More Droppings on the 2016 Campaign Trail

Right From the Start

Trump’s Bromance With Putin

I am fascinated by the media’s obsession with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s views of Russian President Vladmir Putin. The media narrative is that Mr. Trump “admires” Mr. Putin and by implication would yield to Mr. Putin’s ambitions. In a word, “Bullsh*t.”

We know this is just campaign rhetoric emanating from the Hillary Clinton smear campaign because of how dutifully every Democrat and every mainstream media personality uses the exact same words to describe Mr. Trump. And we know that it is the height of hypocrisy by the Clinton camp given how often President Barack Obama (with Ms. Clinton as his Secretary of State) knuckled under to Mr. Putin’s demands, stretching from the “reset” fiasco, through the Syrian “red line,” through the invasion of the Crimea, through the Iran nuclear giveaway, through the Russian sale of missile technology to Iran, up to the most recent outrage where Mr. Obama’s newest Secretary of State, John Kerry caved into all of the Russian demands regarding the latest attempt at a cease fire in Syria – the net result being our abandonment of the Syrian rebels which will leave them no choice but to join ISIS after which we have agreed to attack them in conjunction with Russian and Syrian forces. What a leader we have!

The drumbeat of this Democrat narrative has become so routine that the media searches for people who might engage in “one-up-manship” in its telling – like the moron on Anderson Cooper’s 360 who opined that it was proof that Mr. Trump admires strongmen, despots and dictators because he wants to be one also. What an idiot!

But, regardless of the Clinton smear, the press has missed the whole point of what Mr. Trump is saying. Here is a sampling of quotes (including how they were headlined) from the pro-Clinton CNN attempting to prove the Clinton spin:

“December 2011: Trump praised Putin’s “intelligence” and “no-nonsense way” in his book “Time to Get Tough.”
“Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe,” Trump said. “I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much…Hats off to the Russians.”

* * *
“October 2013: Trump says Putin is outsmarting the US
“I think he’s done really a great job of outsmarting our country,” Trump told Larry King after Putin successfully dissuaded the US from striking Syria by arranging with the US for the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons.
* * *

And even MSNBC has rung in:

“December 18, 2015: Donald Trump lavishes praise on ‘leader’ Putin.
“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” (Trump to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough).

The terms “praising” and “admiring” are the commentators’ words – not Mr. Trump’s. In point of fact, Mr. Trump is contrasting a strong leader in Mr. Putin to a feckless leader like Mr. Obama. You don’t have to like or admire someone to acknowledge their strengths and Mr. Putin is obviously a strong, ruthless leader focused single-mindedly on the advancement of Russia to its old “Cold War” might. I don’t like Mr. Putin and I don’t like his ambitions but I don’t dismiss his effectiveness (even if it comes at the point of a gun). That’s not approval, admiration or praise – that is reality.

Clinton Dismisses Voters

Shades of Barack Obama who in April of 2008 dismissed voters in the heartland of the country by stating:

“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I would like to be able to say that even Ms. Clinton recognized how condescending those remarks were when she noted in The Guardian:

“’I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said on Saturday. ‘His remarks are elitist and out of touch.’ Clinton campaigners in North Carolina handed out stickers saying: ‘I’m not bitter.”

But we know that everything Mr. Clinton says is carefully scripted and it was just another “teleprompter” response:

Now we know that Ms. Clinton actually feels the same way. According to the Los Angeles Times she said at a recent New York fund raiser:

“During brief remarks at the LGBT for Hillary Gala in lower Manhattan, Clinton called ‘half’ of those supporting the Republican nominee a ‘basket of deplorables.’
“’Right?’ she said to laughter from attendees, which included entertainer Barbra Streisand. ‘The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.’”

But Ms. Clinton simply reflects the opinion of the Democrat elites who view those with whom they disagree as some sort of intellectual inferior country bumpkins given to nose picking and gaseous attacks. That’s pretty funny given how intellectually bankrupt the Democrat party has been for the last three decades. It continues to live on a two-point program – blame America first, and spend more on failing programs.

Hillary’s Health

Ms. Clinton was helped out of 9/11 event in New York on Sunday. The New York Times reported:

“Hillary Clinton struggled to stand as she abruptly left the 9/11 memorial ceremony Sunday morning — a health scare her campaign blamed on overheating.
“The incident follows months of rumors from GOP rivals about Clinton’s supposed health problems, which she and her reps have taken pains to deny.
The Democratic presidential nominee left the 15th anniversary event around 9:30 a.m., departing in a van on the sidelines of the memorial in Manhattan.

* * *

“A video from a Twitter user seemed to show Clinton struggling on the way out. The 20-second clip shows Clinton’s knees buckling as she steps toward a van, flanked by security detail. She appears to fall toward the ground as guards help her into the vehicle.”

It’s not the first time Ms. Clinton has experienced health problems. On May 14, 2014 ABC News reporter Mary Burnes noted:

“Bill Clinton did more today than defend his wife, Hillary Clinton, from recent accusations leveled by GOP strategist Karl Rove that she suffered brain damage after in December 2012.

“The former president revealed that his wife’s injury “required six months of very serious work to get over,” he said during a question-and-answer session at the Peterson Foundation in Washington.
“’They went to all this trouble to say she had staged what was a terrible concussion that required six months of very serious work to get over,’ he said. ‘It’s something she never low-balled with the American people, never tried to pretend it didn’t happen.’”

Back then, even while dissembling about her putative conditions as a “concussion” Mr. Clinton revealed the seriousness of her actual condition – a thrombotic stroke. More importantly, while Mr. Clinton claimed that Ms. Clinton never “low-balled” her condition to the American people, she continued to be less than forthcoming about what actually happened and the medical precursors that led to that inevitable stroke.

Ms. Clinton has had other thrombotic episodes. She had a deep vein thrombosis in 1998 and another in 2009. The first venus thrombotic incident was a predictor of subsequent incidents – two of which have already occurred. In a March 2000 Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) Dr. Per-Olof Hansson noted:

“The recurrence rate after a symptomatic DVT is high. Patients with proximal DVT, diagnosed cancer, short duration of oral anticoagulation therapy, or a history of thromboembolic events had a higher risk of recurrent events, while patients with postoperative DVT had a lower recurrence rate. This knowledge could help identify patients who might benefit most from prolonged prophylactic treatment in various risk situations.”

In other words, Ms. Clinton is at greater risk of a subsequent stroke than the average citizen. The facts that she will be sixty-nine in 2016, that she is primarily sedentary and that she is participating in a high stress campaign (and an even more stressful position if she is elected President of the United States) simply increases the risk even more.

Returning now to Ms. Clinton’s current medical problem, we know that we cannot rely on the assurances of her personal physician as to Ms. Clinton’s medical condition since she herself has declined in the past to acknowledge Ms. Clinton’s stroke. We also know that the first story by Ms. Clinton is always a lie. In point of fact, Ms. Clinton’s story had changed four times before sundown on Monday – first it was “overheated”, then it was dehydration, then it was pneumonia, and finally in an interview with Anderson Cooper she acknowledged that this was just the latest in what is described as rare but recurring incidents of fainting. And, in typical Clinton fashion, she has promised to release additional medical information – not the totality of her medical history, particularly the neurological scans – just what she elects to provide – and she will be less than forthcoming. Ms. Clinton, should release her full medical records to a panel of independent physicians for evaluation and comment on her health. The presidency is too important to leave to chance that someone has neither “the strength nor the stamina” to fulfill its obligations.

Maybe Mr. Trump could trade his tax returns for Ms. Clinton’s complete medical records – but then again, based on Ms. Clinton’s past you could never be sure you were getting the real or complete package.

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