Donald Trump is in Trouble – Part 2

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As an American citizen who considers himself relatively well informed as well as deeply invested in the future of the nation, the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has been simultaneously bizarre, exciting, depressing, entertaining and embarrassing. In particular, yesterday represented perhaps the most overwhelming news day of my lifetime from a purely political perspective. The purpose of today’s post is to provide readers with an updated analysis of the race, and how I think things have changed. At this point, I’ve watched the disturbing and vulgar Trump audio a couple of times, and I’ve gone through enough of the Wikileaks Podesta emails to have a more informed opinion than I did yesterday. This post isn’t going to try to inform readers of how I think voters should react, but it will focus on how I think they will react. After all, my opinions are of little to no significance when it comes to what will happen on November 8th.

As disgusted as I am with the current state of the financial industry, I learned a lot of very valuable lessons from my decade on Wall Street. One of the most significant of them is incapsulated by the saying “you need to trade the market you have, not the market you want.” So what does that mean?

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Donald Trump is in Trouble

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*Note: Since this post was published, some material information has hit in the form of a massive, meaningful data-dump from Wikileaks. I have read through some of it, and it is unquestionably damaging to Hillary Clinton. When I originally wrote the post below, I was working under the assumption that this would be the big … Read more

Backlash Grows Months After the FBI’s Sham Investigation Into Hillary Clinton

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“What Difference Does It Make.” Those simple words offer a perfect glimpse into the life and times of Hillary Clinton. A woman who gets away with everything and anything, and who now wants to be President of these United States.

From her earliest days as a public figure, an aura of shadiness and lack of accountability permeates. For starters, there’s the infamous 1978 case of her turning $1,000 into $100,000 by trading cattle futures, an endeavor in which she had no expertise.

Naturally, nothing ever came of the cattle trading incident, kicking off a pattern that has continued to play out throughout her career.  It’s this reality that has made her increasingly bold — and dangerous.

– From July’s post: “What Difference Does It Make” – Thoughts on the Non-Indictment of Hillary Clinton

The FBI’s sham investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server represents the latest corrosive nail in the coffin of the faith the American public once held in its “esteemed” institutions to do what’s right and just by the people.

Months after James Comey cleared her in an utterly embarrassing press conference, many additional revelations have emerged, and outrage about how the investigation was conducted continues to grow.

For example, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions recently had the following to say according to the Daily Caller:

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A Look Inside Key West’s Battle to Prevent a Release of GMO Mosquitos

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We’ve all heard of the Zika virus. What you probably haven’t heard of is British biotechnology company Oxitec, purchased last year by billionaire Randal Kirk. A company that has released A. aegypti killing GMO mosquitos in at least Brazil, Malaysia, Panama and the Grand Cayman islands. The company also planned a release in the Florida Keys, but has thus far been stopped by a group of determined activists.

Bloomberg covered the story in a fascinating article published earlier today titled, Florida’s Feud Over Zika-Fighting GMO Mosquitoes.

What follows are excerpts from that piece:

On a Tuesday morning in September, under a sweltering tropical sun on the island of Grand Cayman, 140,000 mosquitoes flit around in four large coolers in the back of a gray Toyota minivan. Behind the wheel is Renaud Lacroix, a Ph.D. in biology and medical entomology who works for the British biotechnology company Oxitec. A colleague, Isavella Evangelou, crouches behind him in a tight space next to the coolers. The minivan is idling on the side of a dirt road in West Bay, a quiet neighborhood where iguanas and roosters dart in and out of the yards of small homes painted in Caribbean pastels. The time has come for the mosquitoes to fulfill the purpose for which they were genetically engineered: a kamikaze mission to eliminate their own species.

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Now I Know Why I Keep Getting Personalized LinkedIn Requests Although I Never Created an Account

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I’m equally relieved and unnerved to have potentially figured out the answer to a question that has been bothering me for years.

Why do I keep getting personalized LinkedIn requests despite the fact that I do not currently have a LinkedIn account, and I never created one in the first place? How did LinkedIn get the email I use for my blog despite the fact that I have never publicly published this email address anywhere?

For answers to these troubling questions, I turn to a post at Quora that recently came to my attention:

Does LinkedIn access your email or contact list?

YES. Straight from the horse’s mouth: “the people you may know could have been uploaded to LinkedIn through auto authorization if you had at any time your LinkedIn account open and accessed any of your emails through the same browser.” Also “there is not a setting to specifically turn this feature off.”

Here’s the full text of my correspondence with them, through the linkedin help center interface:

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Must Read of the Day – ‘I Listened to a Trump Supporter’

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The following article by David A Hill Jr is simply outstanding.

Here are some powerful excerpts from the piece: I Listened to a Trump Supporter

I talked at length with a Trump supporter I grew up around. I wanted to understand. I respected her growing up. I wanted to know why a person as kind and compassionate as I remember her is voting for someone like Donald Trump.

She was a family friend, a good person. In rural Ohio, everything was tight. Money, jobs. If you really needed quick cash, she’d put you to work doing landscaping. She’d pay fairly and reliably for the area.

She’s voting for Donald Trump. I disagree with her choice, but I understand why she rejects Clinton so fiercely, and why she’s been swept up in Donald Trump’s particular brand of right-wing populism. I feel that on the left, it’s increasingly easy to ignore these people, to disregard them, to write them off as racists, bigots, or uneducated. I think that’s a loss for everyone involved, and that sometimes listening can help you to at least understand why a person is making the choices they make, so you can work on the root causes. For her, the root cause isn’t racism. In fact, I remember her as one of the only people in the area who proudly hired black workers, in a place where that was a huge issue. She fought over that choice.

But that’s enough background. Let me relay a bit of what she told me.

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‘Libertarian’ VP Candidate Will Focus His Energy on Trashing Trump

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Unlike during the 2012 election, when I supported Gary Johnson’s Presidential bid, I have not backed him at all during his 2016 run. There are several reasons for my lack of enthusiasm, but the driving concern has been his apparent support for the sovereignty-destroying, corporatist coup masquerading as a free trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Until recently, I assumed he must have a thought out reason for supporting the calamitous pact, but following his recent foreign policy gaffes, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s probably just clueless.

This cluelessness seems to extend to his judgment in picking a running-mate, as his VP choice, William Weld, is now publicly embarrassing Johnson by stating he will focus his efforts on defeating Trump as opposed to pushing his own ticket to the voters.

As reported by the Boston Globe:

The Libertarian vice presidential candidate, William F. Weld, said Tuesday that he plans to focus exclusively on blasting Donald Trump over the next five weeks, a strategic pivot aimed at denying Trump the White House and giving himself a key role in helping to rebuild the GOP.

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Things Are Going From Bad to Worse – Iraqi PM Warns of ‘Regional War’

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One of the most discomforting aspects of Neil Howe and William Strauss’ seminal work on generational cycles, The Fourth Turning (1997), is the fact that as far as American history is concerned, they all climax and end with massive wars.

To be more specific, the first “fourth turning” in American history culminated with the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the second culminated with the Civil War (1861-1865), while the third ended with the bloodiest war in world history, World War II (1939-1945). The number of years between the end of the Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War was 78 years, and the number of years between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War II was 74 years (76 years if you use America’s entry into the war as your starting date). Therefore, if Howe & Strauss’ theory holds any water, and I think it does, we’re due for a major conflict somewhere around 75 years from the end of World War II. That brings us to 2020.

– From August’s post: Japanese Government Shifts Further Toward Authoritarianism and Militarism

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past six months or so warning about World War 3, an event which is more likely over the next few years than at any other point in my lifetime. Such a conflict is the last thing I’d ever want to see or have to raise red flags about, but I can’t simply ignore all the obvious and troubling signs around me.

Just last week, I published a post titled, The Situation in Syria is Very, Very Dangerous. Here are a few excerpts:

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U.S. Troops Being Deployed to Iraq May Face Violent Resistance From Iraqi State Militias

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My belief is, we will, in fact be greeted as liberators.
– Dick Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

Late last week, we learned President Obama was sending additional “boots on ground” to Iraq in order to push ISIS out of Mosul.

Reuters reported:

The United States will send around 600 new troops to Iraq to assist local forces in the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State that is expected later this year, U.S. and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.

The new deployment is the third such boost in U.S. troop levels in Iraq since April, underscoring the difficulties President Barack Obama has had in extracting the U.S. military from the country.

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Executive Director of the Kansas City Library System Issues Dire Free Speech Warning

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The following story hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

Back in May, a man was arrested by a private security guard and an off-duty police officer after asking pointed questions to American diplomat and author Dennis Ross during a library discussion. When a library employee attempted to intervene, he was also arrested.

ABC News reports:

The executive director the Kansas City library system says he is “outraged” that prosecutors continue to pursue charges against a man who was arrested after asking pointed questions during a library discussion about the Middle East peace process and an employee who tried to intervene.

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