Holy-I-don't-k now-what! Trump is US President Elect

Sheesh! So much for minority power Trump lambasting. Trump won! I followed the electoral college map on Google and saw what chance Hillary had whittle away as North Carolina leaned red. At first I thought Hillary might contest the results in a tit-for-tat because that is what Trump would do if the tables were turned. Instead she conceded with great dignity and it made sense; after all democrats lost the Senate and Congress too, so the people's will is loud and clear–we want our orange clown to be King. So be it. Hillary gave a great concession speech, an echo of the great President she could have been.

I was in the US during the Bush vs. Gore election, that time serving in my Guru's monastery in Hawaii. Though as a rule the American monks did not vote to abstain from political participation all the monks had a clear preference for Democrats because they are liberal and progressive as you would expect of Whites who had converted to Hinduism. I was revisited by the same sinking feeling when it dawned on us that Bush will win. What followed after the relatively prosperous Clinton years was a yippee-ka-kay cowboy President who made the US battle weary, added trillions of dollar in US debt, saw massive inflation in the price of oil and broke the world economy. The world was worse off and no more safer. It took President Obama's genius to stave the US clear off new boots-on-the-ground wars and get the US economy grinding again by not disturbing it with fruitless and dumb endeavours. It looks like a lot of Americans have become tired of peacetime. So here we go again the US has minted a brand new yippee-ka-yay President but he is not a cowboy, he's worse, he is Russia's poster boy. Hopefully this time the crazies in the US will learn their lesson in four years instead of eight.

By the way USA, remember you now have a US President who did not share his tax returns probably because he's got stuff to hide in there, is dogged by lawsuits, his namesake charity is being investigated for self-dealing and is a serial molester whose strongest suit is running his business enterprises to the ground. He has single-handedly made the US the laughing stock of the world. Good luck US you folks are going to need it like never before.

The Most Important Report Of Our Century Is Out–Living Planet Report 2016

To download this report click here.

The Living Planet Report 2016 is a monumental effort that brings to fore all the research and data from 1970 to date to paint a picture of the current state of our natural world and how we got to it. The conclusion is unsurprising that every single natural ecosystem which contributes to providing us with essentials of life–fresh water, oxygen and our milder climate–on our planet is in peril. Deserts however are growing! The report's main barometer for this is the decline of wildlife where backed by heavy data its estimated that we have lost 58% of our wildlife from what was known of it in 1970.

The report which is jointly published by World Wildlife Fund for Nature and Zoological Society of London is 125 pages long and is available free online. I am going to read the report and unpack it chapter by chapter. Their prediction is that by 2020 66% or two thirds of our wild life will be decimated from levels recorded in 1970. The warning of the report is that if we don't act aggressively enough to stop this decline we don't just lose iconic animals of the wild but also cause ecosystems that we depend on heavily for clean fresh water, healthy air and mild climate to degrade irreparably.

Its a report by scientist of portends to hard times ahead if we keep ignoring exploitive human impact on our planet. The good news is that we have all the tech and know-how we need to reverse this situation and that the situation can still be turned around. The bad news is the lack of political will and funding to make the difference.

Clinton may as well sit back and relax, she's already clinched the US Presidency

As the US elections gets into its most intense leg to the finish line I believe the one person who can actually take it easy and coast along is Hillary Clinton because what matters most now is gearing for the get-out-the-vote ground game. In this game Clinton's campaign is leaps and bounds ahead of Trump. Its the volunteers knocking on doors, speaking to friends, helping register new voters and ferrying apathetic voters to polling stations that matter.

Trump is relying too heavily on the Republican National Congress (RNC) to do its ground game which is Trump's biggest mistake next to his foolish overtures to court the minority Black and Hispanic votes. Hispanic and Black voters are going to turn out in record numbers thanks to the anger Trump has stoked in them. Clinton doesn't even need a ground game to get them to the booth, they are primed and ready to give Trump and his White Supremacist followers a sound thrashing. The RNC offices cannot be focused enough to maintain Trump campaign's legwork with their work cut out to support their down ballot candidates plus Trump cannot depend on the loyalty of these ground staff as some might not actually like him.

For all the talk about a tight race in the polls between Clinton and Trump they come with a disclaimer that the polls don't reflect what actually happens on election day. If anything the polls are just fodder for the media to maintain their audience where a tight gripping race is much better than calling it a done deal, its just business. Media pays pollsters to do polls which in turn gives material for the media to turn to headlines. In 2008 and 2012 the same thing happened as the media called a tight race between Obama and McCain and later Romney until election day. Finally Obama won hands down with the minorities carrying him to the finish line, its going to be no different this time.

In Malaysia we also know that the size of the crowd in a political rally is no indication or at most a very unreliable measure of election results. Many people go to political rallies to be entertained, and Trump provides that for his crowd very well, with no intention of even voting. He certainly has a fan base who are vitalised when he is around but what happens when he is not around when message becomes more important than personality. Is Trump's message powerful enough to motivate those spectacle seekers to the polling booth on election day? It will really boil down to Trump campaign's ground game which is at best tepid.

I thought Clinton's labelling half of Trump's support base deplorable was an excellent political move. The fallout from that gave the large racist and extremist elements of Trump's support an opening to expose itself which rendered Trump's overtures into the Hispanic and Black community redundant. In a race for 130 million votes Trump's fan base is only 13.3 million people who voted for him in the Republican primaries but altogether more Republicans voted against Trump instead of for him, Trump was just the least unpopular candidate who fractured the Republican party and caused most of his opponents to not endorse him. Clinton beat Sanders about 16 million to 12 million with Sanders openly backing Clinton even if only begrudgingly as an affront to keep Trump from the Presidency.

Clinton is standing on a much bigger support base with a unified party behind her while Trump has doubled down on the exclusivity of his fan base with the hope that a deeply fractured Republican Party will do the work his campaign needs to do for him. The real story is unfolding in the campaign offices but for the media there are three debates do exploit and gravity defying polls to analyse until election day.