Obama tries to come to Hillary’s rescue on a couple of fronts. Are his arguments in her favor valid? Can he help her win? This and more on today’s show. See Program Notes, below, for all the stories, etc., I plan to discuss.
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Program Notes
Yes, Donald Trump can win. Here are 4 maps that prove it.
Obama Criticizes F.B.I. Director: ‘We Don’t Operate on Incomplete Information’
NYT: F.B.I.’s Email Disclosure Broke a Pattern Followed Even This Summer
President Obama Asks Male Voters If Sexism Is Keeping Them From Supporting Clinton
FBI Surprises With Files on Clinton ’01 Pardon of Marc Rich HT William Bush
“Dump the Emails” Message from Podesta to Mills HT Glenn Jameson
Why Hillary Clinton has my vote
California Today: The Proposition That Has Jerry Brown Up in Arms
Awarding kids for participation isn’t best way to build confidence HT Al Meyer
Israeli scientists see breakthrough in AIDS cure HT Brooke Goldstein
Don't Let It Go 
Courage and integrity exist!
I do not claim to have a perfect answer on who to vote for. I have remained undecided throughout this entire campaign, going back and forth from one candidate to another, even thinking at times I might vote for Hillary, if she showed any flexibility in her crazy leftist schemes. Or Johnson. Or McMullin. But I’ve been reading, listening, and delving into the phenomena of this election, which is the most convoluted election of all time, and I’ve now basically made up my mind. I don’t claim certainty. Nor do I claim doing as I suggest won’t result in disaster. Disaster it seems is behind every door, around every corner. But perhaps there is a chance to buy some more time. That’s the perennial problem Objectivists face, buying time dearly in the hope that a cultural miracle occurs, like Gandalf arriving with an unexpected army when you are surrounded by a sea or Orcs. But I digress.
It seems to me a person should vote FOR a candidate for something about that candidate they like, not just to oppose another candidate. Well, what’s to like about Hillary and Trump?
Honestly, I find nothing about Hillary I like. She’s abysmally corrupt, two-faced, an enemy of the Constitution and the United States. She lies reflexively, but on one policy issue after another where you have to take her at her word despite her proclivity for lying (guns, free speech, Obamacare, regulation, energy, immigration, the military, Supreme Court, you name it) she takes the statist and/or anti-American position every single time. I honestly can’t think of a single issue on which I agree with her. She’s bought and paid for by Saudi Arabia and the other evil Islamic dictatorships, she is *literally* in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood (Huma), and now she wants to start an unnecessary and potentially apocalyptic war with Russia. So: character: evil, stated policies: evil, advisors: evil, consequences: the end of the world as we know it. Basically, Satan in a pantsuit.
Trump, on the other hand, is extremely mixed. From a character perspective, he’s a mess. He’s a narcissist. He’s often confused about policies. He tends to listen to the last person he talks to on an issue, and so changes his mind all the time. But he does have a number of good advisors, and he doesn’t give a damn about what the media thinks and political correctness, and that’s good, as you recognize.
His considered, stated policy positions, that is, those written on his website, are mostly very good. There are a lot of things in these policies that I am positively for, not just that I think are less bad than Hillary’s policies. Even on the issue of trade, it would be a positive good to replace the income tax on business with an equivalent tariff. All taxes are bad, but tariffs are less economically damaging than income taxes. (Having high income taxes and high tariffs would be the worst of both worlds, obviously. Eliminating the business income tax in exchange for tariffs would be required).
His off-the-cuff statements, on the other hand, are all over the map. Some good, some bad, some different today than yesterday. Who knows, really, whether he means anything he says? Does he even read his own website? I have no idea. But on the few issues that he seems to be consistent on: trade, immigration, taxes, guns, repealing Obamacare, actually fighting the Islamic State (and not Russia), he is either a positive good or much better than Hillary.
Finally, Trump the Mythological Figure (as opposed to Trump the Actual Human Being) is a positive good. So much mythology (on the right) has grown up around Trump, some of it right, some of it wrong, some of it wishful thinking, some of it embraced by Trump, some of it ignored by Trump. [Note: I exclude the left-wing mythology of Trump being a racist, sexist, homophobic monster, etc., since (A) that’s demonstrably not true—all one his to do is look at how he runs his businesses, and (B) to the Left, anyone to the right of Che Guevara (including Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Bush, Cruz, etc.–all of them) are racists, sexists, bigots, hate-mongers.]
According to the right-wing mythology about Trump, Trump represents the following things:
1) Pushing back against political correctness, including especially multiculturalism
2) Finally attacking the left for the villains and criminals they really are—no one in the GOP would have gone after Clinton as Trump has, a lesson they all need to learn before 2020, and almost none of them seem to be learning it, e.g., Rubio’s smarmy statements about it not being “fair” to read Podesta’s emails.
3) Restoring the purpose of the US Government in foreign affairs to represent the interests of the American people, rather than foreigners, foreign governments, and foreign and international corporations. (i.e., “America First”).
4) Crafting an immigration strategy that benefits the United States, rather than one specifically designed to benefit immigrants at the expense of American workers, taxpayers, and law-abiding citizens.
5) Not getting into a war with the Russians over so senseless a subject as to which group of Islamic thugs runs Syria.
6) “Drain the swamp” – Washington is full of corruption and Trump is thought to be rich enough not to be bought, and since he’s done enough of the buying over the years, he understands the issue well, so only he has a chance of cleaning up the corruption.
7) Destroy the mainstream media by ridiculing it, insulting it, showing its corruption, and then BYPASSING it.
Now whether any of this mythology about Trump is true is another question. Whether he even understands how to translate “America First” from a broad abstraction into a concrete set of policy proposals is questionable (though his website is actually quite good, see above). But voting FOR the mythology (as opposed to the actual man) has a lot going for it, just as voting for the mythology of Brexit (“taking back our democracy”–as if Westminster is going to listen to the British people any more than Brussels does) has a lot going for it as well. If you recognize this, that voting for Trump is not really voting for the (extremely flawed) man, but voting for this mythology, then a vote for Trump is a vote for Western Civilization over barbarism, in exactly the same way a vote for the repulsive Nixon was a vote for Western Civilization over the nihilistic leftism and surrender of McGovern.
Finally, your point about who will guard us from the potential excesses of Trump is extremely well taken. The media will be against him. The Democrats (but I repeat myself) will be against him. Academia will be against him. Hell, most RINO Republicans will be against him. It will be him, his Twitter account, and the people who elected him, against everyone else. There will be checks and balances, where there will be none with Hillary, as we’ve seen under Obama. Since Hillary will be the First Woman President™, no one will oppose her. Her first two acts on getting in, she says, will be 1) a “stimulus package”—Democrats always have to do this to pay off the big city mayors and governors whose political machines got them elected–and 2) “comprehensive immigration reform”, to give a “path to citizenship” (read “path to voting Democrat”) for the up to 30 million illegal aliens in the country, and the tens of millions more who will subsequently flood in. “Everyone has a right to immigrate to America,” says Hillary. For the past 50 years, the strategy of the Left has not been to convince Americans to vote for socialism, but to import a new electorate through mass immigration from countries with no culture or tradition of free enterprise, self-government, or the rule of law. And if you disagreed with them, they called you a RACIST! Look at poor, quivering, apologetic Paul Ryan, Mister “Diversity is Our Strength” (or was that “Freedom is Slavery?”–I’m never quite sure?) Do you think Paul Ryan and his pack of cowardly RINOs will vote against “comprehensive immigration reform” against a “mandate” for the First Woman President™? Not a chance.
If the flood of immigrants predicted when “comprehensive immigration reform” passes comes to happen, then the country will change into California, a one-party state dominated by identity politics. Many people on the left (and even some Objectivists) are rightly complaining of the large number of white Americans who seem to be adopting identity politics and who are backing Trump. They claim Trump is a Nazi or someone who “winks at” white nationalists. This is of course ridiculous. Trump employs all types of people at high levels in his organizations, whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, gays and straights, men and women, Christians and Jews. A couple of his kids are married to Jewish people. To call Trump a Nazi with a straight face is absurd. But the white nationalists are real.
The problem is not Trump in 2016, but if Clinton’s immigration amnesty passes, what will the “right-wing” candidate look like in 2028, when the national government is a one-party state like California is today? Do you want to have to vote for the moderately leftist “white candidate” to protect you from the depredations of the far leftist “Latino candidate” and the even more avaricious leftist “Black Lives Matter” candidate? Because that’s where we’re going if third-world immigration isn’t sharply curtailed. The luxury of voting based on ideas is only operative when a large majority does so. When a substantial minority engages in identity politics, it’s identity politics all the way down from there on in. Almost all California local elections are decided in the democratic primary where blocks of voters–white, black, hispanic, asian, feminist, gay—fight for their particular group candidate to represent their particular (assumed) group interests. It’s only a matter of time until state-wide California elections are decided in identity-politics-driven Democrat primaries as well. And once this becomes explicit in all of California, the nation teeters on the brink of disaster, as the dwindling white majority in the rest of the US will rush to embrace identity politics themselves out of a sense of self-defense. You and I think we should vote based on ideology, on adherence to the constitution, or on principles. Non-European immigrants as a whole don’t vote that way. They block vote (80-90%) for the politician who “looks like them” or who “speaks their language”–ideas be damned. This has been studied for five generations of hispanics, and the block vote mentality, which gets *worse* in the 2nd generation, only *begins* to abate in the fifth generation. FIVE generations, over a hundred years, and the block vote mentality only STARTS to abate. In these third-world immigrant cultures and communities, the only political “principle” is bringing home the government bacon for their particular ethnic or minority group. It’s freaking IRAQ, but it’s now the rule in California. The logical conclusion to this full rush toward identity politics in the Democratic Party is that they eventually will be met with equivalent identity politics in the white community, maybe also in the Democratic Party (the national Republican Party having atrophied to irrelevancy by then). The nascent white nationalism we see today is NOT the RESULT of Trump. It is a PREVIEW of how bad things are going to be in 2024 or 2028, if third-world immigration isn’t curtailed. And what type of person–what type of Caesar-wannabee—is going to pop up then to collect the payoff?? We’re going to yearn for the relatively benign buffoonery of Trump then.
The entire thought of my having to join one racist gang to protect myself and my family from the depredations of other racist gangs, as if I were in a maximum security prison, disgusts me profoundly, and I can’t imagine you are not disgusted as well. But that’s where we are heading because of unchecked immigration. People call Trump a “Nazi” thinking he’s the Caesar. He’s not Caesar, he’s Crassus. We haven’t met Caesar yet. But I guarantee you when we meet the Caesar figure, it’s not going to be pretty. That’s the supreme irony of Trump. We must elect a narcissistic buffoon who the Left calls a Nazi PRECISELY so we can prevent Nazism from arising in the US by halting widespread unchecked third-world immigration, the inevitable identity-politics-caused backlash to which will be some form of white nationalism. When every interest group on the left uses identity politics (black, latino, asian, gay, feminist) to attack, exploit, and devour straight white working married couples by advocating the seizure or destruction of their property, how long before straight white working married people create their own “gang” to defend themselves? Not long, I’ll tell you that. And another financial crisis will accelerate things dramatically.
So, if you won’t vote for Trump to stop Hillary, and you won’t vote for him for the large number of excellent policy positions he has written on his website, and if you won’t vote for him as a protest against political correctness, and you won’t vote for Trump the Mythological Figure as a positive message for the country, and if finally you won’t vote for him just for the visceral pleasure of seeing the media’s collective heads explode, I have only one thing to say:
Defeat Nazism 2028, Vote Trump 2016.
P.S. As far as I can tell, since there are no electors of record for write-in candidates, and you are voting specifically for electors, Virginia does not count write-ins in presidential elections. A write-in is just a blank ballot as far as Virginia is concerned. Johnson is a fruitcake, neither a libertarian nor a Libertarian, and his Vice Presidential running mate, Bill Weld, in between his calls for more gun control, has already endorsed Hillary in the election, so he’s out. McMullin, as far as I can tell from my investigation, is in the race solely to help elect Hillary by being a spoiler against Trump. See the above why a vote for McMullin is thus a positive evil.
Can Gary Johnson Win the White House? Yes! Here’s How
Gary Johnson is the NONE OF THE ABOVE choice.
He is at 24% in NM and Utah right now in the polls and Utah is a 4-way race Clinton, Johnson, McMullin, Trump
Correction, Johnson is at 26% in Utah
What happens if no presidential candidate gets 270 Electoral votes?
If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.
It looks like the data on Johnson in UT and NM was wrong.
The correct Utah poll is
Donald Trump 33%
Evan McMullin 28%
Hillary Clinton 24%
Gary Johnson 5%
Jill Stein takes 3%
http://fox13now.com/2016/11/04/donald-trump-leads-in-another-utah-poll-mcmullin-second/
https://heatst.com/politics/final-utah-poll-evan-mcmullin-beats-clinton-closes-trump/
Former CIA agent for President