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The other day I wrote about Seth Rich, a DNC employee who was murdered in mysterious circumstances on July 10, 2016 in Washington, DC.
Yesterday, I provided the source for the beginning of the Russian narrative used against President Donald Trump.
Both are WikiLeaks related.
Today, those who do not already know will find out what Hillary Clinton’s campaign had in store for leakers.
That, too, is related to WikiLeaks.
The Podesta WikiLeaks revealed that Hillary’s campaign team and advisers wanted to make ‘an example’ out of ‘leakers’, even if nothing could be proven.
WikiLeaks released this tweet on October 30, 2016:
The source is Podesta WikiLeaks email no. 36082 from February 21, 2015.
That day, the Washington Post printed a story about Hillary Clinton’s campaign branding. Two of the people interviewed were involved with her presidential campaign in 2015:
Ahead of her campaign launch, Clinton has tapped some of the Democratic Party’s star strategists as well as two of corporate America’s branding wizards: Wendy Clark, who specializes in marketing age-old brands such as Coca-Cola to younger and more diverse customers; and Roy Spence, a decades-long Clinton friend who dreamed up the “Don’t Mess With Texas” anti-littering slogan as well as flashy ad campaigns for Southwest Airlines and Wal-Mart.
Clark took an unpaid leave in January from Coca-Cola, where she is president of brands and strategic marketing for carbonated beverages in North America, to help Clinton in what Clark called “a passion project.” Spence is co-founder and chairman of GSD&M, an Austin-based corporate ad firm, and has experience in politics, including with Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, and political operative Joel Benenson discussed their displeasure with the article and with those two people for talking to the press without consulting the campaign managers first.
Podesta wrote (emphases mine below):
… we need a strategy on this that goes beyond internal discipline. This story could have been written without any of these big mouths blabbing …
Benenson agreed:
I think we have to make examples now of people who have violated the trust of HRC and the rest of the team. People going forward need to know there are stiff consequences for leaking, self-promotion, unauthorized talking with the press. No one – literally no one talked to the press in either Obama campaign without clearing it with campaign brass.
Podesta replied in a curious way:
I’m definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it.
Campaign manager Robby Mook, who was copied on the exchange, agreed:
I would love an example being made.
How far did this go in reality?
No one knows, but many suspect — rightly or wrongly — that Seth Rich’s alleged leak of 40,000+ emails to WikiLeaks — the DNC WikiLeaks — might well have led to his death in July 2016.
On Tuesday, May 16, the torchpaper was lit. As Fox News ran with the Rich story, bringing it to the attention of the general public, three new Twitter hastags were busy: #HisNameWasSethRich, #SethRichCoverUp and #SethRich.
Some leftists did take note, primarily those employed at David Brock‘s Media Matters, who now realise they’ve been paid to circulate ‘lies’ online and said so on 4chan.org/pol/. Let’s hope that they do resign now that they know the truth.
Other Americans also doubt the Russian narrative.
With all the law enforcement silence around Rich’s murder and little information to go on over the past ten months, people are naturally suspicious details are being covered up or that nothing is being done:
People following the case since last year do not believe that Rich had no involvement in the DNC WikiLeaks:
Equally, they are disappointed that so much wasted energy is being spent on the Russian narrative and James Comey:
This could be why:
Incidentally, Seth Rich was not the only man to die mysteriously in the summer of 2016:
Pray that the truth comes out about these four men, all of whom had a relationship with the Democrats.
My intention last year was to write about the WikiLeaks emails from the Democrats.
Because of all the hubbub surrounding the 2016 presidential campaign, I never got around to it. I still have all the bookmarks of the emails themselves and related analyses from The_Donald. They are a revelation.
I hope that some people will be wondering how and where the Russian narrative used against President Donald Trump started.
Look no further than Hillary Clinton’s campaign supremo John Podesta and a journalist, Brent Budowsky, who writes for The Hill.
Much of the Podesta WikiLeaks email no. 25651, dated December 21, 2015, concerns Hillary Clinton’s stance on ISIS and Syria. There is also a mention of campaign advertising and getting out the vote.
However, the key to this is the Democrats’ strategy against Trump, primarily this one from Brent Budowsky (emphases mine below):
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin …
Budowsky was also interested in finding and releasing incriminating tapes of Trump to help Hillary, whom they knew even then was not doing well in the polls:
I suspect her negative trust ratings are locked in through election day. If there is a Trump ISIS video the campaign release it. If not, her untrustworthy numbers will remain further locked at high levels. These trust problems are self-induced and keep occurring.
Budowsky became more insistent:
Re the Trump ISIS video, if we don’t have the proof campaign should assign 100 people to look for it ASAP, there is probably something on tape somewhere.
With regard to campaign adverts, Budowsky already noted that Trump was not running them:
It is no coincidence that this year Trump runs no ads, while Jeb and Hillary run the most ads with little effect. Voter registration by contrast creates real voters and changes—and improves—the playing field itself. There is no ad on earth that will increase her trust ratings or the enthusiasm of her voters the way a mega-registration project will increase her support on election day.
They knew then that Hillary was scuppered. Based on the context, they also seemed to discern that Trump was going to be Hillary’s opponent in 2016.
In June 2016 — one month before the Republican National Convention declared Trump the GOP presidential candidate — Trump Derangement Syndrome was flying high in the Democrat camp. Obama’s campaign manager from 2008, later a senior adviser, tweeted:
On November 9, 2016 — the day after the election — Hillary’s campaign heads decided to run hard with the Russian narrative:
The quote in blue comes from an investigative book about the Clinton campaign, Shattered, which came out earlier this year.
On April 21, Breitbart included the quote in their report, which began:
The blistering behind-the-scenes book, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, illustrates how Hillary Clinton furiously blamed her defeat on the FBI investigation into her private emails, Russian interference, and Trump’s supposed support from “white nationalists” …
Also:
The Clinton camp settled on a two-pronged plan — pushing the press to cover how “Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by the contents of stolen e-mails and Hillary’s own private-server imbroglio,” while “hammering the media for focusing so intently on the investigation into her e-mail, which had created a cloud over her candidacy,” the authors wrote.
And so the Russian narrative survives, alive and well, to this day.
The Democrats and the media have been displaying abject contempt for the people of the United States ever since.
Anyone who still thinks either camp cares about them is sorely mistaken.
Bruce Bawer — an American who has lived in Europe for nearly two decades — wrote an excellent essay for PJ Media, ‘What Happened in France?’
It offers a post-mortem of Emmanuel Macron’s victory on Sunday, May 7, 2017 and explains how it happened.
With an upcoming parliamentary election taking place in Britain on Thursday, June 8, it seems apposite to look at voting patterns in the two countries.
Before I excerpt Bawer’s editorial, I, too, have noticed a certain voting behaviour in France and the UK, two countries I know well. I live in the UK and see that voters are reluctant not so much to go to the polls as they are to actually vote in a way that reverses globalism. People in other parts of Europe, e.g. France, are similarly skittish.
The hive mind is a powerful thing in Europe. The globalists created it through politically correct thinking and make jolly good use of it via the media and pollsters.
Two recent British shockers were David Cameron’s victory in May 2015 and the referendum vote for Brexit in 2016. Both results surprised everyone. This is because we were under constant onslaught by print and broadcast media to vote against the Conservatives and Brexit.
Even now that Theresa May is the occupant of No. 10, politics remains a touchy subject. As I’ve said many times before, it’s not something I discuss much with people I know, even with fellow Conservatives, some of whom are quite wet — squishy, for my American readers — about Brexit. They think voters should have gone for Remain last June.
However — and this is something Bruce Bawer did not mention in his piece — Europeans do not have a well developed online alternative media universe comprising independent journalists, citizen journalists and political fora. This, to me, is the principal difference between the UK and Europe.
Bawer’s article is well worth reading and passing along to friends. I’ll try to excerpt as little as possible, because it probably took him a long time to write.
Americans are probably still scratching their heads over 2017 election results, not only in France but in the Netherlands. Both resulted in preserving a self-destructive status quo, one that increases terror and diminishes national identity.
Bawer says that Europeans feel a collective guilt about their former colonies and political movements. Therefore, they feel the need for perpetual atonement (emphases mine below):
One way of trying to answer it is to look at countries one by one. For example, the Brits and French feel guilty about their imperial histories, and hence find it difficult to rein in the descendants of subject peoples. The Germans feel guilty about their Nazi past – and the Swedes feel guilty about cozying up to Nazis – and thus feel compelled to lay out the welcome mat for, well, just about anybody. The Dutch, similarly, are intensely aware that during the Nazi occupation they helped ship off a larger percentage of their Jews to the death camps than any other Western European country, and feel a deep need to atone.
Then there’s postmodernism:
According to postmodern thinking, no culture is better than any other – and it’s racist to say otherwise. No, scratch that – other cultures are, in fact, better than Western culture. Whites, by definition, are oppressors, imperialists, and colonialists, while “people of color” are victims.
We are in denial about terrorist attacks:
The plainer the truth got, in fact, the more fiercely they resisted it. And as skilled propagandists began to represent Muslims as the mother of all victim groups, many Westerners were quick to buy into it all …
But – and this is a fact that some of us are thoroughly incapable of identifying with, and thus almost thoroughly incapable of grasping – some people don’t want to know the truth. And if they do know the truth, they want to un-know it.
These are not intellectuals or socio-political elites, but ordinary people of various income groups and educational levels:
I’m talking about people who, in everyday life, come across as thoroughly good and decent – but who, when push comes to shove, just don’t want to rock the boat. That’s a lot of people. Maybe most. People who are nice so long as it’s easy to be nice …
There are kind people who, the minute there’s any hint of trouble – which means, way before the death-camp round-up begins – prefer to lie low. Their highest value isn’t truth or virtue or beauty or even long-term security for them and their families but the ability to buy another day without major trouble.
You’d think they’d be able to look forward at least some distance into the future and dwell on that grim prospect. Able to see their children, their grandchildren, and so forth, living under sharia law. If, indeed, lucky to be living at all.
But I think it needs to be recognized that for some people, seeing that far into the future is just beyond their intellectual grasp. Or beyond what they dare to envision …
Bawer posits that a lot of these people can see what is actually happening to Europe but they are ‘terrified’ to do anything about it, even at the ballot box.
This is why a Conservative victory in 2015 and Brexit victory in 2016 were so significant for Britain. I had hoped our continental neighbours would follow suit this year, but, alas, it was not meant to be. The Germans are likely to see Angela Merkel continue her chancellorship later this year.
Bawer says that Europeans are now so cowed into submission, even a private vote can’t help:
You might think that, once in the voting booth, these people would be able – and not just able but eager, desperate even – to stand up against the powers above them that have turned their countries upside down and assert their power as citizens. But everything around them has conspired all their lives to render them incapable of feeling that power – or, perhaps, has rendered them incapable of feeling that they have the moral right to exercise that power in the way that their gut is begging them to.
That still, quiet voice in their heads, which I would describe as a voice of plain reason and common sense, is up against the resounding voices of all the higher-ups shouting in unison – the leading voices of politics, business, the academia, the media, and so on – that they’ve been bred from infancy to respect and take seriously. To, indeed, obey …
So it is that even in a secret ballot, it takes European voters a remarkable amount of nerve to resist the thunderous chorus of voices from above urging them to vote against their own interests; it feels like nothing less than an act of treason to heed the meek little voices in their own heads begging them to do the opposite – to do what’s actually best for themselves and their loved ones.
Bawer nails it perfectly in his next sentence:
They’ve been psychologically manipulated to the point where they truly believe, on some level, at least in some Orwellian doublethink kind of way, that acting in clear defense of their own existence, their own culture, their own values, and their own posterity, is an act of ugly prejudice.
Yes — that’s it in a nutshell.
I see it here in the elderly — people old enough to know better — and I see it in the middle-aged and the young.
Europeans must wake up and vote for what is right and good.
I sincerely hope that Britain will do so again on June 8.
Various tweets and videos circulated following the French presidential elections on Sunday, May 7, 2017 saying that the result was hacked. Not true.
France’s example is a good one for other countries to follow. So is the British voting procedure.
This is because both involve paper. In France, one puts a slip of paper with the candidate’s name on it into an envelope. In the UK, we mark an X next to a candidate’s name. What could be simpler?
Traditional voting
There are very few voting machines in France. Most of the French vote the old fashioned way.
Furthermore, they are prohibited from sending in an absentee ballot.
The French must vote in person, even when they live overseas (e.g. Canada). If they are unable to show up at the polling station, they can appoint someone to vote for them, provided that person lives in the same commune or, when abroad, vicinity (e.g. Montreal). That said, arranging proxy voting requires appearing before a designated government official beforehand.
A few days before the election is held, voters receive an envelope by post which has flyers from the various candidates along with a slip of paper with the candidate’s name printed on it.
Last weekend, a video showed someone opening their envelope with information about Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. However, although there were two voting slips, both were for Macron:
A photo showed damaged Le Pen slips damaged in the town of Allier. These could not be used for voting. Allier, incidentally, voted overwhelmingly for Macron:
Although those tweets elicited reaction, a number of French voters responded by saying that the polling station has stacks of slips of paper — bulletins — for each candidate.
Even if someone comes in and steals a stack of bulletins for a particular candidate, polling station officials can ring up and get more within a short space of time. This happened in Ruffey-les-Echirey in Burgundy. France3 reported (I’ve edited the Google translation slightly):
The two stacks of ballot papers, one for Emmanuel Macron and the other for Marine Le Pen, were no longer equal, as required by the electoral code: the electors of the commune were only offered 140 Le Pen ballots instead of 973 – the number of registrants in Ruffey …
Several hundred “Marine Le Pen” bulletins were deliberately stolen during the night, thus compromising the fairness of the two candidates in the polling station. But it took more than that to disturb the elected Ruffey: the mayor, Nadine Mutin, and her 1st deputy contacted the prefecture of Côte-d’Or to resolve the discrepancy. The prefecture provided them with official bulletins thirty minutes later. With enough Le Pen ballots, the polling station was able to open at 8 a.m., and voting unfolded smoothly.
Media blackout
Campaigns end the Friday before the election. No election news is allowed from midnight on the Saturday preceding the election.
How voting works
One must be a registered voter in order to cast a ballot. The minimum voting age is 18.
On election day, French voters go to their appointed polling station.
Before voting, an official checks their voter registration and identity cards. Showing a voter registration card is supposed to be mandatory in communes with more than 5,000 people. However, Marianne reported that if voters lost or misplaced it, showing an ID card would be sufficient, even in larger communes.
Voters then go to a table with stacks of pre-printed bulletins and envelopes. There is one stack for each candidate. I have read that voters must take one slip for each candidate, but I have also read anecdotally that some take only two. Obviously, the more one takes, the less chance that anyone will know one’s voting intention.
Voters also take an envelope before proceeding to private voting booths.
Once in the privacy of the voting booth, voters put the piece of paper with their candidate’s name on it into the envelope. They then close the envelope. They throw unused slips of paper into the bin provided.
They proceed to the table with a clear perspex box which contains the ballots. One official mans the box and two others are on hand to check voter registration and ID cards once more. Once the identity check has been made, voters give their closed envelope to the official in charge of the box. The official opens the little slot on top of the box. The voter places the envelope in the box, then the official closes it.
The official running the box then announces, ‘A voté‘, meaning ‘(has) voted’. Sometimes in smaller places, the official also announces the voter’s full name: ‘Jeanne Duclos a voté‘. I’ve personally seen this done.
The voter signs the voter’s list and an official stamps his voter registration card in the appropriate box.
This ensures that no one can vote twice.
Voting blanc or nul
Protest voting is popular in France.
One can vote blanc — blank — or nul — no vote.
Since 2014, the government has allowed for a tabulation of both types of vote, although neither is included in the entire percentage of votes. In other words, even if the majority of voters cast such a ballot, it would still make no difference to the candidates’ percentages. Someone would emerge as the winner.
Marianne explains that there are only two ways to vote blanc: either put an empty envelope into the box or put a blank piece of paper into the envelope.
Similarly, there are only two ways to vote nul: write anyone else’s name on a piece of paper or put a torn candidate slip into the envelope.
Counting the votes
Polls close at 6 p.m. in smaller communes and at 8 p.m. in towns and cities. Local laws determine closing hours. On Sunday, polls closed at 7 across the country.
Tabulating the votes is remarkably efficient, even though not all votes are counted by the time the media announce the result.
I’ve watched live election coverage a few times over the past decade. By the time I tune in — 11:00 in the UK — the winning candidate has already given his victory speech and is off to celebrate.
The French know the result before midnight. There is no need to pull an all-nighter as there is in the UK and, sometimes, the US.
Fraud nearly impossible
The French voting system, although it is old-fashioned, is remarkably practical, simple and effective.
It mitigates against fraud and there is almost no chance of hacking, even in the few places with machines. Those in one middle class Parisian suburb did not even show the candidates’ names, although Marianne reported that all were fixed on Sunday morning after the polling stations opened:
Marianne stated that, beginning in the first round of voting in 2007, voting machines were allowed in communes with more than 3,500 inhabitants. However, they have been notoriously problematic ever since. After the first round in 2007, the minister of the interior declared a moratorium on new installations, although those communes with machines already installed were allowed to keep them.
Conclusion
It would be nice if the US could adopt the French paper model. However, the US system combines legislative and local elections with the presidential, making this impractical. The US also votes for a wider set of local representatives than France or the UK.
In Europe, we spread our elections out. For example, the UK had local elections on Thursday, May 4. We will be voting again on June 8 for our MPs in a snap election which we hope will return Theresa May to No. 10 so she has an official mandate — and a greater majority of Conservative MPs — to properly implement Brexit.
The French will return to the polls in another two-round election process for their legislators on June 11 and June 18.
Further reading:
Elections in France (Wikipedia)
French Election Vocabulary Practice (French Today)
French legislative election, 2017 (Wikipedia)
On Sunday, May 7, 2017 the French will be electing a new president whose term will run for five years.
It is almost certain that Emmanuel Macron (En Marche!) will win.
Marine Le Pen (Front National) is likely to pick up more votes than her father Jean-Marie has in past elections, but there is too much historical baggage attached to the FN to make her a winning proposition nationwide.
May 3 – debate
On Wednesday, May 3, TF1 hosted a televised debate of the two candidates, which was also shown on several other channels.
One of my favourite socio-political commentators, journalist, author and essayist Natacha Polony, appeared on RMC (talk radio) the next morning to say that the debate revealed one candidate who doesn’t understand the issues and one who is a perfect Énarque (graduate of the École Nationale d’Administration, where the top politicians come from). Macron is also a graduate of Sciences-Po, also very important to political life.
Polony says that the debates told the French public very little about how they would resolve current problems in their nation. A few ‘hollow’ soundbites and ‘vulgarity’, she says, do not constitute a policy position.
France24 reported similarly. The debate was:
loud, fast, personal, riven with inaccuracies and thin on substance …
The media and viewers thought that Macron won the debate hands down.
SkyNews has a good recap of the highlights:
In angry exchanges, Ms Le Pen played up Mr Macron’s background as a former banker and economy minister in the outgoing Socialist government.
Portraying him as Francois Hollande’s lapdog, she said he was the “candidate of globalisation gone wild”.
He tore into her flagship policy of abandoning the euro and accused her of failing to offer solutions to France’s economic problems such as high unemployment.
The attacks were often personal with Mr Macron calling Ms Le Pen a “parasite” and a liar.
Also:
Ms Le Pen accused Mr Macron of having no plan on security but being indulgent with Islamic extremism.
He told her that radicals would love her to become president because she would stoke conflict.
Alternative media’s Paul Joseph Watson, a frequent traveller to France, reacted from London:
For the FN, the debate was of historical importance:
The TV appearance was the first time a National Front candidate has appeared in a run-off debate – an indication of how far Le Pen has brought her party by softening its image and trying to separate it from past xenophobic associations.
Macron win baked in from the start
Emmanuel Macron was meant to win from late 2016.
The media are doing their job in carrying water for him. This week’s French magazine stand is incredible:
Macron, who served as François Hollande’s economics minister for two years, was his pet in many ways. His campaign was designed to beat that of the conservative François Fillon (LR) and the socialist former education minister Benoît Hamon (PS).
Manuel Valls
Those who know that former prime minister Manuel Valls was tipped to be the next PS candidate years ago might wonder what happened. This, too, was part of the plan.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A PS party leader warned Valls not to run and do something ‘irreversible’.
Shortly afterwards, Hollande told Valls in a one-on-one meeting in December that eventually his time would come.
Hollande, incidentally, kept Valls in the dark as to whether he would run for a second term. He didn’t.
Valls did not understand the message from his party. It was not Valls’s turn for a reason. The PS supported Macron, even though Macron created his own political movement.
Valls went ahead and ran for the PS primary earlier this year. He was a long-time favourite. Yet, the weak Benoît Hamon beat him. Behind the scenes, the PS machine made sure Valls did not win. Nothing personal, just politics.
Valls put his support behind Macron rather than Hamon before the first round of voting on Sunday, April 23. That was understandable as Hamon was polling only in the single digits and received only slightly over 6% of the vote that day.
François Fillon
François Fillon of Les Républicains, or LR, was my candidate. He served as prime minister under Nicolas Sarkozy between 2007 and 2012.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Fillon has always been measured, reserved and statesman-like.
There was never a hint of scandal about him.
He won the LR primary decisively on November 27, 2016 with two-thirds of the vote. The turnout — non-LR members could pay €3 for a ballot — was immense. Many polling stations had long queues all day. Some ran out of ballots. Officials were surprised, to say the least.
The result took everyone aback. No one had written much about Fillon in the run-up to the primary. In fact, one newsweekly, Marianne, called him ‘Mr Nobody’.
In December, with a sound political manifesto, he was seen as the man to beat.
In the third week of January, two of Marianne‘s readers wrote letters to the editor, expressing fear about Fillon. In the magazine’s 20 – 26 January 2017, edition, one reader wrote about the disaster 2017 would turn out to be with ‘the arrival of Fillon at the Elysée’ (p. 50). The other reader’s letter bore the title ‘SOS Fillon’. It said what an ‘inhuman’ cruelty from an environmental perspective it would be for him to be ‘at the Elysée’ (p. 52).
The polls showed Fillon as the top candidate at that time.
On January 25, everything changed.
Mysterious charges came out of the blue, with an address book and a dossier given to Le Canard enchaîné. Allegations purported that Fillon’s Welsh wife Penelope had engaged in fictitious employment and had been paid hundreds of thousands of euros for work she had never done both for a literary magazine and as Fillon’s parliamentary assistant. This was strange, because the allegations stretched back to things that supposedly took place in the late 1990s, yet, they had never seen the light of day until now. Recall that Fillon — ‘Mr Nobody’ — was prime minister between 2007 and 2012.
A preliminary hearing began immediately, something that is unheard of in similar situations in France. It normally takes weeks, if not months, for the authorities to investigate.
Nearly every day for two months, either Le Canard enchaîné was receiving new information about other Fillon scandals or the authorities were questioning the couple and searching their properties.
As Eric Ciotti, the LR president of the council of Alpes-Maritimes, told RMC the other week, the last day Fillon had a proper campaign was on January 24.
Fillon had to be cleared out of the way for Macron. Believe me, Macron never would have stood a chance under normal circumstances.
Despite all of this, on April 23, Fillon received a respectable 20.0% of the votes in the first round. He came third, behind Le Pen. Le Pen garnered 21.3% and Macron 24.0%. Jean-Luc Mélenchon came fourth with 19.5%. Benoît Hamon, the PS candidate, got just over 6%.
Now that Fillon is out of the way, so is the drip-drip-drip of scandal.
You can read more about Valls and Fillon in an article I wrote recently for Orphans of Liberty, ‘Pauvre Fillon’. (Pauvre means ‘poor’, ‘pitiable’).
The Big Media narrative
Big Media have been busy for months saying that Macron is a centrist, anti-establishment and antisystème candidate.
If he espoused the latter two characteristics, Big Media would never have endorsed him. Big Media are part of the establishment and le système.
Marianne noted that all of these media outlets have made a big deal about everything Macron except his political platform (13 – 19 January 2017 issue, p. 11).
They have given Macron the celebrity treatment in the same way that the world media gave Obama in 2008. Marianne pointed out that l’Obs (Le Nouvel Observateur) put Macron on their cover six times in 2016 (p. 17).
At that stage, Marianne only had Macron on their cover twice: that particular January issue and in November 2015. Interestingly, the 2015 issue has ‘Moi, Président‘ next to his photo.
This week, Marianne fell in line with every other magazine and put him on the cover. Sad. The magazine that prides itself on independent (albeit left-wing) thinking howled about media intox — hype — then fell into the same trap.
Establishment help
Macron has benefited from Socialist help at home and abroad.
In France, Marianne says that Hollande’s ex-partner and mother of his children, Ségolène Royal — former minister of the environment — has been discreetly advising him behind the scenes since December (13 – 19 January 2017 issue, p. 12). Royal has long admired Macron. She appeared with him on the hustings this week.
In the United States, Obama — also a socialist — gave Macron a fulsome endorsement to the French electorate. Can you imagine the outcry if Trump had done something similar?
My guess is that he was in Tahiti for this very reason. If he had rung Macron from the US, the American intelligence community could have tracked his phone calls. Ironically, Obama put such an arrangement in place himself, whereby Americans corresponding with or talking to people overseas may become of interest to US intelligence.
Like Obama, Macron is another Manchurian Candidate. The two must have much in common.
This tweet bridges the discussion from Obama to the next two men mentioned below:
Besides socialists, there are the globalist economics experts and policy wonks around Macron, including Alain Minc and Jacques Attali.
I saw Alain Minc several years ago on a late-night French talk show, On n’est pas couché (‘We Haven’t Gone to Bed’). The subject was the disconnect between a candidate’s promises and the reality that follows an election. Minc told Natasha Polony, who was a regular panellist at the time, that even she had no place in voicing an opinion about policy-making. Minc said:
You get your say at the polls. At that point, your role ends. Afterwards, we take over.
Her jaw dropped.
In other words, leave it to the experts. The great unwashed have no voice. This guy is advising Macron. He also attended the same grandes écoles as the future French president.
Their already heated debate continued a little longer. Then, Minc dismissed her as being silly and told her to be quiet. If I remember rightly, the talk show host stepped in and changed the subject.
Jacques Attali, who is richer than Croesus, said in a print interview a couple of years ago that, even though he is in his 70s, he still works every day. He said he could not help but look down on retired people who wanted to relax and enjoy life. As a graduate of the same schools as Macron and Minc, Attali has never had to toil day after day in a manufacturing plant or drive a lorry or work in a slaughterhouse. If he had busied himself at any of those occupations for decades, he, too, would want to put his feet up.
Policy positions
Macron’s team have been busy this week tweeting, sometimes posting several every few minutes: a lot of empty words — or bla bla, as the French say — style over substance.
He doesn’t want people to know what he’s actually going to do.
Keebler AC reposted the following tweet on a thread at The Conservative Treehouse:
What follows are a few illustrated highlights from the debate that give you an idea of what Macron is about:
I’ll translate the dialogue below:
Juncker (?, on the left): The barbarians are at the gates. How can we guarantee a French victory?
Macron (lower right): Open wide the gates. There is no such thing as French culture.
Hollande (upper right): I told you so! The little one’s a genius!
All of this causes confusion. On March 31, an RMC panellist, a barrister, asked how Macron could be Hollande’s successor:
It’s inconceivable. He’s surrounded by people from the Right.
However, others do understand. Someone replied to that comment with this helpful illustration:
The influential imam from the Grande Mosque de Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, called on all French Muslims to vote for Macron in the second round.
And Les Républicains (LR), in order to continue to distance themselves from the FN, also urged their members and supporters to vote for Macron. Career politician Jean-François Copé rightly criticised Macron for his heavily publicised victory party after the first round, while Marine Le Pen left her supporters to party and made a quick exit after the results were announced.
Here’s Macron’s party at La Rotonde brasserie in Paris’s Montparnasse district. Copé said he was stunned:
Note that Copé also commented above that, as far as ensuring French security is concerned, Macron is ‘very weak’. As far as economic policies go, Macron is in ‘permanent flux’.
That said, Copé announced on the show:
With death in my soul, I said I will vote Macron.
Globalists v Nationalists
Ultimately, the battle for the Elysée is about globalists (Macron) versus nationalists (Le Pen).
This revolves around changes in those who embrace Marxism.
S. Armaticus, who authors the Catholic site, The Deus Ex Machina Blog, wrote an excellent analysis in the comments on The Conservative Treehouse‘s pre-election post:
The “Globalists” -read cultural Marxists in the US are endorsing the “globalists” – read cultural Marxists in France. Now the cultural Marxist’s enemy is the former economic Marxists- read post-Soviet countries. The reason that the cultural Marxists hate the former economic Marxists is that the later dumped their Marxism. The reason they dumped their Marxism is because it didn’t work. It left their countries ruined. So these former Marxists are trying to implement something that works to get them out of the mess that Marxism left. While the cultural Marxists never experienced Marxism first hand. So they are trying to implement Marxism.
And that is why us normal people like you, me and The POTUS, are caught up in this fratricidal war between the neo-Marxists (Obama/Macron/Trudeau) and the ex-Marxists (Putin).
We should know the results on Sunday night. Unfortunately, because the French don’t really have enough of an online presence to fight globalism.
As Marine Le Pen said, a woman will be leading France: either her or Angela Merkel.
No guesses as to who will be in charge come Monday morning.
Next week I will discuss Macron’s private life.
On Monday, March 6, 2017, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of the speakers who addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters at their annual legislative conference in Washington, DC.
Fox 10 Phoenix has the entire 34 minute video — recommended viewing:
For decades, average Americans have wondered why there is such a gulf between Washington and most of the United States.
Carlson explains the DC disconnect.
Starting with Trump’s surprise win in 2016, Carlson said that the middle class was simply fed up with the DC elite ignoring their cries for help regarding immigration and trade.
He said that the DC elite are oblivious to average Americans. Washington DC has full employment and more people working as housekeepers than ever before. Conversation revolves around the theoretical, e.g. economic theory, rather than reality.
He explained that two things that people in DC love are immigration and free trade. Immigration is great because DC residents can get servants very cheaply. In some cases, he said, they are paid a child’s allowance as a salary. DC residents then feel they are being virtuous towards the less fortunate.
However, what works for DC doesn’t work for the rest of the nation. The middle class tried time and time again to point that out to the elite, who dismissed them as being racist and stupid.
The same scenario occurred with trade. The middle class are losing their jobs. The elite in DC do not care.
This broad swathe of dissatisfied Americans took to the ballot box in November 2016. They mounted a peaceful revolution by electing Donald Trump to the White House.
Carlson talked about the rabid hate of Trump in Washington, where 90%+ of voters plumped for Hillary Clinton. Carlson said that, out of three million government employees, only 50 actually like Trump. Whether that is numerically accurate is beside the point. Trump faces an uphill climb.
Furthermore, as much as Democrats loathe Trump, it’s even more entrenched on the Republican side.
He said that Trump can come up with the most sensible policies — buying cheaper drugs from Canada — and politicians simply shut him out. They cannot hear what he is saying. I call that Trump Derangement Syndrome. The term was used about Bush and Obama’s opponents in their time.
Carlson said that nothing in this world is 100% good. Immigration and market-driven trade are two of these things. They work well for the top one per cent but are disastrous for everyone else. He pointed to other examples of where people have noticed and vote accordingly: the UK, with Brexit, and France, with Marine LePen (doing well in the polls).
Carlson spoke about the disaster coming from mass unemployment, particularly among men. Unemployment, he said, drives men crazy. Men need to work in order to feel that they have value and purpose in life.
He said that the current immigration model — and this is true for other Western countries — is predicated on a large manufacturing base. Unfortunately, that manufacturing base no longer exists. Therefore, immigration policy must change accordingly to fit reality.
This also holds true with regard to war and trade. Trump opposes needless American intervention in other nation’s affairs. Trump supports trade deals that will help, not hinder, America.
Carlson also warned about driverless vehicles. Once again, all of Washington waxes lyrical about how ‘cool’ these are. Yet, they will put 8 million people out of jobs overnight if they become reality on the nation’s roads. Carlson pointed out that the most popular occupation among recent high school graduates is driving a truck.
If truck drivers — and taxi drivers — become obsolete, what are they going to do for work? Carlson correctly surmised that they won’t be retraining to become computer programmers. He said that the Trump administration should ban them outright. I agree, in part. They should be banned for commercial use, at least.
He also talked about the Tea Party, which failed, in his estimation, because it lacked a leader. The Tea Party, he explained, was a way for conservative Republicans to express their dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, which clearly does not share their interests.
Then along came Donald Trump. Carlson found it interesting that Trump has never really issued a concise statement about what his movement or ideology stands for. Yet, he struck a chord with millions of Americans who felt he spoke for them.
I’ll conclude with something that Carlson opened with. He said that Republicans and Democrats must really take in and understand what upsets Americans and why they voted for Trump. He said that serious soul searching must take place in the two main political parties. Unfortunately, he noted, that has not yet begun.
As for what Trump’s ideology is with regard for America, I predict we will all be able to articulate it by 2020.
I nearly forgot to mention Carlson’s opinion of the media: ‘dumb’, except for his colleagues at Fox. He told the fire fighters that he has worked for every cable news network and knows whereof he speaks. He said that no one with an ounce of intelligence goes into media. (That should tell us something about students in Media Studies.)
Carlson’s speech was great. He spoke for 13 minutes then took three questions from the audience, for the next 20. He’s much livelier giving a speech than he is in interviews on Tucker Carlson Tonight. And rightly so. This address shows a different side to his personality.
Happy New Year to all my readers!
2016 proved to be the year of the impossible made possible.
The Brexit vote, the Cubs winning the World Series after 108 years and Donald Trump’s election are only three such examples. We lived through ground-breaking history this year.
Many people — especially agnostics — commented online that the Hand of God was all over various events that took place. Some of those people returned to the Church. Others, previously unchurched, converted. (The best anecdotal evidence can be found in comments at The_Donald.)
2017 looks even more exciting with regard to change and a break with the past. Light will shine on darkness. Those guilty of lying, malfeasance and indecency will be exposed and shamed. Many God-fearing people will be stunned by what they see in the news. The evil of the past revealed — and the power of the good to come — will cause scoffers to repent.
Therefore, I look forward to the New Year for the first time in decades.
I pray that divine grace and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit imbue and guide each of us in the year ahead. May God bless us all.
The post-election events of just this week alone could be turned into a potboiler of a television series.
I feel bad for people who didn’t have the time (work, family) or inclination (closed-mindedness) to follow this election every day. Those who didn’t have the time are excused. The second group do not realise how serious the situation in the United States is today.
America is in grave danger. People who warned against Obama in 2008 and again in 2012 will be proven correct. Some news items in this post illustrate that.
Mischief afoot — fake news from Big Media
Last weekend, America’s news shows discussed at length stories in the Washington Post and New York Times that ‘intelligence officials’ (anonymous, but within the CIA) stated that the Russian government
hacked the U.S. election.
The Conservative Treehouse pointed out:
First, the media’s choice of wording is critical within both reports.
It is impossible to “hack an election“. What was hacked was the DNC email system, and John Podesta’s email. WikiLeaks published the content of both “hacks”.
Additionally, WikiLeaks has denied the source of the information was a foreign government.
Both The Washington Post and New York Times, simultaneously, published articles on Friday claiming anonymous sources within the CIA (note: intensely political CIA Chief John Brennan in charge) point to the Russian government as the originators of the hacking. However, both articles are written with very obtuse and non specific language intended to cover over the fact these reports are not actually stating the official intelligence community are making these specific claims.
All other media outlets subsequently take this illogically based presentation and spin their coverage whereby the “DNC hacked” becomes “the election hacked“.
On Monday, December 12 John Podesta responded to a request from 10 Democratic electors, including a daughter of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for more information about the CIA’s assertions that Russians were involved in affecting the outcome of the election.
That day, Politico reported (emphases mine):
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed” …
Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.
… Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO on Monday that Trump is a “potentially dangerous president.”
On Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey threw a spanner into the works:
In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
What’s more, Comey told Trump that James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, agreed with this FBI assessment.
The only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was John Brennan, the director of the CIA, according to sources who were briefed on Comey’s conversations with Trump.
Later that day, Fox News reported lawmakers were furious that a House Intelligence Committee briefing on the matter was cancelled:
Anger on Capitol Hill boiled over Wednesday night after the intelligence community’s alleged “intransigence” forced the cancellation of a House Intelligence Committee briefing on claims of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
“Somebody has the time to leak it to The Washington Post and The New York Times, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a member of the committee, told Fox News’ “The Kelly File.” “It’s their job to come. They don’t have any choice. They have to come in, especially when they have created this.”
… Fox News was told the CIA Director John Brennan declined to provide a briefer, citing its focus on the full review requested by President Obama. The other agencies did not respond to the committee’s request, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.
Larry Johnson, the founder of No Quarter, used to work for the CIA. He picked up on this story in his post, ‘John Brennan’s Failed Soft Coup?’ He wrote:
This should be setting off alarm bells throughout the U.S. Government, but especially within the intel community and the military. CIA Director John Brennan appears to have tried and failed to take out Donald Trump. It is his Agency that spread the lie that Russia made it possible for Trump to win the Presidency. This was not the idle opinion of some underling. Someone was given permission to tell elected Legislators a lie. A bald faced lie. Brennan, and no one else, bears ultimate responsibility for this lie.
When the news first broke last Friday that the CIA had told Senators that Russia essentially gave the election to Donald Trump the politicians and pundits infesting Washington were up in arms. Hell, even John McCain and Lindsay “Little Old Lady” Graham jumped on the hysteria bandwagon to voice outrage and threaten Russia. Tonight we learn that Brennan was lying.
There’s more at the link, but it is important to see this:
I have heard from knowledgeable friends that Clapper finally decided he would not walk the plank for John Brennan. Clapper has lied once before to the Senate and apparently felt that he could stomach no more lies. This isolated Brennan. He has no place to hide now. He could have sent a briefer who would have had to endure the indignity of admitting that the CIA had no hard evidence to buttress its speculation that Russia favored Trump.
This is more than a lie folks. This represents the first time in my life that the Director of the CIA has tried to intervene and disrupt a Presidential election. Brennan should be immediately dismissed and he should pray to God (or Allah) that he is not prosecuted for sedition. Given his prior service as the Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia, one begins to wonder if he has been protecting the interests of America or serving those of a foreign power?
And:
This also completely destroys the Democrat effort to gather support to brief the Electors, who have no security clearances. How in the world can you justify briefing Electors when you are refusing to brief members of Congress who do have the clearances?
In today’s Washington Post, John Podesta blamed the FBI — and people connected with Donald Trump — for Hillary’s loss:
Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.
Podesta’s picture accompanying the article is priceless. Sorry, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. The Podesta WikiLeaks made it abundantly clear that the Democrats — and Hillary — do not like everyday Americans. They also do not like each other.
On the Russian interference front, I have seen reports this week that a British MP said Russians were to blame for Brexit. Someone in Germany thought the Russians could be influencing their election set for next year. Don’t believe it for a moment!
The faithless elector — more fake news from Big Media
Chris Suprun is a Republican elector for Texas. He doesn’t want to vote for Donald Trump, the voters’ choice in that state. Not voting for the winner in one’s state makes one a ‘faithless’ elector.
He is one of a handful of ‘Hamilton electors’ who take the moral high ground. The expression ‘Hamilton elector’ did not surface until this year. These people claim to be voting in the manner of Alexander Hamilton, instrumental in establishing the Electoral College in the infancy of the United States.
Suprun probably thought he had it made when the New York Times published his op-ed on December 5 listing the many reasons why Trump is no good.
He lives in the Dallas area and works as a paramedic.
He wrote some interesting things, including these gems:
Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation.
I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.
Fifteen years ago, I swore an oath to defend my country and Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On Dec. 19, I will do it again.
Rule No. 1 for electors: vote for the winning candidate in your state. Each elector signs a pledge to do just that. Any elector who has a problem with that should stand down. (I couldn’t be an elector. I was for Gore in 2000. I could not have cast a vote for W then or in 2004.)
The next day, Americans made their responses known. YourVoice Radio host Bill Mitchell rightly said Suprun should be stripped of his electorship. Mitchell took a poll asking what the public thought. 98% of the 4601 participants said he should be withdrawn as an elector.
A man from Texas started a petition on Change.org to demand that very thing. Unfortunately, it is still 14,000+ votes shy of the necessary 50,000. The Electoral College vote takes place on Monday. Still, it was worth a try and a decent effort.
On December 8, Suprun appeared on Tucker Carlson, who confronted him over his soi-disant description of ‘moral elector’. He told Carlson that several other electors have contacted him and they have had very interesting conversations:
Discussing the upcoming vote with other EC Republican electors could be interpreted as an ‘ILLEGAL electoral college coup d’état’. Such actions could give rise to charges of treason, rebellion, insurrection or sedition.
The following day, news emerged that the media contact company Suprun had on his Twitter account is Van Jones’s (former Obama adviser) PR firm. Did they come up with ‘Hamilton elector’ and ‘moral elector’?
After tweets about Megaphone Strategies appeared, Suprun listed a different media contact on his Twitter page. Texas ABC television news affiliate WFAA contacted both firms:
Two public relations firms he has hired – Megaphone Strategies and Fenton Communications – responded to our requests for an interview saying: “Suprun’s schedule is jammed packed.”
But that wasn’t all. His first responder story turned out to be bunk:
on at least two occasions over the last couple years at crowded Major League Baseball games, Suprun has been introduced as a 9/11 veteran before throwing out first pitches.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park [Virginia] Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” said a first responder who knows Suprun and only agreed to speak about him if his identity was concealed.
The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.
The fire chief there added that his department never even responded to the Pentagon or any of the 9/11 sites.
And there is more, much more. His CV is littered with lies:
It shows he was, at the time this story aired on WFAA, a paramedic with Air Methods air ambulance service. But Christina Brodsly, a spokeswoman for that company, said he is not an employee there.
Suprun also claims to currently be a paramedic with Freedom EMS in Dallas. But records from the Texas Department of State Health Services indicate there’s no such company. A firm with that name used to exist in Houston, but it went out of business in 2008, according to DSHS.
The article goes on to say that Chris Suprun — upholder of the nation’s morality when it comes to voting for a president — has been bankrupt for most of the past five years. He was released from bankruptcy supervision only this month.
The story isn’t over yet, though. On December 12, Gotnews revealed that this moral guardian depends on his wife to work to pay off their $200,000 debt owed to various creditors. Suprun and his wife have three young children.
Gotnews got digging. While Mrs Suprun is busy working to support the family, her moralistic husband has been surfing on the cheating website Ashley Madison:
According to the data, Suprun joined Ashley Madison in February 2012, just six months after joint-filing for bankruptcy with his wife, Dianne Michelle Suprun, in September 2011, and paid for an “affair guarantee” in September 2012.
Where did he get the money?
An “affair guarantee”, which costs $249 today, is a discounted “package” for “credits” that allow men to chat with potential cheating partners on the website. Suprun, who had three kids under the age of 10 at the time, listed himself on the site as “attached male seeking female.”
Gotnews tells us:
Even though he used a throw-away e-mail address and changed his birth date by a few days, the Ashley Madison credit card data is unmistakably Suprun …
There’s only one Stephen Christopher Suprun, from Texas, born in March 1974, and the P.O. box is one of many P.O. boxes registered to Stephen Christopher Suprun that can be found with a quick search of any public records database.
It’s also the same P.O. box used for Suprun’s “Never Forget 9/11” charity, which he still lists on his Twitter profile …
There’s more at the link.
And this upstanding man — someone who has lied about his career, being a 9/11 first responder and also registered with a cheater’s website — has a problem voting for Donald Trump?
News becomes ‘performance art’
Tucker Carlson recently had another guest from Newsweek. Kurt Eichenwald appeared, alleging that Trump had been in a mental hospital for treatment in the 1980s or early 1990s. Eichenwald explained some of the background but spent nine minutes avoiding giving a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether the president elect actually was a patient.
Carlson rightly accused Eichenwald of ‘filibustering’, winding down the time so he wouldn’t have to give an answer to a topic he himself raised as the issue he wanted to discuss. He never did give an answer and accused Carlson of interrupting him. Eichenwald ended by saying he had an important message from the CIA. He never delivered that, either. Meanwhile, he occasionally waved around a white binder that read ‘Tucker Carlson Falsehoods’.
This interview was very strange indeed. Carlson called it ‘performance art’ and ‘the craziest interview’ he’d ever done, which it probably was:
The_Donald has more, including partial transcripts of the dialogue.
And it didn’t end when he got off air. A bizarre series of tweets ensued. Someone also sent him an assault gif, which Eichenwald’s ‘wife’ said, using his account, gave him a seizure. (The assault gifs are linked to in the aforementioned The_Donald thread. Don’t look. They are potentially dangerous for people prone to seizures.) It’s unclear whether his wife was actually tweeting on his behalf. Then Eichenwald couldn’t find the all-important CIA message. Let’s hope it wasn’t sensitive information!
This man appears to have a peculiar journalistic past with regard to an incident involving investigating pornography (more here). That was in 2007. This year, he was a big water carrier for Hillary Clinton and is sure there is a link between Trump and the Kremlin. He got aggressive about the issue with a fellow journalist in October and began tweeting repeatedly about it.
Faithful electors in the majority
Regardless of Chris Suprun, two reports state that the electors are highly likely to be faithful to the process and to their states’ voters.
Politico reports that Suprun is the only faithless Republican elector we know about. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is contacting their electors to ensure they will be voting for Trump. the article goes on to say that the RNC routinely contacts them after presidential elections. However, this year, there’s a difference as the Democratic National Committee has also been contacting GOP electors in an effort to discourage them from voting for Trump.
Trump currently has 306 electoral votes. He needs 270 to win:
If 37 Republican electors rejected him, he’d fall below the 270-vote threshold necessary to become president, sending the election to the House of Representatives for a January vote.
Democrats are attempting to persuade Republican electors to vote for someone like John Kasich of Ohio instead of Trump. However, Kasich said he does not want electoral votes.
Being a faithless elector is not a light matter in some states. Utah:
binds electors to support the candidate who won the statewide popular vote, as the most prominent reason he won’t consider voting for someone other than Trump. Similar laws exist in 29 states, including 14 where Trump won.
The penalties for violating these laws vary widely, with some states carrying no penalty at all, some issuing modest fines, and some requiring immediate replacement of electors. One state, New Mexico, treats “faithless” electoral votes as felonies.
Two Republican electors have already resigned, but still have until the day of the Electoral College vote to change their minds. If they do not turn up on the day in their respective state capitals, they will be replaced with alternates.
Business Insider reported that the Associated Press was able to contact all 538 electors and interview 330 of them:
finding widespread Democratic aggravation with the electoral process but little expectation that the hustle of anti-Trump maneuvering could derail him. For that to happen, Republican-appointed electors would have to stage an unprecedented defection and Democrats would need to buck tradition, too, by peeling away from Hillary Clinton and swinging behind a consensus candidate in sufficient numbers.
Business Insider tells us that Bret Chiafalo of Everett, Washington, co-founded Hamilton Electors. He said that the goal of the group is to steer electors away from the two main party candidates to a third party candidate. However, electors say the group’s tactics leave something to be desired:
“We got a stack of letters from idiots,” said Republican elector Edward Robson, 86, a Phoenix homebuilder.
Fellow elector Carole Joyce, 72, a state committeewoman in Phoenix and retired public-health nurse, was more charitable.
“They’ve caused me great distress on my computer, that’s for sure,” she said.
Trump appointees
On a brighter note, Deplorable Dave from New York not only has a fun countdown calendar but also a highly useful blog page of Trump appointees with the briefest of comments by each name. He updates it every day. It’s well worth visiting between now and the inauguration.
There aren’t many open posts left, which is good. That means the Trump administration can be up and running by January 20.
The Conservative Treehouse has timely analyses of new and potential appointments. Trump has drawn heavily on senior military officers. Former Navy SEAL Commander Ryan Zinke is the latest; he is likely to be the new Secretary of the Interior.
What is also interesting is that Trump is approaching conservative media personalities such as Monica Crowley, appointed to the National Security Council, and Kimberly Guilfoyle as his potential White House press secretary.
What’s next
Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s thank you tour ends this weekend.
Trump has three appearances. He will hold a rally in Orlando on Friday evening. On Saturday afternoon, he will media at the airport in Mobile, Alabama. Then he will meet Pence an hour later in the city’s Ladd-Peebles Stadium for the final rally.
A Nigerian newspaper recently republished an article about Trump by Pat Buchanan but changed the title to something much better: ‘Trump, Tribune of the American People’. How wonderful!
On Monday, December 19, the Electoral College will vote. Although the votes are not counted in the House of Representatives until early January, the media often give an indication before then of the expected result. If credible news appears, I’ll provide an update.
