In the end, he just “cannot help himself,” – a final assessment of Obama

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Psychology of Obama and tagged , , , , , , , , .

With less than a month of Obama administration left, it would be a mistake to assume that no further consequential activities by the White House will occur out of respect for the incoming administration, even if the President and his family are at their usual Christmas vacation in Hawaii, symbolically within the U.S. at the, likely, farthest territorial spot from Washington, DC.

The last two weeks have, indeed, been telling, with the Obama administration utilizing an obscure law from the 1950s to declare huge swaths of coastal areas off limits for oil and gas explorations, knowing full well that the incoming Trump administration will do everything possible to reverse this decision. Showing, despite all assertions to the contrary, the finger to his successor even more blatantly, was his government’s non-action (i.e., abstention) in the U.N. Security Council vote that condemned Israel’s settlement policies and, for all practical purposes mandated that Israel return all occupied territories to the Palestinians without receiving anything of substance in return to secure the country. The decision to abstain, and allow the absurd condemnation of the only democracy in the Middle East at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are being murdered next door in Syria (with active participation of permanent Security Council member Russia, and millions have become refugees without U.N. Security Council interventions, not only reflects a momentous change in 40 years of U.S. government policy over Democrat as well as Republican administrations but is also very telling about Obama’s character.

Over the last few years, we here at The Canary, have repeatedly attempted to described who, behind his widely acclaimed façade of reserved “coolness,” Obama is. In doing so, we studied his upbringing under the old Jesuit believe that strong influences in their “youth,” ultimately, make the adult man or woman. We, thus, followed the young Barry Obama through religious Muslim schooling in Indonesia, his return to Hawaii, where under truly radical Marxist tutelage (for details, please revisit our 2015 blogs) he graduated high school and went on into a radical leftist environment at Occidental College in California, only to transfer to Columbia University in New York City and later attending law school at Harvard University, throughout, though, remaining within a cocoon of radical Marxist colleagues and teachers, intermingled with Afrocentric radicals and friends from the Muslim world. From the Canary, this is a final assessment of Obama.

Simply based on his biography, we therefore, concluded a long time ago that Obama had to be viewed as sympathetic to Third World anti-imperialism, classical Marxist dialectics and would, likely, be hostile to the idea of Zionism and, therefore, the State of Israel. To expand on the latter, we furthermore concluded that his decades-long extremely close relationship with the Pastor Jeremiah Wright, a virulent Afrocentric Anti-Semite of no lesser proportion than the Nation of Islam Leader, Reverend Louis Farrakhan, Jr., located just a few blocks away from Wright’s church on Chicago’s South Side.

It was over nine years ago that, then first-term Senator (from Illinois) Barack Hussein Obama decided to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination for president. Reviewing Obama’s political evolution in his explosive career from that early starting point, is not only fascinating but also highly revealing because it demonstrates an intelligent and determined individual and unscrupulously masterful politician, willing to use anything and anybody to achieve his goals.

When it came to Afrocentricity, Anti-White rhetoric and Anti-Semitism, Pastor Wright’s church was since its inception known as the Christian counterpart to Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam Headquarters on Chicago’s South Side. Both religious leaders, preached in each other’s religious facilities, and both did not mince words in their sermons, when it came down to the wickedness of Whites, and especially Jews. And, yet, Wright’s church remained Obama’s and his family’s religious home until Wright’s sermons became public knowledge, and threatened to derail Obama’s chances against Hillary Clinton in 2008. Likely even more importantly, however, his association with Wright threatened the backbone of his financial support, which primarily came from two wealthy Jewish family dynasties in Chicago, The Pritzkers and Crowns.

Though they practically considered each other family, Obama, overnight, distanced himself from Pastor Wright, who over all eight years of the Obama Presidency has remained invisible, – and the Jewish money continued flowing (Penny Pritzker also became Secretary of Commerce in Obama’s second administration). Attending an obviously Afrocentric, Anti-White and obviously Anti-Semitic church and developing a close relationship with its pastor, can be a potentially useful strategy for an African American politician building a political career within the African American community, which has become more Afrocentric and Anti-Semitic. But doing that, and at the same time catering to White Jewish Chicago Gold Coast Liberals is, of course, politically ingenious, – if it can be pulled off. And Barack Hussein Obama was the one politician who could pull off this feat, and he could even do it with his Muslim middle name.

This, however, did not mean that, once elected, he would feel an obligation “to give back.: This is, indeed, one of the most surprising of Obama’s character traits: he never felt that he owed anybody for their support; he simply thought he deserved support, whether financial during campaigns or politically, once elected. His narcissism, simply, did not allow him the understanding that people who helped, at least, wanted to hear a “thank you.” Yet, when politically opportune, he would have no hesitation in “rewarding” those who he needed. So, while attempting to develop Obamacare, he was willing to sacrifice even some of the most important principles to “buy off” those groups that had conspired against earlier attempts at building a national health care system under the first Clinton administration (”Hillary care”), including medical insurances, hospital organizations and drug companies.

Following his Marxist education during his youth, later amplified by Saul Alinsky’s “Twelve Rules of Radicals,” Obama never forgot that an important goal warrants all possible means. This became very apparent when major laws, like Obamacare or the rescue legislation for the U.S. car industry, were passed without even a single Republican vote, and when, later in his second administration, after the Democrats lost the House and Senate, he started an unprecedented rule by executive orders and, like in the Iran deal, circumvented the need for Congressional approval by other means. Since the goals warrant the means in Marxist dialectic, these authoritarian actions taken by Obama should not surprise, and more can be expected.

What we can expect in the next three weeks, is difficult to predict. But we only recently noted our suspicion that President Obama will offer generous pardons to a surprisingly large group of people in his administration to prevent further investigations under the Trump administration. And, despite severe criticism not only form Republican but also from leading (though, interestingly, only Jewish) Democratic politicians, we would also not be surprised if further anti-Israeli activities would occur. After all, eight years of Obama administration have very clearly demonstrated that, while Obama may not be the obvious Anti-Semite, Pastor Wright or Reverend Farrakhan are, he, most certainly, has never been and never will be a friend of Israel.

Knowing his background as the child of a Muslim father, his youth in a Muslim school system in Indonesia, his Muslim friends in college, his close friendship with the official representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasser Arafat in later years, and his close emotional association with the third world and the radical left, which both view Israel as a Colonial power usurping legitimate Palestinian rights, one can really not blame him for being more sympathetic to the Arab world. After all, we all have our biases!

What is, however, worrisome is the impression that arises from Obama’s recent activities that, now unimpeded by political considerations (i.e., elections, fund raising needs, etc.), he is free to pursue his most extreme ambitions without fear of reprisals. And as president of the U.S. that gives him almost unlimited power until January 21, 2017, which is a quite concerning thought, considering the potential damage that can be done to this country and the world in the dangerous times we are living in.

 

Why all we hear about Russia is really about “drain the swamp”

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Elections and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Josh Earnest, President Obama’s Press Secretary was anything but earnest, when in official function and from the podium of a press briefing in the White House he, for all practical purposes, accused President Elect Trump of willfully ignoring the Russian interference in the presidential elections and, indeed, encouraging it. Doubling down on his comments the next day, he not only claimed that Trump “knew of the Russian interference” but also was fully aware that these Russian activities “hurt Secretary Clinton’s campaign” and by implication, therefore, helped his own election “by encouraging Russia to hack his opponent.”

Describing his statement as an “indisputable fact,” while referring to a very obvious joke Trump made on the campaign trail when commenting on the 35,000 e-mails Hillary Clinton had made disappear by ordering their professionally erasing, a last line of decency was crossed in the rapidly deteriorating political relationship between the country’s two main political parties.

Though in this election cycle almost nothing surprises any longer, the evolving hypocrisy in how the Democrat party establishment, now apparently including President Obama’s White House, is handling the November election losses (and not only in the presidential race), is disturbing. Instead of analyzing what lead to the disastrous performance of the Clinton campaign, the party, as we outlined just a few days ago, with increasing vengeance has been propagating a typical “Dolchstoßlegende,” which can have only one purpose, – the delegitimization of Donald J Trump as the incoming 45th President of the United States.

One, therefore, has to ask what, likely, motivates such behavior, especially since Trump, after an obviously aggressively fought presidential election campaign, has been surprisingly accommodating. He, after all, was willing to forgive excesses of his opponents, including those of Hillary Clinton, practically, offering her legal amnesty. Superficially, President Obama and President Elect Trump also appeared to have found political detent, – at least until Josh Earnest’s comments suggested otherwise. And that President Obama allowed their reaffirmation, sends the very clear message that Trump better get ready for more proactive opposition to the promised smooth transition from the current White House and, possibly, outright warfare.

Here at The Canary we are not surprised by these developments. We, indeed, were caught somewhat off guard by Obama’s initially very accommodating comments following his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. While such behavior is what one would expect from any sitting president, it did not match our psychological profile of President Obama. As our very detailed series of biographical articles on Obama documented, we from the very beginning saw him as a highly partisan, Afro-centric third-world Marxist ideolog, more in line with the highly malignant personal attacks (for a sitting president) he unleashed against Trump during the later stages of the Clinton campaign, when serving as her principal surrogate. History proved us correct, we believe, and there is really no reason to assume that his personality has or would change in his last few weeks in office.

We, indeed, predict that in these last few weeks in power, President Obama will do everything possible, overtly and covertly, to subvert Trump’s successful ascendance to the presidency, and not only for political and/or ideological reasons. Much more is at stake, as we also noted a number of months ago in these pages, in trying to understand why the Obamas, suddenly, so vehemently embraced Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, even though many reliable sources had let it be known that there was no love lost between Obamas and Clintons.

We suspect that a principal reason why Obama and the Democrat Party are striving to delegitimize President Elect Trump as much as possible, is the still existing threat to the Obama administration from Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp.” As we also previously noted in these pages, considering the extreme partisanship of Obama’s Justice Department under two Attorney Generals, the swamp two Obama administrations are leaving behind is deeper, smellier and more contaminated by fraud and other crimes than anything seen in recent memory (including the notorious second Nixon administration). We, therefore, would not be surprised if Obama “in the national interest” proactively pardoned Hillary Clinton and a whole coattails of other members of his administration under the offered rational “that they, otherwise, would be subject to unfair prosecution by an illegitimate President.”

The more delegitimized Trump can be made to appear prior to assuming his presidency, the more credible will these pardons appear, especially if presented by public unions and the overwhelmingly liberal media as the rescue of well-meaning public servants from the venomous ire of a vicious and illegitimate president.

President Obama cannot permit such prosecutions even to be initiated since, not only would they negatively affect his legacy, but, once a first dam brakes, the waters threaten to wash away much more than that downstream. It would become quickly apparent how politicized the Justice Department had become under Obama, how much under direct White House orders FBI and CIA civilian and military analyses were dictated by political expedience, and how much obstruction of justice took place at the FBI and at Justice, itself, at the IRS and at other government agencies, like the Veterans Administration and the State Department (remember, we still don’t know where President Obama was during the hours of the Benghazi crisis when Hillary was “in charge”). And since nobody knows more about all of these hidden skeletons than Hillary Clinton, nobody’s legal protection is of more importance for President Obama than Hillary’s. Unless she (and the Clinton Foundation) feel protected, everybody in the Obama administration will be at legal risk, and everybody in the Obama administration knows that.

On the other side of the equation, this makes really “drain the swamp” absolutely essential for the upcoming Trump administration. Not doing so, would not only lose significant credibility for the Trump agenda but would remove the fear factor from dealing with Trump. Successful political leaders are not only loved but also feared by many, – not different from what happens in foreign policy!

The Canary

The Democrat’s Dolchstoßlegende – A Post-WWI conspiracy & Russia’s email hacking

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After their defeat in WW1, Germany developed in the fall of 1918 a conspiracy theory, trying to explain the devastating loss of their seemingly unbeatable military, which presumed that their war efforts had been undermined by secretive domestic forces. In the German language it was called the Dolchstoßlegende or the Stab-in-the back Myth. Historians agree that this legend greatly destabilized the Weimar Republic, and contributed to the rise of National Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.

We are now witnessing as similar onslaught of conspiracy theories developing among the political left, trying to explain the devastating loss of the Democrat Party in the November elections. Among the many legends trying to whitewash the party’s totally unexpected defeat, none comes closer to the German legend than the accusation that Trump won the election only because the Russian Government actively interfered with the election process to secure his win.

None is also more dangerous to the democratic process in this country, – though not for the reasons most media want us to believe. It, of course, matters greatly whether the Russian government attempted to influence the democratic election process, and it even matters more to determine whether any such attempt had at its goal the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the win of Donald Trump. And it, of course, also matters whether the Russian government succeeded in these efforts in any way. This is, however, not why the Democrat Party has stopped talking about FBI Director James Comey, the internal divisions and scandals revealed by WikiLeaks’s e-mail disclosures and the party’s colossal strategic and analytical failures during the campaign.

The reasons why Democrats and the extreme left are concentrating on the Russian legend as an explanation for the lost election are obvious. First, it absolves the candidate and the leadership of the party from responsibility. But even more importantly, like the Dolchstoßlegende in Germany, this conspiracy theory has the potential of establishing a populist counter-movement to “Trumpism” because who would not be opposed to the Russian Bear determining the outcome of U.S. elections? Most importantly, however, it offers a great opportunity to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency from the get-go, especially since his quick rise in popularity after the election, and the complete collapse of the Democrat’s party leadership circle, offers a unique opportunity for Donald Trump to become one of the most powerful transformative post-WWII presidents, with potential decades-long impact on the direction of the country.

The Canary, of course, has no inside knowledge on whether the Russian government, indeed, was involved in WikiLeaks’s disclosures about all the monkey business at the Democratic Party headquarters. If leaks from the intelligence community are correct, then the Russians, likely, were involved. But those same leaks also claimed that there was no evidence that these leaks influenced the outcome of the election unless, of course, we want to assume that the public being made aware of all the lying and deceit, the manipulation of the Democratic Party’s primary election process, internal concerns about Hillary’s truthfulness in the campaign and other interesting vignettes influenced the electorate. And would anybody really argue that making the electorate aware of truth is condemnable, unrelated to whoever does it? We don’t think so! If that were the case, then the U.S. government would have been condemnable forever, since this country prides itself on broadcasting the truth into countries, and on supporting dissident groups all over the world, if we believe they are not privy to such truth from their own governments.

Obviously, illegal hacking is condemnable but we live in a world where adults, and especially those in politics and the government, should know that, unless they take appropriate precautionary defensive steps to protect their electronic communications, they will be vulnerable.

Which really raises the most interesting question of all: Let’s assume for a moment that the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and, maybe all of them and, possibly, even a few more nation states, indeed, hacked into Democratic Party Headquarter e-mails. Who is then really responsible for the resulting damages?

This, of course, is a most relevant question, especially considering that Hillary Clinton’s by now notoriously infamous e-mail server, which according to FBI sources was hacked by at least five nation states, was so central to the failure of her campaign. We already noted above that, in principle, we all are the shepherds of our own confidential communications. But it is also important to note that, until only a relative few years ago, we never heard about hackings of major businesses and government offices. This, of course, does not mean that hacks did not occur; but it, certainly, did not happen at the current pace and with the same ease.

Something, therefore, happened to our nation’s cybersecurity over the last few years. After almost eight years of uninterrupted Democratic control of government during two Obama administrations, it, therefore, has become abundantly clear that the nation’s cybersecurity is yet another major area of national security where the administration has been caught sleeping at the wheel.

It, therefore, is truly remarkable that the Democrats now are developing their own Dolchstoßlegende about Russian government hackers being responsible for Hillary’s loss and Donald Trump’s election. Even if that were true, the Democrats have only themselves to blame that this could happen. Were it not for their administrative incompetence over the last eight years, it should not, it would not have happened. So here is one more thing to thank President Obama for on his way into retirement, together with Obamacare, the Iran deal, the gutting of the military, and so much more.

If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable!

The Canary

We told you so! What’s next in Trump’s first 100 days

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The presidential election is finally over, and Trump won “to everybody’s surprise,” – except, of course, for The Canary, who predicted this outcome in these pages. Correctly perceiving the mood of the country, allowed this blog to be so uniquely accurate in foreshadowing various aspects of the election outcome, while practically all other media convinced themselves of a Clinton victory. We not only predicted Trump’s victory but also correctly noted that almost all major opinion polls missed approximately four to five percentage points of undeclared Trump voters. Only the Los Angeles Times poll in our opinion correctly assessed Trump’s chances by following the same group of people longitudinally, rather than querying in every poll a new group of individuals, as all other organizations did. Promptly, this poll persistently reported Trump a few points ahead of Hillary Clinton, and, on election day, as we had predicted, turned out to be most precise.

It has been revealing to observe excuses from TV networks and major print media for “getting it all wrong.” Like after the last U.K election and Brexit, and the 2012 U.S. elections, pollsters were presented as the main culprits for mistaken outcome predictions. Astonishing is, however, the almost complete absence of self-critique in the media (Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times being a laudable exception), considering abandoned pretexts for any form of objectivity by the media during this election cycle. Practically without exception reporting on the inevitability of a Clinton victory, the media to previously unseen degrees revealed their political biases but also the echo-chambers they are living in. Simply too lazy to pursue independent research, the third estate has become one gigantic liberal propaganda machine, so convinced of the truth of its message that truth of facts no longer matters.

We, thus, in this election season witnessed the total collapse of objective reporting and analysis and, therefore, of traditional journalism. No wonder Trump succeeded despite almost uniform, at times vicious, opposition from most media. Nobody any longer believes what one hears on TV or reads in the newspaper.

So, where are we going from here?

After the election had been decided, everybody, including Trump, Clinton and even President Obama, in good U.S. tradition called for unity and cooperation between winners and losers; but that is easier said than done. Trump now faces a multitude of crucially important decisions, with little time to make them. A still unusually small pool of senior advisers and limited transition efforts so far, limited control over some traditional Republican Party leaders, and now a split Democratic Party don’t make things easier. Also it appears unlikely that Trump will get much of a honeymoon from the opposition and most of the media. Listening to how CNN, for examples, covers the anti-Trump demonstrations all around the country, mostly, as openly acknowledged, organized by MoveOn.org (a propaganda arm associated with the Democratic Party), clearly demonstrates that the major national media organizations will continue unabated in their Trump-bashing. Time, therefore, is short, and important decisions will have to be made quickly.

Those involve not only the traditional transition process between administrations and the selection of his administration’s leadership. Even more importantly, Trump needs to set priorities for which topics he wishes to address in his first 100 days in office. The (during the election campaign) published list of items is too long to be realistic. What he decides to tackle in those first 100 days will, likely, represent most of his agenda for the first two years. Based on historical precedents, those two years offer his best chances of passing major legislative changes because in mid-term elections the ruling party usually loses seats, not infrequently changing majorities in House and/or Senate.

Having at least theoretical (party) control of both houses for the next two years offers great opportunities for Trump. The first Obama administration, however, well demonstrated how such an opportunity can be squandered: By concentrating almost exclusively on Obamacare, a highly divisive issue, President Obama missed the opportunity to pass many other important initiatives and laws. Moreover, because Obamacare was pushed through Congress without even a single Republican vote, it caused a highly divisive and contentious working relationship with the Republican opposition for the rest of both of his administrations. Though strongly obliged to pass the agenda he promised, Trump would be well advised to learn from President Obama’s mistakes, and pursue maximal efforts not to lose his congressional majorities in the next mid-term elections in two years, which means that he has to be able show significant progress in as many as possible critical areas within 18 to 24 months after inauguration.

In every campaign more promises are made than can ever be kept but not all promises are equal. Some are “principal,” while others, based on surrounding circumstances, have to be viewed as “conditional.” For example, any major reform of Obamacare should be viewed as “conditional” because, whatever the solution, it will be complex and should include at least some participation of the opposition party. Similar considerations also apply to the promised repeal of Obama’s Iran deal. Spending too much limited available time in the first 100 days on such issues, therefore, would only repeat Obama’s mistake. The issues that should be tackled are those of great importance, yet with quick solutions, either because they address bipartisan issues or because they can be quickly resolved. A good example is changes in tax laws, which would induce repatriation of trillions of corporate funds from overseas. As promised, items like Obamacare and the Iran deal, therefore, should be at the top of Trump’s to-do list but not at the very top. “Conditional” promises require careful deliberations and “best” solutions, which takes time.

“Draining the swamp” was a popular promise Trump made, referring to term-limits and government corruption. We consider this an essential promise to the public because it would demonstrate a real break with the way how Washington’s “new (government) aristocracy” (which we in detail defined in a prior blog) has been doing business. This was a principal target of the electorate’s anger in the election of Trump. Pursuing government corruption aggressively, though fairly, wherever it will lead, is, therefore, in our opinion an absolutely essential effort, though should also be pursued deliberately and not necessarily play a major role in Trump’s first 100 days.

An administration that can demonstrate satisfactory progress at mid-term elections then will have the opportunity to ask the electorate for continuous control of both houses, and may even receive it. To maintain such control for another two years, therefore, requires astute time management in the first two years of the administration but is absolutely essential if Trump wants to become a consequential president in one term, which at age 70 must be on his mind.

The Canary

Trump’s vow to end mutual absolution between parties threatens Democrats

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Following the FBI’s resurrection of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail affair, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, less than a week before the presidential election, faces the previously almost inconceivable possibility of a Trump victory and, therefore, of a Trump presidency. This appears particularly ironic because during the Republican primaries, the Clinton team had literally prayed for the opportunity to run against Trump. Since they considered Trump the weakest Republican opponent, they, indeed, actively encouraged their media minions to favor Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination.

But once he won, something rather unexpected happened: True to his claim of being a political outsider, Trump broke with an unwritten rule that Republicans and Democrats historically had abided by. Under that understanding, administrations of both parties basically guaranteed implied amnesties for legal breaches to outgoing administrations. The best recent example for this implied agreement was the failure of the Bush Junior administration to pursue any of a number of potential criminal claims against members of the Clinton administration. In other words, any administration that made it through its term without being indicted, was basically assured of no further legal consequences.

The knowledge that one just had to survive till the end of an administration, has been at the core of quantitative and qualitative increases in government corruption this country has witnessed in recent decades, and nobody has been better in “surviving” than the last two Democratic administrations of Presidents Clinton and Obama.

It should not surprise that the years of the two Obama administrations, initiated with the promise of being the “most transparent ever,” turned out to be the least transparent ever (at least since the Nixon administration), and certainly the most corrupt. Combining the intimidating Chicago school of political corruption (which trained Obama) with the finesse of survival, developed to by the Democrats under the two prior Clinton administrations, resulted in the most egregious chain of corruption scandals the country has ever witnessed, from “Fast and Furious” to the IRS scandal, outright bribery to pass Obamacare, the Veterans Administration Scandal, corruption of State and Defense Departments in the Benghazi scandal, and unprecedented corruption of State Department and Justice in Hillary’s e-mail scandal. Never before has the Justice Department been as politicized as under Holder and, now, Loretta Lynch (Bill Clinton’s secrete date at an airport tarmac in Arizona).

Even the President, usually protected by multiple layers of deniability, has been implicated in repeatedly lying to the public in reference to Obamacare, the Benghazi affair and in his knowledge about Hillary’s e-mail server. How far the dirt in this White House reaches toward the skies was recently revealed when Bob Creamer, Founder of Democratic Partners, was revealed to the public by Project Veritas Action as a “dirty trickster” for the Democratic Party. Most remarkable about the whole story was, however, that the media almost unreported the fact that he had visited the White House over 350-times during both Obama administrations, – more frequently, indeed, than likely any other person in the country who was not employed at the White House. He, quite obviously, received his instruction directly out of the White House!

In no administration in recent memory have government employees without any consequences taken their Fifth Amendment rights as often as under Obama. After all, they had just to delay the legal process until the end of the administration, and all would be forgotten.

And then Trump in the second debate with Hillary Clinton, suddenly, made it clear that he had no intention of continuing this policy of mutual absolution between the two parties, should he be elected president. When he announced that he would ask his Attorney General to immediately appoint a special prosecutor to pursue “the truth” in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server and the Clinton Foundation, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, understood that circumstances had changed and that, should Trump win the presidency, they all may be subject to prosecution for illegal activities during the two Obama administrations. This, of course, made a Clinton win appear even that more urgent!

That six days before the election Trump has in national opinion polls pulled even with Clinton, therefore, set off alarm bells among the Democratic elites. The election, suddenly, has become an existential fight for survival, far exceeding the traditional conflict for power and the spoils of power.

We, therefore, can expect Clintonians and Democratic party, in cahoots with a majority of major media, in the last few days before the election to initiate a political bloodbath in attempts to derail Donald Trump. The election no longer is about who gains or retains the privileges of power but, as Trump stated, who goes to jail.

The Canary

 

The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

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The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

So here we are, barely three weeks from what, likely, will be the most consequential presidential election since WWII, and the descent into gutter politics by the campaigns of both major contenders has hit unprecedented lows. Both candidates are disliked by a majority of the public and their approval ratings in public opinion polls are unprecedentedly low.

As the Clinton campaign and the overwhelmingly liberal press that supports Clinton’s candidacy with unprecedented fervor suggest, Donald Trump has gone from just being a relatively benign BS artist (as we discussed in a prior communication) to being a disgusting sexual predator. Such attacks in at least recent election campaigns are unprecedented, and them coming from the Clinton camp can only be characterized as amazing political “chutzpah.” Yet, we are witnessing an, indeed, unprecedented presidential election campaign, which will not only rewrite standard campaign strategies but may also lead to unprecedented political consequences for party politics and even the two-party system, which has provided political stability for the country for so long.

Hillary, based on WikiLeaks, has again and again been exposed as what she already for decades has been known to be, – a conniving pathological liar, self-serving, unprincipled and ready to say and do anything to achieve power. How much she, indeed, strives for this power, and how much she is willing to sacrifice in the process became shockingly apparent when, after fainting at a public event, she refused to be taken to a hospital for fear that this could impede her election chances. Which person of sane mind would behave that way, – rather taking the chance of significant bodily harm than the risk negatively affecting her campaign for president?

At least subconsciously the public understands how sick a mind must be driving Hillary. Otherwise, it is unexplainable that she has not already “run away” with this election, considering Trump’s at times truly bizarre behavior and her enormous fund raising advantage. Her razor thin advantage in national poles is, in addition, likely exaggerated by biased media reports and, more importantly, by a Brexit-like effect on polling that, likely, underestimates Trump’s electoral following by four to five percentage points.

The, likely, most interesting opinion on this race came from David Gelernter, one of the country’s most original geniuses (and past victim of the Unabomber, whose explosive device, sent through the mail, mangled one of his hands). An artist, writer and professor of computer science at Yale University, he recently published in the Wall Street Journal an article, titled

“Trump and the Emasculated Voter” (October 15-16, 2016). Though also a Contributing Editor at the conservative Weekly Standard, which in its editorial policy strongly opposes Trump, he concluded that “there’s only one way to protect the nation from Hillary Clinton, and that is to vote for Donald Trump.”

And the reasons(s) why the nation needs to be protected from Hillary?

Gelernter astutely notes that over the last few decades the people’s opinions have grown increasingly irrelevant to the political class (whether Democratic or Republicans, though at greatly accelerated pace during the two Obama administrations). He offers examples when asking since when the American public, for example, endorsed affirmative action that has become integrated in our lives in schools and at work. Or since when did the American public accept the fact that men and women should have equal responsibilities in combat in the military. He poignantly asks why are women now in combat in the military but not allowed to play football in the NFL, and reaches the very troubling, though absolutely correct conclusion that we are led by a political class that takes football more seriously than the military.

The larger theme behind these examples is the rapidly increasing encroachment of political correctness, dictated by a political and judicial elite in cahoots with national media, liberal universities and an uber-liberal entertainment industry, telling the American public what can or cannot be said in schools, on campus and at work, who we have to share bathrooms with and, ultimately, how we have to think. Reading some of the ideas behind “safe-zones” in colleges, one is reminded of Communist reeducation camps. One is also reminded of Communism and other dictatorships when our children in college tell us that they cannot express their opinion freely to many of their professors because they would be downgraded if they did not agree with politically correct opinions, like affirmative action, safe spaces, black lives mater, Israel as an Apartheid state, global warming, open borders and others.

Gelernter describes the feeling like that of “encroaching numbness.,” and the American public has, simply, had it with being told how to talk, how to behave and especially how to think. This is where Trump’s popularity stems from, and why accusations against him have been largely ineffective. He is perceived as the only politician who does not play the “political correctness game,” and says it how he sees it. The more outlandish an accusation, the stronger the public, consciously or subconsciously, therefore, will perceive him as unfairly attacked by political correctness. This is also the reason why we here at The Canary believe that Trump under-polls by four to five points.

The third Trump Clinton debate will be important. If Trump manages as similar performance as in the second debate and after that, until November 8, does not self-destruct, we predict that the American public, contrary to what most media want us to believe, will elect Donald Trump as the next president. Using a static pool of representative voters who get interviewed serially, the Los Angeles Times poll is the only one, which has had Trump persistently ahead of Clinton. Considering the unprecedented nature of this upcoming election, we believe that this polling structure is superior to standard polling methods.

President Donald Trump is, as we previously noted in an earlier communication, undoubtedly a risky choice. But, as Gelernter, we also believe that, as of this point, he is the only choice that can protect the nation from Hillary. And nothing is more important than that!

What do Bill & Hillary Clinton have on Obama?

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Psychology of Obama and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , .
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Something peculiar is going on in the Obama – Clinton relationship, and The Canary is not the only one wondering what that is. As based on multiple sources we reported months ago, there is no love lost between the Obamas, especially Michelle and Valery Jarret (considered the third Obama in the White House), and the Clintons. Rumors, indeed, suggested that Michelle and Valerie, with the quiet consent of the President, were actively conspiring to prevent Hillary from becoming the Democratic nominee for the November election.

For a while it, indeed, looked like a grand-scale political charade was underway, with the White House publicly fully supporting Hillary’s candidacy but, behind the scenes, planning an alternative scenario, which ultimately would force Hillary to end her campaign because of a legal quagmire. “Discovered” erased e-mails that were anything but “private,” as claimed by Hillary, and the shenanigans between the Clinton Foundations and the Department of State while Hillary was the Secretary, of course, offered ample opportunity. As even President Nixon found out during Watergate, the willful destruction of government property, especially in the process of the cover up of a crime, is considered obstruction of justice and, therefore, a felony. And, as former States Attorney and New York City Mayor Giuliani repeatedly publicly suggested the “pay to play scheme” between the Clinton Foundation and the States Department should be viewed as a criminal enterprise under the RICO law (Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organization Act), an idea also supported by former Attorney General Mukherjee.

But then, nothing happened to that effect, – except, of course, for the highly unusual 30-40 minute long unannounced (likely, meant to be secret) meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the current Attorney General on the evening of June 27 at the tarmac of Phoenix airport. Four days later, the FBI investigation (if there really ever was as serious investigation) was over, with the FBI Director rejecting a formal indictment of Hillary Clinton but, nevertheless, rather forcefully exposing her misrepresentations to the public and what he described as her highly negligent activities as Secretary of State in keeping the nation’s secrets. President Obama and his wife (though not Valerie Jarret), nevertheless, offered effusive praise for Hillary at the Democratic Convention who, despite almost daily new disclosures reinforcing her insincerity and earlier misrepresentations to the public, has ever since been cruising along in her campaign with apparently considerable safety margins over Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

At least on the surface, the unmitigated support from the White House can, of course, be easily explained: The most frequently heard explanation is that President Obama is, simply, keeping his word after promising the Clintons in 2012 that he would support Hillary as his successor over Vice President Biden if Bill agreed to campaign for his reelection. There are those who argue that only Bill Clinton’s rhetorical mastery after that pulled Obama over the goal line toward reelection.

A second frequently heard argument is that there is really nobody but Hillary in the Democratic party who could win the November election. Had the Democratic Party’s leadership not conspired against him, and aggressively supported Hillary Clinton, the likely nominee of the party’s primary process would have actually been Senator Bernie Sanders. The party leadership, however, concluded that the country would not elect a Socialist president. Though Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz lost the Chairmanship of the party, and five other leadership positions were replaced after Vicky Leak posted internal e-mails, the media never reported that President Obama, until election of Hillary Clinton as the 2016 nominee of the party, was the actual titular head of the Democratic Party. He, and the White House, therefore, must have been fully informed about how the Democratic party leadership biased the primary election process in Hillary’s favor.

The Clintons also smartly exploited the leadership vacuum in the Democratic party by choosing as VP candidate, Tim Kaine, U.S. Senator from Virginia, a safe but not very inspiring candidate who, therefore, posed no real “threat” to her survival as the principal candidate of the party, even if a threat were to arise to her candidacy during the pre- election period. The party still would have no choice but to unite behind her. The press has been speculating broadly about a promised October surprise from Vicky Leak, including releases of further “erased” e-mails from Hillary’s drove of ca. 35,000 allegedly only “private” e-mails.

Our sources still claim that from the beginning of the primary season the White House really had favored Vice President Biden as a one-term candidate. The concept was that this would allow the grooming of a serious future presidential candidate in the position of Vice President. Emphasizing a desire for a future female president (other than Hillary), the V.P candidate was, therefore, expected to be a female, with Valerie Jarret, Senator Elizabeth Warren and even Michelle Obama being considered as possible candidates.

And, yet, it is Hillary Clinton who, despite strong headwinds, is successfully steaming full speed ahead with, supposedly, full support of the White House. This is that more amazing, considering that almost daily new disclosures about Hillary’s e-mails and the “pay to play” relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department have to be highly embarrassing for the Obama administration. Concerns about exactly such behavior by the Clintons (for which they have been known for decades) had motivated the administration to sign a formal written commitment with the Clintons, committing them to avoidance of any conflicts of interest once Hillary assumed the position of Secretary of State.

Not only is it now obvious that the Clintons breached this agreement, but released e-mails also demonstrate that they, with full intent, circumvented the will of the White House, when, for example, the Clinton Foundation assumed salary support for Sidney Blumenthal, the decade-long stooge of the Clintons, who the White House refused to offer a position in Hillary’s State Department. Though not employed by State, and not approved for appropriate security clearances, he, nevertheless, as e-mails demonstrate, served as a principal adviser to Hillary during her term as Secretary of State (he, inappropriately, also was given access to highly confidential national secrets).

Considering such targeted actions by the Clintons to evade the President’s will, one has even more to wonder about the unflagging support she is receiving. Indeed, not one unflattering word has been heard in months from the White House, on or off the record, in expression of anger about the Clintons’ duplicity. Their misbehaving, after all, also negatively reflects on the Obama administration.

Democratic operatives and pundits in a majority express the official party line that the White House is so glowingly supportive of Hillary because she is the only realistic chance of beating Donald Trump and regaining the Senate. A minority of Democratic officials, and always only off the record, are, however, also wondering, as we here do at The Canary, what the Clintons may have on President Obama that has “converted” the Obama White House into such a “dedicated” servant of the Clinton campaign. Even previously rather frequently heard anti-Clinton comments by White House staffers have been completely silenced.

Though on the left one can never underestimate the importance of solidarity to the movement as a potential motivating factor for the sudden expression of profound love by the Obamas for Hillary, we here at The Canary suspect a much more devious motivation. A more likely explanation may be that the Clintons are in possession of information, which, if made public, would threaten the President’s legacy.

We, of course, have absolutely no idea what that information could be. But, considering the many scandals the Obama administration suppressed over almost eight years through an unprecedented partisan Justice Department, delaying tactics in providing government records to Congress and courts, and unprecedented lack of transparency, any one of those scandals could be highly damaging, if blown open by a Clintonian revelation. What, for example, if it turned out that the instruction for publicly declaring Benghazi the consequence of a silly California movie about the Prophet Mohamed, rather than a terrorist attack, a few weeks before (re)election day, came from the President, himself? Or what if instructions for the IRS to discriminate against right wing and pro-Israel not for profits prior to his reelection came straight from the White House?

Could an appropriate warning from the Clintons to President Obama have been the real subject of the Phoenix airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and the Attorney General? We will probably never know; but, knowing the Clintons, would anybody be surprised?

The Canary

How we are losing all perspective of relevance and are becoming less and less productive

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Over the last three economic quarters for the first time in many years the U.S. economy demonstrated negative productivity gains. This means that, instead demonstrating steady improvements in productivity, as the U.S. economy has witnessed over the last few decades at record levels in comparison to most of the world, we now demonstrate the same poor to absent productivity gains that have plagued Europe and many other Western democracies for over a decade earlier.

The decline in national productivity during the Obama administration has, indeed, been remarkable, yet, found little attention in the national media. When the issue was addressed, it was mostly dismissed as a temporary and irrelevant phenomenon, since the country’s amazing technological advances, ultimately, had to translate into productivity gains, as they have done in the past.

Suddenly, the tone of the debate, however, appears to be changing. At least partially this can be attributed to public concerns expressed by Federal Reserve that lack in productivity gains will impede growth of the national economy. But, like the national media, the Federal Reserve appears puzzled by the rapidly declining productivity of the nation. They shouldn’t be.

National productivity can be defined as the sum of the national work product per time unit. The more the country produces per time unit of work, the more efficient the national economy produces its national growth product and the more competitive the nation will be vice versa other nations with lower efficiencies.

This is not different from our personal efficiency in completing tasks, whether at work or at home. A crucial component of being efficient in completing our tasks, as everybody will acknowledge, is our ability to prioritize: What is more important, of course, should be tackled first, while less important tasks will follow when time allows. In other words, to prioritize certain tasks over others because of their importance is an essential component of productivity.

We here argue that our society is rapidly losing the perspective on relevance as to what is and is not important. As a consequence, we lose our ability to prioritize and, therefore, become progressively more inefficient in producing work product. The consequences appear obvious and deeply worrisome: Unless we, as a society, strive to regain proper perspectives in prioritizing importance within our daily lives, including our political lives, we will face continuous declines in national productivity and, therefore, at best economic stagnation.

Examples for loss of perspective of relevance abound: In middle and high schools, emphasis on political correctness outweighs in importance the learning process. On the political front, teachers’ unions receive political priorities over the product schools are meant to produce, – properly educated students. Poorly educate graduates will, of course, lower the country’s productivity. In colleges, this trend has reached paradoxically excessive levels, when students are more concerned about being given “safe spaces” to be kept away from the realities of the world, than attaining proper educated to join the work force. The contribution of college education to poor national productivity is further enhanced by the excessive and still disproportionally rapidly rising costs of college education.

Increasing loss of perspective is, however, also demonstrated by government. As valid an accusations of racisms against law enforcement may be in some municipalities, prioritizing solving this problem over the murder of thousands of African American youths in inner cities, like Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC, demonstrates obvious loss of perspective of relevance. Allowing such a circle of violence, unemployment and poor education in inner cities not only to fester but to get worse, is not only inexcusable but very obviously reduces the nation’s productivity.

As important as international trade agreements may be for the growth of the economy, to reach such agreements without considering and preparing for negative consequences of such agreements on the U.S. labor market also demonstrates complete denial of what should be priorities. Take, for example, the Obama administration’s directed efforts to bankrupt the coal industry, its handling of the Keystone Pipeline and the billions of dollars wasted on clean energy companies that went bankrupt.

To favor productivity, as valid as concerns about Global Warming may be, government interventions have to be rational and cost effective. The world’s climate will not improve if the U.S. closes one coal mine, while China and India open 10 new ones at the same time. Nor will the nation’s productivity be enhanced if laid off miners, willing to work, become unemployed recipients of government handouts. Similarly, productivity will not be improved if oil has to be transported by rail rather than through a pipeline, since rail transport is not only much costlier but also prone to more accidents and, therefore, environmentally more damaging. Crony-capitalism, when government chooses winners and losers, also has never been shown to improve a nation’s productivity. To the contrary, when big corporation and government get together, it usually sucks productivity out of the U.S. economy.

In summary, unless the nation comes to its senses, and starts to understand that productivity levels have been lagging behind what this country historically has been able to achieve and, going forward, have to be dramatically improved if we, ever again, want to be the beneficiaries of a growing national economy, our economic picture will remain bleak and, probably, will even continue to deteriorate.

This is as much a wakeup call for Millennials, apparently the most spoiled and “entitled” generation in history, as it is for business and government. Our priorities in life have to return to what makes sense, and produces results before we waste our time (for an average of three hours every day) on Facebook or on chasing Pocahontas through the streets of our cities. Most importantly, however, our government structures have to recognize that a hierarchy of priorities is dictated not by political expediency but by proper perspectives on what is more important for success and, therefore, should be prioritized.

The Canary

Bullshit Artist versus Pathological Liar, that is the question!

Posted on by in Blog, Elections and tagged , , , , , , , , .
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CNN’s liberal and usually measured commentator, Fareed Zakaria has let it been known for some time that he is not a fan of Donald Trump. Many of his past commentaries about Trump, indeed, suggested a deep personal dislike for the Republican nominee for the presidency, rather atypical for this, otherwise, fairly balanced commentator. At his last week’s Sunday morning program, The Global Square (GPS), his dislike for Trump, however, came to full blow, calling Trump on live TV (fully spelled out) a “bullshit artist.” One has to give it to Zakaria, though, no other political pundit can be that insulting with more serenity in tone, verbal eloquence and imposing screen presence. He first prepared his audience by warning about his impending use of usually taboo language. Then, in preparation for his assault on Trump, he defined the term he planned to assign to Trump literally and psychologically by quoting from an “important” book of a well-known “expert,” and only then did he reveal that this whole exercise had been preparation for calling Trump a bullshit artist on live TV.

One could not help but be impressed by Zakaria’s performance because, as he described the personality type of a bullshit artist, one, indeed, had to agree with him, – The Donald, likely, really fits that bill (a conclusion many voters, we are sure, instinctively have reached before, whether consciously or unconsciously). But does this mean that Hillary Clinton should, therefore, be the beneficiary of our votes? Contemplating this question, the idea for and title of this column was born.

Here we are, a country of roughly 325 million people, still considered the leading nation in the world, less than three months away from a historically crucial election, and our choices for president are an acknowledged bullshit artist and an equally widely acknowledged compulsive pathological liar. Two logical conclusions come immediately to mind: First, we, of course, deserve better; and that means we have to do something to prevent this from happening again in the future. Second, we, indeed, do have to choose between the bullshit artist and the pathological liar.

Let’s start by addressing the second point because this is where Zakaria’s presentation, ultimately, failed in its logic: Having other options than to vote for a bullshit artist would, of course, be greatly preferable. But if there is only one other option, the obvious next question to be answered is, what is this alternative? And if the only alternative is a pathological and proven corrupt liar, then we here at The Canary take the personality of a bullshit artist over that of a corrupt pathological liar any day and anytime.

And here is why: Much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth (please forgive our language) is, indeed, bullshit. Those who know the real estate business (especially in New York City) will agree that it often involves a considerable degree of hot air verbosity and exaggeration, in New York City slang often also referred to as “chutzpah.” Many years ago when, because the New York real estate market had collapsed, Trump was close to losing his whole (then much smaller) empire, he attended a crucial meeting with his bankers. One of those bankers tells the story that never in his professional career did he see more amazing “chutzpah” than exuded by The Donald as he walked into that meeting on the verge of bankruptcy. Convincing a large group of initially very hostile bankers that it was in their best financial interest to support him in saving his real estate empire, both, he and the bankers, ultimately walked out of that room as winners.

There is something important to learn from this story for the upcoming election: bullshit artists are not necessarily evil people. Like most of us, they, of course, are driven by self- interests. But because their personality traits usually make them strive for recognition (do you recognize The Donald?), they will do their best to succeed. And if they are smart, they often will do surprisingly well (do you recognize The Donald?).

Contrast that to the alternative that Hillary Clinton offers. She, of course, has a very different psychological profile; Even her supporters acknowledge that she is a compulsive liar but this is not where the negative ends. In over 30 years in politics she also has demonstrated complete callousness in defending her aspirations, whether as wife of a philandering husband, who had no hesitation of degrading his female victims, or as a political candidate herself, where her private server scandal says it all and, as appears increasingly likely, will offer many more surprises before the November election. Or look at her handling of the Benghazi scandal, the Clinton Foundation and the selling of favors to foreign interest, where also more can be expected to come to the surface before November.

Most importantly, however, she has failed in all of her positions. As First Lady her husband assigned her responsibility for revamping the country’s health care system. How she went about it in total secrecy resulted in one of the biggest failures of the Clinton administration. As a senator she was ineffective in achieving what she had promised Upstate New York, and as Secretary of State her tenure can only be viewed as catastrophic. This offers a remarkable contrast to Donald Trump who, as above noted episode so well demonstrates, very obviously earned his success in a very competitive industry.

Think about this comparison all of you “undecided!” Think about the difference between bullshit and evil; think about what went on throughout the Bill Clinton presidency, and I am not talking only about Monica Lewinsky. Remember the travel agency scandal? Remember that Clinton’s rented out Lincoln’s Bed Room in the While House for political contributions? And then there is, of course, now the Clinton Foundation; just wait, – there is much more to come on that front before November.

So, while we here at The Canary wish we had better choices, we any day will choose a capable bullshit artist over a pathological liar looser. Trump, hopefully, will surround himself with smart people and make more right than wrong decisions. Like all presidents before and after him, he will make mistakes because making mistakes is baked into the position. We, however, can be reasonably certain that he will do his best to “Make America Great Again.” The same cannot be said about Hillary Clinton, where the country at every moment would have to fear being sold out for even the most minute personal interests and/or simply falling victim to incompetence.

To those “Never Trumpers” who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump, all we can say is follow the thought processes we here outlined (and we did not even mention the Supreme Court). If you then still cannot bring yourself to vote for Trump, don’t complain if Hillary is elected. You deserve it!

The Canary very much would have preferred different choices on both sides of the isle. Therefore, the time is now to start thinking how a repeat of the current situation can be avoided in future presidential elections. The Canary will return to this issue with some ideas in the future. Only so much now: Is there anybody out there on the left or right who does not believe that our primary election system requires radical reorganization? The time to start thinking about how to do that is now!

The Canary

 

A new governing aristocracy made public deception acceptable

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
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We live in unprecedented times: With both conventions behind us, roughly three months to the November elections, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the political landscape has radically changed; and not only because both big parties selected highly flawed, even in their own parties relatively unpopular presidential nominees.

Disruptions of traditional American politics goes far beyond that point, and the selection of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as standard bearers of their respective parties, indeed, increasingly looks like only the last step in a decades-long process of declining morality in public policy and politics. It also coincides with a rapidly expanding government, the concomitant growth and ever increasing power of a government-funded administrative “aristocracy,” made up of professional politicians and largely unaccountable government bureaucrats, who no longer listen to the people but believe to have the right to make choices on behalf of the people, while in actuality self-servingly expanding their own interests rather than those of the people.

Administrative “aristocracies” existed throughout history, from ancient Egypt, China and Japan to later European nation states, at times, indeed, similarly to current circumstances in the European Union (i.e. BREXIT) and the U.S. (ratification of the agreement with Teheran by the U.N. rather that the U.S. Congress), more loyal to their “aristocratic” cast members across-borders than to their own nations. This is how, for example, a German rather than British aristocratic family ascended to the British throne creating the House of Windsor or, as recently as in 1921, when a Saudi Arabian “aristocratic” family from Mecca was chosen by the British as rulers of Jordan, creating the Hashemite dynasty that has been in power ever since. Though formal aristocracies lost power in many countries, new administrative “aristocracies” almost always followed. Though, for example, end of aristocratic rule was a declared goal of the French Revolution, Napoleon established elite schools for future government administrators (and politicians), not too dissimilar to how Chinese emperors had ruled their vast empire already in early Chinese dynasties, and thus created a new ruling class (i.e., administrative aristocracy).

Napoleon’s schooling concept has survived in the so-called Grandes écoles of France over a number of French Republics, with the École national d’administration till today seeding governments and the nations administrative as well as business elites, whether from the left or right of the political spectrum. Post WWII, similar administrative “aristocracies” also developed in most other Western European democracies and, when the European Community was established, found its ultimate expression in the Union’s Brussel Bureaucracy, which can be viewed as the principle cause why the BREXIT vote led to the pending departure of the UK from the EU.

Primarily driven by an ever expanding federal government with increasing powers, and by diminished independence of individual states, such a federal administrative “aristocracy” has also been evolving in the U.S. Especially the last 30 years have witnessed exponential growth in the power of this ruling class, at least partially driven by the power of incumbency, offering politicians a high likelihood of reelection, and due to lifetime employment (with practically no legal option of dismissal) for government employees. United by common self-interests of incumbency and ever expanding financial as well as political power, politicians and government bureaucrats now represent our country’s administrative “aristocracy,” not dissimilar to the EU’s administrative “aristocracy” in Brussels. This is why, by income, some of the suburbs of Washington, DC, now are the richest counties in the nation.

Convinced of intellectual superiority, these “aristocratic” bureaucracies create self-perpetuating and self-serving government structures from the ground up by determining what is and what is not politically correct language (and, of course, politically correct thinking); by establishing educational curricula for schools and colleges that “educate” the young, following the old Jesuit dictum, “give me a child until age seven, and I’ll give you the man;” by interpreting laws in thousands of rules and regulations, many never intended by congress; in other words, by removing the administration of the country further and further from the direct will of the people.

Since ideologies throughout history never were able to co-exist with traditional religious believes, it is not surprising that these “aristocratic” bureaucracies are usually agnostic, and often even overtly hostile to the exercise of free religions. The empty space of religion is filled with “modern religiosity,” best defined as abstract concepts of thought, which share with religions the indisputable conviction of absolute and, therefore, indisputable truth; yet, like religions, they are also characterized by absence of all provability and, at times, are empirical illogical.

A good example for such illogical thinking is, for example, the laudable insistence on equality of all religions (i.e., Islam with Christianity and Judaism) while, at the same time restricting the ability of Christians to practice their religion freely. A good example for the results of such illogical thinking is that currently over 50% of U.S. college students allegedly favor socialism over capitalism, even though every student of history would know that in innumerable incarnations socialism has without exception always failed as an economic model, and more often than not, ended up leading to dictatorships and economic misery (see the current Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reserves in the world). This statistical fact is, however, also a good example how radically this new American “aristocracy” has changed America in recent decades. Even President Obama in his first election campaign, only eight years ago, still categorically rejected the label of being a “socialist” for fear of becoming unelectable. Only eight years later, Bernie Sanders, a declared Socialist would, likely, have become the elected Democratic presidential candidate, had the party leadership not undemocratically conspired against his election.

Looking back in history, considering the more recent political climate in the country, it is really quite remarkable that when the Watergate Scandal broke in the 1970s in the second Nixon administration, Republicans were on the forefront of those demanding his impeachment. Contrast that to what happened during the second Democratic Clinton administration, when the truth no longer mattered and relativity of values, suddenly, ruled the day.

Can anybody imagine that an earlier U.S. president would have politically survived a Lewinsky- like Scandal? And, yet in 1997, only a little over 20 years following Watergate, Bill Clinton not only survived, but became one of the country’s most popular ex-presidents. The political value system of the country in those short years had, obviously, radically changed: Doing the right thing for the country was out; and self-preservation of the ruling “aristocratic” class, based on the relativity of human values, was in. Not one Democratic member of the Senate supported Clinton’s impeachment, and many Republican politicians who had pushed for it, saw their political careers destroyed.

After Watergate, the Lewinsky Affair, likely, became the most decisive political event in recent American history because, for the first time, an American president in a televised broadcast literally looked into the eyes of the nation and outright lied, when stating “I have never had sex with this woman.”

Many, maybe even most presidents before Clinton, of course, also have on occasion been less than truthful; but nobody, except of course Nixon (“I am not a crook”), has in recent history so blatantly lied to the American people as Bill Clinton and, yet, gotten away with it, in the process changing American politics for ever by demonstrating that the modern multimedia world practically always offers the opportunity to relativize the truth of the message (to quote Bill Clinton, “it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”).

The political “aristocracy” learned this lesson very quickly and, of course, nobody better than Hillary Clinton. She would never have dared to follow through with the absolute insane idea of establishing her own Internet server while serving as Secretary of State, had she not been convinced that she could manipulate the truth, should it be discovered. Piercing her words, as her husband had done so well during the Lewinsky Affair, she, indeed, has successfully avoided indictment by the Justice Department, even though a majority of Americans, likely, believe that she escaped because of special considerations by Obama’s Justice Department. Completely exposed in her deception by the FBI investigation, she, remarkably, still continues to lie in her statements to the public.

That Hillary Clinton was not indicted also explains why investigations of Fast and Furious and the IRS scandal never went anywhere, why six weeks before national presidential elections the first Obama administration could instruct senior administration officials to claim that the U.S. ambassador’s murder in Benghazi was not caused by terrorists but by a ridiculous irrelevant video produced in Los Angeles. This is also why Hillary Clinton is still a candidate for President of the U.S., even though common sense suggests that she should have been indicted, and why President Obama can with a straight face go on national television, telling the American people that sending 400 million dollars in foreign untraceable currencies on an unmarked plane in the middle of the night to Teheran represents just “routine” government relations between two governments, and had absolutely nothing to do with the concomitant release of four American hostages.

It has quite obviously become routine for senior government officials, including America’s current President, without fear of political or legal retributions, to blatantly lie to the American people. This, of course, does not happen by happenstance: it is a reflection of how much our country’s political morality has changed over the last three decades.

Within the ruling “aristocracy,” loyalty to the ruling class supersedes right and wrong, and even loyalty to the country is only, at best, second. This is why Ms. Lerner took the Fifth when questioned before Congress about the IRS scandal rather than inform Congress on who instructed her to discriminate against potential political opponents of the Obama administration. She knew that she could count on being protected, and that there would be no serious follow up investigation by the FBI. This is also why only one person was fired in the Veterans Affairs Scandal, the Justice Department decided not to defend a law suit this person filed about her dismissal, and the Obama administration announced that it would no longer implement a law Congress passed that allowed the Veterans Administrator to fire government employees for appropriate cause. And this is also why Hillary Clinton had no hesitation of appointing Ms. Wasserman-Schultz to the position of Honorary Chair of her campaign on the day she was forced to resign as Chair of the Democratic Party after public disclosure how the party under her leadership subverted the primary election process in favor of Ms. Clinton. One hand, of course, washes the other; the administrative “aristocracy” protects its own!

The public instinctively feels the growing divide between the ruling administrative “aristocracy” of both major parties and the American people. This is unquestionably a major reason why Congress and both parties have reached a nadir in popularity. The only question remaining is whether the public is upset enough about where the political “aristocracy” has taken the country to revolt, and take the risk in the upcoming election to consider the unknown over the unacceptable. If the answer is yes, then Donald Trump will be the next U.S. president; if the answer is no, then Hillary Clinton will not only be the first female president of the U.S. but, assuming the public’s anger with Washington continues to grow and finally boils over during her administration, she may end up being the first president since Richard Nixon not finishing a full term in the White House.