Monthly Archives: May 2017

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Posted: May 27, 2017 12:01 AM

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking." -- Jacques Cousteau

Facts dont care about your feelings. Ben Shapiro

Like a crack addict who cant seem to think about anything other than his next fix, liberals cant seem to think about anything but spewing their emotions at the world. They may be reflexively saying something that makes them feel compassionate, outraged, sensitive or angry, but liberals usually seem to be caught in the grip of some strong emotion.

Of course, it goes without saying that emotion unmoored from logic produces a lot of warped views, but it also mires a person in short term thinking.if you could even call it that. Because when youre emotional, most of the time youre not thinking; youre reacting based on your feels. This is where a lot of liberals live 24 x 7 and so, its not shocking that their behavior is so thoughtless.

Take rock star Katy Perrys reaction to the Manchester bombing, "No barriers, no borders, we all just need to coexist. So, what does co-existing with radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill you mean? Is Katy Perry going to invite ISIS terrorists from Syria to bomb her next concert?

Can you imagine how bizarre the typical liberal reaction to terrorism must seem to the terrorists?

Terrorist: We want to kill you in the name of Allah because were good Muslims!

Liberal: No, youre not. Thats not what you believe.

Terrorist: Yes, it is.

Liberal: No, noyoure oppressed and probably upset about global warming.

Terrorist: Wait, what?

Liberal: Lets all co-exist!

Terrorist: How did you miss the entire, We want to kill you in the name of Allah thing? What is wrong with you?

Then there are the Trump Administration leaks. Undoubtedly, some of the leaks inside the Trump Administration are coming from his staff, but others appear to be coming from the deep state. In other words, Democratic holdovers in the government bureaucracy are leaking information to the press in order to attempt to sabotage a rival political party. Obviously, these leakers are so consumed with their hatred for Trump that they feel politically motivated leaks are justifiable. Except whats going to almost inevitably happen once a Democrat gets back into office? Republicans in the deep state are now going to leak things in an attempt to embarrass him.

Liberals are so overwrought with emotion that they dont get the idea that theyre setting precedents when they do these sort of things. Its like the shock and surprise they experienced when they used the nuclear option to keep Republicans from blocking Barack Obamas cabinet appointments, only to find that it also meant they couldnt stop Trumps cabinet appointments. Wait, you mean that applies to liberals, too? Yes, and those leaks? The next Democrat President is likely to be undermined in exactly the same way.

Look at the liberal threats and violence at universities that have become a regular occurrence. At worst, liberals riot when people they disagree with speak on college campuses and at best, they make threats and do everything they can to rob conservative speakers of their First Amendment rights. Liberals are so supportive of this kind of thing that the police in liberal cities or on liberal campuses refuse to stop the rioting or disruptions.

In other words, conservatives no longer get the same protection from the police. Even illegal aliens are treated better by the police on campuses controlled by liberals. So, when thats the case, is anyone surprised to see that someone like Based Stick Man was warmly received by conservatives for breaking a stick over a violent ANTIFA protestors head? It wouldnt surprise me if we start seeing armed gangs of conservatives policing marches to protect other people on the Right from armed gangs of liberals since the Left has convinced the police not to do it. This is the world liberals are creating with their short term thinking: one where both sides of the political argument will have armed factions at political rallies. How healthy does that sound for the country?

Liberals do the same thing on the deficit. Supporting that program makes me feel good! Spend somebody elses money on it and I dont like thinking about the debt; so just ignore that.

They did it with Obamacare. They lied about the bill, assumed no one would recognize they were misled to when the bill became law and cared nothing about creating an expensive new entitlement program when the country is drowning in debt.

They get upset that Trump actually told NATO that if were going to be in a military alliance, then the nations involved will have to spend enough on their militaries so that they field an effective military force. How dare Trump try to make NATO useful again!

Theyre so blinded by their emotions that theyll even rank Hillary Clinton as the 6th most beautiful woman on the planet. Seriously.

It is impossible to competently govern a nation based on pure emotion and short term thinking. Additionally as a practical matter, its impossible to cut a deal with people whose entire rationale for doing things is, A celebrity told me what I should believe and now I have to do it or I heard a sad story yesterday; so everything has changed. At some point, liberals have to engage in some long term thinking that goes beyond, As long as were in charge, everything we do is okay, or our country is going to get dragged down the tubes along with them.

Obama-Appointed Federal Judge Tosses Benghazi Families'Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton

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How Liberal Short-Term Thinking Is Destroying America - Townhall

Trumps negative media coverage is being driven not by Democrats but by law-enforcement sources and pissed-off Republicans.

CNN analysts discuss President Donald Trumps comments on the necessity for the US Civil War. (Screengrab / CNN)

Last week, when CNN reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had left a couple of meetings with Russian officials off his application for a security clearance, Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) falsely claimed that the broadcaster had later retracted the story. In a Facebook post, Duncan, who is not known for having the keenest intellect on Capitol Hill, wrote, The media was never this critical to President Obama, the recent Harvard study proves that the media has applied a completely different standard to President Trump.

Duncan, like many on the right, sees a recent study of the mainstream coverage of Trumps first 100 days in office released by Harvards Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy as solid proof that the media treat Trump unfairly. It looked at news reports in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, and three European news outlets, and found that 80 percent of Trumps coverage by those outlets was negativesignificantly higher than the shares for Barack Obama (41 percent negative), George W. Bush (57 percent), and Bill Clinton (60 percent) at this point in their presidencies. Conservative publications greeted the report with headlines like Harvard Study Confirms Media Bias Against Trump and Harvard Report: There Is A Huge Anti-Trump Bias In Corporate Media.

The obvious response is that the vast majority of stories about famine, natural disasters, and genital warts are negative, and that doesnt imply a bias on the part of those writing them. Trumps young presidency has been a train wreck, his White House has been mired in largely self-inflicted scandals, and his legislative agenda has so far gotten nowhere in Congress. And Trump, unlike his predecessors, has a penchant for impulsively tweeting dubious claims and inflammatory nonsense. The study also found that the sheer volume of Trump coveragehe was the subject of four of every 10 news stories in the outlets studieddwarfs that of previous administrations.

But thats not the real story. The real story is that Trumps negative coverage is being driven not by liberals or Democrats but by law-enforcement sources and pissed-off Republicans.

Its important to understand the studys methodology. According to its author, Harvard scholar Thomas Patterson, Tone is judged from the perspective of the actor, the actor being, in this case, Donald Trump. A story is coded as negative when the actor is criticized directlyfor example when Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told a reporter, Eleven weeks into his administration, we have seen nothing from President Trump on infrastructure, on trade, or on any other serious job-creating initiativeor when an event, trend, or development reflects unfavorably on the actor. So negative stories are either stories that quote someone griping about Trump, or stories about developments that cast a negative light on his performance.

And heres a key point, as it relates to that first category: Republican voices, wrote Patterson, accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency, compared to only 6 percent for Democrats and 3 percent for those involved in anti-Trump protests. So the coverage has not featured a bunch of liberals complaining about TrumpDemocrats and those engaged with the anti-Trump resistance were few and far between. The fact that Trump has received more negative coverage than his predecessor is hardly surprising, the report says. The early days of his presidency have been marked by far more missteps and miss-hits, often self-inflicted, than any presidency in memory, perhaps ever.

Stories about events that reflect poorly on the White House have in large part been driven by leaks (a fact that infuriates Trump and his supporters). We cant know the ideological breakdown of the people speaking to reporters anonymously, but we do know that Trumps own staffpeople close to himhave been the source of a number of negative stories, and we know, thanks to White House leaks, that Trumps staff often leaks information to the press because, as the very conservative Erick Erickson reported, sometimes the president will not take advice. Sometimes the president treats suggestions as criticism. More often than not, the president is vastly more interested in what the media says about him than what his advisers in his employ say to him. According to Erickson, who personally knows an ardent Trump supporter in Trumps orbit who was the source of one such leak, White House staff have ample incentive to leak to the press when they believe the president needs to pay attention or be admonished. Just think for a moment how often youve read a story in which an anonymous source criticizing the president is identified as a current or former supporter or adviser or donor.

THE STAKES ARE HIGHER NOW THAN EVER. GET THE NATION IN YOUR INBOX.

Law-enforcement and intelligence agencies have been the other big source of leaks. Theyre not all right-wingers, of course, and their motives for leaking include, depending on how you look at it, either revenge for Trumps many assaults on the intelligence community, or a principled defense of institutions they see as vital to our national security. Neither of those things represents ideological bias.

One might certainly argue that many of the Republicans who dominate the public discourse about Trump were hostile towards his presidency from the beginning. Prominent #NeverTrump conservatives like Ana Navarro, Stuart Stevens, David Frum are easy to find on cable TV and social media. But when a reporter doing her best to cover the president fairly sees similar criticisms coming from both the left and the right, when her story reflects those views, its not a matter of bias. Thats how he said-she said journalism, for all its obvious flaws, has always worked.

Ironically, the Shorenstein study did find significant bias at one media outlet: Fox News was a lone outlier in that almost half of its Trump coverage was positive. Looking back at 100 days marked by chaos and failure, its hard to imagine what a truly fair and balanced news outlet possibly could have covered in order to run so many positive segments.

Read more:

Conservatives Complain That Republicans Have a Liberal Bias ... - The Nation.

NewsBusters (blog)

The Liberal Media and the Art of High-Tech Lynchings NewsBusters (blog) On a scale of political insults to the liberal media that ranges from 1 to 10 with 1 being least offensive to a most insulting 10, the Thomas nomination was 110. So what to do? Suddenly America was presented - thanks to anonymous white staffers for ...

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The Liberal Media and the Art of High-Tech Lynchings - NewsBusters (blog)

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Norberto Arroyo Jr. rides Stormy Liberal to victory in the Daytona on Saturday.

ARCADIA, Calif. Stormy Liberal is the king of the hill.

For the fourth straight time this year, Stormy Liberal on Saturday won a downhill turf sprint stakes race at Santa Anita, but his victory in the $147,000 Daytona was the most significant to date, as it was his first graded stakes win, with the Daytona being a Grade 3 event.

The Daytona was reduced to four horses by the scratches of Eddie Haskell on Friday and then Roy H earlier Saturday; as a result, there was no show wagering. Stormy Liberal ($3), the 1-2 favorite, pressed the pace outside Blackjackcat and Ambitious Brew, then held a safe margin over Ambitious Brew the length of the stretch after Blackjackcat retreated. He won by a neck, with Ambitious Brew second by 1 1/2 lengths over Blackjackcat. Home Run Kitten trailed.

Stormy Liberal was timed in 1:12.43 for about 6 1/2 furlongs down the hill. Norberto Arroyo Jr. was aboard, as he had been for victories earlier this meet in the Clockers Corner, Joe Hernandez, and Siren Lure.

Hes the best claim Ive ever made, said trainer Peter Miller, who claimed Stormy Liberal on behalf of Gary Hartunians Rockingham Ranch in October after the horse was recommended to him by David Lanzman, a horse owner who is friends with both Miller and Hartunian.

He ran a 100 Beyer the day we got him, so I dont know if hes gotten better or stayed the same, Miller said. Hes maintained his form. We got lucky. We caught someone stealing.

Stormy Liberal was claimed when returning from a six-month layoff. He won that day, then was second in a pair of races for Miller before embarking on his current win streak.

Stormy Liberal, 5, is a gelding by Stormy Atlantic. He has now won seven times in 20 starts, and is 7 for 12 coming down the hill. He earned $90,000 on Saturday to bring his career earnings to $432,070, but he has won $232,200 this year alone, quite the return on investment for a $40,000 claim.

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Stormy Liberal notches first graded stakes triumph - Daily Racing Form

By Paul Kane, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON Democrats received a strong reminder from Montana voters that it takes more than just liberal outrage against President Donald Trump and the GOP agenda to win seats that lean toward Republicans.

It takes serious candidates and a policy agenda of their own.

Their nominee, Rob Quist, hailed by liberal activists as a cowboy poet, delivered what most observers in Washington felt was an average performance in a race that was closely watched even before the Republican nominee was charged with assaulting a reporter on the eve of Thursdays special election.

Some Democrats have responded to Trumps victory, which they believe resulted at least partly from fame derived from his reality-television career, by searching for their own unique candidates. But after receiving just 44 percent of the vote, Quists performance may demonstrate the limitations of quirky, first-time candidates.

The showing also raises the stakes for Democrats in the June 20 runoff election for the race to replace Tom Price, the health secretary whose former House district north of Atlanta is seen as political ground zero this season because of its more competitive nature the other special elections held so far.

There, a 30-year-old neophyte and former congressional staffer, Jon Ossoff, is locked in a dead heat. Now more than ever, some party strategists fear that if he cannot put the race away ahead of June 20, late-breaking voters will not view him as a serious enough alternative in these politically turbulent times.

What Montana showed was the need to field candidates with backgrounds that appeal to voters who have tended to back Republicans in congressional races. Its not necessarily an ideological requirement to be a centrist serious candidates, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., can reside at the edge of the ideological spectrum. But they nearly always need more gravitas than Quist brought from a decades-long career as a guitar player in a popular bluegrass band in the Mountain West.

There are exceptions, of course. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota is one though its worth noting that Franken spent his first eight years in office avoiding the comedy shtick he was known for on Saturday Night Live because he recognized the need to get serious fast.

Of the three special elections, Quist clearly delivered the worst performance, based on a measure crafted by the smart analysts at the Cook Political Report. Democrats received 49 percent in the initial balloting in Prices old district and almost 47 percent in the race in southern Kansas, better than Quists 44 percent.

Moreover, based on recent presidential races, the Kansas nominee performed 12 percentage points better than an average Democrat would have been expected to show, according to Cook. In Georgia, Democrats performed seven percentage points better than an average nominee.

Quist outperformed an average Democrat by just 5 percent. And he lagged woefully when compared with Montanas Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, who won by four points in November against Republican Greg Gianforte the businessman who beat Quist on Thursday despite being charged with assaulting a reporter the night before.

Democrats in Washington saw that as justification for their decision to invest only $500,000 in the race, dismissing Quist as a candidate from backers of Sanders who did not realize he had a hard ceiling around 43 to 45 percent among voters.

DCCC took a smart chance with its investments, refused to waste money on hype, Meredith Kelly, communications director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wrote in a Friday memo.

Because it was a special election, Quist won the nomination at a party convention where the most liberal activists held sway, rather than a broad statewide primary.

The complaints about money are misguided when comparing this race to the Kansas special election. There, Democrats nominated another Sanders acolyte, James Thompson, who ran in a more conservative district than Quist, on a shoestring budget of just $1.4 million. He received nothing close to the $500,000 Quist got from the DCCC.

Yet Thompson got a larger share of the vote than Quist, who raised and spent more than $6 million.

Perhaps if Montana Democrats had found a nominee with Thompsons profile, they would have been better served.

Homeless as a teenager, Thompson enlisted in the Army and used the GI Bill to finance his education, serving as a civil rights lawyer for 13 years before launching his long-shot bid for Congress.

In their early recruiting for the midterms now 17 months away, Democrats have tried to thread this needle. They are tapping into the anti-Trump energy with first-time candidates who can appeal to anti-establishment progressives but also with personal backgrounds that will demonstrate a serious devotion to governance intended to appeal across party lines.

This has produced an early focus on military veterans more closely aligned with Thompsons background.

In the suburbs east of Denver, Jason Crow is a former Army Ranger and local attorney running in a district where Democrats have underperformed year after year. In a similar district outside Philadelphia where Democrats have failed to put together strong challengers, Chrissy Houlahan is an Air Force veteran who helped run a basketball apparel company and worked in the nonprofit sector.

Beyond candidate recruitment lies a deeper question about the partys agenda and whether Democrats need an update on their policy proposals.

Quist aggressively painted Gianforte as someone who would support Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act without ensuring protections for those with preexisting conditions.

Ossoff has been hitting his opponent, Republican Karen Handel, for her efforts to deny funds to Planned Parenthood, while promising to be a problem solver who will work across the aisle to deliver results.

But theres been very little in terms of a specific Democratic agenda should they win the 24 seats needed to take back the House majority next year.

On Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Sanders at an event to endorse his proposal to create a $15 minimum wage, something Sanders touted in his 2016 presidential campaign.

It showed party leaders were drifting toward the Vermont socialists economic views, but it is likely to do little to generate votes come November 2018.

Raising the minimum wage is an issue that always polls off the charts. But Democrats have pushed this issue in three straight elections, and it has done next to nothing for their candidates, because most voters want a lot more than a minimum-wage job.

Democrats might pull off the win in Prices seat, but if they are going to ride a wave all the way to the majority, they probably need more experienced candidates than Ossoff and Quist and with a sharper message than Ossoffs introductory ad a few months ago.

Ill work with anyone to do whats right for our country, he said.

Link:

Montana election proves that liberal outrage isn't enough - The Daily Herald

George Osborne: I have to call it as I see it as editor. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

Theresa May has joined Jeremy Corbyn in offering a retreat from international liberalism and globalisation, which marks a sharp shift in direction from David Camerons administration, former chancellor George Osborne has said.

Osborne contrasted the prime ministers approach with what he called the socially liberal, pro-business and pro-free market values he wants to promote in his new role as editor of the Evening Standard.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4s Political Thinking, the former Conservative MP stood by criticisms of Mays policies on social care and immigration, which have been the subject of stinging headlines and editorials since he took the helm at the Standard.

He denied that he was taking revenge on the woman who sacked him from the cabinet last July, but said he would not pull punches in his coverage of the Tory government.

Osborne declined to say whether Londons evening paper would endorse the Conservatives for the 8 June general election. Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are offering, in very different ways, a retreat from international liberalism and globalisation, said Osborne.

That is quite a development in British politics, and I think there are quite a lot of people who are uncertain whether that is the right development and I want to make sure that the Evening Standard is asking on their behalf questions about that.

Shying away from classing the Standard as part of the Tory press, Osborne said: I am taking a slightly different approach, which is that there are a set of values that the Evening Standard has, which are that we are socially liberal, we are pro-business and pro-free market, and we want Britain to have a big role in the world and those values we then apply to whatever the issues are.

Asked if the Standards attacks on Mays policies were a matter of revenge, he said: No. What the paper is doing is standing up for a set of values that the paper has long espoused and by a happy coincidence are also the values I applied as chancellor.

Osborne made clear he was taking a hands-on approach to setting the Standards tone, though he insisted that headlines which have included the damning Strong and stable? PMs care U-turn turmoil were the result of a team effort.

He stood by the papers description of the Conservative manifestos social care proposals, saying: They were clearly badly thought through, because the prime minister herself decided to rethink them.

Osborne explained its denunciation of Mays pledge to cut net migration below 100,000 as politically rash and economically illiterate, saying: The Evening Standard is saying you have got a promise to reduce immigration so tell us how you are going to do it.

Which section of industry is not going to have the labour it currently needs? Which families are not going to be able to be reunited with members of their families abroad? Which universities are not going to have overseas students?

If the Conservative government can answer those questions, all well and good. If they cant, the Evening Standard is going to go on asking the questions. We will also be as ferocious in asking questions of the Labour party and, indeed, I am not particularly kind about the Liberal Democrats or Ukip.

The Standard will definitely make a recommendation on which way it thinks its readers should vote on 8 June, said Osborne. But asked by presenter Nick Robinson whether it would endorse the Tories, he said: You have got to go on picking up your free copy of the London Evening Standard and you will find out, Nick.

Osborne identified the immigration pledge, alongside the failure to reconstruct Libya, as shortcomings in the record of the Cameron administration. He said he was proud of what the former PMs team had achieved but would not spend his time as editor trying to defend its record to the hilt.

He said: I have to call it as I see it as editor. Of course everyone knows I was a Conservative MP for 16 years and I was a member of the Conservative cabinet and I know many of the people in the Conservative government, but it is also my responsibility as the editor to interpret what is going on in politics for my readers. Im not pulling punches, because I would be doing my readers a disservice.

Asked if he was missing politics after stepping down from the Commons, Osborne said: Actually, Im not missing it at all. Im really enjoying covering the campaign as an editor. Its a very different perspective and its good fun.

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May and Corbyn offer 'retreat from international liberalism' says Osborne - The Guardian