Tag: trump

Epoch Times: Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents From Supreme Court on Election Case

The Epoch Times reports on the Supreme Court’s decision not to review election results in Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents From Supreme Court on Election Case: ‘We Need to Make It Clear’

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a dissenting opinion regarding the high court’s decision not to take up a case challenging the Pennsylvania Nov. 3 election results.

The court on Monday announced it won’t take up lawsuits challenging a Pennsylvania state court decision that relaxed ballot-integrity measures, including a move to extend the ballot-receipt deadline during the November election by three days due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Former President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania’s GOP urged the court to take up a review of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.

“This is not a prescription for confidence,” Thomas wrote on Monday, adding that “changing the rules in the middle of the game is bad enough.” Thomas, considered by many to be the most conservative justice, said the court should have granted a review.

“That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future,” Thomas wrote (pdf). “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Other than Thomas, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also dissented.

“If state officials have the authority they have claimed, we need to make it clear. If not, we need to put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic,” Thomas, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, also wrote.

Thomas also appeared to make a reference to allegations of fraud and irregularities during the Nov. 3 election.

“We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud,” Thomas wrote. “But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.”

The Supreme Court on Monday also declined to review a bid by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and others who asked the court to strike down a policy that expanded mail-in ballots.

A lawyer for Kelly, Greg Teufel, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week that “it’s important the court should take an interest in whether Pennsylvania’s election laws are administered constitutionally or not, and in accordance with the Pennsylvania constitution and with the federal constitution.” Teufel noted that before the court’s decision on Monday, there was a slim chance of the justices taking it up.

Trump still has a request on the Supreme Court docket regarding his challenge to changes that the Wisconsin Election Commission ordered last year.

The American Mind: Once Upon a Presidency

 

Once Upon a Presidency is written by Joshua Hochschild, Professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s University, for The American Mind.

From populist to dissident

Let’s say you’ve long been disaffected with political parties. You don’t trust them. You care about politics, but you don’t see much promise in the standard candidates.

Let’s even say you have suspicions the two parties are more interested in their own power than in helping the country.

Occasionally you see promising people come forward, challenging the conventions. Maybe your interest is piqued by an Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard, a Marianne Williamson or Bernie Sanders. Or perhaps by a Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ron Paul, or Herman Cain.

Whoever they are, interesting people with interesting ideas show up, and somehow they speak to you. They seem to share some of your interests. But they never get a foothold in the game of national politics.

Maybe you don’t understand politics, and these candidates always lose fairly on the merits. But you suspect the deck is stacked against them. They criticize Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, corruption in politics. You’ve heard them called “populists,” but they always end up getting labeled something like “fascist” or “socialist,” and cast aside.

Or maybe you do understand politics. You long for an outsider, populist candidate, not because you are naïve, but because you are well-read. You’ve studied history and political theory. You don’t care much for pundits or journalists; you read thoughtful, literate writers who provide historical and philosophical perspective—thinkers most pundits and journalists have never heard of and wouldn’t understand.

Or maybe you are a sincerely religious person and you know your beliefs are not, will never be, embodied in a political party. You know all politics is compromise. But you also feel an obligation to help improve the world through politics, and this only makes you all the more frustrated at the narrow range of options presented by the two parties.

For whatever reason—naïve disaffection, intellectual aloofness, religious detachment—you don’t feel at home in mainstream partisan politics, and you suspect that the system, the two parties themselves, are stacked against you.

There are economic and political explanations of why they might be stacked against you. Whether you are aware of these explanations or not, the evidence is clear: candidates who challenge them, candidates who are too “populist,” are always marginalized, ridiculed, suppressed.

Then along comes Trump.

The Renegade

Is his candidacy a joke? Is he worth paying attention to? Is this a publicity stunt?

He says things that seem to make sense to you, and moreover he says them effectively. He inspires followers. He beats opponents. He doesn’t put up with establishment bullshit. You don’t like him—almost everybody says this—but he shows an attractive charisma, a fighting spirit. Even his imperfections—“incivility,” strange mannerisms, shamelessness, a less than respectable past—seem to be part of his energy, his dynamism.

And his actual policies? The things he says he wants to do? Well, maybe you don’t agree with every single one, but there is actually a coherence to them, a sense of priority and pragmatism. Energy independence. Non-interventionism. Revitalizing manufacturing. In substance, as well as style, he seems, well, populist.

Sure he’s rich (maybe) and a celebrity (certainly), and so not what you expect as a populist. But unlike a lot of rich people, he’s not owned. He doesn’t seem to defer to anybody or anything. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone, least of all to the party whose nomination he seeks or the powerful interests that seem to pull the strings in Washington.

So you find yourself one of tens of millions willing to give him a chance. What’s the worst that can happen?

You notice he’s usually attacked not for his policies, but for his style. They say he is “dark.” They say he is “scary.” They say he’s a racist and misogynist. They even say he doesn’t have a sense of humor, or that he’s psychologically ill. You don’t see any of this—but you do see who is saying these things: his enemies in the two parties who would be threatened by his success. You don’t think the charges are fair—but even if they are, it’s what he’d do in office, not his style or his tweets, that matters.

Maybe you see a rally on TV, or maybe you attend one yourself. It doesn’t seem “dark.” The tone is cheerful, patriotic. He’s funny, and also substantive. And the crowd—it’s diverse and friendly. Normal people. Truckers and plumbers and builders. Lawyers and dentists and accountants. Teachers and engineers, restaurant owners and waitresses, moms and grandmothers, people who haven’t been inspired by politics before, all sorts.

The Unthinkable

And then: Trump wins.

Everybody is surprised. Some people even seem genuinely scared. You wonder if the media emphasis on how “scary” he is might be harming people’s mental health.

The opponents obviously overplay their hands. They are hearing “dog whistles” that aren’t there (and they would only signal “dogs” if they were there, anyway). Maybe some of your friends call you a racist for supporting Trump, but you know you aren’t a racist, and you don’t think he is either.

The racism charge is so common and people are so scared that a few smart liberals who opposed Trump beg for people not to lose perspective, to give him a chance, and to stop “crying wolf” about his racism.

You wonder, “Why aren’t people more interested in understanding why Trump won?” They assume that since Trump is “dark,” his widespread support must be “dark.” Trump is a racist, they say, so his supporters must be racist. Or his supporters are brainwashed, the victims of manipulation. Or maybe there was foreign interference. Maybe the election was rigged.

If you haven’t given up on the biggest media outlets by now, perhaps you find some traditional journalists that avoid this cheap, simplistic narrative—journalists doing serious work to explain the political landscape. Perhaps you find one of the honest, anti-Trump journalists, like Tim Carney or John Miller or Chris Arnade, covering Trump’s actual populist appeal, seeking to understand the kinds of people who voted for him, the real civic and economic conditions that Trump appealed to.

But these hardworking, gumshoe journalists seem the exception, not the rule. And their stories, the ones that have a ring of truth to you, are subtle, complicated, and under-the-radar. They don’t play well on social media. They don’t make good memes. It’s outrage that sells. People who are afraid don’t want to be told not to be afraid. They want to be told they have good reasons for their fear.

So cooler heads do not prevail. Trump is never given a chance. Though he evidently wants to work with Democrats—on major issues, like immigration, health care, and tax reform—the Democrats refuse to work with him.

Then, at one point, there is supposedly proof that Trump is a racist. In the wake of tragedy in Charlottesville, he said that white nationalists, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis were “fine people.” Shocking. Smoking gun.

But it’s not. You see it’s a lie, a lie started and propagated by journalists. Clever editing, willful misreadings, bad faith, outright dishonesty. You read the transcript, you watch the video, and it’s obvious: Trump said there were “fine people” on both sides of the debate about statues, but he clearly, unequivocally, and multiple times condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The “smoking gun”…isn’t.

The Lies

Half the country never heard about this though. They fell for a hoax. They believed they really had “evidence” that Trump was an unashamed racist. Crazy, huh? Why? Why would this hoax be perpetuated? Political gain? Outrage clicks? Have the journalists convinced themselves? Who knows the motive: in any case, it proved a useful myth for politicians, an easy talking point. Joe Biden believed the “fine people” lie (or claimed to). Eventually, he identifies it as the basis of his campaign against Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump’s very legitimacy as president has been challenged from the beginning. His opponents accused him of stealing the election. Foreign interference. “Russian collusion.”

These charges are leveled for years. No evidence. Just allegation. Conspiracy mongering. No proof. For years, they say the election was rigged, illegitimate. But no evidence.

Eventually the evidence that does come out is that the whole thing was made up. It’s not just a false allegation, but a contrived hoax, a political con-job. People high up in the FBI lied about it, fabricated evidence, entrapped people on false charges, testified falsely in Congress, hid evidence, and coordinated with the press to leak false information. It was an egregious abuse of surveillance powers. Maybe you see a popular documentary about it, or maybe you were able to put enough pieces together after seeing it argued about and dissected all over social media.

You’ve long known that the media manipulates and lies, and you’ve seen it exacerbated on social media. The media has become masterful at manipulating narrative, framing things, hiding things. Maybe you also watched a documentary about that too (one of the top documentaries of the year, even after being suppressed by Amazon).

You know your disaffection with “the establishment” isn’t partisan: Democrats and Republicans seem corrupt, liberals and conservatives are fed up with “the system.” The media seems systematically dishonest. These are basic civic and human rights you care about: the right to the rule of law, the right to a free press, the right to free and fair elections, the right not to be manipulated.

Big journalism itself seems to be part of the problem, coordinating with the established interests in the two parties to push their narrative. Did they help dispel the “Fine People” hoax? No, they magnified it. Did they properly cover the collusion allegation? No. Did any evidence ever emerge that Trump stole the election? No. But it made for clickable headlines for four years.

“Trump stole the election”: it was literally a conspiracy theory, but it had traction because, of course, we all know about corruption and fraud in politics. We expect it. Heck, Kennedy’s theft of the election from Nixon was a plot-point in Mad Men.

Perhaps you’ve also done a little digging and you know that there are questions about voting machines and how trustworthy they are. This was even a major Democratic complaint following the 2004 election. You’ve always wondered how those machines worked, how they could be secure. Potential for fraud has been widely recognized. Maybe you saw one of numerous stories, or even caught the HBO documentary, about how these machines are not only vulnerable, but suspiciously, intentionally vulnerable.

You’ve also noticed that social media plays a role in manipulating people—not only bad actors on social media, but the social media companies themselves: they tweak their algorithms to manipulate your behavior. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature—it’s the business model…(continues)

The Trumpet: Nancy Pelosi’s Coup D’état

Stephen Flurry of The Trumpet talks about the strangeness of the current impeachment proceedings in Nancy Pelosi’s Coup D’état

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading a coup d’état against the United States government. Last week, she called Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley to ask what she could do to prevent President Donald Trump from accessing nuclear launch codes. Then she attempted to coax Vice President Mike Pence into invoking the 25th Amendment to have President Trump removed from office. When neither effort succeeded, she introduced articles of impeachment to Congress.

Why is she so desperate to remove President Trump from office if he is going to be gone in about a week?

The impeachment articles introduced to Congress yesterday have more than 200 Democratic co-sponsors. They charge President Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” saying that he “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government” by calling on his supporters to stage a “Make America Great Again Rally” in Washington, D.C., last week. Even though the president condemned the violence at this rally and reaffirmed that the Republican Party is the “party of law and order,” Democratic lawmakers still plan to hold an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives tomorrow.

Even liberal law professor Jonathan Turley says this snap impeachment is unconstitutional. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate would not have time to hold a trial until after the president has left office. So why hold the vote?

Pelosi is either the most impatient woman in America or scared of what President Trump might do in the next eight days.

Some Democrats are even talking about impeaching President Trump after he has left office, which probably isn’t even possible. But that does not matter to the radical left. The rules, the Constitution, the law—none of that matters. Pelosi even called the military to see if she could trigger a military coup d’état.

So who are the real authoritarians in America? Who are the tyrants today?

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh says the real reason Pelosi and the Democratic Party are unwilling to wait for President Trump to leave is that they are terrified he will expose their political corruption by declassifying confidential information. “Pelosi has called the military and put them on standby in case Trump launches the nuke codes. Whom are we going to nuke?” Limbaugh said last Friday. “What are they terrified of? They are terrified that Trump is going to unleash classified documents. You know he has a bevy of them, folks. He has classified documents about the hoax, the four-year coup. … There are all kinds of people who broke the law; all kinds of people who are quaking in their boots. They are worried silly that Trump is going to unleash some of these classified documents.”

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night, Pelosi admitted that a significant motivation for President Trump’s impeachment is to eliminate any chance he has of being elected again.

The Democrats fear Donald Trump because he exposes them. They want weak-willed Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Ben Sasse who will stand by and let them destroy the Constitution.

We are witnessing the most astonishing attack on free speech in American history: President Trump and tens of thousands of his supporters have been banned from social media. Now the Washington establishment is doubling down in its efforts to ensure that the president cannot expose any more of their corruption.

My father drew particular attention to Nancy Pelosi when she was first elected speaker of the House in 2007. “The new speaker of the House is a Democrat from San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi,” he wrote in the January 2007 Trumpet. “This woman, who is now second in line for the presidency after Vice President Dick Cheney, is pro-abortion and pro-homosexual ‘marriage’; she wants to allocate federal spending for stem-cell research, which involves experimenting on unborn babies. Democrats are excited by the fact that endorsements of ‘San Francisco values’ now echo through Washington’s halls. Is this what America needs? … What did God think of these elections? … This election marks the final chapter for the United States. We mourn to see America’s downfall. We are about to see a tsunami of problems sweep over the world!”

These statements have turned out to be dead right. The radical-leftist takeover that started in 2006 has advanced to the point where liberals can steal elections and then silence anyone who dares criticize them for it. If these people get full control, they will utterly destroy America’s constitutional republic.

2 Kings 14:26-27 describe a crucial moment in Israel’s ancient history that is prophecy for modern Israel (for proof, read my father’s article “Why Donald Trump Will Remain America’s President”). That passage reads, “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.”

America today is suffering grievous affliction. These verses show that there is no one left who can help the nation—no one in Congress, no one in the courts, no one in the Trump administration. That is why God has to personally intervene and save America by the hand of an end-time type of King Jeroboam ii. If He did not, then the radical left’s coup d’état would succeed.

We are still in the final chapter of America’s downfall, but God is going to intervene in such a way as to allow His warning message to go out to the nation one last time (Amos 7:1-8). My father’s conclusion to his 2007 article rings truer now than ever: “We live in the midst of the most eventful moment in human history! God’s warning must be delivered before this tidal wave of catastrophes descends.”

AmPart: Giuliani – Powell News Conference November 19, 2020

American Partisan, among others, made note of the Nov. 19th press conference with “Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and a host of other lawyers who are representing President Trump and the American people who voted for him.”

…To be quite frank, I was mesmerized as I drove around and at one point when my errand list was done, I parked in a shopping center parking lot to listen to the end of the press conference.

Giuliani started out saying that he called the news conference because he was tired of the press saying that the Presidential election was not stolen. “Show us facts” the MSM keeps shouting…

In case Youtube removes the above video, it may alternately be viewed at Breitbart – Trump Campaign Holds Press Conference to Outline ‘Viable Path to Victory’

The Asia Times: First Comes a Rolling Civil War

A Trump supporter argues with counter protesters in St. Paul, Minnesota, November 7, 2020. Photo: Tim Evans/NurPhoto via AFP

Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times writes about the near future in First Comes a Rolling Civil War.

The massive psyop is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

US intel is very much aware of technology that can abet election fraud. That includes NSA software that can interfere with any network, as detailed by Edward Snowden, and manipulate vote counting; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; and the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000 but still used in 30 states, including every US swing state.

The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. It has weighed the pros and cons of placing as a candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia neocon warmonger and possible extortionist (along with his son) as “leader of the free world,” campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies and seconded by someone with so little support in the Democratic primaries that she was the first to drop out.

The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.

Welcome to the New Resistance

The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.

The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Successionsaga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.

Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.

While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.

Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.

Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”

So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.

Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.

Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.

So what will Deplorables do?

The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.

Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:

“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”

So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.

In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?

The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.

So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.

Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.

The Automatic Earth: Biden IS the Swamp

I can understand why various people don’t like Trump. I don’t understand anyone who thought Biden was actually a good candidate. This Automatic Earth article says it all – Biden IS the Swamp.

Since the US has no official institution to call an election soon after the polls have closed, and people want a result fast, it has befallen on the media to make the announcement. And by and large, this hasn’t been that big a deal. But when those same media have for 4 years relentlessly hounded one of the two candidates, it should be obvious that this “system” should not be applied. If only because it has no legal status whatsoever.

However, people both in the US and abroad don’t appear to be aware of this. So when the New York Times et al declare a winner, this is seen as an “official” announcement. It is not. That won’t come until the Electoral College gathers in December (8-14th?!). And at least until then, Trump will have every right to contest the election in court. Still, “world leaders” are congratulating the “next president”. Do they really not know how this works?

The idea behind it all is obvious, of course: to make Trump look like a sore loser, and Biden the president-elect, a title the media claim they can bestow upon him. Do remember that both Biden’s and Kamala’s campaign were considered dead in the water at one point, before they were magically resurrected by the party machine, which ensured that =two people very unpopular in their own party now lead the ticket. Be careful what you wish for.

In that light. I found this intriguing. Twitter adds a warning to this Trump tweet: “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted”. I haven’t seen one instance where they attached the same warning to tweets about Biden winning and being President Elect. But wouldn’t that be the same thing?

No, I don’t particularly mind Biden winning, Washington is a shit hole whoever occupies the White House and other posts, but this is not about Biden. It’s about the people behind him. About the people who elected him to be a candidate, and that’s not his voters; it’s the DNC, the FBI and media that made him possible.

Everyone in the MSM is talking about Trump’s alleged lies, as they have for 5 screeching years, main news networks on Thursday even cut off/short a speech by the President of the United States -that must be a first-, but nobody reflects on the 5-year neverending constant lies they have all told ABOUT Trump, on the entire Russiagate episode, the Mueller report based on only lies, the whole shebang.

The DNC that paid for the Steele dossier without which there would never have been a Mueller special counsel, commissioned by Rod Rosenstein when he was Deputy Attorney General, which was based on lies, exclusively, the FBI that used the Dossier to falsify FISA applications, people like Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi who kept on lying about having evidence of Russian collusion.

And still these are the people accusing Trump of lying. And they feel they can get away with it, because their media also incessantly repeated their lies, and is still doing that. Forget for a moment about what you think about Donald Trump, and tell me how you feel about an attempt to unseat an elected American president with nothing but lies.

Do you think that will be a one-off? If so, you’re blind. If Joe Biden and his handlers ever get into the White House, respect for the Office of the Presidency will still be gone, and it will be for a long time, decades. That’s the price the American people pay for the attempt to unseat Trump based on lies only. Do you really feel that’s a price worth paying? I suggest you give that some serious thought.

With Biden you don’t get Biden, you get the entire cabal that went after Trump, the Democratic Party, the media, the intelligence agencies. And yes, Biden was and is very much part of that cabal. How people do not find that a whole lot scarier than Donald Trump is beyond me.

If -and no that is not when- Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20 2021, that cabal will take over the country. And we’ve seen plenty indications that they intend to make it impossible for the Republicans to ever get one of their own elected as president again. Moreover they will not be investigated for what they concocted over the past 4-5 years.

How the Hillary campaign and the DNC leaked things to the FBI, and the FBI to the MSM, how they lied in courtrooms to get FISA applications on Trump campaign people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. How they set up Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn so he wouldn’t be Trump’s National Security Adviser, because Flynn knew too much.

It’s a scheme so full of illegal actions that it will be devastating for the entire American political system if it is never investigated, or even if it isn’t investigated very very thoroughly, by an impartial party. And it won’t be if Biden becomes president.

The cabal wants you to think this is about Trump, and any given way to get rid of him is justifiable no matter what, but that is a very dangerous way of thinking. If crimes have been committed, they must be brought into daylight and before a court.

Problem is, of course, that at least half the nation has no idea of what’s been going on. Because they get their news and information from those media that are in on the whole deal. They won’t know that the DNC paid for the Steele Dossier, or that is was just a bunch of lies, or that the FBI knew this even before Rosenstein appointed Mueller as Special Counsel. All that has been kept away from them.

And yes, 4 years ago Trump said he would fight the swamp, but landed right in the middle of it. Early in his presidency he found himself surrounded by the likes of McMaster, John Kelly, Tillerson, and many other swamp creatures, and today he still has people like Mike Pompeo. But at least Trump is an outsider, and if anything can ever be done to drain the swamp, it will have to come from an outsider. That it may take more than 4 years is something we have to take for granted.

The swamp has fought back, and they may yet win. Joe Biden is the face of that. But people who celebrate that victory should think again, whether they like Trump or not. The swamp is not good for you, and it’s not good for your country, your rights, your freedoms. Its entire MO is to take all these away from you. This is not a partisan thing; the fat ass of the swamp easily fits and sits across the divide.

Joe Biden is not Joe Biden, the man doesn’t stand for anything other than holding on to power while getting richer off that power. He’s done it for 47 years. Term limits are desperately needed in Washington, but the only people who can make that decision are those who profit most from not having term limits. If there’s one area where McConnell and Schumer and Pelosi and Lindsey Graham agree, it’s that.

And meanwhile, Trump, unlike Joe Biden, is just Trump. He doesn’t represent a cabal, or a swamp. Even if he’s surrounded by them. Trump is not the biggest threat to America, that’s just something they’ve been wanting you to think for the past 4 years. Successfully, too, for millions of Americans.

The swamp is the biggest threat, whether their handpuppets come in a Democratic or Republican disguise. But to recognize that, you would have to be able to think for yourself, and if you read or watch the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, you simply can’t do that. You just think you can.

Mises Institute: On Foreign Policy, Trump Is Still the Lesser Evil

From the Mises Institute, On Foreign Policy, Trump Is Still the Lesser Evil

Covid-19 has occupied nearly all media attention, but foreign policy remains an important topic for many Americans who are exhausted by the prevailing order of never-ending wars. Lost in the usual cacophony of politics in the Trump era—which has been marked by outrage politics and a lack of introspection in discourse—are any in-depth discussions about making changes to America’s foreign policy quagmire. For some people who became disenchanted with the nation-building adventures of the Bush and Obama eras, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 presented a glint of hope.

Although he is no dyed-in-the-wool noninterventionist, Trump questioned a number of the shibboleths of the contemporary foreign world order that places America as the unquestioned savior of the world. Some members of the foreign policy blob (or the Blob) were so taken aback by Trump’s criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the campaign trail that some feared he would have the US completely leave the military alliance. If only!

History has repeatedly shown, however, that what is said on the campaign trail does not exactly translate into tangible results. Although Trump was able to get NATO member countries such as Germany to pull more of their weight by increasing military spending to comply with NATO standards, NATO remains intact and is still being used to counter the alleged Russian Bear. The fact remains that NATO is a dinosaur of the bygone Cold War era and serves no real national interests in the present.

Nonetheless, Trump’s conversation about having European countries spend more on defense is somewhat encouraging, inasmuch as it makes the idea of countries with an American military presence assuming their defense functions slightly more palpable. Ideally, this would occur outside the NATO framework, as countries start providing for their own defense while America scales back its military presence in said countries and focuses more on its domestic affairs. Alas, we don’t operate in such circumstances.

It is amusing how foreign policy elites’ feathers continue to be ruffled by an administration that hasn’t done much to scale back the military-industrial complex (despite a lot of negative talk directed toward it from the president himself) nor to reduce America’s global footprint abroad. Take, for example, former vice president Dick Cheney. The former member of the Bush brain trust expressed his dismay with President Donald Trump’s supposedly “transactional” foreign policy of weighing the costs and benefits of a number of alliances and partnerships the US has made with other countries over the years. Yes, a transactional foreign policy is not ideal, but it’s a marginal improvement over the missionary role America has taken during the last century. A transactional foreign policy actually takes into consideration that there are actual costs—human and financial—when projecting power abroad.

Many on the mainstream right correctly observe that there are no free lunches in matters of domestic economics. But when foreign policy comes up similar logic escapes them. With over eight hundred bases across the globe and a military budget larger than the next ten highest-spending militaries combined, the US is clearly putting too much of an emphasis on policing the world, when there are plenty of countries that are willing and capable of defending themselves if given the chance. Plus, the US has many domestic problems—from economic uncertainty to social tension—that it will need to sort out in the next few decades.

Most of the liberal and conservative establishment is trapped in outdated twentieth-century notions of foreign policy strategy and is not aware of notable geopolitical realignments taking place across the globe. US policymakers will have to live with the fact that the US cannot police every corner of the world. Additionally, should the US government get overzealous, there will be countries ready to resist American efforts to expand its influence and make potential interventions costly.

The talk about an “America First” foreign policy has been refreshing, but the U.S. has yet to commit to a coherent withdrawal policy. You either have the likes of Liz Cheney leading a bipartisan coalition in the US House to roadblock any withdrawal efforts, or even worse, when the administration announces some form of troop reduction, the generals remain quiet or say that the withdrawal must be “conditions based.” All these roadblocks make one wonder who really calls the shots on foreign policy. With how radically the US state has transformed over the last century, the straightforward policymaking guide that the Constitution originally laid out looks more and more like a dead letter. Unelected bureaucrats and foreign policy officials seem to be the ones actually running the show while presidents function as mere placeholders.

On a more positive note, the Trump administration has made some solid nominations for the positions of ambassador to Afghanistan and ambassador to Germany. William Ruger (the nominee for the Afghanistan ambassadorship) and Douglas Macgregor (the nominee for the German ambassadorship) are both critics of the US government’s perpetual war strategy and overreliance on a militarized foreign policy. As evidence of how dangerous their views are to the foreign policy establishment, both nominees have received stiff opposition from liberal interventionist to neoconservative circles—a solid sign that they’re good choices, but also an indicator that their nominations will likely be torpedoed.

If you think change will come about by getting rid of Trump, think again. Trump’s opposition is simply nothing to write home about. A Biden-Harris administration would do very little to the warfare state. We shouldn’t be fooled by any clever marketing that Trump’s rivals put forward. They’re not a saner, more level-headed alternative to the supposedly erratic Trump. As Ryan McMaken makes clear, the Democratic duo will continue operating within the same parameter of never-ending wars and not fundamentally reorient foreign policy toward restraint. Defense contractors can be confident that business will go on as usual. This is the tragedy of modern-day politics, which is dominated by a uniparty that broadly agrees on foreign policy questions.

Marginal changes in personnel and political leadership are always welcome, but they ignore a fundamental precondition for any meaningful change in policy—a shift in political ideas; namely, a rejection of the progressive liberal ethos of American foreign policy, which international relations scholar Kevin Doremus believes has the objective of “providing global security, global capitalism, democracy, and peace.”

The irony of this foreign policy outlook is that it ignores how liberalism came about in the first place. It was not brought about by putting GIs on the ground or through subversive forms of soft power, such as color revolutions, but rather emerged in the West through organic processes such as decentralization and jurisdictional competition. While certain countries can embrace Western institutions and reap great success, Doremus observed that the “combination of universal liberal values with the unmatched US military power leads to advocates ignoring the historical and cultural contexts of other countries” and make them believe that the US government can poke and prod countries into becoming facsimiles of America and other Western liberal democracies.

Like all forms of intervention, unintended consequences are bound to occur. They can come in the form of blowback or the development of balancing coalitions such as the emerging China-Iran-Russia axis, which has surfaced in response to perceived overreach by hegemonic states such as the US. The rise of illiberalism on the international stage is largely the product of a US government full of imperial hubris that doesn’t take into account cultural differences among polities and whose first instinct is to browbeat countries that don’t conform to its agenda.

The power of ideas cannot be overstated in the struggle to chart a new path for foreign policy. As Ludwig von Mises explained in Epistemological Problems of Economics, “No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology.” The same dynamic is in play with regard to foreign policy. Unless there’s a massive shift in consciousness in public opinion both domestically and abroad that recognizes how social engineering does not work, the ruling class will constantly be promoting regime change endeavors and other militaristic adventures with little to no pushback.

American Mind: What Happens if No One Wins?

This article at The American Mind discusses what happens to the Presidency if no one clearly wins the election – What Happens if No One Wins?

The Constitution provides for election crises—and its provisions favor Trump.

*This article was co-written with Robert J. Delahunty, a law professor at St. Thomas University.

Conservatives and liberals agree on few things, but one of them is that the country may well see an election crisis this year. All of the ingredients seem to be present: a closely and bitterly divided electorate; the threat of violence and disruption on Election Day or after; and the unusual circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this essay we provide a short roadmap through the main legal and constitutional issues that could arise if Election Day fails to result in a clear winner of the presidency, identify opportunities for political mischief, and explain why the weight of the constitutional structure favors President Donald Trump in a contested election.

Unusual Circumstances

A crucial fact in this year’s election is that, largely because of COVID, an unprecedented number of voters will vote by mail. According to the Washington Post, 84% of the electorate, or 198 million eligible voters, will be able to vote by mail this year. In the 2016 election, roughly 25% of the votes were cast by mail. This year, as many of half the ballots may be mailed in.

Republicans tend to prefer voting in person while Democrats tend to prefer absentee balloting. In the swing state of North Carolina, Democrats requested 53% of the absentee ballots and Republicans 15%. A July poll reported that 60% of the Democrats in Georgia, but only 28% of the Republicans, are likely to vote by mail.

Counting mailed votes could make a decisive difference on Election Day. In the 2012 election, Barack Obama bolstered his winning margins substantially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania through overtime votes. Hillary Clinton picked up tens of thousands of overtime votes in 2016, though not enough to win. Last April, over 79,000 Wisconsin ballots arrived after election day (and were counted by court order) in a state that Trump carried in 2016 by about 23,000 votes. In Michigan’s August primary, 6,405 ballots missed the deadline and were not counted; Trump carried that state by 10,000 votes.

In one plausible scenario, Trump appears to be the winner on the morning after Election Day, but a “blue wave” begins in the days and weeks after, and Biden claims a belated, overtime victory.

Both Democrats and Republicans have sought either to enlarge or restrict the opportunities for absentee voting. A massive amount of litigation is already taking place. At last count, 279 Covid-related election cases are currently underway in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico—and that tally does not include other litigation over other election issues.

Vote-counting problems—and the litigation they will generate—do not end once deadlines are decided. States must match signatures on ballots to those on voter rolls and verify that each ballot is valid. Although some key states permit pre-Election Day verification, others do not. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were among the latter. “Real problems will emerge here,” Karl Rove has warned, “especially when there’s a big increase in mail-in ballots over 2016.”

In Pennsylvania, for example, 84,000 people voted by mail in the 2016 primaries; in 2020, 1.5 million did. In the best of circumstances, matching signatures on mail-in ballots to those on file with the state (from voter registration, ballot applications, or the DMV) is not, to the untrained eye, an easy task. Repeated and time-consuming challenges to the verification process will delay a final, official count.

The Electoral Count

Delayed election results could mean much more than the inconvenience of waking up on November 4 and not knowing who is President. They could trigger a constitutional crisis that would shake the country to its foundations.

An old federal statute, the Electoral Count Act of 1887, establishes deadlines for the states to report their official results and for the 538 members of the Electoral College to meet. The latter date this year is December 14, or 41 days after Election Day. The state deadline this year is December 8. The date is a safe harbor: if a state reports in time, Congress will accept its electors. The Act provides that if “any controversy or contest” remains after December 8, Congress will decide which electors—if any—may cast their state’s votes in the Electoral College.

Delays in counting the votes could well encroach on the December 8 deadline. State legislators and governors might come under mounting pressure to designate electors on their own if the popular vote remains incomplete, especially if there are allegations of fraud or abuse. Article II of the Constitution provides that “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” The time when state legislatures directly appointed electors themselves are long gone: since the 19th century, states have delegated that power to their voters. But as the Supreme Court noted in Bush v. Gore, a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.”

The constitutional question is not whether but how a state legislature could reclaim the appointment of electors. States have provided by statute for the selection of their electors by their voters; therefore it one might argue they may only resume that power with a second, superseding statute. On the other hand, the Constitution specifically designates state legislatures, rather than the executives or a combination of the two, to choose the electors.  A state legislature might argue that a past legislature-and-governor cannot constrain its discretion to choose electors today.  Is it likely that state legislatures in battleground states could reclaim their constitutional power before the December 8 deadline looms? Probably not.

While Republicans control the state legislatures in six key battleground states, only two of those states also have Republican governors (Arizona and Florida). In four other contested states Republicans control the legislature, but Democrats control the executive: Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Only if the Constitution allows state legislatures, acting without the governor, to choose the electors, could those states cast electoral votes in a disputed popular election.

But there is another scenario in which the state legislatures could designate electors if litigation held up a definitive accounting of the popular vote. This requires a closer look at the Electoral Count Act.

The Act contemplates a post-election period in which states have the opportunity to resolve any “controversy or contest” in accordance with their pre-election law through “judicial or other methods or procedures.” Once this process has reached a definitive conclusion or “final ascertainment,” the governor is then to certify the electors. But the Act presupposes that all such controversies or contests have run their course before the governor submits the certified list of electors. What if December 8 is at hand and the controversies are still going on?

Another provision of the Act could come into play. If a State has held an election on November 3 “and has failed to make a choice” by the December 8 deadline, the Act declares that “the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day [after Nov. 3] in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.” That failure could arise from fraud, uncertainty, ongoing recounts or litigation. In those circumstances, a state could be said to have “failed” to make a choice, and its legislature could pick the electors.

That analysis presumes, however, that the Act is constitutional. The founders anticipated the possibility that the Electoral College would fail. In fact, they may not have foreseen political parties that would present the same presidential candidates in every state. Instead, several Founders seem to have thought that the states would often propose local favorites, that the Electoral College would reach no majority in the face of multiple candidates, and that the election would have to go to a backup procedure.

No candidate may win in the Electoral College for less noble reasons as well. Suppose states send electoral votes that—even if certified by the governor—remain under question, whether because of fraud in the vote, inability to count the ballots accurately under neutral rules, or a dispute between branches of a state government.

While the Electoral Count Act appears to create safe harbors for a state’s report of its Electoral College votes, the Act itself might prove unconstitutional. Under the 12th Amendment, “the President of the Senate [i.e., the Vice President] shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates [of the electoral votes of the states] and the votes shall then be counted.” Left unclear is who is to “count” the electors’ votes and how their validity is to be determined.

Over the decades, political figures and legal scholars have offered different answers to these constitutional questions. We suggest that the Vice President’s role is not the merely ministerial one of opening the ballots and then handing them over (to whom?) to be counted. Though the 12th Amendment describes the counting in the passive voice, the language seems to envisage a single, continuous process in which the Vice President both opens and counts the votes.

The check on error or fraud in the count is that the Vice President’s activities are to be done publicly, “in the presence” of Congress. And if “counting” the electors’ votes is the Vice President’s responsibility, then the inextricably intertwined responsibility for judging the validity of those votes must also be his.

If that reading is correct, then the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional. Congress cannot use legislation to dictate how any individual branch of government is to perform its unique duties: Congress could not prescribe how future Senates should conduct an impeachment trial, for example. Similarly, we think the better reading is that Vice President Pence would decide between competing slates of electors chosen by state legislators and governors, or decide whether to count votes that remain in litigation.

The Role of the House

If the electoral count remains uncertain enough to deprive either Trump or Biden of a majority in the Electoral College, then the 12th Amendment orders that “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.” Our nation barely avoided that outcome 20 years ago in the 2000 Florida recount and has only used twice it in our history (in 1800 and 1824). So if the disasters described above occur, then the Constitution gives the power to choose the President to the House.

So it seems like Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats would get to pick the winner. But not so fast, said the framers, who feared congressional control of the executive. Rather than allow a simple majority vote, the Constitution requires that the House choose the President by voting as state delegations. If the House decides the Presidency, Delaware would have the same number of votes as California.

This unusual process makes sense in light of the larger constitutional structure. The Framers rejected the idea that Congress should pick the President, which they believed would rob the Chief Executive of independence, responsibility, and energy. They wanted the people to have the primary hand in choosing the President, but mediated through the states, because they also feared direct democracy.

Thanks to Republican advantages among the states (rather than the cities) the current balance of state delegations in Congress favors Republicans by 26-23 (with Pennsylvania tied). If today’s House chose the president, voting by state delegations, Trump would win handily.

But there is another twist. The 20th Amendment to the Constitution seats a new Congress on January 3, but does not begin the term of a new president until noon on January 20. The new Congress chosen in the 2020 elections, rather than the current Congress, would choose the President. Even though Republicans currently have a majority of delegations, Democrats have narrowed the gap—after the 2016 elections, Republicans had held a 32-17 advantage in state congressional delegations. If Democrats can win one more congressional seat in Pennsylvania and then flip one more delegation, they could achieve a 25-25 tie in the House. Then the election would require political bargaining of the most extreme kind for the House to resolve a disputed presidential election.

First Constitutional Backup

Suppose the House cannot agree, which could well happen given the polarization of our politics. The Constitution even provides for this. If the House splits 25-25 between Trump and Biden, then the 20th Amendment elevates the Vice President-elect to the Presidency.

Under the 12th Amendment, when the Electoral College fails, the Senate chooses the Vice President. Unlike the House procedure, the Senators each have one vote, meaning that under the current balance in the upper chamber, 53 Republicans would choose Mike Pence to effectively become the next President. But, as with the House, it is the Senate chosen by the 2020 elections, rather than the 2018 elections, that will choose the Vice President. On November 4, we may well learn who will win the Presidency—because control of the Senate is also at stake.

Suppose that this November, Democrats take three Senate seats—those in Arizona, Maine, Colorado, and North Carolina, while losing Alabama—and the Senate divides 50-50. Could Pence, as the sitting President of the Senate on January 3, break a tie in the Senate in his favor to make him Vice President on January 20, 2021, and hence President due to the inability of the House to break its own deadlock? It appears that this is the case; Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution says the Vice President “shall have no Vote, unless [Senators] be equally divided.” It does not restrict the Vice President’s tie-breaking vote to some functions of the Senate but not others. In those extreme circumstances, Pence might recuse himself, but the Constitution would not require it.

Second Constitutional Backup

Suppose then the House, Senate, sitting President, and even Vice President Pence decide that he should not use that tie-breaking power. Then the Constitution’s backup system for the Electoral College will have failed.

That still leaves a second backup system. Article II of the Constitution states that in “the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability” of both the President and Vice President, Congress can declare “what Officer shall then act as President” until the disability ends or a new President is elected. Don’t forget that word, “Officer,” because it may make all the difference.

Under the current federal succession statute, Congress decided that congressional leaders should assume the Presidency. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sits first in line, followed by the President pro tem of the Senate, currently Chuck Grassley. From there, the line of succession continues to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and then the other cabinet members.

But, as Yale law professor Akhil Amar persuasively argued in 1995 (at the prospect of Newt Gingrich becoming President should Congress impeach Bill Clinton!), this part of the federal succession statute likely violates the Constitution. Notice that Article II requires that the Presidency pass down to an “Officer.” The Constitution generally—but not always—refers to “Officers” as members of the Executive Branch. Further, the Incompatibility Clause of the Constitution prohibits Members of Congress to hold executive office. Neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Grassley can become President. Mike Pompeo would become President—an outcome so unusual, so unexpected, it just might fit our bizarre times.

The American Mind: The Truth About America

From the editors at The American Mind – The Truth About America.

Trump is right: only patriotic American history can heal our deep wounds.

This week we reprinted a series of speeches given at the White House Conference on American History. As we noted, the conference was the first of its kind. On the one hand, it’s remarkable no one in power ever thought to host such a thing. On the other, it’s possible no one has ever needed one quite so much as we do now.

President Trump and his distinguished guests—among them several affiliates, friends, and one current board member of the Claremont Institute—defended things it would have been laughable to defend during much of our country’s history. Not because those things are indefensible, but because they have not been seriously up for debate except in our worst and most fractious moments. These things were once the core of our national consensus, the context within which we had all our other discussions and debates.

“On this very day in 1787,” said Trump, “our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization. Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.”

There is no such thing as pride in or love for America without some version of this foundational belief. Either you think the regime described in our Constitution can work, is noble, and represents a serious advance in the history of nationhood, or you think America ought to be transformed beyond recognition.

We at the Claremont Institute are dedicated to proving, emphatically and without qualification, that a full endorsement of our country’s principles is not only a patriotic act but, intellectually and morally, an unimpeachable one. That entails insisting that the history of our country is one of dedicated human striving toward the highest ideals, and the most prudent political enactment of those ideals, possible on this earth.

Our country was not founded in racism—it was in fact conceived as a uniquely ambitious effort to abolish racism and destroy its intellectual foundations in the West once and for all. That project, over time and through much tragic hardship, has been successful beyond even what its architects may have dared to hope. The cost of that success—in patient intellectual effort, in wrenching expenditure of blood and treasure—has been enormous. But it was worth the cost and would have been worth more. America is a wonder of the world.

This is not what many Americans today think, because it is not what they have been taught. The results of a dedicated, decades-long effort to undermine the foundations of America’s faith in itself are now visible. Today that effort is led most visibly by Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, but insidiously supported by Critical Race Theory training sessions in board rooms, small businesses, and until recently the halls of federal government agencies around the country. There is a diabolical genius to the way this effort has proceeded, in that it has involved both brute intimidation—in the form of cancel culture and its attendant threats of unemployment or unpersoning—and psychological subversion—in the form of an attack on our nation’s history.

It is this latter and more serious offensive against American civic life that President Trump has undertaken to countermand with his 1776 Commission for the promotion of patriotic education. Like the Progressives and Marxists who went before her, Hannah-Jones and her co-conspirators seek to erode American confidence in the basic goodness of our regime. If the Times, the Pulitzer Center, the ruling class, and their various minions can persuade us that the founders are not to be trusted—that they were disingenuous about their aims, that their timeless truths were actually self-serving lies, that the Constitution they composed has fallen fatally out of date—then they will convince us to commit national suicide all on our own.

The effectiveness of that approach is visible already in the insurrectionary violence that now routinely convulses American cities. Such violence is, by Hannah-Jones’s own admission, exactly what she wants and knows how to achieve. As many speakers at the White House Conference pointed out, it is the long subversion of American History—from the elementary school level on up to the universities—that has at last born this bitter fruit of civil unrest.

Trump is wise to fight this domestic terrorism on its own terms—to root Critical Race Theory out of federal training sessions at the heroic urging of Claremont alumnus Christopher Rufo, for example, and to insist that Americans be taught the real history of their country once again.

An objection frequently made to such efforts by both useful idiots and partisan hacks is that remaking American education somehow amounts to propagandistic indoctrination or even a breach of the First Amendment. This is a spectacularly puerile response. As Plato and Aristotle taught, all education just is shaping the soul to love some things and avoid others. Those aversions and loves, once engrained in the hearts of the young, find their expression through the political life in which those young grow up to participate.

Our school system already indoctrinates our nation’s youth in a most dishonest and dangerous manner. Since Howard Zinn’s ridiculous People’s History of the United States became standard in American high schools, and the AP U.S. History curriculum took its cue from Zinn’s calumny, we have been teaching children to hate our country by allowing radicals to lie through their teeth about it: they’ve taught for many years now that America is racist and evil at its core.

There is no alternative now or ever but to teach the opposite, that is, the truth: that America’s history is a story of triumph, that the country we live in is the world’s greatest hope even now, that she is worthy of nothing but love and, if it comes to it, the very extremes of self-sacrifice. We commend President Trump and his team for boldly leading after so many others failed to do so. But more remains to be done—much more.

In his Farewell Address, President Ronald Reagan catalogued his successes—and, by his own admission, his one great failure. In his day, he said, “We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American, and we absorbed almost in the air a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” If not from family and neighborhood, “you could get a sense of patriotism from school” or even “from the popular culture.”

But as America was “about to enter the ’90s,” Reagan noted that “Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.” “An informed patriotism,” he said, “is what we want”—but “are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?”

In the aftermath of the “Reagan Revolution,” Reagan himself warned that “our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it.” He went out of his way to note that “well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style” for the creators of culture.

Reagan then warned: “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of that—of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.” The American spirit is now in crisis precisely for this reason.

In response, as Reagan said, “We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important.”

In every high school classroom, in every boardroom, in every university, we must fight at every level to restore America’s sense of herself. If we lose this fight, we lose America. But we can yet win.

President Trump points us in the right direction.

International Man: Six Reasons Why the Wrong Party Will Win the Most Important US Election Since 1860

Doug Casey at International Man writes his thoughts on the 2020 election in Six Reasons Why the Wrong Party Will Win the Most Important US Election Since 1860

The upcoming election may be the most important in US history. At least as important as that of 1860, which led directly to the War Between the States. In 2016 I believed Trump would win and placed a money bet on him. This time I’m not so sure, despite Trump’s “incumbent advantage” and the fact the Democrats could hardly have picked two worse candidates.

I see at least six reasons why this is true, namely:

  • The Virus
  • The economy
  • Demographics
  • Moral collapse of the old order
  • The Deep State
  • Cheating

The consequences of a Democrat victory will be momentous. Let’s look at why it’s likely.

1. The Virus

Despite the fact COVID is only marginally more deadly than the annual flu, and the fact it’s only a danger to the very old (median death age 80), the hysteria around it is changing the nature of life itself. It’s proven much less serious than the Asian flu of the late ’60s or the Hong Kong flu of the late ’50s. And not even remotely comparable to the Spanish flu of 1918-19. None of those had any discernable effect on the economy or politics. COVID is a trivial medical event but has created a gigantic psychological hysteria.

The virus hysteria is, however, a disaster from Trump’s point of view for several reasons. None of them have anything to do with his “handling” of the virus—apart from the fact that medical issues should be a matter between a patient and his doctor, not bureaucrats and politicians.

First, the virus hysteria is severely limiting the number and size of Trump’s rallies, which he relies on to keep enthusiasm up.

Second, more people are staying at home and watching television than ever before. However, unless they glue their dial to Fox, they’ll gravitate towards the mainstream media, which is stridently anti-Trump. People who are on the fence (and most voters are always in the wishy-washy middle) will mostly hear authoritative-sounding anti-Trump talking heads on television, and they’ll be influenced away from Trump.

Third, older people have by far the heaviest voter turnout, but roughly 80% of the casualties of the virus are elderly. And over 90% of those deaths are related to some other condition. Be that as it may, fear will make older people less likely to vote in this election. The COVID hysteria will still be with us in November. Older people tend to be culturally conservative and are most likely Trumpers.

Fourth, in today’s highly politicized world, the government is supposed to be in charge of everything. Despite the fact there are thousands of viruses, and they’ve been with us thousands of years, this one is blamed on the current government. Boobus americanus will tend to vote accordingly.

2. The Economy

Keeping his voters at home is one thing. But the effects the hysteria is having on the economy are even more important. The effect of COVID on the economy should be trivial since only a small fraction of the relatively few Covid deaths are among people who are economically active.

Presidents always take credit when the economy is good and are berated when it’s bad on their watch, regardless of whether they had anything to do with it. If the economy is still bad in November—and I’ll wager it’s going to be much worse, despite the Fed creating trillions of new dollars, and the government handouts—many people will reflexively vote against Trump.

In February, before the lockdown, there were about 3.2 million people collecting unemployment. Now, there are about 30 million. So it seems we have over 30 million working-age people who are . . . displaced. That doesn’t count part-time workers, who aren’t eligible for unemployment but are no longer working.

The supplementary benefits have ended. If they return, it will be at lower levels. The artificial good times brought on by free money will end too. It will be blamed on the Republicans.

Worse, the public has come to the conclusion that a guaranteed annual income works. This virus hysteria has provided a kind of test for both Universal Basic Income and Modern Monetary Theory—helicopter money. So far, anyway, it seems you really can get something for nothing.

An important note here: Trump—whatever his virtues—is an economic ignoramus. He’s supported both helicopter money and artificially low-interest rates since he’s been in office. But especially now, because he knows it’s all over if today’s financial house of cards collapses on his watch.

I’ll wager that, out of the 160 million work-force Americans, 30 million will still be out of work by voting day. The recognition that the country is in a depression will sink in. The virus hysteria was just the pin—or sledgehammer, perhaps—that broke the bubble. But that’s another story. What’s for sure is that the average American will look for somebody to blame. As things get seriously bad, people will want to change the system itself, as was true in the 1930s.

The only economic bright spot for Trump is the stock market. But it’s at bubble levels. Not because the economy is doing well, but because of the avalanche of money being printed. Where it is in November is a question of how much more money the Fed will print, and how much of it flows into the stock market. Even then, there’s an excellent chance it could collapse between now and the election.

For reasons I’ve detailed in the past, the economy is now entering the trailing edge of a gigantic financial and economic hurricane. The Greater Depression will be much different, longer-lasting, and nastier than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946. And people vote their pocketbook. Bill Clinton was right when he said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” If stocks fall, it will compound this effect. A high stock market just gives the illusion of prosperity. And, at least while stocks are up, contributes to the atmosphere of class warfare. Poor people don’t own stocks.

3. Demographics

Since the gigantic political, economic, and social crisis we’re in will be even more obvious come November, people will want a radical change. Since that—plus lots of free stuff—is what the Democrats are promising, they’re likely to win. But there are other factors.

The last election was close enough, but now, four years later, there are four more cohorts of kids that have gone through high school and college and have been indoctrinated by their uniformly left-wing teachers. They’re going to vote Democrat overwhelmingly.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and people like her, are both the current reality and the future of the Democratic Party—and of the US itself. She knows how to capitalize on envy and resentment. The Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements have added the flavor of a race war to the mix. Racial antagonism will become more pronounced as whites lose their majority status over the next 30 years.

Nobody, except for a few libertarians and conservatives, is countering the purposefully destructive ideas AOC represents. But they have a very limited audience and not much of a platform. Arguing for sound money and limited government makes them seem like Old Testament prophets to Millenials. Collectivism and statism are overwhelming the values of individualism and liberty.

It’s exactly the type of thing the Founders tried to guard against by restricting the vote to property owners over 21, going through the Electoral College. Now, welfare recipients who are only 18 can vote, and the Electoral College is toothless.

For the last couple of generations, everybody who’s gone to college has been indoctrinated with leftist ideas. Almost all of the professors hold these ideas—as well as high school and grade school instructors. They place an intellectual patina on top of emotional, fantasy-driven leftist ideas.

When the economy collapses in earnest, everybody will blame capitalism. Because Trump is rich, he’s incorrectly associated with capitalism. The country—especially the young, the poor, and the non-white—will look to the government to “do something.” They see the government as a cornucopia.

A majority of Millennials are in favor of socialism, as are so-called People of Color. By 2050, whites will be a minority in the US. A straw in the wind is that a large majority of the people who commit suicide each year are middle-class white males—essentially, Trump supporters. The demographic handwriting is on the wall. Trump’s election in 2016 was an anomaly. No more than a Last Hurrah.

4. Moral Collapse

There’s now a lot of antagonism toward both free minds and free markets. A majority of Americans appear to actually support BLM, an openly Marxist movement. Forget about free minds—someone might be offended, and you’ll be pilloried by the mob. Forget about free markets—they’re blamed for all the economic problems, even though it’s the lack of them that caused the problem. The idea of capitalism is now considered undefendable.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the system is obviously bad for the Republicans and good for the Democrats, who promote themselves as the party of change.

It used to be pretty simple—the Republicans and the Democrats were just two sides of the same coin, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Traditionally, one promoted the warfare state more, the other the welfare state. But it was mostly rhetoric; they were pretty collegial. Now, both the welfare and the warfare state have been accepted as part of the cosmic firmament by both parties. The difference between them is now about cultural issues. Except that polite disagreement has turned into visceral hatred.

The Dems at least stand for some ideas—although they’re all bad ideas. The Republicans have never stood for any principles; they just said the Dems wanted too much socialism, too fast, which is why they were always perceived—correctly—as hypocrites. Antagonism between the right and the left is no longer political or economic—it’s cultural. That’s much more serious…(continues)

Zero Hedge: Pelosi Says There Should Be No Presidential Debates

From Zero Hedge, “I Don’t Think There Should Be Any Debates” Says Pelosi, Calling Them An “Exercise In Skullduggery”. In order to protect Biden who has recently come under fire for exhibiting symptoms of dementia, top Democrats have been coming up with any reasons to avoid a Presidential debate.

Nancy Pelosi has just joined the chorus of prominent Democrats trying desperately to avoid placing Joe Biden in front of the proverbial firing squad in a debate with President Trump.

“I don’t think that there should be any debates,” Pelosi said on Thursday, one day after President Trump demanded Biden take a drug test before the two square off.

“I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him – nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States,” she added.

Pelosi said that Trump was “disgraceful” when he ‘stalked’ Hillary Clinton during the 2016 debate by walking near her, and that he will probably “act in a way that is beneath the dignity of the presidency.”

“I think he will also belittle what the debates are supposed to be about. And they’re not to be about skulduggery on the part of somebody who has no respect for the office he holds, much less the democratic process.

“I don’t think that he should dignify that conversation with Donald Trump.”

Pelosi then suggested that each candidate could hold separate ‘conversations’ with voters, saying: “Let that be a conversation with the American people, not an exercise in skulduggery.”

Watch:

Pelosi is far from the first Democrat trying to avoid a Trump-Biden debate. As Rick Moran wrote via PJMedia earlier this month:

*  *  *

Democrats around the country have begun to pressure the Biden campaign to call off all debates with Donald Trump due to the coronavirus pandemic, they say.

In truth, the reason they don’t want Biden to debate Trump is that they don’t think Trump will play by their rules. The president would take over the debate and make it about what he wants, not what Biden wants.

Democrats are also worried about Biden’s mental stamina and his ability to remain engaged for an hour and a half during a debate.

Newsweek:

Democratic strategists and supporters of Vice President Joe Biden are urging him not to debate President Donald Trump in the lead-up to Election Day, citing Trump’s publicity stunts and disregard for the rules in 2016. Meanwhile Biden backers, including some conservatives, applauded the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan for cancelling their scheduled debates over COVID-19 concerns.

Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart joined several Democratic Party strategists in bluntly advising Biden, “whatever you do, don’t debate Trump.” Speaking on CNN Saturday, Lockhart said Trump shouldn’t be given another platform which will enable him to “repeat lies,” which he said occurred in the 2016 debates against Hillary Clinton.

Trump has a knack for exaggeration and hyperbole that Democrats don’t like. It’s very effective in debates and Biden would spend most of his time on the defensive.

Automatic Earth Blog: Are The Tables Starting To Turn?

…according to a Zogby Analytics poll, Trump’s job approval numbers are now at record high levels. And I know polls -and pollsters- can be biased, and so can the press quoting them, but to see three in a row, Reuters/Ipsos, Rasmussen, Zogby, all reporting similar movement, may still be significant…

Medium: Why Trump Is Likely to Win Again

Freelance writer Thomas Greene has written a piece at Medium.com titled Why Trump Is Likely to Win Again. While I believe he gets some things wrong (like a lot of people do believe H. Clinton is a criminal), I agree that voter anger over elected representatives and un-elected bureaucrats who have been captured (and corrupted) by the system is the primary fuel keeping the Trump engine running.

The Bronx of my childhood was a paradise. My street ran parallel to a section of the old Croton Aqueduct, by then long disused, which we kids called the Ackey. Along its banks grew trees and bushes and wild flowers forming a ribbon of thicket in which we played, and through which we “hiked.”

We were always in the street. We learned our games and rhymes by word of mouth, from older to younger. We chose our adventures and settled disputes among ourselves. We played stick ball and ringolevio and skully, red rover and stoop ball, and a deliciously sadistic variety of Johnny on a pony. We raced about on noisy cheap skates with metal wheels.

In this urban sanctuary I grew up safe, loved, happy, and unmistakably working class, yet somehow I slipped away. I was reared to become an ironworker or electrician, but I managed to pass through a posh New England liberal arts college and end up a tech journalist and author. I’ve worked unsupervised, chiefly from home, since the 1990s.

Most of my relatives and old neighborhood friends hate people like me. And I don’t blame them. Most are lifelong Democrats, yet they voted for Donald Trump, and will again, and I can’t blame them for that, either. Let me explain.

My career is the product of an economic revival engineered by the center-right New Democrats of the Clinton era and subsequent administrations. I’ve observed the tech industry for two decades; it’s a job, but it’s hardly work: I’m a nerd; I like science, technology, and medicine. Right now, I couldn’t be more comfortable in lockdown. Amazon supplies my dry goods while a friendly driver brings my groceries. My family and I are safe. No one comes near us without a mask. I control my environment; I choose the people in whose presence I’ll work, if any. I can smoke and drink on the job if I please. So long as I honor my deadlines and file clean copy, no one has anything to say about it. Tech’s been good to me.

But the guy I was expected to become walks beside me like an imaginary friend I never outgrew. I think about him often — daily, if I’m honest. He commutes by bus, encountering irresponsible louts who refuse to mask up. He worries about it, too. His wife, who had earned a second income, is at home supervising their kids. He lives by the lunch buzzer and the punch clock. If there’s music where he works, it’s amplified by cheap, overdriven speakers and the genre will suit him only by chance. The temperature and ambient noise and lighting were calibrated by industrial psychologists. He can’t evade disagreeable co-workers. He’s paid far less than a family wage, but he’s got no health coverage or pension. He endures daily uncertainty about his family’s needs. Why should he not hate me? I would hate me if I were him.

He and millions of others failed to thrive in the tech economy, but that was a feature, not a bug. Blue-collar Americans were never going to adapt, despite the assurances of New Economy cheerleaders, many of whom were in government. Factories closed and data centers opened. Dotcom outfits traded on nothing more than an online presence, which somehow made sense to us. The New Democrats exalted capital both tangible and intellectual, and devalued labor, as if they’d been old-school Establishment Republicans. They fawned over Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Andy Grove the way one imagines Calvin Coolidge gushing about Rockefellers and Morgans, Vanderbilts and Astors.

A high-tech meritocracy would lead America in a better direction, and the need was urgent. The Old Economy was failing, undeniably. It was time to re-formulate it with a progressive veneer: no more dirty factories or pollution; NAFTA would ship that mess abroad. America would subsist on green energy, outsourcing, financial services, the sacrament of e-commerce, and high-tech gadgets: a middle-class Valhalla governed by upper-middle-class trustees from the best schools. There would be no need for troublesome relics like labor unions; the virtuous nature of technological progress would itself ensure quality jobs and dignity for workers. Plentiful consumer credit would replace the family wage and health-care benefits. Blue-collar America would suffer collateral damage, but too much was at stake; it would be a necessary sacrifice. And of course we’d be gentle; we were Democrats and nerds, after all.

Big Tech was hardly the sole disruptor, but the New Democrats fell for, and amplified, Silicon Valley’s specific flavor of empty promises wrapped in technobabble. “Delivering the ____ of the future,” they said. We got e-this and i-that and smart everything else. It had a wholesome ring and implied that Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan were finally in charge. The progressive, sciency veneer gave cover to other mega-rackets with less compelling legends, enabling them to fleece their workers and consumers too. Soon everyone was delivering the ____ of the future.

The Democratic Party divorced its industrial, unionized base and married its Silicon Valley mistress. It had once believed in collective bargaining. It had once believed that workers were an essential part of a healthy economy and worthy of respect. There was a time when a US president, like Harry Truman, might entertain a labor activist, like Walter Reuther, amiably in the Oval Office. But the Party had fallen hard for its tech darlings and began to dream of a meritocracy based on steadily-increasing knowledge, intelligence, and creativity that would lift us all toward self-realization as we bathed in the restorative glow of our screens. In other words, Democrats put their faith in social vaporware. Old-Economy workers would be “rehabilitated,” language implying that they might be more intellectually challenged than unlucky. “Euthanized” would be a more honest word. The former lower-middle and working classes would listen to two decades of meritocratic cant while their standards of living would fall steadily with no ground floor in sight. They were never a priority.


The candidate Barack Obama spoke to blue-collar America. He campaigned on change that would rejuvenate careers and restore dignity. Working Americans in the swing states doubted that Hillary Clinton even knew they existed. They saw Obama as a last hope and supported him enthusiastically in the 2008 primaries and later in the general election, but he soon proved to be a disappointment. He, too, fell in love with Silicon Valley and Wall Street and neglected the people who needed him most. And they punished him: he won fewer states in 2012 than he had in 2008. People like the alternate me felt cheated by a guy who rocked a Brooks Brothers suit and talked a great game, then gave the Tech and Finance sectors everything they wanted and more. Educated people from the best schools trusted Big Tech outfits because educated people from the best schools ran them. Elites imagine each other to be virtuous because they imagine themselves that way.

Technology giants were understood not as hardy sprouts but would be treated instead with princess-and-the-pea levels of delicacy, thanks to a superstitious fear that it might all be brought to grief by, say, forcing companies with hundreds of billions in share value to tolerate an employees’ union, offer a minimum wage adequate for a decent life, or pay tax proportional to their reliance on public goods.

No one bears greater responsibility for the lack of empathy toward Old-Economy workers that led to Donald Trump’s victory than big-name Tech darlings and the New Democrats who coddled them, then openly ridiculed their own voter base: the people Hillary foolishly nicknamed “Deplorables;” that is, the millions of disappointed Obama voters who would happily have voted blue if they’d had confidence that the party would respect them, welcome them, and acknowledge their needs. But the New Economy is a gated community, shut firmly to them, whose most strenuous boosters have been the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations. Old-school, working-class Democrats are unwelcome in the party they built. No one wants them tracking mud through the salon.

Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the swing states the same way Barack Obama had: by characterizing her as disdainful toward blue-collar Americans. It was a potent message among those who once had seen decent wages in return for honest work, lately reduced to Walmart greeters and Uber drivers. Humiliated by a labor market in which they had nothing to trade, the former working class understood that they also had nothing to lose. Liberal democracy and its supporting institutions shed their veneer of sanctity when dead-end employees can aspire only to dead-end management gigs. Call them “associates” and “technicians” all you want; they know who they’ve become and what others think of them. They are why Trump won in the swing states; he was propelled to victory by disillusioned Obama voters. They gleefully chanted “lock her up” not because they thought Hillary was an actual criminal, but because they knew what her election would bring them: four or eight more years of economic and social stagnation to top off the twenty they’d already been through.


They elected Donald once and they will try to again. He is scornful and vicious. He despises openly. He snarls and barks. He will make a pig’s breakfast of everything he touches, but here’s the thing everyone misses: educated elites will feel the hardship he causes more acutely than the millions of workers who have already adapted to pittance wages, dead-end careers, and chronic disrespect. They’ve endured two decades of it; they can cope. They’re betting that liberal snowflakes like me can’t.

Trump will not be defeated by educating voters, by exposing his many foibles and inadequacies. Highlighting what’s wrong with him is futile; his supporters didn’t elect him because they mistook him for a competent administrator or a decent man. They’re angry, not stupid. Trump is an agent of disruption — indeed, of revenge. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has positioned him as a tragic force-multiplier on a scale that few could have predicted, and the result is verging on catastrophic.

Still, that might not be enough to prevent his re-election. Workers now sense that economic justice — a condition in which labor and capital recognize and value each other — is permanently out of reach; the class war is over and it was an absolute rout: insatiable parasites control everything now, and even drain us gratuitously, as if exacting reparations for the money and effort they spent taming us. The economy itself, and the institutions protecting it, must be attacked, and actually crippled, to get the attention of the smug patricians in charge. Two decades of appealing to justice, proportion, and common decency have yielded nothing. I’d rather not see four more years of Donald, but I understand the impulse to use him as a cat’s paw.

Joe Biden is only moderately attractive to swing voters. He’s got longstanding ties to the financial and consumer-credit rackets, and many of his senior campaign people are former lobbyists, industry flacks, and banking alums. He’s a New Democrat at heart: too much like Hillary and too little like the Barack Obama we thought we were voting for in 2008. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders appeal to the Obama 2008 → Trump 2016 electorate, not Biden, and not the domesticated Obama of 2020 who will be campaigning for him.

I doubt that Obama can draw enough of his old swing voters back to the Democratic Party. They were his constituency once, but he let them go and now his transformation into a New Economy aristocrat is complete. He could even be a liability to Biden, who seems more down to earth than today’s Obama.

The New Democratic Party and the flashy economic colossus controlling it are a seductive pair. We saw this as Obama spoke on 30 July 2020, eulogizing the late US Representative John Lewis. The former president and Columbia University and Harvard Law School graduate promised us that one day, “when we do finish that long journey toward freedom; when we do form a more perfect union — whether it’s years from now, or decades, or even if it takes another two centuries — John Lewis will be a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.” Thus did our first black president signal that he might condone two more centuries of racial and social injustice so long as the meritocracy continues to treat him and his family right.

He and other high-minded elites are thinking fine thoughts and beaming positive energy to ordinary Americans from the metaphorical gated community swaddling the rich, progressive class. No uniformed weasel will dare kneel on any of their necks, we can be certain. There will be no eviction notices, no local food pantries, no paltry unemployment checks for them. These people have no clue what’s going on in the workaday neighborhoods of American cities and in our towns and rural communities, and they’ll be pleased to keep it that way.

Why should the victims of the New Economy not despise the system, and the people tending it, so intensely that they would vote Republican again? Why would they not hope that Donald will cause so much damage that America will be forced to make a fresh start? For them, stability equals stagnation while chaos might bring opportunities.

Elections are decided in the swing states. We know how Massachusetts and Mississippi will vote. The battle will take place in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virgina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Colorado, and it will be decided by Obama-Trump voters. They haven’t forgotten that, during two decades’ time, Democrats exported their jobs and rewarded them with gigs. The question is, will their resentment overcome their reluctance? They might fear Donald’s destructive potential, but they’ll be inclined to vote for someone who has been wrecking the political and economic system that cut them down from working class to working poor with no hope of escape. Donald has a solid chance of winning.

For Democrats, the only path forward is behind: the Party must welcome, and actually represent, employees whose lives and labor and services are valued as essential contributions to society. The former working class won’t be satisfied until they see Bill and Hillary, Barack and Joe enact an auto-da-fé through the streets of Washington accompanied by a dreary huddle of bankers, VCs, bond traders, and Tech CEOs in quest of a genuine catharsis in which the pain of their guilt and self loathing swells and burns and finally grows so unbearable that they literally curse themselves and beg to be forgiven.

If candidates Biden and Harris, and the wider Democratic Party, fail to recognize and renounce the worst elements of the high-tech, financialized New Economy they’re in bondage to, and neglect to reach out to Obama-Trump swing voters with genuine understanding, compassion, and respect — not to mention actual, regulatory solutions — Donald might well be elected again, exactly as he was in 2016: by swing-state Democrats who have had enough.

 

 

Alt-Market: Election 2020 – The Worst Case Scenario Is The Most Likely One

Brandon Smith at Alt-Market talks about this year’s Presidential election and what may happen in Election 2020: The Worst Case Scenario Is The Most Likely One

…For the past few month my suspicion is that there might not be an election at all. But let’s look at the factors that are in place:

1) Joe Biden, the Dem candidate, appears to have stage four dementia. Either that, or he is a very good actor. This is another situation where I am questioning WHY? Why would the establishment run Biden (like they ran Clinton), perhaps the worst possible choice if they hope to rally people against Trump and conservatives?

Maybe Trump is meant to stay in office for another four years, because Biden appears to have no capacity to hold the attention of an audience (again, unless his Alzheimer’s is an act).  That said, if the economic decline is severe enough into November, the election numbers could still be very close because of the backlash against Trump.  Close elections are the easiest for the establishment to manipulate one way or the other.

2) Leftists hate Trump so thoroughly that they would vote for anyone at this point just to get rid of him; but will this fervor be enough to sway moderate Dems to participate if Biden continues his displays of mental frailty?

3) The pandemic lockdowns and viral spread are likely to hit hard by November. Meaning, there is a chance that people will find it difficult to vote at all, unless the votes are handled by mail-in or by electronic means.

4) Electronic or mail-in voting will not be trusted by the public on either side. Whoever wins will be accused of cheating.

5) Civil unrest and violence is almost guaranteed in the lead up to the elections, which could frighten people away from voting booths if they are even in operation.

These factors and more lead me to predict that Election 2020 will be a contested election which ends with Trump staying in office but accused of usurping the democratic process. This outcome is the worst possible outcome and also the most advantageous for the globalist establishment.

The elites are even hinting publicly that this is about to happen. For those of you that have been reading my work for many years, the name “Max Boot” might sound familiar. In my article ‘How Globalists Will Attempt To Control Populations Post Collapse’, published in 2016, I outlined writings by Council on Foreign Relations member Max Boot on the Malaysian Model, a method he describes as the perfect strategy for taking control of a population and destroying an insurgency.

The model calls for the institution of city-sized concentration camps which are used to isolate a rebellion away from the general population. The population in these cities is then subjected to extreme tracking and control measures, while the military is sent out to rural areas to eliminate potential insurgent threats.

Well, Boot is back again, this time writing about how he thinks Donald Trump will try to “hijack” the presidency in 2020.

In an article for the Washington post titled ‘What If Trump Loses But Insists He Won’, Boot outlines a scenario that was “war gamed” by a group called the Transition Integrity Project. The group played out a scenario in which there is a razor thin victory for Joe Biden, followed by actions by Trump to keep control of the presidency through lies and legal wrangling. The group also predicted civil unrest leading to potential “civil war” as the fight over the White House expands.

This article is, I believe, an attempt at predictive programming by the establishment. They are TELLING US exactly what is about to happen. A contested election, civil war, martial law, economic collapse and the US will be destroyed from within.  If conservatives actively support unconstitutional levels of federal power or martial law, then the scenario becomes even worse.  By forsaking our foundational principles in order to “defeat the left”, we would be handing victory to the globalists.  We would be destroying our own movement’s reason for existing while the elites barely have to lift a finger.

The CFR and its long time goal of erasing US sovereignty would then be nearly complete. All that would be left is to ensure they they are the people that get to rebuild America from the ashes of all out domestic conflict and collapse. This cannot be allowed to happen.

I continue to predict that the plan is to destroy the US as we know it and blame conservatives in the process. With so many elites inhabiting Trump’s cabinet, this outcome would be easy for them to engineer. That said, the end game is not in the hands of the elites. It’s in the hands of conservatives.

The temptation for conservatives will be to fully embrace government power in order to stop the leftists, but if we refuse to support martial law measures, if we demand or assert alternative solutions (such as community based security), if we stand by our principles of limited government and if we fight back against the globalists specifically instead of only focusing on the political left, then there is a chance we can stop them from taking control. That said, if we bow to government power and hand over our freedom just to defeat the leftists, then we will lose the greater battle against globalism in the long run.

Independent: WA Gov. Inslee Says Trump “Fomenting Domestic Rebellion”

In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Friday accused President Trump of fomenting domestic rebellion for daring to plan for the reopening of states. This despite Governor Inslee’s own efforts throughout his tenure as governor to destroy the liberties and property enjoyed within his own state, creating an antagonistic divide between Eastern and Western Washington.  Inslee accuses Trump of “anti-democrate rhetoric” while his own actual actions have been dictatorial in nature – executive orders with no representative approval.

Jay Inslee, governor of Washington State, has accused President Donald Trump of “encouraging illegal and dangerous acts.”

In a statement released on Friday afternoon, the governor said the president’s “unhinged rantings” could lead to violence and were “fomenting domestic rebellion”.

He also warned that the president was putting millions at risk of contracting the coronavirus.

The governor was responding to the Mr Trump’s comments earlier on Friday about “liberating” parts of the country from lockdowns put in place to stem the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Inslee says that while on Thursday the president stood alongside White House officials and public health experts, saying that science would guide his plan for easing restrictions, with sensible guidelines to resuming economic activity, “Less than 24 hours later, the president is off the rails.”

“He’s not quoting scientists and doctors but spewing dangerous, anti-democratic rhetoric.”

(continues)

See also We the Governed: A good day for a little rebellion against Washington Governor Inslee