845 Farage: 'You can beat Washington'. Trump: 'November 8 is our chance to redeclare American independence'

Farage: 'You can beat Washington'. Trump: 'November 8 is our chance to
redeclare American independence'

Newsletter published on 30 August 2016

(1) Jews versus Trump - Israel Shamir
(2) For the establishment, Trump's billions mean nothing; they treat him
like a bum
(3) African Americans: Donald Trump’s Lincolnesque Moment - David Horowitz
(4) Nigel Farage to Trump Rally: ‘You Can Beat the Pollsters… You Can
Beat Washington’
(5) Trump joins Farage: 'November 8 is our chance to redeclare American
independence'
(6) The Media Vendetta Against Trump - Eamonn Fingleton
(7) Trump: the Unemployment statistics Lie

(1) Jews versus Trump - Israel Shamir

From: "Israel Shamir adam@israelshamir.net [shamireaders]"
<shamireaders-noreply@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:36:28 +0200
Subject: [shamireaders] Jews versus Trump - my new article for you

http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-secret-of-identity-politics/
http://www.israelshamir.com/article/the-secret-of-identity-politics/

The Secret of Identity Politics

Israel Shamir

UNZ Review

JULY 26, 2016

The Jews can be a formidable enemy: devoid of scruples, they hunt in
packs. Like aunts in P G Wodehouse’ fiction, they do not stoop to fair
play: they go for the jugular. The hunt for disobedient leaders is their
favourite national sport; and woe to a politician who crosses their
path. They occupy commanding heights in the US media and finance and
they can undermine politicians susceptible to pressure.

Luckily, they can be defeated. Powerful and cunning, Jews are not
demonic and possess no magical superhuman powers. They are a force among
many forces. Time and again they reached the pinnacle of power and were
dislodged. This may happen to them in the US, as well.

It will not be the end of the world, nor the end of history, neither the
end of the Jews. Only the Jewish dream to end history will end, at least
for a while, while the world will go on. For their attitude is not all
bad; they are needed; just their dominance became too total. For America
and mankind to thrive, it must be rolled back, not eliminated.

The best politicians are those who succeed in repulsing a concerted
Jewish action without giving an inch AND without antagonising the Jews
too much. FDR and JFK, even Richard Nixon did it, so can Donald Trump.

The Donald succeeded in doing just that in the affair of the six-pointed
star. He was attacked; ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt
<http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.729420> urged
Trump to apologize. "He should just admit the offense and apologize,"
Greenblatt said in an interview on "CNN Tonight". "I think this would
satisfy all of the public – on the right and the left, Democrats and
Republicans."

Trump refused to apologise. He insisted that the star is just a star. He
even took his staff to task for removing the offending image. He did not
restore it, true, but he volubly scolded an easy-to-bend assistant. This
ability to withstand pressure is the most encouraging feature of Mr Trump.

Just compare him with Jeremy Corbyn who took the bait and began to
apologise, expel his supporters and demonstrate that he is unable to
withstand Jewish pressure. It did not help him at all, the attacks on
him grew exponentially.

Trump did not apologise, for it would never satisfy the Jewish appetite
for apologies. They always fish for an apology, and an apology always
makes them ask for more, and more. The ADL, the notorious organisation
that spied on activists, ran its own spies and provocateurs, is the
leading tool in this endless search for apology. Refuse apology,
otherwise you invite more pressure for more apologies.

There is a long list of things Jews would like him to apologise for:
<http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.729654>

(1) Trump tried to avoid denouncing David Duke for as long as he could;
(2) he has said nothing about the racists and anti-Semites; (3) he
refused to criticize the anti-Semitic trolls who hounded journalist
Julia Ioffe after her magazine portrait that Trump’s wife Melania did
not like and (4) he has said nothing about the vicious anti-Semitic
social media bombardment of any Jewish journalist who happens to write a
bad word about him; (5) he has refused to let go of the slogan "America
First" even though he must surely realize by now that it carries a
specific anti-Semitic historical connotation; (6) he repeatedly lauds
tyrants and dictators that are problematic for Jews, including Benito
Mussolini and Saddam Hussein; (7) and he himself has been known to
release the occasional anti-Semitic remark, including his assertion to
the Republican Jewish Coalition, that Jews won’t support him because
they can’t control him because they can’t buy him with money.

This list of Trump’s failings with Jews (by an American Jew called Chemi
Shalev) is intentionally humiliating in precluding any chance for
rapprochement between the Jews and Trump.

Trump has no chance with Jews anyway, not for a lack of trying. Surely
he is not an "antisemite" (a silly word of no meaning, just like
"fascist"). Stephen Sniegoski convincingly proves that Trump is rather a
philo- than anti-Semite.
<http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_trump_antisemite.htm>

Trump’s kids married to Jews, his son-in-law is not only a rich Jew but
(1) a son of a convicted Jewish swindler, (2) synagogue goer and (3) a
newspaper owner, (4) publishing anti-Trump smear jobs, meaning he is a
proper pukka Jew
<http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-dismantling-of-dnc-is-clear-attack-by-putin-on-clinton/>.
Trump is as pro-Israel as they make them. Actually, my friends who are
Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank hope and pray for his victory.
Sniegoski carefully debunks all other accusations against Trump as an
enemy of Jews, and he does it compellingly.

Trump has no chance with the Jews, because he wants to change the order
of things while the Jews are perfectly satisfied with the way things
are. Perhaps you do not like that the US is flooded with immigrants,
that so many Americans became poor, that students are indebted forever,
that industries went abroad, that bankers are awash with money while the
workers are impoverished. But for Jews, this is fine. This is exactly
what they want, and this is what they have.

A prominent American Jew,
<http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.732745> Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie
explained that much in an article in the Haaretz newspaper: Trump’s
policies are beside the point. He would like to change things, he will
fight the supremacy of the Supreme Court with its inbuilt Jewish
majority, and Jews are for things being the way they are, perhaps even
more so.
Indeed every possible step of President Trump will run into the Supreme
Court. This is a body where an unelected (Clinton-appointed) Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg already declared she will fight him
tooth and claw. That is the body that gave you gay marriages, unlimited
immigration and other liberal joys. Sooner or later Trump will have to
borrow a page from President Erdogan’s book and deal with them, if he is
to achieve anything: unless, surely, they will refrain from action.
<http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-people-will-decide-in-turkey/>

The Jews will give 90 per cent of their vote to Hillary Clinton,
predicts Yoffie. This is to be expected: the brave Jewish anti-Zionist
Jeff Blankfort wrote of the "actual owners of the Democratic Party, the
American Jewish Establishment". Yes, Jews vote for Democrats. They gave
80 per cent of their vote to Barack Obama. By comparison, the old
masters of the US, WASPs, gave Obama just 34 per cent of their vote. If
they were still at the helm, there would be no President Obama, no
destruction of Syria and Libya, there would be fewer immigrants and the
life of an average American would be better. Oh, perhaps there would not
be an order allowing boys to pee in girls’ bathrooms if they feel
girlish. Big loss.

The problem is that the Jews have much more than just their votes at
their disposal. One of their mighty tools is the Google, their joint
venture with the CIA. This works overtime and offers twenty million hits
for "Trump Hitler", seven times more than the Bing search engine.
Google’s search function
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/google-hilters-birthday-and-you-get-a-very-unexpected-result/>
delivers results related to Donald Trump when users search for Adolf
Hitler. The search "When was Hitler born?" generated not only the
expected information on Hitler, but also a Donald Trump image and link.
Jewish-owned media produces much anti-Trump trash.

But the people do not believe them anymore. Even such a pleasant guy as
Bernie Sanders in the end gave up the fight and endorsed Crooked
Hillary. Now people know the Jews are a force for status quo, and they
want to change it.

For this purpose, a simple rhetorical device called Identity Politics
should be dismantled. It is an enemy device made by a Gramsci blueprint
in order to delegitimise the working class.

Identity politics is an extension of Jewish tactics, or perhaps Jewish
tactics is a particularly loathsome form of Identity politics. A Jewish
bankster defends himself by accusing his adversaries of antisemitism.
This is so simple and useful, that many other groups copycatted the
trick. The protected groups form a coalition under the Dem Party
umbrella, while the Dem Party is doing the will of the Jewish
establishment, as we noted above.

Identity politics have been enforced as the ultimate truth in the US.
The protected groups are attacked for what they are, according to this
concept, while unprotected suffer for what they do. This distinction is
pure sophism: were the Japanese in Hiroshima incinerated for what they
are (Japanese) or what they did (pretty much nothing)? If we disagree
with Jewish politics, is that because of what they are or what they do?

Identity politics forbid us to generalise regarding the protected
groups. You can’t say anything less than complimentary about Jews, for
they are all so different. Well, 90% vote for the status quo is not a
sign of variety. You can’t say anything at all about gender groups for
they are what they are, like Lord Almighty. Indeed "white", "male" and
"Christian" are the only identities you may freely and gratuitously
abuse in the US.

Consider the Catholic Church in the US. The Jews demanded an apology
from the Church, and they got it. Afterwards, they continued their fight
against the church unabated. In a recent attack on the VP candidate Mike
Pence, the Jews made
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/15/sundown-in-indiana-how-mike-pence-enshrined-bigotry-and-discrimination-into-law/>
a lot of mileage from his attempt to allow Christians to refuse service
to same-sex couples. They compared this attempt with Ku Klux Klan of old
and with discrimination of Jim Crow days, when they had signs "Don’t let
the sun go down on you here" and "Whites Only After Dark." Everything
goes to smear the church – and the PC rules do not defend it, like they
do not defend the white workers of Detroit.

The Jews hate the church like the Turkish generals hate the mosque. For
this reason they are so upset with Trump’s idea of limiting
non-Christian immigration. It is not that they like Muslims: surely they
do not, but they like to use Muslims to fight the Church.

Instead of saying "We Jews do not like to see Christian signs for
Christmas" they prefer to say "Muslims do not like…" This is not even
true: Muslims do celebrate Christmas, as anyone can witness in
Bethlehem; but it sounds better.

Here is anecdotal evidence. I receive daily email with the Boston Globe
headlines and suggested articles. Invariably their "Recommended for you"
section begins with an anti-Church article published 14 (fourteen) years
ago.
Recommended for you
JAN. 6, 2002 | PART 1 OF 2
Church allowed abuse by priest for years

I wonder why they think it is necessary for me to read an old antiquated
anti-Christian abuse? Would they ever suggest I re-read a story of
Bernie Madoff? Or a story of a Jewish terror attack on King David Hotel
with its hundred victims? I do not think so.

It is not the first time ever that the Jews have acted in concert and
against majority wishes. A great politician should know how to deal with
them. Such a politician was Vladimir Lenin. In 1913, when his party
struggled with the consolidated Jewish group called the Bund, he
<http://www.israelshamir.net/Left/Left1.htm> wrote "Dear comrades, if we
shall keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will ride on our
backs". This advice is as relevant today as ever.

(2) For the establishment, Trump's billions mean nothing; they treat him
like a bum

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-18/could-trump-pull-post-party-coalition

Could Trump Pull Off A Post-Party Coalition?

by Tyler Durden

Aug 19, 2016 2:00 AM

Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted Op-Ed at SputnikNews.com,

Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Queen of War, Golden Goldman Girl, for
all practical purposes is by now the official bipartisan candidate of US
neocons and neoliberalcons alike.

Certified add-ons include Wall Street; selected hedge funds; TPP
cheerleaders; CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) interventionists; media
barons; multinational corporate hustlers; in fact virtually the whole
exceptionalist US establishment, duly underwritten by the bipartisan,
mega-wealthy 0.0001%.

That does leave Donald J. Trump in the astonishing position of egomaniac
billionaire outsider who somehow dreams he can game the whole system on
his own, moved by his inexhaustible chutzpah.

It’s under this dynamic that Trump has been demonized with medieval
fervor by US corporate media. His non-stop motormouth – and motortweet –
certainly does not help, conveying the impression he’s in the business
of antagonizing multitudes non-stop. For the establishment, his billions
mean nothing; he’s treated like a bum. He may be impervious to empathy;
on the other hand that kind of treatment keeps earning him widespread
sympathy among the angry, semi-destitute, non-college educated white
masses. A US industrial renaissance?

Underneath all this sound and fury, something else is (quietly) going
on. Powerful business interests discreetly supporting Trump – and away
from the media circus — are convinced he’s got the road map to victory.
The question is whether he may be able to tame his erratic behavior to
seal the deal.

     His key message, according to these backers, must revolve around
the destruction of US industries by rigged currencies, and the
"destruction of the wages of American workers by importing illegal cheap
labor from dollar-a-day wage nations."

And that comes with an all-important military angle as a surefire
selling point. As Trump’s backers outline it, "the Pacific Ocean cannot
be used for transporting the vital and essential components of our
military industrial complex, for in the event of war with Russia or
China their advanced silent submarines equipped with advanced anti-ship
weapons will block all of our ocean transport, collapsing our military
industrial production in any war with catastrophic consequences. These
component factories for Intel and others must be repatriated at once
through currency adjustments or tariffs."

So Trump should hammer the message that all new bank credit must be tied
to rebuilding destroyed US industries, "either by ending currency
rigging or applying tariffs." Bank credit, Trump backers argue, "should
not be used for currency manipulation, or for cash settlement market
rigging. There should be no bank credit for speculation and absolutely
none for hedge funds. Let’s wipe these speculative vehicles out by huge
taxes on short-term trading profits, ending tax concessions on
borrowing, and ending all bank credit for speculation. Let these people
go to do real work."

That, in a nutshell, explains Wall Street’s visceral aversion to Trump –
from the Bloombergs to the Lloyd Blankfeins. Anyone familiar with Wall
Street knows every market, commodity and indexes are rigged by cash
settlement manipulations. As a New York-based Trump backer puts it,
"This alone is sufficient reason to support Donald J. Trump. We should
make the Carl Icahans and George Soroses do real work by taxing away
their speculative profits. We need Henry Fords in this nation who create
and build industries, and not Wall Street looters, where they rig
everything as in 2008 then used their political power over bought
politicians for bailouts, after throwing tens of millions of American
out of their homes."

According to this road map, which is already on Trump’s desk – but no
one knows whether he read it in full, or will implement it – fighting
illegal immigration and rigged currencies side by side would create
nothing less than an industrial renaissance in the US to rebuild the
devastated Detroits. Essentially, the road map calls for replacing
millions of illegal immigrants with millions of unemployed US citizens;
Trump’s backers consider the real unemployment rate to be a whopping 23%
today, based on the 1955 Bureau of Labor Statistical Methodology, "and
not the rigged statistics of today."

The bottom line is this road map calls for Trump, if elected, to create
a cross-party, or trans-party coalition – as once happened in the House
and Senate when Jesse Helms on one side and John Conyers and Chuck
Schumer on the other side actually did real business.

This all implies Trump should become well versed in the national economy
ideas of Friedrich List – whose tariff-protected Zollverein League was
essentially the founding method of Prussia to build the German nation.

Some of the above has already filtered out in Trump’s announced economic
agenda. Now comes the hard part for a man with an exceedingly short
attention span who gets into the groove by tweets and sound bites; to
coherently sell the plan without picking up unnecessary fights along the
way. But Vlad has already won it anyway Polls at the moment seem to be
pointing to a Hillary landslide. Trump’s backers though "would not rely
on the polls. Everything is rigged."

And then there’s the all-enveloping "Russian aggression" hysteria.
Hillary went as far as equating President Putin to Hitler. Trump insists
he’s ready to do business with Moscow – starting with a joint operation
to end ISIS/ISIL/Daesh for good.

Why bother? The Stupidity-o-Meter as applied to US mainstream media has
gone on interstellar overdrive anyway – as the presidential election
winner has already been christened: it’s – who else? – the omniscient
Vladimir Putin.

A business source familiar with the designs of the real Masters of the
Universe cuts seriously to the chase: "As far as Russia is concerned,
the issue is decided from above, and that is where the battle has been.
The decision is above Hillary and Donald, and Hillary will be ordered to
create a rapprochement if she is elected, if that is what is decided. If
Trump wins, it is easy; and if he doesn’t, then the fact he brought it
up will be used as a catalyst for policy changes toward Russia. The
fight is behind the scenes now."

As much as currency rigging "will be ended, as we already saw Jack Lew
give out the orders to Germany and Japan", a new geoeconomic  map –
possibly under Trump — would swing towards the end of the oil price war
as well. As a Trump backer puts it, "this is a national objective of the
United States, as a higher price will make the United States energy
independent. This is part of the significance of the Trump revolution."

According to a source close to the House of Saud, Saudis and Russians
are already involved in tortuous pre-negotiations on the possibility of
engineering an oil price around $100.00 a barrel; "There should be
enough mutuality of interest between the Saudis betrayed by the US under
the neocons, and to be destroyed by the neocons eventually, and the
Russians who can prevent that."

     An end to the oil price war may be something the Pentagon won’t be
able to argue about. As a Trump backer notes, "it is in the vital
interest of the military-industrial complex to achieve complete energy
independence, and repatriate all its military industries to the shores
of the United States."

Compared to the current, 24/7 mud-wrestling match, all this may seem
straight from Alice in Wonderland. There’s no evidence such an ambitious
– and contentious – agenda can be sold to movers and shakers from JP
Morgan to the Koch brothers. Trump creating a cross-party, trans-party
or even post-party movement will only succeed if substantial players in
the Power Elite are behind it, and there are no signs of this happening.

What proceeds relentlessly is a massive disinformation campaign – a
ghastly remix of those good ol’ Cold War anti-USSR avalanches. The
Clinton Media Machine is even vilifying Michael Flynn, former head of
the DIA, who supports Trump. Trump was conceptually right when he said
Obama and Hillary were the founder and co-founder of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
That’s exactly what Flynn admitted in that notorious interview when he
stressed that the expansion of the phony Caliphate was a "willful
decision" taken in Washington.

     The bottom line, as it stands, is that Trump is not raising enough
cash to offset the formidable Clinton cash machine. Now comes the time
when he must really take no prisoners to gain maximum exposure – while
trying to sell the road map outlined above, one tweet at a time.

And of course there will be a surprise – October and otherwise. Nothing
has been decided – yet. Disraeli’s Coningsby was never more appropriate;
"So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very
different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind
the scenes."

(3) African Americans: Donald Trump’s Lincolnesque Moment - David Horowitz
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263910/donald-trumps-lincolnesque-moment-david-horowitz

Donald Trump’s Lincolnesque Moment

A landmark in the emergence of a new Republican Party.

August 19, 2016

David Horowitz

Today in Dimondale Michigan Donald Trump gave what was not only the best
speech of his campaign but a speech that will one day be seen as a
landmark in the emergence of a new Republican Party – a party finally
returning to its roots as the party of Lincoln. If this sounds like
hyperbole ask yourself what other Republican leader in recent memory has
addressed America’s African American communities in this voice:

     The African-American community has given so much to this country.
They’ve fought and died in every war since the Revolution.  They’ve
lifted up the conscience of our nation in the long march for Civil
Rights.  They’ve sacrificed so much for the national good.  Yet, nearly
4 in 10 African-American children still live in poverty, and 58% of
young African-Americans are not working. We must do better as a country.
  I refuse to believe that the future must be like the past.

Trump’s Dimondale speech was a pledge to African Americans trapped in
the blighted zones and killing fields of inner cities exclusively ruled
by Democrats for half a century and more, and exploited by their
political leaders for votes, and also used as fodder for slanders
directed at their Republican opponents. This was his appeal:

     Tonight, I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen
in this country who wants a better future. The inner cities of our
country have been run by the Democratic Party for 50 years.  Their
policies have produced only poverty, joblessness, failing schools, and
broken homes. It is time to hold Democratic Politicians accountable for
what they have done to these communities.  It is time to hold failed
leaders accountable for their results, not just their empty words.

Time to hold the Democrats responsible for what they have done. For
twenty years I and many others on the right have waited for Republican
leaders to do just this. Until now we have despaired of seeing this
happen in our lifetimes. But here is Trump articulating the very message
we have been waiting for - support for America’s inner city poor – a
message that should have been front and center of every Republican
campaign for the last fifty years.

Trump: "Look at what the Democratic Party has done to the city of
Detroit. Forty percent of Detroit’s residents live in poverty.  Half of
all Detroit residents do not work. Detroit tops the list of Most
Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime. This is the legacy of the
Democrat politicians who have run this city.  This is the result of the
policy agenda embraced by Hillary Clinton…. The one thing every item in
Hillary Clinton’s agenda has in common is that it takes jobs and
opportunities from African-American workers.  Her support for open
borders.  Her fierce opposition to school choice.  Her plan to massively
raise taxes on small businesses.  Her opposition to American energy.
And her record of giving our jobs away to other countries."

Tying the fight to liberate African Americans and other minorities from
the violent urban wastelands in which Democrats have trapped them to his
other proposals– secure borders, law and order to make urban
environments safe, jobs for American workers, putting Americans first –
these are a sure sign that Trump has an integrated vision of the future
towards which he is working. Call it populism if you will. To me it
seems like a clear-eyed conservative plan to restore American values and
even to unify America’s deeply fractured electorate.

I love this line: "America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton
who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy
of a better future." Yes African Americans and other Americans too are
suffocating under the racism of the Democratic Party which takes African
Americans for granted and lets the communities of the most vulnerable
sink ever deeper into a maelstrom of poverty and violence without end.

Trump being Trump offers this constituency that has turned its back on
Republicans for half a century this deal maker: "Look at how much
African-American communities have suffered under Democratic Control. To
those hurting, I say: what do you have to lose by trying something new?’

In the boldest imaginable way, Donald Trump is doing what Republicans
have been talking about doing for a generation but have failed miserably
to achieve – creating a "big tent" and opening up the party to new
constituencies, in particular to minority constituencies. The fact that
at the moment he is nonetheless distrusted by minorities is partly the
result of his flamboyant carelessness with language during his
extemporaneous riffs, but mainly because of the vicious distortions of
his words and character his unscruplous Democratic enemies and their
media whores. These progressives pretend to care about African Americans
but are content to let generations of inner city minorities and their
children live blighted lives so long as they can be bussed to the polls
every November and cast the votes that keep them in power.

Not to forget the #NeverTrumpers on the Republican side. These defectors
are among the loudest slanderers, smearing Trump as a racist and a bigot
when he is obviously the very opposite of that. In fact, when you look
at what Trump is actually saying and actually doing, Never Trumpism
appears as the newest racism of low expectations. To turn their backs on
Trump conservatives must write off the inner cities and their suffering
populations, regarding them as irredeemable, and unpersuadable, while
leaveing them to their fate. Fortunately there is a large constituency
in the Republican Party that resonates to Trump’s message of a new
Republican Party and a new hope for all Americans - white and non-white
– who have been left behind. ==

About David Horowitz

[For Frontpage editor Jaime Glazov's essay on David Horowitz's life and
work, click here.]

David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s and
an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts. He is the author, with
Peter Collier, of three best selling dynastic biographies: The
Rockefellers: An American Dynasty (1976); The Kennedys: An American
Dream (1984); and The Fords: An American Epic (1987). Looking back in
anger at their days in the New Left, he and Collier wrote Destructive
Generation (1989), a chronicle of their second thoughts about the 60s
that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers’ Witness and other classic
works documenting a break from totalitarianism. Horowitz examined this
subject more closely in Radical Son (1996), a memoir tracing his odyssey
from "red-diaper baby" to conservative activist that George Gilder
described as "the first great autobiography of his generation."

Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the
Center for the Study of Popular Culture) and author of many books and
pamphlets published over the last twenty years.  Among them: Hating
Whitey; Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left; The
Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America; and The End of
Time.

Horowitz is now publishing The Black Book of the American Left, a multi
volume collection of his conservative writings that will, when
completed, be the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to define the
Left and its agenda. Culture Wars, the fifth volume of this projected
nine volume work, has just appeared.  (For information on The Black Book
of the American Left, click here.)  His new book, Progressive Racism,
was published by Encounter Books in April, 2016.

(4) Nigel Farage to Trump Rally: ‘You Can Beat the Pollsters… You Can
Beat Washington’
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/08/24/farage-trump-rally-put-walking-boots-form-peoples-army-beat-clinton/

by Raheem Kassam24 Aug 20166,482

Jackson, Mississippi – UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage
addressed a 10,000+ strong crowd at the Coliseum in Jackson,
Mississippi, telling them to "put on their walking boots" and urging
them to form their own "People’s Army" to defeat the U.S. political
establishment.

Mr. Farage – who led his party (UKIP) to victory in the 2014 European
Parliamentary elections, to a whopping 4m votes in the 2015 UK general
election, and mostly importantly, to Britain voting to leave the
European Union in 2016 – has used the "People’s Army" moniker to
describe his party’s supporters for years.

Introduced by Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, he
told the crowd that UKIP and Brexit campaigners had defeated the UK
political establishment including the big banks, the corporations, the
political classes, the pollsters, and the "liberal elite" by talking to
people about controlling their country, their borders, and having
self-respect for themselves.

He hit out at U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited Britain during
the campaign and threatened to send the country "to the back of the
queue" for a trade deal with the United States if Britain voted for Brexit.

Mr. Farage has previously called Mr. Obama "despicable" and said he
refused to repeat his behaviour by telling Americans how to vote.

But echoing his words from an earlier interview with Breitbart London,
Mr. Farage said: "I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me. In
fact, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if she paid me!"

The crowd, massively receptive to Mr. Farage’s comments, cheered
repeatedly when he mentioned how they too could defeat the political
status quo.

Breitbart London understands that Mr. Farage met Mr. Trump at a
fundraising dinner earlier in the evening, where they discussed Brexit
and how Mr. Farage led Britain out of the European Union.

And Mr. Farage mentioned "Project Fear" – the tactic used by the
establishment to threaten Britons with economic collapse, with
depression, and even with war if Britain left the EU.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron’s name prompted boos from the crowd
in Jackson.

Mr. Trump hailed Mr. Farage as the man behind the Brexit campaign,
stating after his speech, "What a job he did… against all odds".

UPDATE – Editor’s Note: Farage’s speech has caught the attention of the
Huffington Post, which set its home page lead to a picture of him and
Trump with the headline "Bannon’s Bigots" — a reference to Stephen K.
Bannon, the temporarily departed Executive Chairman of Breitbart News
who currently serves as CEO to the Trump campaign. The story linked to
the headline does not mention Bannon; he must really be in their heads
over there!

(5) Trump joins Farage: 'November 8 is our chance to redeclare American
independence'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/08/25/nigel-farage-joins-donald-trump-to-assail-hillary-clinton/

Nigel Farage Joins Donald Trump To Assail Hillary Clinton

The architect of Brexit drew parallels with Trump's anti-establishment
character and immigration positions.

25/08/2016 12:18 PM AEST

JACKSON, Miss. - Nigel Farage, a key figure in the successful campaign
to get Britain out of the European Union, lent his support to Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying Trump represented
the same type of anti-establishment movement that he masterminded in his
own country.

Farage appeared with Trump before a cheering crowd of thousands at a
rally in Jackson, Mississippi. Farage partly based his Brexit drive on
opposition to mass immigration to Britain that he said was leading to
rapid change in his country.

His appearance came as Trump sought to moderate his own hardline stance
against illegal immigration. In remarks broadcast on Wednesday, Trump
backed further away from his vow to deport millions of illegal
immigrants, saying he would be willing to work with those who have
abided by U.S. laws while living in the country.

Trump summoned Farage on stage in the middle of his appearance, shook
his hand and surrendered the microphone to him.

Farage said he would not actually endorse Trump because he did not want
to repeat what he called President Barack Obama’s meddling in British
affairs when Obama urged Britons to vote to stay in the EU.

"I cannot possibly tell you how you should vote in this election. But
you know I get it, I get it. I’m hearing you. But I will say this, if I
was an American citizen I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid
me," Farage said.

"In fact, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if she paid me," he added.

Trump has sought to align himself with the Brexit movement, noting he
had said before the June 23 referendum that Britons should vote to
leave. He visited one of his golf courses in Scotland the day after the
vote and boasted that he had predicted the outcome and called it a sign
his own campaign would be successful.

Trump has since tumbled in national opinion polls and is fighting to
remain competitive with Democratic rival Clinton with little more than
two months to go until the Nov. 8 election.

"November 8 is our chance to redeclare American independence," Trump
said, borrowing a phrase Farage used during the Brexit campaign.
‘FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY’

Farage drew parallels between the Brexit movement and the support Trump
has received from many Americans who feel left behind by Washington.

"They feel people aren’t standing up for them and they have in many
cases given up on the whole electoral process and I think you have a
fantastic opportunity here with this campaign," he said.

Trump’s comments on immigration came in the second part of an interview
conducted on Tuesday with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity. They signaled a
further softening in his immigration position as he tries to bolster
support among moderate voters and minority groups.

Trump, who defeated 16 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination
in part based on his opposition to illegal immigrants, said he would not
permit American citizenship for the undocumented population and would
expel lawbreakers.

To qualify to remain in the United States, Trump said, illegal
immigrants would have to pay back taxes.

"No citizenship. Let me go a step further - they’ll pay back taxes, they
have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but
we work with them," Trump said.

"But when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on
this subject, and I’ve had very strong people come up to me ... and
they’ve said: ‘Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person who’s been
here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it’s so
tough, Mr. Trump,’" Trump said. "It’s a very hard thing."

Trump said he would outline his position soon.

"Well, I’m going to announce something over the next two weeks, but it’s
going to be a very firm policy," Trump told WPEC, a CBS affiliate in
West Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump’s new position seemed to resemble in some respects the failed 2007
reform push by former Republican President George W. Bush. That effort
offered a way to bring millions "out of the shadows" without amnesty and
would have required illegal immigrants to pay a fine and take other
steps to gain legal status.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is
a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire
religion — from entering the U.S.

(6) The Media Vendetta Against Trump - Eamonn Fingleton
http://www.unz.com/efingleton/the-presss-vendetta-against-trump-is-real-and-unscrupulous/

The Press’s Vendetta Against Trump Is Real and Unscrupulous

Here’s the Smoking Gun

Eamonn Fingleton

August 19, 2016

Is Donald Trump really as stupid as the press seems to think? And if
not, how do we explain the press’s version of countless Trumpian
controversies lately?

Take, for instance, the Kovaleski affair. According to a recent
Bloomberg survey, no controversy has proven more costly to Trump.

The episode began when, in substantiating his erstwhile widely ridiculed
allegation that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin
Towers attacks, Trump unearthed a 2001 newspaper account in which law
enforcement authorities were stated to have detained "a number of people
who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding
tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on
the other side of the river." This seemed to settle the matter. But the
report’s author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred. Trump’s talk of "thousands"
of Arabs, he alleged, was an exaggeration.

Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an
embarrassed, backtracking reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had bowed
to political correctness.

So far, so normal for this election cycle. But it turned out that
Kovaleski is no ordinary Trump-dissing media liberal. He suffers from
arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed.

For Trump’s critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely
accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if
disturbing, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him
on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking a disabled person.

Trump pleaded that he hadn’t known Kovaleski was handicapped. This was
undermined, however, when it emerged that in the 1980s the two had not
only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower. Trump
was reduced to pleading a fading memory, something that those of us of a
certain age can sympathize with, but, of course, it didn’t wash with
Trump’s accusers.

In responding directly to the charge of mocking a disabled person, Trump
commented: "I would never do that. Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I’m a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to
the press’s chagrin, many of Trump’s acquaintances have testified that a
streak of considerable private generosity underlies his tough-guy public
image), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. Even if he
really is the sort of unspeakable buffoon who might mock someone’s
disability, he surely has enough political smarts to know that there is
no profit in doing so in a public forum.

There has to be something else here, and, as we will see, there is. Key
details have been swept under the rug. We will get to them in a moment
but first let’s review the wider context. Candidate Trump’s weaknesses
are well-known. He is unusually thin-skinned and can readily be lured
into tilting at windmills. His reality-television persona is sometimes
remarkably abrasive. His penchant for speaking off-the-cuff has resulted
in a series of exaggerations and outright gaffes.

All that said, if he ends up losing in November, it will probably be
less because of his own shortcomings than the amazing lengths to which
the press has gone in misrepresenting him – painting him by turns weird,
erratic, and downright sinister.

What is not in doubt is that if the election were to revolve around
fundamental policy proposals (what an innovation!), it would be Trump’s
to lose. As Patrick Buchanan has observed, "on the mega-issue, America’s
desire for change, and on specific issues, Trump holds something close
to a full house."

On out-of-control immigration and gratuitously counterproductive foreign
military adventures, he has seriously wrong-footed Hillary Clinton. He
has moreover made remarkable progress in focusing attention on America’s
trade disaster. Thanks in large measure to his plain talk, the Clintons
have finally been forced into ignominious retreat on their previous
commitment to blue-sky globalism. For more on Hillary Clinton’s trade
woes, click here.

Trump’s hawkish stance not only packs wide popular appeal but, as I know
from more than two decades covering the global economy from a vantage
point in Tokyo, it addresses disastrous American policy-making
misconceptions going back generations.

The standard Adam Smith/David Ricardo case for free trade, long
considered holy writ in Washington, has in the last half century become
ludicrously anachronistic.

Smith based his intellectual edifice on the rather pedestrian
observation that rainy England was good at raising sheep, while sunny
Portugal excelled in growing grapes. What could be more reasonable than
for England to trade its wool for Portugal’s wine? But, while Smith’s
case is a charming insight into eighteenth century simplicities, the
fact is that climate-based agricultural endowments have long since
ceased to play a decisive role in First World trade. Today the key
factor is advanced manufacturing. By comparison, not only is agriculture
a negligible force but, as I documented in a book some years ago, even
such advanced service industries as computer software are disappointing
exporters.

For nations intent on improving their manufacturing prowess (and, by
extension, their standing in the world incomes league table), a key
gambit is to manipulate the global trading system. Japan and Germany
were the early leaders in intelligent mercantilism but in recent years
the most consequential exemplar has been China.

In theory China should be a great market for, for instance, the U.S.
auto industry – and it is, sort of. The Detroit companies have been told
that while their American-made products are not welcome, they can still
make money in China provided only they manufacture there AND bring their
most advanced production know-how.

While such an arrangement may promise good short-term profits (nicely
fattening up those notorious executive stock options), the
trade-deficit-plagued American economy is immediately deprived of badly
needed exports. Meanwhile the long-term implications are devastating. In
industry after industry, leading American corporations have been induced
not only to move jobs to China but to transfer their most advanced
production technology. In many cases moreover, almost as soon as a U.S.
company has transferred its production secrets to a Chinese subsidiary,
these "migrate" to rising Chinese competitors. Precisely the sort of
competitively crucial technology that in an earlier era ensured that
American workers were not only by far the world’s most productive but
the world’s best paid have been served up on a silver salver to
America’s most formidable power rival.

Corporate America’s Chinese subsidiaries moreover are expected almost
from the get-go to export. In the early days they sell mainly to Africa
and Southern Asia but then, as they approach state-of-the-art quality
control, they come under increasing pressure to export even to the
United States – with all that that implies for the job security of the
very American workers and engineers who developed the advanced
production know-how in the first place.

Almost alone in corporate America, the Detroit companies have hitherto
baulked at shipping their Chinese-made products back to the United
States but their resolve is weakening. Already General Motors has
announced that later this year it will begin selling Chinese-made Buicks
in the American, European, and Canadian markets. It is the thin end of
what may prove to be a very large wedge.

Naturally all this has gone unnoticed in such reflexively anti-Trump
media as the Washington Post. (A good account, however, is available at
the pro-Trump website, Breitbart.com.)

For the mainstream press, the big nation-defining issues count as
nothing compared to Trump’s personal peccadillos, real or, far too
often, imagined.

This brings us back to Kovaleski. Did Trump really mean to mock a
handicapped person’s disability? On any fair assessment, the answer is
clearly No. As the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media
have suppressed vital exonerating evidence.

The truth is that Trump’s frenetic performance bore no resemblance to
the rigid look of arthrogryposis victims. Pointing out that Kovaleski
conducted no on-camera interviews in the immediate wake of the Trump
performance, Catholics 4 Trump has commented:

     Shouldn’t the media have been chomping at the bit to get Kovaleski
in front of their cameras to embarrass Trump and prove to the world
Trump was clearly mocking his disability? If the media had a legitimate
story, that is exactly what they would have done and we all know it. But
the media couldn’t put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they’d have no
story…..But, if they showed video of Trump labeled "Trump Mocks Disabled
Reporter," then put up a still shot of Kovaleski, they knew you, the
viewer, would assume Kovaleski’s disability must make his arms move
without control.

According to Catholics 4 Trump, in the same speech in which he presented
his Kovaleski cameo, Trump acted out similar histrionics to portray a
flustered U.S. general. Meanwhile, on another occasion, he used the same
wildly flapping hand motions to lampoon Ted Cruz’s rationalizations on
waterboarding. Thus as neither the flustered general nor Ted Cruz are
known to be physically handicapped, we have little reason to assume that
Trump’s Kovaleski routine represented anything other than an admittedly
eccentric portrayal of someone prevaricating under political pressure.

Perhaps the ultimate smoking gun in all this is the behavior of the
Washington Post. On August 10, it published a particularly one-sided
account by Callum Borchers. When someone used the reader comments
section to reference the alternative Catholics 4 Trump explanation, the
links were deleted almost immediately. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out,
the Post’s hidden agenda suddenly stood revealed for all to see:

     This demonstrates that the Washington Post is aware of evidence
existing that contradicts their conclusions, and that they are willfully
attempting to conceal it from their readers. If Borchers and WaPo were
honest and truly wanted to report ALL of the evidence for and against
and let the readers decide, they would have to include the video of
Kovaleski and the video of Trump impersonating a flustered General and a
flustered Cruz. Any objective report would include both evidence for and
against a certain interpretation of the Trump video.

What are we to make of the various other press controversies that have
increasingly dogged the Trumpmobile? For the most part, not much.

One recurring controversy concerns how rich Trump really is. The
suggestion is that his net worth is way short of the $10 billion he claims.

He has come in for particular flak from the author Timothy O’Brien, who
a decade ago pronounced him worth "$250 million tops." Although O’Brien
continues to pop up regularly in places like the Washington Post and
Bloomberg, his methodology has been faulted by Forbes magazine, which,
of course, has long been the ultimate authority in such matters.

What can be said for sure is that even the best informed and most
impartial calculation can only be tentative. The fact is that the Trump
business is private and thus not subject to daily stock market assessment.

There is moreover a special complication almost unique to the Trump
business — the value of his brand. In Trump’s own mind, he seems to
think of himself as a latter-day Cesar Ritz – albeit he projects less an
image of five-star discretion as high-rolling hedonism. That the brand
is a considerable asset, however, is obvious from the fact that he
franchises it to, among others, independent real-estate developers. That
said, it is an intangible whose value moves up and down in the same
elevator as The Donald’s personal standing in global esteem.

All that said, in a major assessment last year, Forbes editor Randall
Lane put Trump’s net worth at $4.5 billion. Although that is way short
of Trump’s own estimate, it still bespeaks world class business acumen.

Another controversy concerns the country of origin of Trump campaign
paraphernalia. After he disclosed that his ties were made in China, his
criticism of America’s huge bilateral trade deficit with China was
denounced as hypocrisy.

Again there is less here than meets the eye. It is surely not
unprincipled for someone to argue for laws to be changed even while in
the meantime he or she continues to benefit from the status quo.

Warren Buffett, for instance, has often suggested that tax rates should
be raised for plutocrats like himself. In the meantime, however, he
continues to pay lower rates than many of his junior staff and nobody
calls him a hypocrite. By the same token, many Ivy League-educated
journalists privately criticize the legacy system under which their
children and the children of other graduates of top universities enjoy
preferential treatment in admissions. Few if any such parents, however,
would stand in the way of their own children cashing in on the system.
Should they?

Perhaps Trump’s most egregious experience of press misrepresentation was
sparked when he archly urged Russia to hack into Clinton’s personal
server to discover her missing emails. "Russia, if you’re listening, I
hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said.
"I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press!"

This was sarcasm laid on with a trowel but the press, of course, wasn’t
buying it. Yet it is not as if sarcasm is new to American politics. No
less a figure than Abraham Lincoln had a famously sarcastic tongue and
the press laughed along with him. When someone complained of Ulysses
Grant’s drinking, for instance, Lincoln rushed to the defense of the
Union’s most successful general. "Can you tell me where he gets his
whiskey," Lincoln asked. "Because, if I can only find out, I will send a
barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army."

Then there was Harry Truman, the man who declared himself in search of a
one-handed economist. When he was not making fun of dismal scientists,
he found plenty of other opportunities for caustic wit. After he was
presented with the Chicago Tribune’s front page saying "Dewey Defeats
Truman," for instance, he commented: "I knew I should have campaigned
harder!"

As for Trump, his wit is clearly a major draw with the ordinary voters
who flock to his meetings. Yet little of it is ever recycled in the
press. In the case of the Russia hacking joke indeed, many commentators
were so humorless as to mutter darkly about a threat to national
security. At Slate, Osita Nwanevu interviewed a lawyer to see what could
be done to arraign Trump on treason charges. (The answer was nothing.)
Meanwhile at Politico, Nahal Toosi and Seung Min Kim reported that
Trump’s crack had "shocked, flabbergasted, and appalled lawmakers and
national security experts across the political spectrum." They quoted
Philip Reiner, a former national security official in the Obama
administration, describing Trump as a "scumbag animal." Reiner went on
to comment: "Hacking email is a criminal activity. And he’s asked a
foreign government – a murderous, repressive regime – to attack not just
one of our citizens but the Democratic presidential candidate? Of course
it’s a national security threat."

Countless other examples could be cited of how the press has piled on in
ways that clearly make a mockery of claims to fairness. All this is not
to suggest that Trump hasn’t made many unforced errors. His handling of
the Khizr Khan affair in particular played right into the press’s
agenda. As Khan had lost a son in Iraq, his taunts should have been
ignored. By challenging Khan, Trump was charging the cape, not the
matador. The matador, of course, was Hillary, and she was actually
highly exposed. Trump, after all, could have simply confined his riposte
to the fact that but for her vote, and the votes of other Senators, the
United States would never have entered Iraq, and Khan’s unfortunate son
would still be alive.

Where does Trump go from here? Although it is probably too late to get
the press to fall into line in observing traditional standards of
fairness, Trump can make it harder for the press to deliver cheap shots.

He needs to stake out the high ground and get a serious policy
discussion going. The debates should help but the first one is still
more than a month away. In the meantime one strategy would be to compile
detailed, authoritative reports on trade, immigration, and other key
issues. While such reports would not reach everyone, in these days of
the internet they would find a useful readership among an influential,
if no doubt relatively small, cadre of thoughtful constituents. They
could thus work indirectly but powerfully to change the tone of the
campaign. Certainly such an initiative would be hard for the mainstream
press simply to ignore – and even harder completely to misrepresent.

(7) Trump: the Unemployment statistics Lie
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/jobs-report-donald-trump-joins-economic-experts-who-say-official-unemployment-rate

Jobs Report: Donald Trump Joins Economic Experts Who Say The Official
Unemployment Rate Is Inaccurate

By David Sirota @davidsirota On 08/10/16 AT 8:36 AM

When Donald Trump on Monday questioned the accuracy of the federal
government’s glowing employment reports, it may have seemed like another
unsubstantiated outburst from a famously loose-with-the-facts candidate.
But in this case, he was joining a bipartisan chorus of businesspeople,
economists and lawmakers who say the monthly employment report is an
artificial portrait deliberately airbrushed by statisticians to make the
jobs picture look better than it really is.

Last week, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported that the economy added 255,000 jobs in July, and that the
official unemployment rate had remained at 4.9 percent — the lowest it
has been since early 2008. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club,
Trump derided the report, calling it "one of the biggest hoaxes in
modern politics."

Though Trump didn’t say so, the larger criticism of the unemployment
rate revolves around how it counts — and doesn’t count — the jobless.
Today, the official unemployment rate counts only those actively seeking
a job. It doesn’t count those who have dropped out of the official labor
force either because they have not been able to find a job, or because
they are working part-time and cannot find full-time employment.

"In today’s labor market, the unemployment rate drastically understates
the weakness of job opportunities," wrote the left-leaning Economic
Policy Institute on its website, which calls for a more comprehensive
unemployment rate. "This is due to the existence of a large pool of
‘missing workers’ — potential workers who, because of weak job
opportunities, are neither employed nor actively seeking a job. In other
words, these are people who would be either working or looking for work
if job opportunities were significantly stronger. Because jobless
workers are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking
work, these ‘missing workers’ are not reflected in the unemployment rate."

The group argues that there are now 2.3 million "missing workers" — a
number that, if counted by BLS, would bump the official unemployment
rate up to 6.2 percent. Unemployment Rate & Jobs Added/Lost in the US |
CareerTrends

Others such as private equity executive Leo Hindery argue that even that
figure grossly understates unemployment in America. A longtime
Democratic Party economic adviser and fundraiser, Hindery has since 2006
published a monthly email to lawmakers, congressional staff and
activists that compiles data from BLS and the Census Bureau and then
adjusts to arrive at what he says is a more accurate view of the
unemployment situation.

In his latest dispatch, Hindery points out that there are 2 million
so-called "marginally attached workers," which BLS defines as those who
"were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and
had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months." There were also
another 5.9 million "part time of necessity" workers — those he says are
"unable to find full-time jobs or who’ve had their hours cut back." If
those workers were counted, official unemployment rate would be 9.7
percent, as BLS itself acknowledges. Add another 4.3 million who say
they want work but haven’t sought employment, and Hindery says the real
unemployment rate in America is 12.1 percent.

That figure, he says, tracks a relatively recent trend in which there
are as many uncounted unemployed or underemployed workers as those
counted in the official unemployment figure.

"The difference between the real and official unemployment rate had for
years after the second World War never been more than about 30 percent,
even in recessions," he told International Business Times-. "So if your
official unemployment rate was 5 percent, in real terms it might be,
say, 7 percent, which isn’t great, but won’t kill your economy. What
happened in the two-year lead up to the 2007 recession, though, is that
for the first time the ratio went to 1-to-1 — so if your unemployment
rate was 7 to 8 percent, it was really 14 to 16 percent. And that’s a
huge change."

"They Made A Pact With Themselves And With The Devil"

Trump’s criticism of the latest job report quickly politicized
employment statistics, but that's nothing new. Hindery, for instance,
asserted that the current method of counting the jobless was a political
decision made by both political parties right after World War II.

"Both parties sat down and basically said if we ever tell the American
people the truth about the employment rate, things could get ugly for
whichever one of us is in power," he said. "So they made a pact between
themselves and with the devil to not count everyone."

In more recent times, the tabulation of employment statistics has
changed — and has been a source of political controversy.

In 1994, for instance, federal officials revised the way it counted
"discouraged" workers — those who want to work but have given up
looking. In a research paper about the change, one BLS official noted
that "The number of discouraged workers was much smaller after the 1994
redesign because the definition for the group was tightened."

In late 2002 — amid a recession — President George W. Bush’s
administration discontinued the Labor Department’s mass layoff report,
prompting Democrats to accuse the White House of suppressing negative
economic news. Democrats managed to restore the regular report for a
decade, but it was eliminated again in 2013 by the Obama administration
as part of a budget-cutting sequestration agreement with congressional
Republicans. With President Obama championing the controversial
Trans-Pacific Partnership, the budget deal also followed through on the
Obama administration’s previous proposal to cut a BLS unit that helped
track the job-loss effects of trade deals.

Two years after that agreement, 19 House Republicans co-sponsored
legislation called the "Real Unemployment Calculation Act" that would
mandate the federal government include more jobless workers in its
official unemployment rate. In doing so, it would address what Gallup
CEO Jim Clifton has said is the big problem with the current rate.

"There's no other way to say this," he wrote. "The official unemployment
rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often
permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed,
amounts to a Big Lie."