Author Archives: iciemeg

Transcript of Vice President Joe Biden at World Economic Forum Davos 2017

Special address of Vice President Joe Biden at World Economic Forum Davos 2017

Personally listened to speech and transcribed fully

Other transcriptions (such as Fortune magazine) left out sections

Good morning everyone. I want to thank you and Klaus for your hospitality here and in the United States. You visit me in the United States, you still act as the host. You are so very very gracious.

My name is Joe Biden. I will be Vice President for 48 more hours — and then – tonight I get to start to say what I think, as if I haven’t for the last 44 years. (big smile). Klaus is not part of my presentation, but I promise you I have met so many incredible people around the world that was we begin to reorganize the system of the delivery of both care, as well as the way we attack cancer.. I am confident… absolutely confident – god willing if you have me back next year to talk about the project that we will be making exponential progress. There is so much hope and I’m so happy to see you looking and feeling so well.

Ladies and gentleman, It’s a great honor once again to address this distinguished forum, but this year in these early days of 2017 there is a palpable uncertainty of the state of the world. Klaus said I chose here to make my last speech when the President and I talked about this, President Obama and I, it seemed a fitting place to make the final speech since it was in Europe, on behalf of the United States, made the maiden speech for our  administration on foreign policy at the Munich conference. I want to talk about basically the same subject 8 years later. For the members of the media in the audience, I am making it clear that I am not referring the world is uneasy. I’m not referring to the imminent transition of power in our country and I mean that. In 2 days there will be a new President of the United States (someone booed… He raised his hand.. ). No, the challenges we face, the choices we must make as an international community don’t hinge exclusively on Washington’s leadership. It matters, I’m not suggesting that Washington leadership doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t hinge exclusively on Washington’s leadership.

Whether we reinforce the ties that bind us or whether we unravel under the current pressures, these choices have to be made by every single nation. They will determine, and it sounds like hyperbole, they will determine what kind of nation and what kind of nations and the world we are going to leave for our children.

For the past seven decades the choices why our fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers and grandfathers have made – particularly in the United States and our Allies in Europe –  have steered the world down a very clear path. After WWII, we literally drew a line under centuries of conflict and took steps to bend the arc of history. It sounds like hyperbole, but we actually bent the arc of history in a more just and fair direction instead of resigning ourselves to ceaseless wars. We built institutions and alliances to advance our shared security.

Instead of punishing former enemies, we invested billions and billions of dollars to help them rebuild. Instead of sorting the world into winners and losers, we outlined universal values that defined a better future for our children.

Our careful, and I mean, careful attention to building and sustaining the liberal international world order with United States and Europe at its core was the bedrock of the success the world enjoyed in the 2nd half of the 20th century. An era of expanded liberty, unprecedented economic growth that lifted millions out of poverty, a community of democracies that to this day serves as a fulcrum for our common security and our capacity to address the world’s most pressing problems.

Strengthening these values, values that have served our community of nations so well, for so long, is paramount to retaining the position of leadership the Western nations enjoy and preserving the progress we’ve made together and, I would argue, the health of the remainder of the world.

In recent years, it has become very evident that the consensus upholding this system is beginning to face incredible and increasing pressures from both within our countries and without.

Today I’d like to speak to the sources of those pressures, as I see it, and about why it is imperative that we act urgently to defend the liberal international order, to sustain it.

Here in this exclusive Alpine tower, where CEOs of multinational corporations rub elbows with world leaders, it is easy to embrace the intellectual benefits of a more open and integrated world. Many many benefits flow from it.

It is at our own peril that we ignore and to miss the legitimate fears and anxieties that exist in communities all across the developed world.

The concerns of mothers and fathers how they feel about losing that factory job that has always allowed them to provide for their families and the expectation that their children would even have a better life. Parents who don’t believe they can give their children a better life than they had.

My Dad used to have an expression “Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck” It is about your dignity, it is about your sense of yourself, it is about self-respect, it is about being able to look your child in the eye and say and mean “Honey it is going to be okay.” An awful lot of people felt that way a decade ago aren’t so sure. These are pressures that are undermining the support for the liberal international order from inside.

Globalization has not been an all ? good. I’m a free trader. I’m a strong supporter of globalization, but it has deepened the rift between those racing ahead at the top and those struggling to hang on in the middle or falling to the bottom.

One year ago, I spoke here in Davos about the challenges we face mastering the fourth industrial revolution – which will be a topic of this Forum for the next 10 years – about how can we insure the benefits and burdens of globalization, digitalization, artificial intelligence are shared more equitably.

In my country, there used to be a basic bargain beginning in the mid-20th century embraced by both political parties disagreed only in degree. It was something everyone agreed on. The basic bargain was that if you contributed to the success of the enterprise in which you were engaged you got to share in the benefits and the profits. That bargain has been fractured in my country and many of yours.

Advanced technology has divorced productivity from labor. We are making more than ever with fewer and fewer workers. There is a shrinking demand for low skill laborers while highly educated workers are getting paid more and more contributing to the rising inequity. It is based on a meritocracy, but it still has painful outcomes in some places. International trade and greater economic integration has lifted millions of people in the developing world out of abject poverty. Improving education, extending their lives, their expectations and opening new opportunities

Standards of living are still well below middle class expectations in the United States and Europe, but the change is real and good. Meanwhile many communities in the developed world that have long depended on manufacturing – the opposite is true. Their relative standard of living has declined. They feel shut out of opportunities. Their economic security feels jeopardized. Taken together these forces are effectively hollowing out the middle class, the traditional engine of economic growth and, I might add, of social stability in Western nations. We can’t undo the changes in technology has wrought in our world – nor should we try.

But we can and we must take action to mitigate the economic trends that are stoking unrest in so many advanced economies and undermining people’s basic sense of dignity.

Our goals should be a world where everyone’s standard of living is rising. There is an urgency to taking common sense steps like increasing cognitive capabilities through access to education and job training.

In my country back when I was a young Senator, even in the ’90s, I would talk.. it was very much in vogue to talk to graduating high school and college seniors. I’d say you are going to have seven jobs in your lifetime. I wondered why they didn’t look back at me and smile and say “Isn’t that great.”  Continuing education whether you’re an astrophysicist or you working on the assembly line is going to be required.

Insuring basic protection for workers has evaporated from what they were 20 years ago in most of our countries. Expanding access to capital, implementing progressive equitable tax systems where everyone pays their fair share.

I said to a group of folks like you last night..  the top 1% is not carrying their weight. You aren’t bad guys, you are all good guys.

I pointed out.. imagine in terms of standard of living… Imagine most middle class societies like European societies and ours, a person can’t get much of a raise, but if you told them all their kids would get a free college education they’d be very very thankful. A raise or free college education? They’d take the free college education. We can afford to do that in a heartbeat.

In the United States of America we have $1 Trillion 300 Billion tax expenditures per year. Used to be $800 Billion when Reagan was President. No one I have found can justify that many expenditures. Only two reasons for those expenditures, tax breaks… one, promote entrepreneurialism, generate risk, have people engage in productivity, increasing productivity or promoting social good.

This thing called “stepped up basis”  – you have similar things in other countries. You buy a stock, it increases 4 fold over a period of time. It goes from $1 million to $4 million. You are on your way to cash it in. You are going to pay capital gains on $3 million. But on the way god forbid you are hit by a truck and your daughter inherits it.  She pays no tax. No evidence it generates increased productivity of investment that tax-free money. It costs the Federal government $17 billion a year.

I can pay for every single solitary student in the United States of America going to a community college raising the number from 6 to 9 million, increasing productivity by 2/10ths of 1%, for $ 6 billion a year. Eliminate that one tax expenditure. I can increase productivity, I can cut the deficit by another $11 billion. That’s what I mean by more equity in the tax structure. People paying their fair share.

But compounding these economic worries are people’s fears about the real security risks we face.

If you look at the long streak of history or even just the trend lines in wars and other incidents of large-scale violence over the 50, 60, 70 years. As a practical matter we are probably safer than we have ever been, but it doesn’t feel that way. Daily images of violence and unrest from all over the world are shared directly on televisions and smart phones. Images we rarely would have seen in the pre-digital age. It fosters the feeling of perpetual chaos, of being overrun by outside forces. Communication technology has fostered incredible progress making information more accessible, breaking down barriers between people and nations, facilitating greater scientific collaboration, empowering ordinary citizens to challenge injustice and hold their government’s accountable.

But they also have given hateful individuals a megaphone to spread their virulent extremist ideologies. Radical jihadists not only recruit and find haven in ungoverned deserts of Iraq and Syria. They do the same in the ungoverned spaces of the internet.

Borders seem less real to people. Terrorist attacks seem more inescapable. Fears of unrelenting migration mount as people continue to flee violence and deprivation in their homelands. In the wake of these understandable fears we see the series of alarming responses.

Popular movements both on the left and the right have demonstrated a dangerous willingness to revert to political small mindedness. To the same nationalist, protectionist, isolationist agendas that lead the world to consume itself in war during the past century. We’ve seen time and again throughout history dangerous demagogues and autocrats who have emerged seeking to capitalize on people’s insecurities. This is nothing new in history. In this case using Islamophobic, anti-Semitic,  xenophobic rhetoric to stir fear, sow division, and advance their own agendas. This is at political odds with our values and with a vision that we built and sustains the liberal international order.

The impulse is to hunker down, shut the gates, build walls, exit at this moment is precisely the wrong answer. It offers a false sense of security in the interconnected world. It is not going to resolve the root causes of these fears and it risks eroding from inside out the foundations of the very systems that had spawned the West’s historically unprecedented success.

We need to tap into the big-heartedness that conceived the Marshall Plan, the foresight that planned Breton Woods, the audacity that proposed the United Nations. We can’t rout fear with retrenchment. This is a moment to lead boldly and recommit ourselves to the common principles which remain essential to my nation and to all liberal democracies all over the world.

Of course, their are those who don’t share this vision of the world and those who wish to dissolve the community of democracies and supporting institutions in favor of parochial international order where power rules and spheres of influence lock in and divide nations. We are hearing those voices in the West, but the greatest threat on this front springs from the distinct illiberal and external actors who equate their success with fracturing the liberal international order.

We see it in Asia and the Middle East,  where China and Iran would clearly prefer a world in which they have overwhelming sway in their regions. I won’t mince words. This movement is principally led by Russia. Under President Putin, Russia is working with every tool available to them to whittle away at the edges of the European project, test the fault lines among western nations and return to a politics defined by spheres of influence. We see it in their aggression against of their neighbors sending in so-called “little green men” across borders to stir violence and strains of separatism in Ukraine, using energy as a weapon cutting off gas supplies mid-winter, raising prices to manipulate nations to act in Russia’s interest, using corruption to empower oligarchs to coerce politicians.

We see it in the worldwide use of propaganda and false information campaigns, injecting doubt and political agitation in democratic systems, strengthening illiberal factions and forces on both left and right to seek out and roll back the decades of progress from within our systems. We were sought in the cyber intrusions against political parties and individuals in the Unites States of America which our intelligence community all 17 have determined “with high confidence”,  I’ve been doing this for 46 years and they seldom use the phrase “high confidence”,  that they were specifically motivated to influence the elections. It is not only the United States, I need not tell you, that has been targeted. Europe has seen the same attacks in the past. With many countries in Europe slated to hold elections this year we should expect further attempts by Russia to meddle in the democratic process. It will occur again, I promise you.

Again the purpose is clear, to collapse the liberal international order. Simply put Mr.  Putin has a different vision of the future, one of which Russia is pursuing across the board. It seeks to return to a world where strong imposes will through military might, corruption and criminality while weaker nations have to fall in line.

From the first  moments of our administration, even as we sought to press the so-called “reset” button with then-President Medvedev – President Obama and I made clear that this is not way for nations to behave in the 21st century.

I was asked to layout our policy in Munich in 2009 February when at the Conference, I said quote “We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and to choose their own alliances.” end of quote.

That was our position, that is our position that should be our position. That has been our position for the last 8 years and is a position that needs to be continued to be championed in the years ahead.

Look, the United States hasn’t always been the perfect guardian of that order, of our order. We have not always lived up to our values and some of our past missteps have provided fodder for the forces of illiberalism. But President Obama and I have worked consistently in the past 8 years to lead not only by example of our power, but by the power of our example.

This is the challenge that will by necessity define the foreign policy agendas of all of our nations as we move forward, so although I’m only going to be Vice President for 48 more hours, I’m here today to issue a call to action.

We cannot wait for others to write the future that they hope to see. The US and Europe has to lead the fight to defend the values that have brought us where we are today. The fight to create a more equitable and more inclusive growth for people at every level, not only in our continents but across the world. A fight for democracy where ever it is under threat whether be it at home or abroad. A fight to lift up forces of inclusion while opposing intolerance in all its guises. A fight to embrace that world order that has gotten us here. Fight to urge those to reject isolationism and protectionism. Fight to block the dangerous proposition (and it is a proposition now) that facts no longer matter.

I work with a wonderful guy in the United States Senate with a great sense of humor. He was the Senator from Wyoming. We’d be in a debate.. he’d stand up and say “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts.” That the truth holds no inherent power in a world where propagandists, demagogues and extremists carry sway?

Join this fight. We have to continue to invest in this democratic alliances. As it has been for seven decades, the unity of Trans Atlantic connection is essential to addressing the global challenges we all face. Defending the liberal international order requires we resist the forces of European disintegration and maintain our long-standing insistence on a Europe whole, free, and at peace. It means fighting for the European Union. Presumptuous of me to say that as an American. One of the most vibrant and consequential institutions on earth. The EU has contributed to the prosperity of millions through reforms and improved living standards, driving peaceful resolutions in disputes between nations.

It has its short comings. It means keeping open the door for membership in the European and Transatlantic institutions. Those states of Europe on Europe’s eastern edge where people in places like the Balkans and Ukraine continue to strive to be part of an incredible undertaking that is the European Union.

And is used as a tool to get them to reject the illiberalism that has defined their countries for so long. To get them to attack the cancer of corruption in their states. To get them to move into the 21st century.

The EU has been an indispensable partner to the United States because as the EU and United Kingdom begin to navigate a new relationship it remains profoundly  in my country’s interest to maintain our close relationship with both parties. For all our people, I think that I can say as a fact … all our people are safer when we work together. We have to continue to stand up for those basics norms of modern nations. Principles of territorial integrity, freedom of navigation,  of national sovereignty. Where as I said in Munich… the right of all our nations to make their own decisions to choose their own alliances.

To that end, we must bolster European’s energy independence so that nations are not subject to outside manipulation and improve our cyber defenses and combat misinformation that prevents outsiders from perverting out democratic processes.

In the single greatest bulwark for Transatlantic partnership is the unshakable commitment of the United States to all of our NATO allies. It is a sacred obligation we have embraced. An attack on one is an attack on all. That can never be placed in question. In addition we have to continue to stand with Ukraine as they resist Russia’s acts of aggression and pursue the European path, as long as they are pursuing it in the way that is demanded.

In 2 days the United States will engage in an act that has defined our exceptional democracy for more than 200 years – the peaceful transition of power from one leader in one political party to another. It is my hope and expectation that the next President and Vice President of the United States and our leaders in Congress will ensure that the United States continues to fulfill our historic responsibility as the indispensable nation.

But we have never been able to lead alone. Not after World War II not during the depths of the Cold War and not today. The United States, our NATO allies, all nations of Europe – we are in this together. As the oldest and strongest democracies in the world, we have a responsibility to beat back the challenges that are at our door now.

We must never forget how far we’ve come. How we got here or take for granted that this success will continue without an awful lot of really hard work and investment.

It is only by championing the liberal international order, by continuing to invest in our security, reaffirming our shared values, expanding the cause of liberty around the world that we are going to retain our position of leadership. Because if we don’t fight for our values, no one else will.

The idea of Europe whole and free and at peace, in my opinion, constitutes one of the most audacious consequential visions of the past century. A nation and the notion that after centuries of conflict that Europe could reinvent itself as an integrated community, one committed to political solidarity, the free flow of goods and people, a solemn obligation to collective defense – and succeeded in achieving it was audacious.

The United States believed in it and still believes in it. My prayers.. people across Europe believed in it. They did and aspired to it and I hope they still believe in it. The success of the European enterprise, very simply is essential to American security in the 20th century and remains so in the 21st.

Our Atlantic alliance is the bedrock of addressing so many 21st century threats from terrorism to the spread of disease like Ebola and climate change. You heard me make this claim for four decades, but I’m not alone in this belief. America’s commitment to NATO, not-withstanding things you’ve heard recently, is thoroughly bipartisan.

Just last month my good friend and frequent sparring partner, Senator John McCain, travelled to Estonia where he said quote “the best way to prevent Russian misbehavior is by having a credible strong military, a strong NATO alliance”.

In that same trip another leading Republican and very close friend of mine, Lindsey Graham, assured Ukrainian troops serving on the front lines “Your fight is our fight”.

That’s the same sentiment expressed two days ago when I made my 6th trip to Ukraine as Vice President. History has proven that the defense of free nations of Europe has always been America’s fight and the foundation of our security. Throughout more than four decades of an incredibly divisive foreign policy debate there has always been a consensus about the value of this Transatlantic relationship. And it has to change, and it has to alter, but the essence of it has to remain.

As I enter private life, I can tell you, I will stand with you as you carry this fight forward. I will continue to use my voice and power as a citizen doing whatever I can to keep our Transatlantic Alliance strong and vibrant because our common future and the future of my children and grandchildren depends on it.

Thank you for taking the time to listen.

 

CFR members in past Presidential administrations

Members of Council on Foreign Relations in past 3 presidential administrations

Council on Foreign Relations members have dominated past administrations.

Republican or Democrat hasn’t made much actual difference, as past administrations were all filled with CFR members. There was often mostly an illusion of choice for the voters between the two parties. There have been candidates, such as Congressman Ron Paul (Republican / Libertarian), who have exposed the goals of the globalist agenda. The idea of America First and distrust of globalism has been gaining traction.

Republican Presidential debate 2007

The CFR had only had one candidate, Hillary Clinton, in this election.  Hillary Clinton’s administration would have been as equally filled with CFR members as the prior Presidents’.

Hillary Clinton speaking at CFR in 2010

Below is a list of the Council on Foreign Relations members in the last three Presidential administrations, including Cabinet members, advisers and nominations.

(links are Wikipedia)

President Barack Obama (Democrat)

John Kerry – Secretary of State  (Teresa Heinz Kerry wife of John Kerry is also CFR member)

Timothy Geithner – Secretary of Treasury

Jacob J (Jack) Lew – Secretary of Treasury

Robert Gates – Secretary of Defense

Chuck Hagel – Secretary of Defense (resigned)

Ashton Carter – Secretary of Defense

Tom Vilsack – Secretary of Agriculture

John Bryson – Secretary of Commerce

Penny Pritzker – Secretary of Commerce

Sylvia Burwell – Secretary of Health and Human Services

Ernest Moniz – Secretary of Energy

Janet NapolitanoCFR Staff bio – Secretary of Homeland Security

Jeh Charles Johnson – Secretary of Homeland Security

William Daley – Chief of Staff

Peter Orszag – Director of Office of Management and Budget

Susan Rice – Ambassador to the UN (prior member Trilateral Commission)

Michael Froman – US Trade Representative

Michael Chertoff – US Secretary of Homeland Security (Trilateral Commission member)

Thomas E. Donilon – National Security Adviser (Bilderberg Group)

Cecilia Rouse – Council of Economic Advisers

David Howell Petraeus – 4 star Army General, Director of the CIA 2011 – 2012 (resigned), Commander of United States Central Command 2008 – 2010, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force

Janet Louise Yellen –  Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System nominated by Barack Obama

Paul A. Volcker – Chair of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, prior Chair of Federal Reserve –  (member Trilateral Commission)

Henry Kissinger – Secretary of State for President Richard Nixon, adviser to every President since, and a close friend and adviser to Hillary Clinton.


President George W Bush (Republican)

Richard (Dick) Cheney – Vice President

Steve Preston – Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Henry Paulson – Secretary of the Treasury (and worked at Goldman Sachs Founders corporate member)

Robert Gates – Secretary of Defense

Mary Ann Peters – Secretary of Transportation

Condoleeza Rice – Secretary of State

Tommy G. Thompson – Secretary of Health and Human Services

Elaine L Chao – Secretary of Labor

Colin Powell – Secretary of State

Susan C. Schwab – US Trade Representative

Robert Zoellick – US Trade Representative (also Trilateral Commission) – been President of The World Bank, also a managing director of Goldman Sachs, steering committee Bilderberg Group (was a Deputy Secretary of State)

Michael Chertoff – US Secretary of Homeland Security (Trilateral Commission member)

Richard Holbrook – United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan (Bilderberg Group)

John Wolfowitz – United States Deputy Secretary of Defense (Bilderberg Group) – President The World Bank

Karen Parfitt Hughes – Councilor to the President

John Bolton – US Ambassador to the United Nations

Brent Scowcroft – United States National Security Advisor

Marc Alexander Thiessen – Speech writer for GWB


President Bill Clinton (Democrat)

Bill Clinton – President (current member 2016)

Chelsea Clinton – daughter (current member 2016)

Note:  not listed as a member, speaks at meetings and called New York City branch “The Mothership”. Hillary Clinton –  First Lady to President Clinton, Senator, ran for President twice

Lawrence Summers – Secretary of Treasury (also member Trilateral Commission)

Togo D. West – Secretary of Veteran Affairs

William B. Richardson – Secretary of Energy

William M. Daley – Secretary of Commerce

Madeleine Albright – Director Emerita CFR – Secretary of State (also member Trilateral Commission)

William Cohen – Secretary of Defense

Federico F. Peña – Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Transportation

Mickey Kantor – Secretary of Commerce, US Trade Representative

Daniel Glickman – Secretary of Agriculture

Robert RubinCFR staff bio – Secretary of the Treasury

William J. Perry – Secretary of Defense

Donna Shalala – Secretary of Health and Human Services

Charlene Barshefsky – US Trade Representative

Lloyd Bentsen (deceased past member – no longer listed)

Richard Holbrook – United States Ambassador to the United Nations (Bilderberg Group)

George Stephanopoulos – White House Director of Communications, Senior Adviser to the President (now major media pundit)

Sidney Blumenthal – Senior Adviser to the President

Rahm Emanuel – Senior Adviser to the President (not listed as CFR member, but his brother, Ezekiel Jonathan “Zeke”, is a member) (later Mayor of Chicago where Barack Obama was from)

Cecilia Rouse – National Economic Council 1998 to 1999

Zoë Baird – CFR Staff bio – nominated by President Bill Clinton as the first woman to be Attorney General of the United States, but she withdrew her nomination over “nannygate”

Bobby Inman – nominated by President Bill Clinton for Secretary of Defense, but he withdrew from consideration

Stephen Gerald Breyer – US Supreme Court Justice nominated

Vernon Jordan – Presidential adviser

Links:

(1) End-Times for Liberal Democracy? from CFR articles

CFR published individual membership roster Jan 17, 2017

CFR Membership from 2015 Annual Report (PDF file)

CFR Corporate membership roster Jan 17, 2017

Note: I appreciate that the Council on Foreign Relations has their membership listed publicly. Some conspiracy folks claim there is a secret list of additional members.

Other related and overlapping memberships include The Trilateral Commission and The Bilderberg Group.

Trilateral Commission membership list 2016 (PDF file)

Bilderberg meeting participants (public list)

CNN proposed Donald Trump Cabinet November 2016

Barack Obama Cabinet Members

George W. Bush Cabinet Members

Bill Clinton Cabinet Members

List someone else has done claiming connections of Goldman Sachs

Geithner Haunted by a Goldman Past He Never Had AUGUST 19, 2010 from NY Times

Who is the Council on Foreign Relations?

Who is the Council on Foreign Relations?

The CFR

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource to help better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. 

Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations says the organization “takes no institutional positions on matters of policy”, but their “principal goal is to inform the country’s foreign policy debate”.

About CFR – website

The Council on Foreign Relations is first and foremost a membership organization with about 5,000 members. New members are screened and the members are a very select group. There is a special program to cultivate the next generation of foreign policy leaders with about 800 “term” members.

Most CFR meetings are exclusively for members, but the organization publishes “Foreign Affairs” magazine and has some videos and other open dialogue available to the public.  The Corporate Program serves an international membership with about 200 leading global corporations.

About CFR brochure (PDF format)

Wikipedia: Council on Foreign Relations

The group has members in powerful positions across government, finance, business and the media spread around the globe.

The membership is divided almost equally among those living in New York, Washington, DC, and across the country and abroad, and it is a group unmatched in accomplishment and diversity in the field of international affairs.

Conspiracy theories from sane to “tin foil hat” crazy abound surrounding the Council on Foreign Relations. The following video gives a sane introduction about the organization and founding, then continues into the crazier side with Illuminati alien lizard people, so provides a good broad view.

My take….

The CFR believe in globalism over nationalism. They think and act as citizens of the world. Some say the group desires a one world government as an ultimate goal. Members do appear to want a balance of powers among major nations, as well as regional trade entities with a common organizational control by region.

The CFR view themselves as a group of leaders who should and can direct the world for the common good of the planet and humanity. Members are usually highly educated with many graduating from elite universities with advanced degrees. All members will be very intelligent and desire to think about common global problems and wanting to find solutions through discussion. They believe in the philosophy of “liberal order”.

The group grew out of a Western civilization base and tend to have a grasp of history and how empires rise and fall over the millenia. They frequently use the term “New World Order” when discussing how the world is changing and how to alter and shape the direction of international relationships between countries. They believe in pulling developing countries up, even if this means giving up power and extra benefits in the current developed countries.

The group may claim to want to prevent war, but they also believe in regime change to control the balance of powers. They believe very powerful countries have a responsibility to play world “police”. Currently the United States is the main super power, but they are planning ahead for the US to decline and other countries to rise up and assume that responsibility.

They are a group to be watched because they are very powerful and want to have control to shape minds, attitudes and the world. The control is “for our own good” because they are wiser than the average Joe. I think they have a view of being benevolent overlords to a large extent, as they bumble along trying to direct the world population – a bit like herding cats and taming lions.

There are other related associations where the “elite” – rich, powerful, connected, intelligent, highly educated – meet to discuss world affairs. These groups range from public to private and even secret cabals.

Benevolent overlord - I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR NEW BENEVOLENT OVERLORD Misc

Publication list of CFR

Foreign Affairs magazine (requires a subscription) $35 for new subscriber in USA

Youtube channel of CFR (public videos)  Currently 43,000 subscribers

Facebook for CFR Note: Unless signed up to Facebook, then there will be a blocking message constantly semi-obscuring your view of the pages.

Currently 315,000 followers on Twitter

Blame for Hillary’s campaign loss

There must be someone to blame.

Hillary appeared a shoe-in, particularly running against the wild card candidate of “The Donald”. How did she lose when she was a slam dunk? The Democrat party autopsy is ongoing.

For myriad reasons, Hillary Clinton has a lot of explaining to do to the high dollar donors. If she wants to remain in politics, then she will need their backing again and their money. She has much less power or influence to peddle.

Of course, Hillary Clinton isn’t going to admit to herself or to her donors that she was a poor candidate from the start. There has to be some other reason!

“We have to understand what happened here.”

ABC News reporters at 1 AM on the night of the election were stunned as the states tipped over to Donald Trump. Those waiting for Hillary’s victory speech in the Javits Center were “bewildered” and “shell-shocked”. “We are so confused. The numbers were so wrong just all across the country.” says a reporter. Yes, they are wrong because Hillary was supposed to win.

George Stephanopoulous

“Something no one would have predicted even a day ago.” “Been a surprising evening in so many ways. In some ways an entire industry blind-sided.”

“Historical, unprecedented. We’ve said that word, unprecedented, from the very beginning.”

“I  thought Trump would win the Republican nomination based on “data” and that Hillary would win the election based on “data”.  Well, the data was wrong. Something went majorly off in all of the expectations everybody on both sides had.” (CFR member)

Matthew Dowd

“I think this is the biggest miss that the world has seen.”

“I think a country; blind-sided. An industry and a country blind-sided. Let’s just look at the expanse of it. This is from nearly every single media association that did their own polling. They weren’t in some conspiracy. They did their own polling converged on a 3 or 4 point lead. The Clinton campaign did their own polling. They were confident they were going to win this election. The Trump campaign did some semblance of polling and they were not confident they were going to win this election. Every single state poll out there… accumulation effect. I think that we are going to be asking a lot of questions for the days that are following us how was this missed.”

Martha Raddatz

“I think it had to be more than secret Trump voters, people who wouldn’t say they were voting for Trump. I didn’t find very much of that. I didn’t find really anybody who wouldn’t say “I’m voting for Trump”. But there is something else going on here that the data is missing and the polls are missing. ”

“You know who didn’t believe those polls? Donald Trump’s voters. They went out there, they listened to him saying this is not over. They didn’t listen to us. They didn’t listen to anybody else about the polls. They went out and voted.”

“I think we all got it wrong. It would be good for the Democratic party to look at what happened. Maybe we weren’t listening well enough to those voters.”

Bill Crystal

“You don’t have a historic anomaly of this magnitude and then everything goes back to normal.” “We are in uncharted waters.”

Whack-a-Scandal

Let’s face it. Hillary, unfortunately for the Democrats, was a poor choice of candidate. She had already been passed over in 2008 by a charismatic junior Senator and community organizer. Hillary added to her resume in the last 8 years. Many said she was the most qualified to be President, but that isn’t necessarily why people vote for a candidate. The years of being a junior Senator put her on par with Obama’s experience before becoming President in 2008, but saddled her with the Iraq War vote. Her years as Secretary of State only added more baggage to her pile. Private email server and Benghazi became two new issues. Investigations have definitely been a Whack-a-Mole problem for the Clintons.

When it comes to Hillary Clinton the investigations and scandals are never really over, and they somehow always manage to get worse.

Abigail Tracy (Vanity Fair October 28, 2016)

Hillary’s turn

Many voters actually resented the attitude that Hillary was supposedly owed her turn to be President after waiting patiently doing other duties. Rumors said she had made a pact with Bill Clinton in Arkansas that he would be President first and then it would be her turn. After watching the Bush family oligarchy, then this was believable.

Rumors also spread since 2014 that Hillary had snapped at a freelance reporter in California during a campaign stop saying “It’s my turn. I’ve done my time, and I deserve it.”

Martha Raddatz, ABC News reporter, on election night told of an interview with a prior Obama voter.

Q: Have you ever voted Republican?

A: I have not, but I am this year. I’m voting for Trump this year.

Q: Why are you voting for Trump?

A: I don’t trust Hillary at all, she wanted to be a politician her whole career, so staying in a marriage for that is something that bothered me a little bit.  

Q: Does anything bother you about Donald Trump?

A: Well, you know what… they are both horrible. I don’t know who to pick, but they are both horrible. I’m going with Trump and I think he will pick an amazing Cabinet because he wants to win.

Meme generators ran overtime.

Image result for Hillary was my turn

Voters are sexist

Trump over performed with white men. Democrats blame the uneducated white older man for wanting to prevent a woman from taking office because they are afraid to lose their privileged patriarchy. Yet Hillary didn’t do as well in getting votes from Hispanics and African Americans as expected. There were “secret” Trump voters who lied to pollsters or wouldn’t say that they were voting for Trump, which could have skewed the polling results.

Having personally run into rabid angry Democrats who lash out if you suggest even a hint of tolerance for Trump or saying anything negative about Hillary, then I can definitely understand this sentiment to stay silent about your vote.

Surely the women would vote for Hillary over Trump, right?

There were a couple of people who wouldn’t tell me who they were voting for, but a lot of them were college educated women and … uh… who knows if they were the secret Trump supporters. – Martha Raddatz ABC News on election night

Why bother

The consensus was that Hillary would win. The polls said she would win. The New York Times reported that “Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was so confident in her victory that her aides popped open Champagne on the campaign plane early Tuesday.”

Perhaps Hillary fans were so sure she would win that they decided to just stay home. Maybe they couldn’t vote for Trump, but why bother voting for Hillary when she was an obvious shoe-in? Some couldn’t vote for either candidate, as neither were great options. Some went to third parties or just opted out completely. After the results, there were angry protesters marching with “Not My President” signs in the streets below Trump Tower in New York City. Asked whether they had actually voted, many had not. So how many Hillary votes were lost for failure to even show up?

The electoral college

Rather than figure out how this happened, perhaps just change reality. There were attempts to get the sworn electoral voters to give her the vote with the arguments that Trump was so awful that it was their patriotic duty to go with the next worst candidate.

The sting of her loss is all the more painful because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and is technically a “winner”, even though she isn’t going to be the next President by losing the electoral college. The fault is the archaic electoral college. The debates about the merits of the Founders setting up the “electoral college” in the US Constitution begins anew with many siding for keeping and many siding for switching to the popular vote or even some combination of methods. Perhaps if she had campaigned harder in the close states, then the electoral college would have tipped more in her favor? Would she have actually won or would it just be an even closer race? In the end Hillary had 5 “faithless electors” and Trump had 3 with all being for other people.

How did some Trump / anti-Hillary fans feel about celebrities calling for electors to go with Hillary?  Mark Dice has nearly 900,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and his fan base always loves a good ridiculing of such Hollywood celebrities.

It was the Russians

“Blame the Russians” didn’t manage to get traction, though that theory continues to be pushed. Learning various shenanigans from the leaked Podesta and DNC emails released from Wikileaks has yet to be shown to have altered the outcome, though perhaps a few disenfranchised Bernie Sanders fans opted out of supporting Hillary. Surely the leaks didn’t help Hillary Clinton.

Image result for it's the russians

Holding your nose

The many stupid things Trump said and tweeted somehow bounced off. If Trump had lost, then the analysis of his loss would have been easy. Bottom line was that many voted against Hillary and what she stood for and personally against her. His supporters focused on making sure Hillary Clinton wasn’t the next President. The Republican base held their nose and voted against Hillary. They got out their vote with stronger turnout than came out to support Romney in 2008.

http://www.hellertoon.com/main.html

Can’t blame the weather

If there had been bad weather, then that could have been blamed.

Fewer days on the road

Her being sick and failing to be able to campaign as hard never gets mentioned. She spent precious campaign days preparing for the debates. The pundits told us that Trump lost the debates, but that opinion could itself be debated.

Obama campaigned for Hillary. He said her Presidency would be a “continuation” of his legacy. The election of Trump was a rejection of the Obama administration policies, as well as the Republican establishment. There was also a rejection of the globalist agenda.

Late Deciders

Polls showed more undecided voters deciding in the last week had voted for Trump. Were these polling numbers any more accurate than her presumed margin for winning the election? If not, then analysis of the flawed polling data is also flawed.

David Muir, ABC News, speculated on election night that this poll would “fuel arguments that the FBI Director’s announcement affected the final days of this race.”  Director Comey sent a letter to Congress 11 days prior to the election about 650,000 new emails found in an unrelated case that were being reviewed. The unrelated case was related to the Anthony Weiner divorce with his wife, Huma Abedin. She was a friend of Hillary Clinton and also the Vice Chair of Clinton’s 2016 campaign and also worked in the 2008 campaign.

Early voting was already underway. How many of these undecided early voters were swayed towards Trump by this news, who weren’t already moving towards Trump? The news that Clinton supporters would be listening to, such as MSNBC, overall would likely have a different spin than the news that Trump supporters would be listening to, such as Fox News or InfoWars.

Mika Brzenzinski (CFR member) on MSNBC “Morning Joe” on 10/30/2016:

“Everyone talks about how what Comey did is outrageous. This was a great credible man with great integrity a week ago. So don’t really get that. What if there really is something? We are not going to say it was so outrageous.

The bottom line is this all goes back to the server. Something she shouldn’t have done. Something that was way more than a mistake. Way more! And this is a self inflicted massive wound. I just kept thinking how I’ve been on my horse going after Republicans and the Republican party. You nominated this guy. You nominated Donald Trump. How could you do that? 

When I’m thinking Democrats nominated someone who was under an FBI investigation for having a private server among other things. So here we are! Here WE are!”

There was also more going on, including Hillary Clinton using foul mouthed rappers for an event, which was mocked and turned off many. Trump was pressing hard flying from place to place to campaign.

Hillary was cleared again on 11/06/2016. The election was on 11/08/2016.

Very likely undecided voters went into the polling booth not knowing who to choose, as both were awful choices. Someone had to be blamed and couldn’t be Hillary.

It’s Comey’s fault

Hillary Clinton on 11/12/2016 said the the 10/28 Comey letter to Congress about new emails was the critical factor for why she lost the election. Unless the data can show more detail and can be more accurate than the polling overall predictions, then this appears to be looking for a scapegoat and jumping to conclusions.

ABC News Late Decider poll results

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Clinton said on the conference call. But, she added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless — proven to be — stopped our momentum.”

“we dropped, and we had to keep really pushing to regain our advantage, which going into last weekend we had. We were once again up in all but two of the battleground states, and we were up considerably in some that we ended up losing. And we were feeling like we had to put it back together.” – Vanity Fair in their quote of “The New York Times”

Comey is now going to be investigated

FBI Director James Comey is now going to be investigated for his re-opening of the Hillary email investigation so close to the November election. He really had not choice, except to release the information. He then cleared the doubt was quickly as possible.


Time line:

Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State

Leaked over time by Wikileaks

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/  From Wikileaks: On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016.

https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton served as U.S. Secretary of State from January 21, 2009 to February 1, 2013. The FBI conducted an investigation into allegations that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on a personal e-mail server she used during her tenure.

Politico.com: Clinton aides kept tabs on anti-Trump elector gambit

The Atlantic: What the WikiLeaks Emails Say About Clinton

BBC News: 18 revelations from Wikileaks’ hacked Clinton emails

The Guardian – WikiLeaks emails: what they revealed about the Clinton campaign’s mechanics

Investigated by FBI and Department of Justice determined outcome ( July 5 and 6, 2017)

FBI: Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System

July 5, 2016 “After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.”

Statement from Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Regarding State Department Email Investigation July 6, 2016 “Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State.  I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

Not everyone agreed with the FBI decision

The Intercept: Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — Until Hillary Clinton

Published on Jul 5, 2016

On Fox News – ‘The Kelly File,’ former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom says FBI Director James Comey’s decision makes ‘no sense’.

Email investigation re-opened 10/28/2016

Letter by FBI Director to his staff

Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff distributed an internal memo on Thursday detailing why it thought the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had played a role in Mrs. Clinton’s loss. (from New York Times)

Letter (text) to Congress by Comey 10/28/2016

Politico.com: FBI Letter to Congress

How Trump supporter viewed Comey letter

Vanity Fair: F.B.I. RENEWS CLINTON INVESTIGATION AFTER WEINER SEXTING PROBE TURNS UP “THOUSANDS” OF NEW E-MAILS (they used all caps in their headline) 10/28/2016

Hillary response 10/28/2016

Published on Oct 28, 2016

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke on Friday night from Des Moines, Iowa, addressing the FBI’s recent decision to reopen her email case.

Open Letter from Former Federal Prosecutors and High-Ranking Officials of The U.S. Department of Justice

Open Letter from Former Federal Prosecutors and High-Ranking Officials of The U.S. Department of Justice

Politifact / Meet the Press: Mook said, “There are Justice Department policies against doing something like this so close to an election.” 10/30/2016

“650,000 emails to sort through” 10/31/2016

Published on Nov 1, 2016

MSNBC: Rachel Maddow reports on a new set of stories about the FBI investigating aspects of the Donald Trump campaign and ties to Russia, and FBI director James Comey’s reported reluctance to reveal Russia’s role in hacking for fear of influencing the election.

Published on Nov 6, 2016

Fox News: ‘The O’Reilly Factor’: Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points 11/6

Hillary exonerated a second time 11/6/2016

DailyMail UK: 11/6/2016 FBI announces no change in decision on Hillary emails

FBI to be investigated by DOJ Inspector General 01/12/2017

NPR: 01/12/2017 Pre-Election Conduct Of FBI, Other Justice Officials

Other links on topic:

10 Reasons Why Electoral College is a Problem (six parts) from 2012

Salon.com: Why Donald Trump won — and how Hillary Clinton lost: 13 theories explain the stunning election

Vanity Fair: Clinton Blames Comey for Loss

The NYTimes: 11/13/2016 Hillary Blames Comey for Loss (usually requires a paid subscription to view more than 10 times a month)

Rumors about Hillary claiming “My Turn”

Wikipedia: Huma Abedin She worked on the 2008 and 2016 campaigns and is a friend of Hillary Clinton. (Democrat)

Wikipedia: Anthony Weiner NY politician (Democrat)

Wikipedia: FBI Director James Comey (Independent / Republican)

Wikipedia: DOJ Attorney General Loretta Lynch (Democrat)

Inspector General DOJ Michael Horowitz

The Guardian: ‘I never thought Trump would win’: meet the Americans who chose not to vote

https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/election-day-november-2016-presidential-senate-race

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) current public membership roster

Hello world!

Hello World!

TODAY IS WEBSITE MOVING DAY. 

WELCOME TO WORDPRESS!

Today I am moving my new blog from www.rummagingglobalism.wordpress.com  to the official domain at www.rummagingglobalism.com .

Image result for happy new year 2017 gif globalism

Trump election causes “exploding brain syndrome”

Head in the clouds?

If you view the world from 30,000 feet travelling at 500 miles per hour, then you are going to miss things. The corporate media and elitist establishment were completely surprised by the successful Presidential race by Donald Trump. Hillary appeared to have been promised the Presidency. She had been patient in other duties for many years waiting for her turn.  All that was left was to haul her tired body and heavy baggage across the finish line. They settled in to watch the incoming election results with glee knowing the fait accompli with their head in the clouds dreaming of how Hillary would continue with their planned globalist agenda.

Hillary had prepared only a victory speech to be given at a location with an actual glass ceiling (1) to further symbolize breaking the barrier to become the first woman President of the United States. The Hillary supporter’s shock and disbelief of the electoral college count quickly turned to tears when Trump was announced be the next President.(2)

How did this happen?

The analysis of the new reality was almost more than could be fathomed.  The educated bright minds of the globalist elites wondered how Trump voters out-foxed them. Their brains were literally about to explode trying to grasp how so many in power had been blind-sided by ignorant louts who placed a loose-cannon buffoon as the next President of the United States of America. The Republican establishment wondered how they lost control over the process because they also didn’t support Trump as their party candidate.

The controlled media and the globalists discussed among themselves and wrote op-eds to each other puzzling over the new paradigm. Lauren Green and Judith Miller, Pulitzer prize winning reporter and member of The Council on Foreign Relations, discussed the election outcome on Fox News “Bias Bash” on 11/11/2016. They were both obviously Hillary supporters. (3)

When I talk to people who are really disappointed about Hillary losing, a lot of them have the idea only uneducated, ignorant, stupid people voted for Trump and that’s their attitude. That’s why we don’t pay attention to Trump’s supporters. Did the media play that game too?

Yes, globalist elites and establishment media, you did play that game.

Better than you

Hillary and her supporters looking through the prism of “identity politics” viewed Trump supporters as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it”  cretins. Hillary described half of Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables” garnering laughter from her “better than thou” audience. Deplorable comes from the French word déplorer meaning “to give up as hopeless” with no chance for redemption. Coming from her mouth this righteous tongue lashing was particularly outrageous. She dismissed the other half as just wanting someone to listen to them, which her party wasn’t doing.

Trump’s supporters didn’t split hairs over being “half” and all took offense. A New York billionaire elite was an unlikely champion for the disenfranchised “deplorables” in his campaign’s response to Hillary.

 For the first time in a long while, her true feelings came out, showing bigotry and hatred for millions of Americans. How can she be President of our country when she has such contempt and disdain for so many great Americans? (4)

I’m With Her

“I’m with Her” was the Democratic party slogan. (5) The party of “her” was obliged to look the other way as they dragged her collected ‘baggage’, false memories, poor judgement, lies and moral hypocrisy behind them. They worked to smooth her path and knock away obstacles, but more kept popping up that were of her own making. Democrat operatives were sent into Republican rallies to try to illicit violence, as an attempt to portray the Trump supporters negatively. (6)

Admission by someone considering voting for Trump would only illicit shaming taunts from liberal voters. (7) Democrats failed to note the irony of considering themselves to be tolerant and inclusive while shaming and trying to silence those who disagreed with their world view. Trump voters began to lie about who they were actually voting for to avoid outing themselves. The pollsters gathered false data, which resulted in garbage in and garbage out statistical analysis.

The “identity politics” (8) of Hillary supporters was never the heart of the Trump revolution. Distrust of the globalists, concern for socialist liberal agendas and control of the future Supreme court nominations were much larger factors.

Trump supporters were called racist because they dared to say “All Lives Matter”, xenophobic for wanting to stem illegal immigration, sexist because they wouldn’t vote for Hillary by default or perhaps because they disapproved of government funding for abortion on demand, homophobic for not automatically accepting gender neutral bathroom privileges, and Islamaphobic because they were concerned about terrorist extremism.

The Trump supporters turned her ridicule into a rallying cry and sense of pride. “Deplorables Unite”became a rallying political battle cry and anthem. Donald Trump’s failure to be politically correct and chastised by Democrats into silence merely endeared him more to the so-called “deplorables”.

Deplorables Around the World Unite

This is an example of a video for the song played as Trump entered into his rallies.

We will fight back against globalism. We will stay vigilant and proud of our nations.

Join the fight against globalism. Join the fight against Islamic terror. Join the fight against Soros. Join the fight against the Clintons. Join the fight against Big Banks. Join the fight against the Establishment. Join the fight against Tyranny. The Deplorables of the world unite. Let’s make the world great again.

Trumpennials

I’m NOT With Her

“I’m with Her” was not a very inspiring message. Her cronies didn’t even believe in her message to draw voters. Evidence leaked showed the party insiders and media puppets worked to get Trump as the Republican candidate for a straw man to knock down and sabotaged Democratic party rival Bernie Sanders’ chances. (9)

Bashing Trump was a low bar and not pulling many to support of her. In non-swing states many stayed home or voted for a third party. Fewer voters came out for Hillary than voted for Obama in 2012. Many Democrats in several crucial states stayed home or voted for Trump because they were not “with her”. The Republican Establishment wouldn’t back Trump, but in the end Republican voters against Trump voted for him holding their nose with an attitude of “I’m NOT with Her”.

Trump brought out nearly 3 million more voters than Romney pulled in 2012. (10) (11) Trump had more minorities and women than anyone anticipated, which was only a surprise to the blind sided Hillary fans. They even crossed the line proudly declaring themselves “deplorable” too. The support was evident in the Trump rallies and on-line, if anyone cared to pay attention.

That Hillary won the popular vote is repeated often for a faux victory. They don’t take into account that the campaign was always for the electoral college and want to live in a delusional alternative reality. Many want to believe the election wasn’t really lost and merely stolen from them by a technicality.

Divided America

Bill Maher, liberal political comedian, in an on-line with ATTN on 12/18/2016 (12), spoke out for first time since the election showing the disdain for large swathes of the country as merely places to fly over.

Why do we need two Dakotas? Can we just start with that? There definitely should not be four Senators from the Dakota territory. If there’s two Dakotas, we should have fifteen f*king Californias. (12)

James E. Campbell is a UB distinguished professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and is the author of “Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America”. He wrote a good explanation of the popular vs electoral college results.

Clinton’s popular-vote plurality over Trump depends on the votes in a single state: California, which single-handedly turns a Trump plurality into a Clinton plurality.

Under our electoral-vote system, American voters elected a national president, not California’s choice.

James E. Campbell (13)

Perhaps the country should be “The United States of California” instead of “The United States of America”? Even if Hillary had edged out Trump in critical close states, such as Florida and Pennsylvania, she still lost most of the population in the country-side in those states. Perhaps the liberal elites and media want a world like “The Hunger Games” novels with the big cities ruling the country districts?

Hillary called several states her “firewall”. (14) She forgot her own words about how many supporters of Trump were disenfranchised, but  continued to take them for granted. The Democrats lost in the mid-west and around the Great Lakes. The Rust Belt voted for Trump. The Democrats also lost in the south east and Trump edged out Florida.

The west coast and east coast Liberal enclaves enthusiastically voted for Hillary.

The media establishment, let’s face it, we do live in New York, Washington, and in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. That’s the west coast and the east coast.

Judith Miller (member Council on Foreign Relations)

Hillary also lost most of the “fly over” states between New York City and Los Angeles.

Electoral College Vote Results: State-by-State List December 19, 2016 with Trump 304, Clinton 227, Other 7

Electoral College Vote Results: State-by-State List December 19, 2016

Fly over America

Jason Aldean, a country singer, in 2012 had a song that expressed the sentiment of the elites flying over America from coast to coast never trying to understand the people. This attitude is nothing new, but had an impact on the election this year. The populist revolution had the Silent Majority rising up to get out the vote knowing which states were important for an electoral college victory. The people in some states, like California, may have won Hillary the popular vote, but the votes that mattered were towards the electoral college.

A New York billionaire businessman seems an ironic choice for President from rural and blue collar workers, but he didn’t talk down to them and listened to their concerns and appeared to care. He flew to their communities and never stopped campaigning till the last moment.

Hope and Change Reduct

Michelle Obama spoke to Oprah Winfrey on 12/14/2016 saying she had a feeling of hopelessness because Hillary Clinton lost the election. (15)

“See, now we are feeling what not having hope feels like, you know. Hope is necessary. It is a necessary concept. What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”

Donald Trump’s election turns Barack Obama’s hope on its head. Trump’s election has given hope back to many in America after the “Hope and Change” Obama campaigned on was never delivered to them. Will Donald Trump be able to deliver his version of change?

One champion of the elite globalists isn’t losing hope: Henry Kissinger on “Face the Nation” on 12/18/2016 expressed optimism for the unexpected shake-up by Trump’s Presidency. (16)

“Donald Trump is a phenomenon ….. So it is a shocking experience for them that he came into office. At the same time, extraordinary opportunity. I believe he has the possibility of going down in history as a very considerable president.”

Maybe the “elites” should go out and learn about their own country and their own people vs just those clustered in the cities or at their college alumni breakfasts. Stop just flying over America and maybe you could understand how Trump won the election.

Jason Aldean – “Fly Over States” from album “My Kinda Party” 2012

“Fly Over States”

A couple of guys in First Class on a flight
From New York to Los Angeles
Kinda making small talk killin’ time
Flirting with the flight attendants
Thirty thousand feet above, could be Oklahoma

Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms
Man, it all looks the same
Miles and miles of back roads and highways
Connecting little towns with funny names
Who’d want to live down there in the middle of nowhere?

They’ve never drove through Indiana
Met the man who plowed that earth
Planted that seed, busted his ass for you and me
Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas
They’d understand why God made
Those fly over states

I bet that mile long Santa Fe
Freight train engineer’s seen it all
Just like that flatbed cowboy
Stacking US Steel on a three day haul
Roads and rails under their feet
Yeah, that sounds like a first class seat

On the plains of Oklahoma
With a windshield sunset in your eyes
Like a water colored painted sky
You’ll think Heaven’s doors have opened
You’ll understand why God made
Those fly over states

Take a ride across the badlands
Feel that freedom on your face
Breathe in all that open space
Meet a girl from Amarillo
You’ll understand why God made
You might even wanna plant your stakes
In those fly over states

Have you ever been through Indiana
On the plains of Oklahoma
Take a ride

(1) On election night, Hillary Clinton stands under real glass ceiling in NYC

(2) Tears and shock at Clinton election party

(3) Judith Miller – Youtube video: Media were completely shocked by Trump’s win.

Wikipedia on Judith Miller Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, graduate of Princeton University, and worked at New York Times etc. As of 2016, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

(4) Donald Trump responds to Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment

(5) H Is for Hillary

(6) Project Veritas exposed many dark dealings by the Democratic party

(7) Even Obama thought Hillary supporters should chillax on the anti-Trump hysteria

(8) Democrats: Identity politics

(9) Bernie Sanders wants DNC leadership to resign

(10) Wikipedia: US Presidential election 2016

(11) Wikipedia: US Presidential election 2012

(12) Bill Maher interview on ATTN about Trump election

(13) Why Hillary Clinton Supporters Need to quit whining about the electoral college

(14) What happened to the Clinton firewall?

(15) Michelle Obama talks to Oprah about feeling hopeless

(16) Face the Nation: Henry Kissinger discusses Trump election

US election 2016: Trump victory in maps

Why some flyover states switched to Trump

America held hostage by flyover states

The people in flyover country

Trump won’t ignore the so-called “flyover states”

President Pied Piper = Donald Trump

Is the selection of President an Illusion of Choice?

The globalist neo-liberals were confident that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidential election. They were stunned and surprised by the Brexit vote, then equally and perhaps more surprised by the election of Donald Trump.

The coastal and Washington elites control a major part of the regular old school press. (1) There is merely an “illusion of choice”for the news. The press claims to not be biased, but only the deluded or naive believe that anymore. Those reporting the news won’t admit to being neo-liberals or operators for the globalist agenda. The special “pet” press members were secretly invited to private dinners with Hillary Clinton to get their marching orders. (2) “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to (take) them seriously.” (3) (4)

Pied piper

The elites thought that through the media they would as usual control the minds of the population and attempt to control the electoral process. They could move a story or bury a story and push their agenda. The purpose was to manipulate the voters  to consider the wildcard candidates, including Donald Trump, as valid candidates when in actuality the candidates were just straw men for Hillary Clinton to knock down in her eventual victory.

Meanwhile the Democratic National Committee was secretly maneuvering their party to make sure Hillary was their nominee and used the press to push down Bernie Sanders. Hillary made sure to round-up a number of super delegates in her pocket.

Wasn’t America already pretty great?

Donald Trump tweeted and spoke at his campaign rallies. The press covered every outlandish statement and twisted other statements to make them appear even more outrageous. Trump didn’t even have the support of the Republican party and was treated with contempt. Trump still kept rising to the top of the polling numbers and other Republican candidates dropped to the side. The press was glad, as well as appalled, when Trump won the Republican nomination. They thought that Trump was making it easy and there was no way that Hillary could lose now.

Trump went from being a Pied Piper to a Jack-in-the-Box who couldn’t be  kept in his box. Trump did end runs around the main stream press with his tweets. The main stream media kept covering his every word, as they had been instructed. He could yank their chain with a politically incorrect tweet and dominate the news feeds. The media became his puppet and the Trump train kept rolling on.

Infowars.com or ‘Washington Post’ or Aunt Betty?

Alternative news sources also emerged as a player. There are more options now, even beyond conservative talk radio. Comedy shows are even a news source for knowing about trending topics. Foreign news is accessible now on the internet, which can give a broader perspective. The control of the news slipped away and people were biased, jaded and just not listening.

Trump’s nationalist, pro-America stance resonated with many in middle America.

The distrust of main stream media was apparent to anyone paying attention. The elites talked to themselves reading “The New York Times” and  “The Washington Post” and “Financial Times”, which all require a paid subscription. Do the elites actually think they are talking to anyone but themselves with these newspapers? Fewer people were reading any newspapers, much less newspapers requiring paid expensive subscriptions. Even for reputable news organizations there is a failure to report the real news. Many merely parrot a trending story. Filling 24 / 7 airtime or website content streams ends up with endless speculation as filler and jumping onto stories without proper vetting. The news has lost credibility by their lack of quality, which only leads to further loss of viewers and readers.

Cartoon: Uncle Sam US Govt has a box of

Web Wide Wrap by JoelLeafsFeb 5 2013

Fewer get their news from television or the networks. More people have “cut the cable” completely, so no one is even listening. On the internet the filters of search and social media used to do targeted advertising also help mirror back views. People end up in their own bubble, including the politically correct liberals staying in their own safe zones where Hillary would win. People in the big cities and in Washington are not hearing the stories of real people outside their own bubble zone. If people step outside their bubbles, then they do so only to mock and ridicule the other bubbles.

The media establishment, let’s face it, we do live in New York, Washington, and in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. That’s the west coast and the east coast.

Judith Miller (member Council on Foreign Relations) (5)

The elites thought maybe the race could be close, but convinced themselves that Hillary had her “firewall” states. She would surely get as many votes as Obama. She would win women and non-whites. She would garner the support from co-opted Bernie Sanders voters. She must win because she had worked so hard for so long and she “deserved” to be President. It was her turn after all.

http://memeshappen.com/media/created/it39s-my-turn-to-be-president-Bill-promised-me-meme-30717.jpg

The Donald Trump / Mike Pence ticket was labelled racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic. Anyone considering voting for him were considered ignorant “deplorables”. The main stream press dug up recordings from 10 years ago and old New York tax returns. They pulled out the stops to find dirt or insinuate dirt, which included that he was in the pocket of Russia’s Putin. Meanwhile Trump would mock the press and his deplorables loved him for it. He continued to draw large crowds while Hillary couldn’t get a crowd even pulling famous popular singers to rally for her. The elites still didn’t see it.

Mar-a-Lago club member Rosemary Harder arrives in a costumed hat with Trump's campaign slogan in glittery letters on her hat

The polls were quietly going off the rails. People were lying to pollsters about whether they were actually voting for Trump to avoid the politically correct crowd hounding them. Why not lie after all? Isn’t that what Hillary would do?

There are huge populous forces at work here that are being missed.

We failed to see this enormous revolution coming.

Judith Miller

The disenfranchised were in pockets of the internet sharing their views and tuning out the mainstream filtered propaganda from the Hillary surrogate press corps. The American workers tossed on the ash heap of globalism rose up, as did women and minorities taken for granted. (6) The elites of the coasts and large cities smug in Ivory Towers were not prepared for the quiet insurgency of American populism. They were not prepared for losing control of the narrative through the owned media puppets. Facebook was said to be filtering out conservative voices (7), which only added more to the distrust of the news feeds. People turned to alternative sources for opinion and information, including sharing emails with information from dubious sources. Politically incorrect completely bogus news stories bounced around in emails and private instant messages.

Here’s the problem for the ordinary voter… without the media they are not going to learn what Donald Trump is doing that he doesn’t want them to know. We need a check and a balance in the form of the media however flawed we are or how much we get wrong.

We are there to tell people what the powerful, be they corporations or powerful politicians, don’t want them to know. Without us it is really hard to run an effective democracy whatever our flaws, which are many.

Judith Miller

Judith Miller, Pultizer prize winning reporters, fails to admit that media too often is actually there to tell people what the powerful DO want us to think. They report and opine on what the powerful want us to know while failing to report on other news. The whistle blowers are silenced by the same powerful forces. The media of all sources and the advertisement by the corporations all try to feed thoughts to the “ordinary voter” to influence their minds. They view the people as uneducated, ignorant and even stupid. The powerful and their media spokespeople fly over the Heartland of America and think they know better what is necessary to make an “effective democracy”.

Trump campaigned to the electoral college and worked every vote, even in the Hillary “fire wall” states. He did campaign stops till the very last-minute. He was campaigning while Hillary was getting over pneumonia and while she was “preparing” for debates.

Now the shocked liberal elites try to figure out how they could possibly have lost to such a buffoon. How could their polls have been so wrong? Do we think that Hillary and the DNC understood cyber-security to keep Podesta’s emails safe from prying eyes? Did it have to be Russian secret cyber agents doing the releases? They blame Russian spies for Hillary’s loss. All the emails did was show the hypocrisy and subterfuge of the Hillary camp, which many already suspected. Her smugness that she would win and deserved to win and was owed the Presidency was apparent. That she was part of the globalist elite agenda was also quite clear.

The media was stunned that all their hard work and smug superiority merely ended with them being snookered by the American people. Yes, this is real life.

Trump won the election. President Obama and Hillary Clinton accepted the result. Hillary graciously and tearfully conceded to Trump. The Western elites scratched their heads at how this could have happened and was the world order going to fall into the sea now? Henry Kissinger, a respected globalist member,  has tried to calm the hysteria making the rounds including to the Chinese leadership. (8) (9)

The elites wrote opinion pieces for each other to read in their elite publications and complained of their shock on talk shows. How can they make sure this doesn’t happen again? How did they go so wrong in their campaign strategy? How did they fail to know the right poll numbers? How did they fail to brainwash enough people to vote the way they wanted? How can they take back control of the news feed? How can they make use of the large young population and direct them to their future purposes? Did they spend enough money? Should the electoral college be abolished? Can the internet be controlled or news filtered to make sure people don’t read the wrong sites? They want to gain their control back and will be pulling the levers of power to work towards that end. The minions of the elite and the powerful globalists are meeting and talking and trying to figure out how to control the internet and what we see and what we can know, so they can again claim to be there for our good.

Some non-elite liberals continued in denial. Placards were raised and people chanted “Dump Trump” in the streets, as if that would accomplish anything. People cried on their social media. (10)

Zebro's sign (reading

Trump went on a thank you victory tour speaking directly to the people without need of the national press corps. (11) He continues to use Twitter to his millions of followers, which also sparks more news coverage. He continues to draw outside the lines of the approved Presidential coloring book. Elites wait for a chance to travel to Trump Tower to have a meeting and try to talk some sense into him. They leave behind advice for him in papers they’ve worked on about things like Middle East doctrine. They tell him that Assad must go and it is okay for Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen with US cluster bombs. Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, President Obama, Madeleine Albright and many more are all hoping that Trump will take their advice. (12) (13) Meanwhile Hillary Clinton goes on walks in the New York woods doing fan selfie snaps. (14)

Some die-hard deluded liberals hoped for a coup within the Electoral College. That dream was laid to rest. There is discussion about abolishing the Electoral College, as an attempt to move the power to a “mob rule” democracy where the elites think they can control the narrative. The argument they comfort themselves with is that Hillary won the popular vote in the nation. They do not want to face the reality that Hillary did lose. If the race was run on a popular vote, then other variables would have come into play and Hillary probably still would have lost. (15)

The Electoral College system worked as it should. It did not “misfire.” The election’s outcomes were ultimately about what Americans wanted and what they did not want — not about electoral mechanics.

James E. Campbell

Donald Trump is now officially the President-Elect. Obama is winding down the last days of his administration.

(1) Business Insider: The Illusion of Choice

(2) Wikileaks: Journalists Dined at Top Clinton Staffers’ Homes Days Before Hillary’s Campaign Launch

(3) Podesta emails from Wikileaks: April 2015 DNC plans regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field

(4) Politico: They Always Wanted Trump

(5) Judith Miller – Youtube video: Media were completely shocked by Trump’s win.

Wikipedia on Judith Miller Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, graduate of Princeton University, and worked at New York Times etc. As of 2016, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

(6) NBC: Trump did had more minorities and women than Romney in 2012

(7) Gizmodo: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

Snopes: Is Facebook censoring conservativenews

(8) Kissinger says give Trump a chance to world order elites

(9) Businessinsider: Henry Kissinger talks to China leadership about Trump

(10) Unhappy liberals still voicing their frustration in the streets and social media

(11) Donald Trump closes Thank you tour

(12) Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley advice for Trump on Middle East

(13) Al Gore talks to Trumps on climate change

(14) Hillary Clinton doing selfies with fans in NY woodlands

(15) Why Hillary Clinton Supporters Need to quit whining about the electoral college

James E. Campbell is a UB distinguished professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and is the author of “Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America”.

Updated on 01/25/2017:

Kitten leaves eastern Aleppo, Syria

Fleeing and / or Liberated?

Calico kitten perched on man’s shoulder leaves eastern Aleppo

Calico kitten perched on man's shoulder leaving eastern Aleppo

Fleeing or Liberated? Calico kitten leaves eastern Aleppo December 14, 2016 (Screen grab 22 seconds into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99wtGSaxKWI from Financial Times) CREDIT:  KARAM AL-MASRI/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

One set of media slant told us that the people were fleeing besieged eastern Aleppo in fear of government forces. Another set of media slanted differently said the people were finally liberated and now freed from being held hostage by rebel forces. No doubt there is truth to both sides of the story for different individuals. The headlines continue to morph with descriptions of “victory” or “evacuation”.

The little kitten takes no sides and just wants to be safe.

Calico kitten balances on the shoulder of his human as they leave rebel held eastern Aleppo, Syria December 14, 2016 with his human family

Calico kitten leaves eastern Aleppo, Syria on December 14, 2016 (Screen grab closeup edited: 22 seconds into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99wtGSaxKWI ) CREDIT:  KARAM AL-MASRI/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

What will become of this family with their little kitten? What will become of Syria? What will become of the Middle East? Will this blow up into something even wider?

“Assad must go” was voiced by the CFR members. They still want him gone, but that is less likely now than before  Aleppo was re-taken by his forces.

Global forces align on both sides of the ongoing civil war with proxy wars, as well as the wild card of ISIS fighters with their own agenda.

Reference:

Warning… news reports may have disturbing war related imagery and discussion.

The Independent UK: President Assad claims ‘History is being made in liberated Aleppo’ in triumphant address The evacuation of fighters and civilians to neighbouring rebel-held Idlib province is under way as fragile ceasefire holds

Express UK news: Chilling footage shows THOUSANDS of Syrian civilians fleeing Islamic State-held Aleppo

The Guardian: Operation to evacuate people from Aleppo begins – as it happened

CBC CA news: Battle for Aleppo has ended

ABC News: Bloodied and Demoralized Syrians Evacuate Aleppo

CNN: ‘Responsibility to protect?’ Empty words after Aleppo

AFP correspondent: Karam al masri (very powerful images – warning)

CNN article: Aleppo Feb 2016 by Karam al Masri

 

 

Interview with Jeffrey Goldberg on Kissinger by Judy Woodruff

Judy Woodruff sits in front of image of Henry Kissinger

Judy Woodruff interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of “The Atlantic” 11/21/2016 Screen grab from video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fgFK084gls

Judy Woodruff, a listed member of the “Council on Foreign Relations“,  interviews Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of “The Atlantic” about his interview with Henry Kissinger.

The interviews between Henry Kissinger and Jeffrey Goldberg can be found at these two articles in “The Atlantic”, which were available to read without subscription. Links: Interviewing Henry Kissinger and The Lessons of Henry Kissinger

Link to interview on PBS  Published on Nov 21, 2016
“The Atlantic” magazine’s founding statement promised that the magazine would be “the organ of no party or clique”. They have endorsed only three Presidential candidates since the magazine’s founding in Boston, Massachusetts in 1857. The magazine and editors endorsed Hillary Clinton over fears of Donald Trump being elected.

This election outcome has exposed the veneer of false neutrality and also the deceit of many of the major news sources and reporters in their  coverage and tone. “The Atlantic” is not neutral in their views of the election outcome, but were honest and probably hoping their two-cents might sway some voters. The elites wanted a candidate who would fall in step or was already co-opted or part of their mind hive or was at least malleable to the ongoing power view.

If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. [1]

Hillary Clinton, a former Secretary of State under Barack Obama,  stated with pride that “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better — better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea of what it’s going to take to make our government work more efficiently.” Hillary of the “We came, we saw, he died.” laughing regime change had been groomed by Henry Kissinger in foreign policy. The Clintons have vacationed with Henry Kissinger and consider him a close personal friend.

Henry Kissinger has a 1973 Nobel Peace prize for his negotiations with Vietnam that involved massive bombings, including into neighboring Cambodia. Many agree with Bernie Sander’s description of Kissinger’s years in the Nixon administration as being responsible for one of the “worst genocides in the history of the world.” Bernie Sanders is “proud” that Kissinger was not his friend.

Meanwhile the Obama Administration granted Henry Kissinger a “Distinguished Public Service Award”. Jeffrey Goldberg did extensive interviews with President Barack Obama that can be found at this link: The Obama Doctrine

Donald Trump did meet with Kissinger in May 2016 during his campaign. Kissinger also recently went to Trump Tower for a meeting with the now President-elect Trump. “President-elect Trump and Dr. Kissinger have known each other for years and had a great meeting. They discussed China, Russia, Iran, the EU and other events and issues around the world” says the Trump transition press release.

For most supporters of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s election was an unexpected shock and also a puzzlement. There has been scrambling to try to understand what the election of Trump might mean for the United States, as well as how his Presidency will affect the direction and plans for shaping the world power structure. Many articles by CFR members expressed their shock and dismay and “what now” view of an impending Trump Presidency.  Dr. Henry Kissinger has had long association with the “Council on Foreign Relations” that began in the mid-1950’s as a young man. He is looking for a path to advising yet another president and to advise others who might get Trump’s ear.

Kissinger in his foreign policy believes in ‘realpolitik’, which is an amoral world view that puts balance and world stability over human rights. This makes his decisions and actions quite controversial. He is still respected and sought for his advice and “long arc” view of the world’s history. Trump expressed more nationalism and country sovereignty with protecting borders and less interest in regime change and openness to new cooperation, as well as changing the more globalist view of trade negotiations. The globalist corporatists are scrambling to co-opt Trump, as they have with so many others.

Judy Woodruff says the “report” is part of an ongoing collaboration between “The Atlantic” and the “PBS NewsHour“.
Note: This is my transcription of Jeffrey Goldberg’s comments with some paraphrasing for brevity of the questions by Judy Woodruff.

Jeffrey Goldberg says…

He (Kissinger) still really is the most influential foreign policy thinker in American in a lot of ways. So in my experience with him there is always something to learn even at the age of 93. Maybe especially at the age of 93 there is always something to learn from him. And so we ended up spending hours talking not just about the Obama Doctrine. We talked about the order of the world currently. We talked a lot about the election. He, like a lot of people, thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. We talked about both candidates. Well, here we are.

What does he think about the legacy of Barack Obama’s foreign policy?

He thinks that the President is too passive in his approach to foreign policy. That the American President has a responsibility to make more order in the world, especially as it relates to the other great powers – Russia and China in particular.

He also thinks the President is too burdened by the alleged sins of the past. Kissinger would think of them more as alleged sins of American behavior during the Cold War and various places including Vietnam and Cambodia. But mainly it has to do with passivity that he sees in the President and a lack of strategic thinking and lack of assertion.

Jeffrey Goldberg of

Jeffrey Goldberg of “The Atlantic” talking on “PBS/Newshour” about Kissinger, Obama and Trump  //  Screen grab from video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fgFK084gls

And obviously the President when I was interviewing him on these subjects Kissinger was almost sort of a specter in the room at various points. The President would talk about the “red line” in Syria, for instance, and talk about how one of the worst reasons to bomb someone is to prove that you are willing to bomb someone.

And I felt as if he were addressing Henry Kissinger and Kissinger’s role in Cambodia using bombing to enhance American credibility at the negotiating table. I found it was a totally fascinating process for me because I was moderating non-chronologically an argument between President Obama and the most important and most controversial foreign policy statesman of the modern era.

And so there was that piece… the other piece of this is that Obama in some ways resembles Henry Kissinger. Kissinger recognizes this to some degree. I think that the President recognizes this to some degree. Neither man particularly obsesses about human rights as a key issue in a way America organizes the relationship with other countries.

Kissinger is still defending the decisions that were made in the early part of the Nixon administration in the Vietnam War. 

I don’t think he’ll stop defending them. He feels as if his decision-making is misunderstood in the country and he wants to make his point.

The interesting thing, if I may, is on Syria he noted to me that John Kerry, Secretary of State, guy who has the job that Henry Kissinger had  – who started his public career as a Vietnam protester arguing to the President that we have to bomb the Assad regime in order to focus their attention on the necessity of negotiation.

And so you see these very interesting echos throughout history, these unsolvable problems, these challenges that are in front of policy makers.

I have a feeling that John Kerry and Barack Obama today have a slightly more understanding for the decisions that Nixon and Kissinger made in Vietnam. They may not agree with them, but they have a little bit more understanding.

Human rights is not at the top of their priorities. 

Well that is one of the interesting things that “Hope and Change” is limited to within American borders in a lot of cases. I don’t think that President Obama would appreciate being called a neo-Henry Kissinger, but Obama’s view is “I, as President, have to manage my relationship with China” and me spending a lot of time lecturing them and ‘punishing them’ for their human rights violations is not going to advance my immediate and long-term national security interests and economic interests.

Talking about President Obama’s approach to China…

First of all, I asked him what grade he gives Obama for the China portfolio. He said B+. I said “That’s a pretty high-grade.” He said “Yes, it’s a B+ on tactics”. It is lower probably on strategy.. on thinking through strategy.”

Kissinger’s focus in global affairs has always been what are the needs of the great powers, how do those needs align with our needs, how do we organize that. The opening to China, of course, is the apogee to this theory.

File:Kissinger Mao.jpg

Henry Kissinger meets with leaders in People’s Republic of China – Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong (Wikimedia) [2]

Cannot overstate the importance that Kissinger places on China and China / US relations going forwards… 

It was his greatest achievement, it was a world historical achievement.

Kissinger took a secret trip to PRC in 1971, which had not had relation with US in over 20 years. This paved the way for Nixon’s ‘opening to China’ in 1972. This was the beginning of China’s emergence as a world power.

China is going to be the world’s biggest economy, if things keep going the way they are going. Our economic future, the American economic future, is in Asia.

China believes itself to be the most powerful country in the world, the central kingdom. He is saying that Presidents have to have a strategic view to understand how to manage that aspect of China’s relationship without coming to war.

The stability of the entire world depends on a constructive relationship between the United States and China. If that relationship deteriorates, then it is bad for the United States and it is bad for the entire world. It should be the number one priority of American foreign policy, but there is chaos in the world too. American Presidents have to deal with chaos at the same time they are thinking about 10, 20, 30 years out on how they are going to deal with China.

What about Trump?

In our most recent conversation, I said “Do you think that Donald Trump has matured? Do you think he has become smarter or more studious?”

He said “I’m not having that conversation. He’s the President elect of the United States.”

And so, what we should do…is essentially, I’m paraphrasing now, is to wish him well and be available to help him study and help him understand the challenges before him. Obviously Henry Kissinger is a person, even at 93, who doesn’t like to be out of the game. He doesn’t like to be out of the lime-light.

He’s basically saying “I’m here for you Don and I want to give you some sound advice.”

Kissinger met with Trump, who said afterwards ‘ I have tremendous respect for Dr. Kissinger and appreciate him sharing his thoughts with me.’

Kissinger’s basic rule, I think, is to know what you want to do and know what things are unacceptable to you.

You have to know going into the Presidency what things you cannot accept as the leader of the United States. You have to reverse engineer the problem.

What could China do in the south China Sea that is not acceptable to US national security? What could happen in the Middle East that is not acceptable? So first you have to decide what your, to borrow a phrase, what your red lines are and work back from there.

 Does he believe that someone who hasn’t had experience in foreign policy can make a determination like that? 

He was very assiduous about not providing his opinion about where Donald Trump is on the learning curve right now.

I think it is a big universal truth that if you are not willing or able to take on board new information, new analysis, have long involved conversations about these important issues then you are going to be operating at a real deficit.

Much, if not most, of the foreign policy establishment in the United States has not been on board with Donald Trump.

Quite the opposite.

How can he move ahead making decisions that are good for the country when he hasn’t had these relationships before?

Well, he is going have to do something that is out of character with Donald Trump, which is to say bygones be bygones. Pick up the phone to say to Colin Powell, to Madeleine Albright, say to all these people.. “Come in and talk to me about what you know”.

At the lower level he is going to have to be open to the idea that people who disagreed with him, with his candidacy, that they should come back into government and help.

The flip side is that all of these people who were so nervous about Donald Trump becoming President now might have to say to themselves that “Well, Donald Trump IS President, President-elect, and so I better make myself  available to the government because better me than some guy nobody ever heard of with no experience” because these are not unserious challenges. These are life and death issues. You want people who understand the global ISIS threat really well to be sitting  next to Donald Trump when he actually has to make decisions.

 What are you worried about right now? Do you have bad expectations about this administration? 

I’m worried about everything for starters. I’m worried about a willingness to hire the best people. I’m worried about temperament. I’m worried about his attention, his focus. I am not entirely worried that he is actually going to carry out all of the things he said he would do. I’m worried about accidents.

Who do you want in the White House when the CIA director comes over and says the North Koreans now have the ability to deliver one of their nuclear weapons by intercontinental missile to the American mainland. What do you want to do about it, Mister or Madam President?

I want somebody in that job, obviously, who can make reasonable rational decisions and take in the best advice.

End of interview.

Donald Trump is not part of the clique of the globalist elite cabal nor has he been stewed in the foreign policy views of the “Council on Foreign Relations” nor had Henry Kissinger been whispering in his ear about “realpolitik”. Trump also is not a neo-con “idealist” wanting to spread Democracy around the world and instead leaving smoldering chaos behind. Donald Trump is a hope that the new change can be towards yet another “New World Order” that isn’t ruled solely by the globalists. A hope that the United States foreign policy is not deciding its moves decades in advance based largely on the globalist prophesied future of a transcendent China as a next great world power.

Henry Kissinger’s long arc view started the opening up of China in the 1970’s and he still pushes the view that we are handing off power “back” to China and Asia.  The idea is that China was a great power and merely lost for a time before rising again, so we need to be prepared to hand over the golden keys. Does China realize they are being expected to take over the mantle of world shaper? The “so-called” pivot of Obama to the East isn’t far off the mark from where Kissinger would want him to be heading.

There was no mention of other historical foreign policy decisions of Kissinger, such as his involvement in a coup placing the brutal Chilean leader, Pinochet, in power. There is no mention that our involvement in Vietnam was premised on a lie [4] to the American people, which is a method of getting the United States into war to this day.

Why, as Americans, are we still honoring a man with so much blood on his hands? Why would we want Kissinger or his cronies to continue to shape the foreign policy and world order? They sit in their enclaves and ivory towers and plot and manipulate and smirk, but too often in hindsight the world finds out their great schemes are an ongoing disaster. America is used as a tool in their world chess games.

More is at play in the world and needs to be addressed with urgency than whether countries will blow each other up over land or failed trade cooperation. Failure of antibiotics and a global pandemic or a small meteor landing mid-ocean are too rarely discussed. Those would definitely throw a monkey wrench into the globalist prophesies of future power structure. Surprisingly “climate change” didn’t come up in the conversation with Kissinger, as that topic seems to be a constant thrum in media.

File:Reunión Pinochet - Kissinger.jpg

Henry Kissinger with Chilean despot Augusto Pinochet (Wikimedia) [3]

Henry Kissinger says Trump has “absolutely no baggage”

Fareed Zakaria, on CNN’s GPS show, asks Henry Kissinger about impressions of Donald Trump after meeting President-elect Screen grab from video: http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/11/19/exp-gps-kissinger-on-trump-foreign-policy.cnn

Link to interview video

Fareed Zakaria, a listed member of “The Council on Foreign Relations”, interviews Henry Kissinger on CNN about his opinion of President-elect Donald Trump after their meeting in Trump Tower.

Fareed seems puzzled, as he is ready to start attacking Donald Trump on everything said in the campaign that would challenge their globalist and neo-liberal agenda. Kissinger, always the diplomatic pragmatist, is making the rounds to attempt to get his globalist buddies to calm down and to have an open mind and a “wait and see” attitude. He suggests taking opportunities to advise and educate and direct Donald Trump and not be confrontational, but to remain willing to share wisdom without judgmental tone.

Henry Kissinger is a god-father of globalism and “realpolitik” and he is willing to work with the worst of mankind for his aims and to use his intellect to direct others to his ends, so he is not taken aback nor afraid of Trump. Things would have been so much easier if Hillary Clinton could have been slid into place, as they intended and planned. Life still has some surprises for 93 year old Henry Kissinger. Surprise… it’s Trump!

“What were your impressions from the meeting?”

A determined President-elect who is making the transition from being a campaigner to being national strategist and is trying to inform himself on the various aspects of the current situation.

You’ve seen many President elects come into office…

This President-elect is the most unique that I have experienced in one respect. He has absolutely no baggage. He has no obligations to any particular group because he has become a President on the basis of his own strategy and a program he put before the American public that his competitors did not present. That is a unique advantage.

How will China react…

I’m not here as a spokesman of the President-elect. I am here to answer questions of my impressions. The impact of globalization… not enough attention was paid to the fact that it was bound to have winners and losers and that the losers were bound to try to express themselves in some kind of political reaction. In my view in the present situation one should not insist in nailing him into positions that he had taken in the campaign on which he doesn’t insist. If he insists on them, then of course disagreements will become expressed. But if he develops another program and leaves the question open of what he said in the campaign one should not make that the decisive element.

We should welcome some flip flop? 

 I think we should give him an opportunity to develop the positive objectives that he may have and to discuss those and we’ve gone through too many decades of tearing incompetent administrations apart and it may happen again, but we shouldn’t begin that way and we shouldn’t end up that way either. So that would be my basic view.

End of interview

Donald Trump has come out saying he will not pursue charges against Hillary Clinton [1], which makes common sense to not waste any time or energy and instead to move forward to make positive changes for our country. No doubt this was part of the advice given to him or as a negotiating tool. This makes a good olive branch on Trump’s part to be able to work with Democrats and also the friends of Hillary in media and world leaders. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Hillary Clinton is a backdoor foreign policy adviser to Trump at some point.

The election shouldn’t become about destroying the Clintons, which they did quite well all on their own by their actions of deceit. It would only become a circus and a distraction. The result of the election of Donald Trump should be to move on and work towards “Making America Great Again”. As a country we need this unique President to give us an opportunity to make some real change in the direction and policies of our nation and in the world.

If the ‘lying biased’ liberal media will give Trump a chance and the rabid side of his supporters can be ignored, then the country can focus on the positives that can come from the new unexpected administration. So called “flip flop” is what all Presidents do. Hopefully Trump will focus on important issues and not be distracted.

Kissinger also hopes that Trump will listen because the globalism is there for some good reasons and is also entrenched, so with open mind he can help steer some course through the morass. I have hope for change!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/cartoons/images/2016/07/20/chip_bok_chip_bok_for_jul_20_2016_5_.jpg

Artist: Chris Bok [2]

Reference:

[1] Trump will not pursue charges on Clinton

[2] Chris Bok’s cartoon: Lock Her Up July 21, 2016