Russian Hacking? We've Seen This Movie Before...

The news today is that Barack Obama, with a fortnight left in office, has positioned U.S. special forces in Lithuania at the Russian border in a signal to Vladimir Putin that things like "hacking" our elections will not be tolerated.  Seems legit, right?

Except we've seen this movie before.  The difference is,  last time we weren't saber rattling with a nuclear power, and the administration didn't have a shelf life shorter than a ripe banana.  This is extremely dangerous and reckless behavior.   

Remember Benghazi?  This Russian hacking meme, and the responses to it, are just like what happened after Benghazi.  Back then, the ploy involved an anti-Muslim YouTube video instead of Russian meddling, but the goal was the same: divert attention to cover-up an ugly reality.  

There are always some "tells" with these tactics:  

• Instantaneous determination of the culprit.
• Unanimous talking-point buy-in from all Democrat operatives.
• Over-the-top denunciations of routine behavior.
• Convenient deferrals to the "intelligence community".  (Which, of course, has been thoroughly politicized in the Obama era.)
• Disproportionate and decisive remedial action taken.
• Inability to provide any proof.  
• Claims that proof exists, but exposing proof would jeopardize secret national security sources and methods.

Like Benghazi, there was an instantaneous determination of complicity after WikiLeaks began releasing DNC and John Podesta emails.  It took the Obama administration several years to finally figure out that Major Hassan, screaming "Alahu Akbar" while murdering U.S. military personnel, was actually committing an act of terror.  Yet somehow the administration knew instantly Russia, and specifically Vladimir Putin, was to blame for the emails.  The same administration that couldn't competently launch an Obamacare website with an unlimited budget and years to prepare, knew instantly and with absolute certainty that the easily disguised tracks of a phishing scam led directly to Vladimir Putin.  Does this add up?    

So unanimous was the adherence to this meme, that it became a standing joke whenever a Democrat operative was interviewed during the campaign.  The interviewer would ask a question about some innocuous topic, something like, "So, how's the food on the campaign trail?", and the op would figure out a way to squeeze in a reference to Russians meddling in our election! Anyone paying attention could tell this was a meme being pushed for political expediency...just like the Benghazi YouTube diversion.

Remember after Benghazi how every Democrat operative referred to the YouTube video as "reprehensible",  and then would go on to distance the U.S. government from having anything to do with it?  That was classic straw-man stuff, as no one ever claimed the U.S. government had anything to do with the video in the first place.  With this Russian "hack",  operatives have been using superlatives for how evil and against international norms this alleged hack has been.  Oh really? Not long ago, WikiLeaks disclosed the U.S. government was actually listening to Angela Merkel's cell phone! Now that deserved some superlatives.  And during the last election in Israel, Obama spent a pile of U.S. taxpayer money in an attempt to overthrow Bibi Netanyahu.  All of it wasted, of course. Yet somehow we are to believe Putin is doing something reprehensible?  Putin actually invaded a country recently, and Obama's response?  Nothing.  Remember Anna Chapman?  She was a real Russian spy with an entire spy ring living in the U.S. who got caught in 2010.  Obama's response? Nothing - except she was asked to leave.  Now someone figures-out Podesta's "ultra-secure" password is actually... "password", and Obama is expelling people and sending troops?  Does this make logical sense? 

The intelligence community was somehow coerced into mentioning the YouTube video as a possible irritant for the murders in Benghazi.  We now know that line was Bravo Sierra.  Similarly, the same intelligence community is now pedaling the line about Putin and the Ruskies.  Just as credible, and just as political as last time.  And in both cases, there were dupes in both parties who sincerely bought into the ploy.  

To make the Benghazi ploy look legit, Obama actually did imprison the hapless guy who made the YouTube video.   If only we had a first amendment or something to protect videomakers from being imprisoned for speech!  Oh wait...  Now we are invading countries and expelling diplomats to make the same diversional ploy look legit.  And to sabotage the incoming administration.  

In both Benghazi and the email hack there is a conspicuous lack of proof to support the diversions. And none is forthcoming in either case.  Obama promised a swift response after Benghazi, and then said,  "The perpetrators will be brought to justice!".  Remember how every major network was able to interview the perps within weeks, but it took the Obama military, with a budget in the trillions, years to get one alleged attacker and bring him stateside?  His trial is conveniently scheduled for 2017, long after the election of 2016.  He would certainly know if the attack was really a film critique, and I'm sure he was offered a great deal to publicly finger the video on 60 Minutes.  Of course, any serious observer would know that the compound in Benghazi was attacked on multiple occasions long before the offending YouTube video was ever put online!

In the case of Benghazi, one poor schmuck actually spent a year in prison to divert attention from a terrorist attack and get Obama re-elected.  Now it is a diversion to delegitimize and sabotage the incoming President who threatens to undo eight years of Obama's totalitarian liberalism.  This time the ploy has turned sinister and dangerous.  I sure hope Donald Trump can gracefully dance around all the landmines Barack Obama is putting in his path, because if not, real people could get blown up.

(UPDATE: The company that found the alleged Russian hack, and on which the entire intelligence community assessment rests, is a Google linked company with strong ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign.  CrowdStrike was funded by a division of Google, and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Googles parent, was a staff member and advisor to the Clinton campaign.)  

    

Trump Drops Anchor on The D.C. Establishment

Yet another in the series of Caddyshack metaphors for Donald Trump and 2016.  (These work better as video loops than GIFs, IMHO.)  

Trump vs Obama's Legacy

Caddyshack, as readers of this site know, is the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump and 2016.  In this scene, Al Czervik, the Donald Trump metaphor played by Rodney Dangerfield, deposes the captain, takes the yacht's helm, gets distracted, and runs over this random hapless guy out fishing.  Metaphor and comedy gold!

This Caddyshack Scene is a Perfect Metaphor for the Left's Trump Melt Down

Yet another in my series of scenes from Caddyshack that are perfect metaphors for 2016 and Donald Trump:




Here are links to the others:

Trump as Rodney Dangerfield's Al Czervik from Caddyshack

GIF of scene from Caddyshack symbolizing Trump sinking the Left and #NeverTrumpers yacht...

GIF of scene from Caddyshack symbolizing Trump taking aim at Obama legacy...

Voter Fraud Is So Massive You Can See It From Space!

States that Issue Driver's Licenses to Unauthorized Immigrants 

2106 Election Results Map

The two maps above amount to prima facie evidence of massive voter fraud in the 2016 election.  Of the 13 states and districts (including Washington D.C.) that issue drivers licenses to unauthorized immigrants, 12 of them voted Democrat. Only Utah bucked the trend, but that's because Utah requests a picture ID or equivalent, and the driver's license they issue to unauthorized immigrants is distinctly different from the one issued to citizens.

This occurred during a year when the Democrat candidate won only 21 states (including D.C.). 12 of the 21, or 57%, a clear majority, were the states that issue driver's licenses to unauthorized immigrants.  The odds of this being a coincidence are astronomical.

Only citizens are supposed to vote in national elections, but non-citizens are voting in such massive numbers you can see it from space!

This is not an accident.  Democrats have been on a decades long mission to encourage unauthorized immigrants to come here and vote. The reason is simple; immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

To further this along, Democrat President Bill Clinton signed a law in 1993 known as the Motor Voter bill, which basically automated voter registration for anyone who applied for a driver's license or other government benefit.  The problem, of course, is that unauthorized immigrants can obtain driver's licenses in the 13 states above.

Here's a picture of Bill Clinton signing the Motor Voter bill.  Notice the two people standing directly behind him?  They are Francis Fox Piven and  Richard Cloward in the green and grey respectively, two radical Columbia University professors who advocated collapsing the U.S. by overloading it with dependents and immigrants.

And here is Barack Obama, who studied at Columbia University while Cloward and Piven held court there, answering  a question with only one correct answer.   The question is essentially, "should illegals be afraid to vote?" His answer should have been, "they shouldn't vote because it's illegal".  That's not what he says though.  Watch:




Link: Here

So how many illegals and non-citizens voted in those 12 states? How many voted in all the other states? We'll never know because by Democrat design, when it comes to citizenship, voting is done almost exclusively on the honor system.

(This post is similar to, "Motor Voter and the Popular Vote", which was posted 12/1.)
   

Pussy Riot's Warning for Americans

Oh, the irony.

The New York Times ran a piece on Dec. 4th titled, "A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot".  Pussy Riot, in case you don't know, was a really bad girl band in Russia whose leaders ended up in prison for twenty months after performing an anti-Putin political rant at a church in Russia and then resisting arrest. 

A documentary film called "Pussy Riot, a Punk Prayer" was made about their journey including their formation, arrest, trial, and imprisonment.  The moral of the story:  Putin is a brutal dictator, Russia is not free, and Pussy Riot's treatment is a symbol for smug Westerners to look down their noses at barbaric Russia.  

During the trial, which was ostensibly about trespassing and resisting arrest, the defendants were kept in cages like real life Hannibal Lecters and were not afforded anything like the rights the West is accustomed to.  The implication is that all this injustice was really just payback for anti-Putin political speech,  and it could happen here.  

Now that Donald Trump has been elected President, The New York Times wants you to know that not only could it happen here, it likely will.                   

“It is a common phrase right now that ‘America has institutions,’” Ms. Tolokonnikova said. “It does. But a president has power to change institutions and a president moreover has power to change public perception of what is normal, which could lead to changing institutions.”

                                                                                      Pussy Riot leader, Nadya Tolokonnikova


There's only one problem with all this;  what happened to Pussy Riot in Russia has not only happened here in the U.S., but it's been widespread.  What's more, it happened under Barack Obama and the Democrats, not a Republican.

Here is a list of just some of the political filmmakers imprisoned, persecuted, and legally harassed by Barack Obama and the Democrats in recent years.  Like Pussy Riot, in many cases there were ostensible non-political bases for the arrests and harassment, but the reality is that these were all political payback in one form or another.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was put in prison for a year as punishment for making the YouTube video famously blamed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.  As everyone knows though, the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with a YouTube video.   Even Hillary Clinton knew that because she emailed her daughter, Chelsea, that the attacks were al Qaeda-like terrorist operations and then followed-up with the Libyan President confirming the same.    

Yet Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama needed a scapegoat to cover for their failure to provide the necessary security in Benghazi, to maintain the fiction that they had defeated terrorism, and to deceive the American people before an election.  So off to prison went Nakoula on an ostensible probation violation.      

Dinesh D'Souza admitted he gave more money than was legally allowed to a college friend who was running for office.  He gave $20,000 while the legal limit for a couple was $5,400. More importantly though, he made a couple of anti-Obama films in 2012 and 2013.  As a result of the ostensible campaign finance violation, he was confined for eight months, put on five months probation, and forced to undergo psychological counseling.

Mr. D'Souza was the first person in the history of campaign finance law ever to be confined for an offense such as this.   

Here's what liberal Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz said about his conviction and sentence:  

“The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion.... I can’t help but think that [D'Souza's] politics have something to do with it.... It smacks of selective prosecution.” He went on to say such alleged campaign violations are common in politics. 

David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were behind the Planned Parenthood undercover videos made by The Center for Medical Progress.  Barack Obama himself made a point to single them out.  As part of their cover they used fake IDs that somehow became a pretense for felony charges, a raid on Daleiden's home, and seizures of his property.

“To storm into a private citizen’s home with a search warrant is outrageously out of proportion for the type of crime alleged,” said Matt Heffron a former federal prosecutor who is now Daleiden’s legal adviser. “It’s a discredit to law enforcement, an oppressive abuse of government power.”

Recently all charges in Texas were dropped against Daleiden, but the damage was done.  His funding was depleted, CMP was sidelined, and the harassment was a success.  Charges in California have yet to be resolved.

Joel Gilbert made an anti-Obama film called "Dreams From My Real Father".  It drew the ire of Democrats on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who voted unanimously to punish Mr. Gilbert.  When Republicans stood firm and pointed out that liberal filmmakers such as Michael Moore were not similarly harassed, the punishment was eventually blocked.  Were it not for the split FEC, Mr. Gilbert would have been sanctioned simply for making a movie critical of Barack Obama.

James O'Keefe, Joseph Basel, Robert Flanagan, and Stan Dai were part of James O'Keefe's undercover video organization, Project Veritas, the organization that single-handedly took down one of Obama's favorite community organizer (and voter fraud) activist groups, ACORN. They went on to investigate Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu and ran afoul of the FBI while trying to make a film about her. They eventually settled for misdemeanor charges and accepted probation, fines, and community service.

O'keefe has also been harassed by Obama's DHS for making films about the open Mexican border, and was just blocked by Twitter for releasing videos critical of Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

Logan Clements made a movie called "Sick and Sicker...", an unflattering portrayal of Obamacare. For his disloyalty he was handed his first ever IRS audit.   

Breitbart News also earned their first IRS audit.   Breitbart is a multi-media internet megaphone that is foursquare opposed to Clinton and Obama's policies.  In this election cycle they are all-in with Donald Trump.  (Also, see David Bossie below who contributes occasionally to Breitbart.) 

Glenn Beck, Pat Grey, and Scott Baker of The Blaze Network don't just make videos, they have an entire broadcast network, publish books, run a website, and do talk radio all of which oppose Clinton and Obama policies.  So yeah, these guys all got their first IRS audits .  But that's not all.  Glenn Beck's top sponsor, GoldLine, was targeted by Democrats, specifically congressman Anthony Weiner, husband of Hillary's right hand person Huma Abedin, and a known political hit-man for Democrats and Obama.  Weiner resigned his House seat in scandal, but his (ex?) wife would have played a major role in a Clinton administration.

David Bossie and James Bopp were behind the infamous Citizens United (CU) SCOTUS case. David Bossie runs CU and James Bopp was the lawyer who defended the first amendment. The case centered around CU's right to show an unflattering film portrait of Hillary Clinton. They won the case at the SCUTUS, but ran afoul of Obama and the entire Left who believe the first amendment only applies to Michael Moore and The New York Times. Hence, in front of the entire world during a state of the union address, Barack Obama publicly berated the justices who upheld the first amendment rights of filmmakers, thus sending a message to justices, filmmakers, and supporters of people who make films: oppose me and I will use the Bully Pulpit to bully you.

No list like this would be complete without mentioning Obama's number one target in the media and film world - Fox News.  Fox has been singled-out and harassed personally by Barack Obama on numerous occasions.  These attacks send a clear and chilling message to sponsors:  Advertise on Fox and you will be the target of restrictive regulations, IRS audits, and federal harassment.

Perhaps someone at The New York Times will write a story about all this someday,  but I won't hold my breath.

    

  

Motor Voter and the Popular Vote

States that Issue Drivers Licenses to Unauthorized Immigrants 

2106 Election Results Map

Hillary Clinton supporters are claiming she should be President because she won the "popular vote".   Donald Trump created a firestorm in response when he tweeted that he would have won the popular vote if illegal votes were deducted.  All of this raises some interesting questions.

Did illegals vote?  If so how many?  Could it be enough to change the popular vote results?  But before we get to that, should we even look at the popular vote?    

How many Trump voters stayed home in states like California, New York, and Illinois because they knew their votes were meaningless in states that hadn't chosen a Republican since cars had cranks?You can't hold an election based on one set of rules and then scream foul when your losing candidate would have won based on some other hypothetical set of rules.

Think how this would work in sports.  The baseball World Series winner is determined by a best-of-seven series of games, and  this year the Chicago Cubs won four games and therefore won the series. But in the popular vote of runs scored, it was a tie!  Sometimes the losing team outscores the winner over the whole series, but they still lose, and no one claims otherwise.  

Same in football, where the only thing that matters is outscoring the opposing team at the end of an hour. But sometimes the team that loses has more offensive yards, dominates the clock, completes more passes, forces more turnovers, etc. But they still lose.

Only in politics do we play this game of retroactive rule making, and the reason we do so is based on pervasive ignorance about Federalism and the founding of the country.  But there are other more nefarious reasons.

Democrats have been on a decades long mission to encourage illegals to come into the country and vote. Statistically immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democrat. In 1993 Democrat President Bill Clinton signed a law known as the Motor Voter bill which automatically registered anyone who applied for a drivers license or other government benefit.  The problem is that illegals and non-citizens can obtain drivers licenses in many states including California, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Vermont, Washington, Hawaii...

Say, that looks an awful lot like that blue election map at the top of the page! Interestingly, Utah is the only state that went red of the states that allow illegals to get drivers licenses. But Utah requests a picture I.D. to vote, and illegals are issued a distinctively different license.  In short, the correlation in the two maps is undeniably and statistically significant.

Here's a picture of Bill Clinton signing the Motor Voter bill.  Notice the two people standing directly behind him?  They are Francis Fox Piven and  Richard Cloward in the green and grey respectively, two radical Columbia University professors who advocated collapsing the U.S. by overloading it with dependents.

And here is Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, who studied at Columbia University while Cloward and Piven held court there, answering  a question with only one correct answer.   The question is essentially, "should illegals be afraid to vote?" His answer should have been, "they shouldn't vote because it's illegal".  That's not what he says though.  Watch:

So how many illegals and non-citizens voted in those Motor Voter states? How many voted in all the other states? There is no way to ever know because by Democrat design, when it comes to citizenship, voting in most states is done strictly on the honor system.  But the map speaks volumes.
     

Trump, Explained

Apparently Trump's detractors still don't understand him.  How else to explain their continued reaction to every action and tweet.  Freelance journalist Salena Zito perhaps said it best:

"The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

As good as that is, and brevity being the soul of wit and all, there are times when more depth is required.  For those interested in better understanding, for example, why Trump still provocatively tweets about illegal votes and flag burning knowing he is opening a huge can-o-worms,  I offer the following in-depth Trumpsplanation.

Six Unconventional Trump Perspectives

Full disclosure:  I was a #NeverTrump-er before it got a hashtag.   Right after Trump announced I called him a shock-jock and compared him to Howard Stern.  Later I made a video parody of Caddyshack featuring Rodney Dangerfield’s character with Donald Trump’s voice.  I considered the whole thing to be good comedy.  Throughout the primaries I wrote often about how he was making unforced errors and was certainly not a conservative.  In short, I never thought Trump would go as far as he has. 

But he has, and as the primary wore on he grew on me.  For one thing he kept winning.  For another, he was fearless, tenacious, energetic, politically incorrect, and able to think on his feet.   That’s not to say I ever warmed to his demeanor.  I continue to cringe at his antics though the difference is, at least now I understand why he does it. 

Trump is doing these things deliberately.  There is a method to his madness.   He’s following a game plan he wrote about thirty years ago that he developed for success in business.   He has been far more strategic, methodical, and consistent than he’s ever given credit for.    Now that he's won, we must pay attention.            

1. Trump on Trump

A good place to start is this whole issue of demeanor.   Many Americans are particularly turned-off by Trumps demeanor.  Many women especially.  Donald Trump is not playing the gentleman’s game of politics we are used to.  While it doesn't make it right, it is absolutely by design.  

"In most cases I'm very easy to get along with. I'm very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard."                                                                                                                                                     Donald Trump, “Art of the Deal”, 1987

This “attitude” of his to “fight back very hard” is why he has attacked John McCain, Megyn Kelly, The Khans, and countless others.  It is an attitude that served him well in the ultra-competitive world of Manhattan real estate, but it has also gotten him in lots of trouble lately.  It is obviously a risky strategy in national politics. 

One reason the attacks hurt him so badly is that he does it all personally.  Trump has had to be his own one-man war-room.  He had a skeleton staff, spent almost no money on negative ads, and lacked even a party to fight for him.  But he'll probably continue to operate like that as president because after all these years it's who he is.   

One side-note on Trump’s tendency to attack:  He was born at the same time and place as the saying, “nice guys finish last”.  Leo Durocher was the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers and coined that phrase around the summer of 1946.  Donald Trump was born that same summer, a stone’s throw away in Queens.   

As I’ll explain later, Trump’s "nice guys finish last" attitude has thrown the other side off their game.    

"One thing I've learned about the press is that they're always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better...The point is that if you are a little different, a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you." 

                                                                                     Donald Trump, “Art of the Deal”, 1987

Donald Trump is a veteran media maestro.  His very business model – branding his name – was achieved in large measure by being controversial and getting free media.  For years, his tabloid antics helped keep his name in the spotlight, and the Trump name was emblazoned on every one of his properties and projects.  For Trump Inc. any publicity was good publicity.  

His presidential bid used the same game plan.  By being “sensational”, “different”, “outrageous”, “bold”, and “controversial” he managed to run a presidential race on the cheap with almost no staff or ground-game.  He played the media like a Stradivarius to get his name, face, and candidacy in the conversation every day.  That’s why he started this bid with the Obama birth certificate quest.  It made news. Trump was being sensational and outrageous by design.  Does he really think Mexico will pay for the wall?  Does he really think we should have seized Iraq’s oil?  All we know is what he reveals in his own book.

A vintage example of Trump playing the media was his birther press conference during the campaign.  Trump announced he was going to make a big statement about Barack Obama’s birthplace and invited all the media to a presser.  The networks all covered it live expecting a big announcement, but instead they got a lengthy parade of military endorsements for Trump.  At the very end he made a brief statement that Obama was born in the U.S.  The press went apoplectic.  They knew they’d been trolled.     

By trolling the media Trump has been able to provoke them into over-reactions that almost always backfire.  (See Salena Zito quote in the first paragraph.) The public knows that calling a bomb, “a bomb”, is not an unreasonable assertion.  The public knows that a temporary halt to unscreened Muslim immigration is not outrageous in the context of a global jihad that has declared war on us.

    

Granted, Trump has tweaked the media so often that nearly all his coverage is negative at this point.   But that doesn’t seem to concern him.  He seems to be banking on his ability to go directly to the people, a la Ronald Reagan. 

     

"You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."                                                                                                                          Donald Trump, “Art of the Deal”, 1987

Donald Trump really likes to throw in some “hyperbole”.  Does he really want to throw flag burners in prison?  Can President Trump really Make America Great Again?  Will he really be the best jobs President God ever created?  Does he really think America’s going to win so much we are going to be tired of winning?  All we know is that he knows he has to eventually “deliver the goods”.    

And he has delivered.  He won the nomination and then the Presidency.  He has over-achieved by every single measure of a rank amateur in politics, let alone on the biggest stage - presidential politics.

And he has delivered the goods throughout his career.  Of course not every project succeeded, but Steve Jobs also had plenty of flops along with his successes.  That's just the nature of risk and high achievers.  At least Trump never got booted from his own company.

“You always, when the service was over, you said, ‘I’d have sat there for another hour,’” Mr. Trump recalled. “There aren’t too many people like that. It wasn’t the speaking ability, it was the thought process.”    

                                      Donald Trump on Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Minister at Marble Collegiate Church

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is an often overlooked piece of the Donald Trump puzzle.  Beginning as a teenager, and continuing for decades,  he attended The Marble Collegiate Church, which was led by Dr. Peale, author of the bestselling book, "The Power of Positive Thinking".

The power of positive thinking, according to Peale, was that if you you could train your thought process to focus on positive visions of yourself, your abilities, your prospects, your achievements, etc., you could go as far as you wanted to go in life.  Nothing could stop you as long as you held firm to this positive picture.

Typical Peale quotes are:   "Change your thoughts and you change your world."   "There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment."   "If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind."

You can hear echoes of Peale in every aspect of Trump's oversized positive image of himself, his abilities, and his accomplishments.  It's hard to deny Peale's power, though, when so many of those accomplishments are real.    

“While he may be the billionaire from New York … he’s much more of a blue-collar guy.”                                                        

                                                                                                                          Donald Trump Jr., 2016

Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when Donald Trump was a household name and a fixture of the NY tabloids, I ran an industrial plant in the NY metropolitan area.  Trump was a surprisingly popular figure with the hourly plant workers, truck drivers, tradesmen, and office workers I worked with.  It struck me as odd that a brash billionaire with his name in big gold letters, flying around in a helicopter, with bejeweled arm-candy always at his side, could be a hero to these hard-working blue-collar workers.  Didn’t they know he was a “greedy one-percenter”?  (Though we didn’t talk like that back then.)  Didn’t they know he ran an “evil corporation”?  Didn’t they know he made “a profit”?  Didn’t they know he had a “yacht”?

Sure, they knew all that, but they also knew he was genuine, he shared their affection for pro wrestling, he was unabashed about his wealth, and he was having a good time.  Yes, he was having a really good time!  In short… they wanted to be like him. This was the American Dream they grew up hearing about.  It made him a working-class hero.   

They also saw that Trump spoke more like a blue-collar guy than an elitist rich guy.  The lingua franca on New York construction sites was not what you hear coming out of the mouths of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Trump’s fluent blue-collar, sentence-fragment lingo is refreshing after eight years of Obama’s hyper-careful, faculty-lounge act.  Voters loved Obama’s erudition after George W. Bush’s seeming inability to speak fluent English, but after eight years, that act has worn thin for many. 

2. Milton Friedman 

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion, which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. 

                                                                                                                          Milton Friedman 

Many Americans believed Hillary and Donald were precisely the wrong people for the job.  But according to Dr. Friedman, they could still do the right thing under certain circumstances.

In 1992 Bill Clinton was elected president with far less than a majority of the electorate. Most Americans thought he too was the wrong person for the job.  In his first two years, he raised taxes and grew government.  The economy stagnated, and the stock market was soft.  As a result, Democrats lost big in the mid-term elections of 1994.   In came Newt Gingrich and The Contract With America. Weakened by the rout in ’94, Bill Clinton was forced to do the right thing against his instincts.   He lowered taxes, supported free trade, declared an end to big government, and supported welfare reform.  The economy and the stock market went on a tear, all without the aid of zero percent interest rates.  The budget got nearly balanced, and to this day Bill Clinton is known for the strong economy that came after he "triangulated" and reluctantly agreed to many of the planks of Newt's contract. Bill Clinton was forced to do the right thing despite being the wrong person.

Can the electorate make it "politically profitable" for President Trump to do the right thing?  Based on the example of Barack Obama, I think we have a much better shot given that this "wrong person" is not a "historical first" from a politically favored class of citizens. 

Donald Trump will not be coddled by the media, or Hollywood, or academia, or anyone.  He will not be given the benefit of any doubt.  It will be politically unprofitable for him to do the wrong thing.     

3. Think Tanks

We think we just elected a single person to be President, but it’s not that simple. 

Aaron Klein, a journalist based in Israel, has written extensively about what Barack Obama is going to do before he even does it.  Does Mr. Klein have some prophetic powers acquired in the Holy Land?  No, he simply reads the policy papers from The Center for American Progress (CAP).  Apparently, so does Obama.  

During the campaign Donald Trump came out with a detailed proposal for school funding.   Did he just think up this plan in-between campaign stops?  No, he got it from a think tank. 

And that’s the point.  Presidents lean heavily on their think tanks.  For Democrats it’s CAP, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Human Rights Watch, and George Soros’ Open Societies Institute.  For Republicans it’s The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institution, and Freedom House.

There’s an army of very qualified eggheads who will conceive and implement any presidential priorities. Trump’s lack of government experience is irrelevant in this context.

4. Saul Alinsky

To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in Saul Alinsky, but Saul Alinsky  is very interested in you.  The late Saul Alinsky is the most influential political strategist of our time.  Barack Obama went into community organizing because of Saul Alinsky, settled in Chicago because of Alinsky, and taught Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” as an instructor.  Hillary Clinton knew Alinsky, corresponded with him in college, and wrote her college thesis on Alinsky. 

Prior to Alinsky politics was a dirty business, but post-Alinsky it got radicalized.  At least on one side, that is.   Alinsky's 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals” quickly became the tactical political bible of the radicalized Left.  The Right haplessly ignored it.  

And then came Trump.  Trump’s own book, “The Art of the Deal”, is kind of a “Rules for Radical Businessmen”.  Donald Trump is a natural-born Alinskyite.  His ability to “fight back very hard”, and take a “nice guys finish last” approach, threw the Left off their game. 

The radical Alinsky tactics did not work as effectively on Donald Trump as they did on gentleman GOPers like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain.  They were all turned into Hitler caricatures via the Alinsky tactics, and their only response was to turn the other cheek.  It is sad to say this, but running a race for president as a GOP gentleman is an enormous liability in this radicalized Alinsky age. 

5. The Trump Family

Donald Trump has been quoted as saying he was a lousy husband, but a good father.  I believe he is right.  His kids are all amazing.  They are not typical billionaire ne’er-do-wells.  They all work in the family business, are doing great things, are stable citizens, and aren’t taking salaries from the family charitable foundation.   

If his kids are a reflection of him, and to a person they claim to be, Donald Trump looks pretty good as a human being. 

6. What was, What is, and What may be 

Perhaps Trump’s biggest advantage in the race was his lack of government experience.  No matter what you think of Donald Trump, you cannot be certain what he will do as President because he has never even held a public office.  Everything negative ever said about a prospective Trump presidency, is exactly that - prospective.

My advice when it comes to all politicians is never listen to what they say, only what they do.  Forget what Trump says.  Just watch what he does.    

Conclusion

Think about this:  a complete neophyte, who’s never run for dog-catcher, let alone national office, with a bad haircut, a penchant for controversy, and a shocking lack of decorum, was elected President over a person described by President Obama as, “the most qualified person to ever run for President.”

Now we must do our best to understand our new President and not be whip-sawed by every Trumpian tactic he used to get elected, and will most likely continue to rely on.  It's a new game, and it's best to know the rules.      

As I have said throughout this political season, I consider the country to be like a stage four cancer patient. We have $20 trillion in debt, no prospects of growing out of it, radical Islam is metastasizing here and overseas, Karl Marx is the most assigned economist on U.S. college campuses, most Americans would choose the constitution of the old Soviet Union over our own in a blind test, and cops are being gunned down in cities across the country.

President Trump has almost no chance of singlehandedly curing us of this cancer.  But he could be like chemotherapy.  We may lose our hair, we may get nauseous, and we may feel drained, but we may also go into remission.       

Trump Derangement Syndrome

Warren Buffet is fond of saying, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." The same concept applies to politics. Last Tuesday exposed not just some nudity, but the absolute derangement of the American Left. Never in my lifetime have I witnessed the losing side in an election behave more like deranged five-year-olds. There have been calls for violence, assassination, civil disobedience, riots, demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts, etc. And in many cases they have already acted on those threats.  

Here's the upshot: The Left has been strictly relying on leftist news sources for more than a decade. Any news that did not fit within their narrative was not just ignored, but demeaned, vilified,  mocked, and marginalized.  Thus, the American Left has been radicalized.  

You would think after being blindsided by the results of an election in which they were fed a narrative they wanted to hear, that they would shun the leftist news sources that misled them so badly. Instead they are continuing down that same dead end by latching on to every meme they are fed by the propaganda machine:  Trump is a racist,  Bannon is a racist,  Giuliani is a racist, they are all fascists, Hitler, Goebbels, mean to puppies, etc. 

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Leftists might want to try opening their minds to news sources that are less agenda driven if they ever hope to emerge from their current derangement. 

(UPDATE:  Sessions is a racist, Pompeo is a racist, Flynn is a racist, and that's just Friday morning, 11/18.)       

The Caddyshack Election

If you are among the dazed and confused trying to understand how a boorish, showy, real-estate tycoon outsider just got elected President, I suggest you re-watch the classic 1980 snobs vs slobs comedy, "Caddyshack".

In "Caddyshack", Rodney Dangerfield plays Al Czervik, a boorish, showy, real-estate tycoon outsider who upsets the snobby establishment at a country club with the prophetic name, "Bushwood". The parallels between the movie and what just happened in the 2016 election are nothing short of astounding.  It's almost like the writers had a crystal ball and Donald Trump in mind when they created the Al Czervik character.

The central snob vs slob conflict is between the snobby Bushwood club president, Judge Smails played by Ted Knight, and the slobby outsider, Czervik, who is a guest at the club.

Dangerfield/Czervik trolls Knight/Smails relentlessly throughout the movie.  He gets under his skin by hurling insulting nicknames at him, breaking every club rule, mocking his fashion choices, and then finally by dropping anchor on his new yacht, "The Flying WASP".  As Smails is sobbing and watching his precious yacht sink, Czervik admonishes, "Hey, you scratched my anchor!"

In what may be the most relevant line of the movie, Czervik,  observing the "low-energy" music and dancing at Bushwood, blurts out, "Whaddaya say we bust up this joint?"  At which point he throws a handful of money at the bandstand, tells them to get some music lessons, and the place instantly transforms into a raucous disco.    

Smails assumes Czervik is visiting Bushwood to join the club, but Czervik has other ideas...

Smails - "You! You! You have worn out your welcome at Bushwood, Sir!
Czervik - "Is that so?  Who made you Pope of this dump?"
Smails - "Dump?  Bushwood a dump? Well, I'll guarantee you you'll never be a member here!"
Czervik - "Member? You think I'd join this crummy snobatorium?  This whole place sucks!
Smails - (stammering...)
Czervik - "That's right, it sucks!  Only reason I'm here is maybe I'll buy it!"
Smails -  "Buy bushwood!  Why you..."  (proceeds to try to strangle him)

Insulting comments about women abound.  "Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it!" "You're a lovely lady; you must have been something before electricity!" "Hey, you're a lot of woman; wanna make $14 dollars the hard way?" and  "He called me a baboon; thinks I'm his wife!"

In the only scene where Czervik is with a woman, she's a hot young blond in a tight red dress.

In another scene, after unabashedly farting loudly at the dinner table, Czervik has the whole table in hysterics saying, "That sounded like someone stepped on a duck!"

In just about every scene, Czervik is flaunting his wealth and generously tipping everyone he comes in contact with.  At one point he bribes the referee in the illicit golf tournament denouement.

He even brags about doing business with the Chinese. "We just bought property right behind the Great Wall; on the good side!"

This is not the first time a movie has been relevant to a political election.  Think about Barack Obama and "Blazing Saddles".  And then there was Ronald Reagan with "Knute Rockne, All American" and "Bedtime for Bonzo".

Of course there are limits to what we can learn about this election from a movie made in 1980.  But it is interesting that the most popular and enduring character from "Caddyshack" is Rodney Dangerfield's Al Czervik, the boorish, showy, real-estate tycoon outsider who upsets the snobby establishment.

My point is, if you are one of those disheartened souls in a funk over the outcome of this election, go watch "Caddyshack" and have a good laugh.  You might even learn why so many Americans took a chance on the outsider instead of opting for Mrs. Smails.

(Update: More parallels:   Mrs. Smails faints in the movie.  And Czervik only wins the denouement golf tournament after getting help from Danny Noonan (James Comey?), who turns on Smails. There's also an unlikely assist from Bill Murray's character whose pyrotechnics help sink the final putt (Julian Assange? Anthony Weiner?).)