Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Coronavirus, the economy and the American election, the story thus far …

Posted on by
Reply

Whoever does the plot lines for our world is astonishingly creative but does tend to be highly melodramatic. So this is where we are. Our economies are coming good, the virtuous if eccentric Donald Trump is getting on top of things with some of the best economic outcomes in generations. Meanwhile, the Democrats go into self-destructive mode, creating a set of rules and a large crew of incompetents who allow not just anyone, but an out-and-out communist to take first place in the race for the nomination. In almost every conceivable circumstance, the communist must lose, unless there is a major recession. But then, just in time, along comes the coronavirus, knocking supply chains out of kilter across the world, with this coronavirus business looking like it might really create an international recession just in time for the election. Now read on, taken from Instapundit.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: A Coronavirus Pandemic Is Looking A Lot More Likely. Here’s What That Means.

Harvard scientist predicts coronavirus will infect up to 70 percent of humanity.

WHO says it’s too early to declare a coronavirus pandemic: ‘Now is the time to prepare’.

Coronavirus’s Global Spread May Not Be Contained, WHO Says.

As coronavirus spreads, the US is not fully prepared, but here is how we can be.

What’s it like to be in Italy amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Citi, Credit Suisse among banks curbing Italy trips on coronavirus fears.

Dazed Italy Bickers and Seeks Reason for Coronavirus Spread.

Some Apple retail stores re-open in China after coronavirus closings.

Coronavirus fear sickens stock market, spreads need to diversify manufacturing.

Wall Street plunges as coronavirus spreads.

Global stock markets plunge on coronavirus fears. Though to be fair, I wonder how much the rise of Bernie has to do with this too.

Coronavirus and what needs to be done to get in front of global pandemics.

UPDATE: Yeah.

From here almost anything is possible. Comedy gold! Guaranteed to win the intergalactic Oscars, Tonies and an Emmy.

Is Romney angling for the Democrat nomination for President?

Posted on by
Reply

As we can see the President has their number, the Democrats have nothing and every one of them running for president is an almost certain bust. But Romney. Despicable scum that he might well be, will attract some from the conservative side although absolutely on the left in every way that counts. He almost knocked off Obama in 2012 until he decided to scuttle his own ship.

No idea if it is technically possible, but if it is, this is no doubt on his mind.

AND NOW THIS: From Instapundit.

SEE ALSO: KENNEDY, TED. Media suddenly fall in love with Romney now that his politics align with theirs.

Romney’s vilification by the press in 2012 was a key mile marker on the road to Trump. And as with the late John McCain, his Stockholm Syndrome-levels of seeking the proverbial “strange new respect” from those who clearly hate him is painful to watch.

In the year of the rat we have Mitt Romney as Exhibit A

Posted on by
Reply

Between Romney and McCain, conservatives never had a candidate on their side during the two elections against Obama. Not even sure they had an actual Republican. This is Romney defending the indefensible.

And why say that?

If Romney cannot even see that routine arm twisting is part of the way governments work – and that is not even what we saw here anyway – he really is too high minded for politics. I’m sure Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden will provide a higher ethical standard for us to admire.

More here.

Why you must side with Donald Trump on impeachment

Posted on by
Reply

Since I was asked in a recent post about why we have been avoiding the impeachment story, let me say for myself that there is no there there to discuss. The Democrats and their enablers in the media are apparently willing to destroy the American system of government for some short-term gain in the right to formulate policy, which will ruin the balance of forces that maintain stability. I spent enough years in a political environment to see how things are done, and they are done behind closed doors where agreements are reached with the shake of a hand and then everyone else plays their part in allowing the agreed outcome to come about. There is nothing necessarily corrupt or dishonest about politics.

The one thing that is absolutely necessary is for the representatives of the various interests to be led by strong-willed people who know what they want to achieve and understand when they have gone as far as they can go, given the state of play. No decision I have ever been party to was constructed out of corrupt motives, although there has been quite a lot of political profiteering that has gone on.

Among the reasons I dislike Keynesian economics so much is that it turns governments into dispensers of wealth. Rather than producing value-adding goods and services, people can become very wealthy by being on the receiving end of public funds. There may seldom have been a gravy train as thick as the moneys being lashed out to supposedly prevent global warming, but that is how things are done. Windmills and solar panels, for all their waste and harm, are what the population really seems to want. Self-interest is the soul of politics and it’s not always enlightened.

But the Democrats’ relentless attacks on Donald Trump have gone beyond anything anyone has seen before. None of this is in dispute so far as I am concerned:

  • Barack Obama was at the centre of a cabal of insiders who did all they could by using various government institutions (such as the FBI) to undermine the electoral process to stop Donald Trump from becoming president;
  • There has been a continuous process to prevent and inhibit the Republicans from governing through illegal and unconstitutional actions;
  • Hillary Clinton was the most corrupt and stunningly incompetent politician ever to run for President – the Clinton Foundation was an open non-secret;
  • Joe Biden specifically admitted that he had forced the Ukrainian government from investigating his son who was for reasons unrelated to his knowledge and abilities on the board of a Ukrainian business, receiving millions of dollars, solely because his father, Joe Biden, was the Vice-President;
  • When Mueller could not find any evidence that the 2016 election had been tipped towards Trump by some kind of Russian interference, the Democrats turned on a dime to invent an absurd story about Trump applying pressure on the Ukrainian political system as a means to subvert Joe Biden’s run for the presidency;
  • The media are deranged in their fanatically biased distortions of the events of the day. There is virtually never a positive story in regard to Donald Trump. The ABC is a sewer of lies and distortions, but still remains better than any of the mainstream networks in the US.

And on it goes. Politics is a hard business and often very hard on those who get involved, but also often very lucrative. But the impeachment has reached a new and stunningly high-grade level of corruption. If the Democrats are allowed to succeed in what is essentially a coup, the United States will enter some form of socialist one-party state – not like the Soviet Union, more like Argentina – in which “the will of the people” will be an utterly meaningless expression with no actual reality on the ground.

If this does not worry you to the very depths, then you have no idea what democracy is and why in trying to preserve our way of life you must side with Donald Trump.

The consistency of the left

Posted on by
Reply

No one can be more consistent than the leaders of a modern left-side party. Policies are irrelevant – they just do or say whatever will lead them to power. Take this for an example: Oppose Iran sanctions, but support BDS against Israel?

Contrary to the claims of some of its apologists, the purpose of BDS is not to pressure Israel’s government to change its policies. As the founders of the movement and its leading advocates in the United States have repeatedly made clear, its goal is to eliminate Israel.

So if you support BDS against Israel but oppose sanctions against Iran—a brutal theocracy that oppresses its own people, seeks to impose its brand of Islamist tyranny on others via terrorism, and is dedicated to the goal of destroying Israel—then you are not merely being hypocritical. Singling out Jews for treatment that you think not even one of the worst governments on earth deserves is a form of bias that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

Then there’s this:

Donald Trump and the mythmakers from Caroline Glick.

For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel.

Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic.

As far as Iran is concerned, as journalist Lee Smith explained in Tablet online magazine this week, when Iranian “students” seized the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, they placed the Carter administration in a dilemma: If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the “students” weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the US would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn’t want to do that.

So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of “students” in central Tehran to free the hostages.

 At the base of their decision to prefer fantasy to reality in regards to Iran was the hope that Khomeini and his “students” would be satisfied with a pound or two of American flesh and wouldn’t cause Washington too many other problems.

So too, as Smith noted, the Carter administration was propelled by guilt. The worldviews of many members of the administration had been shaped on radical university campuses in the 1960s. They agreed with the Iranian revolutionaries who cursed Americans as imperialists. They perceived Khomeini and his followers as “authentic” Third World actors who were giving the Americans their comeuppance.

Khomeini and his “Death to America” shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, “plausibly deniable” doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies.

Which continues:

This then brings us to President Trump. Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Soleimani – who as commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force was the head of all of Iran’s regional and global terror apparatuses – destroyed the Carter administration’s Iran narrative.

Soleimani was killed in Baghdad along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of one of the Soleimani-controlled Shiite militias in Iraq. Iraqi protesters, who have been demonstrating against Iran’s control over their government since last October claim that Soleimani was the one who ordered al-Muhandis to kill the demonstrators. More than 500 demonstrators have been killed by those forces in Iraq over the past three months.

By killing the two together, the Americans exposed the big lie at the root of 40 years of American deliberate blindness to the reality of Iranian culpability and responsibility for the acts of terror and aggression its surrogates have carried out against America and its allies.

By killing Soleimani, Trump made clear that the blank check for aggression the previous six presidents gave Tehran is now canceled. From now on, the regime will be held responsible for its actions. From now on US policy towards Iran will be based on reality and not on escapism.

At least from now on until the next post-modernist clown, looking to preserve every possible constituency, takes over, which must happen eventually.

The year has certainly started like a lion

Posted on by
Reply

The above is an update with the President’s statement – “I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary” – plus the following:

_______________ Below is the original post
After today, my impression is that the Americans know, and always have known, who their most dangerous enemies are and where to find them. Now their enemies know that as well. The rest below is from Instapundit.

“BOMB-O-GRAM FOR GENERAL SOLEIMANI!” Iraqi TV: Iranian military commander General Soleimani killed in Baghdad strike. “Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport Friday, Iraqi television and three Iraqi officials said. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF, the officials said.”

Weird, just after the Iranians attacked our embassy, the senior guys behind it get personally whacked by an “airstrike” of unexplained origin. Whatever could have happened?

UPDATE: Oh, this is sweet. Pointed out in the comments, Khamenei to Trump: “You can’t do anything.” Oh?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Trump Authorized Strike That Killed Iran’s Soleimani: Pentagon. Iraqi paramilitary commander also dead in attack on Baghdad airport road; group accuses U.S.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I’ll bet Trump has the next step gamed out, too. The Iranians still seem to think they’re dealing with Obama, or post-2005 G.W. Bush.

MORE: Oops! Trump undermines another journalistic prediction.

STILL MORE: Nice to have a president who isn’t too fearful to strike:

I’ve wondered here before why the Bush Administration was so wimpy with regard to Iran starting in 2005. (It was easier — *cough* Valerie Jarrett *cough* — to see why the Obama Administration was). But it’s good that Trump isn’t.

MORE STILL:

539Posted at 9:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds 

REPORT: Quds Force supreme commander Qassem Soleimani hit by U.S. airstrike in Baghdad.

Earlier: Iran’s Qassem Soleimani controls a multi-national army that is destabilizing the Mideast.

Related: Heh, indeed.™

UPDATE: Another austere religious scholar has assumed room temperature, the WaPo reports:

703

Why some people dislike Donald Trump

Posted on by
Reply

Having gone into Quora on Donald Trump, my inbox is now filled with Quora Q&A on the American President. This has just come up, as an answer to the question, Why Do Some People Dislike Donald Trump? I found it quite interesting in that not a single reason among the ten listed relates to any policy questions. These people have no idea what makes their lives work or where their safety or personal wealth comes from.

About 60% (or more) of us dislike Donald Trump. Most avid Faux News watchers, and Republicans, will tell you all of the wrong reasons why we despise him.

Here are the real reasons.

  1. Trump is an embarrassment. We are now forced each morning to learn what new and embarrassing things the leader of the nation we used to be proud of has said or done on the world stage.
  2. Trump is a raging, malignant narcissist. Many of us knew what that meant. We already knew what problems are associated with this disorder. It meant he couldn’t love our country – or its citizens. And he doesn’t. And he can’t. But we were still standing here loving our nation. He’s never even spoken to us — even after all this time. He either calls us names (Losers, Haters), or he speaks “on behalf of the nation” without knowing our beliefs or thoughts. 1.5+ years into this and he still only talks to his “base”.
    1. His severe narcissism also makes him extremely predictable and most people in our Intelligence community will tell you how dangerous that is. Many of us, who already grew up with a bully knew this. We did not need to re-learn this and did not want to watch it slowly play out in the real world.
  3. Trump is amoral and exceedingly unethical. We didn’t (and still don’t) want to try to explain this to our children and grandchildren. We believe our President should be a role model and of the highest integrity. We also used to gain inspiration from our Presidents (both Republican and Democratic)… now we are just ashamed. We’ve been cringing daily for a-year-and-a-half now.
  4. Trump is a liar bent on making (or keeping) his “base” angry and afraid. He spins everything and tells his “followers ” the press is their enemy. This is for his benefit alone (narcissist) and not for the good of the nation. He lies every single day, to all sorts of people, and refuses to see that a divided nation is a weakened nation. Why? Because he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
  5. Trump isn’t intelligent. He speaks in a childish way and half the time sounds like a moron. He has convinced a good portion (maybe 38%) of the nation that he is smart (he has a “big brain”) but none of us who have already survived the torture of living with a narcissist believe what he says — or that he is intelligent. We see the commoner that he is.
  6. Trump is not prepared or qualified for the presidency. He knows next to nothing about governance, and will not bother to learn about it because he only serves, and cares about, himself. At least 60% of us thought our nation didn’t have time to wait for him to “get up to speed” and many of this same group also knew he’d never make a real effort to learn the job requirements — ever.
  7. Trump spits in the faces of women, minorities, Muslims, Mexicans, black people, other nations (including allies), and Democrats. He’s a despicable xenophobe, racist, misogynist, and philanderer. He’s a total wreck of a man-baby and an example of the worst behavior possible. This is intolerable to us.
  8. We (60% or more) don’t believe that simply being wealthy qualifies a person for any political office. It does not prove ability—especially when one is born into it. It certainly does not prove honesty, integrity, or accountability. Yet, we still want these qualities in our president and our politicians.
  9. We (the 60%+) knew (or at least those of us who’ve studied political science) we would most likely have a Republican president after 8 years with a Democratic president and we were willing to work with most any of them — except Trump.
  10. Trump has lowered the respect and trust the United States previously had in the world.

After all that, there is then this added on at the end:

Now, these are NOT the reasons we despise trump.

a. Because the Democrats didn’t win the election.

b. Because Hillary Clinton did not win.

c. Because a so-called Republican won the election.

d. Because we are “snowflakes”. In fact it takes much more courage to care about those less fortunate than ourselves and use our time and resources to help them. It takes real selflessness to see problems in society and try to fix them — even if we see later we failed. It takes real strength of character to see that some parts of society are being treated badly and then change ourselves and/or our laws to make things better for everyone. It virtually takes NO courage to only care about ourselves. In fact, we couldn’t be that selfish if we tried.

You didn’t add in the possibility that you are fools who are blind to reality, which is pretty close to the right answer.

Is Home Alone a Christmas movie?

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently most of it but not all: CBC Cuts Donald Trump’s ‘Home Alone 2’ Cameo Out of Broadcast. It’s the CBC who apparently cannot bear even six positive seconds of Donald Trump. They’re like the ABC and no doubt the BBC along with every one of the traditional non-Fox networks in the US. They will filter out anything that does not fit the story they want their viewer to believe. Are people really content with such obvious and continuous efforts to shape their opinions? The left are wilfully happy to become Manchurian Candidates. It is spooky to see it before our eyes.

And on the same day there was this as well: Soldier Asks Donald Trump About Cameo in Hit Christmas Movie ‘Home Alone 2’.

“It was an honor to do it. It turned out to be a very big hit, obviously. It’s a big Christmas hit, one of the biggest,” Trump said. “It’s an honor to be involved in something like that.”

It’s almost unimaginable how small-minded and petty the media are.