Michael Kennedy

What will happen in 2020 ?

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First, everyone should view this Steve Bannon Oxford Union debate.

It’s an hour long and, while I rarely watch hour long YouTube videos, this one is worth while.

He gives a talk about his European sessions with new “right wing” leaders like Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister.

Viktor Mihály Orbán is a Hungarian politician serving as Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. He also served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. He is the present leader of the national conservative Fidesz party, a post he has held since 2003 and, previously, from 1993 to 2000.

Orban is hated by the globalists in Germany because he has built walls to keep put “migrants,” which he says his county cannot support.

Orbán’s social conservatism, national conservatism, soft Euroscepticism and advocacy of what he describes as an “illiberal state” have attracted significant international attention. Some observers have described his government as authoritarian or autocratic.

In August 2018, Orbán became the 2nd longest-serving prime minister after Kálmán Tisza. If his current government lasts a full term, upon its completion, he will become the longest-serving Hungarian prime minister in history.

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What about vote fraud in the election ?

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UPDATE: The results as of November 18.

I’m not really writing about Broward County in Florida as that seems to be old fashioned Democrat fraud. In 2016, there was almost certainly vote fraud.

“There is no authentic surge,” a source at the Broward County Supervisor of Elections told People’s Pundit Daily. “They’ve been at this [filling out absentee ballots] for days, working 4 to 5 employees some 16 hours a day each. There’s no telling how many ballots we are talking about. As many as they can each write in 16 hours a piece.”

A review of the early and absentee voting statistics in the statewhich People’s Pundit Daily does on a daily basisdoes reveal a suspicious increase in Democratic returns juxtaposed to the rest of the state, which has not experienced the same turnout increase. If enthusiasm and turnout for Mrs. Clinton was organic and legitimate, then we would expect to see those gains in similar percentages in regions of the state expected to back the Democrat.

But that’s not the case.

Sources confirm Snipes was breaking the law and opened more than 153,000 ballots cast by mail in private, claiming employees were tearing up and disposing of those that were votes in support of Donald J. Trump. The law prohibits the opening of ballots without the supervision of a canvassing board appointed to oversee and certify elections precisely because of this possibility.

That seems to be correct but why was that person still running the election in Broward County in 2018?

Within hours of receiving Ingoglia’s letter, a judge on Broward’s canvassing board offered a two-step compromise that ended the charge by Republicans. But Snipes admitted no wrongdoing and, until now, was able to maintain the story that the employees didn’t open the ballots.

“The canvassing board has never opened the ballots,” Snipes said. “We have procedures we follow that are approved in our security manual sent to state. We don’t feel like we are doing anything illegal — this is the process we have always used.”

But it was only because David Shestokas, a Florida Bar-certified attorney, was sent by the Republican National Lawyers Association from Chicago to watch the election in Broward that these activities were made known.

What about the 2018 election ?

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The Third Place

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Saloon

I am reading, by listening to the audio, a book called The Revolt of the Elites, which was written in 1996 but I just discovered it.

The theme, which is quite timely, is that there are two worlds in this country; that of the elites and that of everyone else. From a review on Amazon:

Lasch was most active in the late twentieth century yet it would seem he was seeing into the future with this book and his equally (or more) famous book, The Culture of Narcissism. In Revolt of the Elites he posits that the degeneration of Western Democracy has been caused by the abandonment by the wealthy and educated elites of their responsibilities to support culture, education, the building of public facilities, etc. in these societies. The rich and educated in Western Liberal, Capitalist, Democracies have, since the 1970s, increasingly abandoned society, keeping all of their earnings to themselves and have adopted a listless transient existence forgoing any significant commitments to community.

He makes the point that we are no longer one nation with even the well off participating in the community. We lead separate lives.

One example of this he calls the “Third Place,” a place where the community gets together. One place is work and another is home. The Third Place used to be a gathering place where all classes could mingle and get to know each other. In my own life it was the neighborhood tavern. My father was in the Juke Box business when I was a child and he spent quite a bit of time in taverns as that was where his business was. Two taverns that I remember quite well were owned by good friends of my father’s. One served as an answering service for service calls from other taverns. Both were neighborhood places which had many customers from nearly all classes. The very rich tended not to be there but I remember quite successful businessmen and their wives who attended parties and barbecues. The tavern would have softball teams for younger customers. One of them had a private ball field across the street that was owned by the tavern owner.

The other tavern was not far away and among its regular customers were a wealthy heiress and her husband who had been a professional golfer. Every Sunday after Mass, there was a group that would always congregate there for an hour or two before going home. Most of the regulars did not visit each other at home, but did their socializing at the tavern.

When I was a medical student, we visited New York City in August 1965 and the friends whose apartment where we stayed, were regular customers of the local tavern. One our one visit to the tavern, the friend pointed out all the men there without women. The wives and children were all at the “shore” for the hot month of August.

The VFW and the Elks Club and Fraternal Order of Moose served the same purpose for many. My father was an Elk. There is a scene in the Clint Eastwood movie, “Gran Torino” that shows him socializing with the friends at the VFW. (Has it been the years since that movie ?)

Those third places are pretty much gone. The country club and even the yacht club, where I spent a lot of time socializing, are not the same. There is an economic issue although yacht clubs are full of crew members who are not members of the club but are welcome.

The divisiveness and tribalism we see in the elections and in the national politics are probably consequences of the lack such mixing bowls of democracy.

Books I’m reading

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I read four or five books at a time. I have one in each room of the house. The Kindle is for the bedroom and reading in bed. That one was “Ship of Fools” by Tucker Carlson.

That is very good but got me depressed a bit. The best review on Amazon was:

Don’t drink wine and read this book, you’ll get angry and make posts on social media that are completely accurate and your friends will hate you.

I feel pretty much like that.

I’ve been reading “Militant Normals” by Kurt Schlicter. It is less depressing and quite good.

Then there is the audio in the car which is now, “Revolt of the Elites” by Christopher Lasch. It was written in 2016 and published in 2017 so has nothing so far about Trump.

Today, I finished “Citizen Soldiers” by Stephen Ambrose which describes the war from Normandy to the end. It’s not just a narrative of the war but has chapters on POWs and about crooks and deserters. There was a lot of “Combat Fatigue” which got Patton into trouble. It was best treated close to the front and 90% of the soldiers returned to their units or at least went back to some job.

I am also reading a couple of books on the back patio, one of which is “The Sleepwalkers” which is about the advent of World War I, and it will be 100 years since the Armistice in two weeks.

The other books is, “Vatican” by Malachi Martin, which I read years ago but am rereading it. I am stimulated to read it by the antics of Pope Francis who seems to be the leftist Pope Martin warned about.

The Trump Russia Collusion story explained.

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The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 was a catastrophic event for a segment of the US government. It had been assumed by the entire “Ruling Class” that Hillary Clinton would, at last, be elected president. Books have been written about her reaction to the loss. One was titled, “Shattered” and recounted her reaction. A pretty good analysis in this Amazon book review.

To be fair to the authors, they lay the blame for her loss squarely on her. They sort of feel bad about it but their close access makes it obvious to them and they are objective enough to report it. The other main person held responsible is campaign manager Robby Mooks, who is so enamored with ‘analytics’ that he can’t see the forest for the trees. The canary in the coal mine is Bill Clinton, who senses that his wife and her campaign are not connecting with the white working class, but is ignored by the team who consider him washed-up and out of date.

What happened after she lost ? The Russia Collusion story was concocted.

Here is an analysis of How it began and why.

It turned out, however, that the dossier was a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project, the main allegations of which were based on third-hand hearsay from anonymous Russian sources. Worse, though the allegations could not be verified, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used them to obtain surveillance warrants against Page, in violation of their own guidelines against presenting unverified information to the FISA court. Worse still, the Obama Justice Department withheld from the FISA court the facts that the Clinton campaign was behind the dossier and that Steele had been booted from the investigation for lying to the FBI.

Now, more analysis is coming from Sharyl Attkisson.

Taken together in context, the evidence points to two important findings. First, U.S. government insiders, colluding with numerous foreign citizens and governments, conspired to interfere in the 2016 election. Second, after the election, these figures conspired to undermine, oust, and perhaps even frame Trump and some of his associates.

The methods used, according to factual accounts and witnesses, include collusion with reporters and politicians, leaks to the press, and paid political-opposition research. Officials in the intelligence community were involved in the effort, which included the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), domestic and foreign informants or spies, and electronic surveillance.

Both articles are worth reading in full. The fact that other diversions are appearing, like the hoax bomb story, suggests that the Democrats know the Mueller “investigation” is going to be ended soon with a dud.

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