VICTORY FOR DONALD TRUMP

Election 2016

Thinking back on the beginning of the election cycle for President, I see predefined correctness imposed on a gullible grassroots populace via the ‘TV stream’ news being shattered by Donald Trump.  Mr. Trump has been known and liked for a long time in our society, which the TV stream media immediately used to garner ratings and money for themselves. 

Playing themselves for fools, the TV stream media took advantage of Mr. Trump’s ratings while mostly plotting to benefit Hillary Clinton behind the scenes, like slipping her the questions in advance, asking for her approval on ‘news’ pieces, which turned them into vicious journalistic hacks masquerading as decent journalists searching for the truth to present to the people dependent upon them to do that job. 

Chris Wallace is by far and away the best Journalist to anchor a presidential debate.  He went into the experience with a good reputation that is now enhanced.  He was fair; not perfect, but fair.  I thank him and I appreciate the honest approach. 

I follow the TV stream news and the internet news and the Facebook news and the disparities in the polls are such that nobody really knows for sure but Mr. Trump is way ahead on social media and the internet, but behind in TV stream media.  Crowd size is another issue, with Mr. Trump drawing thousands while his opponent draws hundreds.  Mike Pence drew more than Bill Clinton in our town, to give you an idea.  Crowd size is an issue ignored by the TV stream media.  I have heard them dismiss crowd size as an indicator of anything, but of course we know better. 

Social Media News and Internet News allow the grassroots to bypass TV Media News in favor of self-searches, internet alerts, phone aps, and other shortcuts to data exemplified in our new electronic society.  Thanks to our teachers, our population is literate and have been taught to think for themselves, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.  I know young professionals who unsubscribed to TV media due to a lack of interest or a desire not to fund blatant bias disguised as news.  People are no longer gullible.

The final presidential debate proved several things:  Ms. Clinton lied at least 7 times during the debate, evaded pointed questions about Bill Clinton, talked over Mr. Trump when he was discussing the Clinton Foundation, took a jab at Mr. Trump about taxes when he has broken no tax law, and slandered Mr. Trump’s character.  She sets herself up as an authority on who is ‘qualified’ to be President, without taking responsibility for her errors and possible illegalities and high payment requirements for her pay to play schemes.  Money from corrupt dictators becomes clean and fresh in the hands of the Clinton Foundation!  I felt she was defensive, nervous and showed it by repeatedly smirking at Mr. Trump’s answers, which was condescending and rude. 

So now we are heading down the homestretch in a contest between a Jack of all trades billionaire businessman builder and a career politician wife of a former president who has ‘connections’.  The biased members of the media are part of her connections, as is the Clinton Foundation, the FBI, the State Department and the DOJ and the presidency and the Moroccan King, apparently.  She just wants to continue everything as it is now, so many of these people are backing her.  All this coziness has not produced success in the Middle East arena, nor has the economy picked up, and the labor participation rate stands at about 63%.  That means that 37% of able bodied people of working age are not working.  Obamacare is a failure and Mr. Trump wants to replace it with free market insurance and affordable healthcare opportunities.  His opponent apparently wants to socialize medicine, require payment through income tax, force medical personnel to accept pay cuts, and take over the hospitals and make it all like the VA while taking a large percentage of your income to do so. 

The craziness continues the more I learn about Ms. Clinton.  Foreign policy based on who donated to her foundation was not a success.  The Haiti debacle took advantage of the poorest people to line the Clinton’s foundations coffers.  The King of Morocco bought an audience with Queen Hillary for $12,000,000.  Qatar gives Billy Boy a million for his birthday.  Saudi Arabia gets fighter jets and donates to the Clinton Foundation.  What happened to the stinger missiles in Libya?  Where did the missing billions from the State Department go during Ms. Clinton’s tenure there?  Who donated to the Clintons in Canada and why is it secret?  Why did Ms. Clinton say she wants to assassinate Julian Assange of Wikileaks?  Mr. Kennedy was asking the FBI to enable him to hide Ms. Clinton’s emails in return for FBI jobs overseas.   There are more and more serious questions every day. 

Donald Trump has weathered the Clinton Machine and has defeated opposition within the Republicans that has persisted in the old entrenched interests and among disgruntled losers.  Of course he is not perfect, yet his values resonate with the grassroots voters and he understands how the economy can be revitalized.  He also has a clear vision for the Supreme Court that will maintain our Bill of Rights.  Mr. Trump believes in free enterprise and lower taxes and less regulation. 

I am a Populist and I admire the groundswell of voters supporting Mr. Trump.  His showing in the Primaries was amazing as Mr. Trump, from a standing start, defeated all those other candidates, including the favored of the ‘establishment’ who spent millions and still lost.  This proved that money was not the deciding factor.  The restlessness of the voters became evident as Mr. Trump won.  What was the deciding factor? 

Radical Islamic terrorism and immigration is an issue people will not ignore and Mr. Trump is very conservative on this important issue.  Military security and preparedness is important to citizens.  Getting rid of Obamacare and Common Core are key issues on the domestic front.  Intense regulation and taxation of small businesses has strangled the economy….I have listened to Mr. Trump discuss the problems of the nation and he is expert in recognizing solutions to problems like fixing the tax code and encouraging stateside investment in real projects.

Mike Pence is a huge asset to the Donald Trump campaign.  He bested his opponent in the vice presidential debate and has maintain a steady, dependable presence in this presidential race.  Gov. Pence is a good example of the kind of people Donald Trump will choose to fill his cabinet.  Some people know how to delegate important jobs and Donald Trump is one of them.  His opponent merely chooses whomever benefits herself the most and gives them the job.  Or they could donate to her campaign or to her foundation to get an advantage, rather than relying on resumes and excellence.  That’s why her foreign policy was an abject failure.  She has surrounded herself with self-serving sycophants. 

Looking down through the campaign, I see huge success for Donald Trump, not because he is a perfect man, but because he is right.        –DP Niemi

Primary Elections and Reform Ideas

                                          Mojave County, Arizona, USA

The latest presidential race is unique in the number of 'debates' among the candidates, the power of the press and the growing power of the internet. However, it appears that the respective major parties are still in the predigital age.


The primary process is outdated and in need of overhaul, as are the east coast based party systems. During a recent expose' on the Dylan Ratigan Show about demands made on freshmen legislators to donate to the party on a consistent basis, I came to realize that the legislators should be in Washington D.C. to do their jobs, not fundraise from among the lobbyists present. Perhaps this party money in both parties is too much concentrated in one place, from my perspective out here in Arizona. These financial demands encourage legislators to take the easy way out and take lobby money and perks in return for favorable votes. Party money is then allotted to 'strategic' races across the nation. These 'strategic' races are coveted endorsements that produce cash for the candidate, like an out of state windfall that influences local elections.

Powerful individuals within the parties should not be making donation demands on legislators, nor should legislators be required to spend any time fundraising when on the job. A ban on lobbying and fundraising while in session needs to be instituted. No lobbying and fundraising in Washington D.C. should ultimately be the goal, as the halls of government should be free of special interests at all times.

Lobbyists are a chronic problem. Banning lobbying activities for the duration of the session is necessary to clear the halls and permit honest discourse without lobbyists interpretations and interference. Registered lobbyists should be required to wear badges that states the employer and the name of the individual, in order to remind and inform legislators and the public that these people are not their friends: they are hired to do a job on you for their employers. When a certain high politician talked about not running for another term, she evidently felt beholden to her donors to run again, not her constituents, her donors!

Term limits is another issue. Some long term legislators are unresponsive to their constituents because the lobbyists and donors become more important to their lifestyle. As long as big donated money and expensive media advertising dominates the voters, the politician can be voted in even though the overall voting record may not benefit the constituents, or even the nation. An argument can be made that term limits would enable the 'hired' people to run the government, but I suggest that study sessions on the issues and the legislation be made mandatory for voting members. Just the facts. Legislators need to study and learn about the issues, not spend their time in Washington attending fundraisers put on by vested interests. The national health insurance reform bill was not even read by most of those voting on it. That's ridiculous and decadent.

Money is greasing the system and those with money don't want the system changed. I think the moneyed class should admit that they found ways to control the economic system to their advantage but they also created the tea party and the occupiers and jobless college graduates. Riots and arrests in Oakland. Squatters in D.C. and a much heralded jobless recovery. What next? Financial control of the pundits on TV until the American people have only two candidates, both of which represent the groups gaming the capitalistic system? Business as usual, including the jobless recovery. And let's throw in some austerity in order to pay for the debts the politicians ran up with impunity. Give the schmucks easy credit using tax money so my associates can access the tax money using a property only worth a fraction of the price charged. Is capitalism now to be defined as access to tax money?

It's easy to create a game you can win when you control the players. The only problem is that capitalism is not really a game, but is a survival mechanism for our species created over eons of history. Creating a way to manipulate capitalism for short term gain of money and power is relatively easy compared to the task of maintaining capitalism in the face of declining availability of commodities per person due to the high population growth rates. Looting the system by creating new imaginary 'products' that the peons can't begin to understand, but that money managers are all too quick to invest money in, was hugely successful for a pitiful few gaming the system. With housing values down to a more manageable level, the disparities between existing mortgage values and new mortgages is actually growing, down some 45% here in Tucson, down 1% in 2011. Perhaps the perpetrators of the derivatives and mortgage securities frauds weren't so smart after all. Why did our legislators go for deregulation of the controls put into effect after the fall of 1929 and the Great Depression? Those who are not studious end up stupid and greedy. It's time to clean house, folks.

Back to reform of the primary electoral system. It appears that the nominee is always decided back east with a palliative thrown in by the Midwest. In the early primaries, the candidates don't run in the west or even the Texas powerhouse. According to the pundits, the primary will be decided in Florida and they have the winner all picked out by the polls for us. Voters in Texas, Arizona and California and Oregon have no vote, according to these pundits because all the money required to 'win' will exhaust the poor candidates while allowing the rich to shine. Yuk. I know this was not the intent of our founders. I'm sick of these people telling the viewers how the debates went, who won, what their latest unsubstantiated poll says and discussing ad nauseum the private lives of some of the candidates. The other night I watched a controversial issue discussed by three people, all of whom agreed. That's not journalism, that's manipulation and propaganda. So what are the credentials of the Media Judges? I think some are using the power of the media to influence elections.

True reform needs to happen. I suggest that the Primary begin in New Hampshire, then moves to Nevada, then to Georgia, then to Iowa and so on, representing all areas of the country in the early primaries, instead of all of them concentrated in the Eastern Seaboard. Let's have a Mexican border state represented also. How about a super Tuesday with several states from around the country to start it off? The primary is not fair to the rest of the states and regions.

To continue the meaning of true reform, campaign spending must be linked to the population of the state: no more than X amount per voter can be spent, and make the amount modest. If a business chooses to unilaterally support a candidate in ads, then the business and CEO must be identified in the ad. No more PACS. Limited campaign spending and more concentration on real issues needs to happen.

I liked the 'debates', although some were better than others. The debates that were actually debates, instead of the candidates answering different questions, were more fun but the questions allowed the candidates to express themselves, albeit in a tightly controlled manner. I liked the exposure to public view but saw that the glib candidates had a huge advantage over the others. I'm not sure glibness is the quality we need in a president. Studious intellect is sometimes not so immediately vocal. I think the future campaigns will be even more visual and more data will be available on the internet. Effective political campaigns waged on the internet are low cost and accessible, a level playing field, as it were.

The pundits on TV bother me because they are so sure of themselves and are usually unknown people with questionable credentials to critique the actions of others. Everyone has an opinion, of course, but the ceaseless self assured statements concerning the candidates 'performance' wear thin as they become an obvious attempt to influence public opinion. I really don't care what Miss X thinks of any candidate's 'performance' and I'm tired of this kind of 'reporting' instead of factual news. Miss X's opinion is a waste of my time and is deceptive as to value from the time spend on it. Give me some real information like a voting record analysis, speech clips concerning health care, tax records analysis and other relevant information concerning the candidate. I think it is interesting that the establishment candidates are the favored ones, with the reform candidates receiving bad ratings and reviews by the self appointed experts among most of the media. The media benefits from the campaign spending.

Campaign spending needs to be limited in order to save Democracy. The Internet must not be limited for it is the medium of free speech and will play a crucial role in future elections, giving power to the people to search for facts without a media filter.