Links - 12th November 2016

Anti-Trump Demonstrators Take to the Streets in Several U.S. Cities - The New York Times - "Chanting “Not my president,” several hundred protesters streamed through the streets of Berkeley and Oakland in the predawn hours of Wednesday venting their anger at the election of Donald J. Trump as president. Demonstrations were also reported in Pittsburgh, Seattle and Portland, Ore. The California Highway Patrol said that one protester, who was not identified, sustained major injuries after being hit by a car when protesters attempted to move onto a freeway... The crowd of anti-Trump protesters burned American flags and chanted “That’s not my president.” In Seattle, a group of about 100 protesters gathered in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, blocked roads and set a trash bin on fire... The student-run campus newspaper, The Pitt News, posted on Twitter about an event later Wednesday titled “Emergency Meeting: Let’s Unite to Stop President Trump.” “We can’t just sit back and let a racist and sexist become president”"
Funny, I thought it was said that Trump supporters wouldn't accept a Clinton win

Thousands rail against Trump: Protesters march on 101 Freeway in L.A., burn Trump's head in effigy - "Traffic backed up for miles, and authorities did not provide a timetable for when the freeway would reopen. Clad in riot gear, CHP officers warned protesters that arrests were imminent and urged motorists to return to their vehicles. But some demonstrators remained, waving flags from U.S. and Mexico and chanting, “Hands up; don’t shoot”... Marchers spray painted profanity-laced screeds on TV news vans and the Los Angeles Times building. Fireworks also shot off near the LAPD’s headquarters."

Patrick O'Neill's answer to How is Donald Trump different from Hitler? - Quora - "By the November 1932 elections in Germany, Adolf Hitler had a private paramilitary force of more than a half-million men at his disposal, many veterans of the war who were regularly engaging in organized, bloody street fights with political rivals.
Donald Drumpf has a private jet and regularly engages in Twitter fights with B-list celebrities.
Adolf Hitler had attempted a violent coup d'etat against the Weimar Republic, the Beer Hall Putsch, for which he was arrested and convicted with treason.
Donald Drumpf has participated in a professional wrestling story line, a reality television show, and was part owner of several beauty pageants...
The National Socialist Program 25 Point Program included these gems: We demand land and territory for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population....
Donald Drumpfs website calls for these things:
Defend The Rights of Law-Abiding Gun Owners
Business Tax Reform To Encourage Jobs And Spur Economic Growth
Make Mexico Pay For The Wall
Defend The Laws And Constitution Of The United States"

Trump and Brexit: Revenge of the Anti-Globalists – So Raven - "Even if racial bigotry were playing a crucial role here, one must then ask what is it that made these sentiments so central to this particular election when a black man won all of those states in both 2008 and 2012? I think a more satisfying explanation is needed... Take the same human being with all his goodness and imperfections and place him in each of the two situations. Racism and bigotry just seems so unsatisfactory an answer to the divergent outcomes we see today... In light of this larger global tide, Hillary Clinton was probably the worst candidate that the Democrats could have chosen"

Teaching Logic with Presidential debates - "The next interesting point was the distribution of fallacies. Trump had many—as I had anticipated—but Clinton had her fair share as well. I think it was eye-opening for the students to systematically break down how a seasoned politician uses rhetorical strategies to shift even issues questions towards points she’d rather be discussing and away from those she’d rather not. My sense of my students was that most (but not all) of them lean Democrat. Nevertheless, within a few minutes they were calling out fallacies on Clinton with gusto."

Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there - "Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. They chose Hillary even though they knew about her private email server. They chose her even though some of those who studied the Clinton Foundation suspected it was a sketchy proposition. To try to put over such a nominee while screaming that the Republican is a rightwing monster is to court disbelief. If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack they’d chosen because it was her turn... It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station... How did the journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach?... The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn’t all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn’t accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away. The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the “last thing standing” between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!"

Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly - "Lichtman's prediction isn't based on horse-race polls, shifting demographics or his own political opinions. Rather, he uses a system of true/false statements he calls the "Keys to the White House" to determine his predicted winner"

Listening to What Americans Said on Election Day - "This is what we hear when we listen to Democrats willing to speak honestly about Bill and Hillary Clinton. On March 8, 2015, one of their longest-serving advisers told me the biggest threat to her candidacy wasn’t a newly discovered private email server. This person said the political danger lied in what the emails might reveal about any nexus between her work at State and donations to the Clinton foundation from U.S. corporations and foreign nations. “Longtime whispers of pay-to-play are going to become shouts,” the source said. “Follow the foundation money." This is what we hear when we listen to Democrats who defend and enable her behavior, who distort the truth and flat-out lie because the ends justified their means. “Trust doesn’t matter,” a senior adviser to Clinton’s campaign told me later in the spring of 2015."

Unhypnotizing a Clinton Supporter | Scott Adams' Blog - "1. Trump’s Tough Talk Inspires violence: Ask Clinton supporters if they have seen the Project Veritas video of Clinton operatives talking about paying people to incite violence at Trump rallies. The people on the video have been fired, and we haven’t seen violence at Trump rallies since.
2. Temperament: Ask Clinton supporters if they have seen the video of Clinton ranting “Why aren’t I already fifty points ahead?” She looks either inebriated or deranged. Mention that the people who know Trump personally have reported that he is both smart and sane in person. Even his enemies who know him personally don’t claim he has a temperament problem. If he did, is there any chance we wouldn’t have heard about it by now?
5. Trump might start a war: Trump owns buildings and property around the world. As a general rule, people who own a lot of real estate don’t start wars because their own assets are at risk. But Clinton is “sponsored” – via the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees – by defense companies that profit from war. Likewise, Clinton is sponsored by foreign countries whose interests don’t align with American interests
7. Group Violence versus Crazy Individuals: Have you noticed that when you see election-related violence from a group, it is always Clinton supporters? That happened at Trump’s San Jose rally, and it happened with the homeless woman protecting Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame. When Trump supporters do something violent they are usually acting alone, and crazy. When Clinton supporters get violent it comes in the form of mobs who are NOT crazy. That’s the dangerous kind of violence because they are literally Stronger Together...
At the Republican National Convention, Trump used his emotional connection to his supporters to declare he was the strongest voice to protect the LGBTQ community. Republicans stood and cheered"

Peter Thiel takes Donald Trump's Muslim ban 'seriously but not literally' - "Thiel acknowledged the criticism in his speech, complaining that “louder voices have sent a message that they do not intend to tolerate the views of one half of the country” and pointing out that an op-ed in the Advocate said Thiel was “an example of a man who has sex with other men” but was “not a gay man” because of his politics. “The lie behind the buzzword of diversity could not be made more clear,” he said. “If you don’t conform then you don’t count as diverse, no matter what your personal background.” “Diversity” is a charged concept for Thiel. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, who has Thiel on his board of directors, defended his politics as an important part of his company’s diversity. In his 1995 book The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, Thiel wrote: “Real diversity requires a diversity of ideas, not simply a bunch of like-minded activists who resemble the bar scene from Star Wars”...Asked about Trump’s statements proposing the construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border and a ban on all Muslims entering the country, Thiel suggested that Trump supporters do not actually endorse those policies. “I don’t support a religious test. I certainly don’t support the specific language that Trump has used in every instance,” he said. “But I think one thing that should be distinguished here is that the media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously, but it always takes him literally.” The billionaire went on to define how he believes the average Trump supporter interprets the candidate’s statements. “I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy"... Thiel accused a former Gawker editor of being “an aspiring child pornographer” and called the entire publication a “singularly sociopathic bully”, and portrayed his backing of the lawsuit as an act of charity. “If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system,” he said."

Why I, and millions like me, will vote for Donald Trump - "Today I will happily cast a vote for Donald Trump. According to the conventional narrative in Europe, that means I must be racist, isolationist, an idiot or all three, right? Wrong. Trump has won me over with a campaign focused on breaking away from the corruption and incompetence that has characterised so much of my country’s leadership over the past 20 years. He has built a remarkable coalition for change, consisting of everyday Republican voters and working-class Americans in industrial regions where Democrats have usually been more successful. He is arguably the closest thing to a One Nation conservative that US politics has seen in a generation. That’s why tens of millions of Americans will be voting for him."

‘I hope whoever wins is a one-term president’ - "Donald Trump is bad, but America can survive him. The world, too, can survive the one term he’ll be able to hold on to. Instead, ask yourself: can the world survive Hillary Clinton? Better yet, ask any Libyan, Iraqi, or Syrian. Actions speak louder than words - vile remarks are incomparable to aggressive warmongering."

Some Who Saw Change in Obama Find It Now in Donald Trump - The New York Times - "Chuck Linton, 69, of Baltimore, a retired military veteran, described Mr. Obama as “condescending” and said that as a black man, he was fed up with Democrats telling him how to vote. “Have you ever seen somebody that talks so good and makes you feel that he is in your favor, he’s in your corner, but the truth of the matter he’s not?” he asked. “That’s Obama.” Mr. Linton, a longtime Democrat, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump because he believes the businessman will work to quell violence in places like Baltimore, where Mr. Linton said several people he knows have lost loved ones to gun violence... For others it was Mr. Obama’s stances on racial justice issues that made them recoil at his presidency. Meg Amamolo, 57, voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and 2012, and was excited, as a black woman, to vote to put a black man in the White House. But she grew especially frustrated in 2012 when Mr. Obama weighed in on the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Mr. Obama said... “It became all about making the young black boys realize that the country doesn’t want them,” she said. “Black Americans, they are being made victims by the Democrats so they can get the votes, but nothing is changing.”

From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Primer on Bill and Hillary Clinton Scandals - "The emails represent something of a classic Clinton scandal. Although the House investigation turned up no evidence of wrongdoing on her part with respect to the attacks themselves, it was during that inquiry that her private-email use became public. This is a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals different questionable behavior. The canonical case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. Although no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. With Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to the State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—have fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges."

The unbearable daintiness of women who eat with men - "A substantial body of literature suggests that women change what they eat when they eat with men. Specifically, women opt for smaller amounts and lower-calorie foods associated with femininity. So, some scholars argue that women change what they eat to appear more feminine when dining with male companions. For my senior thesis, I explored whether women change the way they eat alongside what they eat when dining with a male vs. female companion"

A critic's plea: stop all arts funding now - Telegraph - "Looking back, I can’t think of one funded show that was any good, while every day the world of commercial entertainment throws up work that is new, vibrant, creative and exciting without any need for government help... Arts funding, on the other hand, creates a culture of long term state dependency where companies are more focused on securing healthy salaries through grants than on producing work the public might actually want to see. The oldest rule in the arts is he who pays the piper calls the tune, and funders, from Arts Council England to local authorities, tend to have very narrow tastes. Getting their support is more about ticking boxes and satisfying the political ideals of committees than developing a genuine creative idea. That’s the antithesis of true artistic endeavour and it's why so much subsidised theatre has a generic look and feel."