Tag: politics

Why I support Donald Trump

At the Heat Street editor’s request, I wrote an article explaining why I support Donald Trump for the Republican nomination and the U.S. presidency:

I am often asked why I, a Christian libertarian and intellectual, would publicly support Donald Trump, a man of no fixed ideology, no apparent religious beliefs, multiple marriages, visible ties to the Clintons, and whose taste and sophistication tends to resemble that of a nouveau riche rhinoceros. It is a reasonable question. After all, how can anyone support a candidate whose public statements are, to put it mildly, inconsistent—when they are completely self-contradictory.

The answer is as simple as it is conclusive and convincing. Donald Trump is the only candidate in either major party whose personal interests are aligned with those of the American public rather than with the interests of the anti-nationalist elite who see America as nothing more than lines on a map and Americans as nothing more than 300 million economic units in the global economy.

The reason I trust Donald Trump, despite all his rhetorical meanderings, is that he is a traitor to his class. Unlike Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz, both ordinary people who sold their souls in order to be granted a seat at the table of the Great Game, Donald Trump was born a member of the elite and he has always been welcome in the inner circles of both political parties. When I met him in 1988, it was at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans, where he was the personal guest of George Bush in his private suite there. Like the Bushes, like the Clintons, Trump is truly neither Republican nor Democrat. He is a lifetime member of America’s bi-factional ruling party.

Read the rest of it at Heat Street. And much respect for Louise Mensch, who could not be more opposed to Trump, but nevertheless asked me to make what I considered to be the best case for him.

Cruz curb-stomped in New York

60.5 Trump
24.8 Kasich
14.7 Cruz

From the Decision Desk results, it looks as if Trump will take as many as 94 of the 95 delegates. So, obviously, the most important consequence is that it puts Trump back on track to win the 1,237 delegates he needs.

But the primary result also makes clear that Cruz is not a serious national candidate. No one who has observed the way he is attempting to lawyer himself into the nomination while getting repeatedly destroyed at the polls can possibly conclude that he is a viable Republican nominee, considering how he can’t win in either the more liberal northeastern states or more conservative southern ones.

His core constituency appears to be cuckservatives in states with sufficiently low immigration who are still unaware of the realities of the great issue of our day.

New York primary

“New York will award 95 delegates on the GOP side, and 247 on the
Democratic. If Trump wins by one vote over 50 percent, both statewide
and in every congressional district, he will take all 95 delegates.”

Trump needs a big performance here to regain his momentum. This is an open thread to discuss the New York primary.

Syria or Colorado

Whose elections are less legitimate? Paul Craig Roberts points out the irony of American politicians decrying a purported lack of democratic legitimacy in Syria.

Today (April 14) Syria held parliamentary elections at 7,000 polling stations, keeping the voting open an extra five hours to accommodate the massive turnout. All were allowed to vote, even displaced Syrians from the two provinces still terrorized by Washington and Israeli backed ISIS.

Washington is angry, because Syria held elections before Washington had time to purchase its slate of politicians and organize Washington-funded NGOs to take to the streets to protest and to claim that Assad had stolen the election.

Despite the massive voter turnout and extended hours for voting, the US State Department set the tone by declaring that the elections are not legitimate in Washington’s eyes and do not represent “the will of the Syrian people.”

Washington’s two-bit punk vassals in London and Paris chimed in with both claiming that the war conditions in Syria to which London and Paris have contributed mean that the idea of elections is “totally unrealistic.”

The New York Times lied, characteristically, that the elections, which seem to demonstrate nationwide solidarity against the Western-backed overthrow of the Syrian government, “highlight divisions and uncertainty.” The Washington Post added its lies and misrepresentations to the propagandistic reporting.

The Western governments are far out on a limb with their lies that the Syrian people prefer to be governed by the Washington supported terrorists who were overrunning their country and conducting with Western supplied weapons mass murder on the Syrian people until Russia put a stop to it. Now the Western liars are exposed yet again by election results, and so the liars must pretend that the election lacks validity.

So, Republicans are in the fascinating position of arguing that Syria’s elections, which actually allow people to vote, are illegitimate and do not represent “the will of the people” because “war conditions”, whereas the Republican nomination in Colorado, where no one is even voting, is legitimate and does represent “the will of the people” despite the people having no voice because “rules”.

And people wonder why Americans support a quixotic outsider like Donald Trump. I vote for a blind and incontinent basset hound before I’d vote for any member of the Republican establishment, which now observably includes Ted Cruz. Of course, if I lived in Colorado, I wouldn’t be able to vote at all.

This isn’t that hard. Yes, we all know America is not a democracy. The point is that if you’re going to repeatedly go to war for democracy, then the first place you should do so is in the USA.

Takeover attempt at Eagle Forum

Phyllis Schlafly alerts the media:

“At 2:00 pm today, 6 directors of Eagle Forum met in an improper, unprecedented telephone meeting. I objected to the meeting and at 2:11pm, I was muted from the call. The meeting was invalid under the Bylaws but the attendees purported to pass several motions to wrest control of the organization from me. They are attempting to seize access to our bank accounts, to terminate employees, and to install members of their own Gang of 6 to control the bank accounts and all of Eagle Forum.

“The members of their group are: Eunie Smith of Alabama, Anne Cori of Missouri, Cathie Adams of Texas, Rosina Kovar of Colorado, Shirley Curry of Tennessee, and Carolyn McLarty of Oklahoma.

“This kind of conduct will not stand and I will fight for Eagle Forum and I ask all men and women of good will to join me in this fight.”

Always be wary of those who are eager to help. And don’t give them power simply because they are useful. Entryism takes places in various forms and in every organization, from the children’s church to the Catholic hierarchy. SJWs are the worst entryists, but they are not the only ones.

It is interesting to observe that the Eagle Forum entryists are all female.

A voterless victory

Ted Cruz wins what is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory in Colorado:

It was last August when officials with the Republican Party in Colorado decided they would not let voters take part in the early nomination process.

The Denver Post reported Aug. 25: “The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate that wins the caucus vote.”

The Cortez Journal reported: “Cruz had 17 bound delegates ahead of the Republican state convention. Another four delegates are unpledged but publicly expressed support for the candidate, who hopes to curb momentum seen by front-runner Donald Trump.

“Cruz declared victory in Colorado, pointing out that he won all 21 delegates from the state’s seven congressional assemblies. Another 13 delegates were awarded at the state convention on Saturday. An additional three delegates in Colorado’s 37-member national delegation are unpledged party leaders.”

Remember, this is the same Republican party who said we had to invade Iraq to bring democracy there and waxed ecstatic over purple fingers. Now they’re running with the “it’s a representative republic, not a democracy” line. And if you still believe that they care about anything but maintaining their own power, you’re a fool.

Of course, given that he is ineligible for the presidency anyhow, Cruz probably doesn’t care that he is now regarded as an illegitimate candidate for the nomination.

The campaign takes its toll

A few people have asked me what is wrong with Trump lately, given his recent media missteps and his bigger-than-expected loss in Wisconsin. I think the answer is very simple. He’s tired. This nomination campaign is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is an exhausting process. In every human endeavor, we see the pattern of ebb and flow, the fractal Elliott Wave pattern of 1-3-5 with the 2-4, the back-and-forth swing of the momentum pendulum.

Trump has had two big surges, one that began in New Hampshire and carried through Super Tuesday, the other that carried him through big victories in Florida and Arizona. The question is if he can summon up the energy required for the final push to victory.

The last two weeks have been what happens when a candidate who depends upon his high energy to carry his campaign through finds himself flagging. And, as usual, all the short-term linear thinkers who look only at the present assume that it’s all over and his trajectory is downward.

I suspect that being back home in New York will energize Trump and he’ll roar back into aggressive action after he is remotivated by a landslide win over Cruz there. Whether that will be enough to carry him through California, I don’t know, but remember, what he absolutely needs to win before the convention are: a big win in proportional New York, solid wins in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, a minor state win, and then a clinching victory in California.

That’s not certain, but it is far from being impossible, or even unlikely. April 26th looks to be an interesting day, as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware will vote and the finalists for the Hugo Awards will also be announced.

UPDATE: Nate adds an important observation:

I think this is a fair assessment. but you’re also ignoring Trump’s weak spot, which is also one of his strengths. Trump doesn’t handling failure well. Oh, he’s fine losing one or two while winning 10. But he’s had a bad couple weeks and it is clearly showing. You can see it in his temperament. Looking back at the debates where Cruz and Rubio were ganging up on him he was clearly off-his game in the post debate interviews.

When he’s winning he appears to have a better grasp on what attacks to address and what attacks to ignore. When he isn’t winning he appears to lose that ability and lash out at everything and everyone that says anything negative about him.

This is an excellent point, and it is one reason why I’ve been saying New York is so important even though it’s not winner-takes-all. Trump is a high-energy front-runner who feeds on momentum. He’s a steamroller, he’s not a counterpuncher who is energized by finding himself on the ropes, a die-hard who will fight until the bitter end, or a comeback kid who needs to be knocked down once or twice before he even starts to get serious.

Trump is still the only option

It’s not Trump vs Cruz at this point, it’s Trump vs Ryan. Matt Forney explains that Cruz is just Ryan’s stand-in at the moment:

While Ted Cruz and his fanboys might fantasize about him winning the nomination in a brokered convention, it’s not likely to happen. Beyond Cruz being ineligible to serve due to being a natural-born Canadian, he’s widely despised by his fellow Republicans for his habitual dishonesty and abrasive attitude. The only reason he’s currently racking up endorsements from party insiders like Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham is because they want to use him as a club to beat Trump with.

GOP establishment hacks have begun floating the idea of nominating House Speaker (and 2012 vice presidential nominee) Paul Ryan as a compromise candidate at the convention. Not only would this represent an unprecedented insult to the party’s base, nominating Ryan would guarantee a Democratic victory in November. The Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan brand of Republicanism is so repulsive to voters that not only did it lose them the 2012 election (an election they should have won due to Obama’s unpopularity), Ryan’s own hometown refused to support him.

In any event, Donald Trump and his supporters will need to turn the heat up after his loss in Wisconsin in order to thwart the GOP establishment. Voting for Ted Cruz will ensure that the nomination goes to Ryan, Romney or another Wall Street-owned company man who will both disregard the interests of the American people and lose to the Democrats. If you’re serious about pulling up the floorboards of the GOP to expose the rot within, Trump is your only option.

It’s rather remarkable that so many Republicans would rather lose to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders than simply get on board with Donald Trump. C’est la vie, as it has been said by others before, at this point, all politics in the USA is little more than laying the groundwork for Round Two.

I wanted to like Paul Ryan, but he’s been an unmitigated and shady cuckservative for nearly as long as he’s been on the national scene.

Wisconsin results

This is your post to discuss the primaries in Wisconsin today. Poll average has Cruz ahead by 5 and Sanders by 3.

Preliminary exit polls show 7/10 GOP primary voters support the Muslim ban in Wisconsin. I doubt this matters much, however, as I expect many Cruz voters would support it too.

The best place for incoming results is Decision Desk HQ.

Liberals, not conservatives, hate science

As Maddox has amply demonstrated, they don’t “fucking love science”, they like pictures that remind them of science. Actual science, they hate, because it’s not careful of their precious feelings and tends to gradually destroy their sacred narratives:

I first read Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science when I was home for Thanksgiving, and I often left it lying around the house when I was doing other stuff. At one point, my dad picked it up off a table and started reading the back-jacket copy. “That’s an amazing book so far,” I said. “It’s about the politicization of science.” “Oh,” my dad responded. “You mean like Republicans and climate change?”

That exchange perfectly sums up why anyone who is interested in how tricky a construct “truth” has become in 2015 should read Alice Dreger’s book. No, it isn’t about climate change, but my dad could be excused for thinking any book about the politicization of science must be about conservatives. Many liberals, after all, have convinced themselves that it’s conservatives who attack science in the name of politics, while they would never do such a thing. Galileo’s Middle Finger corrects this misperception in a rather jarring fashion, and that’s why it’s one of the most important social-science books of 2015.

At its core, Galileo’s Middle Finger is about what happens when science and dogma collide — specifically, what happens when science makes a claim that doesn’t fit into an activist community’s accepted worldview. And many of Dreger’s most interesting, explosive examples of this phenomenon involve liberals, not conservatives, fighting tooth and nail against open scientific inquiry.

It’s probably not a book anyone who reads this blog regularly needs to read, but it may be one that most of us would like to give to someone we know. As Nassim Taleb explains, what passes for science simply isn’t really science and it certainly isn’t reliable.

What we are seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30y of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, microeconomic papers wrong 40% of the time, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating only 1/5th of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats wanting to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. I have shown that most of what Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types call “rational” or “irrational” comes from misunderstanding of probability theory.