It's Trump!

I am so happy I could cry.  America has been saved from the psychopathic b*tch and all her ilk who would destroy America.  In my own tiny way, I helped campaign for him so his victory is a victory for me too.  Great blessings and prosperity ahead for America now.

And Trump has singlehandedly reformed and reinvigorates American conservatism.  The Congressional GOP had become just a watered-down version of the Left.  They refused to oppose Muslim immigration because that would be "racist", which is what the Left say.  Trump has turned all that on its head.  The Left no longer rule the roost.  And with both the Senate and the House still in GOP hands, Trump should have little problem getting through any changes to the law that he wants. I am looking forward to his SCOTUS nominee too.

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Donald Trump 'could make the world a safer place', claims former British Army chief

Lord Richards said he believes Trump 'would reinvigorate big power relationships' Former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Richards said he believes controversial Republican Donald Trump could make the world a safer place if elected.

The ex-head of the British Army said the billionaire’s approach to foreign policy could “reinvigorate big power relationships” and in the process “might make the world ironically safer”.

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the chief of defence staff between 2010 and 2013, said: “There is a case for saying that big power politics is what we’re missing.

“If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these people – and I think Trump’s instinct is to go down that route – then I think there's the case for saying that the world certainly won’t be any less safe.

“It’s that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment.

“Therefore I think he would reinvigorate big power relationships, which might make the world ironically safer.”

Richards, who is now a peer in the House of Lords, said there was no reason to think Trump would cause chaos adding the biggest threat came from such groups as ISIS.

Speaking to The House magazine, he added: “It’s non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security."

While on the campaign trail Trump has said he would “make a friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

SOURCE

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Want to know why Trump wins? Ask Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton understands the white middle class voter who elected him president over George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992 like few remaining in the Democrat Party.

Wikileaks revealed that Bill Clinton expressed thoughts that sound as if they come straight from a Donald Trump rally to a group of donors in 2015 when he said the following: “We have incredible debates all over America that shouldn’t exist between people in different racial groups because they don’t trust law enforcement anymore.” he said.

“And in the middle of all this we learned, breathtakingly, that middle-aged, non-college-educated white Americans’ life expectancy is going down and is now lower than Hispanics, even though they make less money. And the gap between African Americans and whites is closing, but unfortunately not because the death rate among African Americans is dropping but because the death rate among white Americans is rising.” Clinton continued.

“Why? Because they don’t have anything to look forward to when they get up in the morning. Because their lives are sort of stuck in neutral. Because their lives are sort of stuck in neutral.”

And that is why Donald Trump will be elected President of the United States, because he has given those who had previously lost hope, a glimmer of expectation of being able to achieve the future they had hoped for themselves and their family.

Bill Clinton understands exactly why the slogan, “Make America Great Again” resonates with so many voters. They have been left behind, sand kicked in their collective faces by multi-national corporations who are incentivized by their own elected officials to move job opportunities overseas.

Former President Clinton understands why voters who have been failed by the status quo will listen to an outsider who promises to fight for them against the elites who have abandoned them, after all, that was at least part of his appeal that won him the White House.

It was Bill Clinton’s ability to “feel the pain” of voters contrasted with Bush’s seemingly aloof style which helped him connect with those who he grew up with in Hope, Arkansas, even though he had virtually nothing in common with them.

Isn’t it ironic that his wife is now cast in the villain role as the representative of big Wall Street against the aspirations of the average person, as a true celebrity outsider hits all the chords on trade, jobs and guns against her.

The question is whether the political wheel turned 180 degrees on the Clinton family, or have the Clinton family turned their collective backs to the hopes and dreams of average Americans?

SOURCE

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All Americans Now?

A comment from English Libertarian Sean Gabb

For me – and I think for many others – the American presidential election has been a repeat of the European Referendum. I went to bed with a faint hope. The BBC coverage of the results was filled with faintly crumbling Establishment optimism. I woke and turned on the computer, to look at the same shocked faces as last June. It is too early to say for sure if he has won, but it does seem that Donald Trump will be the next President of America.

Now, I make the usual reservation about the Libertarian Alliance that I direct. We are a charity. We take no part in electoral politics. We were, as an organisation, perfectly indifferent between Mr Trum and Mr Clinton. Speaking for myself, I am delighted, and I extend congratulations to all my American friends, who worked so hard and hoped to such to see this result.

The idea that Mr Trump will do all the things he has promised is, and must be, unlikely. It seems to be in the nature of things for politicians to support the people who elect them. But leave that aside. As with the European Referendum, this has been a vote on the New World Order. For generations, the British and American peoples have stood outside a wall of managed democracy. We have been asked to decide between issues that others have defined for us. At best, we have been able to choose between the lesser of evils. Last June, and this November, we given a real choice, and we raced for the exit.

The moral effect of what seems about to happen will be explosive. Two bloated, treasonous Establishments have faced electoral challenges, and have lost. The “loons” and “deplorables” have ignored the big media and the big money, and have voted for their conscience. Cultural leftism is not defeated – it has too great a control of the institutions to vanish overnight. But it has been put on notice of dismissal.

There will not be an escalation of the war in Syria. There will not be a war with Russia. There will be no pressure from the highest points of the American Government for the British Government to fudge our exit from the European Union. There will, almost certainly, be further upsets in the forthcoming elections through Europe.

Speaking personally again, it is too early to be sure. However, I have, for many years, been denouncing the United States as The Great Satan. It was the New World Order. It was the source of all war and unaccountable government. Well, all I can say at the moment, is that the Great Satan appears to have repented, and I shall look on the American flags that I encounter as I go about my daily business in England with far less distaste than at any time this century.

Regardless of our nationality, my friends and I are all Americans this morning.

Via email

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Why Elections Today Are So Contentious

The American people have allowed tremendous power to coalesce in DC

It wasn’t that long ago when national elections were more perfunctory, less volatile and certainly less contentious. Those halcyon days are long gone! Today the bile and vitriol spewing over the airwaves mirrors that of society generally, and the seemingly innocent question, “Can’t we all just get along?”, is body-slammed with a resounding “Hell NO!!” So what happened?

To borrow a meme from infamous Clintonista James Carville, “It’s the power, stupid!” That is, it’s the tremendous power the American people have allowed (demanded, even) to coalesce inside the DC Beltway, and particularly at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Decisions that used to be made by individual states or local governments are now decided somewhere in Washington, DC, often by a single branch, or even worse — and more often the case — an unaccountable sub-entity within that branch. As a result, elections nowadays are “for all the marbles.”

We offer as a case-in-point the Supreme Court of the U.S. One facet of the current election is that it is effectively a referendum on who will replace the late, great Antonin Scalia and give the winning party a 5-4 majority on an otherwise (arguably) evenly divided bench. Less than a century ago, the Court was largely apolitical; now it’s an ideology-based “final arbiter” of national law. Instead of faithfully interpreting the plain text and intent of a given law, many justices skew their judgments to “outcome-based” jurisprudence, in which they decide the outcome they want and then “walk-back” their logic — and, unfortunately, their “law” — to support the desired result. Thus whichever party chooses the next justice “wins,” by-and-large, any issue arriving at the doorstep of SCOTUS. But the problem doesn’t stop there.

No, it worsens exponentially because every branch of the federal government has too much power, in one way or another. For example, the Executive Branch has arrogated to itself the power of all three federal branches, temporarily relenting only when checked by another branch of government. As His Worship is fond of saying, “If Congress won’t act, I will” or, alternatively, “I’ve got a pen and a phone.” Translation: “I don’t need the Legislature: I am the Legislature!” In any case, the current Occupation Force inside the Executive Branch does not consider the Separation of Powers doctrine as an impediment to its reach or effectiveness.

As for Congress, with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment morphing senator selection by state legislature into popular election, senators are no longer accountable to their states, but only to “the people.” That might sound good at first blush, but it crippled states' abilities to check federal government power. Moreover, Congress generally has too much power. The Constitution enumerates specific responsibilities for Congress, the president and the Supreme Court. Those not specifically granted to these branches are supposed to be reserved either to the states or to the people — the Tenth Amendment. Today, the Tenth Amendment is all but a dead letter. Like the Executive Branch, Congress — using the courts as well as the Executive Branch — has assumed far more power than “We The People” ever granted it under the Constitution.

The aggrandizement of power by the federal government was a primary concern of the so-called “Anti-Federalists,” who opposed ratifying the Constitution on the grounds that the federal government would eventually become all-powerful and too distant from those it governed. They were also concerned that the states would become mere conduits through which the federal government would exercise its overwhelming power. Fast-forward to today and the Anti-Federalists have been prophetic. An increasingly distant government brandishes immeasurable power over a vast expanse, over hundreds of millions of people with conflicting ambitions and needs. The input of the average American citizen to the federal Leviathan is so remote that the output — the federal government’s influence upon that individual in daily life — seems totally arbitrary. “No taxation without representation”? What about the case of “no representation,” period?

However, the real issue here is not “who’s right” in a national election, but rather the broader issue of “good governance.” Originally, the Founders viewed the states as individual “experiments” on how to “get along” as a people. The idea was that if a particular state went awry with respect to governance, people would “vote with their feet” and relocate to a better state. With the power of the federal government increasing and the power of the states diminishing over time, these “experiments” became less and less distinguishable: Today all is now “federal.”

The Founders did provide an “out” through which states can bridle an over-expansive federal government: Article V of the Constitution states, in part, “The Congress … on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which … shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”

The basic idea behind Article V was — and is — that if the federal government went so off the rails that it was on the verge of becoming uncontrollable, the states could reel it in, via a “Convention of States.” A discussion of the merits and perils associated with such a convention is beyond the scope of this piece, but we’ve written of the merits and risks previously.

Contentious elections are merely a symptom of a much bigger problem: Too much power amassing in the federal government and a discontinuity between its applied power and the will of the people who have no real say in its control. The solution to both problems is to again disperse the federal government’s power by redistributing it across all three branches of the federal government and among the states. But such an act won’t happen from any initiative within the Beltway, which has become so drunk with the mass-accrual of power that the vast majority of today’s members of Congress and senior Executive Branch leaders are millionaires — another clear indicator of the magnitude of the problem. No, it will only happen if the states and the people resolve to cage the tiger.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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