Trump Takes The Lead

While Hillary Clinton coughed her way through a speech in Cleveland yesterday, Donald Trump was taking the lead in the new poll from - get ready for it - CNN.

Yes, friends, the Clinton News Network, which has blatantly made itself nothing more than the propaganda arm for the Clinton campaign for the last year and a half, is no longer able to dummy  up a poll that could credibly give their gal the lead and has finally given up that ghost.  Heads must literally be spinning right now in their morning meeting to review the talking points the Clinton campaign has fed them overnight, as they desperately attempt to find some way to report this latest CNN/ORC poll as positive news for Hillary.

But wait, it gets better.  Trump also took the lead over the weekend in - are you sitting down? - the REUTERS/IPSOS tracking poll.

That is not a typo.

Yes, the Reuters/Ipsos poll, about which I wrote extensively in July, as its authors scrambled to revise their already heavily biased sampling method to make it even more friendly to The Most Corrupt Woman in America, now has Trump holding a 1 point lead.  I suppose we should expect an announcement from Reuters soon that it will, from this point forward, only poll Democrats in order to ensure Hillary keeps her "lead" over her execrable opponent.

Speaking of Trump, let's all remember that it was barely a month ago that everyone in the DC/NYC Establishment Axis of Propaganda was declaring the New York businessman to be officially dead in this race.  It was too late, they said, and Hillary's lead at that point was just too overwhelming for him to be able to make a comeback.

A few weeks later, here we are.  Trump leads not only in the CNN/ORC and Reuters/Ipsos polls, he also leads in the LA Times poll and the Rasmussen survey.

Of course, the Establishment people have made this same mistake of declaring Trump officially "dead" at dozens of points over the last 14 months.  One can only wonder how many more times they will make this same clownish mistake before finally learning what is really going on in the electorate this cycle.

Ok, the truth is that these people are so out of touch with real America, so solidly captive in their little insular bubble of stupidity and ignorance that they are utterly incapable of comprehending how ordinary Americans actually think.

The only good news for them here is that it is they, and not Trump, who are running out of time in this campaign.  So they can only be utterly, completely, laughably wrong a few more times before it's all over.

"Third-World Style Corruption"

Last night, Donald Trump, citing a new report by AP on Hillary Clinton's utter corruption of the State Department, criticized his opponent for engaging in "third world style corruption".

That's a great line, because that's exactly what it is.

For those who actually depend on the fake "news media" for their "news", and thus have not heard anything about this latest Clinton scandal, the AP took a look at Hillary's meeting logs while serving as SecState and determined that fully 55% of the non-government employee meetings she took while in that office were conducted with people who had either already given gobs of bucks to the Clinton Slush Fund, er, "Foundation", or who gave gobs of bucks following the meeting.  The AP then went on to document examples of favors the GodMother did for these folks after the money flowed into her crime family slush fund.

That's exactly how business is conducted in banana republics, i.e., third world countries.  It's a disgrace to the office, an utter and complete betrayal of the public trust, an abuse of power so disgusting than in any other presidential administration in American history it would have landed the perpetrator - that being the GodMother - in prison.

But this is the administration of Barack Obama, a man who views banana republic dictators as role models.  So not only did Ms. Clinton skate while abusing her office, she ultimately became free to rig the nominating process of her party and land the role as its presidential nominee.

Someday, some enterprising investigative reporter will rummage through Mr. Obama's financial transactions, looking for funds that might have been laundered through the Clinton crime family slush fund.  After all, this is a man who has never held a decent paying job in his entire life, and yet is somehow planning to retire to a DC-adjacent neighborhood filled with $10 million homes.  Where did all that money come from? 

An actually functional news media would be clamoring to find out the answer to that question.  Just as a functional Justice Department would have already put Hillary Clinton behind bars.

Instead, we face the prospect of this Most Corrupt Woman in America, who turned herself into a $300 millionaire by turning the State Department into a bribery factory now planning to turn herself into a billionaire by doing the same thing at the White House.

Third world style corruption, indeed.

Trump Taxes and Hillary Sickness

The Donald continues to take frequent criticism from Hillary and her Lapdog Legion in the fake national news media for refusing to release his tax returns.  This is to be expected - it has become an extremely stupid tradition for all candidates for high political office to make their tax returns public over the last 30 years or so.

Presumably, this gives the press and the public a chance to obtain assurance that the candidate is on the up and up.  In practice, however, only GOP candidates' returns are subject to scrutiny by the fake media lapdogs, who generally try to make a cottage industry out of breaking a steady stream of fake and semi-fake stories about them. So Trump has no reason to comply with this tradition, one of so many such self-defeating traditions GOP candidates stupidly subject themselves to every four years.

However, given the growing controversy related to Hillary's obvious health issues, Trump does have one angle to play here that could give him an advantage:  Offer to release his tax returns if Ms. Clinton agrees to release her medical records.

He should make this his answer every time the question is asked from now through November 8.  Doesn't have to be mean about it, doesn't have to expand at all on it unless the reporter follows up with more questions, doesn't have to engage in any nick-naming like "sick and frail Hillary".  Just make the offer, each and every time the question is asked. 

This would be very, very powerful persuasion.  The result would either be a hasty cessation of any media questioning on the subject, or a growing public demand for Hillary's medical records, as more and more people began to focus on her obvious frailty and frequent seizures and uncontrolled coughing fits.

Trump has made  a habit during this campaign of breaking these traditions to which past GOP candidates have stupidly complied, and using them to his advantage.  This is too "yuge" an opportunity to pass up.

Stay tuned.

Pat Caddell Gets it Right on the Fake News Media

“This is the crisis of democracy – the mainstream media, which is in the tank, in the most violent way, against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton, that I have ever seen in the 45 years that I have been at the top of presidential politics.  And it is terrifying. It’s not what they’re telling us, it’s what they’re omitting to tell us...  It is what they are omitting, the facts that they will not tell the American people...All of the media believes the American people are yokels, and that they are fools, and they’re there to be manipulated, so that they – the press, the better people – can set the tone.”  - Longtime Democratic Pollster Pat Caddell

I've long held a lot of respect for Pat Caddell, although I don't agree much with his political viewpoints.  But he has long been one of the handful of TV show talking heads on either side of this country's gaping political divide who doesn't just parrot a handful of focus-grouped talking points when he makes an appearance or gives an interview.

In this week's interview with Breitbart News, quoted in part above, he nails the main reason why the American form of democracy today stands in deep peril:  The intentional abandonment of any form of responsible journalism by our national news media.

As Caddell points out, the national "mainstream" news media - CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. - have always been heavily biased towards the Democrats, going back to the literal birth of television.  The reason for this is no great mystery, as dozens of polls conducted since the 1960s have consistently shown well over 90% of reporters and editors self-identifying as "liberal" or "Democrat".  So the inherent bias in these people's collective world view has always colored what they report, and there was no reason to expect this election cycle's coverage to be any different.

But before this election cycle, there had always in the past been at least some pretense of objectivity claimed by these major media outlets, some assurance given to the public that these "professionals" truly do try to report things as they see them, and do not try to influence the election unfairly.

As Caddell points out, that pretense no longer exists.  Each and every one of the media outlets mentioned above - and more - are fully in the tank for the single most corrupted person to ever seek this nation's highest office, and are darn proud of it. 

I won't try to catalogue examples - they are too numerous and blatantly obvious to try to fit into this space in less than a novel-length piece.

The point here is this: the brilliant men who founded this country knew that the role of an independent press was critical to the maintenance of American democracy.  They believed this so strongly that they accorded protection to this segment of society in the very first amendment contained in the Bill of Rights.

They felt it was critical that holders of high office suffer the public shaming of exposure by a free and independent news media whenever they abused their powers.  This aspect of our society has been completely lost, so dramatically that we now suffer the last throes of an out-of-control president who is verging on dictatorship, doing everything he can to ensure he is succeeded in office by a compatriot who has become fabulously wealthy by selling this country's policy interests and resources in exchange for foreign contributions to her family's "foundation".

While our fake media give her a pass on how she became a hundred-millionaire while serving as Secretary of State, Hillary prepares to become a billionaire while serving as President, knowing she will never be shamed by a free and independent national press corps that no longer exists.

God help us.

Trump Lets Hillary Off The Hook

Well, Donald Trump is back out there doing what he can't be doing again.  This is his race to lose, and the only way he can lose it is to keep making un-forced errors.  After going almost the entire month of July without falling into that now-familiar pattern of saying stupid stuff that allows the fake national news media to focus attention away from Hillary Clinton's serial deceit and mendacity, he fell off the wagon again, going after a Gold Star father who spoke at the Democrat National Convention.

All he had to do when asked about the man's speech was to say "you know, he lost a son in Iraq, in a war that I would not have gotten the country entangled in, and I feel for him. I'm not going to comment further than that", and the subject would have died away.  Instead, by saying all sorts of stupid stuff about the man and his wife, Trump has succeeded in turning the man into this election cycle's version of Cindy Sheehan.

It will ultimately cost him five points or so in the national polls, and those points will be hard to earn back.  Stupid.

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Meanwhile, Trump's opponent just can't stop lying.  Her Sunday interview with Fox's Chris Wallace was just a masterpiece in prevarication, and nobody noticed because Trump had given the fake media all it needed to completely ignore Clinton's latest disgrace.

One of my favorite lines from any movie is Ralphie's line in "A Christmas Story" in which he talks about his father's use of profanity:  "My father worked in profanity the way other artists worked in oils or clay - a true master."

While that line could easily be applied to Bill Clinton by substituting "lying" for "profanity", it doesn't really work for Hillary.  Bill Clinton is a true psychotic - a pathological liar who no doubt actually believes his own BS.  He is without any doubt at all the most skilled liar ever elected to the presidency.

Hillary, on the other hand, is a completely obvious, fully transparent liar.  Her face and body are so chock-full of physical tells that it's difficult to catalogue them all. If she nods her head, she's lying.  If she shakes her head, she's lying.  If her eyes look down and to the right, she's lying.  If they look up and to the left, she's lying.  If her eyes go wide, she's lying.  If she blinks rapidly, she's lying.  If she leans forward, she's lying.  If she leans back, she's lying. If she smiles, she's lying.  If she frowns, she's lying.  If she cackles, she's lying.

Basically, if her lips are moving, she's pretty much lying. 

Her interview with Chris Wallace included each and every one of these tells, and more, and got no attention at all because Trump was out there talking about some guy who doesn't matter.

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A big part of what has gotten Trump to this point is that he is completely different from any politician we've ever seen before.  That quality has a great attraction to the tens of millions of Americans who believe our political system is irredeemable in its current state, and needs to be essentially blown up and recreated out of whole cloth.

But that quality is also what keeps getting him into trouble.  That quality is what essentially doubled what was going to be a negligible polling boost for Hillary coming out of her convention.

This has been from he beginning an election in which the majority of voters want real, significant change from the current political system. That remains unchanged.  But Trump just spent the last week allowing the ultimate status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton, to pretend unchallenged to be running as a change agent.

That must stop, and it must stop now.  All it will take is for Trump to quit saying stupid stuff that doesn't matter.

Reuters/Ipso 'Fixes' Its Poll - And Makes it Even Worse

If you've been reading this blog you've known for more than a month now that the Reuters/Ipsos poll has severe methodology issues, consistently over-sampling Democrat voters by as much as 10% of the overall sample. As a result of this consistent, unaddressed issue, the poll showed Hillary Clinton leading by 15% one day in mid-July when no other poll had her lead registering at over 5%, with most having it within 1-2%.

Even though this ridiculous sampling method produced wildly-outlying results, Reuters/Ipsos did nothing to change its method until last week, when, even with its over-sampling of Democrat voters, the poll showed Trump suddenly moving into the lead following the GOP National Convention.

Now suddenly the folks who run the poll are recognizing they have a systemic problem in their polling method and are moving to "fix" it - only they're NOT fixing the problem that really exists, just "fixing" the method so that it will reliably show Hillary back in the lead.

Your fake national news media in action, folks.

Time for a Change

After last night's boorish proceedings, at least we now know why Hillary Clinton's people didn't want anyone talking about ISIS and Islamic terrorism:  the two men who attempted to do so - including a heroic medal of honor winner - were roundly booed by a crowd chanting "No More War".  Ms. Clinton obviously had wanted to avoid such a damning spectacle. But there is no controlling the radical element that is now verging on becoming the majority in the Democratic Party.

And there is no going back.  With radical anti-American teachings having now taken full control of the country's universities, this element will fully command the mainstream of the D Party soon, probably by the 2020 elections.  It's inevitable.

On the GOP side, Donald Trump represents a disenchantment with the "Bush" wing of the Republican Party that has been growing since 2004.  A consistent near- 2/3rds of voters in the Republican primary process rejected the mainstream, internationalist, open borders candidates like Jeb!, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and others, dividing their votes instead between Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.

The Bushies are now a small minority of the GOP voter base, and there is no going back from there, either.

What this election season foreshadows is a future in which the two party system that has dominated our electoral process for 170 years is soon replaced by a system in which four or more parties vie for enough power to make themselves a part of a governing coalition.  In other words, the U.S. electoral/governing process will in the coming years look a lot like the processes in most of the European democracies.

This is all inevitable, and probably for the best.  The current two-party system has produced a single truly great president in 40 years now.  By and large it has produced disasters.  This election season is no exception, with two candidates, both of whom have negative ratings over 60%.

Time for a change.

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

It is clear now that all of the Clinton shills in our fake news media are going in whole hog on attempting to distract attention from the WikiLeaks publication of 20,000 DNC emails and the scandalous nature of what those emails contain by focusing on the laughable conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin is behind it all.

Knowing now that Julian Assange has denied any connection to the Russians and that much, much more of the same sort of revelations are coming, the Democrats and their media agents are in full panic mode.  Latching onto confirmation from our now-disgraced FBI that the Russians have indeed hacked into the DNC servers over the last few years, news monkeys from fake media outlets are presenting this as "proof" that Vladimir Putin personally gave all of this information to WikiLeaks because he really, really likes Donald Trump.

By doing so, they hope viewers and readers will nod their heads and never realize that if the Russians were able to hack into the DNC system, there are probably about 3 million Millennials living in their grandmother's basements who could have easily done the same thing.

As always, they also expect the majority of Americans to be too ignorant or stupid to reason this all through logically.  Think about it:  If Putin wants to influence American policy, he already knows that the easiest way to do so is just make a huge contribution to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and Hillary will gladly give him whatever he wants, which is exactly what happened when, as Secretary of State, she approved a deal that signs over 20% of U.S. uranium resources to the Russians shortly before Russian interests made a series of mult-million dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Further, if Putin does indeed possess information that would incriminate Hillary even more than she's already been incriminated (hard to imagine, but let's wait and see), then the simplest way to use that to his advantage would be to help her get elected and then simply blackmail her.  He already knows she has no ethical standards at all and would willingly cooperate.

But the Clintons have survived and thrived on the ignorance of the American people for the last 25 years, thanks in large part to the help of their propaganda agents at the major fake media outlets.  So the narrative is today and will continue to be "The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Ignore the scandalous, criminal information that the leaks contain, look instead at this shiny object over here! The Russians are Coming!"

You don't need to believe me on this - just watch the news coverage over the next few weeks. If you're stupid enough to buy into it and go around parroting the talking points they are force-feeding you, then you deserve what you get in the future. But it pisses me off that you are intent on sentencing the rest of us to the same fate.

What We've Learned At The DNC So Far

What a fascinating and educational convention this has been so far for the Democrats in Philly.  Here are some of the things we have learned about the Democrats already this week, and it's only Wednesday:

• We've learned that commiting fraud is a literal badge of honor to the Democratic Party.  How else to explain prime time speaking slots for the likes of Fake Indian Elizabeth Warren;  Lena Dunham, who falsly accused a college contemporary of raping her; the giving of a cushy job to Debbie Wasserman Schultz after it was revealed she rigged the primary process in Hillary's favor; and don't even get me started on Bill Clinton - we'll be here all day if I go down that road;
• Then again, they just nominated the Most Corrupt Woman in America to be the Party's presidential nominee, so none of that should surprise us;
• We've learned that Black Lives Matter to Democrats but Blue Lives don't;
• We've learned that Democrats need the words of the Pledge of Allegiance displayed to them on a JumboTron, and that they will only grudgingly display the American Flag at their national convention when shamed into doing so;
• We've learned the global jihad being mounted by radical Islam doesn't even enter the mental radar of the average Democrat, as 61 speakers on Monday never made any mention at all of ISIS;
• We've learned that Democrats are fully in favor of building walls - they just want to build them to deny access to American citizens rather than foreign invaders;
• We've learned that Paul Simon is aging as poorly as Bill Clinton, and that Howard Dean is apparently not aging at all;
• And we've learned that there is no legitimacy in any sense to the Democratic presidential nominating process, and that Bernie Sanders is who we always really knew he was:  Just another sellout politician.

We've learned all of that, and there are still two more nights of this nonsense to go.

Tonight's DNC Agenda (Not Really)

DNC Agenda
Tuesday, July 26, 2016


6:30 - Convention gaveled to order by whomever happens to be Interim DNC Chair at the time

6:35 - God Damn America Invocation by Rev. Jeremiah Wright

6:45 - 7:00 - Anyone holding a Bernie Sanders sign will be transferred to a re-education camp outside of Chicago.  (Hillary has had enough of this crap, people.)

7:05 - 7:30 - Sarah Silverman and Paul Simon make a joint apology to the Convention for their respective performances on Monday night.

7:35 - 8:15 - Hillary Clinton makes a surprise appearance for an impromptu coughing fit.

8:20 - 8:30 - Music by Milli Vanilli

8:35 - 9:00 - Speech by Joe Biden focused on the takeover of our nation's 7-11s by "these people from India".

9:05 - 9:15 - INTERMISSION - (official DNC narrative memo will be handed out to reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post at this time.)

9:20 - 10:00 - Remarks from Bill Clinton

10:05 - 10:15 - Benediction by Tom Cruise

10:20 - Convention gaveled to a close by whomever has been appointed as Interim DNC Chair since 6:30.

CLOSE

Trump's Perfect Night

"He's going to win," my good friend, a very astute participant in politics, told me over breakfast this morning.

"Yes, he is," I replied.

Both of us have pretty much felt that would turn out to be the case since last September.  If you understood the mood of the electorate, the cluelessness in that regard of his 16 Republican primary opponents, and the incredibly flawed lifetime criminal the Democrats were intent upon nominating, it wasn't really all that hard to see it coming.

Still, isn't it shocking?  This one man, whatever you think of him, has completely overturned one of our two traditional major political parties, and essentially created a new one with a new mission by nothing more really than the sheer force of his will. 

He has demonstrated conclusively that our national politics doesn't have to be about who hires the most expensive consultants, who raises and spends the most money, whose consultants are able to come up with the slickest campaign ads, and who can most ably recite their 5 major talking points in response to any question they happen to be asked.  It's been this way for so long, we've all forgotten that it really doesn't have to be.

And think about what that meant this week for the Republican Party.  This is now a party at which a speaker can get up on the stage, talk about how proud he is to be a gay man, and receive a roaring standing ovation.  That is change.

The GOP is now a party at whose convention the nominee's daughter can advocate for more federal help for working mothers and receive a resounding round of applause.  That is change.

The GOP is now a party whose revised voter base - who turned out in massive, record numbers during the primary season - has put its elected representatives on notice that the excuse-making in which they have uniformly engaged for not getting anything done over the last six years just won't cut it anymore.  Going forward, there will either be results, or there will be new representatives getting elected.

All of this happened through the vision of Trump to clearly recognize the mood of the voters, and use that mood to his advantage through the force of his will.  No one else can take credit for this.

His speech was not perfect, far from it.  It was too loud, devoid of nuance, unsophisticated in its delivery.  But the messages it contained were spot on, exactly what he needed to deliver in order to unite the GOP voter base behind him and begin to expand that base with clear, unambiguous appeals to the independents who will ultimately decide the election.

Naturally, all of the "analysts" at CNN hated it, which in this election season is a pretty sure indicator that it was extremely effective.

Trump will definitely get the bounce in the polls he needed out of this convention, likely enough to take a lead in the polling data next week.  More importantly, he laid the groundwork to continue building on that bounce in the weeks and months to come.

"He's going to win."  Yes, friend, he is.

Why The Trump Kids Matter

Once one plows past all the fake media noise about Melania's supposed plagiarism and Ted Cruz getting booed off the stage, what is the main thing any normal person with functioning brain synapses will remember about this GOP National Convention?

Trump's kids.  Right?  Wow, what incredible kids.  What eloquence.  What composure, even from Tiffany, who just got out of college.  What amazing love, respect and admiration every one of them express for their father.  And we haven't even heard yet from Ivanka, who, at age 34, is probably the most accomplished of them all and her father's closest advisor.

Not even the flea bags who infest CNN have been able to find a means of slandering any of them yet, and you have to know they've been feverishly trying to come up with something.  That's what CNN does to Republicans, after all.

Don't let the fake media fool you:  These four kids are without any question at all the most important aspect of this convention in terms of influencing how this election will turn out.

Why?  Because no father who has turned out four such amazing children can possibly be the "dangerous" individual that the Clinton camp wants - and needs - you all to believe that he is.

As I've repeatedly said, this is not a normal election.  It's not about issues, not about position papers, not about who is qualified or not qualified to hold the office.  It's not even about who is going to be able to raise and spend the most money.  In fact, all the money-grubbing Hillary is doing probably hurts her more than it helps at the end of the day.

This election is about communications and persuasion, which means that it is really about one thing:  Whether or not Donald Trump can convince most voters that he is not "dangerous".

That's why these four young adults are the most important aspect of this convention.  Sorry, Newt;  sorry, Chris;  sorry, Marco and Ted and even Mike Pence.  You are all just an irrelevant side show, time eaters on the agenda more than anything else.

The Trump kids are what matters, and Ivanka gets her turn to help humanize and elect her father tonight.  Does anyone doubt she will do a spectacular job?

************

About Ted Cruz:  Everyone needs to understand that Trump doesn't care about Cruz's refusal to keep his word and endorse the GOP nominee.  It doesn't matter to him.  He saw Sen. Cruz's script days in advance, and made no suggested changes to it.

Trump's world is about dominating the news cycle.  Doesn't matter to him if the news is positive or negative about him, so long as it is about him.  He takes whatever news comes, and plays off of it.  That's what he means when he says he is mostly a 'counter-puncher'.

Which is why he wasn't upset last night and his campaign people aren't upset this morning.  They knew Cruz was about to hang himself with the convention delegates, and gave him the rope to go do it with.  Thus, Cruz looks petty for refusing to keep his word, and Trump looks gracious for giving him the prime time speaking slot.

Sen. Cruz and his father both reportedly believe he is destined to become President of the United States.  That may indeed happen some day, but after last night, it most likely won't be as the nominee of the Republican Party.  But hey, the Libertarians are always looking for someone willing to carry their flag.

Media Coverage vs. Reality

This morning's mainstream media coverage of Day 1 of the GOP convention is pretty much uniformly negative.  Which of course would have been the case regardless of how Day 1 at the GOP convention actually went.  This is who our fake, mainstream news media is and what they do.

If you're a real Republican, and thus not a #NeverTrump person, the good news for you to remember is that the coverage of Donald Trump's campaign by our fake mainstream news media has been pretty much uniformly wrong for the last 13 months.  This morning is no exception.

To understand this, we need to think in terms of communications and persuasion and how those two factors relate to the average independent American voter, not how they relate to the LA/NY/DC political establishment Axis.  To those in the Axis, the speech by the mother of one of the Benghazi victims was "unseemly".  Chris Matthews offered that to him, this speech "ruined" the GOP's otherwise fine day.  (Always so great to know that Mr. Mathews is looking out for the GOP's best interests.)

But the average independent American voter more likely saw a mother still in mourning over the loss of a child - something no mother ever completely overcomes - who blames Hillary Clinton for his death, a view justified by several hundred unanswered requests from the U.S. Ambassador for stronger security.  So while the speech didn't impress Mathews or any of his fellow Axis inhabitants, it was likely pretty effective communications and persuasion.

Many Axis fake media outlets are also wailing about the "tone" of Day 1, which focused on the failure of the Obama Administration - including Hillary when she was Sec. State - to keep America safe.  The terms "mean spirited" and "unfair" are being tossed in tutt-tutting tones out of the Axis echo chamber.

But the average American independent voter has been treated in recent weeks by the same Axis media outlets to endless, graphic coverage of brutal attacks on average Americans and deadly assaults on police all over the country.  Many of them no doubt wonder why in the hell it is that this President and his administration are seemingly helpless to stem the tide of violence, or worse, appear to be supporting it.  These voters no doubt found themselves spending much of the evening nodding in agreement with Rudy Giuliani and the other featured speakers.

Then there's Melania Trump.  While she was speaking, the Axis inhabitants were no doubt sneering and mocking her, but the average independent voters most likely saw a composed and attractive woman, speaking eloquently in what is to her a foreign language (she is fluent in five languages) from her heart about her family.  Very effective, at the time, from a communications and persuasion standpoint.

That of course has been ruined this morning by the apparent lifting of two sentences from Michelle Obama's 2008 speech.  Most likely, this was the work of a careless - or possibly devious - speechwriter, but no matter:  the apparent plagiarism gives the media Axis the opportunity to shift the focus away from what was otherwise a very effective piece of communications and persuasion.

Finally, the fake Axis media have focused a lot of coverage on the last-ditch effort early in the day by the #NeverTrump minions to disenfranchise the 14 million GOP primary voters who turned out in record numbers to make Trump the party's nominee.  While inhabitants of the establishment were feverishly focused on all of that, the average independent voter couldn't care less.  To the average American, that's all just the kind of insider crap they're so sick of hearing about in the first place.

Bottom line:  Day 1 was actually an overall pretty good day for Trump and the GOP from the only standpoint that matters, and that is convincing enough of the average independent voters out there to vote for the GOP nominee in November.  If the next three days go as well as Day 1, Trump will get the polling bounce he needs out of this convention, no matter how hard the fake Axis media tries to spin things otherwise.

Protecting Americans vs. More of the Same

The more terrorist events that take place, the more cops that are killed on our streets here in the United States, the more this election boils down Protecting Americans (Donald Trump) vs. More of the Same (Hillary Clinton).  That's the reality faced by both campaigns.

Throwing out all other considerations around that reality, what this means is that the result on Election Day will depend upon two factors:

• How many American voters really do want real, tangible change from not just the last eight years, but the last sixteen years of American governance; and
• How many American voters can be convinced that Trump is not 'dangerous'.

That's it.  Nothing else really matters.  Yes, there will be tons of noise and efforts by the Clinton camp to distract you and make you think the election is really about something else, but in the end these two factors will decide the election.

Trump understands that Americans are sick to death of the chronic dysfunction coming out of Washington, DC, and sick to death of both major parties and the excuses they constantly make for failing to get anything positive accomplished for them.  Trump further understands that this means that millions of Americans are disenchanted not just with what has gone in in the nation's capital over the last eight years, but for the last sixteen years.

Which is why he has from the beginning run as the only true change agent in either party, and why he has campaigned against not only the policies of Barack Obama, but also against the policies of George W. Bush and the Republican congress.  Of course, those policies often bear so little difference that this task hasn't been all that difficult to achieve.

Trump also understands that millions of Americans are afraid:  Afraid of terrorism and the Obama presidency's steadfast refusal to address the true cause of the problem; afraid of the growing level of violence on America's streets and the president's blatant support of it; afraid of the last 16 years of economic stagnation and lack of economic growth and job creation; afraid of the breakdown of this country's institutions and the abject failure of both parties to address it.

Thus, every major policy preference Trump has chosen has been about protecting the American people.  Protecting them from non-Americans, protecting them from the leftwing radicalism promoted by the Democratic Party and funded by George Soros, protecting them from the growing government intrusion into their daily lives favored by both major parties.

The Clinton campaign has responded to Trump's strategy by attempting to convince the public that things are generally peachy in America, that the policies of Barack Obama are working just fine, that all we really need the next president to do is tweak things a little bit to make them work even better, and that the more radical change represented by Trump and Trump himself  are "dangerous".  Which is exactly how one would expect a conventional campaign like Clinton's to respond to the unconventional campaign being run by Trump.

If one looks back through history one finds that this is exactly, precisely, 100% the way the conventional campaign of Jimmy Carter responded to the unconventional campaign being run by Ronald Reagan in 1980.  It's like deja vu all over again, to put it in Yogi Berra terms.

In 1980, the Carter campaign - helped by many 'establishment' Republicans - portrayed Reagan as a loose cannon, a cowboy, a know-nothing and a racist who was just too dangerous to be handed the reins of power by the American people.

Sounds familiar, huh?

With the exception of a big Reagan bounce coming out of the party conventions, Carter held an otherwise uninterrupted polling lead throughout the 1980 campaign.  The final Gallup poll released the Friday before Election Day showed the race essentially a dead heat.  Over that final weekend, all three major broadcast networks worked hard to convince the public that the polling data was trending in favor of Carter.

On Election Day, Reagan received 51% of the national vote to Carter's 41%, a landslide by any measure, as the late-deciding public decided that Reagan was in fact not too dangerous to be handed the reins of power to implement the radical change that the public desired.

The objective of the Trump campaign will be to produce a similar result.  Trump faces a far less effective and more damaged opponent than Reagan faced, but he also must convince a voting public whose demographics and voting trends are far different than in 1980.

Hillary, on the other hand, really has no choice but to run an almost 100% negative campaign against Trump.  Were she a different person, one could propose that she could influence the outcome by trying to prove to the public that she's not a crook and a pathological liar.  But those ships have irrevocably sailed.  She is who she is.

So this campaign will be about one thing:  Is Trump too dangerous to hold power?

That's it.  Nothing else matters.

Another Polling Update For Today

Two new polls out this morning giving further indication that Donald Trump has essentially drawn even and possibly slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton nationally leading into the GOP National Convention next week:

• A CBS/NYTimes poll that has the race tied at 40/40; and
• A new Rasmussen survey that shows Trump leading, 44/37.

The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, which goes all the way back to June 24, now shows Ms. Clinton with a 3.1% overall lead.  If one considers only those polls taken during July, and thus more likely to give us an accurate snapshot of the race, that lead falls to 1.2%.

Further, if one factors out the wildly outlying Reuters/Ipsos survey, you end up with Trump leading by .67%.  So basically, the race is a tie.

Interestingly, RCP has still not chosen to include Reuters/Ipsos's most recent update that results in Hillary holding a 13% lead in the race.  So I suppose the folks at RCP may have decided that that poll is just too ludicrous even for their purposes.

Whatever, we basically now have a tied race, and it is very likely that the polls will swing in favor of Trump as he gets the traditional bounce out of his convention.  After that, it is equally likely that they will swing back Ms. Clinton's way over the following two weeks as she gets the traditional bounce out of her convention.

After that, this race will ultimately boil down to whether Trump is able to convince enough voters that he is not dangerous.  More on that tomorrow.

More Thoughts on Polling Data - UPDATED

Following on to  yesterday's bashing of the Reuters/Ipsos poll and the recent decision by RealClearPolitics.com to include this clearly fake, clear outlier in its daily polling average, we have these results this morning:

• A national McClatchy poll showing the race at Hillary 42, Trump 39, right in line with every other recent national poll - well, other than Reuters/Ipsos;
• State polls from Quinnipiac that show the following results:  Ohio - Trump and Clinton tied; Florida - Trump +3; Pennsylvania - Trump +2; 
• An Iowa poll from Monmouth that has the race at Trump +2;
• A Nevada poll from Monmouth that has it Hillary +4;
• Another Florida poll from JMC Analytics that has it Trump +5;

And where is this morning's latest update on Reuters/Ipsos?  Hillary 46, Trump 33.

As I write this, RCP has yet to include this latest clearly fake Reuters/Ipsos result in its daily average.  If they do, well, shame on them, and it's time to stop relying on RCP for anything real.

Have a great day.

UPDATE:  Now at mid-day, we have new results from the YouGov/Economist national tracking poll - another tracking poll which RCP chooses not to include in its average for mysterious reasons - that shows the race at Hillary 40, Trump 37.

At this point, the data is overwhelming that this is a 2-3 point race at this moment in time, yet Reuters/Ipsos comes up with a 13 point margin for Hillary.

Why is the Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll the only such tracking poll that RCP chooses to include in its average?  This is a question that needs to be answered.

Thoughts on Recent Polling Data

If you, like much of our fake national news media, follow the RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls, you likely believe that Hillary Clinton has a modest, but consistent lead in that measure of somewhere around 4-5 percentage points over Donald Trump in a head-to-head race.  When polls add in the Libertarian and Green party candidates, the lead shrinks by about a percentage point.  That's been pretty consistent over the last few weeks, though it has narrowed somewhat from a month ago.

What you need to know is this:  In early June - June 4 to be exact - RCP, for whatever reason, chose to start including the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll results in its average.  As we detailed here several weeks back, that poll consistently and obviously intentionally over-samples Democrat voters in its' surveys by a huge amount.  Because of this, it consistently produces a skewed result that heavily favors the Democrat candidate.  This is not a secret - it is something everyone has been aware of for a long, long time.

The folks at RCP appeared to realize this reality from the outset of that tracking poll a year ago, and for ten months studiously refused to include its results in its average.  That changed, as mentioned above, six weeks ago, just as Trump had closed what had been an 8-10 point Clinton lead.  I inquired via email with RCP as to the reasons behind their decision, but received no reply.

This morning, another tracking poll - the NBC/SurveyMonkey daily tracking poll - shows the race has narrowed to a Clinton lead of 47-44.  This compares to the Reuters/Ipsos result of Clinton 44, Trump 33.

Guess what?  RCP does not include the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll in its average.

So let's play a little game:  If one factors out the Reuters/Ipsos clear outlier from the current RCP average of polls going all the way back to June 24, you come out with an average Clinton lead of 3.5%, right in line with the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll.

Further, if one includes only those polls released in July, and thus far more reflective of current events, the average result comes out to a Clinton lead of 2.3%, well within the margin of error of all the polls taken.

Again, I have no idea why, after having ignored the Reuters/Ipsos poll for ten solid months, RCP chose to begin including it in its average at a particularly fortuitous time for Ms. Clinton.  I've asked, and RCP chooses not to reply.

But if you rely on the RCP average for your info on where the polls currently stand, just be aware that its results are significantly skewed by the inclusion of a poll that intentionally uses a widely skewed sample.

The Star of David Joke's On Hillary

First, this is not the Star of David:

THIS is the Star of David as it appears on the flag of Israel:

See the difference?  Good, because apparently no one at CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, the NY Times or the Washington Post is capable of making that distinction.

Well, that's not exactly true.  The people at all of those fake media outlets are capable of making that distinction, but when Donald Trump tweeted out the first image late last week, the fake media people saw what they believed was an opportunity to paint Trump as anti-Semitic by pretending he had used the actual Star of David for crass political purposes.  And so, every one of those fake media outlets spent the entire holiday weekend displaying that image for their viewers and pretending it was some great controversy that somehow proves the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is anti-Semitic.

Do you see why the joke's on Hillary?  If you've been reading my stuff for the last 10 months, I imagine you do.

For the rest of you, here's the deal:  The Trump for President campaign just received about $100 million in free campaign advertising on all of these fake media outlets since last Friday.  The viewers and readers of these fake media outlets have for the last four days been literally inundated with that image and the message that Hillary Clinton is the Most Corrupt Candidate Ever (which coincidentally squares pretty well with my description of her as The Most Corrupt Woman In America).

The joke's on Hillary because about 90% of Americans are mainly visual learners who have the attention span of the average household cat.  Thus, whenever a report about this completely fabricated non-issue began to air, most people saw this image, took the 2 seconds it takes to read those four words, and tuned the rest of the report out.

That the endless repetition of such reports on all of these fake media outlets happened to come on the very weekend during which Ms. Clinton was interrogated by the FBI in connection with her email scandal can only serve to reinforce the already overwhelming feeling among the public that Hillary is indeed a hopelessly corrupt politician.

By the way, not only is Trump NOT anti-Semitic, he in fact spent tons of his own money in the 1990s challenging the city of Palm Beach, Florida's own anti-Jewish policies.

As this reality - and the reality that hundreds, if not thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies use six-sided stars for their badges (are they all anti-Semitic, too?) becomes public knowledge, we will see a backlash against the fake media and Ms. Clinton, and the polling data will reflect that over the next couple of weeks.

So, the joke here is on Hillary.  Her lapdogs at all of these fake media outlets have done her no favors with this phony controversy.

The Terrible Choice Ahead

Quinnipiac came out with what Matt Drudge in his own inimitable manner called a "SHOCK POLL" in screaming headlines this morning.  The poll was a "shock" because it shows the presidential race a dead heat, with Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by just 42% to 40%.

Presumably the other 18% were gagging too hard to answer the question properly, because the poll's other results show that the majority of the voting public absolutely hates, detests and is horrified at the choice before them in this election.  To which I can only respond, well, guess what?  The public is who made this choice in the first place.

Let us never forget that, regardless of how "rigged" the nominating processes of each party are, ultimately it was the voters in the various state primaries and caucuses who ended up choosing these two specific presumptive nominees.  Yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the evil minions at the Democratic National Committee did everything they could to tilt their contest in the favor of Mrs. Clinton, and yes, her opponents ranged from the stark, raving crazy Bernie Sanders to a circus clownish ex-governor from Rhode Island, with only the terminally tedious Martin O'Malley in between, but still, there was a choice, and the Democrat voters chose The Most Corrupt Woman In America to be their party's standard bearer in the November election.

Assuming, of course, she isn't indicted prior to the convention.  But Democrat voters were well aware of that possibility, and chose her anyway.

The decision by GOP voters to leave their party's presidential hopes in the hands of a man who often wanders off into side-shows that do untold damage to his electability was also a conscious, very intentional choice that reflects the abject failure of the party's leadership in Washington to do anything effective to slow the Obama agenda in the last 8 years.  It was very clear that Trump was an undisciplined political wild card as far back as the first primary debate that was held in August of last year.  But GOP primary voters didn't care - they wanted something different, and boy has Trump delivered that.

So now that the decisions the voters have made are before them, and it is clear that there is most likely no turning back from this precipice, you have a big case of buyer's remorse settling in.  Many Democrat voters are no doubt standing back and thinking 'geez, if we'd have just nominated someone who isn't a career criminal, beating Trump would have been a cakewalk', just as many GOP voters are no doubt thinking 'geez, can  we give Marco Rubio a do over?'.  Well, no, you can't.

Here's the truth:  All the Republicans needed to do to easily defeat The Most Corrupt Woman In America was nominate someone who could run a disciplined, professional campaign.  All the Democrats needed to do to easily defeat Trump was to NOT nominate The Most Corrupt Woman In America.

Here's where we stand:  Trump still has an opportunity to discipline himself and let Paul Manafort run a professional campaign for him.  If that happens, he'll win.  If it doesn't, he won't.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are stuck with Hillary, barring a sudden, extremely unlikely burst of professional integrity at the Justice Department.  She is who she is, and there's no going back from that.

The fact that she is stuck in such a close race with Trump, after the horrid month Trump has had in June, is an overwhelmingly bad sign for the Democrats.

Regardless of how this election comes out, never forget that the voting public has only itself to blame, because they had the opportunity to vote for someone else.

Does Brexit Vote Presage Trump Presidency?

It was a lot of fun to see all the long faces open the various major network morning shows with the news that voters in Great Britain had chosen, by a 52-48 margin, to free their home land from the chains and dictates of the internationalists who run the EU in Brussels.

Enough Brits had gotten sick of seeing their culture destroyed by the EU's open borders policies, had gotten sick of seeing their jobs shipped overseas, had gotten sick of a stagnant economy and falling standard of living, and more than anything else had gotten sick and tired of hearing Prime Minister David Cameron and the country's other internationalist leaders telling them that "that is not who we are" whenever they dared to complain, to push the final vote on this matter over the top.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who pays attention to such things, the actual vote stood in contrast to a rash of last minute polls and pronouncements in the British state-run media that the Brexit proposition was doomed to fail.  So ubiquitous was this "conventional wisdom" over the last couple of weeks that even the vast majority of pro-Brexit voters went to the polls fully expecting the proposition to fail.

If all of this sounds familiar to you, it should, because the basis for the Brexit campaign is essentially the same as the basis for the Donald Trump campaign here in the U.S.

President Obama began using his "that's not who we are" talking point two years ago, when he announced his executive order that would have "legalized" about 4 million illegal immigrants.  (That order was rebuffed by the Supreme Court yesterday.) He has repeated that talking point hundreds of times since, using every conceivable opportunity to try to brainwash the public into believing that the U.S. has always been a purely open borders nation.  That same drumbeat was quickly adopted by other Democrat politicians and their thousands of Democrat propaganda agents in our country's own fake news media.  Recently, we've even seen House Speaker Paul Ryan and a few fellow internationalist GOP members of congress take up the mantra.

The truth, of course, is that America has always been welcoming of immigrants, but always through an organized process of legalization and assimilation.  For more than 200 years this country was highly selective about who it allowed to come and join our society.  For more than two full centuries, this country carefully worked to ensure that immigrants came to this country wanting to assimilate to our society, wanting to join our existing culture, wanting - indeed longing - to be able to live under our system of laws and freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.

Trump began his campaign with the correct sense that a growing number of Americans are sick of being lied to by internationalist politicians about "who we are", sick of seeing our culture destroyed by open borders policies, sick of seeing our people sacrificed at the altar of unfettered immigration, sick of seeing our jobs shipped overseas, sick of economic stagnation and a falling standard of living.

The Trump campaign is essentially the same as the Brexit campaign.  Brexit, despite the intense and coordinated propaganda effort mounted by the Cameron government and the state run news media, in the face of a rash of polls showing it would fail, won yesterday by a comfortable margin.

In our presidential race, Trump is Brexit, Hillary is Remain.  Time will tell if British history can be repeated in America.