Getting Comfy for the Pre-Debate Landslide

In most cases I tend to write off when the Mainstream Media try to hype events. Any sort of "most watched event" or "must see showdown" I ignore as I have no desire to give them my viewership or money for something that inevitably falls short of their sensationalist headlining. That said, I am making an exception for the first presidential debate tonight. If only because for once I actually am feeling rather hyped up for an event. Here it is finally, Trump and Hillary in the same room actually speaking to each other. I can't believe it took so long for Hillary to steel herself.

Still, I am legitimately trying not to hype myself up too much. This is Trump's game to lose and I fully expect some surprises to come out of Hillary's corner. At the same time, I do expect the Nimble Navigator to deflect most of them and hone in on actual issues. Hillary's tendency for long-winded roundabout answers will play off rather terribly against Trump's simple snappy responses. Even if it is Trump's game to lose, I expect him to come out of the debate looking even better than before despite the inevitable whining and "fact-checking" the MSM will be doing for the rest of the week. Like others have pointed out by now, the question no longer seems to be if Trump will win; now we are asking by how much he will win.

Lester Holt will undoubtedly try to pry his way into the debate as a participant, especially with the Clinton campaign and a decent percentage of the voters asking him to fact-check Trump's lies. A rather bizarre thing for a moderator to do but not all that worrisome. If Holt is extra hard on one candidate and not the other, this will only help Trump as this will confirm our preconceived persuasions of media bias. Liberals may whine about party lines and point out that Lester Holt is registered as a Republican voter, but the man's a known softball reporter. All anyone needs to do is take a look at Lester Holt's "unbiased" reporting history to see who he favors.

Beyond Lester Holt's obvious biases, other persuasion tactics will certainly be at work tonight. Take a look at the great seal imagery used in this debate prep, the American Bald Eagle clutching his arrows and olive branch. Anyone who knows US imagery can immediately see that the arrows and olive branch have been flipped. Conspiracy theorists can have fun trying to figure out if this means we're signalling whether or not the US is preparing for war, but persuasion theorists should take note here too. Who do the arrows of war point to on the stage? Who does the olive branch hang over to signify the peaceful one? Very subtle persuasion at play here and certainly purposeful; the objects held in the talons are never switched accidentally. We can fully expect lots of the usual "dark and dangerous" talk that helped Hillary earlier this year. This weekend's higher than usual violence will almost certainly be used by both sides and I also expect Hillary will try to spin the madness unfolding in Syria to her favor as well.

All of that being said, I cannot wait for the proverbial fur to fly tonight. I'm going to be comfy tonight gents; who else is ready for the beatdown?

Preparing for the Apocalypse

As the first US presidential debate draws ever closer, I'm noticing that we as American citizens seem to be dividing into two camps across the battle lines. Normally this wouldn't be unusual. After the summer months of campaigning and policy reveals, everyone usually gets settled into their choices by the time the first debates roll around. The debates help solidify the choices of those people who already know who they're going to vote for and maybe help convince the undecided along the way. Yet there's a noticeable difference going into this debate. Perhaps it's just me in my own deplorable corners of the web, but I'm hardly seeing the battle lines one would usually expect. There's no, "Oh yes, Hillary will steamroll through Trump, she has this in the bag!" to go alongside the frequently touted, "Trump's going to win so hard we're going to get tired of winning!" Has anyone else noticed this?

Where is Hillary's ardent support? Most people I see say something along the lines of, "Well, both candidates are equally bad" or, "Whoever wins, we're screwed, it's like the apocalypse is really happening". There's a definite feeling of pessimism settling in on the other side. The liberal left can decry Trump for all of his perceived shortcomings, but in the end they remain unable to look at their own candidate for any positivity. Hillary has had months to hammer out her policies and sharpen her image without any Bolshevik upstart coming in to sweep away the youngsters' votes. The problem is that there has been no image to sharpen. No matter how much behind the scenes rigging Hillary pulls off, no matter how many elites she is able to buy for her stable, no matter how many desperate millennials she hires to correct the record - she is unable to properly hide her true colors from the American public.

Frankly I'm not sure how anyone thought she could hide herself from us. Months ago when she waved off the "vast right wing conspiracies" by saying that she had dealt with them for 30-odd years, I didn't find that reassuring in the slightest. All that told me is that she has skeletons going back throughout her entire political career and no one's successfully lived to tell people about them. Skeletons pile up though. And after three presidential candidate runs, all the laundry's aired out for everyone to see. Even if every single accusation thrown against her was undeniably false, that's still two generations of accusations stacked up against... what? What is her legacy? We all know her supposed legacy; that's the problem.

Yet even despite having to wade through piles of skeletons, Hillary continues to press on in her own way. Her own way is what I believe has finally led to all of this open pessimism. It's too easy nowadays to see that her way means hiding from the press, lying about her health, perhaps even being too unhealthy to serve and seemingly being too fearful to face the American people, let alone the challenges that come with being president. The truth is nobody really wants Hillary as president, not even the Dems who were saddled with her. Her failing health and newfound low energy only serves to give reason for all the Undecided to finally admit they were going to vote for the other guy all along. After all, they can't just waste a vote for someone who might die the first year they're elected.

But there is an apocalypse brewing with some immense political fallout likely to occur. Most of us expect some bombshell leaks will drop around the time of the first debate to give Trump some fresh ammo and send Hillary reeling. I fully expect this myself, though I don't think Assange and Guccifer 2.0 are the only ones in the leak game. If Roger Stone is to be believed, someone recently broke into Trump's campaign HQ to steal some rather sensitive data. Ten bucks says the Mainstream Media won't blame the Russians for this one, if they mention it at all. But most of my money is betting on MSM and the globalist elites crafting a narrative about newly found Russian support for Trump right around the same time that our eagerly awaited Wikileaks files drop.

This isn't so farfetched. I've already mentioned how Zero Hedge realized that this would be a perfect ploy for them to pull on us if Trump wins the election. I believe it could happen earlier though, especially given recent events in Syria. Consider how everything we've done in Syria lately has involved us throwing the blame on our Russian friends. We accidentally bomb a Syrian city? Well Russia gave us the go ahead, so they set us up. Someone blows up our aid trucks? The Russians were watching it happen, so they must be in on it. Anti-Russian sentiment is nothing new, but it's certainly hitting new lows as of late. RT may be statist-operated news, but I imagine many other Americans agree with their questioning of America's Middle Eastern policy. Anyone who bothers looking beyond the usual MSM reporting will find that our actions in Syria are utterly bewildering and nonsensical. Unless of course, we're trying to set Russia up for a fall and take Trump down with them.

Some may accuse me of being a concern shill or a defeatist. I admit to being concerned, though I would argue my concern is more that we should be warier than ever of the false narratives that will be built. We must not let the enemy surprise us, not when the stakes for the future of our civilization are so high. We must also be especially prepared to counter the arguments our globalist friends will use built from these false narratives.  The MSM and the globalists are losing ground, ground that we cannot let them recover. Trump is most certainly winning and I have little doubt he can shirk off whatever is thrown at him, but if the left expects us to get comfortable and sit at home while he wins, then they have another thing coming. In these final days our swords must be at their most sharp and our eyes at their most watchful. An apocalypse is absolutely coming and I for one am relishing it.

A Forum-less Forum

The Commander-in-Chief Forum was somewhat ill-named as it was little more than a prettily packaged press event with pre-fielded questions and a highly controlled environment. The existence of the CiC Forum actually seems to be a bit of an oddity, because I can't really see a good reason to have it. Perhaps the NBC Network is seeing it as a whetting of the appetite, a preparation of sorts for the debates later this month. I'm thinking it's more that Hillary's campaign and even Trump's campaign are testing the waters though. Hillary's people want to see how she can hold up under the lights, the people and the pressure.

To her credit, Hillary actually performed better than she has in quite a while. No coughing, no hacking, no horrible balls of yellow phlegm. She seemed more focused and even stood occasionally during her talking, as if to make a specific point about her health. I still had several issues with her half of the forum however. I didn't really find her speech very persuasive. I'm sure Scott Adams will have much to say on this matter, but for me personally, she came off as a bit confusing. She tells us to pay attention to her record right before saying that she wouldn't do what she did in the past. What part of the record are we to pay attention to then? She says she wouldn't do the private email server again. She says she wouldn't do the Iraqi War again. But then she cites her handling of information and her ability to handle international conflicts as good points. It's conflicting.

And despite Matt Lauer telling both candidates to try to stick to their own selling points other than attacking the other candidate, Hillary couldn't seem to help but tie in how Trump would do things bad compared to her. Good for a debate but not a forum. Her actual talking was also very long-winded and at times she seemed to almost pad or drag out her answers to the pre-fielded questions. Perhaps intentional, perhaps not. To me she really seemed to be struggling to sell herself. A very telling point was when she snapped at Matt Lauer who was trying to push on to the next question. A quick burst of anger reared its head as she demanded she be let a chance to finish her thought. Not very reassuring.

She made another very odd remark later that, for me, was the opposite of reassuring. When Matt Lauer asked the pointed question of whether or not she could promise the American people that they would be safe from terrorism on our soil, she replied that was not a promise that she could make. In one sense it's true; she probably would be unable to guarantee the safety of every American just by sheer probability factors. But no American wants to hear that. We want reassurance of some safety. It felt very odd that she phrased her response that way. Perhaps she was getting tired towards the end.

Now I'm going to be a bit biased here, but I feel that Trump handled his half of the forum much better. He opened it well with a good quip to keep Lauer off-guard and remained mostly in control of the conversation flow afterwards. That's a good thing to see in a presidential candidate. He was also very polite to everyone, thanking them for their questions and repeatedly stating his respect for various people in the military. He managed to breeze through most of the questions, giving sharp and succinct answers. I noticed that Trump actually managed to answer more questions than Hillary and wrapped up sooner than she did.

I feel there may have been a few missteps though. I question Trump's proposal that we should have kept soldiers in Iraq to safeguard the oil reserves from power vacuums. In theory it's probably good, but I foresee a lot of Mainstream Media tearing apart his remark that, "To the victors go the spoils, right?" That sounds power-hungry and manipulative, dangerous even. We don't want to see dangerous right now, just safe and secure. But maybe I'm wrong, we'll see.

One other good thing I saw that Trump had over Hillary - his family was there in the audience to support him. That's a very good thing to see, it shows unity and togetherness, things usually seen as very American. I don't believe Bill or Chelsea were there for Hillary, though I may have missed them.

In terms of NBC's handling of the whole event, it was passable. Both Hillary and Trump were asked fairly direct and challenging questions, though there was a definite tailoring of the questions for each candidate. Lauer continually tried to catch Trump saying he would be besties with Putin, perhaps in preparation for an election con, but Trump managed to sweep most of it aside easily. There were also a few odd moments like where a question was fielded from a military woman and the audience erupted into clapping. I'm not sure why they clapped only for her when many others also asked good questions. It seems Sue Fulton is more important somehow.

Whoever may have been more important, the winner here is the American people. We all got an excellent chance to compare Hillary and Trump's speaking styles and some of their foreign policies and military plans. It will definitely be interesting to watch over the next couple days to see how the Mainstream Media tells us to treat this event.

The Crumbling Facade of a King

Well, President Obama would like to think himself a king I believe. For awhile I think we all wanted him to be a king as well. Some may balk at this idea, but they can't deny the almost mesmerizing effect he seemed to hold over the US and global populace during his first presidential run. He could seemingly do no wrong. Questions about his birth were swept aside as conspiratorial or racist, questions about his leadership ability were laid to rest as racist - really, most criticisms were easily hammered out as "racist". So he was popular, hugely so, and he rode his wave of popularity to an easy second term.

Somewhere along the way, cracks began to appear in the facade. I wish I had paid enough attention to politics years ago that I could point out when exactly these cracks began to appear. I think some people knew there was a problem all the way back in 2010 with the passing of the Affordable Care Act. There is a distinct difference between knowing a problem exists and seeing a problem however. Many people knew the government bailout programs for the Wall Street banks were bad, though few among the average American citizen could directly reason why. At the time, everyone else was saying these programs were good. Obamacare was good. We could all keep our healthcare plans, remember? The worrying and fretting seemed silly, like an elderly woman fussing about the shape of clouds in a sky wondering if her arthritis will be affected. Everything was fine, Obama was the most popular president ever among the US people and even citizens around the world. He could do no wrong.

Then 2013 came and everyone lost their healthcare plans. Snowden blew the whistle on the US spying on its own citizens. Benghazi was fresh in everyone's minds. Cracks. But it was fine -- Obama was still the most likable fellow around. The popularity polls wouldn't lie after all. Obama wouldn't lie. No, it was those damn conservatives (this was still a bit before the alt-right boogeyman really rose into prominence) and their backwards ways. So we all focused on correcting those backwards ways and worked on implementing some social equality. All that needed to be done was that one half of the country needed to fix the other half. I'd like to say that the US began waking up to the fact that something wasn't quite right around this time when groupthink began being enforced less surreptitiously than it had in the years past. Though perhaps that's just me extending my own realizations to the rest of the country, so it's maybe not quite a fair assessment. Still, it's a position I'll hold since I believe many other young people my age could probably point to around this time when they began to see that something was severely off-kilter about their world.

The strange thing to me is that years later, the facade is still being propped up and defended with an almost religious fervor. The Mainstream Media still preaches Obama's incredible popularity here in the US and abroad. As he continues to spend his days golfing and snorkeling, he can seem to do no wrong. Even as the Chinese snub his arrival for the G20 summit... and roll out the red carpet for Putin. Even as Duterte humorously rants against him and his imperialistic aims. Even as the Brits blanch at the idea of him telling them how to vote for their Brexit. Even as the Japanese largely shrug at his "apology" over Hiroshima and ask when the US will ever leave Okinawa and stop raping their women. Even as the Puerto Ricans bemoan the austerity measures forced upon them.

Even as the American people wake up and realize their country is being sold piecemeal from under their feet.

The king turned out to be a king after all I suppose, King George III.