Trump's Revolution

The French dealt with their Elites with the Guillotine

This is another in our series of guest posts.

We look for excellent analyses and reproduce them 

to extend their reach as far as possible.

This one is from the Wall Street Journal  

by Peggy Noonan [25 FEB 2016]

We’re in a funny moment. Those who do politics for a living, some of them quite brilliant, are struggling to comprehend the central fact Republican primary race, while regular people have already absorbed what has happened and is happening. Journalists and politicos have been sharing schemes for how Marco parlays a victory out of winning nowhere, or Ted roars back, or Kasich has to finish second in Ohio. But in my experience any nonpolitical person on the street, when asked who will win, not only knows but gets a look as if you’re teasing him.

Trump, they say.

I had such a conversation again Tuesday with a friend who repairs shoes in a shop on Lexington Avenue. Jimmy asked me, conversationally, what was going to happen. I deflected and asked who he thinks is going to win.“Troomp!” He’s a very nice man, an elderly, old-school Italian-American, but I saw impatience flick across his face: Aren’t you supposed to know these things?

In America now only normal people are capable of seeing the obvious.

But actually that’s been true for a while, and is how we got in the position we’re in.

Last October I wrote of the five stages of Trump, based on the Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Most of the professionals I know are stuck somewhere between four and five.

But I keep thinking of how Donald Trump got to be the very likely Republican nominee. There are many answers and reasons, but my thoughts keep revolving around the idea of protection. It is a theme that has been something of a preoccupation in this space over the years, but I think I am seeing it now grow into an overall political dynamic throughout the West.

There are the Protected and the Unprotected.
The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

The Protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it.

They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created.

Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

I want to call them the elite to load the rhetorical dice, but let’s stick with the Protected.

They are figures in government, politics and media. They live in nice neighborhoods, safe ones. Their families function, their kids go to good schools, they’ve got some money. All of these things tend to isolate them, or provide buffers. Some of them—in Washington it is important officials in the executive branch or on the Hill; in Brussels, significant figures in the European Union—literally have their own security details.

Because they are protected they feel they can do pretty much anything, impose any reality. They’re insulated from many of the effects of their own decisions.

Refugees: No women, no children

One issue obviously roiling the U.S. and western Europe is immigration.

It is THE issue of the moment, a real and concrete one but also a symbolic one: It stands for all the distance between governments and their citizens.

It is of course the issue that made Donald Trump.

Britain will probably leave the European Union over it.

In truth, immigration is one front in that battle, but it is the most salient because of the European refugee crisis and the failure of the protected class to address it realistically and in a way that offers safety to the unprotected.

If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration. 

You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. 

The Republicans were afraid of being called illiberal, racist, of losing a demographic for a generation. The Democrats wanted to keep the issue alive to use it as a wedge against the Republicans and to establish themselves as owners of the Hispanic vote.

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Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration—its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine—more workers at lower wages. No effect of illegal immigration was likely to hurt them personally.

It was good for the protected. But the unprotected watched and saw. They realized the protected were not looking out for them, and they inferred that they were not looking out for the country, either.

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The unprotected came to think they owed the establishment—another word for the protected—nothing, no particular loyalty, no old allegiance.

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Mr. Trump came from that.

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Similarly in Europe, citizens on the ground in member nations came to see the EU apparatus as a racket—an elite that operated in splendid isolation, looking after its own while looking down on the people.

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Not the daughter of an EU official

In Germany the incident that tipped public opinion against the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal refugee policy happened on New Year’s Eve in the public square of Cologne.

Packs of men said to be recent migrants groped and molested groups of young women. It was called a clash of cultures, and it was that, but it was also wholly predictable if any policy maker had cared to think about it.

And it was not the protected who were the victims—not a daughter of EU officials or members of the Bundestag.

It was middle- and working-class girls—the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest what had happened to them. They must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.

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What marks this political moment, in Europe and the U.S., is the rise of the unprotected. It is the rise of people who don’t have all that much against those who’ve been given many blessings and seem to believe they have them not because they’re fortunate but because they’re better.

You see the dynamic in many spheres. In Hollywood, as we still call it, where they make our rough culture, they are careful to protect their own children from its ill effects. In places with failing schools, they choose not to help them through the school liberation movement—charter schools, choice, etc.—because they fear to go up against the most reactionary professional group in America, the teachers unions. They let the public schools flounder. But their children go to the best private schools.

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This is a terrible feature of our age—that we are governed by protected people who don’t seem to care that much about their unprotected fellow citizens.

And a country really can’t continue this way.

In wise governments the top is attentive to the realities of the lives of normal people, and careful about their anxieties. That’s more or less how America used to be. There didn’t seem to be so much distance between the top and the bottom.

Now is seems the attitude of the top half is: You’re on your own. Get with the program, little racist.

Social philosophers are always saying the underclass must re-moralize. Maybe it is the overclass that must re-moralize.

I don’t know if the protected see how serious this moment is, or their role in it.

CIA - Obama's Marketing Team?

CIA HQ: No Moles Allowed; just Hollywood Film Crews

Click here for related story [Xfinity]

One of our National Treasures!

We learn today that the Administration is collaborating with Hollywood to exploit the SEAL Team Six raid which terminated Osama bin Laden with Extreme Prejudice. 

Worse, it is the Administration that has opened the doors to the CIA and the Pentagon to let Hollywood scriptwriters and cameramen wander the halls, capturing images of CIA officers, assigned and visiting, and visually documenting access procedures.

Peter King: Chair, Homeland Security

According to Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King [R-NY], the film-makers were granted "...extremely close, unprecedented and potentially dangerous collaboration... from the Administration."

Judicial Watch disclosed that documents they obtained through the FOIA revealed that the film-makers met with the White House and were also granted access to "The Vault" where the Osama raid was reportedly planned.

 
We try not to reveal the existence, much less the location of our most sensitive installations at all, much less to Hollywood filmsters -- who now know the location and the details of the building.

Libby: Tried & Convicted by Media

So, when Scooter Libby identified the leak [Joe Wilson] of sensitive information to the NY Times as the husband of a CIA admin officer, the Democrats proclaim that he outed a CIA operative.

That would be Valerie Plame, whose status as a covert officer was that she used, as did all CIA personnel on international travel, a cover identity.

But,she was just a CIA paper pusher  -- a higher pay grade than the janitor or security guard, but with about as much access and classified activity.

Nonetheless, both the New York Times and the Washington Post declared her to be a COVERT OPERATIVE, so, it must be true!

 

CIA Entrance [NBC Photo]

In the past, a number of Hollywood films have included the entrance foyer to the CIA so they could film the CIA logo on the floor.

But, the lobby was their limit, and only on weekends when CIA officers were not visible.

 

So, when I press this button, the soldiers shoot him in the face?  (c) Bossip

The Administration is desperately trying to exploit the raid on Osama's house in Pakistan so he can pretend to have participated; as we recall, the Secret Service had to drag him off the golf course so he could be on hand to sign the order for, and witness the assault and execution of Osama.

His presence was necessary since the POTUS must sign and Executive Action order -- i.e., the execution of a foreign national leader of significant prominence.

(c) guim

We are surprised at General Petraeus, the current Director of the CIA, for going along with this security breach.  Then again, we suspect he was the best person for "damage control" given the circumstances.
 
On the other hand, we have Leon Panetta in charge of the Pentagon, so, we can assume any secrets there have been fully disclosed to Hollywood.

 
When it comes to national security, it seems this Administration has less self-control than Jack Kennedy, whose distribution of state secrets ended with his visit to Dallas.

There is no telling how many years it will take to undo the damage to our national security once the Administration changes in January.

[UPDATE  CIA is now tasked with spinning the legend that Moscow hacked tens of thousands of voting machines throughout the US to elect Donald Trump.  That of course, flies in the face of the hundreds of Soros  programmed voting machines placed in key urban centers where Hillary was awarded 100% of the vote - a statistical impossibility.  But, keep in mind, Brennan is now in charge of the CIA, and he's been Mr Obama's puppet for quite some time, and will do as he's told -- to the frustration of CIA analysts and operatives]

Is Ted A Cuban Citizen?

Of course I love my philandering husband, all the way to the White House.  

Excited as we were to read all the lucid details of Cruz's extramarital dalliances with women of questionable character [yawn], we became privy to family details of which were previously unaware.

Specifically, we were drawn back to that tired old issue of Ted's citizenship.

The scandal mongering stories led to other stories which revealed that Ted's dad, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, was one of Fidel Castro's lieutenants in the "revolution" against Batista -- but, he advises he "escaped" Cuba in 1957 [and not 1960] and didn't know Castro was a Communist.

Rafael B Cruz - Dad

Apparently though, those who knew him well challenge the timing of his departure, and his ignorance of Castro's Communist affiliation and Soviet Union support. Entertaining as that tale was, we rethought the awkward issue of Ted's citizenship.

The common defensive argument on Cruz's citizenship has been that Ted was born to American parents in Canada; therefore, he can claim US citizenship.

 We have some expert knowledge in this type of issue, since my son, who was born in Asia, claims US citizenship; however, that citizenship status required my appearing at the Consulate and signing an official declaration; I also had to show the birth certificates and marriage certificate of my wife and me, plus our US passports.

However, it appears that was not the process which Ted's dad - or mom followed, even though Ted and my son were born in the same year -- thus the diplomatic affirmation process would have been precisely the same.

 Was Ted's dad a US Citizen?  Well, not really.  Although Ted's dad was granted US political asylum in 1961, there is no documentation that he ever became a US citizen prior to 2005 [somewhat after Ted's birth].

Oops!

It seems Daddy, a Cuban, emigrated to the US somewhere between 1957 and 1961, worked in the Austin, worked his way through college,  married and divorced a woman [Julia Ann Garza], moved to Calgary after 1969 and became a Canadian citizen; he and his wife [Eleanor E.D. Wilson], an oil company computer programmer who then produced little Ted in December 1970; they divorced in 1997, and it is unclear when he returned to the US -- or when he received his epiphany to become a Born Again Christian and an Evangelical Minister.

Interestingly, throughout this religious transformation, Daddy Cruz waited until 2005 to renounce his Canadian citizenship and apply for status as a "naturalized citizen" -- which was then granted.

Now, if Ted were born in Canada of an American mom, and a Cuban dad with Canadian citizenship, that does call into question his claim to US citizenship, much the same as critics have constantly questioned Obama's citizenship.

For Ted to have US citizenship, it can be argued that him mom's US citizenship would have been passed to her son; but, that would have required her to have appeared at the US Embassy or Consulate to declare her son as a US citizen; but, that would have required dad's birth certificate, and their marriage certificate, and US passports.

At best, Daddy Cruz would have had only a US Green Card, but no US passport, and the Consular official would likely have not accepted Ted as a US citizen, nor would he have created such a birthright document.

But, that issue could be cleared up instantly, should anyone actually ask, through the US State Department records which record and store all documentation of US citizens born abroad.

Now, when Obama was asked by a reporter how he could run for Senator and not be a US citizen, Obama replied "I don't have to be a US citizen", after which, all those who questioned Obama's citizenship were labeled Birthers and condemned as racists --
and investigations into his birthplace were ended.

But, now we have another Birther issue.

Candidate Cruz in Havana?

It would appear that, based on Ted's father's citizenship issues, Ted would be a Cuban citizen, or a Canadian citizen.

Claiming mom's US citizenship, without the documentation from the US Embassy in Canada pretty much leaves him a Canadian citizen by birth, or a Cuban citizen by heritage.

But, very likely, not a US Citizen.

We'll need clarification from the State Department.