Trump and America win: A letter to America

By Rick Manning

Dear America:

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You just saved the nation.

All of those unconstitutional pen and phone executive orders to do what Congress rejected — ripped up.

The regulations that are intended to destroy the coal industry and drive up the cost of manufacturing forcing jobs overseas — rescinded.

All the bad, bad trade deals that put the wants of big donor multi-national corporations ahead of the needs of American workers — torn up.

The job killing highest corporate tax rate in the world that has stifled economic growth — lowered.

And the near permanent takeover of the Supreme Court by those who don’t believe that the Constitution should be their guide, but instead hate the idea of individual liberties that come from God Almighty himself — prevented.

America, Nov. 8, 2016 will go down in the history books as the day that the people stood up and remembered that their country is one of laws and not men and women, rejecting the easy temptation of continuing a slide into the recesses of history, instead choosing the more difficult, noble path of freedom.

Your choosing in favor of our common national bond over those who would hyphenate each of us, separated by our race, religion and even sexual preference stops the slide into the abyss of mean-spirited fights that deprive us of our individual and national character.

The very transformation that you rejected is one designed to conform our nation to the world, rather than playing the role that God created for America to be a shining beacon of freedom for all in the world to see and be inspired by.

Donald Trump is just one man. He is flawed like all of us. He will need to be kept in check, just as the Framers intended for all presidents. And he may falter and fail, but the vote of 2016 signals that America is not dead, but instead is a concept that its people still cherish and are willing to fight for.

Hope for the future can now replace the despair of acceptance of a new normal where every day each of us were just a little less free, with a little less opportunity to make our own way without Uncle Sam’s forceful guiding hand.

In the end, that is what America is about, a land of individual opportunities to try, sometimes fail, get up and try again with an eye to becoming the best that each of us can be with the collective result being a strong, vibrant people and nation.

America is about an abiding faith that our freedom comes from God Himself, and cannot be taken away by men. A freedom worth fighting for not only here, but abroad as we help others overcome oppressors to join us in the light.

We were losing that confidence and sense of purpose and vision for ourselves. On Nov. 8, a glimmer has been restored in the lamp of freedom.

Thank you, America, for taking a chance on yourself again. Now, let’s get to work with the hard task of restoring our nation.

SOURCE

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A view from the Left

Mostly pretty factual

Trump defied all expectations on Tuesday, sending shudders around the world by claiming the keys to the Oval Office. It was the crowning moment of a political career built on proving the so-called experts — pollsters, campaign advisers, and pundits — wrong again and again.

And as the results were tallied, it became clear that Trump was redrawing the electoral map in the same way that he said he was going to. He won over white working class voters who have felt abandoned.

Accusations of groping women? Didn’t matter. Deporting immigrants en masse? Not a problem. Repeated claims that he was unfit, ill-tempered, and too erratic? Didn’t change enough minds.

He played it loose with the truth in a way that, in the past, would have been fatal for other politicians. But voters around the country demonstrated on Tuesday that they were so frustrated, so fed up — so mad as hell — that they were willing to roll the dice on the unknown rather than stick with the status quo.

“The country,” Tom Brokaw said on NBC, “is more agitated than we realized.”

Only 37 percent of voters said in exit polls that Trump is qualified to be president, while a mere 34 percent said he had the right personality and temperament for the office. But the overwhelming thirst for change seemed to take precedence. Some 70 percent of Trump voters said the most important attribute in choosing him was he “can bring needed change.”

It was a monumental loss for Hillary Clinton, but it was also an earth-shattering win for Donald Trump. Clinton dramatically underperformed President Obama in 2012, while Trump far out-performed Mitt Romney.

Rural voters turned out in greater numbers. Over and over in exit polls, voters reported they wanted change. But he also won in Florida, a far more diverse state that Hillary Clinton banked on taking by driving up Hispanic turnout.

Trump supporters gathered at a Boston-area F1 track on election night

Pollsters were woefully wrong, and perhaps unable to capture voters who didn’t vote before — or who were afraid to admit they were voting for Trump until they got into the voting booth. Political analysts late on Tuesday night were flabbergasted. “I literally have no idea what to think right now,” said one.

The New York Times’ Upshot had a projection that had Clinton with an 85 percent chance to win — the same probability that an NFL kicker has at missing a routine 37-yard field goal.

Yet Clinton missed. Despite spending twice as much money. Despite running far more ads. Despite a much bigger campaign staff. Despite a popular sitting president of the United States campaigning relentlessly on her behalf.

Those who couldn’t wait for Trump to exit stage left now have to imagine him sitting down in the Oval Office, giving a State of the Union address, and hosting state dinners. Anyone who turned the channel when Trump came on the news because they didn’t want their children to hear now have to talk with them about Trump or stop watching the news for the next four years.

If you can’t stomach a man who built his campaign on chants of “Build a wall!” and “Lock her up!” — or a man who has a Middle East policy that goes little beyond “Knock the hell out of ISIS” — that man is now your president.

He has rocked the Republican Party, but he now will have House and Senate majorities to try and carry out his priorities.

That means Obama’s health care law could be dismantled, and Supreme Court nominees will be filled by Trump. He almost certainly will attempt to carry out his far-fetched plan to build a wall along the southern border, on the Mexican government’s dime. He wants to deport any immigrant in the United States illegally, which could mean tearing families apart and sending some home.

Any Syrian refugees who had been planning to have safe harbor could be turned away. Muslims could face a temporary ban from entering a country with a motto of e pluribus unum, out of many one.

He could also attempt to follow through on his bold — potentially illegal — suggestion during a debate to instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Clinton’s e-mail “situation.”

When Clinton said it was a good thing he wasn’t in charge, he vowed, “Because you’d be in jail.”

Trump defies predictions and polls in unexpected win

Later this month, Trump — the president-elect — is slated to testify in a lawsuit from former students who say they were scammed by his Trump University real estate seminars. The case is being overseen by US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump said should recuse himself because he is “of Mexican heritage” (the federal judge was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants).

Trump never went on the traditional foreign trip that most presidential candidates do. Instead, he went to Scotland and opened a new golf course. While he was there, Britain took a stunning vote to leave the European Union. In answering questions during the leadup to the referendum, Trump did not seem familiar with it. But as soon as it happened, he embraced it.

“I think it’s a great thing that happened,” Trump told reporters after getting out of a helicopter. “People are angry, all over the world. People, they’re angry.”

He also drew parallels to his own campaign.

“They’re angry over borders. They’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over. Nobody even knows who they are,” Trump said. “They’re angry about many, many things. They took back control of their country. It’s a great thing.”

Nearly five months later, the United States would do something similar.

SOURCE

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The left brought the rise of Trump on themselves

A concise and succinct letter to the editor below

DONALD J. TRUMP is the natural result of the left’s highly politically correct, anti-white, anti-male, and anti-American rhetoric.

It turns out that if you demonize the people you disagree with, paint them as racists and oppressors, and tell them that any and all of their successes are a result of some unearned “privilege,” they will create a counterrevolution.

Progressives, President-elect Trump is the consequence of your actions, your rhetoric, and the identity politics you brought into American politics. You made your bed, now lie in it.

SOURCE

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Crash? What crash? Stocks defy prediction of a Trump meltdown

Conventional wisdom said Donald Trump couldn’t win the White House. Conventional wisdom said that in the event of an upset, financial markets would crater. Conventional wisdom was wrong.

US stocks rallied Wednesday, as shock over the billionaire’s presidential victory gave way to measured bets that he could stoke economic growth by funding infrastructure and cutting corporate taxes.

Pharmaceutical and biotech stocks rose, freed from Democratic threats to restrict drug prices. Bank stocks gained on prospects of higher interest rates and less regulation.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 1.1 percent, shaking off a 5 percent plunge overnight as global investors had watched Trump claim state after state, despite polls leaning toward Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.

Investors went into the election with a high degree of confidence that Clinton would come out on top, shaking off an 11th-hour e-mail inquiry by the FBI. Wall Street had favored Clinton as a more predictable hand on the economy.

But instead of taking a Brexit-like nosedive Wednesday, stocks showed surprising resilience after the votes were all counted.

Despite the vagueness of Trump’s plans so far, investors liked the sound of spending on job-creating projects, such as roads and transportation, to provide stimulus to the economy that the central bank can no longer provide with near-zero interest rates. Corporate tax cuts, too, appeared to be a welcome prospect.

“Trump has a mandate to get growth going,’’ said Kathleen Gaffney, a bond fund manager at Eaton Vance Management in Boston. If Trump is able to generate blue-collar jobs and lower taxes, she said, “those are two things that could affect our economy in a positive way.”

Trump helped ease the global markets’ early emotional reaction to his win with a conciliatory tone in his acceptance speech, analysts said. But markets were expected to be choppy in the days ahead, as investors at home and abroad try to discern more about the president-elect’s intentions.

More HERE

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