RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Spanish. my mother tongue, we call an idiot a “pendejo”

In an interview on the Spanish-language show “Noticias Telemundo,” Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, the Democrat nominee for vice president, said that Spanish was the language of America before English. Kaine has often given speeches in Spanish, and on Sunday he gave a sermon entirely in Spanish at Pneuma Church in Miami, Fla.

“Latino culture is one of the most important things in our country right now because we have had Hispanic roots since the beginning. … Spanish was the language of our country before English,” Kaine told Telemundo host José Díaz-Balart on Monday, according to a translated transcript.

“It’s important to remember that, and celebrate it,” Kaine argued. “And also, the issues important to Latinos are the same: education, economic development and, especially, respect. In this campaign the question of respect is very important, because the two sides of the campaign have very different opinions about the Latino community.”

Kaine was hinting at Donald Trump’s many disparaging comments about immigrants from Mexico, which have been attacked as racist. Trump’s complaints mostly focus on illegal immigrants, as opposed to people of a particular race. The Republican nominee has not specifically disparaged Latinos, but many feel insulted and attacked by his comments, especially as many media outlets have reported them as racist.

Clinton has gone overboard in her attempts to appeal to Latinos, and even the Huffington Post has acknowledged her efforts veer into “Hispandering.” She has launched Spanish-language ads specifically targeting Latinos, especially in Florida. Nevertheless, some Puerto Ricans in that state are still on the fence about her. Nevertheless, the outreach seems to be working.

Trump won’t accept defeat, should that be his lot on November 8, unless he is satisfied the game wasn’t rigged, which it is always is. As for Mrs Clinton, she will maintain the habit of a lifetime and surround the Oval Office with a bodyguard of lies.
The issue of issues in the third debate was Trump’s refusal to commit himself to accepting the results of the election as tallied on the day. He has, in effect, stated that an election result would not be acceptable if there is serious evidence of voter and electoral fraud. I wish he hadn’t said it since it will diminish his outstanding performance on the rest.

But what do I know about politics at that levels, since what it will do is put the spotlight on the way in which the deceased vote early and often, how voting machines are hacked and the multiple-voting that is rife across the American system.For all my misgivings, he is the one that has taken the Trump train to the edge of the White House, so we shall just have to see what happens now.

I have often thought about this issue, in particular in relation to the 2012 election: In 59 Philadelphia voting divisions, Mitt Romney got zero votes. Not one person voted for Romney, not even by accident, not even by pulling the wrong lever, not even my mis-reading the ballot paper! Not one? To quote from the above link:

The unanimous support for Obama in these Philadelphia neighborhoods – clustered in almost exclusively black sections of West and North Philadelphia – fertilizes fears of fraud, despite little hard evidence.

Upon hearing the numbers, Steve Miskin, a spokesman for Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, brought up his party’s voter-identification initiative – which was held off for this election – and said, “We believe we need to continue ensuring the integrity of the ballot.”

The absence of a voter-ID law, however, would not stop anyone from voting for a Republican candidate.

Which is exactly the point. The polls showed a super-majority voting for Obama, but the polls also showed the score at 94-6. Six percent is not zero percent. And then there’s this:

The video was put up just the other day, on October 18, and comes with this caption:

In the second video of James O’Keefe’s new explosive series on the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign, Democratic party operatives tell us how to successfully commit voter fraud on a massive scale. Scott Foval, who has since been fired, admits that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years.

This is an issue of immense importance in a democracy. Legitimacy is bestowed only if the system is fair and perceived to be fair. Trump is in the middle of a battle he thinks, and I think, is for the future of America and the West. What he said is that he is not going to give the outcome his prior approval before he has actually seen what has happened on the day.

And I do have to say that I was surprised that he didn’t bring up Al Gore and the disputed election in 2012. It would no doubt have crossed his mind, so you have to think Trump had sifted this on the spot and didn’t wish to change the focus to sixteen years ago. He wants this election, this year, run clean. And since this is his greatest vulnerability – an election stolen by those with a proven track record of electoral theft – he wants to keep the pressure on as best he can.

Politics is ultimately what works. Does it cost him votes to focus on voter fraud in this way? No doubt. But will it also gain him votes if he can contain the fraud? Yes again. The question really comes down to how it will play out.

That the Clinton Foundation’s operations are nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra….

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website — the ones specific enough for us to track down — were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra…

We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

That the Clinton Foundation’s operations are nothing but a cash cow scam is seen in a brilliant analysis and exposé of its operations in Colombia, a country beset by internal strife and an ongoing battle with drug cartels. The truth, as reported by Ken Silverman and the American Media Institute in Fusion, a joint venture of ABC and Univision, hardly Trump surrogates, explains in part how the Clintons amassed a small fortune without holding any job or running any business:

Colombia should be the Clinton Foundation’s best case study. Ground zero for the drug wars of the 1980s and 90s, racked by uneven development and low-intensity conflict for half a century, Colombia has received more foundation money and attention than any other nation outside the United States. Bill and Hillary Clinton have visited the country often and enjoy close relationships with members of Colombia’s ruling party. Colombia has also been home to the vast oil and natural gas holdings of the man who is reportedly the Clinton Foundation’s largest individual donor, Canadian financier Frank Giustra….

Many of the Colombian “success stories” touted on the foundation’s website — the ones specific enough for us to track down — were critical about the foundation’s effect on their lives. Labor leaders and progressive activists say foundation programs caused environmental harm, displaced indigenous people, and that it concentrated a larger share of Colombia’s oil and natural gas reserves in the hands of Giustra…

We interviewed young women in the foundation’s job-training programs; female business owners who sought help from its programs; workers who toiled for the foundation’s biggest individual donor’s firms; indigenous fisherman who were promised jobs and aid; and union leaders, social-justice activists, and progressive lawmakers. Some say they lost money. Others said they were used as props. Still others simply thought that the foundation had wasted a lot of their time. “They are doing nothing for workers,” one Colombian union official told us, with disgust. “I don’t even know what they are doing in this country other than exploiting poverty and extracting money.”

Donald Trump’s best chance to be President has always been to make the campaign about something larger than himself—reviving the economy, replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, defeating Islamic State, something to make the case for change to a country unhappy with the status quo. In Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump showed what might have been had he fought more on the issues, even as he also exposed his Achilles’ heel of a thin skin and petulant ego.

Mr. Trump is never going to out-argue Hillary Clinton on details, but for much of the debate he was able to draw a contrast on philosophical direction that is his best chance to close his polling deficit. He was effective on the Supreme Court and the right to bear arms, as well as embracing the original meaning of the Constitution.

Mrs. Clinton tried to muddy her opposition to the landmark Heller case that upheld an individual right to bear arms in the Constitution, but Mr. Trump nailed her on it. She certainly would appoint Justices who will sharply curtail if not overturn Heller.

The Republican also managed to convey the large differences between the two candidates on the economy. He’d cut taxes, she’d raise them. He’d replace ObamaCare, she’d expand it. He wants to grow incomes with a stronger economy, she wants to redistribute income. Her claim that her plan would “not add a penny to the debt” was preposterous.

We think Mr. Trump is wrong on trade and his assertions on Nafta are nonsense, but he did manage to show Mrs. Clinton’s double dealing on the issue. Mrs. Clinton said she opposed the Pacific trade agreement only after she had read the text, but the WikiLeaks documents show that she had already decided to oppose it for political reasons before it was completed.

Mrs. Clinton also ducked moderator Chris Wallace’s question on the Clinton Foundation and its “pay to play” acceptance of donations from foreigners while she was Secretary of State. Mr. Trump was right to hit her and her husband for claiming to do so much for Haiti when they have mainly helped their friends to favorable contracts.

The question is whether any of this will matter given Mr. Trump’s manifest flaws in temperament. The Clinton campaign must have done some psychological profiling of Mr. Trump to figure out that his great flaw is his inability to ignore or deflect personal criticism. His GOP opponents made the mistake of trying to take him down on substance. But Mrs. Clinton has tried to disqualify him on character, and Wednesday she continued to set one bear trap after another. Mr. Trump usually walked in.