Thomas Wictor

Nobody can succumb to hysteria like Americans. As an investor, I see it daily. The Dow Jones Industrial Average loses 500 points for no reason, and then the very same people who panicked yesterday make it go up 500 points today. We’ve become a nation of geese.

Although I’m apolitical, I oppose President Obama. In 2008, half an hour of research on the Internet showed me that he had an unbroken history of indecisiveness, corruption, incompetence, rigidity, and failure. I knew that he’d be a terrible president. On the night of November 4, 2008, I was watching the election returns. My brother Tim was on the phone with a woman whose hobby is hysteria. She hated Barack Obama to the point that she’d begin sobbing when thinking about the possibility that he’d be president.

After Illinois was called for the Democrats, I went in and told my brother that our next president would be Barack Obama. He nodded and broke the news to his friend, who screamed so loudly that I could hear her from across the room. What a waste. She looked exactly like this woman.

She was an extremely naughty Israeli. Here I am wearing her skirt in 1982, I think.

Don’t ask. A gentleman never tells.

After the first presidential debate of 2012, I thought Mitt Romney would win. Romney utterly demolished the president, but he did so politely and without malice. It was the most skilled political evisceration in history. Then Romney’s advisers told him to back off, and the president rightfully defeated the governor. I knew after the second debate that Romney would lose. My reaction was, “Crap. Oh well.”

Hysteria is a sign of strength!

Now I’m watching the world lose its mind over Donald Trump. I’m not worried about Trump’s prospects; he’s the most gifted political strategist who ever ran for office. What he did was to make the campaign all about him, the person. He said things that made everyone concentrate only on him. They got tunnel vision that allowed Trump’s campaign staff to work in near-total secrecy. Now, the die is cast.

Trump quietly builds a data juggernaut

Defying skeptics, he puts tools in place to get out the vote.

Donald Trump’s rivals cling to the hope that the surprise GOP presidential front-runner lacks the know-how to lure supporters to the polls, but POLITICO has learned that his campaign several months ago assembled an experienced data team to build sophisticated models to transform fervor into votes.

The team is led by two low-profile former Republican National Committee data strategists, Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz, and includes assistance from the political data outfit L2, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort.

The data push is focused on integrating information Trump has collected, through his campaign website and at voter rallies, on nontraditional or unregistered supporters. It also includes commercial data obtained from the RNC and other sources, in an effort to mobilize voters in key early states, the sources said.

See, Trump fooled everyone. As a child I lived in Tyler, Texas, where all the adult men put on a good ol’ boy act to conceal their razor-sharp minds. You don’t have to like or support Trump, but he’s not what you think. I predict that he’ll make a fine president. This is the real Donald Trump.

I’ve researched Trump. He’s no more of a pathological narcissist than I am. What he’s done in this campaign is to pretend to be the cartoon character who his opponents loathe. While they surrender to hysteria, his staff quietly lays the groundwork for a landslide victory.

Donald Trump is poised for the strongest primary performance in modern history

For months, the press and the Republican establishment alike have been expecting the Trump bubble to implode. Now that it’s clear Trump isn’t going anywhere, we’re seeing stories about a long slog of a campaign or even a brokered convention.

But there’s a very real possibility that, far from those kinds of days of reckoning, Donald Trump could actually “run the table.” Ironically, Trump not only could win — he could win more decisively than any non-incumbent Republican contestant for the nomination since the dawn of the modern primary system.

This isn’t surprising. Trump is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid.

Hysteria guarantees victory!

If Donald Trump doesn’t become the next president, I’ll survive. President Obama is my president. He won two elections. I’m not bitter, and I don’t feel contempt for those who support him. And even though I oppose virtually everything he does, I don’t hate him. It’s said that the right people always come along at the right time. President Obama was too indecisive and superficial to struggle with the endless problems of the Middle East, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Every day brings spectacularly good news from the region.

Goodbye Iran, hello Israel? Sudan changes its approach

While Jerusalem and Khartoum are a long way from normalized relations, the last few months have seen Sudan edge closer to the moderate Sunni camp while speaking openly about improved ties with Israel.

“There is no justification for Sudan having hostile relations with Israel, because it will pay a political and economical price for it,” said the head of the Sudanese Independent Party, who viewed the lifting of US sanctions against Sudan as the opening point for normalizing ties with Jerusalem. The sanctions were put in place around two decades ago as a response to Sudan’s support for terrorism.

The statements of the Sudanese Independent Party chairman were surprising, but not as surprising as those of Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour.

“The matter of normalized relations with Israel is something that can be looked into,” Ghandour said during a convention in the capital Khartoum, in response to an argument heard at the event that Sudan’s belligerent stance towards Israel is an embarrassment to Washington.

The US military used to say, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” We got out of the way, and now Israel and her ARAB partners are cleaning up the mess that vexed us for a century.

I study military issues every day. Something that means nothing to you will bowl me over.

On January 19, 2016, Saudi Arabia and China inaugurated YASREF refinery, a joint venture in Yanbu Industrial City on the Red Sea. Here was King Salman’s bodyguard for the day.

He’s a brigadier general and a paratrooper who has two combat jumps, two airborne qualification badges (sapper, diver, sniper, etc.) and one American Explosive Ordanance Disposal (EOD) qualification badge. On his left sleeve he wears the patch of the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment, but his black beret identifies him as a member of the Special Forces. The Guard Regiment is not known to have either airborne or special-operations capabilities. In the top photo you can see the butt of a pistol in his open breast pocket.

Have you ever seen a more terrifying bodyguard in your life? He’s smiling in the second photo, but he’s also mentally choreographing the best way to kill the photographer.

This bodyguard is a message: The men protecting the king are now incredibly competent angels of death. In the second photo, only one soldier wears the traditional green beret of the Guard Regiment. All the others are airborne special operators. What was once a conventional force has become very unconventional. The skinny man fourth from the left—gazing out of the corners of his eyes—is even scarier than the brigadier general. Look at his right hand. Make no sudden movements around him.

There are many reports that King Salman will soon abdicate, leaving the throne to his son, Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). Below is MbS explaining the facts of life to a poleaxed Valdimir Putin.

The current Crown Prince is Mohammed bin Nayef, a favorite of the US State Department. That’s reason enough to hope that MbS becomes king instead.

Unless I’m completely insane, MbS is a strategic and diplomatic genius. I don’t think I’ve hallucinated everything I’ve written about. There’s no evidence that Saudi Arabia is either bogged down or committing mass war crimes in Yemen, it’s not possible that the Kurds in Syria are openly defying Turkish threats, and the previously ineffective Arab militias did not become brilliant fighters overnight.

The only explanation for everything happening in the Middle East is that Israel made peace with the Arab League; the Yemen war is a strategic, Trumpesque deception; and the Arabs have sent thousands of professional unconventional warriors into Syria to defeat the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah, and Bashar al-Assad.

I told you that I don’t support President Obama, but I also don’t hate him. Despite his many failings, he had the strength of character to admit to himself that he couldn’t handle the situation in the Middle East, so he got out of the way. It’s also clear to me that he doesn’t hate Israel.

Find me another photo of either President Obama or Prime Minister Netanyahu looking like that. Where’s the mutual dislike?

I can’t tell you to knock off the hysteria, but knock off the hysteria! It’s stupid and immature. All will be well. Really.