Yearly Archives: 2016

Why Republicans will vote for Trump (and Democrats too)

Posted on by
Reply

From Victor Davis Hanson, the top heads but read the lot:

First, Trump stays in the news not just by taking extreme positions, but also by taking extreme positions on issues that are already extreme. . . .

A second reason why many conservatives will vote for Trump is that they, like everyone else, are cynical about what candidates say and what they, as presidents, actually do. . . .

Third, we have become so inured to the outrageous, that many conservatives are not quite sure whether Trump is just a more in-your-face version of current politicians or if he truly is an outlier in his vulgarity.

Fourth, most Republicans do not quite buy the #NeverTrump argument that Trump is running to the left of Hillary Clinton. [Does anyone?] . . .

Finally, Republicans might embrace a democratic fatalism—or the opinion, in other words, that “if that’s what the people want, that’s what the people get.”

Of course, the real reason is that Trump is offering to do what voters want their government to do and no one else is.

Libs ahead by minus four

Posted on by
Reply

Everyone seems to think that a Labor lead in the polls should not be taken seriously. Why worry about this, we are asked: Election 2016: Labor surges in the polls as campaign focus turns to economic credentials. The details:

At the end of the third week of the 2016 campaign, Labor surged to its largest lead of the contest to date in a Seven News/Reachtel poll published Friday night, taking a 52-48 lead in the two-party preferred vote.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian: Labor’s reckless economic strategy starting to unravel, Why Turnbull has a wealth of advantage over Shorten, and Malcolm Turnbull must revel in secrets of his success.

I know that aggregates don’t mean everything, and that it is a seat-by-seat battle. And being ahead only counts on election night. And the only poll I take notice of is when the votes are counted, and etc. Nonetheless, down 48-52 does not look to be such a great place for a team that is looking to sweep to victory, or even to win by a single seat.

Same old same old

Posted on by
Reply

abc me

“New ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie rejects suggestions most of the broadcaster’s journalists have a left-wing bias.”

I mean, really, what she’s saying is if you think the ABC presenters are left wing, you should see the people who come to dinner parties at my house.

The ABC’s new managing director, Michelle Guthrie, has conceded the national broadcaster “can do better” at presenting a wider range of political views – while hitting back at critics who believe its journalists have a left-wing bias.

“I don’t see that as true at all,” Ms Guthrie said in a wide-ranging interview with The Weekend Australian Magazine, published tomorrow.

“People view any organisation from their own biases and my sense is that I think we do a very good job in covering the gamut of opinion. But I always think we can do better.

“That’s why I’m very conscious of making sure we are very reflective of the Australian population. I feel we do have a lot of editorial processes in place and we just need to make sure we adhere to them. I feel very confident those processes are well adhered to.”

Could be but how can I tell? Other than the occasional Q&A – where there is no end of evidence of a leftward bias – I stopped watching the ABC years ago.

The Dunning–Kruger effect meets the Kates effect

Posted on by
Reply

Honestly, what can one do with a story like this: Obama: World Leaders ‘Rattled’ by Trump’s ‘Ignorance’ and ‘Cavalier Attitude’. The following, please note, is in quotation marks and the person quoted is Obama!

“They’re rattled by him — and for good reason — because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude, or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what it is that is required to keep America safe and secure and prosperous, and what’s required to keep the world on an even keel.”

I found this quote at Instaundit where I also discovered the “Dunning–Kruger effect” which is new to me as a named psychological syndrome but very straightforward as a frequent picture of reality.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately.”

Someone must also make a study of the related effect – call it the Kates effect – which I describe as follows. We are here discussing a syndrome that often affects the media and academics studying in the social sciences and humanities:

The Kates effect is cognitive bias in which relatively unskilled persons are believed to have superiority abilities, where the minimal abilities they do have are mistakenly assessed to be much higher than they really are. Kates attributes this bias to a metacognitive inability of the similarly unskilled to recognize ineptitude in others because of a deep desire to escape reality and live in a fantasy world of their own construction.

Obama is delusional but he really is the president. The more remarkable form of insanity – the Kates effect discussed above – is found among those who feed these delusions with affirmations that permit those delusions to persist, sometimes for as long as eight years.

Legal bills estimated to be nearing a million!

Posted on by
Reply

This really is beyond all sense: Gillian Triggs hires top silk in 18C university case. Wherein we find:

The total legal bills for the university and other parties are estim­ated to be nearing $1 million.

You can read the details at the link, but this seems absolutely right:

In a letter to Professor Triggs yesterday, the lawyer for Mr Wood, Michael Henry, stated: “Examining complaints against the commission is your responsib­ility and your responsibility alone. We had sincerely hoped that some leadership would be shown by you on this issue and that the commission would have investigated this deeply regrettable incident of its own initiative.” . . .

“The entire matter could have been easily ­resolved during the process the commission was duty bound by statute to undertake.”

There is something very very wrong here that needs to be fixed. And as usual, the best part of the story at the link is in the comments.

He’s over the top

Posted on by
Reply

trumpmcdonalds

UPDATE: Adding the picture above which comes with this: To Celebrate Winning 1,237, Trump Eats McDonald’s, Has Diet Coke. Been there myself. I’ve often said the worst thing about my children growing up is that I no longer have an excuse to go to McDonald’s. It is still an incongruous picture which must have some intended meaning but one that eludes me for the moment.

In the news today: Trump reaches 1237. And so now he begins to say what he really thinks:

Trump, whose support from North Dakota national convention delegates put him over the top for securing the party’s nomination earlier in the day, told the crowd he’d eliminate regulation he says is killing the fossil fuel industry as well as be favorable to additional pipeline projects and exports of American oil.

Thunderous applause greeted Trump’s declaration that in his administration there’d be an “America-first energy plan.”

“We will accomplish a complete American energy independence,” Trump said. “We’re going to turn everything around. We are going to make it right.”

And in a related story from The Japan Times: Trump sends shivers down spines of nations trying to solidify global warming pact. Here I agree there is reason to worry, or there is if you think global warming is a genuine problem. Future generations are going to look back at us in amazement. So more of the Trump effect on policy:

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week.

But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous.

It is not hard to see why.

The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory even among climate skeptics.

More recently, he said he was “not a big fan” of the Paris Agreement, the fruit of two decades of stop-and-go (but mostly stop) wrangling between rich and developing nations.

“I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum,” Trump told Reuters in an exclusive interview last week, betraying an unfamiliarity with the U.N.’s consensus-based process.

“And at a maximum I may do something else.”

Let ’em worry

Posted on by
Reply

From The Japan Times: Trump sends shivers down spines of nations trying to solidify global warming pact. Here I agree there is reason to worry, or there is reason to worry if you think global warming isn’t the greatest con job in human history, which it is. Future generations are going to look back at us in amazement. Meantime:

The talks in Germany to flesh out December’s historic global climate deal are probably not at the top of Donald Trump’s agenda this week.

But the diplomats from 196 nations huddled in Bonn are keenly aware of the fact that the “The Donald” is now within spitting distance of the White House — and it is making a lot of them nervous.

It is not hard to see why.

The last Republican standing in the U.S. presidential race has described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by China to gain competitive advantage in manufacturing over the US, an eccentric theory even among climate skeptics.

More recently, he said he was “not a big fan” of the Paris Agreement, the fruit of two decades of stop-and-go (but mostly stop) wrangling between rich and developing nations.

“I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum,” Trump told Reuters in an exclusive interview last week, betraying an unfamiliarity with the U.N.’s consensus-based process.

“And at a maximum I may do something else.”

Go for the max, I say, aim for the absolute full wreckage. So one more round from the report, just to cheer us up:

The prospect of a Trump presidency precisely at the moment when nations are inching toward ratification of the delicately balanced deal sends shivers down the spines of negotiators here.

When asked what worried him most at this stage, Seyni Nafo, climate ambassador for Mali and president of the Africa Group, snapped: “Trump winning the election.”

Ah, the global begging bowl will be taken away, or at least this one.

Communications advice to the Great Communicator

Posted on by
Reply

I thought Malcolm’s strongest feature was as the Great Communicator. So why this now from Robert Gottliebsen: How Malcolm Turnbull can lift his media game. This is the message he wishes to convey:

Turnbull’s failure to sell his message is hurting his campaign, he’ll need to sharpen the script if he wants to cut through.

The problem is that it’s not “his message” but Tony’s. Nevertheless, Gottliebsen seeks to offer advice:

Given Bill Shorten knows the electronic media game backwards and forwards, there is an uneven contest. It’s no surprise that Shorten is winning in the opinion polls.

I realised that Turnbull does not know the secret of communicating on radio as I replayed yesterday’s interview with Alan Jones.

I have been around the radio game for many decades, so, with respect Mr. Prime Minister, let me give you a few hints.

I’m afraid, at this stage, it is all instinct. All you can do is let Malcolm be Malcolm in getting Tony’s message out and hope for the best.

Practical politics and political opinion

Posted on by
Reply

It is a fact that both Charles Murray and Jonah Goldberg have left me frigidly cold in almost everything they have written. I stopped reading both years ago and am not surprised to find that Goldberg had invented the #NeverTrump tag. Now Murray has lined up in the same way. And here in a single sentence he captures everything that is wrong with #NeverTrump:

While I am already on record with my sympathy for the grievances that energize many of Trump’s supporters, I am thinking about writing a book that is even more explicitly sympathetic with those grievances.

He has sympathy for such grievances and what does he intend to do: write a book. For some of us – me included – that is the best we can do. But for some of us, but not the #NeverTrump bozos, we are grateful that ever so often someone comes along who can turn our concerns into a practical political outcome. That Donald Trump is somewhat more risky than some others because he has never actually held office so has no record in dealing with political situations is a valid concern. But after that, you just have to look at what he says he wants to do, which are congruent with what he has said all his adult life. Meanwhile Murray writes:

In my view, Donald Trump is unfit to be president in ways that apply to no other candidate of the two major political parties throughout American history.

So therefore Hillary. Let us therefore go to the specifics as outlined:

But it’s worse than that. It’s not that Trump makes strategic decisions about what useful untruths he will tell on any given day — it looks as if he just makes up stuff as he goes along. Many of his off-the-cuff fictions are substantively unimportant: He says Rex Ryan won championships when he coached the New York Jets, when he didn’t.

You know, that being the first example of an untruth that came to mind portrays such a trivial mind that he ought to be embarrassed to the final degree by even bringing it up. But let them all reveal themselves and let their names be recorded. The list of political commentators we can forever ignore just keeps getting longer.