Many are wondering whether Donald Trump is an Entrepreneur, listen to this recording and you decide.
Dr. Raymond Jewell
www.RaymondJewell.com
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
What Does Advertising-Supported Revenue Model Mean?
What Does The Future of the Ad-Supported
Revenue Model Mean to the Internet and Technology?
An advertising-supported revenue model is a business approach that emphasizes the sale of advertising as a major source of revenue. This structure is most prominent in traditional broadcast and print media, as well as online media. Media businesses generally earn revenue from advertising, customer subscriptions or a combination of the two.
Traditional Media
TV and radio shows, along with newspapers and magazines, generally serve to entertain or inform viewers or readers. TV and radio have traditionally been largely advertising-supported. While networks and TV stations do often earn revenue through subscriptions to satellite or cable television, much of their income is earned from advertisers trying to appeal to viewers. Similarly, magazines and newspapers charge subscription or purchase fees, but advertisers pay to place ads within these print media.
E-Commerce
The emergence of the Internet in the mid-1990s has affected the advertising-supported revenue model. Newspapers, for instance, have tried to adjust to increased demand for online content and limited growth in print publications. Thousands of media websites have been born online, which often offer free access to content for users. This attracts users and enables the publishes to sell banner ads and advertorial ad spaces. Traditional newspapers have offered free content as well, but many are trying to figure out how to combine ad revenue with subscription fees as of 2013.
Benefits
The benefit of an advertising-supported revenue model is that if you have an audience, you can almost always find companies that want to pay to reach it. This is especially true when you can provide specific details about the nature of your audience. When you operate with a 100 percent ad-supported model, you can more easily attract users with free content. Newspapers have long given away hundreds of copies to businesses and organizations in communities to drive up their circulation and readership, and subsequently, ad revenue potential.
Drawbacks
The major drawback of an entirely ad-supported revenue model is the inherent lack of diversification. Businesses generally prefer multiple revenue streams when possible. In a down economy, advertisers might back off their investments, which can more negatively affect a medium that has no subscription revenue. Plus, print publications, and even some websites, have high costs. Even a small subscription rate can help cover some of these costs. Local newspapers charging, say, 35 cents per issue can't use that to cover all production costs, but the fees do help offset costs and allow revenue to build.
Facebook Reports Soaring Revenue, Buoyed by Mobile Ads
On Wednesday, Mr. Zuckerberg’s social-networking company, Facebook, reported another quarter of soaring revenue. The company said sales in the fourth quarter rose 52 percent from a year ago, to $5.84 billion, while profit increased to $1.56 billion, more than doubling from $701 million a year ago. For the full year, the company reported $3.69 billion in profit on $17.93 billion in revenue, an increase of 44 percent from 2014.
The numbers far surpassed Wall Street’s fourth-quarter expectations of $1.2 billion in profit on $5.37 billion in revenue. Investors welcomed the performance by pushing up Facebook’s stock more than 12 percent in after-hours trading.
The results were largely a result of Facebook’s enormous success in selling advertising on mobile devices, a business that the company was not even in just a few years ago. Mobile ads made up 80 percent of the company’s total ad business in the fourth quarter, compared with 23 percent in the same quarter of 2012.
“We have a Super Bowl on mobile in the U.S. every single day,” Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said in an interview.
The results offer a bright spot in a tumultuous climate for many American technology stocks. Shares of Twitter, Facebook’s most visible social networking competitor in the United States, have tumbled more than 55 percent during the last year. Yelp, the local-review service, is down about 60 percent. LinkedIn, the professional social networking service, is off more than 15 percent.
Facebook is a much larger company than many of its peers, yet it is able to keep its growth rate high. The company has notched double-digit jumps in ad revenue and in the expansion of its user base. Facebook now has 1.59 billion monthly visitors, up 14 percent from a year ago. About 1.44 billion of those people visit the site on a mobile device; 1.04 billion visit Facebook every day.
That growth engine has given Facebook lots of room to play in different areas — like virtual reality, messaging and even building drones capable of delivering Internet service to far-flung places around the world — that seem to have little to do with Facebook’s core business of advertising.
Facebook is spending billions of dollars developing those projects, and Mr. Zuckerberg has repeatedly said the company has no plans to make money on them in the near term. In an earnings call with investors, David Wehner, Facebook’s chief financial officer, said the company projected that expenses would increase roughly 30 to 40 percent over the course of 2016 compared with last year.
One example of the spending is on Oculus, Facebook’s $2 billion bet on bringing virtual reality to the mainstream. The unit will begin selling its first headsets to consumers in March. Facebook has said it plans to sell the hardware, called the Rift, at a loss to help the technology catch on with a large audience.
“These are long-term bets, but we don’t think they’re particularly large bets relative to the size of Facebook,” said Ben Schachter, an Internet analyst at Macquarie Securities. “They’ve gone out of their way to say they’re not Google and going after health care, for instance.”
Other analysts said they also saw potential for profit in the hundreds of millions of people who regularly use Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, a messaging service also owned by Facebook.
They are also bullish on the potential for Instagram, the photo-sharing service that has more than 400 million regular monthly users, to become a significant source of revenue in the future. The company does not disclose what portion of revenue Instagram accounts for in Facebook’s overall sales. Ms. Sandberg said 98 of the top 100 advertisers on Facebook also advertised on Instagram in the last quarter.
As for Mr. Zuckerberg, he spent a portion of the investor call on Wednesday talking about his new role as a father to his daughter, Max.
“With a new addition to my family, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the legacy we want to pass on to the next generation,” he said, adding that he wanted Facebook to “continue to focus on solving the fundamental challenges facing the world, and bringing the world closer together.”
If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.
Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive
markethive.com
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
Entrepreneurial Social Networks
Top 5 Social Networks Entrepreneur Strategy
There are hundreds of social networks out there. You can’t be everywhere and we all need to focus our efforts and time on the most effective social networking sites. Here are the social networks I would recommend most for entrepreneurs.
Looking for a job? Consider creating your own. There are a number of social resources to help you connect with other entrepreneurs and get your business ideas off the ground.
Here are the top 10 social networks for entrepreneurs. Each helps entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the guidance, tools and resources they need to setup their company and gain exposure.
Nothing compares with the brute force horsepower Inbound Marketing engine that comes free with Markethive, but we need to build alliances among our peers and this list is the top 10 of other Entrepreneurial social nets we recommend you frequent as well.
1. Markethive
I am putting Markethive as number one for many reasons, including a serious case of bias. I built it, aside from that. Markethive is a traditional easily navigated and profile oriented network similar to Facebook, oriented like LinkedIn but unique in that it's engine is a multimillion dollar Inbound Marketing platform. As entrepreneurs, we invest (spend) millions on autoresponder systems, capture page systems, blogging platforms, broadcasting technologies, known as Inbound Marketing today. Markethive's founder is the same man the developed Veretekk and invented Automated Marketing, auto responders, capture pages basically what has become today known as Inbound Marketing. There is no other Inbound Marketing solution on the Internet that comes close, has the level of integration found on the Internet at any price and the other systems cost upwards of $10,000 per month. Markethive's Inbound Marketing platform is free included and built into the social network.
2. StartupNation
Most social networks neglect the content aspect that makes StartupNation so useful. With articles, forums, blogs, on-demand seminars, and podcasts, entrepreneurs will be better prepared for their ventures and have the resources required to make better business decisions.
There are a wide range of topics being discussed on StartupNation right now, including business planning, marketing and web-based business. The site also offers a series of competitions, such as a dorm-based 20 contest and an elevator pitch competition. If you're an entrepreneur or hope to become one, this site is definitely one you can’t miss out on.
3. LinkedIn
It’s difficult to leave LinkedIn off of any social networking list because it’s so useful for anyone who's either searching for a job, is trying to network with like-minded individuals, or building a company. LinkedIn offers many resources for entrepreneurs, such as groups, including the very popular “On Startups” group that has over 54,000 members.
Entrepreneurs on LinkedIn should brand themselves properly so they can attract the right kind of business opportunities, and perform searches to find service providers or partners. As an entrepreneur, you should also be looking to participate in LinkedIn Answers, events and applications to spruce up your profile and become a valuable member to your community.
4. Perfect Business
If you want to meet thousands of serious entrepreneurs, experts and investors from a variety of industries, then Perfect Business might be the perfect social network for you. The type of people you’ll find are potential business partners, potential clients and advisers. Additionally, the site has leading business partners like Entrepreneur and Virgin Money.
From business networking to a video center where you can learn from successful entrepreneurs, a business plan builder and even an investor center, you’ll have most of the resources you need to create or regenerate your business. There is a free basic membership and a gold membership that costs $29.99 per month.
5. The Funded
The Funded is an online community of entrepreneurs who research, rate and review funding sources. Entrepreneurs can view and share terms sheets to assist each other in finding good investors, as well as discuss the inner workings of operating a business. General benefits of this site include viewing facts, reviews and commentary on funding resources, and accessing RSS feeds of the most recent public comments by members.
By joining the site, you have access to detailed fund profiles with specialty, reference investments, and investment criteria, in addition to accessing partner vCards that have full contact information of all partners at venture funds. In order to get any value out of this social network, you pretty much have to become a member.
If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.
Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive
markethive.com
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
What History Teaches Us About Great Speculations
Right now, we are exiting the eye of the giant financial hurricane that we entered in 2007, and we’re going into its trailing edge. It’s going to be much more severe, different, and longer lasting than what we saw in 2008 and 2009.
In a desperate attempt to stave off a day of financial reckoning during the 2008 financial crisis, global central banks began printing trillions of new currency units. The printing continues to this day. And it’s not just the Federal Reserve that’s doing it: it’s just the leader of the pack. The U.S., Japan, Europe, China…all major central banks are participating in the biggest increase in global monetary units in history.
These reckless policies have produced not just billions, but trillions in malinvestment that will inevitably be liquidated. This will lead us to an economic disaster that will in many ways dwarf the Great Depression of 1929–1946. Paper currencies will fall apart, as they have many times throughout history.
This isn’t some vague prediction about the future. It’s happening right now. The Canadian dollar has lost 26% of its value since 2013. The Australian dollar has lost 29% of its value during the same time. The Japanese yen and the euro have crashed in value. And the U.S. dollar is currently just the healthiest horse on its way to the glue factory.
These moves show that we’re in the early stages of a currency crisis. But if you make the right moves, you could actually make windfall gains instead of suffering losses. Here’s how to do it…
The huge winner during this crisis will be the only currency that has real value: gold.
Gold has been used as money for thousands of years because it has a unique combination of qualities. Very briefly, it’s durable, easily divisible, convenient to carry, consistent around the world, and has value in and of itself. Just as important, governments can’t create gold out of thin air. It’s the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously someone else’s liability.
When people wake up and realize that most banks and governments are bankrupt, they’ll flock to gold…just as they’ve done for centuries. Gold will rise multiples of its current value. I expect a 200% rise from current levels, at the minimum. There are many reasons, which we don’t have room to cover here, why gold could see a 400% or 500% gain.
This should produce a corresponding bull market in gold stocks…perhaps of a magnitude we’ve never seen. A true mania for gold stocks could develop over the coming years. This could make anyone who buys gold stocks at their current depressed levels very rich.
What History Teaches Us About Great Speculations
Many of the best speculations have a political element to them.
Governments are constantly creating distortions in the market, causing misallocations of capital. Whenever possible, the speculator tries to find out what these distortions are, because their consequences are predictable.
They result in trends you can bet on. Because you can almost always count on the government to do the wrong thing, you can almost always safely bet against them. It’s as if the government were guaranteeing your success.
The classic example, not just coincidentally, concerns gold.
The U.S. government suppressed its price for decades while creating huge numbers of dollars before it exploded upward in 1971. Speculators who understood some basic economics positioned themselves accordingly. Over the next nine years, gold climbed more than 2,000% and many gold stocks climbed by more than 5,000%.
Governments are constantly manipulating and distorting the monetary situation. Gold in particular,
as the market’s alternative to government money, is always affected by that. So gold stocks are really a way to short government—or go long on government stupidity, as it were.
The bad news is that governments act chaotically, spastically.
The beast jerks to the tugs on its strings held by various puppeteers. But while it’s often hard to predict price movements in the short-term, the long-term is a near certainty. You can bet confidently on the end results of chronic government monetary stupidity.
Mining stocks are extremely volatile for that very same reason. That’s good news, however, because volatility makes it possible, from time to time, to get not just doubles or triples but 10-baggers, 20-baggers, and even 100-to-1 shots.
When gold starts moving higher, it’s going to direct a lot of attention towards gold stocks. When people get gold fever, they are not just driven by greed, they’re usually driven by fear as well, so you get both of the most powerful market motivators working for you at once. It’s a rare class of securities that can benefit from fear and greed at once.
Remember that the Fed‘s pumping-up of the money supply ignited a huge bubble in tech stocks in the late 90’s, and then an even more massive global bubble in real estate that burst in 2008. But they’re still creating tons of dollars.
This will inevitably ignite other asset bubbles. Where? I can’t say for certain, but I say the odds are extremely high that as gold goes up, a lot of this funny money is going to be directed into these gold stocks, which are not just a microcap area of the market but a nanocap area of the market. The combined market capitalization of the 10 biggest U.S.-listed gold stocks is less than 29% of the size of Facebook.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: When the public gets the bit in its teeth and wants to buy gold stocks, it’s going to be like trying to siphon the contents of the Hoover Dam through a garden hose.
Gold stocks, as a class, are going to be explosive. Now, you’ve got to remember that most of them are junk. Most will never, ever find an economical deposit. But it’s hopes and dreams that drive them, not reality, and even those without merit can still go up 10, 20, or 30 times your entry price.
And companies that actually have the goods can go much higher than that.
You buy gold, the metal, because you’re prudent. It’s for safety, liquidity, insurance. The gold stocks, even though they explore for or mine gold, are at the polar opposite of the investment spectrum; you buy them for their extreme volatility, and the chance they offer for spectacular gains. It’s rather paradoxical, actually.
Why Gold Stocks Are an Ideal “Asymmetric Bet”
Because these stocks have the potential to go 10, 50, or even 100 times your entry price, they offer something called “asymmetry.”
You probably learned about symmetry in grade school. It’s when the parts of something have equal form and size. For example, cut a square in half and the two parts are symmetrical.
Symmetry is attractive in some forms. The more symmetrical someone’s face is, the more physically attractive they are considered to be. Symmetry is often attractive in architecture.
But when it comes to investing and speculating in the financial markets, the expert financial operator eschews symmetry. Symmetry is for suckers.
The expert financial operator hunts for extreme asymmetry.
An asymmetric bet is one where the potential upside of a position greatly exceeds its potential downside. If you risk $1 for the chance of making $20, you’re making an asymmetric bet.
Amateur investors too often risk 100% of their money in the pursuit of a 100% return. These are horrible odds that the financially and statistically illiterate flock towards…the kind you find in casinos and most sports betting. It’s one of the key reasons most people struggle in the market.
I’ve always been more attracted to asymmetric bets…where I stand a good chance of making 10, 50, even 100 times the amount I’m risking. I’m not interested in even bets. I’m only taking the field if my potential upside is much, much greater than my potential downside.
Because of the extreme asymmetry gold stocks offer—because of their extreme upside potential—you don’t have to take a big position in them to make a huge impact on your net worth. A modest investment of $25,000 right now could turn into $500,000 in five years. It has happened before and it will happen again.
Right now gold stocks are near a historic low. I’m buying them aggressively. At this point, it’s possible that the shares of a quality exploration company or a quality development company (i.e., one that has found a deposit and is advancing it toward production) could still go down 10, 20, 30, or even 50 percent. But there’s an excellent chance that the same stock will go up by 10, 50, or even 100 times.
I hate to use such hard-to-believe numbers, but that is the way this market works.
When the coming resource bubble is ignited, the odds are excellent we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank in a few years.
No one, including me, knows that the Mania Phase is just around the corner. But I’ve operated in this market for over 40 years. This is a very reasonable time to be buying these stocks. And it’s absolutely a good time to start educating yourself about them.
There’s an excellent chance a truly massive bubble is going to be ignited in this area. If so, the returns are going to be historic.
If you believe that my message is worth spreading, please use the share buttons if they show at the top of the page.
Stephen Hodgkiss
Chief Engineer at MarketHive
markethive.com
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
Popular Auto Responder Marketing Techniques
Popular Auto Responder Marketing Techniques
Marketing through auto responder series is a popular strategy to increase repeat website visits and sales. Here is a popular strategy.
The power of an EZINE Book
Instead of trying to publish a small daily or weekly eZines, try publishing one large monthly eZine (similar to a monthly magazine) as an e-book format delivered via auto responder, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. You could have it made up of a large number of articles per issue and insert regularly featured areas throughout like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. You could also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio / video file links and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots to sprinkle in your auto responder announcements for each issue and with an informational series to announce your monthly eZine to new prospects.
In summary, by using customized marketing techniques like an eZine eBook, tailored to fit your own products and services, you can reach out and increase your website traffic and sales opportunities. Internet marketing can mean more ways to grow your business.
Auto Responder Improvements!
Stuck in an auto responder rut with only your eZine going out regularly? Get out of the rut with some of these ideas for improvements.
1. Provide back issues of your eZine archives via your auto responder instead of hosting all your archives online. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy access to them and offers a chance to include graphics, audio and video and other components all rolled up in .pdf files for quick, easy download.
2. Help with tech issues and publish your entire web site, save it in a pdf file, and load it into an auto responder. Sometimes visitors don't have enough time read your entire site or they lose their Internet connection or time online. So this way, they could print it out and read it offline.
3. You could offer your eBook via an auto responder. Often your visitors won't have to download it or have the software to read it right away, so this way they can take it “to go”.
4. For a handy – -and nice legal – touch, you could include the terms and conditions to purchase transactions and load them into an auto responder that is triggered with each purchase. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.
Autoresponder Two-Step process!
Top sales pros confirm that it often takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know gave positive testimonial about their products or services.
What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas? A nifty and thrifty two-step. Try this two-step tip:
1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone's e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces.
2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and / or .pdf to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above with monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products / services, and a request for referrals.
So why not improve your closing ratio and reach out even farther at the same time? Do the two-step!
Auto Responder Marketing Techniques
The Internet offers many means of affordable marketing with auto responders. Here are a couple more popular ways of using them.
Article Directories on your Own Domain
Some webmasters set up link or article directories on their sites. They create a directory on a specific industry topic, placing their own ad or banner along the top. Then they invite others to add their website links via a link exchange program, listing themselves in your directory. Or they invite articles to be submitted that include a resource box at the bottom of each with a link to the author’s website. This results on increased traffic as sites link up across the World Wide Web. Enter “link exchange software” or “article directory software” into a favorite search engine for help with each.
Teach a Course
Some marketers write up a simple step-by-step instructional class in their area of expertise. Then they break it up into smaller portions or messages and set them up in an auto responder as email messages, including short ads within each message to invite sales & website visits. Then they invite website visitors to sign up through on online form or email subscription address offered through the auto responder service. As people sign up, they will learn more about the products and services through the teaching series.
Improve your marketing and sales with some auto responder Improvements.
Here are some more techniques you can apply with auto responders :
1. Publish free reports to send via your auto responder. The reports should be related to your business or web site & contain info, ads and links to your sites. People love getting freebies.
2. Collect vital customer satisfaction information by publishing a survey to send via auto responder to those who sign up on your site in exchange for a free eBook, software or trial period at your membership site. This type of information will help you understand their needs, likes & dislikes better.
3. Instead of answering each customer question that is e-mailed to you, publish "Frequently Ask Questions" and make them available via auto responder to those who sign up. To save time and support headaches.
4. Instead of publishing all of your customer testimonials or endorsements on your website, publish only a few there. And set up an auto responder form that invites visitors to receive a complete list via subscription. Give them a power-packed list; it's more effective to include all of them.
Mix and match. Change your auto responder strategy to change your auto responder results!
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
We choose the nominee, not the voters: Senior GOP official
We choose the nominee, not the voters: Senior GOP official
Political parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump rolled up more big primary victories.
"The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That's the conflict here," Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North Dakota, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.
Haugland is one of 112 Republican delegates who are not required to cast their support for any one candidate because their states and territories don't hold primaries or caucuses.
Even with Trump's huge projected delegate haul in four state primaries Tuesday, the odds are increasing the billionaire businessman may not ultimately get the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the GOP nomination before the convention.
This could lead to a brokered convention, in which unbound delegates, like Haugland, could play a significant swing role on the first ballot to choose a nominee.
Most delegates bound by their state's primary or caucus results are only committed on the first ballot. If subsequent ballots are needed, virtually all of the delegates can vote any way they want, said Gary Emineth, another unbound delegate from North Dakota.
"It could introduce Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, or it could be the other candidates that have already been in the race and are now out of the race [such as] Mike Huckabee [or] Rick Santorum. All those people could eventually become candidates on the floor," Emineth said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who decided not to run for the White House this year, said in a CNBC interview Tuesday he won't categorically rule out accepting the GOP nomination if a deadlocked convention were to turn to him. But on Wednesday, a Ryan spokeswoman said the speaker would not accept a Republican nomination for president at a divided convention.
Democrats experienced the last true brokered presidential convention to go beyond the first ballot in 1952. Republicans came close at their 1976 convention.
"The rules haven't kept up," Haugland said. "The rules are still designed to have a political party choose its nominee at a convention. That's just the way it is. I can't help it. Don't hate me because I love the rules."
Haugland said he sent a letter to each campaign alerting them to a rule change he's proposing, which would allow any candidate who earns at least one delegate during the nominating process to submit his or her name to be nominated at this summer's convention.
If the GOP race continues at the same pace, Trump would likely have a plurality of delegates. So far, he's more than halfway to the 1,237 magic number.
Trump split Tuesday's winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio.
The real estate mogul dominated in Florida over Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race after losing his home state.
But Trump lost Ohio to the state's governor, John Kasich. Trump also won Illinois and North Carolina. He held a slim lead over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Missouri early Wednesday.
Emineth, also a former chairman of the North Dakota Republican Party, told "Squawk Box" in the same interview that he's concerned about party officials pulling "some shenanigan."
"You have groups of people who are going to try to take over the rules committee," he warned. "[That] could totally change everything, and mess things up with the delegates. And people across the country will be very frustrated."
"It's important that the Republican National Committee has transparency on what they're doing [on the rules] going into the convention and what happens in the convention," he continued. That's because of "all the votes that have been cast in caucuses and primaries. Don't disenfranchise those voters. Because at the end of the day, our goal is to beat Hillary Clinton or whoever their [Democratic] nominee is in November."
Emineth said he's worried that frustration would discourage Americans in the general election from voting Republican.
— CNBC's Lori Ann LaRocco contributed to this report.
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
Donald Trump just hit a critical threshold
Donald Trump just hit a critical threshold for the GOP nomination — one that his opponents might not achieve
March 12, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event
at the Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland in Kansas City, Mo. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
The Northern Marianas are a collection of 15 islands in the Pacific Ocean, located at about the focal point of the Pacific Rim. It's a U.S. territory, 179 square miles of land — an area smaller than New York City — that happens to jut out above the surface of the water. And on Tuesday morning, before you even woke up, it made Donald Trump the first man to qualify for the Republican presidential nomination.
See, in the Northern Marianas, Tuesday began 14 hours before it began on the East Coast. So its Super Threesday caucus was done overnight, and Trump won all nine delegates. In doing so, the Northern Marianas became the eighth state or territory in which Trump won a majority of the delegates. (The others: South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Hawaii and Mississippi.) And according to the rules of the Republican convention, a candidate must “demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.” No eight states, no nomination.
That's the fabled Rule 40, which governs how the nomination process works, down to the length of time allotted candidates who wish to speak about their nominations. The eight-state thing is in Section B of the rule, and it is a pretty high bar to meet. (The party’s rules count territories as states under Rule 1.) After all, it's not that Trump hasn't won at least eight states; he has. But only in eight (including the Marianas) does he have a majority of delegates. In the others he has won — New Hampshire, Nevada, Arkansas, Vermont, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Michigan — he has a plurality of delegates. Not good enough.
Notice that we’ve taken 16 states and territories out of play already. There are several more that other candidates have won with a majority of the delegates — Texas (for Ted Cruz), Kansas (Cruz), Maine (Cruz), Puerto Rico (for Marco Rubio), Idaho (Cruz) and D.C. (Rubio) — and more still that other candidates won, but didn't capture most of the delegates. Those are Iowa, Alaska and Oklahoma for Cruz and Minnesota for Rubio. Cruz needs four more and Rubio six more. (Oh and John Kasich, eight more.) And not many states are left.
In theory, then, Trump could be the only candidate to hit the bar before the July convention.
Of course, once the convention arrives, that doesn’t really matter at all.
As former Republican National Committee counsel Ben Ginsberg noted during an appearance on MSNBC last week, Rule 40 is not a hard-and-fast rule for the convention. The convention will have a Rules Committee in which 112 representatives will battle over the final guidelines for eligibility to receive the nomination. Rule 40’s eight-state boundary could become 25 states or two states. In 2012, in fact, the Rules Committee bumped it up from five to eight, which is why that’s where it stands right now. (The rules document notes that it dates from the 2012 convention, with a few updates by the party.)
Aerial view of Saipan Island in the Northern Marianas. (Paul Chesley)
Think of it like an NFL game. As the clock runs out on the voting, we think we know the winner. But before a winner is announced, the referees get to discuss how the rules will be applied. Maybe they decide that what constitutes winning is “most yardage gained by passing” — but that one of the team’s quarterbacks is ineligible for consideration. It’s a ridiculous example, but it’s not entirely inaccurate: The Rules Committee could make the nomination rules into nearly anything it wishes.
That’s not terribly likely, of course, both because there’s value in maintaining the integrity of the process for candidates and because any perception that the scales are being tipped away from Donald Trump probably would result in a very angry group of Trump supporters. But the rules can and probably will change to some degree.
None of this is meant as a slight on the importance of the Northern Marianas, of course. But, then, they’re all asleep right now anyway.
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
China Warns, Japan Fears And George Soros Freaks Out As Donald Trump Continues End Times Rise To The Top
China Warns, Japan Fears And George Soros Freaks Out As Donald Trump Continues End Times Rise To The Top
On his very first day in office, president Donald Trump will send shockwaves around the world, not by doing anything, but just by being. From a prophecy perspective, this will immediately reset the table with every nation hostile to us, and with every nation that has gotten used to pushing around a second-rate America under the Obama reign of terror. For the first time since the reestablishment of Israel in 1948, there will exist the possibility that literally anything can happen. The entire global community is starting to realize that we are on the brink of huge, huge change.
In the last two weeks, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has won more delegates in primaries and caucuses, even while his opponents have launched new attacks and questions have been raised about his supporters.
“And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:” Daniel 2:21 (KJV)
My friends, we are indeed living in the end times, and a Donald Trump presidency will be just the ticket. I believe with all my heart that God is getting ready to shake the world and I further believe that He is going to use Donald J. Trump as president to bring it about. Never before, either in my lifetime or in recorded American history, have we witnessed such a strong reaction to a candidate for president of the United States. Never before have so many world leaders chimed in to give an opinion on our election process. Shoot, even NWO puppet master George Soros is running scared and the millions to ‘stop Trump’ have already begun to flow.
Fellow Christians will ask me “how can you vote for Trump?” And I say back to them “are you KIDDING me? If you know and believe Bible prophecy, how could you not vote for Trump?”
On his very first day in office, president Donald Trump will send shockwaves around the world, not by doing anything, but just by being there. From a prophecy perspective, this will immediately reset the table with every nation hostile to us, and with every nation that has gotten used to pushing around a second-rate America under the Obama reign of terror. For the first time since the reestablishment of Israel in 1948, there will exist the possibility that literally anything can happen. The entire global community is starting to realize that we are on the brink of huge, huge change.
Did you read the headlines just today? Take a look:
- Donald Trump’s rise sparks alarm in Japan: As polls open for US primaries in Ohio and Florida, the political elite in Tokyo is starting to confront a disconcerting idea: that their indispensable US ally could actually elect Donald Trump as president. The controversial businessman, now favorite for the Republican nomination, hits Japan regularly in his stump speeches for supposedly unfair trade practices and freeriding on US military protection. “To start with they just thought ‘he’s funny’,” said Masatoshi Honda, a professor of politics at Kinjo University. “But recently they’re starting to worry — what happens if Trump wins?” source
- Trump opens Pandora’s box in US: Donald Trump, front-runner to be the GOP’s candidate for the upcoming US presidential election, encountered a major protest at his campaign event in Chicago on Friday evening. Over a thousand people, both his supporters and opponents engaged in a physical confrontation, which was quelled by police who arrested a number of people
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Soros, Alarmed by Trump, Pours Money into 2016 Race: George Soros has expressed alarm over the past few months at the candidacy of Donald Trump. In a statement last week about a new group he’s funding to increase voting by Latinos and immigrants in the election, he again mentioned the candidate by name. “The intense anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been fueled by the Republican primary is deeply offensive,” Soros said in the statement. “There should be consequences for the outrageous statements and proposals that we’ve regularly heard from Trump.”
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Trump breaks 50% in national support for the first time: In the last two weeks, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has won more delegates in primaries and caucuses, even while his opponents have launched new attacks and questions have been raised about his supporters. The week’s Economist/YouGov Poll finds Trump still at the top of GOP voters’ preference with a wider lead, while Florida Senator Marco Rubio seems most damaged by the two weeks of attacks and counter-attacks. This is the first time Trump has garnered the support of a majority of Republican primary voters nationwide. YouGov’s February 24-27 survey marked his previous high, at 44% support
As much as I dislike the failed Marxist policies of the Muslim-raised Barack Hussein Obama, I have always said on this website that I believe he became president so God could judge our nation. And He certainly has done that. Taxpayer funding for baby murder, forcing same-sex marriage on America, decimating the power of our military, and the list goes on and on. Now that the United States has been judged, I believe God is going to begin the process of shaking the entire world in preparation of the time of Jacob’s trouble. And America will be the ‘big stick’ He is going to use, with Trump as president.
These are the days of prophecy, there is no hiding place, nowhere to run to. Every night when I look up into the the eastern sky, I see in my mind’s eye the clouds parting, a shofar blaring, and a thunderous “come up hither!” reverberating across the ocean. If the time of Jacob’s trouble really is as close as it looks like it is, then that means that the Pretribulation Rapture, which naturally must come first, is closer still.
So Christian, when you vote, vote for the candidate that seems most likely to be used of God to advance the prophecy timeline. I want to see the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob shake this world to its very core, and I want a front row seat when it happens. You students of Bible prophecy will take note that America does not appear anywhere among the named nations of the world. There is no “revival” coming, there is no “kingdom to claim for Jesus” as one of the candidates believe.
“I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” Isaiah 61:10 (KJV)
It is my contention that the God of the Holy Bible is getting ready to set the entire global community on its ear. Don’t waste your time with politics! Start getting busy going out into the streets, handing out gospel tracts, and preaching the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJV)
Are YOU ready for what comes next?
originating article is here:
NOW THE END BEGINS
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
Markethive Website Rotator
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Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member
Losing Ohio Improves Trumpâs Chances to Win the Nomination
Keeping John Kasich in the race divides the anti-Trump vote.
Two months ago, based on a computer model I developed of the Republican delegate race, I wrote in The American Prospect that the GOP’s nomination rules tilted the playing field to Donald Trump’s advantage. For Trump’s opponents, the time window for counteracting many of those advantages and winning a first-ballot nomination has passed. Now the campaign enters a new phase, as Trump’s rivals try to deny him a majority of pledged delegates going into the convention. Simulating the remaining contests based on current polling data, my model picks up an unexpected wrinkle: Trump’s strongest position comes if he loses the primary in Ohio on Tuesday.
Tomorrow marks the start of an onslaught of winner-take-all elections, which will continue for the rest of the primary season. A winner-take-all rule rewards the first-place finisher even without a majority, and therefore gives the biggest advantage when the field is divided. Two of the first winner-take-all elections take place in Florida and Ohio, the home states of Senator Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Winning their home state would provide each of them not only with delegates, but also with the credibility they need for raising money and obtaining other support to continue as candidates. But if they survive, they will continue to divide the anti-Trump vote with Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
In 17 out of the remaining 29 state and territorial GOP contests, the rules will give all or nearly all of the delegates to the first-place finisher. My computer simulation for these races includes rules not only for statewide but also for congressional district-level delegates, which add complexity but make only a small difference. South Carolina has already provided an example of a state with both statewide and district-level rules. Trump still got all 50 of South Carolina’s delegates.
I estimated win probabilities for Trump using recent polling data where it was available. Where polls were not available, I assumed that individual states varied around the national median with a standard deviation of 16 percentage points, comparable to the 2012 primary season. I assumed that districts varied around the state average with a standard deviation of five percentage points, a typical amount for most states. I then converted these margins to win probabilities and delegates, and combined all 29 races using methods that I originally developed in 2004 to analyze the Electoral College.
We can test the effect of a divided field by simulating the outcome of having all the primaries as if they were held today and included all four of the remaining candidates: Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich.
The above graph represents a distribution of all possible outcomes. Where polls are available, Trump leads in eight of the nine states that vote between now and mid-April. I estimate that under these conditions, he should lose between two and four of the winner-take-all races and win a median of 804 newly awarded delegates. Combined with his existing 465 delegates, Trump’s total would be 1,269, more than the 1,237 needed to get a majority on the first ballot at the convention. The total might be smaller because of chance variation, as well as Cruz’s tendency to outperform his polls. So there is a chance Trump would need to pick up a handful of additional delegates, for example from Ben Carson, who has endorsed him. In this way, Trump could easily get the nomination with a majority of delegates, despite having the support of only 39 percent of Republican voters, as measured by national surveys. Indeed, my simulation indicates even if his support dropped across the board by 5 percentage points, he would still have an even-odds chance of getting 1,237 delegates. This victory builds on the 42 percent of delegates that he has obtained so far, based on getting 34 percent of the vote.
Most of the remaining primaries, however, do not happen tomorrow. This gives time for the consequences of the March 15 primaries to unfold, changing the picture substantially.
In Florida, Rubio lags Trump by a median of 14.5 percentage points. Assuming Rubio loses and leaves the field, more of his supporters should go to Cruz than to Trump. In exit polls for Michigan and Mississippi, Rubio voters preferred Cruz over Trump by a ratio of four to one, and an ABC-Langer national sample of Republican and Republican-leaning independents got a similar split. So Trump would gain Florida’s 99 delegates, but his future gains would probably be reduced thanks to Rubio’s absence from the race.
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A preview of the effects of a Rubio withdrawal can be seen in Ohio. In four Ohio polls spanning March 2 to 8, Trump leads Kasich by a median of six percentage points. Over the weekend, however, Rubio urged his supporters in Ohio to vote for Kasich, a strategic move that fulfills Mitt Romney’s recommendation to fight Trump by consolidating around the strongest candidate on a state-by-state basis. Rubio’s median support in Ohio is seven percentage points, and his supporters prefer Kasich or Cruz over Trump by a ratio of 12 to 1. So Kasich's position in Ohio may be quite competitive.
To assess the overall consequence of Rubio’s withdrawal, I redid the simulations after giving Ohio to Kasich and reassigning four-fifths of Rubio’s support in later states to Kasich and Cruz equally, with the remainder going to Trump. Under these assumptions, I calculate that Trump would gain a median of 724 delegates, to end up with 1,189 delegates in all.
Depending on exactly where Trump falls in the range of possibilities, to reach a majority he might have to gather additional support from a pool of more than 100 uncommitted and minor-candidate delegates. As more elections occur and better polling data becomes available, it will become clearer how many, if any, of these unpledged delegates he will need.
The aforementioned scenario, in which Rubio drops out and Kasich stays in, may be Trump’s best option. Perhaps counterintuitively, it is worse for Trump to win Ohio since that would likely cause Kasich to withdraw. In this scenario, Trump would be left in a one-on-one matchup with Cruz. National surveys from ABC/Langer and NBC/Wall Street Journal show Cruz leading Trump by 13 and 17 percentage points. A two-candidate race might not only leave Trump far short of a majority of delegates but also open up the possibility of Cruz ending up with the most delegates.
To emulate the effect seen in those two surveys, I reassigned Rubio and Kasich's support to Cruz and Trump in a four-to-one ratio. This leads to the following distribution of outcomes.
In this scenario, Trump picks up only 548 new delegates, for a total of 1,013— barely 40 percent of delegates, far short of the necessary number for nomination. Failure to get a majority on the first ballot would then generate the open convention that has been the subject of so much speculation.
Even in this two-candidate scenario, Trump still has a shot at the nomination. Despite his record of racist, sexist, and inflammatory statements, culminating in the proto-fascism and violence of his rallies, many Republicans regard him as the lesser of available evils. Some Republican insiders see the ascendancy of Cruz as more damaging to their party in the long run.
We are therefore left with an odd situation. Many Republicans who oppose Trump and Cruz are desperately hoping for Kasich to win Ohio, an outcome that Kasich himself certainly wants so that he can stay in the race. But Trump also should hope Kasich wins Ohio, since a decision by Kasich to keep fighting keeps the field divided, offering Trump himself the best chance of getting a majority of delegates and ultimately winning the nomination. The only candidate who should not want Kasich to win Ohio is Ted Cruz.
Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member