polecat news and views

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Former Clinton Adviser: Democratic Party’s ‘Technocratic Speak’ Turning Off Voters

Hillary Clinton speaks after losing the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9, 2016, in Hooksett, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

WASHINGTON – Alec Ross, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, said the Democratic presidential campaign’s ideas were not “digestible to blue-collar America” and suggested that the party use less “technocratic speak” in the future.

PJM asked Ross, who was the former secretary of State’s senior adviser for innovation, if the Democratic Party should change its positions on certain issues to win back blue states that flipped from President Obama to President Trump.

“Our party has become too technocratic and too incrementalist and we need big, bold ideas that people in West Virginia, western Michigan and Pennsylvania can see themselves in. I think they have really pushed back against a lot of what they see as technocratic speak,” Ross said after a discussion about his book The Industries of the Future at Busboys and Poets in D.C.

“I think Bernie Sanders in certain respects had a lot of it right, where he called for things like free college – which may not be at all feasible, but the reason why it was appealing, in part, was because it was big, bold and un-nuanced. And I think we’ve become too much the party of technocratic incrementalism, which just does not resonate with blue-collar America,” he added.

Trump promised to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal jobs to states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Ross was asked if the Democratic Party is going to be able to gain more support from blue-collar workers while advocating for government investment in green technology.

“Ultimately, the White House is not ours and it’s not going to be ours soon, so ultimately I think there’s an opportunity for governors to show what can be done on a statewide basis, to show how this actually works,” he said.

“Blue collar workers, they want to see the jobs, they’re like ‘show me the jobs, show me the results,’ so we have to take some of our technocratic pie-in-the-sky ideas and produce some truck rolls – like we have to actually enact some of these ideas of ours on the state level to demonstrate how they can actually produce real jobs with good wages,” he added.

Last year, Politico reported that Ross was playing “a key role” in managing the Clinton campaign’s technology policy advisory network.

Ross, a distinguished visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University, told PJM he had a role in policy discussions on the Clinton campaign as a volunteer but that he was “not omniscient.”

“I would say that ultimately a shortcoming of the policy products coming out of the Clinton campaign was in part because they were not digestible to blue-collar America; you know, there were too many commas and semicolons and it missed them, and so I think the ideas themselves weren’t always bad but sometimes they lack sufficient boldness and they were overly nuanced and overly parsed in terms of how they were communicated,” he said.

https://pjmedia.com/election/2017/02/20/former-clinton-adviser-democratic-partys-technocratic-speak-turning-off-voters/

When President Obama’s National Security Advisor Lied, The Media Laughed

It’s somewhat ironic that this email was disclosed the same day the anti-Trump universe was spinning into the stratosphere over Michael Flynn’s resignation as President Trump’s national security advisor.

Buried deep beneath the Michael Flynn hysteria this week was Judicial Watch’s release of newly obtained State Department documents related to the Benghazi terrorist attack on September 11, 2012. One email confirms—again—that the Obama administration knew the day after the attack it was not a random act of violence stemming from an anti-Muslim video. That was the excuse shamefully propagated by top Obama administration officials (including the president himself) and swallowed whole by a media establishment desperate to help Obama win re-election six weeks later.

According to the summary of a call on September 12, 2012 between State Department Under-Secretary Patrick Kennedy and several congressional staffers, Kennedy was asked if the attack came under cover of protest: “No this was a direct breaching attack,” he answered. Kennedy also denied the attack was coordinated with the protests in Cairo over the video: “Attack in Cairo was a demonstration. There were no weapons shown or used. A few cans of spray paint.”

It’s somewhat ironic—galling?—that this email was disclosed the same day the anti-Trump universe was spinning into the stratosphere over Flynn’s resignation as President Trump’s national security advisor. It begs for a little trip down memory lane, to a kinder, gentler time when the media gave a great big pass to another national security advisor in the days after four Americans, including an ambassador, were murdered in Libya by Islamic terrorists under her watch.

Lying to Us Only Matters If We Dislike You

Fun fact: While Trump press secretary Sean Spicer fielded 55 questions on February 14 related to the Flynn debacle, Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney received only 13 questions from reporters on September 12, 2012, three of which were set-ups to blast Mitt Romney’s criticism of the administration after the attack. 55 to 13.

So as we now suffer through yet another patch of media mania, conspiracy theories, and unsubstantiated claims about how Trump hearts Russia, as well as the daily beatings endured by Spicer, let’s reminisce to when the media and Obama’s press flaks spun, deflected—even joked about golf and “Saturday Night Live!”—less than a week after Benghazi.

The day after Hillary Clinton’s deputy had that call with key Capitol Hill staffers, including advisors to senators Durbin, Feinstein, and McGaskill, to dispute the notion the attack was about an anti-Muslim video, here’s what Carney said: “I think it’s important to note with regards to that protest that there are protests taking place in different countries across the world that are responding to the movie that has circulated on the Internet. As Secretary Clinton said today, the United States government had nothing to do with this movie. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible.”

On September 14, hours before the remains of the Benghazi victims would arrive at Andrews Air Force Base, Carney was still blaming the video. Just steps from the Oval Office, Carney opened his briefing with this: “First of all, we are obviously closely monitoring developments in the region today. You saw that following the incidents in response to this video, the president directed the administration to take a number of steps to prepare for continued unrest.”

Carney went on to mention the video/film/movie another 30 times during his briefing. He stuck with his story even after some reporters pushed back, citing other sources who said it was indeed a pre-mediated attack. One reporter said several senators admitted the “attack on Benghazi was a terrorist attack organized and carried out by terrorists, that it was premeditated, a calculated act of terror,” and asked Carney, “is there anything more you can — now that the administration is briefing senators on this, is there anything more you can tell us?”

Carney: “Again, it’s actively under investigation, both the Benghazi attack and incidents elsewhere. And my point was that we don’t have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film. But we’re obviously investigating the matter…” Who cares, Sean Spicer called Justin Trudeau Joe, OMG!

Susan Rice’s Audacity of Trope

But of course nothing matches the audacity of trope by Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice on September 16, 2012. Rice went on several Sunday shows to peddle a story she knew was completely phony, one that was already quickly unraveling even as most in the media and administration tried to keep it intact.

You can read most of her comments here, but Rice repeats the line that Benghazi attack was not premediated and was connected to the demonstrations in Cairo over the video (a document obtained by Judicial Watch last year shows Hillary Clinton met with Rice a few days before her television appearances). Which presidential administration is fact-challenged, again?

In a press gaggle on Air Force One the next day, guess how many times Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about Rice’s comments? Ten? Five? One? Not once. Let me repeat that. The day after Obama’s national security advisor was on five news programs to blame a terrorist attack on a YouTube video, not one reporter asked the White House about it. I actually had to re-read the transcripts several times, even checking the date over and over, to make sure this was accurate. Her name did not even come up.

No discussion about the investigation. No discussion about emerging evidence from around the world that Benghazi was indeed a terrorist attack. (The only time it was mentioned was when Jen Psaki criticized Mitt Romney’s comments about how the administration handled Benghazi and questioned whether he was ready for “primetime.”)

Here’s what they did discuss: Debate prep, Occupy Wall Street, and the Chicago’s teachers strike. An actual human reporter asked this: “It was a beautiful weekend for golf and he wasn’t out on the course. Is it safe to assume maybe he was doing some preparation at the White House?” WHAT? Then they joked about football and “Saturday Night Live.”

Sometimes the hypocrisy, double standard, and outright lies by the media under the Trump presidency is funny. Sometimes it is infuriating. But never was the media’s complicit sheep-like coverage more evident than it the days after Benghazi, behavior you can never imagine now. They have yet to admit their mistakes and failures, even as more evidence is revealed.

Remember that the next time you want to worry about how Trump is responsible for undermining the media’s integrity and credibility.

Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor and food policy writer from Orland Park, Illinois. She's also been published in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and The Hill.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/17/president-obamas-national-security-advisor-deceived-people-media-laughed/#.WKb1BL3sza4.twitter

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Nestle Leaves California to Get Away from Anti-Capitalist Lawmakers and Activists

The exodus from the Golden State continues.

2.17.2017

News

Trey Sanchez

170

The exodus out of the Golden State continues with Nestle USA being the latest business to pack up its operation in Glendale, California and relocate in business-friendly Rosslyn, Virginia as a means to escape the grasp of anti-capitalist lawmakers and activists. In doing so, the candy corporation will enjoy $16 million in tax incentives not available previously.

Inverstor’s Business Daily’s Terry Jones writes:

[A]part from having higher taxes, absurd housing costs and more regulations than nearly any other state, California’s wacky laws have turned the Golden State into a venue of choice for activist groups to file costly class action lawsuits — or to launch anti-corporate PR campaigns against big, wealthy targets like Nestle.

In recent years, Nestle has faced two such activist-led actions, both spurious: One involves allegations that Nestle improperly documented its anti-slave-labor policies. Not that it employed slave labor, it just didn’t document it online.

This and other types of “corporate harassment” are helped by “top officials and local politicians — virtually all of them far-left progressive Democrats — [who] actively despise capitalism,” Jones adds.

Jones says California is one of the “worst places to do business in America.” That proud distinction not only comes from these crazed activists but also the passing of laws like Proposition 30, which essentially targeted the pay of the state’s highest earners to bleed even more taxes out of them.

The Blaze notes:

According to a report by business relocation expert Joseph Vranich, from 2008 through 2015, at least 1,687 California companies moved operations out of the state.

Toyota shifted its U.S. headquarters and thousands of jobs from Torrance to Dallas, while global oil giant Occidental Petroleum moved its corporate HQ from Los Angeles to Houston, reports IBD.

At this rate, California is seceding itself right out of the union before residents can even cast a vote. But other states will gladly take their fallout. In the years between 2004 and 2013, over one million California residents left, taking their $26 billion in taxes with them.

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/nestle-leaves-california-get-away-anti-capitalist-lawmakers-and-activists

President Trump Has Been Far Too Nice To The Mainstream Media

Kurt Schlichter

Posted: Feb 20, 2017 12:01 AM

The sequel to that stupid mommy porn bondage movie is now in theaters, giving naughty thrills to bored housewives whose liberal husbands can’t cut it manwise, but the real festival of S&M was in the White House as President Trump unleashed his iron discipline on the media. Call it Fifty Shades of Orange.

It wasn’t a press conference – it was a kinky dungeon session where masochistic journalists eagerly sought out the delicious pain Master T was dealing. Hack after hack stepped up, tried to play “gotcha.” and ended up whimpering in the fetal position. The best part was CNN’s Jim Acosta, fresh from whining about how conservative outlets now get to ask questions too, basically handing Trump the cat-o-nine tails. Dude, next time keep from talking yourself into more public humiliation by biting down on the ball gag.

The media’s safe word is “Objectivity,” but none of them uttered it.

The wonderful thing about Trump – and the thing that sets the Fredocons and wusspublicans fussing – is that he gives exactly zero damns about the media’s inflated and ridiculous self-image. He doesn’t pay lip service to their lie that they are anything but what Instapundit calls “Democratic Party operatives with bylines.” Trump called them the “the enemy of the American People,” to which normals responded with “Yeah, sounds about right.”

Trump sees them as the enemy, which they are, and he calls them what they are, just like he calls radical Islamic terrorists “radical Islamic terrorists” instead of generic “extremists” who shout “Allah Akbar!” as they commit acts of “workplace violence” whose motives remain elusive and unknowable. It would be ironic that the media hates it when a politician tells the truth, except no one still believes the media is in the truth business.

The press conference provided a great excuse for one of the media’s periodic freakouts about pretend oppression. After all, the best press is Threatened by Fascism Press, where the pampered members of the Fourth Estate get to play the heroic resistance to huge, shadowy forces intent on stilling their voices and suppressing truth and justice. Except the media might come off as a bit more sincere about freedom of speech if it spared even a fraction of its ostentatious current concern for itself for the conservatives being silenced and beaten at Berkeley while the police stood back, under orders to let it happen. Oh, and it would be more convincing if the media did not eagerly support overturning a Supreme Court ruling that said that the government could not stop people from showing a movie critical of Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying my novel People’s Republic’s depiction of a lapdog press serving the liberal fascist elite in post-secession blue America represents the media’s desired end-state, but all the evidence supports that the media’s desired end-state is totally to serve as the lapdog of a liberal fascist elite in a post-secession blue America.

Only a fevered hive mind, poisoned by unearned self-regard and a delusional sense of its own moral superiority, could seriously equate a politician pointing out the obvious fact that today’s reporters are mostly lying, incompetent jerks with Hitlerian press censorship. Tell you what – I’ll believe you when the National Guard shows up to shut down CNN by padlocking the makeup room.

Except, according to the AP, the National Guard is busy preparing to be unleashed upon the photogenic honor student dreamers who the press tells us make up the undocumented friend community – when they aren’t murdering us or voting, which our ink-stained guardians assure us totally never ever happens, and Trump lies, plus you’re a racist. Another day, another example of Fake News. My favorite part of this particular press foot-shoot was getting lectured on the intricacies of the Posse Comitatus Act by 25-year old media savants whose military experience consists of pestering their dorm mates about Call of Duty’s cartoon guns being phallocentric and how the game is insufficiently welcoming to the trans perspective.

In any case, the whole National Guard v. Aliens story was yet another giant lie in that seemingly endless series of giant lies we call “the News,” but don’t think it made the press go into spasms of reflection or self-criticism. No, those bloodhounds pivoted right back to the important stuff, like sniffing out whether someone in the West Wing might have uttered some vaguely complimentary words about Ivanka’s line of shoes. In the meantime, this lie opened the floodgates and released a horde of mouth-breathing liberals slandering our National Guard warriors as Nazis on Twitter. Thanks, media – nothing I love better than seeing my former troops’ reputations made collateral damage of your quest to bring down a president you resent because he was elected without your approval.

It’s all so pathetic, and the clichés are so hackneyed. As always, there was the “Will You Denounce X?” Guy, rolling out the usual demand that Trump “denounce” some misbehavior he has nothing to do with in what everyone who isn’t an utter moron or in Congress sees as a cheesy ploy to associate the innocent respondent with said misbehavior. The day after Israel’s leader rhapsodized about Trump’s friendship for the Jewish people, Trump’s somehow obligated to concede the implicit charge that he’s secretly ant-Semitic? It’s stupid, it’s a lie, and it’s wonderful that Trump refused to play along with this tired, hack tactic.

Then there’s the Russians/Flynn nonsense, a non-story that America non-cares about. Oh, there’s a real story there, but the press isn’t interested in that. Here’s the real story – the intelligence community under the Obama administration was obviously eavesdropping on Trump’s campaign in violation of practically every law ever written. Whether it was direct tapping of phones and emails, or illegally accessing the communications swooped up by the NSA in its nets, it’s clear that Obama’s people were spying on Obama’s political opponents. The transcript excerpts of Flynn’s phone call with the Russian diplomat leaked because it could be played off as targeting the Russian, though this was still an outrageous disclosure of American spying capabilities. What these criminals can’t do is release the communications between Americans that they possess because doing that confirms what we all know – that Obama’s people spied on his political opponents like his IRS persecuted them. The only question really is what did Obama know, and when did he know it – interestingly, on his way out the door, Obama made it easy to hide the source of the leaks by opening up access to the information across a bunch of agencies. There’s your story, a scandal that makes Watergate seem microscopic, and the mainstream media will not touch it because it would destroy the media’s political allies.

But wait, what about Trump’s bathrobe? Better flood the zone, stat!

Now, the media could try something new, like being objective and covering issues people care about. It could stop making every single question some sort of gotcha ploy designed to generate a viral clip. Normals tire of these antics; they want information that affects their lives. How about a question like “Mr. President, the market is up 10 percent since the election. Where do you expect it to go from here and why?” That’s not a softball question just because it recognizes that Trump has a success; it seeks information that every American with an IRA or 401(k) wants to know. Sexy? No. Useful? Yes. Oh, and it also totally undercut’s Trump’s ability to make the question about the press – I actually wonder how he would respond to a non-hostile, reasonable question because, outside of Katie Pavlich, I‘ve never seen him asked one.

But the media won’t learn, which is why it needs to die and be reborn as something that isn’t the hacky lackey of one of the political parties. Until then, the mainstream media will just keep on begging “Thank you Mr. President, may I have another?” and Trump will happily keep on delivering.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/02/20/president-trump-has-been-far-too-nice-to-the-mainstream-media-n2287759

Trump may have been unclear, but Sweden experiencing a migrant crime wave

By Cody Derespina

FoxNews.com

NOW PLAYING

Is it a dream or a nightmare on illegal immigration?

Never autoplay videos

Police investigator Peter Springare isn’t likely to be among those mocking President Trump for his remarks about refugees in Sweden.

Trump’s comments during a Florida campaign rally on Saturday – which some took as a misstatement about a supposed terror attack – dovetail with what Springare has been seeing during a typical week in Orebro, Sweden. Five rapes, three assaults, a pair of extortions, blackmail, an attempted murder, violence against police and a robbery made up Springare’s caseload for a five-day period earlier this month, according to a Feb. 3 Facebook post he wrote. The suspects were all from Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Turkey – save for one Swedish man nabbed in a drug-related case.

“Mohammed, Mahmod, Ali, again and again,” Springare wrote of those arrested.

Springare, who was briefly investigated for possible hate crime incitement based on his post, managed to elucidate what Trump only hinted at during a Florida campaign speech – somewhat opaquely.

“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

Many analysts took issue with Trump’s “last night” framing, and immediately compared the line to recent misstatements by Trump spokespeople, such as counselor Kellyanne Conway’s infamous“Bowling Green Massacre” blunder.

But Trump explained on Twitter late Sunday that he was only referring to a Fox News segment that aired on Friday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” dealing with the Swedish refugee crime.

“It seems like we may be missing the point of the story, which is there has been a massive social cost associated with the refugee policies and the immigration policies of Western Europe,” Carlson said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday morning.

He added: “Fifty years of immigration policy is coming to flower in Europe. We’re not paying any attention. We’re not drawing any of the obvious lessons from it. It's not working. That's the real point here. ”

Trump tweeted again on Monday morning, blasting media outlets that failed to report on Sweden's migrant crime epidemic.

"Give the public a break - The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!" Trump wrote.

Fox News reached out to the Swedish Embassy for comment, however, the building was closed for President's Day. The embassy did tweet back to Trump on Sunday: "We look forward to informing the US administration about Swedish immigration and integration policies."

Last month, the police chief for the southern Swedish city of Malmo issued a desperate plea for help curtailing a plague of attempted murders, beatings and rapes. About 32 percent of Malmo’s occupants are migrants, although it is not clear what role migrants play in the crime wave.

“We cannot do it on our own,” Chief Stefan Sinteus wrote in an open letter about the “upward spiral of violence.”

And Sinteus is not merely dealing with typical crimes that any modern city would witness.

Malmo had 52 hand grenade attacks in 2016 alone, a jump from 48 attacks in 2015, according to figures provided by the Swedish Police Authority.

Nationwide, the terror threat level is at “elevated” and police believe at least 300 Swedish nationals have travelled to Syria and Iraq for jihadi training. On Feb. 11, a Swedish man and a Danish man were arrested in Turkey, suspected of plotting to carry out attacks in Europe. Tofik Saleh, a 38-year-old Swedish citizen of Iraqi origin, had been training with ISIS since 2014, officials said.

On the same day Springare posted his screed, a Swedish court turned over to Belgium evidence – seized in Malmo – in connection with the 2016 Brussels terror attacks, prosecutors said.

Sweden has taken in 650,000 asylum-seekers during the past 15 years – including 163,000 in 2015 alone, The Spectator reported. Of those refugees, 35,000 were unaccompanied children – or at least claimed to be. The children – mostly males from Afghanistan and Somalia – are only identified as minors by the age the applicant gives. The only time an applicant-provided age is rejected is if it’s “obviously” untrue, though there’s no clear definition of “obviously.” The Spectator interviewed asylum-seekers who admitted to lying about their age to improve their chances of avoiding deportation.

Carlson warned this mass influx of migrants, many of whom are uneducated and jobless, has begun to alter the face – and crime rates – of countries such as Sweden.

“[The integration policy] hasn’t worked very well, at all,” Carlson said. “And it’s in the process of totally changing these ancient cultures into something different and much more volatile and much more threatening, so what are the lessons we should draw from this? That’s the conversation we should have.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/20/trump-may-have-been-unclear-but-sweden-experiencing-migrant-crime-wave.html