A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

There is a popular story of Ben Franklin emerging from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and being asked by a woman ““well, Doctor, what do we have, a republic or a monarchy?” To which Ben supposedly answered, “a republic, if you can keep it.”

That statement carries significance in today’s world.  We see threats to the Republic all around us, both internally and externally.  We as citizens have allowed forces, we believe are beyond our control, to drive us into fractured elements.   All seeking our own supremacy.

We no longer seek a common ground of understanding but have chosen sides where there can be no compromise.  One side is allegedly filled with people who would destroy the republic in the name of freedom, and the other side would destroy freedom in the name of the republic.  The sadly humorous thing is neither side recognizes the risks of their position, and at the extremes both views are interchangeable.  Both extremes would destroy the republic in pursuit of their own agenda, and both would destroy the freedom to accomplish that.

I think the irony of this reality is striking and so obvious I am either insane in my vision, or the reality we face is truly being manipulated by the power brokers.  In either case, we continue our movements toward some new world reality where minorities carry a louder voice than the majority and there is no longer a sense of the common good. 

Right now, and I’ve said this to friends, I think it must feel like the world did in the 1930s, where the radical elements of Germany, Italy, and Japan moved toward world conquest, while the west sought only to maintain the peace, at any cost.  Russia, at the time, was a wild card with Stalin more worried about internal threats than that posed by Germany.

Vladimir Putin has taken on the role of Hitler.  He wants to return Russia to its former glory (I assume as it was under the USSR and not the Czars), regardless of the cost of human lives.  Meanwhile, in the west, we’ve chosen again the path of appeasement we followed when Hitler began absorbing adjacent regions in the name of a greater Germany.  We didn’t challenge Putin when he began stirring up Russian separatists in Georgia, we accepted his claim to Crimea, and only now are we beginning to send supplies to Ukraine as it fights for its independence against the Russian invasion.

The question for us in America is, is this the end of our greatness or the beginning?  It took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Germany’s declaration of war to bring us into the second World War, our leadership is afraid if we were to actively engage in the defense of Ukraine it would be the beginning of the next World War.  Better, they say, we quietly work behind the scenes to bolster Ukrainian defenses to help them fight this invasion.  Unfortunately for all of us the UN has no power to compel peace, it can only engage in peacemaking war if the Security Council agrees, and Russia learned its lesson the last time when it boycotted the UN and America got everyone to agree to defend South Korea.

We are rightfully afraid of a nuclear conflict, and it was only a couple of years ago the left was warning Trump would start a nuclear war.  The thing was -- Russia and China worried about the same thing, and nothing happened.  Now Trump is gone and I imagine Russia and China know the U.S. does not have the will to engage and risk that possibility.  We will be more worried about how our economy is doing, how the move to socialism is working out, and how the shift to “green” energy will save us from climate change.

Meanwhile, we can expect double-digit inflation, and soaring gas prices as this administration stick to the idea we should buy someone else’s oil rather than encourage the self-sufficient posture we were moving towards.  If we stop buying Russia’s oil, whose will we buy?  Saudi?  Iran?  Venezuela?  Mexico?  It seems according to Jen Psaki our energy policy isn’t to blame for American companies’ decision not to drill here.  She could be right, but that would be a first for this administration.

As we focus on the important things in life, like equity, diversity, pronouns, and free college for those who fail out of high school the world will go on.  The only question is will the greatness of our Republic?

Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs

I’ve written in the past on this theory of society, its villains, and its protectors.  I was introduced to it when I listened to a presentation by LTC Dave Grossman[1], USA (Ret), author of “On Killing” who related this story from an old Colonel[2].

“‘Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.’ This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

‘Then there are the wolves,’ the old war veteran said, ‘and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.’ Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

‘Then there are sheepdogs,’ he went on, ‘and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.’”

I was reminded today of that analogy when I listened to a speech by Victor David Hanson to Hillsdale College on George S. Patton[3] and the tragic reality of how we as a society view our sheepdogs.  Those people who view the dark side of humanity and choose to engage it.  Examples he gave in leading up to the discussion were Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Matthew Ridgeway, and Curtis LeMay who all had made the mistake of having views in opposition to the popular (i.e., therapeutic we are nice and shouldn’t kill those who are responsible for this mess we are in) view of most of society.

Remember when President Trump ordered the drone strike on the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and how outraged the political opposition was and how this was going to cause a massive Iranian response?  Soleimani was the mastermind behind attacks that had killed hundreds and was responsible for Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war.  Just because he was responsible, they said, it was just not right to actually target him as an individual. What was the result?  After his death there was a lot of Iranian chest-beating, a lot of leftist noise about how a war was inevitable, but really not much more.  At the end of the day was Trump’s decision to execute this Soleimani any different than Obama’s to execute Bin Laden, or all the drone strikes he approved against nameless terrorists in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula?

Islamic apologists and supporters of Hamas like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush like to talk about how most of the followers of Mohammed are peaceful, but it is just pure deflection.  As Brigitte Gabriel[4] explains in this video on Benghazi accountability[5] most people are irrelevant to the issue of confronting terrorism, whether done in the name of Allah, the Third Reich, White Supremacy, Black Lives, or simply anarchy. 

As we look at the tenor of American politics today it seems, at least to me, our young and the most highly educated among us have been trained to be sheep and to fear the sheepdogs. They believe the right government will protect them from the evils of the world. But at the end of the day is the government any different than a simple fence or pen, intended to keep the herd all in one place and make it easier to gather them all up when it comes time to be sheered? To keep up the illusion the pen is there for their protection and that the masters are to protect the weakest in the herd they are taught from the earliest time the government will care for the weakest, and must always be on guard of the sheepdogs. (e.g., Defund the Police will lead to safer, more tolerant communities.) 

The DNC has leveraged this with great success, suggesting they are the bravest of the sheep and those mean sheepdogs are just out to destroy the herd.  That works, at least until a real wolf appears.  So, to avoid having to confront a real wolf, they create problems that seem solvable but really don’t seek rational solutions as long as those problems keep the herd moving in its endless circle around the field and inside the fence.

For example, poverty.  Since the beginning of recorded history, there have been those who’ve been doomed to live in poverty.  Today, in America, that is equally true, although what is classified as poverty today would almost certainly be well above the survival standards of yesteryear.  With the crash of an overleveraged stock market in 1929, the government has taken increasingly expensive steps to help the poor us.  In the 1960s while expanding our role in an unwinnable war, and racing the Soviet Union to the Moon, President Johnson and Congress created the “Great Society.” 

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson and the Congress (2/3 majority Democrat) got to work overcoming the resistance of the Southern Democrats to significantly expand America’s support for the disadvantaged and underprivileged. They created Medicare and Medicaid, training programs for the unskilled and illiterate, and priority placements for the underprivileged to provide them a helping hand up, educational assistance, and welfare programs for the poorest of the inner cities.  Of course, to administer all these programs and the redistribution of America's tax dollars they established sizeable new bureaucracies, which have continued to grow and flourish over these past five decades, as have the criminal abuses of these programs.  Human greed being what it is, whenever free money is available there will be those who attempt to gain that wealth for themselves.

But let’s stop for just a minute and ask ourselves one simple question.  Have all these programs and all the redistribution of wealth or the expansion of Government debt served the needs of the poor and the quality of life in the United States to achieve their stated purpose, or have they simply been a tool to increase our individual dependence on the government as it moves to eliminate our faith in God, or our faith in family and our faith in each other as a vital aspect of life in America?  Have these programs, and all the other programs like the “War on Drugs” or the ebb and flow of criminal incarceration helped the poorest of the nation, or eliminated the racism of those who believe they are superior to others based on the color of their skin?  By the way, it doesn’t seem to matter what the color of someone’s skin is for those feelings to exist.  

As we devolve from a nation-state with a unified vision of ourselves and the world, into an amalgamation of tribes at some point there will be too many sheep for the sheepdogs to protect and the wolves of the world will fall upon those flocks and gobble them up.

 

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[1] David Allen Grossman is an American author and trainer who conducts seminars on the psychology of lethal force. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army.

[2] https://www.mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJsC-buIkSE

[4] Brigitte Gabriel is a Lebanese-American conservative author, anti-Islam activist, and founder of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America.

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-vvoRwJSPc

And Just Like That -- Nothing

Just scant days ago the world was on the verge of total global war.  World War III was just a button push away, a mad man was at the helm, young men were trying to figure out how to avoid the coming draft and Hollywood celebrities were trying their damndest to explain the Iranians how they weren't the blame.
Of course, the media -- always fair and balanced where explaining how the entire nations of Iran and Iraq (all 122,000,000) were now unified in their hatred of the U.S. for the death of what they referred to as a "revered military leader," and the death of all the U.S. military in the region was undoubtedly only days away when Iran would launch its terrible reprisal.
Those who hate Trump made it a point to highlight that his treats were, in fact, war crimes and he should be immediately taken before the Hague and stripped of his presidency,
Then Iran launched a couple of dozen (or less) missiles into Iraq and as far as the public knows killed only a few camels.
Today the President noted the Iranians appeared to be standing down and the Stock Market hit a high of 28,866 before slipping down to the 28,745.
It appears the mainstream media, flush from their expert analysis of the middle east where they reported on how unified Iraq and Iran had become and how many American casualties we had experienced in the rocket attacks seem to be having a hard time explaining why we aren't at war today.
The bottom line:  Our Embassy was attacked, we responded to protect it, a bad dude was somewhere he shouldn't have been and is no more.  The outrage will continue, but only by the same people who saw no problem with the Obama administration's response to Benghazi, and Hillary Clinton's famous statement, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Well That Starts the New Year Off with a Bang.

I’ve been on a Christmas road trip and only briefly paying attention to the news and Social Media while enjoying the grandchildren and catching a cold.  But I’ve apparently missed the big fireworks when Iranian backed groups in Iraq stormed the U.S. Embassy and in response, the U.S. used a drone strike to kill an Iranian General and his Iraqi counterpart at the Baghdad Airport. 

It amazes me on how predictably the commentary unfolded in the news media, and how incapable we are of moving from our polarized positions into one where people agree a military response was appropriate and correct.  Then, of course, we have the politicians weighing in with their opinions on what the President should have done, or what he failed to do to keep them in the loop.  Of course, to an outsider, my view of their concerns vanished quite a while ago as they began a non-stop campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the voter’s choice and the election.  Now every statement is viewed as just another complaint from those powerless to change the dynamic because they hate the facts before them.

The first I knew of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad was a news broadcast that announced Iraqi “mourners” were storming the embassy and the staff had been evacuated and asked the administration to send help.  Some on the left, like Joy Reid, called this “Trumps Benghazi” implying the Iraqi Embassy would suffer the same fate as the Libyan Consulate.  Fortunately, for the Americans most affected by this event, the current President’s response was far more effective than that of Obama, Biden, and Clinton when it came to protecting Americans serving in the State Department in a dangerous area.

With elements of the USMC and the USA’s rapid deployment force (elements of the 82^nd Airborne Division) mobilized and deployed to the embassy it appears, at least for the immediate future the “mourners” have decided to mourn somewhere else.

Following the deployment of forces for the protection of the embassy there was a drone strike at the Baghdad Airport that killed what the Washington Post described as “Iran’s most revered military leader.”  From where I sit that was a strange way to describe a man who has been condemned for his brutality towards Americans and even his own countrymen.  It really makes me wonder about the editorial mindset of the Washington Post, and only serves to reinforce for the President’s supporters his claim they are “Fake News” or just an anti-American propaganda machine.

The ending of this little experience in international diplomacy has not yet been written, but then again real life never seems to match the neat and tidy endings of novels.  In the coming days, we will learn more about what Iran will do, and what the U.S. will do to counter them.  What I am pretty certain of is the left will continue to vilify any U.S. action, or lack of action, for their own purpose, and the right will continue to defend any response, or lack of response, to support the President. 

The bottom line from most political pundits should be, which approach plays better for the average American?  Unfortunately, we are well beyond rational thought in our politics these days.

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Amid the Twitter Storm

This weekend President Trump had just a little too much time on his hands and set off yet another twitter® storm of epic proportions.  He suggested in a series of tweets, perhaps those freshman Democrat Representatives who are making such a fuss about the border and the detention centers should go back to their own countries.  Of course, almost everyone with a D behind their names, the media, and all the perpetually offended Hollywood elites were totally outraged.  They flooded social media to clarify, for anyone who had a doubt, how hateful and racist this President is.

But (and that is a longstanding but).

But the question of flight by the intellectual elites from their home countries to Europe and the United States has been a longstanding subject of debate.  They are leaving their countries, seeking a better life for themselves, and leaving behind a country increasingly unable to cope with the issues of modernization precisely because those who could conceivably do something about improving the nation have left.

America has had in place a long-term program to bring eligible young people to the United States to attend our Colleges and Universities, with the expectation they would take that knowledge home, along with warm feelings about the U.S., and help improve the lives of their fellow countrymen.  Of course, some of those on educational visas stayed and became U.S. citizen, but I believe many returned to their homes.  I had a classmate in college who was granted such a visa, he was instrumental in our achieving a national championship in soccer and when college ended he returned home to Uganda with a degree in Chemistry.

Then the Government created immigration policies to allow 65,000 or so skilled workers (and fashion models) to obtain work visas under the H1-B skilled worker program. While this certainly helps the U.S. in some areas (like cheaper labor), doesn’t it do so at a cost to the home nation of the visa holder?   I wonder how good the government has been on ensuring once a visa expires the holder actually returns to his country?  Knowing a thing or two about the government I’m guessing the Departments of State, Labor and Homeland Security have not been all that diligent in holding people to the law.

At the end of the day people are offended when those countries of origin are called $h&t holes, but how will they ever improve if we keep enticing (i.e. stealing) all their brightest citizens?  Here’s an idea, maybe we can offer them a one for one exchange.  We could send 65,000 or so college professors or corporate CEOs back to help them become a first-world nation. 

The Weinberger Doctrine.

When Should We Use Military Force?

I served in the USAF for just under 22 years, and in that time, I saw us end the Vietnam war, engage in a number of brief military operations (with varying success), and fight a short, but violent, conventional war to reestablish Kuwait sovereignty.  Along the way, there were a number of Secretaries of Defense, most of whom made some impacts that may have been newsworthy at the time but left little impression on me.  There is one exception to this and he was Ronald Reagan’s first SECDEF – Casper Weinberger.

In supporting the President, he along with the Secretary of State George Schultz created the conditions to broker an international reduction in Nuclear Arms between the Soviet Union and the United States and NATO with the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces talks.  But their shared strategic vision would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yet, despite these successes for America, he was routinely criticized by President Reagan’s political opponents in the Congress.

During his tenure, we saw the military forces of the United States begin the rebuilding and modernization the Nixon/Ford and Carter administrations had put off after the withdrawal from Vietnam as they dealt with the inflation caused by unbalanced federal spending.

But what I find to be his greatest contribution was something I doubt any of our modern politicians have a clue about.  When it first came out it was known as the Weinberger Doctrine.  It was a simple set of statements on when and how the US should use its military force.  They are listed here.

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat overseas unless the particular engagement or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest or that of our allies.
2. If we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation, we should do so wholeheartedly, and with the clear intention of winning. If we are unwilling to commit the forces or resources necessary to achieve our objectives, we should not commit them at all.
3. If we do decide to commit forces to combat overseas, we should have clearly defined political and military objectives.
4. The relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed–their size, composition, and disposition–must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
5. Before the U.S. commits forces abroad, there must be some reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. forces to combat should be a last resort.

What I think we are seeing today are the choices of a generation of politicians and statesmen who’ve not had the military experience to know the true cost in the human capital of a shrinking military as an instrument of national policy.  The one thing this current war without end will do is change that as more veterans enter into political office.  I just wonder what lessons and experience they will bring as they rise to positions of greater authority.

Unfortunately for us, there is no clear path for disengagement when administrations change or popular support wains.  Sadly, it seems for most of our politicians the commitment of American lives is not an important determination in their political decision making.  They think in much grander, and opaquer, terms where the morality of their position can be justified within the broader context of national security.

A War Without End -- Amen

So, among the latest of Trump’s kerfuffles is his tweet about extricating ourselves from Syria.  This means now every “Never Trumper,” alleged “foreign policy expert,” “political talking head,” and democrat thinks this is a rotten idea.  It is funny how Trump can turn the normally peace-loving Democrats into war mongers with just a simple tweet about bringing troops home.  (BTW that was sarcasm.  The Dems are no more peace-loving than the Republicans are war mongers, and the troops will probably not come home, they will just be deployed somewhere else.)

We have been in a war against Islamic terror since about 1980, (earlier if you want to go back to the 1974 Munich Olympics) with what can best be described as mixed results.  For most of the late 20^th Century the events were outside the US so the public outrage lasted for a few days and we returned to our own interests pretty quickly, but those who were engaged found themselves engaged on a global basis.

The thing about terror and terrorist organizations though is their resilience.  I would argue it is impossible to completely defeat them on any conventional battlefield.  If they can’t be engaged and defeated at the ideological level they will continue to gain support with funding and followers who believe they are the one path out of whatever they have today into some ill-defined better world.  In the case of Islamic terror, this is reinforced by clergy who give sanction and legitimacy to the cause.

What is lost in all these expert opinions (mostly by people who don’t have children engaged in war) is what are the vital national interests we need to protect?  SECDEF Mattis resigned a couple of days ago over the President’s decision, does that mean the President is wrong in his decision?  I don’t think so, but what Mattis did point out was the problem of making foreign policy via Twitter without maintaining the alliances we have built and cultivated since the end of the Second World War.  Maintaining good relationships with our Allies is in our national interest, but at some point, we have got to decide what is best for the Nation, and let the world fend for itself.

The question then is how do we end a war that has no glorious outcome with a ticker tape parade?

Just a Few Thoughts on Trump Derangement Syndrome

There are things I don’t care for in President Trump, but then I could say the same thing about Presidents Obama, GW Bush, Clinton, GH Bush and every other President I’ve served or lived under.  It is sadly amusing though to observe the ever-deepening nature of the attacks on his Presidency by those who oppose him and the agenda that carried him into office.

About 18 or so months ago the left became aware Donald Trump posed a threat to the anointing of their queen in waiting and began the vilification of someone they had loved for his money.  The propaganda arm of the Democratic Party (also known as Main Stream Media), began an all-out assault on Mr. Trump’s personality as well as attempting to influence the average voter with the fact he had little-to-no chance of being elected.  Their strategy proved ineffective, and Mr. Trump was elected through a political process that has sustained our country for about the last 83,823 days.  The fact the electoral college was a key to success somehow eluded the Clinton brain trust, but that is another topic.

Subsequent to his election we have seen those with progressive and liberal agendas push their points of view through riot, media propaganda, and ad hominem attack.  I find it next to impossible to find a Democrat who can make a reasoned or logical response on why the President’s policies or actions are not beneficial to the country.  It is as if a sizeable portion of the nation has swallowed LSD and are living in an alternate reality where emotion is the currency of exchange and cause and effect is the illusion.

Of course, Mr. Trump routinely fuels the media frenzy using its own tools.  He has boldly implemented the concept of instant communication with the masses and passed by the pundits who feel compelled to tell the average citizen what the President is really thinking, thus outraging those who seek to control him or the dialogue.  This will cause confusion on the world stage as foreign leaders are then forced to figure out what he really means and what he intends to do. 

Uncertainty can be a two-edged sword.  There are those who argue that uncertainty increases risk, just as others argue it is a useful tool in dealing with hostile foreign powers.  With the former President, there was little uncertainty.  We and our enemies knew, for the most part, his words and threats were empty.  Our foreign policies reflected that, and threats grew and flourished.  If we should have learned one thing in the years of President Obama, it is that appeasement of a hostile threat does not work.  It is a lesson brought again to the big screen with the movie Churchill.  Unfortunately, many on the left are unable to understand that, but that is not the point of this post.  Rather, I want to reflect on the increasing hyperbole and rhetoric of those who oppose the President and his agenda.

Today it seems every time counter-Trump messaging fails - the political leadership is compelled to ratchet up the hyperbole.  For example, just a couple of days ago Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the Republican tax bill “the worst bill to ever come before the House.”  You will forgive me if I find this a laughable statement.  I would think the laws Congress has passed that remove individual protections[1] are far worse than a law that lowers taxes for a majority of the nation.  During her time as Speaker, she helped pass the 2011 Defense Authorization Act that allows the government to indefinitely detain a US citizen on the suspicion he or she may be a terrorist.  Then, of course, we have laws like the Fugitive Slave Act that mandated escaped slaves must be returned to their owners.  This was pushed through by the democratic party in 1850.  My takeaway from those complaining about tax legislation is; safeguarding individual rights are far less important to the party than maintaining a status quo, condemning the opposition, or vilifying an individual while maintaining their hold on a dependent poor and their emotion-driven true believers.

So, let’s talk about the tax bill and what’s in it, or not.  Since I can’t seem to find the actual legislation awaiting the President’s signature I will refer back to the original House bill that was changed by the Senate and the conference committee for some points I’m pretty sure didn’t change too much. 

The liberal press is making a big deal about things like the mortgage on a 2^nd home no longer being deductible, but seem to be leaving out the 2^nd home part of the deal.  How many people have two homes they are deducting?  Will this be a loss to the lower middle class, or people who have summer homes, or RV’s and boats that have a toilet and a kitchen?  Maybe, but will this really be a tragic loss for most middle-class America?  Probably not.

What I don’t hear the press talking about is the doubling of the individual deduction.  While they talk about the loss of this or that deduction, it will be interesting to see if the average person making between $35 & $85,000 has historically had enough deductions to equal the new individual allowance.  Somehow that seems to be missed by the big city reporters who eke out a living on their high six and seven-figure salaries. 

-- Break, Break --

These observations are interrupted at this time to address a fundamental question.  Why do we pay taxes?

You know, the government didn’t always have a personal income tax, right?  For the longest time, it managed to get by with the money it received from import taxes and tariffs.  It is true that personal taxes were levied from time to time to pay for things like war, but it was not formally institutionalized until the government outgrew its own spending limitations and the 16^th Amendment was ratified (1913).  Today, personal income tax is the single biggest funding source for the US government.

Therefore, we pay taxes to secure all the things we want the government to do for us.  Unfortunately, we have also created a government that does not believe it is necessary to live within its own rules.  It budgets and spends more money than we are obligated to give it.  We as a society have become increasingly demanding on the things we want from the government while in the meantime decreasing the number of people who actually pay into its funding program.

There is one truth.  The more money the government has, the more it will spend.  Usually, on stuff, only a small percentage of Americans think we need.

The one question that seems unanswerable is, who has the best idea on how to spend your individual wages?  Is it you, or is it the government?  This last question is really the heart of the fiscal divide separating the two political ideologies.

-- I return you now to the current discussion --  

There are a number of things, in the new tax bill, that I believe are flawed, but I’ve given up the notion we will ever achieve a balanced budget or find a path where the two political parties will again begin to hash out their differences and find reasonable compromise for the benefit of the American middle class.

On one side, we have a party that thrives on separating the various economic classes by singling out those who have achieved wealth through commerce and increasing the economic dependence of the poor on the government.  On the other, is a party identified as being made up of zealots and big business lackeys, whose every action is characterized as making the rich – richer.

Since this new law is a unilaterally approved effort with no Democrats voting for it, and we have mid-term elections coming up in about 10-months; those elections will tell us if the average voter finds the lower taxes to be a benefit, or if they buy into the ideas pushed by the DNC, and its media, that the Republicans are out to screw the county.

I’m betting the GOP will lose control of the Senate, and we will again enter the age of rule by fiat we first saw in the Obama administration.  I hope I’m wrong.

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[1] http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/15108-congress-10-worst-infringements-on-personal-liberty

So, Let Me Get This Straight

On 29 November 1947, the UN general assembly determined by a 2/3 vote to petition Palestine into a Jewish state and Palestinian state, recognizing Israel’s right as a state for the Jewish people.  Israel declared its independence immediately after the vote.  The Islamic world refused to accept that decision, and when Israel declared its independence the surrounding countries of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon invaded in an effort to destroy the country.

The Arabs lost and Israel came into existence.  Over the next thirty years, a number of wars were fought by the Arab states in an effort to eliminate Israel, without success.  In the 1970’s the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a terrorist group best known for killing Israel’s athletes at the Munich Olympics evolved into a political group seeking not a stable homeland, but the elimination of Israel. 

Each time a peace agreement is brokered it is the PLO who refuses to accept its terms.  Yet the media and those who view the Jewish people as a threat continue to fund and praise those who seek a continuation of violence against Israel.  For example, there is an active movement on the liberal college campuses that advocates for the boycotting and isolation of Israel from intellectual forums, where the issues could be openly debated, but that would not further the cause of peace because they are Jews and cannot be trusted.

So now that the President has signaled our intention to move our Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize this city as a state capital, it is somehow upsetting all possibility for peace in the region?

Give me a break!  Who seriously believes the Palestinians are interested in peace for their people if it means Israel continues to exist?

Of course, changing the status quo and ignoring the anti-semitic propaganda is something the left is never very happy about.  They still hate Reagan for defeating the Soviet Union and the great worker's society it represented with universal health care and empty store shelves.

Peter's Principle

In 1969, Laurence J. Peter proposed a business theory that said individuals were promoted based on their performance in their current job, not on their potential to perform in the new one.  Thus, they would keep being promoted until they failed to perform, or simply put “managers rise to their level of incompetence.”  This has been known as the Peter Principle, and is often used to explain why companies never seem to be totally efficient since their top people are operating above their best level.

If we look around us today, this theory seems to hold great relevance to the political climate where the leadership of both main political parties seem so out of touch with the reality of President Trump.  The Democrats show the most obvious disconnect, but the majority party Republicans are not more than a step behind, as we see in their approach to healthcare and the general process of governing.

It seems no one, other than the President, has grasped this new reality of instantaneous, and often insane, communication.  The news punditry seems to trip over every tweet as if it were the reincarnation of the Monroe Doctrine.  Of course, they do it from their established anti-Trump positions, so there is little real new analysis.

Instead, they seek out those with supporting views, even if they are complete idiots, to show how right they are in their opinions.  For example, take this latest blow to liberal immigration policy where the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the restraining orders of the 4^th and 9^th Circuit Courts blocking the President’s Executive Orders suspending for 90 days the immigration of people from the countries President Obama’s administration had identified as having the highest potential for sending terrorists.  In doing this all nine Justices were in agreement, yet they show people condemning Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch as three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  [to be correct the SCOTUS did allow one exception to the written policy – so let’s call it a 98% victory for the President] 

And they wonder why the average American no longer trusts them to be “fair and balanced.”  For our part, as citizens, do we really want fair and balanced, or do we only want to hear what we like?  Increasingly it seems the later.  The question is why?

Blunt Force Meets Immoveable Object

In my opinion, I doubt many undecided voters were persuaded to jump on board with either of the two leading candidates last night.  I am doubly sure their current supporters are more convinced than ever they are supporting the right candidate.

Reading the news this morning it appears that one side is all up in arms over the moderator “fact checking” Mr. Trump and not Ms. Clinton.  The other side seems to be greatly relieved that Ms. Clinton remained standing upright, looking serene, and not getting asked the hard questions about her previous roles or positions.  I assume Mr. Holt was in a hard position, attempting to keep the sumo fight debate on track and moderating some of the more extreme statements Mr. Trump makes from time to time.

This is offered as food for thought to those who may be undecided, and does not constitute an endorsement of either candidate.

Past Performance – past performance should matter.  While not 100% accurate, it is a benchmark to help judge how well an individual is prepared for the higher level of responsibility.  Both candidates have a history to judge, but those histories are in significantly different environments.  On the one hand Ms. Clinton has been in politics almost all her adult life, and since 1992 has lived in the sheltered world of the beltway with its lobbyists and benefactors.  After leaving the White House in 2000, Ms. Clinton claimed to be dead broke – yet she, her husband, and their foundation has amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through those political contacts.  Since Ms. Clinton has been in political life a lot longer than Mr. Trump she has a longer public record to assess.  Things I think about include, what has she done to keep jobs in NY when she was a Senator?  Is the middle east a safer place since she advocated for the over throw of the Egyptian and Libyan governments by radical Islamic clerics?  Is our relationship with Russia better today than before she used the infamous reset button?  How did she handle the now famous 3 am phone call on Benghazi?  Does the compromise of our highest level of secret information, or the fact she is handled differently than those less well politically connected, matter? Decide for yourself how well her background prepares her for leading rather than just following?

Mr. Trump has been a real estate developer, starting in NYC and expanding beyond.  He has taken advantage of all the tax benefits and shelters afforded him, and as far as I know has not yet been convicted of fraud and misconduct.  He has grown a business that has been valued in the billions of dollars, undoubtedly in the course of that growth he has cut some corners and rubbed some people the wrong way.  You can decide whether his in ability or unwillingness to deal with specific aspects of his record should be judged.  Does he have an ability to separate his reality TV personality from the international leadership personality he will need as President.  While I have formed my own opinion, each of us should know what we think and why.

Income Tax Returns – Releasing tax returns is a relatively modern idea (early 1970’s).  For the average person they will learn only what the media wants to tell you about as the “alleged” experts pick them apart.  Since we know the media is not neutral, form your own opinion on this issue the Clinton campaign (and the left) is making a big deal about, and Mr. Trump (and the right) is ducking the issue on.

It’s the economy, stupid!  To take a line from the 1992 campaign of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush we should consider how the two candidates would address this.  Again, for Ms. Clinton we see the standard progressive talking points.  Make college free, forgive everyone’s existing college debt (i.e. the government pay the banks and make the debt a government cost), increase minimum wage, and increase welfare, while opening up the borders to more low skilled immigrants to compete for the diminishing labor market.  Meanwhile promise new high tech jobs in renewable energy for all those new graduates that will be pouring out of college.  These are essentially the same talking points the traditional government candidates have used since the 1990’s.  How well has this all worked out so far?  The point I find most interesting is how well Ms. Clinton spends other people’s money.  In this campaign she is outspending Mr. Trump by over $600,000 a day and what kind of return on investment is she seeing?  If money were the only variable, or the answer, she should be killing him in the polls.  Mr. Trump, on the other hand, has yet to lay out how he will deal with the disparity of wealth (if that is really the problem), or how he would guide the government to fix the hopelessness of the rust belt inner cities. The one historical comparison Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump agree on is he wants to reduce taxes on the rich (who play over 50% of all the taxes today), and return to President Reagan’s economic policies.  The ones hated by the Democrats and loved by the Republicans.  The major problem I see is neither candidate is willing to shrink the government; so all the small businesses and competition will suffer, allowing the drug companies, like the makers of the Epipen, to continue to charge uncontested exorbitant prices because of the government regulations.

Universal Healthcare – How is that working for you?  Private Insurance companies are bailing out, rates are going up significantly, and things like the Epipen cost $600 dollars…I am not sure I see the “affordable” in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Maybe you do.  If you want to see it continued in its present form, Ms. Clinton is your best choice.  If not, maybe she isn’t?

Finally, we come to National Security.  Everything up to this point is interesting, important and relevant, but the national security of the United States is an inescapable role of the executive branch and the President. In fact it is the first role identified for the President in Article 2, Section 2 of the US Constitution.

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States[emphasis added]; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

We have seen since the beginning of our nation the various Presidents fail or succeed in this role, and for the most part the nation survived despite their worst (or best) efforts.  Few of the Presidents have brought great military experience to the job, and that is probably a good thing, for history has shown that if they view themselves as military experts then we are likely to get involved beyond their ability to appreciate the complexity of warfare.  Within our recent history we have examples of both the good and bad of being Commander in Chief, but this is an area where “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  For me President Reagan and his Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger set the gold standard.  President Reagan set the policies and funding that that would reshape a broken military and lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the SECDEF set the conditions for employing the force that would ultimately lead to the defeat of Iraq in the first gulf war.  Since then the Presidents have torn down the military to fund their desires for social engineering or economic priorities in the social programs.  The willingness of the Clinton years to allow growth of the radical Islamic factions targeting US interests lead directly to the attacks on 9/11.  The splitting of US focus by the Bush administration has allowed both Iraq and Afghanistan to remain crisis points.  The use of drones as a tool to engage specific terrorist leadership has done little to resolve the on-going conflicts and tensions.  Mr. Trump has publicly stated he knows more about the problems, than all the Generals, while Ms. Clinton has shown she takes inputs from only her closest and most trusted advisors, so you decide who is most likely to be an effective protector of the nation.

Well that's about it for me, good luck with your choices.

Myths and Legends (Part II)

A southerner, born in Virginia before the civil war, he chose the life of academia.  Ultimately rising to become President of what is today known as Princeton University.  He was not a particularly great student, but he stayed with it.  He received his law degree from the University of Virginia, and his PhD in political science and history from John Hopkins University.  He was a social democrat who supported the concepts of the progressive movement and argued to keep the United States out of foreign entanglements.

He became President of the US when the Republican vote was split by a third party candidate.  As President he is known for his resistance to the woman’s right to vote, the separation of the races, and the eventual inclusion of the US into a European war. His stance on women’s suffrage softened when the political pressure became too great.  His support of the KKK, Margaret Sanger’s theories of eugenics, and the racial segregation concept of Separate but Equal never altered.

His marriage was tested when he had an affair while in Bermuda, but he and his wife reconciled and remained together until her death while he was President.  With his wife’s passing he soon met and married a woman with whom he shared the secret codes necessary to access and view the documents intended only for the President.  This served as a useful benefit when he experienced a stroke while in office and his wife took over his role and was able to hide the seriousness of his illness from the nation.

At the end of the war he worked to establish the League of Nations, a globalization concept, that was supposed to allow the peaceful resolution of international conflicts, but was unable to secure the support of the Congress after his letter of 1918 where he urged the country that Democrats must maintain majorities in both houses because a Republican victory would help the Germans.  As a result of this and his stroke in 1919 he was unable to convince the Senate to ratify the US membership.  The ratification process ended with the election of his successor in 1920.

How would Woodrow Wilson fit into his party today?  From what I can see he would do quite well if he could evolve his views on the race to align with the concepts of today’s party.

It Has Been an Interesting Week (in review)

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Earlier this week 47 Republican Senators sent Iran a letter explaining the rules for US approval of international treaties.  This has created quite the firestorm.  The author and spark behind this was the freshman senator from Arkansas, the Honorable Tom Cotton.  So far he has been labeled everything from a traitor to a mutineer.  Where is a good yardarm when you need it?  Every expert the media and White House can find has been brought out to smack him down.  Heck, even Meagan Kelly has taken him to task.  There are some interesting comparisons made at Legal Insurrection, a politically conservative blog.

From what I’ve observed, the letter is foundationally correct in its statements to Iran that the Senate must approve treaties if they are to be binding.  This flies in the face of what has been reported about the President’s plan to just sign the agreement as if it were a binding document, perhaps thinking the Iranians were not smart enough to know the rules we in the US must play by.  What is causing the controversy is a group of Senators interjecting themselves into what is historically the role of the Executive.  As LI points out good ol’ Tom Cotton is not the first to do this, but he carries on a tradition employed by a number of Democrats when they didn’t like what a Republican President was doing.  Examples cited are Congressional engagement with Nicaragua’s communist regime, Senator Kennedy’s attempt to reach out to Yuri Andropov of the USSR, and the Honorable Ms. Pelosi’s uncoordinated trip and lunch with President Assad of Syria as she attempted to broker a deal between Syria and Israel.

As an interested citizen with no voice in the issues -- the only thing I find amusing in this whole affair is how outraged everyone is when, after six years of an administration that repeatedly shows its disdain for coordination with a Republican Congress they find that very same Congress acting without its blessing.

And then we have Ms. Clinton, presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party for the 2016 Presidential Campaign.  Good golly Miss Molly, she set up her own server because conducting official business through the government's system was just so darn inconvenient.  I understand many say “what’s the big deal? It was all personal stuff, and she should be allowed to do what she wanted to do.”  To those I would offer the following questions.  Why do we have a national archive and why do we have classified and unclassified systems?

Believe it or not the US Government actually has laws that define what constitute official records, how they are to be handled and where they are to be stored.  Just for the record (pun intended), based on my annual training in records maintenance, I can assure you E-mail does constitute an official record.  I checked, and you know I didn’t see Ms. Clinton’s server as one of the places they should be.  A while back, during the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s, we got all up in arms about the government spying on us, and our Congress created the “Freedom of Information Act” or FOIA (5 USC § 522) that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law in 1966.  This statue allows any citizen to make a request for information from the Government and obligates the government to make a good faith effort to provide that information as long as it does not compromise national security, or personal privacy.  What better way to avoid FOIA release  than not keep it where it belongs so it can’t be searched for and provided as appropriate?  Not that Ms. Clinton would ever consider that, it was simply a matter of convenience.  Who likes to carry around both a private device and a government device, especially when the demands on the entourage to carry all the other stuff like luggage, meals, bullet proof vests (for getting into and out of war zones), and flowers to give that homey touch to the government jet is so great. 

So now comes Citizen’s United in its lawsuit against the Department of State, for its failure to answer FOIA requests for the passenger manifests on Ms. Clinton’s flights as SECSTATE.  According to the NY Times, it seems Judge Gladys Kessler, District Court, District of Columbia, has ordered the State Department to begin turning over the manifests by April 5^th.  I assume the DoS will appeal.   
Isn’t government transparency a great thing?

Bombing Iraq

Does anyone really believe a few air strikes will make a difference?  It seems we are now employing military force in much the same way the Wizard used smoke and flame in MGM's version of the Wizard of Oz.  "Ignore the man behind the curtain, there is nothing to see here, move on!"

Now where did I put my ruby slippers?