TRUMP APPEAL: FIGHTS BIG MONEY

MR. TRUMP'S APPEAL: UNTETHERED FROM THE BIG MONEY MACHINE. ITS THE MONEY!

Mr. Trump's campaign has unintentionally underscored and exposed the evil influences of big money donations on our political campaigns and the sinister effects it has on the way our government operates.

Donald Trump has garnered massive support during these 2016 Republican nomination elections. To date, Mr. Trump has out-voted, out-appealed and out-lasted all but one of his opponents, almost all of whom were highly experienced politicians, who were massively-financed and well connected politically or descended from established political dynasties. He has (almost) withstood all the many ambushes, and mine fields planted for him by his many enemies in the political establishment and the media, two groups who too often collude and closely support each other. The Donald remains the GOP front runner with nearly double the delegate strength of his closest competitor. Yet, the print and electronic media elites, the nation's top editors, TV talking heads, and the blogosphere pundits have all been at a loss to explain his popularity.

He appeals to "the racists, the anti-feminists, the under educated and ill informed," they claim. "He's a bully, a brute and a fascist..and worse", they rail, claiming that is why voters like him. He appeals to "the angry white men" in the population, they state. But all of these Trump voters could not all be ill-informed, women-hating, angry white men, and these proffered reasons simply can not explain his massive popularity, the enthusiasm of his supporters and his manifest success at the polls over wide geographic ranges of this nation and with a highly diverse demography.

What is Mr. Trump's real source of popularity? The primary answer is that unlike all of his competitors, this candidate is untethered from the GOP money machine and its failed ideology. Mr. Trump can speak his mind. He is free of ideas framed and controlled by the big donor class, the monied oligarchs of the party. These 400 or so super wealthy ideologues have for too long commandeered the party of Lincoln with lucre. For the last decades they have doled out funds to their favorites. They have controlled the pick of candidates, the message and the GOP's governing policies. Their power is based on their ability to provide campaign funds, and as importantly, it rests on the threat of withdrawal of financial support. And even more fearful is their ability to quickly shift cash from a uncooperative (independent, perhaps a patriotic ) candidate to a different, more compliant one. Oftentimes these powerful oligarchs can squash a politician's long career by financially supporting an opponent in a primary challenge. You see---It is the money! The pols are so scared they almost always do exactly as they are told.

Mr. Trump is in large part financing his own campaign. He is not controlled by the the monied elites. His message can thus stray from their prepared script. His message can actually serve the needs of a the wider American electorate. The prepared script and policy serves only the needs of the one-tenth-of-one percenters who control the message and messengers.

Where has Mr. Trump taken us with his free message? His stated goals are clearly more in tune with the vast majority of voters than those espoused by the controlled establishment candidates. The electorate has responded favorably to Mr. Trump and rejected the establishment types. One has only to examine the list and pedigree of the failed establishment darlings: such as Mssrs Walker, Rubio, and Bush, who mouthed their prepared talking points and went down in flames in front of the unhappy voters.

Mr. Trump has shined a much needed light on the failings of the GOP policies of the past...and its slavish attendance to the needs of only a small sliver of the electorate--the donor class-- the one percenters---the Singers, Koch brothers, the Adelsons--while the Washington elites abandoned the vast middle, the working classes, the small businessman, farmers and the independent voter. The strategy of throwing the dry crumbs from the political table to these millions of hard working, voting men and women in the form of wedge issues, like abortion, marriage regulations, flag waving, a "strong military", and phony trickle down economics issues etc. etc. while astutely toeing the line for the rich to cut taxes, cut entitlements, deregulate banks, maintain a porous border, expand free trade agreements, and finance military adventures abroad, all in support of big donor wishes. These domestic and foreign policies have backfired and the failings have been duly noted by voters. They know that the Bush- neocon adventures in Iraq were a disaster. They know that our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges and transportation system are crumbling about our ears. They see us deploy troops abroad, expand foreign bases, butt our noses into the affairs of nations far afield while our own people suffer with poor wages, non-existent or poor-paying jobs. They find their expensively educated children still living in their basements. And in face of the government bail out of wealthy Wall Streeters, they find they are no better off then they were thirty years ago. They are still paying dearly in gold and blood for the misguided policies of the GOP.

Yes, Mr. trump is correct! NATO should be reevaluated and we should not be asking the American taxpayer to foot the vast majority of that bill to succor foreign nations who can well afford to pay for their own defense. What purpose do all of those 900 military base serve abroad? Yes we must staunch the flow of illegals at our porous borders. Yes we must bring back jobs to American workers and prevent the flow of jobs offshore. Yes we need better, wiser deal making with our trading partners.

All these issues would not have been raised or placed into public debate without the unfettered speech by Donald Trump a candidate untethered from the political money machine.

The appeal of Mr. Trump? Do not defame and berate the electorate as racists and fascists. It is the Washington money machine that is the cause.

TRUMP ACCUSED BY NEOCONS AS SECURITY THREAT

TRUMP ACCUSED AS SECURITY THREAT (? TO ISRAEL?)

Donald Trump was attacked again by the neocons. This time is was Max Boot of Commentary magazine who penned a piece entitled: "Why Trump is a Security Threat". Boot, like the others at "Commentary", have a world view colored too deeply by their unwavering, knee jerk, allegiance to Israel to act as objective observers of US foreign policy. In light of the pain of the Holocaust, I respect and understand their position. But they can not be taken seriously when, as in this piece, they try to make judgments concerning the positions Americans take as a nation regarding our foreign policy, our military stature, our relation to NATO, our economy, and the best interests of the majority of tax paying, working people of this nation who find we can longer sanction, support or afford the overly aggressive foreign policy the neocons favor.

Viewed only by those who see the world through the pierced ear of Benjamin Netanyahu could Mr. Trump be seen as a "security threat". But that view should not overly concern an American voter, and is no recommendation for a commentator, or advisor to the US electorate or to its leaders. The Republican primary election voters have spoken out loudly with their enthusiastic support of the new, sensible, practical policies that Donald Trump has espoused.

The crew at Commentary and their neocon allies may not like what Trump has to say. As our late Supreme Court member, Antonin Scalia was fond of saying: "Get over it!"

NATO: TRUMP RIGHT AGAIN

TRUMP RAISES ISSUE OF NATO. UNFAIR TO US TAXPAYER, NEEDS RESTRUCTURING. KUDOS TO TRUMP!

Our homeland is in trouble. We have been on a wrong-way course now for decades. Our nation is today a land of big debts, faltering economy, lost good paying jobs, massive inequalities in wealth and income, porous borders, unfettered immigration, trade deficits which favor our foreign partners, as well as losses on the battlefield, and deep seated corruption in Washington. I envision our homeland in a foxhole, like those the doughboys dug in basic training. I see all the other candidates, the "presidential hopefuls" busily digging themselves down deeper and deeper in the bottom of that hole, while proclaiming they are "going to solve our problems"...but applying the same shovel to the same dirt and going down, down, down.

The sole exception is Donald Trump, who seems to be able to rise up to look over the rubble-piled edge. While the others are busy digging deeper, he peers outward and views another option, a possible solution. He raised issues the other candidates have ignored..our waves of immigrants, our porous borders, our illegals, our unequal trade balances, our loss of jobs overseas, and now our relationship with NATO.

My career happily gave me a wonderful opportunity to travel widely in Europe. Coming home after a long stay abroad, I always marveled at the Europe I left, and their up-scale life style. They had then and still have some of the best highways, most advanced infrastructure, fastest broadband, longest vacations, best services, abundant social safety net and world class healthcare. Yes, we have to admit it, we may make more money here, but our life style is only second rate. Those Japanese, the French and Germans live pretty nice lives. How could that be?

The ready answer is that, here in the USA, we as taxpayers are saddled with the costs of a massive military establishment, which at over $600 billion dollars annually, 900 bases around the world, and millions in uniform, is designed and projected to protect the entire free world...not just our shores. Yes, we are paying not simply for our own "defense", but to defend them too! The abused American taxpayer pays through the nose to make life safe for the Japanese, the Koreans, the French, and Germans and the rest of the so-called "free world". These people, unburdened from their own defense costs, get to spend their energies on beating us at trade and to live it up, while, we have to shell out our meager earnings to keep them safe. NATO is one of our biggest foreign military expenses. We foot the major part of that bill.

Looking over the edge of the foxhole...the Donald saw the stupidity of our NATO position and called it right again. Let's restructure NATO to reflect the modern reality. Make our so-called allies pay their fair share of legitimate defense costs. Let's refocus NATO on terrorism rather than a land war with the now extinct Soviets.

Let us use those freed-up funds to rebuild our infrastructure, our highways and our nation. Kudos to Trump who again sees the world as it really is and is not afraid to say what he thinks.

GOP VOTERS REJECT PARTY DOGMA

The GOP dogma of mass migration, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, budget cuts for the middle class, and "war war war"..has been soundly rejected by the party voters. Now it is time for the adherents of these failed policies to come to terms with the facts. As Antonin Scalia said..."get over it".

Just like Marco Rubio, caught repeating his now infamous talking point.."Obama knows exactly what he is doing" over and over again during that fateful pre-Super Tuesday debate, the party big wigs continue to repeat their phony mantra to "cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations, make endless war, and support Israel." This rich man's prescription for success has manifestly worked well for its target group the top one percenters and the donor class, but unfortunately for the GOP we still have some remnants of a democracy to deal with, and the Republiacn Party must actually be elected by a majority of voters. The policies the GOP has been touting over these last decades has been an abject failure for the mass of working, middle class Rpublican Americans. The GOP CAN NOT BE ELECTED TO OFFICE WITH THE VOTES OF THE 400 WEALTHIEST, THE DONOR CLASS, THE KOCH BROTHRERS, AND A FEW PARTY ELITES. THEY MUST FACE THE FACTS. GOP POLICIES HAVE IGNORED THE MASS OF REPUBLICAN VOTERS.

This is a time for renewal and change...the party big wigs have to begin talking out of the other side of their mouths. They are politicians after all....that is part of their make up.

GOP REJECTS MATH

GOP GOES INTO SELF DESTRUCT MODE

The party that has too often rejected reality for an alternate one, preferring concocted, flawed myths regarding economics, science, evolution, and global warming (and immigration) has is now firmly rejecting MATHEMATICS too. GOP party elites, the donor class and the neocon wings of the party are all united in a concerted effort to overturn a clear equation for success, the manifest math of recent nominating elections giving a massive plurality of votes to Donald Trump. They would ignore the math hand the election over to Hillary Clinton. Their insane need to support myth rather than reality, their rejection of fact for an alternate cosmos are preventing them from making the wise and sensible decision---- the bottom line...to support the winner. When one candidate has a good forty to fifty percent of the Republican electorate tied up and committed, how can party leaders reject that candidate and swing support to a minority candidate who has won only one state, and polls in the low double digits, or another who has won a few states but polls at the twenty percent level? The neocons, National Review editors, mega donor class and party elites it seems, have all failed remedial College math.

They somehow can not bring themselves to face the numerical reality that by rejecting the candidate who has been selected by vociferous, determined and energized pluralities of Republican voters in almost all demographic categories from the north south east and west of this nation, they are tossing away the election. The rejected voters will certainly stay home on Election Day. The is no winning without Donald.

It seems these party elites would prefer to keep their cushy jobs, perks, and positions of authority as members of a losing party and under the thumb of a Bill and Hillary Clinton regime, rather than be flexible and change course to win. They prefer loss in the general election rather than face a real world in which vast numbers of previously ignored and sidelined voters have roundly rejected their long-honored three-legged policy-stool, smashed and broken by Donald Trump. The fact is their mythic world has been demolished by TRUMP and is no more.

TRUMP DEFEATS NEOCON MARCO, ENDS EVIL DALLIANCE WITH GOP

NEOCONS GO DOWN WITH MARCO

The disastrous decades-long dalliance the GOP has had with the neocons, is over. Trump savaged THEIR candidate, Marco Rubio, in Florida. Then Trump went on to win in Illinois, and North Carolina and squeezed out a slim, win-tie in Missouri. The tally of delegates he has and the map of upcoming states will eventually put him well over the 1237 delegate count he needs to win the nomination in Cleveland. Today he is the nominee. The remains of the Republican establishment will now have to come to Donald hat in hand or face another lost election and the end of their control of the Supreme Court.

And best of all..the neocon plague (Bill Kristol, Max Boot, the Kagans, and their ilk) is over. Thorough they never faced a voter or were elected to any office, the powerful and insidious neocon virus, supported by billionaire donors of like mind, insinuated and infected the halls of Congress like a staphylococcus aureus super bug. Their Rasputin-like control of certain weak minded leaders, controlled the party's foreign policy and led to the disastrous "three trillion dollar war" in Iraq. In that awful, unnecessary conflict of preemption and choice thousands of young American lives were lost, tens of thousands were horribly wounded, a half a million innocent Iraqi citizens were killed and millions became refugees. The disruption of the long Iraq conflict initiated a destabilizing wave which passed though the deserts of surrounding lands like an earthquake, overturning long held political stasis in nation after nation. Thus, misguided neocon policies in the US contributed to the today's contiguous series of failed states left in smoldering ruins across the northern part of Africa. It contributed as well to the downfall of Syria, in good part generating the awful refugee problem in the millions now shaking the political and economic foundations of Europe and America too.

Nearly singlehandedly, Donald Trump, who was free of the control of the MEGADONORS class and uninfected with "neoconism" or its controlling money, Thumbed his nose at the GOP establishment. He was unpolitical. He told the truth as he saw it. The American people enthusiastically responded to his message. And last night, weathering a storm of negative propaganda paid for by big money donors, while taking incoming barrages from the Democrats on the left, and the Republican establishment on the right, as well as potshots and trip wires set by the media...Trump came through a winner.

It gives one hope that our democracy is still strong enough to withstand the effects of influxes of massive amounts of money, powerful and sinister Washington influences, media complicity and cowardice, and still the people's will can be heard.

HILLARY AND BILL: LIBIDINOUS, LIBELOUS INGLORIOUS PAST

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY SET THE STAGE FOR THE GREAT RECESSION, THE RISE OF THE NEOCONS, THE IRAQ WAR, AND THE CURRENT DEVASTATION OF THE MIDDLE EAST.

DO WE WANT TO REPEAT ANY OF THAT WITH ANOTHER CLINTON?

Many of Bill Clinton's key foreign policy and economic decisions and signed legislation were too often based on faulty reasoning or political weakness. They set the stage and paved the way for the disaster of the Great Recession of 2007-2008, the neocon takeover of the GOP, and ultimately the Iraq War, the chaos in the Middle East--- and the rise of ISIS.

I recently came across Thomas Frank's new book, "Listen Liberal", on display in our Manchester VT, bookstore. Waiting for the grandkids, I leafed through a few chapters. It is recommended, as are the earlier Frank works. What stirred my interest was the clear-eyed retelling of the history of the Clinton years. Too many of us have fuzzy memories and a mistaken positive view of that era. Author Frank reexamines those years critically. With Bill's so-called "co-president" running for a seat in the Oval Office now...it seems wise to examine that era with more circumspection--with an eye to avoiding a reprise of many bad decisions and lingering ill-effects from those days. And yes, since the Clintons introduced the term "co-president", it is fair to saddle Hillary, today with their joint mistakes.

Thomas Frank conveniently excerpted a good deal of his book in a fine piece in Salon (March 13, 2016). In that piece, Frank reminds us that it was Bill Clinton that deregulated the derivative market. At the behest of his Republican detractors, he also deregulated telecom and signed off on a bill to kill the Glass Steagall Act too. That post-Great Depression law wisely kept banks as savings institutions distinct from the Wall Street "gambling casinos" and preventing these two types of institutions form intermingling depositors funds at great risk to depositors. The loss of Glass-Steqgall also set the stage for the costly bank bail-out tqxpayers are still paying for.

Bill also rammed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which when implemented caused that loud sucking sound heard across our great land as good high-paying American jobs and industries headed south (and north) to relocate over the border. Bill Clinton's NAFTA deal eliminated millions of well paying jobs and contributed to the decline of middle America and hollowing-out of our middle classes. Clinton also initiated the policy of mass incarceration, and the harsh restructuring of the welfare system, both of which we realize today hace had such a negative impact on our social structure.

Bill's uncontrolled libidinous activities in the Oval Office (and under his desk) led to the ugly Monica Lewinsky affair. When discovered and faced with a disgrace and lying under oath, he and Hillary hung on. Instead of honorably resigning his Presidency, as had Nixon under similar circumstances, and leaving the affairs of state to his more than competent Vice President, Al Gore, Clinton selfishly dragged the nation through his seamy personal sexual peccadilloes. He limped on in office, a weakened political,force, and then an impeached President. During this time of political vulnerability, he acquiesced to pressures from Congress that he might have repulsed and avoided prior to his embarrassment. It was during this period of weakness and of preoccupation with the Lewinsky charges that Clinton signed on to the neocon-sponsored Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which gave legal status to the overthrow of the Iraqi government...the first such law in American history. It radically altered our foreign policy in the Middle East and was frequently cited by George Bush in the run up to the Iraq War as evidence that Clinton supported the Iraq invasion and overthrow of a legally constituted government.

Many of Bill Clinton's key economic and foreign policy decisions set the stage for disaster. His triangulated economic policies of deregulation and freeing the markets paved the way for the most profound economic downturn since 1929,---the Great Recession of 2007-2008. We are still in the throes of that recession, living with an economy characterized by weak growth, weak demand, and low inflation. We have millions underemployed or unemployed. Massive wealth and income inequality plague the nation and continue to stymie a full recovery. In foreign affairs, the Iraq Liberation Act signed by Bill Clinton, altered our foreign relations and precipitated the neocon takeover of the GOP foreign policy portfolio. That law ultimately gave credence to a disastrous interventionist policy initiated by Clinton, and then unwisely implemented by his successor, George W. Bush. Bush led us ultimately into the fifteen year long "three trillion dollar" Iraq War. With the the acquiescence and inaction of President Obama, that conflict morphed into the utter devastation and chaos which presently characterize the Middle East today, and most recently, contributed to the rise of ISIS.

Do we want to send the Clintons back into the White House? Never!