The US midterm elections will soon be over. Some will be celebrating, with others passing the crying towel around. Another group of spinmeisters will then go to work for those who have lost, claiming Russian interference or whatever they can invent to dodge responsibility for their own failures.
My goal here is not to make election predictions, as that is a fruitless game. We live in an age of rigged polls and corporate journalists taking assignments from paying clients on their political reporting. And then of course we have social media, one of the biggest election “interferers” of all.
The winding up of this midterm election had a new twist with the invasion of instant messages into my phone, some from Trump himself and even the washed-up Republican religious phony Ralph Reed invading my in-box. I am told I am powerless to prevent this, a sign of the times, that we have only the rights that “they” have not decided to take away from us yet.
I thought a better focus before the big day next Tuesday would be to reflect on what is happening to Americans as a people, a country, and the ripple effect that can have on the rest of the world. Sure, we will have some political changes on November 7th, but might that be just rearranging the deck chairs on the good ship Titanic that is sailing on a steady course to disaster?
What difference will the election make?
If the US House is retaken by the Democrats, the major impact will be that we are going to see two years of revenge on Mr. Trump. Whether the House will have the courage to dig into those behind him is a different matter. The Deep State boys play a group defense and have a history of discouraging troublemakers via their extensive tool kit.
The chairmanships of the committees would have senior Democrats in charge, including the investigation ones. They would focus on tearing Trump down before the 2020 elections by digging deep into his full dirty closet, and this would include his family.
General Michael Flynn knows he made a big mistake bringing an underqualified son into his influence pedaling, get-rich-quick consulting business, where he got indicted right beside his father. Flynn should have known better. When you are doing doggy business deals, keep your family far away, and your legal litigation savings account full at all times.
One of the “winner take all” ploys the Republican majority inflicted on the Democrats was a rule change where the ranking committee chairman can issue subpoenas on his sole authority. The opposition party has no say whatsoever. Democrats are already saying that if they take the House back, the Republicans will regret making that move with the Dems now able to use that tool on them.
Jared Kushner will be one of their main targets as he has been Trump’s secret messenger to arrange deals and “arrangements”, which no staff witnesses or any paper trail would be left to reveal. These types of insider dealings have involved Netanyahu and of course Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince.
News coverage of the Khashoggi case has only lightly touched on a below-the-surface reason why the US Congress was so quick to condemn the Saudis. It surprised my old-timer Washington watchers, as the Saudis have long been known for spreading a lot of cash around Washington to have friends when needed.
To see both parties criticizing the Saudis publicly, even using the sanctions word, caught many of us off guard. We then learned that the so-called $110-billion arms deal was in effect a paper deal, something for Trump to brag about, but where nothing has been done. Worse, a deadline had passed on the Saudis beginning one of their biggest purchases.
Lockheed has spun the delay as still being in negotiation, stating that it is “the largest order we’ve been waiting on”, and “has not taken place yet”, and is “not sure when that will take place.” That is PR talk that there really never was an order.
Veterans Today’s sources tell us the hang up has been over Lockheed’s THAAD missile system being too expensive and second rate, compared to the Russian S-400 system. The Pentagon and State Department have pressured countries not to buy Russian arms which keep its defense industry running at a higher volume and also help to fund research and development to maintain its qualitative defense on a much smaller budget than the 10 to 1 superiority of the West.
The US high-ticket weapons platforms with their endless performance issues and cost overruns like the F-35s have given Moscow the opportunity to offer a better and cheaper model. Whose fault is that?
Where will the Iran sanctions go?
The Big Bad Wolf Iranian oil sanctions have collapsed before our eyes. It appears that there really was no excess production capacity to come on stream to prevent a big price hike on oil and gas. Saudi Arabia claimed it had replaced the Iranian production as a favor to them, but that turned out to be a bluff.
While the EU has talked a good game on its commitment to defeat the US sanctions by doing business with Iran, it could not find a member country willing to physically host its vaunted Special Purpose Vehicle operation, which would find itself in the cross hairs of the US Treasury Dept.
Closing Iran’s oil production down to zero has been exposed for the wild dream it always was, something the Israelis will be unhappy to see, as they view themselves as future oil and gas exporters when their offshore wells come on stream, and what they later plan to get out of the Golan Heights.
Targeted countries, which include everyone but the US, are working full speed to build financial settlement workarounds to prevent being colonized by the US financial system, which has openly been turned into a geopolitical weapon under Trump.
Will there be a WWIII?
Yes. We are already in it. The proxy terror wars have been going on full bloom for some time, with the UN powerless to do anything to stop them. Anyone who does not see that the US has launched a full-scale financial war has been asleep. Read Gordon Duff’s recent NEO, The Wizard War against humanity, the threat of hidden science.
Corporate media has not dug deeply into the motivation for the current US offense, even though they only have to scratch the surface to find it. What did they expect from a US that is over $20 trillion in debt? How does it keep from imploding at some point?
It has to turn the world into the old Pac Man computer game, where it goes around gobbling everything up to keep the bubble afloat.
And even worse, the US has already shown its cards that it will use its military to protect itself financially. WWII saved Roosevelt, as none of his stimulus work programs had created a single permanent job.
That is why he and Churchill backed Japan to the wall in cutting off its oil and scrap metal imports, forcing it into its preemptive Pearl Harbor strike plan to win a short war. It did not work out.
Could the world financial system collapse?
That is a growing concern. Even Baron Rothschild is worried. As for stock holdings he says, “The cycle is in its 10th positive year, the longest on record”, adding to that, “potentially destructive” debt levels in Europe and now the Trump trade wars.
As happened during the last banking implosion, the US came to the rescue, the only player that could create money out of nowhere to supply the needed liquidity to run a world where short term credit is the lifeblood of trade.
Triggering a war usually triggers emergency financial powers, price controls, rationing, etc. Can you imagine Trump exercising such power? Baron Rothschild is shaking in his shoes at the thought of it, and so should we.
What will happen to Trump?
The Robert Mueller FBI investigation went super quiet prior to the coming elections, following the rules of taking no action that could influence an election. No one really has a clue as to what Mueller will do.
We see the Republicans quietly planning a safety net for themselves in a post-Trump world, just in case, starting with the grooming of replacement candidates. We are hearing that Nikki Haley’s job will be to make a primary run and fire up the women who are bleeding away from the Republican Party due to the long abuse record of Trump.
Trump had only been attending carefully controlled events which can be safely choreographed in places like Montana, where the crowd had to be bused in from hundreds of miles away. A lot of his original base has melted away.
Even yesterday he was cautious in his remarks on the House remaining Republican, unlike his usual bravado, “when in doubt, just fake it”.
But he has been campaigning as hard as he could to keep the Senate, and what the Republicans are openly admitting, to “minimize” losses in the House. The 43 Republicans retiring created a lot of open contests for Democrats.
Regardless of what happens next Tuesday, we are all sailing through dangerous waters, where a number of bad things could happen to spin a world economy out of control. Since 2000, we have endured economic downturns twice, and I fear number three is waiting in the wings.
Jim W. Dean, managing editor for Veterans Today, producer/host of Heritage TV Atlanta, specially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
