"Third-World Style Corruption"

Last night, Donald Trump, citing a new report by AP on Hillary Clinton's utter corruption of the State Department, criticized his opponent for engaging in "third world style corruption".

That's a great line, because that's exactly what it is.

For those who actually depend on the fake "news media" for their "news", and thus have not heard anything about this latest Clinton scandal, the AP took a look at Hillary's meeting logs while serving as SecState and determined that fully 55% of the non-government employee meetings she took while in that office were conducted with people who had either already given gobs of bucks to the Clinton Slush Fund, er, "Foundation", or who gave gobs of bucks following the meeting.  The AP then went on to document examples of favors the GodMother did for these folks after the money flowed into her crime family slush fund.

That's exactly how business is conducted in banana republics, i.e., third world countries.  It's a disgrace to the office, an utter and complete betrayal of the public trust, an abuse of power so disgusting than in any other presidential administration in American history it would have landed the perpetrator - that being the GodMother - in prison.

But this is the administration of Barack Obama, a man who views banana republic dictators as role models.  So not only did Ms. Clinton skate while abusing her office, she ultimately became free to rig the nominating process of her party and land the role as its presidential nominee.

Someday, some enterprising investigative reporter will rummage through Mr. Obama's financial transactions, looking for funds that might have been laundered through the Clinton crime family slush fund.  After all, this is a man who has never held a decent paying job in his entire life, and yet is somehow planning to retire to a DC-adjacent neighborhood filled with $10 million homes.  Where did all that money come from? 

An actually functional news media would be clamoring to find out the answer to that question.  Just as a functional Justice Department would have already put Hillary Clinton behind bars.

Instead, we face the prospect of this Most Corrupt Woman in America, who turned herself into a $300 millionaire by turning the State Department into a bribery factory now planning to turn herself into a billionaire by doing the same thing at the White House.

Third world style corruption, indeed.

More Clinton News for the Fake National Media to Ignore

Julian Assange Suggests Seth Rich – Who Was Murdered in DC – Was Wikileaks DNC Source

This would seem to be a significant actual news story. Therefore, you can expect our fake national news media to ignore it at all costs, just as they have studiously ignored the murders of two other DNC-related people over the last three weeks.

Ask yourselves this: what other organization besides the DNC/Clinton Campaign are you aware of that have had three very healthy individuals closely connected to them murdered in the last six weeks? The odds against this happening have to be in the millions to one, on the order of winning the MegaMillions jackpot. It may not be a conspiracy at work, but it is one hell of a coincidence.

You won't see this incredibly odd coincidence of events reported on ABC, NBC or CBS, all of whom also studiously ignored the story of the President of the United States of America loading up a jet with $400 million in foreign currency and shipping it illegally to the world's leading sponsor of Islamic terrorism in a clear exchange for four U.S. hostages.  This same story happening in a Republican administration would have been reported - properly - as an impeachable offense by these same media outlets, headline news for weeks, months, years on end.

Think about that for a minute, especially if you are one of the millions of brainwashed apologists for the current president and the Democrat nominee.  Stop apologizing for or just plain ignoring this kind of behavior, just because a politician shares your views on some social issue.  By doing so, you are supporting the criminal corruption of American democracy, plain and simple.

Stop it.  Just stop.

Trump Taxes and Hillary Sickness

The Donald continues to take frequent criticism from Hillary and her Lapdog Legion in the fake national news media for refusing to release his tax returns.  This is to be expected - it has become an extremely stupid tradition for all candidates for high political office to make their tax returns public over the last 30 years or so.

Presumably, this gives the press and the public a chance to obtain assurance that the candidate is on the up and up.  In practice, however, only GOP candidates' returns are subject to scrutiny by the fake media lapdogs, who generally try to make a cottage industry out of breaking a steady stream of fake and semi-fake stories about them. So Trump has no reason to comply with this tradition, one of so many such self-defeating traditions GOP candidates stupidly subject themselves to every four years.

However, given the growing controversy related to Hillary's obvious health issues, Trump does have one angle to play here that could give him an advantage:  Offer to release his tax returns if Ms. Clinton agrees to release her medical records.

He should make this his answer every time the question is asked from now through November 8.  Doesn't have to be mean about it, doesn't have to expand at all on it unless the reporter follows up with more questions, doesn't have to engage in any nick-naming like "sick and frail Hillary".  Just make the offer, each and every time the question is asked. 

This would be very, very powerful persuasion.  The result would either be a hasty cessation of any media questioning on the subject, or a growing public demand for Hillary's medical records, as more and more people began to focus on her obvious frailty and frequent seizures and uncontrolled coughing fits.

Trump has made  a habit during this campaign of breaking these traditions to which past GOP candidates have stupidly complied, and using them to his advantage.  This is too "yuge" an opportunity to pass up.

Stay tuned.

Everybody Calm The Hell Down

On Tuesday, the in-the-tank-for-Hillary Washington Post ran the following headline atop the latest anti-Trump rant by most-reliable Lapdog Dana Milbank:

Is this the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?

Now, if you take a step back from the brink of panic for a moment and reflect on this, you will no doubt realize that this is about the 6,000th time you have read that exact header or something very similar to it from our Fake National News Media (FNNM) since last July.  We've seen it in the wake of each and every Trump gaffe, seemingly poor debate performance (all of which turned out to help him in the polls), or attack on the nearest bystander or shiny object.

Ok, so, did any of those previous 5,999 times turn out to actually be the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?  (Hint: the correct answer is "no".)  So what makes you or anyone else think that this time is The One?

I mean, Dana Milbank is one thing - he doesn't really believe this, but is hoping to influence  his readers to believe that it is as a part of his never-ending lapdoggery in favor of the Clinton machine.  So I get that.

But the rest of you ought to know better.  You're smart people and can think for yourselves.  So do that.

No presidential campaign ever proceeds in a straight line to Election Day.  There are always going to be ups and downs, peaks and valleys, potholes, stumbling blocks and every other tired cliche' one can think of to describe what is always destined to an endless progression of random events.

And then there are the not-so-random factors, like all the polls released and paid for by the exact same FNNM outlets that are in the tank for Hillary.  Why are any of you even bothering to read such polls, much less allowing their results to cause you a bit of heartburn?  I have catalogued to you the absurd machinations that the folks at Reuters/Ipsos have gone to in order to ensure that their poll will always show Hillary in the lead, even going to the lengths changing methods in the middle of the campaign and back-fixing their results.  Why would you think that CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, WaPo and the NYTimes have not done the same thing in their ongoing efforts to influence this election in favor of their chosen girl?

If you must rely on a poll, rely on polls that are not paid for by fake news outlets, like Gallup and Rasmussen, whose latest tracking poll has Trump 4% down in the race.  That's probably fairly accurate.

Three months and three days remain in this campaign, a lifetime in the political world.  There is no question that the vast majority of voters want significant change and no question that Trump is the only change agent who has any chance to win the election.

Calm the hell down.  It's going to be ok.

Pat Caddell Gets it Right on the Fake News Media

“This is the crisis of democracy – the mainstream media, which is in the tank, in the most violent way, against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton, that I have ever seen in the 45 years that I have been at the top of presidential politics.  And it is terrifying. It’s not what they’re telling us, it’s what they’re omitting to tell us...  It is what they are omitting, the facts that they will not tell the American people...All of the media believes the American people are yokels, and that they are fools, and they’re there to be manipulated, so that they – the press, the better people – can set the tone.”  - Longtime Democratic Pollster Pat Caddell

I've long held a lot of respect for Pat Caddell, although I don't agree much with his political viewpoints.  But he has long been one of the handful of TV show talking heads on either side of this country's gaping political divide who doesn't just parrot a handful of focus-grouped talking points when he makes an appearance or gives an interview.

In this week's interview with Breitbart News, quoted in part above, he nails the main reason why the American form of democracy today stands in deep peril:  The intentional abandonment of any form of responsible journalism by our national news media.

As Caddell points out, the national "mainstream" news media - CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. - have always been heavily biased towards the Democrats, going back to the literal birth of television.  The reason for this is no great mystery, as dozens of polls conducted since the 1960s have consistently shown well over 90% of reporters and editors self-identifying as "liberal" or "Democrat".  So the inherent bias in these people's collective world view has always colored what they report, and there was no reason to expect this election cycle's coverage to be any different.

But before this election cycle, there had always in the past been at least some pretense of objectivity claimed by these major media outlets, some assurance given to the public that these "professionals" truly do try to report things as they see them, and do not try to influence the election unfairly.

As Caddell points out, that pretense no longer exists.  Each and every one of the media outlets mentioned above - and more - are fully in the tank for the single most corrupted person to ever seek this nation's highest office, and are darn proud of it. 

I won't try to catalogue examples - they are too numerous and blatantly obvious to try to fit into this space in less than a novel-length piece.

The point here is this: the brilliant men who founded this country knew that the role of an independent press was critical to the maintenance of American democracy.  They believed this so strongly that they accorded protection to this segment of society in the very first amendment contained in the Bill of Rights.

They felt it was critical that holders of high office suffer the public shaming of exposure by a free and independent news media whenever they abused their powers.  This aspect of our society has been completely lost, so dramatically that we now suffer the last throes of an out-of-control president who is verging on dictatorship, doing everything he can to ensure he is succeeded in office by a compatriot who has become fabulously wealthy by selling this country's policy interests and resources in exchange for foreign contributions to her family's "foundation".

While our fake media give her a pass on how she became a hundred-millionaire while serving as Secretary of State, Hillary prepares to become a billionaire while serving as President, knowing she will never be shamed by a free and independent national press corps that no longer exists.

God help us.

Trump Lets Hillary Off The Hook

Well, Donald Trump is back out there doing what he can't be doing again.  This is his race to lose, and the only way he can lose it is to keep making un-forced errors.  After going almost the entire month of July without falling into that now-familiar pattern of saying stupid stuff that allows the fake national news media to focus attention away from Hillary Clinton's serial deceit and mendacity, he fell off the wagon again, going after a Gold Star father who spoke at the Democrat National Convention.

All he had to do when asked about the man's speech was to say "you know, he lost a son in Iraq, in a war that I would not have gotten the country entangled in, and I feel for him. I'm not going to comment further than that", and the subject would have died away.  Instead, by saying all sorts of stupid stuff about the man and his wife, Trump has succeeded in turning the man into this election cycle's version of Cindy Sheehan.

It will ultimately cost him five points or so in the national polls, and those points will be hard to earn back.  Stupid.

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Meanwhile, Trump's opponent just can't stop lying.  Her Sunday interview with Fox's Chris Wallace was just a masterpiece in prevarication, and nobody noticed because Trump had given the fake media all it needed to completely ignore Clinton's latest disgrace.

One of my favorite lines from any movie is Ralphie's line in "A Christmas Story" in which he talks about his father's use of profanity:  "My father worked in profanity the way other artists worked in oils or clay - a true master."

While that line could easily be applied to Bill Clinton by substituting "lying" for "profanity", it doesn't really work for Hillary.  Bill Clinton is a true psychotic - a pathological liar who no doubt actually believes his own BS.  He is without any doubt at all the most skilled liar ever elected to the presidency.

Hillary, on the other hand, is a completely obvious, fully transparent liar.  Her face and body are so chock-full of physical tells that it's difficult to catalogue them all. If she nods her head, she's lying.  If she shakes her head, she's lying.  If her eyes look down and to the right, she's lying.  If they look up and to the left, she's lying.  If her eyes go wide, she's lying.  If she blinks rapidly, she's lying.  If she leans forward, she's lying.  If she leans back, she's lying. If she smiles, she's lying.  If she frowns, she's lying.  If she cackles, she's lying.

Basically, if her lips are moving, she's pretty much lying. 

Her interview with Chris Wallace included each and every one of these tells, and more, and got no attention at all because Trump was out there talking about some guy who doesn't matter.

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A big part of what has gotten Trump to this point is that he is completely different from any politician we've ever seen before.  That quality has a great attraction to the tens of millions of Americans who believe our political system is irredeemable in its current state, and needs to be essentially blown up and recreated out of whole cloth.

But that quality is also what keeps getting him into trouble.  That quality is what essentially doubled what was going to be a negligible polling boost for Hillary coming out of her convention.

This has been from he beginning an election in which the majority of voters want real, significant change from the current political system. That remains unchanged.  But Trump just spent the last week allowing the ultimate status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton, to pretend unchallenged to be running as a change agent.

That must stop, and it must stop now.  All it will take is for Trump to quit saying stupid stuff that doesn't matter.