A Meta-Column On Pollwatching
This is going to be a meta-column, just to warn everyone in advance. It's going to be a column about columns. If you think this will bore the pants off you, then now is the time to seek other content, in other words.
Behind the scenes here, I've been gearing up to kick off my election-year "Electoral Math" series once again. Throughout the campaign, we'll take a look at the polling and try to predict how each state will vote, and thus what the Electoral College vote will be after the November presidential election. These columns will run right up until the day before the election, when I'll attempt to make my final prediction. This will be the fourth run of this column series. I previously wrote these articles for the 2008, 2012, and 2016 campaigns.
This time around, however, many people (Democrats in particular) are what could only be called "twice shy," after getting so badly bitten in 2016. "Polls cannot be trusted," many now conclude, "so why even bother writing poll-watching columns?"
At the heart of the matter, such thinking is right (to some extent). The map is not the territory. The poll is not the Election Day reality. It can only ever be an estimate, and estimates can prove to be badly mistaken, in the end.
In one sense, this is good for Democrats and good for Joe Biden, because even though he's looking better and better in pretty much every poll that's been run since the start of Donald Trump's massive failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats are simply not going to be lulled into a false sense of overconfidence this time around. This includes the voters, by the way. Elections often hinge on turnout, which proved to be a particular problem for Hillary Clinton the last time around. This time, some people worry about Biden generating enough enthusiasm among the base. But Donald Trump is the best uniter of the Democratic Party ever seen, which means the enthusiasm to vote against Trump is probably going to be the biggest turnout factor in November.
Intangibles aside, though, what about those polls? Polling is an exercise in mathematical statistics, which is based on the premise that if you take a large enough sample of people and ask their opinions, it will turn out to be a representative sample of the population as a whole. So you can predict what will happen on a larger scale by polling a fraction of the total. That's it in a nutshell, really.
Public opinion polling has been around for quite a while, although it has gotten increasingly more scientific with better mathematical models over the past century or so. The first rudimentary presidential polling I am aware of happened during Andrew Jackson's time, in the 1820s. What would now be called campaign operatives for Jackson travelled up and down the most important mass travel corridor of the time. In 1820s America, this meant taking riverboats up and down both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. If these proto-pollsters talked to enough people (from enough disparate walks of life), then they could get a fairly accurate feel for "what the public is thinking" on both the issues and Jackson's chances of getting elected. The equivalent in the 1970s would be setting up shop at rest areas along highways like Interstate 95 and Interstate 70, and trying to talk to every car that pulled in. Travel is not a partisan thing, so there are all kinds of demographic groups driving on the same road simultaneously. More recently, polling people at major airport hubs like Atlanta would probably give just as varied a slice of the public.
Of course, nobody actually polls that way today (with the exception of exit polls, where pollsters try to question as many voters in person right after they have voted, to predict what the totals will be). Instead, the best public opinion polling now takes place by phone. The changing nature of phones has impacted polling in a big way over the past two decades, of course. Many point to the difference between cell phones and landlines as the biggest change in polling, but the biggest technological shift likely has come about as a result of the near-universal use of caller ID nowadays. Whether on a landline or a cell phone, most people today simply do not answer incoming numbers they do not recognize. That is really the biggest challenge polling has faced in decades, not whether the phone is attached to anything by a cord. Pollsters have been grappling with both the landline/cell problem and the "nobody ever picks up the phone anymore" problem for a while now.
These technological shifts are one reason polls can be wildly off base these days. Donald Trump is actually counting on this in his campaign, as he's trying to resurrect Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority." This term is supposed to refer to all those Americans out there that never get polled (or wouldn't answer one if they got called) and therefore never enter into the pollster's equations. On Election Day, though, they'll turn out to vote in big numbers to provide a swell of voting that the pollsters didn't see coming. That's the Silent Majority theory, at any rate. Trump's not entirely wrong, because unexpected votes did indeed help him out the last time around. He's hoping history will repeat itself this November.
Of course, not all polls are created equal. Some are much more rigorous in their methodology than others. Some have preconceived outcomes they want to see happen, which can lead to fudging the numbers (mostly by tweaking the modelling used to predict the whole population). But in general, the A-level pollsters do a pretty good job, within the limitations of all polling. After all, the 2016 outcome was indeed in line with the nationwide polling -- Hillary Clinton beat Trump by a few percentage points, which was pretty close to what all the respected pollsters had been predicting.
The real challenge comes at the state level, though. State polls -- unless conducted by those same respected national polling outfits -- are usually less accurate as a rule. Many state polls are conducted by local media and local universities (sometimes done in collaboration, sometimes done independent of one another). And, to state the obvious, some of these polls are a lot better than others. When you've got dozens of different polling operations in all 50 states, some are naturally going to be better than others.
Pollsters do try to get things right, because their own reputation as pollsters hinges on it. They try to learn from previous mistakes made and refine their methodology in an effort to be more accurate. Three things to watch when considering individual polls are the type of people polled, the number of people polled, and the reported margins of error. By "type of people polled," I am not talking about demographics, but rather the differences between "all people," "registered voters," and "likely voters." For a general poll -- say, on the current president's job approval rating -- polling all people makes sense. You don't have to have voted in order to have a valid opinion on how the country's leader is doing, after all. But in election season, most pollsters begin by polling registered voters at the start and then shift at some point during the campaign to focus on the likely voters. Doing so is supposed to provide a more accurate picture of what the vote will actually turn out to be. Different pollsters measure the likeliness of a person to vote that year in different ways, though -- some only count voters who say they've voted in the past two elections, while some directly ask: "How sure are you that you'll cast a ballot this year?" and then rank people by their self-reported enthusiasm. None of this is perfect, of course, and by discounting some people's responses, pollsters can miss a wave of voters that show up from out of nowhere and change the Election Day results.
The number of people polled is very important. To get a nationwide sample of the public, at a very minimum 1,000 to 1,500 people really need to be polled. The higher the sample is, the more accurate the poll will be, because the more people you talk to the lower the risk will be that you just randomly missed a big demographic group out there. The reported margin of error is a function of the number of people polled and the total population involved (either the whole United States or just one state or even one district). Margins of error above five percent are pretty bad. Margins below about 3.5 percent are good. The smaller the margin of error, the more accurate the poll will likely prove to be. This is where problems with state polls begin, because polls are expensive and complicated to produce. So the smaller polling operation (with a smaller budget) will call fewer people and have a much higher margin of error.
The hardest thing pollster do with their raw data is "weight" it according to all sorts of demographics. This is supposed to correct the problem of not calling up enough people in any one group. If, for instance, you poll 1,000 people in a state that has 20 percent of a certain demographic (African-Americans, or people over 65 years old, or people making a certain income -- there are plenty of demographic groups to keep track of, obviously), but in your poll you only wind up talking to 120 people of that certain group, then you know that your data will be skewed. You've got to include a multiplier to get that 120 people up to 20 percent. This is very tricky to do because of the complexities of so many different demographics. This is also where Donald Trump is hoping the pollsters get it wrong, by undercounting his base voters.
The upshot of all this is that I do realize people have more than just a healthy skepticism of polling, heading into the 2020 election. This is almost universal across the political spectrum, I should point out, since Trump voters sneer at pollsters that underestimated them in 2016 while Democrats worry about overconfidence. Either way, the polls are viewed with far less faith than they were four years ago.
Even so, it's really all we have to go on. Public opinion polling is an inexact science to begin with, no matter what the statistics textbooks say. It can be wrong. It can even be wildly wrong. But I still believe it's worth watching.
Which is why I will be starting the "Electoral Math" columns up again soon. I'll be keeping a much closer eye on the volume and quality of the individual state polls this time, though. Some states get polled repeatedly throughout the campaign season by multiple polling outfits. Some don't -- in some states only a handful of polling (or even "one single poll") will be provided for the entire campaign. Why poll for president in California or Nebraska, after all, when the outcome is pretty much a foregone conclusion? As a rule, battleground states -- any state seen as competitive and meaningful -- get polled more often and by multiple pollsters. This helps, since these are the states that can decide the whole election. But it's still not perfect, of course.
As a reader, you can follow along with the "Electoral Math" series (with a healthy dose of skepticism, as always) or you can choose to ignore the whole series if you wish. The choice is up to you. I will try to maintain a healthy level of skepticism myself this time around, but I'm still going to pay close attention to the polling for the next four months. Polling may be flawed and often inaccurate, but without it I'd be left with mere anecdotal evidence of what the voters feel -- which is virtually guaranteed to be even more inaccurate. Polling is what we've got to work with for now, which is why I'll be plowing ahead with the "Electoral Math" series once again.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
The aftertaste that 2016 left behind gives cheer to the GOP and the the willie's to Democrats. But pre election polling in 2018 proved to understate the Democrats support, so there's little chance that there's a vast, unpolled motherlode of Trump supporters out there.
'Tis best, though, that Democrats act like it's a lot closer than the blue tidal I see forming five months out from November.
RCP had a very interesting article about a pollster that correctly predicted 2016. I think it referred to social desirability bias, and I wonder whether most pollsters will try to adjust this time around to the likelihood that more people will vote for Donald than will admit they're voting for Donald.
[2]
I think it referred to social desirability bias, and I wonder whether most pollsters will try to adjust this time around to the likelihood that more people will vote for Donald than will admit they're voting for Donald.
I think Trump's remaining supporters have remained "loud and proud." Plus, they elected him in 2016, so why would any significant portion of his supporters be shy about supporting in 2020?
@caddy,
because they know that anyone else in the room who hears about their choice will rip them a new one.
JL
You know, Don, Biden is for campaign finance reform. You should check it out and, then, write more letters.
Just because that tactic hasn't worked for you in the past doesn't mean it can't work in the future.
I still say that there is no way that Trump can win without outside interference. There are a large number of 2016 Trump voters who voted for him not because they believed in him, but because they thought Hillary was actually going to win and they just couldn’t bring themselves to vote for her. They regret their decision to vote for Trump now, and they will not make the same mistake this time around.
I have yet to meet a Hillary voter who is planning on voting for Trump (except those that have lost bets and now feel obligated to keep their word). You never read op-Ed pieces from anyone saying that Trump has won them over with his administrative skills.
Combine these with the number of FoxNews viewers that have died since Trump’s election and there really is no way for him to win the election...unless he has help.
[7]
You never read op-Ed pieces from anyone saying that Trump has won them over with his administrative skills.
Combine these with the number of FoxNews viewers that have died since Trump’s election and there really is no way for him to win the election...unless he has help.
And he'll get help. Russia, North Korea, China and Suadi Arabia are among the state actors who have incentives to try and tip the scales.
I think 2016 showed us Russia's "B-game." 2020 will see their A-game.
The Donaldthug likes to watch polls even though he lies about them a lot. They have to be torturous for a fragile snowflake like him. Biden leading in Pennsylvania? Send a Predator drone to get Bolton. Approval rating under water in Florida? Order the secret prison guard thug army to massacre BLM. The failing orange manbaby's acting out is likely to get ugly as the polls go down the ramp faster than an old fat guy.
@liz,
biden should quit the cake habit and return to his cherry pie roots. we must require more of our desserts.
JL
Just watching some clips of Trump’s rally...I have never seen a crowd of people more impressed and proud of someone who hadn’t suffered a major brain trauma for being able to drink from a glass of water using one hand than they were of Trump! Really? Is that what warrants applause these days from Republicans.
Then watching him try to explain why he couldn’t walk down a ramp that somehow was like an ice skating rink on a day where he was complaining about how incredibly hot he was. Or was he explaining why he could walk down it? He kinda said both things, so it was not clear.
Joshua, I don't understand …
FPC,
WOW.. 335 comments.. That's gotta be close to a record!!! :D
CW,
Behind the scenes here, I've been gearing up to kick off my election-year "Electoral Math" series once again. Throughout the campaign, we'll take a look at the polling and try to predict how each state will vote, and thus what the Electoral College vote will be after the November presidential election. These columns will run right up until the day before the election, when I'll attempt to make my final prediction. This will be the fourth run of this column series. I previously wrote these articles for the 2008, 2012, and 2016 campaigns.
If I recall, 2016's was kinda wild, eh?? :D
This time around, however, many people (Democrats in particular) are what could only be called "twice shy," after getting so badly bitten in 2016. "Polls cannot be trusted," many now conclude, "so why even bother writing poll-watching columns?"
It IS a valid point...
At the heart of the matter, such thinking is right (to some extent). The map is not the territory. The poll is not the Election Day reality. It can only ever be an estimate, and estimates can prove to be badly mistaken, in the end.
Thank you... :D
Democrats are simply not going to be lulled into a false sense of overconfidence this time around. This includes the voters, by the way.
Wanna bet??? We are already seeing that sense of overconfidence here in Weigantia... :D
But Donald Trump is the best uniter of the Democratic Party ever seen, which means the enthusiasm to vote against Trump is probably going to be the biggest turnout factor in November.
Yea.. I believe that's what was ya'all's plan in 2016.. Didna work out to well if I recall.. :D
And let me tell you why.. Considering all the real life violence and attacks on Trump supporters, Trump voters are stealth voters.. They won't acknowledge who they support or might even say Biden just to avoid being, literally and physically attacked..
That's a sad state of the Democrat Party to be sure.. But it also explains why ANY plans the Democrat Party makes will be for naught..
The biggest threat to ANY military enemy of the United States is the stealth capability of our military forces.. The enemy can't fight what it can't see...
So it is with presidential campaigns.. Democrats can't plan for what they can't see.. So the plan for what the CAN see and end up getting their asses handed to them..
That is what happened in 2016 and that is what is going to happen in 2020...
Intangibles aside, though, what about those polls? Polling is an exercise in mathematical statistics, which is based on the premise that if you take a large enough sample of people and ask their opinions, it will turn out to be a representative sample of the population as a whole. So you can predict what will happen on a larger scale by polling a fraction of the total. That's it in a nutshell, really.
And THAT is exactly why polling doesn't work with President Trump involved..
Because, once again, President Trump supporters are stealth supporters and either won't answer polls or if the do answer polls, they don't tell who they really support.. Can ya blame them?? I mean, who wants to draw that kinda violence from Democrats onto one's family..
So, it's as I said in the previous commentary.. When you see a poll about the election, you can assume that ALL the respondents are Democrats and/or Trump/America haters..
Given that fact, it's a wonder President Trump does as good as he does...
The upshot of all this is that I do realize people have more than just a healthy skepticism of polling, heading into the 2020 election. This is almost universal across the political spectrum, I should point out, since Trump voters sneer at pollsters that underestimated them in 2016 while Democrats worry about overconfidence. Either way, the polls are viewed with far less faith than they were four years ago.
Apparently, that skepticism has not extended to Weigantia.. :D
Even so, it's really all we have to go on. Public opinion polling is an inexact science to begin with, no matter what the statistics textbooks say. It can be wrong. It can even be wildly wrong. But I still believe it's worth watching.
It's worthwhile if Weigantians understand how wrong the polls were before and likely how wrong they will be again..
But if it's used for propaganda purposes, to sell people on a lie, then I wouldn't call it worthwhile..
On the other hand, that's why ya'all have ME here.. :D To keep ya'all grounded in reality.. :D
MC
The aftertaste that 2016 left behind gives cheer to the GOP and the the willie's to Democrats. But pre election polling in 2018 proved to understate the Democrats support, so there's little chance that there's a vast, unpolled motherlode of Trump supporters out there.
You can't compare a mid-term election to a Presidential election..
They are 2 totally different animals..
Even with that fact though, it was well documented that Democrats only did well in the House and only because the Dem candidates who ran, ran as GOP-Lite... In other words, a lot of Doug Jones elections that won't be repeated in 2020..
I'll make you a wager that 75% of Dem House Reps that ran as GOP LITE and won in 2018 will lose their jobs in 2020 and that the GOP will take back the House..
Wanna place yer bet??? :D
JL
RCP had a very interesting article about a pollster that correctly predicted 2016. I think it referred to social desirability bias, and I wonder whether most pollsters will try to adjust this time around to the likelihood that more people will vote for Donald than will admit they're voting for Donald.
EXACTLY my point...
For their polls to be viable, pollsters are going to have to take into account President Trump stealth voters...
The pollsters are going to have to pierce the cloak of invisibility..
If they can't, 2020 is going to be an even BIGGER upset than 2016, with President Trump likely taking home the Vanity Vote trophy as well..
It will be interesting to see what 2020 pollsters will come up with to increase the sensitivity of their radars, to continue along the military theme...
MC,
I think Trump's remaining supporters have remained "loud and proud." Plus, they elected him in 2016, so why would any significant portion of his supporters be shy about supporting in 2020?
Because they are still attacked and demonized... Physically attacked for their choices..
Would YOU want to voice your support for Biden if you knew you and your family would be beat up??
JL,
because they know that anyone else in the room who hears about their choice will rip them a new one.
Yunno, if ya like, you can just write my comments for me and I can take the day off, eh?? :D
Combine these with the number of FoxNews viewers that have died since Trump’s election and there really is no way for him to win the election...unless he has help.
Yep, yer right..
And President Trump gets PLENTY of help from the Media who gives President Trump BILLIONS in free media coverage..
President Trump will ALSO have help from the Democrat Party who ties their platform to utterly moronic shit like DEFUND/ABOLISH THE POLICE and SLAVE REPARATIONS and YOU AIN'T BLACK...
So, yea.. President Trump gets PLENTY of help...
What's yer point?? :D
But there is that over-confidence I mentioned up in comment #21..
Democrats, by and large, think that 2016 was a fluke and couldn't happen again..
But the circumstances we saw in 2016 (IE lousy Democrat governance, Left Wing terrorism and violence, physical attacks on President Trump supporters) is all present in the here and now..
What IS different is the huge left lurch that has permeated the Democrat Party.. And the blatant and utter terrorism and violence committed by the Left..
Considering all these facts, 2020 is going to be 2016 on steroids...
Let's visit the area of the latest AntiFa/Democrat Party attack on society..
Seattle officials vow to clear out violent 'CHOP' zone, but residents ask why it took a murder
Residents near Seattle’s CHOP ask what took city so long to move to break up protest
Residents who live near Seattle’s "police-free" zone called CHOP—“Capitol Hill Organized Protest"—expressed relief Monday after Mayor Jenny Durkan announced that city officials are working to end the protest after two recent shootings including one that was deadly.
But despite the mayor’s decision to act, some residents who live by the area were critical of the city's leadership for taking so long to act.
“It was doomed to happen from Day One,” Matthew Ploszaj, who lives in the vicinity, told KOMO News. “No one wanted to say it, but I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It should have ended when the Car Tender got broken and the mob went down and broke his fence. It did not have to come to this.”
Durkan said the violence was distracting from changes sought by thousands of peaceful protesters opposing racial inequity and police brutality. She said at a news conference that the city is working with the community to bring CHOP to an end and that police soon would move back into a precinct building they had largely abandoned in the area.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/residents-near-seattles-chop-ask-what-took-city-so-long-to-breakup-protest
THIS is why Democrats are going to lose big in Nov...
The GOP will keep the Senate, keep the White House and take the House back..
Because Democrats are off their rockers with this violence and every American knows it..
JFC
The Donaldthug likes to watch polls even though he lies about them a lot. They have to be torturous for a fragile snowflake like him. Biden leading in Pennsylvania? Send a Predator drone to get Bolton. Approval rating under water in Florida? Order the secret prison guard thug army to massacre BLM. The failing orange manbaby's acting out is likely to get ugly as the polls go down the ramp faster than an old fat guy.
And yet, he is going to win re-election..
Funny how that is, eh?? :D
Years ago, we had a rock-solid conservative congressman around these part name of George Hansen. George never won a poll in his entire career, but he also never lost an election.
As CW mentioned, I'm totally surprised the the profession of poll-taking even survived the debacle of 2016, but the reason is clear - without poll takers, you political junkies wouldn't have anything to occupy yourselves. Political poll watching is literally your raison d'etre.
Without political poll takers to keep you guys talking, you'd have to get a real life!!! SCARY, right?
Really? Physically attacked, what, through their phones? Does it have to be a land line or are Trump supporters getting beaten down through their cell phones, too?
The above was in reference to
[16]
And let me tell you why.. Considering all the real life violence and attacks on Trump supporters, Trump voters are stealth voters.. They won't acknowledge who they support or might even say Biden just to avoid being, literally and physically attacked..
[4]
nypoet22 wrote:
@caddy,
because they know that anyone else in the room who hears about their choice will rip them a new one.
Sure, except that do you really think anyone overhearing a Trump supporter answering a pollster doesn't already know they're a Trumpanzee? I mean, they wear red hats and such so they can recognize each other.
Disgusting Political Correctness Hits Home..
St Augustine, the nation's oldest city, has decided to remove it's Confederate Memorial..
I am totally disgusted with my adopted home.. :(
@caddy,
i've encountered people who are trump voters who you'd never think. just because the "loud and proud" ones are the ones we tend to notice doesn't mean that there aren't also those who are quiet and circumspect. those types have to really trust you not to blow up at them before they'll let you know about it.
CRS,
Years ago, we had a rock-solid conservative congressman around these part name of George Hansen. George never won a poll in his entire career, but he also never lost an election.
Exactly.. But what's so funny about Weigantians is that they (NEN) swear and live and die by those polls..
But *ONLY* the polls that say what they want to hear...
It's tragically laughable...
As CW mentioned, I'm totally surprised the the profession of poll-taking even survived the debacle of 2016, but the reason is clear - without poll takers, you political junkies wouldn't have anything to occupy yourselves. Political poll watching is literally your raison d'etre.
Without political poll takers to keep you guys talking, you'd have to get a real life!!! SCARY, right?
Hay!! I resemble that remark!! :D
No, seriously.. The *ONLY* time I ever use polls is to rub my fellow Weigantians nose in the fact that they only buy into the polls that say what they want to hear..
I am on record as stating that the ONLY thing that polls indicate is the biases of the poll takers.
They are useless for anything else..
Having said that, the official Poll of Weigantia (RCP's Poll Of Polls) is less useless than all the others...
MC,
Really? Physically attacked, what, through their phones? Does it have to be a land line or are Trump supporters getting beaten down through their cell phones, too?
Yer kidding, right??
You honestly believe that Trump supporters are not victims of real physical violence JUST for being Trump supporters??
You HONESTLY believe that??? Or are you just trolling??
Sure, except that do you really think anyone overhearing a Trump supporter answering a pollster doesn't already know they're a Trumpanzee? I mean, they wear red hats and such so they can recognize each other.
You really have led a shelter'ed life politically speaking, haven't you??
@m,
what do you have invested in a confederate memorial? if someone wants to get rid of it, why should you care?
JL
i've encountered people who are trump voters who you'd never think. just because the "loud and proud" ones are the ones we tend to notice doesn't mean that there aren't also those who are quiet and circumspect. those types have to really trust you not to blow up at them before they'll let you know about it.
Exactly....
The facts of 2016 should prove beyond ANY doubt that Trump supporters are vastly under counted...
Because, once again, President Trump supporters are stealth supporters and either won't answer polls or if the do answer polls, they don't tell who they really support.. Can ya blame them?? I mean, who wants to draw that kinda violence from Democrats onto one's family..
So, it's as I said in the previous commentary.. When you see a poll about the election, you can assume that ALL the respondents are Democrats and/or Trump/America haters..
Given that fact, it's a wonder President Trump does as good as he does...
Wait, I'm confused. Trump supporters won't admit to it due to "violence from Democrats onto one's family?
OAN outta be all over this story!
But...some of the 100% of Democratic poll respondents are supporting Trump, because why?
Michale, you really reached a bit too far on this one haha
[33]
MC,
Really? Physically attacked, what, through their phones? Does it have to be a land line or are Trump supporters getting beaten down through their cell phones, too?
Yer kidding, right??
You honestly believe that Trump supporters are not victims of real physical violence JUST for being Trump supporters??
You HONESTLY believe that??? Or are you just trolling??
Yes, I honestly believe that no Trump supporters have been physically attacked through their cell phones. Landlines, maybe, please provide the link.
Yes, I honestly believe that no Trump supporters have been physically attacked through their cell phones. Landlines, maybe, please provide the link.
Why be such a smart ass??
We're talking about Trump supporters being physically attacked in public??
Given this FACT, you think that Trump Supporters are going to be forthcoming when asked about the political preferences in ANY venue???
Seriously???
Given this FACT, you think that Trump Supporters are going to be forthcoming when asked about the political preferences in ANY venue???
You can deny this FACT all you want... Doesn't make it any less factual..
But answer this... If Trump supporters are fully represented in the polls, as you seem to believe....
How do you explain Trump's victory in 2016???
How do you reconcile the polls with the results of the 2016 election??
It took some digging but I found this, which in your honor I present in all bold. Because everyone knows that if you shout you're waaay more persuasive.
"Deep State" Using Stealth Capabilities to Suppress Trump Polling Support
-- One America News
The "Deep State" is using stealth technology to locate and neutralize Trump supporters via Potemkin "polling firms" that dispatch stealth assault teams to attack those who support Our Dear President. The well known GOP anti-gun culture leaves most of these True Americans defenseless. Apparently, supporting Trump over a cell phone call is no protection.
Said one victim, "Yeh, I said I'm all in on Trump over mah cell Thursday, and they caught up to me at Saturday night's cross burning."
Is this a good time to go "Heh?"
Signed--
Newbie to the Society Against Gratuitous Use of Heh
Give me guidance, people.
[39]
Why be such a smart ass??
We're talking about Trump supporters being physically attacked in public??
No, were talking about telephone polling and your excuse for Trump's sagging reelection chances.
It took some digging but I found this, which in your honor I present in all bold. Because everyone knows that if you shout you're waaay more persuasive.
Actually, if you had more than 2 brain cells to rub together, you would note that BOLD indicates information and commentary from various sources..
ITALICS indicates quotes from Weigantians..
As for your quote, why not quote Brietbart?? Has as much credibility as your bullshit source...
Give me guidance, people.
I just did.. Have a ball...
Newbie to the Society Against Gratuitous Use of Heh
Well, noob to Weigantia at the very least.. :eyeroll:
Not gonna answer the question posed to you in comment #47??
"What a shock.."
-Bill Murray, GROUNDHOG DAY
Insurgents from the left threaten to upend Dem Party plans in Tuesday primaries
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party hasn’t had much to celebrate at the ballot box since populist Sen. Bernie Sanders suspended his presidential campaign two-and-a-half months ago.
But the left appears to be storming back, giving more moderate Democratic candidates some serious competition in newly competitive primaries in Kentucky and New York, two of the states holding contests on Tuesday.
The premier showdowns grabbing the national spotlight are the Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky, where establishment-backed Amy McGrath – who had been the heavy favorite and enjoyed a massive fundraising advantage – is facing a serious threat from progressive candidate and state Rep. Charles Booker.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/insurgents-from-the-left-threaten-to-upend-dem-party-plans-in-tuesday-primaries
Remind me again how the Democrat Party is united?? I seem to have forgotten what with all the FACTS that say otherwise.. :D
And in other new...
http://sjfm.us/pics/RavenRajah.jpg
Another addition to our family.. :D
Remind me again how the Democrat Party is united?? I seem to have forgotten what with all the FACTS that say otherwise.. :D
The Democrats are united. Much more so than the Republican Party. I don’t see any prominent Democrats forming a PAC to get Trump re-elected, but there are multiple Republican groups who are anti-Trump and pro-Biden.
Your problem (WOW, I cannot imagine how many times a day you must hear sentences that start off like this...) is that you are in a cult where you are instructed as to what your opinion must be; whether you truly believe it or not. We can disagree on issues and not be run out of the Party for that disagreement. I know that must sound like a fantasy world compared to what you are constantly faced with, but once we select who will represent us in the general election, you’ll see the type unity that Trump truly inspires in others!
[45]
Yes, I honestly believe that no Trump supporters have been physically attacked through their cell phones. Landlines, maybe, please provide the link.
"Deep State" Using Stealth Capabilities to Suppress Trump Polling Support
-- One America News
The "Deep State" is using stealth technology to locate and neutralize Trump supporters via Potemkin "polling firms" that dispatch stealth assault teams to attack those who support Our Dear President. The well known GOP anti-gun culture leaves most of these True Americans defenseless. Apparently, supporting Trump over a cell phone call is no protection.
Said one victim, "Yeh, I said I'm all in on Trump over mah cell Thursday, and they caught up to me at Saturday night's cross burning."
As for your quote, why not quote Brietbart?? Has as much credibility as your bullshit source...
You know, you're right Michale. Putting that totally made up "source" (i.e. bullshit) in all bold did make it look more legit!
The Democrats are united. Much more so than the Republican Party. I don’t see any prominent Democrats forming a PAC to get Trump re-elected, but there are multiple Republican groups who are anti-Trump and pro-Biden.
So, you are saying that the totality of the Democrat Party is on board with Defund/Abolish Police and Biden's "YOU AIN'T BLACK" BS and AntiFa's Armed Rebellion??
Democrat Party is totally united with all that??
Oh well, then I stand corrected... :D
Thanx for that concession...
but once we select who will represent us in the general election, you’ll see the type unity that Trump truly inspires in others!
Yea?? The kind like in 2016 when all the Bernie Bros voted President Trump??
"You can't win.. I have god on my side!!"
-Leland Gant, NEEDFUL THINGS
You know, you're right Michale. Putting that totally made up "source" (i.e. bullshit) in all bold did make it look more legit!
Only to those with simple minds.. Which is, apparently, what I am dealing with in you..
Still waiting for your Police Reform ideas.. :D
Disgusting Political Correctness Hits Home..
St Augustine, the nation's oldest city, has decided to remove it's Confederate Memorial..
I am totally disgusted with my adopted home.. :(
When you start seeing statues of Judas at churches, busts of Benedict Arnold being placed in federal buildings, or statues of Adam Lanza at preschools, then you can complain about tearing down Confederate statues. We do not honor betrayal in this country...so statues honoring the Confederacy were put up for only one other reason — racism.
Back on point, Michale:
No, were talking about telephone polling and your excuses for Trump's sagging reelection chances.
Gotta say it:
"Because the polls were wrong in 2016..." isn't convincing to anyone who's not one of Trump's Deranged Supporters.
That's if you're here to persuade rather than to (try to) annoy.
We do not honor betrayal in this country..
And yet, even England has a statue of George Washington....
so statues honoring the Confederacy were put up for only one other reason — racism.
First off, the Confederacy were Democrats...
Secondly, it's all part of our history..
Scumbag dictatorships usually try to erase their country's history...
The Democrat Party's attempts to erase this country's past is Orwellian.. As is the Democrat Party itself..
Finally, you have absolutely NO FACTS to support your BS claim that it's all based on racism..
Unless you are willing to concede that the entirety existence of the Democrat Party is based on racism..
No, were talking about telephone polling and your excuses for Trump's sagging reelection chances.
Yea. Just like his election chances were also "sagging"...
Remind me again how that turned out??
That's if you're here to persuade rather than to (try to) annoy.
Why I am here is really not any of your business, now is it??
STILL waiting for your ideas on police reform..
You ready to man up and admit yer clueless???
Or we can play this game a bit longer where you pretend to know what you are talking about and everyone knows yer clueless..
Makes me no never mind.. :D
Russ,
Explain the destruction of Grant's and Washington's statues??
Can ya do that??
PIERS MORGAN: Trump should be heading for a massive shellacking in November, but insane liberals are fighting hard to get him re-elected by destroying statues of American heroes, rioting in the streets and letting off fireworks all night
Donald Trump should be preparing to pack his bags at the White House.
It’s hard to imagine a worse scenario for any incumbent President trying to secure re-election than his terrible handling of a global pandemic resulting in America suffering the world’s worst coronavirus death toll and the US economy crashing to its worst levels since the Great Depression with 40 million job losses.
Trump made things even worse when the country was engulfed by the worst race riots for 50 years and he shamefully fuelled the fires with his shockingly tone-deaf and incendiary response to the country’s rage at George Floyd’s murder at the knee of a racist cop.
Any one of those things would normally signal ballot box slaughter in election year.
Yet somehow, unbelievably, Trump’s opponents are once again doing everything in their power to wrestle another defeat from the jaws of seemingly inevitable victory.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8451541/PIERS-MORGAN-Liberals-fighting-Trump-elected-rioting-letting-fireworks.html
Even a Trump hater realizes how badly the Democrat Party is fraking up...
If you were scripting an escape route for Trump it would involve liberal protesters tearing down statues of America’s greatest icons, liberal leaders allowing virtual anarchy on the streets to go unpunished, and a dramatic intensifying of the absurdly self-defeating culture war nonsense that makes many Americans fear the very soul of their nation is being dismantled.
From a position of unprecedented weakness, Trump is now fighting back with his clunky but undeniably effective triple whammy ‘America first’ fist of patriotism, toughness and common sense.
Or rather, he’s being hauled off the ropes by his opponents losing their minds.
The Dumbocrat Party is like the Palestinians..
Their own worst enemies..
Democrats are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory... :D
This insanity has reached its peak over the past few days as protesters set about destroying monuments to some of America’s most beloved historical figures.
In Portland, Oregon, they draped an American flag around a 100-year-old statue of the first president, George Washington, set it on fire, pulled the statue down and then urinated on it.
They said they did it because Washington owned slaves.
That’s true, he did.
But he was also one of the Founding Fathers who established the United States of America with a determination to eradicate slavery, which then happened.
In San Francisco, protesters vandalized a statue of another former president Ulysses E. Grant, the man who led the Union Army in defeating the Confederates in the Civil War.
Again, they argued he was a slave owner.
And again, that’s true.
But Grant was gifted one slave, despised the whole concept of having one, and let him free within a year. He then wiped out the Ku Klux Klan by pushing legislation through Congress to prosecute them. And he appointed African-Americans to prominent government roles.
In another part of the same Golden Gate Park, hundreds more protesters tore down statues of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to 'The Star-Spangled Banner', because he too owned slaves.
This, again, is true. But he also represented a young Black man suing Georgetown College for his freedom in the 1830s.
And he wrote America’s National Anthem!
In Philadelphia, the statue of abolitionist Matthias Baldwin was attacked and sprayed with words like ‘colonizer’ and ‘murderer’.
Yet Baldwin was a very outspoken critic of slavery, fought for African-Americans to have the right to vote and founded a school in the city for black children.
Basically, Dumbocrats/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter (According to Russ, the Democrats are all united) are attacking the monuments to people who thought EXACTLY as Dumbocrats claim to think today...
Get that???
Dumbocrats are claiming their OWN beliefs are not worthy to be displayed...
Only the Democrats would be so utterly stoopid...
The craziness has got so demented that author and activist Shaun King has even called for statues of Jesus Christ to be removed. ‘I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down,’ he tweeted. ‘They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.’
All of this, set against the backdrop of widespread looting and rioting during otherwise predominantly peaceful George Floyd protests, will have the opposite effect to the one the protesters claim to want.
It won’t persuade people to join their movement, it will turn them against it.
That’s not to say all their arguments are wrong.
I have no problem with statues of Confederacy leaders being removed.
As Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen wrote yesterday: ‘The Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, said in his “cornerstone speech”, the Confederacy rested on “the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.” Monuments to this revolting sentiment have no place in a United States that is dedicated to the opposite principle — that all men are created equal.’
I think most Americans would support that.
But to destroy monuments to great Presidents, as with the defacing of Sir Winston Churchill’s statue in London recently, actively alienates people from supporting the Black Lives Matter cause. So, it will hinder, not help the battle for racial equality and justice.
As does the failure to enforce the law.
In New York, people have been illegally letting off fireworks through the night in record numbers.
It’s also being seen as some kind of protest.
But against what? And to whose benefit?
It's 1968 all over again..
And Democrats will lose it all, just like they did in 1968...
And oh how I'll be laughing and gloating.. :D
The "TOLD YA SO"s will be fast and furious.. :D
All it’s doing is annoying most people in New York who just want a good night’s sleep.
Yet authorities are refusing to confront the firework miscreants because they don’t want to create more riots.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams told residents not to call 911 to report the fireworks because some view them as a form of nonviolent protest. Instead, he urged concerned neighbors to 'go talk to young people or the people on your block who are using fireworks' and warn them of the potential risks.
This is ridiculous and fuels the ‘one rule for them, one for the rest of us’ mindset of law-abiding Americans, something that Trump can and will exploit.
The way for Democrats to win in November is simple: keep reminding the American people how badly Trump’s handled the pandemic, how horrifically the economy has tanked, and how atrociously he responded to George Floyd’s murder.
It’s not difficult to paint a pretty accurate picture of a president who completely lost control of his country during its darkest hour, through his ineptitude, complacency, narcissism and chronic lack of empathy.
But nobody’s talking about any of that right now.
Instead, the news agenda is dominated by images of statues of beloved American icons being destroyed, and by lawless rioting and looting in cities all over the country.
During his controversial speech at his poorly attended comeback rally in Tulsa, Trump said: ‘The choice in 2020 is very simple. Do you want to bow before the left-wing mob or do you want to stand up tall and proud as Americans?’
Whatever you think of Trump, this is a very simple and powerful campaign message.
Yep.. A clear and concise message that ALL patriotic Americans can stand to over..
The choice IS clear..
The Democrat out of control mob who is looting and burning and destroying everything in sight??
Or the forces of law and order...
Democrats don't stand a chance in Nov...
As Trump taunted: ‘Biden remains silent in his basement in the face of this brutal assault on our nation and the values of our nation. Joe Biden has surrendered to his party and to the left-wing mob.’
It’s obvious how Trump will fight this election.
He knows that if the debate over the next four months centers around his abject failures with the pandemic and the collapsing economy, then he may get crushed on November 3 – especially if by then, there’s a second wave of the virus, and the economy hasn’t shot back up in the V-shaped rebound he keeps promising.
But if he can make the debate about toppled statues, liberals encouraging lawlessness, and annoying fireworks, then he’s got a very good chance of being re-elected.
In the run-up to the 2016 Election, I regularly warned liberals that their strategy to beat Trump, based around constant self-righteous and often rankly hypocritical rage, wouldn’t work.
They ignored me, carried on screaming, and lost.
And there it is.. Facts and reality.. Apparently, Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter terrorists can't see the facts nor the reality...
And so history will repeat itself..
JL....
You HAVE to concede that the current state of affairs vis a vis the Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter hysterical mob will nullify ANY chance of President Trump being hurt by the pandemic..
The Pandemic is so March/April and any gains the Democrats/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter MIGHT have seen against President Trump has been superseded by the acts of the hysterical Left Wing mob...
My message to liberals today remains the same: stop shrieking, stop statue toppling, stop virtue-signalling, stop pandering to ridiculous political correctness, and provide America with a vision for the future that resonates better than Trump’s increasingly dystopian ideal.
It shouldn’t be difficult to do this given the state of the country.
But all I’m seeing is liberals committing political suicide.
As Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former short-lived communications chief who’s now become his biggest critic, told me on Good Morning Britain today: ‘If they continue to tear down statues in the United States and continue to riot, that will play into the president’s hands. As he searches for a campaign narrative right now, that narrative will be that people are trying to take away your cultural heritage. And he’ll pit people against each other in a big culture war.’
Yes, he will.
And it might work.
Wake up liberals, before it’s too late.
It's already too late... The inertia of the hysterical angry mob is too great...
Ya'all read it here first..
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party has just lost the Nov election...
First off, the Confederacy were Democrats...
BULLSHIT BINGO!!!!
Thank God! I have been sitting here with two ways to get bingo for almost a week! I needed “Michael claims Mueller Report exonerated Trump on charges of Collusion” or “Michael points out the KKK/Confederacy were mainly Democrats of that day”.
That “Michael’s Bullshit Bingo” card took longer to beat than most. I guess Michael has been singing the same tune over and over as of late...it’s great to see him fall back on a classic one for the win!
Teddy Roosevelt saw this mob coming
Who is immune from retrospective condemnation?
So now they have come for Teddy Roosevelt. The large bronze statue of TR on horseback, flanked by a black man and an American Indian, will be removed from the spot it has graced since 1940 in front of New York’s Museum of Natural History. Why? According to Warren Wilhelm Jr — known to some as Bill de Blasio — the statue is being moved (to where no one yet knows) ‘because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.’
Does it? I don’t think so. I think both flanking figures exude strength and dignity. I also think they stand in solidarity with the jovially commanding figure of Roosevelt. But then my hermeneutical antennae have not be trained to discern the whole world through the scrim of endless racial and ethnic outrage.
Ellen Futter, President of the Museum, is cocooned by that scrim. ‘Over the last few weeks,’ she said in an interview, ‘our museum community’ (have you noticed that the word ‘community’ now requires a dose of dramamine before being swallowed?) ‘our museum community,’she said, ‘has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.’
George Floyd? What does Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, have to do with George Floyd, the career criminal with serious cardiac issues and a fondness for fentanyl and methamphetamine who died in police custody at the end of May?
https://spectator.us/teddy-roosevelt-statue-natural-history/
The stoopidity of the Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter angry mob knows no depth of depravity....
It's really THAT simple...
The total lack of connection didn’t matter, though. When the mob decides to move, it consults not reason but (apologies to Pascal) raisons du coeur.
I think it is a pity that the Traveling Racism Outrage Mob (TROM) has it in for Teddy Roosevelt. I agree with President Trump who, when he heard the news, tweeted ‘Ridiculous, don’t do it!’ Quite right. For one thing, TROM could learn some useful life lessons from Teddy Roosevelt. Although there is much in his progressive politics with which I disagree, I greatly admire him for his character and determination. A sickly boy, plagued by asthma, he nonetheless devoted himself to the ‘strenuous life’ and achieved great things. Above all, he did not whine.
That is one thing our professional anti-racists and identity-politics ideologues — especially feminists — could learn with profit: stop whining about how unfair life is to you and do something to improve your lot. You would thus make everyone around you happier, and you would be happier yourself.
That's it in a nutshell..
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party likes to sit and whine and complain about things..
But when it comes time to take action??
They simply destroy and loot and rape and murder...
And you people HONESTLY believe that is the way to secure votes from patriotic Americans???
Are you frakin' KIDDING me!!???
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is a joke...
Fortunately, it will be a short-lived joke because Nov 3 is right around the corner..
Am going to LOVE to see the Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party vapor lock when President Trump waltzes his way to re-election..
Oh how the gloating (from me) will flow..
Oh how the whining and crying and hysterical mewlings and gnashing of the teeth (from ya'all) will reach a fever pitch.. :D
I simply cannot wait til 3 Nov.. It's gonna be better than christmas morning for me.. :D
Teddy Roosevelt also had a deep social-political message that our generation, especially paid-up members of TROM, should rediscover. ‘The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin,’ he wrote in his autobiography, ‘would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.’
He was thinking of the habit of calling recent immigrants Italian-American or Irish-Americans or German-Americans. He was dead set against this practice of coining ‘hyphenated Americans’. He would not have been surprised to discover that the lowly hyphen was a potent weapon in the divisive armory of multiculturalism and identity politics. When we speak of an African-American or Mexican-American or Asian-American these days, the aim is not descriptive but deconstructive. There is a polemical edge to it, a provocation. The hyphen does not mean ‘American, but hailing at some point in the past from someplace else.’ It means ‘only provisionally American: my allegiance is divided at best.’
It is curious to what extent the passion for hyphenation is fostered more by the liberal elite than the populations it is supposedly meant to serve. How does it serve them? Presumably by enhancing their sense of ‘self-esteem’. Frederick Douglass saw through this charade some 150 years ago. ‘No one idea,’ he wrote, ‘has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.’
The multicultural passion for hyphenation is not simply a fondness for syntactical novelty. It also bespeaks a commitment to the centrifugal force of anti-American tribalism. The division marked by the hyphen in African-American (say) denotes a political stand. It goes hand-in-hand with other items on the index of liberal desiderata — the redistributive impulse behind efforts at ‘affirmative action’, for example. Affirmative action was undertaken in the name of equality. But, as always seems to happen, it soon fell prey to the Orwellian logic from which the principle that ‘all animals are equal’ gives birth to the transformative codicil: ‘but some animals are more equal than others’.
And therein lies the exact problem with The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party....
The simply have no concept as to who wrong.. How anti-American they really are...
They will receive a harsh lesson come Nov..
One has to wonder if they can survive it.... :D
I am betting they can't..
Which brings me to another sad aspect of the decision to remove that statue of Teddy Roosevelt from its place in front of the Natural History Museum. If Teddy Roosevelt can be tarred with the brush of racism because George Floyd died, who is immune from retrospective condemnation?
This is something that a reporter for the New York Times came close to perceiving in her story about the decision to remove the statue of TR. ‘The museum took action,’ she wrote, ‘amid a heated national debate over the appropriateness of statues or monuments that first focused on Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee and has now moved on to a wider arc of figures, from Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill.’
Indeed, that arc now includes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant. The target is not a bugbear called ‘America’s racist past’ but America itself. The appetite to discover and destroy enemies will be boundless until we awaken from our ‘dogmatic slumbers,’ disgorge the would-be usurpers, and reclaim our heritage.
It's amazing that ya'all simply cannot see how UN-AMERICAN, how ANTI-American The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party has become...
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party thinks that the best way to win votes is to attack and destroy and to loot and rape and murder their way thru American history...
Now tell me honestly... Does ANYONE here believe that The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party can actually win in Nov???
Honestly???
I would LOVE to hear yer facts on supporting THAT obviously bogus and bullshit position..
"Anyone??? Anyone??? Beuhler???"
Next up..
How Chicago toddler is gunned down by The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party and the Party calls that social justice...
Stay tuned...
OK Break time is over...
Column: Chicago toddler gunned down, another soon-to-be-forgotten tragedy in city where violence gets ignored
A 3-year-old boy was shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend. Two hours later, a 13-year-old girl was shot and killed just blocks away.
Between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, seven people were killed, including the 3-year-old, the 13-year-old and two other teenagers.
Should I go with, “Enough is enough”? Or maybe, “These tragedies must stop”?
You want me to echo Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s weekend tweet? The one that read: “Our city’s collective heart breaks to hear the unfathomable news of a 3-year-old boy who was shot and killed tonight on Chicago’s West Side.”
That’s nonsense. If this city’s “collective heart” actually broke to pieces in the wake of “unfathomable news” about a child’s life being cut short by a bullet, we’d all have scarred feet from years of walking on shards.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-chicago-violence-child-toddler-shot-homicide-huppke-20200622-cugzaw32gja3nnmomxmzkgf4ou-story.html
Remind me again how "Black Lives Matter"???
Because it's readily apparent from the FACTS that black lives don't really matter to black scumbags and dirtbags??
I mean, the FACTS are surely clear on this issue are they not??
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party clearly hemorrhages indignation and virtue-signalling..
And yet black Americans are STILL killing black Americans on a wholesale basis...
How then, can black lives truly matter to The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party???
There is no evidence of this....
Explain the destruction of Grant's and Washington's statues??
Can ya do that??
Stupidity. I’m guessing the crowd was too stupid to realize that not all Civil War statues were of the Confederacy. As for George Washington, I can only assume that some of the crowd believe anyone who owned slaves must be viewed as “evil”. Again, an overly simplistic view caused by a lack of education or just general stupidity. Washington ordered his slaves freed upon his death. Granted, only one was immediately freed, but the other 122 slaves he owned were freed about a year after his death when Martha became concerned that they were plotting to kill her (It is more likely that feeding and caring for them was draining her finances so freedom was a cheaper alternative. )
Slavery and indentured servitude were common practices in colonial times. We cannot attempt to hold historical figures to today’s morality standards.
The toddler, Mekhi James, was in a car with his 27-year-old father Saturday evening in the South Austin neighborhood. Another vehicle pulled up behind them and someone opened fire, hitting Mekhi in the back. Police say the father was likely the target — Mekhi was the victim, as innocent as they come.
That killing, along with the slaying of other teenagers, set the usual ritual in motion: Faith leaders and activists rushing in to hold a vigil and demand an end to violence. Neighbors saying perfectly sensible things like: “Our babies can’t be getting killed. What kind of future do we have if our babies are getting killed?” Police stepping up patrols, promising to remain vigilant. The mayor expressing outrage.
And Mekhi James briefly becoming the face of Chicago violence, at least until another child takes his place, and the cycle repeats.
Since I came to Chicago 18 years ago, there have been roughly 7,000 homicides. The year-to-year numbers have gone up and down, but whether speeding up or slowing down, the deaths have been a drumbeat people find too easy to tune out.
It has never made sense. I’ve never understood how a city filled with intelligent, powerful, wealthy people can allow this kind of carnage.
But clearly it can. So you’ll pardon me if I’m jaded. You’ll pardon me if I don’t think this city’s heart will break at the news that another Black child was shot dead.
Once again, the question SCREAMS out for an answer???
How can The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party claim that black lives matter, yet descend into this orgy of violence and degradation that kills black Americans by the truckload on a daily basis???
Does anyone have an answer for that???
Ah yes...
TRUMP SUCKS!!! RUSSIA!!! TRUMP!!!!! TRUMP!!! TRUMP!!!!!
That's the only answer that The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party can come up with...
It's simply no wonder that 40% of black Americans... yunno.. the ones that AREN'T into wholesale slaughtering of black Americans, 40% of the good and decent black Americans are all supporting President Trump instead of Joe YOU AIN'T BLACK IF YOU DON'T VOTE FOR ME Biden....
Ya'all seeing the pattern that's painfully obvious to every PATRIOTIC American???
Stupidity.
So, you agree..
The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is stupid..
OK.. Common ground.. A truly wonderful thing.. :D
It must be horrible every night having to check under your bed and in all of your closets to make sure AntiFa is not there before you can go to sleep.
In early December 2016, when 700 human beings had already been slain in Chicago that year, I wrote that “we need to accept that if parts of Chicago are so out of control that men, women and children are being slaughtered daily, then ALL of Chicago is out of control. That has to mean something, and there has to be a collective force of will to regain control. We can’t keep talking about problems in ‘those neighborhoods.’ We can’t keep partitioning ourselves from the ‘parts of Chicago’ where bad things happen.”
I said “we can’t,” but we did.
Kanari Gentry-Bowers, 12, from left, Lavontay White Jr., 2, and Takiya Holmes, 11, died within two days of each other in 2017 after being shot in separate attacks in the city. All were victims of stray bullets meant for others in gang-related attacks, police said.
Kanari Gentry-Bowers, 12, from left, Lavontay White Jr., 2, and Takiya Holmes, 11, died within two days of each other in 2017 after being shot in separate attacks in the city. All were victims of stray bullets meant for others in gang-related attacks, police said.
In 2017, three children were shot in the span of a few days. Their names were: Lavontay White Jr., 2; Takiya Holmes, 11; and Kanari Gentry-Bowers, 12.
Children slaughtered by the same group who claims that black lives matter...
DO black lives matter to THOSE black Americans???
The answer would obviously be "NO", they don't..
So, this begs the question...
Why doesn't The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party address the overwhelmingly black on black violence and not worry about the statistically insignificant number of black Americans killed by cops.. Killings that virtually all are justified use of force??
I mean, honestly??
Doesn't it make MORE since to address the 96% of black Americans that kill other black Americans and don't worry about the .08% of black Americans who are killed, justifiably so, by cops??
Seriously doesn't that make the most sense??
Oh yea.. I get it..
TRUMP!!!! EVIL!!!! TRUMP!!!! BAD!!!!! TRUMP!!!! TRUMP!!!! BUT!!!! TRUMP!!!!!
:eyeroll:
Ya'all realize how utterly pathetic your Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is, right???
It must be horrible every night having to check under your bed and in all of your closets to make sure AntiFa is not there before you can go to sleep.
Hay.. it was YOU who said that all of the Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter are united..
So Democrat=AntiFa=BlackLivesMatter=Democrat Party..
I don't have to worry about AntiFa.. Because I know I can put them six feet under should the need arise..
It must be sad for you to have all those black kids brutally slaughtered in Chicago in your ledger...
Nope, not what I said....but thanks for taking care of two boxes on my next Bullshit Bingo card with that one post!
Unlike Republicans, who have to believe whatever Trump commands you to believe at any given moment, Democrats aren’t a monolith.
In 2017, three children were shot in the span of a few days. Their names were: Lavontay White Jr., 2; Takiya Holmes, 11; and Kanari Gentry-Bowers, 12.
I wrote this: “This city’s murder factory churns out names, nothing else. Those names turn up in the newspaper and on TV, in sympathetic or outraged social media posts and on the tongues of politicians. And they mean nothing. If they did — if all the names over all these years ever meant anything — Takiya might still be an 11-year-old girl playing with friends. Lavontay might still be breathing and bringing the kind of joy to the world that a 2-year-old can, with only a laugh. Kanari might still be a little girl with a future.”
In July 2018, Lashanna Howard, a 27-year-old mother of two little girls, was gunned down walking into a South Side apartment building.
I wrote this: “This city will forget Howard in an instant, just as it forgets everyone on the nightly death rolls. The politicians will take note of her only if pressured or if they see an opportunity. The people who ignore these neighborhoods, the ones who ignorantly say, ‘Oh, you can’t drive through there, you’ll get shot,’ will see it as a tragedy in another world. The people who could actually make a difference, the city’s rich and powerful, will let it pass as part of an unfixable problem.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
An image of Candice Dickerson, shown on a screen during her memorial service at Norwegian American Hospital in Chicago on May 7, 2019.
An image of Candice Dickerson, shown on a screen during her memorial service at Norwegian American Hospital in Chicago on May 7, 2019. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
In April 2019, Candice Dickerson was with two of her three sons at the counter of a South Side cellphone shop when a stray bullet struck her in the back of the head. She died in front of her children, and I wrote about watching a television interview with her young son.
“I watched the video of Candice Dickerson’s sweet 12-year-old boy trying mightily to speak about seeing his mother get shot in the head, holding back tears and confronting a reality — ‘She’s gone’ — that will hurt forever. And I thought: How are we not doing everything humanly possible to prevent something like this from happening again?”
I still don’t have an answer to that question.
So many black lives brutally slaughtered in Chicago...
And The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party whines and cries about George Floyd, a scumbag druggie who had a rap sheet a mile long including kidnapping and drugs, who ingested meth and fentynal and then fought the cops...
All the black toddlers and kids in Chicago and the only word from The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is about Rayshard Brooks another dirtbag whose crimes range from drugs to child abuse to child cruelty...
Are ya'all seeing the pattern here???
Ya'all whine and cry about scumbags who were killed by cops by their own actions..
Yet, you ignore all the black kids and toddlers gunned down in Chicago and elsewhere...
Explain to me how someone could be so utterly cold and brutal that they care about some scumbag who fought the cops and ignore black kids like this...
https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/UMZashl2ouWUbrMzmFAgXy2_kWQ=/800x532/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/6E4NUANNB5D3VGVDUFRJWIQEHM.jpg
who are gunned down..
I mean, seriously..
There is something SERIOUSLY wrong with a Party that elevates scumbags like Brooks and Floyd to martyr status and IGNORES how cute black kids are gunned down.. Kids who have... who HAD.. their whole lives ahead of them..
Explain to me how The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter can martyr the likes of Floyd and Brooks and callously ignore all the innocent... TRULY innocent kids gunned down by black Americans..
Explain that to me... :eyeroll:
ike Republicans, who have to believe whatever Trump commands you to believe at any given moment, Democrats aren’t a monolith.
YOU said they were all united..
Now you back pedal when you realize how bad that looks for you.. And your Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party....
It confounds me. With every weekend death toll. With every tragic story of young lives cut short. And every time a child like Mekhi James is gunned down and the rich and powerful of Chicago have the gall to claim this city’s heart is breaking.
This city’s heart seems unbreakable.
Though I imagine if children like Mekhi, children similar in all ways except skin color, were being shot in white neighborhoods, that line about a collective heart breaking might be true.
And the speed with which Chicago would suddenly find a way to solve its crisis of violence would make our collective heads swim.
Again, it shreds the concept of reason that The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party would elevate scumbags like Brooks and Floyd to angelic status and totally ignore when HUNDREDS of black Americans are gunned down by other black Americans in Chicago and across the country..
And ya'all have the gall to say that POLICE are the problem when it comes to black American deaths??
What a joke.... :eyeroll:
Next up...
Black Lives Don’t Matter to Black Lives Matter
Stay tuned...
Writing "Antifa" is lazy and allows the right to dance around what it really means. They are anti-fascists. And it's all kinds of wrong that Anti-Fascists would be labeled terrorists in this country.
Last unified anti-fascist commander: Dwight D. Eisenhower. I like Ike, heard he was president once...
122,654 Americans dead from Coronavirus and counting...
All these troubles and Trump's incompetence is still the vastly greater killer of Americans.
Writing "Antifa" is lazy and allows the right to dance around what it really means. They are anti-fascists. And it's all kinds of wrong that Anti-Fascists would be labeled terrorists in this country.
They CLAIM to be anti-fascists
Of course, the FACTS are clear that they ARE fascists..
It's no wonder you support them Blathy...
Black Lives Don’t Matter to Black Lives Matter
In case you missed it, and you could have, considering the endless thumb-sucking regarding just how many came or didn’t to the Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 60 were shot, nine fatally, at last count, over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago.
These included a 13-year-old girl in the Austin neighborhood of the West Side. Two hours earlier, in the same area, someone pulled up alongside a blue Honda in an SUV and fired several rounds at the driver, striking and killing his 3-year old son.
Similar carnage occurred in Chi-town only a couple of weeks earlier, over Memorial Day weekend, when 39 were wounded and 10 died, including a 16-year old boy.
And then, of course, we have Minneapolis, where most of the recent contretemps began, where early on June 21, one died and 11 were wounded in a shooting spree.
All of this was black-on-black violence of the most tragic sort.
Where was Black Lives Matter? Nowhere to be found, since the cops didn’t do any of it. BLM doesn’t seem to care about violence done to blacks if the police aren’t involved, even though black-on-black crime is by many multiples more lethal and more common, resulting in exponentially more black casualties.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-dont-matter-to-black-lives-matter_3397428.html
It's truly amazing in a disgusting Anti-American sort of way..
2 assholes who happened to be black were killed by cops.. Killed after they themselves committed the crimes that warranted deadly force..
2 scumbags killed by cops and The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party were out in full force, burning and raping and looting and destroying...
SIXTY people were gunned down in Chicago, including children.. A toddler 3 years old...
Where was The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party???
Absolutely NO WHERE to be found..
2 scumbags got what they deserved.. What they brought upon themselves and The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party lost their collective minds, shrieking and hollering and burning and looting..
Innocent black Americans were gunned down left and right in Chicago...
And The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party couldn't even be bothered to show up..
THIS is the Party that ya'all support???
How perverse and disgusting is THAT!??
Blathy,
122,654 Americans dead from Coronavirus and counting...
I'll give you the same answer you gave me when Odumbo's incompetence killed over 12,000 Americans..
"So??"
If you honestly believe that covid is the issue in the here and now, you are stoopider than I thought.
And I know you are pretty stoopid, so... :D
BLM’s primary interest appears to be smashing the state, creating revolution with their pals in Antifa in order to take power themselves.
But there is another, perhaps more psychologically potent, reason that BLM doesn’t want to deal with black-on-black violence, other than finding some preposterous way to connect the police when it doesn’t exist.
To do this they would have to raise a question that could be truly embarrassing and elicit shame: Just why haven’t black people been able to improve their own neighborhoods in such places as Chicago, Minneapolis, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Los Angeles?
Why are they in such a miserable state after all this time? Why are so many people still killing each other? Is it all the white man’s fault?
Well, it some ways, it is, if the white man is Lyndon B. Johnson. Before he initiated, for reasons both idealistic and self-interested, the Great Society in 1964, most black families were intact, some say even more so than white families. Then, along came the welfare system and, over the years, as entitlements became more valuable than work, the black family disintegrated. Their communities fell into increasing disrepair.
The vast majority of black children are now born out of wedlock to single-parent homes, the world stacked against them before they can start.
That’s something BLM should want to do something about if real black lives actually mattered to Black Lives Matter.
Of course, it’s not fun. That’s hard work, improving lives on the ground, encouraging people to get off welfare and get jobs, to start businesses, to stay or get married, to stay away from drugs, alcohol, and gangs.
Apparently The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is not really interested in saving black American lives..
They simply want to burn and loot and destroy...
On the plus side, The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party has gotten most of their christmas shopping done already.. :eyeroll:
The epoch times? I had not realized you were such a devotee of Falun Gong...
The leaders of Black Lives Matter are obviously bright people. But they are taking the easy way, allowing their anger and their fear of truth to dictate their lives when they, of all people, have so much to offer.
BLM are the very young people who could be improving black communities, and they’re not. They’re directing their energies to the romantic delusion of revolution, as they tear things down rather than build them up.
Lennon and McCartney put it well in an early, similar era:
“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out”
Verse three is even more, actually quite eerily, contemporary, as if John and Paul were singing directly to Black Lives Matter and Antifa in the time of the CCP virus:
“You say you’ll change the Constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow”
How right they were.
I would contest that The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party are made up of "bright people"..
The Party is made up of lazy opportunists who see value not in building and enriching, but rather in destroying and looting...
As Russ said, The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party is united...
Completely united in their quest to destroy America...
That is why The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party will lose in November..
And I will be here each and every day to remind ya'all how bad The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party really is..
No thanks are necessary.. It has it's own rewards.. :D
The epoch times? I had not realized you were such a devotee of Falun Gong...
I had not realized yer such a fan of The Democrat/AntiFa/BlackLivesMatter Party that likes to kill black toddlers and children..
Awww right...
We'll pick this up in the morning..
Starting Season 2 of THE AMERICANS tonight...
See ya'all in the AM....
If you honestly believe that covid is the issue in the here and now, you are stoopider than I thought.
i guess i must be stoopid too, because as long as it keeps killing tens of thousands of americans a month i consider covid to be a pretty big 'here and now' type of issue.
at the very least, significantly moreso than whether or not some jackass from a hundred fifty years ago - who tried to quit america just so he could keep owning slaves - gets his statue torn down by the descendants of the people he tried and failed to keep enslaved.
C. R. Stucki
25
Years ago, we had a rock-solid conservative congressman around these part name of George Hansen. George never won a poll in his entire career, but he also never lost an election.
In 1964, he was elected to the House representing ID-02.
In 1968, he lost to the Democrat by a 20-point margin in his bid to win election to the Senate.
In 1975, he was fined $2,000 for violating campaign finance laws after the judge withdrew his original 60-day prison sentence.
In 1984, he was the first congressperson convicted on three counts of violating the Ethics in Government Act and eventually served about a year in the federal penitentiary.
In 1985, he lost his bid for reelection to ID-02.
In 1992, he was convicted of 45 out of 47 federal bank fraud charges for defrauding multiple banks and individuals in a $30 million investment scheme.
*****
So to recap: This guy actually did lose elections and was a swindler convicted numerous times for financial fraud.
Good story, Stucki.
Russ
48
Yep!
** Vote Blue **
No Matter Who
Russ
76
It must be horrible every night having to check under your bed and in all of your closets to make sure AntiFa is not there before you can go to sleep.
Slowly and hesitantly, he peeks under the bed and finds no one, but he knows those thugs were there because he finds weapons, torches, and IEDs for looting. Oh, wait... those are his, he suddenly realizes, and then settles down for beddy bye with his security blankie and pacifier. ;)
BashiBazouk
89
The epoch times? I had not realized you were such a devotee of Falun Gong...
That swastika emblem and all that right-wingnut conspiracy blather reeled him in like fish in a barrel.
Michale -
Dude. Seriously. Just post a link, and maybe the key paragraph. You're risking my standing when it comes to "fair use" of articles. I'd hate to have to defend your comments posts in a court of law, in other words. Seriously, just post the "gotcha" paragraph and the link from now on... please....
-CW