Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he’s merely delusional

Soon he’ll be gone and his views will be as significant as those of any past president, maybe even less. But this really does turn my stomach since in no moment in the last eight years has he acted on any of it: Obama warns against ‘a crude sort of nationalism’ taking root in the U.S.. Take a couple of seasick tablets and then go read this:

President Obama warned Tuesday that Americans and people around the world “are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity, or tribalism” taking root amid the populist movements that are gaining currency around the world. . . .

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them, and I will never apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict,” Obama said. . . .

“In the United States we know what happens when we start dividing ourselves along the lines of race or religion or ethnicity. It is dangerous. It is dangerous, not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind of discrimination, or in some cases in the past, violence, but because we then don’t realize our potential as a country when we are preventing blacks or Latinos or Asians or gays or women from fully participating in the project of building American life,” he said. . . .

“Globalization, combined with technology, combined with social media and constant information, have disrupted people’s lives, sometimes in very concrete ways,” he said. “But also psychologically, people are less certain of their national identities or their place in the world. It starts looking different and disorienting.”

“And there is no doubt that has produced populist movements, both from the left and the right, in many countries in Europe. When you see a Donald Trump and a Bernie Sanders, very unconventional candidates, have considerable success, obviously there’s something there that’s being tapped into,” he said. “I think at times of significant stress, people are going to be looking for something, and they don’t always know exactly what it is that they’re looking for, and they might opt for change, even if they’re not entirely confident what that change will bring.”

The most divisive president in history, completely delusional if not totally off with the fairies, lecturing us on how we ought to come together with him leading the way. His approval ratings in positive territory matched against the election results are the most certain recent example of the Bradley Effect I know.

Dealing with media bias

Media bias is among the largest problems our democracies have, and I don’t have to tell you in which direction that bias goes. This election has been a truly learning experience: MRC/YouGov Poll: Most Voters Saw, Rejected News Media Bias. Here are the reported stats:

Key findings:

7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful.
8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%) vs. for Trump (21%).
Even 1/3 (32%) of Clinton voters believe the media were “pro-Clinton.”
8% of Trump voters said they would have voted for Clinton if they had believed what the media were saying about Trump.
97% of voters said they did not let the media’s bias influence their vote.

It is this last one that is the most ludicrous finding. It is impossible not to be influenced by the media and anyone who thinks they are not is kidding themselves in a very comprehensive way. The media are like crowd noise at a football match which affects not just the players but the referees. The number of so-called conservatives I met with during the election who were saying things that came straight out of the New York Times was astonishing.

It was therefore interesting to read the second editorial in The Oz this morning: Making the media listen again. It begins:

Donald Trump’s victory has exposed serious flaws in so-called quality media, mainly a refusal of many ideologues to deal with facts.

If “ideologues” is the new word for journalists, I could not agree more. So this is what they think should be done, which I agree with while doubting it is even remotely likely:

Best report the facts, listen to the public and share a variety of opinions.

A variety of opinions on the pages of a paper you no longer trust is not going to work. You need to be able to balance what is found there with sources that are seeing the world as you see it yourself. What made following the election so that I could see more clearly what was going on depended on the following online sources, of which there were others from time to time. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything they wrote, or even their general political line, but they did give me a different perspective and helped to anchor my thoughts in the midst of a maelstrom. These are the ones that worked for me in alphabetical order:

Ace of Spades
Atlas Shrugs
BadBlueNews
Breitbart
Drudge
FrontPageMag
Instapundit
Lucianne
Powerline
PJ Media
Quadrant
Stefan Molyneux
Taki’s Mag
VDare

The MSM has discredited itself. For those of us on this side of politics, reading newspapers or watching the news will now and forever be an endurance test in getting through presentations and articles we no longer trust. At least, for now, there are alternatives. To a very important extent, Donald Trump is president-elect because of the alternative media. Watch below:

The 1980’s are no longer asking for their policy back

Trump and Putin vow to tackle ISIS together as they hold breakthrough talks after billionaire’s election

President-elect Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have vowed to tackle ISIS together after holding breakthrough talks on the telephone.

Less than a week after the billionaire’s election, the Kremlin said Putin called Trump yesterday to begin negotiations over how best to tackle to terrorism.

The Russian is reported to have said he is ready for dialogue with the US “on the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention into each other’s internal affairs”.

According to the news agency Kremlin, Putin and Trump have agreed to “work to channel bilateral relationships into constructive cooperation, to combine efforts to tackle international terrorism and extremism, and to continue contact by telephone and to work towards meeting in person”.

“The importance of creating a solid basis for bilateral ties was underscored, in particularly by developing the trade-economic component,” the Kremlin said in its statement.

It added that the countries should “return to pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation, which would address the interests of both countries as well as stability and safety the world over.”

The two men will maintain contact by phone and seek to meet each other in person, the statement said.

Obama really is going to be gone really soon. And on top of everything else, the 1980s really will no longer be calling and asking for their foreign policy to be returned. How have we endured the past eight years?

There are Moore idiots than you would believe

A very disturbing video but one that is easily associated with the left and their ways of doing things. There will be four relentless years of anti-Trump reporting across the media, as disproportionate in its presence as the absence of any serious anti-Obama reporting over the last eight. What is the meme of the moment is that Hillary erred in assuming she would win the industrial north-east. If only she had listened to Bill and not her advisors etc. The new authority on the anti-Trump wagon is Michael Moore whom I discussed a couple of days ago under the heading, Michael Moore’s idiot’s agenda. Idiots’ agenda or not, he is now featured in both The Australian and The Age. Here from The Oz yesterday we have Michael Moore: the rust-belt prophet which is reprinted from The Times. Can’t get more establishment than that.

Michael Moore is the rust belt prophet. The documentary maker and author was almost the only commentator in America who predicted that Donald Trump would become the 45th president. Having come from the Michigan wilderness, the son of a car assembly-line worker, he understands middle America. He might be seen as part of the liberal elite but he has been warning for years that too many have been left behind. “I live in what they call the flyover but I like the Bob Dylan line, ‘the country I come from is called the Midwest’,” he says.

Last July he posted “five reasons why Trump will win”. He now feels vindicated, though not smug. “I have been trying to warn people for many months. I was in the UK in the week leading up to Brexit and I saw the fake bubble that the establishment were in. The day after the vote I went on TV and said: “‘I am from one of the Brexit states’, and they said, ‘You aren’t even from England’, and I said, ‘I live in that part of the US that is filled with the same anger I heard in Britain’. It was clear they wanted to send a message they didn’t like what was happening to them.”

See, what a genius he is, a true man of the people, a working class guru to help forge a new consensus. And then we get the same from The Age today, When inclusiveness isn’t: how Hillary Clinton and the Democrats got it so wrong, this one also from The Times, but the New York variety. And if you go to the link you can play a video which comes with this caption:

How Michael Moore predicted Trump’s win…
… and what he now thinks of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, let me repeat, the central issue of the election was open borders. It wasn’t the only issue but it was the most important. If Trump had proposed amnesty in any form, he would not have won. Try to find that in any paper anywhere. With Trump, we have a reprieve on so many issues, but not some kind of permanent victory. I can only hope those who understand what’s at stake will be able to bear up under what will be a relentless campaign from the media who will now notice that the economy is in a mess, America’s international allies are abandoning her, and health care is an impossible expense.

Voter fraud in the United States is not an accident

It is the deliberate policy of the Democratic Party. What other interpretation do you have for this: REPORT: THREE MILLION VOTES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAST BY ILLEGAL ALIENS?

Although some states require some form of ID before voting, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. all require no identification before voting.

What would stop me from voting if I showed up and asked for a ballot in any of these places? Putting an end to this must be added to the Trump agenda.

Everyone loves a winner

mad-election-cover-1960

I remember seeing the cover for the first time there on the newsstand and wondering how they had got it right, even before the election was over. And while you cannot tell from the picture, half the magazine was printed with Kennedy at the start and the other half with Nixon, with the print suddenly turning upside down when you got to the staples in the middle. “We were with you all the way, Jack’. So let me give you the relevant passage from Henry V:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

At that level, there are no friends (or enemies), only associates. You know the joke, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. It was reading Trump’s twitter feed that made me think of the Henry V passage and the Mad cover.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 13h13 hours ago
Governor John Kasich of the GREAT, GREAT, GREAT State of Ohio called to congratulate me on the win. The people of Ohio were incredible!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 14h14 hours ago
Jeb Bush, George W and George H.W. all called to express their best wishes on the win. Very nice!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 14h14 hours ago
Mitt Romney called to congratulate me on the win. Very nice!

“Very nice!” must be the Trump equivalent of GFYS. But he will not shun their company nor their presence from this time forward. That is not how politics works. If you have power to share and a hand to lend in getting things done, all is forgiven and forgotten (for the moment). But the reality is that Trump will never trust any of them ever again. If you weren’t there on St Crispin’s Day, how much can you be trusted when the tide begins to turn, as in politics it eventually must?

Another media lie

And this one is more ridiculous than all the others: New York Times publisher vows to ‘rededicate’ paper to reporting honestly. Confession may be good for the soul, but there are limits:

The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would “reflect” on its coverage of this year’s election while rededicating itself to reporting on “America and the world” honestly.

Fool me once, etc. But the reality beneath it all is that people read the NYT so that they can avoid finding out what’s going on that might suggest that people on the right have a legitimate point of view. That kind of reporting you will never see in the mainstream American media.

The FBI’s not wanted list took Hillary down

She’s half right: Hillary Clinton Blames F.B.I. Director for Election Loss. The other half being that Comey was directed at each step of the way by Obama who wanted to have enough pretext to indict her and have Tim Kaine become president. It was the unexpected outcome of the on-again off-again investigation where the final attempt to rescind the possibility of prosecution came too late and may have anyway already have caused the fatal outcome, fatal for Hillary that is.`

Mrs. Clinton said a second letter from Mr. Comey, clearing her once again, which came two days before Election Day, had been even more damaging. In that letter, Mr. Comey said an examination of a new trove of emails, which had been found on the computer of Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of one of her top aides, had not caused him to change his earlier conclusion that Mrs. Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information.

Her campaign said the seemingly positive outcome had only hurt it with voters who did not trust Mrs. Clinton and were receptive to Mr. Trump’s claims of a “rigged system.” In particular, white suburban women who had been on the fence were reminded of the email imbroglio and broke decidedly in Mr. Trump’s favor, aides said.

After leading in polls in many battleground states, Mrs. Clinton told the donors on Saturday, “we dropped, and we had to keep really pushing to regain our advantage, which going into last weekend we had.”

“We were once again up in all but two of the battleground states, and we were up considerably in some that we ended up losing,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And we were feeling like we had to put it back together.”

I wonder if she understands what was going on. It’s possible, but no one can say it so we will never know, unless she puts her suspicions into an email.

Michael Moore’s idiot’s agenda

The left is filled with malice against everyone, both on their own side and on the other, where a couple of days ago everything was perfectly lined up. Michael Moore, a perfect representation of the Left and what it stands for, has it figured out. This is his Morning After To-Do List which is followed below by his Day Two list. I am not sure there is anything in either that actually mentions an action that might be taken to improve anyone’s lives, except the very last one, and that is related to Flint Michigan which has had the named problem during all the years of the Obama administration. Why doesn’t he look for change that would improve something, anything? Because he and the rest of them are too stupid and this would require actual thought. But more important, because their only interest is in power and wealth for themselves. He and the Clintons are two of a kind, in politics for what it will bring to them. Trump, on the other hand, already has wealth and power and is in it largely because he wishes to improve the lives of others. His own life is now infinitely more restricted than it had previously been. For all the power he will now have, it will come at a cost to his own ability to lead a life on his own away from others. Anyway, here are the first of Moore’s two lists of things to do.

1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin.

4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!”

Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane, 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want.

You live in a country where a majority of citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).

Let’s try to get this all done by noon today.

Now there is his Day Two List:

1. Must quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s. I will do my part to help lead this as I’m sure many others (Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, MoveOn, the hip-hop community, DFA, etc.) will, too. The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people who, as with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, don’t tolerate b.s. and are relentless in their resistance to authority. They have no interest in compromising with racists and misogynists.

2. Prepare to impeach Trump. Just as the Republicans were already planning to do with President Hillary from Day One, we must organize the apparatus that will bring charges against him when he violates his oath and breaks the law — and then we must remove him from office.

3. Must commit right now to a vigorous fight (including civil disobedience, if necessary) which will block any and all Donald Trump Supreme Court nominees who do not meet our approval. We demand the Democrats in the Senate aggressively filibuster any nominees who support Citizens United or who oppose the rights of women, immigrants and the poor. This is non-negotiable.

4. Demand the DNC apologize to Bernie Sanders for trying to fix the primaries against him, for spinning the press to ignore his historic campaign, for giving Clinton the questions in advance at the Flint debate, for its latent ageism and anti-Semism in trying to turn voters against him because of his age or religious beliefs, and for its anti-democracy system of “superdelegates” who are elected by no one. We all know now had Bernie been given a fair shot, he probably would have been the nominee and he — as the true outsider and “change” candidate –would have inspired and fired up the base and soundly defeated Donald Trump. If no apology is soon forthcoming from the DNC, that’s ok — when we take over the Democratic Party (see yesterday’s To-Do List, #1), we will issue the apology in person.

5. Demand that President Obama establish a Special Prosecutor to investigate who and what was behind FBI Director James Comey’s illegal interference into the Presidential election 11 days before the vote was held.

6. Begin a national push while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind for a constitutional amendment to fix our broken electoral system: 1. Eliminate the Electoral College — popular vote only. 2. Paper ballots only — no electronic voting. 3. Election Day must be made a holiday for all — or held on a weekend so more people vote. 4. All citizens, regardless of any run-ins with the criminal “justice” system, must have the right to vote. (In swing states like Florida and Virginia, 30-40% of all Black men are prohibited by law from voting.)

7. Convince President Obama to immediately do what he should have done a year ago: Send in the Army Corps of Engineers to Flint to dig up and replace all the poisoned pipes. NOTHING HAS CHANGED; the water in Flint is still unusable.

Will try to get these done by sundown. More To-Do tomorrow…

He should run for president he is so full of ideas. Nothing that would actually benefit anyone, but that is not what the left is about.