Sunday, May 1, 2016

shit hillary said vol 46

"The exchange that followed was remarkable. In strongly supporting the surge in Afghanistan, Hillary told the president that her opposition to the surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary [in 2008]. She went on to say, ‘The Iraq surge worked.’" - robert gates

j reacts to the continuing ideological incoherency of donald trump

the guy is really a walking contradiction, and the more you try and make sense of him, the less sense he makes. he came on here to defend a speech that i think was literally written by bush' old speechwriters, and he ends up using talking points, almost verbatim, from noam fucking chomsky.

no joke. forget hillary - he's plagiarizing fucking chomsky. and, if you're familiar with his interview talking points, you'll see that immediately.

you're voting for a moving target. you don't know what the fuck you're going to get.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h5uWzElIb8

j reacts to indiana pre-polling

indiana...

i'll admit the numbers are a tad closer than i expected. i was expecting clinton to win indiana by around ten points, based on the reality that it's more conservative than ohio. the civil war was 150 years ago. the boundaries of north and south have shifted, and we have a west, now, too. ohio is split - it's south is south, and it's north is north. but, it's increasingly becoming the south. indiana is the south. west virginia is the south. kentucky is the south, too.

the fact that most of the polls have her under ten, and it's an open primary, means he's within striking distance. she will probably win, but he may just get a split out of it. but, that's not a win, and he needs those right now.

further, given the reality of things, i think you have to expect her to stuff the mail-ins, again. she'll "win" indianapolis by a huge margin, and the numbers to overwhelm are just hard to generate - even without the reality that he's lost a lot of momentum over the last three weeks.

i can't claim that clinton will win. but, the chances of him generating the huge turnout that he needs to overwhelm her are a lot lower than they were a few weeks ago. he might do surprisingly well [that is, he might surprise me - he'll certainly underperform relative to the racist models]. but, a win is really a giant longshot.

on the republican side?

the data suggests that trump is going to beat the snot out of cruz. again. and, this is a state that cruz should be competitive in. but, the numbers suggest he isn't - he's done. where sanders may get close to a tie, cruz will struggle to get to 35.

but, i want to point something out about kasich. if you remove the obviously outlandish ipfw poll, cruz is very stable in his numbers - of the last six polls, two are at 35 and one is at each of 34, 33, 32 and 31. trump, on the other hand, fluctuates between 37 and 49, while kasich fluctuates between 13 and 22. the relationship is that as kasich' vote goes up, trump's goes down - and as kasich' goes down, trump's goes up. that seems to confirm what i've been saying:  there is essentially no swing between kasich and cruz. the swing is between kasich and trump. it follows that cruz should have begged kasich to campaign hard in indiana to try and split the vote. but, he's a dipshit that is ideologically opposed to things like intelligence, mathematics, co-operation and strategy.

j reacts to the likely logic around hillary clinton's vp choice

who will hillary pick as vp?

i'm not sure. but, you can expect the following characteristics:

- southern
- conservative
- more likely to be black than female

i would strongly expect a person of colour. i think she'd like to pick condoleeza rice, but she's in the wrong party. that's her ideal pick: black, female, smart and just barely right of center. i don't know who that transfers over to on the democratic side.

remember: she doesn't think she needs to win votes on the left. she thinks she needs to win votes in the center. she takes the left for granted. because, she won. right?

30-04-2016: adventures grocery shopping [+ tired ranting]

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1