Ted Cruz endorses Donald Trump:

This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.

In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

One can imagine the tear tracks being carved through the Cheetohs grime covering Glenn Beck’s face. I wonder how long it will take the cuckiest of cucks, Erick Erickson, to follow Cruz’s lead and reverse course considering that he just planted his flag again earlier today.

The polling has drawn ever closer. More and more people wonder if those of us who are NeverTrump should finally yield knowing that we can beat Hillary Clinton. I am in an odd position. I am mindful that should Trump win, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump. Likewise, I know if Trump loses, the Republican establishment will blame people like me for giving rise to Trump and Trump supporters will blame people like me for his loss. I suppose I should say not that I’m in an odd position, but that I am in a no-win position.

With Donald Trump’s rise in the polls and the increasingly competitive nature of the race, it is time to reconsider my opposition to Trump. After all, I view Hillary Clinton’s candidacy as anti-American….

I think Hillary Clinton will do lasting damage to the country. I cannot vote for her.

Having reconsidered my opposition to Trump, I think Donald Trump will do lasting damage to the witness of the Church in America and I therefore cannot vote for him.

I am without a candidate. I just cannot vote for either one. Whichever is elected, it is God’s will and as his holy and inerrant scripture commands, I will pray for my President as I pray for the current President. But I will not harm my witness nor risk Trump’s soul to serve my political desires.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I do not believe a vote for either candidate glorifies God and I am certain neither advances his kingdom.

Dude, you voted for Captain Underoos. You voted for a bloody MORMON. You don’t get to play the “oh, I’m an evangelical, I’m too holy to care about my country, I’m voting for God” card after that. What the fuck is “the witness of the Church in America” anyhow? Lesbian Unitarians performing gay marriages while the gay Catholic seminarians chase the altar boys and women talk about their mutually submitted husbands in the pulpits of the Protestant churches as the only male pastors left are too busy apologizing for slavery to preach the Gospel?

Erick Erickson is exactly the sort of Christian that gave me an allergy to Christianity growing up. All that passive-aggressive, faux-righteous babble designed to justify himself reminds me of every smarmy high school guy who was going to a Bible college to pursue a career in youth ministry because it was the only way he could hang around high school girls.

Let the pools begin!

There are going to be betting pools all over the country on this one. I call the 40-minute nark for her first extended coughing jag that interrupts the debate. From the Drudge Report:

If presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton slips into a coughing fit or any other medical crisis during Monday’s high-stakes debate, she will have to power through, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned!

“There are no commercial breaks,” a commission source explains. “Period.”

Debate moderator Lester Holt does not have the authority to cut away from the stage during the epic 90-minute showdown. And microphone audio for either of the candidates is not to be manipulated.

The interesting thing is how heavily her handlers are going to drug her. On the one hand, they’ve got to settle her down, keep her anxiety in check, and suppress her coughing, on the other, they don’t want her going out there wild-eyed, manic, and more hyped up than a coke-addled New York Met from the 1980s.

White Democrats move to Trump

Identity always trumps ideology, if you’ll excuse an obvious pun:

On Como Street in Struthers, where CBS News spent a recent weekend knocking on every door on the block, Skook was in the minority. All around her, the community was ditching their Democratic roots and flocking to Trump.

Paul Sracic, who has lived in the area for years and is chair of the department of politics and international relations at Youngstown University, described Trump’s “blue-collar billionaire” identity as the perfect cocktail to attract onetime Democrats here.

“They know he’s not really a Republican, and that Mitt Romney hates him, so that helps,” Psaric said of the voters in his community. “So instead it’s like, ‘I’m not becoming a country club Republican, I’m a part of Trump’s party.’”

The story of these defections goes back to March when over 6,171 registered Democrats voted in the GOP primary that was a showdown between Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Even the Democratic mayor of Struthers was caught with a Trump For President sign in his front yard.

But the Democrats here have not come back home. Instead, many of them are still looking to Trump.

I note that Donald Trump has gained 11 points in the battleground state of North Carolina, going from -9 to +2 and taking the lead in the RCP state average. It’s too soon to confirm it, but all the indicators of the coming Trumpslide are sliding into place.

I doubt the Charlotte “riots” are hurting Trump any either.

Increasingly desperate

Now the media is “quoting” Donald Trump saying things he did not say. CNN actually inserted the word “racial”. Because, you see, if they just insinuate that he is RACIST one more time, that will salvage Hillary Clinton’s flagging campaign.

As Scott Adams observed earlier today, “Everyone knows it’s over. But not everyone can say it yet.”

But it’s over. Trump will be the next President of the USA and it’s not even going to be close.

Trumpslide brewing

You may recall that in response to dh’s citation of the state poll data pointing to an easy Hillary win this summer, I responded that it was too early to pay attention to the state polls, and that those polls only began to be relevant at least one month after the conventions. I also stated that if there was to be a Trumpslide, we would have to see the state polls start moving in Trump’s direction after that time.

What is interesting is that we are now seeing precisely the sort of movement that is necessary for a Trumpslide to take place, even before the first presidential debate. Consider the way in which the following states have changed in the last month according to the Reuters polls, and remember that Reuters already tweaked their methodology once to favor Clinton.

  • Florida has swung 11 points toward Trump moving the state from solid Hillary to marginal Trump.
  • Pennsylvania has swung 5 points toward Trump moving the state from solid Hillary to “Too Close To Call.”
  • Nevada has also swung 5 points toward Trump moving the state from marginal Hillary to marginal Trump.
  • South Carolina has swung 8 points toward Trump moving the state from “Too Close To Call” to solid Trump.
  • Colorado has swung 6 points toward Trump moving the state from marginal Hillary to marginal Trump.
  • Iowa has swung 11 points toward Trump moving the state from marginal Hillary to solid Trump. 

It is clear that Trump has all the momentum, even before the news of the new round of Muslim attacks in America have been taken into account. The national polls also reflect this degree of movement, as Clinton was +8 in the RCP average only five weeks ago, and will almost certainly be behind by the end of the week.

While it is far from certain that this Trumpward movement will continue at its current pace, if it does, Donald Trump will win in a landslide. I am not predicting a Trumpslide on that basis, for as you know, I already predicted one months ago. All I am pointing out is that the scenario for not only a Trump victory, but an overwhelming Trump victory, continues to remain a legitimate possibility on the basis of the current evidence.