Friday Musical Interlude - Working at the Car Wash Blues

Jim Croce live singing one of his well known hits.

Thursday Hillary Bash - about that health question.

I think Hillary could have issues from her concussion  BUT I honestly believe the coughing fits are a stall tactic because she doesn't know an answer.

Trump in Mexico - Winning Hearts and Minds

Donald Trump in Arizona later tonight is expected to make a pivot speech on illegal immigration.  He's expected to soften on illegal immigrants who have been in America for a long time and not broken any laws.  He's doing so after returning from Mexico for an impromptu meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, at the latter's invitation. Trump did so in a bold attempt to win hearts and minds - in America, not Mexico. But in doing so, he was able to find common ground with Niento - the start of any good negotiation.

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton declined the same invitation and took pot shots at Trump for going. But this was a win for Trump. He appeared presidential - something Clinton and other Democrats have been claiming he was incapable of being. He was reasoned, and balanced. That alone is a huge win. It also plays to Hispanics in America who might be scratching their heads as to why Clinton didn't also accept the invite from Niento. Clinton cannot reverse herself and attend now - it will appear indecisive and also smack of me-too-ism. She's unlikely to do so anyway - she seems to be afraid of any sort of interaction where she cannot control the conversation to her script. One wonders how she might react to an actual invite if she were president. Trump also seemed in control of the entire press conference; presidential.

Trump once again played to his strengths and reinforced his self-defined image as a negotiator. There was agreement on 5 points. If he can negotiate with someone who he has more or less been insulting for a year, perhaps there's truth in his claims about his renegotiation bad deals America has made. Hopefully Obama's Cuban capitulation ends up on that list.

It's also shows that Trump is willing to take a risk, and succeed. This was a clear cut win for Trump. Despite a late tweet from Niento that he did declare to Trump that he would not pay for the wall, Trump did say it was not discussed. It is important to parse that - if Trump did not return the conversation then it was not a discussion. In any case, it will be interesting to see the details of Trump's immigration speech in Arizona shortly, on the heels of the Niento meeting.

Trump conflation

Trump supporter might be worried about the polls, even if they are closing a bit of late.  Then again, they might not be worried, seeing the polls as misleading. Many of us did that erroneously in 2012, and Trump supporters should be warned by that head-in-the-sand-aided-by-confirmation-bias world view. One of the things I worry about is the notion of attendance.  Trump supporters and indeed Trump himself are conflating two different notions.  They argue that the polls are wrong and Trump is winning and the proof is that he's getting thousands of attendees at his rallies and Hillary Clinton is getting hundreds or even dozens.  There are a couple of problems with that idea.

Firstly, and no less importantly, just like Clinton is avoiding press conferences and is being handled with exacting standards, I suspect her approach in facing Trump is that less is more.  She's avoiding big crowds and longer appearances in the hopes of avoiding a slip-up (which she is clearly prone to make).  The smaller crowds might be by design.

Secondly, when looking at the size of a crowd, what we really are trying to guage is the depth of support, not the breadth of support.  How many supporters a candidate have is the bailiwick of pollsters. How engaged those supporters are, is measured by turnout to a rally.  Trump's supporters are truly energized, but it does not mean there are more of them than Hillary supporters.

As an adjunct to that latter point, engagement still needs to translate to action to be useful.  Are Trump supporters organizing themselves and going door-to-door to promote Trump?  There's no evidence of that, at least in the news.  

All that not to say that Trump supporters are mixing up rally attendance with the truer picture provided by the polls.  Polls can be wildly erroneous if constructed incorrectly. And Obama had massive rallies too in 2008, so it's not meaningless.  But conflating enthusiasm with numbers (support ten feed wide but a mile deep) is a mistake Trump supporters and more importantly Donald Trump and his team are advised not to make.

Vatican about to become even more leftist progressive

What are you doing to our church?

The Pope is slimming down the Vatican - less bureaucracy, that's a good thing right?  Not so fast.  Dictators like to consolidate power. Pope Francis has already proven that he's far to the left of his two predecessors.  Now he's taking direct control of issues that are sure to have global ramifications and might split the church ideologically:

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Wednesday announced major changes to the Vatican bureaucracy, slimming down the number of offices and giving himself direct charge of migration issues, continuing a reform push he promised when elected more than three years ago.

In a document known as a Motu Proprio, Latin for "by his own initiative", the pope said he would merge four Vatican offices into a "Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development" starting on Jan. 1.

When elected in 2013, Francis pledged to cleanse the Church's bureaucracy, which had been rocked by scandals and charges of greed and corruption. He said he wanted "a poor Church" that served the poor.

The pope will oversee work on migration and refugees within the new dicastery, or department, which will absorb the offices for justice and peace, human and Christian development, immigration, and health workers.

It will spearhead the Church's humanitarian work internationally, including oversight of funds allocated to charities, focusing on "migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture," the pope wrote.

Cloak it in verbiage as you will, this is a dramatic shift in focus for the church and it's also a consolidation of power.

Canada's GDP under ultra-left Liberals nosedives

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in November 2015, promising to unbalance the books and run a massive deficit for several years, legalize marijuana and effectively remove Canada from the war on terror.  He also prattled on about fairer tax for the middle class .  Being a member of the middle class, the changes that have taken place have not helped me (not that I expected them to do so - his definition of the middle class effectively splits it in two and apparently I fall on the wrong side of the line for any benefit.  More on that in the future perhaps).  In any case, those of us attuned to economic policy were alarmed at his plans for which the math simply didn't work. Shouting it did not help.  After a decade of Conservative leadership, and in an election where the Conservative Prime Minister seemed bored and listless, Canadians seemed ready for change.

So we got a drama teacher (seriously) for a Prime Minister because he had name recognition.  His father Pierre Elliot Trudeau probably did more damage to Canada than any other Prime Minister in history but he was charismatic and won election after election.  Which brings us to Round 2.

After an anemic first quarter GDP growth of 0.6% in Trudeau's first quarter as PM, the second quarter swung wildly into negative GDP territory;

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's economy shrank in the second quarter in its worst showing in seven years, hurt by a drop in exports and a disruption to oil production caused by wildfires in Alberta, but growth was still seen as likely to rebound later this year.

Although the second-quarter contraction was somewhat larger than the Bank of Canada had anticipated, the figures released on Wednesday were not expected to move the central bank off the sidelines at its meeting next week. Markets see a 92 percent probability that the bank will hold rates at 0.50 percent. [CA/POLL]

While the article goes on to take an upbeat view that the economy will rebound and that it was merely a series of unfortunate events that caused the downturn. No. Oil prices are not going to recover any time soon. That's a critical factor. Employment is still weak. Fiscal policy akin to the big Obama stimulus will do nothing to mitigate the downturn which tax policies are sure to exacerbate.

This is a sign for American voters to keep in mind as they head to the polls in November. Electing Liberals in perilous times increases the risk of greater peril.