American deadlock trudges on. Trump promised a wall and he won’t back down. Democrats won’t back down either. Both show solidarity with their respective platforms. The only group that seems to favor backing down is Congressional Republicans, who want Trump to get this over with any way possible. For the compromising Republicans on Capitol Hill, Trump’s refusal to sign a “wallless budget” isn’t a “wall” strategy as much as it is a “shut down” strategy. Trump and Congressional Democrats see it differently.
Keep watch; it just might be Jared Kushner who saves the day.
The term “free speech” has taken a new meaning. While speech has kept less and less freedom from the tech bosses, the monetary cost of speaking out has essentially become free. With speech becoming more and more “financially free”, the media industry can’t find a way to stay solvent.
Newspapers and local news broadcasters seek collective ways to work against the tech giants, but they only rearrange their immediate problems with no long-term solutions in sight. The dwindling news industry is attacking “free” platforms of semi-free speech: social media. That’s the clue of where news & information will head in the future.
Washington is moving against corporate giants. Gear up.
David Hogg is under ad hominem character assassination from multiple directions. He curses and is disrespectful. He advocates action to be quick and to stop deliberating, not removing the 2nd Amendment. Other anti-2nd Amendment students are being conflated with Hogg’s position. The reason for this partial Right Wing, mad-dog assault on David’s character is unknown, except that he is the loudest and easiest target while people in close social proximity to him are Leftists. It should be the other Leftists, not David Hogg, that the Right Wing should focus on.
The anti-ad attack against Laura Ingraham would normally fail, except that she’s wrong; colleges are just stupid much of the time. She seemed to be part of a mindless Right Wing attack against David because her defense of bureaucratic colleges is rare form. This seems very unlike the Conservative media. Her apology seemed more like a cave-in and demonstrated that she doesn’t really have a direction. The apology didn’t do any good since advertisers pulled anyway. The lesson here is two-fold: 1. Ingraham should have stuck to her statement, no matter how silly, expounded on the whole situation—not apologized—, and thus at least gained a sense of direction. 2. Never apologize when a hypocritical media asks you to. Public apologies for statements in the media have now proven to be permanently useless.
The Christian concept of an apology is forgiveness. Suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg took this approach, indicating that he may have a moral center after all, even with Facebook’s censorship of some accounts. Jesus taught us to love our enemies and to give justice to everyone; silencing “bad people” isn’t justice to everyone. If someone is bad, the Facebook community of users should see why. If Facebook censors an account it should be for posting incriminating content only. But, the people who demand apologies want admission of guilt, not restoration, because they are part of an anti-Christian attack on everything good in this world. This week, the Right Wing got caught up in the mindless mob-think in attacking David Hogg’s character.
This means one thing: The People’s Party is coming.
Stormy Daniels is promoting her story in a way that makes perfect sense if her goal is to get media attention. Her story could be true or false and this “marketing” method would still hold true. Lawyers promote her interviews as one would a movie. They talk about money. She promotes her social media connections. And, she has commented that her bookings are up. It’s just interesting how much business she has gotten from this and it will be more interesting to see how it pans out.
There is a gross contradiction, however, with Stormy Daniels and the Left. Being a porn star, she is hardly a moral judge. More importantly, the Left Wing did not attack Bill Clinton anywhere near as much.
Most of the news about Bill O’Reilly examines the history of advertising, accusations, money, and news ratings. The main topic of headlines from big news outlets are about Fox News—not what Bill O’Reilly’s future is, but what Bill O’Reilly’s future is at Fox, the competitor of reporting news companies.
It was all political. Yes, there are and have been for quite some time bolstered allegations that O’Reilly has too much playtime. The allegations against him pale in comparison to Clinton—either Clinton. But, it only mattered before because Bill was big. It only bit this time because Roger Ailes wasn’t there to circle the wagons and he was targeted by special groups, such as Color of Change, that go after a media personality’s advertisers. That tried and failed against Rush Limbaugh, but not against Glenn Beck, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and now Bill O’Reilly.
Again, Sarah Palin called Republicans a “party of cannibals”. They are. Everyone has problems. Only venues that cater to Republican-voting audiences exploit each other’s problems like chickens in a pecking order. Were O’Reilly’s audience made mostly of Democrats, he might have been praised. Only Roger Ailes would not capitulate over the accusations against O’Reilly over a decade ago, but the Murdoch’s would capitulate over Ailes and they did last year. Now, Fox capitulated again. It won’t stop. Fox News is beginning a trend of giving in to every weak-kneed demand like General Motor’s executives caving-in to most every whim of the unions.
It’s over for Fox. It’s over and dead.
No industry leader allows its most-viewed show’s most-viewed host to leave—and continues to be the industry leader. Right or wrong, dishonest or ethical, when Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly Fox News fired itself. It’s all about money. Under the pioneer of Fox News, Ailes, it was about long-term money. Now, governed by some “great successor”, it’s about short-term money. It’s always been about money. Now that it’s become about the short-term, so short is the term Fox News has left.
Everything will shift to alternative media. O’Reilly is resuming his work at billoreilly.com as of Monday, April 24th. And, Milo Yiannopoulos announced this week that he is returning to the public eye in a “comeback tour”.
Big news venues have attempted to take out Donald Trump, bolster the Democratic candidate in Georgia’s special election—who still didn’t win the necessary 50% of the vote to keep his seat past June. And, Republicans continue to play a losing game—eleven Republican candidates in the same Georgia district!?
“Big News” is a dying industry cannibalizing itself. Were it not for the desperate scramble for what remains of industry-wide dwindling ratings, Bill O’Reilly’s problems, whatever they may be, wouldn’t have mattered.
The hashtag #Calexit would be #Texit if the election had gone the other way. California and Texas already did secede once. Of course Washington would do something to stop it, we wouldn’t be dealing with Obama anymore. Secession is now on the table for real, thank you Californians. It’s only a matter of time. These are bad days for globalism.
Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon will be great in the White House. Trump is the man who led and starred one of NBC’s most profitable shows, The Apprentice. He knows who to hire. This man, accused of being a woman-hating, homophobic racist has already hired KellyAnne Connway, Peter Thiel, and Dr. Ben Carson. The Anti-Trumpist retort is that they are examples of Trump operating in “rare form”.
Are the protesters in as much danger of Trump as they protest to being? Will Trump retaliate against NBC and other venomous enemies with an onslaught of IRS audits and the like? Historically, no because Trump is not a Democrat.
“Experts” in other countries, disparaged Democrat voters, members from the four corners of Congress, and media talking heads from the four corners of the moon—even Fox News Sunday and debate host extraordinaire Christopher Wallace—did not predict the 2016 US election outcome; Pacific Daily Times Editor in Chief and writer-narrator of this editorial, Jesse Steele, did in early February. The most widely-known prediction of Trump’s victory before Jesse Steele’s was from Richard Nixon’s wife, though Mrs. Nixon didn’t make a map.
A few polls got it right. Khali at Trafalgar polling found a way to get the truth from “shy” Trumpist Conservatives who think they can’t tell the truth to pollsters: “Who is your neighbor voting for?” It’s interesting how we tend to think that our neighbors think how we think.
In their ever-shifting opinions and speculations about Trump, so-called “experts” of 20/20 hindsight who park their pedestals among aftermath should cite their more accurate election maps published before February. As usual, if you read it here, you read it here first, at Pacific Daily Times.
The divide in America is between the archetypal city mice and country mice. The country mice need land to make things in factories and grow food on farms; the city mice manage the market’s business on less and more costly land, all the while consuming the fat of the land they rarely visit. Like a saddle and a horse, a saddle helps, but bareback is an option while a saddle ridden on the fence goes nowhere.
The two are naturally polarized and out of touch with each other; they have formed political right and left extremes. The country mice want production and renaissance while the city mice want fashion and manners. Being a “moderate” in the city-country conflict surmounts to mixing coffee with orange juice at breakfast—both are great, but they need different cups.
As for the controversy of the electoral college, it resurfaces in every presidential election as if it has just surfaced for the first time: It’s a newbie voter’s topic. The basic purpose is, in the event of a very close margin of city mice v country mice, the country mice will win because the country can’t function without the rural backbone. This is why a State gets just two extra votes just for being a State, and all that comes with it. This is why Alaska contributed 3 Republican votes, not just 1, and Hawaii and New Hampshire contributed each 4 Democrat votes, not just 2. That said, there have been no certified reports on how much of Clinton’s 260k vote lead came from illegal voting. We do know that Democrats openly object to measures that prevent illegal voting while moderate Republicans claim to oppose illegal voting, with little or no action to back up that claim. The policies, both actual and claimed, of both Democrats and Republicans brought the vote to what it was.
Pro-Lifers should be glad abortion will likely end. That was the biggest and most lasting direct result of this election, which many people have not realized, yet if ever. Perhaps Religious Right Conservative Christian Anti-Trumpist lamenters could learn a thing or two about gratitude from Liberal Democratic Anti-Trumpist protesters. Trump has managed to inspire shared hashtags for these Conservatives and Liberals. They might actually talk to each other now. That could be a longer-lasting, less direct result of this election. The way has been paved for The People’s Party.
The massive protests against Trump are the result of the country’s public education policies since the 1990’s. Students are given a trophy for showing up and recognition of winners and losers in sports is outright persecuted. Nannying and sissifying young people left the generation of first-time voters ill-prepared to deal with loss. While neither Conservative nor Liberal youth have had much experience training them to deal with the emotions of “losing” something, Conservative parents were more likely to prepare them at home for the things that school neglected. If nothing else, Conservative first-time voters had their first eight years of voting to learn to deal with loss; the Democrats did not.
There would have been protests of some kind either way. These protests are more of a “nasty” nature, involving destruction of private property with little legislative result. Had the election gone the other way, riots would have been replaced with larger, more peaceful, and yet more effective protests. Secession petitions would have been legitimate enough to provoke Congress, involve the Supreme Court, and surely military action, citing Clinton corruption and excess executive orders that Trump promised to undo. This election was somewhat of a “deal”: Get back inside the Constitutional boundaries or rip it up; the electors chose to get back inside the lines, for now. California and Texas will secede eventually, but that will require the “don’t get mad, get busy” action of sobriety and will happen only after elections and wars yet to come.
Contrary to some opinions floating around the “media-osphere”, there actually is a Constitutional basis for secession, though not stated directly. The Federal government is obligated to repel invasion, according to original Article IV. If the US is ever invaded, State secession will be as Constitutional as it is inevitable. The topic California brought up implies a warning to US enemies: Invading the United States at home would not be an act of war against one country, but against fifty. While secession is coming, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. The president elect still has not taken office, the electoral college has not voted, and the results of many States have not yet been certified by their election authorities. While some things are foreseeable from the vantage point of history, history informs foresight while the two remain separate.
The earthquakes had the final and poetic word after “US election week”: Both sides of the Pacific were shocked and shaken, and, more poetically, the shock in Christchurch started a tsunami.
If the Clinton campaign is doing so well, why are they working so hard? If the media “knows” Trump will win and has totally done himself in “this time” (as in many times before) then why do they have such a demonstrable effort against him? Why is it illegal for the public to read WikiLeaks, but not for CNN? And why, if the box office is down, did “Star Wars” help the box office make so much money? Are movies from the 80’s all that people want to see anymore?
When Trump “changes his mind” from a non-teleprompter statement to a media microscope interrogation a few days later, his supporters like him more for one reason: It proves he is normal.
Americans make whimsical statements every day as they toss ideas and formulate real opinions. The small back-and-forth as real Americans—including Trump—develop their ideas in a consistent, overall direction is a stark contrast to the flip-flopping of career politicians with calculated, consulted, contrived so-called “positions” as they forget whether they are speaking to their secret donors or the voters they scam. Of course, no one has a front-row seat to this difference like the media, who seem to be so ignorant of that difference that the ignorance has become an indictment.
No one will ever trust the media after this election. They have bankrupted their “emotional bank account” of public trust.
The sad part is how many career politicians think their smooth statements are actually helpful. But, the Republican rhetoric lovers forget that the smoothest-talking presidents with the least offensive speeches have always been Democrats. Republicans who get the blue votes always make big waves.
Everything, including the extra effort for Hillary, says that Trump will win November.