VIDEO: "DEMageddon" -- The Epic Tale of the 2016 Election

Got a tip (via Dr Rich Swier) from Carpe Donktum, the creator of DEMageddon, that, after a year in YouTube purgatory, his epic Meme Movie DEMageddon is now available again. Here `tis.



Censorship warning from Ed.: Speaking of YouTube purgatory, an alert reader has just advised us that the Masters of the Universe have deleted the video of Dr Taylor Marshall and Faith Goldy talking about the infiltration of the Catholic Church by secular humanists and other enemies of the True Faith. For that reason, our post of 14/6/19 is no longer "Featured" in the sidebar at the right. However, you should still be able to find it, and lots more worthwhile videos and articles on Dr Marshall's website, Taylor Marshall: Stay Salty My Friends. Walt recommends it highly.

UPDATED: Understanding geopolitics with the help of "1984"

I'm having trouble figuring this out. President Trump went to Helsinki and had a meeting with President Putin. After the meeting POTUS said (when you add it all up) that, even though American "intelligence" said otherwise, he was taking Mr Putin's word for it that the Russians didn't meddle in the 2016 presidential election. "Why would it be the Russians?", he asked, then "Why wouldn't it be the Russians?" He didn't know at the time -- it was Obama who received the PDBs, eh -- and doesn't know now.

Now the usual gang of gliberals, Democratic socialists, antifa Nazis and media stars are calling the President a traitor -- literally -- and unpatriotic for suggesting that the CIA and "military intelligence" (an oxymoron, for sure) might have been wrong on this one. If you think American "intelligence" never makes a mistake, perhaps you'd be interested in some of this yellowcake I can get for you, cheap! In spite of the ongoing witchhunt in Washington, nobody can say for sure what the Russians did or didn't do in the runup to the election. The thing sure is that what the Russians did (if anything) didn't have much effect (if any) on the result. The Democrats and other "resisters" are still in denial that the American people chose The Donald over Crooked Hillary.

What, I wonder, do the anti-Trumpers think POTUS should have done at the historic meeting. Should he have pulled a Glock out of his pocket and shot the Russki-in-Chief in the face, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather? Of course not. He'd have been recognized!

Now the blaze in the anti-Trumpers hair has become an inferno because President Trump has invited President Putin to come and have a chat at the White House. With confusion still swirling around what the two men discussed behind closed doors in Helsinki, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said it’s important to "deal with the results" of their first summit before jumping too fast into a new one. But, he said, "Russia is always open to such proposals. We are ready for discussions on this subject."

Which is as it should be. Seems to me we're losing sight of the importance of the meeting itself. When the heads of two of the world's three super-powers sit down to talk, something good may come of it, or not, but, as Churchill supposedly said, "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war." [In fact it was one of Churchill's successors, Harold Macmillan, who put it exactly that way. According to his official biographer, Churchill's words were, "Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war." Ed.]

Those folks -- especially Republicans -- who criticize President Trump for making nice with President Putin should keep in mind that American foreign policy was badly in need of a reset after eight years of Obamian dithering and wimpishness, and POTUS is leading the much-needed change in direction.

This summer alone, he has stood up for America, to the discomfort of its "allies", at the G7 and NATO summits, sat eyeball-to-eyeball with Kim Jong-un (something no-one thought possible) and now in serious talks with the Russian president about Syria, the Ukraine and other matters of vital importance. All that and all POTUS gets is grief. Obama was only a few weeks into his presidensity, had done nothing (and never did) and what did they give him? The Nobel fucking prize!

The present geopolitical situation reminds me of that described by George Orwell in 1984. Writing at the beginning of the Cold War, Orwell predicted that, come the iconic year, the world would be divided into three super-states:
• Oceania -- including all of the Americas, southern Africa, Australia and the British Isles, the main location for the novel
• Eurasia -- Europe and most of the old Soviet Union, plus a little chunk of the Middle East
• Eastasia -- Japan, Korea, China and northern India.

The three states are in a perpetual state of warfare -- sometimes two against one, sometimes all three against each other. These wars are fought in the disputed territories, running from North Africa over the Middle East and southern India to Southeast Asia. Orwell's gift of prescience is spooky, isn't it?

There's not much "super" to Orwell's super-states except their size. All three are totalitarian dictatorships.

Oceania's ideology is Ingsoc -- English Socialism, of the kind now being espoused by "socialist democrats" like Bernie Sanders and the latest political rock star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Eurasia's state creed is Neo-Bolshevism, not unlike what Russia has today under the Putin régime.
Eastasia's politics and religion are blended into the Obliteration of the Self, something like the Buddhist-inspired fascism you might find (so they say) in today's Myanmar or Thailand.

These ideologies are very similar one to another, but the "proles" -- the common people -- are told the opposite.  "Of course the Russians hate our American values! If you're not against Russia, you must be against America!" Sound familiar?

Orwell suggests that the conflicts between the super-states may not be real at all. It's clear that the media of Oceania are completely one-sided and in the habit of fabricating "facts" -- fake news! A dissident book central to the plot of 1984 suggests the two other powers may actually be a fabrication of the government of Oceania, which would make it the government of the entire world. An alternative theory is that "Airstrip One" (the British Isles) is not an outpost of a greater empire, but the sole territory under the command of Ingsoc, which fabricates eternal global war to keep its people permanently mobilised (check), scrutinized (check) and on rations (and check).

The world as portrayed in 1984 is purely fictional of course. The book was written in 1949. What George Orwell predicted could never happen... could it?

Further reading (by the sheerest coincidence): "The idea of Eurasia is once again the subject of geopolitics", by "Banyan", in The Economist, 19/7/18. "A growing number of strategists argue that the emergence of a cohering Eurasia is the key feature of a new world order that is taking shape.... The emerging order is one that Marco Polo would recognise." George Orwell too.

UPDATE ADDED 22/7/18: Further reading: "Mainstream media deliver most outlandish and hyperbolic reactions to Trump since election night", opinion piece by Dan Gainor, Vice President for Business and Culture of the Media Research Center, on Fox News.

VIDEO: Trump is still POTUS! Happy MAGA Day!

Walt and Ed. and even Poor Len Canayen wish all our readers
HAPPY MAGA DAY!

To all these anti-Trumpers (but especially the CBC's Keith Boag, MSNBC's Rachel Madcow and the wimmin at The View)... Donald Trump is still POTUS!



A year has passsed, and the gliberals, the chattering classes and the lamestream meeja are still in denial. They're still pissing and moaning, but they can't change that fact. Nor can all their talk of impeachment change the fact that Mr Trump will remain in the White House until January of 2021, and perhaps for another four years after that!

Not that the Trump-haters aren't trying to bring his administration to a premature end. The (((liberal media))) are still churning out the fake news, counting what they say are lies and pointing the finger of scorn at the President's supposed gaffes. The latest example of their anti-Trump hysteria is the Great Koi Feeding Scandal, which turned out to be nothing of the sort.

You've probably seen the video of President Trump dumping a large quantity of fish food into a pool full of loi -- the huge goldfish beloved of east Asians -- while on a state visit to Japan. In a headline since taken down, the British newspaper The Independent raged "Trump tramples Japanese koi carp ritual". We all know you're supposed to feed goldfish slowly, and only a little bit, right? Otherwise you'll find them belly up in the water the next morning. So what POTUS did was supposed to show his disregard for the fish, the environment, and Japanese customs.

The only problem is, he was only following the lead of his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had done the same thing only moments before. The whole thing was just a case of two world leaders doing a boring photo op. How did it become such a big, anti-Trump deal on all the lamestream networks? Because the so-called "journalists" and their (((masters))) wanted it so. Mr Trump may be... hell, he is the President of the USA, but the media bias against him is just as strong or stronger than it was a year ago.

The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust is in crisis around the world. People's trust in all four key institutions -- business, government, NGOs, and media -- has declined broadly, and rightly so. People no longer believe that the "system" is working for them. Their societal and economic concerns -- globalization, the pace of innovation, immigration and eroding social values -- have become fears, spurring the rise of populism now playing out in the USA and other Western democracies. It's that lack of trust that doomed Hellery Clinton's campaign and got The Donald elected!

Further reading: "Cry, Losers, Cry", by Jim Goad in Taki's Magazine, 30/10/17.

Book review: "Insane Clown President" by Matt Taibbi made Walt LOL

Ed. here. In "Hellery Clinton's 'Mannequin Challenge' campaign fail" (WWW 5/8/17 - includes video), Walt promised you a review of Insane Clown President, Matt Taibbi's book on the 2016 presidential election (Spiegel & Grau, 2017). This is it.

It's a pity that the original -- make that unique -- Doctor of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, offed himself before US politics sank to the dpeths of the 21st-century campaigns for the presidensity. How he would have enjoyed last year's down-and-dirty slugfest between The Donald and Crooked Hillary. "Fear and Loathing in the Beltway, 2016" would have been a great title for one of HST's no-holds-barred tirades against the swine that comprise the American political and media establishments.

Matt Taibbi covers politics for Rolling Stone, and, when he's in form, is capable of just as much indignation and rancour as HST. In Insane Clown President, Mr Taibbi reveals a blind spot when it comes to Barack Hussein Obama, who, he reckons, will be adjudged a great president, compared with those who preceded and followed him. QED.

Although he makes mock of the "Mannequin Challenge" -- see above, Mr Taibbi also averts his gaze, for the most part, from the glaring defects in Hellery Clinton's campaign and the manifest flaws in her character. He seems unsurprised by La Clinton's answer to a question about why she took $675,000 for casting a few pearls before select groups of bankers. What Crooked Hillary said was "Well, that's what they were offering." So that makes it OK, then.

Very little of Insane Clown President is about Secretary Clinton or President Obama. Most of the book -- a collection of articles written for Rolling Stone, with some footnotes and hindsightful comments -- deals with the Republican primaries of 2016 and the subsequent campaign which resulted in the election of President Donald J. Trump.

Matt Taibbi's average as a prognosticator was not nearly as good as Walt's (lifetime pct .986). Mr T batted only 1 for 2. He called the primary result way back in February, labelling Mr Trump as "unstoppable". But he drank the lamestream media Koolaid on the election itself, believing right to the end that there was no way a majority of Americans would vote for the "lunatic Trump". He was wrong, and, to his great credit, admits it.

Mr Taibbi provides a cogent analysis of how he, the DNC, CNN, MSNBC etc etc blew it -- by ignoring the opinions and feelings of the American people in the flyover states between the Blue Coasts. It is from that analysis, contained in the introduction, that I excerpted the bit about the "Mannequin Challenge". It's worth repeating.

As a metaphor for an overconfident and incompetent ruling class that was ten miles up its own backside when it should have been listening to the anger percolating in the population, the "Mannequin Challenge" is probably unsurpassable. Here was a planeload of effete politicos making a goofball video when they should have been frantically bailing water to stave off maybe the most disastrous loss in the history of American presidential politics. If those people had known the election was even going to be close, they would have outlawed smiling on that plane, let alone making nutty souvenir videos. But they had no clue what was coming.

There's a lot of very serious commentary in Insane Clown President, but it's leavened with humour, dripping with sarcasm, and larded with LOL put-downs like this description of "Rudy Giuliani...his eyes spinning and arms flailing like a man who'd come to a hospital lost-and-found in search of his medulla oblongata."

I laughed, loudly and often, at the invective the writer hurls at everyone except the Prez and Hellery. But our laughter at the clowns who dominate American politics and media should be tempered by recognition of the ugly truth that we are being led (laughing all the way) to the end of the "American era" -- the time when the US of A was arguably the best country on earth. I've selected two more excerpts from Insane Clown President which should sober you up, no matter whether you're a "progressive", like Mr Taibbi, or a conservative-cum-libertarian, like Your Humble Servant.

[We are] facing a future in which national elections will no longer be decided by ideas, but by numbers. It will be a turnout battle between people who believe in a multicultural vision for the country, and those who don't.
     Every other issue, from taxes to surveillance to war to jobs to education, will take a distant back seat to this ongoing, moronic referendum on white victimhood.

Way back in February...I thought Trump had a real chance at the presidency. But later I made the same mistake most every other reporter did. I listened to polls and media outlets, instead of people. I thought Trump's maladroit and ridiculous general-election campaign, in which he went back on virtually every major primary-season promise while being revealed through seemingly hourly scandals as one of the world's most corrupt and personally repulsive individuals, would do him in. He would lose and lose huge, ending up a footnote to history, having served no purpose beyond the destruction of the Republican Party. Conventional wisdom said so, and wasn't conventional wisdom always right?
     Not quite. We journalists made the same mistake the Republicans made, the same mistake the Democrats made. We were too sure of our own influence, too lazy to bother hearing things firsthand, and too in love with ourselves to imagine that so many people could hate and distrust us as much as they apparently do.

Summary: If you're only going to read one book about the 2016 election and how The Donald became President Trump, don't waste your time on self-serving trash like La Clinton's What Happened (already reviewed for you right here on WWW). Make it Insane Clown President. You'll laugh and you'll think, and what more can you do, now that it's happened.

Footnote: The illustrations for Insane Clown President were done by Rolling Stone artist Victor Juhasz. Just as Matt Taibbi is no Hunter S. Thompson (and admits it), Victor Juhasz is no Ralph Steadman. The drawing above is supposed to show Mr Trump emerging from the anus of an elephant. Subtle enough for ya? But that's quite in keeping with the spirit of  '16.

VIDEO: Hellery Clinton's "Mannequin Challenge" campaign fail

Yes, yes, I know the election is over. (Memo to the New York Times: President Donald Trump won!) Now we're seeing a spate of books telling us how and why it happened. I've just finished reading Matt Taibbi's Insane Clown President (Spiegel & Grau, 2017) and will have a review for you very soon. Reading it, I've picked up on a couple of incidents I missed. One such was La Clinton's "Mannequin Challenge". Here's what Mr Taibbi has to say.

"Watch as the camera pans over the plane full of photogs, aides and pols, proudly clutching their tablets and pens and pizza boxes, all dressed in blazers and 'smart glasses' and crisp gingham shirts and buzzed at being on the same plane as two Clintons and Jon Bon Jovi.



Mr Taibbi continues: "As a metaphor for an overconfident and incompetent ruling class that was ten miles up its own backside when it should have been listening to the anger percolating in the population, the 'Mannequin Challenge' is probably unsurpassable. Here was a planeload of effete politicos making a goofball video when they should have been frantically bailing water to stave off maybe tghe most disastrous loss in the history of American presidential politics."

That's from the Introduction to Insane Clown President. I went from there to the Epilogue in less than 24 hours.

"Whitelash" only part of reason for Trump triumph

I think it's almost time to call a halt to the analysis of -- and liberal hand-wringing over -- the triumph of Donald Trump in the late presidential election. The lamestream media and "progressive" chattering classes have convinced themselves the 60 million Americans who voted for Mr Trump are all racists, and have run out of other things to say. The moaning of the snowflakes is dying down as cold weather forces them to move inside into safe spaces.

Enough reading of the entrails, then. The last you'll read of the topic here -- I hope -- will be the following precis of an article by Joseph Brean in today's National Post, headed "Theory that racist 'whitelash' was behind Trump victory ignores true reasons, experts say". I've selected just a couple of paragraphs.

According to Gil Troy, a presidential historian at McGill University, putting too much emphasis on race, to the exclusion of economic, cultural and security concerns, is precisely the same mistake that cost Hillary Clinton the White House.

"To reduce these people to racists, as so many Democrats are now doing with their 'basket of deplorables', misses a subtlety," Troy said in an interview. "Whitening Trump’s support too much plays into the identity politics which led Hillary to misread the electorate in the first place. Simply seeing it through a black and white lens misses the economic dimension, which I think Trump and Sanders understood, which is that at the core of the anger, the core of the frustration, is a sense of too much month left over at the end of the money.... I really think it starts with the economics."

The infrastructure of middle class American life has "exploded," he said, and the very same consumers who demand low cost products are, ironically, the same people who lose their jobs as industry and the market shifts accordingly. There is widespread unease about a declining culture, with compromised security and poor economic prospects, and a danger for the left is that fixating on Trump's blame-game rhetoric against immigrants or Muslims can risk minimizing those primary concerns. "I think the ugly bits (of Trump’s rhetoric) were reinforcers," Troy said. They were not the main message....

In an election between two disliked candidates, with a large number of voters lacking party affiliation, and economic factors pushing against Democrats after eight years in power, Clinton simply lost, as much from tactical error as from racist uprising. As the Columbia University political scientist Mark Lilla put it, Clinton pitched to every identity group except white people, and her failure in the vote should mark the end of "identity liberalism".

Footnote: I asked Mrs Walt yesterday if she had finalized her battle plan for Black Friday. "There is no more Black Friday," she told me. "It's not PC now. They're calling it 'Hot Friday' or 'Crazy Friday'." Unbelieving, I started listening to commercials on the boob tube, and sure enough.... Apparently this started last year. See "Is Black Friday racist? These college students say it is", TheRebel, 27/11/15.

Doctor CZ is happy about the result of the US election

Assiduous readers of WWW may remember that Walt has a connection with Africa, having lived and worked at the southern end of the Dark Continent back in the 20th century. 

I follow the news from South Africa and Zimbabwe -- still waiting for the demise, through old age or lead poisoning, of Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe -- and my few friends who are still there follow the news from this side of the Atlantic. One such, "Doctor CZ", weighed in this week with an opinion (in his column in the Financial Gazette) on the election of Donald Trump. Here it is.

While the just-ended presidential elections in the United States never excited Dr CZ in any way since Yours Truly knows for sure that nothing really changes in American policy towards Zimbabwe, he was, however, one of those few people who were so elated at the pleasantly surprising outcome of the poll. The reason simply being that the results spite those who think experience is everything.

The danger of having career politicians is that sometimes they get too obsessed with their own self-preservation to the detriment of the whole country. What happened in the US should happen more frequently. Election outcomes should never be so predictable as sunrise and sunset.

The other thing Dr CZ likes about president-elect Donald Trump is that he tells the truth whole and raw as it is and has no time to hide behind niceties of pretending. This is what Americans voted for. They are sick and tired of leaders who pretend.

Americans do not want foreigners in their own country, and Trump promised to help them in this regard. If one is not wanted in a certain country, they should stay in their own country or go to that country where they are welcome, not to force themselves even where they are not wanted. Americans have their own country, which they should do their best to keep it to themselves, just as everyone else should do their best to belong to their own countries.

Sadly, Trump appears to be rude because just like fire and water, which cannot be carried in the same mouth, truth and politeness never go hand-in-hand.

Websites the PC police don't want you to read

Within an hour of posting "Canadians love multiculturalism... don't they?" (below), Walt was deluged with requests [Two is a deluge? Ed.] for the list of websites recommended at the bottom of the "Hey, WHITE PERSONS" posters which have appeared in Toronto. Well hey (white person), unlike the lamestream media, Walt listens to his readers. [But it's Ed. who does the research! Ed.] Here's the list. Most of them are recommendable.

Red Ice TV - Stuff on the election (of course), Brexit, culture wars
Radix Journal - Blog. "The Red Pill" has articles like "What the Founders *Really* Thought About Race". Guess quotes from Jefferson, Franklin et al. are politically incorrect nowadays
Counter-Currents Publishing - Sells books. Guess the lefties are still heavily into book-banning. 2nd Amendment be damned.
The Right Stuff - Not Tom Wolfe. Subtitle: "Democracy is an interracial porno". Mostly about the leftward trend of politics.
Social Matter - "Not your grandfather's conservatism". For those who remember Wm. F. Buckley Jr. Serious stuff.
Taki's Magazine - Gavin McInnes contributes, so it's gotta be good. 100s of others: Michelle Malkin, Steve Sailer, Conrad Black, Kathy Shaidle. Highly recommended.
Council of European Canadians - "Promoting Canada's European Heritage". About time someone did that!
Amerika - All about "rightism": Alt Right; Traditionalist; New Right; Conservative; Nietzschean; Neoreaction; Dark Enlightenment; Deep Ecology. Who knew there were so many varieties?
The Alternative Hypothesis - Tabs on: Race Realism; Modern Racism; Immigration, etc. An obvious target for promoters of multiculturalism and diversity.

Lots of bookmarks for you there. Read. Think. Consider. Learn. You're welcome.

You need TRUMP to spell TRIUMPH !!!

CAZARTTTTTTT

Ed. here. Walt was heavily into Ma Nifkins' Jellied Gin when he sat down at the computer. He managed to type just those few letters before collapsing in a heap. I have revived him, but he is in no condition to drive, much less write. He demands to be driven to town to start collecting on his bets. When we get back, I'll have a go at the stack of scribbled notes littering the floor like autumn leaves.

We have some space to fill here. I think this flag will do nicely.

Americans! It's YOUR call!

I'm going to keep this short and simple, just like my own goodself.

The United States of America cannot afford another four years of Democratic liberal secular humanism. It's time to end the rule of the corrupt "progressive" elites. If you don't do it now, you may never get another chance.

You have only this one day to save the USA from the Clintons. Vote for Donald J. Trump!

If you just can't vote for Trump, at least vote for the Republican candidates for Senate and the House of Representatives in your state and district. A Republican Congress will be America's only defence against a Clinton dictatorship.

Americans! Do not fail your country! Go to the polls and vote to make America great again!

Worth reading (even if you've already voted): "The rise and fall of Hillary Clinton, exemplar of the U.S. ruling class culture of entitlement", commentary by Father Raymond J. de Souza, in the National Post, 8/11/16. Key quote: "She will win the election, but her presidency is already lost."

VIDEO: Keep the demon in human form out of the White House! (Michael Matt & Christopher Ferrara)

Walt just received, and must share with you, the latest edition of The Remnant Forum, a dialogue between Michael Matt and Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq. I've stripped out their scathing criticism of Flakey Francis' visit to Sweden to commune with the Lutheran heretics, leaving Chris's incredibly emotional appeal to American voters to keep "this demon in human form" (and her perverse husband) from getting back into the White House. Running time is about 12 minutes. I guarantee you won't fall asleep.

Michael Moore explains why Donald Trump won

UPDATE: On October 30th we posted the item below, an audio excerpt (no video) from Trumpland, a one-man stage show created by Michael Moore as... get this... an endorsement for Hillary Clinton. But listen to what the arch-liberal Moore is really saying! Taking him at his own words, the average American has every reason to vote for Donald Trump!



"Trump's election is going to be the biggest 'fuck you!' ever recorded in human history, and it will feel good!"

Turns out Mr Moore had it exactly right... exactly right. To those who went to the polls on November 8th to vote for an end to illegal immigration, enforced multiculturalism, unrestricted abortion, economic stagnation, open markets and open borders, etc etc and so forth, Walt addresses his heartiest congratulations!

VIDEOS: Blatant rigging could give election for Clinton

Here's Walt's sometime buddy, Christopher A. Ferrara, Esquire, questioning the feigned outrage of the lamestream media over Donald Trump's claims that American elections are already rigged in favour of the Democrats. A shorty (under five minutes) from Remnant TV.



Chris isn't the only one who thinks Trump is right. Here, speaking to the same point, is Ezra Levant.



Noli illegitimi te carborundum! Get out and vote!

VIDEOS: Welcome to Hillary's "basket of deplorables"!

Hellery Clinton's supporters say, loudly and insistently, that Americans should vote for their girl because during Obama's first term she was the country's top diplomat. They also say, even more loudly and even more insistently, that she's the only one who can unite a fractured country. Let's have a listen to La Clinton practising the politics of inclusion, at an LGBTQ (natch!) fundraiser last night.



In case you couldn't believe your ears, Walt can confirm that Mrs Bill Clinton said, "To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it."

It wasn't a slip of the tongue. "Basket of deplorables" is a phrase she has latched onto -- likes the sound of it, I guess -- and used before, as in this interview which she gave recently to an Israeli (natch!) TV channel.



The Donald jumped on this characterization right away quick, saying today his opoponent had smeared many Americans and would pay a heavy political price. "Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard-working people," he tweeted. "I think it will cost her at the polls!"

Damn straight! Call me "deplorable" if you like, but I certainly won't be voting for her!

UPDATED: Guess what? Trump leads latest polls!

Not so long ago, the lamestream media were assuring us that Hellery had a lock on the presidential race. Since then, as Walt told you recently, she's been keeping shtum lest she say anything which would reinforce the public perception that she's a liar and a crook. Her silence has allowed The Donald to creep up behind her, and now... whoda thunk it... he's edging ahead!

The New York Times reports today that a survey from CNN/ORC shows 45% of likely voters backing Mr Trump, with 43% supporting La Clinton. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate who is banking on a late surge in the polls to be included in the presidential debates, sits in third place at seven per cent (7%). Statistically, given the usual margin of error in these polls, that's a tie, but still... Trump is leading!

Further reading (added 7/9/16):
"Trump closes in on Clinton as US election enters final stretch, polls suggest" - Analysis by the CBC's Éric Grenier. Synopsis: If it comes down to temperament, Clinton wins. If it comes down to trust, Trump wins.
"President Trump Isn’t Farfetched" - Wall Street Journal, 6/9/16. Subhead: "Pundits treat Clinton like a shoo-in, but polls tell a different story. Victory is well within Trump’s reach." (As I was saying... Walt)

Hellery's low profile allows Trump to catch up

Anybody heard from Hellery Clinton lately? Since the gooey clusterfuck of the Democratic convention, Crooked Hillary has barely opened her mouth. She's been off the campaign trail for at least a day for unspecified medical treatment -- a case of lockjaw, perhaps -- and when she does appear hasn't said much except to call Donald Trump a racist.

Walt guesses that La Clinton's advisers are telling her to keep her head down, pending the release (set for September 13th) of more e-mails about Libya. What about the Clinton Foundation and the millions the would-be First Couple have made out of that? Let Bill handle those questions. He's the one who says he'd sooner have a root canal than give up that little money-maker. What about policy? Hellery assures us that she'll continue the fine work of the Prez and her husband. Trust her. That's all.

Counselling Mrs Clinton to STFU and run on the family name may prove to be a bad call. Her silence leaves the field wide open for The Donald, who has something to say about anything and everything. Mrs Clinton took a pass on the invitation of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to visit his country. Mr Trump said he'd be there like Jack the Bear, thus scoring a tremendous PR coup. What he and President Pena Nieto said to or about each other doesn't matter. There they were, on the same platform, looking presidential and speaking calmly about the main issue in the US election campaign. Score one for the Donald.

Meanwhile, Hellery stands quietly, like a cigar store Indian, trying to appear above it all. And, according to an article by Aaron Blake in the reliably liberal Washington Post, "A record number of Americans now dislike Hillary Clinton".

As of Wednesday, Americans' views of Bill's surrogate hit a record low. A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 41% of those polled had a favourable impression of Hellery, while 56% had an unfavourable one. That's the worst image she has had in her quarter-century in national public life. If it weren't for Trump (Mr Blake writes), Mrs Clinton would be the most unpopular major-party presidential nominee in modern American history.

Perhaps most notably, La Clinton's image has declined significantly from just a month ago. After the Democratic convention, Americans were about evenly split: 48% favourable and 50% unfavourable. (That's the Washington Post's idea of an even split. If the election turned out that way, Hellery would lose!)

Mr Blake can't figure out what might have caused Mrs Clinton to fall further than ever before. Perhaps (he writes) she simply got an extended bounce after the Democratic convention that has finally faded. It's also possible that adverse headlines last week about the Clinton Foundation and thousands of newly discovered emails from the private email server Clinton used as secretary of state reinforced why views of her had been worsening prior to the July conventions. (Ya think?!)

But it was clear long before the convention that Mrs Clinton was headed in the wrong direction, setting new records for her unpopularity. Her image has been on a downward trajectory since her tenure as Secretary of State ended in 2013, and the decline continued through the primary campaign. That the race downhill to the presidensity is still competitive is due to Mr Trump's image, compounded by Mrs Clinton's "personal problems". At the moment (Mr Blake concludes), the voters who will determine the next president don't like her much more than they like The Donald.

SHOCK! Scott "Dilbert" Adams endorses Clinton!

Yes, folks, you read right! Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has been accused for lo these many months of being an apologist for Donald Trump. (In reality, he's just been calling attention to the fact that, no matter what you think of his politics, The Donald's powers of persuasion are awe-inspiring.) Now Mr. Adams has apparently made an amazing about-face, with a surprise weekend endorsement of the Once-and-future First Lady.

But... here comes the spoiler alert... Mr Adams says, in his blog, that endorsing Hellery out of concern for his own physical well-being. Click here to read his reasons, as posted in his blog on June 5th. Walt suspects that he had his tongue stuck firmly in his cheek when he wrote it. If you want my opinion, here it is.

Absentee votes deny Freedom Party victory in Austrian election

The final results from Austria's presidential election are now in. With Austrian voters apparently sick and tired of the centre-left coalitions that governed the country for two generations, the hard-fought campaign pitted the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPO) against (believe it or not) the Green Party. It was like watching Donald Trump vs Bernie Sanders, but in German of course.

The Freedom Party campaigned on an "anti" platform -- anti-immigration, anti-Muslim (although they don't say so as directly as does The Donald), and -- very significantly -- anti-European Union, which is to say they're against the One Rainbow World Agenda. The Greens? Well, they're for all the rainbows and unicorns, alternative energy, Willkommenskultur and the brotherhood of man. [Ed., can I still say "brotherhood of man"?]

A key campaign issue was Europe's migrant crisis, which has seen the number of mostly Muslim asylum-seekers and "refugees" soar into the millions. Unlike their German kith and kin, Austrians have been decidedly unwelcoming to the Muslim hordes. Although only 90,000 or so people claimed asylum in Austria last year, that's equivalent to about 1% of the country's population, and many Austrians -- the majority, apparently -- feel that enough is enough!

As of last night, the Freedom Party's presidential candidate, Norbert Hofer, was leading the Greens' Alexander Van der Bellen by 51.9% to 48.1%. The actual margin was 144,006 votes, but there are some 750,000 postal ballots yet to be counted. Projections indicate the postal votes could favour Herr Van der Bellen, and sure enough, the final tally showed Herr Hofer with 49.7% of the vote and Herr Van der Bellen the president-elect, with 50.3%. The difference is only a little more than 31,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million ballots cast.

If Norbert Hofer had won, he would have been the first "far-right" head of state in the European Union. The implications -- not just for Austria but for all of Europe -- of the FPO's very narrow loss are enormous! Although the "antis" lost a close one, the result still adds momentum to the surge in support for populist and far-right parties in other European countries. As well, it gives impetus as well to the "Quit Europe" side in the UK "Brexit" referendum, coming next month. The forces of "progress and enlightenment" are more nervous now than ever... and rightly so!

Mary Anne Noland, RIP

Thanks to Agent 34 for making us aware of this obituary.

Smart Canucks warn their country to brace for a Trump win

Derek H. Burney and Fen Osler Hampson are not the real names of the guys who play arch-hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie on much-missed SCTV. They are most unhoserlike. Mr. Burney was Canada’s ambassador to the United States from 1989-1993, during the reign of Bush I. Mr. Hampson is a distinguished fellow [a title, not necessarily a description. Ed.] and director of Global Security at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He is also Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Messrs Burney and Hampson the authors of Brave New Canada: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014). They've also written an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail in which they give some timely advice to their fellow Canucks under the headline: "Brace yourselves: Trump is going to win". Walt will skip the advice and repost the explanation for their contrarian prediction.

Canadians and our media have watched U.S. primary season with a mixture of incredulity, disbelief, horror and smugness. The conventional wisdom here, as well as among most American pundits, is that Donald Trump doesn’t stand a chance of winning the presidency and that the Democrats will retake the White House under Hillary Clinton.

The problem is that the conventional wisdom has been consistently wrong since last June. Many thought Mr. Trump would implode during the Republican primary. He didn’t. Many thought his reality-TV-show persona and foul-mouthed campaign style would eventually wear thin with voters. It hasn’t. 

Many thought – and still do – that his lack of policy substance and multiple about-faces – if not downright contradictions – on hot-button issues like abortion, Muslims and Mexican migrants would doom his campaign with Americans, who generally tend to have a strong sense of fair play and public decorum. That, too, hasn’t happened. Meanwhile the FBI investigation of Ms. Clinton’s personal e-mail accounts is ongoing and Vice-President Joe Biden is back on TV stating that he would be the best candidate.

What many fail to recognize is that Donald Trump is rewriting the rules of American politics with his take-no-prisoners, earned-rather-than-paid media campaign for the U.S. presidency. He is riding a tidal wave of profound dissatisfaction among ordinary American voters (and not just aging, white, middle-aged males, for that matter) that is driven by a volatile mix of xenophobic nationalism, falling wages and living standards for the middle and lower classes, a yawning and ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and an acute sense that America under President Barack Obama has taken a backseat role in world affairs, has mismanaged major issues and is no longer the leading great power it once was.

Donald Trump understands the angry mood of America better than his Washington-based Republicans, which is why he is the last man standing. Only Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders rivals Mr. Trump with his intuitive grasp of America’s state of mind and that is why he is giving Hillary Clinton such an unexpected run for her money.

America’s political establishment, including those in the media, are widely seen as being out of the touch and arrogant and self-serving, which is why Mr. Trump’s “outsider” appeal has traction. If there were any lingering doubts, consider the extraordinary confession in the New York Times Magazine by Obama confidant, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes openly bragged about lying about timelines in the Iranian nuclear deal to reporters while feeding their more inexperienced colleagues with stories to create, in his words, “an echo chamber” so that the public would support the deal. Talk about hubris! 

A just released Reuters online poll puts the race between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump as neck and neck. That is just one poll and a lot can happen between now and November. But Canadians and their government should nevertheless ready themselves for the possibility of a Trump presidency. Prudence is anticipating the worst before it happens and readying yourself for the consequences.

Indeed.... The emphasis above is mine. And, as Donald Trump said to David Cameron, I'm not stupid -- far from it. I'm taking bets now on The Donald plus three points. That is, if Mr. Trump wins, or loses to Hellery Clinton by 3% of the popular vote or less, I win. Send your name and credit card details to the usual address. I won't debit your card until after the votes are counted!