The Second Debate

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott Adams blogs:

Some quick reactions…

1. When the Access Hollywood tape came up, Trump dismissed it as locker room banter that he regrets. You expected that part. The persuasion move was that he quickly contrasted that “small” issue with images of ISIS beheadings, and cage-drownings. It was a high ground maneuver, a powerful visual anchor (like the Rosie O’Donnell move from his first primary debate), and a contrast play. In this framing, Trump cares about saving your life while Clinton cares about your choice of words. I realize the issue is Trump’s alleged deeds, not his words. But in terms of debate persuasion, Trump nailed it hard.

2. Clinton’s body language was defensive. Trump is physically larger and prowled the stage. He won the optics. It only got worse when a fly landed on Clinton’s face mid-answer. Both candidates looked perfect in terms of wardrobe and hair, given what they have to work with.

3. Trump threw in enough random details about Syria to persuade viewers that he knows more than they thought he knew. And he did a great job selling the idea that he knows more than the generals (as ridiculous as that sounds), at least in terms of not announcing where we plan to attack. I agree with the moderator who said there might be good reasons for announcing attacks – such as giving time for civilians to leave – but it wasn’t quite a counter-argument. Trump succeeded in looking informed on Syria, and at the same time reinforced the “can’t keep a secret” theme for Clinton.

4. Trump’s pre-debate show with Bill’s alleged victims dismantled Clinton’s pro-woman high ground before the debate even started. I didn’t see the pre-debate show, but I assume it was impactful. It had to be. Clinton looked shaken from the start.

5. The best quotable moments from the debate are pro-Trump. His comment about putting Clinton in jail has that marvelous visual persuasion quality about it, and it was the laugh of the night, which means it will be repeated endlessly. He also looked like he meant it.

Clinton’s Abe Lincoln defense for two-faced politicking failed as hard as anything can fail. Mrs. Clinton, I knew Abe Lincoln, and you’re no Abe Lincoln. You know that was in your head. Or it will be.

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The New Star Of Germany’s Far Right

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Luke Ford

From The New Yorker:

On one side there are moderate members, for whom the AfD is basically a protest vote; on the other is what he called a “dark core” of true believers—people like Björn Höcke, a former history teacher who has said that the “reproductive strategies” of Africans are diluting the ethnic-German population. Petry had been a link between the two wings, Funke said, but now she was vulnerable, because the dark core had succeeded in moving the AfD even further to the right. “The Party is in the hands of radicals now,” he said.

That’s shocking to notice that different races have different reproductive strategies. Wow, just wow. That sounds like Phil Rushton’s R/K hypothesis.

He was disgusted that so many of his countrymen were immune to the tug of patriotism, and called Merkel “the Germany abolisher”—a newly popular term derived from a right-wing tract titled “Germany Abolishes Itself,” by Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the executive board of the German Bundesbank. The book, which appeared in 2010 and sold more than a million and a half copies, argues that everything from high immigrant crime rates to low test scores among Muslims could be partly traced to genetic factors.

Of course we know now that genes don’t account for anything. They have no predictive value, that’s why smart people are so careless in selecting who they make babies with.

The success of Sarrazin’s book revealed an important shift in public opinion. For decades, Germany was proud of not being proud—of confronting its past openly and of accepting the principle of collective guilt. It developed a political identity based on allegiance to the laws and norms of the state, rather than on any cultural or ethnic sense of Germanness. As a result, patriotic displays that would be uncontroversial in other countries, such as flying the national flag or saying that you love your country, were taboo in Germany. But, as the memory of the Third Reich recedes and the last generation of perpetrators and victims dies out, the nation has begun to see itself differently. The AfD is attracting voters, like Kucharicky, who want Germany to become a normal country again, with an unashamed sense of nationalism.

A political identity based on allegiances to the laws and norms of the state is a weak political identity compared to the ties of blood and soil.

On the other hand, as I discovered, there is no truly typical AfD supporter, because the Party attracts voters who have a wide range of concerns and grievances. At town-hall meetings, conferences, white-sausage breakfasts, dinners, and late-night carouses, I encountered many types. I met a doctor from Kiel who had come back to Saxony to reclaim ancestral land confiscated by the Communists; I met a middle manager for Mercedes who had had to seek medical attention for his heart when he learned of Merkel’s bailout of Greece; I met a Vietnamese-German man who joined the AfD because it was the only party that talked about the global influence of the C.I.A.; I met a trainee pilot for United Airlines who admired Trump and had decided that the AfD was the closest German equivalent; I met a quiet architect who thought that most of the Party was unhinged but still joined, because it was right about the economy. I met very few women. (The membership is eighty-five per cent male.)

Women are conformist. They are rarely trailblazers. They do what they think their peers will admire.

The discussion escalated when Petry accused Mazyek of wanting to impose Sharia law on Germany, a popular but unfounded claim.

Every group wants to impose its norms to the extent that it can.

Afterward, in her office, we talked about the AfD’s connections to other populist movements. She has established close ties with Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria’s Freedom Party, and has also met with Geert Wilders, the star of the Dutch far right. She told me that a colleague had recently met with Marine Le Pen, of France’s Front National, and that over the summer she had spoken to various American Republicans, including the Iowa congressman Steve King, who has compared immigrants to dogs and suggested building an electric fence on the U.S. border with Mexico. When I asked her what she thought of Donald Trump, she said, “My impression is that Trump may become the American President, because the alternative to him, Hillary Clinton, is just so unconvincing. She is almost like a copy of someone like Merkel—someone who just keeps on with the same policies that led to the trouble in the first place.” She admired the American willingness to take risks: “It might not be better under Trump, but at least with him there is the chance to change.”

She thought that German politics was more weighed down by liberal pieties. “It’s so moral to allow these attacks to happen,” she said sarcastically. “It’s so moral to promise to people around the world that they can come to Germany and find paradise.” She found this outlook anti-democratic, disdainful of the views of ordinary Germans. “I myself am not morally good,” she said. “I’m just a human being. I try to stick to the rules. And I think there is a majority of Germans who agree with me. So, reducing the entire Enlightenment and all of the successes of European history down to this need to be morally good: I find that extremely dangerous. There’s this saying of Nietzsche”—she took out her phone and pulled up the quote almost instantly. “Here it is, in ‘Zarathustra’: ‘The good have always been the beginning of the end.’ ”

Israel does not worry about being so good that it puts its existence in danger. That would be insane. I once heard a rabbi say, “If Israel were 25% better, it would be dead.”

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Trump’s Comments: The Latest Left-Wing Hysteria

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Luke Ford

Dennis Prager writes:

Regarding Donald Trump’s private sexual comments: We are living through a national hysteria.
To understand how and why, it is necessary to understand the indispensable role hysteria plays on the left. The left is always in major crisis mode. And, in nearly every case, the crisis is either wildly exaggerated or simply false…

The latest is the tsunami of horror in reaction to Donald Trump’s gross and juvenile comments made in private 11 years ago.
The tsunami of condemnation of his remarks is quintessential left-wing hysteria. That more than a few Republicans and conservatives have joined in is a testament to the power of mass media and hysteria to influence normally sensible people.
This is hysteria first and foremost because the comments were made in private. I would say the same thing if crass comments made by Hillary Clinton in private conversation had been recorded. In fact, I did. In 2000, in a Wall Street Journal column, I defended Hillary Clinton against charges that she was an anti-Semite. That year it was reported that Clinton had called Paul Fray, the manager of her husband’s failed 1974 congressional campaign, a “f—ing Jew bastard.”
Even the left-wing newspaper, the Guardian, reported that three people — two witnesses and Fray — confirmed the report.
Nevertheless, I wrote in the Journal, “I wish to defend Mrs. Clinton. I do so as a practicing Jew and a Republican. … We must cease this moral idiocy of judging people by stray private comments.”
I gave two more examples:
One was Harry Truman, who often used the word “kike” when referring to Jews. Yet, he was the Jews’ greatest friend when he changed Jewish history by resisting powerful State Department opposition and recognized the State of Israel.
The other was Richard Nixon, who made anti-Jewish remarks in private conversations in the Oval Office. These were revealed on tapes he himself made of his conversations, and he was accordingly widely labeled an anti-Semite. Yet, as president, Nixon appointed the first American Jewish secretary of state and, more importantly, literally saved Israel’s life with his quick airlift of military supplies during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
As I concluded:
“It is highly misleading to probe private comments for evidence of anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry and sexism.”
In addition to not taking all private comments seriously, Republicans, conservatives and independents need to ask themselves if what Trump said — not did, but said — in a private conversation is any way comparable to the truly awful things Hillary Clinton and her husband have done both to women and to the country.
They also need to ask themselves if it is worth giving the left the White House over such trivia.
If Hillary Clinton wins, will Republicans and conservatives who gave up on Trump because of this recording really think that it was worth: having a left-wing Supreme Court for the next 30 years; having left-wing judges completely dominate lower federal courts; radically curtailing religious liberty in America; having speech codes go from colleges to the society as a whole; massively increasing the size of the government and of the debt; bringing in tens of thousands of refugees from the Arab Middle East; and having open borders?
How can anyone answer in the affirmative?
The answer is the left-wing hysteria got to them.
On the same day the recording came out, so did leaked emails that revealed that Hillary Clinton told a Brazilian Bank in 2013 that she is for “open borders.”
Open borders mean the end of the United States as we know it.
That, my fellow Americans, is worth getting hysterical about.

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Sexy Australian Actress Kate Fischer Now An Orthodox Jew & American Citizen & Trump Supporter

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Luke Ford

REPORT: AUSTRALIAN actress and model Kate Fischer has changed her name, her career path and even her religion as she shuns the spotlight for a quiet new life in Melbourne’s leafy suburb of Toorak.

The former star, who shot to fame in 1993 with the saucy hit film Sirens, has converted to Orthodox Judaism and now goes by the name T’Ziporah Malka bat Israel.

She told Woman’s Day in an exclusive interview: “I learned the hard way that it’s better to dress more modestly”. She joked about wearing braces and finally hopping off the damaging weight-loss rollercoaster she’d ridden since she was a teenager.

During the height of her fame, Fischer’s personal life became tabloid fodder thanks to a five-year relationship with Australian billionaire James Packer. The pair broke off their engagement in 1998 — Packer is now engaged to pop diva Mariah Carey.

Following their engagement, Fischer moved to the US, and is an American citizen. The 42-year-old daughter of Liberal MP Pru Goward is also a registered member of the Republican Party, and in photos publicly posted to her Facebook page she can be seen wearing T-shirts depicting Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. Her current Facebook cover photo is a pro-Trump meme depicting the Presidential nominee and various other far-right figures as ‘The Deplorables.’

…“Almost 20 years later she is back in Australia and leading a life which couldn’t be more different. She’s living in an apartment in Melbourne, working in an aged care home and studying Yiddish. She’s isn’t even Kate Fischer anymore, having changed her name to T’Ziporah Malka bat Israel after converting to Judaism. From all reports, she’s happier now than when she was a fixture on the A-list all those years ago.”

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WP: A professor is under fire after saying Black Lives Matter is as racist as the KKK

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Luke Ford

The KKK and Black Lives Matter are both racial identity movements and if there is such a moral sin as racism, then they are both racist. This seems like an ordinary observation to me, but making ordinary observations about reality get you in trouble in America today.

The University of Virginia is the enemy.

Washington Post:

A college professor found himself in hot water after likening the Black Lives Matter movement to the racism of the Klu Klux Klan.

Douglas Muir, an adjunct professor for the University of Virginia, wrote in a Facebook comment that Black Lives Matter is the “biggest” racist organization since the KKK. The comment was written last week in response to a Facebook post about a Black Lives Matter event in Charlottesville.

University officials later issued statements denouncing the comments and distancing themselves from Muir. The professor has since taken leave, according to the university…

Tom Katsouleas, University of Virginia’s executive vice president and provost, said in a statement on Friday that he’s “disturbed and saddened” by Muir’s comments.

“The University of Virginia stands firmly against racism and social injustice of any kind,” Katsouleas said. “Statements such as Mr. Muir’s do not foster intellectual exploration, nor do they encourage the voices of others.”

In a statement issued on the same day, officials from the university’s School of Engineering and Applied Science said Muir’s “entirely inappropriate” comments raised concerns about the school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The university’s Darden School of Business also released a statement saying Muir’s comments don’t represent the school’s viewpoint or values.

Muir is an adjunct lecturer at both the engineering and business schools.

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NYT: ‘An Open Letter to the Woman Who Told My Family to Go Back to China’

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Luke Ford

Michael Luo writes for the New York Times:

Maybe you don’t know this, but the insults you hurled at my family get to the heart of the Asian-American experience. It’s this persistent sense of otherness that a lot of us struggle with every day. That no matter what we do, how successful we are, what friends we make, we don’t belong. We’re foreign. We’re not American. It’s one of the reasons that Fox News segment the other day on Chinatown by Jesse Watters, with the karate and nunchucks and broken English, generated so much outrage.

My parents fled mainland China for Taiwan ahead of the Communist takeover. They came to the United States for graduate school. They raised two children, both of whom went to Harvard. I work at The New York Times. Model minority, indeed.

Yet somehow I still often feel like an outsider.

And I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. Perhaps, more important, I wonder whether my two daughters who were with me today will always feel that way too.

Asian-Americans are not likely to feel more at home than white people do in China, non-Japanese do in Japan, non-blacks in Africa, non-Mexicans in Mexico. It’s not complicated.

Michael Luo never bothers to make a case that America needs Asian citizens. What is good for America does not concern him. America is just something to be used. It has no specific people, unlike China or Japan or Taiwan. America is just a trough for him to feed from, the purpose of America is to serve him, his concern is about making America more user-friendly for his kind, and so his article is all about his hurt feelings.

As Maj. Kong says: “Anti-Semitism is as natural to Western civilization as anti-Christianity is to Jewish civilization, Islamic civilization and Japanese civilization.”

As one professor put it: “American Jews want to maintain a distinct identity and on the other hand want to be fully integrated into broader society and don’t want the distinctiveness to come at a price.”

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Dennis Prager Defends Donald Trump

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Luke Ford

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Trump Wins Second Debate

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Luke Ford

Pence isn’t there to dictate foreign policy, he’s there to sit and look pretty.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* After the first four minutes, it seems to me that Trump has already won. Hillary is hammering down on her talking points, but her phoniness is palpable. Trump is coming across as utterly, sympathetically human.

* The first “undecided” voter asks about “setting a bad model for children” and is a black woman school teacher. I’m sure she was completely honest about being open to voting for Trump.

* Trump is doing great so far against a hostile and biased set of questions.

We are about 15 minutes and every single question so far has been a pointed anti-Trump question that has nothing to do with policy.

I wish Trump would shut up about the emails however. Do you think a single voter is going to decide based on this issue?

* SLUGFEST!!!! This is better then the fights at Vegas. Trump punched the hell out of Hillary on the e-mails and the Bill Clinton sex scandals. Hillary was ROCKED! THIS is the Trump we’ve been waiting for!!!

* My e-mail and text lit up with that one. Pretty much everyone I know thought that was a direct hit. I would say most of my friends are mildly anti-Trump. Those who are pro-Trump were roaring with approval.

* Trump is fucking full nuclear Liberty Prime tonight. Good fucking gravy.

* Trump comes out swinging! He’s doing great.

So far, the debate “moderators” have been a black man, a black woman, a white woman and a gay man. The media isn’t going to wait until Hillary is elected – they’re replacing hetero white men right now. Trump is alone in standing up for us, dealing with immigration, attacks on police and las and order, trade, jobs leaving the country, etc.

* I had decided this morning that the leaked recordings scandal was good for Trump in the long run because it was a hard punch to the face that shook him up and forced him to take things seriously. He looks much more self-controlled and prepared tonight compared to last time.

* After this debate there’s a pretty good body of evidence that Trump set the bar low in the first debate so that he could vault over it this time. Holy crap he’s hammering her on all her weak points.

* Not quarter given in politics. The GOP has been groveling for decades hoping for mercy. They never get it. Trump, to his credit, seems to be figuring that out and is now unleashing his full arsenal.

My guess is the release of that tape pissed him off. Probably a bad move by Team Clinton.

* Scorched Earth Indeed. Trump won on points. She is still as slick as ever, but DJT’s new focus and fight is going to set the stage for an even more epic Debate #3. He can win the Big Prize. The ferocity of this election is the great catharsis the nation needs to cut the establishment & MSM down to size.

* So Trump has given a press conference with women who have claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton.

I guess to me it isn’t so obvious that this is a poor tactic.

Look, negative advertising works. This is why it’s used. Negative advertising has now been thrown at Trump in the form of this tape, and Trump’s press conference is way of throwing it right back.

I appreciate that it’s typically best if this counterattack is performed by surrogates instead of the candidate. But will such a response really be heard from someone else’s mouth, especially given how the Megaphone will never give Trump’s side its due?

In fact, it’s simply a remarkable piece of gall that Hillary’s supporters — and, for God’s sakes, Hillary herself in a tweet — should express such disgust over Trump’s tape, given how eager they have been to support Bill Clinton in the face of his sexual scandals. They have opened up this entire line of attack, presumably expecting that there would be no one to call them on their hypocrisy. How do they effectively answer him on this point? His case for their hypocrisy is actually quite compelling, and easy to understand for the public. And fighting fire with fire isn’t exactly an unpopular thing to do.

I’m not going to pretend that I know that this will work — but I don’t see why people seem so certain it will backfire. It may seem that not responding to the controversy, or making light of it, would work better, but I don’t know why this would be so — the most likely consequence of doing so is that the issue festers, and indeed is aggravated over time, as Hillary’s supporters keep pushing it hard.

But if Trump has an effective answer, and the women Bill Clinton has abused seem persuasive to the public, then I think that entire line of attack might be greatly diminished in power, and will be so at the earliest possible time, rather than continuing through election day. Better sooner than later.

It would of course be great if Trump could just focus on the issues — but nothing could be more obvious than that the next number of newscycles will be consumed with this tape, and/or other similar tapes, because that’s what the media wants. But if every such newscycle is answered with Trump making even more prominent the women Bill Clinton has abused, and Hillary has defamed or dismissed, that ploy may be reduced or retired — which is what seems to have happened to Machado.

It may be that this won’t be enough for Trump to win — but it can still be the best, most effective thing he could do, under the circumstances.

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Now I know how the goy feels before Super Bowl kickoff – Second Presidential Debate

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Luke Ford

* I have a hard time believing a black woman is undecided.

* This crowd should all be white women and a couple asians if truly undecided.

* Trump starts weak.

* Hillary is totally fit to be a middle school principal.

* I would vote her chair of gender studies at Weslyan.

* That Muslim woman is totally undecided.

* Oh, where would America be without all our Muslims?

* To fight terrorists, we need to be as pussy as possible.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* There’s no such thing as fighting dirty. You either win or lose and the winner gets to tell the story.

* The entire debate format, which ostensibly places the professional media in the role of (supposedly) unbiased questioner, unbiased fact-checker, candidate police, and umpire is ridiculous.

Debates would be much, much better if they had teams of partisan questioners, not “moderators” — i.e. Limbaugh asking partisan questions of Hillary, and in turn, some little punks from Daily Kos or Huffington Post asking partisan questions of Trump. And the candidates would respond to the questioners, not to each other.

That would be great, and highly informative.

* Problem with this is 4 years of Hillary after 8 years of Obama means game over. Mass immigration dooms the GOP is some of their stronger states, like Texas. Florida, North Carolina and Virginia will be blue forever. The demographics doom any GOP shot in the Electoral College. And SCOTUS; in addition to the Scalia seat. Ginsberg and Breyer figure to retire. Anthony Kennedy is 80, Clarence Thomas is 68. The GOP is still of the mind that we’ll get them next time. But there isn’t going to be a next time. It will be over.

* Welcome to the Unz Review, where disbarred lawyers and angry Russians argue over whether the Twin Towers were destroyed by nuclear weapons or Israeli holograms. We should be thankful this latest lunatic hasn’t brought up The Jewish Menace yet.

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Jews & Ukraine Have A Complicated History

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Luke Ford

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