Archive for June, 2016

The preference cascade is building.

Friday, June 24th, 2016

brexit

The Brexit vote in Britain has rocked the country with elites and immigrants most affected.

The vote to “Remain” was a majority in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in London and several other large cities with large “immigrant” populations.

Protesters are planning to march to London’s Shard building to demonstrate against the ‘racist’ and anti-migrant rhetoric of the EU Referendum campaign.

The march, announced in a Facebook post by the Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, was due travel from a park in Whitechapel to the headquarters of New Corporation next to the Shard at 6pm.

All is proceeding as expected.

The decision has prompted a large market selloff, which will probably persist until the effects are better understood. Those campaigning to “Remain” have used various threats and predictions of doom, so the immediate result is not unexpected. Of course, the political left is hysterical at the isea that voters don;t want to be governed by remote elites.

On Thursday British voters willfully walked off a cliff when they decided to leave the European Union. The “Brexit” victory is a defeat for Britain, Europe and the global economy.

Tens of millions of Britons voted for isolation — to go it alone — rather than for cooperation. The European Union just lost a sixth of its economy, roughly akin to Florida and California seceding from the United States. The impact on the British economy could be catastrophic. Europe’s unified stance against a reemerging and aggressive Russia will be splintered.

Who could imagine that people would not want a thousand bureaucrats in Brussels, or for that matter Washington DC, micromanaging their lives ? Well, I know someone.

Donald Trump is a happy guy today, and his timing seems to be excellent. Last week, when the “Remain side” was expected to win, he was told it was a serious mistake to go there.

Trump, on his first trip overseas since he embarked on his White House bid, faced criticism in the US for making what was essentially a business trip at a time when his campaign has been faltering, falling behind Clinton in the polls and in fundraising.

Yes, who can imagine a politician actually conducting business and creating real jobs ?

Some in Britain were pleased, and did not put scare quotes over ‘great victory’ as the Guardian did.

There were two referendums on Thursday. The first was on membership of the EU. The second was on the British establishment. Leave won both, and the world will never be the same again.

It’s impossible to overstate how remarkable this victory is. Twenty years ago, Euroscepticism was a backbench Tory rebellion and a political cult. It was a dispute located firmly on the Right with little appeal to Labour voters. It took Ukip to drag it into the centre of political life – given momentum by the issue of immigration – and slowly it has emerged as a lightning rod for anti-establishment activism.

The British Establishment seems to be doing no better then its American cousin.

But this time the establishment consensus coincided with a historic loss of faith in the experts. These were the people who failed to predict the Credit Crunch, who missed the greatest economic disaster to hit us since the Great Depression. And we were supposed to believe them? Slowly the consensus came to resemble not just a conspiracy but, worse, a confederacy of dunces.

The British voters may be joining the preference cascade that began with the Trump Phenomenon. I don’t want to claim clairvoyance but I did say:

Their panic was best articulated last week in The Daily Beast by GOP consultant Rick Wilson, who wrote that Trump supporters “put the entire conservative movement at risk of being hijacked and destroyed by a bellowing billionaire with poor impulse control and a profoundly superficial understanding of the world .?.?. walking, talking comments sections of the fever swamp sites.”

Some might take that as a backhanded compliment. Can the GOP really be so out of touch with the legions of out-of-work Americans — many of whom don’t show up in the “official” unemployment rate because they’ve given up looking for work in the Obama economy? With the returning military vets frustrated with lawyer-driven, politically correct rules of engagement that have tied their hands in a fight against a mortal enemy? With those who, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres by Muslims, reasonably fear an influx of culturally alien “refugees” and “migrants” from the Middle East?

The Daily Beast is not exactly the Republican voter and the “GOP Consultant” seems to be ignoring the possibility that his job prospects might be harmed by his contempt for the voters he is supposed to understand and convince.

And now we have had Orlando. And Brexit.

Trump in Mississippi.

Saturday, June 11th, 2016

mitch-tyner-trump-mississippi-rally

Does the Republican Party want to win this election ?

Friday, June 10th, 2016

trumpflag

I’m starting to wonder if the Republican Party, that is the institutional party not the voters, really wants to win the election if it means accepting Trump as the nominee.

I was skeptical at first when it looked like Trump was not collapsing of his own weight.

About December, he began to look like there was a real chance of winning.

Now, after months of whistling past the graveyard of Trump’s seemingly inexorable rise and assuring themselves that his candidacy will collapse as voters come to their senses, a CNN poll released Wednesday showing Trump now lapping the field has the GOP establishment in full meltdown mode. The survey shows Trump with nearly 40% of the primary vote, trailed by Ted Cruz at 18%, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio tied at 10%, and the also-rans (including great GOP hope Jeb Bush) limping along far behind.

I am not a Trump supporter but I am intrigued at the steady progress he is making toward success.

I am still not that enthusiastic but it seems that he has attracted a large following of people who might be motivated enough to elect him president. The Republican Party seems horrified by the prospect.

This talk of ousting Trump as the nominee seems more likely to be a big flashing public signal to Trump to get his act together right away. (The smart lefty writer John Judis thinks Trump’s scripted speech Tuesday night is a sign he got this message.) If you were really going to depose Trump from being the GOP nominee in Cleveland, I’m not sure you’d go big with lots of public chatter about it as you’re seeing right now.

For example, Michael Mukasey a former Attorney General, has written a pearl clutching op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Trump’s feud with the judge in the Trump U case.

Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to parents of Mexican origin and belongs to an association of lawyers of Mexican origin, is sitting on a case in the Southern District of California that charges fraud against Trump University. Donald Trump in recent days has attracted much attention by suggesting that Judge Curiel should be disqualified for bias because the judge’s rulings are adverse to Mr. Trump and because, in campaigning for the presidency, the candidate has criticized Mexicans and proposed building a wall on the southwest U.S. border.

Mr. Trump’s claim against Judge Curiel is both baseless and squalid, but some in the chorus of critics are not themselves entirely without fault.

The accusation about the “association of Mexican (Mexican-American ?) lawyers” neglects to mention it’s name, La Raza Legal Lawyers Association.

Not all agree with Mukasey.

Curiel served on the selection committee in 2014 for the La Raza Lawyers of San Diego Scholarship Fund. Six of seven of the recipients of these scholarships ranging from $1500 to $1600 were born in Central America. One of them, Ricardo Elorza, described himself as “undocumented.”

Donald Trump has been critical of Curiel, calling him a “hater” over the weekend. “The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he’s given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative,” Trump said. (RELATED: Trump U Docs: Employee Calls Program A Huge Scam)

“What happens is the judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine,” Trump added.

I think Trump was inartful in his statement but, is he so wrong ? A scholarship for an illegal immigrant student might suggest bias against Trump and his emphasis on illegal immigration.

Mukasey again. Whether they know it or not, judges demonstrate symbolically every time they mount the bench that personal considerations have no place in deciding cases.

If only that were true.

The left seems to understand what is going on.

Never Trump Republicans like Bill Kristol, and whoever else would rally behind French’s potential third-party candidacy, do not take the presidency as seriously as they claim to: If they did, they’d admit that they find Hillary Clinton to be a better choice than Donald Trump.

There seems to be no doubt on the Democrats side in spite of all the baggage that Hillary brings.

Even those who should support the nominee seem doubtful.

The reluctant Trump supporters in the upper echelons of the GOP keep expressing surprise and/or dismay at the fact that Trump hasn’t toned things down or been “reined in” yet. If they truly thought this was a possibility, it’s further proof that the party has transcended clueless. Trump is a 69-year-old man who has never had a filter, he isn’t going to develop one overnight, especially simply because some people he deems inferior are exhorting him to.

I don’t think Trump believes the “donor class” is inferior. He probably knows most of them think he is “inferior.”

The portion of the electorate that has propelled Trump to this point are attracted to the very things that the “Harumph!” wing of the GOP finds problematic. When they say they want him to be more of what their vision of a proper candidate is, they are asking him to do a 180 from the version of him that his supporters love.

It isn’t just the Trump faithful who are in love with the lack of a connection between Trump’s brain and mouth, however. Trump himself sees it as an asset. He is very much adopting an attitude of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” now. He’s earned the right. The idiots who let him rise to power have no real basis for their claims that he needs to be the kind of candidate they view as a winning candidate.

That’s largely because they rarely win.

The left is already planning to describe him as mentally unbalanced, as they did Goldwater.

In a speech last week, Hillary Clinton took her befuddlement with Donald Trump and dropped it squarely at the feet of America’s mental health professionals. “I’ll leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants,” she said, in response to comments Trump had made marveling at the political effectiveness of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

She’s not the first person to suggest the Republican presidential candidate could use a session on the couch. Back in November, Vanity Fair got five psychiatrists and psychologists to weigh in on Trump’s mental health.

Goldwater did not fight back. Trump does and that is why his supporters love him.

Also, the political left is doing a good job of explaining why we should choose Trump.

Much more about the city sanctioned riot at the Trump Rally here.

San Jose is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Remember, all of these videos took place within sight of the San Jose police department, the police officers therein, and the San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia. According to his own statements, Chief Garcia spent two full days preparing his officers and leadership for the event. He was right there on scene, at the mobile command center. Garcia watch this all as it took place.

It’s pretty clear the rally-goers were set up. Here is an eye witness account.

The Trump event attendees were forced to walk past the protesters afterward, after the event was over, to get to their cars. Broad areas of sidewalks and streets, that were not blockaded before the event started, were blockaded by barriers after the event ended, and standing in front of those barriers were lines of individual police officers telling Trump event attendees what route to follow to get to their vehicles.

I had parked in a parking garage right next door to the event. Before the event, an easy walk to the event, after event over, had to square 4 blocks of sidewalk lined with protesters who somehow knew the exact route that Trump supporters/event attendees had to walk, and were waiting for them.

But the GOPe is planning to try to wrest the nomination away from him at the convention.

Is there a better definition of a suicide pact ?

To Stop the Train.

Saturday, June 4th, 2016

I have been using the analogy of pulling the cord to stop the train when it is headed for the cliff, even if you don’t know what happens next. I see that Richard Fernandez has now adopted the analogy.

I don’t see Trump voters as doing anything noble or particularly courageous but it is a risk and many of us are willing to take it.

Fernandez uses the example of Torpedo Squadron 8 which was a factor in the success of the US Navy in the Battle of Midway. John Waldron did not sacrifice his men and his own life voluntarily but he had a mission and he carried it out in spite of everything that stood in his way. The fighters of Fighting 8 that were supposed to provide cover got lost in the confusion. According to Alvin Kernan’s book “The Unknown Battle of Midway: The Destruction of the American Torpedo Squadrons ,” other pilots nearly attacked the leader of Fighting 8 after the battle.

Fernandez uses the sacrifice of Waldron and Torpedo 8 as a metaphor for the 2016 election while remembering the crucial battle fought 74 years ago today.

While the path leading to the present is disputed, no one appears to deny America has now arrived in a critical place whose abnormality is most evident in a contest between two presidential candidates neither of whom is widely supported by their nominating parties. None of the two candidates is actually expected to solve the multiple foreign policy and domestic crises currently besetting the country. In fact one candidate may have helped cause many of the current problems while the other’s main attraction is that he may function as a demolition charge which will clear out the roadblocks that have paralyzed America.

If political columnist Ron Fournier is right about this election cycle, it is less about achieving incremental policy change than precipitating a radical institutional change. In that case the current unpopularity contest can be seen as an deliberate process to increase instability by hoping the worst man wins, not in order to continue the status quo but to tear things down and start afresh.

I think it is more important to stop the trends initiated by Obama and the increasingly radical Democrats than to attempt any serious foreign policy initiative.

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