Posted on Nov 3, 2016 in Bernie Sanders, Cruz, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Hillary Clinton, immigration, Iraq, ISIS, Jeb Bush, Middle East, Obamacare, President Obama, Public Opinion Polls, Putin, Republican Party, social issues: Racism, Uncategorized |
When Bernie Sanders famously said: “Enough of those damned emails,” many thought they’d heard the death-knell of that wearisome argument. Just this week, President Obama referred to it as “all that noise,” designed to confuse new voters about Hillary’s trustworthiness. The concept of “noise” comes from cybernetics and it refers to anything that interferes with a message sent by one party to another–we laymen also know it as static. Sad to say, we are all familiar with static on our cell phones which keep us from hearing the other person’s words and messages. The static in this case, as we all know by now, are the dark references to some of Hillary’s emails. Of the emails, President Obama also noted that while Clinton, while serving as his Secretary of State, made an “honest mistake” by using a private email server, as it was now “being blown up into just some crazy thing,” which will affect new voters when they hear “all that noise.” Why now, you may ask, all of this focused static. Well,...
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Posted on Oct 28, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Public Opinion Polls, Republican Party |
Hillary still leads in the national polls, although that lead has shrunk almost daily over the past week. The RCP Poll of polls shows a 30 percent drop in Hillary’s lead, down to just a little over 4 percent. The magnitude of the drop can be seen by comparing the last three ABC News Tracking polls. In polls covering the period 10-20 to 10-22, Hillary’s lead over Donald Trump was 12 percentage points. In their polling covering 10-21- to 10-24 her lead had declined to 9 points. In their 10-23 to 10-26 poll, Hillary’s lead was down to just 4 points. This kind of drop should be alarming to the Clinton camp coming so late in the race for President. Other polls also show a downwards trend for Hillary. My sounding board daughter now focuses on Hillary’s electoral lead, which is still significant. However, key battleground states still show leads for Clinton so small that her electoral advantage (ranging from the 70 votes above the 270 needed for victory, to 18...
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Posted on Aug 26, 2016 in Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Putin, Social Issues: Free Trade and Labor displacement., Syria, Ukraine and Crimea, Uncategorized |
The growing wealth and income gap between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent has reached staggering dimensions. And now, more than ever, the “have-nots” are made up largely by the middle class, which now includes many “workers.” Years ago I dismissed Marx’s class conflict theory as yet another, albeit more radical, utopian socialist dream. Then in my first, of a long line of classes, taken and then taught, about communism, in both theory and practice, I continued to be intrigued by Lenin’s 1917 tract: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Now, nearly 100 years after Lenin wrote his theory of imperialism, and the first time since The Great Depression, Lenin’s check-list for revolution appears close to being realized. Ironically that is largely due to the policies of the “haves” themselves. Whether this has come about mostly by greed or by ignorance is unclear. What is clear, however, is that policy differences between Tump and Clinton will go a long way towards deciding how peaceful a revolution...
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Posted on Aug 6, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, President Obama, Republican Party, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Crimea |
Trump’s post-convention 6 point bounce was wiped clean as Hillary emerged from the Democratic Convention with a 6 to 9 point lead, according to most polls. One reason was the well produced program that the Demos put on. Part of it was due to Trump’s own continued poor judgment, his foot-in-mouthitis as he chose to denigrate a gold star mother who son, Capt. Humayun Khan, heroically gave his life in Afghanistan saving others during a suicide bombing. As usual Donald was his own worst enemy. Not only did Trump, who never served in our military himself, insult Mrs Khan and her religion, but he doubled down the next day, expanding his attacks on the Khans. This quickly drew the vocal ire of most mainstream Republicans and veterans throughout the country. The Veterans of Foreign Wars joined in the condemnation of Trump, as they, too, wondered about whether such a man could be qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. As if that wasn’t enough, Trump took on fellow Republicans Sen. John McCain and Speaker Paul...
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Posted on Jul 24, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, E.U., Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Putin, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine and Crimea |
Seventy years of bi-partisanship have gone into creating a credible deterrence strategy to cope with the challenges posed to our foreign policy in an era of nuclear powers and the means of delivering them. Our deterrence strategy rests upon the elimination and reduction of doubt as to whether certain actions against ourselves and our allies will produce a response by the U.S. that is unacceptable to a potential enemy. The weaving of alliances and other measures taken to implement and maintain this strategy has been supported by every President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, both Republican and Democratic, since the fateful dropping of those early atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II and ushered in the dangerous nuclear age. This credibility of our response and commitments to our allies have been seriously, if not fatally, weakened by Donald Trump’s clearly ignorant insertion of doubt into the equation. He might as well have invited North Korea across the “no-man’s land” and across the 38th parallel and on into our...
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Posted on Jan 6, 2016 in Foreign Policy Issues, Iran, Middle East, Oil, Saudi Arabia, Shia, Sunni, Yemen |
Happy New Year to all of our viewers. Polling for the presidential nominations, by and large, took a break for the holidays. Polls from individual states, you’ll recall, get much more accurate with the holidays in the rear view mirror. We’ll analyze and report on them and the important national polls as they become available. Meanwhile, sectarian tensions in the Middle East were exacerbated when the Saudis executed a Shiite cleric that triggered large demonstrations at the Saudi embassy in Tehran, which was ransacked and damaged in the process. That this was in violation of the Geneva Convention seemed of little consequence to the demonstrators, who appeared organized, judging by the plethora of similar professionally made signs showing the likeness of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Iran, of course, is predominantly Shia, while Saudi Arabia is Sunni–with a sizable Shia minority, that mostly live in Saudi’s strategically important Eastern oil region. Al-Nimr, though not theologically a major cleric, was popular throughout the Shiite world and had spent many years in Iran. Al-Nimr, a...
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