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Oh yeah, I forget to mention the polls and the MSM — 47 Comments

  1. While I believe there are solid reasons why the best attempts at honest polling face real limitations (disappearance of landlines, shy Trump voters, apathetic young’uns), the real problem is that the polls have been weaponized for political purposes. These are not just honest mistakes; they are being manipulated to create narratives. It reminds me of real estate appraisals. The party that commissions the appraisal will get the number they are looking for.

  2. Wonder how long until senior citizens who have once more taken to the streets and malls while wearing teabags hanging from the brims of their hats, and who leave areas more litter-free than before they came, will be labeled “mostly un-peaceful rioters” by the Fifth Column/Fourth Estate?

  3. “they are being manipulated to create narratives.”

    Not merely narratives to manipulate the average man or woman on the street, but to kill fundraising for GOP while boosting Democratic Party fundraising. Money doesn’t flow to losing candidates; and the GOP, including the President, really struggled financially these last few months as the funding dried up because of the polls.

    With more money, they may have been able to flip the House as well.

  4. Turned off Fox when they wouldn’t call Fl, Tx, nor Ohio in a timely manner but called Virginia and California each off the mark. Some family members turned to CNN (yup! they said their coverage was better). I turned to YouTube and watched tracybeanz. Much better. Except for Tucker, et al daytime Fox has morphed into MSM.

  5. Dorothy Kilgallan died in 1965, Fred Friendly shuffled off to the foundations and academe in 1966, AM Rosenthal retired from editorial duties in 1988, Robert MacNeill retired in 1995, Ted Koppel retired in 2008, Jim Lehrer retired in 2012. There isn’t anyone available for soul searching. Some are enjoying time with their great-grandchildren and the others have died.

  6. As long as it profits those in power to manipulate the American voter, the polls will continue to pump out disinformation.

  7. neo,

    I have been working on getting my “media spend” dollars directed towards organizations I respect and limiting them from going to those I do not. It’s tricky. Far trickier than it should be, but I’ve done a good job on the sports network side. ESPN and their behemoth parent Disney/ABC no longer get any of my money.

    It’s also tricky because my wife is not super tech-savvy and I have to ensure she can figure out how to view TV when I’m not around (also trickier than it should be).

    In the past year I’ve reduced our monthly television spend by over 60% (and we were not spending a great deal prior). I pay a monthly subscription to the Daily Wire, primarily for Andrew Klavan. Last night the wife and I spent at least half our election results watching time, watching their programming.

    The Daily Wire and Blaze TV (Glenn Beck’s company) seem to be the players on the conservative side who have their acts together most. The Daily Wire just announced Candace Owen will have a daily talk show on their channel starting in March and they have Ben Shapiro. Blaze TV has corralled Dave Rubin and Steven Crowder onto their channel, along with quite a few others.

    Tim Poole also has some great stuff on YouTube. He is good at giving a perspective on the day’s news.

  8. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any more cynical. I’ve resisted the idea that the polls were deliberately skewed, I thought they were just wrong because pollsters couldn’t figure out how to poll people in the cell phone era. But now I’ve changed my mind. It’s hard to come to any other conclusion that they were skewed deliberately.

    As for Fox, I stopped watching their election coverage a couple of cycles ago. My wife started out watching them last night but couldn’t take it after about an hour. They’ve gone dramatically downhill. I used to watch Special Report almost every night but rarely watch anymore. I do watch Tucker now and then but that’s about it.

  9. I’ve been, for months, walking out of the room when Fox’s “Special Report” opened with yet another Fox News poll. Polls are not news. Alternately, I shouted at Bret Baier’s image along the same lines.

    I subscribe to several conservative news and opinion sites. I’ll need to keep doing that. I already avoid MSM/social media. If the WSJ were to stifle its opinion page, then I’d cancel them after forty years.

  10. TINA writes “ I turned to YouTube and watched tracybeanz. Much better. Except for Tucker, et al daytime Fox has morphed into MSM.”
    Me too.

    Except that analyses by Paul Murray in Sydney on Sky News Australia were spot on throughout the wee hours. (They switched to FNC about half the time, though.)

    Gregory concludes that polls “were deliberately skewed” – of course. To gaslight the unwashed into rioting and to empathise with arsonists when the election was “stolen.”

    But the groundwork for this propaganda narrative is now entirely muddied by the size of Trump’s lead, and further blown up by GOP House gains and surprising Senate victories.

    What to do now? Given the open election theft by manipulating votes in up to 7 states?

    We feared this possibility some eight weeks ago when we read about this rich and powerful Communist backers scheming behind the Orwellian named “Voter Integrity Project.”

    Now that this backup plan is clearly controlling “events,” has anyone sketched how it might be operating to orchestrate this vast “in your face” election theft? Allied, obviously, with traditional union conspiracy?

  11. Well, looks like about 1/2 of all American – and by a simplistic extrapolation to the general population – are just as prone to propaganda as are the citizens of any other nation, past, present or future.

    So let’s not anymore hear how Venezuelan’s or Cubans or Poles or E.Germans or Russians or 1930’s Germans and Italians, or …….. were too timid, manipulated, orderly, scared, approving, obedient, whatever. to resist the constant drone of propaganda and that, well, that can’t happen here in the USA.

    As it now stands – I hope I am wrong – looks like Biden will be sworn in as prez and after a year or so, Kamala Harris will be the president.
    Yep, half the electorate has actually voted in Kamala Harris to be the president.
    I have not checked it out, but I will surmise she is the most unqualified person in US History to be the VP or President.

    Putin, the Mullahs of Iran, and the leaders of China , Venezuela and Cuba have already ordered their champagne and hors oeuvres for their celebratory party, wondering how they just hit the mother lode. Even the good folks at ISIS have ordered up a few barrels of sheep’s eyeballs to celebrate.
    They all must be besides themselves with wonder and glee and shock that they will now have the next 4 years to do as they please.

    After all, that “line in the sand” will remain in place until the next gust of wind.

    Oh yea, remember folks, if you like your doctor and insurance plan, you can keep it under Bidet-care. All this is explained in that Benghazi video, narrated by Obama and Susan Rice.

  12. Somewhere around 10 or 11:00 PM Eastern, I heard Fox News claim that their projection had the GOP losing 10 or 15 House seats to the Dems. (Did I hear that right?) This morning the number was the GOP gaining 5 seats. Nice work guys.

  13. Well Neo… I’m sure they’re all hanging their heads in shame back at the polls. No dessert for them at dinner time.

    In their reality, the one which stands a good chance of winning and crapping on our collective heads for the rest of our natural lives, what are these notions of ‘Discredit’ and implied Disgrace and Shame you speak of?

    For those here who are disheartened by treachery of supposedly conservative media organisations and commentators, welcome (at long last) to Base Reality. Yes, it’s Base in more than one sense of the word. Sorry about that; I sure as hell didn’t make the rules in this Universe, alas.

    Honestly, self-described ‘Conservatives’, what, if *anything* have any of you or your favoured organisations actually managed to, you know, Conserve this last generation? Taking 5 or 10 years longer than a Democrat to accede to the latest Progressive Poz is not Conserving.

    And do you not see that the Poz (look it up if you have to) has permeated our society so much that there is little point in Conserving at this late stage. Why would you embalm a putrid corpse?

    What’s needed is Reaction. That’s a different thing and it gets a bad press. Well of course it would.

    I am heartened that Trump says that he’s going to fight this fraud in the courts. It will likely end up in the streets. In some ways better now than later. Even had Trump won clearly beyond the margin of Democrat electoral fraud capabilities, the can would have been kicked down the road. I’d rather see him spend next x years fighting rather than doing victory laps.

  14. @TommyJay:

    It’s a business. They live and profit by click bait and stirring up your emotional engagement. Think of that closet pedophile Monsters animated movie franchise where their world is powered by the nightmare screams of human children. Your getting pissed off at Fox makes a Murdoch somewhere just that little bit richer. His 200 ft yacht proceeds another 20cm down the Mediterranean powered by your aggro.

    Oh… and also Fox Talking Heads are media prostitutes and traitors just like everyone else. Tucker excepted. Being independently wealthy helps one keep some independence… beyond that he’s one of the last of a certain type of dying breed.

  15. Greg Gutfeld, Tucker Carlson, and Brit Hume when he’s fired up are the only people on Fox worth watching.
    The rest of them are there to Make America Mediocre Again.
    Chris Wallace for some reason stands out as particularly execrable. They all defer to him like he’s some sort of oracle. It’s gross.

  16. Manipulated for narratives.

    Media lies, plus suppression of the truth.

    “All too easy.”
    For the lying Dems to cheat and win.

    It’s a bit depressing, but as an ex-Libertarian, I’m used to being depressed by elections.

  17. @Boomers:

    The only reason to have a Television in 2020 is to know what folks are watching in the ghettos, trailer parks, and dementia homes.

    Unplug your TVs and sell or donate them to people who hate you already.

    @Younger Lechers:

    You don’t need a TV (or a collection of etchings). None of this sidling up crap. Get her through your front door or behind a convenient tree and just get busy stat.

    @Couples and Families:

    Build a fire in the back yard and go sit around *that* and let its ~13Hz flame flicker create beats with your brain waves and hypnotise you into a lovely ancestral state of contentment. Accept no #$@&ing TV substitute.

    Now that I’m through with this rant, I’m off to let YouTube algos make like Glenn Gould with my neurons.

  18. Regarding that “wave of the future”, I think you may be onto something.

    A podcast I ran into during the election cycle was Tim Pool, who fits many of the markers listed in the Contras article. His analysis and discussion of the election coverage was flawed in many ways, but it was quite honest and raw at the same time, which oddly cheered me up, even when I completely disagreed with him.

    So while I lament the probable days ahead, I think there is a glimmer of hope for a new wave of people hungry for something honest.

  19. People might not understand that many of the polls, particularly the MSM polls, are designed to ensure that campaigns continue to spend money on political advertising, which, in its cumulative entirety, garners the networks a significant amount of revenue during each election year. If MSM polls are intended to prod campaign staffs to spend ever-increasing amounts of money on more and more campaign ads, it’s easier to understand why it benefits MSM outlets to make political races “appear” to be “too close to call.” If the race appears to be too close to call based on polling, campaigns are almost obligated to spend more money on ads, particularly in those states/regions that appear, per the MSM polls, to be “too close to call.” In the end, “[i]t’s all about the Benjamins, baby!”

  20. O/T: How about this theory: The Chinese weren’t happy about Trump’s hard-line stance against them. So how do they undermine him to keep him from being re-elected? Create a virus that will cause over 200,000 deaths, crippling the world economy and causing doubt about Trump in the electorate. And who wins the election? Their good friend Joe Biden. Now THAT’S collusion.

  21. Joe VS,

    The other campaign cash angle is that the operative who chooses and allocates campaign media buys, gets to collect as much as 20% of the whole media purchase. For many campaigns, this person is an outsider and they may get paid less than 20%.

    But for Bernie Sanders, his wife Jane is the buyer. So she collects the 20%. No wonder Bernie likes to generate a lot of political heat, only to lose. Repeatedly.

  22. You heard correctly. The R’s are now +10.

    QUOTE: Somewhere around 10 or 11:00 PM Eastern, I heard Fox News claim that their projection had the GOP losing 10 or 15 House seats to the Dems. (Did I hear that right?) This morning the number was the GOP gaining 5 seats. Nice work guys.

  23. @TommyJay:

    Thanks for that tidbit about campaign finance skimming.

    The more one knows about How the Sausage is Made…

  24. brinster is 100% correct. Heed his words!

    As to Fox, it is joining the herd. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham (who clerked for Clarence Thomas at SCOTUS !) are the two worthies.

    I watch at a friend’s. No TV for me otherwise.

  25. A friend of ours was having coffee in our backyard Monday morning and she told us that she had actually answered her phone because it was a local prefix call. A man introduced himself and asked her how she was going to vote and she said, “In person at the poll letting them see my ID.” she then went on to say that is was important to know about all of the local races and be well informed. At that time the person on the phone said, “THANK YOU FOR VOTING DEMOCRAT” which of course she did not.

  26. Drew Holden:

    No matter who ends up winning, my take-away post-2020 is the same as it was post-2016:

    The journalists and outlets who cover this country need to do an ENORMOUS amount of soul searching about how and why they were wrong, and confidently wrong at that.

    The MSM response to this will be the same as it was post-2016: crickets. There will be no “soul searching about how and why they were wrong.” Instead, they will double down.

    Like Instapundit repeatedly say, think of journalists as Democratic Party operatives. That’s what they are. The only thing that will stop a journalist from being a paid Democratic Party operative is to get laid off. Then the journalist becomes a volunteer Democratic Party operative.

  27. Rufus gives some ideas in a comment above but what are the video options to consider?

    I’ve seen rallies on RSBN.
    But what are the TV “channels” I can view from my laptop?
    We have a TV but no cable and we really don’t watch anything.

  28. Adios Fox !

    Unfair, Unbalanced, and very, very much afraid.

    Now it can be told: Bret Baier is the second coming of Howdy Doody.

  29. I just came out of a seance with a medium who contacted my Great, Great Grandfather who died of pneumonia in the 1870s after campaigning on a cold and stormy night for Tammany Hall. He assured me that he was ready to vote Biden if he was needed. I assured him that if he had lived in Philly it would have been a different story.

  30. I wanted some music to listen to as I read blogs.

    Got this great 3 min 3 great (2 legends plus new guy) guitarists:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPfjWsbCZV0
    One of the fine “alternative” (/indie) hits that has crossed over into mainstream.
    I thought, like The Edge, that it started with a bass. But it was lead, set electronically an octave lower.

    Big Tech knows me. And what music I like.

    And how I voted.

    The fake polls were a disinformation campaign, deliberately lying in order to influence the election.

    Poll watchers should add a Bias adjustment factor to all future Pres. polls. For economic stuff, this is called “seasonal adjustments”, because the raw number story includes both the newsworthy new unexpected stuff, as well as the expected change.

  31. You are absolutely correct. This is not a case of incompetence in need of reform. This is a case of willful subversion of the democratic process.

  32. A suggestion I saw on another blog is for our side to completely screw things up and disrupt with lawfare to the point where the selection of the President is decided by a vote of the House.
    Get some of these fraudulent state races thrown out entirely.

  33. brinster – you’ve nailed it. A conspiracy like no other! The scenario of the Chinese Virus being used by the CCP to depress the world economy and in particular to hurt Trump’s chances for reelection has been percolating in my head for a while now. And they’ll get a president they’ve already compromised…brilliant! Why else let the citizens of Wuhan travel internationally but not domestically?

    Remember that Asians are smarter those of European descent!

  34. JimNorCal,

    Sorry I did not see your comment earlier. Hopefully you are still monitoring this thread.

    Regarding “channels” there is no such thing on your laptop except for YouTube. People refer to their YouTube aggregations as “channels.” If you search “Daily Wire” on YouTube, or “The Blaze” or “PragerU” or “Candace Owens” YouTube will offer individual videos, but if you scroll a bit you should also see a circle with the person’s face, or a few initials. Clicking on those will take you to “channels.” Here is a link for Candace Owens’ YouTube channel:
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL0u5uz7KZ9q-pe-VC8TY-w

  35. I wasn’t a Van Halen fan, but after Eddie Van Halen died a couple weeks ago, I checked out some of his guitar work and found this gem, “Eruption.” My estimation of EVH shot up accordingly.

    It’s often melodic, not derivation of Hendrix or Clapton, and I swear there’s some Bach in there, plus plenty of his famous “tapping” technique, where his strumming fingers play on the frets against his left fingers.

    It’s worth a watch and a listen. I now realize he was one of the greats of rock guitar.

    –Eddie Van Halen, “Eruption”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9r-NxuYszg

    RIP, Eddie.

  36. Since cutting the cord I’ve been paying more attention to online sources for video content. Two weeks ago some of my friends were texting about interesting goings on in a Bears football game. I knew YouTube would not have a live stream (sports rights are tightly controlled and locked down), but a week earlier I learned my alma mater’s football TV contract allowed posting game highlights within a few hours of the contest ending, so, I wondered, maybe I can see something from this Bears’ game.

    It was very interesting. I found a few sites that had the radio commentary along with a video graphic of a field with a cartoon ball moving around. Even more interestingly I found quite a few YouTube live streams where men (they were all men) videod themselves watching the game live. There was no video footage from the live broadcast, so they didn’t violate NFL copyright laws, but they did play by play of what they were seeing and offered comment and opinion. I accidentally clicked on the YouTube “chat” button (I never knew that was there before) and I saw they had many “fans” who watched the game along with them and used the YouTube livestream to “talk” to one another, as if they were all on one, huge sofa watching the game together. Then I noticed some were donating money in real time in order to get the host to address and answer a question or comment they had. It seemed like maybe some of the hosts were actually making a living doing this!

    Tim Poole is basically doing the same thing vis a vis current events. He picks a few news stories and does a deep dive on them, offering his opinion and folks are free to kick him a few bucks if they wish (as we all can here, on neo’s site, hint, hint…)

  37. While waiting for neo or someone like her…

    Here’s an amazing classical guitarist who has created a whole new shot for guitar, plus his flawless technique. Paul Galbraith plays a specially designed eight-string guitar semi-upright like a cello atop a resonance box.

    What counts is the music, but it’s still interesting to watch him play.

    –Paul Galbraith, “Adagio Sonata K570 – Mozart | Allemande”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqS66sXf1Bo

    –“Albéniz: Sevilla • Paul Galbraith Live at Soka University”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAnx00s2Cn0

  38. ‘The journalists and outlets who cover this country need to do an ENORMOUS amount of soul searching …”

    So, what is it exactly, that a – by it’s own definition – soulless appetite entity inhabiting – on its own theory – a meaningless world, and driven by nothing but [that which reduces to] a will-to-power or randomly evolved preferences, should “examine”?

    There is nothing there for it to examine critically; unless it has suddenly developed an otiose concern for making sure its tactical pronouncements are consistent with its actions.

    Yeah … I don’t think that our use of language has quite caught up with the anthropological facts on the ground here, folks.

    Of course, conservatives, with their many fond hopes, and treasured standards, and innate inhibitions, have been, and yet may be loathe to call a spade a spade, even when it proudly presents itself as such. It is too emotionally jarring.

    Sometimes they, meaning conservatives, will even point to the awful past consequences of “dehumanizing” the “other”: which of course, has been the more or less default position throughout anthropoid history, except for those who attributed souls and innate and Divinely established value to that other. But of course unpleasant interpersonal consequences which might accrue from the abandonment of any given illusion, do not go on prove the truth of the illusion.

    And when the other itself denies the critically structuring predicate, what stance is one supposed to assume toward that implacably desiring, yet non-negotiating other-thing, which recognizes no limits to its wants, nor boundaries to its sway, nor any point of satiety?

    It, essentially declares not that it is made “in the image and likeness”; but that it is itself become a God [as gods tend to go in such an ephemeral and pointless reality] : the unconstrained Shaper and Maker of all reality, including you, insofar as you are allowed a continued place in it.

    It has for years been as if conservatives have been dealing with a sci fi creature which never gives up or backs off; which you cannot reason with; which respects no limits, and has as its target you and all that you have and are

    And then we actually look directly at these self-proclaimed deities: at the neotenous, fish mouthed purple haired selfie posing liberal gurls, at the smirking infantilized 28 year old hipster males in their spindle armed suit coats, at the drug addled offspring of their progressive predecessors in seizen, and at the current senilities still presiding, and we listen to their ignorant spiels, their boasts of their literal insanity, and their canting vainglory …. and we are advised to take them for a like kind? … made in the image and likeness of a God, whose churches they are intent on burnimg down?

    Now, that is funny.

    Conservatives don’t lose, historically, because they are too high principled; they lose because they refuse to recognize the enemy means what it says when it is at their very throats.

    Fortunately, that appears to be changing. And insofar as it has, the Trump phenomenon has been a big part of it.

    At some point, they are going to have to learn to cut their losses. And to some extent with internal migration, and the choice being made for them by liberal relatives who preemptorilly lock them out, this seems to be already going on. What one does though when these same come fleeing to you unchastened from the consequences of their own choices, or worse, sniffing around for signs of recusancy to report, remains to be seen.

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