At This Point in Time, What Difference Does It Make?

No matter who is president, there will be a recession in the next four years.

No matter who is president, the US will spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. 

No matter who is president, US sovereign debt will expand. Right now it is at 100% of GDP, it is going higher. 

No matter who is president, the US population will get older and the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, and especially Medicare, will blossom. This might be as much as 100 trillion dollars, five times the horrific US national debt. This is such a large number that no one can comprehend it.  

No matter who is president, the unfunded pension liabilities of states and municipalities will continue. Chicago alone is over 100 billion in unfunded pension obligations. 

I opposed Clinton because I did not want to die in a nuclear holocaust. Not dying is a good thing. 

We have a window for reform. I hope Trump does not waste this window and reforms the US healthcare system. If the healthcare system isn't fixed, nothing else matters.

I will talk about this in the next blog post. Until then I leave you with this version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I Have Good News and Bad News

I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that Clinton was not elected president. The bad news is that Trump was. 

You would have to add me to the list of those wrong about Trump. I just did not think that the "powers that be" would let Trump be elected. Apparently they lost control of the memes due to having no control over new media. I did expect a tie, however if the election had played out as I thought Clinton would have won. I did not predict a win for Trump in Pennsylvania. Michigan and Wisconsin? Don't even think about it. I sure didn't. 

Camille Paglia, a Sanders supporter, said this about Trump before the election:

Primary voters nationwide are clearly responding to Trump’s brand of classic can-do American moxie. There has been a sense of weary paralysis in our increasingly Byzantine and monstrously wasteful government bureaucracies.  Putting a bottom-line businessman with executive experience into the White House has probably been long overdue.  If Mitt Romney had boldly talked business more (and chosen a woman VP), he would have won the last election.  Although the rampant Hitler and Mussolini analogies to Trump are wildly exaggerated–he has no organized fascist brigades at his beck and call—there is reason for worry about his impatient authoritarian tendencies.  We have had more than enough of Obama’s constitutionally questionable executive orders.  It remains to be seen whether Trump’s mastery of a hyper-personalized art of the deal will work in the sluggish, murky, incestuously intertwined power realms of Washington.

Here is a montage of Trump skeptics. 

A Historic Rant

Normally I would not put items with profanity on this blog, but I decided to make an exception. A rant is a rant. This is Jonathan Pie, who is I assume a British comedian, on the Trump election. 

As I said on Facebook:

The Republicans have managed to nominate someone who might not be able to beat Hillary Clinton; the Democrats have managed to nominate someone who might not be able to beat Donald Trump. 

Note that rants have a long history and are even in the Bible, especially the book of Ezekiel. Naturally conservative Bible commentators interpret these rants literally, to great confusion. 

President Trump: Obama's Third Term

I can just see some people's faces. What?! Trump and Obama are nothing alike. But hear me out. I have not "jumped the shark." 

First one needs to remember the Obama campaign. Clearly he was not ready to be president. He had been in the Senate for only two years, and his service there was unimpressive. But he was a fresh face. I had always thought that he was actually running for vice president, and got lucky. He campaigned on Hope and Change. That is exactly what the electorate wants. They want change, and they hope it works. The fact that someone with such a lack of experience was able to sideline Clinton for 8 years tells us that Clinton was out of touch with the people. 

Look at her campaign slogan. "I'm with Her." Yes, she had another slogan as well, "Together something or other." I will not bother to look it up. The fact that I can't remember it says a lot about the Clinton campaign's rhetorical skills. But instead of "I'm with Her," her slogan should have been "She's with US." The rumor is that her husband saw this coming and tried to get her campaign to address these issues with the average working class person. Even though former President Clinton's political instincts are said to be quite good, he was ignored. His existence probably hurt her campaign as his sexual past was actually worse that Trump's. President Clinton's past allowed some to vote for Trump as the other side was worse. While Hillary Clinton naturally had policies, her emphasis was almost entirely, "I am not Trump." 

This was not enough. 

While Trump has considerably more "life experience" than Obama had in 2008, this experience was not all positive. His political experience was even less than Obama's. Trump ultimately was a celebrity from a reality TV show. In some ways he was the "ideal" candidate. 

I see a connection with the Obama slogan, "Hope and Change," with the Trump slogan "Make America Great Again." In fact, Trump's slogan could also have been "Hope and Change." Nostalgia does have it appeal, just look at the popularity of the sitcom, "Happy Days," from which the term "jump the shark" entered our cultural lexicon. Personally I do not want to live in the 50's reincarnated. 

Like Obama, Trump is a master of rhetoric. Both had substance, but in neither case did the substance matter. 

For both Obama and Trump, rhetoric was enough. 

Has American "jumped the shark" with a President Trump? No one knows. I am "guardedly pessimistic." No one can repeal the business cycle, so President Trump will have to deal with a recession, just as a President Clinton would have. At least Trump, having skirted personal bankruptcy in the 90's, understands the risks. 

There is that clichéd Chinese curse that seems to fit the US right now: 

May you live in interesting times. 

The Evils of Two Lessors

As I write this on Monday, I am still not certain what I will do. Since I titled one blog post "Clinton: Dangerous as Hell" and another blog post "Trump: Dangerous as Heck" you might conclude that I was leaning one way. 

To explain my probable vote you need to understand my history of voting in California. 

In 1972 I was not happy with either McGovern or Nixon. Both seemed really bad. It was my first vote and I wanted to vote. I was not sure what I was going to do when I entered the voting booth. I noticed that the American Independent party was on the ballot and my congressman was the candidate for president for that party. So I voted for him. 

After returning to California after many years, I was also not happy with my choices in 2012—Romney or Obama. It just did not seem to matter. I was flirting with voting for the Peace and Freedom Party as their candidate, Roseanne Barr, had suggested bring back the guillotine for bankers. I noticed that the American Independent party still had ballot access. So I voted for their candidate. I actually do not remember his name! It did not matter. 

So as I prepare to vote, I am still uncertain. I may just leave it blank, and vote against all the propositions. I will vote in favor of 53 as Governor Brown is against it. But the most likely outcome is that I vote for the American Independent candidate this year, I would not want to break with tradition.