Hillary Clinton gave voice Wednesday to a question on the minds of many of her fiercest advocates in her race against the controversy-prone Donald Trump: Why isn’t she way, way ahead?
The Democratic nominee raised the issue here during an address via video conference to a gathering in Las Vegas of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
The former secretary of state ticked off her pro-union positions, including investing in infrastructure, raising the minimum wage and supporting collective bargaining.
“Having said all this, ‘Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?’ you might ask?” Clinton said. “Well, the choice for working families has never been clearer. I need your help to get Donald Trump’s record out to everybody. Nobody should be fooled.”
“Nobody should be fooled”! That’s my wish as well, but with the media the way it is, not much hope of that.
If he isn’t the dumbest, least informed, least capable president in history, he must come close. Reading almost anything he says or does is a trial on the nerves. How do others take it? A sample from today:
It’s hard to work out whether his ignorance is more significant than his lack of intelligence, or whether it is the other way round. But whichever it is, he cannot be gone soon enough. In ’08 I thought anyone but Hillary, so this was the answer and I learned my lesson. Although not much better, she would have been better. That he is still the apple in the eye of the media is all you need to know about the American media, which is as ignorant and unintelligent as Obama.
I HAVE RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING COMMENT ON THIS POST: Source unknown, but entirely apt:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”
I’m not sure if anyone can get through a Niki Savva column any more – I certainly don’t – but the comments section is pure entertainment. The latest: In the time of moderate Malcolm, Abbott must shut up. The first six of the top comments:
(1) This Abbott whom Niki despises is a regular bloke with a mortgage, a working wife and a history of community service who, on his first Christmas break as PM, took all the family to France in economy and paid for all of them including himself. At the same time Bill Shorten (quite reasonably) flew to Europe in business class at the tax payers expense. The rest of the world would be dumbfounded to hear of the nations leader footing his own bill to fly down the back end of the plane. The world needs more Abbotts.
(2) Nope. He must not shut up. His voice and the contributions he makes are too valuable. Some examples:
> Let’s be under no illusions the carbon tax was socialism masquerading as environmentalism.
> The prime ministership of this country is not a prize or a play thing to be demanded. It should be something which is earned by a vote of the Australian people.
> Your hard-earned savings – yes, they might be tax advantaged – but your hard-earned savings, they belong to you. They aren’t a piggy bank for government to raid whenever it’s in trouble and this is one of the key differences between us and our political opponents right now.
> The nature of politics has changed in the past decade. We have more polls and more commentary than ever before. Mostly sour, bitter, character assassination. Poll driven panic has produced a revolving door Prime Ministership which can’t be good for our country. And a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery. And if there’s one piece of advice I can give to the media, it’s this: refuse to print self-serving claims that the person making them won’t put his or her name to.
> Our moral obligation is to receive people fleeing for their lives. It’s not to provide permanent residency to anyone and everyone who would rather live in a prosperous Western country than their own.
We are indeed fortunate to have a politician of the credibility and the calibre of Tony Abbott in our parliament. And long may this boat-stopping, trade-deal-signing, tax-repealing, union-corruption fighting former prime minister continue to rise above the play-the-man grubs.
(3) Did you ever tell Malcolm to shut up when he was white anting Abbott for 2 years ?
(4) Yet another installment of Niki Savva’s rivetting 437-part series on “Why I don’t like Tony Abbott”.
Dull. Predictable. Boring.
I still keep looking for the disclaimer that makes known the bulk of the Savva family income is derived from being directly employed by Malcolm Turnbull.
This clear conflict of interest undermines any pretense of objectivity and impartiality.
(5) Honestly, this is not bordering on, this is demented. Who edits this and allows it to pass for supposed reasoned commentary? It’s blatant propaganda, straight from the PMO. This commentary is sub par (at best), and the diatribe towards Abbott is unhinged, undergraduate, and unfit for public comment. The fact of the matter is this; Turnbull isn’t a leader. Intelligent, in some capacity, sure (yet to see any evidence of this although the MSM seem to bang on about how brilliant he is) but a leader, neigh. He doesn’t command respect, his emotional intelligence is non existent and his political judgment is inherently flawed. He is not a conviction politician. He simply sways with the breeze, intent on appeasing the populist minority. Abbott however was a conviction politician. What you saw was what you get. You knew where he stood on Small Government, Super, Border Protection, Fiscal Responsibility and just about every other matter of government business irrespective of whether you liked him or not. Who knows what Turnbull stands for? I certainly don’t and that’s the problem that Niki and her ilk cant’ seem to grasp. The majority of Australian’s don’t like feeling left in the lurch. He’s been in the job for year and coupled with the significant political capital he had at his disposal following the coup, achieved what? He won an election by one seat? Wasn’t he supposed to romp home because everybody loved Malcolm? Ah, that’s right, it’s the fanciful reasoning of the press gallery who pursued this narrative and who seem to be completely divorced from reality. Turnbull has achieved nothing other than backstabbing a sitting Prime Minister for his own personal gain. I’d be happy for Niki to debate me on this, but alas, I can only dream.
(6) I know who needs to shut up and it ain’t Abbott or Credlin, but rather you Niki.
The original post on The Flight 93 Election was exceptional, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should read it now. The writer, who goes under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, has written a follow-up which is even better. Because of the wide circulation of the original, it attracted an immense amount of criticism from all the right sorts of people. He titles his follow-up, Restatement on Flight 93 in which he picks up the various criticisms of the first article and replies to them one by one in ascending order of importance. This is where the second article leads, but all of it should be read:
If Hillary wins, there will still be a country, in the sense of a geographic territory with a people, a government, and various institutions. Things will mostly look the same, just as—outwardly—Rome changed little on the ascension of Augustus. It will not be tyranny or Caesarism—not yet. But it will represent, in my view, an irreversible triumph for the administrative state. Consider that no president has been denied reelection since 1992. If we can’t beat the Democrats now, what makes anyone think we could in 2020, when they will have all the advantages of incumbency plus four more years of demographic change in their favor? And if we can’t win in 2016 or 2020, what reason is there to hope for 2024? Will the electorate be more Republican? More conservative? Will constitutional norms be stronger?
The country will go on, but it will not be a constitutional republic. It will be a blue state on a national scale. Only one party will really matter. A Republican may win now and again—once in a generation, perhaps—but only a neutered one who has “updated” all his positions so as to be more in tune with the new electorate. I.e., who has done exactly what the Left has for years been concern-trolling us to do: move left and become more like them. Yet another irony: the “conservatives” who object to Trump as too liberal are working to guarantee that only a Republican far more liberal than Trump could ever win the presidency again.
It is a depressing article but what do you know that makes what he describes seem anything other than the most likely outcome we face? But what continues to get me is not just the outright lying but the willingness throughout the media to lie on her behalf, which is followed by an exceptional willingness to accept these media lies as the good-enough truth. People want to feel good about themselves, and don’t wish to see they are supporting a corrupt and dishonest whose only principle is never to tell the truth.
The incredible defensive formation within the media following Hillary becoming ill is amazing, since its dishonesty is unmistakeable. These are lies designed only for those who do not wish to face the truth and need comfort rather than facts. When it really comes down to it, who’d have thought that 1984 was an instruction manual? I thought I would have a look at what the papers said about Hillary’s health just to see how it was discussed, but I have to say I did think it would be discussed. To my astonishment, there was not a single negative word about the entire episode in The Herald Sun, The Age or The Australian. The blogs, moreover, have been virtually wiped clean of any such mention even in those few instances where it was mentioned at all. Hillary falling ill has been a one-day wonder, allowed to be mentioned, it seems, only because the video evidence could not be suppressed, at least not on the net. A spot of pneumonia which she will be over in a tick and that is that, unless it was dehydration. Here are the mentions from what are now yesterday’s papers.
In The Australian:
Hillary Clinton says she feels better after falling ill at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, insisting she never lost consciousness and that her pneumonia diagnosis was too insignificant to disclose before hand.
Put enough nonsense out there and some of it might just collide with a fact – and thats what happened on Sunday when Hillary Clinton’s apparent kerbside collapse in New York became a video that can be run as an endless loop with internet claims about every real and imagine ailment that must surely disqualify her from the presidency.
The Herald-Sun ran a mini-story on page 2 under the heading Clinton Health Scramble, but really, that so-called right of centre columnist, Rita Panahi, put it perfectly under the heading “Hillary can’t handle her own truth”. The point is that because Hillary is such an inveterate liar whose word can never be trusted, she gets caught out on those odd occasions when she is actually telling the truth:
Despite the myriad conspiracy theories about her health issues it is possible that she is perfectly healthy and that the occasional episode of ill-health are normal for a 68-year-old woman taking part in a gruelling campaign.”
That she might actually be ill, as well as ill-prepared to be president, there is not a word. But just to remind you what we read yesterday on Drudge, where, I might note, there is no follow-up of any kind today. Here is yesterday’s news which has really, for all practical purposes, disappeared.
PAPER: HILLARY MYSTERY ‘NURSE’…
ON-SITE NEUROLOGICAL TEST?
Clinton Admits She Has Passed Out ‘A Few Times’…
Can’t Remember… Campaign Avoided ER To Conceal Details of Medical Treatment…
FLASHBACK: FAINTS DURING SPEECH…
FLASHBACK: HEAD FIRST BOARDING PLANE…
FLASHBACK: SCARY COUGHING FIT AT BENGHAZI HEARING…
FLASHBACK: SURGERY TO REPAIR ELBOW FRACTURED IN STATE DEPT FALL…
Allies grow angry over secrecy…
MORE DOCTORS SOUND ALARM…
Three blood clots, a concussion, deep vein thrombosis…
DEMS READY FOR KAINE…
If even a tenth of this applied to Trump, the stories would be all front page and endless. Amazing to have seen how the coverage went. Interesting to understand the times in which we live. Here is the video one more time which you can look at until it finally also disappears for good.
Who’d have thought that 1984 was an instruction manual? I thought I would have a look at what the papers said about Hillary’s health and there is not a negative word about the entire episode in The Herald Sun, The Age or The Australian. The blogs have been virtually wiped clean of any such mention. It has been a one-day wonder, allowed to occur, it seems, only because of the video evidence that could not be suppressed, at least not here on the net. A spot of pneumonia which she will be over in a tick and that is that. Just a quick reminder of what you were told yesterday before it went down the memory hole.
In The Australian:
Hillary Clinton says she feels better after falling illat a 9/11 memorial ceremony, insisting she never lost consciousness and that her pneumonia diagnosis was too insignificant to disclose before hand.
Put enough nonsense out there and some of it might just collide with a fact – and thats what happened on Sunday when Hillary Clinton’s apparent kerbside collapse in New York became a video that can be run as an endless loop with internet claims about every real and imagine ailment that must surely disqualify her from the presidency.
The Herald-Sun ran a mini-story on page 2 under the heading Clinton Health Scramble, but really, that so-called right of centre columnist, Rita Panahi, put it perfectly under the heading “Hillary can’t handle her own truth”. The point is that because Hillary is such an inveterate liar whose word can never be trusted, she gets caught out on those odd occasions when she is actually telling the truth:
Despite the myriad conspiracy theories about her health issues it is possible that she is perfectly healthy and that the occasional episode of ill-health are normal for a 68-year-old woman taking part in a gruelling campaign.”
That she might actually be ill, as well as ill-prepared to be president, there is not a word. But just to remind you what we read yesterday on Drudge, where, I might note, there is no follow-up of any kind today. Here is yesterday’s news which has really, for all practical purposes, disappeared.
PAPER: HILLARY MYSTERY ‘NURSE’…
ON-SITE NEUROLOGICAL TEST?
Clinton Admits She Has Passed Out ‘A Few Times’…
Can’t Remember… Campaign Avoided ER To Conceal Details of Medical Treatment…
FLASHBACK: FAINTS DURING SPEECH…
FLASHBACK: HEAD FIRST BOARDING PLANE…
FLASHBACK: SCARY COUGHING FIT AT BENGHAZI HEARING…
FLASHBACK: SURGERY TO REPAIR ELBOW FRACTURED IN STATE DEPT FALL…
Allies grow angry over secrecy…
MORE DOCTORS SOUND ALARM…
Three blood clots, a concussion, deep vein thrombosis…
DEMS READY FOR KAINE…
If even a tenth of this applied to Trump, the stories would be all front page and endless. Amazing to have seen. Interesting to understand the times in which we live. Here is the video one more time which you can look at until it finally also disappears for good.
CLINTON ‘FAINTS’ AS SHE IS RUSHED OUT OF 9/11 MEMORIAL…
SECRET SERVICE ATYPICAL PROTOCOL…
‘OVERHEATED’…
VIDEO…
STRUGGLES TO WALK…
Knees buckle, loses shoe…
WASH POST: HEALTH NOW AN ISSUE…
DRUDGE Vindicated…
Medical History Now Under Microscope…
She embraces child — despite ‘pneumonia’… Press left in dark…
No probe into flaring hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s…
FLASHBACK 2012: CLINTON FALLS BOARDING PLANE…
The Roughest Week…
It’s the “press left in dark” which really is the joke. Everyone knows that Hillary is a very sick woman and is in no condition to be the President of the United States. This is the media supporting Hillary to the bitter end. You cannot trust the media, but if they can, as unfit in so many ways as she is for the presidency, they will see her win. This is the death of democracy, and the media are the surest symptom of its collapse in the US. They have covered for Obama for the past eight years and will do the same for Hillary if they can. Democracy depends on an informed electorate. The American media is no longer a free press, although with the internet the flow of information is no longer as controllable as it once was.
Murdoch was not a fan of Trump’s and especially did not like his stance on immigration. (The antipathy was mutual: “Murdoch’s been very bad to me,” Trump told me in March.) A few days before the first GOP debate on Fox in August 2015, Murdoch called Ailes at home. “This has gone on long enough,” Murdoch said, according to a person briefed on the conversation.
Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox’s debate moderators — Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace — to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes, understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely thought it was a bad idea. “Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee,” Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn’t fight Murdoch on the debate directive.
On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions. But it was Kelly’s question regarding Trump’s history of crude comments about women that created a media sensation. He seemed personally wounded by her suggestion that this spoke to a temperament that might not be suited for the presidency. “I’ve been very nice to you, though I could probably maybe not be based on the way you have treated me,” he said pointedly.
Here is Ann Coulter discussing the distortions and lies of the journalistic profession in a column titled, How the media work. It is, as always, an interesting column that gets to the point, but this is I think particularly true. She is discussing the reporting that surrounds Donald Trump, but she could mean anyone on the right who actually gets political traction. The actual example she gives is about herself, but the general principle is the point.
Even sensible people can’t think straight in the middle of one of these [media] hate campaigns.
It can be very difficult for people to overcome whatever meaning the press superimposes on what someone has said, no matter how psychotic. Throw in incessant repetition and uniform agreement among the pundits (Hillary cheerleaders versus Never Trumpers), and completely deranged interpretations become historical facts.
We treat media corruption and its cultural Marxism like bad weather, as just the way things are. But the vile misrepresentation of the world they are reporting on is one of the most important of the entrenched problems we face. The Western world – our way of life – is in mortal danger because the media wilfully distort the world they describe. It is not that they do not know any better. The know exactly what they are doing, which is unmistakeable given what they consistently leave out and what they do say about what they decide to discuss. There is nothing haphazard or accidental about it. Here is Donald Trump discussing the problem as part of a more comprehensive speech he gave last week. What makes Trump so unique is that he will raise this at all. Who else does? Not another politician I have ever seen. And every word of the following is unarguably true.
The establishment media doesn’t cover what really matters in this country, or what’s really going on in people’s lives. They will take words of mine out of context and spend a week obsessing over every single syllable, and then pretend to discover some hidden meaning in what I said.
Just imagine for a second if the media spent this energy holding the politicians accountable who got innocent Americans like Kate Steinle killed – she was gunned down by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times.
Just imagine if the media spent this much time investigating the poverty and joblessness in our inner cities.
Just think about how much different things would be if the media in this country sent their cameras to our border, or to our closing factories, or to our failing schools. Or if the media focused on what dark secrets must be hidden in the 33,000 emails Hillary Clinton deleted.
Instead, every story is told from the perspective of the insiders. It’s the narrative of the people who rigged the system, never the voice of the people it’s been rigged against.
And here is one more article that discusses this same problem where the sub-head reads: Honest Reporting Died Long Ago. Yet even if you know it, how many are capable of suspending judgement on things they see in the press? And just to pile a bit more on, there is now also this from The New York Post: American journalism is collapsing before our eyes. On the off chance you need a bit more reminding, there is then this, although I’m not sure I quite agree with the first sentence:
The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.
The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.
Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.
By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.
It’s not simply that they do it that is the worry, but that they are so ignorant that in acting this way they believe they are doing good.
Were it not for Andrew Bolt, I would have no idea that Nikki Savva is still going on about Malcolm, but there she is: As the real game begins, Malcolm Turnbull needs quick runs. You would think she would finally get the point why anyone who had previously seen Malcolm in action could not possibly have supported him. And to tell the truth, though I tried, I could not get through her column, but I did manage her hilarious first para:
As he approaches his first anniversary as Prime Minister, the number of items on Malcolm Turnbull’s to-do list continues to multiply. His singular achievement so far has been to win the election, if only by a whisker, but it would help his standing inside and outside the government if he could score a few more runs and quickly.
If that is all he has done, he has done less than nothing, his contribution has been entirely negative. He won only because of Tony, but his almost losing the lot was entirely due to his own incompetence. I eventually skipped to the end of her column where there was this exhortation:
Individual ministers have to drive their issues, but they can do it only if the Prime Minister is in the forefront. A year into the job, and almost two months since the election, he needs to pick up the pace. He cannot give eloquent speeches (unfortunately marred by protesters) or drop ideas, then vacate the field for a few days before reappearing.
He has to be a persistent as well as persuasive advocate using all media, particularly radio and from the office, not home, so that there are visuals as well as audio. He needs to convince the public, then, having convinced them, use that to exert pressure on parliament. It is circular and never-ending.
Turnbull has to be relentless and show he is the one in charge, not Abbott, not Shorten, not Xenophon, not even Barnaby Joyce.
By now, Malcolm is completely gun shy since he has shown time and again that his own ideas are poison for most of those who vote for the Coalition. Every time he opens his mouth, three-quarters of the back bench roll their eyes. He’s in the wrong party, should not even be on the back bench, never mind its leader.
Trump said at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Tuesday that if Clinton gets to pick federal judges as president, there is nothing that can be done to protect the right to bear arms.
But then he adds without elaboration that maybe supporters of the Second Amendment could figure out a way. . . .
My first reaction on hearing that he had said this was to think that it was the first time I had heard him utter a defeatist word, hypothesising that Hillary might win in November. But then I have watched the reaction across the media, and even among the supposed conservative media, accepting the left-media’s interpretation of what Trump had said, that he had been advocating some kind of violence against Hillary. There are political morons everywhere, I’m afraid, but the left-media must be amazed at how stupid the conservative side of politics is. I will go to the logic of what Trump is supposed to have said, which is that:
if Hillary is elected
and she gets to choose the next Supreme Court justices
and she chooses nominees who are opposed to the second amendment
then, what?
It ought to be obvious that if she is already president, her death would have no effect on who is chosen for the Supreme Court. Suppose she nominates Judges X and Y and then another blood clot to the brain carries her off. The same nominees will go forward under President Kaine.
The thing that makes Trump so different from all of the other Republicans is that he is not gun shy of a serious fight. He must be no little dismayed and quite a lot disgusted by the Republican first eleven who are weak beyond measure and who have no fight in them. The way the story continues is how it looked to me even as I read his words:
Trump himself seemed unaware of the controversy in an interview shortly after the rally, but he repeated that his point was that Second Amendment advocates are a powerful lobby. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani also came to Trump’s defense.
“I think you are talking about — I’m not sure because I haven’t’ heard this question — but I think you’re talking about the power of people that are in favor of the Second Amendment, and they have tremendous political power,” he said.
When asked about Democrats’ statements equating the remark to condoning violence, Trump said: Oh no, no. This is political power.”
Giuliani added, “I mean, this is the Clinton trick book that you fall for all the time.”
Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller told CBS News’ Major Garrett the accusations the GOP nominee was calling for violence are “completely ridiculous.”
“Donald Trump was obviously talking about American voters who are passionate about their Second Amendment rights and advocating they use that power at the ballot box,” Miller told CBS News. “The Clinton campaign is desperate and is obviously throwing all sorts of outrageous charges. I am surprised so many reporters are falling hook-line-and-sinker for what is obviously a ridiculous charge.”
I’m not surprised, of course, and I would be surprised if he really were surprised. The media are Trump’s most relentless enemies.
What I like about Trump is that he brings a gun to a knife fight. He does not back down. He’s new at this political game, but what he is not new at is fighting to win. You want to win yourself, you want to get your policies up even with the gale force media winds in front. It disgusts me to see how weak his support is. Here it is, you dummkopfs. We are down to the last two, and if it’s not Trump then its Hillary. Don’t tell me about all of your concerns with this and that. If you are not all in for Trump, then do me a favour and just shut up.
Law of Markets 