Two New York University professors conducted an interesting experiment to test this question: what if Trump had been female and Clinton had been male? Their assumption going in was that a male acting like Hillary Clinton did in the debates would have been perceived more positively.
Tad Cronn explains the experiment and its surprising (to leftists) results:
The idea was simple: Re-create a portion of the presidential debates, putting Hillary’s exact words into the mouth of a man and putting Donald Trump’s exact words into the mouth of a woman.
To isolate the gender factor as much as possible, the two actors hired even went so far as to copy each candidate’s posture, movements and inflections.
The professors hoped to show that Trump’s aggressive manner would not have been acceptable to viewers coming from a woman, while Hillary’s presentation would have won her fans if she were a man.
Upon showing the resulting video to audiences, the results were eye-opening. The male version of Hillary came across as an even bigger pompous jackass, while the female Trump won over viewers with her feistiness and courage.
“We both thought that the inversion would confirm our liberal assumption—that no one would have accepted Trump’s behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate,” said Professor Joe Salvatore. “But we kept checking in with each other and realized that this disruption—a major change in perception—was happening. I had an unsettled feeling the whole way through.”
Cronn closes with an intriguing thought:
I wonder, if anyone was brave enough to try it, if a similar experiment involving race would finally show liberals that, yes, it really was Obama’s policies that people hated.
No, I’m not celebrating because The Donald was elected. He wasn’t in my list of top ten candidates for president. If I’d bothered to put together a list of my top 100 (or 1000) candidates, he wouldn’t have been in that list either.
I’m celebrating because Felonia McPantsuit (as Kurt Schlichter dubbed her) won’t be bringing her toxic, Chavista-like mixture of unbridled corruption and radical leftist ideology to the White House. And won’t be carting out yet more of its furnishings after four or eight years.
Oh, yeah, and I’m celebrating because … no hanging chads!!
Billll has updated the “window sticker” he posted earlier this month (tape it to your car’s rear window), but hasn’t posted the new version yet. Here it is.
It really is that simple. On the one hand, we have a person of flawed character (to put it mildly) who embraces our self-defense rights, cutting taxes, rolling back economy-stifling regulation, and “draining the swamp” of a corrupt Washington, D.C. On the other hand, we have a person with a decades-long history of corruption and self-dealing who promises to overturn Heller, likes Australian-style gun confiscation, and committed multiple felonies to cover up her corrupt reign at the State Department. One of the two will be the next president.
If you live in a state where there is no doubt about the outcome (like Massachusetts), please support and vote for the Libertarian candidates, Johnson and Weld. But if you live in a state that’s in doubt (like Colorado), and if the Second Amendment matters to you, download, print, and put this thing to work. Then put a big clothespin on your nose and vote for the asshole. It’s important.
The Podesta emails released by Wikileaks contain a wealth of examples of how dependent on fraud, fakery, and manipulation of a compliant press the Clinton campaign is. Gateway Pundit pointed out an example of interest to those of us concerned about our civil gun rights:
So much about Hillary’s campaign is fake, even some of her supporters. A blog posted to Medium in January was made to look like it was written by a Hillary supporter who was a victim of gun violence was actually orchestrated and written by her staff. Then the piece was customized for the person assigned as the author.
RTWT.
HT: Billlls Idle Mind, which appropriately labeled the Medium post as fantastic, according to one of the definitions of that word.
UPDATE: NRA-ILA reported this story along with a lot of other evidence from the leaked emails of the Clinton campaign’s commitment to make war on gun owners. See also their dissection of the preposterous lie Clinton told during the third debate when asked about her statement that the Supreme Court is “wrong on the Second Amendment.”
First, there were weeks of recurring coughing fits (which prompted this gem from Mad Magazine). Then, she was rushed out of the 9/11 remembrance ceremony, and some private citizens recorded her collapsing and being dragged into a waiting van. She became overheated, her staff said. It was 77° at the time. Oh, she was dehydrated, they added, due to the pneumonia she was diagnosed with last Friday. That’s why she’s been so frail that she needs to be helped up steps and is always coughing.
So of course, that van rushed her to the nearest hospital emergency room to get IV fluids and be checked out, right? Um, no. They took her to her daughter’s apartment. An hour later she came out and danced a jig. And a small child just happened to walk toward her, so she exposed the child to her pneumonia in order to complete the photo op.
Bill filled in for her on the campaign trail and, having failed to get the pneumonia memo, talked about her “flu.”
If you’re confused and/or suspicious, some posts by Aesop at Raconteur Report will make you less confused (but much more suspicious). He apparently has expertise in emergency medicine, as well as some personal history that’s relevant. The first post from last Tuesday includes this about the latter (emphasis in original):
1) I’ve had actual “walking” pneumonia, for real. In my twenties. It absolutely kicked my 20-year old ass, around the block, and down the hill.
Forget about what it would do to a corpulent 68-year old woman.
I did not, for instance, simply go into an air-conditioned apartment for an hour, and come bouncing back to normalcy, same day.
Not just no, but HELL NO.
I was put on a course of antibiotics for a week. I dropped half my college classes for a semester, and it took two weeks at home, doing abso-effing-lutely nothing, to get to where I could come back and struggle through the half that I didn’t drop.
And before and after I got to that point, I looked and felt like death warmed over, thinking I just had a bad chest cold. I did not, for example, look bright and perky in the morning, and then faint dead away in a matter of an hour and a half on a pleasant fall day.
After you’ve read the eight other important points he makes in that post (note: I think he was wrong about Chelsea’s apartment), read the follow-up from Wednesday. And then read today’s update regarding Hillary’s miraculous recovery. If, by the time you read this, Aesop has posted again, you’ll probably want to read that too.
Hillary’s real health problem isn’t her health per se. It’s that this health issue has further exposed the fact that Hillary and her campaign staff are, as Kurt Schlichter says in his latest must-read column,not even competent liars. Even Bill, once the world’s greatest prevaricator, has become maladroit.
Yet why should they bother? Why should Task Force Pantsuit expend any effort at all trying to construct convincing prevarications when the mainstream media is going to smile and nod at whatever they say? Without resistance, you aren’t going to get any stronger, and Clinton’s lies have just gotten weaker and weaker. For her, lying to the mainstream media is like weightlifting by pumping Styrofoam.
Personally, I think all the covering for them that their sycophants in the media can muster isn’t enough to hide the clumsiness of their lies from the public.
Hugh Hewitt quoted Romney supporter David Parker as having crunched the numbers and concluded that “there is NO scenario wherein Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, or anyone else other than Mitt Romney can accumulate the needed 1,144 delegates; unless of course that Mitt Romney withdraws, which is not likely!” The nut of the argument:
… With proportional allocations and 851 of 2,286 delegates having been through the primary/caucus process; Mitt Romney has won nearly 50% (he has also won 14 of 22 states), Rick Santorum has won about 19% and Gingrich has won about 12%. From another vantage point, Mitt has to win approximately 50% of the remaining delegates, Santorum and Gingrich have to win approximately 70% and 73%, respectively. …
Those numbers, if correct, don’t quite mathematically eliminate Santorum and Gingrich, but they sure make Romney’s eventual victory highly likely.
I suppose I’m OK with that. I’ve expressed before my strong dislike for Santorum’s big-government social conservatism. And Gingrich strikes me as narcissistic, unpredictable, and too clever by half (as demonstrated by his partnering with Nancy Pelosi on the issue of “climate change,” for instance).
Ideally, I’d like to see the Republicans nominate someone with a Reaganesque vision of a brighter future, not just a competent executive to “manage the decline,” in Gingrich’s memorable phrase. But, like many people today (most, I hope), I’ll settle for someone who can defeat Obama — and who’ll hopefully have a majority in both houses of Congress, where people like Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan can provide the vision.
Matt Drudge reports that ABC News is sitting on an interview with Newt Gingrich’s first wife, Marianne, that contains “explosive revelations.” On my way home, I heard Hugh Hewitt tell his radio audience that they’re withholding the interview until after the South Carolina primary in order to protect Newt and hurt Romney in that state. But now, on his website, he’s acknowledged another possibility:
… The leak of the story of the interview of Marianne Gingrich without details may actually do more damage to Newt than the interview itself, but it is amazing that a network news operation is sitting on a big story three days before an election.
I question Hewitt’s original contention, as well as his use of “actually” and “but” in that sentence. I think it’s likely that the story was leaked to hurt Gingrich, not Romney. The MSM have been largely pro-Romney (after the attempt to elevate Huntsman’s candidacy fizzled). As in 2008, they’re favoring the most moderate Republican — until after he’s nominated, and then they’ll suddenly discover that he’s a right-wing extremist.
South Carolina has a high percentage of evangelical voters. Leaking the claim that Gingrich’s first wife has dirt on him is going to be damaging even if her revelations later turn out to be no big deal. If nothing else, it reminds those evangelicals of Gingrich’s sorry marital history.
I’m not a big Newt Gingrich fan, but when he’s right, he’s right, and when he’s on his game, there’s nobody better. In last night’s debate, his response to Juan Williams’ race-baiting, “don’t you realize your wife doesn’t like to be beaten” question was simply masterful. He was unapologetic, forceful, articulate, and stood by his principles — qualities that are unfortunately rare among the GOP leadership. It’s the first time a presidential candidate in a debate ever got a standing ovation, and he deserved it.
While you and I and most of the American viewing public were watching J.J. Abrams' latest (not bad; not up to the hype, but not bad), the Republican presidential candidates had another "debate." Do I have to remind you that the best way to find out what happened is to read Vodkapundit's drunkblogging of the event?
It looks like Gary Johnson had the best line of the night — maybe the best line of the year:
7:44PM Johnson: My neighbor’s dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this administration.
UPDATE: Credit where credit is due: Johnson borrowed that line from Rush Limbaugh.
To the delight of the mainstream media, John Huntsman threw his hat into the ring today. They've been promoting his potential candidacy for weeks now. He's the kind of soft-spoken, moderate, reach-across-the-aisle Republican that the Socialist Democrat Party's media shills like. He's the new John McCain.
Of course, if he were to get the Republican nomination, they'd turn on him in a heartbeat, just like they did McCain.
Huntsman announced his presidential campaign at Liberty State Park, with the Statue of Liberty behind him, right where Ronald Reagan spoke on Labor Day, 1980. And Huntsman evoked Reagan early and often. Rush Limbaugh had the right response to that: "You have to forgive me here but I'm a little resentful of people who are nothing like Reagan trying to be Reagan."
Huntsman may have evoked Reagan, but he channeled McCain:
Let me say something about civility. For the sake of the younger generation it concerns me that civility, humanity, and respect are sometimes lost in our interactions as Americans. Our political debates today are corrosive and not reflective of the belief that Abe Lincoln espoused. I don't think you need to run down someone's reputation in order to run for the office of president. I respect the President of the United States. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love, but the question each of us wants the voters to answer is "Who will be the better president?" not who's the better American.
As Limbaugh noted, this is the timid Republicanism that the media elites and the inside-the-beltway, ruling class Republicans want the GOP to embrace, and it's nonsense (emphasis added):
The Republican Party is still convinced that in order to secure the support of independents, that they have to be boring. They have to be serious and Milquetoast and cannot be confrontational, cannot be partisan, cannot go into attack mode. Somehow this is going to cause the independents to get nervous and send them running right back to Obama. Now, of course, that's flat-out BS, it's totally wrong. The elections of last November demonstrate that in a real world, real life example. But then there's also this. We're told — and this is a trap, by the way, the left puts this out. It's designed to get us to be boring. It's designed to get us not to contrast ourselves with the left.
They put out this notion, "These independents, these moderates, they don't mess around. They're cut above! And they start hearing this deep partisanship and they're just gonna run away from you guys. They're gonna run right back to the Democrats." Right. Now, the Democrat Party and anybody in it that you want to name today is the most vicious and mean-spirited and exemplifies the politics of personal destruction unlike I've ever seen it practiced in my lifetime. …
So Huntsman stood where Reagan stood, tried to evoke Reagan, and then proceeded to talk about civility and being nice, about not running down his opponent, and about how much he likes and respects his opponent. Is that how Reagan approached his opponent?
Not exactly. At that same spot, Reagan issued a full-throated denunciation of the godawful mess Jimmy Carter's policies had made of things. Reagan called Carter out by name, called him a failure and a disaster, and eviscerated his misbegotten policies (which sound eerily familiar today). Then he spoke with optimism about the better future that lay ahead after Carter was sent packing. Listen for yourself.
Tony Lee thinks Republican presidential candidates can become much more effective communicators by studying Dodgers' play-by-play announcer Vin Scully:
At the start of the baseball season, hope also springs eternal for the field of potential GOP presidential candidates who are gearing up to launch their presidential bids in the spring. But like Scully’s epic "day to day" quip, the GOP has turned into a day-to-day party and it is an image these presidential aspirants must work to change. Republicans have too often been reactionary—and thus held captive to events—instead of being forward-thinking and proactive. The GOP has lately been a party of nearsighted tactics devoid of any overarching strategy. But in the immediate, the GOP and its representatives have simply just forgotten how to speak effectively and compellingly to Americans. As the presidential sweepstakes kick off, all potential candidates would do themselves a big favor if they listened to nine innings of Vin Scully. …
Lee describes five lessons to be learned from Scully. It's pretty good advice for the GOP's chronically inept communicators (which is most of them). Read the whole thing.
In his weekly email newsletter, Independence Institute President John Caldara observed that each of the two major-party presidential candidates is the most liberal senator in his party. "So really we have a Marxist running against a Democrat, but at least the Democrat's running mate is a Republican."
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Caldara also pointed out that The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News have both endorsed the Institute-backed Amendment 49, Ethical Standards. You can find a brief description of that and the other 17 measures on the Colorado ballot at the Institute's Issues '08 page, as well as at the Ballotpedia Colorado page.
And check out Caldara's blog, The Cauldron, from time to time.
I tried to watch the first McCain-Obama debate. I really did. I gritted my teeth and hung in there right up until moderator Jim Lehrer asked them both how the financial crisis and bailout would affect "how you rule the country."
I screamed "The President doesn't rule the country, Jim!" and ran from the room.
UPDATE: You want more? Substantive analysis and insight mixed with adult beverages? Well, go read Stephen Green's drunkblogging. Here's the money quote:
McCain is no debater. He wouldn’t last a second during Question Hour in the British Parliament. And yet Obama is coming off in third place in a two-man session.
… When it gets so bad that late-night comics like David Letterman and Jon Stewart are making sport of him, you'd think that Obama's handlers would be trying to do something about it.
But the problem with deep-rooted narcissism is that it can't be disguised or controlled; arrogance is so much part of the narcissist's psychological makeup that he simply cannot help but find new, almost daily, forms and forums in which to express it. Here is Obama's latest gaffe, which has already become the target of MSM, talk-radio, and blogger mockery:
Stumping in an economically challenged battleground state, Obama argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain their hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
"…all those other presidents on the dollar bills"? Did we miss something? Have we already had that election?…
No wonder that the David Letterman audience exploded with laughter the other night when, in a list of "Top Ten Reasons Why Barack Obama May be Over-Confident About the Election," reason number six was: "Getting his head measured for Mt. Rushmore." …
… Hubris has dashed the lofty dreams of more than one Democratic candidate, despite weak Republican opponents — and given the latest polls, it appears that it is setting off alarm bells with the electorate this year, too.
The problem for Obama is that megalomania is so much a part of him that there's probably not a damned thing he can do to hide it. So, I'm sure the gaffes will continue, every time he speaks without the discipline of a text prepared for him by others .
Obama thinks some people are "scared" of him because of how he looks. But a lot of us are turned off (not "scared") because of how he sounds — like a slightly less stiff, more pigmented version of John Kerry.
I heard this portion of Obama's Tuesday night victory speech on the radio today, and I was chilled by both his words and the intensity of the adulation, cheering, and screaming by the crowd:
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless…
… this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…
… this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.
Wow. Just wow. Did he ride in on a white horse?
Set aside for the moment the absurd suggestion that until St. Barack's triumphant arrival, "we" didn't care for the sick or provide jobs for the jobless. What really disturbs me is someone whose mentors, spiritual advisers, friends, allies, and close associates include the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Frank Marshall Davis, Alice Palmer, Rashid Khalidi, and Raila Odinga (to name just a few*) promising to "remake" America.
