Saturday, October 12, 2024

 THE STATE OF U.S. PRESIDENTAL ELECTION

        (Picture courtesy Reason.com)

Twenty-four days to go to the Presidential election on November 5, being the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. Kamala Harris received a boost after Biden pulled out (or was forced out) of the race. At one point she was leading in opinion polls by 5-7%. but that was a post nomination bubble which seemed to have subsided.   to Real Clear Politics  Poll Average she is now leading by1.8% at 49% to Trump's 47.2%, i.e. a wafer thin lead and within the margin of error.


The Electoral College however, presents a different picture, where Trump leads by 219 to 215 votes with 104 votes to be decided in toss up states. Trump is leading in six of the seven states, albeit by a thin margin. But he seems to have taken the momentum back from Harris as a month ago, they were both leading in 3 states and one was a tie. The betting odds have also shifted significantly in Trump's favor  at 53.6% to Harris' 45%. The betting odds people usually have a pulse of the situation and that is why the odds have increased in Trump's favor. 



If RCP polls are accurate, they project Trump to have 312 electoral votes to Harris' 236, a candidate needs 270 to win the White House.


While the race is still very tight and one mistake by a candidate can shift the balance, but the way things look at this point, Trump looks like the next President of the United States. 


Tuesday, September 3, 2024

  WILL MICHIGAN DECIDE THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RACE?

(Photo courtesy Yahoo.com)

For a long time Ohio was the deciding state in Presidential elections, but it seems this year the focus has changed to Michigan. Of the seven toss up states, Trump leads in Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, while Harris leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan with Nevada a dead heat.

Kamala's post convention froth is settling down and she seems to be slowly losing the advantage. Her CNN interview did not help much and this while Dana Bash was soft on her and spared her tough questions. It all depends on how the respective campaigns do over the two months. The betting odds have improved in Trump's favor. Opinion polls don't involve any money, the betting odds do.

Another major challenge Democrats face is the control of Senate. Michigan has an open Senate seat after retirement of Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers is in the race against Democrat Elissa Slotkin. It is the most closely contested race. If the Republicans wins the race, it will be after 30 years in Michigan that a Republican Senator would have won a Senate seat.  It will also mean that the Republican Party could win the majority in the Senate.

(Mike Rogers, picture courtesy USA Today)

Mike Rogers is a former FBI agent, has strong views on the economy and may just upset the Senatorial equation.



Thursday, August 22, 2024

 WHO WILL WIN THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?

(Courtesy AP Photo)

With the Democratic National Convention over, the euphoria caused by Biden withdrawal and Harris' candidacy should soon be over. The tough questions start now. We all know who Donald Trump is and we also know his idiosyncracies, but we don't know much about Kamala Harris, she is an unklnown quantity. As Biden's VP she was virtually non-existent. She will need to move away from Biden legacy and establish her own narrative to succeed. Tough questions will be asked in media interviews and press conferences where she will be tested. However, she has done well since she replaced Joe Biden. The real test for both candidates comes in the next 73 days to November 5.

As Hillary Clinton discovered shockingly, it is not the popular vote that counts, it is the number of electoral college votes that count. There are 538 electoral college votes and the winner needs to secure 270 votes to win. If no candidate gets 270 delegates, the House of Representatives will elect a President and the Senate will elect a Vice President. Several States are already in the decided column. It is the swing states that will decide the election. The current delegate count of decided and toss up States is as follows:

                 Donald Trump                       219

                 Kamala Harris                       208
        
                 Toss Up                                 111   

                 TOTAL                                  538

So it is the Toss Up States that will decide the final outcome. Of the seven key toss-up states, Trump currently leads in five and Harris in two. This could change between now and the election date.

According to 'Real Clear Politics' Trump is likely to win 287 electoral college votes and Harris 251 votes. However, it is too soon to call as swing states tend to move back and forth. To win, the candidates have to demonstrate that they have effective economic, immigration and, financial policies. So there is a long way to go yet.

Monday, September 6, 2021

IS THE UNITED STATES IN DANGER OF A BREAKUP?

           President Biden after the ISIS attack on Kabul Airport, which left hundreds dead.

President Joe Biden openly admitted this week that Afghanistan is a graveyard of the Empires. The British Empire was the first to be humiliated in Afghanistan. This is how the historian William Dalrymple describes how U. K’s first incursion ended in Afghanistan. ‘The First Anglo-Afghan War was arguably the greatest military humiliation ever suffered by the West in the East. On the infamous retreat from Kabul, which began on the 6 Jan 1842, of the 18,500 who left the British cantonment, only one British citizen, the surgeon Dr. Brydon, made it through to Jalalabad six days later. An entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world utterly destroyed by poorly-equipped tribesmen’. So, 18,499 British soldiers were slaughtered by the Afghans and the only surviving soldier, being a doctor was let go so he could narrate to his masters as to what happened.

A couple more attempts by the British to invade Afghanistan also failed and their grip on India loosened sufficiently for it to become independent bringing with it the breakup of the British Empire. Some British politicians had learned their lesson and as reported by William Dalrymple ‘Even as late as October 1963, when Harold Macmillan was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is supposed to have called the younger man to his office and passed on some reassuring advice, “My dear boy,” he said, looking down from his paper, “as long as you don’t invade Afghanistan you’ll be absolutely fine.” Sadly, John Major appears to have neglected to give the same advice to Tony Blair. In 2001, soon after the catastrophe of 9/11 Blair signed up with Bush to invade Afghanistan yet again. Thus, racking up the fourth defeat for the British in Afghanistan.

In 1979 the Soviet Union repeated the folly of invading Afghanistan. It took them ten years to realize that they were in an unwinnable war and after losing thousands of soldiers, arms and equipment retreated from Afghanistan in 1989. The impact and cost of the Afghan war was so great that The Soviet Union broke up into several states, leaving Russia on its own devoid of all the European and Central Asian states that at one time comprised The Soviet Union.

The spectacular defeat of the United States and its allies after twenty years of occupation, loss of thousands of soldiers and nearly two trillion dollars of American taxpayer money wasted with nothing to show for it plus the 100,000 innocent Afghans killed by their reckless bombing, drone attacks and daisy cutters, is not altogether surprising. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, only the U.S’ arrogance and foolish belief in their superiority did not allow them to see the impending defeat. They came to defeat Al-Qaeda, which they managed to do within three months but then expanded the war ‘to kill or capture the Taliban’ as President George W. Bush defined it. Twenty years later, they asked the Taliban to let them leave in peace and handed back the country to them once again. 

The loss of war does not by itself mean the breakup of The United States is imminent, but the massive humiliation will have far-reaching consequences on its Military and politics. There is a storm brewing within The United States and the undercurrent is so strong that it could wreak havoc on the country. A sample of it was seen on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the Congress building killing several policemen. The Senators and Congress members had to run for their lives, some of whom escaped just seconds before the attack. President Trump who lost the election in November 2020 is aggressively attacking President Joe Biden as he aspires to run for office again in 2024. The defeat in Afghanistan will provide him an impetus to attack the pro-war establishment and the military-industrial complex that has been pushing wars in the Middle East. He has come out of the woodworks and is already attacking the past Presidents for launching wars on Iraq, Libya, Syria & Afghanistan, calling them a great mistake. To his credit, he made a deal with the Taliban to bring this war to an end. His attacks are likely to grow louder and become more frequent to build up momentum.

President Trump’s supporters are extreme right-wing fundamentalists who do not want to see African Americans take part in voting and in various states have already passed laws to deny them voting rights. The defeat in Afghanistan and the Presidential election campaign that will start in 2022, is likely to rip the country apart and the political scene could get a great deal uglier than what we saw on January 6, 2021. Trump’s followers (including many Senators and Congress members) support the theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him and in 2024, they want the Presidential office back for him by hook or by crook.

The divide between the Northern and Southern States could crystallize and the less educated working-class blue-collar white voters in The Southern States could be pitted against the better-educated voters in The North-Eastern States and California, which are traditionally Democratic States. Encouraged by Donald Trump the election campaign could become violent just as it did on January 6 and this could lead to chaos and mayhem ripping apart the fishers that already exist in the American Society, ultimately resulting in the breakup of the United States.

  

Monday, August 16, 2021

THE DEFEAT OF YET ANOTHER SUPERPOWER AT THE HANDS OF A RAG TAG BUNCH OF PRIMITIVE AFGHAN FIGHTERS

 History repeats itself

               Vietnam 1975                                            Kabul 2021

             Desperate Afghan nationals clung to the U.S. aircraft and fell to their deaths.

The Soviet Union bit the dust in Afghanistan in 1989 and now another arrogant Superpower, the United States of America bites the dust in Afghanistan in 2021. This is despite the fact that U.S. lost the war and ran from Vietnam with its tail between its legs in 1975 and yet again history repeats itself as the U.S. runs from Aghanistan exactly in the same manner in 2021. Desperate Afghans clinging to helicopters/aircraft in the hope of redemption for siding with the U.S. over the last 20 years and being the partners in the death and destruction of over 100,000 Afghans.

The U.S. in its wisdom built an Afghan Army of 300,000 strong and equipped it Western-style but when the push came to a shove, the 'American trained' Afghan soldiers capitulated like a house of cards, or perhaps they did not want to fight their Taliban brethren. The U.S. in its arrogance forgot that Afghans don't need training and even a five-year-old kid is better at handling an automatic weapon than a fully laden American soldier. The Afghans only joined the army to get a salary and over the years many disappeared with their weapons and joined the ranks of the Taliban and yet the Americans kept raising and equipping more Afghan soldiers.

The Afghan leadership that was planted by the United States came to power through rigged elections and with only 5% voter turnout. Fiest Hamid Karzai and later Ashraf Ghani proved to be must corrupt drug peddlers while the U.S. conveniently looked the other way. The so-called Democracy was nothing but a farce and had no public support. The way Ashraf Ghani escaped from Kabul and tried to take suitcases full of dollars shows the lack of credibility of such criminal leaders.

India was allowed a free hand in Afghanistan by the U.S. setting up five consulates and several training centres throughout Afghanistan. Their notorious intelligence agency RAW jointly with Afghanistan's NDS to finance terrorists to launch bomb attacks in Pakistan. The biggest crime was the cold-blooded murder of 165 innocent children of Army Public School, Peshawar by the Indian financed TTP, a criminal organisation of exiled Pakistani Taliban. Mr. Ajit Duval , Modi's National Security Advisor is on record admitting financing the TTP to launch attacks into Pakistan. They also financed the bogus Balochistan Liberation movement. All this under the nose of the American occupiers and no doubt with their blessings. The terrorism supported by the U.S., India and Afghanistan was as bad as if not worse than the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. It is a shame that a country that suffered such massive tragedy had a hand in terrorism in this region.

Many a great power have disappeared over the course of history. The Soviet Union evaporated after its invasion of Afghanistan, it remains to be seen if the U.S. follows suit.





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