HALF-FULL REPORT 03/18/16

Published March 18, 2016 | By Dr. Jack Wheeler

On Wednesday (3/16), Megyn Kelly interviewed Ted Cruz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbHYVEK5Nr0http://

At 4:25 Cruz explains why Trump is the one candidate Hillary can beat. His key points:

“Well, the media has given him the equivalent of about $2 billion in free media. If you turn on the television at any moment, there are wall-to-wall infomercials. Every network. This is not an accident. The media – the suits in the suites who are almost all liberal Democrats supporting Hillary – desperately want him to be the nominee, which is why they won’t cover his record now.

The fact that he had a $1 million fine against him for hiring illegal aliens. You didn’t see the media cover that. You didn’t see the media covering the fact that his hotel down in Florida hires foreign workers instead of American workers because he can pay them less. When is the last time any of the network news mentioned the fact that he refuses to hand over his tax returns?

The media is doing everything they can to cover up his background. You’ve seen no reporting on his multiple business interactions with members of the mob. But if he’s the nominee, every bit of that, I guarantee you, September, October, November, every station they’ll cover all of that. That’s how they give the presidency to Hillary Clinton.”

At 7:30 he explains the math of how he thinks he can get to 1,237 delegates instead of Trump:

“It’s true I need to get 78% of the delegates remaining, but you don’t need to get 78% of the vote to do that. Going forward, if I beat Donald 55 percent of the vote to 45 percent, I will get a delegate majority according to the delegate allocation process.

Further, Donald has done horribly in closed primaries so far (except Florida), and of the 20 remaining primaries only four are open. What’s important is that Donald has proved over and again he has a hard ceiling of 35 to 40%.

Head to head I beat Donald by double digits. He’s only won these primaries by us being divided. Now that we are becoming unified, with Rubio supporters joining for example, I will beat him handily from now on.”

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I, of course, want Cruz to be right. I want him to enter the Cleveland convention with an outright majority. And of course, I may very well not get what I want. But, to quote Mick Jagger, I may get at least what I need – that Trump doesn’t get a majority either. In which case, we have what so many are predicting, a contested convention.

Trump has begun predicting violence and riots a lá 1968 Chicago if he isn’t crowned with a plurality (much of which with Democrats voting in open primaries). On the other hand, there’s a widespread suspicion that, with Trump having only a plurality thus failing on the first ballot, the GOPE will rig it for a RINO – like Boehner proposing Paul Ryan while calling Cruz “Lucifer” (3/16), providing more reasons to despise the former Speaker.

A solution has been proposed by Ramesh Ponnuru at AEI (American Enterprise Institute). His A Fair Way to Choose a Republican Nominee (3/15) via a preferential ballot could work:

“Republicans could change the rules of their convention to permit some kind of preferential ballot. The rule change would have to be proposed in advance, so that members of the convention’s rules committee have time to consider it before voting on it during the week before all the delegates arrive in Cleveland. Then, if it passes the committee, a majority of delegates would have to vote for it too.

When it came time for the delegates to vote on the presidential nomination, delegates would rank their candidates — with pledged delegates putting the candidates to whom they are pledged at the top of their lists. It would probably also be necessary—to reduce the likelihood of accusations of dirty tricks — for each delegate to make his or her rank orderings public immediately after the vote.

It’s a process that would generate a majority for a candidate automatically: There would be no need for multiple ballots, and thus no politicking between rounds of voting. The process would also be formally neutral… Whoever lost the nomination contest would have no legitimate complaint with this process, which would be entirely above-board.”

Any other outcome of a contested convention could implode the GOP, like ending up with Mitt or Jeb. Or worse, Amnesty Kasich. As for me, I’ll be as far away from Cleveland in mid-July as I can get. I’ll be in Tokelau. No airport, have to take a boat.

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Yesterday (3/17), Cruz announced the formation of the Cruz National Security Advisors. I don’t know all 23 but I sure know several and they are first rate. Elliot Abrams, Ilan Berman, Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney, TTP’s Michael Ledeen, Andy McCarthy, Mike Pillsbury… wow, really impressive, friends and colleagues for many years.

This is a gin-clear example of what a brilliant pro-American national security and foreign policy we’ll have under a President Cruz. Most enjoyable is how it’s infuriating libtards.

HuffPo is in a tizzy over my buddy Frank Gaffney: Cruz’s New Adviser Is Even More Anti-Moslem Than Trump. The moonbats at ThinkProgress consider Frank and my other buddies for 30 years, Elliot and Michael, “Terrifying.” Can’t get better endorsements for Cruz than that!

Meanwhile, ereyesterday (3/16), Trump announced his team of national security advisors: himself. You can’t make this up.

When asked on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show who he consults with on national security and foreign policy, he actually replied:

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things… My primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”

What more does it take to convince Trumpistas that this guy is a know-nothing narcissist? We’ve had seven years of one of them already, the last thing on earth we need is another. He’s a joke, can in no way be taken seriously, and anyone who continues to want him in the White House is beyond embarrassment.

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The real bottom line in all of this is that if Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins in November. Period. To think that Trump can be elected President of the United States is simply delusional.

And not only for Cruz’s reasons quoted above. He’s right, no doubt whatever, the lib media will destroy Trump with enough dirt to bury Mount Everest. There will be a Noah’s Flood of news interviews of people he ripped off in the scam of Trump University. Of what an incompetent serial failure he’s been at business. On and endlessly on – the lib media that built him up so he could be the PIAPS’ opponent will steamroller him.

Further, vastly more voters despise him than like him. The latest RCP average of Trump’s unfavorability is 61% with a spread of 28.5. His negatives leave Hillary’s in the dust (hers are 53% with a spread of 12.5).

Especially among women, now over half the electorate. On Monday (3/14), a compendium of public quotes (with citations) of Trump’s on women went up on YouTube. In 4 days, it has almost 3 million hits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkSRJSUY0vs

Before Monday and this YouTube, the latest polls have Trump losing the women’s vote by 21 points against Hillary. Little wonder there are stories that Women Are Hillary’s Trump Card Against Trump. It’s not that women are simply voting for Hillary because she’s a woman – lots of women despise Hillary, but even 45% of Republican women voters despise Trump more.

And pro-Trump angry old white guys won’t make up the difference, as both young men and women millennials are flocking to Clinton against Trump.

Put all this together and more, and the Republican Party faces an electoral catastrophe of biblical proportions in November with Trump. The Pubs will lose not just the White House to the most evil woman in America, they will lose both the Senate and the House, the whole enchilada.

Which is why Pub Party honchos are dragging themselves kicking and screaming to the realization that Cruz is now the GOP’s only salvation. They either hang together with Cruz or, most assuredly, they will hang separately without him.

Just bear in mind, when you see this happening – like Lindsay Graham endorsing him – Rush’s counsel that Cruz is not the Establishment. It is the Pub Establishment submitting to Cruz, not the other way around.

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Enough of this – let’s get out of here. What’s the Putin Huilo up to this week? Well, today (3/18) he made a visit to Occupied Crimea. The Ukrainian Press did not report this favorably, running this picture for the story:

On Tuesday (3/15), Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria. Really? He’s keeping the Russian airbase of Hmeymim near Latakia operational, and of course retaining the Russian naval base at Tartus.

It’s a good time to return military aircraft back to Russia for maintenance and pilots for r&r during the spring rains and storms. And the Assad regime has gained a murderous stability. So it’s really a head fake aimed, as my friend John Bolton tells me, to get the Euroweenies to relent on their sanctions over Crimea and Ukraine.

(FYI – Bolton is a sure bet for Secretary of State in a Cruz Administration.)

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And in ChicomLand, as you are reading this, scores of labor strikes and protests, such as over unpaid wages, are taking place all over China today. They happen every day now at state-owned enterprises, as reported by the New York Times on Monday.

Strikers are employing the beautiful irony of singing the first line of the Chicom National Anthem as their mantra: “Rise, we who refuse to be slaves!”

To give you an idea of how badly China’s economy is faltering, here’s a recent (3/09) story in Beijing-based Caixin Online: Hebei to Close 60 Percent of Its Steel Mills by 2020.

Hebei is a critically important province that wraps around Beijing itself:

One million workers will lose their jobs in the next two years, as not only over 200 steel mills will be shut down, but two-thirds of Hebei’s cement production – some 60 million tons – will be closed as well. The demand is just not there. That’s gotta hurt.

I just got David Shambaugh’s new book, China’s Future. He’s Professor of Political Science & International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program at The George Washington University. His assessment is bleak.

While China will not collapse, President Xi Jinping’s attempt to revive the economy will stall. Political repression is worse in the 27 years since Tiananmen Square in 1989, the elite are ready to flee en masse, capital flight is gargantuan, the society just needs a few sparks to ignite.

Xi’s sweeping purge of the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) has so alienated senior officers that, while a coup is unlikely it is , says Shambaugh, “not entirely out of the realm of the conceivable.”

Now that’s sobering. Someone should send Shambaugh’s book to Trump so that he might learn something about China.

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It’s time to close with the HFR Hero of the Week – and what could be more appropriate in the context of what we just discussed than have the award go to the Argentine Navy for sinking a Chinese illegal fishing boat?

At last, a country has the nerve to stop with gunfire China’s raping of the world’s oceans. Illegal fishing boats of the state-owned China National Fisheries Corporation have been plundering the coastlines of dozens of countries in Africa – cf. this study of 114 cases in the waters of Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone alone. A conference of 24 African countries last January demanded the Chicoms stop it.

The Chicom plundering of world fish stocks is global, reports Bloomberg. In the past 10 years, some 4,600 Chinese illegal and unlicensed fishing boats have been seized by South Korea. Small island countries in the Pacific Ocean are helpless to prevent China’s rape of their seas.

So the HFR is overjoyed that when, on Monday (3/14), an Argentine coast guard ship found a Chinese unlicensed fishing boat off Puerto Madryn, the Lu Yuan Yuan Yu, trying to flee – and when blocked rammed the Argentine ship, the Argentines opened fire and sank it to the bottom of the sea. All 32 Chinese crew on the Lu Yuan Yuan Yu were rescued.

It’s about time. Now maybe more nations will take military action against Chicom illegal fishing. The Argentine Navy is the Hero of the Week.