So Adams pivoted to write more about the workplace, and the budding "Dilbert" in the early ’90s became "about this huge part of people’s lives that was invisible to the rest of the world and about suffering in a hundred different ways."
"By simply mentioning that world," Adams says, the comic connected with readers "on an emotional level."
And isn’t that essentially, in turn, what Trump is doing? He is acknowledging the suffering of some, Adams says, and then appealing emotionally to that.
And he bolsters that approach, Adams says, by "exploiting the business model" like an entrepreneur. In this model, which "the news industry doesn’t have the ability to change ... the media doesn’t really have the option of ignoring the most interesting story," says Adams, contending that Trump "can always be the most interesting story if he has nothing to fear and nothing to lose."
1. Trump knows people are basically irrational.,
2. Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.
3. By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.
4. If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be "wrong."
5. With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.
6. To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics -- and identity is the strongest persuader.
"Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. ... [And]
Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of Americans (people who see themselves that way), Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males.
Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
"If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?"
#3
Scott's blog has been a must-read on political persuasion during this election cycle.
Posted by: regular joe ||
06/02/2016 12:02 Comments ||
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#4
a massive number of people have lost their jobs due to globalization. The Republicans and Democrats have ignored the problem and written these folks off of the unemployment numbers.
But they are still there and they vote and they are pissed.
Trump speaks to them. Bernie speaks to them as well, to a lesser extent.
#5
I disagree with Adams on this. Voters are rational, very rational. It is a fact that folks vote against, very rarely for someone - that is rational if we vote against something that is not working or poisonous to our society. Thus, Trump woos the anti-illegal immigrant folks, the anti-Clintons and the anti-Obamas, anti-worthless Republican leadership, anti-beta male world. I want a war president and Trump is the best choice left standing.
[Daily Caller] Energy experts believe if crude oil prices stay above $50 per barrel for long enough, American oil companies could make a huge comeback while OPEC countries continue to squabble over production freezes.
A CNBC survey of oil industry experts "found that most U.S. shale drilling is expected to return when oil rises to $60 or above" and 40 percent of respondents "expected most production to return when prices reach $50 to $60."
Forty-five percent said oil needed to be above $60 a barrel for a production boom, according to CNBC’s survey, but most experts agreed it’s very unlikely OPEC member states will agree to freeze oil production this week.
CNBC reported "73 percent of the strategists, traders and analysts found 10 percent or less chance that OPEC would come to an agreement on freezing production this week." OPEC members and Russia failed to agree to production cuts in April.
When he talks about Turkey’s failing demographics, though, Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Turkey’s Kurdish citizens continue to have three or four children while ethnic Turks have fewer than two. By the early 2040s, most of Turkey’s young people will come from Kurdish-speaking homes. The Kurdish-majority Southeast inevitably will break away. Erdogan’s hapless battle against the inevitable motivates the sometimes bewildering twists and turns of Turkish policy.
A review of the recently-released 2015 population data shows that the demographic scissors between Kurds and Turks continues to widen. Despite Erdogan’s exhortations on behalf of Turkish fertility, the baby bust in Turkish-majority provinces continues while Kurds sustain one of the world’s highest birth rates. Even worse, the marriage rate outside of the Kurdish Southeast of the country has collapsed, portending even lower fertility in the future.
According to Turkstat, the official statistics agencies, the Turkish provinces with the lowest fertility rates all cluster in the north and northwest of the country, where women on average have only 1.5 children. The southeastern provinces show fertility rates ranging between 3.2 and 4.2 children per female.
As I reported in my 2011 book Why Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too), Muslim countries that achieve a high rate of adult literacy jump from infancy to senescence without passing through adulthood. Like their Iranian, Algerian and Tunisian counterparts, Turkish women reject the constraints of Muslim family life as soon as they obtain a high school education. The shock of sudden passage from traditional society into the modern world has produced the fastest-ever fall in fertility rates in the Muslim world.
Iran, whose fertility rate fell from 7 children per female in 1979 to less than 1.8 today, has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world. Turkey has an average total fertility rate of 2.18, or just at replacement, but the split between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds will make Turkey’s present geographic configuration untenable.
The Kurds’ courage and military prowess leave Turkey in a quandary. Any effective action against ISIS enhances the Kurds’ political standing and advances the day when they will have their own state including the northwest of Iraq and the southeast of Turkey, as well as the southwest corner of Iran and a large swath of northern Syria. But Turkey cannot abandon the NATO alliance, which stands as a guarantor of its territorial integrity. It has no choice but to play both sides, playing the public role of an alliance member while covertly sabotaging the effort to destroy ISIS.
#1
Iran,whose fertility rate fell from 7 children per female in 1979 to less than 1.8 today, has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world.
I thought Japan was winning that self-destruct race?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/02/2016 20:35 Comments ||
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Hillary Clinton’s problem is that she isn’t as smart as Henry Kissinger. And I’m not talking about her performance as secretary of State (though I could be) but rather about how she got into her festering, possibly criminal mess with insecure emails and an unauthorized private server.
#1
As Austin Bay notes: “...She tried to hide her personal server system because its entire purpose was evasion — evading federal record retention laws that promote government accountability and transparency."
I'm more of the opinion that, at the time, she was evading White House monitoring.
#2
From the WH's perspective, it would have looked kinda strange if Hilla had no activity in her mailbox. And Obean was emailing her on her private email as well.
#3
If I were, say, an Obama Regime Official, and I received an email outside State.Gov domain, I would assume it was phishing or a hoax. The fact these "smart people" didn't, indicates they were in on it - word-of-mouth. You'll never find that email that says: ...
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/02/2016 20:42 Comments ||
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[Gateway Pundit] Less than a minute into her town hall event with Barack Obama PBS host Gwen Ifill lectured Elkhart, Indiana for not giving the country’s worst economic president since the Great Depression more credit for the town’s recovery. I blame the Winnebago disconnect.
Barely a minute into Wednesday’s PBS town hall event with President Barack Obama, PBS NewsHour co-host Gwen Ifill took a few digs at the hard working white people of Elkhart, Indiana where the event was being held for not giving Obama "any credit" for their unemployment drop to the point that she exclaimed: "What gives?"
The town hall, which was designed to have the President take questions from the audience, began with Ifill explaining that Wednesday’s visit to Elkhart by the President was his "fifth visit to the once and again R.V. Capital of the world, a small city where the unemployment rate hit 19.6 percent his first year in office, and now has dropped to about four percent."
Taking into no consideration things that the townspeople or local and state governments may have done to improve business, Ifill went right to wondering why "this White House isn’t get any credit for that turnaround."
#3
Hmmm. I recall that Elkhart had a sizeable KKK membership back in the day. Gwen wasn't necessarily on neutral ground.
I'm not going to let this one slip by. Just what are you implying about the good people of Elkhart today, ElziverKnaggs?
You see, racism was everywhere in this country back in the days of the KKK. We had it in the American South, in Elkhart, in New York, Chicago, Boston, DC, and in the West. It was everywhere. It was pervasive. You couldn't get away from it for a moment. Is that your point?
We don't have it everywhere today. People of Elkhart, the South, and elsewhere are a lot better about race relations. We aren't perfect by any means, but today you have people of every race working together, sharing neighborhoods, public accommodations and the vote. The only group in this country that is still obsessed with race are the progressive Democrats.
So I'm not sure, ElziverKnaggs: are you a troll? A moby? An idiot? Just maladroit? Or perhaps you're an unpaid volunteer for either the Clinton or Sanders campaign?
Why don't you clarify that for me in a new comment in this thread?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/02/2016 12:38 Comments ||
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#10
"B" you can add a 10th chart to the 9, the death rate. It has increased for the first time in a decade. The increase is attributed to drug overdose deaths. Probably due to a permissive attitude from D.C. about drugs (as well as some other reasons).
[Wash Times] Late last week, the inspector general of the State Department completed a yearlong investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when information technology officials at the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Mrs. Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home.
The migration of the secret email stream most likely constituted the crime of espionage -- the failure to secure and preserve the secrecy of confidential, secret or top-secret materials.
The inspector general interviewed Mrs. Clinton’s three immediate predecessors -- Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- and their former aides about their email practices. He learned that none of them used emails as extensively as Mrs. Clinton, none used a private server and, though Gen. Powell and Miss Rice occasionally replied to government emails using private accounts, none used a private account when dealing with state secrets.
With the Champ now actively involved in the 'Never Trump' campaign, a potential train wreck appears to be shaping up between the FBI and the DoJ.
No way all the players involved - the education industry, the IT industry, the entertainment industry, the banking/finance industry, and the public employment industry - walk away from the more than one billion they have invested in Hillary Clinton.
No way all the foreign money that poured into the Clinton Foundation in exchange for future favors simply gets put in a file and set on fire.
If I were a conspiracy guy, I'd say this is all a clever ruse to pose Hillary Clinton as the "comeback kid" in some near future.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/02/2016 7:38 Comments ||
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#2
Let me see the "perp walk." I might then think this political vampire is on the ropes.
#4
If charges are brought before the Champ leaves office, we already know the outcome
She goes down. Champ is a chump, but there are people around him who realise how vindictive Hillary is and whom she blames for not becoming POTUS in 2008.
#6
Super delegates could get cold feet. They must be thinking about who is the most viable candidate in November and, if the Beest loses California next week to Bernie, it ain't her. The people who have backed her so far must be wondering if they want to keep throwing good money after bad or if Biden might be a better way to go.
#7
I have seen some pundits say that if Queen McKacklepants can't seal the deal against Sanders, that she may back out right before the nomination due to "Health Reasons" and a Biden/Warren ticket will be presented.
At first I thought this would be silly, but as she implodes further I can see this happening.
#8
I cannot imagine the obsessed, self-absorbed, immoral bitch that is Hildabeest, stopping this quest for supremacy and wealth beyond imagining. The charade she and ZipperBill have pulled on the useful idiots of the left and fellow grifters of every stripe is dissolving in the miasma of revealed misdeeds, but they just plow on, driven by ambition and appetite and ego. Our choice on the trunk side is an ego-maniac capitalist plunderer, who might, just might, let competent people run the country while he basks in the butt-kissing. It is the lesser of two really bad choices and ought to earn each party an enormous public bitch-slap for their horrible offerings.
Please Director Comey, help put down Hilda's limitless ambition with a damning recommendation for indictment!
#10
They have too much invested in this to go quietly. I'd like to see how contributions to the CGI have fared given the further exposure of high speaking fees, FBI investigations, continuing disclosures. If she's out of the race, they'll get ZERO income
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/02/2016 20:50 Comments ||
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BLUF: [Wash Times] In interviewing Clinton White House aides and Foster’s friends and family, the FBI found that a week before Foster’s death, Hillary held a meeting at the White House with Foster and other top aides to discuss her proposed health care legislation.
Hillary violently disagreed with a legal objection Foster raised at the meeting and ridiculed him in front of his peers, former FBI agent Coy Copeland and former FBI supervisory agent Jim Clemente told me. Mr. Copeland was Mr. Starr’s senior investigator and read the reports of other agents working for Mr. Starr.
During the White House meeting, Hillary continued to humiliate Foster mercilessly, both former FBI agents say.
#4
Shipman, do you mean the Mena airport road? As in the Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in Arkansas? Haven't finished reading the article yet but it seems intriguing.
[The Blaze] "The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel wrote 2,500 years ago that 'in the last days' of history, Russia and Iran will form a military alliance to attack Israel from the north," Rosenberg wrote. "Bible scholars refer to this eschatological conflict, described in Ezekiel 38-39, as the 'War of Gog & Magog' He added, "Are these sudden and dramatic moves by Moscow and Tehran...simply coincidental, or [do they] have prophetic implications?"
Rosenberg's question is at the center of the very debate surrounding Iran, Syria, and Russia and their perceived involvement in the end times--one that has attracted a great deal of attention both in Christian circles and in media over the years.
The military alliance between Russia and Iran was also discussed by Pastor Greg Laurie, who said that the "entrance of Russia . . . as an ally of Syria and Iran, and this alliance between Russia and Iran is a special interest in the Bible."
He called the current alignments between Russia and Iran particularly notable, though he said that it is important to differentiate between the details he's certain of and those that he cannot definitively speak to.
"I'm very careful when I teach Bible prophecy to not paint myself into a corner and say things that I can't be certain of," Laurie told me. "Do I know with 100 percent certainty that Gog is Russia? No, I do not."
#2
Um, Russia didn't exist 2500 years ago and from the maps I've seen there's no agreement on who's where.
It is very easy to try and force fit historical prophecy into current reality, we see it all the time with Nostradamus, but, until I see a prophecy translated before an event that comes true I'll remain a skeptic.
#7
Begging indulgence, may I offer the following alternative grasp of what is happening in re Russia, Iran, USA and India: http://theological-geography.net/?s=three+brothers
An interim director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a major proponent of laws protecting gender identity, has resigned after her daughters were frightened by several transgendered men who came into the ladies room they were using at the time.
Although the mainstream media has utterly ignored this story, LifeSiteNews and a few other outlets are reporting on the resignation of Maya Dillard Smith, interim director of the Georgia chapter of the ACLU, over the organization’s involvement in the controversial transgender bathroom debate.
“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered,” Dillard Smith said.
“My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer,” she continued.
In a statement, she said that the ACLU has become “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights.”
The “hierarchy of rights” the ACLU chooses to defend or ignore, she wrote, is “based on who is funding the organization’s lobbying activities.” She did not elaborate further.
Dillard Smith, who describes herself as “progressive” and “unapologetically black” says she just can’t go along with the ACLU’s transgender legal agenda which includes suing North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory for signed a law requiring individuals to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex.
Dillard Smith says that the ACLU’s opposition to the bill, which essentially leaves restroom policy up to business owners, proves that her legal philosophy and that of the ACLU no longer align.
“I found myself principally and philosophically unaligned with the organization,” Dillard Smith said. “I believe there are solutions that can provide accommodations for transgender people and balance the need to ensure women and girls are safe from those who might have malicious intent,” she said.
In response, Dillard Smith started a new website, Finding Middle Ground, which is providing the public with a “safe space” to share their views of the transgender bathroom issue without fear of being called a bigot or hater.
Thus far, the ACLU has made no comment about Dillard Smith’s departure and has merely posted a job announcement to replace her.
#2
something, something .. about a conservative being a liberal that has been mugged. Wonder what was more unsettling, the experience or the awakened knowledge she was one of the 'little people' she had so labeled as bigoted and intolerant before.
At least that is what Michael Kozlowski over at Good Ereader seems to be saying. In an article I found via The Passive Voice, the headline really does tell the story. “Indie Authors Are Responsible for the US eBook Decline.” Now, I won’t talk about how the headline is poorly formatted. Anyone with a modicum of journalistic training will be able to spot what is wrong. Instead, let’s take a look at the post and see if we agree with Kozlowski or with PG who said, “too much choice is a terrible problem. That’s why nobody buys anything from Amazon or reads anything on the web.”
Why are bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble enjoying a robust increase in book sales? I think the main reason is because they only stock physical books by new authors that the publisher is really hyping and perennial bestsellers by recognizable authors. Simply put, it is far easier to discover a great book in a bookstore, than try and find one online. So why are digital sales truly down? The answer is too many e-books being self-published by indie authors.
Pardon me while I laugh for a bit. Kozlowski doesn’t seem to recognize the problem with his own statement. Bookstores stock only new authors publishers are “really hyping”. Hmm. What about those new authors who aren’t receiving all the hype? They are out there. Or is Kozlowski so out of touch that he really believes that publishers give that sort of hype to every new author they sign?
Or how about the assertion that they only other books being stocked are those by perennial bestsellers? I guess that means I could walk into my local B&N and check every author in stock and find them to be as he said. A best seller or hyped newcomer. Sorry, but no. There are still some midlisters there. Yes, the number is fewer but they are still there. There will also be — gasp — classics and nonfiction titles that aren’t “bestsellers”. But that wouldn’t fit Kozlowski’s either or scenario.
More at the link
#1
The Passive Voice must get a prize for the worst blog name ever. Anyone who knows anything about writing, knows AVOID The Passive Voice at all cost.
#3
Why are liberals so against choice. In this case praising Barnes & Noble for having such a limited selection. I'd rather have a lot of choices thank you very much.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Gateway Pundit] Less than a minute into her town hall event with Barack Obama PBS host Gwen Ifill lectured Elkhart, Indiana for not giving the country’s worst economic president since the Great Depression more credit for the town’s recovery.
[Wash Times] Late last week, the inspector general of the State Department completed a yearlong investigation into the use by Hillary Clinton of a private email server for all of her official government email as secretary of state. The investigation was launched when information technology officials at the State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry learned that Mrs. Clinton paid an aide to migrate her public and secret State Department email streams away from their secured government venues and onto her own, non-secure server, which was stored in her home.
Think about it, and give me a call tomorrow. 
An interim director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a major proponent of laws protecting gender identity, has resigned after her daughters were frightened by several transgendered men who came into the ladies room they were using at the time.
