October 29-31, 2015
Oct 29 03:05 Trump wins troll poll Oct 29 23:36 Jeb Bush's death spiral? Oct 31 10:58 Substantive debate questions? Oct 31 11:32 Boycotting Tarantino's movies
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Trump wins troll poll
According to this highly unscientific poll , Donald Trump won CNBC's GOP debate quite handily. According to the online poll, Trump dominates with 48% of the vote, followed by Ted Cruz with 19.12% and Marco Rubio with 14.28%.
Finding out that Donald Trump won the troll poll immediately following a debate isn't surprising. It's like finding out that Rand Paul won the CPAC Straw Poll. It's as surprising as finding out that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett made money last week.
Honestly, Donald Trump had a decent performance, with one high profile weak spot and one low profile weak spot. Mr. Trump's high profile weak spot came when he insisted that he hadn't criticized Mark Zuckerberg about H1B visas. The only thing weaker than his answer was that CNBC moderator Becky Quick apologized even though she got it right. Mr. Trump did criticize Mr. Zuckerberg about H1B visas. It's even posted on Mr. Trump's campaign website on his immigration issues page.
The other weak spot for Mr. Trump came when he started talking about how he isn't being influenced by super PACs. From there, he pivoted to rail against super PACs , saying "Super PACs are a disaster, they're a scam, they cause dishonesty, and you'd better get rid of them because they are causing a lot of bad decisions to be made by some very good people."
Trump will get hit on this in the coming days, especially by columnists like George Will, who will excoriate him for hating the protections that the First Amendment provides.
The consensus from last night's debate was that Rubio won it going away, that Cruz helped himself by ridiculing the CNBC moderators for asking gotcha questions and that it was terrible night for Jeb! The truth is that Mr. Trump was fairly subdued (perhaps sedated? LOL) last night. He didn't have his swagger going, either, which meant he just bided his time before getting out of town ASAP.
That's hardly the description of a candidate who won the debate handily.
Posted Thursday, October 29, 2015 3:05 AM
No comments.
Jeb Bush's death spiral?
After last night's debate, Jeb Bush appeared on America's Newsroom to insist that his campaign isn't on life support, which means his campaign is on life support. It's like when progressives insist that the science is settled and the debate is over on climate change. George Will properly noted that people who insist that the science is settled and the debate is over are usually fighting the fight of a lifetime and they're losing the debate.
If David Catanese's article is accurate, which I'm confident it is, Jeb Bush's campaign is in trouble. The biggest attention-grabbing part of Catanese's article is the part where he shares vote goals in Iowa. According to a report selectively leaked to the media, "Bush's vote goal, according to the document, is to attain 18 percent of the vote share, or about 23,700 votes." That isn't optimistic. It's unrealistic by orders of magnitude.
According to Catanese's article, Gov. Bush's "campaign identifies just 1,281 known supporters in Iowa , even after making over 70,000 calls and collecting more than 5,000 emails through mid-October." That means Gov. Bush just has to increase his known support by eighteen times. The chances of that happening are nonexistent. The chances of him going from 1,281 known supporters to 5,000 supporters is a difficult, if not a near-impossible, proposition.
That's before talking about something that other pundits haven't talked about. Jeb Bush is a terrible candidate. Whatever people think of Jeb's brother, the reality is that he loved campaigning and it showed. Jeb isn't a good campaigner. He looks better suited to be a policy wonk at a DC think tank, where campaign skills aren't required.
Jeb tried going negative during the CNBC debate. He looked awful attempting it. If you're awkward going negative against Hillary, she'll slice and dice you before turning you into "thousands of Julienne Fries" for breakfast.
Posted Thursday, October 29, 2015 11:36 PM
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Substantive debate questions?
The latest spin from progressives is that the questions asked at the CNBC Disaster were " the most substantive " questions asked this debate season:
Cruz ticked off the insults the CNBC moderators had lobbed Wednesday night at the assembled Republicans. "Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don't you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? How about talking about the substantive issues?"
The crowd roared. Republican pollster Frank Luntz reported with some awe that his focus group gave Cruz's riff a 98. "That's the highest score we've ever measured," Luntz tweeted. "EVER."
Cruz's attack on the moderators was smart politics, but it was almost precisely backwards. The questions in the CNBC debate, though relentlessly tough, were easily the most substantive of the debates so far. And the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks, but that's because the policy proposals are ridiculous, not because the questions are actually unfair.
Let me correct those deceptive statements before someone starts thinking that they're substantive comments worthy of serious consideration. To do that, it's important to provide context for the debate. CNBC signed a contract that said that this debate would be about economic issues.
John Harwood didn't meet those expectations. He failed that test early and often. Early on, he asked Donald Trump a question that ended with him saying "Let's be honest. Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?" That's Klein's idea of a substantive, hard-hitting question?
A couple minutes later, Becky Quick asked Dr. Carson a question about his tax plan, saying "Dr. Carson, let's talk about taxes. You have a flat tax plan of 10 percent flat taxes, and, I've looked at it, and this is something that is very appealing to a lot of voters, but I've had a really tough time trying to make the math work on this." Though this sounds like a fair question, it isn't from the standpoint that Dr. Carson's flat tax plan, in Dr. Carson's words, "the rate is gonna be much closer to 15 percent."
If these are examples of "the most substantive", hard-hitting questions of the debate season, why are they utterly disrespectful? Why didn't the 'moderators' do their homework and get the basics right? When Harwood asked Sen. Rubio about his tax plan, he got it almost entirely wrong. Here's that exchange:
HARWOOD: Senator Rubio, 30 seconds to you. The Tax Foundation, which was alluded to earlier, scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top 1 percent as to people in the middle of the income scale. Since you're the champion of Americans living paycheck-to- paycheck, don't you have that backward?
RUBIO: No, that's -- you're wrong. In fact, the largest after- tax gains is for the people at the lower end of the tax spectrum under my plan. And there's a bunch of things my tax plan does to help them.
Number one, you have people in this country that...
HARWOOD: The Tax Foundation -- just to be clear, they said the...
RUBIO: ...you wrote a story on it, and you had to go back and correct it .
HARWOOD: No, I did not.
RUBIO: You did. No, you did.
Sean Davis' article settles that matter permanently by posting Harwood's tweet saying that he "had to go back and correct it":
John Harwood? Verified account ?
?@JohnJHarwood CORRECTING earlier tweet: Tax Foundation says Rubio benefits lowest 10% proportionally more (55.9) than top 1% (27.9%). Avg for all: 17.8%.
It's stunning that the DNC apologists that call themselves journalists can't even get their facts straight. They can't even admit that they've made mistakes when it's highlighted that they've made major mistakes. Harwood's mistake was so bad that the Tax Foundation corrected him in a tweet... during the debate:
Scott A. Hodge ?@scottahodge
Rubio was right about his plan . Poor get larger tax benefit than the rich. #CNBCGOPdebate http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/FF457-Charts_4.png :
These aren't substantive, hard-hitting questions. If I wanted to write a 3,000 word article on the flimsy, unprofessional questions asked at the CNBC I could do it without much effort. When a moderator asks whether fantasy football should be regulated, the candidates should have the right to criticize the moderators.
Posted Saturday, October 31, 2015 10:58 AM
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Boycotting Tarantino's movies
According to this article , Quentin Tarantino's movies will be boycotted by police organizations. Since Tarantino accused police officers of being cold-blooded murderers , the protests against Tarantino have multiplied in number and ferocity.
These protests started when Tarantino said "I'm a human being with a conscience. And if you believe there's murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I'm here to say I'm on the side of the murdered." Saying that that touched off a firestorm is understatement. The "National Association of Police Organizations - a group representing 1,000 police units and associations and over 241,000 sworn law enforcement officers," issued a statement saying "We ask officers to stop working special assignments or off-duty jobs, such as providing security, traffic control or technical advice for any of Tarantino's projects."
Here's NAPO's full official statement:
Just days after NYPD Officer Randolph Holder was killed in the line of duty, film director Quentin Tarantino bluntly referred to police as 'murderers' during an anti-police rally in New York City this past weekend. As a high-profile figure, Tarantino's language is utterly irresponsible, particularly at a time when the nation is seeing increasing and persistent calls for the killing of officers. Anti-police rhetoric like Tarantino's threatens the safety of police and citizens alike. The police he are calling murderers are the same officers who were present along the protest route to ensure the safety of protesters, who provide security when he is filming, and who put their lives on the line to protect our communities day in and day out. The National Association of Police Organizations staunchly supports the call of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the Los Angeles Police Protective League to boycott Tarantino's films. Furthermore, we ask officers to stop working special assignments or off-duty jobs, such as providing security, traffic control or technical advice for any of Tarantino's projects. We need to send a loud and clear message that such hateful rhetoric against police officers is unacceptable!
Mr. Tarantino should expect a lengthy, extensive blowback after his comments. These police officers are under siege. The last thing they need is a grandstanding Hollywood nutjob making their jobs more difficult and dangerous. That's what Tarantino did with his reckless statements.
Posted Saturday, October 31, 2015 11:32 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 31-Oct-15 07:00 PM
I guess one man's murderer is another man's police officer. Are there cases of excessive force or brutality? Yep and those case are handled in the courts and the officer is sent to prison or fired. What we are seeing/hearing all too much these days are media reports that have either altered the story or evidence to make it look like the police are always in the wrong. Worst part of all of this is nothing happens to the media outlets perpetrating the lies.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 31-Oct-15 07:23 PM
Welcome to fact-free America, Chad. Remember the Clarence Thomas hearings? It isn't about the evidence. It's about the seriousness of the charges.
