Yesterday (9/07) in Philadelphia, The Donald gave a rousing speech on building up our military.  Heavens knows we need that after 8 years of Zero trying to ruin it. But certainly what’s not needed is just more stuff. 

Take the trillion-dollar F-35 boondoggle, for example, “the greatest white elephant in US military history.”  The good old F-16 eats its lunch.  The new innovative technology like General Atomics’ railgun leaves most big-ticket extravaganzas like aircraft carriers and manned bombers in the dust.  Manned bombers?  How 20^th Century can you get?

The military’s resistance to obsoleting innovation is but one example of legions shot through our entire economy.  People are afraid of the new.  People are afraid of their jobs ending up making buggy whips.  People want to stifle competition, demanding a “divine right to stagnation.”  People are envious, they want to “eat the rich.”

Trump can talk all he wants about how to make America “great” again, how he wants to create jobs, how he wants better trade deals, how he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US from overseas.  Fine, go for it.  Almost anything he does will be better – as in gargantually better – than Hacking Hillary who will do her best to make it worse (except for her cronies).

I believe that Trump’s heart is in the right place, while Hillary’s is in a deep dark hideous hole.  Nonetheless, there’s something he needs to understand about economics – namely, that the key to it, the key to whether a society prospers or pauperizes, has nothing to do with economics.

What does she stand for?  What are the genuine accomplishments in her life?  What new innovative ideas does she have to change the current direction of the country that two-thirds of voters think is wrong?

Then there are questions of ethics and morality.  Ereyesterday (8/28), Roger Simon laid out the stakes:

“The truth about the Clinton Foundation is already clear:  a medium to leverage Hillary Clinton's position as Secretary of State for personal enrichment and global control by the Clintons and their allies.  To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done in the history of the United States government.

 

This means quite simply, that the United States of America has abandoned the rule of law. The election of Hillary Clinton—our own Evita—will make the situation yet more grave. Consider something so basic as how you raise your children in a country where the president is most probably an indictable criminal and most certainly a serial liar of almost inexhaustible proportions. What does this say about our basic morality and how does that affect all aspects of our culture?”

It’s been a long hot political summer, with the Lying Swine Media in a 24/7 feeding frenzy to demonize Trump and coronate Hillary as having already won before the campaign really begins.  As always, summer froth abates over Labor Day weekend, with campaigns beginning in earnest the day after – one week from today, Tuesday September 6^th.

So with the LSM predicting the race for the White House is over before it begins, I figure I might as well join in.  My prediction is:  Hillary is going to lose.  She is going to lose, as Dick Cheney would say, “big time.” 

Of course I’m going to caveat that big time – I’ve been wrong too many times before not to do that.  But let’s set the caveats aside for now.  Let’s first count the abundance of ways she’s going down for the electoral count.

“Scoundrel’s View” of Mount Everest – Tibet North Face on left, Nepal Southwest Face on right

Can you imagine what it is like to actually be at Mount Everest?  Or any other Himalayan giant – like Kanchenjunga, Annapurna, or Dhaulagiri – the greatest mountains on earth?  To be in the presence of any one of them is a life-memorable experience.

To reach any one, you must trek for many days, over extremely rough mountainous terrain at very high altitude.  You must be in exceptional physical condition to do so.

Which is why almost no one, even the most ambitious trekker, has ever been to all of them.  Last May, I created an alternative:  to the base camps of all eight 8,000 meter peaks in the Himalayas by helicopter, piloted by the most experienced mountain rescue pilots in the world.

Here’s our high altitude AS350 B3 coming in to land at the Khumbu Ice Fall on Mount Everest at 17,500 ft.

What we did in May was so astoundingly spectacular I can’t resist doing it again this November.  Would you like to come with me?