There's gotta be some law on celebrities that their brains go to jelly over "global warming" at some point in their careers. And I've been cutting Paul McCartney so much slack, heh.
Via Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "THE FOOL ON THE HILL."
Monday, May 9, 2016
White House Press Corps Asks Obama Three Questions About Trump, None About Ben Rhodes.
From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE."
Also, from Dan Nexon, at Duck of Minerva, "The White House Pushes for its Policies, and Other Surprises from Ben Rhodes."
Postmodern foreign policy.
Also, from Dan Nexon, at Duck of Minerva, "The White House Pushes for its Policies, and Other Surprises from Ben Rhodes."
Postmodern foreign policy.
FWIW, Samuels' appears to be walking a very fine line in the piece. /1
— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) May 6, 2016
Here's his inference from the 'grand deception' of focusing on the 2013-2015 round & critics are seizing upon: 2/ pic.twitter.com/HZeUSEoggj
— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) May 6, 2016
Here's the *only* supporting evidence he offers from Rhodes — which is not actually from the interview: 3/ pic.twitter.com/CIyRwOEzvC
— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) May 6, 2016
These are NOT the same argument. One is about trying to 'end cycles of conflict,' the other is about unravelling US alliances 4/
— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) May 6, 2016
This is basically just Samuels offering his own theory and wrapping it in orthogonal statements and evidence 5/
— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) May 6, 2016
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Everything's Orwellian these day.
Maybe folks might want to get up on the great essayist's writings.
At Amazon, George Orwell, Politics and the English Language and Other Essays.
Also, Why I Write.
BONUS: 1984. (The Erich Fromm afterword in this Signet pocket edition is excellent, reminding us that 1984 isn't just about totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union under Stalin. It's about us too.)
Maybe folks might want to get up on the great essayist's writings.
At Amazon, George Orwell, Politics and the English Language and Other Essays.
Also, Why I Write.
BONUS: 1984. (The Erich Fromm afterword in this Signet pocket edition is excellent, reminding us that 1984 isn't just about totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union under Stalin. It's about us too.)
Hillary Clinton Apologizes to Laid-Off Miner for Comments on Putting 'Coal Companies Out of Business...' (VIDEO)
Here's the full video, at Yahoo, "Hillary Clinton apologizes to laid-off coal miner for comments."
And at WSJ, "Laid-Off Coal Worker Wants Explanation From Hillary Clinton":
And at WSJ, "Laid-Off Coal Worker Wants Explanation From Hillary Clinton":
WILLIAMSON, W.Va. – When Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said in March that she would put a lot of coal miners out of business, Bo Copley took it personally.Still more.
On Monday, the laid-off coal worker from this struggling Appalachian community came face to face with the former secretary of state and called her to account for her remarks.
“I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend,” Mr. Copley said.
During a roundtable discussion in a county that has been ravaged by coal-industry layoffs, Mrs. Clinton sought to make amends for remarks that sparked a furor in Appalachia. In March, she predicted that coal companies would be put out of business during a Clinton administration. She added that those workers should not be forgotten and spoke about her plans to boost the economy in coal country, but her comments landed with a thud here in Appalachia.
On Monday, the former secretary of state told Mr. Copley that she had misspoken. During a campaign stop in West Virginia, Mrs. Clinton said she meant to suggest that the area was on a path to continued job losses, but that she would act to boost the economy in this depressed region. In November, she released a $30 billion plan aimed at revitalizing communities dependent on coal production.
“What I said was totally out of context from what I meant,” Mrs. Clinton said. “It was a misstatement.”
Mr. Copley, who is 39, choked up as he showed Mrs. Clinton a picture of his family and spoke about other coal workers who have lost their livelihood.
“When you make comments like we’re going to put a lot of coal miners out jobs, these are the kind of people that you’re affecting,” he said.
Such an emotional and frank exchange is a rarity on the campaign trail, where candidates speak to friendly crowds and seldom are compelled to answer their detractors. Mrs. Clinton thanked Mr. Copley for raising the issue, saying “it’s important to put it out on the table.”
She added that regardless of whether West Virginia supports her, she would work to help the state, acknowledging that she faces a steep challenge in the Democratic primary there on May 10...
Keep English. Vote Ron Unz!
Heh.
He's actually looking a little worse for the wear, but no doubt he's still got the fire down below.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Ron Unz’s U.S. Senate race raises concerns of splintered GOP vote":
He's actually looking a little worse for the wear, but no doubt he's still got the fire down below.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Ron Unz’s U.S. Senate race raises concerns of splintered GOP vote":
Republican Ron Unz may have jumped into the high-profile race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, but he’s not drafting the speech he’s planning to deliver on the Senate floor in January.Still more.
“I’m an honest person, and I say what I believe,” said Unz, a Palo Alto software developer and entrepreneur who made an unsuccessful GOP primary bid for governor in 1994. “Sure, I could say I’m going to be the next senator, but that wouldn’t be honest.”
A Field Poll earlier this month shows just how tough a road Unz and other Republicans face in the Senate race, where only the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the November general election.
Democrat Kamala Harris, the state attorney general, leads the field at 27 percent among likely voters, followed by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, with 14 percent support. None of the top three Republicans — Unz, Walnut Creek attorney Tom Del Beccaro and Palo Alto mediator Duf Sundheim — had more than 5 percent backing.
Instead of being in it to win it, Unz is using his Senate run to battle a measure on the November ballot that would repeal much of 1998’s Proposition 227, an initiative he sponsored — and bankrolled — that banned bilingual education in California public schools.
Focusing primarily on repeal
Unz isn’t making a secret of his plan to shove aside many of the typical issues of the Senate race to focus on a measure that’s not even on the June 7 primary ballot. His campaign business card, for example, reads, “Keep English. Vote Ron Unz!”
“The overwhelming factor (for his Senate run) was the absurd effort by the Legislature to repeal Prop. 227,” Unz said.
When the Legislature overwhelmingly voted in 2014 for SB1174, which put the repeal on this November’s ballot, Unz first thought about organizing an opposition campaign.
“But I decided the best way to get focus (on the repeal) was to get into a race,” he said. “It gives me a platform.”
Unz took out papers for the Senate race on the Monday before the deadline and returned them two days later on March 16, the last day possible.
“I really had to scramble,” he said.
Unz’s spur-of-the-moment decision blew up the careful plans of the other Republicans in the race, Sundheim admitted.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 50 Years Later
Interesting.
At the New Yorker, "The Cost of the Cultural Revolution, Fifty Years Later":
Still more, FWIW.
At the New Yorker, "The Cost of the Cultural Revolution, Fifty Years Later":
What effect did the Cultural Revolution have on China’s soul? https://t.co/6RGVaC2Q22 pic.twitter.com/Ww3tQm7Xlv
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) May 7, 2016
In 1979, three years after the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited the United States. At a state banquet, he was seated near the actress Shirley MacLaine, who told Deng how impressed she had been on a trip to China some years earlier. She recalled her conversation with a scientist who said that he was grateful to Mao Zedong for removing him from his campus and sending him, as Mao did millions of other intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, to toil on a farm. Deng replied, “He was lying.”What a terrible country.
May 16th marks the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution, when Chairman Mao launched China on a campaign to purify itself of saboteurs and apostates, to find the “representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture” and drive them out with “the telescope and microscope of Mao Zedong Thought.” By the time the Cultural Revolution sputtered to a halt, there were many ways to tally its effects: about two hundred million people in the countryside suffered from chronic malnutrition, because the economy had been crippled; up to twenty million people had been uprooted and sent to the countryside; and up to one and a half million had been executed or driven to suicide. The taint of foreign ideas, real or imagined, was often the basis for an accusation; libraries of foreign texts were destroyed, and the British embassy was burned. When Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current President, Xi Jinping—was dragged before a crowd, he was accused, among other things, of having gazed at West Berlin through binoculars during a visit to East Germany.
In examining the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the most difficult measurement cannot be quantified so precisely: What effect did the Cultural Revolution have on China’s soul? This is still not a subject that can be openly debated, at least not easily. The Communist Party strictly constrains discussion of the period for fear that it will lead to a full-scale reëxamination of Mao’s legacy, and of the Party’s role in Chinese history. In March, in anticipation of the anniversary, an editorial in the Global Times, a Party tabloid, warned against “small groups” seeking to create “a totally chaotic misunderstanding of the cultural revolution.” The editorial reminded people that “discussions strictly should not depart from the party’s decided politics or thinking.”
Nonetheless, in recent years, individuals have tried to reckon with the history and their roles in it. In January, 2014, alumni of the Experimental Middle School of Beijing Normal University apologized to their former teachers for their part in a surge of violence in August, 1966, when Bian Zhongyun, the deputy principal, was beaten to death. But such gestures are rare, and outsiders often find it hard to understand why survivors of the Cultural Revolution are loath to revisit an experience that shaped their lives so profoundly. One explanation is that the events of that period were so convoluted that many people feel the dual burdens of being both perpetrators and victims. Earlier this year, Bao Pu, a book publisher raised in Beijing and now based in Hong Kong, said, “Everyone feels he was a victim. If you look at them, you wonder, What the fuck were you doing in that situation? It was everyone else’s fault? You can’t blame everything on Mao. He was responsible, he was the mastermind, but in order to reach that level of social destruction—an entire generation has to reflect.”
China today is in the midst of another political fever, in the form of an anti-corruption crackdown and a harsh stifling of dissenting views. But it should not be mistaken for a replay of the Cultural Revolution. Even with thousands under arrest, the scale of suffering is of a different order, and shorthand comparisons run the risk of relieving the Cultural Revolution of its full horror. There are tactical differences as well: instead of unleashing the population to attack the Party, as Mao did in his call to “bombard the headquarters,” Xi Jinping has swung in the direction of tighter control, seeking to fortify the Party and his own grip on power. He has reorganized the top leadership to put himself at the center, suffocated liberal thinking and the media, and, for the first time, pursued critics of his government even when they are living outside mainland China. In recent months, Chinese security services have abducted opponents from Thailand, Myanmar, and Hong Kong...
Still more, FWIW.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Blacks in Chicago See Neighborhoods Beset by Crime, Isolation, and Worry
Well, once again, to slightly paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, "WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL FEAR, CRIME, AND NEIGHBORHOOD INSECURITY?"
Seriously, this is just terrible.
At the New York Times, "For Black Chicagoans, Isolation, Frustration and Worry":
Seriously, this is just terrible.
At the New York Times, "For Black Chicagoans, Isolation, Frustration and Worry":
African-Americans in Chicago see their neighborhoods beset by crime, isolation and worry https://t.co/nnbNLduJeO
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 6, 2016
Chicago, unsettled by a crime wave and a troubling police shooting, is in a grim mood. The outlook is clearly bleaker in some areas than others. African-Americans, especially, see their neighborhoods as beset by crime, bad schools and a host of obstacles to a better life for their children.Click through to view all the graphic data.
A survey of 1,123 Chicagoans from April 21 to May 3 found a majority of every race agreeing that the city has veered off course and that the mayor is not addressing their needs.
But when it comes to life in their neighborhoods, people in different groups describe substantially different experiences. Crime, for instance, is a greater concern for blacks in particular.
And in a city with a history of racial segregation, blacks see their neighborhoods as more isolated than people of other races do.
But the worst thing about their neighborhoods, and one of the biggest contrasts between blacks and other races in the poll, had to do with children.
When it comes to raising children, blacks and Hispanics see obstacles that most whites aren’t worried about.
Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to say they want to get out of their neighborhoods, and indeed, out of Chicago entirely.
Donald Trump Supporters Rally in Temecula (VIDEO)
They've got a lot of great conservative folks out that way. Murrieta's right next door, where we had the huge immigration protests a couple of years back.
Watch, via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Watch, via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Peggy Noonan Rips the #NeverTrump Movement
Former Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter, now at CNN, wasn't taking Noonan's piece too well. She was even lashing out at the Wall Street Journal.
Actually, I think Noonan gets it, and I say this in full knowledge that she's a stuffy elitist in her own right.
See, "Trump Was a Spark, Not the Fire":
Noonan basically says that voters gave Amanda Carpenter the boot along with all the other #NeverTrump ghouls. That's why Carpenter's dissing Noonan. And why Stephen Hayes is too, apparently, heh:
We live interesting times, that's for sure.
Actually, I think Noonan gets it, and I say this in full knowledge that she's a stuffy elitist in her own right.
See, "Trump Was a Spark, Not the Fire":
God bless our beloved country as it again undergoes one of its quiet upheavals.Keep reading.
Donald Trump will receive the Republican nomination for the presidency and nothing will be the same. How we do politics in America is changed and will not be going back. The usual standards and expectations have been turned on their head, and more than one establishment has been routed.
A decent interval should be set aside for sheer astonishment.
We face six months of what will be a historically hellacious campaign. Yes, we picked the wrong time to stop taking opioids.
Before I go to larger issues I mention how everyone, especially the media, is blaming the media for Donald Trump’s rise. I hate to get in the way of their self-flagellation but that’s not how I see it. From the time he announced, they gave Mr. Trump unprecedented free media in long, live interviews, many by phone, some possibly from his bathtub. We’ll never know. It was a great boon to him and amounted, by one estimate, to nearly $2 billion worth of airtime.
But the media did not make Donald Trump’s allure, his allure made for big ratings. Mr. Trump was a draw from the beginning. If anyone had wanted to listen to Jeb Bush, cable networks would have been happy to show his rallies, too.
When Mr. Trump was on, ratings jumped, but it wasn’t only ratings, it was something else. It was the freak show at its zenith, it was great TV—you didn’t know what he was going to say next! He didn’t know! It was better than everyone else’s boring, prefabricated, airless, weightless, relentless word-saying—better than Ted Cruz, who seemed like someone who practiced sincere hand gestures in the mirror at night, better than Marco the moist robot, better than Hillary’s grim and horrifying attempts to chuckle like a person who chuckles.
And it was something else. TV producers were all sure he’d die on their show. They weren’t for Mr. Trump. By showing him they were revealing him: Look at this fatuous dope, see through him! They knew he’d quickly enough say something unforgivable, and if he said it on their air he died on their show! They took him down with the question! It was only after a solid six months of his not dying that they came to have qualms. They now understood they were helping him. Nothing he says is unforgivable to his supporters! Or, another way to put it, his fans would forgive anything so long as he promised to be what they want him to be, a human bomb that will explode by timer under a bench in Lafayette Park and take out all the people but leave the monuments standing.
In this regard today’s television producers remind me of the producers of 1969 who heard one day that Spiro Agnew, the idiotic new Republican vice president, was going to make a big speech lambasting the media for its liberal bias. They knew Agnew was about to make a fool of himself. Who would believe him? So they covered that speech all over the place, hyped it like you wouldn’t believe—no one in America didn’t hear about it. It made Agnew a sensation. The American people—“the silent majority”—saw it as Agnew did. “Nattering nabobs of negativism,” from the witty, alliterative pen of William Safire, entered the language.
The producers had projected their own loathing. They found out they and America loathed different things.
That’s a little like what happened this year with TV and Mr. Trump.
My, that wasn’t much of a defense, was it?
The Trump phenomenon itself would normally be big enough for any political cycle, but another story of equal size isn’t being sufficiently noticed and deserves mention. The Democratic base has become more liberal—we all know this part—but in a way the Republican base has, too. Or rather it is certainly busy updating what conservative means. The past few months, in state after state, one thing kept jumping out at me in primary exit polls. Democrats consistently characterize themselves as more liberal than in 2008, a big liberal year. This week in Indiana, 68% of Democratic voters called themselves liberal or very liberal. In 2008 that number was 39%. That’s a huge increase.
In South Carolina this year, 53% of Democrats called themselves very or somewhat liberal. Eight years ago that number was 44%—again, a significant jump. In Pennsylvania, 66% of respondents called themselves very or somewhat liberal. That number eight years ago was 50%.
The dynamic is repeated in other states. The Democratic Party is going left.
But look at the Republican side. However they characterize themselves, a majority of GOP voters now are supporting the candidate who has been to the left of the party’s established thinking on a host of issues—entitlement spending, trade, foreign policy. Mr. Trump’s colorfully emphatic stands on immigration have been portrayed as so wackily rightist that the nonrightist nature of his other, equally consequential positions has been obscured.
In my observation it is a mistake to think Mr. Trump’s supporters are so thick they don’t know his stands. They do.
It does not show an understanding of the moment to say Donald Trump by himself has changed the Republican Party. It is closer to the mark to say the base of the party is changing and Mr. Trump’s electric arrival on the scene made obvious what was already happening...
Noonan basically says that voters gave Amanda Carpenter the boot along with all the other #NeverTrump ghouls. That's why Carpenter's dissing Noonan. And why Stephen Hayes is too, apparently, heh:
Long been an admirer of @Peggynoonannyc and look forward to each new column/book. But her zig-zagging on Trump is...confusing.
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) May 7, 2016
A month ago, @Peggynoonannyc found Trump "nutty," occupied w/"subjects...small, petty, unworthy." Now she scolds ppl who won't support him?
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) May 7, 2016
We live interesting times, that's for sure.
Kristen Keogh's Saturday Forecast
It's actually lovely weather today, especially for an outdoor workout.
At ABC 10 News San Diego:
At ABC 10 News San Diego:
Professor Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth
It's not on my short list, but it's definitely on my list.
Lots of buzz about this book, from Professor Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War.
Lots of buzz about this book, from Professor Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War.
History's Not on Hillary Clinton's Side
From Matt Bai, at Yahoo News, "Clinton has the map on her side, but history working against her":
But keep reading, in any case.
We'll know how well all these election theories hold up this November. Nothing's locked down. Nothing's written in stone. It's going to be awesome, lol.
If you want to experience the full-on contempt of the leftist intelligentsia right now, go on social media and suggest, as I did this week, that Donald Trump isn’t certain to get crushed in November. (Trump, in case you hadn’t noticed, brings out pretty much the worst in everybody.)Well, Clinton would certainly have to defy historical trends going back to the 1990s, but I actually do think voter burnout with the party in power plays a key role here --- voter enthusiasm is almost always more fervent among partisans of the out party, and 2016 will showcase more partisan fever than we've seen in a long time, heh.
The way a lot of partisan Democrats see it, Hillary Clinton — despite a loss to Bernie Sanders in Indiana Tuesday — will soon lock down her party’s nomination, and the only way she finds herself even threatened by Trump is if the media decides to legitimize him so we all have something to talk about. The word I keep hearing from liberals is “layup.”
Clinton does, in fact, enter the general election season with some serious structural advantages. Having analyzed trends from the past six elections and factored in demographic shifts, Third Way, the leading centrist Democratic group, concluded that Clinton starts the campaign virtually assured of 237 electoral votes — 46 more than Trump and just 33 short of a majority.
And as you’ve probably heard, no candidate has ever overcome — or even tried to overcome — the kind of ugly impressions Trump has made on women and minority voters to this point. Next to him, Clinton polls like Santa Claus.
But if history is any guide, Clinton comes to the campaign with a structural disadvantage, too, and one that shouldn’t be overlooked. It may explain why she can’t seem to put Bernie Sanders away — and why the outcome in November is hardly assured.
I’ve gone through this history once or twice before, but it bears repeating: In 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment, which said no one could be elected to the presidency more than twice.
In the 65 years since the last state ratified that amendment — comprising 16 elections, and six elections following an eight-year presidency — only one nominee has managed to win a third consecutive term for his party. That was George H.W. Bush, who overcame a double-digit deficit late in the campaign, thanks in part to one of the most ineffectual Democratic campaigns in history.
(And before you start with me, I know, Al Gore actually won, and in an alternate universe somewhere they are building his monument on the Tidal Basin in a climate that is, on average, four degrees cooler than the one we inhabit, but for purposes of this discussion, let’s just live in the here and now.)
The important question is why it’s proved so difficult for either side to win third terms. The most common explanation has to do with voter fatigue. Essentially, we’re told that voters get sick of having one party in office for eight years, and so the pendulum swings back.
I don’t find this theory especially persuasive. I’ve met an awful lot of voters over the years, and rarely have I heard anyone make the case that it was time for the other party to get a turn. It seems to me voters focus a lot more on the candidates themselves than on the parties they represent.
And this may get to the truer cause of the third-term conundrum. If you look back at elections over the past half century, what you find is that the parties of two-term incumbents almost always nominate the candidate who is nominally next in line. Of the six candidates who have sought third terms since 1960, five had previously served as either president or vice president. (The president was Gerald Ford, who ran for election in 1976 after having held the job for two-plus years.)
The outlier was John McCain, who, like Clinton, had been the runner-up in the last open election, and who ran in a year when the incumbent vice president was sitting it out.
It’s not hard to see how this happens. A two-term president has both the time and the muscle to set up someone who will carry on his legacy — while effectively boxing out challengers.
And because presidents almost always lose congressional seats and governorships in off-year elections, an eight-year presidency tends to decimate the ranks of worthy, younger successors from outside the establishment, anyway.
In other words, by the time a president gets done slogging his way through the peaks and troughs of eight years on the job, there aren’t a lot of new, exciting alternatives to whichever former rival or loyal No. 2 has been patiently waiting on the edge of the stage...
But keep reading, in any case.
We'll know how well all these election theories hold up this November. Nothing's locked down. Nothing's written in stone. It's going to be awesome, lol.
Conner Eldridge for U.S. Senate Offers Preview of Democrat Attacks to Come (VIDEO)
Heh.
It's gonna be an election for the ages. Seriously, this is going to be the most bitter, bruising, and abusive election in generations, and not just at the top of the ticket. Down-ballot races are going to be nasty!
At the New York Times, "In Arkansas, a Preview of Democratic Attacks to Come" (via Memeorandum):
I mean, as much as leftists can smear Trump for misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, or whatever other slur-of-the-day, there's ten times the material available from Hillary and Bill Clinton's decades-long careers in the public eye. Just Hillary's years in the Obama State Department will provide so much brutal attack material, it's going to make the Democrat Party look like the key state-sponsor of Islamic State.
And Bill Clinton's misogyny can't be topped. Yeah, Hillary enabled it, despite her lies to the contrary. It's going to be mud-slinging and nasty all the way down. What a hoot. I can't wait for the fall campaign!
More.
It's gonna be an election for the ages. Seriously, this is going to be the most bitter, bruising, and abusive election in generations, and not just at the top of the ticket. Down-ballot races are going to be nasty!
At the New York Times, "In Arkansas, a Preview of Democratic Attacks to Come" (via Memeorandum):
It has not yet been seen on television, but the early notices for a digital advertisement from a Democratic candidate for the Senate from Arkansas, Conner Eldridge, suggest it could well become a blueprint for how other Democrats — incumbents and challengers alike — attack their Republican opponents by linking them to Donald J. Trump.I think Republicans should just say bring it.
THE AD Highlighting some of Mr. Trump’s most misogynistic remarks, the ad alternates between those quotations and slowly spelling out the definition of the ad’s title: “Harassment.”
A white, blinking cursor on a black screen begins to peck out a dictionary’s entry for “harassment,” before the screen cuts to video and audio clips of Mr. Trump: “She ate like a pig.” “I’d look her right in that fat ugly face of hers.” The cursor continues typing the definition — “To subject someone to hostility” — before cutting again to the voice of Mr. Trump opining about a woman’s cosmetic surgery: “The boob job is terrible.”
This continues for a full minute before the cursor blinks ahead of a new phrase: “Trump enabler: Arkansas Senator John Boozman,” who is shown in a black-and-white photo as he is heard saying he will support the Republican nominee, “regardless of who we pick,” even if it is Mr. Trump.
THE IMPACT The two-minute ad was instantly seen as a preview of general-election attacks on down-ballot Republican candidates with Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket. It received even more attention on the right than on the left: “This is brutal,” wrote Erick Erickson, a conservative writer who opposes Mr. Trump’s candidacy. He called it a road map for how Democrats “are going to take back the Senate.”
THE TAKEAWAY Mr. Trump’s victory in the primary campaign has created a sense of worry and uncertainty for lower-level Republican candidates, unsure if he will drag them down or if they will need to hold onto his avid supporters to have a chance in November. The threat contained in this ad — effectively using Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Boozman’s own voices against them — could well prompt some Republicans to try to distance themselves from their presumptive nominee...
I mean, as much as leftists can smear Trump for misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, or whatever other slur-of-the-day, there's ten times the material available from Hillary and Bill Clinton's decades-long careers in the public eye. Just Hillary's years in the Obama State Department will provide so much brutal attack material, it's going to make the Democrat Party look like the key state-sponsor of Islamic State.
And Bill Clinton's misogyny can't be topped. Yeah, Hillary enabled it, despite her lies to the contrary. It's going to be mud-slinging and nasty all the way down. What a hoot. I can't wait for the fall campaign!
More.
Deal of the Day: KitchenAid PRO 500 Series 5-Quart Lift Style Stand Mixer
That's a nice mixer!
At Amazon, KitchenAid PRO 500 Series 5-Quart Lift Style Stand Mixer All Metal (SILVER).
Also, Hanover Outdoor Strathmere 6-Piece Lounge Set, Silver Lining.
More, Save on Outdoor Patio Furniture by Hanover.
And, Save $15 on Fire TV – Now with 4K Ultra HD and Alexa.
Plus, Fire Tablet, 7" Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB - Includes Special Offers, Black.
And from Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.
More, from Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education.
And Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.
Michael Walsh, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.
Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.
From Daniel Flynn, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness.
BONUS: Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, and Our Lives.
At Amazon, KitchenAid PRO 500 Series 5-Quart Lift Style Stand Mixer All Metal (SILVER).
Also, Hanover Outdoor Strathmere 6-Piece Lounge Set, Silver Lining.
More, Save on Outdoor Patio Furniture by Hanover.
And, Save $15 on Fire TV – Now with 4K Ultra HD and Alexa.
Plus, Fire Tablet, 7" Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB - Includes Special Offers, Black.
And from Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.
More, from Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education.
And Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.
Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.
From Daniel Flynn, Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness.
BONUS: Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, and Our Lives.
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