Beyond the Cusp

September 9, 2016

Election of the Millennium

 

The coming election in the United States may be as breaking important to the survival of the Judeo-Christian ethos and society as any since the British elected Winston Churchill to face the Nazi menace. The problem is the choices with which the American people have provided themselves. The Democrat Party has caved to the pressure from the Clintons and the idea that they needed to place another first onto the ballot, the first woman to be President, or at least to be the choice to top the ballot of a major party. The Republican Party did not do anything really different when they nominated a person who in appearance was closer to class clown than class president. The real problem is that in politics, as in life, you have to play the cards you are dealt.

 

So we have a political hack who has never accomplished much of anything noteworthy but has still managed to have collected legal baggage unseen in any candidate running for their first term and not reelection, though we doubt there have even been many seeking reelection with such a set of baggage with the possible exception of Richard Nixon. The fact that it would be Richard Nixon who when seeking reelection may have had almost as much legal difficulties with Watergate bring us full circle as Hillary Clinton, then still Hillary Rodham, in her first “big” job after graduating was to be a researcher on the House Impeachment committee looking into charging President Nixon with impeachment. You cannot make this stuff up and making matters worse, there are some who claim, though verification of this presumed fact has been unsuccessful by us and others, that Hillary Rodham (Clinton) was removed from her position under suspicions that she was attempting and had consulted with members of Senator Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist in violation of House rules. The originating source, as far as we have determined was the Jerry Zeifman book published in 2006, “Hillary’s Pursuit of Power.” In the book our research turned up references to Hillary having “engaged in a variety of self-serving unethical practices in violation of House rules.” Zeifman wrote on his now-shuttered website, “Hillary Clinton is ethically unfit to be either a senator or president” and further stated that, “if she were to become president, the last vestiges of the traditional moral authority of the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson will be destroyed.” Then again, these charges and innuendo may simply have been Zeifman’s contribution of more grist for the mill.

 

Impeached but Untried Resigned in Disgrace President Richard Nixon

Impeached but Untried
Resigned in Disgrace
President Richard Nixon

 

On the opposing side we have what some have referred to as a huckster, showman, real estate magnate, television reality show producer and even a fraud. At first look one would be led to believe that the two parties are in a race to the bottom, and that may very well be true. The one thing that the media has been very guilty of thus far in covering Donald Trump is their sensationalism over news content. True, Donald Trump was all bombast and insult to the intelligence during the primaries. The media could have derailed Trump early on simply by noting that he had run for the nomination for President on the Reform Party ticket in 2000 and considered to run for President as a Republican way back in 1988 as well as in 2004, and 2012. George H. W. Bush had also considered Donald Trump as his running mate amongst others before selecting Dan Quayle. These former forays into politics have largely been brushed aside as Trump’s not being a serious candidate and only running for further name recognition and the free publicity thus furthering the Trump “brand” making his television reality show more popular and other promotional contents. Had his campaign been treated as such this time, he likely would have seen his campaign collapse as it had in the past and he would have gone on his merry way. The media for reasons of their own chose instead to promote Trump’s campaign as serious despite his running basically on the same bombast as his previous excursions into the field of Presidential politics. Now Donald Trump, some have posited, is in the position of the dog who chased the car and having now caught it by the back tire trying to decide what to do before being pummeled. The problem now is that he may possibly not be pummeled but could conceivably win the Presidency. That is making the theory that the media pressed his campaign in order to have the Republican Party run an incompetent nincompoop allowing for Hillary Clinton to complete her dream run achieving her destiny, as seen by the leftist mainstream media, the Soros foundation, leftist loonies, the BDS anti-Israel fanatics and a coalition of other far left causes, of becoming the first woman President of the United States as their idea of fate should have things. Something went terribly wrong and Donald Trump may not only have caught the car but the entire car carrier on its way to the White House.

 

So we have the potentially first woman President running against somebody inflated by circumstance and a pliable media attempting to nominate an idiot, fool, class clown and totally unelectable candidate for the Republican Party such that that candidate could be a simple and easy punching bag which Hillary could knock the stuffing out of on her way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. Now the only way Hillary might be able to see the inside of the White House could be as a tourist or possibly by invite from a gracious Donald Trump giving her a personally guided tour of his remake of America’s House. Well, that would get pictures even on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and be the lead story on FOX News and Glen Beck’s cable network. What more could Donald Trump desire as the coverage of his first month in office climax press release/conference, and yes, he would definitely invite the entire Washington, New York and Los Angeles press corps. Should Donald Trump win the election and become President it will prove to be one of the biggest coups ever pulled on the mainstream media as they were played like Nero’s fiddle as the conventional rules for campaigning were thrown out the window. Donald Trump saw what they desired, a patsy to fill the other side of the ballot assuring a Hillary Clinton victory and he played the part perfectly. He rode the wave of being the most aggrandized idiot and a fool but if he wins the race it will posit the question of exactly who is the fool in this real life drama.

 

Choosing Between Crook and Clown, With Which One are You Down

Choosing Between Crook and Clown,
With Which One are You Down

 

The media is playing another role in this campaign, one of advocate for one side or the other. The talk circuit is probably the most balanced as just as many hate Donald Trump equally if not more than Hillary Clinton and others fall slightly on the other side. Print media and the mainstream television media are completely lined up behind Hillary Clinton to the bitter end. There is one problem which the media need answer for, they chose Donald Trump to be Hillary’s chew toy and it appears Hillary may not have enough bite to destroy her gifted chew toy. With the e-mail scandal, private server problems, inadequacies as Secretary of State, complete lack of positive credentials and most of all, Benghazi; the media have their work cut out for them as they attempt to cover these stories which just continue to plague them and still try to make their candidate look better than Donald Trump. The big question is can the media out-show the showman himself? Thus far they are getting a failing grade. The media will continue to refuse to pass any questions to Hillary Clinton about the myriad of problems and potential criminal charges seeming to chase her wherever she goes as they value their jobs and their lives. Instead there will be the obligatory questions as to how she managed to be the star Secretary of State while raising a perfect child and still finding time to bake cookies. This after she disavowed baking cookies claiming such would be a waste of her valuable time. Of course this was during her stint as the main lead in drafting new healthcare legislation during her husband’s first term, a piece of legislation so ponderous and unthinkable that even the Democrats turned it down flat out. This should be another qualifying study in what a President Hillary would entail. But this too has been forgotten as the only thing anyone seems to remember is how accomplished Hillary Clinton has been in her illustrious career. Why was that again? Oh yea, she is married to Willian Jefferson “Bill” Clinton who gave us four marvelous, prosperous and entertaining, always entertaining, years as President and this makes Hillary qualified, exactly. This will be her campaign story, how qualified she is by comparison. We wish the media luck selling this product.

 

On the other side of the campaign stretch the media has an equally difficult row to hoe as they must sell that Trump is unelectable due to his incompetence without drawing any attention to whether Hillary is any more competent. Thus far the media is doing an excellent job in making sure nobody inspects anything Donald Trump is actually saying at his speaking and campaign stops. The media is still pounding away at his irreverent actions during the primaries before he realized that he might actually win. Since the point Donald Trump realized he was very likely going to not only gather sufficient delegates to win on the first ballot, but that there would be no changing the rules of the game in order to place anybody else on the ballot, he had changed the entirety of his election team twice. Simply put, the Republican Party went with the potentially disastrously defective candidate the people voted for in the Primaries against the hand-picked candidate the Democrat Party placed on their ballot the voters be damned as it is her turn, promised turn. These changes in his team proved one simple fact, Donald Trump has taken this election seriously and was going to continue to change team members until he found a team to stay on his message and run a credible campaign.

 

Donald Trump has been putting forth campaign points which he intends to work towards and had been on message and serious for going on a little over a month. The media won’t report this because Donald Trump is supposed to be the foil for placing Hillary Clinton in the Presidency. Instead of covering the Donald Trump who exists currently and who is talking seriously about issues he and many American care about, the future of the United States, immigrations, both overhauling the current system so legal immigrants can actually come to the United States if they have qualities and skills needed by the United States and not just anyone who can walk over the border and register as a Democrat or work under the table for less. Donald Trump is talking about jobs, real jobs for working class people and bringing back industries from overseas. Trump has proposed a flat tax on business of fifteen percent with minimal if any deductions making America business friendly again. He has gone from bombast and claiming to fire every General in military service to discussing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon commanders how to best engage and destroy the Islamic State. He also claims to demand a plan to rebuild the militaries which have been gutted over the past eight years. Tax reform has been one of Trump’s lesser mentioned subjects, but it is on his radar. The media may not cover this but every Trump rally and speech is viewable on YouTube as well as his campaign site for those voters who actually desire to see what the media refuses to cover.

 

This will be the Presidential election cycle which will go down in history as the campaign the media refused to cover even resembling honestly. There will be critiques of the lack of coverage of any detracting facts or lack of principles by Hillary Clinton while the exact opposite where even if Trump were to get a boil behind his left ear the media would run a week or two coverage inquiring if this was a mark of the beast and pressing the possibility that Donald Trump practices demonic covens to decide his positions on the issues. Well, they have become almost that much of a joke. The blessing is that the people no longer need the media to inform them as they can go find the information straight from the sources with the alternative media. Yes, we know that both candidates have their negatives, all we can add is that they both have positives which would be hard pressed to know from watching MSNBC for one and FOX for the other.

 

Our message is look before you leap and definitely before you vote as the choice the United States makes this fall for Congress as well as President will have profound meaning for the entirety of the free world going forward. The one item we would suggest you find the answer to is what is the term for surrender, because surrender might just be behind one of the doors in the race for President of the Free World. That position has been vacant for the past eight years and the Free World needs it filled and nobody in Europe appears desiring stepping up. In Israel they are holding their own against a rising tide and their fight is transforming from their sole lonely fight to one that much of the world has coming to knock on or knock down their doors. The future is very scary and that truth should guide everybody to take check of themselves, their life styles and their life choices as those are what got us to this point. Any culture which stops raising children is a dead culture and that is the plague that will very probably have murdered the Europe we all thought we knew. Behind the front of glitz and lights with the night life has been a hollow void of childless marriages and relationships with declining and aging populations with nobody home to take the baton forward as the next generation. Another two or three relatively childless generations, another fifty years and there will be no Europe, no Russia and a very different America and Canada. That too is something that needs to be inspected and choices investigated and their ramifications altered or simply admit that the Western World, freedom and Democracy, the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the Bible and Western philosophy will die for the lack of any following and that will be the end of a long legacy.

 

This legacy started with Abraham followed by the Ten Commandments with Moses and the rules limiting the powers of Kings in Deuteronomy and an entire codified set of rules for society; soon adding to by the Greek and Roman Democracy and Republic which almost died but were defended at Thermopylae; the English Common Law, spelled rights in the Magna Carta once again limiting the King, the Reformation, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution and Information Age; and the freedoms to choose ones’ own future and passing that on to children to preserve which are all wobbling at the edge of extinction. Ronald Reagan stated it best when he said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” Ronald Reagan almost nailed it because it will not be only the United States but all of mankind and that is why everything is so seriously wrong and in need of greatness and we get to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

August 11, 2016

Trump Paranoia Trumps Trump Facts

 

There were three articles this past week by two of my favorite reads and that struck me as a tad bit obsessive, so I decided I would be a little obsessive myself and write about Trump again and all too soon. The first item I wish to present are the recent polls showing Hillary Clinton defeating The Donald 50% to 39% with 7% going to the Libertarian Party candidate and the rest to the Green Party. The fact that these two were included in the poll and the Constitution Party was not was indicative of seeking every presumably mainstream viable candidates despite us all knowing that Donald Duck had as good if not better chance than the Libertarian and Green Party candidates of winning the elections, especially this year where more will be pressed to write in a Disney or Peanuts character. Still, it seems somewhat difficult to believe that Hillary Clinton gained nearly 8% points while Donald Trump lost around 3% in a single week, but then again this is an election like few others. The last time anything remotely similar came down the pike the United States elected James K. Polk as their President and that may have had more to do with the opponent’s campaign theme stating, “Who the hell is James K. Polk.” Perhaps there is something to be said for getting your name out before the public even if it is your opponent ridiculing your obscurity. Perhaps if Henry Clay had ran advertisements with his name instead of his opponent’s he would have won the election and nobody would ever have heard of James K. Polk, but he didn’t and so we now know that Polk was the eleventh President of the United States. But enough about then, this is now and we have a completely different problem as both the candidates are well known, maybe a little too well known.

 

James K, Polk and Henry Clay

James K, Polk and Henry Clay

 

Just a quick aside to those who feel I write too often about Trump and appear to be ignoring Ms. Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s shortfalls and misdeeds are more than well-known and her record stands as it is for better or for worse. Thus far she has not been indicted, but not for lack of trying. Some would claim that much of the effort has been spent finding reasons and ways not to charge her with crimes; many might say far too much effort. The one item which might be of interest is that there are no laws which preclude being President and giving all your State of the Union addresses from the Prison library. Imprisonment does not disqualify one from being elected President and would only prevent them from serving past a few weeks if the Congress brought charges of impeachment and a guilty finding removing her from office. Without an impeachment conviction from Congress there is no reason a President could not serve two terms as President while serving a long term in even Federal Prison, though such would be unlikely.

 

The most echoed complaint about Donald Trump has been his sophomoric attitudes and overindulgence of self-adoration. Then there is the further claim that he tends to go off on tangents and wild exclamations in response to what should be serious answers to serious questions. He takes criticism as if it was an attack on his being and returns as he perceives he has received. All of these are packaged in different orders of severity and then summarily referred to as disqualifying him to hold the office of President. Character faults, ignorance, self-adoration and aloofness are also not disqualifications to the office of President. Actually, there are very few actual qualifications to be President and none of them have much to do with intelligence, education, good character or even literacy. So, no matter how disqualified many of us believe one or the other, if not both, candidates put up by the two major parties may appear to be, let us assure you that both are technically as qualified as one need be to be elected President. So the next time you read a column claiming either candidate is unqualified to be President be assured that you are reading an editorial opinion and not a fact.

 

One of the other favorite reasons which make Trump a poor choice to be President, we have read, is that he will have his finger on the button, or more accurately direct access to a list of launch codes for different scenarios, which in and of themselves would likely take a week of briefings for any normal human being to master, and that would pose too dangerous a position to allow such a shallow and unserious person who seems more drawn to the adulation of the office than the actual performance of the duties to be permitted to access. Luckily, Donald Trump is likely not the buffoon he has been playing thus far on the campaign trail and likely is aware, as are many pundits though they are want to admit, the real campaign as far as some 80% of the voting public are concerned does not begin until the second or third week of April and everything before that is grist for the political mill, and Donald is giving the mill all it can handle. He will not even start spending in earnest as those paying attention now have already decided and picked their preferred poison. This is definitely going to be an election decided in the final two weeks and everything before is trimming hanging in the hall. If Trump is going to become serious as promised, do not expect this new Donald until the end of September as he will give the media a week or two of introductions before refining it for the final push when the election truly will be decided. Trump is not the fool he appears to be playing as you do not even hold on to a fortune as a fool and if half his claims are valid he has done rather well in his investments despite the media concentrating on those that went bust. Ask any true investor and one of their likely favorite quotes comes from Edison who claimed his success came from not allowing failures to deter him but only to show him another thing which would not work.

 

Donald Trump having the access codes for nuclear weapons is not giving a baby dynamite and matches and leaving them in the quarry to play. He is no more prone to starting a nuclear exchange on his Presidential whim than most of us, though there are some who might have doubts about that. Further, after two or three days in office Donald Trump will be disabused of any thoughts that he was just elected to the cushiest job on the planet. Those days will be spent receiving the most serious reality check conceivable as he is briefed by the CIA, Military Intelligence, FBI, NSA and a number of agencies neither he nor we have ever heard of and what he will learn would turn the hair on a peach white. I am fairly sure such reports and truths about the realities in the deepest recesses within our world, which most of us are not privileged to know, unequivocally and in the starkest terms would serve to alter even Donald Trump shaking all he believed he knew about the world in which we reside. Even things deduced by the fiercest news addict would take the wind from Trumps antics and bring him crashing back to be grounded in what is real and presented before him. Add to this the fact that he will have appointed people who are well known for expertise in the workings and situations around the world, people whose worlds most of us would never care to share if we were informed as many of these experts reside in day in and day out. The only two Presidents in since even before World War I who were likely not even the slightest surprised when they received their initial briefings would have been President Dwight David Eisenhower, as he had just finished commanding the allied efforts in Europe and pretty much knew many of the troublesome areas as he was living them, and President George H. W. Bush (the elder), as he had been head of the CIA formerly and Vice-President and probably trusted and included in many of the Presidential briefings thus knew most of what any briefing upon taking office was going to contain. There are very good reasons why the Presidency tends to age the men holding the office so visibly, and these are reasons which most of us would just as well not be made privileged to as it would remove any doubt about the shape of the world and threats held within.

 

There is also the truth that Donald Trump has presented defining core beliefs which are placed on his campaign website though for detractors it is far easier to challenge the Trump buffoonery he has shown the media, especially those in the media seeking to discredit him. Baiting the mainstream media has been one of the games that Donald Trump has played largely for his own amusement as he is just as aware as are we that there would be no pleasing the leftist media pundits and if he were to treat their questions seriously they would likely ask him when he planned to stop beating his wife and if he answered it the headline would read, ‘Trump Beats his Wife,’ or ‘Trump Refuses to Stop Beating Wife.’ That would be the reality of much of the reporting as we have already witnessed; so with these tricksters and gamers out there laying traps for him to fall into, and he has fallen for more than his supporters wish he had forcing them to defend the undefendable, why even treat their ‘interrogatories with any degree of respect and seriousness when all they exist for are for Trump to take them on seriously and then they report the choicest morsels strung together out of context and in an order often expressing the opposite or things never uttered by Donald Trump. We will not even deign to give any examples as doing so would also serve to send our readers into the darker corners of the liberal, leftist media and all its machinations. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is giving a show for the pure entertainment factor as he realizes the media is trying to game him, so why not play along and game the gamers. Trump has his positions defined, as we linked to above, but that is not what the media wishes to cover or expose to the light of day. Informing the American public that Trump has serious positions, which anybody can go and read for themselves, is not what their coverage is about, theirs is to destroy all veracity and support behind Donald Trump such that their darling, Hillary Clinton, wins the election by hook or by crook come November. This is also why we will witness more and more polls showing Hillary Clinton pulling away eventually predicting a landslide win for Hillary Clinton all in an effort to suppress Trump voters from even going to the polls on election day.

 

Presidential Rivals Not So Different on Far Too Many Positions

Presidential Rivals Not So Different
on Far Too Many Positions

 

It should not surprise anybody with an ounce of integrity who has experienced even the slightest glimpse into how the media operates and the extents the state with all of its power even to include court challenges which even if fought and won would take those proceedings past election day thus accomplishing the goal of hiding true democratic choices openly to the public. The reality is the fix is in that there are but two parties and that the United States has a two party system. Check your Constitution and you will not find anywhere a limit to the number of parties permitted in American political theater. There have been elections thrown to Congress to sort things out as none of the candidates, sometimes more than even just three, reached the required number of electoral votes to become President and the delegates remained locked. Four candidates, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay, had originally campaigned for the presidency in 1823-24 and each man had the unyielding support base generally reflected the geographic region from which each came. Further confusing the election of 1823-4 was the fact that all four candidates claimed to represent the same party, the Democratic-Republican Party. Who said there had to be more than one party for controversy and more than a single candidate for the office of the President? Numerous Presidential elections have included more than two parties and others have had one party nominate and run two candidates in order to win differing states with neither candidate strong enough overall. This seldom made any difference as fielding two candidates proved to almost always throw the election to the other party. This in and of itself as well as the destructive antics of people such a Teddy Roosevelt running with his own Bull Moose Party simply because he did not win his party’s nomination which simply weakened his former party’s position splitting their vote and throwing the election to their mutual opposition. Often such splits worked to divide but not conquer as that divide was most apparent on the side of the third party candidate taking votes from their former and natural party leaving their mutual opponent the electoral victory.

 

The finality is this claim that the only fact which supports a Trump receiving anybody’s vote is due to their distaste for Hillary Clinton. This is an insult to the true supporters of Donald Trump though these pundits would also claim that the average Trump supporter is too ignorant or lacking in intelligence to understand that they had been insulted; simply piling on now, aren’t we. What makes the claims against Donald Trump appear to be greater than their support base is directly due to elitist and Republican hierarchy who detest Donald Trump and are ashamed of his candidacy representing their party, a party they believe deserves better than Donald Trump. If these people are pushed, the reality surfaces and we find that these are the very elitists and establishment Republicans who gave the electorate John McCain and Mitt Romney, both wonderful men with lots of talent and capable of being an outstanding President except they are centrist candidates more popular with the party leadership than its people. This is where Trump can claim his right to the nomination as he defeated all the centrist elites’ candidates and the other conservative darlings even once it became evident that the race was finally between two men, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, neither very popular with the Republican upper crust leadership who were left wondering where they went wrong. That has an easy answer, they were fully behind repeating every mistake of the last two elections and the people decided otherwise. One needs look no further than the campaign funding of the candidates. Initially all money was bet on Jeb Bush. He crashed and burned early. Then the money went to Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ben Carson and others except for Trump. Donald Trump was the red haired, freckled step child nobody wanted left to grow up in a political orphanage but Trump took to the mean streets, like the ones in New York where he was raised. He then proceeded to battle the entire power structure of the Republican Party, the party he was attempting to garner the support for his candidacy for President. Somehow this proved the best path to tread as this was the year of the outsider. Yep, the year of the outsider and the primaries gave us the two main candidates having over 50% negatives for both in polling and two as connected monetarily deeply in the establishment of either party. That was the one truth evident in the 1823-4 elections, when carefully examined there is still only one party which could be called the Democratic-Republican Party even today. The main difference is that the Clintons have always been in the midst of the political mainstream and elites on the left while Donald Trump can actually be viewed as an outsider despite his campaign contributions, which he made often equally to each party, which were pay to play contributions so Donald could always claim he had supported either candidate dependent on his access to whatever approvals his next project will be required. That is the reality of how business need operate in order to not become subservient to either party and especially to their politics.

 

So, what can we say about Donald Trump and the fears he exudes to so many pundits and other commentary of these elections? Much of the fear is simply the media attempting to play on other people’s fears which can be largely traced back to early losses by favorite candidates such a Jeb Bush, likely the candidate with the moneyed support and who was considered, according to the media, to be the established leader which should have read the establishment’s candidate whose sole fear is that they have nothing truly behind them but the moneyed leadership whose sum total is greater in dollars compared to numbers of supporters. Such proved too deep a hole to get oneself extricated no matter what the monetary reserves contained. This was proven time after time where some even threw their hat in the ring supporting others who remained to fight a better fight but each failed until Trump and not-Trump remained the two standing candidates. Candidates other than Donald Trump were no longer gaining supporters as much as they were gaining people desperate to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination making him their candidate for President. Even now after the convention and every last ditch efforts having failed are seeking to find some way of placing a favorite son in every state to deny Trump winning in every state where this may become an accomplished reality. What these panicked elitists of the party are missing in their calculations is that if they prevent Trump winning some state all they have accomplished is electing Hillary Clinton as she will win such states handily. So, those opposed to having Hillary Clinton for their President had best find some reason they can latch upon in order to place Donald Trump into the White House. The one advantage this year had brought is both of the party candidates will desire looking truly knowledgeable in most areas desperately seeking any bump they can garner. It still remains to be seen exactly where the youths’ votes will fall at the end of the day. Another crucial area which bears watching, as it will be a vital and necessary component if Donald Trump hopes to be competitive, is the trending of the voting for married women, a demographic to both be voting on Election Day and supporting Trump in sufficient percentages. This one vital demographic is and has been the biggest question mark in the Trump equation, married women, especially those with a college education, and whether they will vote in sufficiently high percentages as well as vote Trump overwhelmingly. Without this demographic a Trump victory appears shaky and in jeopardy. Of course that is if polling is to be believed. Possibly the most manufactured and profoundly wrong segment of the entire election might turn out to be how little polling can be an accurate gauge of public opinions in this new digital world. One poll may prove to be the most accurate of them all are those based on social media, Twitter in particular. We will have to wait and see while keeping in the back of our minds that the pundits have sold Donald Trump nearly every step of the way. They have raised questions on his origins, intelligence, seriousness, knowledgeability, competence, skill set and any other quality which could be used to berate, belittle and otherwise oppose his candidacy and Trump has proven them wrong at every turn. The question now is whether he can do this one more time in November.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

August 6, 2016

The Trouble that Trumps Trump

 

Simply put, Trump Trouble Trumps Truth. That’s more than an exercise in alliteration, that’s an assessment of all the hyperventilating from both sides. The Democrats are afraid that their hand railroaded candidate might come up short against a second populist candidate without just as much liberal vote counting and prearranged delegates reserved by any means necessary. This is not to claim that the Democrat Party is any more the cheats than the Republican Party, just this time the Republicans got the candidate the party leadership was most aggrieved over while the Democrats all but closed the selection process before the voting had opened. But, as this article is supposed to be about the Trump candidacy and the trouble so many appear to have with his running for and possibly becoming President and not about any Hillary problems in the same categories, let us address the Trump-phobic reactions from both the Republican and Democrat party elite representatives and commentators. The first thing we must add is that in any election where the media is present, in other words, and free and presumably open elections such as those in the United States, the media might not be truly detached, independent, neutral or unbiased. Yes, there are media outlets on both sides and one could probably make a reasoned argument that they are equivalent in size and numbers, but the reality is as long as PBS, television and major print newspapers are only competing with talk radio to balance them, then the media is definitely slanted in favor of echoing any and all things anti-Trump. Further, any talk radio who have sold their soul to the company store, aka the Republican Party elites, are also more than willing to repeat every doubt, criticism, accusation, reservation, dispute, misquote, allegation or other disparaging commentary coming from the less than liberal, or even from leftists should the tidbit be juicy enough, will repeat and amplify the information far and wide over the airwaves. Trump is facing pretty much what any third party candidate would all but kill to receive, negative reports from every end of the political spectrum and everyone in between (we can report from experience that third party candidates get next to no press coverage and when included it is usually in the next to the last paragraph as they know some people read the last paragraph along with the first paragraph if the title caught their eye but the first paragraph did not give the expected thrill).

 

So, we have the guns from all sides armed, primed and firing on all cylinders. It does remain to be seen if the negative reporting will continue on the right but the left we can guarantee will continue and accelerate all the way to absurd. But up to this date there have been insults, innuendo and recriminations emanating from all sides. The only things of which there is a dearth is common sense, courtesy, and the kindness of giving someone the benefit of the doubt until they have proven themselves. There have been claims, unsubstantiated claims, galore from political pundits, party elites, former failed Presidential candidates and even entertainers who once took part in a Comedy Central roast of the candidate. The consensus was that Donald Trump’s smiles that night were forced as he was really steamed inside and, as one entertainer stated, “At no point did I think he was actually enjoying himself.” They even went on to claim that Trump was thinking ahead and had a “game plan,” and “He volunteered for it and it seemed smart in a way. Like, let’s get the pros out here and really tear me a new one and then in five years when I start to run, these things will kind of punch themselves out…” Such a plan so far ahead of things that he must not be the bumbler without a plan on how to repair anything in America which so desperately needs repair that Americans cannot rely on such an amateur with no ability to work through any problems. The hypocrisy and faulty logic in many of the attacks on Mr. Trump make most of those piling on simply get much of the public to take a closer look at Trump who were not considering giving him any consideration simply because they get the feeling that there must be something about Trump that scares everybody so badly that they would go to such lengths to disqualify him as if he was ever remotely as bad as is claimed he would self-destruct on his own and nobody would need warn the public of this menace.

 

Then there is a further reason, the effort to show the presumably glaringly obvious reasons the voting public should disqualify Trump from receiving their votes is beginning to be counter-productive; the majority of the public, voting or otherwise, are merrily (or not so much) going on with their daily lives completely oblivious to the fact that there is a Presidential election this fall and would not be paying any real attention to the brouhaha surrounding all things politics. Suddenly they are hearing all this buzz and criticisms of Donald Trump and even those who would not have given his candidacy a second look are looking not just twice, but thrice and more just to see if he really is such a bumpkin so completely unprepared and unqualified to become President of the United States and they see and hear a man who gets their attention and they note he deserves a look-see and return to taking care of life and put off everything until a few, likely three, weeks before the elections. Many of these people are the middle of the road Democrats who would have voted Hillary simply because Donald Trump is the Republican and they give both candidates a fair evaluation election after election and always vote for the more qualified Democrat (my father is one of those). Now they fist hear Democrat criticisms and there is so much their radar starts listening and now they are aware that the Republican establishment also hates Trump and all of a sudden Trump appears to be an answer to many a voters’ prayers, a candidate that both parties hate as anybody raising the ire of both party big-wigs deserves a serious look and the benefit of the doubt. All this free publicity is one reason Trump has not worried about having a war chest of money to counter the millions available to Ms. Clinton, possibly billions or trillions after the super PACs and the Clinton Foundation war chest full of Saudi and other Gulf State oil money and other foreign monies yet to be disclosed, as the media is lapping up every syllable uttered to his presumed detriment blasting it over the airwaves ceaselessly. As goes the old adage by Brendan Behan “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” Some might point out that if anything that is being proclaimed about Donald Trump proves true that just might be his political obituary. Thus far the only result of attacking “The Donald” has been his rising poll numbers and votes in the next primary and thus far it looks like the current ranting may just have a similar result.

 

The interest in election rhetoric thus far, as our trip to the United States proved out, has been entirely looking at two points, one for Hillary Clinton and another for Donald Trump. The interest shown Ms. Clinton has been in the e-mail potential to have provided easy access to some of the United States most secret plans and information being easily hacked by America’s enemies, her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, funneling of monies and higher than normal speech payments funneling monies into the Clinton Foundation during Hillary’s time as Secretary of State and favorable decisions by the State Department and other government favors and decisions. Many are bothered by the lack of Congressional hearings or Special Investigator appointed or lastly a Grand Jury reviewing the accusations and evidence. The lack of all these has forced people to react either by believing that everything was actually politics as usual and the innuendo and accusations must be baseless or that the Obama administration is knee deep in the cover-up proven by the meeting between Bill Clinton and the current Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch less than a week before the FBI report was turned over to Congress and the media finding that Hillary Clinton’s use of a non-Government e-mail system on her own server kept at her residence outside government safety, where being dangerous, was not sufficient to prosecute and despite her e-mails provided easy access by America’s enemies was not of sufficient level to prosecute and everything about the e-mails, where highly questionable and irregular, were not prosecutable offences. These and other reported irregularities have bothered many just as much of not more that Trump’s shortcomings.

 

Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton

Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton

 

The Trump receipt of excessive media coverage often for seemingly minor gaffes or manufactured gotcha reporting such as the Khan affair has largely served to at least put his name out linked with being a Presidential candidate who is despised by both parties’ elites. This has afforded him the mighty title of outsider, the only questions being, is he a real outsider and is he the right outsider. Still, the majority of the electorate is putting off their decision until from one to three weeks before the election when they will weigh the two candidates, and some the third party candidates, on their advertisements and other campaign coverage. The final two weeks seems like the mean with three and a half weeks being the average. Were you to walk into the average shopping mall in the United States and simply ask, ‘Who will you be supporting (voting) for in the coming elections for President?’ without providing any names or parties you can bet that the winner would be Hillary Clinton hands down by anywhere from 4 to 9 points. This is unsurprising because if you were to visit that same mall and ask the people who are the two main candidates for President from the two main parties you would get a measurable percentage who would name Hillary and not name Trump against a far smaller number who would only know of Trump. Contrary to what is being sold of both candidates being from outside politics is a lie though the claim that Hillary has held high office and knows all the maneuvers and how to reach consensus and get things done while Trump will face opposition from both parties’ voters and will be unable to accomplish anything and more-so he will not be capable of even passing a budget. When people are faced with the fake outsider who is the ultimate and an outsider so real everybody in politics are aghast at his being a candidate for President; the truth is that those who know only one candidate split heavily to that candidate being Clinton and a huge number, almost all, of Trump supporters know that Hillary Clinton is his adversary.

 

This election has drawn definitive battles for more than just the several battle-ground purple states but the red and blue states as well. This election could portend a realignment of the states with some formerly purely red or blue states which are now becoming purple. Some states entering the unpredictable plane include Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Louisiana. The Presidential election threatens to blow away all preconceived understanding of the electorate. Donald Trump has risen riding on a populace phenomenon coming completely out of nowhere making them unseen. There have even been pollsters arguing one another’s integrity, formulae, accuracy and methodology. Some pollsters are even explaining that the anger of the public or the wide use of cell phones which are protected against robo-caller tracking only people with ground lines, people’s dishonesty when polled, sunspots, the orbit of Pluto and anything else to explain why it has become impossible to judge this election using any of the older techniques as the public is in a special mood this election. The keys to this election teeter precariously on whether the Clintons end up facing charges due to the e-mails, Benghazi or any of the myriad of other abnormalities surrounding the Clintons; the occurrence of a high casualty terror attack anywhere in the world, especially in Europe or North America, Trump self-detonates falling to pieces, Hillary loses her kewl and starts screaming and is caught on tape or any of for too many to list actions by the candidates, their staff, their supporters, appearance of complicity in low blows against one’s opponent or any outside events with some not directly tied to the election. Even should one pollster actually get the Presidential numbers near perfectly, such a person would likely do horrifically on the Senatorial and House elections. This election will serve to challenge how campaigns will be run in the future but otherwise it is unlikely to alter our politics itself, just the way it gets to the same points just using different paths. Some people we talked with described the election for President as being a contest between a crook and a megalomaniac. The reality is we have a contest between a system manipulator and insider especially with the banks and Wall Street and another a novice at politics who has the ability to insult everybody but like Don Rickles, he does so in a way you can laugh about along with everybody else. As far as whom we can endorse? Well, probably a write-in for Daffy Duck which is one choice which would go well with the rest of this election thus far.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

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