Debate Reacts

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Peter Grant: “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.”

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.”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I swear, my son spent more time prepping this past week for his job interview at Ford this morning (entry level engineering job) than Donald Trump seems to have bothered to spend to become the leader of the free world and perhaps save Western Civilization.

* What did he lose? Did he lose the debate on points? Perhaps. Did he lose because he disqualified himself by fulfilling the MSM narrative that he is temperamentally unfit for office? No, he most certainly did not.

Trump’s main objective was to show the nation that he belongs on this stage and is not the buffoon they say he is. He did that. Do I wish he would have had more debating skills and wiped the floor with Hillary? Heck yes. But he did endure 90 minutes of attacks by Hillary and a moderator that was clearly on her side. And he came through without disqualifying himself with any showstopping gaffes.

All I can say now is let’s see how this plays out with the voters. Hillary supporters think it’s over. Trumpers like me think he pulled through. It’s now up to the 15 to 20 percent of the voters who don’t care too much one way or the other.

* The basics for a change election are obviously in place. Voters overwhelmingly see the country on the wrong track. We’ve had two terms of the Democratic Party in the WH, and the current Democratic candidate is the quintessential status quo candidate. Her opponent is the quintessential change candidate.

Hillary can win only if Trump can be made to look like a wild, risky, out-of-control man. Whether Trump “won” the debate is mostly irrelevant if he managed to come across as a rational character. And in this debate I think he did. FWIW, I watched the debate with two people who, beforehand, regarded Trump as simply a “clown”, but who declared afterwards that he came across as a lot more reasonable than they had expected.

I think that if Trump manages a similar performance in the final two debates, and generally sticks to the knitting, it’s going to be very difficult for Hillary to win.

* Trump could use what Jane Austen called “command of countenance.” Too much smirking, pursuing of lips, head shaking, eye rolling.

Overall, though, I think Trump did fine. Not as well as I might have dreamed, but that would have required someone who is not Trump. He rambled incoherently a few times and failed to make a few strong points when the opportunity arose, but he didn’t shoot himself in the foot.

Thinking about it a few hours later, the point that remains with me is, “Hillary may talk a good game, but she’s not going to deliver. People like her have been running Washington for 30 years, making lot of promises, and nothing ever changes.”

That’s what it really boils down to, not the birther issue or tax forms.

Posted in America | Comments Off on Debate Reacts

Trump’s African-American Reframing

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott Adams writes:

So Trump flipped the frame. He said life in the big cities is worse-than-ever for African-Americans, thereby forcing his opponents and the fact-checkers to explain in detail how much better things have gotten since slavery. And the civil rights movement. And on and on. That changes your perspective. Now you see 2016 as the best year – probably ever – for African-Americans, albeit with plenty of work left to do. And that’s the sort of reframing that diffuses racial tension. I think it helped.

But it gets better.

Trump’s absurd claim that things are worse-than-ever isn’t true in a factual sense. But it is emotionally compatible with the feelings of African-Americans who feel victimized by police and the system in general. This is one of those cases where being totally wrong is the most sensible approach. Emotions matter in the real world because they drive behavior. Facts, not so much.

Trump doesn’t ignore facts because he is dumb. He does it because facts don’t matter. Every trained persuader knows that.

In the 2D world, where people think that facts and reason matter, Trump’s claim that life is worse than ever for African-Americans is an absurd lie. But in the third-dimension of persuasion – where Trump operates – it was brilliant.

Posted in America, Blacks | Comments Off on Trump’s African-American Reframing

Scott Adams Scores The Debate

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott Adams writes:

Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event. If she continues with a light campaign schedule, you should assume my observation is valid, and she wasn’t at 100%.

Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage. That would be true if she also looked healthy in general, and her campaign schedule from here on out is full. We’ll know more this week, based on her schedule.

Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. I’m already hearing on Twitter that mentioning a woman’s smile is sexist. I understand the point. But when someone goes full Joker-face and tests the uncanny valley hypothesis at the same time, that’s a bit different from telling a woman to “smile more.” My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.

To be fair, Trump’s physical appearance won’t win him any votes either. But his makeup looked better than I have seen it (no orange), his haircut was as good as it gets for him, and he was otherwise his normal self that some voters hate and some like.

But 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.

By tomorrow, no one will remember what either of them said during the debate. But we will remember how they made us feel.

Clinton won the debate last night. And while she was doing it, Trump won the election. He had one thing to accomplish – being less scary – and he did it.

Posted in America | Comments Off on Scott Adams Scores The Debate

Dear Trump Supporters

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Tom: “Dear Red America. Having lived in many of your regions — geographical, psychological and economic — I used to have a lot of respect for your wisdom and fortitude. I thought I understood you, and that you often endured a lot of unfair and even prejudicial scorn. That you cannot now see through this huge tub of flaming horseshit and are willing to play dangerous games with the country’s existence is a mystery to me.”

Luke: “Come on, Tom, you can do better than this. Do you think one person who disagrees with you will be persuaded by that? Or are you only virtue signaling? People not only see the world differently, but more importantly, they experience it differently because of differing biology. How much do you believe in free will? I don’t think most people can choose their politics. It springs from their genes. I think Jonathan Haidt’s perspectives of understanding where the different sides come from is more fruitful. Why do people react differently to the same stimuli, such as Trump? It’s more important to understand than to get angry.”

Tom: “This is an expression of how disappointed I am in my countrymen, that they would let this dismal spectacle get this far.”

Luke: “Well, why have they done this? How do you understand that?”

Tom: “I confess it’s a mystery to me, because I don’t think it’s rooted in anything having to do with actual policies, as Trump has nothing coherent to say. I suspect darker motives: latent bigotry, sexism and freewheeling frustration without a clear target. It’s not a good look.”

Luke: “Come on, Tom. You can do better. Use your ability to empathize. People have different politics because they experience life differently. Outside of religious faith, there are no good guys or bad guys in the universe. There are just different forms of life competing for survival and to propagate and they use different evolutionary strategies. Here is a good liberal academic [Jonathan Haidt] who always votes Democratic expending some effort to empathize with those who view the world differently from him.”

David: “You can be an atheist utilitarian and still find room for Good and evil. Go reread Cicero.”

Luke: “Yes, but it is subjective, unless you ascribe it to a transcendent source, which requires faith, and there is no point arguing over faith.”

Tom: “That’s charitable of you, Luke, and I agree that facts are processed differently by everyone, but these kinds of awful and self-defeating political decisions need to be called out.”

Luke: “How much time have you spent in real life listening to people voting for Trump without arguing back against them, but only trying to understand? I find there is nothing human that is alien to me. With some effort, I can see where anyone is coming from and why they act and think the way they do and I can describe what they see and feel without using any negative words.”

Tom: “Luke, tons. I listened to reams of it without saying a peep while working as a reporter in Wyoming, Georgia, Utah and Arizona. I have never seen the vox populi go so wrong or ugly as this year.”

Greg: “Facts are processed by rational people. The irrational, the ones who make up the nationalist base, do not process facts but feelings. The problem begins when they demand that those feelings be given parity with facts in any kind of argument. Vox populi, indeed..”

Luke: “Nobody processes facts without regard to their genetic make-up. We all have instinctual pre-rational reactions that determine our politics. We then rationalize our instincts. Nobody just looks at the facts from a blank slate and idealistically pursues the true and the good.”

“Forgive me, Tom, if you have written this up already, but can you describe the reasons people are voting for Trump using only objective language? No slurs such as racist, bigoted, etc.”

Tom: “Luke, I can’t. I feel like I am living in a parallel reality, because Trump is such an obvious liar and sociopath that I just can’t see why a rational person would want to give him the most precious office this planet can offer.”

Luke: “Of course you can, you just don’t want to expend the effort of empathy. There is no POV on politics that I can’t articulate in objective language.”

Tom: “I have tried many times over the last 12 months and it still doesn’t make sense in the final analysis. Since you seem to have the advantage on me here, can you do it in a few sentences?”

Luke: “People with a strong disgust reflex (it is stronger on the right than on the left) have a stronger reaction against diversity.”

Tom: “So it comes down to the GI tract? Not sure about that.”

Luke: Wikipedia notes: “There is evidence that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust [7] and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust [8] On the other hand, more ‘liberal’ students tended to have a larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex,[5] a structure of the brain associated with monitoring uncertainty and handling conflicting information.[5][6] It is consistent with previous research suggesting that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views [9] The authors concluded that, “Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.”

Tom: “I’ve read some biological determinalism studies on this — and keep meaning to look at the work of John Alford at Rice U. but it still doesn’t explain the gullibility. Otherwise tough-minded businesspersons in the heartland are willing to take the nation to Trump University because they have a gag reflex? WHY?”

Doug: “Luke Ford, how’s your empathy level with folks like ISIS followers who adhere to an ideology that justifies cold blooded murder in the name of their religion? Surely they have many justifications for their existential conclusions. Do you give them the same benefit of the doubt, “describing what they see and feel without using any negative words?” It seems to me that there is sometimes a manifestation of evil within the human experience that transcends our desire for tolerance and attempts at mutual understanding.”

Luke: “Evil is a statement of religious faith, which is fine. Otherwise, ISIS are just following their group interest.”

“Tom, what percentage of people do you think have free will in their political choices? I’d say almost none. We all have instinctive reactions that the more intelligent try to rationalize. Do you think half the population has free will with their political choices? Tom, do you think you have free will with your political choices?”

Tom: “I sort of see Luke’s point about group interest, though. Last night watching the debate, this quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein came to mind. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.””

Luke: “Exactly. ISIS has many reasons to believe it is doing the will of Allah. If Hitler had allowed his generals to go for Moscow in August of 1941, Germany would have won WWII and Nazism would be the dominant ideology of the West.”

“When I look back on my life, I don’t I could have ever chosen otherwise based on who I was at the time. Given who you were at the time and your level of understanding? Could you really have chosen differently?”

AR: “This is circular logic, Luke. We all could have made different choices in the past. The fact that we didn’t doesn’t obviate free will. And we’re living in the present, not the past.”

Luke: “We may think we’re living in the present, but the past is never past. I suspect that most of us most of the time have less freedom than we imagine and that we are more in the grip of our genes, our history, our social setting than we would like to admit. Freedom of choice is a faith statement, like good and evil.”

Posted in America | Comments Off on Dear Trump Supporters

Forward: Hollywood Makes Its Case Against ‘Denial’ — Will It Matter?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

I hope the side with unlimited funds gets portrayed as the plucky underdog.

David Irving could only afford to represent himself as he went up against Deborah Lipstadt’s generously funded legal team.

Wikipedia: “Lipstadt hired the British solicitor Anthony Julius to present her case, while Penguin Books hired Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman, libel specialist from media firm Davenport Lyons. They briefed the libel barrister Richard Rampton QC and Penguin also briefed junior barrister Heather Rogers. The defendants (with Penguin’s insurers paying the fee) also retained Professor Richard J. Evans, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, as an expert witness. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, the German historian Peter Longerich and the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt. The latter wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of mass murder, while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust.”

Forward Editor Jane Eisner writes:

The role of memory, and its fraught relationship to fact and truth, is threaded through Lipstadt’s legal battle with Irving, and so through “Denial,” the new film dramatizing that epic British courtroom struggle. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and will open in select cities in the United States on September 30. Starring Rachel Weisz as Lipstadt, it’s based on Lipstadt’s book recounting her ordeal, “History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier.”

Though in the end victorious, Lipstadt faced a legal saga that was filled with uncertainty and marked by intense loneliness. In the United Kingdom, the burden of proof in a libel case is on the accused, so it was up to Lipstadt and her British legal team to prove that Irving was wrong; that the Holocaust had, indeed, occurred, and that Jews were its intended victims. Lipstadt, then and today still a professor at Emory University, had put everything on the line to defend herself against the claims of a man who was driven by prejudice and anti-Semitism but also knew how to construct a cunning and cynical argument.

“History on Trial” was published in 2005, and it eerily resonates today. The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the surge of derogatory Holocaust-related tropes on social media perpetrated by extremists in this country raise a similar quandary: How do you deal with those who deny history, who disregard factual evidence, who seem to care little for the truth? And can this one film — a solid, interesting, at times gripping film, but one not destined for blockbuster status — help counter an ugly narrative?

The contemporary echoes were one reason that Weisz, whose parents fled from the Nazis, wanted the part. “Obviously, the Holocaust being on trial is just a very outlandish notion to me,” the British-born actress said during an interview in a Manhattan hotel. “But the idea that there are objective truths, and there is a difference between opinion and fact — in the current climate of relativism, people just spout opinions as if they are facts! There doesn’t seem to be much respect for the difference of the two things. So I thought it was fascinating to put something on trial and prove it was irrefutably a fact and that someone’s opinion didn’t stand up.”

David Irving is a complicated chap. There’s an excellent five-part British miniseries “Selling Hitler” about the Hitler Diaries. Apparently, Irving lead the way in denouncing the diaries as fraudulent after first calling them genuine.

From Wikipedia:

In 1983, Stern, a weekly German news magazine, purchased for 9 million marks the Hitler Diaries of 61 volumes and published excerpts from them. Irving played the major role in uncovering the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving purchased, from the same source as Stern’s 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to discover that many of the documents were forgeries.[52] Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.[53] Irving’s performance at the Stern press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news; the next day, Irving appeared on the Today television show as a featured guest.[54] Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.[52] At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving announced, “I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here”.[52] Irving was proud to have detected and announced the hoax material and of the “trail of chaos” he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his sloppy work (not detecting the hoax) and criticism of Irving’s methods and conclusions.[55] Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler’s right hand had been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg earlier that day.[56]

A week later on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appear to be genuine; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler’s physician Dr. Theodor Morell.[55] Robert Harris, in his book Selling Hitler, suggested that an additional reason for Irving’s change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving’s claim in Hitler’s War that Hitler had no knowledge of it.[57] Subsequently Irving conformed when the diaries were declared as a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.

David Irving is the subject of a great Wikipedia profile. He lost his libel lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt. Here is David’s side.

Jack the Jew* emails:

David Duke of course came to his views on race through the KKK. It is easy to think of David Duke as a clown, but his views on Jews largely parallel Kevin MacDonald’s.

David Irving is a different case. He was a respected amateur historian and popular author about military matters. He is educated guy and a really talented writer. Because he speaks and reads German fluently, he has used original source material for his works. He is more responsible than anyone, other than Kurt Vonnegut, for publicizing British firebomb raid on Dresden (for fans of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, it plays a significant part in that book as well). What happened with Irving is that in all of his original research, he was unable to come up with anything linking Hitler with direct orders to exterminate the Jews. He also minimized the number of Jews who were deliberately killed. (The numbers, even from established historians of the Holocaust, are all over the map. Arno Mayer, who wrote, Why did the Heavens not darken, in that book said that more Jews died of disease and other causes than were put to death in gas chambers in Auschwitz.)

Deborah Lipstadt wrote a book in which she called Irving a Holocaust Denier, lumping him with people who were explicit Holocaust deniers. Irving sued her in England for libel and lost. In the process Irving’s historical research was shredded by Richard Evans, another British historian of WWII and the Nazis, because Evans said that Irving had deliberately shaped his books and opinions by ignoring some facts and stressing others to reach a desired result.

This result of the trial pretty much ruined Irving’s reputation among serious historians. However, there are a number of points that really have to be made in Irving’s defense: Irving foolishly represented himself at trial whereas Libstadt’s team consisted of the best barristers in England paid millions of pounds by wealthy Jews including Spielberg. Evans was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to testify as an expert witness, and in subsequent events, has been criticized by neutral sources as someone who has made serious errors in his own works. Irving made all of his source materials available to the defense and Lipstadt refused to turn over much of what she had that she based her claim in the book on.

Irving is probably the English speaking historian who knows the most about the Nazi leadership having read and translated Goebbels diaries, written a book on Goebels and on Himmler as well as on other aspects. Irving has also changed his views on the extent of the Holocaust. He still doesn’t think it can be attributed to Hitler, but does think that others in the leadership were involved, and he now concedes that there were extermination camps and that at least hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.

Christopher Hitchens strongly supported Irving’s right to his opinions and his books. The question is always one of whether histories should be refuted by calling its author a racist or an anti-Semite or refuted with facts. Irving was not some crank pounding out tracts. He may have had an agenda as Evans testified, but if that is the case, identify the agenda as Evans did and show how Irving distorted the facts. However, that may be true for some of the parts of Irving’s works, its certainly not true for most of them.

Posted in David Irving, Holocaust | Comments Off on Forward: Hollywood Makes Its Case Against ‘Denial’ — Will It Matter?

Why Donald Trump Won Last Night’s Debate

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

From the Forward:

Joshua Seidel is a Trump supporter and a Jew on the alt right.

Right from the start Trump was aggressive and focused on Clinton’s documented shortcomings. His strategy was a smart one: keep the attacks coming while discussing his policy ideas with broad brush strokes. Trump took every question from Holt and turned it into the discussion HE wanted to have. Holt asked about the economy and how to make it better: Trump responded by talking about everything from trade policy to his own business success, while attacking Hillary’s record on NAFTA. His responses were so dense, so filled with asides and potential tangents, than Clinton couldn’t possibly respond to every assertion Trump was making. Instead, she had to lamely refer people to her own website for “fact checking.” Trump’s strategy here was brilliant: attack Clinton on specific issues, make her defend herself while presenting his own policies more broadly, and making it difficult for her to counter him on specifics. Clinton was on defense virtually the entire debate. By making his attacks early, Trump made it seem as though Clinton was merely responding, rather than coming up with unique attacks on her own, as she hit his tax and business records.

Trump used Holt’s rather hands-off moderating to his advantage. Holt wouldn’t press Trump to answer questions directly and with specifics, and Trump used this to answer in the way he wished. He used old sales tricks to let Holt keep him talking, such as responding to a question with a question. “You asked me a question, didn’t you Lester?” he said at one point as Holt tries to ask a follow-up. “Let me answer.” Reminded me of my cold-calling days.

Posted in Alt Right | Comments Off on Why Donald Trump Won Last Night’s Debate

I wonder what Hitler would have thought about medical marijuana

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Gerard J. Perry: Hitler was anti-pot but pro-meth.

hitler_07

Miriam: “What would Hitler think”, is that your equivalent of Christian’s “WWJD?”

Joshua Pitterman: I always ask myself what would Hitler think before I do anything important, I feel hashem loves Irony.

Miriam: Ha! This made my day. Thank you.

Posted in Adolf Hitler | Comments Off on I wonder what Hitler would have thought about medical marijuana

What Next For The Goy?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

Chaim Amalek writes: What next, for Goy-America, once they fall short with Trump? Time for serious thinking and practical action, as only a Jew (I wish to be the Leon Trotsky of the alt-right) can conceive. For starters, the goy must learn how to boycott corporations that work against his interests, which these, days, are most of them. Big, popular, powerful corporations, like Disney, the NFL/NBA, and many others that keep the goy entertained and passive.
The goy must also elect wise men and women to high office who are smart enough to create ad hoc alliances with some-time foes when and where doing so advances goy interests. For example: alliances with the Left against corporate power in America, alliances with Muslims against Hollywood’s Hebrew Homosexuals, alliances with Hollywood’s Hebrew Homosexuals against the gay Jew-hating Muslim invaders, alliances with Black Men against Hispanic invaders, alliances with Hispanics against certain black groups, alliances with black Americans against Asian Americans (e.g. by supporting certain kinds of affirmative action programs), alliances with Asian Americans against those they regard as their racial inferiors (e.g. blacks), etc.
In other words, the goy must learn to think like what he has allowed himself to become in the land of his fathers: a minority group with special interests of his own. The goy must learn to think like a Jew. Is the goy up to that task? This Liberal Upper West Side Jew thinks not.

Posted in America | Comments Off on What Next For The Goy?

WP: Why even Republicans think Clinton won the first debate

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Luke Ford

I thought Trump did fine and I expect him to keep rising in the polls.

All the Republicans the Post quotes have been strongly against Trump from the beginning of his presidential run, but the newspaper does not note this. They are hardly disinterested observers. They are invested in Trump losing.

Frank Luntz tweeted that Trump was winning the first half of the debate. Trump had a strong first 25 minutes. I thought Hillary tired about an hour in and became less articulate, though she finished strong. I thought Trump lost his discipline about 25 minutes in and missed many opportunities to score.

The experts have been wrong about Trump since last summer. I think they are wrong about him again today with their opinions on the debate. Average Americans will keep responding positively to Donald Trump.

WP: “Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton lacked stamina. But guess who wilted in the debate?”

I thought Trump was high energy the whole debate even though much of it was two against one (with the moderator, Lester Holt, challenging Trump much more aggressively than Clinton and delivering commentaries such as “the records shows otherwise”, etc,). Clinton wilted in the middle and then came back strong.

The Washington Post thinks otherwise:

THE BIG IDEA: The consensus that Donald Trump badly lost the first debate gelled overnight. Liberals predictably panned the GOP nominee’s performance on Long Island, but some of the harshest reviews are coming from conservative thought leaders who had been starting to come around.

— Instant reaction:

Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group of undecided voters in Pennsylvania. Sixteen said Hillary Clinton won. Five picked Trump, per CBS News.

In a Florida focus group organized by CNN, 18 of 20 undecided voters picked Clinton as the winner.

Not one of 29 undecided voters in an Ohio focus group organized by Park Street Strategies thought Trump prevailed, while 11 picked Clinton and the rest said neither. By a two-to-one margin, the group thought Clinton had the better tone and, by a three-to-one margin, they thought she came across as more knowledgeable candidate on the issues.

A CNN/ORC flash poll found that 62 percent said the Democrat won, compared to 27 percent who picked Trump. That’s on par with 2012, when Mitt Romney was seen as the winner of the first debate.

In a separate instant-poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 51 percent said Clinton won and 40 percent picked Trump.

Eight in 10 insiders in the key battleground states thought Clinton performed better, including 57 percent of Republicans, according to the Politico Caucus survey.

reporters during a gaggle. “Did you notice that? My mic was defective within the room. I wonder, was that on purpose?” There was no clear problem with his microphone during the debate, Jose DelReal notes.

Trump was supposed to stop by the Nassau County Republican Committee’s watch party on his way home. He skipped it. Clinton, meanwhile, celebrated with hundreds of supporters in Westbury.

And Rudy Giuliani, a top Trump surrogate, even suggested that Trump should skip the next two debates unless he gets concessions. “If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact checker,” he said.
— It was a debate about Trump. Like the whole 2016 cycle, the GOP nominee sucked up all the oxygen. Facebook says eight in 10 posts about the debate focused on him. Twitter said 62 percent of debate-related tweets were about him.

— But Trump’s lack of preparation showed. There were too many missed opportunities to count.

“I’m not positive Hillary actually won the debate. But I’m sure Trump lost it. He choked,” writes Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol.

“Even if you are a Trump supporter, you have to think that he left a lot on the table,” writes GOP supper lobbyist Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses. “He didn’t see the openings and he didn’t swing at the softballs that came his way. He never used the word ‘change,’ he didn’t bore in on Hillary’s email scandal and he never got around to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s suspect integrity. Trump was inarticulate and rarely hit the bull’s eye.”

 “He was exciting but embarrassingly undisciplined,” writes New York Post conservative columnist John Podhoretz. “He began with his strongest argument — that the political class represented by her has failed us and it’s time to look to a successful dealmaker for leadership — and kept to it pretty well for the first 20 minutes. Then due to the vanity and laziness that led him to think he could wing the most important 95 minutes of his life, he lost the thread of his argument, he lost control of his temper and he lost the perspective necessary to correct these mistakes as he went. By the end … Trump was reduced to a sputtering mess blathering about Rosie O’Donnell and about how he hasn’t yet said the mean things about Hillary that he is thinking.”

“After the first 20 minutes, it may have been the most lopsided debate I’ve ever seen — and not because Clinton was particularly effective. But you don’t need to be good when your opponent is bad,” writes National Review’s David French, who considered running for president as an independent. “Why didn’t he have a better answer ready for the birther nonsense? Has he still not done any homework on foreign policy? I felt like I was watching the political Titanic hit the iceberg, back up, and hit it again. Just for fun.”

The Fix’s Chris Cillizza notes in his piece on the night’s winners and losers that Trump never even mentioned the phrase basket of deplorables. “Trump was simply not prepared well enough for this debate,” says Cillizza. “His [birther answer] was like watching a car accident in slow motion.”

As Dana Milbank writes, “Trump ostentatiously avoided preparation — playing the proverbial high school slacker drinking beer behind the bleachers while the teacher’s pet was in the library. But Monday night was the revenge of the nerd.”

From the chief strategist of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign:

From the chief strategist of John Kasich’s 2016 campaign:

Trump’s web site was not even ready for the deluge of traffic. It crashed.

— Trump got worse with each passing exchange. “In the early stages, Clinton and Trump seemed evenly matched, but the longer it went on, the more she was able to score against him,” writes Dan Balz, The Post’s chief correspondent.

Trump took the stage subdued, trying to show he’s serious, but he became peeved as he allowed Clinton’s attacks to get under his skin. “Within minutes of the opening bell, Clinton’s attacks forced domesticated Donald to go feral – he bellowed, interrupted her repeatedly, grunted, and toward the bedraggled end, became muted and pouty,” writes Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

“’I did not! I did not! I do not say that,’ he shouted as Clinton accused him of calling climate change a hoax, which he has said on numerous occasions,” Jenna Johnson recounts. “‘Facts!’ he yelled as Clinton began to question the accuracy of his assertions. ‘Wrong! Wrong!’ he said as Clinton stated that he initially supported the Iraq War, which he had. ‘Where did you find it? Oh really?’ Trump said as Clinton referred to a beauty pageant contestant who has accused Trump of calling her ‘Miss Housekeeping’ because she is Latina.”

“Trump needed to conceal his temper … and appear ready to be president. He didn’t,” writes conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin. “There were too many instances in which the real Donald showed through. Clinton wasn’t emotive, but she was cool and efficient in drawing blood.”

“If her goal was to get under Trump’s skin — you know, sniff out his weakness, and bait him into losing his temper — it worked,” adds conservative columnist Matt Lewis. “She got under that thin skin by talking about his inherited wealth and questionable status as a billionaire.”

— Trump played to his base. He did nothing to win over fresh converts or reassure recalcitrant Republicans. Sean Hannity’s audience is not who he needs to win over.

“Unpersuaded college educated white women didn’t come away from this debate — at least not in large numbers — feeling reassured by Trump,” conservative Jonah Goldberg writes in National Review. “Clinton was narrowcasting at the voters she needs. Trump was broadcasting to the voters he already has. … If you’re truly pro-Hillary or pro-Trump it doesn’t matter what you thought tonight. Your vote is baked in. But if you’re on the fence or thinking about not voting at all, your impression matters — a lot. And in this regard, I think Clinton was the winner.”

“Hillary was well-informed and unflappable; Trump got across his major themes but was probably too Trump to widen support,” National Review executive editor Rich Lowry concludes. “I thought Trump might save a weak substantive performance with some big moments, but he didn’t have any that cut his way.”

“It is hard to imagine that there was a single moment in the debate that would have convinced a wavering college-educated woman in the Philadelphia or Cincinnati suburbs to vote for Trump,”  writes Roll Call columnist Walter Shapiro. “In fact, Trump seemed to be debating with the single-minded goal of turning his gender gap into a canyon. … In 1973, a trash-talking, over-age self-described ‘chauvinist pig’ named Bobby Riggs took on Billie Jean King in a tennis match in the Houston Astrodome that was billed as The Battle of the Sexes. King won in straight sets. History repeated itself Monday. … Clinton defeated Trump in straight sets.”

Posted in Donald Trump | Comments Off on WP: Why even Republicans think Clinton won the first debate

The Debate Begins

Posted on September 26, 2016 by Luke Ford

Both candidates look dialed in.

* Trump needs a tissue.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Just by remaining on her feet for more than 90 minutes, Hillary Clinton won the debate with her freak-flag flying high. Since her Sept. 11th collapse in New York, her candidacy has been bleeding profusely. Tonight, she managed to apply a fresh bandage to her electoral prospects – – – she’s upright and fighting and back in the game! But if she disappears for several days, her physical resillency will once again become a matter of pressing concern. The palsy or Parkinson’s was evident in various facial ticks at about 9:50PM and became more aggressively pronounced between 10:15PM and 10:20PM. But for most of the debate, Trump was diffuse while Mrs. Clinton was focused.

Trump was the usual Trump – – – jumping all over the place and getting lost in the weeds. You’ve got to hand it to Hillary : she knows how to lie and go down with her ship of lies, if need be, without batting an eye. An average debater (Trump is sub-par by any measure) would have been able to easily expose her prevarications but Trump is all wrapped up in himself, as ever the blind egotist, sweating and sweating to get an irrelevant word in at all costs.

Mrs. Clinton, tonight, may not have managed to appear likable but at least she managed to appear tolerable. Trump’s incredulous glance kept darting in her direction the whole time. He seemed to be hoping for the physical collapse of his opponent but Hillary Clinton’s medical staff was in top form tonight. Whatever Frankenstein concoction Mrs. Clinton took in the hours before 9:00PM, it kept her going until 10:35PM! BRAVO, Hillary! Risen from the political dead and back from the flim-flam grave! Try not to stumble, though, before November 8th, otherwise you’ll find yourself falling right back in!

* They say the extended release version of Adderall lasts about four hours. But even with instant release, once you’re “in the zone” you can sometimes stay there long after the effects should have worn off- especially if you’re a tad (or more than a tad) hypomanic to begin with.

* The choice of a moderator was interesting. I’d not seen him before. A black AA hire is generally going to be a loyal Democrat. He was obviously anti-Trump, and did not hide it by going after Clinton in even a token fashion. This was the usual MSM we have come to know and resent.

Although Trump did win on trade and crime, it was a bit like a soccer game where the striker gets an open goal several times and can’t convert. When Hillary mentioned as part of a demonstration of her stamina, her ability to withstand congressional hearings for 12 hours, she was a sitting duck although that was practically an own goal on her behalf. It was as if Nixon or Clinton were to argue about their stamina to go through the impeachment process. Sometimes the lemons are so bad one should not even consider making lemonade. The openings were there to nail her on several occasions, and he didn’t.

Trump did nail her on other occasions. I agree that one of his most effective points was that she has been part of the government for a while now, with nothing but failure to show for it.

Overall I think Trump came out looking better. Hillary’s health is still questionable. Towards the end there was a moment where she came dangerously close to the “I should be 50 points ahead!” tone. And it’s always easy to criticize from the sidelines.

* That’s the media’s love hate relationship with populist politicians. On the one hand they hate Trump from an ideological point of view, but on the other hand they find him entertaining and newsworthy.

Your critics seem to forget that we live in a capitalist society where the media needs ratings to attract advertisers and make money. The MSM may be biased but it isn’t a government funded sociology department.

* I have no doubt this debate took a supreme effort from Hillary and her doctor. If she is as sick as some pointed out, this debate took a lot out of her and something she can’t recover from very rapidly.

Remember right after the DNC convention, Hillary and Veep were planning on touring the mid-west in a converted Greyhound bus. FoxNews even made a big show of it. It didn’t happen, she just vanished.

I just wonder if Hillary will do the same again. Or go to ground for about a week then show up for fund raisers and rigged TV shows for a 20 minute sit down.

Posted in America | Comments Off on The Debate Begins