Iowa Results and Insights

 

The biggest lesson we learned was that the media placed far too much emphasis on the caucuses. What we learned was that in cases where there was no definitive winner, then the entire choice would come down to a coin toss, how perfectly random. In the six instances where these rules were applied it was apparent that team Hillary got to call the coin-toss and call them they did. Apparently Bernie Sanders was perfectly happy to allow her team to call it, “Heads we win and Tails you lose.” And in six caucuses that appears to have been the call as Hillary either won each or Bernie lost, either way, Hillary went forth and declared a great victory while Bernie, being Bernie, claimed he and his supporters gave it a good fight and promised to continue the “Revolution” on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. When one looks beyond the primary delegates to the “Super Delegates” which are more or less decided by the Democrat Central Committee, one sees the reality of the delegate race as Hillary has 357, Bernie has 14 and O’Malley has 2 all going towards garnering the 2382 delegates needed to win.

 

We learned that Hillary can place way too much emphasis on her phantasmal ability or luck by her precinct chairs abilities to call coin tosses. Her grand claims of victory soon turned to sand in her mouth and she probably sputtered and spurted still insisting she had a mandate. Perhaps she was looking at the super delegate count which is made up of party hacks and people of whom Hillary had their FBI files on another server which was not used for State department e-mails but whose contents would be just as interesting to the voting public but has zero chance of ever seeing the light of day as it would be burned as soon as it was taken in as evidence. There are far too many people the files held there could damage and who have the power to destroy evidence just as well as Bill and Hill have proven capable. We also learned that Bernie has excited and tapped into an interesting voter group, the young and first time voters. Some of these first time voters have been of sufficient age to vote before but have now found their candidate. This is a large part of the voters eight years ago which propelled Obama into the White House and are just as likely to spoil Hillary’s last chance saloon and give her a really bad case of déja vu hiccups as she watches another upstart, this time a seventy-four year old hippie socialist who never let go of the dream from his college days, or is it daze? Should Bernie Sanders pull this off he will have proven that Hillary is fated to never grasp the golden ring in politics and Bill will never hear the end of how it was supposed to be hers but that Obama beat her and then Bernie the crazed lunatic stole it and it just was not fair. I guess nobody ever had the nerve or the suicidal tendencies to tell Hillary that life quite often is not fair. We learned also that Bernie had a solid and faithful following and that his challenge to the chosen one is real and very possible no matter how many delegates Bill can line up on Hillary’s side as in this day and age of the voters, as a collective intelligence, choose the candidates and the final elevations of a President. We also have seen the inside of the “Feel the Bern” generations and they are coming on strong and this might make Bernie Sanders the more electable Democrat and the real candidate the Republicans should fear facing.

 

The Republicans gave us a different message. The evangelicals, the Christian Right, was supposed to decide the Iowa vote and put one of two candidates on the short list for failure; they did not come through that way but have written the last swan song for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz needed to corral, he is from Texas you know, the Evangelicals but he somehow lost about half the herd which left him limping into first place by a small margin, though it was a landslide by Hillary standards. Ted Cruz did do well as many had predicted claiming that the majority of the polling numbers for ‘The Donald’ (Donald Trump from here on) were mostly fictitious and when the time came to actually support a candidate, these polling numbers would prove to be a phantasm and disappear. Well, they actually did but not as far as predicted and Donald Trump has proven he is for real and will become a viable and potential winner should he start to actually express serious steps and reasons for his bombastic statements and clarify them into a reasonable platform people can stand behind. Ted Cruz, as wonderful as his supporters claim, will very likely fall flat in New Hampshire and rebound in South Carolina and Florida though it will remain to be seen if that is sufficient for him to remain in the race. After the caucuses in Nevada and Colorado it will be definitively decided who is the acceptable alternative to the establishment choice which appears currently to have fallen from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie to John Kasich and now on the Marco Rubio. Other than Cruz, Trump and Rubio who finished in close proximity to one-another, the rest should start taking stock of how much is this worth pursuing and what actually are your actual chances of emerging from the background in a positive manner. The media will ignore you until you make a mistake, and then they will crucify you until you fall on your sword; trust me, I’ve been there. For a good number, probably larger than those willing to vote for him, Ben Carson leaving will be heart-wrenching. We want so much to just once have the nice guy who refused to go negative and was an exemplary person whose life reads like a storybook where underprivileged youth from the worst part of town rise to prominence and was not only a success but also a solid positive force and contribution to society become Mr. Smith Goes to Washington except with a much happier result as he rises above the political machinery and does great and wonderful things lifting the nation by his inspirations. That would have been Ben Carson but perhaps this is better as the media have not torn him to shreds which would have come next had he shown he might succeed. The media will praise you to the hills and as soon as you start to succeed, partially due to their building you up, they will tear into you until you let out a personal secret, say that one time you lost your temper, we all have at least one such moment, and then that will become your defining moment as if nothing else you ever accomplished really made up for the momentary weakness when you were eight years old.

 

 

Mr. Carson Goes to Washington

 

 

So the result in Iowa placed Ted Cruz momentarily in the cat bird seat with Donald Trump close behind and Marco Rubio in tightly behind Donald Trump. There being merely 8,500 votes between the three out of close to 175,000 they finished in a photo finish which their margins only looked large compared to the difference, or lack thereof, between the top Democrat candidates who basically resulted in a dead heat. The reality hopefully will become obvious to the three that for the race to be determined honestly then one of the non-establishment candidates will need to bow out if the other will have even a chance of taking the nomination. Should all three remain in the race and the contest continue to have similar results then there will be the definite possibility that at the Republican Convention there will be no definitive winner and as long as the three remain holding their delegates to their vote then there will be an arranged result which is basically a fixed convention where a candidate is chosen in some back room with some establishment and insiders making a choice and then bringing their golden boy forward and sweeping the convention as the party machinery steamrolls any opposition and presto, Jeb Bush is brought forward as the great hope of the party and we end up with the potentially lowest turnout election percentage in American history as we end up with that dreaded Clinton-Bush family rerun of the 1992 election without the drama or concern as the people show their disgust by staying home. Should this scenario become reality, then there need be a slight Constitutional Amendment making every Federal elected office have an additional choice at the bottom such that the people can demand better choices than the party line who has scratched the most backs and it is decided to reward them by making it their turn for the House of Representatives and then later the Senate and finally, for the real party hardliners, the Presidency by voting for “None of the Above” and if “None of the Above” receives the greatest plurality then the parties must find new candidates and a reelection will take place six weeks later, so they better choose well and somebody the people would rally to or they could face embarrassment after embarrassment and perhaps allow a primary if it is a Senate or House of Representatives for unaligned people to attempt to gain ballot access and allow the highest independent vote getter to also be on the ballot as it is doubtful such a person could do any worse in the performance than some of those currently in office. We really need to get better quality candidates and until the parties are forced to consider that they have to win over the people or face challenges from what are usually referred to as Joe-six-pack meaning it as a pejorative label when actually that may be a person who would do a far better job of representing the people with their being from amongst them. Still, there are the gems amongst a sea of party functionaries and the quality, or lack thereof, of the candidates on the average ballot simply proves George Washington correct when he claimed, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Enough said.

 

We regret that nowhere in the conglomerate of offerings is there a single candidate with military service in their background. Some of the candidates I doubt could reduce their self-worth to a sufficient level to survive basic training nor would they know when to stand on principle and when to stand down as that is also something they test in basic training and for the select few who respond accordingly they offer them to attend OCS which is the one way that an enlisted man can become an officer, and maybe a gentleman. The world stage being what it is, we believe would be best served by somebody who has served and our first choice would be Lt. Col. Alan West.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Real Problem for Obama is not Jewish Voters

President Obama does not have a Jewish problem in the upcoming election; he has an Israel problem. Contrary to the mainstream media portrayal of President Obama facing a loss of Jewish support is false as their votes are minimal when compared to the numbers of Americans who might not vote for him due to their perceiving that he does not stand with Israel as much as they might like. Where the Jewish voting population is less than 2% of the total and in their more heavily represented states respectively, it is but a mere 9.1% in New York, 5.5% in New Jersey, and 4.6% in Florida then dropping even lower from there; of these states, New York is not a likely swing state and even if President Obama lost sufficient Jewish support in the others, the split at worst would be an even 50/50 which drops the percentage lost to under 2% of the total vote compared to the normal voting history in any state. This is unlikely to be the determining factor when weighed against the Christian support for Israel which has been measured to be as high as 70% and measures consistently well over 55% in polls taken without regard to religion. This is the significant voter losses the media is referring to when they talk about the problem that President Obama is likely to lose votes because of Jewish support for Israel.

That begs the question of why they tie the vote loss to Jews over Israel when the majority of the losses will come from Christians and other non-Jewish voters. The most innocent reason is likely that relating the loss of Jewish votes over perceived lack of solid support for Israel is the most obvious and requires no further explanation, thus for the sake of simplicity and pure laziness this connection is utilized. There also is the possibility that those reporting on this are myopic and their narrowness of focus does not allow them to look past the most obvious of reasons. Perhaps the reporters honestly believe that the Jewish vote is far more significant in numbers than is the reality of their numbers. They might be incorporating the loss of donations from Jewish sources which likely has a larger influence than Jewish voting power possesses. Somehow, I doubt that it is any of these all-so-innocent reasons and instead they are far more likely to have a darker and more sinister reason at the heart of this reporting.

It just might be that they desire placing the blame for an Obama loss on a misperception, according to the mainstream press, of his lack of support for Israel. This would allow all the blame for an Obama loss to be because of those Jews who placed Israel before their consideration of the United States. Should President Obama actually lose in November, we all know it will only be because of some nefarious reason spawned by some sinister and deceitful campaign which used lies and suspicions to mislead people from reelecting the presumed <a href=http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-believes-he-s-the-fourth-best-president-of-all-time target=blank>fourth best President</a> in American history. So, if you are going to formulate such a theme, why mess with what has been the most successful plot-line used throughout history to explain every calamity from the beginning of history through the plagues during the Dark Ages right up to the excuse for the evils and plight of the Palestinians today. The real problem is that should the blame be placed on Jews as the reason for the President failing to be reelected, there will be an unfortunately large number of people who will simply nod their heads knowingly and simply agree that was the real reason behind Obama losing.

The full extent of the result of placing the blame on Jews in the minds and hearts of those on the far left of the political spectrum is that this has been the formula used to explain so many other failures in history. Other than the obvious use of the Jews as a scapegoat in 1930s Germany, there was the same reasoning used by both Lenin and Stalin in Soviet Russia, the same when Jews were branded along with the Muslims during the Inquisition as Spain threw off their Islamic invaders after centuries of oppressions, and in numerous other calamities even including the dispossessing of Jews of their lands, holdings, wealth and property by General Grant in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi area which were under his control at the end of the Civil War in the United States. This order was overturned by President Lincoln immediately of his receiving notification which proved to be too late for many Jews who had already been driven from their homes and had their businesses taken and they being driven from the area with whatever they were allowed to carry with them. Such use of Jews as the perfect scapegoats throughout history led to Jews, wherever they lived, to keep a suitcase which contained a few changes of clothes, a second set of candle-holders for the Sabbath candle lighting, a second set of personal religious items, some gold, silver or money if they were fortunate to have some to set aside, an extra family bible replete with family histories exactly as their regularly used one, and whatever other items they valued and felt were absolutely necessary to restarting their lives should they be driven from their homes without notice. Is the world heading in that direction again? Has the world not learned anything from the past and the ever increasing price paid, first by the Jewish people, then by everybody else each time they blame the Jew, trotted out that it was their doing why things went other than desired? Looking around the entire world and it is growing darkly obvious that this lesson is on the verge of being once again imposed and on a scale beyond all previous times. Perhaps the Shoah, the Holocaust, was not the final and most horrid result to befall the Jews and the world from out-of-control anti-Semitism. Is this where this blame the Jews who prevented Obama from reelection because of their love of Israel over America is taking us? Some conspiracy theories have no expiration use-by date and apparently are not learned no matter how many times they are repeated.

Beyond the Cusp