Whirled Politics: Would you rather be Trumped or Pillaried?

By DonkeyHotey [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve never seen anything so surreal as the United States’ current political circus of unelectable and undelectable candidates offered as each party’s top of the crop. I can’t stop wondering if the Trump is Clinton’s decoy, gathering all the Republiducks into one place so the Democats can slaughter them. Yet, as surely as Trump looks like he’s trying to throw the election, Hillary looks like she’s going to fall over unconscious from a brain aneurysm on the dawn of election day … or on midnight after the votes are in and counted, depending on which conspiracy you like best.

Equally weird is the certain fact that the Democrat’s Chosen One was assured her party’s worship through inside engineering. I’m not surprised such maneuvering happens inside political parties but that, after it came fully into the open, Hillary seems more likely to win.

That she was able to take the Democrat who was most to blame (and who resigned because of it) and raise her quite publicly and immediately to the top of her campaign goes to show how voters believe this is just the way party politics works all the time. Hillary made that move openly, knowing that most people in her party couldn’t care less about such things. She even got a big bump in popularity after the move. That’s how little such shenanigans mattered to her supporters.

 

By DonkeyHotey [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By DonkeyHotey [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Trump — What a card!

 

That the irony is everywhere is unsettling. If I were writing a novel, I couldn’t pick a better name for an unlikable, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniac presidential candidate than “Trump.” He has the sole virtue of sounding anti-establishment at a time when people crave a strongman who can save the nation from its own craven greed now that it has lived for decades above its means.

Then there is the irony that, having been clobbered by a rich, self-serving one percent who were too big to fail, the masses run to whom? A billionaire who is a member of the one percent who has spent his entire life serving only himself and bragging to the world that he’s the greatest man who ever lived. The more he brags that he’s rich, “really rich,” the more people flock to him to save them from a world dying under the strains of unbridled greed.

And, yes, there is the irony that the man named “Trump” spends his entire life blowing his own horn as brazenly as he can.

I’m not suggesting the Trump should stay with statements the mainstream media will approve, but his move toward more extreme statements as he nears the main election looks a lot like a guy whose plan is to throw the election by becoming less likable, as if he never really wanted to win. I wonder Is this all just another clownish Trump publicity stunt like his past pretenses of running? (Speaking out against crying babies is hardly a bold policy statement. It just seemed cold and clumsy. Awkward!)

Clearly, this is far from a normal election year:

 

Republican officials are exploring how to handle a scenario that would be unthinkable in a normal election year: What would happen if the party’s presidential nominee dropped out? ABC News has learned that senior party officials are so frustrated — and confused — by Donald Trump’s erratic behavior that they are exploring how to replace him on the ballot if he drops out.(ABC)

 

Even if you were looking for an anti-establishment Republican candidate that most Republicans would hate, Trump certainly doesn’t look like one now that he has come out with a stimulus tax plan that is almost straight out of the establishment-Republican, thirty-year-old play book.

In a nutshell, his plan to save America’s economy is to give deep tax breaks to the top one percent by establishing the cheapest capital-gains tax in decades. That assures the rich continue of paying less in taxes than the middle class (since they make their money off of capital gains, not wages). Then Trump intends to balance this tax cuts (bigger than the Bush tax cuts that helped bankrupt the nation) with huge spending increases in order to assure enormous deficits from here to kingdom come.

Having been sold that bill of goods by Reagan and Bush who assured us the economic benefit of tax cuts would outweigh the tax losses to such a degree that we could increase our spending without running the national debt up (and having seen that prove outrageously false … twice!), it looks like we are about to take that same ride for a third time around the block as everyone waves their hands and screams, Salvation is here! Throw us some candy!”

The only major change to the Republican plan of the past thirty years is that we’ll be running up massive deficits on projects at home rather than on foreign wars. The plan assures we’ll move further than we’ve ever been from paying as we go for the things we want to do. That’s what got us here, and it looks like we’re as determined as ever to hit the throttle as the bus heads straight for the cliff. A vote for Tump assures that we’ll continue to hand the bill for all of our overspending to our children and grandchildren at least until the ground leaves the wheels of our bus behind. Praise Trump!

Trump also blew his horn over and over about how he could fund his entire campaign so as to be owned by no one and then made a lot of noise about how bad hedge-fund guys are; but then he hired a top hedge-fund mogul and partner at Goldman Sachs to be his campaign finance chair to help raise funding. Really? A partner in Goldman Sachs — the company that gift-wrapped the Great Recession for us — will make him less beholden to the corrupt one-percenters who got us where we are?

Yikes!

 

Feeling Pencive about Trump

 

In an odd marriage of opposites, Trump chose a running mate whose history demonstrates he stands for everything Trump has railed and rallied against. Being the quintessential establishment neocon, Pence never saw a war he wouldn’t approve or a tax he wouldn’t cut or free-trade deal that he didn’t vote for or a bank he wouldn’t further deregulate or a major corporation whose greed he would stand up to. He’s Bush to the core.

Trump chose Pence to soften the Republican establishment’s opposition to his campaign. So, he’s already caved in to the establishment.

Pence is such a champion of the free-trade deals that moved jobs out of America (the free-trade deals Trump hates). Pence supported and voted for NAFTA. He has even spoken in support of Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership plan. So, he has heralded free-trade agreements from the start to finish.

Pence has also spoken in favor of more open borders. While Trump sounds like an isolationist, Pence is pure globalist believing that American companies win with open borders and free trade, but blind to the fact that only the shareholders win. The workers wind up competing against lower wages from immigrants who come across those open borders or seeing there jobs move out of the country entirely. So, the top ten percent grow wealthier under these deals because of cheaper labor while the middle class fades.

Pence also fully supported George Bush’s regime-change experiment in Iraq, which we are still fighting more than a decade later. I cannot see any manner in which the US is better off with Iraq as it is today than it was with Iraq as it was over a decade ago, having spent more than two trillion dollars there. Costs over the years ahead are estimated to total more than 6 trillion dollars. And that doesn’t cover the economic costs to Iraq. Total dead, nearly a quarter of a million people! What on earth did either the US or Iraq gain that was worth all of that?

The amount already spent on our pre-emptive war against a nation with no weapons of mass destruction, which posed almost no threat to the US at all, totals ten percent of all the decades of accumulated national debt. That’s for just one war in one little country … for which we have NOTHING to show.

Yet, Pence, in a nation that the Republican Speaker of the House called “broke,” has called for “dramatically” increasing military spending. Apparently no cost of war is too great for America, even when it fails to buy us an ounce of security and appears to have turned Iraq into an incubator for ISIS by removing the one strongman whom the US originally set up there to keep a heavy hand on such movements.

Throughout the Bush years and beyond, Pence, as vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, continued to champion the Iraq war as a virtuous spread of democracy. Trump, on the other hand, strongly spoke against the Iraq war leading up to the primaries but now seems comparatively quiet about it, lest people point fingers at his running mate. (The cost of sucking up to the establishment.)

I think the only Obama plan that Pence every heartily agreed with was getting the US involved in a civil war in Libya. So, Pence is a US imperialist to the core, who has said a number of times that US should impose democracy wherever it can in the middle east (apparently even at the cost of trillions of dollars).

Pence is as blind as Bush was to the reality that democracy is only as good as its people. So, if the people in a nation hate you, that democracy will also hate you and oppose you. Hardly sounds like a plan in the United State’s best interest, and it hasn’t turned out too good for the country’s we’ve tried to bring democracy to either.

Pence is a neocon’s neocon and stands for everything Trump has proclaimed he stands against. Totally bizarre.

None of that would matter if Pence were just a token vice president, as many have been; but, according to the NY Times, Trump lured Pence with a promise that he will be put in charge of of all domestic policy and all foreign policy if Trump is elected and will become “the most powerful vice president in history.” Well, that’s “in charge of everything.”

While the NY Times has only a single source for the statement that Trump promised Pence the full power of president, and the Trump campaign now says that isn’t true, such a move would be consistent with Trump’s direction in his tax plan and his embrace of a neocon running mate. All of his actual actions to date reek of the moldy hash of the Repub establishment. The reality that is unfolding around Trump is consistent with putting an establishment Republican in charge of everything.

Trump doesn’t sound like a man who wants to actually do the work of president nor even like a man with any actual anti-establishment ideas of his own for saving the economy. He’s just great at saying, “It’s great. It’ll be great. It’ll be the best, the best plan anyone ever saw.”

While Pence runs the country and attempts to run the world, what will The Trump actually be doing to make America great again? Keeping his eye on the big picture as an idea man while he continues to build his corporate empire? Creating a bigger and better Miss USA pageant so the world can see how great America truly is by how beautiful its women are?

Apparently, running the nation is something one of Trump’s peons can do, since Trump has an entire corporation to look out for and a name to keep building. So, maybe the presidency is just part of building that name:

 

All Dick Cheney jokes aside, let’s remember that the real job of the vice president is actually something like, “being alive on the off-chance the president is not,” not “assuming the duties of the presidency in toto for the duration of the president’s term.” (Huffington Post )

 

So, this is the year in which the antiestablishment candidate came out with the biggest establishment economic plan in the history of the nation — the same old buy-everything-without-paying-for-it stimulus, but on steroids at a level the would make the Russian Olympic team envious. (I plan to write more on the Trump tax plan at a later date, but it’s the same old never-trickle-down major tax breaks to the rich while buying lots and LOTS of stuff to stimulate the economy.)

Republicans have fallen for this candy for thirty years, so it will probably sell like circus peanuts. And who better to sell the nation on circus peanuts than a pompous con artist who has defaulted on debts due to failed plans more often and more spectacularly than any candidate in history — the Don of Debt, a joker for a trump card and a lifetime blow hard, Donald Trump, a man who has no record of ever standing in business for anything higher than himself?

 

Is Hillary Clinton crazy?Hillary or Billary or Pillary or Shillary or Chillary or Killary

 

A thorn by any other name.

Whatever you want to call her — and they all fit to a tee — the possible next world leader from the Clinton dynasty seems well qualified for the starring role in [amazon_link id=”B0032KUX8E” target=”_blank” ]Weekend at Bernies[/amazon_link] or [amazon_link id=”B00000ILEC” target=”_blank” ]Waking Ned Divine[/amazon_link]. If her head bobbles anymore, her neck will fatigue and her cranium will fall off, revealing the burned wiring that extends up to her motherboard from that dead battery pack she calls a heart.

Already, the shorting circuitry causes her to smile and laugh uproarously like she’s going to eat the person she’s looking at everytime someone accuses her of misconduct. I’m sorry, but an “I’m going to eat you” smile chills the heart and fits all that’s been rumored about her and the worst of what her many bad actions have shown.

She also appears to be ready to join the plight of some big Russian leaders of the past and cough herself out of existence. Even her fans at major networks have raised questions about her brain injuries being the source of her abundant coughing, her unsteadiness, and her sometimes bobbling head.

Speaking of Russian, I think Hillary pushed the wrong red button when she reached for the reset button on relations with Vladimir Putin. It appears she pushed the nuclear button with Russia, as the US moved during her time as Secretary of State all the faster into racing Russia to arms in Europe. While Bush was sophomoric in his relations with Russia, giving foreign leaders high-schoolish nicknames like “Putie,” Hillary helped frost the entire nation over like Elsa, the ice princess in [amazon_link id=”B00J2PCCYQ” target=”_blank” ]Frozen[/amazon_link]. Relations with Russia haven’t been this icy since the cold war.

Follow Ms. Clinton’s trail as Secretary of State, and it looks like a scorched-earth scar across the globe. Nations that were unstable before she stepped foot there are now deep in war. She takes personal responsibility for counseling President Obama to jumpstart Libya’s civil war, and President Obama gladly agrees it was her idea. There you also find her apparent Benghazi flameout.

 

Clinton viewed “smart power” as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values—in a world of varied threats, weakened central governments, and increasingly important nongovernmental entities—by combining military hard power with diplomacy and U.S. soft power capacities in global economics, development aid, technology, creativity, and human rights advocacy.As such, she became the first secretary of state to methodically implement the smart power approach. In debates over use of military force, she was generally one of the more hawkish voices in the administration. In August 2011 she hailed the ongoing multinational military intervention in Libya and the initial U.S. response towards the Syrian Civil War as examples of smart power in action. (Wikipedia)

 

Libya became another failed state that may not regain health for another fifty years, and Syria has already become another Middle East quagmire where US involvement has slowly escalated, and costs are endlessly growing. Russia has done more to stop ISIS in Syria than the US because of conflicts in the United States’ hard-to-describe Syrian policy that seems more intent on regime change than on stopping ISIS, America’s true enemy.

Hillary advocates the “We’ll stuff democracy down your throats or kill you trying” approach that Pence favors. At the global level, you see, the establishment in both parties is the same.

Clinton engineered Obama’s Middle East policy from the start of the Arab Spring. She moved Obama against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in favor of an “orderly transition [to] a democratic participatory government.” She advocated greater force in Afghanistan than either President Obama or VP Joe Biden were in agreement with.

Throughout her life, Clinton also never saw a scandal to which she couldn’t find a way to attach her name. From White Water to keeping someone she knew was a rapist out of prison by destroying the female victim’s reputation t0 destroying the feeble reputations of any women in later years who accused her husband of infidelity to the growing scandal around the Clinton Foundation, her name is right there again and again.

She disregarded US security with her emails and then lied about it repeatedly to such an extent that FBI director Jame Comey struggled to find enough loathing adjectives to describe her incompetence:

 

There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information…. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation…. Their presence [on an unclassified system] is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at agencies and departments of the United States government…. We also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department [under Clinton’s leadership] … was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information that is found elsewhere in the government…. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account. (CNN)

 

That’s the kind of foresight, attention to security and forthrightness I want to see in a president of the United States.

Seriously? With over three-hundred-million people to choose from in the US, these Trump and Hillary are the best and brightest saviors that either party can put forward? That this is what rises to the top is one of the scariest thoughts on earth.

 

An Epocalypse upon us all

 

Meanwhile Barrack Obama is ceding US power to the UN with his TPP to such a level that it would appear he is setting up his next office as Sec’y General of the UN. He appears to be readying that office with the power it will need for him to operate without US interference.

Unless, of course, the deep plan is that Hillary goes into a coma after winning the election that The Don of Debt is throwing her way so that Obama can manufacture an excuse for maintaining the office of president during a protected emergency election. So say some conspiracy theorists, though there is no constitutional basis for that. Still the political world is so bizarre right now to where my stomach is queasy enough that I even find conspiracy theories plausible.

On the other side of the pond, Merkel appears to self-destructing by turning Germany into a European Islamic Caliphate. The EU appears more likely than ever to self-destruct along with her now that the Brits pulled the plug at the center of the cess pool, giving rise to other European nations to do likewise. All this happens as the world’s oldest banks in Europe now glow in the dark as if nuclear explosions are going off inside their vaults.

No matter how you look at it, it is truly a bizarre election year where the main characters in the US have big plastic heads that seem to be occupied by tiny alien operators.

To cap this whirling dervish all off, a virtual Who’s Who of Republican leaders have stated on record they will vote for a liberal Democrat for president — a woman whom they usually talk about with complete derision. Hate her as they do, they’d rather have her than one of their own. How surreal is that?

It’s a year like none other in my lifetime, and it certainly all fits the Epocalypse that I have been saying all year is building around us. We are walking through the gates of a new world order that is forming and falling apart at the same time. It is a time of great conflicts as globalizing forces clash against local resistance, resulting in crumbling unions and reforming alliances.

It happens as there deep economic faults show up everywhere while neither of the two people rising to the world’s dominant leadership role look remotely suitable to the task. On one side we have a “very rich” narcissist with a red squirrel for a wig who can never stop boasting about how great he is while he defaults on debts all over the world. On the other side, we have a stumbling, coughing, fainting bobble head who leaves a slime trail of fire wherever she has travelled this earth.

I’m going to bed now. Hopefully to dream sweeter dreams of times long past or far — very far — ahead, for the next four years look like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

25 Comments

  1. Ping from Kim:

    Is this blog finished?

  2. Ping from Knave_Dave:

    Now Trump appears to be softening his rhetoric on the Wall with Mexico and on NAFTA:

    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-says-he-and-mexican-president-didnt-discuss-border-wall-payment-2016-08-31?mod=MW_story_top_stories

    So, perhaps he has gotten the message to move closer to the center after all.

  3. Ping from Knave_Dave:

    Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre:

    “With the November election fast approaching, Donald Trump is not the only person who stands in the way of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency.

    “There’s also the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who continues to release damaging info on the Democratic nominee which she would much rather keep hidden.

    “In fact, it certainly appears at though Hillary is willing to kill to keep her skeletons in the closet…”

    Read the story at: http://threepercenternation.com/2016/08/john-jones-found-dead/?utm_source=tp1&utm_medium=tp1&utm_campaign=tp1

    Apparently, the lawyer at Wikileaks who promised to destroy Hillary’s election with a major leak of new information threw himself in front of a train. He’s now the SECOND person providing information harmful to Hillary who wound up dead.

    “The news is particularly disturbing, as Democratic Strategist and CNN host, Bob Beckel recently appeared in a FOXTV interview and called for the assassination of Julian Assange (or more accurately, “Just kill the sonofabitch!”)

    “Assange is believed to be planning a strategic “October Surprise” leak of a Hillary Clinton email, just prior to the US Presidential Election. It purportedly contains information that will definitively put her behind bars.”

    Just sayin’ this is the oddest election cycle I’ve ever seen, and somehow (be it her fault or not), there is always a trail of death behind Killary.

  4. Ping from Knave_Dave:

    Is Trump turning more establishment and backing down on his harsh rhetoric?

    From the Washing Times:

    Donald Trump was supposed to deliver a major address on immigration Thursday, laying out a plan that would win over swing voters while reassuring his base that he is serious about enforcing the law.

    Instead, he has postponed the speech, sent staggeringly conflicting messages about his plans and managed to anger Hispanic activists, who say there is little he can do to appease them at this point, and die-hard supporters, who say any backsliding on his strict deportation message will expose him as a pandering politician.

    The wounds are self-inflicted. Mr. Trump has talked tough yet promised the possibility of leniency for illegal immigrants — often in the span of a couple of hours.

    “His biggest problem is that he has no prior history in politics for people to weigh. He’s asking people to support him based on what he says lately,” said William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee.

    He said Mr. Trump is asking a lot from voters who have been burned repeatedly by politicians, particularly on immigration. “If Donald Trump significantly diverges from his promise to deport all illegals, he will end his own campaign or his own presidency. His campaign or his presidency will be wounded to the point of self-destruction….”

    As a presidential nominee on the campaign trail, he still promises to build the wall and enforce existing laws, but his campaign says he would prioritize criminals for deportation over illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. the longest and have ties to their communities. For those, Mr. Trump told Fox News on Tuesday, there could be a “softening” of his deportation policy.

    “We’re not looking to hurt people,” the candidate said.

    The verbiage on prioritizing criminals is particularly striking because that is how President Obama describes his policy….

    Mr. Rosenberg said Mr. Trump may have set himself up for an embarrassing revelation about his wife. Melania Trump’s immigration history is murky, but she said she first worked in the U.S. as a fashion model using what sounds like a tourist visa, which would have prohibited her from working.

    There are also questions about how she qualified for a green card.

    “If he’s so concerned about following the law, then he’s got to prove that his wife did,” Mr. Rosenberg said….

    Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports a crackdown, said Mr. Trump has fallen into the “amnesty trap” by getting baited into talking about immigration policy several steps down the road.

    “What he’s doing here is groping his way toward a real-world policy from his initial Archie Bunker yelling-at-the-TV thoughts,” he said….

    “Once you unleash the fire that he has, you can’t turn around on it. Once you become an immigration enforcement hard-liner, there’s no going back,” he said. “On this issue, once you commit to certain things, the people that you upset are never, ever going to be your friend….”

    Read the full article at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/24/donald-trumps-backslide-on-immigration-angers-base/

  5. Ping from jakartaman:

    As has been pointed out:
    Th election is binary
    We pretty much know what we will get with Killary (see Obama)
    The second amendment
    Immigration
    Supreme Court
    Jobs
    These are my 4 issues and Trump
    I believe will do the right things?

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I hope so, but it’s not looking good with him now that he’s putting things into plans. I would love to be wrong in my concerns. We certainly need someone who is against the establishment, but Trump seems to be capitulating whenever it comes down to actual political action versus campaign talk.

  6. Ping from Auldenemy:

    David, if I have one criticism to make of you it is that your writing needs to be more widely known. This article is quite simply a work of genius. Not a single other economics/political/monetary/markets analyst (and I read them all), could have summed up Hillary Clinton with:

    ‘If her head bobbles anymore, her neck will fatigue and her cranium will fall off, revealing the burned wiring that extends up to her motherboard from that dead battery pack she calls a heart.’

    You so the same with Trump (I laughed out loud at your description of his wig, as in a dead squirrel).

    In this article you sum up in the most consummate way just how bereft the West has become of leaders with any integrity let alone brains. Trump and Clinton are mirrored here in the UK and all through Europe. A perfect example is the old drunken, self serving, unelected, over paid Junker who is President of the EU Commission and spews garbage that turned to reality is ruining the countries of Europe. This Z, this grey little bureaucratic cretin who was President of tiny little Luxembourg and who by using that position to give huge tax breaks to big multi nationals was paid back by them making sure he became President of the EU Commission. Once great and proud nations are now the serfs to a Mafia run from Brussels, a triangle of 5th rate minds consisting of Merkel, Juncker and Hollande who are literally destroying Europe with mass – mostly male – Muslim immigration from not only the Middle East and Asia but now from Africa. Juncker announced recently that, ‘Borders are the most stupid invention ever’. This is the kind of talk that the Neo Liberals all across America and Europe wet themselves with. They think they are creating a socialist Utopia, where national identity doesn’t exist anymore, along with race and religion. Their endless wet dream of homogenising people from completely different cultures and a religion stuck in the Stone Age, with white Europeans whose culture and history is completely different and has been shaped by hundreds of years of struggle to gain democratic rights that have never existed in any Muslim nation on earth and never will.

    So yes, America deserves much better than this miserable choice between a corrupt showman whose intellectual knowledge of history and economics could fit on a postage stamp or a woman who is completely corrupt, to the point where too many people close to her have died suddenly and in extremely odd circumstances. She has taken millions of dollars from Goldman Sachs. They own her. She is married to a man who constantly lied when he was President and whose morals are all the way down there with an alley cat. The pair of them are now multi millionaires, sucking huge sums of dodgy money into their Clinton Foundation which has never been properly audited.

    I too have seen the nodding dog videos of Hitlary having seizures, also the big security guy always close by with an epi-pen full of diazepam. The thought of Hillary Clinton being your next President is actually more frightening to me than Trump! The reason being that Trump has business interests in Putin Land and Hillary doesn’t. All she has is a longing to start another war in Europe, this time against Russia. To allow someone with a serious health condition that affects the brain, to be in charge of the most powerful military in the world is extremely scary.

    I suppose it fits our age of degeneracy that our political leaders are degenerate and corrupt. When did we last see a Western leader with a first rate intellect? It has been too long.

    Your articles need to be assembled and published in book form. If you think I am some kind of sycophant you are wrong. I am cynical and I spot lousy and mediocre writing all the time. My greatest teacher in life was a woman called Dr Anne Smith (Google her). She was born at the end of WWII, the daughter of a coal miner. She had to leave school at 15 because her mother needed her contributing to the household. She fought her way back to school, studying her Latin verbs at night. By the age of 26 she had her PhD from Edinburgh university. She went on to create The Literary Review (regarded now as the top literary mag in the UK). She scraped the money together, was doing everything herself and working 18 hour days (sometimes sleeping at her desk), to make that magazine work. She had no financial brain and that magazine was stolen from her by a rich Arab.

    That woman stayed true to where she came from and the realities of life. She loathed the power of money and she died with nothing. She was the most generous human being I ever met. Her love of literature was through her blood like wine and yet she never boasted about her intellect. She was totally down to earth, had a wicked sense of humour, loved simple ways. She was fluent in Greek and Latin but loved getting her hands dirty planting seed potatoes. In her working life she was constantly shafted and conned. She once said to me, ‘I would rather that, be the one to be conned than be the one conning someone else’.

    I knew and lost a giant of a mind. She made me understand that this world is full of great minds who never become well known. That is the pity of this world. It is awash with talent and yet real talent has humility, doesn’t push itself forward. It doesn’t shout itself from the roof tops, it doesn’t claim it can cure others woes and ills. That probably explains why in every field of life there are too many charlatans. Companies want, ‘yes’ employees, government works the same. The status quo must never be challenged. The best walk away from the filth of the world, the worst roll in it like the pigs they are.

    I wish Dr Anne Smith was here. She would get your blogs compiled, edited and published. This world needs your writing ability David.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Trust me, Auld. I wish I could overcome your one criticism! Then maybe I could make some actual money at this gig.

      Juncker, I think, is well named so long as you pronounce his name as “junker.” (I think he made up the other pronunciation just like Mrs. Bouquet, whose last name was really “Bucket” in Keeping Up Appearances.)

      Yes, indeed, bizarre are the number dead bodies recently lying on Killary’s slime trail

  7. Ping from Knave_Dave:

    I took down my Rebel flag (which you can’t buy on EBAY any more) and peeled the NRA sticker off my front window.

    I disconnected my home alarm system and quit the candy-ass Neighborhood Watch.

    I bought two Pakistani flags and put one at each corner of the front yard.

    Then I purchased the black flag of ISIS (which you CAN Buy on EBAY) and ran it up the flag pole.

    Now the local police, sheriff, FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Secret Service and other agencies are all watching my house 24/7.

    I’ve NEVER felt safer and I’m saving $69.95 a month that ADT used to charge me.

    Plus, I bought burkas for me to wear when I shop or travel. Everyone moves out of the way and security can’t pat me down. If they say I’m a male wearing a burka, I just say I’m feeling like a woman today.

    Safe at last. Is this administration great or what ?

  8. Ping from Knave_Dave:

    As for whether to vote for Trump or Hillary, I can only say I regret that one of them is going to win.

  9. Ping from MeMadMax:

    Hey, Dave Haggith. There is not one law on the books that was signed into law by Trump. Not one policy in force because Trump signed an exec order. Not one dime in taxes paid because Trump raised taxes. Not one pervert lurking in a bathroom. Not one foreign debacle because Trump fucked up. Not one lie told to pass O-care. Not one man dead in Libya because Trump was asleep. Not one lie told to the mothers of those murdered in Libya or anywhere else. Not one law passed to restrict firearms because of Trump. Not one shitty Sup Ct justice on that court because of Trump. Not one coal miner is out of work because of Trump. Not one illegal wetback crossing the border because Trump let him in. Not one raghead terrorist or convicted felon in Virginia will vote for Trump. You don’t get it, Dave Haggith, so fuck you. Sincerely, Your greatest fan

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      What you’re really saying is Trump has never done anything politically; therefore, he has not track record to be judged by. He’s never signed a good executive order or a bad one because he can’t. He’s never raised taxes, but he’s also never lowered them. He’s never changed any rules with bathrooms because he has no power to do so. While he didn’t lie to pass Obama care, he did say that he would bring universal medical care to the US funded by the US taxpayer. (Now, of course, he no longer says that.)

      That’s my problem with Trump: we have nothing political to judge him by; but if we judge him by his businesses, he had declared bankruptcy numerous times, and numerous projects fail miserably, stiffed people who bought condos in his buildings, been sued thousands of times. When he talked he says how great his plans will be but usually doesn’t give a hint how he’ll go about his plan. When he does lay out a plan, as with this economic plan, it looks like the exact plan Republicans have foisted on the country for over thirty years — as establishment as can be.

      Where Trump is a politician, it is in flip flopping. He has taken both sides of almost every issue he speaks on at one time or another: Go into Libya and kill Ghadafi. Don’t go into Libya. Create universal health care. Tear it apart. Don’t allow business to take their manufacturing overseas. Take your own manufacturing overseas for your clothing line. Don’t allow migrant labor, but hire immigrant laborers all over the place to save yourself money. “I love Hillary; she’s great; she’s smart.” “Hillary is evil. She’s a criminal. She’s the worst secretary of state we’ve ever had.” Fund Hillary for office. Tear her down as unfit for office. Say that hedge-fund managers are the scum of the earth and are useless. Hire one to be your campaign manager. He’s going to fund his own campaign so he is beholden to no one. He’s not going to fund his own campaign but is going to become the Republican’s greatest fundraiser.

      He doesn’t seem to stand for anything with integrity, but stand for the issues that people are angry about and changes on those issues anytime the current around them changes.

      He’s a blowhard and always has been, self-aggrandizing to the extreme, and always has been. He’s told the whole nation he would run for president and then backed away in the past, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did something of the kind again. I think those (like myself) who want an anti-establishment candidate are going to find they’ve been duped if the vote for Trump. They’re going to find he’s a showman, not a statesman and even a con man. And when they do, their anger is going to skyrocket compared to where it is now because they’ll feel they cannot get around the establishment even when they voted for the anti-establishment candidate. And that’s when things are going to get real ugly.

      His tax plan is totally establishment. His running mate is establishment to the core of his soul. Trump can talk about all the things he’s going to do about immigration, but both Republicans and Democrats in congress will stand united against him so that he cannot get anything done. He says he’s going to undo trade deals everywhere, but the true fact is that he cannot tear up those trade deals that he says he’s going to tear up because the president of the United States doesn’t have that power. Unless he can persuade congress to revoke old trade laws and enact new deals, it’s not going to happen.

      Take a look at some of the videos others have posted here to see how many times Trump has said one thing and then said the opposite a couple of years later (or even a couple of months later). The man revels in saying the politically incorrect things that get the press fired up, which has always made him the center of attention; but the fact is that he has no integrity.

      Again, take a look at some of the videos in the comment that show Trump saying one thing and then saying the opposite over and over again. I think he just runs because he loves to be the center of attention. He’s a narcissist and a megalomaniac.

      As you’ve said above, you cannot show me anything he has actually done on any of the issues that he campaigns about. He makes a lot of noise, year in year out (and changes what he makes noise about), but he’s never accomplished one thing in actually fighting any of the things he says he will fight.

      • Ping from MeMadMax:

        First: Lots and lots of politicians flip flop on some issue or another. They do it before, during, and after their tenure. Yay….
        Second: No politician puts out a plan of any concrete facts/figures before they are elected, they put out a general “direction” of where they want to go… Once again, they do that all the time…
        Next: You said “He doesn’t seem to stand for anything with integrity”… go tell that to the Louisiana flood victims, a million dollars to the vets, and 23 other confirmed charity organizations.
        Tax plan is just that: A PLAN. And no presidential candidate puts out hard facts/figures till they make office anyways…
        His tax plan is totally establishment? lol. All tax plans are establishment because its FOR the establishment… DUH… Besides, he’s a 90’s ‘esqe centrist populist in that respect. Boo Hoo.

        At least he showed up for Louisiana…

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Let’s see, lots and lots of politicians flip flop, so that’s a good thing. He’s just like lots and lots of politicians who stand for nothing, and change with every wind that blows based on what is popular with the crowd. So, yay, he’s a politician. Trump’s done it on ALMOST everything he claims to stand for right now, so that makes him a politician’s politician.

          I agree that most politicians don’t put out a very specific plan, but Trump has been more vague than anyone I’ve ever listened to. So, yay, he’s just a politician’s politician, in that he’s worse than most on that score because he is completely vague.

          … until he put out his tax plan, and that’s when things fell apart all over the place for me because it showed he had no ideas of his own. He adopted the ideas of Larry Kudlow, who worked as his economic advisor and who is as establishment as you can possibly get. He did the Bush tax cuts on steroids, which Larry has always loved, and he stayed with the now thirty-year-old trickle-down core plan of lower taxes for the rich — Larry’s favorite part.

          Remember, the rich don’t make their money off wages; they make them off capital gains. So, the middle class will pay 25% in income taxes, while the rich pay 15% for doing nothing more than investing their money. Since almost all of Trump’s money as a real estate developer is made by capital gains, the tax savings alone will make this whole political gig worth his time and every dime he’s spent, and his buddies on Wall St. will LOVE HIM because that is where they make all their money, too! Yay.

          Goldman Sachs is waving its sacks of gold on that idea. Interesting that the tax plan emerged after he chose one of their partners to be his campaign finance director.

          So, he’s adopted the Bush tax cuts, but has put them on steroids, going far beyond Bush or Reagan, and he’s made daddy Bush’s NAFTA champion (also Obama’s TPP champion) his running mate; so that, just in case the establishment gets so mad they knock him off (though I see no reason they would at this point since both of his two only political acts have been 100% in their pocket), we get to have a totally establishment Republican president in his place. Yay again. We get to stay establishment after all!

          We get another four years of Bush’s voodoo economics with even bigger deficits (by far because the cuts are bigger and the spending is bigger). The difference between him and Bush is on immigration where Trump will build a wall. Of course, the reason he is going to get Mexico to fund it is that he knows for certain congress will never fund it, and congress controls the purse strings. Therefore, he either builds it with his own money, or Mexico builds it. Good luck with either of those options ever actually happening.

          He did show up for Louisiana, and he did give money. I’ll give him that much.

          –David

  10. Ping from Brian McKeever:

    This election cycle is also demonstrating once and for all the ideological bankruptcy of so many of the “isms.” Conservatism, liberalism, capitalism, socialism, libertarianism, nationalism–none of them offer anything in the way of remotely plausible solutions to rescue our rapidly crumbling society. When you have a completely infantile electorate full of “adults” who have the average emotional intelligence of 6-year olds, no system based upon the assumption of a knowledgeable citizenry can function for very long.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Hi Brian. Welcome to the blog. Good comments. By the same token people are too given to parties (as another form of ism, really). Neither party has any party of answering our problems because both parties have intentionally created these problem by taking care of their business cronies first and because both are fully sold out to globalism as the chief idea that overarches the two.

  11. Ping from Lincoln:

    Jul 7, 2016 The Close Relationship Between Donald Trump and the Clintons

    Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton act as if they are arch enemies. But is it all just politics?

    https://youtu.be/gJGnFDnbmhU

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Honestly, Abe! It is certainly things like that that make one wonder if Trump is just playing the Republicans, or is he just so out for himself that he thinks nothing of treating people as close family friends and then stabbing them in the back? I mean the things he says against Hillary are so cutting. (Not that she doesn’t deserve it, but it doesn’t square up that people can talk that viciously against friends unless their friendships are that superficial or words mean that little to them or Trump is secretly just a shill for Hillary in a reverse sort of way: instead of acting enthusiastically toward her; he acts negatively in such a way as to draw all her enemies toward himself, knowing that’s better than 50% of the Republican party, so that she’ll win. That would be an awful lot of work, though, just to help a friend by shooting her full of holes. Whatever it is, it’s bizarre behavior between people who are close enough family friends to receive wedding invitations. Maybe Trump just needed them then, so he courted the friendship of a US presidents; and now he doesn’t, so he kicks them in the backside.

      • Ping from Lincoln:

        Thank you for your time and comment, and I have two more with insight on Trump.

        Jul 23, 2016 Trump Exposes Trump

        In his own words, Donald Trump reveals his hypocrisy about Iraq, immigration, health care, abortion, Libya, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and more.

        https://youtu.be/kSE-XoVKaXg

      • Ping from Lincoln:

        Dec 18, 2015 Donald Trump Is The Establishment Candidate

        While his rise in the polls is attributed to his challenging the establishment and the political status quo, let’s look at the many ways Donald Trump, when it comes to his political positions, represents that very same status quo. From the Fed, to war, to civil liberties, the “anti-establishment”? Trump takes no positions not already endorsed by the establishment.

        https://youtu.be/vt2NPP1z-y8

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