Trump Wins The Persuasion Battle

To listen to and read all the fake media reports today, last night's forum was basically a wash for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  Because the fake media continues to report on this race as if it were a conventional race, they would have you believe there was no winner.  Trump's optics were a little better, while Hillary predictably displayed a superior grasp of details, they would all have you believe.  A tie.

I believe this is, like 1980 was, a completely non-conventional race.  The details on foreign policy issues don't matter.  Hell, the issues themselves don't matter.

The only thing that matters in this race at this point is whether or not Donald Trump can convince enough undecided, independent voters that he is not a danger to the survival of the American Republic and everyone in it.  It's the exact same challenge Ronald Reagan faced against incumbent Jimmy Carter 36 years ago.

Hillary spent her entire time with Clinton Foundation Fellow Matt Lauer trying hard to convince you that Trump is indeed such a clear and present danger to your very survival.  Given that she decided about six weeks ago to make this the entire basis for her candidacy, that is not surprising.

Trump, on the other hand, spent his time with Mr. Lauer looking and sounding nothing like a danger to the survival of the country and its inhabitants.  He actually was pretty well versed on the issues as well - indicating he has finally decided to do the homework he should have done a year ago - and that's great.

But again, the issues don't matter, because everyone who gives a damn about the issues has already unalterably made up their minds about who to vote for. 

What mattered was how Trump looked and sounded to those who haven't made up their minds.  Again, he looked and sounded presidential, and really pretty safe compared to his unrepentant felon of an opponent.

Make no mistake about it, last night was a clear, big win for Trump from the only standpoints that matter.  That clear, big win will begin showing up in the polling data early next week, when you will see Trump's lead in the non-TV network affiliated polls expand.

Once you start viewing this race from a persuasion standpoint, none of what happens from here on out will surprise you.  If you, like the fake news media, keep looking at it as a conventional presidential race, you'll be surprised pretty much every week.

Your choice.

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.

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.

Everybody Calm The Hell Down

On Tuesday, the in-the-tank-for-Hillary Washington Post ran the following headline atop the latest anti-Trump rant by most-reliable Lapdog Dana Milbank:

Is this the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?

Now, if you take a step back from the brink of panic for a moment and reflect on this, you will no doubt realize that this is about the 6,000th time you have read that exact header or something very similar to it from our Fake National News Media (FNNM) since last July.  We've seen it in the wake of each and every Trump gaffe, seemingly poor debate performance (all of which turned out to help him in the polls), or attack on the nearest bystander or shiny object.

Ok, so, did any of those previous 5,999 times turn out to actually be the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?  (Hint: the correct answer is "no".)  So what makes you or anyone else think that this time is The One?

I mean, Dana Milbank is one thing - he doesn't really believe this, but is hoping to influence  his readers to believe that it is as a part of his never-ending lapdoggery in favor of the Clinton machine.  So I get that.

But the rest of you ought to know better.  You're smart people and can think for yourselves.  So do that.

No presidential campaign ever proceeds in a straight line to Election Day.  There are always going to be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, potholes, stumbling blocks and every other tired cliche' one can think of to describe what is always destined to an endless progression of random events.

And then there are the not-so-random factors, like all the polls released and paid for by the exact same FNNM outlets that are in the tank for Hillary.  Why are any of you even bothering to read such polls, much less allowing their results to cause you a bit of heartburn?  I have catalogued to you the absurd machinations that the folks at Reuters/Ipsos have gone to in order to ensure that their poll will always show Hillary in the lead, even going to the lengths changing methods in the middle of the campaign and back-fixing their results.  Why would you think that CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, WaPo and the NYTimes have not done the same thing in their ongoing efforts to influence this election in favor of their chosen girl?

If you must rely on a poll, rely on polls that are not paid for by fake news outlets, like Gallup and Rasmussen, whose latest tracking poll has Trump 4% down in the race.  That's probably fairly accurate.

Three months and three days remain in this campaign, a lifetime in the political world.  There is no question that the vast majority of voters want significant change and no question that Trump is the only change agent who has any chance to win the election.

Calm the hell down.  It's going to be ok.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sit-ins, Polls and Basketball

The Democrats staging their petulant sit-in on the House floor yesterday and this morning are not only attempting to do away with the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, but 5th Amendment as well.  Fake media reports notwithstanding, the sit-in is protesting Speaker Paul Ryan's insistence that any "gun control" bill brought up for a floor vote must protect Americans' rights to due process under the 5th Amendment.

This is kind of a big deal, or at least it is to anyone who is not a Democrat politician or progressive activist.

That's what this sit-in is about, nothing more or less.  The national Democrat Party wants to take away your 5th Amendment rights, and your 2nd Amendment rights.  Eliminating such rights was also among the first priorities of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi (National Socialist) Party when they assumed control in Germany.

This is not a coincidence, folks.

***

Thursday's Today Show led with a story that President Obama, upon leaving office, is looking at the potential for becoming the owner of an NBA franchise.  Upon hearing that lead, my first thought was that I wonder if anyone at NBC might think to ask how it is that a person who has been nothing more than a "community organizer" and a professional politician for his entire adult life might have amassed a personal fortune sizeable enough to even entertain the thought of owning an NBA team, the least expensive of which would cost upwards of $1 billion?

Of course the answer to that is that if Barack Obama were a Republican, that would not only be the first question asked, but the entire focus of the story.  But because Barack Obama is a Democrat, no one at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times or the Washington Post would ever dream of posing such an inconvenient question related to this story.

Still, any thinking American ought to be asking how it is that a lifetime politician would have obtained the personal wealth necessary to even entertain this thought.  I mean, President Obama doesn't even have a criminal enterprise like the Clinton Foundation to fall back on.

Where's all that money coming from?  It's a good question that nobody in our fake news media would even dare to ask.

***

There must be real panic going on at the DNC this morning, after the release of Quinnipiac Senate race polls yesterday showing Marco Rubio leading by 7% in Florida, Mike Toomey leading by 9% in Pennsylvania, and the hotly contested Ohio race tied.  The panic most likely is shared at the Clinton campaign as Quinnipiac has Crooked Hillary tied with Trump in Ohio and leading by only 1 in PA.  Her lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average has held steady at just over 5% for more than a week now.

After the last three weeks, during which Trump made a series of unforced errors and the fake media sacrificed ratings and readership in a highly-coordinated effort to take him down, the Clinton camp had to have expected well ahead in these battleground states and nationally, and the DNC no doubt expected the pillorying of Trump would have down-ballot impacts in the senate races.

Not happening.  One must wonder how much longer the networks and 24 hour news channels will be willing to continue sacrificing viewers to Fox News at the altar of the Clinton campaign?  After mounting a similarly coordinated effort to take Trump down during the last two weeks of March, they all gave up the ghost because they were losing too much money.

I couldn't help noticing that the general media coverage of Trump's speech on Wednesday was far more even-handed than anyone had a right to expect.  I'm betting the DNC and Clinton camp noticed that as well.

Trump has avoided any major unforced errors for two weeks now.  If that continues, we should expect the national polls to even back up as we approach the GOP national convention in mid-July.

***

One last add that everyone needs to see and digest:

The Presidential Campaign Began Today

This morning, Donald Trump gave the speech Republican voters have been longing to hear from a Republican - any Republican - candidate about the Clintons for 24 long years.

George H.W. Bush wasn't willing to tell the unvarnished truth about Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1992, and he lost.  Bob Dole was too frightened of the Clintons and their media protectors in 1996, and he lost.  George W. Bush suffered from the same fear of the Clintons and the media, and the result was his being blamed for the 2008 banking collapse which in fact was caused by idiotic policies enacted during the Clinton Administration.

 Today, Donald Trump demonstrated why, out of the original 17 Republicans who sought the Party's nomination this year, he was the only one who would have any chance of defeating Hillary Clinton in the general election.  The simple reason why is that Trump has no fear:  No fear of the Clintons, no fear of their army of highly paid liars, no fear of our fake media establishment which functions as little more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.

The GOP had to have a Honey Badger as its nominee this year.  Where the Clintons are concerned, Donald Trump is that Honey Badger - he just don't give a damn.  Honey Badger Don't Care.

It has been 36 years since the Republican Party had as its nominee a candidate who had the personal intestinal fortitude to tell the unvarnished truth about the opposition party and its nominee.  In this regard, Trump is so alien to the traditional GOP cower-in-fear-of-negative-press approach to politics that many members of his own party simply do not have any idea how to deal with it.  As Trump said yesterday in an interview, he is almost having more trouble with leaders in the GOP than he is having with the Democrats.

The reason for that is that establishment Republicans don't know how to react to the Honey Badger in their midst. They have become too accustomed to nominees who more resemble head-in-the-sand ostriches or plodding sloths.

In any event, what we saw from Trump this morning is in fact the beginning of the campaign.  This is the campaign that must be run if the Clinton/fake media machine is to be defeated.

It's going to be tough, it's going to be nasty, it's going to be incredibly unpopular among our pop culture, it's going to be hard for the squeamish among us to watch.

But make no mistake about it, the Honey Badger approach is the only way the GOP can win the presidency this year.

And Donald Trump is that Honey Badger.

Game on.










 

Another Ghoulish Administration Lie

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is going to appear on every Sunday morning news program today. Her focus will not be Islamic Terrorism as it should be. Nor will her focus be the seemingly interminable FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's serial selling of U.S. national security interests for personal gain, as it ought to be.

The Attorney General's focus will be to attempt to shift attention away from those real issues by demagoging the fake "gun control" issue.

This should really come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the activities of the President and the Democrat presumptive nominee since the latest Islamic Terrorist atrocity took place in Orlando last week.

They are laying the foundation for the President to issue yet another in a long line of blatantly unconstitutional executive orders relating to gun control, most likely an order that would pretend to outlaw "assault weapons".

You can expect such an order to come as early as this week. These people always strike while the iron is hot, and as they like to say, they never want to let a good crisis - like 49 dead Americans - go to waste.

It's important to remember that the last time a major administration official appeared on every Sunday morning news program was when the UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, took to the air to blame the Benghazi attacks on a video, another blatant, disgraceful lie which Hillary Clinton fully supported.

These people are ghouls. They really, really are.

Connecting the Terrorism Dots

Our CIA Director is telling a congressional committee this morning that ISIS is working to send many more jihadists to the United States.  One of the main ways they plan to do that is by embedding them among the thousands of Syrian refugees that President Obama has already begun to bring into this country.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton recently doubled down on her pledge to continue and even increase the President’s policy towards giving these refugees asylum in this country, rather than find ways to provide them safety in their own country.

Progressives and our fake national news media appear to be incapable of making any connection between these realities and the constantly growing incidence rate of Islamic terrorist atrocities in the United States.

Connecting dots in a logical manner has never been a strong point for “progressives”.

Also this week, as the nation reels and mourns in the wake of 49 Americans murdered by a rampaging Islamic terrorist, President Obama quietly named a woman who is pretty much unquestionably a radical Islamist to his Council on Homeland Security.  I’m not making this up, promise.

Laila Alawa is a 25 year-old Syrian immigrant who has publicly praised the 9/11 attacks as having made the world a better place.  Although she immigrated to this country at the age of 10, she has publicly renounced any intention of ever becoming an assimilated American citizen.  Her Twitter feed is full of hate-filled, racist tweets towards America and Americans.

This is who our President wants on his Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Progressives and our fake national news media are incapable of making any connection between this sort of insanity and the constantly growing incidence rate of Islamic terrorist atrocities on U.S. soil.

Speaking of our President, today is Thursday, four full days after the Islamic terrorist committed his atrocity in Orlando, and he still hasn’t managed to find a moment to make a phone call to the Governor of Florida.  True, the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, is a Republican, and we all know that this President considers Republicans to be his only true enemies, but every other president since the invention of the telephone would have put in a call to the governor of any state suffering such an attack within a few hours of its happening.

Again, there is no depth to which this President will not stoop in order to divide this country.

Progressives and our fake national news media are incapable of making any connection between this sort of intentionally divisive behavior in the White House and the constantly growing incidence rate of Islamic terrorist atrocities on U.S. soil.

Yesterday I mentioned that the FBI had interviewed the Orlando Islamic terrorist twice and had let him go free both times.  I was wrong:  it is reported today that the FBI actually had interviewed this obvious radical Islamist THREE times and had let him go free every time.  Not only that, but he was not placed on the FBI watch list – contrary to Hillary Clinton’s claims – and he was allowed to maintain his job as a security agent, a job which required a Homeland Security background check.

To understand why he was able to pass that background check and retain that job and avoid being placed on the FBI’s terrorist watch list, go back up and read who it is that our President appoints to his Homeland Security Advisory Board.

Progressives and our fake national news media are incapable of connecting any of these dots. 

They are, however, capable of inventing false connections between this religiously-motivated act and the need for “gun control”, because, you know, inanimate objects are the real issue here.

Hillary Clinton announced that the only things she would change to the current Obama policies would be to institute the following gun control measures:

·         Remove the “gun show loophole” in the background check laws;

·         Reinstate the “assault weapons” ban; and

·         Make sure that no one under FBI investigation could go out and buy firearms.

Here are the problems with these proposals:

·         There is no such thing as a “gun show loophole” – it hasn’t existed for years now.  She is relying on the ignorance and stupidity of average Americans in continuing to advocate eliminating something that does not exist;

·         The “assault weapons” ban existed in the law for many years, and never prevented any criminal from obtaining an “assault weapon”.  The policy was repealed because it made absolutely no difference whatsoever;

·         Preventing those under FBI investigation from purchasing guns would of course prevent Mrs. Clinton and all of her top advisors from being able to buy guns, because they are all under FBI investigation as of today.

But seriously, it would make sense for the government to make it illegal for anyone who is on the FBI terrorist watch list to obtain any sort of firearm.  It makes so much sense that Donald Trump met with the leaders of the NRA yesterday to try to convince them to support this change.

If the leaders of the NRA are smart, they will decide to support that change to the law.  It would be great publicity for them, and show they do understand that every right in the Bill of Rights is subject to certain limitations.

Of course, what Mrs. Clinton, her fellow progressives, and our fake national news media studiously ignore is that the Orlando Islamic terrorist was not on the FBI’s watch list, and thus, this change in policy would have – like every other gun control proposal they support – made no difference at all in what took place in Orlando.

All of those people would still be dead, the nation would still be in mourning, and our country would still be less safe, all because progressives and our fake national news media insist upon ignoring and distracting attention away from the real root cause of the problem.

Trump's Wasted Week that Was - Or Was it?

During the second half of March, Donald Trump pretty much unarguably had the worst two weeks any presidential candidate in modern times has ever had.  He was completely off-message, focused on the wrong things, constantly under fire from the mainstream [fake] news media, and just generally looked lost.  The "Trump is Hitler", "Trump is a racist", "Trump is a misogynist" memes were ubiquitous on all the talking head shows and across all social media.

The result of those two weeks came with a big-time loss to Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary.  This led all the "smart" people in Washington - like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and George Will and all the pinheads who write for The National Review these days - to declare Trump dead as a doornail, proclaiming with certainty that Trump could never, never, ever even hope to get to the 1237 delegate needed to win the nomination, and that the GOP would end up having a brokered convention out of which Ted Cruz would emerge victorious.

Remember all of that?  If you don't, go back and do a little review, 'cuz that's exactly what happened during that period of time.

So what happened next?  What happened next was Ted Cruz never won another contested primary.  What happened next was Ted Cruz and the crazy party guest who just won't leave, John Kasich, finally dropped out of the race following Trump's huge win in the Indiana primary.  What happened next was Trump ran his delegate total all the way to 1542 as of this writing, with still more on the way.  What happened next was Bill Kristol made a clown of himself by pushing some blogger no one had ever heard of as his own stellar independent candidate.  What happened next was Trump already consolidating support in the GOP to the same level Mitt Romney managed to put together in the 2012 race.  What happened next was Trump taking a temporary polling lead over Hillary Clinton, something none of the "smart" people thought could ever happen in a million years.

That's what happened next, all of it after Trump had experienced the most god-awful two week period in the history of American politics in March.

And now we sit here at the end of another lost week for Donald Trump.  He was focused on the wrong things, completely off-message, creating controversy where none needed to exist, pounded 24 hours a day by the [fake] news media, needlessly giving rise again to the "Trump is a racist" meme.  His lead over Hillary is now a thing of the past, his campaign is supposedly out of money, and his millions of dollars worth of free weekly airtime on the 24 hour cable networks has all but disappeared.

So now what's happening?  Why, all the same "smart" people who declared him dead in early April are now declaring him dead in early June.  Bill Kristol and his gang of #NeverTrump circus clowns are busy huddling with Mitt Romney concocting yet another scheme to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention in July.  Normal people who see Hillary Clinton as the personification of evil in our time and want desperately to support Trump as the only viable alternative to four or eight years of resident evil in the White House are walking around with their heads down, despairing that Trump is blowing this thing.

That's what's happening now.  Everything is right back where it was in early April.

Given what has happened during the course of this campaign season to this point, what do you think is the most likely thing to start happening next?

Get your heads up, Trump fans.  It's a long way to November.

Weekend at Trump, Hillary and Bernie's

Some thoughts on the events of the weekend....

• The Commie (Sanders) swore to one of his California audiences on Saturday that he plans to continue to "fight" (isn't it great how all liberal politicians "fight" all the time?  It's like they all think they could go eight rounds with Ali) "all the way through the convention".
  
  What this actually means is that he's getting ready to concede the nomination to Hillary Clinton if he loses California on Tuesday, and end his campaign.  If you remember back to the day before the Indiana GOP primary, Ted Cruz also swore to stay in the race "all the way to Cleveland" to an audience of supporters.  By 8:00 Central Time the next night, after a crushing loss to Donald Trump, his campaign was over.
  
  If California goes for Hillary, the Commie is toast.  Best bet of the week.

• Donald Trump has a legitimate concern about the impartiality of the judge in his Trump University case, but doesn't appear capable of appropriately expressing it.  Instead of focusing on the judge's "Mexican" heritage (he was born and raised in Indiana), Trump should be talking about Judge Gonzalo Curiel's membership in a radical organization called "La Raza Lawyers of San Diego", a race-based group that is so racist that its name - La Raza - literally translates to "The Race".
  
  Given Trump's support for a border wall and other strategies to secure the U.S. border with Mexico, he has every reason to be concerned about having this case heard by this specific judge.  Unfortunately, the judge's obviously biased conduct of the case only serves to reinforce that reality.
  
  Trump's unfortunate focus on the judge's "heritage" is entirely wrong-headed.  A focus on his associations and membership in a race-based organization like La Raza is entirely appropriate.

• Many of our fake "news" outlets this morning are focusing on the fact that The Most Corrupt Woman in America, in an interview with George Stephanopoulous yesterday, would not affirmatively state that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution confers a right to keep and bear arms to American citizens.  Instead, she would only talk about the "right" of the government to regulate firearms ownership.
  
  To me, this focus is kind of a big yawner. After all, all Hillary was doing was expressing the commonly-held belief by pretty much all of today's "progressives" that individual Americans don't have rights, but the government does.  That is the basic, fundamental, driving principle behind American progressivism today.  Tell us something we don't know already.
  
  My big question about that particular interview is why in the hell is ABC still allowing George Stephanopoulous, who served as senior advisor to Bill Clinton, has contributed more than $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and is really nothing more than a lifelong Clinton toady, to interview Hillary Clinton under the pretense of objectivity? 
  
  Even more to the point, why does anyone still watch that crap?  I mean, am I the only one who understands that every question and answer in that "interview" has been vetted and rehearsed beforehand?  This is not "news", it is theatre.  No different than Broadway, though not  nearly as entertaining.

•  Matt Damon took some shots at Donald Trump during a commencement speech at MIT on Saturday. Some of the lines were pretty funny.  Good for him.
  
  My only question is, what is it in the makeup of most actors that compels them to start taking themselves seriously once they have achieved major fame?  We see this happen over and over and over again:  Actors who begin their careers focused on making great films or TV shows, perfecting their craft to the point at which they become fabulously wealthy and start winning awards, who then decide that winning those awards somehow makes them smart people who should then start dictating to the "little people" out in flyover country how they ought to behave.
  
  Rob Reiner, having won an Emmy for All in the Family, has been out there telling us all how to act for 40 years now.  Ted Dansen was great in Cheers, and then spent most of the '90s making all manner of environmental pronouncements that turned out to be false.  Susan Sarandon has been doing it for 25 years or so.  Barbara Streisand has been babbling non-stop for 30.  George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, the list can go on and on and on.
  
  What is it in their makeup that makes such people believe that, because they can act or sing or dance, that means that the "little people" should suddenly look up to them as authority figures?  Even more to the point:  What is is in the make up of so many "little people" that they possess so little self-esteem that they actually do listen and give these pompous Hollywood asses a platform from which to pontificate?
  
  Truly one of life's great mysteries.