Dear Mr Trump:

In 2015, I was involved in the initiation of two groups in your behalf.

One was “Libertarians for Trump.” I started this along with the late Ralph Raico and Donald Miller. We received about 4000 signatures on this compilation. The other was “Scholars for Trump.” My partners on this were Paul Gottfried and Boyd D. Cathey. You had to have an advanced degree such as a phd or law degree to sign up. This list was begun since it was then widely believed that only dumb rednecks in flyover country would vote for you. We wanted to put paid to that claim. We garnered about 150 signatures on that initiative.

I plan to do something similar this year, as soon as the Democrats choose their candidate.

I appeal to you to pardon Ross Ulbricht. His was a victimless crime. Yes, he promoted the sale of illegal drugs, but did not himself engage in any sale. He engaged in no violence whatsoever. He now has a life sentence. Let me repeat that: he now has a life sentence.

Howard Stern has been calling Comrade Sanders “Karl Marx, Jr.” on his radio show.

Bloomberg has dropped out of the race (as though he was ever really in it).  The two celebrities were praising “Mike” to the treetops recently, especially the TV judge.

As the celebrated novelist Gore Vidal once observed, we live in the United States of Amnesia.

Yesterday, Americans across the nation voted in the “Super Tuesday” Presidential Primaries.

Today, those same people will be inundated with arcane critical observations by corporate mainstream media pundits and commentators concerning the results of those primary elections as to who are the front runners and what all this bodes for the November General Election.

Why do Americans continually listen to these self-anointed electoral pundits (who speak in the name of “everyone”) when they have such a miserable track record on predicting the campaign viability of presidential candidates?

Presidential politics is like playing poker with a deck of 52 Jokers or Wild Cards. There are all sorts of unforeseen consequences regarding candidates’ physical and psychological health and well-being, scandals and corruption that can arise.

Past is prologue.

Look up the historical factual data for yourself on these past races.

In 1972 “everyone” early on predicted Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine was the cinch Democratic candidate until the melting snow on his face incident outside the NH Union Leader building in a snow storm where “everyone” reported he was crying;

In 1976, dark horse Trilateral Commission candidate Jimmy Carter astounded the pundits with his acceleration in the primaries due to massive coverage from the establishment media (while those in the know knew that the “fix” had been on from the beginning for Jimmy);

In 1980, “everyone” early on predicted GOP candidate John Connolly and Democrat Ted Kennedy were the sure things;

In 1984 Democratic candidate Gary “Where’s the Beef?” Hart was the sure thing;

In 1988 Democrat Gary Hart was again the sure thing until that “Monkey Business;”

In 1992 “everyone” was eyeing Democrat Jerry Brown;

In 1996 lackluster GOP Bob Dole challenged incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton (the “fix” was on for Dole to take a fall) and take down the 1994 Republican congressional insurgents elected by promoting the Contract on America opposed by the party elite;

In 2000 “everyone” was touting GOP maverick John McCain;

For most of 2003, insurgent antiwar Democrat Howard Dean had been the apparent front-runner for the 2004 nomination, performing strongly in most polls and leading the pack in fund-raising. Then over a span of a few days his candidacy was destroyed by the most intense mainstream media barrage in history, leaving John Kerry as the establishment’s anointed;

In 2008, “everyone” early on asserted Rudy Giuliani was the sure thing for the GOP, while Democrat front runner Hillary Clinton was upended by the unknown dark-horse Barack Obama; and

In 2012, Ron Paul, the GOP candidate with the largest grass-root base of enthusiastic supporters and the most phenomenal online campaign funding abilities in history in raising millions in his celebrated “money bombs,” was sabotaged in state after state and destroyed by the GOP elite who hated, feared, and loathed his insurgent candidacy, placing the lackluster corporatist Mitt Romney as the nominee.

And in 2016 “everyone” got the Trump candidacy wrong from almost the get-go, predicting the race would be between legacy candidates Jeb Bush for the GOP and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats.

I am on the Corbett Report discussing the latest interventionist confab in DC:

Below are shown market predictions (% chance of winning) as of 1:40 p.m. yesterday, adjacent to the name of the state or territory. Beside each is added the name of who actually won.

Alabama BIDEN 97% chance of winning; BIDEN won.
American Samoa NO INFO
Arkansas BIDEN 88%; BIDEN won.
California SANDERS 91%; SANDERS won.
Colorado SANDERS 92%; SANDERS won.
Maine SANDERS 86%; BIDEN is ahead by 1 percent, about 35% to 34%.
Massachusetts SANDERS 71%; BIDEN won.
Minnesota SANDERS 81%; BIDEN won.
North Carolina BIDEN 93%; BIDEN won.
Oklahoma BIDEN 82%; BIDEN won.
Tennessee BIDEN 87%; BIDEN won.
Texas BIDEN 55%; BIDEN won.
Utah SANDERS 83%; SANDERS won.
Vermont SANDERS 99%; SANDERS won.
Virginia BIDEN 96%; BIDEN won.

In 11 out of 14 states, the candidate predicted to win did win. In 3 states, Biden upset Sanders: Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota. The market predictions were wrong in these 3 states.

There may be revisions when all the votes are in, but they are unlikely to change the overall picture.

Biden now has a 75.5% chance of winning the nomination. Sanders’ chance has fallen drastically to 17.1%.

Dear Readers of LRC:

Once or twice a month I notify people of events occuring in New Orleans of interest to people involved in the libertarian and Austrian economic movements.

If you live within an easy drive of New Orleans, and/or visit the Big Easy, or are just interested in what’s going on around here, give me your name and e mail address. I’ll then put you on my list to be notified of Austro-libertarian events in New Orleans.

Best regards,

Walter

wblock@loyno.edu

Democrats do not have winner-take-all contests.

Alabama BIDEN 97% chance of winning
American Samoa NO INFO
Arkansas BIDEN 88%
California SANDERS 91%
Colorado SANDERS 92%
Maine SANDERS 86%
Massachusetts SANDERS 71%
Minnesota SANDERS 81%
North Carolina BIDEN 93%
Oklahoma BIDEN 82%
Tennessee BIDEN 87%
Texas BIDEN 55%
Utah SANDERS 83%
Vermont SANDERS 99%
Virginia BIDEN 96%

PLEDGED DELEGATES:

Alabama 52
American Samoa 6
Arkansas 31
California 415
Colorado 67
Maine 24
Massachusetts 91
Minnesota 75
North Carolina 110
Oklahoma 37
Tennessee 64
Texas 228
Utah 29
Vermont 16
Virginia 99

A stunning change in the odds of the Democratic nomination occurred after the South Carolina primary won by Biden. He vaulted into the lead (57.3% chance of winning), with Sanders now second (32% chance of winning.) Political outcomes are subject to great uncertainty as this sharp and rapid change in odds shows.

The Biden odds are higher than any of the contenders has achieved in this contest to date, surpassing Warren’s peak and Sanders’ peak readings in the low fifties.

Sanders was already falling due to his Castro remarks, it seems. He had had difficulty getting above 50% for some time. Bloomberg had already played his spoiler role. There was more and more talk of stopping Sanders from people like Carville and nameless Democratic Partycrats. Obama telephoned Biden, maybe a key event that tipped his hand. Obama’s influence is large and his endorsement is yet to be won. Plus several contenders dropped out of the contest and were last seen headed for the Biden camp.

Supportive Democrats are ignoring Biden’s corruption, his doddering and his other negatives — at this time; but political markets are volatile. One or two remarks of a tenor that may lose whole states or voting blocs can undermine any politician.

Today is Super Tuesday. This is predicted to favor Biden. Should Biden put in a good showing, and he probably will, Obama will have reached a point where he cannot do anything except endorse Biden without demonstrating to everyone that primaries do not count and insider control is what matters.

In Woke-istan, anyway.  A Paris theater apparently cancelled an event where a transgender juggler was to perform for 98 paying customers to make room for one of Kanye West’s Sunday church services.  Last Easter his service attracted more than 50,000 attendees and was also live streamed on YouTube.  It is said to have provoked “fury” in the Woke-istan twitterverse.

(Well, maybe it’s the second ultimate sin.  The first would be his support of Trump).

Several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published a couple of biologists who presented a glaringly obvious truth: there are only two sexes, not a “spectrum.” Furthermore, that fixed and immutable division pertains regardless of anyone’s feelings to the contrary [the Journal hides the piece behind a paywall, so I’m quoting outtakes from a secondary source]:

In humans, as in most animals or plants, an organism’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of reproductive anatomy that develop for the production of small or large sex cells—sperm and eggs, respectively—and associated biological functions in sexual reproduction. In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time.

Nothing remarkable here—except that in our absurd age, we must laud both the biologists and the Journal for their courage in proclaiming such incontrovertible facts.

Also remarkable is Amerikans’ tragic and fawning deference to experts. Most of our countrymen are so enslaved to credentials that they trust neither their own senses and perceptions nor the accumulated wisdom of the centuries. No, they require biologists to state verities so basic and self-evident before agreeing that men are men and women are women. (Just as terrifying, many more will continue to deny reality despite this irrefutable testimony.)

These attitudes don’t bode well for more abstract concepts, such as political liberty, the reasons Our Rulers’ response to coronavirus rather than the germ itself is a threat, or the disadvantages of socialism’s “free” stuff.

Today would have been Murray Rothbard’s 94th birthday. He was an unforgettable friend, whose immense knowledge of many different fields was unsurpassed in my experience. In a lecture on the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, he mentioned the common objection that the expansion of bank credit might have no effect, if investors anticipated trouble. After the lecture, I asked whether Mises had answered this point. He said, “See his response to Lachmann in Economica, 1943.” I often went to used bookstores with him, in both Palo Alto and Manhattan, and listened to him as he commented on nearly every book on the shelves. When he was a student at Columbia, he admired the philosopher Ernest Nagel, who he said would always encourage students to do new work. Murray was like this himself. He constantly encouraged students to work on Austrian and libertarian topics.  His support for me was never failing, and I owe him everything. If only he were still here now, to guide and instruct us!

I noticed that in the Sunday “Parade” insert in the newspaper there was a full-page front cover mugshot of Hillary Clinton, with a headline something like “Hillary’s Side of the Story.”  I consider this to be the real start of the Democrat/Clinton Crime Family presidential campaign.  Hillary will ride into the “brokered” convention and be “drafted” with the help of all those “superdelegates” (a.k.a. already-been-bribed-by-the-Clinton-Foundation political hacks) as The Savior of the Party (and of all humanity), after which she will pick the biggest sychophant she can find to be her vice presidential candidate.  This will include none of the current pretend “candidates.”  Marxist Bernie will then kiss here ring, just as he did last time around.

The monetary policy of Bernie Sanders: hyperinflation to fund a massive state, taxes and regulations (punitive fiscal policy) to punish enemies.

Regardless of whether the proposed measures would be effective or should be pursued, the one not mentioned is nailing down the ultimate source of the virus. The 9/11 anthrax came from the U.S. government. Where did coronavirus ultimately come from?

In an incredibly naive Reason article on the recent PragerU court challenge to YouTube’s restrictive policy regarding censorship of content on its online platform, these self-styled “libertarian” defenders of freedom of speech and the First Amendment ignore elemental facts of hard reality regarding the creation of the digital universe which envelops us — the secrets of Silicon Valley and what Big Tech corporatism and the deep state does not want you to know. These Big Tech “friendly fascist” entities are key elements of the “public-private partnership” between the deep state and what has cogently been described as the Google Archipelago. It is not the first time Reason has provided a disinformation cover for a deep state covert operation.

Now that the Army may soon have its first female Green Beret.

A California Democrat has introduced a bill (H.R.5962) “To require the Secretary of State to require the inclusion of a gender neutral designation in a passport, passport card, or Consular Report of Birth Abroad, and for other purposes.” Hey, 10 other countries “already issue passports with this option,” said another representative. (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Malta, New Zealand, Nepal, the Netherlands, and Pakistan.) What is even more ridiculous is some left-libertarians saying that this is “good” and has a “libertarian plus.”

He was too busy orchestrating the sedition campaign against President Trump, every step along the way, from the Russia/Manchurian Candidate Hoax to the Impeachment-for-Delaying Foreign-Aid-to-Ukraine-for-a-Few-Weeks hoax.

The source of odds is Election Betting Odds. Links at the top of the main page are useful in bringing up charts. The link here is to the Senate and House forecasts. There was stability for a long time in the 2020 House composition odds, with Democrats having a near 75% chance of maintaining control. That has started to change noticeably. The Dems are just under 60% now and the Reps a wee bit over 40%. It won’t take much continuation of this to turn this contest for House control into a real horse race.

This shift has coincided with another upward move by Sanders who is now even more clearly running away from the pack. He’s at 51.4% chance of winning the nomination. Bloomberg is a long ways back in second at under 20%. Everyone else has been out of the running for some time, and they are even more clearly out of it now, according to current odds.

The more that Sanders moves out front, it appears the more that House control may pass to Republican control.

Sanders has improved relative to Trump too. As the rest of the field fades, this is almost bound to happen. Trump’s at 58% chance of getting re-elected.

There is nothing that jumps out of the betting odds charts that suggests foreign interference in social media has caused a notable effect. However, the latest rise of Sanders coincides with the big decline in Bloomberg, and they can be traced back to the recent debate.

Conservatives in five states are serious about secession from neo-Stalinist governments, such as the one in Virginia, now that it is completely controlled by Demo-Bolsheviks (thanks in part to financing by the likes of billionaire totalitarians George Soros and Michael Bloomberg).  In doing so these conservatives are repudiating the chief mantra of the Lincoln Cult, that his waging of total war on the Southern states “ended once and for all” the debate over whether the American union was voluntary and whether secession was legal.  Lincoln’s position, and the position of all card-carrying members of the Lincoln Cult, especially the “Straussian” neocons, is that the American union never was voluntary.  It is more like the Soviet Union, held together by threats of force, violence, and the waging of total war on civilians.  That was Lincoln’s theory of the American founding.  He may have used pretty words like the “mystic chords” of a “perpetual union,” but the real meaning was a coerced union held together by the mass murder of hundreds of thousands and the bombing and burning of entire cities.  It is little wonder that among Lincoln’s literary admirers were Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler.

In his first inaugural address Lincoln warned of “anarchy” if any one state peacefully seceded.  That would come about, he said, because then counties would secede from states, and cities from counties, etc.  This is what Virginians are discussing today.  Another way of describing Lincoln’s “anarchy” would be “freedom from tyrannical government” or “devolution of power,” something that Lincoln was hellbent on prohibiting even at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

I write about all of this in great detail in my new book, The Problem With Lincoln, to be published on July 7 by Regnery Publishing (available now for advanced purchase on Amazon).

Justin Chang, film critic at the LA Times, remarks that Trump has mentioned “Gone With the Wind” as a racist dog whistle. The usual suspects took up this cry, like The Daily Beast, “Donald Trump Has the Absolute Worst Taste in Movies”. Does he?

Trump’s top 5 favorites in 2012 included GWTW, of which he said “It’s a classic. It has stood the test of time. For me, it’s a love story combined with a time in our country’s history that was pivotal in our evolution. The scope of the storytelling is tremendous.” His others were “Citizen Kane”, “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”, “GoodFellas” and “The Godfather”.

Are older movies generally better than new movies, as Trump suggested? Several years ago, I looked at how the IMDb user ranking scores of old film noirs compared to their scores for neo-noir remakes. The evidence is one-sided. Users rank the (old) originals higher than the (new) remakes. This foray into movie research is by no means complete or even unambiguous. At the time, I included the following remarks:
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