Trump Has a Good Day

Well, how about that? Donald Trump caught Hillary Clinton flatfooted. He, unexpectedly, snapped up  the invite from Mexican President Peña Nieto to the two major U.S. candidates and flew down to Mexico City to discuss a range of issues. Hillary sniped at him for a "photo op" visit and issued a lame statement saying she would go to Mexico at "an appropriate time." Her speech on foreign policy and national defense to the American Legion was completely overshadowed (note: Not a bad speech, but it's impossible for me to take Hillary seriously on national defense given her RECORD.)

His visit to Mexico was a risky one. He risked, of course, physical harm or, more probable, an embarrasing incident or two that would become headlines for weeks. None of that happened. The Mexican President treated Trump with respect and courtesy, and Trump reciprocated. One of the amazing things to come out of the visit, something almost ignored by the media, was that Peña expressed willingness to renegotiate NAFTA! This from CNBC,

Pena Nieto said he and Trump disagree on some topics, but added that cooperation between the countries is essential. He noted that the North American Free Trade Agreement, a frequent Trump punching bag, has benefited both countries but can be improved.

Trump's not even president and he has gotten Mexico to agree to "improve" NAFTA!  Not to mention, of course, that Peña did not reject the idea of a wall to protect "both countries."

Give Trump some credit, folks, give him sone credit.

His immigration speech later in the day in Arizona was also very good. I have only two criticisms:

1) it perhaps might have been better to delay it a day or so so as not to step on his visit to Mexico;

2) I would have mentioned the idea of a temporary suspension of immigration until we have a new system in place.

Those, of course, are minor quibbles. His speech was good, provided a lot of solid proposals, and put the focus on how our out-of-control immigration system puts the nation at risk. I haven't heard anything comparable from Hillary Clinton.

A good day for Trump. I think the Clinton campaign had better start sweating. In my view, they are preparing to lash out at a Trump who is no longer there. There is a new Trump on the campaign trail who is highly unpredictable, savvy, and very nimble.

Keep it up.

Gene Wilder, RIP

Very sad to hear that comic genius Gene Wilder passed away. I have no idea how many times I have seen "The Producers," "Blazing Saddles," and "Young Frankenstein," all of which he made with another comic genius, Mel Brooks. Truly the Golden Age of Comedy.

What made Wilder and Brooks into classic comedians was their willingness to go where no comic had ever gone before, but without being disgusting or degrading; I think they were much funnier than Lenny Bruce or any of the foul-mouthed "comics" who now hold forth.  They also did not hesitate to skewer sacred cows. Brooks has recently said that he could not make his signature comedies in today's politically correct Hollywood. They made fun of racism and racist stereotypes, of pompous politicians, and even turned Hitler's Germany into a joke. Who can think of Hitler without the song "Springtime for Hitler" bouncing around in his head? Watching Pryor teach Wilder how to act "black" is a masterpiece of comedy which could not be done today. Any attempt to replicate the whole send-up of racial prejudice we see in "Blazing Saddles" would have the precious snowflakes on our campuses and media board-rooms running for cover and tweeting outrage. I remember watching "Blazing Saddles" in a rural theater in Israel. The crowd went wild with laughter when gunslinger Wilder shows his shaking hand--I won't even try to describe the howls when Mel Brooks as a Native American chief speaks to a black settler family in Yiddish . . . I thought the building was under attack.

Every time I watch as the Wilder character in "Producers" realizes how crazy their idea is to rip off Broadway, and he goes totally insane, I can't stop laughing. He gives voice to the guy trapped in something he doesn't quite understand but can't quite escape.

Thanks, Mr. Wilder. You made my life a little better.

On Trump, Immigration, Deportation, and "Flip-Flops"

The media and the pundits are trying to trap Trump into appearing to flip-flop on his hard-line immigration stance. Trump seems to be helping them do it as his message is getting muddled, and the media focus on that instead of on the growing email and Clinton Foundation scandals.

I have written previously about immigration, and cannot understand how smart politicians and commentators let themselves get fouled up in that debate. It is not that hard to keep things straight.

As I noted before, some three years ago, in fact,

I do not hear discussion about whether we need none, little, some, or a lot of immigration, and if we do, what type of immigration we should seek. Do we need millions more of semi and unskilled people from Mexico and other poor countries? Absent widespread elimination or reduction in minimum wage, taxation, public assistance, and zoning laws, how will these people contribute to the economic growth of our country? This is not nineteenth century America with small factories and workshops on every street corner, and belching smokestack industries eager for cheap workers. This is the America of EPA regulations, OSHA bureaucrats, job killing minimum wage and health insurance laws, outsourcing, and of a growing ethos that sees single parents living on the public dole as an honorable existence. It is also the America of multiculturalism whereby immigrants are encouraged never to become Americans.

And, again,

[W]e need a good discussion of how much immigration WE NEED. Not how many people want to come here, but how many and what sort WE need. I see nothing wrong with a bit of selfishness when it comes to protecting our national defense, our cultural values, our jobs, and our tax resources. Do WE need one million legal immigrants? Off the top of my head, I would say, no. What types of immigrants are they? By far, today, the majority are of the low-skill "family reunification" type. Do WE need that? I, for example, find it absurd that an adult immigrant can file for his or her adult siblings and their family members. That sets up an endless cascade of "family reunification." We no longer enforce the "public charge" provisions of our immigration law; that needs to restart ASAP. Do WE need hundreds-of-thousands of unskilled and low wage-earning immigrants? Do WE need immigrants who adhere to a totalitarian murderous cult that passes as a religion? Do WE want to replicate the German, French, and Scandinavian experience with bogus refugees?

Once we establish what type and how much--if any--immigration our nation needs, then we can move on.

To have that debate, however, we have to be able to conduct it without waves of immigrants and "refugees" pouring in.

That means,

-- Temporarily suspending all immigration;

-- Securing the border, including a wall which can be paid for by a tax on remittances and fees on certain consular and border services;

-- Enforcing our existing laws, which would include deporting people caught here illegally--especially felons; and,

-- Having a system of verification in place that ensures illegals do not work, vote, or draw public benefits.

In other words, make the environment hostile for illegal migration. That would lead to large numbers of those illegally here departing on their own. Combined with the deportation laws already on the books, we should see a dramatic reduction in illegal aliens pretty quickly--even if we do not deport 12 million people.  It would, above all, make it less likely that illegals would continue to come here.

There is no Constitutional or internationally recognized right to immigrate to the United States (or anywhere else). We have in the past excluded fascists, Nazis, Communists, anybody adhering to a philosophy advocating the violent overthrow of our way of life, sexual deviants, criminals, etc. We can do it again.

Bottom line: Our nation has the right to have whatever immigration system we want.

Not hard to keep straight.

Don't let the progs  get away with their usual fog of confusion.

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," George Orwell

One of the great little pieces written by George Orwell is "In Front of Your Nose," first published March 22, 1946. In this marvelous short essay, Orwell skewers so much political nonsense that it is breath-taking. Written over 70 years ago, his article is still valid for today.

[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. 

When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say ‘Guns before butter’, while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words. 

Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy. Then, as a result of the war, millions of ordinary Russians penetrated far into Europe, and when they return home the original avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye. 

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one's subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one's thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.

Was there ever a better description of what we see at work in today's "Progressive World"? One, for example, in which we see liars such as Hillary Clinton rewrite her own history right before our eyes and the supine mass media go along.

I am working on something else, but happened to re-read this gem, and thought it worthwhile to mention.

Back to the Keyboard

OK.

Back from our road trip to northern California. While at his house, I discovered that my oldest son did not have a firearm. This was intolerable; I felt as though I had failed as a parent.  So, of course, I accused him of being a traitor and an embarrassment to the men of the family. I got him to accompany me to a local gun store in Roseville. We bought a .40 cal Rock Island Armory (not a brand I  know well) which he liked. In ten days, he will have it. I continue with my crusade to defend the second amendment one kid at a time. You're welcome.

I tried to stay away from politics, but it was hard. As part of my effort to break the addiction to politics, I watched some Olympics basketball (US vs. Spain; US vs Serbia; Australia vs Spain) which was fun. On the Australia vs. Spain game the Diplowife and I split our support; she cheering for her old country, and I for the representative of the Anglosphere. Sigh. I thought the Aussies would pull it out, but . . . one lousy point, one lousy point, one . . .

Speaking of one point, it appears some of the presidential election polls have begun to turn around as Trump--clearly--has taken The Diplomad's advice, and gotten himself a good speech and a script. Some polls--for what they're worth--have the candidates about a point or so apart, with some having Trump in the lead. My prediction: unless there is massive electoral fraud if the polls are close, if it's "too close to call," Trump will win. I know it's anecdotal, but I keep running into people who privately tell me they're voting Trump but tell the outside world they're undecided. I think there might be a lot of that. But, I thought we would have President Romney, so . . .

As soon as I get a little more settled, walk my dogs, and stop vibrating from the nearly one thousand miles I just drove, I am going to concentrate on writing something good. Not my usual stuff, but something good. Promise.

Road Trip

Heading off this morning to northern California in the trusty ol' Ford Expedition. I leave my quarters with the news of depressing presidential election polls and the corrupt Haridan's screech of tax-raising promises and vows to "invest" more money in progressive education echoing in my head.

Not good prospects for the future as we see the effects of the "soft" genocide being pursued by the left (more in a subsequent post).

I will try to stay away from the news as best I can over the next three or four days and just relax.

Hillary Makes It Official: 2016 Elections to be Rigged

I have bored faithful readers of this humble blog with warnings about the criminal organization otherwise known as the Democratic party. You can find here (January 24, 2014), here (July 9, 2014), and here  (October 28, 2014) three such pieces on how the Democrats would degrade the concept of citizenship and use illegal aliens to conduct massive electoral fraud to win the 2016 presidential election.

I am glad to see that Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most dishonest and corrupt candidate of any major candidate in 240 years, has had the decency to confirm these predictions.

We see her campaign announcing,

a new Latino outreach initiative Sunday focused on mobilizing young undocumented immigrants to highlight their risk of deportation if Donald Trump becomes president, with the aim of inspiring others in their communities to vote in November. 

So-called "dreamers," who in many cases were brought to the country illegally as children, do not have the right to vote, but their stories have the potential to motivate friends, classmates and co-workers to go to the polls with their fate in mind, the Clinton campaign said.

OK.

Do the writers at the Post and the criminals running the criminal Clinton's criminal campaign think we're all idiots? Or is it now the assumption that the American people are simply so overwhelmed by Clinton scandals and crimes as to be completely numb?

I love the phrase re the "dreamers . . . not having the right to vote," but, of course, their sob stories will motivate others to reject Trump and his call to deport those illegally in the USA. Does anybody, anywhere think these "dreamers" won't vote? The Democrats and their allies in the courts have made it all but impossible to prevent unqualified people from voting. You can be sure the "dreamers" will be voting along with tens-of-thousands if not hundreds-of-thousands of new arrivals from Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere.

Further on in the article we are told,

Clinton’s campaign said the new effort, dubbed "Mi Sueño, Tu Voto" (“My Dream, Your Vote”), will be highlighted at several events around the country this week, including in Florida, Nevada and North Carolina — all states where the Hispanic vote is a growing force.

I see.

Let me note that the genius who thought up that slogan might not realize that he has given away the game: "My Dream, Your Vote" can be interpreted several ways including that Hillary's Dream is getting the vote of the illegals or that the illegals dream of getting your vote. This is either rank stupidity or brazen cynicism. As I wrote before, quoting This is Spinal Tap, that when dealing with this misadministration, "It's such a fine line between stupid, and, uh . . . clever."

There is another phrase in Spanish, "mi casa es su casa" ("my house is your house.")  I always liked that phrase; I found it very poetic. I see, however, that we are now being told to take it literally when dealing with the flood of illegal aliens: our nation is to be their nation--quite literally. Hillary has said so.