Election America, to Steal or not to Steal

 

There is going to be an all-out assault during the next American elections with the media making mountains out of ant hills, not even a mole hill size items. They will barrage the American voters with a different Trump controversy, conspiracy, scheme, collusion and other enticing tidbits. Each of these claims will have a half life of about twelve hours making them disappear within a couple of days, which is why the media is already lining up their ducks and making sure they are all in a row. But no matter how much they are able to invent, infer, suggest, rumor and hyperventilate over, these efforts are going to be overshadowed by the Democrat Primary Race.

 

We all know that hell knows no fury like a leftist scorned, and the Democrat Primaries will have an ample quantity of leftists each competing to make the others appear stingy when it comes to offering free stuff. The Democrats will have two sides to their campaign, the who can out-spend all of the other candidates with offers of free medical coverage for all, free college for all, forgiving all college debts, guaranteed wage, fifteen-dollar an hour minimum wage, paid vacations and whatever other socialist gems in the rough they can invent. Their backstabbing, undercutting, slash and burn campaigning will provide everything the Republicans require to win the election without ever using anything which was not part of the Democrat no-holds barred campaigning.

 

But the Republican primaries might also have some excitement as the establishment, country club, old guard Republicans may very well put somebody up against Trump. Originally, that person appeared to be Mitt Romney as that was the reason for him bumping a fresh and upcoming young man from the ballot so he would be in a position to threaten Trump. Whomever the Republicans attempt to run against President Trump will likely be guaranteed to win the majority of states which will be in the Democrat’s pocket during the election and as such will be a great measuring as to how the election itself will play out. There is another possibility in that the chosen savior who is going to replace Trump on the Republican ticket actually is dragged across the finish line ahead of Trump. Should this be the result, the Republican hierarchy might be able to do to Trump what Hillary did to Bernie Sanders. This would not bode well for the Republicans as not replacing Trump on the ticket is very likely to have many Trump supporters simply staying home. The one secret to the Trump victory which has been mostly ignored were the numbers of first-time voters and people returning to active voting after taking a long break. Remember the little group known as the Silent Majority? Well, they may not be the majority but when it came to supporting President Trump, they definitely were not silent. Should they go quiet, then the Republicans will definitely lose the White House and very probably lose the House and a possibility of losing the Senate. Such a collapse of the Republican base would place the surviving Democrat from the primaries in the White House very probably with a favorable Congress. With a small amount of rule changing such as cloture requiring a simple majority instead of sixty votes and other adjustments and they would be capable of almost anything policy wise.

 

They Can do Socialism Right, Really?

 

The next American elections could provide some of the most ridiculous articles when attempting to cover the give away for votes the Democrats appear to be ready to use as their campaign slogan. Get your free stuff here, for a small fee, but we will only tax the rich and if Elizabeth Warren should win, she has proposed the greatest job and wealth killer in the world, a wealth tax. Such a tax would see money and corporations fleeing the United States in order to protect their shareholders and the health of the company. The remainder of the initial squeaking from the overly crowded field of candidates has already laid out several plans and programs which would completely destroy the American economy and do so with great alacrity. The Democrat Party has become the American for Socialism Party with the banner claiming, ‘We can do it right unlike the previous thousand times socialism has gutted a national economy.’

 

The proof that the Democrats have become the supporters of socialism was proven by their reaction to the Israeli elections. Their hatred for Bibi Netanyahu stems from far deeper than his nationalist agenda and stated support for the Israelis residing beyond the Green Line. Their initial distaste for Bibi Netanyahu originates back in the early 2000’s when he was assigned to be the Israeli Finance Minister. Ariel Sharon gave Bibi this assignment because it had been the death knell for every former Finance Minister as the Israeli economy was hamstrung with heavy amounts of socialism left over from the thirty plus years of the Labor Party running the country. Bibi immediately started to sell off many of the government agencies to private corporations completely separating them from government control. The taxes were revamped to be more favorable to research and development and allowing for the retention of more of the wealth. Israel still has that burdensome VAT tax, but some things might be going too far too fast. Still, Bibi transformed much of the Israeli economy into one based on Capitalism. Bibi also reinvested in Israeli companies giving them an advantage in receiving government contracts over foreign companies. These transformations took Israel from Socialistic economy to a Capitalist economy and the country has never looked back. But to the current Democrat leadership, such a transformation is taking the economy in the wrong direction. They insist that the government be the decider of who will be a winner and who will be the loser. Government will guarantee that workers have all the rights and the corporate owners will be made subjected to the worker’s demands. Should the American people choose their policies, then America could be heading over the falls without even a barrel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israeli Future a Look Thirty Years Hence

 

Israel is a nation at the leading edge of a swell which will crest in about twenty to thirty years and may simply continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Currently, Israel has a narrow majority of Zionist, nationalist Jews of which the majority is religious, some more and some less, but all go to Synagogue on Shabbat and observe the Day of Rest and many go to daily morning service if not evening as well. The difference is one of the most basic of statistics, birth rates. The liberal left is having less numbers of children the further left you reach in the political spectrum. Their reproductive rates have been estimated to fall between one and a half to as many as two children per child-bearing aged women where two and a quarter is the minimum required to replace their population. The religious Zionists are having an average of between four to six children per married women, well above replacement level. There are some communities within this community where nine or more children are the norm. It does not take a mathematical wizard to see where the Israeli people are heading amongst the Jewish populations. Now for the reality which nobody wants the world to know. The Muslim, mostly Arab, population has had a declining reproductive rate with it currently between three and three and a half children per married woman. There have been some who have statistically measured the demographics which see that Israel will soon have a solid and unchallengeable three-quarters majority within Israel. The only challenge is the Palestinian Arab populations in the Shomron and Gaza. As both of these populations are outside the Israeli population and have their own governance, whether it is Hamas or the Palestinian Authority both being basic dictatorships, they will not become Israelis beyond those in Eastern Jerusalem. These Arabs have been given provisional citizenship which permits them to vote in Jerusalem and neighborhood elections but they are not permitted to vote in national elections thus far. The remainder of the Palestinian Arabs of the Palestinian Authority will, at best, receive resident alien status while being granted citizenship in whatever Arab nation is willing to grant them such status or they will remain under their present governance while their region will become part of Israel with them in a semiautonomous region. Gaza is unlikely to ever be readmitted into Israel without something extremely severe occurring in which most of the population will be sent from Israel as the Gaza population support Hamas and Islamic Jihad by over 80% according to most surveys. This makes this population antagonistic and adversarial to Israel and completely hostile and unacceptable for incorporating into Israeli rule under any circumstance or political scenario.

 

With Israeli population mostly defined as those who already have citizenship and those who may immigrate into Israel from abroad. Much of the Jewish population outside of Israel is highly unlikely to make Aliyah and come home to Israel. Israel has placed impediments against illegal immigration or any influx of refugees from Syria or the other disasters referred to as nations currently in the Middle East and North Africa, such as are streaming into Europe. There are some advantages to having adversarial nations on every border as it forces one to have the IDF guarding every border. The one border which had proven problematic was the long border along the Sinai Peninsula and the Israeli Negev Desert. Israel suffered such an influx from several African nations which Israel has been unable to deport thanks to threats from the European Union and its several nations, the United Nations and their interference forcing any nation willing to take these illegal immigrants through threats to cancel their agreements with Israel. This minority population will eventually leave by one means or another. Since their influx, Israel has, wait for it, built, yes, you know what is coming, a border wall which cut the numbers significantly. Israel then made this border wall even higher and it cut the numbers to zero. That problem addressed, Israel is in control of their borders and thus the population.

 

Stretch of the Israel-Egypt Border Fence

 

There is a currently sizable sector of the religious community which is largely not Zionist in their beliefs believing that the Messiach is necessary to form the final Jewish state, the Haredi. They are the current king-makers as their numbers of ministers, as they vote pretty much as a block though that is slowly crumbling at the edges, so to speak, but they still are often the deciding block which decides which party is capable of making a majority coalition. Their population numbers is also increasing due to their high birth rate but their percentage is still not increasing as the religious Zionist percentage is increasing even faster. The mathematical projections show the religious Zionists allied with the nationalist conservatives will have a near majority needing less numbers, if any, of other smaller interest-specific parties such as the Haredi Parties, there are two, or the Yisrael Beiteinu Party which represents largely Russian Jews but has been losing mandates in recent elections. In time, providing the religious Zionist groups can solidify putting aside their often-petty differences and some based on a small group of larger than life egos, then such a party will soon be able to replace the Likud as the largest party. Polls taken recently show that the left leaning parties, unless they receive boosts from retired generals and former Mossad commanders which they often woo immediately before election with promises of high positions in their list for Knesset Ministers. Without such a boost, the Zionist Union is perched to lose a number, potentially significant number, of mandates in the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, the religious Zionist Parties appear to be ready for gains, as does Likud. There is one thing which we must tell about Israeli elections and politics, it is extremely energetic which makes a poll taken in the morning out of touch by late afternoon, not to mention the change which can take place in a few days or a week. There is one item for which we need to thank President Trump, the media has become far more suspect and their slant is now readily identifiable by the majority of the population. This has been evidenced by serious changes in subscription rates within Israel.

 

But we are attempting to predict the future in twenty to thirty years. Then Israel will be even more Jewish than she is today. Israel will be more conservative, more religious, more Zionist, more nationalist and still a technological marvel as Israel will continue to be the start-up nation. It will still, unfortunately, be facing the same problems with the threats from the Islamic and Arab world not to mention that there will be opposition to the fact that Israel is such a success and Jewish being a bother to many in Europe plus the world will also have changed. The direction of many of the problems and the future of the world’s nations is in many cases problematic and in so many others in flux. The United States is in the center of a political civil war being fought largely on social media and the ballot box. One can only pray that the American civil war remains as civil as it currently exists and not turn to violence or one side winning an election and then altering the laws of governance permanently altering the future of the nation. In Europe, they are being tested by the large influx, much larger than expected, of people from the Islamic world. This is causing a culture clash of monstrous proportions exampled by the Ramadan with Muslims attacking cars in Birmingham, England early last June (video below). These confrontations as well as the tax riots in Paris and across France are all signs that within Europe the civilization is tearing itself apart. They make future predictions about Europe, especially Western Europe, far more problematic than here in Israel. The United States will be more readily predicted by the 2024 elections completely independent of whether or not President Trump is reelected as whomever the Democrats might run against him would likely not even remain in the Democrat Party by 2024 as that party is in flux apparently moving well to the left. The world is a very unpredictable and vacillating place where the only thing which is constant is change, a saying which has numerous variations and an equal number of claims of authorship.

 

 

Well, there really is not much to add beyond that the future does appear bright for Israel. The one item which is an unknown will be the numbers of Jews making Aliyah and coming home to Eretz Yisroel. That is a pleasant variable to have to be the main variable for the future. We realize that many of those Jews will be more liberal than the direction which Israel is moving. These Jews will also very possibly have decided to return home because of the changing situations in the world where anti-Semitism is on the rise and in all too many instances taking on some very violent confrontations. This is even occurring in some of the neighborhoods in and around New York City, even in some which are major Jewish areas. This has been a greater difficulty for the Jews in Europe where in France the numbers leaving for other shores has been increasing every year for the last decade. Numbers of Jews have stated their intent to depart Britain should the Labor Party place Jeremy Corbyn into the Prime Minister’s 10 Downing Street address. The future for Jews living outside of Israel is another problematic situation which is in flux and too often in a very wrong direction. Such experiences will have definitive effects upon those who are victimized and their congregations and neighborhoods. That will also have an influence on their political outlook upon arriving in Israel. They will all be welcomed and Israel will try to accommodate them as quickly and comfortably as possible. This too could lead to a significant increase in the Jewish population of Israel as not even half of the world’s Jewish population resides in Israel. There are approximately fourteen and two-thirds million Jews in the world and between six and a half and seven million in Israel making it 44.5% of the world’s Jews currently residing in Israel. The best projections claim that in thirty years the number of Jews making Aliyah will provide Israel with a twenty to thirty percent increase in the Jewish population, which is something we will have to wait and see as it occurs. Outside and unpredictable events and conditions will weigh heavily on what the actual numbers will become. But the predictions we have made will likely stand with whatever influx should occur. Coming to Israel can have a profound effect on many people as it did myself, and I pray it was for the better.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Challenges in the United States

 

Currently there are two regions of great challenges in the United States, one mostly physical the other completely manmade. The physical is in California where two massive and deadly forest fires that have raged beyond control destroying homes, communities and anything in their paths. Firefighters are battling around the clock to attempt to bring these disasters under control thus containing them, extinguishing the fires, and then hunting down the last of the hotspots, no small task of its own. Entire towns such as Paradise are going to require being completely rebuilt which will only come to be providing the inhabitants and commercial entities decide to return and not simply relocate elsewhere. One fire was presumably started by a campfire or may have been downed electrical wires sparking the exceedingly dry grasses and then, whipped by steady and strong winds, quickly spread and became an inferno. Being a former firefighter, when asked about forest fires such as what is consuming California in both the north and south, I slowly shake my head solemnly saying that despite training in structure and aircraft fires, I have never worked on fires such as these and considers myself to be extremely fortunate to have never faced such a fury. We cannot even imagine the furies loosed in California, hoping and praying that they manage to prevent any further losses of life. The death toll at the last count we have seen was approaching sixty while the numbers of missing topped one-hundred. The numbers of missing leaves fears that the number of fatalities attributed to the fires is not known and will likely rise. There is little one can add to the newswires coverage of the disasters in California which leaves hoping that things eventually come back to normalcy.

 

California Wildfires

 

The other challenge is in counting ballots in numerous states including Maine, New Jersey, New York where two races remain, Texas and Utah which is just about the house of Representatives. Then there are the states where Senatorial races are still in doubt which include Florida and Mississippi. Lastly are the races for Governor in Florida and Georgia which are still in recount. Most of these have been resolved and have largely gone to the initial winner while in Maine there is an unusual means of voting where people cast tanked votes which are used in case no candidate reaches a majority rather than merely a plurality. This has led for the Republican incumbent Representative Bruce Poliquina to file a lawsuit in a federal court trying to block Maine from tabulating ranked-choice voting ballots. The governor’s race in Georgia appears to be an attempt to count sufficient votes such that neither candidate gets an outright majority and merely a plurality in order to force a runoff election which would usually favor the Democrat candidate, if voting profiles from the past would hold. The real contests, at least by the coverage, appears to be, where else, but in Florida and particularly in Broward County and West Palm Beach, OH MY!

 

If a recount hinging on Broward County and West Palm Beach, Florida sounds familiar, it should, as that was one of the focal counties in the 2000 Presidential recount in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The problems in West Palm Beach was presumably accepted ballots were mixed with some of the rejected ballots. The problems in Broward County are over which ballots require recounting and which should not even be acceptable for the recount. Needless to point out, everybody is getting involved and the accusations of voter fraud abound. The bright side have been the cartoon with Sesame Street figures mostly including the Count have been a feature in many places with the figures claiming they are headed to Florida to teach them how to count. Unfortunately, these recounts are of a far more serious nature than to which such cartoons allude. We very well may see a number of these recount races result in court battles where the result will be cries of, ‘Selected, not elected,” coming from the losing side, a standard set in the Bush-Gore recount and the Democrats protesting the Supreme Court ending the recount process leaving Bush the winner, by court selection, we are to presume. Whatever the results of these various recounts, hard feelings will remain and the winner may ultimately pay should they face the same opponent in their next election where that election will be cast as some form of recount of the former to determine the truly legitimate winner. Of course, that vindication will only count if your personally favored candidate wins in that election and without the necessity of a recount and definitely not needing going through a court battle. There have been claims, which we have attempted but been unable to verify, that in the recounts for Congressional and Gubernatorial elections since 2001 that, depending on which claim you run into, the Democrats have won the vast majority or the Republicans have won the vast majority. In the ever more important side where the initial winner resulted in having their victory overturned by recount, we again have competing claims which will depend on which echo chamber from which you get your news as to which one you will hear. We hope that whichever side you prefer is the only side whose victories you will read and none of the victories by that mean and horrible other party. Always remember, elections set up a temporary opportunity to get out next elections and try that much more to avoid the messy recounts and the vitriol they engender.

 

Voter Reality in Most of America

 

For those who are in the inconsolable department and are suffering election trauma, may we offer a solution. There are numerous places where one can move where such trauma inducing acts such as elections will never again invade your life. Such places as North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Eritrea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam, Angola and Iran, to name a few, where they have predictable election results or no elections, well no true elections where there is any doubt months before on who will win and are places one can move to be rid of election meltdowns. We would probably even advise against taking a vacation in most of these nations, but perhaps elections have become so fraught with anxiety that some might actually desire a more regimented governance where every day you know who the leadership is, well, until the other form of election occurs, the always fraught with danger popular uprising or its cousin the coup. Personally, we kind of prefer true and democratic elections, be they a pure democracy, republic, parliamentary or other more innovative form or representative governance and are happy that they turn out to sometimes be messy, it gives us things to comment on and proves that the people actually care about elections, well at least the forty to sixty percent of registered voters who vote in a population where often at best two-thirds actually bother to register. The only question we often want to ask, if in too many places you have a candidate win with sixty percent of the sixty percent of eligible voters voting who from a population where only sixty percent of eligible people register, does anyone realize that means they did not even get twenty-two percent of the people who are eligible for voting and they are declared the person the majority chose? Well, they do refer to these elections as a voluntary representative democratic process which kind of takes the fact that all too many people are anywhere from the most fanatical to somewhat ambivalent to completely unaware and uncaring to make a society. The one thing I do advise those who think that making voting mandatory is, do you really desire people who are currently too lazy to register along with those who do not care sufficiently to vote actually choosing who represents those who do care and actually make a point to vote? Personally, we would not mind if voters had to actually provide two things their candidate actually proposes to support in order for their vote to count, but that would be requiring people to actually take the elections as seriously as they should, and we know that such a requirement would drive the voting public down to next to nothing. As for if such would improve the system we will let you decide, in the meantime, we will continue to vote for those whose positions we prefer in the elections we are legally permitted to vote, and we promise to vote once and only one each.

 

Beyond the Cusp