Elections

Trump Clinches the GOP Nomination

by

Donald J. Trump has now clinched the GOP nomination, with 1,237 delegates committed to voting for him on the first ballot at the GOP Convention. It was a scant few months ago when this idea was literally laughable to most supposedly knowledgeable persons.

Congratulations to Mr. Trump. Now, to rally as much of the GOP as possible for the upcoming election. Then, onward to the great American voting public, to defeat Hillary Clinton. And then, if Fortune continues to smile upon his efforts, we shall see whether Mr. Trump can pull off the YUGEST deal of his career, and can Make America Great Again.

I have always supported the GOP nominee, and this year is no exception. Trump defeated the other sixteen candidates in fair combat, though it was ugly at times.

Stopping Hillary Clinton is so important that the proverbial man-shaped cardboard cutout with “GOP” scrawled on it in Sharpie marker would get my vote. I cannot fathom the continuing quibbling by purported Republicans and Conservatives, given the stakes, and the destruction a Clinton presidency would inflict. Defeating her TRUMPS all other considerations. Trump is the chosen means to that necessary end. So be it. Let us go forward together. #NeverHillary

Beyond being not-Hillary, Trump is a wildcard. Much of what he has published, and says he wants to do, is good. As I wrote elsewhere, there is plenty of material to find common ground with the legacy GOP and its leaders. The list of proposed Supreme Court justices he recently published is very good. So, there are things to like about Mr. Trump, as well as some things not to like so much. But this election, like all American Presidential elections is a simple, binary decision. There is no imaginary third option, as some people seem to wish. It is Trump or Clinton, period, end of report.

And Trump is clearly preferable to Clinton.

Congratulations and good luck to Mr. Trump, and God bless America.

GOP Elephant #MAGA

Quote of the Day

by

Where are the law journal articles and op-ed’s on the potential legal consequences of Clinton’s legal jeopardy? Where? HJLPP? WSJ?

–Seth Barrett Tillman on Twitter

State Department IG’s Report: Fallout

by

Hillary2016

What now for Hillary? Was the IG’s report  just the precursor  to  the FBI’s hammer dropping?

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4911270408001/napolitano-audit-faulting-clinton-on-emails-is-huge

Judge Napolitano:

I think it’s huge. It goes to the heart, it disputes the heart, of Mrs Clinton’s defense.

…

She knowingly and willfully violated her own State Department requirements that she put in place for all other employees…

…

She diverted 100% – one hundred percent! – of all digital traffic coming to her through her home server… She was also harshly criticized for keeping some of the email traffic from the State Department, which to this day she believes she wiped clean – I happen to believe the FBI found what she believes she wiped clean…

…

As we speak, our colleague Katherine Herridge is in a federal courtroom in Alexandria Virginia listening to this Romanian hacker tell a  federal judge about the deal his lawyers cut with the Justice Department. The quid pro quo is: ‘Don’t send me to jail for a long time and I’ll tell you – I’ll tell a jury! – how easy it was for hackers in Europe to get in to Mrs Clinton’s emails.

Why was the report released now? Has the DNC decided Hillary cannot beat Trump and decided to throw her under the bus? If so, who’s up to replace her? Biden-Warren? Sanders? And will Debbie Wasserman-Schultz get the boot too?

Presidential Poll Snapshot

by

Statistically, we have a tie. The trends tell a different story.

PollSnapshot

Part of this is explainable by who’s getting criticized the most. Trump is the Republican nominee so he is no longer taking much flak from the right. Clinton, on the other hand, is still locked in battle with Sanders, who is only now, a the campaign becomes bitter, calling the DNC selection process rigged (it seems to be) and questioning Hillary’s competence and honesty (she has neither). Trump has also begun hammering Hillary and prefaces all his references to her with terms like ‘crooked’ and ‘corrupt’, which, amusingly,  is trending the hashtag #CrookedHillary. What a difference a few months makes in politics. And we still have six months to go.

What Trump needs to do is go scorched earth. Lay out her history of destroying the women abused, molested and raped by her husband in order to protect her power and income  and call out her as the vicious hypocrite she really is. And keep calling her out. Lay out her history of incompetence and ask the country if we can tolerate that incompetence in the Executive Mansion. Call out her long history of ethics violations and her never ending embroilment in scandals. Hammer her down like it’s the most important battle facing America. Because it is.

Will Trump win this thing? What is the best strategy?

The London Mayoral election (oh and the Assembly, too)

by

Does anyone on the other side of the Pond care about the Greater London Authority (GLA) elections that we have just had? Actually, not that many people care on this side of the Pond either and even in London the turn-out, much trumpeted by the media as being spectacularly high, was merely 45.30%, exactly the same as it was in 2008 when Boris Johnson was first elected to be Mayor. As I explained some years ago, the Mayor of London is not the same as the Lord Mayor, a position of many centuries’ standing in the City. So, more than half of London’s electorate did not bother to vote, possibly because the Mayor does not have a great deal of power and the Assembly has none or possibly because all the candidates were paralyzingly dull.

Nevertheless, Sadiq Khan’s election is a significant event in British political history: we have had Muslims in Parliament and even one or two in the Cabinet (the Conservative one, naturally); there are many Muslims in local councils and that tale has not been particularly happy. But this is the first time a supposedly practising Muslim has been elected to a reasonably high position.

The excitement about him getting the highest number of direct votes of any British politician in British history is humbug. There are no other places as large as London where direct votes are cast in our system. Altogether Sadiq Khan got 1,310,143 votes; in 2008, with the same turn-out, Boris Johnson got 1,168,738 votes, undoubtedly the highest number at the time of what any British politician had got in a direct vote. I do not recall anybody mentioning this.

I wrote a blog on the subject and some of CBz readers might be interested in reading it.