The Press Attacks

First they backed Jeb, then Marco, then Cruz, and now, it looks like Wall Street is pinning their hopes on Hillary.

Bernie is not an avuncular Socialist anymore. He is a threat to the capitalistic system of today, a system that has put 90% of America near poverty… The reason? He wants to return America to the capitalistic system we had 20,30,40 years ago… when to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, “America was great.”

And most of America hopes he succeeds.  The anger behind Donald Trump is also anger against the current capitalism which has emasculated the American worker. You add Donald’s followers to Bernie’s followers and you have a majority of America who wants some very big changes to quickly affect the daily lives of 90% of Americans… They need more income.

The capitalist system of today is bigger than America… Most of America’s profits are quickly moved off-shore doing Americans no good for all the work they’ve done for their bosses.

American workers are past their breaking point and only two candidates understand and address their issues.  Donald and Bernie.  There are opposite differences in addressing the same theme.  One is diverting attention away from those big businesses by pointing to Mexicans, Muslims, and Megan (something with M’s?). The other is aiming to control big business by putting it back into the box from which it escaped during George W Bush’s presidency…. But depending on who you mistrust, both are doing exactly the same thing in the grand scheme of things: organizing against today’s form of capitalism.

So, with Wisconsin going to Bernie, there is now some fear that New York may do the same.  And that has unleashed all the tricks to blank out  both Bernie and Donald so regular Americans continue to be blocked from any say in how their government gets run… something that keeps Wall Street up at night.

Which is why, with the Wisconsin Win, we now have The Daily News of New York and the Washington Post follow-up, excoriate presidential candidate Sanders…

I read the Daily News transcript and you should too.  You will understand that headlines quite often these days, do not an accurate description of the article, make.

I was very pleased with Bernie’s answers and was rather shocked that some have said otherwise….

The leader of the negative articles is none other then mega-giant Amazon.Com’s own newspaper, the Washington Post… Remember this paper is owned by Jeff Bezos, 5th richest Forbes designated person in the world, who is worth $52 billion. 

There is one reason he would not want Bernie to win and that would be because Bernie would put him in the highest tax bracket.  Which is 58% I believe.  Though he will cry, cry, cry about paying high taxes, Americans will get far more benefit from his $52 billion portfolio if correctly taxed, then they would from letting him keep even more of his profits, as is being proposed by every other candidate…

So, imagine you had $52 billion in assets… Would you attack someone who would cost you money???  Or someone who would give you money??

Here are the Washington Post’s flurries off that great interview (read the transcript)-=- remind one of Fast and Furious?

9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview

This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders picks a dangerous New York fight with Hillary Clinton

The case against Bernie Sanders, according to Barney Frank

Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president

About that Bernie Sanders ‘momentum’ …

Writers for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, CNN, Slate and Talking Points Memo concluded as well that Sanders had botched the interview.

But the transcript shows a different story…..Sanders’s conversation with the Daily News was more nuanced than some of the criticism might suggest.

Here is one example…. Sanders was faulted for not having formed an opinion on a recent ruling in federal court. “It’s something I have not studied, honestly,” he said.

That federal court ruling, for instance, remains under seal, and experts on the financial sector said there were additional reasons that Sanders couldn’t give precise answers to several of the questions that were put to him.

When asked how to break up JP Morgan, Sanders answered he’d leave it up to the banks.. That is exactly the right answer. The government doesn’t know the most efficient way to break up JP Morgan, JP Morgan does. If the point is to downsize the banks, the way to do it is to give them a size cap and let them figure out the best way to reconfigure themselves to get under it…  It is no different than requiring seat belts in every car, but not specifying how they must be constructed…

The same applies to Sanders not knowing the specific statute for prosecuting banks for their actions in the housing bubble. Knowingly passing off fraudulent mortgages in a mortgage backed security is fraud.  And the fact that Sanders didn’t know a specific statute, who cares? How many people know the specific statute for someone who puts a bullet in someone’s head? It’s murder. Specific statute?  Are you serious?

Although he did not know, he did argue that the federal law enforcement should devote more manpower to investigating the largest financial firms to determine whether any particular laws were violated, something Clinton has also promised to do, putting both of them at odds with Obama, who chose instead to seek large payments to settle, instead of aggressively prosecuting what could be very involved, risky and unsuccessful at the Supreme Court.

With the exception of the subway token thing, gracefully ending with an image of Bernie jumping a turnstile and gracefully eluding the subway police, it often appeared that the Daily News simply had inexperienced reporters asking vaguely open questions to which Bernie was hearing different parts….

Bottom line is that reading the entire transcript, makes Bernie not someone out of touch with the big picture of running America; which means that those saying he was, ARE out of touch with how America needs to be run….

Look.  Mom says:  Be home for Thanksgiving…  She doesn’t say: get out of work early, pack the night before, take the number 5 bus to the station at 7:45; get on the 8:11 train to Philly and get of at Suburban station and take at 9:22, the 102 bus north….

Bernie got it right… Bezos obviously has a $52.2 billion agenda…. If you are smart  (Allan Loudell gets fooled every time), don’t believe any media this campaign, but use them to read the transcripts…. for you are smarter than they are.

Brilliant strategy for any voter:  go the source; ignore headlines and commentary.

 

 

 

One Graphic Shows Who Can Unify Us After The Election

Call Out The Press On Your Social Media Pages

In 8 short months, Americans have gone from trusting their press 44% of the time, to trusting them 17% of the time.

Undoubtedly their coverage of this election cycle is responsible.   There has never been an election in recent living people’s memory where the entire press corp has focused on supporting one candidate, who then drops out, then focused on another, who then drops out, etc.  Jeb Bush was the favorite until people actually started voting. It was him and Hillary said all the pundits… Jeb Bush is gone, gone, gone… Then it was Marco Rubio… He was the one all voters would elect in the end… Gone, gone, gone…  And so now… it is Hillary…

Which means that Bernie is about to be smeared no doubt…

First this is a good thing… Why?  Because it is better than being ignored which what has happened for so long.  For when a candidate gets smeared, he gets elevated in prominence and people pay attention to him…

Usually that is bad for a candidate, such as with Chris Christie, who once he put himself in the limelight of New Hampshire, couldn’t pass muster.  But when you have a prophetically good candidate who gets smeared, people look closer at that candidate and if they like what they see, they say, “wow, I didn’t know all these details about him.  Why was no one telling us all these great things?”

Then it becomes the smearers who are the ones who look bad… How many people today still have a good positive opinions regarding the Sanhedrin during the time of Pontius Pilate?

So today I saw a headline that Sanders Concedes Defeat.... Intrigued, I looked to see, since with Bernie having earned more campaign money than Hillary across the last three months in a row, I knew that was nothing close to the truth.  Upon reading the article, the headlines premised false.  The article quoted no one who said Sanders was done. Instead, it was twisted from the articles we have already seen about how Sanders didn’t attack Hillary strong on her emails and her Wall Street paid speeches… To be honest, most of us normal people see that as a good saintly thing in Sanders’ character:  choosing to base his campaign strictly on our needs and not on whether he by primary day stands a micro-inch taller than his opponent so he gets a “win”.

So I went to the comments on the social media sight  (It was “recommended” for me, not a real friend’s posting I later found out) and added to the hundreds of others, how the headline lied about the article it tops… “Click Bait” I posted. “This whole post is nothing but bullshit.”

I am asking you to not pass by these anonymous sites, but to do the same.. Just type in the comments: “Click Bait” and some type of warning…

I warn of this malfeasance every election year and since suckers indeed are born every year, new fish are always entering the pond, here is how these things are played….

A major paper, one of the top 5, runs a story with a headline that is very misleading.  They send it out on their multiple feeds…

 

The news is that the Wall Street Journal is reporting (the lie).. All those papers reprinting the lie are legally then telling the truth, and cannot be sued for liable (though they could with deep enough pockets), because they are reporting not the lie itself, but that the Wall Street Journal was reporting it…

The story’s instigators are hoping that the credibility behind the Wall Street Journal, spreads the story wide enough so it becomes belief and every new reporter focuses anew on trying to one-up the story to a higher level, instead of reporting on it being bull.

So news outlets are very careful at first, to make the distinction that they are reporting the accusation itself… not its validity;”the news” is that a certain outlet made such an accusation.  Nowhere is there any detail giving creedence to whether the claim is true.  And if anyone goes to the original article making the accusation, they immediately find no evidence. It is bunk.

In the past it was called Swift Boating where unanswerable accusations are thrown out, no rebuttals allowed to air, and massive proliferation ensues.  Such may have thrown a close 2004 election in the one state that made all thedifference.  All’s fair in war I guess.

It also was used by the Washington Post, to sink Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential run, as detailed here in 2007.  Here, when one combed that Washington Post article for proof, it came down to this single printed sentence… “that some on the editorial board “felt” Biden thought Blacks were poorer students than whites showing he must be prejudiced…”  In today’s  world, we have terrible corporate polices enforced on every state to close that very gap.  That was truth back then, not prejudice.  But the headline ran something like: “Biden Thinks Blacks Can’t Be Educated.”  Yeah, it was pure race baiting.

This is just how it works….  In those days when Facebook was something only college kids used, there was no way to combat the newspapers and medias reach. Today there is…. if you use it…

When you see a lie on your social media,  read the article, comment it is nothing but click bait and if you feel the Bern, put it up on your site ridiculing the perpetrators…  People don’t read junk.  They read what you wrote….

It is hard to convince anyone not to like Bernie… If enough of us call out the media where they get hurt the most, on social media, then we have fought a small part in the ongoing war to keep America in the hands of Americans… and not the hands of some Australian news conglomerate owner…

 

 

 

 

 

What Is The Singlemost Difference Between Hillary and Bernie?

Bernie is running his campaign to change the world of the future over to what he thinks will promote a better world.  Hillary is running a campaign to survive.

Did I call it correctly?

Looking At Bernie’s “REALISTIC” Projections

Being curious, I thought I’d take a look.

The problem when dealing with other people deciding who is a good candidate, is that you have to then accept that person’s choice of what is good policy…

For example, people in lower incomes see Bernie’s rates as reasonable because 1) they pay little in taxes and 2) he will provide services such as Medicaid and college tuition, an attainment they have always dreamed of obtaining.

Those in the investment world who care nothing about how people hurt, rank Bernie as being unreasonable and rank Trump’s program which is unreasonable, very highly…

So it takes some time and effort to explore both sides and see how things stack up. When one sees that Bernie will greatly increase taxes for ones 2016 income and Trump will greatly decrease taxes for ones 2016 income, one might jump towards Trump as the person giving them the most money… But no.  To achieve that cost reduction, Trump who promises to balance the budget, will have to cut most of the services you receive, including Social Security and Medicare, including military and transportation, including crime and the judiciary…  So one would assume your life would change greatly either way, and putting all costs together, Bernie’s plan with an organized society could be much cheaper than Trumps plan where all society is in chaos.

For example: roads, an odd example but one all can grasp because we know the difference between free and toll roads. Now and in Bernie’s world you will drive for free. In Trump’s world,  you pay $1 on every road you drive… Going to work and coming back will cost you $5 each way.  At $10 a day, 5 days a week, and for 52 weeks a year, this one cost would cost you $2,600 a year out of the $5550 dollars Trump says he’ll save you.  That’s just roads.  What about medical?  What about food? What about education? What about all those other things you get as a United States Citizen which you will have to pay for …

So seeing what you get, is important when deciding on cutting or lowering taxes… The answer to deciding should be not whether you pay or get money back; it should be decided which one makes you richer or poorer over a whole year….

You need to see this… It is a tax calculator which inputs the rates all candidates are proposing and tells one how much more or less they pay in taxes… It does not tell you how much or how less you lose in services.

A family of two adults and one child at $50,000 will save $3200 with Trump $1800 with Cruz, $30 more with Clinton, and $6800 more with Sanders.

But under Sanders they get free healthcare; free college; increased infrastructure developments, and their bosses get penalized by the tax brackets if they do not give you substantial raises.

As a business person, I can say that taking the healthcare costs out of business and putting it on government, benefit one between $158 and $359 per month per employee.  Which as a business person is much more relief to bottom line after taxes than Trump’s or Cruz’s lower taxes.

But as a very wealthy person, Bernie’s tax increases will make changes… Higher estate taxes, higher tax rates on income, higher financial transaction fees, higher capital gains taxes, and will drastically change the way we park our money. Instead of putting it into stocks and bonds, we will put it into land, businesses, and development.  Profit no longer becomes a prime driver, because it becomes money that gets taxed and lost. Instead we invest in our businesses before profits so in the following year, we increase its future value, but not necessarily its income.   No different than buying a Van Gogh to hold and sell at some future date.

Those making $10 million according to the calculator can pay $3 million more in taxes.  Which tends to make one who is still earning $10 million a year, not want to report he  is making $10 million and instead choose to say, buy a company yacht for $5 million and ensure that 1000’s of Americans have another job to work on for another 4 weeks..

So though some people get hurt and some get better under all candidates tax plans,  the real focus should be on which makes America better?

And I think no one can argue, what makes America better is when all of its citizens can expect a better future in each subsequent year than they had in the last…. To have a top few get better at the expense of many on the bottom, is great for those few, but must be balanced by the anguish of the many… Likewise to have a bottom few (as in the totally fictional welfare queens) enrich themselves off the top, is no good also… What works best is when all Americans benefit?  America should be where the rich get richer, and the poor…. get richer as well.

That needs to be the measuring stick.

So take a family making $50,000..  Out of current deductions they now take home $38,000 (federal, state, FICA, Medicare).  Under Bernie, they will take home $32,000. And pay nothing for medical or college.  Take college.  At $20,000 a year or $80,000 for four, if they started a private college tuition account they would pay $80,000/ 21 years from birth or $3800 a year.  But no one can afford to do that, but one can see the cost is rather practical… Medical costs for a family of 3 run according to the NIH, $6,800 for most families.  That is almost an even swap.  The family is simply paying the Federal government what it once paid insurance companies and medical services in co-payments and deductibles.

The difference is quality.  One gets better healthcare service when one is on Medicaid for all than one does with private health plans. So families pay the same under Bernie, get better coverage, and get free education to boot.

And under Cruz and Trump, Pell Grants are gone. Federal loans are gone, all federal grants are gone. There is no assistance for states to help out. Small states of course get hit worst than large states.  Something all small states need to consider…

But the reality is that for a very large number of Americans who see no future today under the status quo, a status quo being perpetuated by Hillary Clinton, by Ted Cruz, and by Donald Trump, all allow the rich to benefit AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OTHERS, Bernie’s plan is very viable and very realistic…

No matter what those who have so much income that they have no money-worries, say…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bernie And The Possibility Of A Great Future For America

One thing to remember over this past weekend in which Bernie overwhelmingly won three Pacific Rim states. All three were caucuses, not primaries, and all were open.

This does not discount Bernie’s wins, but it does require explanation for the differences.

Look at it as a voter…  In a primary all you have to do is show up at a polling place and vote for candidates on your ballot.  You are done.

 

At a caucus, you first have to be highly motivated.  Because you leave your house and you show up at a venue expecting to spend long hours.  You get herded into camps and the candidate with the biggest camp, wins the delegates… Does that explain it well in common language?

So caucuses measure enthusiasm more than a candidates actual pull across a state. Many old people would love to participate in caucuses, but it would cost them severe medical strain to do so.  Caucuses tend to be populated by younger people who are more enthused, have less baggage, and less scheduling limitations…

But, it  is also how someone long ago decided delegates should be selected.

This is just a reminder that though Sanders did win 80% of the delegates over Hillary in those three states, it does not mean that all voters in those states will overwhelmingly and enthusiastically support him in the election..

So in analyzing these results from this past weekend, one should call it with these modifications.

Among highly energized democratic voters in these three Pacific Rim states, Bernie supporters took 80% of the delegates.  In caucuses attended by highly motivated voters including independents, Hillary supporters averaged only 2 out of 10.

Though that may not accurately describe a states entire political party, it does show who is able to  demonstrate enthusiasm in that state’s electorate…

If you happen to be voter who thinks the good times have past and really wants things to change for the better, enthusiasm is the first place one should look.

Equaling Out Income

The income imbalance is gigantic.  You may have see this before.  It is our income imbalance as seen in three perspectives… What it is… versus what we think it is,… versus what we would like it to be.

So what would it take to make it like we would like it to be?

Obviously we would take the top 20% down from 85% ownership to around 30%… a  drop by 55% of the nation’s wealth. That would be divvied up though not equally, among the other four 20%….

So what if we used those numerical principles to tackle income inequality?  Then instead of wealth, simply use the same alignment picked by most Americans to figure out a theoretical income distribution?

In 2007 prior to the Recession American families brought in $7..723 trillion dollars….  one half of that went to the two 20% with incomes over $100,000..

If our aim were to move the slider from 50% down to 35%… then this is how much a percent of national income, the top 10% would take…   From 50% to 35% is 15% and fifteen percent of $7.7 trillion is $1.1 trillion dollars each year…

So basically to get the middle class back to where it was in the past, we need to take $1 trillion a year from the top 10% and give it back to everyone else…

America is roughly at 315 million people. and they live in 123 million households… If we lop off the top 20%, we have 80% left which is 252 million people or 98.4 million households…

Giving us 25 million households giving up their $1 trillion to be split up with 98.4 million households.

The average given would be $40,000 given up by 25 million households per year. And if spread across America’s other 80%, it would average………………..$10,204……

The economic value of that total gets reflected by the memory that the wealthy don’t spend the $40,000 into the economy; they lock it away in stocks. But an yearly extra $10,000 in the hands of the stressed 80%, gives a big boost to economic demand.

And this does not get us to equal. It is just where Americans think the levels inequality SHOULD be.

In fiscal 2014, the federal government collected nearly $1.4 trillion from individual income taxes, making it the national government’s single-biggest revenue source. (Along with corporate income taxes and payroll taxes, other sources of federal revenue include gasoline and cigarette taxes, estate taxes, customs duties and payments from the Federal Reserve.)

WE are saying this now needs to be raised to $2.4 trillion with ALL that average increase borne by the top quintile… As a rough estimate (since they are actually paying near a 25% real tax rate now), because we need double the intake of income, doubling their rates up to the 50% level for the highest margins, would bring us close to parity. Exactly to the level to which Ronald Reagan cut taxes in his first term.

THAT, should give you an indication of where we were at one time, and how bad things have been allowed to slip away from the middle class.

I should add, there is only ONE candidate who is addressing this issue…All other candidates are pandering to those who already “have”…..

The Hillary Spin

You can hear if from Deldem, a Hillary supporter…  “Looks like your candidate is out.”  The media across the board has echoed the same message… “Bernie is out of the race.  He can try going forward because he has so much money from his donors, but the race is over. He can’t win… ”

Hillary’s victory speech in Florida briefly mentioned Bernies campaign, then went into fluff mode.  Platitudes after platitudes like those extra fluffy lemon meringue pies being forced on you around large round tables in a banquet hall, none of which could be pinned to the protein of any policy.. Anything said, would cause her crowd to roar right then and as a listener focusing on what was being said, all those cheers were more for the incantational music of her speech, than the actual words being said…

Obviously she was tired and wanted the thing over… So, are her surrogates really telling the truth when they say the race is over? I had to look.

Current Delegate count: Hillary 1139 / Bernie 825 … these are the delegates won on primary and caucus votes. For now, we can ignore the super delegates who at a series of whims, can switch to Sanders and back to Hillary and over to Sanders again. Of real earned delegates, Bernie has 42% and Hillary 58%… 

The media is quick to just take the lazy approach… count states and call a winner. Hillary won all 5 states.  The Southern states went to her handily, and Ohio was 166,000 strong in her favor, and Illinois was within 34,000 votes…

Let’s look at Chicago…. Hillary won Chicago by 58,000 votes.  But she only won Illinois by 34,605 votes.  Which means… across the entire rest of the state of Illinois, from Wisconsin down to Kentucky, Bernie beat Hillary by about 24,000 votes. (From the map, the Black sections went Hillary. The white suburbs when Bernie. )

Missouri was very closely won by Hillary… 0.2% margin.  1531 individual votes.

Here is the state map of the results.

And here is how St. Louis voted…

Meaning Sanders carried the entire rest of the state from Kansas to Illinois, by 5200 votes….

Counties in North Carolina and Ohio which had larger numbers of blacks, went for Hillary; in areas of fewer blacks, they tipped to Sanders.

This is important for you to know; from here we go forward…..

Arizona, Idaho, and Utah are up next Tuesday… Arizona has 4.7% blacks. Idaho has 0.8%. Utah has 1,3%…  Based on the above trends we should guess Bernie.  Of course, there are the Hispanics. Arizona 30% . Idaho 12% . Utah 13.5%. Some are using Florida to say Hispanics are solidly behind Hillary. But Hispanics in Florida are primarily of Cuban descent. In the West, they would be mostly Mexican.

A closer approximation would be next door Colorado which went 50%-40.3 for Bernie.  Colorado is 4.5% black, and 21% Hispanic.  Next Tuesday, 121 delegates are up for grabs in states heavily favored for Sanders. 

On the 26th, come Alaska, Hawaii, and very liberal Washington State.  We all know Alaska is too cold for blacks but 3.9% of their population stays there anyway. Fewer made it to Hawaii, 2.5%. Washington State sits on 4.1%…On this day 142 delegates are up for grabs in states heavily favored for Sanders.

The following week Wisconsin (6.6% black) splits up their 84 delegates and Wyoming (1.8% black) adds their 14…  It is possible at this point Bernie will have caught up with Hillary in earned delegates providing both a level playing field for New York’s 247 delegates on April 19th. …At 17.6% black New York is the potential Hillary win…

And the formula may be different then. After seeing win, after win, after win, after win, after win, after win, people who liked Bernie but thought he couldn’t win, may decide he can…  which is why you have to play these things out and not make snap decisions on March 15th of how people will vote far, far out into the future.

Hillary is strong in the South… Hillary won Ohio and Florida back in 2008. But she did not win the nomination in 2008.  Now the South is done, you can stick a dessert fork in it.  States that have previously voted in the areas into which the primaries now head, have mostly been above the 58% margin that Sanders needs to win.  67.7% of the vote in Kansas, 64.3% in Maine, 59% of the vote in Colorado and 61.6% in Minnesota, a close 57.1% in Nebraska. 60% back in New Hampshire..

So don’t be put off by the smugness of that team who just put up points on the board… They now have to shift to defense to minimize the yardage expected to come their opponents way… If they can’t slow the offensive, we then have a close race, keeping primaries in contention as we did in 2008 right up to the very end….June 1st.

But it certainly looks like the media who was very wrong in Michigan, is very wrong now when they try to paint the race as over… and throw Deldem into that mix as well.

At the current spread of 314 earned delegates, this looks like the high-water mark of the Hillary campaign.  Looking at the map, all her strong suits are played out…. Bernie’s are just beginning.

The gray……. is still in play…….

 

 

 

Trump, Rump, Dump, Bump, Stump

I did see this coming… just in a different person.  I thought it would be Gov. Scott Walker now in the lead but with the same contingent backing him, and…. coupled with some big Koch money always being bundling up behind him where ever his footsteps led.

What I didn’t foresee was that the Kochs would pull the money plug on Scott early on and flip to Cruz…  But that is exactly what happened and almost as soon as he got the Koch’s call that he was finished, Scott Walker dumped his campaign..

But he would have run it defiantly against all the establishment and he would be where Trump stands in his shoes now… Where he got out-played in the first debate was by not knowing how to steal the limelight back from someone building a gigantic wall and preposterously making Mexico pay for it… If he’d immediately countered that he, Scott Walker would build two walls, one North and one South, both to keep brown people out, and would make the United Nations pay for it…, he could have recaptured the spotlight. He didn’t, his moment passed, and the media and public went after Trump..

Without his lead role as defiance-in-chief, he had nothing else to run on…

The point being, that I accurately pinpointed way ahead of all the other commentators over at WDEL, what the Republican electorate was feeling…

I’ll explain it by quoting from Today’s exit poll data….

“More than half of GOP voters saying they feel “betrayed” by their party’s politicians supported Trump. Unsurprisingly, Trump—the only non-politician left in the race—dominated among those who want the next president to be from outside the political establishment, winning three-quarters of their votes.”

The actual total is 55%.  Get that?  Somewhere between 5 and 6 out of 10 Republicans, feel betrayed by their OWN party… The Mitch McConnells. The Paul Ryans.  The Mitt Romneys. The Ted Cruzs, The Marco Rubios….Their assorted Senators and Representatives…

They feel betrayed…

And not necessarily because candidates weren’t conservative enough… Their betrayal came about because they elected a majority of Republicans to make individual voter’s lives better, and on that contract item, they did not deliver….

From the American point of view, when any attempt arose to make American’s lives better, these new Republicans drug their feet to doom it to failure.  Which is why… the leading candidate…. was a once a democrat supporter friend of Hillary, who was against the Iraqi War and who supports strengthening Social Security and Medicare, not tearing it down…

• When they drug their feet on Obamacare… Americans got hurt.  Republicans didn’t care.
• When they shut down the government… Americans got hurt.  Republicans didn’t care.
• When they defaulted on America’s debt… Americans got hurt..Republicans didn’t care.
• When they didn’t care about up to 48 million Republicans on SNAP but gave the billionaires a $438 billion dollar tax cut, Republicans didn’t care….

All of which would have certainly helped Hillary………. but they want someone other than Hillary…

Enter Donald Trump.

The more the establishment hates Donald Trump, the more his supporters reaffirm their allegiance.  For the non-establishment candidate is exactly what these voters want… They did not get prosperity from the establishment, they got financially worse… Since the Recession, their lives got tighter and the wealthy’s lives became more loose and easy… No taxes; no regulations; no requirements; no rules.

Now here is one of that upper crust, a billionaire himself,  extending to them the exact same rules that his establishment plays by…

Donald is now a symbol;  talking about holes in his statements, his firebrand racism, his vapid plans for the future, only cements the view these people have: that they are saying this only because they think Donald Trump will change the things they’ve set in stone…. The more you attack him; the greater his support swells…

If you are a Progressive (reading this) think back on 2008! The more the conservative press piled dirt on Obama (what was that pastor’s name) the more his supporters rallied to his cause to not only defend him, but finance him, and work hard to get him elected… If you can remember such, you can begin to understand the attraction Lord Voldemort has over the Death Eaters… oops, Republicans…
Trump is simply THE ANSWER to a lot of people’s problems….. it may not be what you like, but you… are not “those people”…

As he wins, he grows.  Now that the establishment has let it out they are going to “try” to unseat him at “their” controlled convention, of course, that makes Trump even more of a hero..

And to his credit. He has morphed the Republican Party from a party of butt-licking sycophants run by email chains penned by the elite, to a boisterous, rowdy, lively, cantankerous party flailing around, seeking a direction on where it might go… Very much like America in 2016 if you ask me….

Though I don’t like racism, I do like how Trump hates Wall Street and the big banks.  I do like how he is not beholden to big money and I presume he will do what is necessary as gleefully as he throws out protesters from his forums.  I do like how in battles with monoliths versus little people, he sides with the little people.  For those with long memories, his early campaign is very much like Reagan’s.  Those who only know the “myth of Reagan” will contest my claim, but if your memory is good, you’ll remember how everyday people flocked to his appearances, and how both the Establishment Republicans and all the Democrats, all turned up the heat to blow him out of the race….

Trump is so much like Reagan, I’m almost thinking he will win….  despite the racism, despite the hatred, despite the emotions, and despite the hair… Like Reagan, just looking at him, you like him. Like Reagan, both come from acting and know how to push an audience’s buttons. Like Reagan, both approach everything as non-negotiable; their way or the highway…  For people unhappy with everything in general but have no specifics at which to gripe, this is very attractive.. Just as it was in 1980…. And like Reagan, both are really Democrats at heart, just playing a Republican for TV….

 

There is a way to beat him.. whether by John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton.  The last debate showed how… From all reports of that last debate Trump stopped using his attention-getting bombs and without them to “plow the road” ahead of him, he hit quite a few land mines set up for him to step on.

The way to beat Trump is not to yell at what he is… and that was the tact taken by the Democrats in 1980 and to their dismay, the American people didn’t care about the old ideas of what a President should or should not do. They didn’t care about procedures and traditions laid down over long periods, dictating how politics were supposed to unfold…

But considering all the huge negatives Ronald Reagan had in his campaign of 1980, if Jimmy Carter had been able to put up a plan that solved the problems then of stagflation, misery indexes, military ineptitude, and a feeling that America had drifted off from its destiny, he would have cut into Reagan’s overwhelming victory…

The sole way to beat Trump is not to attack him (though that could serve to bring out your voters in higher numbers)  but to offer a plan to America that will solve its problems faster than electing a big mouthed bigot who just yells and points fingers and says he’s going to fix it… whatever “it” is…

America only elects those representing its “dark side” when it sees no other option available.

To beat Trump, you have to get in front of him on how you will make America great again;…how you can give “faster” relief without building a wall.;…. How you can make us safer and not ban our third largest religion from whom we will again import a vast majority of  our oil; … how you can do all this without alienating that 50% of our population who just got called “fat pigs.”.

As long as no one hears that, how you will actually fix things,… if you can’t offer a solid solution, Trump will win the Republican nomination and continue to beat out Hillary in the electoral college…

Because if there is anyone representing the “establishment”  it IS, Hillary Clinton.  Americans are SO FED UP with the establishment they will support anyone and anything, who promises to bring it down….

That explains Trump’s popularity… He is the creation of the Republican Party’s grinding down our gears of government to a standstill. In a world where Republicans and Democrats worked together going with up or down votes on everything put before them for their perusal, Trump now would be on the outside, quickly typed-cast as a weirdo looney as was Michele Bachmann.

But run government efficiently…. is not what Republicans did… That is why we have Trump…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Violence And Trump

The media will show you nonstop the violence at Trump’s latest rallies.  They have an ulterior motive for doing so..  They want to incite more violence to occur so they can keep citizens’ attention focused on their channels…

As soon as I heard Chicago was successful at shutting down a rally, I KNEW, it would ripple through America and be the start of a giant wave of protesting…

For 99% of America does indeed have something to protest… They are suffering more than anyone in their family line since their great-grandparents lived. America has gone downhill, slid across the ice on the pond, and fallen into the icy river on its far side…  Only young George Bailey can save us now.

It is just like when 99% of young people had something to protest in the 60’s,.. being drafted to fight a proxy war that we would ultimately abandon and walk away… For those not living then, two camps divided.  One fought against the power of status quo, knowing they were on the right side of morality, knowing that accepting what is wrong because you were simply told to, was unconscionable.  The other camp, also knew the war was wrong, but warped the test of the draft as a loyalty benchmark, a high attainment that must be surmounted to prove you were indeed loyal to the United States of America… To them, if drafted and you didn’t go fight in a petty, ill-conceived, poorly strategized  war, and if you weren’t willing to die just solely to prove your loyalty to America your country, then you weren’t good enough to be a United States Citizen…

The irony of course being that large numbers of draft dodgers used legal means to escape the war, including one who went on to become Vice President of the United States of America, then send 4,425 Americans to die, and 32,223  to return to America wounded just in order to get his oil company deep inside the Western desert of Iraq, to steal their high grade oil for free.

Youth didn’t protest that as we did Vietnam, mostly because 2003 was a volunteer army. We weren’t disrupting careers, killing sons and daughters, by random lotteries.

But economically,… under the auspices of multiple Republican Congresses which have been almost criminally delinquent on improving the quality of life of young people. a lottery did materialize.  If you were extremely lucky, you could partake of the American dream… Like Powerball, everybody has to play to create a pool for the winner.  But only one winner takes all.

If the 99% were every to realize that should they not play Powerball twice every week, they would be guaranteed to save $6 a week ($312/year)… (which would make most of them $312 richer at that year’s end)…. the scheme would fall short. The winner would only have his own ticket as the prize for his winning because nobody would play.

Therefore it is important to distract the 99% with lots of noise that causes their brain to think of what you program for them, instead of what is in their best interests.  You say things like “you can never win these billions, if you don’t play“. “We have lucky winners all over the place who were just like you except they bought a ticket.”

The idea is to distract you from thinking of your abysmal chances of winning, and from totaling up the cost your addictive behavior is costing you…. Of course if you win, then it is worth it… but YOU will never win… It doesn’t take much thinking to reach that conclusion and by distracting you, thinking about such things never crosses your mind.

That is Donald’s role right now.

Do you remember exactly when Donald entered the race?  It was the week after Bernie dominated the news feeds about filling stadiums everywhere he spoke.  For only one week, Bernie’s message got out… What he was saying was in the paper every day. Then Donald stepped in saying Mexico will pay for his wall, instantly and ever since, becoming the elephant in the room… Nothing else about Bernie has gone mainstream.  Hillary is safe.

But let us assume it wasn’t Hillary who was the beneficiary.  Let us assume that someone didn’t want us to know how affordable Single Payer healthcare really is to run. Let us assume someone didn’t want us to know how rapidly the fortunes of the Middle Class rise as soon as taxes go up on the top 0.1 of the top 1%.  Perhaps someone didn’t want young people to know how easily they could go to college and not wallow forever in catastrophic debt.  Let’s assume someone didn’t want the shadowy area of Wall Street put under the Fed’s microscope.  Or perhaps someone didn’t want you to know how they purposefully caused the financial crises for  their profit in 2008 and took a lion’s share of your 401 K’s out of your pockets, jeopardizing your retirement. Perhaps someone didn’t want you know how easily it is to fix Social Security permanently so it lasts till perpetuity. Perhaps someone didn’t want you to know how easy it is to make healthcare a right, and not a profit making machine… Perhaps someone didn’t want you to know that charter Schools are get-rich shams, and that the Smarter Balanced is a fake assessment  designed solely to break teacher’s unions and open up more for profit charters.

If these even closely sound like some far out extremist ideas to you, then the policy of entering Trump into 2016’s race was very sound. For those attending these unreported rallies of Bernie were rapidly learning just how easily all these could be accomplished if we just elected people who would work for us, and not Wall Street… And suddenly, after Trump, there was silence on all Bernie was saying….

And so if you look across the past months, you can see a trend of where when each uproar dies out from a previous outrageous action, a new one gets inserted to flame things up again… Their effect is never wasted as would occur if they weren’t being orchestrated. If Trump truly was shooting from the hip, then we’d have multiple flair ups going all the time, each canceling out and eating into the analysis time of the other.. But that isn’t the case… The effect appears planned just as if it were on a sit-com… One line said… wait for the laugh track. then the rebuttal… wait for the laugh track. Timed perfectly for the desired effect.

The serious problem in 2016 for those with money and power, is Bernie.  With either Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, Trump, or Hillary, had you a problem with Common Core or the Smarter Balanced Assessment, you could not approach them for a fair hearing… They all owe big money subsidizing Common Core… Only Bernie could effectively act independently and steer government back towards appeasing the will of the people, over the current status quo which is crafted to appease the will of a fortunate few.

Only Bernie. Wall Street does need to fear him. for if he ever becomes President and gets a super majority in both houses…. Wall Street gets handcuffed with all the regulations of the New Deal and contained in a cage of its own making.

Which is why he is the only candidate who is good for you… Most watchers are shocked he is still going at it as strong as he is.. I certainly wouldn’t have written a scenario where a hunched old man could with a miracle wind behind him, become the 2016 Democratic candidate and possibly the next president of the United States?   Appearance=wise, he is the least likely person to ever be president in the modern age.  But here he is riding solely on the strength of  ideas… Ideas that were cannons of government until Reagan, until we tore down the temples in which they were kept.

So the violence?  It will grow.  Just as one successful sit in of a Dean’s office in Berkley spread to almost every campus by the end of the second year… For if you speculate it would be great to do something huge and outrageous, and someone else does it first, you then know it’s possible so there is nothing holding you back…

I’m looking forward to the first mass killing inside a Trump event,  with NRA smuggled-in weapons…  Anyone want to take bets on the death toll?  I’m staking out the number 13…..