Wow! The Donald won and he won big.
I gave the last debate to Hillary on points, but this one had The Donald mopping the floor, the seats, the walls, and the ceiling with The Hillary. He had what should become one of the most memorable lines in any presidential debate when he said Hillary was trying to blame Abe Lincoln for her lies.
OK, let's review.
First of all, as always, I watched this debate with my two dogs. At the end of the debate, I immediately switched off the TV, and took them for a walk. I got home, made myself a vegetarian beef steak (comes from cattle that do not eat meat), had a can of V-8 juice, and sat down at the keyboard. I do not want any pundits or other outside influences affecting my evaluation and recollection of the debate.
The debate started with a pre-game event that clearly shook and shocked the Clinton campaign. Trump held a little presser with several of the victims of Bill Clinton's sexual assaults, as well as the woman who was raped and Hillary got her assailant off. He then doubled down: he had Mayor Giuliani lead the women into the forum where they got front-row seats. Just after they sat down, the families of the candidates trooped in: the look on Bill Clinton's face was worth a million bucks. He looked ashen, and not all his jovial back-slapping country-boy self. He looked to the floor and tensely made his way to his seat with only a precursory greeting to Melania Trump. The two candidates then walked onto the stage and the tension was palpable. No handshake, no air kisses, no wishing of luck, none of the usual hypocrisy we require of political combatants.
Hillary's face was a frozen mask
I think, and correct me if I am wrong, that Trump, for once, got under her skin. She knew that any time spent on the Trump tape would result in a retelling of the Clinton's sordid history of sex and scandal. And so it came to pass. I think Trump handled the tape question masterfully, pivoting not only to other issues more important, but then hitting Clinton between the eyes with her own behavior towards the women whom Bill had assaulted, and bringing up her own tape in which she is laughing after getting the rapist of the 12-year-old off. She did not want to talk about the tape anymore.
Brilliant. Give the man some credit.
The moderators were a joke, and it was hard to take seriously that the Muslim woman who asked a question was an "undecided" voter. Right. No matter. Trump handled them all. He dealt well with the Islamophobia question, called the moderators on their obvious bias throughout the evening, and tore into Clinton on Syria, Libya, her emails, and her lack of accomplishment as a Senator. Hilary completely fumbled the question about the leaked speech she gave to Goldman-Sachs in which she talked about the need to have a "public position and a private position." She gave a convoluted answer which not only confirmed the authenticity of the leaked document, but tried to claim that she was doing as Lincoln had in trying to eliminate slavery (?) Uh, OK. The Donald seized on this and chastised Clinton for trying to blame Lincoln for her dishonesty: "Abe Lincoln did not lie, but you do."
There was lots more, but let me stop here, and shift gears a bit. Yes, Trump won, and won clearly. I think, however, that the Clinton campaign is not counting on the debates, on the substance of the issues, or on policy prescriptions; they are counting on more leaked scandal tapes about Trump including a rumored one in which he uses the n-word. Can he continue to deflect those tapes? We'll see.
I don't think this debate won Trump the presidency but it sure kept him alive, and Hillary did not look good. OK, off to listen to the pundits and see if they're copying me.
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Heading into the Debate
In a few hours, the second presidential debate will begin. It will be in a faux-townhall format, wherein the moderators decide who can ask what questions, in addition, of course, to the questions the moderators themselves ask. You know the questions will be rigged to make Trump look small, mean, and defensive and, of course, as a hater. I am sure we're going to get some lachrymose question from an illegal "Dreamer" who fears having his parents deported, the usual stuff. We are going to get a YUGE amount of attention devoted to the nefarious Trump tape and his tax returns.
It's going to be a tough night for Trump.
He is going into the debate under severe media and GOPe pressure, with rumors swirling that his running mate Mike Pence is thinking of jumping off the train, and the late night comics trying to turn him into a bad punchline. He, in other words, is now facing the full wrath of "the system," one which had dismissed him as a laughable crank, but in the last few weeks broke into a cold sweat in the realization that the man might just pull it off. Trump might just become President and put that "system" into terra incognita. That cannot be allowed and all false party labels are being ignored as the ruling elite has decided that the rampaging Trump beast must be killed at all costs. Any and all weapons in the system armory are valid for use.
What can he do at the debate? My advice, and you know the value of that, is to be calm, almost zen-like, very focussed, and articulate; no broken half-sentences, no weird tangents. Allow no question to remain one-sided: no matter what is asked insist that the same same or equivalent be asked of his opponent, and, in fact, Trump should ask it. Trump tape? Yes, I was coarse and crude in joking around, but was Hillary just joking when she tried to destroy the lives of the women her husband abused and raped? My tax returns? Yeah, sure, as soon as Hillary releases her deleted emails and her speeches before the Wall Street fat cats, and, oh by the way, I see some of those speeches are leaking. What does she say? She says that she will have a "public position and a private position" and that the bankers need not worry--she is not going to do anything to regulate them or to go along with those dopey Bernie people. Immigration? Deport the criminals first, build the wall, and insist our laws are obeyed, and, oh by the way, will Hillary disavow sanctuary cities? Will she apologize to the families of victims of illegal alien criminals? Will she apologize to the Deplorables? And so on.
Trump will have to be on an A-plus game. He cannot let himself get angry and rattled or look defensive. He has to come off as serious but with a sense of humor and empathy for what ordinary people are enduring under progressive rule.
Will it make a difference? Who knows. I can assure you if the Hillary-Media complex decided to release the Trump tape 30 days out from the voting, that means they've got more. They want to drown out the disastrous economic and foreign policy news, and not leave room for the Wikileaks which show how corrupt and venal Hillary truly is.
The odds are against him.
It's going to be a tough night for Trump.
He is going into the debate under severe media and GOPe pressure, with rumors swirling that his running mate Mike Pence is thinking of jumping off the train, and the late night comics trying to turn him into a bad punchline. He, in other words, is now facing the full wrath of "the system," one which had dismissed him as a laughable crank, but in the last few weeks broke into a cold sweat in the realization that the man might just pull it off. Trump might just become President and put that "system" into terra incognita. That cannot be allowed and all false party labels are being ignored as the ruling elite has decided that the rampaging Trump beast must be killed at all costs. Any and all weapons in the system armory are valid for use.
What can he do at the debate? My advice, and you know the value of that, is to be calm, almost zen-like, very focussed, and articulate; no broken half-sentences, no weird tangents. Allow no question to remain one-sided: no matter what is asked insist that the same same or equivalent be asked of his opponent, and, in fact, Trump should ask it. Trump tape? Yes, I was coarse and crude in joking around, but was Hillary just joking when she tried to destroy the lives of the women her husband abused and raped? My tax returns? Yeah, sure, as soon as Hillary releases her deleted emails and her speeches before the Wall Street fat cats, and, oh by the way, I see some of those speeches are leaking. What does she say? She says that she will have a "public position and a private position" and that the bankers need not worry--she is not going to do anything to regulate them or to go along with those dopey Bernie people. Immigration? Deport the criminals first, build the wall, and insist our laws are obeyed, and, oh by the way, will Hillary disavow sanctuary cities? Will she apologize to the families of victims of illegal alien criminals? Will she apologize to the Deplorables? And so on.
Trump will have to be on an A-plus game. He cannot let himself get angry and rattled or look defensive. He has to come off as serious but with a sense of humor and empathy for what ordinary people are enduring under progressive rule.
Will it make a difference? Who knows. I can assure you if the Hillary-Media complex decided to release the Trump tape 30 days out from the voting, that means they've got more. They want to drown out the disastrous economic and foreign policy news, and not leave room for the Wikileaks which show how corrupt and venal Hillary truly is.
The odds are against him.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Trump Tape: Feet of Clay vs. Pajama Boys
Daniel 2:31-33 (NKJV)
31 You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome.
32 This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,
33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
I wrote the original draft of this post re the Trump tape at 0300 this morning. I almost published it, but at the last moment remembered the wise ol' saying from either Shakespeare, Lincoln, Twain, or "Banjo" Paterson, that "one neither should tweet nor blog in the darkest hours of the morn." Whoever said it was right. I re-read at 0900 what I had written six hours earlier and . . . delete, delete, delete, maybe not 33,000 times but many deletes, nevertheless, followed. BleachBit ordered.
That said, here I go again.
We live in a digital and salacious age. One of the great triumphs of modern science is used to promote sex, and destroy private lives. We no longer can have leaders and heroes who live large colorful lives. Lincoln, Churchill, Eisenhower, and so many others would be undone by this age, and its use of intrusive technology that memorializes our foibles forever.
While this tape is run four hundred times a day, and crowds out all other political conversation, America's core national interests at home and abroad are in free fall. Our future is disappearing, but we must titter and tweet away over an eleven year-old tape of big boys talking trash. We are seeing a flood of new leaks showing just how corrupt and two-faced Hillary Clinton is, but we must talk about Trump's use of bad words. The same media that has given the Clintons a pass on so much, including serious allegations of rape and cover-up, must now feign outrage over a bawdy conversation.
A Spanish saying wisely notes, "The fish dies because of its mouth." Trump has provided the enemy something with which they can play forever. It will be even harder now for him to get his message out. The hostile media will talk only of this, making his crude words far worse than they are in fact. Is this the death knell for the Trump campaign? Is it going to turn away supporters or those who were considering supporting him? I don't know. Perhaps. Can he pivot to more important issues? I hope he tries, but . . . at a minimum he should apologize to his wife, kids, and Mike Pence.
The debate tomorrow will be critical. While I have doubts that the "moderators" and left-wing media will not let this rest--and who knows what else they have queued up for the coming four weeks?--Trump, nevertheless, will have to handle it with calm and grace, and keep bringing the conversation around to the disaster that looms for our nation and a civilization if the same old corruptocrats get re-elected. He is paying the price for defying the bipartisan elite. I guess those who switch their vote to Hillary because of The Donald tape, will have the satisfaction of knowing that if she wins our borders and economy will collapse, our foreign policy will be a disaster, and terrorists will pour in, but, at least, she did not say a "bad" word on tape.
Sad times.
31 You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome.
32 This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,
33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
I wrote the original draft of this post re the Trump tape at 0300 this morning. I almost published it, but at the last moment remembered the wise ol' saying from either Shakespeare, Lincoln, Twain, or "Banjo" Paterson, that "one neither should tweet nor blog in the darkest hours of the morn." Whoever said it was right. I re-read at 0900 what I had written six hours earlier and . . . delete, delete, delete, maybe not 33,000 times but many deletes, nevertheless, followed. BleachBit ordered.
That said, here I go again.
I've listened to the audio tape of Trump's unguarded "hot mic" comments. Shocking? Disgusting? Indefensible? Absolutely . . . yes, well, that is if you've lived your life as a delicate snowflake in a nice cool safe place. If, however, you've been in the company of men, when they are allowed to be men, the language can get a bit colorful; that's not surprising. Look, I don't talk like that because I spent over half of my life in a profession in which one never knew who was listening, a misplaced comment, an infelicitous phrase, or a bit of overly exuberant verbal color could prove fatal to your career. Embassies, consulates, cocktail parties, negotiating sessions, and public venues, are not places conducive to uncensored guy talk. I have to admit, however, that when we would get out into the bush for a few days, far from recording devices and the PC police, in places such as Pakistan, Guatemala, and Bolivia, well, the language could get a bit, uh, saltier, shall we say--not mine, of course, but that of others . . . that's my story, and I am sticking to it.
The 2005 Trump tape captures a conversation between two (trigger alert: semi-nasty word about to appear) bullshitters doing what bullshitters do, bullshit. What I find appalling is that somebody would record this and keep it for so many years. That is malice aforethought. Both men on the tape, lest we forget, were private citizens having a private conversation. Let us also not forget that Trump, at the time, was a Democrat. Come to think of it, he should just claim that he and Billy Bush were auditioning to form a white rapper group, Salt & Sugar. All would be forgiven.
The 2005 Trump tape captures a conversation between two (trigger alert: semi-nasty word about to appear) bullshitters doing what bullshitters do, bullshit. What I find appalling is that somebody would record this and keep it for so many years. That is malice aforethought. Both men on the tape, lest we forget, were private citizens having a private conversation. Let us also not forget that Trump, at the time, was a Democrat. Come to think of it, he should just claim that he and Billy Bush were auditioning to form a white rapper group, Salt & Sugar. All would be forgiven.
We live in a digital and salacious age. One of the great triumphs of modern science is used to promote sex, and destroy private lives. We no longer can have leaders and heroes who live large colorful lives. Lincoln, Churchill, Eisenhower, and so many others would be undone by this age, and its use of intrusive technology that memorializes our foibles forever.
While this tape is run four hundred times a day, and crowds out all other political conversation, America's core national interests at home and abroad are in free fall. Our future is disappearing, but we must titter and tweet away over an eleven year-old tape of big boys talking trash. We are seeing a flood of new leaks showing just how corrupt and two-faced Hillary Clinton is, but we must talk about Trump's use of bad words. The same media that has given the Clintons a pass on so much, including serious allegations of rape and cover-up, must now feign outrage over a bawdy conversation.
A Spanish saying wisely notes, "The fish dies because of its mouth." Trump has provided the enemy something with which they can play forever. It will be even harder now for him to get his message out. The hostile media will talk only of this, making his crude words far worse than they are in fact. Is this the death knell for the Trump campaign? Is it going to turn away supporters or those who were considering supporting him? I don't know. Perhaps. Can he pivot to more important issues? I hope he tries, but . . . at a minimum he should apologize to his wife, kids, and Mike Pence.
The debate tomorrow will be critical. While I have doubts that the "moderators" and left-wing media will not let this rest--and who knows what else they have queued up for the coming four weeks?--Trump, nevertheless, will have to handle it with calm and grace, and keep bringing the conversation around to the disaster that looms for our nation and a civilization if the same old corruptocrats get re-elected. He is paying the price for defying the bipartisan elite. I guess those who switch their vote to Hillary because of The Donald tape, will have the satisfaction of knowing that if she wins our borders and economy will collapse, our foreign policy will be a disaster, and terrorists will pour in, but, at least, she did not say a "bad" word on tape.
Sad times.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
A Little Piece on Nutty White Guys
It's been a lazy sunny day here in southern California. I went shooting yesterday and slightly improved my results. I was going to go back again today, but felt guilty about leaving the dogs alone again for a few hours. The beasts and I have been sitting around watching "Longmire"--starring a terrific and under-appreciated Australian actor, Robert Taylor, who can do an American accent better than I can--and cleaning my guns. I love my two Kimber 45s, but the full size Kimber is kind of a pain to clean. I am always terrified that I am going to get a recoil spring embedded in my forehead. To avoid that, I let my Akita disassemble it . . . nah, just be careful, that spring is under a lot of tension. Anyhow, the three of us were sitting on the floor watching the TV, cleaning the guns, and . . . oh, one more tangent: when cleaning a gun think of Laurence J. Peter's aphorism, "Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean." We managed to get a lot of stuff dirty, and the guns ended up only marginally less so than when we started . . . anyhow, watching the news, it struck me that increasingly the white men left in the Democratic Party are pretty nutty. At the risk of being Captain Obvious, I must ask if others have noticed this?
The Democratic Party is one of the oldest continually operating political parties in the world--arguably the oldest voter based party. It has always had a bit of the bad boy image to it, and has had a long list of impressive politicians who, nevertheless, had something of an edge, not completely kosher. The Democrats, of course, were the party of slavery, secession, segregation, white lynch mobs, and massive voter fraud; one of the early Democrats, Andrew Jackson--held up as the founder of the party, in fact--was probably a full-blown genocidal maniac--and I am pleased he will be removed from our $20 bill. They had a crude racist populism from the start and have been reluctant in recent times to admit it. They now hide that racist populism under the banner of progressivism, but continue to play the race card at every opportunity.
For a number of reasons not worth going into here, the white voters, especially white males and married white women, and most especially working and middle class males, have moved away from the Democrats and vote increasingly Republican. The Democratic party has become largely a party of public sector workers, university professors and students, lawyers, labor union leaders, socialists, journalists, rich actors, crony bankers and CEOs, and, above all, racial and ethnic minorities. The glue that holds this disparate grouping together is government: Democrats are the party of government and of expanding the public sector at the expense of the private, while doling out vast sums to those members of the shrinking and maligned private sector who play along--Solyndra, anybody?
The electoral appeal of the Democratic party is to those who want more government, and who feel that a whole litany of current and historical grievances can only be addressed by more government taking more from, well, from the "rich," defined as anybody who is not one of the aforementioned categories. It is a party increasingly divorced from economic reality; it seeks to repeal the pesky and brutal laws of economics by reforming our souls, by getting us not to think or articulate bad thoughts, by getting us to give up on greed and privilege and allow the government to allocate resources and ensure the well-being of us all. And when that fails, it is a party that reverts to its violent lynch mob past to get its way.
Don't want to make this too long; I have still got my .357 Henry Big Boy rifle to clean--great gun, by the way, although a bit of pain to load. I notice that the white guys, especially the senior politicians who remain in the party, are more than a bit loopy. Gone are the Scoop Jacksons, the Moynihans, the Liebermans with whom one could disagree, but yet recognize that they were common sense politicians with whom a deal could be reached, and, above all, who were deeply patriotic. The party is left with gems such as the increasingly unhinged Senator Reid, the clownish Tim "I speak Spanish" Kaine, the unbearably smug Governors Brown and Cuomo, and the completely insane Mayor DeBlasio. They are white guys trying very hard to hide the fact that they are white guys. They adopt positions of extreme pandering to the worst and most radical elements of the party, and actively work for the elimination of the white majority in this country as a way to "solve" all our problems. They are ashamed of being who they are and must work to ensure that they are never succeeded by people like them.
OK, let's let it go at that. The beasts want to go for a walk.
The Democratic Party is one of the oldest continually operating political parties in the world--arguably the oldest voter based party. It has always had a bit of the bad boy image to it, and has had a long list of impressive politicians who, nevertheless, had something of an edge, not completely kosher. The Democrats, of course, were the party of slavery, secession, segregation, white lynch mobs, and massive voter fraud; one of the early Democrats, Andrew Jackson--held up as the founder of the party, in fact--was probably a full-blown genocidal maniac--and I am pleased he will be removed from our $20 bill. They had a crude racist populism from the start and have been reluctant in recent times to admit it. They now hide that racist populism under the banner of progressivism, but continue to play the race card at every opportunity.
For a number of reasons not worth going into here, the white voters, especially white males and married white women, and most especially working and middle class males, have moved away from the Democrats and vote increasingly Republican. The Democratic party has become largely a party of public sector workers, university professors and students, lawyers, labor union leaders, socialists, journalists, rich actors, crony bankers and CEOs, and, above all, racial and ethnic minorities. The glue that holds this disparate grouping together is government: Democrats are the party of government and of expanding the public sector at the expense of the private, while doling out vast sums to those members of the shrinking and maligned private sector who play along--Solyndra, anybody?
The electoral appeal of the Democratic party is to those who want more government, and who feel that a whole litany of current and historical grievances can only be addressed by more government taking more from, well, from the "rich," defined as anybody who is not one of the aforementioned categories. It is a party increasingly divorced from economic reality; it seeks to repeal the pesky and brutal laws of economics by reforming our souls, by getting us not to think or articulate bad thoughts, by getting us to give up on greed and privilege and allow the government to allocate resources and ensure the well-being of us all. And when that fails, it is a party that reverts to its violent lynch mob past to get its way.
Don't want to make this too long; I have still got my .357 Henry Big Boy rifle to clean--great gun, by the way, although a bit of pain to load. I notice that the white guys, especially the senior politicians who remain in the party, are more than a bit loopy. Gone are the Scoop Jacksons, the Moynihans, the Liebermans with whom one could disagree, but yet recognize that they were common sense politicians with whom a deal could be reached, and, above all, who were deeply patriotic. The party is left with gems such as the increasingly unhinged Senator Reid, the clownish Tim "I speak Spanish" Kaine, the unbearably smug Governors Brown and Cuomo, and the completely insane Mayor DeBlasio. They are white guys trying very hard to hide the fact that they are white guys. They adopt positions of extreme pandering to the worst and most radical elements of the party, and actively work for the elimination of the white majority in this country as a way to "solve" all our problems. They are ashamed of being who they are and must work to ensure that they are never succeeded by people like them.
OK, let's let it go at that. The beasts want to go for a walk.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
The VEEP Debate
Environmental report first: I watched the VP debate right after taking delivery on my new Winchester gun safe. Very nice. Delivered and set-up by a very professional and friendly crew. I was, therefore, in a good mood when I sat down with the dog beasts to watch the debate between Trump's running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, and Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Upon the conclusion of the debate, I immediately shut off the TV and took the dog beasts for a quick walk in the cool evening. I did not and have not yet listened to the pundits evaluation of the debate, so my evaluation might be way off in left field. I just didn't want the chatterers to influence me.
Quick and dirty.
Winner?
In the debate between Trump and Clinton, I gave that one on points to Hillary, this despite my clear intention to vote for Trump. This debate, however, I give overwhelmingly to Gov. Pence. He far exceeded my expectations; he showed himself a polished, natural speaker, and debater with a quick wit and no irksome mannerisms. He also showed a strong grasp of policy issues, and took the attack to Hillary quite effectively on her failed foreign policy record, her use of the Clinton Foundation, and her use of a private email server for official and classified materials. He nailed Clinton on the "Russian reset," on Iran, and on the disasters unfolding in Syria and Iraq. Pence did a credible job of defending some of Trump's more ill-advised statements and in dealing with the tax issue. He did not allow Kaine's repeated efforts to interrupt and speak over him to throw him off message. I was quite taken by the skill and courage he used in explaining and defending his position on abortion, especially on partial-birth abortion. A very impressive performance. Trump made a good choice.
I found Sen. Kaine, quite simply, annoying for most of the evening. He had several highly rehearsed lines that he insisted on using whenever possible; he wanted the whole debate to be about Trump's tax returns. His attempts to interrupt Pence and to shout down Pence's statements did not go over well with me and I doubt with any but the most die-hard Clinton supporters. His repeated pronouncements that Hillary Clinton had stopped the Iranian nuclear program and that the Israelis were quite pleased, were, of course, nonsense, and Pence repeatedly called him on it. Kaine seemed overly rehearsed and programmed, not natural at all. For me the only effective moment Kaine had was in response to the question of how his own faith has shaped his actions as a public servant. He did a nice job in explaining how despite his personal faith-based opposition to the death penalty, he realized that when he was Governor of Virginia his state was a death penalty state, and he was sworn to uphold the law. It was good.
The moderator? Elaine Quijano of CBS News did a very credible job. Her questions were good, with no "gotcha" attempts, and she tried to prevent Kaine from making a rude ass of himself, although not always with success. I thought the questions were balanced and fair. At times she seemed a bit intimidated by the debaters and let them keep talking too long, but overall she did a good job--much better than Lester Holt at the Trump-Clinton debate.
So, Pence wins. Will it have an impact on the polls? I don't know.
Quick and dirty.
Winner?
In the debate between Trump and Clinton, I gave that one on points to Hillary, this despite my clear intention to vote for Trump. This debate, however, I give overwhelmingly to Gov. Pence. He far exceeded my expectations; he showed himself a polished, natural speaker, and debater with a quick wit and no irksome mannerisms. He also showed a strong grasp of policy issues, and took the attack to Hillary quite effectively on her failed foreign policy record, her use of the Clinton Foundation, and her use of a private email server for official and classified materials. He nailed Clinton on the "Russian reset," on Iran, and on the disasters unfolding in Syria and Iraq. Pence did a credible job of defending some of Trump's more ill-advised statements and in dealing with the tax issue. He did not allow Kaine's repeated efforts to interrupt and speak over him to throw him off message. I was quite taken by the skill and courage he used in explaining and defending his position on abortion, especially on partial-birth abortion. A very impressive performance. Trump made a good choice.
I found Sen. Kaine, quite simply, annoying for most of the evening. He had several highly rehearsed lines that he insisted on using whenever possible; he wanted the whole debate to be about Trump's tax returns. His attempts to interrupt Pence and to shout down Pence's statements did not go over well with me and I doubt with any but the most die-hard Clinton supporters. His repeated pronouncements that Hillary Clinton had stopped the Iranian nuclear program and that the Israelis were quite pleased, were, of course, nonsense, and Pence repeatedly called him on it. Kaine seemed overly rehearsed and programmed, not natural at all. For me the only effective moment Kaine had was in response to the question of how his own faith has shaped his actions as a public servant. He did a nice job in explaining how despite his personal faith-based opposition to the death penalty, he realized that when he was Governor of Virginia his state was a death penalty state, and he was sworn to uphold the law. It was good.
The moderator? Elaine Quijano of CBS News did a very credible job. Her questions were good, with no "gotcha" attempts, and she tried to prevent Kaine from making a rude ass of himself, although not always with success. I thought the questions were balanced and fair. At times she seemed a bit intimidated by the debaters and let them keep talking too long, but overall she did a good job--much better than Lester Holt at the Trump-Clinton debate.
So, Pence wins. Will it have an impact on the polls? I don't know.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
The Speech I Would Like Trump to Give
Pardon my temerity and my spilling out of my narrow minor blog lane, but I have written a little speech I would like to hear Trump give. I think he could even stick to these points in the debate regardless of what is asked.
Ladies, Gentlemen, Basement Dwellers, Irredeemables, and Deplorables All,
On November 8, you and I will vote for President and Congress. We will be joined on that day by thousands upon thousands of dead Democrats and illegal aliens voting for our opponents, so make sure you turn out to cancel the massive fraud that the Democrats are planning. Let's make sure that the voice we hear is that of US citizens, alive today but concerned about the tomorrow they leave their children. We don't want America to be like the USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, or Detroit. All examples of where the path of progressivism leads.
We face a tipping point between a vision of liberty and individual freedom and that of a progressive nanny state that will decide what you can say, what you can believe and think, and how much if any of your money you can keep for yourself and your family. We are for a vision of America as a country based on universal values and responsibilities that apply to us all. We are for a country of accountable leaders who 99% of the time leave us the hell alone, and let us work out our own pursuit of happiness. Our opponents, Obama, Clinton and our morally bankrupt universities and media, promote a country full of grievances and entitlements, one in which the ruling elite will deal with those grievances and entitlements as befits and benefits the ruling elite. Our opponents want a country of no accountability for them, of laws that apply only to us, the Deplorables, but not to the anointed ones. If, for example, you and I handle classified information in a sloppy and "extremely careless way" we go to jail; if they do, they get nominated to be President. They want a country where if you speak up you get labelled deplorable, irredeemable, and racist. And the media goes along.
They want a country divided by race; we want a country dedicated to the advancement of the only race that counts: the human race.
We have an opponent who attacks me for taking legal tax deductions under the tax code that existed while Bill Clinton was president--but look at her deductions, donations to the Clinton Foundation. We have an opponent who distorts and brings up incidents from my past as a businessman, such as occasional failures from among the thousands of efforts I have made to invest, to grow the wealth of my companies, and to employ thousands of people and give them good salaries and opportunities for advancement. We have an opponent who claims to have been "dead broke" when she and her husband left the White House. She doesn't mention why they were "dead broke." They spent a fortune on lawyers combatting the scandals of the Clinton years in power.
Well, she is certainly not "dead broke" anymore.
She and her husband are worth perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. Where are the Clinton factories, retail outlets, hotels, and skyscrapers that provide employment and tax revenues? Don't exist. They got rich in the classic crony capitalist way of the beltway bandit. Hillary and Bill Clinton received fabulous sums for speeches to fat cats on Wall Street and abroad. On Hillary's speeches, what's amazing is that in this era of leaks, hacks, and covert IPhone recordings, nobody has seen or heard those speeches. What did she say? To whom? All nonsense, of course. It was just another classic Clinton "pay-to-play" scheme. What could Hillary Clinton have to say of such value to Goldman Sachs that they would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear her give a dull thirty minute talk? How about this? "Don't worry guys. When I get into power I will take care of you." And the media goes along.
We have an opponent who promises all sorts of things, well, that is when she's not insulting those who oppose her. She says she is for women. Really? What's her record? I'll tell you what it is: it is one of demonizing and trying to destroy women whose only crime was to tell the truth of how they had been abused by her husband. Suppressing what she called, "bimbo eruptions," that's her record. And the media goes along.
In every policy area she addresses, we must ask, well, while you were in power what did you do about that? Nothing is what Hillary Clinton did. Nothing. She has spent almost three decades roaming the corridors of power and has nothing to show for it --- well, except for hundreds of millions of dollars and a very nice walled compound in Chappaqua. It has a very nice wall. I might use it as a model for another wall.
She says she is for African-Americans and Hispanics. Really? Is that what her record shows? Not at all. She has never questioned the Democratic party policies that have led to the destruction of Detroit and so many other great American cities, the policies that have produced widespread poverty and unemployment among African-Americans. She has never questioned the policies that have led to the crumbling schools to which overwhelmingly African-America residents of those cities are forced to send their children. She has never expressed concern about the thousands of black kids killed in Chicago by gangs. She has never deviated from the Democratic orthodoxy; the Democratic Party, the party of lynch mobs, KKK, and segregation. No, instead, she has called black kids, "Super Predators." One of her closest political mentors was a senior member of the KKK. She has a habit of the bigot which is putting people into baskets, Deplorables, Basement Dwellers, Super Predators.
Hispanics? Guess what? She doesn't care for or about you either--except on November 8. Her campaign, of course, refers to Hispanic voters as the "Taco Bowl." So you Hipanics have an insult from her, too. Don't forget, also, that this was the person who was Secretary of State when Obama declared a covert war on the people of Mexico with "Operation Fast and Furious." The administration illegally shipped thousands of guns to drug cartels, killing hundreds of innocent Mexicans, not to mention at least two US federal agents. Even the murdering drug lord El Chapo got a .50 caliber rifle from Obama. Did our Secretary of State ever speak up? Did she raise an objection to this illegal and immoral policy? Did she apologize to Mexico? To the families of the dead US agents? No. Why? Mexicans in Mexico can't vote for her, and our border agents won't, so she doesn't care. And the media goes along.
She has supported horrendous trade deals which have destroyed American jobs. She once called the disastrous TPP deal, the "gold standard" of trade deals and has been walking that back since the campaign began. She wants to put coal and oil workers out of work, and replace their industries with the sort of crooked crony deals we saw in the Solyndra fiasco. Solar panels for everybody! Right.
Around the world, the interests of the United States and our allies are in collapse. Everywhere we look we are in retreat or defeat. NATO is a directionless shell. Our weakness has turned Russia into an enemy; China does not take us seriously. Even an old-time ally such as the Philippines has told us to take a hike. Our military is in severe decline. The policies of Obama and Clinton have produced bloody chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and, of course, in Libya. Her grotesque incompetence in Libya left our facilities in Benghazi exposed to the attack of--you guessed it--radical Islamic jihadis. A phrase she won't use. She will call you Deplorable, or a Super Predator, or a Basement Dweller, or a Taco Bowl, but she won't label the terrorists who killed our people in Benghazi, in Ft. Hood, in San Bernardino, in Orlando, and so many other places, what they are: radical Islamic jihadis. Instead she tried to get the radical Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt, and tried to prevent the Egyptian military and people from throwing them out. She has put Israel in mortal danger by pushing and supporting the insane nuclear deal with Iran in which we give them $150 billion in exchange for . . . well, nothing. She and Obama have helped Iran, the world's greatest state sponsor of terror, become a major regional power; Iran, which has sworn death to Israel and to America, is to be rewarded when it seizes our sailors, takes our citizens hostage, and provokes our ships. I have not heard her talk about how Christians, Bahais, gays, and women are treated in Iran, or for that matter in many of the other Muslim countries in the Middle East. She can't do that: It might get them to cut their donations to the corrupt Clinton Foundation.
While she was Secretary of State she ran a "pay-to-play" scheme in which donors to that corrupt Foundation got access to her, and other favors, such as exclusive cell phone contracts in Haiti. She so mismanaged the State Department that to this day, billions in aid for Haiti remain missing. And the media goes along.
Her illegal and, yes, immoral use of a private server on which to conduct official classified State Department business has exposed our nation's secrets and, perhaps, even led to the death of an intelligence source. She even had exchanges with the President on this system, something which Obama had denied. So when I hear her talk about her concern for cybersecurity, I have to laugh. And the media goes along.
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats don't want us to defend our borders or our sovereignty. They know there is no way to vet the tens-of-thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. They don't care; one day they'll vote Democrat is the thinking. They want endless numbers of people to pour in, unchecked, to pad the voter rolls, and become dependent on government largesse controlled, of course, by the Democratic party machine. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment don't care about the impact these immigration and asylum polices have on the poor or the middle class. The Democrats need to have poor people. They thrive on the misery of others.
Electing Hillary Clinton is re-electing a stagnant economy; it is a vote for the disastrous Obamacare; it is for the political use of the NSA, the FBI, the IRS, the EPA, and more Washington agencies. Electing her is a sure way to wipe out the second amendment and so many other of our rights. She wants the government involved in every aspect of your life and wants the government to take what you have earned not only while you are alive, but even after you're dead. It makes sense, I guess: a political party that famously uses the votes of dead people has no problem taxing the dead, too. And the media goes along.
Reject the progressives and their effort to transform America into another failed socialist state. Vote for liberty; vote for a prosperous and free future. Make America Great Again!
Ladies, Gentlemen, Basement Dwellers, Irredeemables, and Deplorables All,
On November 8, you and I will vote for President and Congress. We will be joined on that day by thousands upon thousands of dead Democrats and illegal aliens voting for our opponents, so make sure you turn out to cancel the massive fraud that the Democrats are planning. Let's make sure that the voice we hear is that of US citizens, alive today but concerned about the tomorrow they leave their children. We don't want America to be like the USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, or Detroit. All examples of where the path of progressivism leads.
We face a tipping point between a vision of liberty and individual freedom and that of a progressive nanny state that will decide what you can say, what you can believe and think, and how much if any of your money you can keep for yourself and your family. We are for a vision of America as a country based on universal values and responsibilities that apply to us all. We are for a country of accountable leaders who 99% of the time leave us the hell alone, and let us work out our own pursuit of happiness. Our opponents, Obama, Clinton and our morally bankrupt universities and media, promote a country full of grievances and entitlements, one in which the ruling elite will deal with those grievances and entitlements as befits and benefits the ruling elite. Our opponents want a country of no accountability for them, of laws that apply only to us, the Deplorables, but not to the anointed ones. If, for example, you and I handle classified information in a sloppy and "extremely careless way" we go to jail; if they do, they get nominated to be President. They want a country where if you speak up you get labelled deplorable, irredeemable, and racist. And the media goes along.
They want a country divided by race; we want a country dedicated to the advancement of the only race that counts: the human race.
We have an opponent who attacks me for taking legal tax deductions under the tax code that existed while Bill Clinton was president--but look at her deductions, donations to the Clinton Foundation. We have an opponent who distorts and brings up incidents from my past as a businessman, such as occasional failures from among the thousands of efforts I have made to invest, to grow the wealth of my companies, and to employ thousands of people and give them good salaries and opportunities for advancement. We have an opponent who claims to have been "dead broke" when she and her husband left the White House. She doesn't mention why they were "dead broke." They spent a fortune on lawyers combatting the scandals of the Clinton years in power.
Well, she is certainly not "dead broke" anymore.
She and her husband are worth perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. Where are the Clinton factories, retail outlets, hotels, and skyscrapers that provide employment and tax revenues? Don't exist. They got rich in the classic crony capitalist way of the beltway bandit. Hillary and Bill Clinton received fabulous sums for speeches to fat cats on Wall Street and abroad. On Hillary's speeches, what's amazing is that in this era of leaks, hacks, and covert IPhone recordings, nobody has seen or heard those speeches. What did she say? To whom? All nonsense, of course. It was just another classic Clinton "pay-to-play" scheme. What could Hillary Clinton have to say of such value to Goldman Sachs that they would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear her give a dull thirty minute talk? How about this? "Don't worry guys. When I get into power I will take care of you." And the media goes along.
We have an opponent who promises all sorts of things, well, that is when she's not insulting those who oppose her. She says she is for women. Really? What's her record? I'll tell you what it is: it is one of demonizing and trying to destroy women whose only crime was to tell the truth of how they had been abused by her husband. Suppressing what she called, "bimbo eruptions," that's her record. And the media goes along.
In every policy area she addresses, we must ask, well, while you were in power what did you do about that? Nothing is what Hillary Clinton did. Nothing. She has spent almost three decades roaming the corridors of power and has nothing to show for it --- well, except for hundreds of millions of dollars and a very nice walled compound in Chappaqua. It has a very nice wall. I might use it as a model for another wall.
She says she is for African-Americans and Hispanics. Really? Is that what her record shows? Not at all. She has never questioned the Democratic party policies that have led to the destruction of Detroit and so many other great American cities, the policies that have produced widespread poverty and unemployment among African-Americans. She has never questioned the policies that have led to the crumbling schools to which overwhelmingly African-America residents of those cities are forced to send their children. She has never expressed concern about the thousands of black kids killed in Chicago by gangs. She has never deviated from the Democratic orthodoxy; the Democratic Party, the party of lynch mobs, KKK, and segregation. No, instead, she has called black kids, "Super Predators." One of her closest political mentors was a senior member of the KKK. She has a habit of the bigot which is putting people into baskets, Deplorables, Basement Dwellers, Super Predators.
Hispanics? Guess what? She doesn't care for or about you either--except on November 8. Her campaign, of course, refers to Hispanic voters as the "Taco Bowl." So you Hipanics have an insult from her, too. Don't forget, also, that this was the person who was Secretary of State when Obama declared a covert war on the people of Mexico with "Operation Fast and Furious." The administration illegally shipped thousands of guns to drug cartels, killing hundreds of innocent Mexicans, not to mention at least two US federal agents. Even the murdering drug lord El Chapo got a .50 caliber rifle from Obama. Did our Secretary of State ever speak up? Did she raise an objection to this illegal and immoral policy? Did she apologize to Mexico? To the families of the dead US agents? No. Why? Mexicans in Mexico can't vote for her, and our border agents won't, so she doesn't care. And the media goes along.
She has supported horrendous trade deals which have destroyed American jobs. She once called the disastrous TPP deal, the "gold standard" of trade deals and has been walking that back since the campaign began. She wants to put coal and oil workers out of work, and replace their industries with the sort of crooked crony deals we saw in the Solyndra fiasco. Solar panels for everybody! Right.
Around the world, the interests of the United States and our allies are in collapse. Everywhere we look we are in retreat or defeat. NATO is a directionless shell. Our weakness has turned Russia into an enemy; China does not take us seriously. Even an old-time ally such as the Philippines has told us to take a hike. Our military is in severe decline. The policies of Obama and Clinton have produced bloody chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and, of course, in Libya. Her grotesque incompetence in Libya left our facilities in Benghazi exposed to the attack of--you guessed it--radical Islamic jihadis. A phrase she won't use. She will call you Deplorable, or a Super Predator, or a Basement Dweller, or a Taco Bowl, but she won't label the terrorists who killed our people in Benghazi, in Ft. Hood, in San Bernardino, in Orlando, and so many other places, what they are: radical Islamic jihadis. Instead she tried to get the radical Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt, and tried to prevent the Egyptian military and people from throwing them out. She has put Israel in mortal danger by pushing and supporting the insane nuclear deal with Iran in which we give them $150 billion in exchange for . . . well, nothing. She and Obama have helped Iran, the world's greatest state sponsor of terror, become a major regional power; Iran, which has sworn death to Israel and to America, is to be rewarded when it seizes our sailors, takes our citizens hostage, and provokes our ships. I have not heard her talk about how Christians, Bahais, gays, and women are treated in Iran, or for that matter in many of the other Muslim countries in the Middle East. She can't do that: It might get them to cut their donations to the corrupt Clinton Foundation.
While she was Secretary of State she ran a "pay-to-play" scheme in which donors to that corrupt Foundation got access to her, and other favors, such as exclusive cell phone contracts in Haiti. She so mismanaged the State Department that to this day, billions in aid for Haiti remain missing. And the media goes along.
Her illegal and, yes, immoral use of a private server on which to conduct official classified State Department business has exposed our nation's secrets and, perhaps, even led to the death of an intelligence source. She even had exchanges with the President on this system, something which Obama had denied. So when I hear her talk about her concern for cybersecurity, I have to laugh. And the media goes along.
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats don't want us to defend our borders or our sovereignty. They know there is no way to vet the tens-of-thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. They don't care; one day they'll vote Democrat is the thinking. They want endless numbers of people to pour in, unchecked, to pad the voter rolls, and become dependent on government largesse controlled, of course, by the Democratic party machine. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment don't care about the impact these immigration and asylum polices have on the poor or the middle class. The Democrats need to have poor people. They thrive on the misery of others.
Electing Hillary Clinton is re-electing a stagnant economy; it is a vote for the disastrous Obamacare; it is for the political use of the NSA, the FBI, the IRS, the EPA, and more Washington agencies. Electing her is a sure way to wipe out the second amendment and so many other of our rights. She wants the government involved in every aspect of your life and wants the government to take what you have earned not only while you are alive, but even after you're dead. It makes sense, I guess: a political party that famously uses the votes of dead people has no problem taxing the dead, too. And the media goes along.
Reject the progressives and their effort to transform America into another failed socialist state. Vote for liberty; vote for a prosperous and free future. Make America Great Again!
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Surprise! State Department Diplomats Don't Like Trump!
An ideological compadre sent me a link to story from Politico which I had missed in my daily scouring of the wild and wonderful world of the internet. The story, written by Nahal Toosi, has the frightening headline, "U.S. diplomats fear Trump will unleash cronies as ambassadors; Will he just appoint a buddy to schmooze with the Kremlin?" Oh, horrors! Read it for yourselves and you will quickly see that it is just a typical inside the beltway hatchet job on Trump.
America’s diplomats are shuddering at the notion that Donald Trump, if elected president, will send unqualified cronies around the world as ambassadors, exporting his bombastic style to sensitive jobs that represent the face of the United States.
As the presidential election draws closer, many career diplomats are uncertain about their future should the Republican presidential nominee and his unorthodox foreign policy positions triumph. And while plenty of them are wary of how Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — a former secretary of state who will owe a lot of favors — will shape her administration, Trump is by far the bigger unknown.
"He probably has no idea what the foreign service is," lamented one person with deep knowledge of the U.S. diplomatic corps. "At least with her we know who half the people who will get these jobs will be. With him we have no idea."The tension! The drama! American diplomats are shuddering! Canapés are falling! Drinks are spilling!
She goes on relaying the devastating news that,
In my 33 years at State I refused to join AFSA. A more worthless organization would be hard to imagine. It is hardly non-partisan as it signs up for every progressive scheme out there. AFSA was a prime mover of "diversity" at State; in the name of making life better for black FSOs, State, with AFSA's OK, boosted the number of white women. There that makes things better for black FSOs, eh?
The organization, as is true for the Foreign Service and the Civil Service, is overwhelmingly Democrat. AFSA, every time a new president comes in, sends its silly letter asking for the number of political appointees to be kept to a minimum. Incoming administrations pay no attention. More important, however, I see no mention in the article of how SecState Clinton "skillfully" handled Syria, Russia, Venezuela, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, etc. Nor do I see any mention of how her policies opened up some vacancies in our staff in Libya, and how she acquiesced in the Obama/Holder illegal covert war against the people of Mexico via "Fast and Furious." Anyhow, you get the drift. Pay no attention to articles such as this or to a letter signed by "senior diplomats" opposing Trump. I know almost all those people; some of them are fine, but nearly all of them are creatures of the beltway and the lush post-FS jobs that go with being such a creature. Ignore them.
I don't see many "Senior Diplomats" reacting to a "damning" report out in the UK on Libya. The parliamentary report confirms what any sentient being has known for a long time (here, for example): there was no masterplan for the intervention in Libya, the reasons behind it were defective, the intel was hopeless, and nobody really knew what the end game was to be. Read it. I see that our press is ignoring it. Sure doesn't look too good for ol' Ms We Came-We-Saw-He Died.
Move along! Nothing to see here!
The American Foreign Service Association, a non-partisan union representing U.S. diplomats, is agonizing over the topic. The group debated sending letters to the Clinton and Trump campaigns urging them to keep political appointments to a minimum, but now plans to wait until the election is over and approach whoever wins. Once the new Congress is sworn in, AFSA also will likely reach out to relevant committee chairmen and ranking members to make its case for giving preference in appointments to career diplomats.Ah, yes, AFSA--AFSA is agonizing . . . if only.
In my 33 years at State I refused to join AFSA. A more worthless organization would be hard to imagine. It is hardly non-partisan as it signs up for every progressive scheme out there. AFSA was a prime mover of "diversity" at State; in the name of making life better for black FSOs, State, with AFSA's OK, boosted the number of white women. There that makes things better for black FSOs, eh?
The organization, as is true for the Foreign Service and the Civil Service, is overwhelmingly Democrat. AFSA, every time a new president comes in, sends its silly letter asking for the number of political appointees to be kept to a minimum. Incoming administrations pay no attention. More important, however, I see no mention in the article of how SecState Clinton "skillfully" handled Syria, Russia, Venezuela, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, etc. Nor do I see any mention of how her policies opened up some vacancies in our staff in Libya, and how she acquiesced in the Obama/Holder illegal covert war against the people of Mexico via "Fast and Furious." Anyhow, you get the drift. Pay no attention to articles such as this or to a letter signed by "senior diplomats" opposing Trump. I know almost all those people; some of them are fine, but nearly all of them are creatures of the beltway and the lush post-FS jobs that go with being such a creature. Ignore them.
I don't see many "Senior Diplomats" reacting to a "damning" report out in the UK on Libya. The parliamentary report confirms what any sentient being has known for a long time (here, for example): there was no masterplan for the intervention in Libya, the reasons behind it were defective, the intel was hopeless, and nobody really knew what the end game was to be. Read it. I see that our press is ignoring it. Sure doesn't look too good for ol' Ms We Came-We-Saw-He Died.
Move along! Nothing to see here!
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