Waterspout Over Lake Erie

This evening at around 7pm, a waterspout appeared over Lake Erie and was visible from a Lakeside Avenue location. Note the spray where it touches down.

photo credit: Pat Dooley Photography

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Media Polls and Media Malpractice

graph via: conservative treehouse

If you are trying to follow the wild swings in the media polling leading up to the Presidential election, you’re probably risking whiplash. Hillary’s up, Trump is down, Trump is up, Hillary is down. Are ANY of the polls cited by anchors and talking heads reliable? Sundance at Conservative Treehouse followed up on the issue yesterday:

Insufferable “Media Polling” Begins The Pendulum Game Again…

Last month [Treehouse] shared a warning to ignore the predictable post convention media polling nonsense.  That warning remains valid today.

Just because the media is predictably beginning to sell poll stats beneficial to Donald Trump doesn’t mean they are any less manipulated.

On June 15th aggregate media polling had Hillary Clinton leading by 15 points.  On July 15th the same media polling had Trump +17.  On August 8th the pendulum swing was back to Hillary +15,…. and now today the media signals of a tied race begin.

It’s all nonsense.  All of it.  Polls don’t swing 20 to 30 +/- points every few weeks.

[graph shown above at the link]

The media outlets conducting these polls have the same bias in their statistical representation as they publish in their daily event articles.  

[examples of recent media malpractice, mostly on CNN, follow at link]

. . .

It’s all about the media “narratives” – manufactured for daily consumption to control voters who don’t question the information. Watch your evening news program and see how these media talking heads set up a “discussion” based on their phony-baloney polls, reports, etc. It’s not just CNN. It’s the alphabet networks, Fox, or, if you’re still getting news from the mainstream print media, it’s the NY Times and all its derivatives.

Caveat emptor!

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Great America PAC Launching Voter Outreach & GOTV Programs in Battleground States

From Great America PAC --

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

August 16, 2016
 

CONTACT: Leigh@greatamericapac.com...

GREAT AMERICA PAC ANNOUNCES BATTLEGROUND STATE LEADERSHIP TEAMS IN OHIO AND PENNSYLVANIA
 

GRASSROOTS VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP TO HELP DIRECT TARGETED VOTER OUTREACH AND GOTV PROGRAMS

Alexandria, VA – Today Great America PAC, the leading independent committee supporting Donald J. Trump for President, announced new State Leadership Teams in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two critical battleground states essential to victory in November. These leaders are the first of several battleground teams coming together in key states that will be announced soon as part of Great America PAC’s extensive GOTV operation.
 

“Donald Trump has built tremendous grassroots support across the country and we are committed to maximizing it in battleground states in the final months,” said Ed Rollins, Great America PAC lead strategist. “We are a full-service PAC expanding and improving the model of Super PACs by doing far more than just TV ads. We’ve done the critical spade work of identifying millions of Trump supporters in recent months and now our robust ground game will work to turn them out in the November election”.

  

Great America PAC is committed to having maximum impact on the election and supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy by engaging key voting blocs and turning them out to vote on Election Day. The State Leadership Teams are as follows:

 

Ohio Leadership Team
Steven Herbik, Chair
Ralph King, Co-Chair
Brian Schoenstein, Co-Chair

Hiram Dejesus, Co-Chair
Richard Jones, Co-Chair
Tim Ali, Co-Chair
 

Pennsylvania Leadership Team
Camera Bartolota, Co-Chair
Wayne Buckwalter, Co-Chair
Curt Coccodrili, Co-Chair
Tom Spankey, Co-Chair
Will Tallman, Co-Chair
James Shultz, Co-Chair

 Great America PAC is the premiere pro-Trump Super PAC led by veteran Republican strategist, Ed Rollins. The group has raised and spent over $9 million in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy, broadcasting more than 5,000 TV spots, secured over 140,000 donations, and built a file of millions of active, newly engaged Trump supporters across the country. 

 

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Sheriff Clarke on inner-city dysfunction and riots

photo credit: dailymail.co.uk

In a piece titled “Hard truths about inner-city dysfunction” at  Fox News Opinion, Cal Thomas cited America’s Sheriff, David Clarke of Milwaukee County:

. . . In an appearance Monday on Fox, Clarke, who is African-American, offered his explanation for the major cause of riots in Milwaukee and other cities: “You know what encourages this? The growth of the welfare state. These are underclass behaviors. Seventy percent of the kids born in Milwaukee are born without an engaged father in their life. So I look at the progressive policies that have marginalized black dads. They push them to the side and say ‘you’re not needed.’ Uncle Sam is going to be the dad, he’s going to provide for the kids, he’s going to feed the kids. Uncle Sam has been a horrible father. Uncle Sam does not love these kids. He might keep a little food in their mouths and that is about it. But we all know the importance of an intact family, what it can do to shape the behavior of kids.”

Clarke called progressive policies “a total disaster,” not only in Milwaukee, but in Chicago, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere. “These progressive policies have hit the black community like a nuclear blast and until we reverse this government dependency, that’s what creates all of this and it encourages it by the way, along with some questionable lifestyle choices.”

His answer? “Until the black community does a self-evaluation and until they begin to self-criticize about some of the lifestyle choices they are making, this stuff is going to continue to fester.”

. . .

Why do African-Americans continue to vote for liberal Democrats who have done little to help them and, in fact, often cause more harm than good?

Again, Clarke gets it right: “Until we push back against this progressive ideology, this dangerous ideology that has been very destructive to the black community and that’s what I’m trying to do -- it’s Job One right now in terms of messaging -- this thing is only going to get worse.”

Clarke expanded on the topic in a longer piece at The Hill (h/t HotGas).

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Pastor Darrell Scott on media bias and Trump

And speaking of media bias and coverage of Donald J. Trump, here is Cleveland Heights' Pastor Darrell Scott on Fox yesterday:

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Trump on Islamic threat: Make America Safe Again

photo credit: indianexpress.com

GOP Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump spoke today in Youngstown, Ohio on the threat to America and western civilization coming from Islamic jihad. The full text is here and contains extensive footnotes. Two take-aways:

The Obama-Clinton foreign policy has unleashed ISIS, destabilized the Middle East, and put the nation of Iran – which chants ‘Death to America’– in a dominant position of regional power and, in fact, aspiring to be a dominant world power. It all began in 2009 with what has become known as President Obama’s global ‘Apology Tour.’

In a series of speeches, President Obama described America as “arrogant,” “dismissive” “derisive” and a “colonial power.” He informed other countries that he would be speaking up about America’s “past errors.” He pledged that we would no longer be a “senior partner,” that “sought to dictate our terms.” He lectured CIA officers of the need to acknowledge their mistakes, and described Guantanamo Bay as a “rallying cry for our enemies.”

Perhaps no speech was more misguided than President Obama’s speech to the Muslim World delivered in Cairo, Egypt, in 2009.

In winning the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly touted the superiority of freedom over communism, and called the USSR the Evil Empire.

Yet, when President Obama delivered his address in Cairo, no such moral courage could be found. Instead of condemning the oppression of women and gays in many Muslim nations, and the systematic violations of human rights, or the financing of global terrorism, President Obama tried to draw an equivalency between our human rights record and theirs. 

His naïve words were followed by even more naïve actions.

. . .

Our victory in the Cold War relied on a bipartisan and international consensus. That is what we must have to defeat Radical Islamic terrorism. But just like we couldn’t defeat communism without acknowledging that communism exists – or explaining its evils – we can’t defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism unless we do the same. This also means we have to promote the exceptional virtues of our own way of life – and expecting that newcomers to our society do the same. Pride in our institutions, our history and our values should be taught by parents and teachers, and impressed upon all who join our society.

Assimilation is not an act of hostility, but an expression of compassion. Our system of government, and our American culture, is the best in the world and will produce the best outcomes for all who adopt it.

This approach will not only make us safer, but bring us closer together as a country.

Renewing this spirit of Americanism will help heal the divisions in our country. It will do so by emphasizing what we have in common – not what pulls us apart.

The rest is here. Or if you prefer to watch on video, it’s here.

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Do you believe what you read and see in the media?

art credit: mediacontrolingourminds.wordpress.com

Is the election already over? In a short piece titled “Media-driven Political Insanity” at American Thinker, Joanna Rosamund begins:

Psycholinguistics and cognitive science have long been interested in linguistic relativity – the concept that language influences way of thinking.  George Orwell, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, also considered: “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”  In the dystopian novel, Orwell depicted a totalitarian state using controlled language and “thought-crime” charges to keep people from thinking.  Throughout history, real-life dictatorships have been known to “pre-define” reality via meaningless slogans, political correctness, and punishment of cerebral dissent.

The fact that several months before elections we are constantly told that a candidate has already won definitely rings an alarm bell.  Orwellian “Newspeak” morphed today into NewsSpeak, with the mainstream media acting as thought police.  While we are being nonchalantly reminded about a long list of observable crimes that go unpunished, the media cheer those crimes’ authors and try to contaminate us with the “enthusiasm.”  One can’t help but notice how visionary Orwell’s writing was: “[s]o much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”

Where did ol’ good logic go?  The processes used in thinking and reasoning should be natural to homo sapiens, and it’s impossible not to have a brain-ache when you clearly see that it´s not the case.

Read the rest here.

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