Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante
In an essay entitled “American Federalism, 1776 to 1997: Significant Events,” by Eugene Boyd dated January 6, 1997, the author breaks American political history into four (4) distinct eras beginning in 1789 and ending in 1997.
In his scheme of things, he terms the period from 1789 to 1901 as the era of Dual Federalism which is characterized as an era during which there was little collaboration between the national and state governments.
Indeed, that was the time period in this nation’s political history which included the Principles of ’98, the American political position that individual states could judge the constitutionality of central government laws and decrees, and could refuse to enforce laws deemed unconstitutional, which, according to WIKIPEDIA, is generally referred to as “nullification,” but has also been expressed as “interposition,” i.e. the states right to “interpose” between the federal government and the people of the state.
As schoolboy/girl history books tell us, the Principles of ’98 were widely promoted in Jeffersonian Democracy, especially by what were then called Tertium Quids, a disparaging term that referred to cross-party coalitions of Federalists and moderate Democratic-Republicans such as John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia.
As we are informed by history, the term “Principles of ’98” derives from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions written in 1798 by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively, both of whom believed that if the central government was the exclusive judge of its limitations under the U.S. Constitution, then it would eventually overcome those limits and become more and more powerful and authoritarian, which, of course, brings us to the times we are living in today in this nation, which is what makes this upcoming presidential so interesting and important, where we have what can only be called two monarchists competing against each for the throne of imperial power in Washington, D.C.
Madison and Jefferson argued that formal limiting devices such as elections and separation of power would not suffice if the government could judge its own case regarding constitutionality.
As Jefferson wrote, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
Say what you will about old Tom, he certainly had prescient vision with that statement.
From Dual Federalism, we next go to what the author terms the era of Cooperative Federalism, which is the term given to the period from 1901 to 1960.
According to the author, this period was marked by greater cooperation and collaboration between the various levels of government, and it was during this era that the national income tax and the grant-in-aid system were authorized in response to social and economic problems confronting the nation.
From there, we go to the period from 1960 to 1968, which was called “Creative Federalism” by President Lyndon Johnson’s Administration.
Not surprisingly to those of us alive back then, especially us Viet Nam veterans, President Johnson’s “Creative Federalism” as embodied in his Great Society program, was, by most scholars’ assessments, a major departure from the past, which comes across to me as gross understatement.
President Johnson’s “Creative Federalism” as embodied in his Great Society program further shifted the power relationship between governmental levels toward the national government through the expansion of grant-in-aid system and the increasing use of regulations.
And that then takes us to what the author calls Contemporary federalism, which was the period from 1970 to 1997, when the article was written, an era characterized by shifts in the intergovernmental grant system, the growth of unfunded federal mandates, concerns about federal regulations, and continuing disputes over the nature of the federal system.
And here we are now, almost twenty (20) years later, and those disputes over the nature of OUR federal system in this nation have greatly escalated, as we see state Constitutions vanishing in New York state and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
So the question to me is – what era are we now in?
Are we still in the era known as Contemporary federalism, which period began in 1970, the year I got back from Viet Nam, or have we progressed from there into a new era, as yet unnamed?
In answer to that, I would posit that the era known as Contemporary federalism ended on 9-11-2001, to be replaced with what can only be described as Imperial federalism, where all governmental functions in this nation are being subsumed into the federal government in Washington, D.C., or are coming under the control of the federal government in Washington, D.C., which is coming to resemble the Roman government in the time of Augustus Caesar.
In that scenario, George W. Bush became our first imperial president, a law unto himself.
Barack Hussein Obama, he of the executive orders, became our second imperial president, and with his executive orders, he expanded on the powers our first imperial president, George W. Bush awarded himself when he assumed office in 2000.
And now we are confronted with the election of our third and most powerful imperial president to date, in what has to be the most bizarre and surreal presidential election in my lifetime.
With respect to bizarre and surreal, we have Hillary Clinton, who just made the most miraculous recovery from pneumonia the world has ever witnessed, making national news by slamming Donald Trump on Thursday, September 15, 2016, for declining to answer a question about where President Barack Obama was born, as if the most important issue facing this nation today was not about ISIS, or when we are ever going to get out of Afghanistnam, or our $20 TRILLION national debt, but instead is “where was Barack Obama born?”
“When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?” Hillary ranted and pouted at The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute awards gala in Washington, D.C. because Trump would not tell her where Barack Obama was born, as if Trump had been there as a witness to record the momentous event, and as if not considering where Barack Obama was born was really a worthy topic of debate between two presidential candidates in America today, neither of whom is named Obama, constitutes bigotry, which is defined as “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.”
Does the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t see it worth the while of we, the American people, to have listen to a silly debate between himself and Hillary Clinton on the question of where Barack Obama was born really qualify as “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself,” or is the charge of bigotry made by Hillary Clinton simply patently stupid?
Are there more important things for two presidential candidates in this country to debate about than where Barack Obama was born?
Or is that really what is at the top of the list?
Now, as to that caterpillar, it is blue in color with a haughty look on its face and a supercilious attitude as it sits on a mushroom outside my window smoking its hookah and occasionally blowing smoke letters in the air, which, when put together, seem to say “this **** is too bizarre to be real,” a sentiment I find it impossible to disagree with.
Whatever kind of caterpillar that is, it sure does seem to have its finger on the pulse of these times that we now find ourselves immersed in.
Could it be Tom Jefferson reincarnated?
A question for our times if there ever was one.
With respect to the surreal and bizarre nature of this up-coming presidential election, for the first time in American political history, we have two candidates running for the imperial presidency on behalf of the two supposedly “major” political factions in this nation, both of which now represent a shrinking minority of voters in this country, and both candidates are highly disliked and reviled by a majority of voters in this country, as we are informed by the Washington Post on 31 August 2017, as follows:
* A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows 41 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Clinton, while 56 percent have an unfavorable one.
* That’s the worst image Clinton has had in her quarter-century in national public life.
* Her previous low favorable rating this year was in July, when it was 42 percent, lower than any mark in historical Post-ABC polls except a few points in the 1990s when a large share of the public had no opinion of her.
* Her previous high for unfavorable views was in June, when 55 percent disliked Clinton.
* If it weren’t for Trump, in fact, Clinton would be the most unpopular major-party presidential nominee in modern American history.
* Perhaps most notably, Clinton’s image has declined significantly from just a month ago.
* Interestingly, Clinton’s numbers appear to have dropped since that early August poll mostly in groups that have been very supportive of her:
* Her favorable rating among women dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent.
* Among Hispanics, it went from 71 percent to 55 percent.
* Among liberals, it went from 76 percent to 63 percent.
end quotes
According to NBC News on 13 September 2016, though a majority of voters say they have an unfavorable impression of Clinton (59 percent) and Trump (60 percent), the number of voters who say they have a strongly favorable opinion of Trump has increased by 4 points — from 12 points to 16 points — since the questions was last asked about a month ago.
Currently, 38 percent of registered voters now have a favorable impression of Trump.
Nearly an identical number — 39 percent — have a favorable impression of Clinton.
end quotes
And yet, they are what we are being dished up as our choices for president this year.
In a MARKETWATCH article by Caroline Baum on August 3, 2016, we are informed thusly about Hillary Clinton, who is reviled by a clear majority of American citizens, and with good reason, in my estimation:
Hillary Clinton has a long history of lying.
In fact, her first instinct, when confronted with some tawdry, quasi-illegal activity, is to dissemble.
In 1996, New York Times columnist William Safire called her “a congenital liar,” citing her comments about her cattle-trading windfall, her involvement in the firing of members of the White House Travel Office, and the missing Rose Law Firm files that miraculously reappeared.
Most recently, Clinton’s denials about sending classified information on her private email account housed on her private server were exposed as falsehoods by FBI Director James Comey.
Asked by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” about Comey’s comments, the former secretary of state lied again, claiming Comey had called her statements “truthful.”
The Washington Post’s FactChecker awarded Clinton four Pinocchios, a rating reserved for the biggest whoppers, prompting the Atlantic’s Ron Fournier to write an article headlined, “Why Can’t Hillary Clinton Stop Lying?”
end quote
The question, however, is not so much one of why can’t Hillary Clinton stop lying as it is one of who in America in their right mind wants to have as their leader someone who can’t stop lying.
How low does one’s self-esteem have to be to want to live in a nation with a highly unpopular congenital liar who despises the majority of people in this country and dumps them into her “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES,” as if they were trash, as its chief executive officer and commander-in-chief of its military?
With respect to the question of Hillary Clinton’s veracity, in a NEWSMAX article by Brian Freeman on 07 August 2016, we are informed as follows with respect to Hillary Clinton’s claims about creating jobs in the United States of America, to wit:
Even though Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton touts her accomplishments at job creation as a New York senator, the actual results of her efforts are far from impressive, according to The Washington Post.
The paper conducted an in-depth review of her job-creation efforts while in the Senate, when she concentrated on trying to revive the economy in the depressed region of Upstate New York.
One of the major issues in the presidential election is expected to be who is most capable of running the economy and who has the best record of helping to stimulate growth.
In fact, First Post reported that during this past week of campaigning, Clinton said her economic plan for if she becomes president would create 10 million jobs, while that of Republican nominee Donald Trump would lose 3.5 million jobs, emphasizing that he is not offering “real change” but “empty promises.”
In her campaign for the Senate, Clinton also made grand promises, vowing to create 200,000 new jobs in Upstate New York, but the results fall well short of that, according to The Washington Post study.
Her attempts to pass major legislation to benefit the economy of her state failed and her smaller projects often were short-lived or did not work out at all, with overall job growth stagnate during her tenure, while manufacturing jobs plummeted 25 percent.
With that in mind, the most reliable figures are those from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which show that during her overall time as senator, upstate jobs rose only 0.2 percent overall, while manufacturing positions fell 24.1 percent.
Some of the new jobs, however, appeared to have been created by legislation that was introduced by a Republican senator and only included Clinton as one of 21 co-sponsors, the study shows.
end quote
In New York state, we know Hillary Clinton to be pro-repression when it comes to dissent against government corruption, and pro-government corruption when it comes to her policies.
We also know her to be quite a bit less than truthful, and thus are amazed that she is a leading contender for this highest government position in this land.
With respect to her dislike and disdain for the American people, and her broad-brush smears of the American people, who Hillary despises, in a NEWSMAX article dated September 16, 2016 by Mark Swanson, we are told:
Hillary Clinton on Friday slammed Donald Trump for being the standard bearer of the Obama birther movement, telling the audience that “he is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
Clinton made the remarks at the Black Women’s Agenda 39th Annual Symposium in Washington, D.C.
end quote
“He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country,” this from Hillary Clinton who stated publicly in April of 2016:
“If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
end quote
But of course, since she is Hillary, she is not feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country, with that biased and highly prejudicial statement of hers as she panders for votes with it.
What crap say I.
In that same article, Hillary can be seen screeching as follows:
“For five years [Trump] has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said in her speech.
“His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie.”
“There is no erasing it in history.”
“He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology,” Clinton said.
end quote
Why does Donald Trump owe the American people an apology because Barack Obama was born in the United States of America?
What kind of lunatic logic can possibly support that statement?
And why should Trump have to apologize to Obama because Obama was born in the United States of America?
That makes absolutely no sense, either, and it is a sign that it is Hillary Clinton’s mental health we really should be concerned about, although to be truthful, there is nothing that bars someone with a questionable grasp on reality from running for and serving as American president.
“Imagine someone who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world,” Clinton said.
And yes, I can certainly can.
In fact, her name is Hillary Clinton.
And then Hillary says: “Imagine a president who he sees doesn’t look like him and doesn’t agree with him and thinks, that person must not be a real American.”
“Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States.”
end quote
Uh, okay, sure, Hillary, if you say so, but with respect to where Barack Obama’s ideas come from regardless of where Obama was born, Obama himself stated thusly in his African Union Speech in Ethiopia on July 28, 2015:
OBAMA: I also stand before you as the son of an African.
And Africa and its people have helped shape who I am and how I see the world.
end quotes
With that statement by Obama in the public record, as an American citizen, I see no reason why Trump, or anyone else for that matter, including Clinton herself, should not be questioning how Obama views the United States of America and its people, when his views on government are not based on our political history, but instead are derived from the tribal political history of Africa, a place not noted for political stability, while being noted for corruption and tribal violence and warfare.
With respect to the Republican and Democrat parties now being shrinking minorities in this country, we have from GALLUP in a January 11, 2016 story entitled “Democratic, Republican Identification Near Historical Lows” by Jeffrey M. Jones, as follows:
Story Highlights
• 42% identify as independents, 29% as Democrats, 26% as Republicans
• Independent identification at least 40% for fifth consecutive year
PRINCETON, N.J. — In 2015, for the fifth consecutive year, at least four in 10 U.S. adults identified as political independents.
The 42% identifying as independents in 2015 was down slightly from the record 43% in 2014.
This elevated percentage of political independents leaves Democratic (29%) and Republican (26%) identification at or near recent low points, with the modest Democratic advantage roughly where it has been over the past five years.
end quote
Despite the fact that they are both minorities in this country, they have provided us with our only two major presidential contenders.
What is wrong with that picture, people?
Why does the minority get to impose their views on the majority through the selection of who we get to vote on for president?
As to issues far more important to us as a nation than where Barack Obama might have been born, as if anyone even cares, according to a MARKETWATCH article by Jeffry Bartash on September 13, 2016:
The national debt has grown tremendously in the wake of the Great Recession owing to slower economic growth and tax revenues and higher government spending.
The total owed by the U.S. government has more than doubled to $19.5 trillion as of August from $9 trillion shortly before the onset of the Great Recession at the end of 2007.
The total debt surpassed the size of the U.S. economy in 2012 for the first time since the end of World War Two, according to a calculation by Haver Analytics.
Just 10 years ago, the debt was only two-thirds the size of annual economic growth.
end quote
What are either of these two highly-disliked, minority party presidential candidates going to do about that, besides keep increasing it by leaps and bounds without an end in sight?
Neither says, because neither knows.
In another MARKETWATCH article from September 8, 2016, we are told:
Outstanding consumer credit rose by a seasonally adjusted $17.7 billion in July, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
Adding to the sense of strength, a slowdown in June was revised to reflect a rise.
The Fed’s data now show a $14.5 billion gain in June, up from the prior estimate of $12.3 billion, which was the slowest pace in almost four years.
Consumer credit rose at a 5.8% seasonally adjusted annual growth rate in July, a pickup from June’s upwardly revised 4.8% pace.
end quote
And in a MARKETWATCH article by Darrell Delamaide on September 16, 2016, it was reported as follows:
Personal finance website WalletHub reported that U.S. consumers added $34.4 billion of credit card debt in the second quarter of 2016 alone, equal to nearly half the overall total in 2015 and almost matching the $36 billion for all of 2012.
Credit card debt is likely to show a net increase of $80 billion in 2016, WalletHub forecasts, versus $71 billion in 2015 — pushing outstanding balances over the $1 trillion threshold for the first time and making the average household debt a “perilous” $8,500.
end quote
Do either candidate have any thoughts about all the debt?
The answer is, we don’t know.
Why don’t we know?
That answer is simple – because we have two highly disliked idiots running for president after being put in those roles by a minority of the American people who are too busy arguing and bickering over where Barack Obama was born to be worried about all that debt, if they even know it exists.
Incredible, say I.
And now, back to that caterpillar ….
In his essay entitled “A VANISHING VIRGINIA CONSTITUTION?”, the Honorable Stephen R. McCullough, a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, and prior to that, a State Solicitor General, Office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia, informed us as follows with respect to concentrated power at the federal level, such as we are experiencing more and more in our lives as American citizens today, to wit:
The notion of protecting the sovereignty of Virginia might seem highly abstract or even anachronistic in an age of robust federal power, but that is not so.
Concentrated power was one of the principal evils the Framers of the United States Constitution sought to avoid.
The horrors of the past century that were inflicted upon the world by totalitarian regimes offer ample evidence of the wisdom of avoiding concentrations of power.
end quote
Quite obviously, from the fact that we now have Imperial presidents in this country along the lines of Augustus Caesar of Rome, or Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as Caligula, or “little boots,” we have completely forgotten the horrors of the past century that were inflicted upon the world by totalitarian regimes which were supposed to offer us ample evidence of the wisdom of avoiding concentrations of power, as I was taught in school at the end of WWII.
Why have we forgotten those horrors of the past century?
Because we have extremely short memories, those of us who still have memories, and we like to focus on how special and exceptional we are, instead, as was made quite apparent to all of us by Hillary Clinton, more than likely this nation’s first empress along the lines of Catherine the Great of Russia, despite the fact that she is disliked and reviled by 60% of the American people, who are disliked and disdained in return by Hillary, in her impassioned speech to the American Legion, of which I am a life member, touting “American Exceptionalism” on September 1, 2016, as follows:
If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this.
The United States is an exceptional nation.
I believe we are still Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth.
We’re still Reagan’s shining city on a hill.
We’re still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country.
My friends, we are so lucky to be Americans.
It is an extraordinary blessing.
It’s why so many people, from so many places, want to be Americans too.
end quotes
Yes, indeed, Hillary, we are so exceptional that we are now $20 TRILLION dollars in debt as a nation, we are stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistnam we are unable to extricate ourselves from at a cost of $4 BILLION a year to protect rampant corruption in that country, we have turned Libya into a failed state thanks to the idiotic foreign policy of Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, and we are becoming mired in another quagmire in Syria which again was caused by the idiotic foreign policy of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in 2011, which idiocy has given the world ISIS as its poison fruit.
Exceptional, indeed.
So, with respect to concentrating power at the federal level in the person of a tyrant like Hillary Clinton, how does someone who is despised and disliked and reviled by a majority of American citizens, and who in turn despises a majority of Americans, calling them a “Basket of Deplorables,” manage to become the top contender for the office of president of the United States of America?
How can such a thing happen in a supposedly exceptional nation that is Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth, Reagan’s shining city on a hill, and Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country, all rolled up into one?
Let’s take a look, and the answer is called “tyranny of the minority,” as we shall soon see.
As to the “tyranny of the minority” that has given us Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, according to recent Voter Registration Statistics, the total number of Americans eligible to vote is 218,959,000 persons while the total number of Americans registered to vote is 146,311,000 persons.
If we consider the 60% of Americans registered to vote who dislike Hillary Clinton, we are talking 87,786,600 people.
If we then check further, we find that Hillary Clinton received just 15,899,116 votes this year in the primary against the sell-out Bernie Sanders, which is how Hillary Clinton became a top presidential contender in this presidential race.
So, doing some math here, of all the people in this country eligible to vote, just 7.261 percent of those people, a very small minority, are responsible for gifting us with Hillary Clinton as our next Imperial president, or empress in the case of Hillary Clinton.
And that people, is what is laughingly called “democracy” in this exceptional nation of ours by such political luminaries as Hillary Clinton and our present emperor, Barack Hussein Obama.
To me, of course, it is bizarre that we do call this obvious tail wagging the dog “democracy.”
Democracy is supposed to be majority rules, not the majority ruled by less than 10% of the people in this nation who can vote.
When less than 10% do rule the majority, who in turn cannot abide the choice of the minority for “ruler,” then that is not democracy at all, that is demockery, and the joke is on us, for we are fools to allow it to happen.
But we have, haven’t we.
Forgetting the past, we are selling out the future for a pocketful of mumbles from Hillary Clinton which pass as promies.
And now, back to that caterpillar, who has been blowing smoke letters in the air, which, when put together, seem to say “you people aren’t exceptional at all, you’re the idiots, and this **** is still too bizarre to be real,” which sentiment I again find impossible to disagree with, because it is so true.
What era are we in now? THE ERA OF INSANITY!
I am furious. ICE allowing CRIMINALS to walk free awaiting deportation. INSANE! If this isn’t bad enough, now 1800 of these criminal aliens have been automatically made U S citizens without the riger-ma-roll my wife endured with green cards & study and a test at the court house after the required years of waiting,
Obama brought this “birther” issue on with his own rhetoric & his history. I, myself, still wonder is he a citizen, an enemy agent or a traitor? So many things about him just don’t ring true. It has nothing to do with his skin color. How could any American confuse how many states this Republic has? Then he apparently had no liking for the flag or the Anthem. His wife was not proud to be an America in her early years. Why are his college records hidden from the public? Why did it take so long to produce a birth certificate? Why did he not enroll in the ROTC & do his “fair share” to defend this country? Why does it seem he had no friends who were patriots, perhaps some veterans, and why did so many of his friends seem to hate America & even be anarchists? I believe he was involved with ACORN & as I understand it that group wanted to cause trouble for our country.
Now, as president, I do not see him as making our country better & improving the lives of our people, in fact, I see the opposite in every aspect of government function. By every measure we have gone down hill these last 7 years and he has been extremely destructive.
With regard to what era we might now be in in this nation today, and I certainly don’t quibble with calling it THE ERA OF INSANITY, for that name seems apt, in the FEDERALIST No. 1, written in 1787 by Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym PUBLIUS for the Independent Journal and to the People of the State of New York, it was stated thusly:
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
end quote
There is where the experiment known as the Republic of the United States of America began two-hundred twenty-nine (229) years ago now, and 229 years later, today, in fact, we are left in here to ponder that same question in the light of the history which has transpired in this nation between then and now, to wit: whether societies of men and women are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Having been a student of our contemporary political history since I returned to this country from combat in Viet Nam in 1970, quite frankly, I tend away from the former, that societies of men and women in this country are really capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice, and toward the latter, that in reality, we are forever destined to depend for our political constitutions on accident and force.
In FEDERALIST No. 2, writing as PUBLIUS, John Jay, later to be the first Chief Justice of the United States (1789–95), mused as follows with respect to the American people of that time:
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
end quotes
How the times have changed since then, is all I can say, because today, we no longer are one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, and attached to the same principles of government.
Today, we are a nation divided and at war with itself within.
We are a nation speaking many languages, with many competing religious views, and people very dissimilar in their manners and customs, who are not at all attached to the same principles of government.
In support of that contention, consider this from the Wall Street Journal on January 12, 2016:
Some 70% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, according to a December Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The poll also found 51% of Americans disapprove of the job Mr. Obama is doing, while 43% approve.
end quote
With respect to our nation, our political union as he called it in FEDERALIST No. 2, PUBLIUS stated as follows:
A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it.
They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and well balanced government for a free people.
It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.
end quote
Think on those words for a moment if you will, “that a government should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer,” keeping in mind that in December of last year, some 70% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.
Then consider these words from FEDERALIST No. 2 concerning the persons in this nation at that time who were responsible for the United States Constitution, which has been largely, if not totally set aside and discarded by our present Imperial president, Barack Hussein Obama Magnus:
This (Constitutional) convention (1787) composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task (of writing the U.S. Constitution).
end quote
And then honestly ask yourself, do we have anyone in our federal government today, or running for president today, especially, who can truthfully be said to be “highly distinguished” by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom?
Is Hillary Clinton “highly distinguished” by her patriotism, virtue and wisdom?
Or is she highly distinguished as a shallow-thinking, pathological liar whose damn poor judgment as U.S. secretary of state in 2011 resulted in Libya now being a failed state overrun by terrorists, and has also caused Syria to be on the road to becoming a failed state overrun by terrorists?
I, of course, and not surprisingly, go with the latter based on Hillary’s own long and well-documented record of failure.
And that of course, brings us to this CNN article by Dan Merica and Eric Bradner from July 25, 2016, entitled “Clinton says there is an unfair ‘Hillary standard’ on trust and honesty,” where we were informed as follows:
Hillary Clinton “felt sad” watching a Republican National Convention that was mostly about “criticizing me,” she said an interview aired Sunday night on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
end quote
Yes, Hillary, of course, it is always about you and not what plagues this nation today that has some 70% of Americans believing the country is on the wrong track, according to a December Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, with some 51% of Americans disapproving of the job Barack Obama is doing.
“I seem to be the only unifying theme that they had,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said.
“There was no positive agenda.”
“It was a very dark, divisive campaign.”
“And the people who were speaking were painting a picture of our country that I did not recognize — you know, negative, scapegoating, fear, bigotry, smears.”
“I just was so — I was saddened by it.”
end quote
Oh, poor dear Hillary is all I can say to that.
And that brings us to an article by Stephen Collinson of CNN on January 17, 2016, where we are given this information about poor dear Hillary and her own relationship to Barack Obama, who does not enjoy the trust of the American people, nor is he considered to be “highly distinguished” by his patriotism, virtue and wisdom, to wit:
And she sought to tie herself as closely as possible to the Obama’s legacy, praising him for pulling America out of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
She accused Sanders of calling the President “weak” and “disappointing.”
end quote
Given that Bernie Sanders swept just about every county in New York state in the primary against Hillary, it logically follows that Bernie was not alone in calling Barack Obama “weak” and “disappointing,” which is a fair assessment of the man in my estimation anyway, as a loyal American citizen.
And that then brings us to this MARKETWATCH article by Darrell Delamaide dated March 9, 2016:
Another progressive, Bill Curry, a White House counselor in the Clinton administration, wrote in Salon that the inevitability of Clinton’s nomination is a lie, because she is by some measures the weakest candidate the Democrats can field.
“The election is part of a broader revolt against a failed status quo,” Curry wrote this week.
“Clinton is an architect of that status quo; Trump, a big beneficiary.”
“Bernie is an open book,” he continued.
“It’s why he has the highest favorability rating of any candidate in the race and Clinton has the lowest of any presidential candidate in the history of polling, except for Trump.”
end quote
There is what gives some teeth to the premise or argument that we have indeed entered fully into the ERA OF INSANITY here in the United States of America, that we actually have someone running for president who is despised and reviled by over half the people in this nation.
Adding more fuel to that debate as to whether we are just now entering the ERA OF INSANITY, or have fully entered it with no way back now, we had this from HILLARY in the CNN debate in response to Bernie questioning her lack of sound judgment:
CLINTON: — and President Obama trusted my judgment enough to ask me to be secretary of State for the United States.
end quote
That of course, is horse****.
For one thing, Obama’s own judgment with respect to foreign policy is highly suspect, so making the statement that Obama trusted Hillary Clinton’s judgment on foreign policy enough to ask her to be secretary of State for the United States is like one blind person telling us that another blind person trusted her to do the driving when they went out on a date.
And more to the point, Obama didn’t ask her to be secretary of state because he trusted her judgment on foreign policy.
In fact, he made it clear during the Democrat primary when he ran against Hillary that Hillary’s own judgment on foreign policy was seriously flawed and highly suspect because of HILLARY’s vote to invade Iraqinam.
In reality, Obama gave her the job of secretary of state as a political plum, a sinecure, to make peace with the Clintons and to keep peace in the Democrat party, but not surprisingly, Hillary thinks we are all stupid and have no memories of any of that, so she felt quite comfortable feeding us that line of crap in the CNN debate that President Obama trusted her judgment enough to ask her to be secretary of State for the United States.
So yes, people, the ERA OF INSANITY!
Look around yourself and you will find yourself surrounded by it, especially when you head to the polls in November to vote for one of the two most unpopular presidential candidate in this nation’s history.
And now, back to that caterpillar and his hookah …
To answer your question, Absolem the blue caterpillar I Alice in Wonderland, smokes a Hookah…..LOL
That’s what I thought, but I wanted some outside confirmation,
So, we are really down a rabbit hole, then.
No wonder everything seems so strange.
N0w, what the heck is that cat over there on that tree branch with the mischievous grin smiling about …
Psshw! This commentary ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on!
David, so good to see you here educating yourself on basic American history.
Your citizenship efforts are greatly appreciated by your nation and its many people.
Explain….or is that asking too much?
Please do not spew a ‘Liberal-Diatribe’.
No, only right-wing diatribes are evidently acceptable to the Cape Charles Mirror.
Note: Really, Mr. Read?
Right-wing diatribes?
What right-wing diatribes?
Where are the right-wing diatribes in here?
I must have missed them, myself.
So that charge sounds like hooey to me, who am as far from the right-wing as possible.
For the record, I recently took a Pew political poll PEW POLL and not surprisingly, I scored as an independent, which is what I am, although I tended a touch toward the theoretical democrat side of the divide.
Actually, I would be called a centrist, not drinking the Kool-Aid either political fringe is serving up to the minority of people who still adhere to them because they are incapable of thinking for themselves.
And I tended more toward the 18-29 age group on my views, and away from the older people, who tended more towards conservative republican views, which would be considered the “right-wing.”
And I was more liberal than both men and women in average.
So, so much for “right-wing diatribes.”
As I said, that charge sounds like so much hooey and nothing else, a sandwich made of stale white bread with no filler of any kind in between other than thin air.
Yes, right-wing diatribes by right-wing gasbags such as yourself, who devoted most of a 2,300 word diatribe to bashing Hillary and Obama with nary a word about the vile Trump.
You include such nuggets of “centrist” wisdom as:
“The question, however, is not so much one of why can’t Hillary Clinton stop lying as it is one of who in America in their right mind wants to have as their leader someone who can’t stop lying.”
“OBAMA: I also stand before you as the son of an African.
And Africa and its people have helped shape who I am and how I see the world.
end quotes
With that statement by Obama in the public record, as an American citizen, I see no reason why Trump, or anyone else for that matter, including Clinton herself, should not be questioning how Obama views the United States of America and its people, when his views on government are not based on our political history, but instead are derived from the tribal political history of Africa, a place not noted for political stability, while being noted for corruption and tribal violence and warfare.”
““He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country,” this from Hillary Clinton who stated publicly in April of 2016:
“If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
end quote
But of course, since she is Hillary, she is not feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country, with that biased and highly prejudicial statement of hers as she panders for votes with it.
What crap say I.
In that same article, Hillary can be seen screeching as follows:
END QUOTE FROM PLANTE
Notice the way Hillary “screeches”.
END COMMENT BY ME
“For five years [Trump] has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said in her speech.
“His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie.”
“There is no erasing it in history.”
“He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology,” Clinton said.
end quote
Why does Donald Trump owe the American people an apology because Barack Obama was born in the United States of America?
What kind of lunatic logic can possibly support that statement?
And why should Trump have to apologize to Obama because Obama was born in the United States of America?
END QUOTE FROM PLANTE
Trump should apologize to Obama because of his insulting campaign accusations that Obama is not an American. Nothing nonsensical about that.
END COMMENT BY ME
That makes absolutely no sense, either, and it is a sign that it is Hillary Clinton’s mental health we really should be concerned about, although to be truthful, there is nothing that bars someone with a questionable grasp on reality from running for and serving as American president.
“Imagine someone who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world,” Clinton said.
And yes, I can certainly can.
In fact, her name is Hillary Clinton.”
END QUOTE FROM PLANTE
You can’t claim to be “centrist” when you cherry-pick quotes that support your position that Hillary is a lunatic, screeching congenital liar and ignore the vastly more plentiful evidence that Donald Trump is utterly unsuited to be President.
The thing is, the Cape Charles Mirror evidently allows long diatribes by right-wingers such as yourself to substitute for editorial opinions. Unless you are the Mirror’s editorial board. If so, you should be labelled as such.
Actually, John Read, I most certainly can claim to be a “centrist,” especially when I take care to post quotes which support my position that Hillary is a lunatic, screeching congenital liar, which happens to be the opinion of some 60% of the American people.
But enough of that for the moment.
Since you now have the floor in here, please tell us what this plentiful evidence is that Donald Trump is utterly unsuited to be President.
Lay it all out for us in here if you would, as a public service, and as a part of your own citizenship responsibilities as an American citizen going into this critical presidential election.
Edify us, John Read.
Show us the truth.
And while you are at it, please tell us how, with her record of poor judgments and shallow-thinking, you see Hillary Clinton as being suited to be U.S. president when Trump isn’t.
Elucidate that for us, if you please.
And John, as to my “status” in here, if you go back up to the top of this thread, you will clearly notice that the Cape Charles Mirror has identified this writing as “Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante.”
You can clarify that further with the management of the Cape Charles Mirror as to its exact technical meaning, but I take it to mean that I appear in here as a guest op-ed writer courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror.
If you have problems with that, I am sure the management of the Cape Charles Mirror would be happy to hear you out, and indeed, if you can make a persuasive enough argument, perhaps you can even succeed in having that privilege, for privilege it is, stripped me from me, and my voice totally cut off in here.
Give it a go, John Read.
What do you have to lose afterall, other than your own credibility.
Here you go:
1) A Leftist says, “If it saves just one innocent life we should repeal the 2nd amendment and ban guns.”
2) I say, “If it stops just one murder, robbery, rape, etc., we should repeal immigration and ban all illegal aliens.”
Paul Plante:
It is not difficult at all to demonstrate that Donald Trump is unsuited to be the President. In fact, he demonstrated that fact himself repeatedly at Monday night’s “debate.” He showed himself to be a rude, incompetent, hectoring ignoramus who had the greatest difficulty composing coherent statements.
He clearly has no respect for the American system (pays no tax on $695 million income and that “makes him smart”), thinks that the housing collapse was a good thing because it will enable him to make money (“It’s called business”), has no feeling of obligation to the common good (“My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that’s what I do.”)
He has only contempt for the intelligence of his audience and seems to believe that anything he utters is inherently true and wise.
When asked how he would prevent homegrown terror attacks, he produced the following (From the Federal News Service transcript):
TRUMP: “The record shows that I’m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows? Essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about the economy is more important. I then spoke to Sean Hannity, which everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity. I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox. And Sean Hannity said — and he called me the other day — and I spoke to him about it — he said you were totally against the war, because he was for the war.”
Aside from being completely off-topic, this response shows a near-pathologically incoherent train of thought.
Trump has made a long series of peculiar statements. Politico published a tabulation of 87 lies, exaggerations, and baloney recently produced by Trump, including the theory that global warming is a hoax disseminated by China to make our products less competitive. See
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-donald-trump-fact-check-week-214287
Regarding the qualification of Hillary Clinton, I would have preferred that Bernie Sanders be the candidate. However, the scary team of Trump and his gang of hangers-on including Roger Ailes, Breitbart stooges, and David Duke is the most frightening bunch since the 1968 candidacy of George Wallace and Curtis LeMay. Hillary is rational, intelligent, well-prepared, and poised and will make an excellent President. If you think that Trump et al. would be superior, then your position was perfectly described by an elderly lady interviewed after the debate who said, in effect, “I’m a Conservative. I’ll vote for the Conservative even if he is a jackass.”
After the debate, Trump immediately started trying to find a scapegoat for his inept performance. He said that the moderator was against him, and his microphone had been sabotaged. I’m inclined to agree with him on the last point. Most of what he spoke into the microphone somehow came out sounding like gibberish.
Not to be overly picky or pedantic here, David, but I think that should be spelled “pshaw,” which is an expression used to express irritation, disapproval, contempt, or disbelief, all of which are quite fitting with respect to this up-coming presidential election where we are stuck with a choice, and a damn poor one it is, between a loud-mouthed blowhard with a perpetual bad hair day on the one hand, who if elected will render the United States of America into an environmental and industrial wasteland reminiscent Giedi Prime under the rule of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, with its bio-resources depleted and its environment fouled with industrial pollution, and a shallow-thinking, pathological liar with extremely poor judgment but a very high opinion of herself, notwithstanding, on the other, both of whom are disliked and reviled by a majority of the American people, and with good reason.
Given that, David, your expression of disapproval and contempt for those two choices, as well as your disbelief that those are our choices, is warranted.
Thanks for coming in here and expressing it for all the candid world to see.
As always, your efforts at citizenship are very much appreciated by a grateful nation and its people.
If only more people like you would come out and stand up against these two sorry political parties who are ruining this nation, what a world it could be.
Mr. Plante, I’ve read your article and your responses in the comments section with great interest. You are undeniably not only a great writer and word handler, but an astute student of United States history. I would be honored to sit with you one day and buy you a beer and discuss this nation’s history, ad nauseam. Or at least until the keg runs dry.
You bring up so many interesting points, I really don’t know where to begin. So, let me play devil’s advocate (which seems appropriate on many levels for those that know me.)
You speak of a united America in the earliest days of this nation’s liberty and how the people were bonded in common cause, and common ancestry. I disagree. First, the revolution was split (and some folks on the Eastern Shore can attest to their own families royal standing) with many people siding with the King of England. They were known as Loyalist and their loyalties fell anywhere between strongly standing with the King to somewhat loyal to whomever inhabited their property to smuggling for both sides. Scottish and Hessian soldiers, (British mercenaries) it is known, remained in the land long after the war and settled Pennsylvania and the Appalachian regions. Furthermore, black slaves constituted over one quarter of the population of the young nation at this time. They did not have a voice that John Jay speaks of. Neither did the female population. My point is, divisions were present even as John Jay wrote Publius. Further cracks appeared politically that eventually led this country into a great war within this nation. The result being a stronger centralized Federal government. To accuse this nation of being divided at its very beginning, I believe is a fair assessment. But those causes/solutions are for a later discussion.
Mr. Plante, I must say, I am very impressed with the four to five divisions you have brilliantly presented as to the state of the nation over its nearly two hundred and forty years. The naming convention seems fairly apt. For my own (and others) reference I will repeat them here. They are:
1. Dual Federalism – 1789 thru 1901
2. Cooperative Federalism – 1901 thru 1960
3. Creative Federalism – 1960 thru 1968
4. Contemporary Federalism – 1970 thru 2000
5. Imperial Federalism – 2001 thru today
As a participant of history (aren’t we all one way or another – there are no participants in the stream of time) and as a student I find these terms fascinating. It truly helps to define the various eras of this great nation. However, with just a cursory glance, they may seem to clearly define each epoch, but on closer scrutiny they seem (in my honest opinion) to be false. May I try to break down Devil’s Advocate style?
Number one, Dual Federalism. First and foremost, as history would teach us, Jefferson and Hamilton seem to be the defining points of the compass of government in the period of this young nation’s growth. Federalism being the centralized banking and the government that paid the bills and keep the economy running smoothly and the standing army, well, standing. (And thanks to Adams – the Navy, floating) Jefferson’s ideal was Agrarianism, where the farmer (translate: white property owner – usually wealthy) was the Country Gentleman and the Renaissance man serving both locally (crops to feed the workers/tradesman in the immediate area) and nationally (governmental positions either with the statehood or within the Federal government – for a time). Then it was back to his regular ways of farming, building and contributing. But, we both know history and Jefferson was not wealthy, in fact he was quite in debt most of his life.
Also, as the range of land ran out, we were expected to expand westward, or incorporate into townships. Both of which happened at a rapid rate. Mix in an agrarian south and a merchant based/industrial north, there were bound to be differences between the states and the central government tasked with holding it all together. It would be during the growth of this young nation that the Cooperative Federalism began to take shape. This would have been a time of tremendous economic and industrial growth for this young nation. I would put the years 1789 to 1877. The strength of the Federal regime grew quite muscular post-Civil War. From that period forward, Congress and the House began to manipulate the economy and of course their constituency to gratify their own monetary gains. This was happening not only at the local levels, but on the national levels. Alongside this graft, you had the growth of the Nouveau Riche or Robber Barons, depending on your historical stance. The fact that the one percenters of the day were the railroad, steel, oil, land owners and politicians, has not been lost on history. The cooperation was to ensure their maintaining power.
This, I believe lead to the growth of Creative Federalism, which I would put between the years 1880 to 1940. In those years, the Federal Reserve was created, a centralized taxation system installed and the beginnings of socialism with Social Security and multiple national welfare projects installed. Some of which are still in place. There are many arguments about what caused and what ended the Great Depression. Just as there are many arguments about what sustains our capitalistic system and keeps the one percent viable and maintained today. I will not going go into that now, as it is a separate issue parallel to the growth and maintenance of our Federal government today. My point is this, however. The period of creative federalism set in place a lasting foundation on which the growth of imperialism was possible. Which leads me to the fourth period. Contemporary Federalism or as I like to view it, the rise of the Military Industrial Complex, took place from the years 1940 to now (over lapping today’s period of Imperial Federalization. During the Second World War, industrialist realized that this huge war machine was a vast money making enterprise. But, to truly reap the bounty of profits, one must first win that war. What they discovered, was, if you play both sides it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. You could still profit. This is inherently dangerous for obvious reasons. One, an economy is solely dependent on war to continue and maintain a high return. Two, imperialism is the key to creating war. During the fifties and sixties, resources still were fairly abundant. Oil hadn’t reached the tipping point and many resourced mountain ranges hadn’t been tapped for their precious ore as of yet. By the year 2000, however, that perspective had vastly altered. We are now in a period of an Imperialist expansion where we have troops pretty much everywhere in the world. Like they used to say, “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire.” That is true for the United States Army, Navy and Marine Reserves. A far cry from our constitutional intent, wouldn’t you agree Mr. Plante? I believe, I have defined as well the fifth period you so eloquently named as Imperial Federalism. In his exit speech, President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex. As a soldier and a leader of soldiers, he knew the cost of perpetual war. He know the costs of limited war. And he knew the costs of war in general. We have reached a period of human history where the natural resources cannot be sustain without major technological manipulation. Fresh water is limited, unless cheap de-salinization plants can be built and maintained. Oil is limited, unless some alternatives such as synthetic oil can cheaply be made or solar, nuclear, or wind turbines can be used and maintained to sustain our dependence on electricity. Food diets are rapidly changing as the sea life is depleted and viable land decreases for livestock and plant growth. The nature of the earth itself is rapidly (geologically timewise) changing and not in favor for the existence of human life. Humanity is in a war on two fronts. One with the changes in lifestyle/resources. The other, well, with each other. I am not sure they are in disconnect. The real answer to the question of today’s turmoil, is not why they (whomever the enemy da jour is) are doing to us what they are doing, but why are we involved in the first place. No one seems to have a good answer for that. Certainly our political leaders don’t. And if you ask me, they are the ones who got us here in the first place.
I know I have gone long, but I was so taken by your article, I felt a need to respond in kind. I hope I have done your piece justice. It was a good one. But, I hope you realize (and I believe you do) this is not a one way street. Many people (and many, many years) have gotten us to this point. Our nation is where it is because many connected people made miss-steps all along the way. The very fact that even the brightest and most connected so long ago could not agree on so many issues, leads me to believe government, any government for that matter is not the answer. The answer lies within ourselves. And of course, the converse of that is, as succinctly as Shakespeare could famously put it…
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Have a blessed day, dear sir. And, remember, that first beer is on me.
What a segue you have provided me with here, Chas Cornweller.
Never waste a good segue, say I.
Like the people of Virginia, I too live in a place steeped in history going back to the 1600’s, and I have been surrounded by that history these 70 years that I have been alive, and I have been a student of it ever since I was first introduced to it as a kindergartener right after WWII.
Just to the north of me is the Saratoga battlefield where the playwright, “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne met his Waterloo in October of 1777, and just to the east is the site of what is mistakenly called the “Battle of Bennington,” where a rebel force of 2,000 men, primarily composed of New Hampshire and Massachusetts militiamen, led by General John Stark, and reinforced by Vermont militiamen led by Colonel Seth Warner and members of the Green Mountain Boys decisively defeated a detachment of General Burgoyne’s army led by Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, and supported by additional men under Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich von Breymann. which was a mixed force of 700 composed primarily of Hessians but also including small amounts of dismounted Brunswick dragoons, Canadians, Loyalists, and Indians.
In that engagement, some 207 Hessians were killed, and 700 Hessians captured, and when I was young, farmers plowing their fields out that way in the springtime were still dragging up the occasional Hessian planted there by the rebels in August of 1777.
And yes, that was very much a bloody civil war in this country between loyalists, or tories, on the one side, and the rebels on the other, so I am aware of how divided we were as a people prior to Publius and the Federalist papers, post the American Revolution.
And having studied Roman history extensively, especially the period of Julius Caesar leading up to the Roman civil war, with the Optimates on one side, and the Populares on the other, I am very aware of how divided people in an established Republic like ours can become, and how quickly and permanently a Republic like ours can fall, to be replaced, like Rome, with an absolute ruler like Augustus Caesar, or a Hitler in Germany.
We delude ourselves if we think it cannot happen here.
Indeed, in Federalist No. 1, Publius informs us as follows with respect to the rise of tyrants and tyranny:
On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.
History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
end quote
How apt that seems today, and how much like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that sounds.
But back to the segue and all these wars we find ourselves in today, where Barack Obama is acting like First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22,” who, though an American, began contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa, in order to keep the war flourishing so profits could continue to be made in good capitalistic fashion.
Recently, Obama loaned out our Air Force to one of his buddies in Libya, so that tyrant could then use our Air Force to bomb some of his many enemies in that country, thanks to the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton as U.S. secretary of state, who had Gaddafi killed, and in true schizophrenic fashion, Obama has our Special Forces fighting on the one hand with the Kurds in Syria, who the Turks consider terrorists, while on the other hand, he has just lent some of our Special Forces to the Turks, so they could use them to fight in Syria against the Kurds in Syria being advised by our Special Forces, who the Turks consider terrorists.
Talk about disjointed foreign policy, alright, that takes the cake, and it also takes us back to FEDERALIST No. 4, where Publius had this to say:
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.
These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.
end quotes
Methinks Publius had Barack Hussein Obama Magnus very much in mind when he wrote those words 229 years ago now.
So who says people can’t see the future before it happens.
Not I, anyway.
Actually, Chas Cornweller, it is Publius who speaks of a “united” America in the earliest days of this nation’s liberty and how the people were bonded in common cause, and common ancestry.
You disagree, and quite frankly, having studied that period of our nation’s history, I take that with a huge grain of salt, for the very reasons that you state, so we are on the same page here in actuality.
Over time, Chas Cornweller, I have come to believe that in this nation today, we have a virtual plethora of words available to us, but most of them seem worthless since they have neither common nor concrete meaning.
“United” would be one of those words.
Indeed, if we go to pp.8-10 of “Miracle At Philadelphia – The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787” by Catherine Drinker Bowen, we find as follows concerning the slippery meaning of words and just how “united” those people in America were back then, I n the days preceding the Federalist papers:
Original principles signified Revolutionary principles; the Federal Convention was to find the phrase very useful.
And it meant whatever men chose it to mean: to men like Governor Clinton of New York, Judge Bryan of Pennsylvania, Patrick Henry, young James Monroe or Congressman Grayson of Virginia, original principles signified as little government as possible, a federation wherein each state would remain sovereign, with Congress at their disposal.
Had not the Articles of Confederation been written with this idea uppermost?
It had taken five years, beginning in 1776, to write the Articles, argue and vote on them in Congress, modify them, compromise, and finally persuade the last state to ratify.
The Articles were in fact America’s first constitution.
“The Stile of this Confederacy,” said Article I, “shall be ‘The United States of America.'”
Nothing less than the perils of war would have induced the states to make even this tenuous union at a time when John Adams referred to Massachusetts Bay as “our country” and to the Massachusetts representatives as “our embassy.”
Danger had proved a strong cement.
Only through the persistence and skilled maneuvering of a few men did the Federal Convention meet at all.
It happened that Maryland and Virginia were engaged in a strenuous quarrel over the navigation of the Potomac River; in the spring of 1785, their respective legislatures sent commissioners to Mount Vernon for a discussion of the subject, bearing on the question of east-west communication in general.
Seeing the chance to enlist the cooperation of neighboring states, the commission was enlarged, and met at Annapolis in September of 1786.
Madison attended; Hamilton came down from New York.
Before the Annapolis Commission rose it had recommended to Congress (Hamilton wrote the report) that all thirteen states appoint delegates to convene at Philadelphia “on the second of May next, to take into consideration the trade and commerce of the United States.”
Commerce was a far-reaching word; it covered a multitude of troubles.
The war debt still hung heavy; states found their credit failing and small hope of betterment.
Seven states had resorted to paper money.
True, the postwar depression was lifting.
But prosperity remained a local matter; money printed by Pennsylvania must be kept within Pennsylvania’s own borders.
State and section showed themselves jealous, preferring to fight each other over boundaries as yet unsettled and to pass tariff laws against each other.
New Jersey had her own customs service; New York was a foreign nation and must be kept from encroachment.
States were marvelously ingenious at devising mutual retaliations; nine of them retained their own navies.
(Virginia had even ratified the peace treaty separately.)
The shipping arrangements of Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey were at the mercy of Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.
Madison saw the picture clearly.
“New Jersey,” he wrote, “placed between Philadelphia and New York, was likened to a cask tapped; and North Carolina, between Virginia and South Carolina, to a patient bleeding at both arms.”
When Virginia passed a law declaring that vessels failing to pay duty in her ports might be seized by any person and prosecuted, “one half to the use of the informer and the other half to the use of the commonwealth,” she was not aiming at Spain or England but at the cargoes of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Massachusetts.
“Most of our political evils,” Madison wrote, “may be traced to our commercial ones.”
It was true, as it is true today between nations at large.
The little states feared the big states and hated them.
“The people are more happy in small states,” Roger Sherman was to say in Convention – though, he added, “states may indeed be too small, as Rhode Island, and thereby too subject to faction.”
Ellsworth of Connecticut declared that “the largest states are the worst governed.”
“Virginia is obliged to acknowledge her incapacity to extend her government to Kentucky.”
“Massachusetts cannot keep the peace one hundred miles from her capital and is now forming an army for its support.”
It was a telling shaft.
Since ’86, Massachusetts had suffered public humiliation over Shay’s Rebellion in the west.
Desperate farmers, ruinously taxed – “by Boston,” they said – and seeing their cattle and their land distrained by the bailiffs, had risen in revolt.
With staves and pitchforks they marched on county courthouses after the best Revolutionary technique, frightening sound-money men out of their wits and rousing General Washington to express disgust and anger that a country which had won a difficult war was not able to keep order in peacetime.
By January, 1787, fourteen rioting leaders, earlier condemned to death, had been pardoned; a newly elected Massachusetts legislature would enact many of the reforms the Shaysites had demanded.
Yet the stigma of insurrection remained, and in the Federal Convention sat men who had themselves suffered at the hands of mobs: James Wilson, Robert Morris and John Dickinson knew well that rebellion can be contagious.
end quotes
So, yes, Chas Cornweller, when Publius called us a “united” people back then, he indeed painted a rosy picture that doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
And in FEDERALIST No. 5, Publius actually predicted the American Civil War to come, thusly:
Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good-will and kind conduct more speedily changed than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations, whether expressed or implied.
The North is generally the region of strength, and many local circumstances render it probable that the most Northern of the proposed confederacies would, at a period not very distant, be unquestionably more formidable than any of the others.
No sooner would this become evident than the NORTHERN HIVE would excite the same ideas and sensations in the more southern parts of America which it formerly did in the southern parts of Europe.
end quotes
So, as I said above, Chas Cornweller, with respect to the times of this nation’s founding, we are very much on the same page.
Further, I would admit that the essay entitled “American Federalism, 1776 to 1997: Significant Events,” by Eugene Boyd dated January 6, 1997, tends to be somewhat simplistic and perhaps idealistic, as well, so I am quite happy and pleased that you have come in here to flesh it out with some more detail based on historical reality.
Now answer me this, if you can, Chas Cornweller: Will folly always be our nemesis?
That is a question for our times as we head into a presidential election featuring a loud-mouthed blowhard with a perpetual bad hair day on the one hand, and a shallow-thinking, pathological liar with extremely poor judgment but a very high opinion of herself, notwithstanding, on the other, both of whom are disliked and reviled by a majority of the American people, and withy good reason.
And now, back to that caterpillar!
What is true? We were taught the election was on the 1st Tues following the 1st Mon in November BUT now we have “early voting” & many will have voted before the 1st drbate. As Nancy Pelosi put it, (my wording)”we need to vote first & then find out we just did”,
We were taught there were two qualifications to run for president. NATIVE BORN & AGE 35 OR OLDER. With Ted Cruz we found being born in Canada was OK as long as his mother was from here. Since Winston Churchill’s mother was an American perhaps “Winnie” could have become our president, which wouldn’t have been bad at all. I believe Cruz is white so the “birther” issue concerning Obama isn’t based on race and I wish Hillary would discard her”race card”.
We were taught how the U S Constitution could be amended (changed) & we find it is being done by activist judges a much shorter more political way.
We were taught about laws finding their way through congress, being passed in both houses & signed by the president. We know about the veto & how to over ride and we used to know the president was sworn to enforce ALL kaws & again the LEGAL way to amend (change) a law.
We, at least in my experience, were NOT taught about “executive orders” & the president ruling by himself with his pen & his phone.
We, at least in my memory, were not taught about all thse regulatory agencies and how each of them cranks out volumes of new “laws” daily. When I was in school at any rate we didn’t need or have many agencies & the Cabinet had many less Secretaries.
We were taught about “due process” & property rights and all of that seems to have gone its way.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) to which I belong has great ads on TV about FREEDOM & one has a father saying he will raise his children as he sees fit. Oh, really? Nice thought BUT Big Brother will cite chapter & verse & you will do as ordered and count yourself lucky your wife & some judge hasn’t kicked you out of your houes. DYFS, the school & the police wii make sure you comply with all the laws down to shots, car seats, when & if you can smoke, housing and every facet of family life with no stone unturned.
I think the only thing that is true anymore, andy zahn, is that nothing is true, starting with what our “president” and his propaganda machine straight out of Orwell’s “1984” tell us, followed by what the Pentagon tells us, followed by what Donald Trump and Her Royal Highness Hillary Clinton are telling us, with the caveat that when Hillary tells the ONE PERCENT that while U.S. senator from New York she represented the banks, that is true.
When Hillary tells us that “Fighting for kids and families” has been the cause of her life, that is not true.
The cause of Hillary’s life has been Hillary and her pocket, and the cause of her life while U.S. senator from New York was protecting public corruption and environmental polluters.
Thanks to Hillary’s efforts in that regard, there are now children in Hoosick Falls, New York with elevated levels of PFOA in their bloodstreams caused by drinking water poisoned with PFOA which poisoning can be traced right back to Hillary’s efforts to protect polluters instead of fighting to protect the public health of those children.
To answer your question directly and without fanfare. Yes.
Folly as nemesis? Without a doubt. But that folly comes in many formats. My first inclination would be to blame our lack of education. A closely following second format would be the vast amounts of disinformation being fed the American public. The third folly would be the total insanity of our leaders and their myopic and clearly cash and power fed egotistical view of their own tenuous hold on their so called leadership. When linked together, you have a people easily led into mistake after mistake with no recourse of how to change the direction of their lives, much less their leaders. I think this election year shows us just how clearly we have fallen as an educated people.
May I present what I think is an amazing scenario, sir? Though I am not a scholar of Roman History (I now have a clearer understanding on your view of our present history – as it relates to the recent past) I did read Donald Kagan’s treatise on the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Greece/Athena (431 BC to 404 BC). What amazed me most (besides reading a book of that volume and depth and actually enjoying it) was how closely related to our times those days were. And though the final results were vastly different for Greece than our nation (Athens was basically ruined economically after twenty five years of strife, terror and terrible strategic miss-haps) I could not help but compare our Cold War of the 1950’s through the 1970’s to this ancient scenario.
Some of the same actions that occurred during the sixties here in this country (the rise of youth culture and multiple demonstrations against the war-the politicalizing of the war-and splitting of classes) took place in Athens. And though The Peloponnesian War took place nearly twenty five hundred years ago, human nature was exactly the same as it is today. The irony of this fact was not lost on me as I read this book. This book, beyond all others, proved to me that history is circular. We do repeat the same mistakes over and over. Americans who are blind to this fact or chose to ignore it, are doomed to a fate that will go beyond mere surprise. This is but one example the lack of education will present. If you do not know your history, you are doomed to repeat it. My limited knowledge of Roman history bears this out as well. It is a rare and astute person who can witness events and make the connections to their time and see the history reflected as it truly is. A few, today are living in the present moment believing tomorrow, left alone, will bring either a brighter day or disastrous future . While others today are living in the past, wishing the present moment were different and more like yesterday. Still others, are both lost in today and regret their yesterdays and daydream of a better tomorrow, all the while accomplishing nothing. All is insanity. I believe: live for today and in the moment, all the while remembering and revering the past and use that crucial moment here and now to try and forge a better tomorrow. I am only one and I can only change the small circumstance surrounding me. But, in the end, even when I have been true to myself and those around me, the world being its own, will continue to turn regardless, with or without me. Makes no difference. I can only be the change I want to effect. History will continue and humans, being who they are, will continue to be fools for fodder on which it feeds.
I hope I answered your question.
I think in all truth you answered questions for many, many people there, Chas Cornweller, as well as expressing some very elemental and existential truths.
Rule No. 1: To improve the world, I must improve myself!
Rule No. 2: There is no need for a Rule No. 2, go back to Rule No. 1 and work on that.
There are quite a number of really knowledgeble, experienced experts in their fields with COMMON SENSE out there and I hope some are brought to Washington to provide assistance to the new president.
I am deeply impressed by so many sheriffs from all over this country at how brilliant and professional they are. Sheriff Joe from Arizona is amazing! He is so right-on and his life is a constant battle with the Obama administration. Sheriff David Clarke from Milwalkee, an American who happens to be of color, knows exactly what the score is and from wence the problems in the ghettos originate. Sheriff Clarke knows the real reason for the riots in Charlotte & who is behind this discontent and like Benchazi it was planned ahead of time. The shooting was the excuse. The tear gas didn’t work well because some “protestors” had gas masks! Although I do not agree with former New Yory City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s views on gun control I understand where he’s coming from and he was an outstanding 24/7 police officer. He too had to fight Holder & Obama as all good cops must do.
On the legal side Mayor Rudy is outstanding as well as being 100% law & order. He straightened out a horrible crime situation in NY.
On the military side I see General Jack Keane (USA, ret), former Vice Chief-of-Staff of the U S Army as expert in tactics, strategy and in his knowledge of foreign affairs especially in the middle East. He is well spoken, articulate & a perfect officer & gentleman,
In diplomacy I respect Ambassador Bolton & I believe he is in touch with all the world’s affairs.
There is, of course, Dr Ben Carson, Gov Huckabee and others such as Gov Perry of Texas who know how to run a government, have great job growth, few taxes & regulations and a very healthy economy.
For some reason I don’t seem to have any liberals on my list & as a former Jerseyite I feel toward Christie about how Paul Plante feels toward Andrew Cuomo.
The debate tonight should be very interesting to say the least. While I find fault with some of what Trump has said & may think he’s trying to do too much, what choice do we really have? Four more years of Obama and even worse & the country has gone in reverse for these last 7 years.
Like it or not, Trump has the background of a high-stakes businessman with many irons in the fire all at once, requiring attention, and like it or not, as a businessman, Trump has met those challenges as he saw fit at the moment, and if he used bankruptcy as a business tool, who gave him that tool to use?
You got it – Barack Hussein Obama who could have made the tax code read something different, but didn’t.
To a businessman like Trump, and the ONE PERCENT who stuff Hillary Clinton’s pockets with BIG BUCK$, bankruptcy is a tactical and strategic move they can employ for their benefit granted to him and them by the United States government …
If Trump has “stiffed” workers, it is no different from what Democrat Andy Cuomo, said to be Hillary Clinton’s first federal attorney general when she is elected, is doing in New York state, where incidentally, according to the story “Preet Wields Ax” by Chris Bragg and Matthew Hamilton in the September 23, 2016 Albany, New York Times Union, federal prosecutors brought corruption charges against top state government insiders as close to Andy Cuomo as is his skin and business development executives who contribute heavily to Andy Cuomo Thursday scorching Gov. Andy Cuomo’s hallmark upstate economic initiative, with this being the third seismic political scandal in less than two years to rock state government with Andy Cuomo at the helm.
That Andy Cuomo is doing business just the same way Trump is accused of doing business is quite evident from the Albany Times Union story “Work resumes on $35 million SUNY Poly/GE project – $35M chip project with GE had stalled over lack of state payments” by Larry Rulison, published September 9, 2016, where we are informed as follows:
Work has resumed on SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s $35 million silicon carbide chip wafer manufacturing line at its Albany campus on Fuller Road after a long delay in state payments to The Pike Co., the main contractor at the site.
Pike, of Rochester, stopped work on July 26 after failing to be reimbursed by the state for roughly $8 million in work on the project, a joint venture between SUNY Poly and General Electric Co.
end quote
Now, if that had been Trump doing that, delaying payments, oh how the Democrats would howl and scream and weep and wail and gnash their teeth and foam and froth at the mouth with indignity, but since it is their own high-ranking Democrat and future attorney general Andy Cuomo of New York doing it, no problem, it is the way government works, afterall, which is something EVERYBODY knows, so it is no big deal for Andy to do it then.
Trump has no “government” experience, they say, but that is not really so, since Trump has been dealing with government on many levels for many years and as a result, knows far more about it than Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, for that matter.
So Trump is a wild card, but then, so are they all, including John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who stole the 1960 presidential election away from Dick Nixon.
For the record, I am not for Trump, just as I am not for Hillary Clinton.
To the contrary, I am against them both, and intend to write in Tulsi Gabbard, a woman much more fit to be commander-in-chief than either Trump or Hillary Clinton, who would be a disaster as the person in charge of our military forces now in combat in Syria and Iraqinam and Afghanistnam, for president, and Chris Gibson, a combat veteran with the 82d Airborne, as vice president.
But if faced with a choice between the two, I would be forced to lean more toward Trump as Hillary does not have the mental and emotional stability the person in charge of our military needs to make sound judgements, especially when it was the unsound judgment of Hillary Clinton in 2011 while serving as Obama’s secretary of state that has resulted in our having combat troops now on the ground in harm’s way in Syria, where to date several have already been wounded.
It’s not a surprise at all that you “lean more toward Trump”. Your history as a faux-centrist, suggests no other response.
Actually, John Read, if you had bothered to really read what I had written, which you clearly did not in your zeal to try to pin a label on me as a “faux-centrist,” you would have noticed that I clearly stated on the record that I am against both Trump and Clinton, both of whom are unfit to be an American president, and that I intend to write in Tulsi Gabbard, a woman much more fit to be commander-in-chief than either Trump or Hillary Clinton, who would be a disaster as the person in charge of our military forces now in combat in Syria and Iraqinam and Afghanistnam, for president, and Chris Gibson, a combat veteran with the 82d Airborne, as vice president.
As to my voting registration I have been registered as an independent since the 1980’s.
That means I don’t belong to the Republicans, and I don’t belong to the Democrats, and I drink the Kool-Aid of neither party, nor do I support either party with my vote.
If you are going to be critical in here, John Read, and yes, it is your God-given right to be as critical as you wish, you really should read what it is you intend to be critical about before being critical, to avoid embarrassing yourself and making yourself look uninformed and foolish in the eyes of the candid world as you just did here by accusing me of something that is wholly untrue, that being that I am for Donald Trump, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The most and best I can say for Trump, and it isn’t much, is that when it comes to the two bad choices the two major parties have dished us up from the bottom of the political barrel, Trump is not quite as bad as Hillary Clinton is, with her long record of poor judgment and shallow-thinking that has turned Libya and Syria into failed states, and has created a human tragedy the scale of which hasn’t been witnessed since WWII.
And I would like to take a moment here to thank John Read for bringing to the fore in here that ridiculous false argument that circulates in the USA during presidential elections that if you are not for one of the alleged and supposed “major” parties, even though neither party can claim to represent more than a fraction of the American people, then you have to be for the other, so that in this case, if I express incredulity, which is the state of being unable to believe something, that of all the people in the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, a pathological liar with a long, established record of shallow-thinking and very poor judgment, is the best that we can come up with for not only our “leader,” but the “leader” of the supposed “free world,” as well, and God help the free world if Hillary Clinton becomes its leader, in the reasoning of these people like John Read, I have to be a republican and right-winger who is for Donald Trump, and what a narrow and unenlightened view that is.
It is a narrow and unenlightened view in many respects, first of all, because it is not true, but perhaps most significantly in the case of Hillary Clinton, if John Read had ever bothered to really check Hillary Clinton’s record as a U.S. senator from corrupt New York state, John Read would have noted, as I have previously noted in here, that when it comes to appointing federal judges, it is Hillary Clinton who is very much the hard right-winger.
As proof of that statement, all we need do is to consult the Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7, Wednesday, January 28, 2004, Pages S304-S307, under the heading EXECUTIVE SESSION, NOMINATION OF GARY L. SHARPE TO BE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE, where we find as follows:
Mrs. CLINTON. Madam President, I rise in very strong support of the nomination of Magistrate Judge Gary Lawrence Sharpe who has been nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.
I ask all of my colleagues to support this nomination.
I commend my colleague, Senator Schumer, for the important role he has played on the Judiciary Committee.
I second his comment that in New York we have worked together with the administration to nominate and confirm judges who will be a real credit, not only to the bench but to this administration and to our country.
Magistrate Judge Gary Lawrence Sharpe is at the top of that list.
I think he will not only serve with distinction in New York but demonstrate clearly that this is the kind of conservative Republican nominee whom we could be unanimously confirming.
end quote
Note those words well, people, as John Read falsely accuses me of being a “right-winger” in here – “this is the kind of conservative Republican nominee whom we could be unanimously confirming.”
That is not me saying those words, those words are straight from the mouth of John Read’s political hero, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So who is the real right-winger here, me or Hillary?
For the record, Hillary’s “conservative Republican nominee” was as far from a liberal as you could get, and when Hillary was speaking those words, George Pataki, a republican, was sitting on the throne of power in New York state and George W. Bush was in the White House, and it was they who Hillary was referring to as the “administration.”
So if Hillary was for conservative Republicans as federal judges back then, which she clearly was according to the Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 7, Wednesday, January 28, 2004, why on earth would she be considered a “liberal” today?
I for one would like to hear an answer to that question.
Perhaps John Read would do us all a favor and explain that for us, so we have something to ponder as we head into the election in November.
John Read, thank you for taking seriously my request above that you please tell us how, with her record of poor judgments and shallow-thinking, you see Hillary Clinton as being suited to be U.S. president when Trump isn’t, and thank you especially for giving us an intelligent answer to the query from your perspective, with the well-worded caveat that you, like many, many other people in America, and especially the young people, and with good reason, would have preferred that Bernie Sanders be the candidate, but that you are forced to now back Hillary because the scary team of Trump and his gang of hangers-on including Roger Ailes, Breitbart stooges, and David Duke is the most frightening bunch since the 1968 candidacy of George Wallace and Curtis LeMay.
And it is interesting and informative that you bring us back to 1968 candidacy of George Wallace and Curtis Lemay, which, sadly, is likely far out of people’s extremely short memories today, so they wouldn’t have a clue as to the rich mental imagery you are providing us with in here with that reference.
1968 was an important year in American presidential politics for many reasons, as well as being the year I voluntarily joined the United States Army and began the journey that would take me to Viet Nam and back, teaching me a lot about politics and foreign policy along the way, because when it comes to foreign policy and diplomacy, combat infantrymen like me were the tip of the spear.
Ah, yes, 1968.
1968 was the year in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire where incumbent President Lyndon Johnson did not file, but received write-ins totaling 50% of all Democratic votes cast, which proves the write-in can be a valuable tool in the hands of voters in presidential elections.
In 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy, who campaigned actively against Johnson’s Vietnam war policies, was on the ballot.
He received an impressive 41% of the vote and gained more delegates than the President, which left Johnson was so stunned that he did not run for reelection.
1968 was also the year of the Chicago riots, which I think it is fair to say, literally stunned a lot of people in other parts of America who could not believe what was going on in Mayor Daley’s City of Chicago, where in 1960, he and Mooney Giancana were able to deliver the city and state for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who said the words that actually started me on my Viet Nam journey: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
There began my political awakening as an American citizen, I would say, John Read.
It is with those words in mind that I judge such people as Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton, to be truthful and candid with you.
But it is at the same time much more than just those words from JFK’s very memorable inauguration speech where he also said:
“Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation” — a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”
end quote
Think on those words for a moment, John Read, if you will – “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”
That was January 20, 1961.
I was alive then, and so was Hillary Clinton, who was born on October 26, 1947, a little more than a year after I was born.
So like me, John Read, Hillary Clinton would have heard JFK utter those same words, and like me, she would have discussed them in school and would have been tasked, like me, in considering how those words applied to her – what part would Hillary Clinton play in the struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself?
We know from her miserable record what the answer to that question is – Hillary Clinton is a cause of tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
She is not a cure for it, and she never will be.
As I see it from my perspective, Hillary Clinton is far over onto the side of the enemies of man, those being tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself, and WALL $TREET sees her there, as well, as can be seen in this MARKETWATCH article yesterday by Wallace Witkowski and Anora Mahmudova, September 27, 2016, to wit:
U.S. stocks closed higher Tuesday, with the Dow industrials rising more than 100 points after the first presidential debate between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican contender Donald Trump and a number of stronger-than-expected economic reports.
The advance in stocks suggests that U.S. equity markets are betting that Clinton benefited the most from Monday’s presidential debate.
Stocks are rising on the prospect of a Clinton presidency because the Democrat is viewed as a known quantity while some view Trump as being more unpredictable—a bad thing for stock investors.
“Investors have a better idea about policies of Hillary Clinton, so any sign she is closer to the presidency is a boost for markets,” said Diane Jaffee, senior portfolio manager at TCW.
In another sign suggesting financial markets were betting that Clinton would benefit from the debate, the Mexican peso surged against the dollar on Tuesday.
The peso has been acting as a gauge of the presidential election sentiment on the theory that a victory for Trump will at the very least result in less trade between the two countries, if not the building of a barrier on the U.S. southern border.
end quote
Hillary Clinton is most certainly viewed as a known quantity by WALL $TREET, and with good reason.
In a New York Times article entitled “Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich” by Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin, 3 September 2016, we were informed as follows as to where Hillary was recently, before her bout of pneumonia, from which she made one of the most miraculous recoveries in medical history:
At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”
“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.
end quote
That article continued by telling us:
Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public.
But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her.
In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.
And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.
end quotes
The Hamptons, of course, are where WALL $TREET goes to spend the summer, so it is not surprising to see Hillary Clinton partying it up there with her ultrarich friends who can pay BIG BUCK$ to see her, as at an event in Sagaponack, N.Y., where 10 people paid at least $250,000 to meet her.
As that New York Times article informed us, “If she feels most at ease around millionaires, within the gilded bubble, it is in part because they are some of her most intimate friends.”
As to “investors” having a better idea about the policies of Hillary Clinton, versus those of Trump, according to the New York Times, Clinton, who has promised to “reshuffle the deck” in favor of the middle class and portrayed Mr. Trump as an out-of-touch billionaire, has almost exclusively been fielding the concerns of the wealthiest Americans.
“To businessmen who complain to Mrs. Clinton that President Obama has been unfriendly to their interests, she says she would approach business leaders more like Mr. Clinton did during his administration.”
“When financiers complain about the regulations implemented by the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, Mrs. Clinton reaffirms her support for strong Wall Street regulation, but adds that she is open to listening to anyone’s ideas and at times notes that she represented the banking industry as a senator.”
end quotes
Hillary Clinton did indeed represent the banking industry while she was a U.S. senator from New York, and in representing the banking industry, Hillary Clinton came down firmly on the side of deregulation and government corruption in New York state as her policy WALL $TREET is familiar with, the fruits of which are young children in Hoosick Falls in Rensselaer County in corrupt New York state who have been poisoned by PFOA in their drinking water.
As a grandfather, I find that deplorable, reprehensible and intolerable.
For that reason, I find Hillary Clinton to be as unfit to be president of the United States of America as is Donald Trump, and in being for Bernie Sanders, John Read, you showed intelligence and good sense.
For that, as a fellow citizen, I commend you.
And I also understand completely when you say you feel forced to back Hillary because the scary team of Trump and his gang of hangers-on including Roger Ailes, Breitbart stooges, and David Duke is the most frightening bunch since the 1968 candidacy of George Wallace and Curtis LeMay.
Actually, I thought George Wallace was a joke, and Curtis Lemay a has-been, who, owing to his unrelenting opposition to the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy and what was widely perceived as his hostility to Secretary McNamara, was essentially forced into retirement in February 1965.
As history books tell us, for the 1968 presidential election, LeMay originally supported former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon having turned down two requests by former Alabama Governor George Wallace to join his newly formed American Independent Party, that year, on the grounds that a third-party candidacy might hurt Nixon’s chances at the polls.
Did you know, John Read, that George Wallace had served as a sergeant in a unit commanded by LeMay during World War II?
Anyway, LeMay gradually became convinced that Nixon planned to pursue a conciliatory policy with the Soviets and accept nuclear parity rather than retain America’s first-strike supremacy, and he felt that President Lyndon B. Johnson had lied to him on several occasions and that Vice President Hubert Humphrey, if elected, would do the same, so that while being fully aware of Wallace’s segregationist platform, Lemay decided to throw his support to Wallace and eventually became Wallace’s running mate, to find himself attacked in the press as a racial segregationist because he was running with Wallace.
That made him look foolish and small, not scary.
No, the presidential campaign that I think really scared people in America was not Wallace/Lemay 1968, but the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964.
As I recall, people in America thought that Barry Goldwater was a dangerous lunatic and God help the nation and world if he got his hands on the nuclear launch codes.
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton was a GOLDWATER GIRL in that campaign.
With that said, John Read, I propose that you have an alternative far more rational and intelligent than Hillary Clinton – do as I am going to do and write in Tulsi Gabbard and strike a real blow for freedom.
Tulsi Gabbard represents the future.
Hillary Clinton represents the corrupt status quo.
That makes it a no-brainer as I see it, but then I am not ultra-rich, a WALL $TREETER, pro-government corruption or pro-pollution, so it stands to reason that I would see it that way.
How about you, America?
I learned my lesson. We voted for Perot & paved the way for Bill Clinton. In the election for governor I voted for Mickey Mouse & McAwful got elected reducing many of us to “deplorable” and moving felons to the front of the line.
Pat Cadell, a Democrat who was a pollster for Jimmy Carter, does not like what has become of his beloved Democratic Party. He must know, as I do, that the party has been hijacked by the liberal, progressive, secular left & that all they care about is their “agenda”. The middle class has been reduced from 61% down to 51% in ten years and except for the amazingly wealthy we are all suffering. The left talks “fair share” & they don’t have a clue what that is. Many pay big taxes & many pay nothing. Many serve in uniform or in other ways and many work to provide things of use while other do nothing. Most are law-abiding & many are felons, drug pushers, etc & take up alot of police & prison manpower and expense.
Some people are paid obscene salaries but how can that be kept within reason without stiffiling the work efforts of everyone? Every time the left talks “rich” the numbers go down as with the start of federal income tax. Only the “rich” & only ” a little bit” & WOW! Just look at me now! If “they” took ALL the money from ALL of the obscenely (and who’s to decide that?) rich it would be a pittance compared to our budget & our debt. Back in 1960 when I taught great math, prior to Modern Math, one exercise was to take ALL the cash in circulation & divide it equaly among all the people in the United States. It would have come to around $180 each! Not very much & you could bet the poor would be broke shortly & the rich would have all the money. The 8th graders became aware that cash is but a small part of wealth & business.
Personally I have always been conservative in every part of my life. This is part of achieving longevity. I did many dangerous things but planned & used care. We never had a re-po or even a late payment & survived a variable rate loan by reducing principal to keep interest charges affordable. If we couldn’t afford it, we didn’t buy it & our first home had a mortgage payment of $65 a month.
I count myself an Independent. I don’t like or trust the two major parties and right now the Republicans are a disgrace. Republicans not honoring their oath in the primary & Republicans aiding & abetting the enemy. If the Devil were running as a Democrat you wouldn’t find one turn-coat in their ranks. As George Wallace put it,”there’s not a dimes worth of difference.”
I see the “establishment” as wanting to win all the positions up for grabs in order to divide the pie among themselves & their friends and the hell with all of us!
You are talking of the times before what is called “quantitative easing” by the federal reserve, andy zahn, and “monetization” of the federal debt by the federal reserve which has allowed the total owed by the U.S. government to more than double to $19.5 trillion as of August of this year from $9 trillion shortly before the onset of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, so that the total United States debt we owe debt service on surpassed the size of the U.S. economy in 2012 for the first time since the end of World War Two, according to a calculation by Haver Analytics, which is as a result of Barack Hussein Obama’s commitment to loose monetary policy which has kept the ultrarich in America ultrarich so they can buy up this coming presidential election for Hillary Clinton so she can then continue the Obama agenda here in America.
As to how much funny money the federal reserve has created in just a handful of years, when the Great Recession hit in 2007, the Fed’s balance sheet was approximately $700 billion dollars, and over the course of the recession and recovery, the asset purchases the Fed made through its various quantitative easing programs expanded the balance sheet to over $4.4 trillion at the end of October of 2014.
I suspect that is a lot bigger number than what you were using when you were teaching the old math.
My governor, Terry McAwful, is now braggiing about restoring voting rights to 60,000 felons. Like all liberals, a big heart for criminals but no care about the damage & heartache they cause their victims and the families of the victims. In America, what happened to the “stick & the carrot”?
Here we go again! My former senator, John Warner, one time husband (who wasn’t?) of Liz Taylor is like many, smarter than the voters in the primary, is axing Trump. I remember when Ollie North was running for the senate in Virginia as a Republican and the Republican, (?) Warner, endorsed Charles Robb, Democrat& son-in-law of LBJ.
I omitted Ollie North from my list of great Americans worthy of some position in Washington. There is no such thing as an ex-Marine or a retired Marine. Ollie has been many times to Iraq & has gone with the “grunts” putting his life on the line to have first hand knowledge of what is really going on. Another great hero is Lt Col Allen West.
In American politics it’s amazing what can disqualify a person from the presidential lottery. Dan Quale misspelled “potato” & his career was over. George Romney said he was “brainwashed” when he visited the war in Viet Nam. His career was over. George H W Bush said “read my lips” and then under pressure changed his mind which was taken as the telling of a lie & he was history.
i had a boy in Science class who was outstanding but his writing left a lotto be desired. He was an “A” student & his English teacher said I should reduce his grades due to poor penmanship. I told the other teacher that where this boy was going he would have secretaries and his writing would never matter. Same for Dan Quale! Romnet was possibly the only one to realize that Westmoreland had “brainwashed” all the visitors as well as the public at large and/or had the guts to say so. Bush was hung out to dry for “one little lie” while Obama & Hillary thrive on lies & the public never notices. My RINO representative voted for the Bush tax hike & my representative was re-elected. Politics is so fickle!
It seems, andy zahn, that you, like many other older Americans, are seeking rational explanations for the irrationality, lunacy and insanity that you find yourself now surrounded by here in the United States of America, where for our choices for what is now an imperial president in the mold of Augustus Caesar of Rome, or Rodrigo Lanzol Borgia, as Pope Alexander VI, or empress like Catherine the Great of Russia in the case of Hillary Clinton, we are stuck with stuck with a choice, and a damn poor one it is, between a loud-mouthed blowhard with a perpetual bad hair day on the one hand, who if elected will render the United States of America into an environmental and industrial wasteland reminiscent of Giedi Prime under the rule of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, with its bio-resources depleted and its environment fouled with industrial pollution, and on the other, a shallow-thinking, pathological liar with extremely poor judgment but a very high opinion of herself, notwithstanding, each of them put forth by a minority of the population of the United States of America, and both of whom are disliked and reviled by a majority of the American people, and with good reason.
There is no rational explanation for any of that, andy zahn, and it is a waste of time to try and find one.
As was said about WWI, we are living in a time of mass psychoses here in America.
Why that was during the time peri0d of WWI and why it is in this time period we are now immersed in is impossible to say, just as it is impossible to say why a rabies epidemic is going on in the wild at any given time – it just is.
The only cure for rabies in the wild is to let it die out, and in the meantime, stay out of the jaws of an animal foaming at the mouth.
With that said, this morning, what were both “presidential contenders” going on about?
The $20 TRILLION in debt this nation now owes, and what either candidate is going to do about seeing that it is paid off, before the debt service crushes us?
The 5,000 U.S. combat troops commander-in-chief Hussein Obama and his lackey Ash Carter now have in harm’s way in Iraqinam, and how they are going to maintain those troops when they replace the hapless and inept Obama as commander in chief?
The special forces we now have fighting in Syria, and how they are going to get those troops back out?
The $4 BILLION a year we are wasting in Afghanistnam to support a phantom army that cannot fight, along with corruption?
If you thought any of that, of course, you would be dead wrong.
As for Hillary Clinton, she was going on about some overweight beauty queen someplace who Hillary swears is overweight because Donald Trump caused her to have some kind of eating disorder, which in Hillary’s opinion, disqualifies Trump from being president, while Trump and his crowd were yukking it up about Bill Clinton’s sexual prowess and all his conquests of the female set since he has been in public office, although numerous as Bill’s sexual exploits might be, they don’t hold a candle to those of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
That is what the American people want to hear about today from their presidential contenders, andy zahn, overweight beauty queens and Bill Clinton’s sexual exploits.
So that is what they got.
And once again, I would like to take a moment to thank John Read for coming in here to raise our consciousness for us, as we head into this 2016 presidential election season.
Reviewing what wisdom John Read has left us with to study and consider, at the top of the list, I have this:
“The question, however, is not so much one of why can’t Hillary Clinton stop lying as it is one of who in America in their right mind wants to have as their leader someone who can’t stop lying.”
end quote
There truly is one of the greatest mysteries of our times, in my estimation – what kind of person wants a liar as their military commander in chief, which is what Hillary Clinton would be if elected president of the United States of America?
Try as I might, I simply cannot figure that out.
How low does one’s self esteem have to be for them to want a liar as their leader?
As the song by Fleetwood Mac goes, it is a mystery to me.
Which thought brings me to this statement left behind by John Read, quite likely with tongue in cheek:
“Hillary is rational, intelligent, well-prepared, and poised and will make an excellent President.”
end quote
People up here where I am who have experience of Hillary Clinton as our U.S. senator from New York readily admit that among her attributes, Hillary Clinton is indeed quite cunning and crafty, but does being cunning and crafty serve to make her intelligent?
There is a serious question for us to consider as we head into the presidential election in November, people.
According to the dictionary, “intelligent” can be defined as:
1. having good understanding or a high mental capacity; quick to comprehend;
2. displaying or characterized by quickness of understanding, sound thought, or good judgment: or
3. having the faculty of reasoning and understanding.
end quote
That, of course, has people asking themselves, as well they should, when as U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had Moamar Gaddafi of Libya murdered, setting that nation on the road to being a terrorist-infested failed state, was Hillary Clinton displaying sound thought, or good judgment?
And in considering that question, they in turn ask us to GOOGLE “Images for hillary clinton with mercenaries in Libya,” and they ask us to look at the pictures of Hillary with a goofy smile on her face surrounded by her mercenary gunsels in Libya as they all hold up their hands making the sign of the “Vee,” or something any way.
And they ask us this question: “Does that look like someone having the faculty of reasoning and understanding, or does it look like someone who is a fool?”
As I say, tough questions, people, tough questions, indeed, and it is up to each of us to endeavor to persevere to answer them as best we can.
And when in 2011, Hillary Clinton set off a civil war that still rages to this day in Syria by trying to use terrorists as her mercenary army in that country in a failed bid to militarily despose Bashar Assad, setting Syria on the path of becoming a terrorist-infested failed state, was that the act of someone displaying sound thought, or good judgment?
As I say, tough questions indeed, but let us face it, people, they are far too important to disregard.
Hillary Clinton has led us into a quagmire.
People up this way do not think she has the brains to get us back out.
And that brings us to this conundrum John Read has left us to consider:
Trump should apologize to Obama because of his insulting campaign accusations that Obama is not an American.
end quote
That brings us face-on to the question of exactly what is an American anymore, and how can you tell?
As for Hillary Clinton, here is how she describes Barack Hussein Obama:
“For five years [Trump] has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said in her speech.
end quote
What does that really mean, people, when Hillary Clinton calls Obama not an American, but “our first black president?”
What, pray tell, is a “black president?”
And how does a “black president” get “delegitimized?”
What on earth does it even mean to be “delegitimized?”
And how does a “black president” differ from an American president?
Hillary, of course, never tells us.
John Read, John Read, where are you when your country needs you?
Please come back and help us out here so we too can have some understanding of this, and you will have our eternal gratitude.
Yes, but consider the alternative: President Trump. Enough said.
No, John Read, thankfully, that is not the alternative, at all, and by thinking that way, in such a binary either/or fashion, where you are forcing yourself to be confronted by what you consider the less bad choice of two extremely bad choices, spoiled, infantile children, the both of them, bickering about total inconsequential matters to our future as a nation and our national security, like overweight beauty queens and where Barack Obama might have been born, as if that somehow mattered, or was a weighty matter to be debated by two presidential candidates, as opposed to say, what are either of those two infantile ninnies going to do about the 5,000 U.S. combat troops Obama has been stealthily sticking into IRAQINAM, when he promised the nation no U.S. boots on the ground in IRAQINAM, when either of those two mindless morons become commander-in-chief, God help the nation, you are doing yourself a great disservice as an American citizen.
Seriously, John Read, you come across in here as someone who is rational, intelligent, well-prepared, and poised, so I find myself very surprised and amazed that you don’t see the trap you have placed not only yourself in, but the nation you love and cherish, as well, by this foolish thought that you are limited to voting for either a worthless Republican or an equally worthless Democrat.
That is so yesterday, John Read.
The Republican party and the Democrat party are dying dinosaurs.
Independent thinking is the wave of the future.
And that CRAP about the “two-party” system in America being necessary for our survival as a nation that you have been indoctrinated with is just that, John Read, CRAP!
Liberate yourself, John Read, set yourself free!
Shed the bonds and shackles of partisan politics, John Read, and its eternal bickering, and start using your intelligence in a positive manner.
Ask yourself this simple question, John Read: if the founding fathers in their wisdom had really wanted us to be shackled with a bunch of idiots and bottom-feeders from the Republican or Democrat parties here in America, both of which, by the way, only represent a minority of the American people, and fringes, at that, on both sides, the terminally moronic the political wags up this way say, WHY did they give us the WRITE-IN VOTE?
If they had wanted us to be stuck with nothing but an endless procession of idiots and bottom-feeders from the Republican or Democrat parties here in America, don’t you think they would have assured that fate for the nation by depriving us of the WRITE-IN VOTE?
Do you see what I am saying here, John Read?
The founding fathers had prescient vision, John Read.
They saw these times coming, and so, they gave us the WRITE-IN VOTE as our salvation, and now is the time to use it, John Read.
Strike a blow for freedom, John Read.
Never before has your country needed you so.
This is your time to shine, John Read, to stand up for true American values, to be a beacon of freedom for the masses.
Use the gift of liberty granted to you by the founding fathers, John Read, write in Tulsi Gabbard for president and Chris Gibson for vice-president.
Both of them have served in our military.
Both of them know foreign policy first-hand.
Both know a quagmire when they see one and can be trusted to lead us around one, not straight in to the middle of it as either of these two idiots running for president can be trusted to do with their poor judgment and total lack of any military experience.
There is your choice, John Read, staring you in the face.
The question is, do you have the courage to use it?
Yes, but realistically, either Trump or Hillary is going to be President. As far as I can tell, Tulsi, an admirable candidate in many ways, seems to have no interest in running for President at this time. So in 2016, a vote for Tulsi is a wasted vote.
A wasted vote?
Not hardly, John Read.
Study your American history, John Read.
It is called a CITIZEN’S DRAFT!
The citizens call to the Oval Office the candidate the citizens want in the White House as someone they can trust to fulfill the duties of the president.
Remember your American history, John Read.
That is how George Washington came to be president of the United States of America.
Like Tulsi Gabbard, John Read, George Washington did not ask the American people to make him their leader.
Clearly, John Read, someone who is as rational, intelligent, well-prepared, and poised and politically astute as you are would recall that, so I find myself very surprised and amazed that you don’t see the trap you are placing not only yourself in, but the nation you love and cherish as well, by doubting the efficacy of the same CITIZEN’S DRAFT this time around, which is what the write-in vote in actuality is, at a time when it has never been needed more.
I believe that it is in the character of Tulsi Gabbard that if the people of the United States of America call her to serve as their next president, that Tulsi Gabbard would answer that call and serve with distinction as this nation’s next president.
Think about it, John Read.
From her record of public speaking, it is clear she cares deeply for this nation, its future, its national security, and its people.
So why would she decline their call to serve, especially when she voluntarily joined this nation’s military in a time of war?
Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with John Read that it is a given that either Trump or Hillary is going to be President.
Yes, there is a likelihood one of them might be president, God help the nation, but not a certainty.
If the Bernie supporters had the courage of their convictions, for example, they would send a very strong message to the Democrat party that shut them out by rejecting Hillary Clinton and instead, voting for Bernie Sanders by write-in.
And according to Marketwatch today, in an article by Robert Schroeder published Oct 3, 2016, there is a new wild card in the deck by the name of Evan McMullin, who, according to the article, said he could “no longer stand on the sidelines” of the presidential race and decided to challenge Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for the White House.
McMullin, a former Goldman Sachs banker who also happens to be a former Central Intelligence Agency operative, said he’d hoped this year to see nominees who could offer visions of a better future, as did we all, or well, most of us anyway, those of us who are not besotted from drinking too much Democrat and Republican Kool-Aid.
So, according to Marketwatch, the 40-year-old Utah native, who’s running as an independent, calls Clinton, who emerged from her near-fatal bout with killer pneumonia with an entirely new, very demure voice to replace that old hag-like hectoring voice she was using before pneumonia almost carried her off in its deathly grip, “a corrupt career politician,” which is the truth, and has similarly harsh words for GOP nominee Trump, who after the faux “debate” now has people up this way totally convinced that the Clinton Foundation is paying Donald Trump to run against Hillary Clinton as a favor to the Clintons, with some kind of big pay-back for the Donald down the road in the form of government grants and tax breaks to build more casinos here in America, because the only one in America who can make Hillary Clinton look presidential is a fool like Donald Trump, who people are convinced is going out of his way to look stupid so he can make Hillary look good by comparison.
According to Marketwatch, McMullin is stopping by MarketWatch’s office in New York on Tuesday, and he’ll answer your questions about his campaign and the economic issues at stake in the election live on Facebook at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Tuesday.
So this race is far from over, people.
Will history be made this year?
Will the Democrat and Republican parties finally be consigned to the dustbin of history along with the Whigs, where they belong.
Stay tuned is all I can say.
In the meantime, I’m still going to vote my own conscience here by writing in Tulsi Gabbard for president and Chris Gibson for vice president, as I want someone sane and rational in the White House for a change as opposed to another shallow-thinking incompetent.
And speaking of the seemingly perpetual WTF moment I seem to be immersed in here in America, if it really is America, and not some Never-Never Land, in yet another cosmic confluence as this Mullet, er, sorry, I don’t know why I keep getting typos on that, Mueller Report has come out, we have none other than Hillary Clinton herself hysterically and shrilly shrieking in TIME article entitled “Hillary Clinton: Anyone Else Would Have Been Indicted After Mueller Report” on 23 April 2019 as follows:
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she agrees with those who argue that Russian meddling cost her the 2016 election and that President Donald Trump has obstructed justice in covering up his campaign’s interactions with a foreign adversary.
Clinton said Trump’s actions would only embolden future adversaries and weaken American democracy.
“What you’re saying is we were attacked, we have significant evidence that this Administration did everything it could to undermine and interfere with the investigation into that act.”
“And we are going to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen?” Clinton said.
“Well, at that point, then you might as well just say all bets are off, there is no accountability for anyone in the most significant job in the world.”
“I don’t think that’s the right place to end up.”
“This is about what is going on today and the threats to our next election, to our defense as a nation,” Clinton said.
“I’m really of the mind that the Mueller report is part of the beginning.”
“It’s not the end.”
“… There’s still so much more that we should know and that we should act upon.”
end quotes
And the cosmic confluence includes this thread in the venerable Cape Charles Mirror which transports us back in time to SEPTEMBER 19, 2016 AT 5:18 PM, where we have this essential background to refute the silly claims of Hillary Clinton, who I think has become unhinged due to the continued stress of being Hillary Clinton as opposed to just a normal human being like the rest of us, that Russian “meddling” cost her the 2016 election and that President Donald Trump has obstructed justice in covering up his campaign’s interactions with a foreign adversary, to wit:
With respect to the surreal and bizarre nature of this up-coming presidential election, for the first time in American political history, we have two candidates running for the imperial presidency on behalf of the two supposedly “major” political factions in this nation, both of which now represent a shrinking minority of voters in this country, and both candidates are highly disliked and reviled by a majority of voters in this country, as we are informed by the Washington Post on 31 August 2016, as follows:
* A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows 41 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Clinton, while 56 percent have an unfavorable one.
* That’s the worst image Clinton has had in her quarter-century in national public life.
* Her previous low favorable rating this year was in July, when it was 42 percent, lower than any mark in historical Post-ABC polls except a few points in the 1990s when a large share of the public had no opinion of her.
* Her previous high for unfavorable views was in June, when 55 percent disliked Clinton.
* If it weren’t for Trump, in fact, Clinton would be the most unpopular major-party presidential nominee in modern American history.
* Perhaps most notably, Clinton’s image has declined significantly from just a month ago.
* Interestingly, Clinton’s numbers appear to have dropped since that early August poll mostly in groups that have been very supportive of her:
* Her favorable rating among women dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent.
* Among Hispanics, it went from 71 percent to 55 percent.
* Among liberals, it went from 76 percent to 63 percent.
end quotes
Now, today, almost three years later, Hillary is saying that ALL of that is the result and fault of “Russian Meddling,” which I think is pure horse****.
It did not take the Russians to make all of those American people revile Hillary – that credit goes to her, and her alone, as we see by going further into this thread from yesterday, to wit:
In a MARKETWATCH article by Caroline Baum on August 3, 2016, we are informed thusly about Hillary Clinton, who is reviled by a clear majority of American citizens, and with good reason, in my estimation:
Hillary Clinton has a long history of lying.
In fact, her first instinct, when confronted with some tawdry, quasi-illegal activity, is to dissemble.
In 1996, New York Times columnist William Safire called her “a congenital liar,” citing her comments about her cattle-trading windfall, her involvement in the firing of members of the White House Travel Office, and the missing Rose Law Firm files that miraculously reappeared.
Most recently, Clinton’s denials about sending classified information on her private email account housed on her private server were exposed as falsehoods by FBI Director James Comey.
Asked by Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” about Comey’s comments, the former secretary of state lied again, claiming Comey had called her statements “truthful.”
The Washington Post’s FactChecker awarded Clinton four Pinocchios, a rating reserved for the biggest whoppers, prompting the Atlantic’s Ron Fournier to write an article headlined, “Why Can’t Hillary Clinton Stop Lying?”
end quotes
But again, hey, it’s the ******* Russians, people – Hillary really wasn’t a congential liar at all – it was the Russians who made those people say those bad things about Hillary, who is as pure, or actually even more pure, than the driven snow, which again takes us back to 2016, as follows:
The question, however, is not so much one of why can’t Hillary Clinton stop lying as it is one of who in America in their right mind wants to have as their leader someone who can’t stop lying.
How low does one’s self-esteem have to be to want to live in a nation with a highly unpopular congenital liar who despises the majority of people in this country and dumps them into her “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES,” as if they were trash, as its chief executive officer and commander-in-chief of its military?
end quotes
Now, that we me saying that, and I am no stinking Russian agent or Russian spy or Russian tool – to the contrary, I AM AN AMERICAN, Hillary, and I am older than you, and I am past being sick and tired of all your ******* lies and horse****, which again takes us back to 2017 as follows:
With respect to the question of Hillary Clinton’s veracity, in a NEWSMAX article by Brian Freeman on 07 August 2016, we are informed as follows with respect to Hillary Clinton’s claims about creating jobs in the United States of America, to wit:
Even though Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton touts her accomplishments at job creation as a New York senator, the actual results of her efforts are far from impressive, according to The Washington Post.
The paper conducted an in-depth review of her job-creation efforts while in the Senate, when she concentrated on trying to revive the economy in the depressed region of Upstate New York.
One of the major issues in the presidential election is expected to be who is most capable of running the economy and who has the best record of helping to stimulate growth.
In fact, First Post reported that during this past week of campaigning, Clinton said her economic plan for if she becomes president would create 10 million jobs, while that of Republican nominee Donald Trump would lose 3.5 million jobs, emphasizing that he is not offering “real change” but “empty promises.”
In her campaign for the Senate, Clinton also made grand promises, vowing to create 200,000 new jobs in Upstate New York, but the results fall well short of that, according to The Washington Post study.
Her attempts to pass major legislation to benefit the economy of her state failed and her smaller projects often were short-lived or did not work out at all, with overall job growth stagnate during her tenure, while manufacturing jobs plummeted 25 percent.
With that in mind, the most reliable figures are those from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which show that during her overall time as senator, upstate jobs rose only 0.2 percent overall, while manufacturing positions fell 24.1 percent.
Some of the new jobs, however, appeared to have been created by legislation that was introduced by a Republican senator and only included Clinton as one of 21 co-sponsors, the study shows.
end quotes
And again, Hillary will shriek and screech that it was really the Russians saying all those mean things about her, and they can’t be true, because the Russians made up all that stuff to put Trump in the White House, because they already own him, and by gosh, the Mullet, er, gee, sorry, Mueller Report backs her up in spades, which is more horse****, which again takes us back to 2016 as follows:
In New York state, we know Hillary Clinton to be pro-repression when it comes to dissent against government corruption, and pro-government corruption when it comes to her policies.
We also know her to be quite a bit less than truthful, and thus are amazed that she is a leading contender for this highest government position in this land.
end quotes
And that is why Hillary is a LOSER!
If she wants to blame the Russians for that, so be it!
And God bless America for that favor.
And in the light of the reality that all of us who are not Hillary Clinton live in, let’s go back for a moment to that TIME article entitled “Hillary Clinton: Anyone Else Would Have Been Indicted After Mueller Report” on 23 April 2019 where we have this ridiculous statement from Hillary, as follows:
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she agrees with those who argue that Russian meddling cost her the 2016 election and that President Donald Trump has obstructed justice in covering up his campaign’s interactions with a foreign adversary.
end quotes
That statement that Hillary Rodham Clinton says she agrees with those who argue that Russian meddling cost her the 2016 election is ridiculous because it was Hillary who was making that claim, and then the Democrats jumped on that same bandwagon along with the Washington Post, and the rest is now history, as we can see by going back to a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Clinton blames the FBI, Russia, WikiLeaks and also herself for 2016 loss” by Evan Halper on May 2, 2017, as follows:
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday took some responsibility for her historic loss in the presidential election, but mostly blamed a conspiracy against her.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, of course it has to be a SHUDDER SHUDDER “grand conspiracy,” precisely because she is the only Hillary Clinton we have in America, or the world, for that matter, and people are just jealous of her, and so for that reason, they all ganged up on her in a grand conspiracy to give the job to Trump, instead, as we see from the LA Times article as follows:
“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” Clinton said at the Women for Women event in New York.
end quotes
So, the takeaway there is that Hillary got screwed over, because the actual day of the election was designed to favor trump, instead of her, and that was the fault of the Russians, and their tool, Jim Comey, as we see by going back to the LA Times article as follows:
But she said FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress announcing that he had reopened his investigation into Clinton’s email practices, combined with the damage Russian hackers inflicted through their disclosure of campaign emails, raised just enough doubt in the minds of voters to cost her the election.
end quotes
And personally, I think that is just a load of horse**** from Hillary, because if there was a balance to be tipped, it had already been tipped years before, which takes us again to the LA Times, as follow:.
Clinton’s refusal to take full responsibility for her loss comes after a flurry of post-election critiques concluded the campaign she ran was deeply flawed, neglecting key groups of voters and failing to project a compelling message.
end quotes
And today, almost two years later to the day, Hillary’s refusal to take full responsibility for her loss has resulted in this Mullet, no, that’s not right, Mueller Report as a white wash to shift the blame elsewhere so Hillary can continue with her illusion that she really would have been president if only the election had been on a different date, which again takes us back to the LA Times, as follows:
Critics, including some Democrats, also charge Clinton brought the e-mail troubles on herself by setting up a private server in her home on which to conduct confidential government business.
end quotes
Of course, there is nothing about that in the Mullet, why does that keep happening, must be my spell checker stepping in, Mueller Report, because this is America and Hillary Clinton is a symbol of all that is pure and holy in America, and so, we can’t think bad things about Hillary, which takes us back to this from the LA Times, as follows
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign, there is no such thing,” Clinton said, promising to reflect on her mistakes in an upcoming book she joked will be a “confession” and “request for absolution.”
“But I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” Clinton said.
“There was a lot of funny business going on.”
end quotes
Hillary, take it from me – you were never on the way to winning, except in your own mind – to the contrary, you were on the way to losing when you announced you were going to run again after being rejected before for the same reasons you were rejected this time, and Comey and the Russians had nothing at all to do with that, since you were losing on your own merits and din’t need their help, so lay off with the lame excuses, Hillary.
And now for a word from our sponsors as we pause for station identification.
And while we are on all the silly screeching and mewling Hillary Clinton is doing now that this Mullet, stop that, spellchecker, Mueller report is in, let’s go to a Bloomberg article entitled “Hillary Clinton says Congress should begin Watergate-style hearings after Mueller findings” by Margaret Talev on 24 April 2019, for some classic Hillary, as follows:
WASHINGTON — Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Congress should begin a Watergate-style investigation into President Donald Trump’s attempts to obstruct Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election that she lost.
end quotes
BOO HOO HOO, Hillary – you lost an election because you are Hillary Clinton and people in America cannot stand you because you think you are so perfect and everyone else can’t be because they are not you, so now the world has to be turned upside down on your behalf so you can have some scapegoats, because you have political power to make all of these witch hunts happen simply so you can blame somebody else for your loss, which takes us back to Bloomberg as follows:
Clinton wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that lawmakers should undertake “substantive hearings” on the special counsel’s report from his investigation and shouldn’t “jump straight to an up-or-down vote on impeachment.”
end quotes
And there is where we find ourselves in complete agreement, Hillary – yes, Congress now needs to go back to that Trump Tower meeting where Natalia Veselnitskaya, a former Russian prosecutor, raised allegations that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee benefited from dirty Russian money, which revelations and evidence in turn scared the living **** out of Trump Jr. who let us face it, is not made of the stern stuff of a hero, and doesn’t want his name associated in any way with making that evidence public, knowing only too well what would happen to him if he became a “rat,” and it needs to get those records, and it then needs to make them public in order to bring this sick show to an end, and if Hillary has to go to prison for laundering money with Russia, so what, she deserves it, which statement whisks us back in time to a necessary background article from Marketwatch entitled “Opinion: The race for the White House enters an alternate universe” by Darrell Delamaide published June 28, 2016, where we have as follows:
WASHINGTON – It’s not just you.
This presidential campaign truly has an air of unreality about it, like something out of the Twilight Zone.
end quotes
That was almost three years ago now, and three years later, especially now that the Mullet, I said stop that spellchecker, Mueller Report is out, it still has an air of unreality about it, like something out of the Twilight Zone, that thanks to Clinton Democrat and master political conjurer Lanny Davis, who may well be the real author of the famous Mullet, cross that out, Mueller Report, what takes us back to 2016 and the beginning of this sick Hillary Clinton saga as follows:
The candidates, the pundits and the media in general seem increasingly detached from the real world we live in as a campaign of taunts and insults replaces real debate on issues.
end quotes
And almost three years later, Hillary, the pundits and the media, and especially the Washington Post, are even more detached from reality, which takes us back to 2016 and Hil;lary’s speciaous claims that she would have been president but for the Russians and their tool Comey, to wit:
The first woman to clinch the presidential nomination of a major party has no bigger message than to bad-mouth the white male running against her.
A progressive champion who rocketed to popularity for her trenchant criticism of the financial industry and other consumer scammers now has become the name-caller-in-chief for an establishment politician she has in the past vilified as a tool of Wall Street.
The press calls this display of mudslinging by two Democratic women “electrifying,” an adjective generally absent from their coverage of equally enthusiastic rallies with Donald Trump.
Let’s stipulate for a moment that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is a really flawed individual, riven by deep-seated insecurities, and apparently a pathological liar.
It’s a description that would fit, say, Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson to a T as well – presidents who for all their flaws have some major accomplishments to their credit.
If we concede all this, however, then we have to concede that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, too, is a really flawed individual, riven by deep-seated insecurities, and apparently a pathological liar.
So it’s hard to figure out just what Clinton and her new enabler, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, hope to accomplish with their mudslinging tirades against Trump, such as the one they engaged in on Monday in their first campaign appearance on the same stage.
Warren repeated her cliché-ridden description of Trump as a “small, insecure money grubber.”
For good measure, she added that he is “a thin-skinned bully” and “a nasty man” who would “crush you into the dirt to get whatever he wants.”
Clinton played her usual campaign trick of repeating statements long since clarified or “walked back,” taking them out of context and putting a spin on them that was never intended.
For instance, Trump never said he would default on U.S. debt, even though some inartful remarks were construed to mean such by people who understand less about finance than he does.
But this remains part of Clinton’s litany of disdain for the real-estate mogul, just as she continued to accuse Sanders of wanting to throw out Obamacare and every other government health-care program even though that grossly mischaracterized his plans.
Now, instead of nodding like a bobblehead just at the wisdom of her own remarks, as Clinton is wont to do, she’s happy to stand next to Warren and bobble along in approval as the Massachusetts senator preaches to the choir of Clinton supporters who already hate Trump.
And Trump is the only one to blame for creating a climate of hate and division in our politics?
The Clinton campaign apparently feels they are on the right track with their unremitting attacks on Trump.
But it’s a bit hypocritical to criticize him for fostering division and running on insults when doing the same yourself.
Welcome to the alternate universe that is the 2016 presidential campaign.
end quotes
And there is why Hillary Clinton lost, people – because she never had anything to offer America beyond her endlessly running mouth offering insult after insult about people who get up in the morning, go to work, pay their bills and raise their families because those people would not fall for Hillary’s bull****, so they became the BASKET OF DEPLORABLES who did vote to keep her out of the White House and I am proud to say that I am one of them who did MY COUNTRY a favor by denying Hillary Clinton my precious vote.
So let’s finally cut this endless spew of bull**** that the Russians had anything to do with keepin g Hillary Clinton out of office as president -that is something she alone deserves the credit for, so let’s make sure she gets it.
And now, it’s time to take a break for station identification and a word from our sponsors!
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-ra … 2016-06-28
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