Communities Dominate Brands

The Trump Convention in Cleveland: Preliminary Program: Day 1 Women's Outreach (aka Rape), Day 2 Hispanic Outreach, Day 3 Black Outreach

So now we know what Donald Trump is planning for his Convention. A number of major Republicans are boycotting his Convention. So Trump has started to prepare some counter-programming. We only know a few names like say Mike Huckabee, Mike Tyson (yes the boxer), Bobby Knight (the basketball coach) etc. But I think I have figured out what is going on. I think I know what Trump is up to. And its pretty darned brilliant. He intends to solve the Republican party's problems with the three big voter demographics. So time for a fresh piece of comedy. This is a rough outline of the preliminary speaking schedule and proposed/invited speakers:


DAY 1 - WOMEN'S OUTREACH

So Day 1 is the most thoroughly prepared day. It builds on the great success of the GOP in 2012 on its women's outreach such as Mitt Romney's Binders full of Women, Todd Akin's Legitimate Rape and of course the mandatory forced intravaginal probing of 'Governor Ultrasound' Bob McDonnell. Trump builds on this solid foundation with his favorite speakers who know women and who know rape:

Introductory Remarks by Donald Trump (real estate developer) - When a woman smiles at you when dancing, she is seeking a rapist. If she comes to your hotel room, she is is begging to be raped.

Rush Limbaugh (radio host) - The Four-time Married Man's Viewpoint - Its not rape if you know the signals: how to tell when no means yes. 

Bobby Knight (former basketball coach) - The Woman's Viewpoint: If you're gonna get raped just relax, and enjoy it.

Michael Cohen (Trump's Attorney) - The Attorney's Viewpoint: Whenever a husband like Donald Trump rapes the wife like Ivana Trump, that, in legal terms is actually not rape. And I'm not saying it just because I am Mr Trump's attorney, I really am this much a scumbag, hey, I AM an attorney

SPECIAL VIDEO ADDRESS Vladimir Putin (President of Russia) - The International Angle - How multiple rapes by politicians in Israel are of course hilariously funny

Michelle Bachmann (former Congresswoman) - The Gay viewpoint: Gay marriage leads to child rape.

Mike Huckabee (former Governor of Arkansas) - The Child's viewpoint: The baby from rape is a gift from God.

Keynote: Mike Tyson (former world champion boxer and convicted rapist) - The Rapist's Viewpoint. How Mike Tyson felt when he was raping, its a painful experience that causes more hurt to the man than the woman, the real misunderstood victim is the man raping.

Closing remarks by Donald Trump:(twice divorced serial adulterer currently sued for rape) - If you are sent to prison for rape, you were railroaded.

Signs distributed to audience for Day 1 read 'MAKE AMERICA RAPE AGAIN' on one side, and 'MEN'S LIVES MATTER' on the other side

(Note the day includes an appeal to an oft-neglected minority voter group: Registered Cannibals of America - who will enjoy hearing their idol Mike 'Bite his ear off' Tyson also discuss what an ear tastes like when interlaced with the adrenaline from the heat of a boxing match)

(After the day Donald Trump will be available for press interviews together with his daughter Ivanka Trump. He will keep reminding everybody that he'd really like to bang her)


DAY 2 - HISPANIC OUTREACH

Opening remarks by Donald Trump (has-been reality TV star) - Not all judges are from Mexico

Jan Brewer (former Arizona governor) - why Hispanics don't really need to be given driver's licences

Newt Gingrich (Captain Moonbase) - why Spanish is the language of the ghetto

Rick Perry (Governor Oops) - Any wealthy Hispanic American got to be rich through connections to Mexican drug dealers.

SPECIAL MUSICAL PERFORMANCE by Ted Nugent (musician) - the beloved rockstar debuts his new tribute to racial harmony entitled 'You're a Beanochimp'

Ann Coulter (lunatic) - Why Mexican Culture is Deficient

Louie Gohmert (idiot) - How to tell if someone of brown color is actually an Islamic Terrorist not the other nasty kind of brown, a Hispanic

Keynote: Joe Arpaio (Sheriff in Arizona) - How to be friendly to Hispanics

Closing remarks by Donald Trump (six times bankrupted alleged billionaire who won't release his taxes) - Mexicans are rapists and murderers, and some, perhaps, are nice people

Signs distributed to audience for Day 2 read 'MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN' on one side, and 'WHITE LIVES MATTER' on the other side

(A life-sized mock-up of The Wall will be built of crushed cans and other garbage. A life-sized cardboard cut-out of Trump will be placed there for delegates to take selfies)

(After the day Trump catering will provide all with delicious Tacos)


DAY 3 - BLACK OUTREACH

Opening remarks by Donald Trump (pathological liar, serial fraudster) - Black people are lazy which is pretty disgusting, honestly. They should be beaten up. We have no choice. Believe me.

Dr Ben Carson (retired neurosurgeon) - Why Obama is not properly black

Paul LePage (Governor of Maine) - An overview of popular names in Maine, such as D-Money, Smoothie & Shifty. Also a brief history of how local white women get impregnated by visitors from out of state.

SPECIAL VIDEO ADDRESS Kim Jong-Un (Supreme Ruler of North Korea) - President Obama is a wicked black monkey, which in North Korea is considered a compliment - and by the way, monkey is darned good meat to eat too, tastes just like chicken

Dick Cheney (war criminal) - Historical perspective: why South African Apartheid leader Pik Botha was a nicer person than his over-rated prisoner Nelson Mandela

Sarah Palin (moron) - Historical counterpoint - The Federal Debt is exactly like slavery

[PENDING SPEAKER, not confirmed] Clint Eastwood (actor) - Why an empty chair is more interesting than a live black man

Rick Santorum (asshole) - Why we should not make black people's lives better

Pat Buchanan (racist bastard) - How White people today are actually oppressed by the Black people

Keynote: David Duke (former grand wizzard of the Ku Klux Klan) - A supremely white celebration of black power (with giant cross on stage, set magnificently on fire)

Closing remarks by Donald Trump (small-fingered vulgarian) - Blacks should go back to Africa, but I mean that in the nicest of ways. Besides I hear that Kenya is a nice place: our President is from there

Signs distributed to audience for Day 3 read 'MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN' on one side, and 'RICH LIVES MATTER' on the other side

(Before his speech, former Vice President Cheney is kindly willing to illustrate proper shooting technique to the face of one lucky winner from the audience chosen at random)

(Speaker Lineup Note: actor Gary Busey is standing by to do the Empty Chair monologues in case Clint Eastwood is not available)

(After the day Trump will be available for press interviews. Trump will be followed everywhere in a silent, creepy way by Chris Christie)


Now, I am sure I am missing some of Trump's favorite speakers especially from sports and entertainment but this is a pretty good start. The Mitt Romney election loss autopsy was quite clear that in 2012 the Republican party had repelled major voter subgroups especially women, Hispanics and blacks. This new speaker lineup by Trump will be spectacular, and deal with those issues in a truly Trumpian way. Not unlike how Trump himself just today spoke in front of a pile of garbage while advocating protectionist trade wars, and in another speech today promised to bring back waterboarding. Looks like the Trumpster is doing everything he can to misdirect us from asking for those Tax Returns by the alleged 'Billionaire'. It looks like all systems go for Trump 2016. I wonder why all those other Republicans are boycotting this Convention


PS - if you enjoy my weird sense of humor, here is some more recent blogs relating to US politics - Wikipedia Page of The Trump Con, the worst nightmare for the Republicans from year 2017: The Hateful 8, a possible future: from Brexit to Trump to World War 3, the secret transcript of the Bill Clinton - Donald Trump telephone call, and the original view to the 2016 Presidential season: Return of the Clown Car.

PSPS - For those who want my ANALYSIS of this political race, my forecast of the Trump vs Hillary race (20 point landslide, predicted on March 6, 2016) is here. And my original forecast from October 2014 that Hillary will win in 2016 by landslide is here.

PSPSPS - my normal topics on this blog relate to technology, in particular mobile telecoms but also social media, the internet, digital media etc. A possibly relevant article is about the use of Big Data in Presidential Elections, this is the most thorough blog article anywhere about the 2012 election 'Big Data' race, Obama vs Romney datamining and targeting including metrics and measurements: The Definitive Article on Narwhal vs Orca

Total Fiction: Lets Imagine Horror Scenario from Brexit to Trump to World War 3 (UPDATED - with Fan Fiction Ending)

As a European, I am sorry about the Brexit vote but I do acknowledge, it is democracy in action. Thats fair. Britain wants to separate from European union, so be it. There are too many close ties for Britain to become truly isolated, some border matters become a bit more cumbersome and likely in the short run the UK will suffer in terms such as a recession and some longer term business benefits etc. London will still be a major tourist attraction for global tourists and the world will not end. BUT, as this was Brexit, the vote of British Exit from the European Union, where US Presidential candidate Donald Trump had been vocally in support of Brexit, lets explore a horror scenario. Lets have the worst possible events now follow, and push the planet to World War 3. And lets give the US election in November to Trump, and lets further explore the bizarre statements from Trump that could suggest bizarre changes in US alliances and loyalties in that WW3. This is pure fiction and utterly implausible as a total scenario (although some individual elements may occur) but some ‘expert’ such as say Sarah Palin or Dr Ben Carson could perhaps even guide a President Trump to this type of directions.

After all, it was Sarah Palin who read ‘all the newspapers’ and whose foreign policy competence came out of her home state, Alaska having geographic proximity to Russia; and Dr Ben Carson thinks Egyptian Pyramids were built to be grain storage. Note that Trump has said he’d consider Sarah Palin for a Cabinet post. He’ll be campaigning with Sarah next week. And Dr Carson, he was said to be heading Trump’s vetting process for the VP slot (although very soon it became obvious Carson was nowhere near that actual job). And this from Trump who said his Cabinet would be the brightest people. Yeah, I think when Trump says ‘brightest’ he means that as much as when he said he has the best memory and then couldn’t remember saying that.

BREXIT AND SCOTLAND

So lets start my scenario. Boris Johnson (another weird hair dude) the former Mayor of London becomes the new Prime Minister as David Cameron just stepped down. Boris’s support back home, literally, in London is dismal - Londoners voted 75/25 against Brexit. So Boris faces daily protests and jeers as he starts his new job. Things don’t go well. The British economy crashes into a recession. The Europeans who were struggling to trust Cameron, now have to deal with the hostile Anti-EU crowd in charge and tempers flare. The banking and finance industry starts its own Brexit, moving staff and some HQs from London to Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam and Dublin. And the Scots, they scream for a new Independence vote (Scotland voted 67/33 against Brexit). And the Irish start their own independence drive and even the sleepy Welsh suddenly wake up to Wales Independence (although this is still, typically, Welsh and sleepy).

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says not now, the Scots just had one Independence vote last year, they won’t get another now. They have to wait .. years, maybe a decade. This angers the Scots more. Meanwhile the changes start on the borders. As Britain stops free transit of European Union citizens into the UK, of course the EU retaliates and suddenly long lines form where both sides demand all sorts of nonsense in new and constantly changing visa forms. The visas are approved instantly on the spot for anyone holding an European Union or British passport but the paperwork is cumbersome. This impacts the normal British border crossings like Heathrow and the Eurostar train across the Channel Tunnel but far more angry border crossings become those in Ireland and with Gibraltar. Northern Ireland now has to re-institute its formal border with Ireland and require normal passport inspections. The visa requirements and paperwork anger the Irish.

This fuels a return of Northern Irish separatist emotions and those working the border are accused of being English lackies and loyalists. Anger from long lines soon bursts into various violent episodes and then the first spontaneous attacks on border guards and .. the return of Irish terrorism. Boris Johnson responds by increasing police numbers and sends in some military. This hostility in turn angers the Scots out of solidarity who demand a vote on independence - and now in an age of social media and various selfie-stunts, some Scots start to cross over the border to Northern England (the English in the countryside voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU) to start hooliganism and vandalism aimed at English landowners on the Southern side of the Scotland-England border. A bizarre instagram-inspired modern variant to ‘happy slapping’ creates a craze of Scottish teens raiding Northern English farms setting various objects on fire at night and videorecording it on their smartphones and posting to social media, as an ever escallating contest of mischief and property damage. The local police are overwhelmed, Boris sends more soldiers to patrol the border. Trump chimes in from America and says: build a wall! The rebellion in Wales is still rubbing sleep out of its eyes and forgets to mention their intended support of the Irish or Scots.

TRUMP RISES

Trump gets past a contentious Convention in the USA, continues his various rants and nonsense, some days he sounds nearly sane, other days he goes on rants and he cannot avoid the thrill of his passionate audiences when he mentions The Wall and that Mexico will pay for it. Trump also surprises nobody by launching his TrumpTV during the general election process, as the new right-wing propaganda channel with so extreme hostile views it makes Fox News seem rational. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is far ahead in the polls but the negotiations with Bernie Sanders simply never produce a result and she says, enough. I will not give Bernie a speaking slot at her Convention. Bernie in turns decides to hold his own alternate Convention and launches his independent run, even as he is unable to get to all states onto the ballot anymore. Bernie escapes all scrutiny by most right-wing media because they want Hillary the front-runner to lose. The strong lead in Hillary’s polling is suddenly split, as Bernistas bolt to the wacky old uncle-Socialist. And polls for the general election suddenly show a slight Trump lead. In a 5-way race, with Bernie on the very left, then the next left is the Green Party, then Hillary on the moderate-left, the Libertarian party on the moderate-right, Trump pushes to the extreme right and returns to his white nationalist, isolationist, populist anti-globalist rhetoric - partly energized by the Brexit late success in the British referendum vote.

Hillary Clinton has a ‘health episode’ and is out of campaigning for 6 days, then returns seeming quite weak for the next week. Everybody gossips she’s had a heart attack. Then in very unfortunate timing, Hillary defends some Obama statement about not all Muslims being violent. This has very inopportune timing as finally ISIS succeeds in a nasty bombing plot hitting New York, London, Paris, and Moscow killing hundreds in each city. Trump uses the paranoia about ISIS - and Hillary’s inopportunely timed comments - to run up the election fears and ends up winning the election. Trump even win his home state - New York was attacked - and runs off to a big landslide victory - in a clearly white supremacists, white racists, isolationist agenda. He only takes 38% of the national vote but as Hillary splits votes with four others including Bernie, she ends with 35% and as New York votes blue, the Electoral College goes to Trump. Trump’s election victory also brings in every more wacky members to Congress that make Louie Gohmert seem positively coherent. Similarly many loonie Governors are elected so that LePage of Maine no longer holds the title of nuttiest Governor. But also in the weird 5-way race, some states go to Hillary such as Texas, Arizona and Utah, partly by the strong Mormon vote against Trump, partly by the strong Hispanic vote against Trump, partly by the strong female vote against Trump and partly by a strong generic anti-Trump vote. Still, in a clear election victory, Trump becomes President.

THE POLICE STATE

The bombings in each of the four megacities causes a similar reaction of nationalism, where the local governments seize more control, curtail the press, institute various police actions that limit individual freedoms - and run emergency upgrades to the police and bring in military to police their major cities (well, in Russia this is already normal so in Moscow its just more of the same). The Paris attacks unite Europeans in the EU to fear Muslims more, but to fear all foreigners - including now the British. In the UK the terrorist attack is used by Boris Johnson and his government to institute heavy-handed anti-terrorist laws - which also impact the hooliganism on the Scottish border and the violence on the Irish border. Both fuel a backlash of nationalism and actual terrorism locally, attacking police and miliatry bases. Gibraltar sees violence on its border with Spain. Britain is in severe economic crisis, brings in all NATO troops it has abroad, to help the police at home, including soldiers based in Gibraltar, leaving it to a small police force only to try to maintain border security.

Police brutality and military use on the Irish border turns into violent clashes now with a fully re-arming IRA and now cries of Irish Lives Matter. Ireland is bordering on a civil war. Scotland sees a similar escallation, on some highways, large obstacles are placed with check-points and then actual concrete barriers brought in - which becomes the new Hadrian’s Wall, the Boris Wall that starts to be erected between most used crossing points between Scotland and England. The Scottish coin the brilliant phrase Scottish Lives Matter. Trump again stuffs his foot in his mouth saying he loves the Scotch (the whisky, not the people). The uprising in Wales has now gotten its first cup of tea and are babbling in their weird language but nobody else yet takes any notice. Scotland demands a vote for Independence. Ireland joins in its demand. Boris Johnson says no. The Scottish Parliament takes a vote of Independence and declares its independence from Britain, and applies for instant admission to the European Union. Local police departments in Edinburg, Glasgow and Aberdeen are all overrun and start to fly a Scottish flag. Belfast in Northern Ireland is in total revolt by now and the city soon sees its ‘Arabic Spring’ uprising where the Irish flag is now flying also in major Irish towns. Boris Johnson considers sending the military to retake the cities. The Welsh issue statements of strong support of the Scottish and Irish independence, but do it only in their own language which then is ignored by everybody.

RE-EMERGENCE OF EFTA

In the Brexit economic climate, Britain starts to rebuild EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, the anti-EU grouping that Britain built after World War 2, in response to the French-German led EEC, predecessor to the EU. Norway, not part of the EU, joins EFTA. Switzerland, not part of the EU, joins EFTA. Turkey angry at its delays to get into the EU, is fast-tracked to join EFTA as well. Greece suffers through another financial crisis and votes to exit the EU and right after Grexit, the nation join EFTA. Portugal has its own Potsit, departs the EU and joins EFTA (another ex EFTA member). Finland, yet another EFTA member asks to join both, to which the opportunistic British say, of course you may join EFTA without departing the EU, and Finland is not Finnished with the EU and joins EFTA. Czech and Sloval republics look at all this European disintegration in despair, and in a weird protest decision and referendum, have a ‘Velvet Reunification’ vote and reunite to form Czechoslovakia with no practical effect, as they continue having separate Czech and Slovak governments and flags and both remain in the EU. But Slovenia protests that it is frequently confused for Slovakia, and has its Sloxit departing the EU, but keeping the Euro, and joining EFTA. The rest of the balkans deteriorate into another decade-long mess where nobody really knows is it Serbo-Macenia or CroAlbania or Yugo-Yugo stan-stan. They are all expelled from the EU and not accepted to EFTA either, while they sort out their local mess. The Italians laugh hysterically next door - you thought WE had a messy government?

PUTIN RISING

As Europe has its reaction to the Paris bombing and starts to clamp down on civil liberties and takes various actions to monitor and control - and deport - Muslims and various recent immigrants, there is regional violence. Local armies are asked to join police in keeping the peace in cities. This depletes the barracks from many NATO military bases. Meanwhile in the transition period in the USA, from Obama to Trump, Obama starts the pull-back of US troops from NATO bases as Trump had promised to bring American troops back and clearly it was the will of the people in the national vote, that US troops need to come home. The global warming-caused severe weather extremes produces a bitterly cold November. Vladimir Putin in Russia plays his gas pipeline extortion ploy and raises the price of gas to Europe. And simultaneously Putin escallates the war with Ukraine. NATO complains but as Ukraine is not a member of NATO, is not obligated to send any military support. Europe is toothless anyway with most countries never bothering to spend enough to keep their militaries strong, and what they have, are now policing their cities to try to keep terrorism out. But Germany and other Western and Northern European nation strong protests about Russia in Ukraine. Hungary meanwhile, has a sudden instant ‘referendum’ and declares its population has voted for Huxit. And Hungary leaves the EU. Totally coincidentally at that time, Putin rewards Hungary with very low cost energy in the cold winter. Hungary joins EFTA.

The war against ISIS in Syria is slowly won by Assad’s troops supported by Russia. On the Iraq side the war is won by Iraq government troops supported by Iran. Trump pledges to withdraw all US military from this civil war, leave it for the Russians and Iranians to deal with. Suddenly Russia, Iran and Syria announce a military alliance. As they push the ever more brutal last forces of ISIS towards the North, they breach ever more into Turkey bringing horrible terrorist attacks everywhere from Istanbul to Ankara. The Turkish government responds with ever more heavy-handed means, and as American and European support is not coming, they rely ever more on the happily provided support from .. Putin. An informal four-way alliance forms around the battle against the remainder of ISIS - where Turkey allies with Syria, Iran and their weapons, military training and air power (and for Turkey, low cost gas) come from Russia. The Kurds are once again left out of everybody’s calculations and escape into the mountains.

In North Korea Kim Jong Un detonates a successful hydrogen bomb and tests successfully a submarine-launched long range ballistic missile. It then detonates a small-size fission nuclear warhead so small it fits on the submarine launched missile. Japan and South Korea are alarmed as President Obama pulls US naval assets back from their shores to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Because of the continuing protests against the US base in Okinawa, and as incoming President Trump had promised to close the Okinawa base anyway, Obama starts the withdrawal from the Okinawa base. Japan starts secretly its nuclear weapon program and pivots its peaceful space rocket program into a ballistic missile project. South Korean cyberspies soon discover this, and the South Korean government also institutes its rival project, but with the demand that they need to finish ahead of the Japanese.

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE

In Britain the border situations in Ireland and Scotland becomes untolerable. The Welsh have now started to demand their own independence. Then the IRA brings its terror bombing back to London. Now the Scottish independence fighters join in this terror plot. Of course they are all ‘UK citizens’ the Northern Irish and Scottish and thus have legal rights to come to England. And a whole range of terror bombings start, mostly targeting police and military and government buildings. These are joined by ISIS related bombings and for a few weeks in January there are too many bombs going on in London for 24 hour news channels to be able to keep up with the count. Locals flee. Many European-born residents of London return to Europe. In an emergency session, Boris Johnson approves Scottish Independence. The Northern Irish then follow declaring their independence in a violent brief civil war, which at this time is beyond the hands of London and Boris Johnson also approves that Independence. The Northern Irish join the Republic of Ireland and also return to become members of the EU again. Scotland formally joins the EU as a new country. The Welsh demand their independence.

The ongoing violence across the ever-expanding ‘Boris Wall’ between now the two independent nations. Scotland and England, brings about more violence and hooliganism and various local incidents. English nationalist rebels start to run similar attacks to the Scottish side vandalizing farms and land and doing small-scale bombings in Southern parts of Scotland. A new Scottish militia is rapidly raised to patrol the border. The two armies face off, with border clashes.

In the USA, Trump becomes the next President and issues a series of executive orders and many draconian measures to grab more power, limit the press, and give police and military more power. He issues a global withdrawal order of all US military from foreign bases, which he orders to be shut down, and he puts his US army to work on building.. the wall. Trump appoints a total Nazi as a Supreme Court justice and gets the Court to approve his abusive executive orders. Meanwhile the Congress controlled by ever more radical Republicans start their process of the bathroom wars and various mandatory gun-carry zones. As Trump starts to build the wall on the Mexican border, he also issues ever more insulting demands to Mexico, trying to extort Mexico to pay for the wall. As the construction is conducted by soldiers, many who were just recently in Afghanistan, a series of mishaps happen where soldiers think locals - Mexicans or Americans - near the border were ‘enemy’ and are shot. Some local civilians then start to shoot back and various militia incidents occur. Trump issues a construction-zone gun-free order which angers the border states. Across the border, the Mexican government is outraged and sends troops to the border to safeguard its citizens. The daily death count on the border rises from dozens to hundreds.

TEXIT

The recent Brexit, Scottish Independence, Irish Independence, Grexit and Huxit, have the Texans thinking that they actually hate that Yankee Trump dude who is building this silly wall on their border, and forbids them from their god-given right to carry firearms to the construction site. So Texas carries through on their legal right to withdraw from the Union (Texas is the only state that was an independent country before joining the USA, and it has a treaty in its joining, which states that Texas may secede if it so desires). As the nation laughs at this stunt in the Texas Legislature, the Texas local government rapidly executes its exit (Texit) and then the Texas National Guard expels US troops and cancels the border wall between Mexico and rapidly tears down what had been built. While Trump fumes in Washington, his right wing military advisors are aghast at attacking Texas - wait that was what Obama would have done - and refuse to obey Trump’s orders.

Then Texas signs a friendship, free trade and military alliance with Mexico (Tejas! We are friends!). Meanwhile Utah and Arizona demand their own independence from Trump the Tyrant (but their states have no such legal rights). As there is no practical physical border (yet), Free Texan rebels and militia now move en mass to Arizona and Utah, to create a stand-off with the US military on the border that is buidling the fence. As there will be more guns than people, inevitably several mass killings happen almost by accident. Trump issues a clamp-down and sends more troops to Arizona and Utah, plus orders Texas borders shut and Texas encircled. As many military officers refuse Trump’s orders, he court martials them and orders them beheaded for treason. This is shown live on TrumpTV to record-setting TV audiences. The purges of the military of any officers with any morals results in a Trump Troopers force that is ever more Nazi in its philosophy and that brownshirt army is ready to execute any orders Fuhrer Trump demands. They pledge allegiance to Trump and have no qualms with disobeying the Geneva Conventions because Fuhrer Trump says we just have to. Believe me. We have no choice.

TRUMP DOCTRINE

Then the Trump doctrine becomes evident. A new set of alliances are built and old ones are destroyed. Trump was already friends with Boris Johnson and liked Brexit. Trump had also said a lot of nice things about Vladimir Putin and vice versa. But Trump was hostile towards the outgoing British Government of David Cameron and of other Europeans like Angela Merkel in Germany. As later historians would discover, this was all due to petty feuds Trump had related to his finances. The loans he had with German and British banks, especially his 100 million dollar loan from Deutsche Bank had eventually resulted in those banks demanding payments that Trump could not make, and he blamed their governments. But Trump’s new-found friends were those willing to take over Trump loans and extend him new lines of credit - in particular Vladimir Putin with Russian banks and Kim Jong Un of North Korea, via his bankers in China. The first state visit to the USA under Trump is Kim Jong Un, and Trump’s first international trip shortly thereafter is to Moscow to meet with Putin. US relations with many classic allies deteriorates fast like France, Germany, South Korea and Japan, and in the middle east the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. New strange friendships form with Putin’s Russia, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and China. plus Trump starts to endorse and support the Syrian regime of Assad as one of Putin’s friends. The new Boris Johnson government is a friend while Mexico and the deserters in Texas are seen as the enemy. Canadians don’t know what to make of Trump and he seems to forget they exist.

THE GIBRALTAR INCIDENT

In Europe the tensions rise. Its a bitterly cold winter and Europe is starved for energy while Putin turns up the extortion and gets a kings ransom for his gas piped from Russia to keep Europe barely warm. The money goes directly to Putin's rapidly-expanding military. Then Putin moves to Eastern Estonia and Eastern Poland. NATO is paralyzed with suddenly the USA declaring it will not fight Putin and England joins the USA. But Americans are now angry at Trump, on why is he not defending the rights of America’s allies. As Europe is confused with NATO paralyzed, an incident on the border of Gibraltar escallates. The Spanish send police over to control the violence and then their military to control the situation and almost by accident, the Spanish take over the whole rock. Britain demands Spain withdraw from British soil, and Spain insists, Gibraltar was theirs to begin with, it was unfairly seized by Britain all those years ago. Suddenly Trump chimes in from the USA saying the property is British and Britain should fight for it, and Trump is willing to come support Britain. Boris Johnson sees this as his ‘Margaret Thatcher Falkland Islands’ moment and sends the British fleet to go invade and take back Gibraltar. The invasion is as much a total massacre disaster as Churchill’s crazy idea in World War 1 to invade Gallipoli in Turkey. But now England is in a shooting war with Spain - both members of NATO and Britain, part of EFTA shooting at soldiers from Spain, a part of the EU. And the USA is siding with England.

The border between Scotland and England is getting ever hotter, now with daily clashes, and with the Gibraltar incident, the new Scottish government declares its support of Spain. It closes the border with England. Ireland joins this. Now the Wales Independence movement is in full swing and the English resort in the same way as they did with Scotland and Ireland a few months prior - by brutal police and military repression. Welsh citizens protest declaring Bywydau Cymru Yn Bwysig and everybody just nods their heads in bewilderment. But the Welsh, like the Irish and Scots a few months earlier, start a bombing terrorism campaign - which re-ignites a recently calmed-down ISIS inspired bombing wave in London and major English cities. But the domestic terrorist attacks by the Welsh, are mistakenly thought to be by the Scots and now land-owners in Northern England get into an uprising and storm the Scottish border. And now the Scottish militia fires back, and now the distressed British army, already shamed from losing in the failed Gibraltar Incident, and under fire in Wales, fires back hard at the Scots, and now, England is in a second shooting war with another EU nation, Scotland. Iceland observes all this from across the sea, can’t pick a side because they hate both the Scots and the English, vote Bjork to become their new President who then sings a bizarre song about peace that everybody ignores.

Now Germany and France have had enough, and declare their alliance with Spain and Scotland (and Ireland). Most smaller EU nations in Central Europe join with this cause. Norway joins out of EFTA solidarity to the English side. Sweden and Finland look at each other and say, wait, aren’t we civilized people, can’t we just get along. The Danish say, fuck it, and they join the French and Germans to side with the Spanish and Scots against the English - and against the Norwegians. The Belgians look at what did the French do? Oh, they sided with Spain, so the Belgians side with Spain. The Dutch look at Belgium and then go to the other side and support the British. The Dutch-speaking minority in Belgium then decide, this is THEIR moment for a Bletchit and they vomit themselves out of the nation of Belgium - but remain inside the EU. Meanwhile far across frozen seas, Kalaalit Nunaat (you may now this huge island as Greenland) declares its independence from Denmark, and allies itself with Britain and declares war on Iceland. Luckily they have no navy to do any actual fighting.

Now Putin moves his little border skirmishes in Poland and Estonia into a full-fledged invasion. He allies with England. The British say - no, you can’t ally with us, we hate you. Thats when Trump says, no, England and Russia! We are all friends, I accept the alliance with Putin AND England, and then Trump starts his invasion of Texas. Mexico decides that enough with the silly wall, and sides with Texas and sends its army to fight in Texas. Spain, France and Germany ally with Mexico and Texas but don’t have any soldiers to spare to give more than lip-service to that military alliance. Meanwhile armed-to-the-teeth militia in Utah and Arizona join Texas. Mostly Hispanic inspired but also Trump-hating New Mexico joins on Texas’s side. California and Nevada declare NEUTRALITY and refuse to support Trump’s war against Texas. Casinos in Las Vegas take record bookings on the outcome of what is locally called the Second American Civil War. The military assets in California are seized by the local government. Canada hides its head and ignores everybody but keeps its borders open as its population is rapidly expanding with the exodus of sensible Americans running away from the Trump tyranny.

WORLD WAR 3

Thats when Kim Jong Un launches his attack across the border to South Korea. Putin declares its support of North Korea. Japan declares its support of South Korea. Trump accidentially declares US support of Central Korea until he is corrected by his advisors that there is no such country, and that their President meant to say North Korea. China claims to be neutral but in reality supports North Korea. Germany, France, Spain Italy and the EU joins in the support of South Korea and Japan. England and its EFTA partners support Trump who supports North Korea. Syria, Iraq and Iran join in supporting North Korea and receive new North Korean ballistic missiles in return. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations support South Korea and Japan and receive new Japanese ballistic missiles in return.

The Iranian-led alliance of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, supported now by Putin and endorsed by Trump, attacks Saudi Arabia. The rich gulf states side with Saudi Arabia. The European Union sides with Saudis but say they can’t send any actual military support. Putin however sends big military support to Iran. Japan sends a delegation of nurses. South Korea sends a batch of new Samsung Galaxy smartphones. What is left of ISIS, who had been fighting Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, now declares its alliance with .. Europe and Saudi Arabia. The ISIS terrorists in Europe become confused and demoralized. Meanwhile Al Quada who hate ISIS, then join the opposite side with Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia (allying now with England and the USA who is now renamed from the Great Satan to the Mild Satan). The Taliban in Afghanistan say, hey this is how wars were supposed to be, and return to their tribal hobby of centuries-long civil wars. The Kurds continue to be abandoned on every front with no allies (again). Hezbollah accidentially starts a war with itself. The Israeli Prime Minister has a nervous breakdown.

China once again invades Vietnam. Trump’s neo-cons remind Trump that Obama went to Vietnam, so Trump sides with China. Ironically the French lead the European support to Vietnam but apologize that they can't send actual military assistance. It doesn’t matter, the tenacious nation easily repels the Chinese invasion without any foreign military assistance. India sides with Europe and Vietnam against China and makes a play for some forgotten mountain on the Chinese border. Pakistan sides with China and USA and Russia against India. They don’t really care who it is, they are always siding against India. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal join with Pakistan against India but their military support is symbolic at best. Bhutan meanwhile can't find itself on the map and invades the wrong mountain. Malaysians see an internal conflict with their domestic Indian and Chinese minority populations so they all go to Thailand to get some massages.

In Europe, Hungary and Greece side with England and Russia (and Norway and the USA). The European Union gets most of its members to side with it, including Spain, France, Germany and Italy, but still they can’t manage to get any military support into Poland before it is overrun by Russia. Switzerland and the Nordic pair, Sweden and Finland declare their independence and neutrality again in this conflict. Sweden and Switzerland again as usual, make big fortunes selling weapons to all sides, while Russia promptly takes advantage of Finland’s declaration of neutrality by invading Finland (again).

How’s that for a silly World War 3 scenario? Come on, Trump wanted Brexit, he admires Putin and said he’d invite Kim Jong Un for a state visit to the USA. The Scots want independence and the Irish had been fighting a century-long rebellion. What is Putin up to and how far from today is an anti-ISIS alliance of Iran, Iraq, Syria and gosh, why not, Turkey if it can’t get into the EU. Putin is trying to be the friend to all of them. Kim Jong Un is dead-set to start a war. And Spain really still today is sore about Gibraltar. Yeah, its a totally silly implausible scenario.. but SOME of the elements in it could happen..

ADDENDUM

One of our regular readers of the blog, cornelius, has contributed a fan fiction epilogue to the above. He showed where it went next and how it all ends. This is great, much funnier than my own writing. Thanks cornelius and all other readers, please enjoy:

You didn't mention the nuclear incident.

NUCLEAR INCIDENT

Every night, since he was a little boy, before falling asleep, Trump dreamed of pushing the red button. Now he was, oh, so close. He touched the button briefly. US was at war with so many nations and yet, apart from the Texas uprising, no country dared to attack the US. That was very frustrating. Trump wanted a war, a beautiful, tremendous war. What was the point in the gold plated "US" inscriptions on the US' tanks if no enemy would see them (and be impressed by them). He wanted action and he wanted it now. He didn't know where the rocket was headed but it didn't matter. He pushes the button but he can't push the button all the way down. His fingers are too short. He calls Christie but he can't either. His fingers are too fat. Rubio refuses out of spite. Then, Trump's frustration reaches the boiling point. He calls his VP, Maury Povich. Maury was not his first choice. Trump wanted his mentor, Jerry Springer, to be his VP but couldn't convince him to come out of retirement. Anyway, Maury tries to no avail to calm Trump down. A last ditch effort is made by calling Dr. Phil. And he doesn't disappoint. He orders a new red button that is shallow enough and it triggers a nuclear explosion underground in North Korea.

GENERAL McCAIN

Trump is in the oval office. He plays tic-tac-toe with himself. He's winning. The army is in a tough tactical situation and he must find a solution. In the past tic-tac-toe has always helped him make good strategic decisions. But this time he's out of ideas. The phone rings almost non-stop. He ignores the phone. He knows it's only bad news from the Texas front. Sarah Palin enters. She looks very concerned.

Sarah: Mr. Trump, the South front is collapsing. The morale of the troops is at catastrophic levels. We must do something. How about a huge rally near the front line? That should fire the army up.

Trump is terrified but he can't show his fear. He puts on his tough, frowning face. He's thinking: "If I go to the front there is a slight probability that I get captured. I can't let this happen. I've worked too hard to build my hero, my winner reputation. If I get captured I won't be a hero anymore. I must find a pretext to not go to the front. I must think fast, I'm already kind of stalling." Suddenly he smiles.

Trump: "I can't. Believe me, I just can't. I have a bone spur that is bothering me tremendously. It's the best bone spur, I'm telling you. Find someone else."

He was about to repeat the same pretext several times, just to buy more time when he's got a great idea.

Trump: Send McCain.

Trump's choice was not random. If McCain is taken prisoner, he'll be one more hero removed from the competition. In addition, with every loss, McCain was becoming less obedient. His capture would be a good opportunity to get rid of him.

THE BUNKER

Trump's final hours at Oran-Gutansschanze bunker

It turned out that the generals were all establishment. They betrayed Trump, all of them, including Collin Powell and John McCain. They had joined forces with the Texas rebels. Only the KKK militia remained loyal to him. Last time Trump checked he still controlled a small territory of some five square miles around his bunker. But that was hours ago. He is in fetal position, sucking his thumb, waiting... Finally the generals enter the bunker. They offer him a handgun loaded with a single bullet. For some reason they insist that his name is Donald Trump. His name is John Miller.

Miller: Listen guys, I'm not Trump. My name is John Miller, believe me. It's a beautiful name and I am very proud of my name. I have proof. I have tapes of myself phone calling TV channels. I have the best memory, I remember very well my name and it is not Donald Trump. I'll report back to you with more proof."

The generals lay the gun within Trump's reach and quickly leave the room. Trump is thinking: "I fooled them. My name is actually John Barron. How stupid are they?"

Trump picks up the gun. He shoots himself in the foot thinking: "There goes that bone spur. Besides, I am no longer fit for trial because I am injured." The generals barge in and arrest Trump as he yells in pain.

All Entries in the 'Guess Nokia Smartphone Market Share 3 Years From Now' Twitter Contest

Now the dealine to enter my Twitter contest has passed and I have closed the contest. Here are the entrants in the forecasting contest, to try to guess the market share of Nokia brand smartphones in the summer of 2019, after the Q2 (April-June) quarter data has come in. Our entrants (each in %) in numerical order from smallest to largest are:

@cjpberry                     0.3

@JunkinSaha               0.5

@halibut_ter                 0.6

@__Lullz__                  0.7

@ARJWright                0.8

@SamailaGoje             0.9

@LasPent                    0.9

@praveenshetty          2.2

@ringgit002                 2.7

@roivod                       2.8

@fneuf                        2.9

@HarveyBeili              3.1

@mysterlawk              3.7

@digitreo                    3.9

@telmo_mota             4.1

@seaef                       4.1

@brianSJ3                  4.3

@spacetimebias         4.4

@qwazix                     4.4

@mosworld                 4.5

@afussen                    5.3

@martikonstant           5.3

@jubingoyal                5.5 (median)

@sbepstein                 5.7

@KarlHummer            5.8

@oluSunYAh              6.7

@MobileVi                   6.8

@jstranger                   6.9

@SirKneeland             7.1

@lovehunter1970        7.3

@gdg69                       8.1 (nearest to average)

@andreasm5858         8.9

@AnthonyEnglish        9.0

@wayneborean           9.5

@zlutor                       9.7

@erichugo                  9.7

@hellemans             11.2

@meneer                 12.8

@prkvs                     13.3

@proloscic               14.1

@franklinnwa           15.5

@abhibera               20.5

@SuhailS007          28.4

@Kamalakshan       34.2

@Diogo_Travassos 34.7


Quick statistcs. Total entries submitted was 45. Lowest estimate is 0.3%, highest is 34.7%. The mathematical average is 7.9% and the median (middle point guess, exaclty half guessed more, half guessed less) was 5.5%.

Good luck to all contestants and we'll see after 3 years who was closest.

ADDENDUM - after I got a good night's sleep (I kept the Twitter contest open for 30 hours to the end of business day in California time on Monday) I wanted to come back and give you my prediction just to be fair. It is timed at the same time as this set of entries. I actually wrote my Nokia Returns blog already, it is here. And from that you can see that at the end of 2018 I expected Nokia to get to 5% market share in smartphones and by end of 2019 to be between 7% and 8% (call that 7.5%). So for mid-2019, end of Q2 ie June 2019, my already-published forecast suggests 6.25% so call it 6.3% and thats what I'll put in as my non-competing entry, just for the record (and funnily enough nobody picked that number either).

Lets Do Another Twitter Contest - Guess Nokia Smartphone Market Share 3 Years from Now: After June 2019

Now that Nokia brand is coming back to smartphones, we can do another Twitter contest based on that good news. I have changed the rules a little bit so this time I won't limit anyone to picking a unique percentage. So more than one person can now have the correct winning guess. I'll award each winner the full grand prize (all 5 of my ebooks that cost 10 Euros each, so the latest Almanac, the latest Phone Book, and Pearls Volumes 1, 2 and 3). And like before, for the runners-up, who just missed the winning guess, who were nearest above and nearest below that exact number, they get the Almanac latest edition.

This is a particularly interesting guess as the Nokia partners have not yet launched any handsets and have not yet even told us what kind of phones, at what price points, how many devices, in what regions, on what networks, with what type of distribution deals etc, will be done. And 3 years in smartphones is a very long time. Apple went from 0% to 13.4% in its first 3 years (12 quarters) but had been as high as 17.4% at one quarter when the new iPhone was launched. At the other end, Nokia collapsed from 28.8% at the end of 2010 to 2.9% exactly 3 years later (12 quarters). And sometimes you get no life no matter how much you try, like say Microsoft with Lumia, the first full quarter of Nokia Lumia sales after the deal to Microsoft was announced, was 3.0% market share. Three years later, after the unit was fully controlled by Microsoft and they had already fired Elop its first boss and given the unit to a new boss to run, the market share of Microsoft Lumia exactly three years later was 2.8%. Considering the total cost, that is probably the largest waste of marketing and sales futility in human history haha. So yeah, we don't even know WHEN the first Nokia smartphones will be shown to us, far less when they will be sold (and at what prices) but yeah. Make your guess now on what will be Nokia smartphone market share, 3 years from now, when this period, April-June Quarter has ended.

So we do this via Twitter. I am @tomiahonen on Twitter (don't post your entries here in comments on the blog). Send your guess to me on Twitter in an open Tweet (just start your Tweet with my handle, so start your Tweet typing @tomiahonen - do not send me a 'DM' ie a Direct Message. You have to enter the race openly, not secretly :-). And all you need to do is send me the percentage, you don't need to give me any reasons etc, its a contest, all I want is your number.

Make your guess an exact percentage up to one decimal point, so for example 3.3% or 5.2% or 1.9%. The time when it is measured, is after Q2 of 2019, three years from now. Thats the quarter from April to June. Now all you need to do is to send your guess to me on Twitter. You are allowed only one entry, but you may change your mind if you want, but the contest will close in three days (72 hours) hours. I will use the last entry you have made, if you make more than one guess. Go to Twitter now to enter your number, even if you want to still think about it, enter one first now, so at least you are entered, even if you want to refine your number more. By Monday about this time, I will close the contest and I will run a count-down to when the contest ends, on Twitter.

This is how I will determine the exact winning number. I will calculate the number so that we take the best number available for Nokia brand smartphone sales and then take the best available number for the total smartphone market. Then the Nokia share will be divided to give the percentate. Hopefully HMD or FIH will announce their actual sales number and then that will be the official number. If the two are in conflict, we will take HMD over FIH. If neither announces a number by middle of August (for Quarter ending June) then we take the next best number. If Nokia gives that number, we take that. If not Nokia, then I will take the average of the best four smartphone analyst houses of the recent past ie IDC, Strategy Analytics, Canalys and Gartner. If any of them publish a Nokia Q2 global unit sales number by the middle of August, I will take all published numbers by any of those four, and calculate their average estimate as the official number. If none give a Nokia number (in that case Nokia is likely to be quite small in its number) in that case, I will take the average of any other 'credible' smartphone analyst houses who have published global smartphone stats in the interim period from now to then but only of course the number published for Q2. And again for all of those other analyst houses who do give a Nokia number, I will calculate the average.

Then for the industry total number for Q2, I will use the big 4 analyst houses (but currently only IDC and SA give regular Quarterly numbers, Gartner occasionally gives a global number and it often comes at considerable delay). If both IDC and SA stop releasing a smartphone total number, then I will use the other 'credible' analyst houses as in the above.

After Monday 20 June, I will collect all entries on Twitter and publish the full listing here. You should verify that your Twitter handle is correctly listed here with the correct percentage as I will be manually transferring percentages and names. And then we wait and see. Good luck to all. Note, this time I will not give you my number 'first' because now everybody can pick the same number and some might say, I am so accurate in this industry it might not be a bad idea to pick my number or something very close to it haha. I'll give my estimate after the race has closed. Note also that this will be a kind of crowd-sourced forecast, it will be interesting to see how its average score will compare to the truth.

For those interested, here is the current TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 that came out a couple of weeks ago.

The Hateful Eight - Thinking About Hillary’s Cabinet and Various Democrat Leaders: Worst Nightmare for Republicans

After I finished watching Elizabeth Warren’s speech a few days ago, it struck me, that the Republicans will be headed to a period of ‘their worst nightmare’ of who will be in charge. Currently the Republicans have Mitch McConnell in charge of the Senate, Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, and with a conservative balance, the Supreme Court has Chief Justice Roberts issuing mostly Republican-pleasing decisions from the bench. The only branch of government not in Republican or conservative hands today, is the White House. Even there, President Obama did start his administration attempting a post-partisan and bipartisan government. In his first years, he really tried to govern on a bipartisan basis, to the dismay of his own party, then in control of both the Senate and the House, but to total obstruction by the Republicans. What I can foresee now, is an emegence of a ‘gang’ of politicians that the right wing will hate like nothing they’ve hated before. It could be a bunch of people that might be called the Hateful Eight. Lets play some speculation about Hillary Clinton’s first cabinet and various other postings, and other changes in government that will be coming after November.

OBAMA AND FEARSOME FOUR

In the past eight years, the right-wing media has been vilifying President Obama with everything from questioning his birth (led by Donald Trump) and bringing about the widely-held myth among core Republican voters, that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim (both obviously untrue). His policies have been attacked mercilessly, Obamacare was supposed to have death panels (it doesn’t) and to destroy the US economy (it didn’t; the US economy has had its longest period of economic growth and of job growth in US history). They even questioned his motives, suggesting Obama will take away guns (he has done no such thing) or he was going to invade Texas (which didn’t happen). Obama governed as a moderate Democrat, he hasn’t damaged the United States in any way, but the perception of the USA abroad, which was at its lowest measure ever measured under Bush-Cheney, has now recovered to being highly admired again. In an objective measurement, while he has by no means been a perfect President, Obama has been one of the better ones, one of the more achieving Presidents, and his achievements have not featured any major over-reach by government, nor any scandals. Quite a remarkable Presidency in all. Yet the right-wing media have turned Obama into the most hated politician to them, of the past 8 years. That was turning a teddy bear into a monster. What happens when a REAL bear walks into the bedroom?

Its normal for the party not in the White House to be against the sitting President. This by long-standing tradition was limited to domestic policy, it was very rare that the Senate and House would make public any grievances they had with the White House on foreign policy. But in domestic policy, the Republicans were against Jimmy Carter; the Democrats against Ronald Reagan and Daddy Bush; the Republicans against Bill Clinton; and the Democrats against W Bush. One can detect an increasing intensity in that, where the attacks from the left on the Bush-Cheney administration, and attempts to block them, were at perhaps historical highs, and that in turn perhaps caused the ‘reaction’ and revenge from the Republicans, when President Obama came into office, to do that unprecedented move - to systematically block everything he did. This had never been public policy by the party in opposition. Where Obama wanted to, and truly tried to govern as a post-partisan, bipartisan President reaching across the aisle on everything (in his early years) even when his own party held briefly a filibuster-proof 60 seat majority in the Senate - the Republicans refused to play ball with Obama and instead vilified him and blocked him at ever stage.

The current blockage of the Supreme Court nominee Garland is the longest its ever been for a Supreme Court Justice, but thats nothing compared to the lower court Judges than the Republicans have been blocking. They are totally against Obama at every stage. After the 2012 re-election of Obama, he finally got the message that the Republicans would never be post-partisan with him, and he has then pursued a more liberal agenda, but by then he had lost both the House and the Senate. Now he was pretty much powerless and has been resorting to some Executive Orders to get some of his policies in place. Even here, Obama has issued the least of Vetoes and Executive Orders of any sitting President in recent years, but the right-wing media accuses Obama of using somehow ‘dictatorial powers’ to subvert the will of the people.

Its fair to say, the relationship between the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House is bad. Certainly yes. This is not, however, caused by hostility initiated by the White House, it is the result of 8 years of deliberate, systematic and total obstruction by the Republicans. They broke it, but they accuse Obama of being the villain.

Most fair-minded moderate and Independent voters see this as a fact. Most Republican and right-wing voters believe that the Republicans are not at fault (or that there is roughly as much fault on both sides) and that this is Obama’s fault. So they have turned Obama into a pretend-monster. Which he wasn’t. But if we go back one year, just as the primary process was starting with its first announcements and first debates - at that time the politician most hated by Republicans was President Obama (now that is Hillary Clinton). If we go back to the early years of the Obama administration, say year 2010, the most hated politicians by right wing voters were Obama, Nancy Pelosi (then House Speaker) and Harry Reid (then leader of the Senate when it was controlled by Democrats). And of Obama’s White House, the number 2 guy hated almost as much as Obama himself, was the Attorney General, Eric Holder, the first black man to hold that office of the highest-ranking attorney in the nation. Note that Vice President Joe Biden wasn’t seen that intimidating, and while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she was actually admired by many Republicans in public (partly as they wanted to undermine the respect of Obama). These four, a kind of Fearsome Four, were the boogeymen and women for Republicans: Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Holder. They were portrayed as Evil Incarnate.

TOP TROICA OF THE HATEFUL EIGHT

Now lets look past November. Most pundits and analysts now say Hillary is favored (some say strongly favored) to win in November. Most pundits and analysts say the Senate is likely to flip to Democrats; some even are starting to admit, the House may flip if Hillary has a big landslide victory. So lets update that list for Republicans and Conservatives, for say summer of 2017. Who will be the most hated Democrats for them. It will be more than four people because we will have yet another tilt in the balance. Because Justice Scalia died in office, the Supreme Court balance will shift from conservative to liberal balance. If the Republicans played this smartly, they would approve Obama’s nominee, a moderate and very highly rated, qualified judge, Garland. But they are continuing obstinately on their path of total obstruction of Obama. So Garland is not being confirmed. This means that while in reality, the Supreme Court conservative edge was lost early in 2016, the real shift in its balance to liberal-leaning will not happen until Hillary is in office (with a Democratic majority in the Senate to confirm her nominees). So lets start with the hatred. Who will be the Hateful Eight?

Who will be the single person the Republicans hate the most in 2017? Trick question, it won’t be a Democrat. No, while they yes of course will hate Hillary Clinton with a deep passion, they will hate one person more. The most reviled person in America in 2017 will be Donald Trump of course, because it was Trump who destroyed all chances Republicans had to win anything. He will lead the party to an epic catastrophy losing by 20 points and causing the Senate and House to flip to Democratic control. The Democrats already hate Trump now, before the general election season has even started. The Independents will grow to hate Trump with unprecedented passion during the general election when so many conservatives and Republicans, Trump’s ‘own side’ will say he is an unelectable incompetent arrogant racist. And Republicans themselves, will hold out hope, until after election day in November when they too will join in the grand coalition of Trump-haters. There will be about 20% or 25% of Americans who voted for Trump who still think he actually had good ideas and they will soon learn to shut their mouths and never talk of Trump again, similar to how Sarah Palin’s fans soon learned not to admit that in public. The closet Trump supporters (who often also are, by coincidence, Sarah Palin fans).

So yeah, sorry, its a Saturday. I tricked you. Yeah, the most reviled person in US politics will from mid November of this year, become Donald Trump, hated on all sides of the political spectrum and he will be exiled from politics more than Walter Mondale who only lost by 18 points to Reagan in 1984, and has been vanished from politics since (he is the former Vice President to Jimmy Carter) who still lives to this day. We will be rid of Trump don’t worry. But yes, lets talk of the living DEMOCRATS that will be hated, in the summer of 2017.

First off, at the top of the Hateful Eight will be of course Hillary Clinton, the leader of the gang. No surprise there, she is already today the most hated Democrat. Hillary has not silly misconceptions about any post-partisan world. She is a deep partisan, she will govern with an iron grip, she will bring back the Senate and House majorities, and she will inact a populist agenda, which the Republicans will hate. Just by being her, she is elevated to top hated Democrat by the conservatives.

A familiar name rises to her side. No, not hubby Bill. Bill Clinton is best served by doing what is very hard, but where long-term relationships matter the most. He will be the Ambassador At Large; Bill will be the Ambassador Without Portfolio; he will be like a second ‘foreign minister’ for the USA, alongside the Secretary of State. Often the First Lady of a male President in the past has done ceremonial foreign affairs duties but Bill Clinton will be the ‘actual’ Secretary of State, closer to Hillary than the ‘real’ Secretary fo State, whoever that might be. I would guess Hillary will appoint some general to that post. So while Bill Clinton will definitely as First Gentleman have a larger role in US Government than any First Lady ever has, it will not be in domestic policy, he will be dispatched abroad, to work on all the international policy quagmires that the US is involved in. Note that his presence will frustrate the ‘real’ Secretary of State. But for right wing media and Republicans, Bill Clinton will be forgotten. The public enemy number 2 will be a familiar ghost of nightmares past: Nancy Pelosi!

Yes, Nancy. The hated Speaker of the House will be back. Whatever Hillary enacts as law - she won’t need Executive Orders when she has both the Senate and the House - that will always come from legislation in Congress and as she’s the far more senior, ranking Democrat in Congress ahead of Chuck Schumer who just now starts his role leading the Senate, and as Nancy very much loves the spotlight, she will be the one speaking most on camera about any legislation. Schumer will be playing second fiddle to Pelosi. So number 2 on our Hateful Eight will be Nancy Pelosi. But let me say this. Where the Republicans thought they knew Pelosi (of how bad she can be - to their causes) this will be worse. In the last years of Bush-Cheney Pelosi was the nemesis in Congress. Then in came Obama with his silly post-partisan ideas, so Pelosi could not enact a clearly liberal Democratic agenda. And she lost her gavel only 2 years into Obama’s first term. She has been plotting her return and now, finally with a firebrand liberal (on domestic issues) in the White House, the most liberal of the past recent Democratic Presidents at least going back to Lyndon B Johnson, Pelosi finally has her ally in Hillary that she always wanted. Pelosi will run through a raise in the national minimum wage, a law for the first time mandating paid maternity leave, election reforms, environmental controls, reasonable limits to gun purchases, and on and on and on. The ‘new Pelosi’ is a far more dangerous older Tiger than the one the Republicans hated back in 2010.

Third, obviously, among the Hateful Eight is Chuck Schumer, Senator from New York who will become the leader of the Senate when the Democrats regain control of that chamber. Over time Schumer will become emboldened to use more of his power, but initially he still will be learning the ropes and moving cautiously. The Senate was always the more ‘mature’ chamber with less heated rhetoric and more friendships across the aisle. Schumer’s position among the Hateful Eight will be more symbolic and one out of his mere presence in press events than actual actions and deeds. Yet he will be ramming through a ton of hated legislation and preciding over all those nominations approved in the Senate by often pure partisan votes, of judges, ambassadors, cabinet members and various government officials. Schumer will be earning his post as one of the Hateful Eight simply for doing his job. Thats our top trio of hated Democrats, the Top Troica. Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Now what of the supporting cast of the Hateful Eight.

WHERE WARREN?

If you saw the speech by Senator Elizabeth Warren two days ago, you saw something special. If you enjoy truly great speeches by political leaders, like Obama’s classic keynote to the Democratic Convention, of ‘No Red America, No Blue America’ or you enjoyed Reagan’s ‘Shining City on a Hill’ or say Churchills ‘Never Surrender’ speech. A political speech of epic, lasting relevance, go watch Elizabeth Warren’s speech. It was that good. Its the best speech she’s given. Its the best political speech of this year so far, definitely. Its one of the best speeches given by anyone. It will be the speech that is repeated and revisited. It will be the one, that will be referenced when the Elizabeth Warren 2024 Presidential run begins, and all will point to this speech. This speech is what turned a Democratic and liberal darling into a national force. Its only 30 minutes in length but if you enjoy a speech that is emotional and factual, that is funny and serious, that is deep and uplifting, that is motivational and persuasive, go watch Elizabeth Warren’s speech on.. (I don’t want to say what its about, you may enjoy it more if you don’t know even what its about, just please trust me, go watch it).

Elizabeth Warren will run for President after Hillary’s two terms, that is certain. Can she beat the sitting Vice President Julian Castro, that remains to be seen. So yes first off. What becomes of Elizabeth Warren. She’d love to be Hillary’s VP. She’s said so. Hillary has said she won’t rule out a two-woman ticket. Warren would be a great attack dog on Trump except Hillary doesn’t need another attack dog, its not that she’s intimidated or timid of Trump. Trump is a perfect vehicle for Hillary to establish her reputation as the Iron Lady of America (similar to how Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady of Britain or how Golda Meir was the Iron Lady of Israel). Elizabeth Warren would be another woman - women will already vote for Hillary over Trump. Warren is from Massachussetts, one of the most Democratic states, so there is no regional gain out of putting her on the ticket. No, I do like Warren but Hillary will pick Julian Castro as her VP, because he is a young Hispanic, will bring in tons of enthusiastic Hispanic voters to the Democratic ticket up and down the ballot, and be useful in battleground states of the South with high Hispanic voter numbers like Nevada, Florida, Colorado and New Mexico. Even more so now because of Trump’s hostile rhetoric about Hispanics and Mexicans. Then Castro will help fight for two states Hillary wants to flip from red to purple - Arizona and Texas. Castro even has an identical twin brother Joaquin who is a Congressman from Texas. Yes, Hillary will pick Julian Castro the former Mayor of San Antonio Texas and current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development as her Vice President. Finally, remember what Hillary promised, her White House will look like America. She will have roughly half of her Cabinet women (its never happened in the US before) and have an appropriate racial mix too. So here we have the first-ever Hispanic as Vice President. Yes it fits perfectly a Hillary Clinton master-plan.

Lets set aside the prestige of the position of Vice President. As a government official, the VP is pretty much just a place-holder. In case the President dies, then yes, he is important (Johnson was last VP to become President when John F Kennedy was shot five decades ago). But as a member of the Cabinet and as a politician, the VP is utterly meaningless, as the TV show Veep has reminded us now for several seasons. What has Joe Biden done in his 8 years? Nothing. The Republicans haven’t even bothered to bitch about Biden and the only attacks about him are of his numerous gaffes in what he says. He has done nothing. Because most VPs do nothing (excepting puppet-master Dick Cheney who was the power behind inept President W Bush, but thats another story). If you are a bleeding-heart liberal, and you love Elizabeth Warren and you hoped she would have run against Hillary, where do YOU want her now. She can’t become President. If not President, do you really want her to be as useless as Joe Biden? Really? Of course not. Yes, it would be another plumb prestige job to be Secretary of State but seriously - you want her to waste all that talent in having photo ops with the Prime Minister of France and the King of Sweden? Really? No you don’t. You want Warren the liberal lion to roar. You want her to ROAR.

The Democrats rammed through, with lukewarm Republican support, Dodd-Frank, to limit excesses of Wall Street and bring about regulations about banking and the financial sector. Dodd-Frank is the ‘answer’ to the crisis that collapsed the world economy into its deepest recession of the past 80 years. But Dodd-Frank is toothless because the Republicans have systematically obstructed it and gutted it at every level. Who was the most vocal Democrat to push for banking rules and regulations and all the parts of Dodd-Frank? Its Senator Elizabeth Warren. If Hillary is the one Democrat the Republicans most hate, Elizabeth Warren is the one Democrat the Republicans most FEAR.

Then where is the biggest power base of Republicans and conservatives? Its not the religious right. Its not the gun lobby. Its the billionaires. Its the Bush clan’s pals and its Mitt Romney’s friends. I mean the real human beings, not that Corporations are People My Friend. The fat cats of Wall Street, the Billionaires who are hedge fund managers and who have seen their wealth balloon incredibly from Reagan’s voodoo economics, ie trickle-down economics up to the last tax cuts by Bush-Cheney, that were again extended under Obama. The real power of Republicans are the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and various Billionaires (like Donald Trump too). Who do they fear the most? Elizabeth Warren. Who are polluting and corrupting the political system the most? Via Citizens United, it is that billionaire class headed by the Koch Brothers. And yes, their public enemy number 1 is not Hillary Clinton. They are ok with the Clintons. The person they truly fear is Elizabeth Warren.

If you are a bleeding-heart liberal, and cannot have Elizabeth Warren as President, and think of where can she do the best job, of truly fulfilling her utmost capability and ‘fight the good fight’ it is to fight against the powerful forces of money from Wall Street. And there is one person who has that power. The government’s top dog regulating and controlling the financial side of the nation. Its the job of Treasury Secretary. The fifth person in succession to the Presidency, a permanent member to the National Security council, and one of the four most powerful Cabinet posts. It has always been held by a man up to now. But Elizabeth Warren is totally competent to run that job. And she’d do it darned well.

Now consider the symbolic side of it. She’d be the first-ever woman to hold the job of Treasury Secretary (nice move by first-ever woman President Hillary Clinton). Yes, its a woman onto Hillary’s Cabinet, but not just a woman - she is part Native American. It would be a nice addition to the ‘rainbow’ aspect of Hillary Clinton’s White House of being more like America. To have a woman who is part Native American as one of her senior cabinet members. But consider this. Her SIGNATURE would be on US banknotes ie the dollar bills in our pockets. Yes, take a look, every dollar bill of any denomination has the signature of the current, sitting Secretary of the Treasury. That in itself is historic, except, remember.. that new Tubman 20 dollar bill will be coming shortly, with a woman on the banknote. That banknote will come into circulation when Hillary is President. If she makes Warren her Secretary of the Treasury, then this highly-collected first-woman 20 dollar bill - will also have, yes, the signature of the first-ever woman Secretary of the Treasury. Nice symbolism on the rise of women into power.

Usually the job of most Cabinet ministers is hidden from view. They are not seen much unless something goes catastrphically wrong within their area of responsibity. But imagine Elizabeth Warren as Treasury Secretary. The Democrats WANTED Dodd-Frank to have teeth. The wrote it into the legislation. The Republicans have been able to gut all that for several years. Warren has fought against that from the Senate. Hillary is not eager to go destroy Wall Street (many there are her friends and benefactors, as well as friends of Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation) but all Democrats want the ABUSES curtailed and reasonable controls and limits enacted, like those about predatory payday lenders, abusive credit card and bank fees, etc etc etc. Look at what John Oliver just did buying old medical debt in Texas and forgiving it. There are masses of abusive behavior in the financial sector today, not because Dodd-Frank isn’t in place, but because it has been gutted. Elizabeth Warren, just by doing what that law requires, with a Democratic-control House and Senate can bring about tremendous improvements in the financial sector, to cut down on the abusive behavior. She will love doing it, and she will be great at it. And she will instantly be elevated to near the top of the Hateful Eight.

Meanwhile, while most Cabinet posts are very well hidden from view, Elizabeth Warren will ensure her time at the Treasury will be one of exceptional visibility. They will agree on this, with Hillary. Elizabeth Warren will use her time as Secretary of the Treasury as her ‘platform’ to prepare for her run into the Presidential race in 2024. So she will be in the news often, on very populist and popular rulings and regulations that are for the people and against abuses. After she finally resigns from her post sometime during Hillary’s second term (to prepare for her run for President herself) Elizabeth Warren will have created the position of Secretary of Treasury as one of the most desired Cabinet postings, simply because of the publicity she will have gotten from that posting. Its a match made in heaven. She was born to run that office. And she will have a historic memento to outlast her life - her signature was on that banknote when the USA put a woman on the 20 dollar bill.

FEELING THE BERN

Where do we put uncle Bernie? Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He’s a Socialist. He knows now, his run that briefly raised his own hopes that he might win, was crushed in the end, and he will be deeply demoralized but he will be a trooper and campaign for Hillary and rally his troops to ‘his cause’ and of course against Trump and for Hillary. There will be some who try to argue Bernie should be on the ticket as Vice President (that will never happen, and most know it). He’d like a major Cabinet post like Secretary of State and he won’t get that either. But Hillary will find a place to at least offer Bernie, and it is a good job but not a ‘plum’ job. I do personally believe that Bernie is that much a man of principle, that when the job is offered, and he is disappointed, he will think it through, and he will in the end, accept it. Its the job of Labor Secretary. Where else can Bernie Sanders have more actual impact on the lives of American suffering lower-income workers, than serving Hillary Clinton’s Democratic White House, when the Senate and House both flip to Democrats, and then go serve as the Secretary of Labor.

But Bernie now is a rock star of politics with enormous grass-roots support, especially among the youth. It means, that when this obscure Cabinet post has something to report, Bernie WILL get into the news cycle. He has far more actual power than he would in the Senate, where after all, he is Not a Democrat. The Democrats will take a big swing into their favor, so they won’t ‘need’ to give Bernie some chairmanship job, just to ensure Bernie caucuses with the Democrats. He would be overshadowed in the new Democratic Senate. But if he now takes his cause to the Labor sector, he can have the Republicans, especially any nasty employers trying to union-bash etc, to feel the Bern. He would be, beyond any doubt, the most visible Labor Secretary that the USA has ever seen. And because of his rock star status in politics, he’ll remain visible for many years. And in the eternal battle of employers versus labor, Bernie can be on the side of the little guys, and against the moneyed rich guys. This would make Bernie a natural, albeit bit-player, among the Hateful Eight. For Hillary’s Cabinet yes its an old white guy, but .. he’s a Jew. Again a minority, even where Hillary appoints a man, a man representing a minority. Would fit Hillary’s overall plan of a diverse White House.

ATTORNEYS ANGELS

So then the attack dog of the White House. The lightning-rod that draws instantly the most hatred by the rival party. Attorney General. Eric Holder was almost as reviled as Barack Obama and now Loretta Lynch is equally under fire. Note Holder was the first black AG, and Lynch the second black but first black female AG. Its not a stretch to imagine Hillary asking Loretta to continue. This is a very important job for the President, the kind of personal attorney to send to attack on any mission of national injustice (and defend the President when the other side runs nasty politically-inspired attacks etc). It is one that often is very personal - Holder and Obama were close friends - and needs utter total trust between the two. I do not mean that Lynch doesn’t have this with Hillary, I just don’t know. Its MOST likely that Hillary has known for years who will be her AG and its someone relatively obscure, not in the public eye right now but someone VERY competent as a lawyer, who shares Hillary’s visions and values perfectly and has long served near or with the Clintons. But lets play a bit with this theme. Lets first dispose of Loretta Lynch.

The Attorney General is almost always a very competent lawyer. Almost always, when there is an opening in the Supreme Court, among the early gossip is a current or recent Attorney General, to be ‘promoted’ to the Bench of Supremes, while that actually only rarely happens. Still, already now Eric Holder has been mentioned - he has been asked, what if Garland is not confirmed and Hillary becomes President, if she asks, would Holder be willing to serve on SCOTUS. He has said almost unequivocably, no. I would love the ‘poetic justice’ of the years of Republican hatred of Holder, to then be stuck with Holder on a lifetime commission now on the Bench (and it was not a total absolute denial, he could even be willing to do it, and even be appointed, but probably not). Lets play with this Hateful Eight theory however. What of Loretta Lynch? Hillary no doubt likes her and admires her, and almost certainly, if Lynch was Obama’s first choice to replace Holder, she will not be Hillary’s first choice. So Hillary would like to get rid of her, but obviously, in a nice way. So lets take this Garland confirmation mess and again, lets take some poetic licence for our Hateful Eight.

As the Republican-controlled Senate has not affirmed Garland to the Supreme Court, at just before election day, point Obama just withdraws his name, saying that Hillary shall have the right to nominate whoever she wants (this all in reality has been coordinated with Hillary and Obama, of course). Garland has a private meeting in the White House attended by Hillary, where he is assured, she will be nominating him again, in her first term, but they need to teach the Republicans a lesson about this obstruction. And during the transition period, Hillary declares that her first nominee, instead of Obama’s choice of Garland to the Bench, will be Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. Not a white man, the first person Hillary appoints - is a black woman. Again this is that principle of her administration and appointments ‘looking like America’. (Secretly, they promise Garland, he will be the second nominee, expected to only wait some months into Hillary’s first term, and that he will sail through now with a Democratic Senate).

Loretta Lynch would be a far more ‘liberal’ justice than Garland. The Republicans would hate her for that and they would ALSO blame Mitch McConnell for being so stupid and short-sighted not to accept Obama’s Garland nomination. This helps sink even further Republicans’ own opinions of their party leaders in the Hillary election massacre aftermath - and help raise Obama’s increasing popularity - that yeah, compared to Loretta Lynch, gosh Garland would have been a far more moderate Justice, why didn’t the idiot Republican Senators take that offer when reasonable Obama made it in 2016. Now, lets get to the Hateful Eight. A Supreme Court Justice will almost never gain major fame or notoriety except the Chief Justice. Justice Antonin Scalia on the extreme right was an exception and liberals hated him. There is a rare counterpart on the current Bench, on the left, as all SCOTUS-watchers know. She is 80 year old Notorious RBG, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

Up to now, for her whole tenure on the Supreme Court, Notorious RBG has only had the power to write scalding rebukes in the minority (losing) views to major court cases. The balance of SCOTUS was conservative, so on issues that she most cared about, she mostly lost. Yes, she also is a brilliant attorney and has been able to win debates and many narrow cases, got an actual switch of the Court’s eventual ruling or if not then maybe toned down how conservative that ruling ended up being. But Notorious RBG has been forced to play second fiddle to Chief Justice Roberts. And she never really got to sing the lead vocals of their dischordiant tunes. What happens now? Regardless of whoever it is, that Hillary appoints to the Supreme Court, the balance will now shift to liberal-leaning. For 40 years the liberal Justices have been forced to eat the shit while the conservatives overruled them. Now they have their time to issue opposing views - as the majority view. She is still in her prime mentally (even as she has health issues otherwise, she is 80 years of age) and expect for several years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg to issue epic rulings on the most contentious Supreme Court decisions where it only goes 5-4 for the liberals. Where that vote by (in my scenario, Loretta Lynch but it could be any liberal Justice appointed by Hillary including Garland) is decided by the new, youngest judge - they DON’T get the attention. They get the least important cases to write their rulings on.

The most important cases go to the most senior Justices. And the right wing will hear Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words in fire and brimstone of unprecedented fury, after she was forced to live in the minority for all those decades. And the conservatives and Republicans will be astonished as to ‘where is Chief Justice Roberts’? He has been ‘pussy whipped’ by the new women on the Bench. He is a traitor. He will be hated on all sides. And his words won’t have any real relevance anymore, because suddenly it is only the minority view, the dissenting view, that he gets to author. The passion won’t be there. And the conservatives will blame Roberts anyway. What is the end result? It will seem like Notorious RBG has become the ‘de facto’ Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. She will be authoring the rulings of each of the most long-reaching most meaningful decisions of the court, that only now flipped 5-4 in favor of the liberal wing. So her words will be echoing in the ears of conservatives as the most evil poison coming out of the Supreme Court. A part of how it gets there is ‘the evil Loretta Lynch’ who flipped the balance. Another part is how ‘the evil Hillary Clinton’ appointed that liberal Loretta Lynch to the Bench. But most of all, not through her words or any public appearances, but simply through writing her epic rulings in the most important Supreme Court rulings of the first years of Hillary Clinton’s Presidency, Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg will earn her spot as one of the Hateful Eight. An 80 year old jewish woman and judge.

REMEMEBER BENGHAZI?

So we have six of the Hateful Eight. Hillary, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders; and now Ruth Ginsberg. What happend to the AG? The attack dog? Loretta Lynch was convenienly deposited to the Supreme Court. Who would Hillary appoint as the Attorney General? This is probably the biggest stretch in my story, but lets play along. Did you watch the full 12 hours of the Benghazi Hearings? The witch-hunt meant to tear down Hillary Clinton last year? She withstood all those attacks with a smile. But were you like me, and watched that old Black Congressman from Georgia, Elijah Cummings, with just awe and respect. To call Congressman Cummings ‘tenacious’ is unfair. If you conjugate Tenacious, it goes like this: Tenacious, More tenacious, Elijah Cummings. He is the the ultimate bulldog if there ever was. If he was the speech-writer for Winston Churchill’s ‘Never Surrender’ speech, Elijan would say - Mr Prime Minister, I think that speech has still too much surrender in it.

There is nobody on the planet more unyielding than this epic Democratic civil rights lion. He pops up every few years, when the Republicans have another moronic commission on something, and everything that he says sounds like chocolate, smooth, smart, logical, rational, AMERICAN, fair, honest, and just. If you were a Democrat President, and had to pick the Attorney General out of the sitting House, you’d pick Elijah Cummings. And if you’re a Republican in Washington DC, and had the chance to veto a choice for Attorney General, the first person you’d veto is a return of Eric Holder. Yes, he was that bad for them. Then you’d say, oh, Harry Reid. He’d be just as bad. Number three, the first person not retired or retiring, that would be Representative Elijah Cummings of the Great State of Georgia. Now, its almost certain Hillary has long since known who will be her AG and it will not be someone we generally recognize by name. Its someone from the secretive Clinton circles. But lets play Hateful Eight. If there was one person, who would still WANT the job has not retired or is not retiring, that the Republicans would MOST fear as Attorney General (and this includes Elizabeth Warren as the alternative) - that would be this old black gentleman / bulldog from Georgia. Now, whoever Hillary appoints as her Attorney General, that person will be highly visible and instantly hated by Republicans, but lets play. Lets say its the most feared House Member. Hillary could appoint yes, Elijah Cummings as Attorney General. It would also fit the pattern, an older man, but a black man. And we have seven out of our Hateful Eight. Lets go to the joker card.

WHO OUTSIDE OF POLITICS WOULD THEY MOST HATE

We have seven of the Hateful Eight. Lets do the last one. I left this purposefully to the bottom, as the person is not a politician. The most visible face of the White House is not the President or his/her spouce. Its not the Vice President either, obviously. Its nobody in the Cabinet, not the Secretary of State or the Attorney General or any of the Secretaries, Secretary of Defense, or Treasury or Interior or Homeland Security etc. The most powerful person in the White House after the President is the Chief of Staff (someone who usually stays very far hidden out of the limelight) but the FACE of the White House is... the Press Secretary. The Press Secretary is on the news several times ever day, representing the President’s agenda and taking questions and dealing with the latest attacks on the President by the opposition, plus issuing White House positions on everything that is happening in in the news.

Now, the Press Secretary is not anywhere near the most powerful or influential person and it is not a Cabinet post and it has kind of ‘no power’ as such. However, of the people around the President, the Press Secretary has the second most access to the President of his staff, on any day, behind only the Chief of Staff. The Press Secretary will have to coordinate the White House’s views - and advise the President and be guided by the President - on all issues that require communications with the press. His or her role, is not as ‘powerful’ or ‘influential’ as say the National Security Advisor or any of the heads of the various major agencies, the Joint Chiefs of Staff etc, but it is PERMANENT and DAILY access to the President. If you were a fan of the TV Show West Wing, this was ‘CJ Craig’ the tall blonde Press Secretary played by acress Allison Janney (and in the last series was promoted to Chief of Staff) who so frequently was central to the stories in that TV show. Her role is very close to reality, as it was designed with the help of former White House Press Secretary and advisor to the TV show, Dee Dee Myers (the first Press Secretary to Bill Clinton almost two years from 1993 to 1994). As various comments from past Presidents like Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and many other senior staff like past Secy of State Henry Kissinger, past Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, past Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and so many others have said, the TV show was very realistic. So lets accept, it is fiction yes, but if you wanted one person who is not a Cabinet level politician, and who could be potentially a political outsider, to have an ‘outsized’ influence on the White House and directly to the President, that would be the Press Secretary. Its a job of incredible pressure and it burns out the people in it very fast. Hillary Clinton already arrives to the White House with a bad reputation with the press overall, and her press team so far, has not exactly impressed us with impeccable excellence. What has happened in the past, is that the President has gone into the MEDIA to pick a new Press Secretary. The last time this happened was Tony Snow who was W Bush’s third Press Secretary and appointed directly ‘from outside’ where he was then a Fox News anchor. Now, the most natural route to becoming Press Secretary is to work with the President’s team as it ran for office and then to get that gig, but lets do Hateful Eight and imagine, who would be the single most hated non-politician, journalist.

Easy question. Public Enemy Number One, to Republicans and conservatices in the ‘liberal media’ is of course ...Rachel Maddow. The sharpest, smartest and fastest mind on TV. A liberal firebrand, and the very soul of progressive thought. She would be ‘way’ far further into progressive and liberal thought than her President, but that is not a bad thing. She would instantly become the progressive movement ‘soul’ of the White House, with her voice heard on all issues - argued like only Rachel Maddow can. Hillary loves smart people around her, this would be one of her brightest. Hillary loves young people and most that I mentioned are old. Rachel is only 43. To fit a ‘Hillary Clinton White House’ she is a woman, duh, she’s an atheist (oh, thats new) and haha, she is an openly lesbian person. Yeah, would fit perfectly the rainbow coalition that Hillary wants to assemble into her White House. If you wanted to pick any one journalist that truly was most hated by conservatives and Republicans, who is a perfect consumate professional in journalism - at its core and base definition, not the farce that modern journalism often becomes chasing celebrity stories on CNN - that is the core of Rachel Maddow. She - like so many in journalism - has plenty of friends on the other side of the aisle, even with Fox News. She is VERY respected in her post and is sitting out patiently, waiting for her slot to take over the one job on TV she was born to do - to host Meet the Press as the true heir to the deceased Tim Russert, after we endure a few more seasons with the not-particularly-impressive Chuck Todd.

Would Rachel Maddow drop everything and take the job to be the official face of the White House with its first woman President, a Democrat? Of course she would. And look at their banter several times now this election cycle, there is a clear chemistry there. I would not be at all surprised if Hillary has already mapped out a posting for little Rachel, that yet that young and not that politically ambitious Ms Maddow is not even yet aware of it. That Hillary is now monitoring her and considering her. If you start to listen to Rachel Maddow and especially see her in any unscripted moments you get that magnificent journalist’s mind. You see it in the eyes of her fellow anchor, far more senior Brian Williams. The real star of the MSNBC network and its future is clearly Rachel Maddow. I am certain Hillary has talked to her inner circle about considering some role for Rachel Maddow in her administration, and Press Secretary is the obvious one. For Republicans and conservatives, of the industry sector they most hate, its the evil lying liberal media. And within that nasty lying evil liberal media, their public enemy number one is Rachel Maddow. If she were to join the Hillary Clinton White House, she would be the last but not least member of the Hateful Eight.

Thats what was on my mind on this lazy Summer Saturday. Imagining the worst horrors of the near future, what would be the absolute worst group of eight to have to face from 2017. The Hateful Eight: Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elijah Cummings and Rachel Maddow. It cannot get worse than that (for eight YEARS). Note, there would also be a Famous Five. The Most inept conservatives and Republicans who drove their dreams into the ditch. The Infamous Five would be led by he whose name shall never be mentioned again, the orange-faced baffoon, the small-fingered vulgarian, the thin-skinned bully (ie Trump). Then there would be his gang of losers, Former Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, Former House Chair Paul Ryan, Disgraced Tea Party ‘leader’ Ted Cruz and disgraced sitting but totally neutered (and ‘pussy-whipped’) Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts. After the first few years of the Hillary Clinton-Nancy Pelosi-Chuck Schumer show from Washington DC passing one piece of major legislation after the next, and with rising popularity to the Democratic party, those five losers will indeed be getting ever more of the blame. Why didn’t they take advantage of the ‘good old years’ of Obama’s rule.

THEN THE DIRTY DOZEN

Ok, want to go further into the future? Lets play a bit further, go into about year 2020 or so, and we have had the first retirement on the Supreme Court, some old probably liberal judge has retired, and Hillary appointed the promised Judge Garland onto that seat. She is not a firebrand liberal herself, she does like some moderation and Garland is a very moderate, barely liberal judge. Well to balance the first nomination we imagined (Loretta Lynch). Now lets imagine a few more years, and there is the next vacancy. A Judge retires or dies in office. Some are very old by now. And we’ve had President Obama out of office for a couple of years, he wrote his memoirs, he has had a life of enjoying his ‘retirement’ and whatever he decided to get into, but he is waiting. They have a deal with Hillary, I am certain. When that ‘next’ opening comes in the Supreme Court, as long as the Democrats still have the majority in the Senate, then Hillary will nominate and the Senate will confirm Barack Obama as the new Justice to the Supreme Court.

Note, that about this time, after some years of being hated on every side, Chief Justice Roberts may well decide he no longer likes his job and will step down. That might even be when Obama gets in. But, its likely Roberts will not continue long as the Chief Justice as the balance of the court has swung ‘against him’ and then, as more of the older Justices are replaced with ever younger and often ever more liberal replacements. Its likely the balance shortly shifts to 6-3 rather than 5-4 and then Robets would be VERY isolated. Not a nice place to be. And yeah. I can very well see a future where Obama is the new Chief Justice. It is the job HE was meant to do. Listen to his Press Conferences. Listen and you always hear the law professor there, lecturing us on the very minutiae of whatever is on that daily agenda that day. He was not meant to be the President, he was meant to be the Chief Justice in a new liberal era. He’s still pretty young, he could chair SCOTUS for several decades. And say what you will, the truth is that Obama is no extreme bleeding-heart liberal. He is a moderate. A Democrat yes, a liberal yes, but a moderate one. And that would be a good next Chief Justice after a moderately conservative Chief Justice that Roberts has been. But now, our Hateful Eight would get Obama into SCOTUS and that would be one of the worst fears of the Republican party - and the PERFECT poetic justice to their intentional sabotaging of his Presidency.

Now we would have potentially two voices of ‘worst possible hate’ from the Bench. New Chief Justice Obama - his first rulings will be studied by magnifying glass - and still that trusted old lioness, Notorious RBG writing her magnificent rulings. We’ve gone from 8 to 9.

Then what of the most popular person in politics? I’ve said for years she will run for office and she wants to become the first black woman President. If you’ve listened to Michelle Obama’s recent speeches, she is prepping her run. What will she do? We have a good indication on their home after the White House. The Obamas will remain in Washington DC. They will not move back to Chicago. And what will happen in the first years of a Hillary Clinton Presidency when she has control of the Senate and House? She will run through the statehoods for Puerto Rico and.. DC. District of Columbia has the same population as Vermont, will get two Senators and one member to the House. Its an all-black region, of course all of this new state, called New Columbia, will be black. Its Senators will be black and hits House Member will be black. And they will all be Democrats. And the new state also needs a Governor. If Michelle Obama says ‘ok, I’ll do it’ she wins by landslide. She doesn’t have to run for that office, she will get it just by saying yes I can. And she’ll win by massive landslide. Now. What does the GOVERNOR of New Columbia do? She will be enacting laws for the citizens of DC, that the REPUBLICANS have been against. She will instantly gain the ire of the House and Senate Republicans. She joins the hated group which now has grown to 10.

Bill Clinton will be abroad most of the early Hillary years, but by year 2020 we will have a fresh election cycle. And then Bill will be back home, and he will be campaigning for Hillary’s re-election. So Bill will suddenly be ‘remembered’ and hated. He has spent enough time abroad, he wants to touch on domestic issues and defend his often-attacked wife. He will be loud and boisterous and often in the press. Yes, the right wing will re-discover Bill and how much they hate him. Thats number 11.

And one more. What about that second Senator gig in New York. Kirsten Gillibrand will be up for re-election in the 2018 midterms. Now if you were the daughter of a past President and daughter of the sitting President who held that same Senator seat just ten years ago - and you are named Chelsea and are the 38 years of age and you wanted also a career in the family business of becoming US President, then you need to get elected. That Gillibrand seat would be just about perfect for you. All it needs is for mommy to arrange some comfy job for Senator Gillibrand to get away from the Senate. She could be given some Cabinet posting or .. she has studied China and Asia, wouldn’t that be an awesome gig for Gillibrand she could not possibly turn down - Ambassador to China (Gillibrand is ambitious and wants to run for higher office, possibly President at some point). And that would conveniently open up the seat for Chelsea. New York is safely Democratic with a Democratic Governor, so the interim gig is no problem - could even be given to Chelsea haha. Now we have the Dirty Dozen for Republicans to hate in 2020. Obama is back, Bill Clinton is back. And the gang that was the Hateful Eight has now grown to the Dirty Dozen. Hillary Clinton as President, Bill Clinton campaigning as First Dude, Nancy Pelosi with the House, Chuck Schumer running the Senate. Elizabeth Warren with her signature on currency running the Treasury. Bernie Sanders as Labor Secretary. Elijah Cummings as Attorney General. The most visible Governor in the USA is that of DC, the new state of New Columbia with Michelle Obama. Her husband Barack Obama now the Chief Justice, co-authoring the most liberal and damning rulings from the bench, with his partner in crime, the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The youngest of the Clinton Clan, Chelsea as the fresh-faced junior Senator from the evil meccha of liberalism, New York; and the whole story sung by Rachel Maddow as Press Secretary. Thats the worst nightmare for Republicans to come out of Trump’s loss: The Hateful Eight grow into the full Dirty Dozen by 2020.  

Typepad Down for 5h 45min is Unacceptable; That it took 5h 40min for first acknowledgement of a problem is Unprofessional - use Wordpress instead if you start a blog

I have to write about the Typepad total failure. Typepad runs THIS blog. I have used this blog for over 11 years and I have a paid premium account on Typepad. This blog has had over 6 million lifetime visits (thank you to all who have visited us) and my readers have left over 50,000 comments (thank you to all who contribute thoughts to the blog). While I have a formal website - www.tomiahonen.com and plenty of social media sites from Twitter to Linked In (I even have a rarely-used Facebook account) this blog is my digital home. And its always been on Typepad. Typepad is not by any means a perfect tech company, but all tech companies have their stumbles from time to time. What makes Typepad particularly relevant to this blog - the Communities Dominate blog - is that Typepad serves social media experts and providers. They are a business serving BLOGGERS. They power social media. So they are at the heart of the social media world, and they have to know its rules, and behave by it.

That is why what happened is so serious, and why it disqualifies Typepad totally as a valid alternative to consider if you want to start a blog. Five hours and 45 minutes down - in a real-time BLOG world - not of free blogs, but serving also many PAYING blog users - is completely unacceptable. This blog of mine is not a news blog or in any way a 'newsy' blog of info of very 'breaking news' type, where minutes count. Yes we occasionally break news, but most of the tech topics are not measured by a minute, they are measured more on a timing of about a day. A few hours would not kill this blog (although a 5 hour 45 minute outage is a big inconvenience to our readers many hundreds of readers were inconvenienced, we average several thousand readers every day and up to tens of thounsands on a busy day). But if you are a newsy blogger, then several hours of an outage is total credibility to you. What of SALES. Many use Typepad as a sales website (I sell my ebooks via my www.tomiahonen.com site instead) and then you are actually financially DAMAGED if the site is down for any meaningful amounts of time. This is unacceptable. Yes, tech problems happen - but even in the 1990s, when I was working for OCSNY, the internet services and networking company, we had service contracts that had 4 hour response time - covering for premium customers if they needed, 24 hour and 7 day service - we could get a TECHNICIAN to your door in less than 4 hours. A 5 hour 45 minute outage is totally unacceptable in a modern era, and for a real-time web services company, even more for a paid professional company serving bloggers. Totally unacceptable. Based on this, I cannot recommend Typepad ever again for people to use, if they are looking for a blog services or web services provider.

But it is worse. There is NO excuse for total radio silence for 5 hours and 40 minutes. That is how long it took, from when the problems started, and the first of us bloggers informed Typepad (many dozens of us complained for example on Twitter). I wrote an email, I used the problem alert website form, I posted a comment on Twitter to the @typepad account - and so did dozens and dozens of others too. I also learned that they did so on Facebook. I myself sent FOUR separate complaints in the nearly six hours via the website for example. I probably did a hundred Tweets with @typepad included in the Tweet so they all were seen at the Typepad Twitter help desk. Except nobody was there. They were - ahem - asleep. Yes. SAY Media which owns Typepad, claims it serves 400 million people worldwide, yet they cannot keep their global ONLINE business awake for 24 hours. It seems that they are on California time. How dumb is that? Serving the Pacific ocean fish? Even if you want to limit your tech support to US shores, then why not the East Coast and at least have some overlap with Europe, Africa and Latin America. But no. Typepad clearly is such cheapskates, as a global company, they only serve you when the sleepy-heads in California feel like waking up. No. This is not acceptable in a modern world. Even so, when dozens of people suddenly complain - you have ALARMS with your tech team - to WAKE THEM UP. You do not wait 5 hours and 40 minutes before you 'notice' that something is wrong. No, Typepad are a dead company. Do not sign up with them. Do not set up your blog with them. If I didn't have that many pages here, I would go right away. And if I start another blog, I will go with real professionals - like so many who are abandoing Typepad and going with Wordpress. This is unacceptable Typepad. No apology will bring back that lost time. There were people with news sites that were down for hours, sales sites that were down for hours, people who had important updates they had to do, which were now incredibly delayed. You are a disgrace. Shame on you. Any readers - do not sign up to Typepad. Go with a professional outfit like Wordpress.

Wikipedia Page of the ‘Trump Con’ from year 2018, retelling this fraud Trump ran on the Republican party

I have imagined one plausible end-scenario for Trump’s run in 2016. All signs of the race so far suggest this wild scenario is in fact plausible, while I wouldn’t say now, its likely. Remember, back in August of last year, I suddenly said it was actually plausible for Trump to win the Republican nomination. This blog was the first published source to calculate the Delegate Math that gave Trump’s his nomination, when most said he cannot possibly win. Now follow me on this ‘thought experiment’. What if this is how Wikipedia will tell the story, two years from now, of what will become known as ‘the Trump Con’. A very special type of confidence trick, by which you destroy a whole political party. How Trump defrauded the once-mightly Republican party destroying it and giving rise to the Hillary years and total Democratic control of the US goverment, where the Libertarians emerged as a choice for the discredited Republican party. Follow me and my imagination to this scenario. Imagine reading Wikipedia some day in say 2018:

PLAUSIBLE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY - TRUMP CON

The Trump Con or the Trump Confidence Trick against a major political party.

The Trump Con is a confidence trick, a fraud, perpetuated against a political party which guts the party, robs its supporters of hundreds of millions of dollars of their money, destroys an election, and ruins a political party’s image damaging it for decades to come. Named after disgraced former Billionaire, former real estate developer, former reality TV star and multiple convicted serial con artist Donald J Trump whose previous scams included bankrupted casinos, Trump University, job-creation fraud, etc The con on the Republican party was his last major scam and the one that ended his public career. The Trump Con defrauded Republican voters and donors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and handed the 2016 election cycle in its entirity, from President to the Senate to the House to various local elections, to the Democrats, in the biggest landslide loss measured in the history of US politics. It also gave rise to the Libertarian party as the new second largest party of the USA.

In some ways the Trump Con is seen as a cousin of vulture capitalism and corporate raiding that was popular in the 1980s when Billionaires bought poorly-managed companies and then split them and sold their parts, in what was called ‘raping and pillaging’ those companies. Trump was raping and pillaging the Republican party which had been incompetently managed in the previous years. In some ways what Trump was, was closer to pure vandalism like ‘joy riding’ by youth gangs who steal cars, race them, crash them, then burn them. Trump stole the Republican party, raced it, crashed it, and then burned it. But at its core, the Trump Con is a confidence trick, played on vulnerable Republican base voters, that sold them a fantasy, swapped a nasty reality, and ran away with the profits. After Donald Trump ran his Trump Con on the Republican Party, ‘doing a Trump’ has become the generic word for any outsider trying to capture a political party for his own ends and gains.

ROOTS TO THE TRUMP CON

Donald J Trump inherited a vast real estate empire from his rich father, but Trump squandered most of it in numerous failing business ventures both in real estate, and trying to explore other areas like airlines, vodka, magazines, insurance, education and clothing. His business background resulted in four business bankruptcies and Trump was functionally bankrupt personally by 2015 when he embarked on his most ambitious and in the end, most profitable scheme. While Trump’s actual business deals were a series of disasters, his publicity and personality were perfect for a TV age. He wrote a bestselling book, bought the rights to a number of popular TV show from the Miss Universe pageant to The Apprentice and then starred in several versions of the shows. What Trump excelled at, was a bombastic self-grandizing style of claiming to be the greatest and the best. This he learned from his involvement with the World Wrestling Foundation and its loud abrasive peacocks who proclaimed their personal bestness. While this style of arrogance and boasting turns off most people - and in particular women and minorities - it attracted a certain cult following, white men who grew up with the World Wrestling phenomenon and were attracted to that ‘comic book’ style of a ‘good versus evil’ world of total extremes.

Donald Trump had developed his Trump Con to run against a political party for several years, in stages. He was not initially sure which party would be best suited for it, but after the Bush-Cheney years helped push the intellectual divide so, that increasingly the Republicans were “the dumb white man’s party” it became clear, this was his mark. So Trump registered as a Republican and started building the base for his confidence trick. The big gains were in the early years of the Obama administration, when Trump led a ‘birther’ conspiracy movement against Obama, claiming he was born in Kenya, was thus not legitimate to be President, and was a Muslim. (Trump knew all these were lies, but he needed his victims to start to believe these lies). This endeared Trump to the right-wing media from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh who all gave Trump a prominent platform. Trump also campaigned for the various Republican candidates in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections giving his voice to be used in robocalls, and he also supported the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections. Trump was building a base of support by supporters who seeked his endorsement, while actually not contributing more than the bare minimum directly to any of the campaigns in actual cash donations. Trump made a big show out of various candidates have to come to kiss his ring, be seen at a Trump building, to seek his blessing. This all helped bring an aura where Trump was in some ways ‘above’ mere politicians who ran for President. Trump already then was all about the style and none of the substance.

Trump identified a target voter segment he wanted to appeal to, on the fringe of the Republican party. These were initially the racists, conspiracy theorists, White Supremacists and Nazis, but in 2008 and 2012 he saw the election cycle was not ripe for him to try his confidence trick. He waited and in 2016 he had the perfect opportunity. The Republican field had its broadest range of candidates ever to run (17 in total including Trump) and yet none of those were openly appealing to the racist wing, ie the ‘Pat Buchanan’ wing of the party which had a significant base of support, especially in Southern states. Trump correctly calculated that if the party was sufficiently split among its factions, by appealing to this base, and then building on the ignorant voters and with his name recognition, he could get up to about 40% of the Republican party total support, but because of the various candidates, this was the year when you did not need to win 50% of the delegates to clinch the nomination. By the time his last rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich quit the race in May of 2016, Trump had only won slightly over 40% of the votes cast up to that point. The political calculation was correct, and Trump exploited a weakness of the Republican party, which back then did not use ‘SuperDelegates’ that the Democrats had. If the Republicans had used SuperDelegates, then Trump could not have risen, and indeed, one of the first actions the dramatically defeated Republican party did in 2017, was to introduce SuperDelegates to its nomination system. This was done specifically to prevent any future Trump Con from succeeding again against the party.

THE POLITICAL CON

The political part of the Trump Con was actually quite simple. Trump took every position on every political issue. He never studied any issue in any depth. He said he is for abortion, and against abortion. He was for the Iraq War and against the Iraq War. He was for gun control and against gun control. He was for Planned Parenthood and against Planned Parenthood. He was for higher taxes for the wealthy and against higher taxes for the wealthy. He was for invading Libya then against involvement in Libya. He was for a higher minimum wage and against a minimum wage altogether. Then whenever confronted with a ‘contradiction’ to a position he had also recently held, he did not claim he had evolved or changed his mind, or try to find some convoluted way to be both for and against a position. Trump simply denied that he had just said the opposite. Trump would utterly deny he ever said it, much like how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had shown, many Republicans are willing to believe you if you just deny it in strong enough terms. So inspite of videotape played to him, of words he said to the opposite, or of audio tape of his past words, Trump would say that was not him, that was not what he said, or that it didn’t even sound like him.

He would then run over anyone who questioned him with a long rant of mostly unrelated positions, with more lies, to eventually move the matter beyond the initial controversy. This left the audience feeling that Trump was correct that he had never said something. The questioner did know the truth (or a debate opponent in the Primaries) but they had not yet figured out how to counter this, seemingly lunatic way of denying reality. Eventually the press figured out how to counter this, demanding Trump to answer an explicit question, and of course Hillary Clinton never lost her footing on using Trump own words on videotape against his own new positions. So Democratic voters and Independents and rational and moderate Republicans could all see, Trump was lying. This is part of what doomed his general election campaign and why his polling support fell to ever worse standing throughout the summer of 2016.

To one slice of Republican voters, however, Trump seemed irresistable. As Trump had held every conceivable position on every political issue, a voter could always find Trump in support of what was important to that voter. Trump seemed like the ideal, perfect candidate. He had EVERY position you wanted. As long as that voter was not meticulously exposed to every OPPOSITE position that Trump had ALSO held, that voter could safely believe, that Trump was the perfect politician, the only honest one who the voter had been hoping for years, decades even, that might emerge some day. As long as the illusion was maintained, Trump had ironclad support among his core supporters, while the majority of the nation was dumbfounded, on how can some voters be so dumb. This was why there was a total divergence of Trump support. Some utterly loved him while most hated him. The correlation was very strong with uninformed, lowly educated and misinformed voters. If a white voter thought Obama was born in Kenya, there was nearly a 100% correlation with that supporter also being a Trump supporter. Among those who knew Obama was not born in Kenya, nearly all were not Trump supporters (while many were of course not Hillary supporters either. This group included the majority of the ‘never Trump’ Republicans).

PERFECT CON MAN

The core of any confidence trick is that ‘the mark’ ie the victim (Republican voters) must believe and trust the con artist. Trump was a master at creating an untarnished golden image among his core supporters. Those were mostly the lowly educated white male voters of the Republican party and often also their spouces. A disgruntled, dismissed minority of the Republican voter base, who felt a deep sense of a rigged game against them. Where they felt the minorities (and women) were being given an edge through all sorts of quota systems to actually deny the white male voters their chances. The white lowly educated older voters felt victimized and the culprits were the educated classes (‘elites’), the foreigners (‘Mexicans’), the people of other religions (‘Muslims’), and various groups who seemed to be given preference, from women to gays. This part, closely overlapping with Pat Buchanan’s voters, was ready for Trump and when Trump started his hate speech, attacking Mexicans, Muslims, women, even the Pope, he was cheered by this vocal minority of the Republican party, while the majority of the nation was aghast.

Trump achieved an illusion of ‘telling like it is’ with this voter group. This voter group had plenty of genuine racists but many more who were simply not mentally astute, or culturally experienced enough, to be aware that using a word like ‘nigger’ might anger a black person etc. Many were not actually racists, only they often SOUNDED like they were, out of ignorance. This helped create the opening for Trump, to pursue a battle against ‘political correctness’. When Trump said ‘Mexicans are rapists’ the racists of course loved it, but those who were not racists, but who often were victims of being accused of racism - for not using ‘appropriate language’ suddenly discovered Trump in ‘telling it like it is’. The more Trump used horrible divisive language, accusing Megyn Kelly of being on her period, or accusing John McCain of not being a real hero, or of calling on a ban on all Muslims, or mocking a disabled journalist, or saying the Pope doesn’t have grace, the more this slice of the Republican party loved Trump. They associated Trump’s rude language with the freedom they hoped they would have had, in their own speech, to ‘tell it like it is’. Then, the ironic reality is, that as Politifact measured, Trump’s actual statements were the most deceitful of any leading politician ever measured. Even Dick Cheney only lied 59% of the time, but Trump’s statements were 76% untrue. Yet with this objectively measured fact, Trump’s core supporters had somehow become convinced, in unshaking certainty, that Trump ‘told it like it is’.

The Confidence Artist had now set up his mark (the Republican voters). Next he needed to insulate himself from any doubt or breach in that trust. So Trump waged a relentless war against ‘the evil media’. He took Newt Gingrich’s tactic from the 2012 election cycle but turned up the volume to unprecedented levels. He waged an open war in every public speech railing against the ‘lying media’ and the ‘deceitful press’. This helped Trump with his intended marks, to not pay attention to any media claims that Trump is lying or attempting to defraud them. Because the right wing media in general, from Fox and Friends to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, to Breitbart and Drudge, had been pushing a myth of a broad media conspiracy against the Republicans, Trump found fertile ground and his core supporters were completely willing to accept whatever Trump said to be the truth, and no matter how many dozens of various media sources including conservative media like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal saying otherwise. Trump was now preparing his mark for his confidence trick which did not come in the primary race, it could only come if Trump was able to clinch the nomination, so trap was designed to be triggered in the main campaign in the Autumn.

THE MONEY GAMBIT

The core of any confidence trick is to steal money. Trump did this by creating an illusion that he was ‘self-funding’. In 2016 the US election system was still run under the since-banned rules of ‘Citizens United’ which meant unlimited campaign cash and incredible amounts of corruption, as the various Congressional investigations have unveiled since the 2016 election. So in the 2016 cycle, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders a Democratic rival to then-Candidate, now-President Hillary Clinton. Both Trump and Sanders made a big political issue about not taking campaign donations from big donors and then being beholden to them. Because of Citizens United, and as major ‘front-runner’ candidates in that cycle like Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz all had ‘SuperPACs’ (a political campaign donations vehicle that was legal under Citizens United but now has been outlawed) that were able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, both Sanders and Trump had a great opening to declare their independence from such campaign financing. Bernie Sanders took openly citizen contributions in small numbers. Trump went even further, he claimed he was ‘self-funding’. Like everything in the Trump Con, this too was a carefully-crafted lie, it was an illusion where the truth was the exact opposite of what Trump claimed. Trump did not self-fund his own campaign, more than by about 1%. About one fifth of his primary campaign was funded by citizens (like any other politician) and four fifths of his campaign was a loan from Trump to his campaign. This was 44 million dollars by the summer. Trump had this loan paid back to him early in the Autumn campaign, out of his donations to the general election campaign.

Trump was able to con his gullible Republican voters in several ways by this claim of ‘self funding’. First, he obviously did not self-fund but he got the full media attention and was able to claim for almost a year of campaigning, creating a lasting impression among his voter base, that he is so independent of any outside influence, that he was actually self-funding, while he was no better than any other politician. Secondly, he had his supporters retroactively fund his primary run, entirely. So in effect the whole claim was a deliberate lie. But always before, in campaigns that ran a lavish lifestyle, where a candidate ran essentially a glorified book tour, paid by donors (like Newt Gingrich in 2012 or Dr Ben Carson in 2016), the campaign finances were scrutinized and the candidate was severely scorned for wasting campaign funds on luxury and frills, first class travel, expensive hotels. Trump stayed briefly in some Holiday Inn style standard hotels when the primary race was at its hottest, early in the year, but one he clinched, Trump shifted his campaigning to only be in large cities, in rich states, and in towns where the Trump organization held properties, like New York, Florida and California. And Trump flew everywhere with his giant private jet. While Trump had no political chance of winning the race for the state of California (which votes by about a 20 point margin for Democrats in every election) or New York (the fourth most Democratic state, with a margin typically of between 25 and 30 points for the Democrats), Trump now camped in those states, and ran an expensive lifestyle. Where any previous campaign tried to life a first class lifestyle, the donors would protest loudly and insist on strict fiscal responsebility, Trump was able to avoid all that, because of his initial claim of ‘self funding’.

The money trick was to funnel as much of the money as possible through Trump enterprises. So Trump struck a deal with the Republican party (and its then-leader, since discredited Reince Priebus) so that the Republican party would staff, fund and manage the ‘field operations’ - a major expense of any campaign - while Trump would do his own travel, events and TV appearances. The Republican party in 2016 was nearly broke and this new added heavy financial burden taxed heavily its fund-raising and what ended up being a useless operation, built to support Trump in states he ended up not contesting, destroyed the Republican party’s chances to hold the Senate and the House, and even win many local contests, as Trump’s organization was now placed in wrong states doing pointless tasks while real needs of the struggling Republican party were left undermanned and underfunded.

Trump himself racked up massive debts and huge expenses billed to various Trump organizations from renting out ballrooms at Trump hotels to catering to transport and of course lavish hotel rooms at various Trump hotels and golf resorts in the richest parts of the country. Under normal political runs, such a lavish lifestyle would have drawn enormous scorn by fiscally conservative Republicans but as this was supposedly a ‘self funded’ campaign - Trump’s con got away with this overspending. Then Trump of cousre further profited by overbilling for all those expenses. Any normal hotel chain would offer various incentives to have a political organization stay at their hotel, packages, bulk discounts, breakfasts, ballrooms etc - but Trump billed all at undiscounted premium ‘rack’ rates with the highest profit margins. So Trump was shoveling campaign money into his own pockets, without any scrutiny. (This practise was outlawed in the Anti Trump Con election laws package that passed unanimously both in the House and Senate in 2017).

Two years of congressional hearings in the Trump Con aftermath and into the series of bankruptcies of the Trump Campaign 2016, and the Republican Party, and various Trump enterprises that followed, have not been able to piece together the full trail of where the money vanished, but estimates go from 100 million to 400 million snatched by Trump, moved to offshore accounts, and hidden. Typical of Trump in his various past bankrupties, all major people who ran the parts of the scam were convicted and sent to prison, but Trump escaped without a day spent behind bars. While he was eventually forced to give up his last possessions and his various homes including that in Trump Tower, in his personal bankruptcy that followed, Trump’s family had by then acquired so much of his fortune, that Trump continues today to live in his seclusion, but as a permanent family guest with various properties owned by his children.

TIMING OF THE GAMBIT

The Trump Con was about stealing money in the end, while it destroyed the Republican party in the process. Four elements were critical to the exact timing. Trump had to have his own loans paid off. He had to pick up new funding enough for his escape. He needed to postpone his promised tax returns until the last possible date. And he had to have his excuse to quit the race. That was all timed to the week prior to the first TV debate. While in the Spring, Trump had seemed to be reasonably close to Hillary Clinton in national polling, and in May some polls showed him even slightly ahead, after the Conventions Hillary had built a solid double-digit lead over Trump foretelling a massive election rout. Trump built his promise of a surprise win by a fantasy of winning in large states that the Republicans had not won in many decades (like California and New York) even as all polls showed him behind by 20 points or more in those states - and by beating Hillary in the upcoming TV debates. It was the TV debates that had Mitt Romney climb to a tie from being far behind President Obama in the 2012 election cycle. As long as the first TV debate had not occurred, Trump could still sustain the illusion that he still has a chance. As he promised his loyal supporters, he claimed he could demolish Hillary Clinton in the TV debates, and then the race would be tied. The first TV debate became the crucial focal point of the whole 2016 election which actually decided the race.

As mounting pressure came on Trump to release his taxes, including loud voices by Senator Elizabeth Warren that Trump had a conflict of interest with his 100 million dollars he owed foreign banks, Trump finally accepted he would release his tax returns by mid September, just after the scheduled first TV debate. Trump’s pretense all along was the audit which by then had ended. As later congressional hearings and leaked tax documents have shown, Trump in 2016 was only moments from bankruptcy (a condition he declared in January of 2017). That was why he was terrified and determined never to actually show his tax returns, and would rather quit the race than show his financial condition. Congressional hearings also revealed that Trump had successfully tricked many US and international banks to extend loans to him even when his personal wealth no longer justified such amounts. This resulted in both parties instituting their ‘Tax Return’ rule, that all candidates must release 6 years of tax returns by Super Tuesday or forefeit all won delegates to be distributed to then-viable rivals. No candidate since Trump has ever even suggested not showing 6 years of tax returns and most modern candidates show every tax return from age 18.

With the promise of beating Hillary Clinton in the debates, Trump was able to sustain enough of a hope, that his supporters kept sending him money. Trump also pleaded very strongly to his base, at all his rallies and in his now-frequent email pleadings, to send him money as Trump listed various measurements of how much ‘Crooked Hillary’ was outspending him in the various expensive TV ad markets. Trump achieved a large haul of campaign funding, which according to his official filing was about 200 million in the month of August, directly for his campaign and another 200 million for his SuperPAC but various independent measurements have estimated it to be possibly twice as much. Trump ran a large run of TV ads and booked up major blocks of TV ad space, well exceeding his total campaign budget and in many popular TV shows, maxed out the total available TV ad inventory that was left. The TV spending in August would not have those advertisement payments coming due until in mid September.

The negotiations between the Trump and Clinton campaigns about the TV debates were acrimonious but seemed to finally reach agreement by early September. Then Trump started to demand new concessions which in the end, derailed the first announced TV debate only 24 hours before the debate was scheduled to be broadcast. Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, sitting President Obama, past Presidents Bill Clinton, both Bushes and Jimmy Carter, Republican past nominees Mitt Romney, John McCain and Bob Dole, and past Democratic nominees John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale all condemned Trump. The Libertarian ticket of Johnson and Weld came out against Trump and offered to present their candidate as the alternative (which Hillary Clinton and the debate commission turned down, as at this time the Libertarian ticket did not qualify by polling to pass the threshold). Almost all major current sitting Republican leaders from Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan to Reince Priebus came out against the decision. Almost all major media from the left with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC to Chuck Todd on Meet the Press in the middle to Morning Joe Scarborough on the right to Bill O’Reilly on Fox to Rush Limbaugh on the extreme fringe on the right, all condemned this move. Even staunch Trump supporter Sarah Palin said it was cowardly to skip a debate reminding people that she won her VP debate against Joe Biden.

That was the opening that Trump needed to claim being the victim, that the game was rigged against him. That the Republican party was deserting him, that the mainstream media were biased against him and even conservative media were rooting for Trump to fail. Trump said he could not in good conscience continue a race which clearly was biased against him - and over the weekend, live on Fox News, he announced he quit the race.

ELECTION BLOODBATH

The Republican party was registered to have Donald J Trump as their Presidential candidate on all ballots nationwide by this time and could not withdraw the name or substitute an alternate. But as Trump now was a ‘quitter’ his support instantly collapsed. The polls showed a huge spike in ‘will not vote’ where most loyal Trump supporters went. Those less convinced of Trump migrated their support almost instantly to the Libertarian ticket. But many Trump loyalists voted for Trump anyway. The Presidential election had Hillary winning 55% of the vote, with Johnson second at 30% and Trump with 15%. Johnson won 9 reliably Republican states by narrow margins like Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas and Idaho. Hillary Clinton’s 25 point margin over Johson (and 40 point margin over Trump) was a historic victory with 42 states and the District of Columbia, even winning several ‘very reliably Republican’ states like Utah, Texas and Mississippi.

The television news coverage of President Hillary Clinton’s victory election count, was unique in that while the news broadcasters did not want to run the headlines or have their news staff say ‘Hillary Clinton has won the election’ while the voting was still going on in California, Oregon and Washington and other Western states, the actual vote count in the Electoral College showed already at midnight Eastern time, that Hillary Clinton had clinched the election and had won enough Electoral College votes that she was the winner. Runner-up Johnson of the Libertarian party called President-elect Hillary Clinton by 01 AM Eastern time to concede and congratulate her but Hillary Clinton waited until the news broadcasters actually ran the story that she had won, which happened the moment polls in California, Washington and Oregon had closed by 02 AM Eastern time.

Because of the ruinous campaign run by Trump, who then deserted the race and left the Republican party with hundreds of hired staff in the wrong states, with a campaign but no candidate, the resulting expensive reorganization and reallocation meant that the Republican party was completely in disarray for the last two months of the 2016 election. This doomed what was already a perilous election for the Senate and House. The Democrats picked up nearly all available Senate seats, recaptured the Senate and Mitch McConnell was forced to give up his gavel to Chuck Schumer the Democratic Senator of New York. The Trump aftermath caused also many ‘Trump crony’ Republican Senators to lose seats in the 2018 midterms, when Hillary Clinton and the Democrats expanded their Senate lead and gained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. 2018 was the first year that the Libertarians won their first Senate seat, displacing a ‘Trump crony’ Republican sitting Senator.

In the House, the Democrats flipped control of that chamber which was considered by many to be ‘invincible’ because of gerrymandering (a system of rigging voting outcomes so that one party gains more seats than the party had won in percent of actual votes. Gerrymandering was made illegal in Hillary Clinton’s first term and stood several challenges in the Supreme Court). California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi returned to chair the House and never again lost her gavel, becaming the longest-serving House Chair until she died in office in 2036. Nancy Pelosi successfully played the rising Libertarian party against the diminishing Republican party. On many social issues she struck a deal with the Libertarians to support the majority Democratic positions (while allowing some moderate Democrats in Republican districts to defect and vote against that law), while then using the dramatically diminished Republican party to give support on several foreign policy and trade issues where not all Democrats were onboard. After 8 years of Republican obstruction and the six Boehner-Ryan years of Republican gridlock in Congress, Nancy Pelosi created the image of the ultimate deal-maker of bipartisanship even as in reality, she just played ‘divide and conquer’ after the Republican party had been destroyed. The 2016 Trump Con election is what started the US Congress on its journey from a gridlocked two-party system to a more flexible multi-party system, eventually opening the path also to the extremist Tea Party split out of the Republicans, and eventually the Sanders-Warren Green Party split out of the liberal wing of the Democrats.

LIBERAL ERA

The Trump Con damaged the Republican party so badly, when no other third party was yet viable, that Trump ended up ushering in the over two decades-long Liberal Era, after the eight Obama years of moderation. The survivors in the rump Republican party, who lasted the Trump Con purge and the Tea Party explusion, say the Obama years were the golden years, and universally blame John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan for squandering the period when Obama genuinely offered them a chance at sharing power in bipartisan manner. Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer never made that mistake again.

The first political reforms enacted by the Democratic Congress, with its fiercely partisan new President, and supported by a freshly liberal-leaning Supreme Court, did away with the corrosive damage of unlimited campaign financing when Citizens United was outlawed. This deprived the Republican party one of its strongest weapons of recent years. Retired Senator Harry Reid returned as Independent Council at the express personal request of President Hillary Clinton, to prosecute the worst offenders of campaign finance excess and was instrumental in breaking up the Koch Brothers empire and sending both brothers to prison.

The highly popular and populist voting rights laws, such as national motor-voter laws (automatically registering every US citizen of legal age) brought a fresh new enrollment of eligible voters for the 2018 midterm Congressional elections and the 2020 re-election for Hillary Clinton. These were mostly youth voters and minority voters which greatly benefitted Democrats in those elections. The Democrats in Congress ran through a series of laws outlawing several voter suppression methods from ID requirements to denying votes by felons who had served their time, to mandatory national 8 day early voting, to elongened voting times on voting day, and other such laws. These all were incremental small changes, which combined, helped boost Democratic vote in 2018 and 2020, while reducing some of the Republican party activities to try to reorganize and regroup after the Trump Con, with a party whose reputation was in tatters.

The Democrats ran the statehoods for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia which both were inaugrated as states in 2018 in time for the mid-term elections. Some have attributed as an aftermath of the Trump Con also the personal success of one politician related to these new states. DC became the state of New Columbia which elected as its first Governor, the lady who would eventually become the first black female President of the USA, the most popular candidate ever to run on any ticket, Michelle Obama. Her whole message from being Governor to being President was no more Trumps. She succeeded the two-term highly popular first Hispanic President, Hillary Clinton’s two-term Vice President Julian Castro. The two new states brought two new stars to the US flag, and the way Hillary Clinton campaigned for DC statehood and Puerto Rico statehood, the new flag with its 52 stars rather than 50, has become to be known as ‘The Hillary Flag’. Sending loyally Democratic Senators and House Members, for the next three decades, these two new states were part of what kept Congress in the iron grip of the Democratic Party even as the two-party system itself was crumbling.

Hillary Clinton’s first major legislation, the amnesty of the 11 Million illegal immigrants, produced a significantly larger wave of actual illegals than had been estimated. In total nearly 14 million illegals were given legal status and over the next two decades most of them also applied for and achieved citizenship. When their spouces and relatives - afraid often of registering or voting, were added, more than 20 million total voters were eventually added, almost exclusively to the Democratic party ranks. Their role in boosting the Democratic base were part of what future Democratic Presidential hopefuls always referred to as the solid ‘Hillary base’. Paul Ryan in his memoir wrote that this one act was what doomed Republicans from ever returning as an equal, as a major party again, when trying to recover after the Trump Con. Ryan claimed that the internal power battle between the pragmatist Republicans who had read the Mitt Romney autopsy, and the Tea Party fanatics, was what prevented the Republicans from enacting the Immigration compromise that would have prevented this political suicide.

After record-setting Republican obstruction on the Supreme Court, once Hillary Clinton and the Democrats took over in 2017, they rapidly confirmed President Obama’s nominee, Justice Garland and Hillary Clinton nominated a fiercely liberal minority female Justice as her second nominee just as an elder liberal Justice annouced retirement. Three years later, at the next Supreme Court retirement, Hillary Clinton was able to fulfill a promise she made four years prior to then-President Obama, when she nominated Obama to the bench who was approved by unanimous Senate confirmation. A year later Chief Justice Roberts retired and Obama was named the new Chief Justice. He served as Chief Justice over many of the most important rulings from the bench of the modern liberal era, until, in typical Barack Obama fashion, he stepped down from the bench, when his wife announced her run for President, to join her campaign as a surrogate and to do the only thing he loved more than the law - campaigning.

The Libertarian party used the Trump Con year to gain its foothold in the House, winning a dozen upset-victories for little-known members of Congress. Johnson and Weld would run again against incumbent sitting President Hillary Clinton finishing again second in 2020 but their actual impact was to help legitimize the Libertarian party as the only ‘sane’ or ‘adult’ or ‘modern’ alternative to the giant dominating monopolistic Democratic party, as the Republican party went into its desperate decade while it struggled with the remnants of the Tea Party lunatics it would eventually reject and eject. While the Republicans kept nominating white rich men as their always-losing candidates, the Libertarian party eventually won the Presidency in 2040 when they nominated an openly gay transgender woman ex-man atheist isolationist peacenick. Her successor was the last in the link to the Trump Con, when New York Governor Chelsea Clinton ran for President on the Democratic ticket and won in 2044.

VOTERS IN THE WILDERNESS

As always in confidence tricks, the lasting damage is with those who were directly injured. The base white male lowly-educated voters (and often their spouces) who had fallen for Trump were for a while lost, trying to reconcile the reality. They seeked Trump’s reassurances that Trump was right and they were robbed, but Trump soon left them as any con artist does when the mark has been robbed, and Trump went into his seclusion. As the parade of investigations and Trump Campaign bankruptcy was followed by the Republican party bankruptcy and then Trump personal bankruptcy, the reality set in. The disillionment among the core Trump voters was immense and for many they quit voting in elections forever, and some only returned when Michelle Obama ran, but then as freshly-registered Democrats. By this time Barack Obama’s Presidency was seen by the remnants of the Republicans as the ‘Golden age’ and Michelle Obama’s new brand of optimism and bipartisanship and post-partisanship (actually totally resurrected Barack Obama Hope 2008 campaign positions) were seen as hopeful for a new era, after what all on the right wing viewed as hostile authoritarian rule by President Julian Castro. Michelle Obama in her term was able to introduce a new kinder, more hopeful and less partisan era, as the last legacy of her husband and a new period past the divisive Hillary-Castro years. Michelle appointed several young Republicans and Libertarians into her Cabinet, as a sign of her post-partisanship, similar two what husband Barack Obama tried in 2008.

The Trump Con also meant that the blind trust by conservatives in the absolute truth of the right wing media instantly collapsed, and Fox News lost its leadership position in news, eventually leading to a total reorganization and a recommitment to news facts and the truth, rather than ratings and ravings. The hearings held by former Attorney General, appointed Special Prosecutor to Congress, Eric Holder, found so much deliberate lies and unethical behavior at Fox News, that Fox fired most of its on-screen personnel starting with Bill O’Reilly. After Megyn Kelly became the new face of Fox, a recovery was slowly built on facts, not fiction, with rigorous fact-checking and immediate on-air corrections to any mistakes, something Fox had not had as its policy for more than a decade. An internal audit, headed by Jon Stewart, was run with all findings published, which finally cleared the way for Fox to return to credibility as a news channel.

A part of Trump’s voters were not traditional Republican voters, they were on the fringe, racists and White Supremacists, and conspiracy theorists who normally would not vote at all. They retreated to their utter disgust and distrust of politics. But about one fifth of the Republican party base were Trump supporters who now felt completely betrayed. The man who ‘told it like it is’ was in fact a serial liar. The man who ‘self funded’ was in fact stealing their money. These were embittered and some migrated to the Libertarian party but many quit politics. The loss of these reliable if lowly-educated voters is what made the Republicans a junior party after the Trump Con and gave the chance for Libertarians to overtake the Republicans eventually in national support.

USES IN POPULAR CULTURE

Several movies were made of the Trump Con including The Greatest Con which won Tom Hanks his latest Oscar in the title role. The English Language usage of the term ‘trump’ has shifted from its previous meaning ‘to supercede in a bid’ to its modern meaning ‘complete fraud’. This is similar to how the word ‘gay’ once meant ‘happy’ but the meaning now is ‘homosexual’. The popular international card game Bridge, changed its international game rules to stop using the word ‘Trump’ in its bidding and has abandoned the word for its negative connotations. In Las Vegas, the modern meaning of a ‘Trump card’ has become to mean a hidden card by a cheat, such as hiding an ace in the sleeve. All meanings of the term ‘trump’ today have negative connotations.

TRUMP PERSONAL LIFE

After he quit the race in September 2016, the Republican party pleaded for Trump to resurrect his campaign, to no avail. His name was on the ballots and his final count was 15% of the vote in November. Already in October the various TV stations resorted to collection agencies to try to recover unpaid TV ad bills and stopped airing scheduled Trump TV ads until past bookings were paid for. The Trump 2016 Campaign managed to avoid bankruptcy until December but as numerous lawsuits were under way and creditors were loudly demanding to be paid, the Trump 2016 Campaign was placed into Chapter 11 protection. The debtors found no money in the Trump bank accounts and in the years of litigation that followed, none of the remaining debtors were ever paid. The Trump campaign had repaid all personal loans to Trump himself by late August when the Campaign still had plenty of money. The campaign was run so precisely to not cause Mr Trump any further losses, that Trump Enterprises were not even listed as debtors when the bankruptcy started. While the debts were several hundred million dollars, no money was owed to Trump enterprises by September.

Trump campaign finances were what seemed to be an orchestrated systematic mess designed to hide all transactions and enable as much of it to disappear as possible. As with all past Trump confidence tricks, Trump himself was able to remain untouched but all of his people running the scam were indicted and convicted to long prison sentences. Trump himself was forced into bankruptcy in January 2017. He tried several times to resurrect a TV career but now nobody wanted to watch him. His name was removed from the various buildings and golf courses as the name had become toxic. Trump was never invited to speak at any TV show again. His publisher refused to publish his new autobiography which he self-published and which saw negligent sales levels. Trump’s children kept his name but his grandchildren all switched to the family’s historic name Drumpf. Trump lived with his fourth wife, a former Eastern European Miss Universe contestant with significant plastic surgery, after his third wife left him. Trump lived to an age of 103 years in good health but never again had any chance at returning to fame and adulation. He was never invited to speak to the Republican party again in his lifetime.


TOMI END COMMENTS

So the above is a scenario, not a forecast. And yeah, I tricked you - like a good con man, eh? Its not a Wikipedia page written in 2018, it goes all the way to 2044 and haha.. but hey, lets say that this page was CREATED in 2018, and then had updates all the way to 2044.. Did you enjoy it?

I think its plausible that Trump will quit the race. He does not want the label ‘loser’ and when the loss to Hillary is clearly unavoidable, he will seek some way to end the run so he can avoid the ‘loss’. I wouldn’t say this is a forecast of what will happen (lets see how it plays now, I may change my mind as we get nearer to the debates) but Trump’s past behavior suggests this is DEFINITELY possible. If Trump were to end his run - he CLEARLY fears showing us his tax returns. He is terrified of that. He won’t. And if he quits, he won’t quit before he has repaid his own loans, so it will be sometime in August at the earliest. But Trump also doesn’t want to go into that debate against Hillary. He knows he will be massacred in that debate. So if he quits, and we just have to pick a date of when that might happen, then yeah, September, first debate. The week before, possibly as late as the day before, thats when it might happen, yes. Remember, Ross Perot the previous Billionaire to run, also quit his campaign. Trump is clearly irresponsible and eratic and a loose cannon. He could do it. And then, no matter if he comes back (like Ross Perot) then ALL credibility is lost and his loss will be EPIC. And the beneficiary will not be Hillary - who will win anyway - its the Libertarians. And the Democrats down-ticket, running to unseat sitting Republican Senators, House Members, Governors, Mayors etc.

Secondly, note two elements to this blog. One, is the ELECTION result, if Trump suddenly quits the race. Then a landslide victory by Hillary becomes an all-engulfing tsunami-wave utterly obliterating the Republican party at every level. BUT, the second part of this blog, is a speculation of a possible money fraudulent motive, a true confidence trick. They are not necessarily connected. Trump can well quit without the evil money-grubbing side to this story haha, that is just my wicked imagination. I am thinking obviously of the worst possible scenario and imagining Trump as a horrible monster of a person in a Bond-Villainesque manner. He is a nasty person with short fingers and ugly hairdo, and he’s run a lot of shady deals, but he does not necessarily have to have an evil money-corruption side to this play. He could drop out simply to save face, without any actual money fraud side to it. Its just more fun to speculate going the full distance to the worst I can imagine.

Trump will lose this election, that is clear. I don’t see the Libertarian party with a chance to get more votes than Trump, if Trump stays in it till the end. But Trump might quit (this way, or some other way, just before the debates, or at some other time). If Trump did quit, then I think many of his voters will stay home. Some will switch to the Libertarians. And some will come and vote for him anyway. Then it could well be that the Libertarians win more votes than Trump. And yeah, if Trump quits, its not just that Hillary wins by landslide and flips the Senate and House, then the Republican party is wrecked for years and years to come, and they will have HUGE mental trauma of the Trump Con. Now, can Hillary avoid scandals and troubles of the third Presidential term by the same party? Can she possibly win re-election? Could the world really be so bad that Castro then becomes the next President in 2024 and the fifth consecutive term by Democrats (and then Michelle haha as the next Democrat for the seventh consecutive term in 2032?) haha, yeah, at some point this blog is pure fiction. BUT, if Trump quits before November, then it is an election disaster for the Republicans like we have never seen. And Hillary and the Democrats are EXCEPTIONALLY poised to capitalize on that kind of total failure now, after 6 years of Republican obstruction in Congress and now the shenanigans with the Supreme Court. I think if Trump quits the race, then yes, an exceptional Liberal Era would be witnessed for maybe a decade or more. And the Libertarian party would then emerge as a legitimate third party for the USA with seats held in the House and even eventually winning some Senate seats.

So what do you think? A wicked Trump exit scenario, eh? Lastly, my thanks to two CDB blog readers, Winter and cornelius, who first suggested this to me and this blog, that actually, Trump might quit the race before the election. Winter first suggested it, and cornelius added the critical part - the ridiculous pretext and a related temper tantrum. Those two comments are what triggered my mind to devise this fantastical - but still plausible - exist strategy - and grand conspiracy - for our Trumpster.


UPDATE August 1, 2016  - I have now updated my 2016 General Election forecast and full analysis of all the details (fund-raising, electoral map, surrogates, TV ads, everything). Its at this link: Election Scorecard August 1, 2016

How is that 10 Dollar iPhone (clone) Prediction Coming, for 2020? Lets do an update

In year 2010, 6 years ago, I made a famous forecast. I took the best smartphones of the day, the iPhone 4 and its various competitors like the Blackberry Bold, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia N8 etc, and applied Moore's Law for ten years. I said, if Moore's Law really will hold true, we should see a clone of that top-most phone of the day, say the iPhone 4, take all its specs, clone that on a cheap Android, give it 10 years of Moore's Law, and what cost 600 dollars (before any contract discount of handset subsidy) should cost 10 dollars - to manufacture, ship, market, sell - and still make a profit, by year 2020.

So to consider. Year 2010, if you took a brand new iPhone 4, which had a 5 mp camera, 3.5 inch touch screen, 3G and WiFi, the camera had an LED flash, and the iPhone 4 had also GPS. It was a VERY powerful pocket computer back in 2010. Any kid would have loved it, and with a bit of effort, you could run your business from that phone, it was clearly a fully-fledged computer. The App Store was now in full swing, you could also install almost any business productivity type of app from word processing to spreadsheets to accounting and billing. Or if you were more of an artist, it shot video, you could edit your photographs on the phone, and of course upload or download and view online etc. If you could give every human being on the planet, in year 2010, an iPhone 4, the 'digital divide' would essentially vanish. Everyone would have access to almost unlimited information, almost all education online etc. But the problem obviously was the price. In 2010 that pocket miracle machine cost 600 dollars. You can I could afford it. Someone in Tanzania who earns 2 dollars a day, could not afford it. And the rival flagship phones, Blackberry Bolds, Samsung Galaxies, Sony Xperias, Nokia N8s what have you HTCs and LGs and ZTEs and Lenovos, their flagships also cost in that roughly 600 dollar range, in year 2010.

So I applied Moore's Law. Moore's Law is a computer science law that says, that every 18 months the amount of microprocessors that can be squeezed onto the same space of a silicon chip will double. So in effect, computing power doubles every 18 months. The corollary to the law says, to get the SAME computing power, every 18 months, the COST of producing the same computing power will be cut in half. And if we start from 600 dollars in the summer of 2010, then cut it in half in 18 months, by Christmas of 2011, there should be an equivalent smartphone costing 300 dollars, and 18 months later, by the summer of 2013, one should exist for 150 dollars etc. You see how this goes. I am looking for specs of 5mp camera, 3.5 inch touch screen, smartphone, on 3G, WiFi, with GPS (and an LED flash for the camera). If you've seen me speak in the past 6 years, you've seen this slide and my latest update of where we are:




So its a CLONE. Not the actual Apple iPhone. Apple is not interested in selling us the same iPhone at half price every 18 months until it costs essentially nothing in a decade. They will try to think of ever more cool gadgets and specs and tech to squeeze into the phone, to keep up its price and ideally even raise its price (like they did with the 6 Series phablets). I have not predicted that APPLE would sell us a 'real' new iPhone in 2020 for ten dollars. BUT if we apply Moore's Law, then some clone-maker, could design an iPhone 2010 clone, in year 2020, put it on Android, and offer us the COMPUTING SPECS that are the same, as the iPhone 4 was in 2010, and if Moore's Law really holds, that smartphone should really cost about 10 dollars in year 2020, including manufacturing, shipping, marketing - and a modest profit to the maker.

So I made this famous prediction in 2010. The nice thing about it is, that it gives us a calendar, a schedule, of benchmarks. We can TEST the theory, to see if it is 'on track'. Every 18 months, I have then tested the theory to see, can I find some cheap smartphone somewhere that fits those specs and is on the price that my theory suggested 6 years ago. And so far, up to Christmas of 2014, I had managed to find some Android device - a new smartphone, not discounted old model - that fit those specs and was priced at or just under what the theory suggested. We were on track still in 2014. Now, its summer of 2016. It is time for the next 'check point'. Is that theory still on track. Can I find a new smartphone, released and sold this year, which has minimum specs of 5mp camera, 3.5 inch touch screen, 3G and WiFi, GPS, and flash for the camera. Obviously those are the minimum required specs, the smartphone can have BETTER specs on any of those, and the theory would still hold true. But the price is the key element. Can I find one that has an unsubsidised real price in some country selling for 38 dollars or less.

And would you know it. Yes I can. I found in India a new smartphone, released this March, by a brand I had never heard of, called Microkey. The Android smartphone is the Microkey E9. It has: 5mp camera and LED flash; 5 inch touch screen; 3G and WiFi, plus GPS. It matches or exceeds (5 inch touch screen vs 3.5 inch) the specs I needed. And its retail price is 2.443 India Rupees today, June, which is 36.25 US dollars. We are 1 dollar and 75 cents BELOW the target price. The theory still holds. We are on target to reach a 10 dollar 'iPhone 4 clone' to sell by year 2020. In fact, my original theory said 10 US dollars by summer of 2019, and yes THAT schedule is still today, year 2016, on target. I am expecting my theory to start to fail, because now so may of the remaining price elements of the path are not subject to Moore's Law - the price of plastic or glass does not fall by Moore's Law; the price of battery storage does not follow Moore's Law; the price of labor in manufacturing, the price of shipping, the price of packaging, the price of retail and marketing - does not follow Moore's Law. So I am seriously expecting not to hit that 10 dollar Android 'iPhone 4 clone' in the summer of 2019, and I expect very soon we will find that we are 'falling short' of my prediction - but so far, gosh, so good. Still now, six years into this forecast, of a 9 year journey, we are ON TRACK. If that final end is a 12 dollar smartphone rather than 10; or if the resulting date for 10 dollars is summer of 2020 rather than 2019, I will take that as a 'win' - because if humanity can have the power of an original iPhone 4, sold for 10 dollars without contract, it means everybody can have a scanner in their pocket (5mp camera is good enough to do page scans). Everybody can shoot videos. Everybody has the internet in their pocket. Everybody can have precision-mapping in their pockets. This is an amazing industry. And the golden years of mobile are only now ahead of us.

PS 1 - if you were not sure why the golden years of mobile are only now starting, read this.

And PS 2 - if you need all the stats of our amazing industry, you need to get the TomiAhonen Almanac 2016 edition - it only costs 10 Euros.