The GOP’s Donald Trump nightmare may soon get a whole lot worse (TPP)

What I absolutely disagreed with was the entire concept of calling this treaty an “agreement” rather than what it is, in order to subvert the constitutional requirement of 2/3 approval for treaties.

Our lawmakers seem to spend much of their time devising lawbreaking...or at least law-avoidance.

(Your first paragraph to me confirms my own observation and helps me justify my continued stand with Cruz so far, even in this his questionable legislative move.)

I said above that “it all revolves around the debt” and where it went. You were also correct in your excellent summary about the growth of corporate executive pay through bonuses and stock options. That money, a very significant amount, also went into the markets as you stated.

Again, the spending only benefits the few (executives/banks) at the expense of many (workers and the communities in which they reside) as their jobs were outsourced. The executives benefit even as they believe they are promoting capitalism and doing what is in the interest of their companies/stock with little consideration of their workers. They believe they are capitalist just as we believe if we are conservative Republicans we are capitalist. However, capitalism is not premised on destroying the host for profit. The government has even stepped in to help the transfer of jobs out of our nation through laws and regulations that make it more expensive to employ Americans and operate in America.

What a farce we have been sold. We think we are supporting capitalism and America. The left thinks they are supporting the poor. Entitlement spending is out of control and even while the left seeks more spending, it is only a drop in the bucket compared to the real theft that is close to 10 trillion dollars. Nothing changes for the majority of Americans despite historic levels of spending- even as we are all on the hook for the borrowed money. Everything is funneled to the market - the government retirement system, private retirement funds, executive bonuses, and the banksters get a percentage of everything.

When the real market can’t support the growth they need through real economic activity they simply have the Fed pump trillions into the system to keep siphoning off of the lie. It’s truly criminal what has happened to our country. It’s not ideology, it’s theft. They have screwed us and it seems far beyond our ability to fix because our nation is so divided over the issues they have created as distractions to hide the crime.

I am not a conspiracy theorist either, I just think we (the people) allowed the system to become what it is today. Everything is funneled to the market, but the part we rarely talk about is the debt - far bigger than everything else and seemingly hidden from our eyes.

The effort to destroy Trump is only beginning. The big money is relying on the GOPe and the media to bring him down right now and frankly, Trump may help them because he can be a loose cannon and many (including me) fear that he may self-destruct.

This morning, the talking heads on Li'l Chuckie Todd's MTP propaganda show laughed repeatedly and loudly at every mention of Trump's name...very plainly always in derision.

The talking points have been melded into a narrative, the scripts have been sent to all actors involved, and the destruction of Trump in the media has begun in earnest as of today.

Yep, as I wrote above. Trump is a threat to the banksters, the globalists, and politicians owned by both who have siphoned off tens of billions from the trillions that we have poured into a black hole. Trump is right about job losses and the underlying cause, but he threatens a system that is far bigger than just jobs/manufacturing - this is money like the world has never seen before.

Trump played their game and played it well, but he is right - it is a game that is not for America and the American people - it’s for the few. He is the biggest threat to them right now.

“What a lie we have been sold! On paper (like communism) it should have worked based on what we were told. It has not.”

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my post.

I stood in line for 5 hours in 2004 to vote for the reelection of George W. Bush. The Democrats who controlled the state at the time made sure the voters being bussed to the polls in minority precincts were efficiently processed while undermanning conservative precincts so Republican voters would go home instead of standing in long lines. Upon reflection, I wasted my time.

The two Bush terms did it for me with respect to any belief in the system. I watched Bush deliberately push non-entity jurists (Roberts and Miers) to fill Supreme Court vacancies and decline to put up a real fight for Miguel Estrada’s appointment to the court of appeals. I saw him fail to protect the border, push amnesty, and substitute a “virtual” border fence for the physical border fence Congress mandated. I watched him pass new “free trade” legislation costing millions of American jobs. After 9/11 he shamefully called Islam the “religion of peace” and then publicly held hands with a Saudi prince. He used the 9/11 tragedy to pass the abominable “Patriot Act” and set up the oppressive Department of Homeland Security. He squandered the balanced budget he inherited by putting his veto pen away while the corrupt Hastert and Frist led Republican Congress went on an obscene deficit spending spree. After Katrina, he went missing in action, declining to respond to any partisan attack no matter how vicious and false. Under his watch, Ben Bernanke became Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and Goldman Sachs Chairman of the Board Henry Paulson the Secretary of the Treasury. All in time for a manufactured financial crisis in September 2008. No one has ever explained what nations, institutions, or individuals precipitated the sudden run on the US banks resulting in the near collapse of the global financial system. Bush and his henchmen had to know, yet those hidden actors were never identified, much less tried on RICO and securities charges. His successor, Obama, who frequently speaks out against the wealthy special interests has demonstrated a similar reluctance to out and prosecute the real villains.

If Republicans were supposed to be the defenders of free enterprise, I knew when Bush completely abdicated management of the 2008 financial crisis to Bernanke, Paulson, and Geithner the system was totally corrupt given he was turning over the chicken coop to the foxes and snakes. True to form, these Wall Street insiders shamelessly bailed out the New York banking cartel on the backs of the American taxpayer. Instead of taking the less expensive route of covering FDIC insured accounts with tax money and forcing the big banks to break up and reorganize in bankruptcy, Bush’s team exploded the deficit and expanded the money supply with bailouts and later the ill conceived TARP program. Instead of making the bank bondholders, shareholders, and management take the financial haircut for their reckless behavior, the US Treasury was raided to make them whole. The overburdened taxpayers not only took on trillions more in debt, many lost their jobs, homes, and savings in the months that followed.

Two years after the crash Goldman Sachs and the other taxpayer bailed out big banks were paying billions in management bonuses again to top executives while the nation was mired in an economic depression. At that time I concluded the president and the party did not matter. Bush was clearly not an independent actor, he was a puppet dancing on a string. Every action he took, or didn’t take, during his last four years in office seems to have been part of a master plan to put Obama in office.

Trump fully understands the corruption in business and government as he has built a huge business dealing with the corrupt Wall Street investment firms and politicians at every level. I’m not yet convinced, but I would like to believe, he understands rarely do institutions reform themselves. Reform almost always comes with revolution or collapse, not with tinkering. The only time corrupt institutions reform themselves is when a fearless, passionate, and skillful leader empowered by the people to make painful changes and overcome the powerful interests.

I doubt Trump really understands the philosophy underlying the founding of the nation, or the brilliance of the Constitution as written. However he seems to have an innate sense of evil and the need to crush the powerful interests allied against the republic and the people. While intellectually Cruz may seem the better leader, he lacks the personality and sheer force of will embodied in Trump. Plus, Trump is a take no prisoners fighter who knows how to hire the right people to do a job.

If Trump is who I hope he is, he will put like minded fighters into cabinet positions, instead of retread political hacks, and will do everything he can to shake up the entrenched bureaucracy. With capable people, and control of the IRS, FBI, and NSA files, someone with the take no prisoners fighting spirit of Trump may be able to goad the special interest controlled politicians in Congress to actually do some work to roll back the tyrannical socialist state.

If Trump is real, he may be the last hope of a Republic heading for economic and social collapse. He may even be the last hope of western civilization. If Trump is just another tool of the shadowy figures behind the curtain, then the barbarians are at the gates and the guardians are consciously handing them the key.

As to your comment on Elizabeth Warren, I also agree with her there is a need for intervention to protect the consumer against “too big to fail” financial institutions empowered by the corrupted political system to fleece the people. Her remedies though are draconian and tyrannical, putting even more power in the hands of the politicians and bureaucrats who continuously fail us.

The prescription for fixing the system, by returning to founding principles, will require another post. One of my biggest fears about Trump is he does not have the philosophical and religious education our founders benefited from when they established the Republic. I can only hope if he reaches the office he is pursuing he has enough self awareness to know he will need intellectuals like Cruz to help him downsize the government, restore the power of the states, and return the three federal branches to equal status.

In this time of despair I take some hope in a quote from Winston Churchill. “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.”

Thank you.

In this time of despair I take some hope in a quote from Winston Churchill. “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.”

You nailed it again. Let us pray that our nation wakes up if it is not too late. So many voters have been conditioned to look to the problem (gov’t) for the solution to everything. However, there are forces of influence on our government that serve their own interests (not the peoples) and as long as the electorate are stuck in the illusion nothing will change and they will continue to rob our children of the future.

Saving your excellent post, SoTS.

Thanks. I wish more folks could look at these issues for more than a bumper sticker slogan.

I’m still onboard with Cruz, and have been quite happy with my vote for him as my senator so far. I honestly can’t think of another politician that I can say that about.

ut I cannot do without full employment for my fellow Americans, producing world class high quality products.

Put protective tariffs back and watch new American manufacturers blossom, staffed by millions of......robots.

It's just like requiring a $15/hour wage at McDonalds, but you can't see it.

The days of millions of American men turning bolts on the washing machine assembly line, or snapping vacuum tubes into that conveyor belt of TV sets, are, simply. over.

And what we have to do is figure out how to sustain living standards in an economy in which those sorts of jobs continue to disappear.

Automation is the future and robotics will become the norm for many actions now performed by unskilled or low skill workers. It is not if, but when.

It makes our intake of poor immigrants all the more foolish......