Zero Hedge:
If there was a time Hillary needed to make a public appearance in the key battleground state of North Carolina to drum up voter support, it was today, if for no other reason than a just released Elon University poll finding Trump now has a modest 44% advantage among likely voters in the Tar Heel State, with 43% going to Clinton.
...Which is why we find it surprising that with Hillary's desperately needing to make an appearance, overnight CBS reported that Clinton campaign officials said that a Tuesday fundraiser in Chapel Hill was postponed.
...No reason was given for postponement of the Clinton event, which was planned to take place at the home of Betty Craven and Michael Warner.
Is Hillary's health once again becoming an issue?Valid question.
Here's another one: If Hillary was having serious health problems, do you think she would cancel her campaign, or even let the public know? I think not. She is this close to becoming the "first woman president". Even if she only served for a day, she wants that title badly.
On the other hand...
CNN:
To be honest, I suspected this when the whole tax return issue came up.Trump is faking his net worth. He's not as rich as he would have us believe + a bad businessman. That's why we can't see his tax returns.— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) September 20, 2016
However, "Dingy Harry" Reid doesn't have a good track record with this sort of thing. From the Washington Examiner:
Harry Reid, D-Nev. has no regrets about his 2012 claims that then presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years.
The outgoing Senate Minority Leader even bragged to CNN that the comments, which had been described as McCarthyism, helped keep Romney from winning the election.
"They can call it whatever they want. Romney didn't win did he?" Reid said during a wide-ranging interview.
So, in Reid's world, it is perfectly acceptable to make a defamatory charge against an opponent to damage his campaign.
Reid first made the accusation against the former Massachusetts governor in a 2012 interview with the Huffington Post. At the time, Reid claimed that a Bain Capital investor told him Romney didn't pay taxes for the previous 10 years. This, Reid claimed, was why Romney hadn't released his tax returns.
"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years!" Reid said. "Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain, but obviously he can't release those tax returns. How would it look?"
A few days after the HuffPo interview, Reid made the same charge on the Senate floor, this time claiming as fact that Romney paid no taxes.
"As we know, he has refused to release his tax returns. If a person coming before this body wanted to be a Cabinet officer, he couldn't be if he had the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns," Reid said. "So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove he has paid taxes, because he has not."In poker, this is called bluffing, and I suspect Reid's bluff against Trump might actually win him the hand on this one. When two bluffers get together, it still comes down to the best hand wins, and Reid may just have an ace in the hole on this one.
In other news...
The Daily Caller:
In his last address before the United Nations Tuesday, President Barack Obama acknowledged that globalism has led “to a collision of cultures” but urged countries to embrace liberal democracy and internationalization.
Obama told world leaders to recognize that violence and poverty are at historic lows.
“I believe that we need to acknowledge these achievements in order to carry this progress forward,” Obama said. “In order to move forward, though, we do have to acknowledge that the existing path to global integration requires a course correction.”
The president said those who trumpet the benefit of globalization have ignored inequalities in their countries and “the enduring appeal of ethnic and sectarian identities.” Obama added that many government institutions around the world have been unfit to handle the changes globalization has brought.
Due to this, Obama said “alternative visions of the world have pressed forward in both the wealthiest countries and the poorest.” The president pointed to the rise of religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and what he called a “crude populism.”
Obama posed these alternatives as being “self-defeating” due to a global-supply chain and increased technology and travel. “Today a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” Obama said in a thinly veiled shot at Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The president did take time to criticize globalism. He mentioned that Brussels, the European Union’s capitol, became “isolated” from the people it governs. “Globalization combined with rapid progress in technology has also weakened the position of workers in their ability to secure a decent wage,” Obama said.
“I understand that the gaps between rich and poor are not new, but just as the child in the slum today can see the skyscraper nearby, technology now allows any person with a smart phone to see how the most privileged among us live and the contrast between their lives and others,” Obama continued.
His solution to these problems is a continued embrace of globalization with a focus on closing the gap between rich and poor and promoting liberal human rights. The president acknowledged that the address wasn’t the proper forum for a specific blue-print and spoke vaguely of investing in the future of citizens, through education or promoting “open societies.”
Obama said that, “given the difficulty in forging true democracy in the face of these pressures, it is no surprise that some argue the future favors the strong man.” He unsurprisingly rejected this idea and said that “history shows that strong men are then left with two paths” permanent crackdown or scapegoating enemies abroad.
“We must reject any form of fundamentalism, or racism or a belief in ethnic superiority that makes our traditional identities irreconcilable with modernity,” Obama said before the U.N. “It’s a truism that globalism has led to a collision of cultures.”That is tempting.
If you read and watch as much science fiction as I do, you see a lot of future visions which have all of humanity under one world government. In the face of sentient alien life forms, that makes perfect sense. Inevitably, we probably will get there one day. Today ain't the day.
There are two flaws in Obama's speech, and thinking.
First, democracy doesn't work. It has never worked historically, and we have fallen into it yet again. Democracy is like a dictator: It is great as long as you agree with him. Or you can call it the two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Regardless, to create a one-world government based on democracy is an epically bad idea. Imagine a world where the populations of China and India decide most issues?
Second, when you concentrate large amounts of power, the tendency of those in control of it is to use it for their own personal benefit. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Control over the entire human race will require significant "checks and balances", even better than the Founding Fathers created. That kind of system hasn't been created yet.
Overall, I think Obama is right, but he hasn't considered fully the possibility of his suggestion. If we are going to develop globalism, we need a roadmap to get there.
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