MORE REASONS TO DOUBT THE “INTERNET OF THINGS:” Roadside Cameras Infected with WannaCry Virus Invalidate 8,000 Traffic Tickets.
Archive for 2017
June 25, 2017
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LOSING AGAIN, FOR THE SAME REASON. Jon Ossoff’s loss in Georgia shows that the Democrats have failed to broaden their appeal, Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center writes at City Journal:
Ossoff’s loss ultimately stemmed from his failure at the third task: persuading independents and never-Trumpers that he was the better choice. Third-party voters cast 4.9 percent of the vote in 2016, but Ossoff outperformed Clinton by only 1.3 percent. Since partisan turnout seems to have been about equal, this implies that Ossoff won by only about a quarter of the third-party supporters’ votes. Democrats hoped that he would do better, based on polls showing Trump’s low approval rating (less than 40 percent) among voters in the district. But Trump’s approval ratings were no better last November, and he still won because people who did not like either Trump or Clinton voted for him by a large margin. Apparently these mostly Republican voters remain willing to choose the Trump-backing GOP devil they know over the Democratic devil they don’t, even if they don’t like Trump himself.
This is the Democrats’ national problem in a nutshell. The Democratic mantra this year has been “resist,” a call to the barricades that energizes their base but apparently does nothing to attract more people to the cause. When Democrats are trying to win districts or states where Trump triumphed, they’re simply re-running the same failed strategy that sent Clinton down to defeat.
Rather than resist, the Democrats should desist—from overreacting to every tweet from the Oval Office and from trying to push their unmodified agenda. Whatever Democratic activists think, a majority of Americans do not want what they are selling. They may not like much of what the Republicans and Trump are offering, either, but when forced to choose, they will, however reluctantly, back the Trump-GOP synthesis over the united Democratic alternative.
One special election 18 months before the national midterms is just a data point, of course; extrapolating national trends from such a unique race as Georgia’s is unsound. But placed in the context of polls and other special elections that show the same thing—Democrats mobilizing their voters but not winning over Republicans or GOP-leaning independents in appreciable numbers—it is a warning. Unless Republican voters start to see Democrats as acceptable alternatives to their own Trump-backing party members, Democrats who hope to regain power quickly are just whistling Dixie.
Good luck getting the left to see that, however. QED:
JUST THINK OF CHUCK TODD AS A DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE* WITH A BYLINE, AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: “Oh weird…Chuck Todd has Bernie Sanders on [NBC’s Meet the Press] and doesn’t question him about being under FBI investigation.”
Flashback: NBC, Chuck Todd Hide Wife’s Kaine Donation, and Her Firm Getting Millions from Bernie Campaign.
*Still being a Democrat operative, that is.
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DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Video: Children of Darkness.
AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES THE ONION*:
● Shot: “Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years.”
—A classic Onion headline from April of 2001.
● Chaser: “In this statement, the progressive organizer of Chicago Pride parade says Jewish Pride flags are banned because they’re visually threatening.”
—Commentary and Daily Beast contributor Omri Ceren of the Israel Project, as quoted today in a Twitchy post headlined, “TRIGGERED: Guess the country’s flag banned by tolerant lefties at Pride parade in Chicago.”
● Hangover: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wears Ramadan-themed socks at a church service before the Pride parade on Sunday.”
—Caption of photo in article today at the Toronto Star, headlined, “Black Lives Matter joins Toronto Pride parade, despite not registering.”
As Mark Steyn wrote a decade ago, in the post-9/11 leftwing worldview, “our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.”
* The earlier, funnier, not yet totally in the tank for Hillary Onion, of course.
UPDATE: “Now, if only actual Muslims around the world can wear rainbow socks, then maybe we’ll get somewhere.”
IN HEATED POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT, TIME-WARNER-CNN-HBO RESPONDS TO CALLS TO TONE DOWN RHETORIC: Bill Maher Sees ‘Zodiac Killer’ GOP Plan’; Too Many ‘Waste-Making’ Kids.
Actually between Maher dropping the N-word on air and his corporate associates’ love of assassination porn, for Time-Warner-CNN-HBO in 2017, perhaps that does count as dialing back the rhetoric.
MORE “UNEXPECTED” BAD LUCK IN ILLINOIS: Senator Durbin Confronted By Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso Who’s a Doctor: ‘Senator Durbin doesn’t want to talk about the fact that in Illinois they are way down on the number of people even selling insurance and prices are way up.’
Earlier: “Illinois on the Right Track…To Achieve Junk Credit Rating.”
(Classical allusion in headline.)
UNEXPECTEDLY: Every now and then, a small news item will restore your faith in the decency of people. This is one of those. “Video shows a teen falling off a Six Flags ride — and a crowd gathering to catch her.” Spare yourself the navel gazing about amusement parks, and watch the embedded video.
SKYNET SMILES, PREPARES FOR 2020 ELECTION:
Shot: Why humans must accept that robots make better decisions.
—The London Telegraph, today.
Chaser: Will Mark Zuckerberg Run For President? He’s Hanging Out In Iowa Right Now.
—Bustle.com, yesterday.
A RARE MOMENT OF SANITY IN SACRAMENTO: Remember that California single payer plan? Yeah… never mind.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What to know about NYC’s golden age of ‘butt-legging.’
CLINT EASTWOOD ANNOUNCES NEXT FILM PROJECT: “Eastwood is working on his next project, about three friends who stopped a terrorist attack two years ago on a train in France:”
“I met the kids at an awards event last summer,” Eastwood said, referring to the 2016 Spike TV “Guys Choice Awards” — a made-for-TV comedy event that features Hollywood stars who gather to “toast the mega-splendor of all things guy,” according to the cable channel. During the taping of the event last August, Eastwood was on hand to introduce Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler before they received the Hero Award.
“The audience was mostly military, and I just introduced them as guys who represented the American spirit, who were going to go down fighting,” Eastwood said.
“I was flattered when I met him, because when we were on the stage, Mr. Eastwood told me, ‘I don’t usually do this type of stuff, but when I heard who I’d be introducing, I decided to show up,’” Stone recalled.
Backstage, the heroes had a chance to chat with Eastwood, whom they all admired. And they told him they’d be honored if he’d consider directing their movie.
“It was just a brief conversation, but he said, ‘Send me your book,’” Stone said. In December of last year, after they sent the book to Eastwood’s Burbank office, his assistant called them to say he was interested.
“I read it, and I thought, ‘This is something different,’” Eastwood said. “It was an episode people don’t associate with young people today — doing something heroic.”
Read the whole thing.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY, MY LATEST PIECE AT THE PJ LIFESTYLE SECTION: Ted Nugent, Bespoke Instruments Steal the 2017 Dallas Guitar Show.
YES, BUT THEY STILL HAVE VERY POWERFUL MICROPHONES: They’re Wrong About Everything — More evidence the political class doesn’t know what it’s talking about.
But they do manage to always protect their phony-baloney jobs, alas.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Paper ballots are hack-proof. It’s time to bring them back, Glenn Reynolds writes in his latest USA Today column.
Read the whole thing, to coin an Insta-phrase.
ILLINOIS SURE HAS BEEN HAVING PLENTY OF BAD LUCK, HUH? “Illinois on the Right Track…To Achieve Junk Credit Rating.”
(Classical allusion in headline.)
PROCESS VS. PRODUCT: Roger Kimball on Why the Democrats Keep Losing.
YES, IT’S STILL NEWSWORTHY: Members of both parties, including Republican Trey Gowdy, said they still don’t think they have all the answers as to what was really behind ‘Fast and Furious.’
That was so many allegedly “phony” scandals ago, it’s hard to keep track.
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‘WHO WILL CLEAN TOILETS?’ Salon writer accidentally admits the Left’s racist views on illegal immigrants:
You stay classy, Democrats.
Not surprisingly, Salon’s Mary Beth Williams, whose Twitter profile claims she lives in “Upstate Manhattan” (but of course) is getting plenty of pushback from the right on Twitter, including, “Yesterday, I was a toothless, uneducated hillbilly Trump supporter. Today, I have a limo driver! America, what a country!”, and “I particularly like how you threw in a ‘we’re’ as if you weren’t being racist.”
UNTIL GLENN GETS BACK: You can read my latest piece at PJ Media: “Are Dad Bods Really the New Six Pack?”