Tag Archives: 2016 election

No One Can Stop Her… And She Knows It: “This Election Won’t Be Fair” by Mac Slavo

Will the coming election be aboveboard and honest? Probably not. How bad will the cheating get? Maybe enough to swing the election from Trump to Clinton. From Mac Slavo at shtfplan.com:

In a fair election, my best estimate is that Donald Trump would win in a landslide.

But this election will not be fair. In fact, few of them are.

For Trump’s part, there is no doubt that he has been this year’s sensation. A newcomer to politics, he has thrown out all the conventional rules, played by his own, and found a captivated country hanging onto his every word. Love him, hate him, or somewhere in between… no one can look away from the spectacle.

After a war within the party and the convenient disposal of 16 conventional GOP contenders, Trump is now the official Republican candidate and he is in a strong position. Coming out of the relatively calm Republican National Convention and going into the tumultuous DNC, Trump has enjoyed soaring poll numbers while Hillary has been losing ground fast to the scandals and corruption revealed by Wikileaks and other related mouthpieces.

But the fat lady has not sung.

Hijacking the Party, Keeping Dissent Under Wraps

Hillary’s coronation last night as she formally accepted her party’s nomination could hardly have been more forced. The entire Democratic convention has been staged managed to downplay the overwhelming noise from Bernie supporter who are outraged and feel betrayed by Hillary.

The entire convention has had a certain air to it, a quality that reveals the desperation for power, and the crisp sense of danger that brings with it.

To a casual observer, things might look typical enough, with a few sore losers and pipe dreamers wishing for an ideal country run by decent and fair people that either don’t exist or haven’t figured out how to win an election. But things are not typical – the paradigm is shifting. Politics realigns every 30 years or so, or at least that is the maxim that has held in political science. Only, the last shift has been 30 or 40 years overdue.

There is a reason for that, and the establishment has been fighting to stop the change for the past generation. They have faked out the cycle and kept the population under their thumb (when was the last time you saw a “real” presidential election that wasn’t a means to keeping the status quo?)

But delaying the inevitable won’t hold.

Why Trump Should Win…

As Michael Moore argued, Trump has been preaching the gospel of restoring America’s manufacturing, and is working to woo and turn to “red” the “blue” Rust Belt states where Americans once had strong middle class jobs, especially in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. According to Moore’s numbers (which are cited to motivate support for Hillary and opposition to Trump), if Trump captures those key states in addition to the red states that Mitt Romney, a weak candidate, won in 2012, then Trump should win the electoral college:

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest.

To continue reading: No One Can Stop Her… And She Knows It: “This Election Won’t Be Fair”

 

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5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win, by Michael Moore

Yes, that Michael Moore, famous liberal filmmaker, is saying—seriously—that Trump will win. From Moore at michaelmoore.com:

Friends:
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this!

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!”

To continue reading: 5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win

Trump Takes Aim At The Global Elite, by Tyler Durden

Donald Trump is taking aim at a corrupt elite that after the FBI’s pass on Hillary looks even more corrupt. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Donald Trump has always framed his candidacy as providing the average American with an opportunity to vote for an outsider, someone not already part of the traditional political machine. Immediately following Brexit, we asked whether or not this was Trump’s opportunity to seize the momentum and use the referendum result as an example of what can be done if the people stand up against the global elites.

It turned out that Trump wasted no time in making sure that the people of America understood that what had been done in the UK can be done in the United States.

Recall from Trump’s statement immediately following Brexit:

Statement Regarding British Referendum on E.U. Membership

The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy. A Trump Administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense. The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump Administration.

Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people. I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.

We were curious as to how framing the debate as a fight against the elites would play out for Trump, but if the first Rasmussen poll after the Brexit result is any indication, the tide could be turning for Trump. As we reported, Trump jumped out to a four point lead over Hillary Clinton in the latest Rasmussen poll last week, after being behind prior to that.

Of course none of this has been lost on The Donald, and as The Hill points out, Trump is ramping up efforts to continue the framing of his candidacy as a fight against the global elite. Trump is stepping up the rhetoric around the economy being rigged by the media and corporate elites, and is folding Hillary Clinton into the mix seamlessly. In some cases, Trump is even putting himself in direct conflict with big business in Washington, something that will presumably only help with the voters looking for a change from the status quo.

To continue reading: Trump Takes Aim At The Global Elite

Has Trump Found the Formula? by Patrick Buchanan

Trump’s “formula” may be nothing more complicated than repeatedly hammering on Hillary Clinton’s corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy, and incompetence, while stressing opposition to current trade and immigration arrangements. It may very well work. From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Stripped of its excesses, Donald Trump’s Wednesday speech contains all the ingredients of a campaign that can defeat Hillary Clinton this fall.

Indeed, after the speech ended Clinton was suddenly defending the Clinton Foundation against the charge that it is a front for a racket for her family’s enrichment.

The specific charges in Trump’s indictment of Clinton: She is mendacious, corrupt, incompetent and a hypocrite.

“Hillary Clinton … is a world-class liar,” said Trump. She faked a story about being under fire at a Bosnia airport, the kind of claim for which TV anchors get fired. She has lied repeatedly about her email server.

She lied to the families of victims of the Benghazi massacre by implying the atrocity was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islamic video, not the premeditated act of Islamist terror she knew it to be.

Drop “world-class” and Trump’s case is open and shut.

His second charge: “Hillary has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft” and “may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”

Particulars?

Bill Clinton got $750,000 for a speech from a telecom company facing State Department sanctions for providing technology to Iran. The Clintons got the cash; the telecom company got no sanctions.

“Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while 9 investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

Trump added, “She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund — doing favors for oppressive regimes … for cash.”

Together, she and Bill have raked in $153 million since 2001 in speaking fees from “lobbyists, CEOs and foreign governments.”

These figures are almost beyond belief.

Sherman Adams had to resign as Ike’s chief of staff for accepting a vicuna coat from Bernard Goldfine, who had problems with federal regulators.

When ex-President Reagan, after brain surgery, visited Japan to receive that nation’s highest honor, The Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum, and got a $2 million fee from the media company that hosted his nine-day visit, our liberal editorial pages vomited out their revulsion and disgust.

Where are those media watchdogs today?

Rather than condemning the Clintons’ greed, their conflicts of interest and their egregious exploitation of their offices, the media are covering for Hillary and digging for dirt on Trump.

To substantiate his charge of incompetence, Trump notes that Clinton as Senator voted for arguably the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, the invasion of Iraq.

She pushed the attack that ousted Col. Gadhafi and unleashed terrorists who took over much of Libya and murdered our ambassador.

She played a leading role in launching the insurrection against Bashar Assad that has left hundreds of thousands dead, uprooted half of Syria and sent millions of refugees to seek asylum in Europe.

Primary beneficiary: ISIS, with its capital in Raqqa.

To continue reading: Has Trump Found the Formula?

Thank You, Mr. Trump, Part 2, by Robert Gore

This is Part 2 of Thank You, Mr. Trump. Link to Part 1.

Hillary Clinton; her friends, sycophants, and supporters in government, the media, and the general populace; the leadership of the Democratic Party, and the Republicans who have announced they will support her are desperately wishing that much of her past would just go away. During the 1990’s, the Clintons’ low-bar goal was to elude criminal justice for their many scandals. They never answered inquiries unless compelled, or proved their innocence. Instead, they besmirched the inquirers, floated conspiracy theories (conspiracy theorists are only kooks when they challenge the government, not when they’re the president and his wife), stonewalled investigations, threatened, blackmailed, hid or destroyed evidence, and fed exculpatory material to their friends in the media. Everybody then moved on, until the next scandal: lather, rinse, repeat.

The Clinton’s 1990s scandals never really went away, and they have added to them since then. Bill pals around with a pedophile billionaire who procures underage females for consensual and allegedly nonconsensual sex on his private plane and island. Hillary has Libya and the emails. Jointly they have the Clinton Foundation. The usual suspects have labored assiduously not to investigate these new scandals and keep the old ones down the memory hole. However, the stench persists, as stenches do, and many Americans have neither forgiven or forgotten. Trump pushed Clinton criminality to the forefront with one adjective: “crooked.” Only Clinton’s most blindly deluded supporters have called this one outrageous. Hillary is crooked, and Trump deserves credit for not avoiding the issue, as many Republican hopefuls did when they still had hopes.

Compare the lack of mainstream outrage at Hillary and Bill’s transgressions and crimes, stretching back decades, to the hypocritical, hyperventilating, hysterical, and endlessly recycled outrage over anything Trump. Turning mountains into molehills and vice versa, the mainstream media, politicians, and commentators’ only real outrage is reserved for those, including Trump, who point out the obvious bias. Their over-the-top broadsides against Trump have, like the violence against his supporters, backfired spectacularly and confirmed his charges.

The latest contretemps concerns a judge whom Trump has accused of prejudice against him because of his Mexican heritage. Heaven forbid anybody impugn a judicial system that has twisted itself into tortured, illogical pretzels to find Obamacare constitutional! Some of the same people who swear the judge in question wouldn’t let his ethnicity affect his rulings—notwithstanding “understandable” Latino outrage at Trump—also swear that white judges’ “whiteness” and heritage of privilege renders them prejudiced per se. They can’t have it both ways—another backfire.

If Trump is elected and he’s able to implement policies implied by some of his criticisms of US foreign and military policies, his visage may get chiseled into Mount Rushmore. Back in December 2014, the only criticisms the anointed candidates had about those policies were that the US had not intervened enough, and where it had intervened, it had not dropped enough bombs or killed enough people. The operative word was “tougher”: everybody, including Clinton, was going to be tougher than the current inhabitant of the White House.

Then, crazy Donald reminded us that he had been against the 2003 Iraq war, didn’t see why the US had to be in Syria, didn’t see why our allies couldn’t pick up more of the tab for their own defense, and that he would negotiate, maybe do some deals, with the leader of the country with the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal. He hasn’t likened that leader to Hitler or equated his own manhood with killing terrorists, drone strikes, or ordering other people’s children into war.

Trump understands that you can do quite well in business with nowhere near 100 percent market share, and trying to attain such dominance is often ruinous. He has questioned whether the US can or should maintain unipolar dominance, the geopolitical equivalent of 100 percent market share. Even during its supposed heyday at the end of World War II and through the Cold War, US power was not absolute. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by the USSR, China, and lesser powers, the US’s string of inconclusive or losing military engagements since World War II, and the rebuilding of European and Asian economies devastated by that war chipped away at US dominance. The government refused to recognize it then, and still doesn’t.

It’s hard enough to maintain a confederated empire when its leader has clear military, economic, and financial superiority. When it doesn’t, the effort is dangerously delusional. For the government—deep in hock and unable to realize its objectives in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Ukraine, among others—to even contemplate confrontation and conflict with China and Russia would be farcical if the potential consequences weren’t so deadly.

The US sends its warships into the South China Sea, the Baltic and Black Seas, essentially Russian lakes; pushes NATO, which lost its raison d’être when the Soviet Union collapsed, to Russia’s western border; foments revolution in Ukraine, Napoleon and Hitlers’ welcome mat to Russia, and decries Russian and Chinese aggression. Russia and China are nuclear powers, and even if the US had a nuclear first strike capability to wipe them both out, which it probably does not, the ensuing fallout and nuclear winter would make the global warming we’re all supposed to be worrying about irrelevant. If the US does not have first strike capability, or Russia and China, singly or jointly, launched the first strike against the US, the nuclear devastation would wipe out US cities and infrastructure, rendering vast regions, perhaps the entire country, uninhabitable.

It is commonplace to ascribe the darkest motivations to your enemies, and credit yourself with the best of intentions, but based on their respective actions—not conjectures and hypotheticals about designs to rule the world—Russia and China seek control of their spheres of influence consistent with notions of multipolarity, while the US seeks unipolarity and Russian and Chinese submission. All indications are that Russia and China will not submit. Nor will the US back away from unipolarity. Certainly Hillary Clinton will not.

The US government’s misbegotten drive for unipolarity is the most important issue Trump has raised. Humanity’s survival may be at stake. Call it the military-intelligence-industrial-media-complex, the powers that be, or the Deep State, if Trump follows through on his rhetoric he will be fighting the most lucrative and powerful cabal on the planet, a far greater threat to American liberties and lives than that which President Eisenhower warned of in 1961. Simply raising the issues he has accounts for the lion’s share of the fang-baring hostility towards him, especially from members of his own party. If his only accomplishment is to splinter the cabal “into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds,” as President Kennedy reportedly wanted to do with the CIA after the Bay of Pigs disaster, Trump will have earned his place on Mount Rushmore.

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Thank You, Mr. Trump, Part 1, by Robert Gore

December 2014, SLL posted an article: “Can’t Wait For That Next Election.” The article argued the positions of the two front-runners at that time—Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton—were virtually indistinguishable.

Other than which campaign contributors get paid off, there would be very little difference between the potential presidencies of Jeb and Hillary. Commentators and opinion organs masquerading as news outlets will champion their guy or gal, and hyperventilate about perceived sins of the other side’s gal or guy, but when you get right down to actual policies, there has been little difference between Republicans and Democrats for many years; they are both the parties of government. It gets bigger, spends more, piles new programs on top of failed old ones, sticks its nose anywhere on the planet it sees fit, makes more promises, and goes deeper in debt. None of that is going to change—Jeb or Hillary—and the permanent Washington oligarchy and its dependents are fine with either one.

The first of the article’s two closing sentences was spot on, the second dead wrong.

The prospect of a Jeb-Hillary election should put the body politic in the same frame of mind as a restless teenager, ready to do something rash, dangerous, and destructive, just to relieve the tedium. That, unfortunately, is giving the body politic far too much credit.

A year-and-a-half later, critics denigrate Donald Trump as restless teenagers’ car keys and beer. Even those more sympathetic to Trump’s candidacy have identified emotional factors as the primary basis of his support (see “Much More Than Trump,” SLL, and “‘Dilbert’ Creator’s 6 Reasons Why Trump Will “Win In A Landslide” In November,” by Scott Adams). That’s not incorrect, but Trump has dramatically altered the terms of debate on the playing field that all right-thinking, civic-minded Americans believe that elections should be waged: the issues. Support or oppose him, Trump has performed a public service, mentioning the unmentionables that our minders and keepers would rather avoid (for the good of the people, of course).

Immigration has been a blessing for America. Seeking an opportunity to build better lives for themselves and their families, millions have flocked to this country and helped make America great. A substantial number of immigrants to this country today are similarly motivated, but some are not. Since the Industrial Revolution heyday of immigration, the US has erected a welfare state, conducted a futile war on drugs, and intervened extensively in Latin American political affairs. Currently, some immigrants come for the freebies, some to ply the drug trade and engage in criminal acts, and some to escape turmoil and intolerable conditions in their own countries.

A nation going broke providing freebies to its own citizens cannot afford them for non-citizens. A nation that criminalizes drugs creates an economic risk premium for dealing in those drugs, which is especially attractive for the relatively impoverished in Latin America. A nation that helps make conditions intolerable in other countries may be confronted with escaping refugees (as Europe has discovered). Those are simple, indisputable facts.

There has been no shortage of commentators pointing out these facts—for years, even decades—but by definition, even if their audiences were in the millions they were “fringe.” Back in late 2014, immigration reform—a “path to citizenship,” de facto amnesty, and meaningless promises of tighter border security—was the prevailing mantra, chanted by both parties’ candidates, endorsed by all right-thinking pundits as necessary to secure the increasingly important Latino vote (support from Republicans was paradoxical—most immigrants vote for Democrats). There would be no immigration issue because dissenting views were marginalized or suppressed, and the “solution” to the problem was a done deal regardless of who was elected.

Then Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and proposed building a wall at the border, funded by Mexico. The epithet and proposal were outrageous, but the concerns of millions of Americans had been ignored or dismissed as racist and xenophobic. It took something outrageous to get those concerns on the table and force the Cloud People to pay attention. They did so not out of any solicitude for the unwashed, the Dirt People, but because Trump jumped to the top of the polls. Immigration will be a front burner issue through the general election, and attacks on Trump supporters by Mexican-flag-waving thugs will only help his cause. He doesn’t even have to say: “What did I tell you?” It’s implied.

Like open immigration, free trade has been distorted beyond recognition by governments. In a free world, a decision either to migrate or trade across the artificial construct known as a border would be recognized as an act of self-interest that should not be hindered. Today’s decidedly unfree world means that so-called free trade arrangements augment the power and wealth of governments and their cronies at the expense of everyone else, just as “open immigration” expands welfare states with resultant political and economic advantages for the few.

Again, with rhetoric and proposals designed to roil the elite and agitate the electorate, Trump has exposed the sham of “free” trade. Real free trade among two or more countries would not be negotiated in secret and add thousand-page agreements, plus thousands more pages of implementing regulations, to a world already drowning in laws and regulations. A real free trade agreement would reduce laws and regulations—tariffs and trade barriers—and there would be no need to negotiate it in secret.

Real free trade increases the US’s economic well-being. By definition, two parties don’t engage in voluntary trade unless both parties benefit. However, present trade agreements have facilitated outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs. David Stockman persuasively argues that they are part of a one-two punch, the other punch being anti-deflationary monetary policies, that have frozen real incomes for decades (see his four-part series, “Losing Ground in Flyover America.”

Trump has broken through the mainstream narrative, highlighting the ongoing deterioration of the American economy and resonating with the millions who have been living through it. SLL has argued that since 2000, we’ve been in the midst of a Humungous Depression, an argument not confirmed by Wall Street’s and Washington’s statistic mills, but which finds support in Trump’s ascent. (Interested readers are referred to the linked article and SLL’s Debtonomics Archive.) Trump has struck a chord with his criticism of the economy, and by implication, statistic mills, equity markets, and the media that paint a much rosier picture than the one his supporters see.

This is Part One of “Thank you, Mr. Trump.” Link to Part Two.

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The Risks of a Trump Presidency, by Scott Adams

The creator of Dilbert carefully examines the “risks” of a Trump presidency, and finds that it may not be as risky as advertised, and it may be less risky than the alternatives. From Adams, on a guest post on theburningplatform:

For starters, ask yourself how well you predicted the performance of past presidents. Have your psychic powers been accurate?

I’m not good at predicting the performance of presidents. I thought Reagan would be dangerous, but he presided over the end of the Cold War. And I thought George W. Bush would be unlikely to start a war, much less two of them.

But it gets better. Even AFTER the presidency, can you tell who did the best job? I can’t. You think you can, but you can’t. And the simple reason for that is because there is no base case with which to compare a president. All we know is what did happen, not what might have happened if we took another path. You can’t compare a situation in the real world to your imaginary world in which something better happened. That is nonsense. And yet we do it. Watch me prove it right now.

So, how did President Obama do on the job? Was he a good president?

If you have an answer in your head – either yes or no – it proves you don’t know how to make decisions. No judgement can be made about Obama’s performance because there is nothing to which it can be compared. No one else in a parallel universe was president at the same time, doing different things and getting different results.

I’m not a fan of everything our president has done, but I feel as if historians will rank him as one of our best presidents. Definitely in the top 20%.

Wait, what? Am I crazy?

Many of you think Obama nearly destroyed civilization. You and I can’t both be right. But both of us can be irrational in trusting our opinions. We are literally comparing Obama’s actual performance to imagined alternatives that exist only in our minds. Maybe you think the imaginary president in your mind is way better than the real one, whereas I think the real one did well compared to my imaginary alternative.

That isn’t thinking. Science is pretty clear on that.

And how about your ability to predict the future of your own relationships? Most relationships end badly, so we know that the majority of Americans are not good at predicting the future. Have all of your relationships worked out the way you expected? Mine haven’t.

I think you’ll agree that humans are terrible at predicting the future. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we think we are not terrible at predicting the future. Our certainty in the face of overwhelming uncertainty is irrational.

Do you think President Trump would be extra-dangerous to the world? If you have an opinion on that – either yes or no – you’re being irrational.

To continue reading: The Risks of a Trump Presidency