HALF-FULL REPORT 07/22/16

Back in the HFR saddle again.  I can’t thank Jack Kelly enough for his great HFRs while I’ve been gone.  Thanks, Jack!

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One takeaway from the GOP convention – Donald’s speechwriter sure is a lot better than Melania’s.  It was delivered strongly with every word clearly articulated, and hit a lot of good notes.  The best line was contrasting Hillary’s slogan for her followers, “I’m with her,” with his “I’m with you.”

Here’s the full text as prepared for delivery.

The trillion-dollar question is, Can we trust him to keep all the promises he made – especially when he provides no specifics on just how he’s going to achieve them?

I was not in Cleveland this week, but a good friend was who has gotten to know a number of folks in Trump’s inner circle of advisors.  His verdict – they’re disorganized doofuses.  They know so little about the world it’s scary and sad.

Further, they have no idea how to raise the hundreds of millions it’s going to take to beat Her Shrillness.  The jaw-dropping irony is that Hillary has more money than Trump.  As in cash in the bank.  She’s a crook and influence peddler with a good half-billion stuffed away, e.g., in her Clinton Foundation.  If Trump had to write a check for $50 million he’d have to scramble.

Meanwhile, the Pub Donor Class is spending their money to protect the House and Senate – especially the Senate.  Trump says he’s so rich he will self-fund his race.  The donors say, go for it and good luck, just don’t knock on my door.

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As Skye has noted on the Forum, among the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation are the Saudis.  They are paying the PIAPS to shut down fracking – the one thing that has saved the US economy during the Zero Years.

On Wednesday (7/20), a fellow named Harold Hamm addressed the GOP convention.  He’s the guy who started the fracking energy revolution.  He spoke the plain truth:

“Every time we can’t drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded. Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk.”

The next day, Reuters reported that Trump is considering Harold Hamm as his Energy Secretary.

Finally, a positive reason and a very good one to vote for Trump, rather than just as a vote against Hillary.  Trouble is, there are almost no others.

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Two immediate examples.  On Monday (7/18), the WaPo disclosed that Trump’s campaign is being run by the same old hacks that ran Dole’s 20 years ago.  You don’t get more over-the-hill anti-conservative pro-lobbyist Washington Establishment than these guys.

On Wednesday (7/20), Trump was interviewed by the New York Times on foreign policy.  Incredibly, unbelievably, he supported Erdogan in crushing the military’s coup against him.  This is disgusting.  Read Ralph Peters’ Turkey’s Last Hope Dies.

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Erdogan is an Islamofascist supporting ISIS.  Trump hasn’t a clue.

When one of the NYT interviewers pointed out that Erdogan has put 50,000 people in jail (including more journalists than any other country including China), fired thousands of teachers and hundreds of judges who might rule against him, Trump replied, “I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries.”

Neither Hillary nor Zero could have said it better.  Ronald Reagan would have nothing but contempt for such “Blame America First” drivel.  Particularly with Trump being on the side of Putin in Europe.

When Trump declares he won’t come to the aid of NATO allies should they be invaded unless they pay “their fair share” from their “massive wealth,” it is an open invitation for Putin to aggress against Estonia and Poland – which, by the way, are not massively wealthy.

Trump has a fondness for authoritarian megalomaniacs like Putin and Erdogan.  He even once praised the Chicoms for having the steel to crush the protestors on Tiananmen Square.  His promise of being President Law and Order has too much of a tinge of this.

Last January I expressed this concern in Donald Perón.  It’s what he does to many of his followers that is most worrisome – turning them into little brownshirts who want to beat up anyone who dares criticize or oppose him.

Bottom line:  Trump still emits too much of an odor of fascism for me to endorse his candidacy.  The only thing he has going for him is that Hillary is worse than he is.  Much worse, so if he wins, that will be why.

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Thus it should come as no surprise to you who the HFR Hero of the Week is:  Ted Cruz.  At last, a real conservative who refuses to lick Trump’s boots and stands on principal instead.

The outpouring of hate and diatribe by Rino after Rino after Rino, the entire panoply of the Pub Elite Establishment, should make Cruz a hero to any real conservative.  To see Trumpistas and Rinos join together in hating him makes him our guy for 2020.

Jonah Goldberg nailed it in I Choose Ted yesterday (7/21):

“This is part of the corruption of Trump. He called Ted Cruz a liar every day and in every way for months (it used to be considered a breach in decorum to straight up call an opponent a liar, never mind use it as a nickname). The insults against his wife, the cavalier birtherism, the disgusting JFK-assassination theories about his dad: These things are known. And yet the big conversation of the day is Ted Cruz’s un-sportsmanlike behavior?…

 

But if the choice is between forgiving Ted Cruz’s obvious political calculation to become the standard bearer of an authentic conservatism or Donald Trump’s lizard-brain narcissism where no principle or cause outranks his own glandular desire to be worshipped like a conqueror atop the carcass of conservatism, I choose Ted.

 

If the choice is between, say, congratulating the Boy Scoutish obedience of Mike Pence as he sells off bits and pieces of his soul like jewels from a family heirloom just to survive another day, or Ted Cruz who took the tougher road and refused to join the mewling mobs of toadies, apologists, human weathervanes, difference-splitters, and vacillators, I choose Ted.

 

If the choice is between suspending the rules of decorum, decency, and civility for Donald Trump as he casually badmouths his own country to the New York Times just as he secures the presidential nomination of the Republican party, or accepting that we are in dark and uncharted waters and conscience must light the way, I choose Ted.”

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By the way, did anyone notice there wasn’t a word in Trump’s speech last night about conservative social values – such as protecting the rights of the unborn or traditional marriage?  Do you think any real conservative would have done this?

The 2016 Republican Party Platform is very clear on “Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary” (p. 18), and on “The Fifth Amendment: Protecting Human Life” (p. 20).  Shame Trump ignored this.  To his credit though he praised the Second Amendment.

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The GOP Platform is 66 pages and worth reading.  It even says the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are “the foundations of personal liberty” (p. 22).  What Trump needs to pay laser-focus attention to is “Honest Elections and the Right to Vote” (p. 23).

One reason I think Hillary has November in the bag is because the Dems have cheating baked in the election cake.  There will be massive, gigantic, yuge voter fraud of every kind by the Dems to ensure a PIAPS win.  The only chance Trump has is to start heading this off at the pass now and keep hammering it.

And be sure and take a close look at “US Leadership in the Asian Pacific” (p. 55), where it calls Chicoms’ claims to the South China Sea “preposterous,” accuses them of “cultural genocide in Tibet and Xinjiang,” and of a “return to Maoism by China’s current leaders” with an “economy based on piracy.”

Great stuff – no wonder the Mandarins of Beijing have their undies all twisted regarding it.

As do the libtards.  You’ll have fun watching their heads explode over “50 Shockingly Extreme Right-Wing Proposals in the 2016 GOP Platform.”

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Speaking of libtards – they never cease to amaze with yet another example of looney tunes fascism.  On Wednesday (7/20), we saw the emergence of their latest cause:  use government guns to force us to eat less meat, with the audacity to blame our obesity epidemic on it instead of garbage sugar foods.

“We Need to Eat Less Meat.  Should the Government Step In?” asks the WaPo.  Thank you for sharing.  Now STFU.

Oh, wait – there’s something even crazier.  Today (7/22) in Vienna, Austria, Secretary of State Lurch proclaimed that air conditioners and refrigerators are more dangerous to “life on the planet” than ISIS and other varieties of Islamofascist terrorism.

Yet more evidence that liberalism is a form of mental derangement.

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Of course, the most blatant example of libtard derangement is occurring as I write this – the nomination of a criminally evil and monumentally corrupt Hillary Clinton to be President of the United States.  Even being an impossibly obnoxious jerk possessed of a megalomaniacal narcissism that could easily veer in to fascist tyranny doesn’t belly up to that bar.

On the other hand, maybe it does.  So this terrible dilemma we face.  And so the Question of November millions of voters must answer for themselves.  We know what a nightmare, a true living Horror Nightmare of a Hillary Presidency will be.  A Trump Presidency might be as bad or even worse – but we don’t know like we do with the PIAPS.

The less sober-minded among us fantasize that it will be better – but, who knows, it might be.  That’s the Great Gamble of 2016.  How will Americans roll the dice?

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Can’t help closing with the best news of the week:  Russia Is Banned from Rio Olympics.  Due to “systematic state-sponsored doping” of its athletes, all track & field Russians have been banned from participating in the 2016 Olympic Games that begin on August 5 in Brazil.

Somehow, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, based in Lausanne, Switzerland which has the final say on such matters, remained impervious to Putin’s bribes and furious threats.  Thank heavens for the Swiss.