Immigration, Hispanics, and the Political Triumph of Donald Trump

by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:

Given that I strongly disliked the policies of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, I didn’t pay much attention to the twists and turns of our recent presidential election, and although I voted, I wrote in someone else’s name. I can’t quite remember whom I honored with that protest vote, though it may have been former British MP George Galloway, a pugnacious pundit and host on RT.

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

One silver lining in not having supported either major candidate in the race is that unlike many others I won’t be disappointed in my choice.

For example, some commentators had reluctantly backed Trump, hoping that he had learned his lessons from the many mistakes he had made in his first term. But just a couple of days before the vote, their candidate said that his likely choices for Secretary of Defense would include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or Sen. Tom Cotton, both of whom were hardcore Neocons, and the subsequent names floated for Secretary of State and National Security Advisor have been Sen. Marco Rubio and Richard Grenell, who also fall into much the same category. These early indications suggested that the Trump Administration would likely continue the same very aggressive foreign policies of the Biden Administration, and some of Trump’s erstwhile supporters probably began grinding their teeth in frustration.

They surely recalled that during his original 2016 campaign Trump had regularly denounced his own Republican Party’s ruling Neocon establishment, famously declaring in one of the primary debates that the Iraq War of President George W. Bush had been a huge disaster for America, a statement that shocked and horrified all his Republican rivals but may have helped win him the nomination. However, once he actually reached the Oval Office, he soon placed our national security policies in the hands of Pompeo and John Bolton, both arch-Neocons of the worst sort, and they did whatever they wanted. Indeed, I’ve read that in the book he published after leaving the administration, Bolton bragged how easily he had tricked and manipulated his ignorant and detached superior, heaping insults and ridicule upon the president whom he once had served.

However, talk of such potential Neocon appointments may have provoked a political backlash, and by the weekend Trump had declared that neither Pompeo nor Nikki Haley would have any role in his new administration, thereby soothing some of those concerns.

It is widely accepted that in a presidential administration, personnel is policy, so as we learn the names of Trump’s senior appointments over the next few weeks, we will also discover the likely trajectory of the next four years.

Although it is unclear what use Trump will make of his new term in office, the mere fact that he regained the White House certainly ranks as the most spectacular political comeback in our nation’s nearly 250 year history, easily outdistancing the split second term of Grover Cleveland in 1893 or Richard Nixon’s political resurrection in 1968. Indeed, the challenges Trump overcame along the way to Election Day sound like something out of a satirical Hollywood film.

While in office, he had been impeached not once but twice, and after his outraged supporters stormed the Capitol in early 2020, he was widely declared an “insurrectionist” by the Trump-hating media. I doubt that any other major political figure in American history has ever been so massively and uniformly vilified by that media, which for generations had been recognized as having the power to make or break presidential candidates.

Then, as Trump geared up for his 2024 run, Democratic prosecutors across the country brought him up on a host of criminal charges, eventually convicting him of 34 felonies and fining him hundreds of millions of dollars, so for a time it looked like he might have to campaign for the White House from a prison-cell.

Read More @ Unz.com


Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com


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    Visualizing 80 Years Of The Gold-to-Oil Ratio

    Visualizing 80 Years Of The Gold-to-Oil Ratio

    Gold and oil – two of the most influential commodities on the planet – have a fascinating relationship that has evolved over decades, captured in the gold-to-oil ratio.

    The gold-to-oil ratio represents the number of barrels of crude oil equivalent in price to one troy ounce of gold.

    It is viewed as an indicator of the health of the global economy, indicating when gold or oil prices are significantly out of balance with each other.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows the gold-to-oil ratio since 1946, using data compiled by Macrotrends.

    What is the Gold-to-Oil Ratio?

    The gold-to-oil ratio expresses the price relationship between gold and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil. WTI is a grade of crude oil and one of the three primary benchmarks for oil pricing, along with Brent and Dubai Crude.

    A high ratio indicates that gold is relatively expensive compared to WTI crude oil, and vice versa. This can indicate periods of outsized demand for energy in the form of crude oil, or periods of monetary uncertainty when there is higher demand for gold.

    Below is the gold-to-oil ratio every decade between 1946 and 2024.

    During the 1950s and 1960s, fixed gold prices and stable oil prices kept the ratio between 11 and 13 for 20 years.

    Since the 1980s, the ratio has typically traded within the range of 6 to 40 with a notable exception: in 2020 when the ratio reached a high of 91.1. The peak in 2020 was driven by COVID-19, which boosted gold prices as a safe haven while oil demand and prices plummeted due to global lockdowns.

    In contrast, between 2000 and 2008, oil prices were relatively high compared to gold. During this period, the ratio dropped to nearly 6 but never rose above 16.

    When comparing the two commodities, it’s worth remembering that the crude oil market is around 10 times larger than that of gold, making it the largest commodity market in the world.

    If you enjoyed this graphic, make sure to check out this graphic that shows the top countries by natural resource value.

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