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Not Getting It: Michael Moore, Hollande, Merkel, Financial Times, Stephen Colbert

The parade of politicians and media pundits who are totally clueless about what happened and why is miles long.

Most writers are equally clueless about what to do now and how to react.

Let's kick of the parade of incorrect, political correctness with a Michael Moore and Stephen Colbert.


Morning After

Documentary film-maker Michael Moore has a Morning After To-Do List that allegedly has gone viral.

  1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

  2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

  3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.

  4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

  5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).


Moore's Fantasyland

Moore ends his to-do list with a preposterous comment "Let's try to get this all done by noon today."

Moore live in a Fantasyland where Hollywood, New York, and California socialists and unions are in control.

For all the talk of a popular vote win for Hillary, check out two key states. Hillary beat Trump by a margin of 5,491,633 to 2,970,914 in California. That is net margin of 2,520,719.

She beat Trump in New York by a margin of 4,143,874 of 2,640,570. That is net margin of 1,503,304.

I look at things this way: Trump's Geographic Landslide.

In the real world, we have a Republic, not a Democracy, designed by our constitutional founders on purpose, so that a few large population states do not dictate the rules for the entire nation.


How Could God Let Trump Win?

In his TV show, in a state or shock, Colbert asks "How Could God Let Trump Win?"

I have to say I laughed, but Colbert is as clueless as Moore.


Crowds Take to the Streets

Of all the totally clueless actions, taking the protest to the streets is near the top of the list. Hillary already conceded. Yet, the New York Times reports 'Not Our President': Protests Spread After Donald Trump's Election .

Thousands of people across the country marched, shut down highways, burned effigies and shouted angry slogans on Wednesday night to protest the election of Donald J. Trump as president.

It was the second night of protests there, following unruly demonstrations that led to property damage and left at least one person injured shortly after Mr. Trump's election was announced.

The protests on Wednesday came just hours after Hillary Clinton, in her concession speech, asked supporters to give Mr. Trump a "chance to lead."

In New York, crowds converged at Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue at 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, where the president-elect lives.

They chanted "Not our president" and "New York hates Trump" and carried signs that said, among other things, "Dump Trump." Restaurant workers in their uniforms briefly left their posts to cheer on the demonstrators.

The demonstrations forced streets to be closed, snarled traffic and drew a large police presence. They started in separate waves from Union Square and Columbus Circle and snaked their way through Midtown.

If protesters really want to protest something meaningful, they ought to be picketing the Fed and its inflationist policies that have destroyed the middle class.


Chancellor Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had the gall to chastise Trump in a supposedly congratulatory statement. It was nothing but hypocritical. For details, please see Merkel Has the Gall to Lecture Trump, Not Islamist Police State Bedfellow Erdogan.


French President Francois Hollande

Hollande proclaimed Trump's 'Excesses' Make People 'Want to Retch'

His policies, and the policies of socialists in general are why France is a basket case. They make any thinking person want to retch.


West Cannot Survive Trump

Trump Cartoon

Philip Stephens, writing for the Financial Times says America Can Survive Trump. Not So the West.

America's tragedy -- and how else can one describe the passage to the White House of someone whose politics are so boastfully rooted in prejudice and hate -- is also the west's tragedy.

Mr Trump is content to preside over the dissolution of the US alliance system, leaving Europe vulnerable to Mr Putin's revanchism and East Asia to the ambitions of an assertive China. Japan and South Korea, he has suggested, may want to build their own nuclear weapons. We can be sure that, if he keeps a promise to abrogate the international nuclear deal with Iran, then Tehran will soon enough build its own bomb.

Other democracies face their own populist insurrections. Demagogues across Europe have been lauding Mr Trump's success. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's xenophobic National Front, hopes to emulate him in next year's contest for the Elysée Palace. Hungary and Poland have fallen into the arms of far-right nativism. Britain's vote in June to leave the EU in significant part was an expression of angry English nationalism.

Mr Trump goes further by repudiating the basic, organising idea of the west: the notion that the world's richest democracies can oversee a fair and inclusive rules-based system to underwrite global peace and security. Co-operative internationalism is to be replaced by competitive nationalism.

So the dangers will now come thick and fast. How much of a free Europe can survive the withdrawal of the US security umbrella? Will Russia be allowed to restore its influence over formerly communist states in eastern and central Europe? Will rising states in the east and south now look to authoritarianism rather than democracy as a model for their societies? Who will keep the peace in the East and South China seas? How safe or stable is a world organised around the interests of, and conflicts between, a handful of great powers?


America's Tragedy?

The tragedy in all of this is the socialists, the public unions, Hollywood, the Fed, and Central Banks are completely clueless about what happened and why.

Donald Trump is not a tragedy. The tragedy is piss poor economic policies led to the rise of Donald Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France, and Beppe Grillo in Italy.

The solution is not more Europe, more unions, more socialism, more QE, or more free handouts that have punished the middle class to the sole benefit of the political class, the bankers, and the already wealthy.

I strongly disagree with Trump on free trade.

Yet, Trump won because he tapped that discontent. But Hillary? Please spare me the sap. She represented the war mongers, Wall Street, and drones. A no fly zone in Syria risked a war with Russia,

I am in favor of lifting Russia sanctions immediately. It's high time the US mind its own business. We should be more like New Zealand.

How many governments did New Zealand overthrow? How many disasters did the US create by overthrowing governments? Iran, Iraq, Libya, Chile, Afghanistan, and an attempt in Vietnam all come to mind, at a cost of trillions of dollars, better spent at home.

Hillary was an agent of the status quo. Trump provides a chance at much needed change. The US can no longer afford to be the world's policeman.


Non-Solutions

  1. Central bank sponsored inflation is not the solution, it is the problem.

  2. Regulation is not the solution, it is the problem.

  3. Public unions are not the solution, they are the problem.

  4. Competitive currency debasement is not the solution it is the problem.

  5. More debt is not the solution, it is the problem.

  6. Warmongering is not the solution, it is the problem.

  7. Tariffs are not the solution, they are the problem.

  8. Minimum wage hikes are nor the solution, they are the problem.

  9. More military spending is not the solution, it is the problem.

  10. The status quo is not the solution, it is the problem.

Trump is wrong on 7, 9, and it appears 5 although he says otherwise. Trump is either correct, or positioned correctly on the rest.


Solutions

  1. End fractional reserve lending.

  2. Return to a gold standard.

Neither candidate espoused those policies. Trump is more likely than Hillary to do something reasonable.


Blame Game

Don't blame Trump or deregulation for this mess. Blame central banks, FRL, socialists, public unions, war mongers. https://t.co/JYJqnzJKAN

-- Mike Mish Shedlock (@MishGEA) November 11, 2016

FRL stands for Fractional Reserve Lending.


Gold's Honest Discipline

The entire trade problem and deficit spending problem can be linked directly to fractional reserve lending and Nixon closing the gold window allowing governments and central banks to inflate at will.

For details, please see ...

  1. Hugo Salinas Price and Michael Pettis on the Trade Imbalance Dilemma; Gold's Honest Discipline Revisited
  2. How One Billionaire Became a Gold Bug

Massive problems started the moment Nixon closed the gold window.

Inquiring minds should consider Readers Question Free Trade; Does Nonreciprocal Free Trade Cost Jobs? Paul Krugman "Was" Right!

Tariffs are not the answer. Free trade, a gold standard, and the end to fractional reserve lending and central banks is the answer.

 

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