Friday, November 11, 2016

America, You WILL F**king Be Ruled By Clintons!!!

Sometimes you just have to wonder...

In power for 8 years.  Hang around while out of power for 8 years.  Hang around, kinda in power, for another eight years.  Seek to be in power again for, at least, another 8 years.  Get embarrassingly smacked down by improbable, clownish opponent.

What do you do next?  Try to push your way into power anew.

@Clintons

Iowahawk...what say you?

Thursday, November 10, 2016

To Progressive Whiners

Dear Progressive Whiners,

Please be assured that in the America that emerges in the wake of our most recent election, nobody will  deport, jail, inhibit, harass, waylay, Shangai, relegate, exile, oppress, persecute, torture, or subjugate you in any way.

You will however be mocked, ridiculed, caricatured, satired, gibed, taunted and generally lampooned should you not cease to be such ridiculous f**king weenies, pantywaists, babies, chickens, milquetoasts, fraidy-cats, pansies, wusses, milksops and all-around intestinal weaklings.

We have serious problems and we need serious people to help solve them.  No Pajama Boys Need Apply.

Regards,
DB

Pat Caddell Was Right

Carter-era pollster Pat Caddell put his finger on the mood of the citizenry several years ago...he called it "pre-revolutionary." 

As in ripe and ready for revolt.

We tend not to do things like storm the Bastille or break out the guillotine here in the good ole USofA.  We've developed and taking a liking to a more civilized ways to chop heads of our leaders (for which many of our leaders should be thankful), via the ballot box.

I'd say Caddell was spot on.

Earnest, Sincere, Dour William Galston Is Earnestly and Dourly...Wrong

Let's pile on the media some more...it's fun.

Despite the perfunctory caveat that he went to press before we knew the outcome of the election, William Galston pens a Year 1 road map for our next POTUS, and embarassingly sees HRC as a foregone conclusion.

"Mrs. Clinton must reach out..."

"So she should challenge the bipartisan congressional leadership..."

"She should avoid unforced errors that heighten partisanship.."

"She should make it clear that she intends to determine the composition of her own administration..."

"In shaping her first-year agenda, Mrs. Clinton cannot possibly..."

"This does not mean that Mrs. Clinton will (or should) simply repropose the bill..."

"Finally, Mrs. Clinton should pledge to avoid the language of demonization..."
Wow.  That's alot of stuff...and alot of assumption, alot of arrogant, cluelessly unknowing assumption.

Final tidbit...
"Instead, she should be forthright with the Republican leadership: Their failure to take their own party chairman’s advice to address this issue after Mitt Romney’s woeful performance among Latino voters set the stage for Donald Trump’s insurgency—and for his defeat."
Ouch.

Job Candidate...

Any of you corporations looking to hire?  Solid candidate right here...conscientious, hard-working, level-headed, presentable, incisive, and a joy to be around in the workplace.

Apropos

HAH!  I LOVE it!

As a former Marketing maven, having taken all the de rigeur classes to learn the fine voodoo art of marketing, I've heard this exact case study joke many times. 

Yeah, first order of business is make sure the dogs like the food...

These Things Must Be True, If You Believe Lefties

Here are some of the things that must be true for Democrats'  view of the election to be accurate:

- Tolerant and enlightened citizens of Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan turned into raving sexists in the span of four years;

- 42% of women hate women and wish to establish, essentially, an anti-woman police state (oh, and all of this was led and orchestrated by a woman);

- 30% of Latino voters voted to have themselves violently expelled from the country

- Minorities feared the imminent Trumpian Police State so much that they did two things: 1) stayed home, resigned to their fate, and 2) those that did show, marginally (2% for blacks, 10% for Hispanics) moved towards Trump.




The Krugman Buy Signal Is Back

The Krugman Buy Signal has a rich and storied history.  Here was yours truly talking about it 10 years ago.

Well, Krugman has out-done his previous awful market calls with a post-Trump flub.  The Powerline guys has the gory details...

Identity Politics Model Is Not Sustainable

You've heard of the "non-apology apology"? 

Well, if this WSJ article is to be believed (and perhaps not because it is very early days) we can coin some new terms, like the "tired and stale fresh approach" or something to that effect.

The article explores some thoughts on how the Democrats - now nearly completely eviscerated except for their most impenetrable coastal redoubts - can reboot.  Lots of happy talk about being more inclusive, which is code for more identity politics.  Not one single inkling that maybe they should stop calling people racist or stop calling men sexist or stop calling everybody a homophobe.

This is not a problem hidden deep in the weeds of our politics.  Let's harken back to one of Dan Henninger's best columns, "The New Stupid Party".  Read both but here's the upshot
When you've so thoroughly alienated entire swaths of the American electorate, it doesn't matter if you mobilize a small army of Sandra Flukes and the ObamaPhone Underclass, you're going to lose - there a lot of white guys, married gals and Southerners out there.
Well, the ObamaPhone Underclass stayed home and all those white people in - most notably Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan and North Carolina - who've been told they're racist these last eight years well...you know the story.

Too early to say whether the Democrats have learned nothing.  It bears watching, but the Identity Politics Model where everything runs on racial or gender grievance is breaking down, perhaps never to work again.  It is not sustainable to use a favorite word of the left.

Lefty Freakout Is Utterly Delish

I bathe in your tears Dana Milbank.  And likely so do roughly 59,690,000 others.

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Expect a Trump Presidency to Function Pretty Well. Why? Incentives.

Despite all the hyperventilating and caterwauling, life has to go on and it might be helpful to start to understand what a Trump presidency might look like.  In broad terms, there are two models that are likeliest to emerge.

The first is that President Trump will be every bit the person that candidate Trump was, with policy goals and leadership efforts all over the spectrum pursued incoherently and articulated to the nation poorly, even offensively.  Call this the "Reality TV" model.

The second model is, now having secured office and slayed the metaphorical beast, gathering to his administration all manner of experts and advisors that can fashion reasonable and promising policies and help Trump articulate them to the country and steward them through Congress and into law.  This is what most Presidents do or seek to do.  I'm not sure why Trump would be any different, but it appears that many expect him to be an outlier in this respect.  Anyway, call this the "Peter Thiel" model.

I think the Reality TV model is actually unlikely.  Not impossible, just unlikely.  The Peter Thiel model is the most natural outcome, generally and particularly for a person like Trump.  Trump will want to be a success and he's smart enough to know that he needs the best team.  Here is a small example.  And, cynically, the GOP will attempt to bear hug him in order to get their own way as well as contain Trump's potential for recklessness. Finally, there are many people who having staked their reputations on Trump, now have a big incentive to make the Trump administration successful - their reputations are on the line a second time.

Look to see familiar, even reputable, people start to fill up Trump's administration, i.e. Giuliani, Sessions, maybe even Thiel.  There will the hacks and stooges, but all administrations have those (and the left needs to be honest with themselves here too, Obama had legions of hacks serving him), but Trump will benefit from the overarching incentive structure that he and his surrogates will operate under.

In addition, of course, you can be sure that media scrutiny of the Trump administration will be at its maximum and those self-styled guardians of our democracy will be ready to pounce viciously.  As Glenn Reynolds has been fond of saying, if you want a media that ruthlessly holds our leaders accountable, elect a Republican.  You can be absolutely sure that no perfidy or slip-ups get by them if that's the case, and now it's the case.


Post-Mortem Part 1

Well, I am as shocked as anybody.  Last night when I went to the NY Times's coverage and saw the probability meter over 80% and then 90% for Trump, I thought I had had too much wine.


Anyhew...herewith is a more cold-blooded analysis of this bloody crazy election.

For Democrats who are reeling, shocked and bewildered, perhaps it is best to start with the basics and layer on the nuance as we go, for it is the nuance that will cut the deepest.

1)  Hillary Was an Awful Candidate - You know it, we all know it.  The first Clinton era was successful by many measures but it was accompanied by a shocking level of tawdriness and slime. People might have forgotten but for the fact that the Clintons did not fade into history but kept feeding at the trough and playing bare-knuckles politics that fed their ambitions at all costs over the span of nearly two decades out of power.  Wikileaks served to remind the nation of 1) that tawdriness, and 2) the raw personal ambition that drives the Clintons.  Was any of this unseemliness able to be hidden under even a modicum of personal flair?  No, not even close, HRC is one of the worst retail politicians of modern times.  Why did the Dems overlook these basic flaws?  I'm not sure that they did.  The improbable success of Bernie Sanders suggest that primary voters felt in their hearts that HRC was a poor candidate.  In the end though, the modern Democratic party is driven by a false god, partly addressed in 3 below.

2)  Obama Bares Much of the Blame - The political left has yet to come to terms with several aspects of the Obama presidency.  First, the political arrogance emanating from Obama and his administration over eight years was, again, astonishing and the left has failed to see it for what it is, dismissing it as bias as they do almost all criticism.  Second, the left fails to see Obama in proper context as, upon election, the neophyte that he was.  Despite raw political talent Obama's resume was appallingly thin.  The nation was happy to overlook it in favor of his charisma and a desperate desire to elect a black President.  In a sense, we all knew that Obama was a gamble, even if we were willing to take it.  The precedent, however, was set that political gambles are more acceptable, even desirable.  Electing a rank neophyte in Obama, regardless how charismatic, opens the door to the next neophyte.  Basically, after Obama the bar was set low.  Finally, the Left has not even begun to entertain an honest evaluation of the tangible results of Obama's policies, mired in a hero-worship that prevents them from admitting that many (most?  all?) of Obama's policies are not successes.  Not having the capacity to be honest with themselves, the electorate felt the need to deliver to the Left the message in the most shocking way possible.

Lefties are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the most talented politician of the era, who was elevated on an air of celebrity, cult-like fawning and the slickest of marketing, presided over the loss of the House in 2010, then the Senate in 2014, numerous state legislatures and governorships in 2014, and topped it off by opening the way for Trump.  The destruction of Democratic political power in the Obama era has been unprecedented and complete, and yet I feel he will always be looked upon as one of the greatest figures the political left has ever seen. When do the scales fall from the Left's eyes?  I don't know.

3) Identity Politics Has Reached Its Endpoint - Racial, gender and ethnic crusading leads down two destructive paths.  First, as I've written before, the knee-jerk accusations of racism, sexism and whatnot when decent people bring legitimate and reasonable notions to the public square ultimately create backlash.  When Mitt Romney is painted as the second-coming of Hitler and any and all policy opposition is always and everywhere evil, people either disengage or come to see public discourse as a bloodsport, so they choose candidates who play nasty.  Non-stop shaming as bigots, homophobes and every form of maliciousness under the sun has created among otherwise normal, decent people a desire to hit back, often with blunt instruments.  Second, obsessiveness of identity categories dulls decision-making.  See above about the Left abandoning any effort to see Obama through a clear lens.  The mistake was repeated with Hillary.  In the name of what most people call "window dressing" (and Dems call making history) Dems were willing to cover and condone a deeply flawed and arguably reprehensible individual in a mad drive to tick a box at the expense of genuine leadership for the benefit of the country. 

There are about a thousand ways to unpack the deeper sociological and political meaning of the 2016 election, but this is a start.

Monday, November 07, 2016

My Take From 2012 Revisited

Here is what I wrote in the runup to the 2012 election:
Many Americans are still spitting mad at the MSM/EJM for their despicable performance in the 2008 campaign, a performance which continues today, and the thicker they lay it on, the more they slobber over Obama, the more grossed out it will make regular Americans and the more it will galvanize an anti-Obama coalition. The media will conduct Act II of its slobbering love affair from a vastly diminshed position in American society, with vastly reduced influence, this time around.
I got the 2012 call wrong, but this analysis holds up pretty well.  Actually, I think this has gotten MORE correct.  After four additional years of covering for Obama's bumbling and renewing the slobbering subservience to the Dems in the form of the Hillary project, Americans are that much more disgusted.  Thus the willingness to lift a man such as Trump to within a razor-thin margin of the White House a day before election day.

...and there was also this...
But now, after the appalling behavior of the elitist jerkoff media (I have recently determined that "MSM" does not accurately convey the perfidy, arrogance and willfull negligence of our major news sources, so I coined a new term

Enthusiasm Gap...Kinda

Me and Baseball Tyke #2 made the trip back from Richmond, VA to North Cackalacky on a beautiful fall day yesterday, Sunday.  Granted it was that part of the state where I would have expected a skewed result - western outskirts of Richmond southwest down into central NC - but we saw numerous large, prominent Trump/Pence signs all along the road.  And not a single Clinton/Kaine sign, not even a measly bumper sticker on a beat up Subaru driven by an aging hippie living down there in NASCAR country (Martinsville, Rockingham).  Not a one.

Granted, if we were up in Northern Virginia, it would be reversed, but the enthusiasm gap was palpable.  It might not matter for the election though, red state Virginia is smaller than blue state Virginia.  I report you decide.

What would be interesting is to see lopsided or unexpected signs of an enthusiasm gap in swing states or traditionally blue states.  Like this.

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

More...

Obama's Anti-Midas Touch Hard at Work for Trump

As I have noted before, you can almost hear the "cha-ching" of a cash register ringing up a sale as new Trump voters are created by the utterance of inanities and/or insults from the left.

Today's creation of a handful of more Trump voters comes from Lightworker Boy himself.  You are a sexist pig and you need to get over it and vote for Hillary.  If you have personal views about integrity and honesty that might give you pause, no matter, you are a sexist pig.  That's the end of it, pig.

Cha-ching.

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

So Bubba Trashes OCare...Obama Stands by Comey...Whoops

Unlikely a prime motivating factor, but certainly not a zero-motivating factor, of why Obama is not feeding the Comey Rage frothing up out of media circles...is a little payback.

Remember just a few short weeks ago, Bubba was trashing ObamaCare - signaling to Dems across the land that it was OK now to trash Lightworker Boy's last thin hope of a legacy.  I bet King Obama I didn't like it much.  So, yeah, I bet O thinks Comey's just ducky.

At this rate, expect Bubba to come out swinging at Obama other big stupid "win"...the Joint Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal or the worst thing ever negotiated by anybody.

You Had to Ask Mr. Vodkapundit, Didn't You?

In re ObamaCare, Stephen Green asks, "Can individuals be mandated to buy a product no one is selling?"

The answer, sadly but predictably with the idjits who run the government, is YES
 The US Environmental Protection Agency lowered the amount of cellulosic ethanol required in 2013 to the amount actually produced, relieving refiners and importers of the need to buy credits to cover shortfalls against the earlier mandate.
At least though, if you complain enough that you can't buy what isn't for sale to meet a government mandate, there is a chance that the government will cut you a break.  So there's that.