It’s Official: Clinton’s Popular Vote Win Came Entirely From California
Posted: December 18, 2016 Filed under: Politics, White House | Tags: Americans, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Democratic Party (United States), Direct election, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Republican Party (United States), RUSSIA, Twitter, Wisconsin Leave a comment
Outside California, Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote by 1.4 million to Donald Trump.
John Merline reports: Democrats who are having trouble getting out of the first stage of grief — denial — aren’t being helped by the fact that, now that all the votes are counted, Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has topped 2.8 million, giving her a 48% share of the vote compared with Trumps 46%.
To those unschooled in how the United States selects presidents, this seems totally unfair. But look more closely at the numbers and you see that Clinton’s advantage all but disappears.
As we noted in this space earlier, while Clinton’s overall margin looks large and impressive, it is due to Clinton’s huge margin of victory in one state — California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump.
California is the only state, in fact, where Clinton’s margin of victory was bigger than President Obama’s in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama’s 60%.
But California is the exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.
In recent years, California has been turning into what amounts to a one-party state. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of Californian’s who registered as Democrats climbed by 1.1 million, while the number of registered Republicans dropped by almost 400,000.
What’s more, many Republicans in the state had nobody to vote for in November. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Ted Cruz Cookin’ Bacon By Wrapping It Around A Machine Gun, Because, AMERICA
Posted: August 3, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere | Tags: Bacon, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Machine gun, Republican Party (United States), Ted Cruz, Texas, United States, YouTube 2 Comments“In Texas, we cook bacon a little differently than most folks.”
Cruz is seen wrapping bacon around the barrel of a machine gun prior to firing away at a shooting range. The video was released Monday by the Independent Journal Review.
“There’s grease comin’ down…Mm… machine gun bacon!”
Donald Trump: World’s Greatest Troll
Posted: July 21, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg Television, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Culture War, Donald Trump, Facial recognition system, Google, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Republican Party (United States), Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz Leave a comment
Trolls operate on the principle that negative attention is better than none. In fact, the troll may feed off the negative attention, claiming it makes him a victim and proves that everyone is out to get him.
Nate Silver writes:
…There’s a notion that Donald Trump’s recent rise in Republican polls is a media-driven creation. That explanation isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s incomplete. It skims over the complex interactions between the media, the public and the candidates, which can produce booms and busts of attention. And it ignores how skilled trolls like Trump can exploit the process to their benefit.
Let’s look at some data. In the chart below, I’ve tracked how media coverage has been divided among the Republican candidates over roughly the past month (the data covers June 14 through July 12), according to article counts on Google News. In turn, I’ve shown the share of Google searches for each candidate over the same period. The data was provided to FiveThirtyEight by Google but should closely match what you’ll get by searching on Google Trends or Google News yourself.
“Trump has taken trolling to the next level by being willing to offend members of his own party. Ordinarily, this would be a counterproductive strategy. In a 16-candidate field, however, you can be in first place with 15 or 20 percent of the vote — even if the other 80 or 85 percent of voters hate your guts.”
Even before his imbecilic comments about Sen. John McCain this weekend, which came too recently to be included in this data, Trump was receiving far more media attention than any other Republican. Based on Google News, 46 percent of the media coverage of the GOP campaign over the past month was directed toward Trump, more than for Jeb Bush (13 percent), Chris Christie (9 percent), Scott Walker (8 percent), Bobby Jindal (6 percent), Ted Cruz (4 percent) and Marco Rubio (4 percent) combined.
“Trolls are skilled at taking advantage of this landscape and making the news cycle feed on its own tail, accelerating the feedback loop and producing particularly large bounces and busts in the polls.”
And yet, the public is perhaps even more obsessed with Trump. Among the GOP candidates, he represented 62 percent of the Google search traffic over the past month, having been searched for more than six times as often as second-place Bush.
So if the press were going purely by public demand, there might be even more Trump coverage. Instead, the amount of press coverage that each candidate has received has been modulated by the media’s perception of how likely each is to win the nomination….(read more)
“The public is perhaps even more obsessed with Trump. Among the GOP candidates, he represented 62 percent of the Google search traffic over the past month, having been searched for more than six times as often as second-place Bush.”
But a regression analysis — you can read the gory details in the footnotes3— suggests that press attention both leads and lags public attention to the candidates. This makes a lot of sense. The public can take cues from the media about which candidates to pay attention to. But the media also gets a lot of feedback from the public. Or to put it more cynically: If Trump-related stories are piling up lots of pageviews and Trump-related TV segments get good ratings, then guess what? You’re probably going to see more of them.4
This creates the possibility of a feedback loop….(read more)
…So if these spikes are media-driven, they seem to be driven by some particularly modern features of the media landscape. Social media allows candidates to make news without the filter of the press. It may also encourage groupthink among and between reporters and readers, however. And access to real-time traffic statistics can mean that everyone is writing the same “takes” and chasing the same eyeballs at once. Is the tyranny of the Twitter mob better or worse than the “Boys on the Bus” model of a group of (mostly white, male, upper-middle-class, left-of-center) reporters deigning to determine what’s news and what isn’t? I don’t know, but it’s certainly different. And it seems to be producing a higher velocity of movement in the polls and in the tenor of media coverage. Read the rest of this entry »
Murder & Mayhem, Division & Panic: Media’s Fabricated Fabric Fixation
Posted: June 21, 2015 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: African Methodist Episcopal Church, American Civil War, Army of Northern Virginia, Flag of South Africa, Flag of South Carolina, Flags of the Confederate States of America, Lindsey Graham, List of Rhodesian flags, South Carolina, South Carolina State House Leave a comment
T. Becket Adams writes: It took less than two days for the press to take a story about a white South Carolina man who shot and killed nine black churchgoers, and turn it into a story about the Confederate battle flag flying outside South Carolina’s state house.
[Also see – Shooting reignites Confederate flag debate on CNN, with David French]
For media, the flag as a supposedly influential symbol of racial oppression and hate represented an issue that required immediate attention and hours of coverage. By Friday, the press’ focus on the flag was intense.
“S.C. Confederate flag back in the spotlight after massacre,” CNN noted, tracking the public furor over the state’s choice to display the Civil War leftover…(read more)
THINK TANK: National Review Institute’s IDEAS Summit 2015 Streaming Guide
Posted: April 30, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Charles Krauthammer, Jeb Bush, John Fund, John Kasich, John Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, New Hampshire, Rand Paul, Rich Lowry, Rob Long, Ted Cruz Leave a comment
From our mailbox: Today, the National Review Institute, National Review‘s sister organization, opens it’s biennial Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C.
Special segments of the Summit will be LIVE streamed on the Corner for free — watch Rich Lowry
and Jeb Bush, Jim Geraghty and Marco Rubio, John Fund and Carly Fiorina, and Heather Higgins and Bobby Jindal discuss why the future is conservative, and more!
First live stream starts today at 4:25 p.m. EST with Jeb Bush. Don’t miss it!
Full schedule is below. Click on the event to watch.
Thursday, April 30
3:00 P.M. NRI Ideas Summit Livestream Event: Rich Lowry, Welcome Address
4:25 P.M. NRI Ideas Summit Livestream Event: A Conversation with Jeb Bush and Rich Lowry
5:15 P.M. NRI Ideas Summit Livestream Event: A Conversation with Paul Ryan and Eliana Johnson
8:30 P.M. NRI Ideas Summit Livestream Event: A Conversation with Ben Sasse and Larry Kudlow
9:20 P.M. NRI Ideas Summit Livestream Audio Event: The Night Owl Read the rest of this entry »
Lindsey Graham Welcomed Joni Ernst to the Senate with a Hog Castration Device
Posted: January 6, 2015 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: ABC News, Chris Coons, Great Comet, Joe Biden, John McCain, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, Mediaite, National Journal, National security, Twitter 2 CommentsLindsey Graham Welcomed Joni Ernst to the Senate with a Hog Castration Device http://t.co/KGMeyE8Fro (PHOTOS) pic.twitter.com/R9GKPoNgY2
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 7, 2015
[VIDEO] Senator Lindsay Graham Responds to the House Intelligence Committee Report
Posted: November 23, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2012 Benghazi attack, Benghazi, Central Intelligence Agency, CNN, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gloria Borger, Lindsey Graham, Obama administration, Republican Party (United States), United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Leave a comment“I think the report is full of crap.”
Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The House Intelligence Committee released a report on Friday evening, which took two years to compile, that found there was no outright intelligence failure during the attack, there was no delay in the rescue of U.S. personnel and there was no political cover-up by Obama administration officials. Read the rest of this entry »
Goldberg: The Victory Behind Cantor’s Defeat
Posted: June 12, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Cantor, Daniel Pfeiffer, Eric Cantor, Graham, John Fund, Jonah Goldberg, Lindsey Graham, White House Leave a comment
For NRO, Jonah Goldberg writes:
It’s amusing to watch the strange new respect Democrats are mustering for Eric Cantor. Xavier Becerra was on Morning Joe lamenting how Eric was just the sort of responsible Republican who wanted to get things done. I think Hugh Hewitt is right that Dems like Becerra don’t want to fix immigration so much as have the issue. But I do think the White House really does want a big immigration bill as part of their effort to pad 
his legacy. That’s why they are in overdrive to claim that, in Dan Pfeiffer’s words, “Cantor’s problem wasn’t his position on immigration reform, it was his lack of a position.”
[Jonah’s book, The Tyranny of Cliches, is available at Amazon]
A White House aide notes that Lindsey Graham won his race running away and he’s far more associated with immigration reform than Cantor was. This of course leaves out the fact that Graham is a much better retail politician than Cantor. It leaves out that Graham saw the threat coming years ago and wisely panicked early about a tea-party challenge. And it leaves out that Graham was in a seven-way race. If he’d had a single opponent, like Cantor (or Cochran), who knows how differently things would have played out.
“If there’s one takeaway on the immigration issue from Cantor’s defeat it’s that sweeping comprehensive legislation is not going to happen any time soon. I would say 2017 is the earliest it would be considered. That’s good news.”
Now, I actually think there’s a grain of truth to Pfeiffer’s point. As John Fund notes below, Cantor’s biggest problem was that he seemed insincere, elitist, aloof, and concerned about agendas not connected to his district or his base. He held a fundraising meeting at D.C. Starbucks on primary day. Some of this was driven by his personality. Read the rest of this entry »
Internet Troll’s Questions Ignored by Ann Coulter, Goes Commando in Breitbart Comments Section
Posted: November 11, 2013 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio, Coulter, George Soros, Iraq War, Jamie Leigh Jones, Lindsey Graham, Mike Enzi, MSNBC, Tom Wolfe, University of Southern California 2 Comments
You won’t want to miss the self-defeating intra-conservative circular-firing-squad in the comments section, inspired by this article about Ann Coulter. Apparently Coulter still has a talent for inflaming readers and entertaining audiences.
Question: Is Ann not right wing enough to satisfy some of the sore losers out there? Answer not needed, it’s not a serious question.
Coulter’s apparent disinterest in indulging a self-serving question from a radio-call-in listener (a peculiar self-appointed “Republican precinct committeeman” fetishist) inspired him to take his crackpot complaints to the article’s comments section. Not satisfied with annoying the disinterested Coulter (who had the good sense to not take it seriously) the radio-call-in guy took his tiresome laundry list of “important unanswered questions”–to the comments section, to draw attention to himself for the next ten hours. And a lot of unrelated comments, too. Very funny stuff. Here’s the article from Breitbart. Then check out the long, long chain of comments at the source page.
Joel B. Pollak reports: Conservative columnist Ann Coulter entertained an audience of 400 at the University of Southern California on Sunday night at an event co-sponsored by the USC College Republicans and the Hancock Park Patriots, a local Tea Party group.
Fears of large and violent protests failed to materialize, as five peaceful demonstrators were the only presence outside the Ronald Tudor Campus Center.
Coulter spoke at length about crime, and the New York of the 1980s–to which, she joked, New Yorkers were about to return with leftist Bill de Blasio as mayor. (She is re-reading Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities to prepare, she joked.)
Though she has written about race and crime, she is an equal-opportunity critic–arguing, for instance, that accused murderer Amanda Knox was protected by the U.S. media because she is a “pretty white girl.”
There were plenty of macabre jokes to follow–including an extended riff on how several MSNBC hosts would each commit suicide (“Chris Matthews would bungle it…Al Sharpton would do it in such a way as to blame some poor white guy”). On a more serious note, she slammed MSNBC for attacking what they called “pro-rape Republicans” over the Jamie Lee Jones rape case, in which the victim’s claims were dismissed and she was ordered to pay the attorneys’ costs of her former employer, an American military contractor.
What We Just Saw
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Chuck Schumer, Cruz, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Senate, Tea Party, Ted Cruz Leave a comment
Michael Walsh writes: In the aftermath of Senator Ted Cruz’s epic performance on the Senate floor, a few observations:
- After his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican party. Ditto his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, the entire Old Guard of business-as-usual “comity” fans passeth. When you care more about what the other side thinks, it’s probably time either to switch teams or step down.
- There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, and the others who stepped into the breach to spell the senator from Texas.
- The popular reaction to Cruz will be immediate and noticeable; the more the old bulls carp, the more the public will rally to Cruz’s side. The country has been spoiling for a real fight since the election of 2008, and now it has one. Read the rest of this entry »
How the Senate Exploits Unpaid Interns
Posted: August 30, 2013 Filed under: Economics | Tags: Harry Reid, Joe Manchin, Lindsey Graham, Mark Udall, Martin Heinrich, Party leaders of the United States Senate, Senate, West Virginia 4 CommentsBarely a third of U.S. senators pay their interns — and embarrassingly for Democrats, a party focused on workplace welfare, most of them are Republicans.
By Stephen Lurie
Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, shown with his interns in July 2012, is one of the few senators who pays his interns — at least in the summer. (Flickr)
If you walk into any of the 100 Senate offices spread across Capitol Hill, there is one consistent element. Marco Rubio’s furniture won’t be the same as Elizabeth Warren’s and Mark Udall’s landscape photographs won’t match Lindsey Graham’s wall hangings. The ubiquitous fixture of every Senate (and House) office is livelier: the young, sometimes bright-eyed, cohorts of interns that flood the Capitol in the summer.
Why Zombies Are Everywhere
Posted: April 8, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: CDC, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Lindsey Graham, United States, Walking Dead, Wayne LaPierre, World War Z, Zombie Leave a commentVia WJS – By DANIEL W. DREZNER
By any observable metric, zombies are totally hot right now. Look at movies like “Warm Bodies” and the coming “World War Z,” the ratings for AMC’s hit series “The Walking Dead” (12.9 million viewers for its recent season finale) and $2.5 billion in annual sales for zombie videogames. Over the past decade, between a third and a half of all zombie movies ever made have been released. A glance at Google Trends reveals that in the past few years, interest in flesh-eating ghouls has far outstripped popular enthusiasm for vampires, wizards and hobbits.
Any species that invented duct tape, Twinkies and smartphones stands a fighting chance against the living dead.
Why are the living dead taking over our lives, and why have so many other domains of American culture, from architects to academics to departments of the federal government, been so eager to jump on this macabre bandwagon? Is it all just good, scary fun—or something we should worry about?
First we have to appreciate why zombies are so terrifying. The classic ghoul of George Romero films seems awfully slow and plodding. But what the living dead lack in speed, they make up for in other qualities. Zombies occupy what roboticists and animators call “the uncanny valley” in human perception—though decidedly not human, they are so close to being human that they prompt instant revulsion. Another common feature of zombie narratives is that 100% of the people bitten by zombies eventually turn into zombies. Even the most virulent pathogens encountered in the real world (say, Ebola or HIV) have infection rates below 50%.
These qualities matter because they map so neatly onto the genuine threats of our day. Zombies thrive in popular culture during times of recession, epidemic and general unhappiness. Traditional threats to U.S. security may have waned, but nontraditional threats assault us constantly. Concerns about terrorism have not abated since 9/11, and cyberattacks have now emerged as a new anxiety. Drug-resistant pandemics have been a staple of local news hysteria since the H1N1 virus swept the globe in 2009. Scientists continue to warn about the dangers that climate change poses to our planet. And if the financial crisis taught us anything, it is that contagion is endemic to the global market system.
Zombies are the perfect metaphor for these threats. As with pandemics and financial crises, they are not open to negotiation. As with terrorism in all its forms, even a small outbreak has the potential to wreak massive carnage.
