Sell The Whitehouse to Trump

[choff]

Make science courses mandatory for all grades, and you'll see less successful appeals to emotion.

[williatw]

Why Some of the Smartest Progressives I Know Will Vote for Trump over Hillary

Even on Wall Street, a powerful Sanders contingent so hates what Clinton stands for—the status quo—they’ll pull the lever for almost anyone else.
By Yves Smith June 01, 2016

Why do progressives reject Hillary Clinton? The highly educated, high-income, finance-literate readers of my website, Naked Capitalism, don’t just overwhelmingly favor Bernie Sanders. They also say “Hell no!” to Hillary Clinton to the degree that many say they would even vote for Donald Trump over her. And they don’t come by these views casually. Their conclusions are the result of careful study of her record and her policy proposals. They believe the country can no longer endure the status quo that Clinton represents—one of crushing inequality, and an economy that is literally killing off the less fortunate—and any change will be better. One reader writes:

“If Clinton is the nominee 9 out of 10 friends I polled will [do one of three things]:

A. Not vote for president in November.
B. Vote for Trump.
C. Write in Bernie as a protest vote.

The Clintons’ dismal record, which Hillary cannot run away from, speaks for itself. And this is what makes many progressives I know unable to support her, even if she wins the nomination. Consider the reasons why they feel this way:

Social Security. Bill Clinton made a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security, but Monica Lewinsky derailed his plans. Sanders has promised to strengthen Social Security. By contrast, Clinton wants to “preserve” it, which includes means-testing. That would put Social Security on a path to being a welfare program, not a universal safety net, making it vulnerable in the long run. Bill Clinton’s ending of welfare is an illustration of the regular pattern, dating back to England’s Poor Law of 1834, of gutting safety nets for the poor.

Climate change. Sanders calls for a full-bore, Marshall-Plan level commitment to reducing carbon output. Hillary talks about climate change but pushed for fracking in Europe while secretary of state. The Clintons remain firmly committed to fracking, which ruins water supplies and releases large amounts of methane.

Minimum wage. Inflation-adjusted minimum wage increases under Clinton were negligible—virtually identical to those under George H.W. Bush. Obama promised a minimum wage increase to $9.50 an hour and failed to act in the first four years of his presidency. Sanders wants to raise minimum wages to $15 an hour, while Clinton stands pat with the administration plan to increase wages to $12 an hour by 2020.

Trade deals. Bill Clinton ushered in NAFTA, which was touted as positive for growth and employment, and is now widely acknowledged to have cost nearly a million jobs. Even one of its chief promoters, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now deems it to have been a failure for American workers. Hillary consistently backed the Trans-Pacific Partnership until Sanders made an issue of it, and she’s recently returned to supporting it.

Health care. Sanders wants single-payer, government-provided health care. Around the world, single payer has uncontestably demonstrated that it delivers better results overall at vastly lower cost. Obamacare took single payer off the table, instead rearranging the current costly, clumsy system while guaranteeing profits for health insurers and Big Pharma. Clinton at most has offered patches, but the pressure from Sanders has compelled her to suggest an early buy-in for Medicare.

Then there are questions of competence. Hillary has a résumé of glittering titles with disasters or at best thin accomplishments under each. Her vaunted co-presidency with Bill? After her first major project, health care reform, turned into such a debacle that it was impossible to broach the topic for a generation, she retreated into a more traditional first lady role. As New York senator, she accomplished less with a bigger name and from a more powerful state than Sanders did. As secretary of state, she participated and encouraged strategically pointless nation-breaking in Iraq and Syria. She bureaucratically outmaneuvered Obama, leading to U.S. intervention in Libya, which he has called the worst decision of his administration.

Finally, there is the stench of corruption, dating back to Hillary’s impossible—by any legitimate means—trick of parlaying $1,000 into $100,000 in a series of commodities trades in 1978. The Clintons and their backers seriously expect the rubes to believe that large financial firms happily forked over their hefty speaking fees purely out of interest in what they had to say, or that Middle Eastern and Taiwanese moneybags gave big bucks to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was
secretary of state out of their deep belief in the foundation’s lofty goals. Why has Hillary refused to release the transcripts of her Goldman speeches, wiped her server and foot-dragged on releasing allegedly personal emails?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ton-213931

[williatw]

Armstrong Williams: Even Van Jones and Tavis Smiley Admit Trump Connects with Blacks, Could Get ‘Between 17 to 20 percent of Black Vote’


2 Jun 2016

Radio host and former senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Dr. Ben Carson, Armstrong Williams tells Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon: “Donald Trump has the possibility of capturing between 17 and 20 percent of the Black vote. Even Van Jones and Tavis Smiley have admitted that there is some connection between the Black community and Donald Trump…. If he shows them that he cares and they believe he will make a difference, they will give him a chance.”

Added Williams:

The race-baiting, the grievances, the victimization has gotten the Black community nowhere. This is why Mrs. Clinton cannot connect. That’s why she loses in places where there are an overwhelming number of Black voters because they don’t trust her, nor do they believe her. They want something fresh and he thing that Donald Trump has going for him – he’s a billionaire, he’s built businesses, he’s created opportunities…. Donald Trump has the opportunity to change the Republican Party for American Blacks forever.


The senior adviser to former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson told Breitbart News that the black vote is in play and that many black Americans are supporting presumptive GOP nominee Donald J. Trump.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-president ... lack-vote/

[williatw]

...whatever you think of Trump, do understand that the New Mexican judge he claims ought to recuse himself from the case is a Board Member of La Raza. Whether La Raza is a racial or a Mexican nationalist organization, it is not unreasonable to assume a suspicion that he may be prejudiced against Trump, just as a member of the Communist Party of the United States might engender suspicions of partiality, or a Kleagle of the KKK might be thought to have some prejudices.

One comment on the election: whatever you think of Trump, do understand that the New Mexican judge he claims ought to recuse himself from the case is a Board Member of La Raza. Whether La Raza is a racial or a Mexican nationalist organization, it is not unreasonable to assume a suspicion that he may be prejudiced against Trump, just as a member of the Communist Party of the United States might engender suspicions of partiality, or a Kleagle of the KKK might be thought to have some prejudices.

I saw today but did not read beyond the headline that Trump ought to be embarrassed because he once praised President Clinton. Perhaps so, but then many of us deserve criticism. I have often said that Clinton gave us the last balanced budget in the history of the nation. True, he had Newt Gingrich as Speaker at the time, but he was President, and we got a balanced budget. When Bush became President he didn’t have Newt as Speaker, and we got huge deficits. Then came Obama…

The United States budget strategy is to kick the can down the road and let the Millennials pay for all the free stuff. We can pay for it by giving them all free college. Of course when everyone goes to college, not many get a college education because the standards have to be lowered, so that national productivity is not likely to rise because of increased capabilities of the graduates, but perhaps the robots will bail out the children of the Millennials. The United States with its regulatory agencies increasing the expense for starting new companies has already succeeded in transferring a great deal of wealth from the young to the elderly. Unemployment has been defined down, but a smaller percentage of the population has jobs now than earlier; I’d say that was a Depression.

Trump is a pragmatist. So was Clinton. Neither is an ideologue, of Left or Right. Hillary is neither a pragmatist nor an ideologue: her performances in Libya and Iran show that. Lately she seems to letting Sanders write her ideology, then trying to run to the left of that. I can praise some of Clinton’s performance. Not so sure about Obama, whose record Hillary now defends.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosman ... computing/

[williatw]

Elizabeth Warren Describes Hillary Clinton as a Donor Puppet (2004)


Watch Elizabeth Warren in 2004 tell a story that reveals Hillary Clinton as a flip-flopping Donor Puppet




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYa3Q4NUYPM

[williatw]

Full Speech: Donald Trump Delivers Anti-Hillary Clinton Speech in NYC (6-22-16)

Published on Jun 22, 2016


Wednesday, June 22, 2016: Full replay of Donald Trump's anti-Hillary Clinton speech at Trump SoHo in New York City.

Full Speech: Donald Trump Delivers Anti-Hillary Clinton Speech in NYC (6-22-16)



"No Secretary of State has been more wrong more often and in more places than Hillary Clinton"




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkdGJMSo5MI

[choff]

Karl Rove is a big Sanders supporter. I suspect he believes Bernie's supporters will duke it out with Hillary's at the DNC.

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/19/karl_ro ... _millions/

[williatw]

Scott Adams' Blog

The FBI, Credibility, and Government

The primary goal of government is its own credibility.

That notion needs some explaining.

Governments do many things, including building roads, providing social services, defending the homeland, and more. But no matter what the government is trying to accomplish, its macro-responsibility is to maintain its own credibility. Governments without credibility devolve into chaos. Credibility has to be job one.

Consider all the different government systems around the world, and all the different laws they created. The Chinese government is different from the United States government, which is different from Jordan’s government, which is different from Great Britain. But each of those governments is credible to its own people, and that’s the key. The specific laws and the specific forms of government don’t matter too much, so long as the public views its own local system as credible.

The notion of credibility is why my political preferences don’t align with either of the candidates for president. I look for credibility in government, not for my personal agreement with a particular policy.

For example, I think laws regarding abortion are most credible when they are agreeable to the majority of women, no matter what the majority of men think. Imagine an abortion-related law that was acceptable to 90% of men but only 10% of women. It wouldn’t be credible. Nor should it be.

I take this same thinking to how a president should fill Supreme Court openings. For maximum credibility, we should have eight justices instead of nine, equally divided by liberal versus conservative credentials. That way nothing gets through the Supreme Court unless one of the liberals or one of the conservatives switches sides. That’s how you get credibility. Compare that to a 5-4 court that always votes conservative or always votes liberal. With a biased court, every decision will lack credibility with half of the citizens. That’s a problem.

This gets me to FBI Director James Comey’s decision to drop the case against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail security lapses. To the great puzzlement of everyone in America, and around the world, Comey announced two things:

1. Hillary Clinton is 100% guilty of crimes of negligence.

2. The FBI recommends dropping the case.

From a legal standpoint, that’s absurd. And that’s how the media seems to be reacting. The folks who support Clinton are sheepishly relieved and keeping their heads down. But the anti-Clinton people think the government is totally broken and the system is rigged. That’s an enormous credibility problem.

But what was the alternative?

The alternative was the head of the FBI deciding for the people of the United States who would be their next president. A criminal indictment against Clinton probably would have cost her the election.

How credible would a future President Trump be if he won the election by the FBI’s actions instead of the vote of the public? That would be the worst case scenario even if you are a Trump supporter. The public would never accept the result as credible.

That was the choice for FBI Director Comey. He could either do his job by the letter of the law – and personally determine who would be the next president – or he could take a bullet in the chest for the good of the American public.

He took the bullet.

Thanks to Comey, the American voting public will get to decide how much they care about Clinton’s e-mail situation. And that means whoever gets elected president will have enough credibility to govern effectively.

Comey might have saved the country. He sacrificed his reputation and his career to keep the nation’s government credible.

It was the right decision. Comey is a hero.

Interesting take...if the American people are obtuse enough to vote Hillary Clinton in for president in spite of her now well known scandals (& remember through the super delegate system the Democratic party could still replace her at the convention) they deserve what they get. If she wins than the effective "highest court in the land" (the American electorate) are voting they don't care about the E-mail scandal. If Trump wins, he has all but said his Attorney General will indict; this is also reasonably well known to the American electorate, in effect the election result is almost like a jury verdict in a sense.






http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1470450023 ... government

[mvanwink5]

Adams is full of it is all I can say, in so many ways, hard to count them all.

The Federal Government is run by criminals from the top down.

[Tom Ligon]

Hillary's got an e-mail scandal, not rising to the level of criminal indictment, but enough to get a State Department employee fired or barred from handling classified information.

Trump's got a fraud investigation going for Trump U, ought to have a couple more for fraudulent business practices, which include bundling personal debt into business loans and saddling other people with his bad judgement.

For honesty, Clinton's as big a liar as most politicians, which is bad enough. Trump? He's making most of it up or stealing his "facts" from tabloid headlines. He just demonstrated he does not know the Constitution from his rectum ... he's not only ignorant of the laws our government is built on, he is proud of it.

And people expect me to pick between the two? I vote "none of the above", and will pick Door Number Three. You can argue that this assures Hillary will beat Trump and the third party cannot win. I'm not sure that's true ... Johnson may take more votes from Clinton than Trump. I don't care. The voters have already lost this election, regardless of which major party candidate wins.

I notice George Will has come to a similar conclusion.

[Diogenes]

The voters have already lost this election, regardless of which major party candidate wins.

[hanelyp]

Hillary's got an e-mail scandal, not rising to the level of criminal indictment, but enough to get a State Department employee fired or barred from handling classified information.

ARE YOU KIDDING?????!!!!!
The facts related by the FBI are more than enough to indite on multiple felony counts. Just not one particular count that the left wing filters seem to be focusing on. And that's with what is coming to have every appearance of not conducting a serious investigation with intent to prosecute if facts supported it. Witnesses likely complicit in the misdeeds interviewed in series, allowing them to compare notes and get their story straight. FAILURE to record the interview of the primary suspect. We can only imagine what additional criminal counts might be supported if the investigation was conducted properly.

The FACT is we have an unindicted FELON running for president on the democrat ticket, with a great many in that party complicit in the same offenses.

[williatw]

Trump's got a fraud investigation going for Trump U, ought to have a couple more for fraudulent business practices, which include bundling personal debt into business loans and saddling other people with his bad judgement.

Yes Tom and unlike Hillary, Trump's is being successfully sued in civil court for the "Trump University" alleged scam. He isn't skirting like Hillary.

For honesty, Clinton's as big a liar as most politicians, which is bad enough. Trump? He's making most of it up or stealing his "facts" from tabloid headlines. He just demonstrated he does not know the Constitution from his rectum ... he's not only ignorant of the laws our government is built on, he is proud of it.

I think Trump's philosophy is that the CEO/Boss doesn't have to know such "details"; just make sure he hires competent people to carry out his broad policy initiatives leaving the details to said subordinates. After all he got Trump Towers built without being an architect/engineer; the "wall" can be made to work the same way, he tells them what he wants done their job is to figure out how to do it; think that's how he looks at it.

And people expect me to pick between the two? I vote "none of the above", and will pick Door Number Three. You can argue that this assures Hillary will beat Trump and the third party cannot win. I'm not sure that's true ... Johnson may take more votes from Clinton than Trump. I don't care. The voters have already lost this election, regardless of which major party candidate wins.

Well if enough people voted for Gary Johnson to make sure that neither Trump nor Hillary get the magic no. of majority electoral votes then it is thrown into the House of Representatives. They have to by law decide by majority from the candidates who receive the top three electoral votes. Since many in Republican party don't like Trump (at least among the elites), hard to see how that would play out. They might even conceivably elect Gary Johnson (though Johnson would have to have electoral wins to be eligible) maybe seeing him a better choice than Trump or Hillary. After all he (Johnson) is a former Republican before he joined the Libertarian Party. There are also other interesting possibilities; suppose it is thrown into the House of Representatives and after multiple votes the House is "deadlocked" no candidate gets a majority. note: The Senate would have to also "deadlock" on electing a vice-president from the top two VP electoral winners. According to the Constitution (via Wikipedia):

If the House of Representatives has not chosen a president-elect in time for the inauguration (noon on January 20), then Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment specifies that the vice president-elect becomes acting president until the House selects a president. If there is also no vice president-elect in time for the inauguration, then under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the sitting Speaker of the House would become acting president until either the House selects a president or the Senate selects a vice president. Neither of these situations has ever occurred.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral ... n_by_House


Then the speaker of the House Ryan (assuming the Republicans maintain control of the House) would be the next President until the House/Senate get their act together.

[williatw]

Hillary's got an e-mail scandal, not rising to the level of criminal indictment, but enough to get a State Department employee fired or barred from handling classified information.

Maybe a little history on her will help:


Hillary Clinton: A Career Criminal



No Hillary in 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kypl1MYuKDY

ARE YOU KIDDING?????!!!!!
The facts related by the FBI are more than enough to indite on multiple felony counts. Just not one particular count that the left wing filters seem to be focusing on. And that's with what is coming to have every appearance of not conducting a serious investigation with intent to prosecute if facts supported it. Witnesses likely complicit in the misdeeds interviewed in series, allowing them to compare notes and get their story straight. FAILURE to record the interview of the primary suspect. We can only imagine what additional criminal counts might be supported if the investigation was conducted properly. The FACT is we have an unindicted FELON running for president on the democrat ticket, with a great many in that party complicit in the same offenses.

Par for the course for Hillary Clinton; in other words what would you expect from her/them?

Unlike say former House Majority Leader TomDelay, who was convicted under a new interpretation passed in 2003 of an older law for acts committed in 2002; finally reversed on appeal after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded "evidence was legally insufficient to sustain his convictions". After ruining his political career of course.

[Tom Ligon]

(Deleted stray post)