Friday, November 11, 2016

Missing The Message. Republicans Unleashed. Kim Agrees With Me. Readership Metrics.




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The mass media and their fellow rioters are likely  to miss the positive impact of Trump's ability to accomplish what Americans want and have longed for, ie.  a return to the common sense policies that made us great,

Furthermore, Republicans have been bottled up by the likes of Reid, Pelosi and Obama and now are free to implement their ideas which Trump will gladly pass.   

Because Obama arrogantly ruled through his pen and phone, he failed to realize his legacy could be undone in the same manner and now, will be.  


Obama arrogantly  said" we won" and now he has lost and so will his misguided legacy!

The opportunity for true progress is there now so let's see what happens.(See 1 below.)


Hillary admits she stepped in it. (See 1a below.)
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My previous focus on health care, financials and energy has not turned out too badly.  I would now add the defense sector as an area of focus because Trump will no longer allow The Pentagon to be used as a playpen for social experimentation.





















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Kim agrees with me - Obama helped elect Trump.

Hard to believe the Jewish vote may have deserted Clinton where it was critical. (See 2 and 2a below.)

I am bemused how all those opposed to Trump have resorted to Murine and now see more clearly. (See 2b below.)
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I have close to 500 people I send my memo to and then I also post it on Facebook - Dick-Meom.Blogspot.Com.

As the election drew near my readership , on any given day, was in the high 20%.  As the election drew even nearer, readership crossed over to the high 30% and on some days even exceeded 40 plus %.  Now that Trump has been elected, and my views of his prospects somewhat confirmed, my readership remains in the low to high 40%

I do not understand what this means but I find it interesting.

My memo goes to and is read by some of the best op ed writers in the nation (in my humble opinion) and who I have the greatest respect for though we often disagree.

I also receive a large number of cartoons and articles from my fellow memo readers and re-post a good amount for which I am grateful because I cannot do what I do without help.

I also get a lot of rebuttal and I always respond though I do not always post.

I also apologize for memos that are not properly sized.  Many times articles I post turn out weird and I am not able to resize them.
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Have a great weekend and on this Memorial Day, realize and be thankful for how far we have come from the disrespectful Viet Nam Days!
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Dick
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1)Drowning the elites in the gene pool


Wesley Pruden

By Wesley Pruden



The 2016 elections are a gift that keeps on giving, and nothing has been sweeter than watching the chattering class being taken back to school. Rarely has smug arrogance been so sharply rebuked. It's delicious to watch. Yum, yum.

The pundits and talking heads particularly relish the finding in the exit polls that most of Donald Trump's votes appeared to be coming from white working-class stiffs "without a college education." What should you expect from someone who had never seen the inside of the Student Union?

A college education is a fine thing, and a few years with access to a library and a conscientious professor is a reward that pays dividends for a lifetime. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," as a familiar television commercial once reminded us. Or as an earlier vice president, Dan Quayle, put it, "it's a terrible thing to lose your mind."

But a college education is no substitute for a native appetite for knowledge, wherever found and however acquired. Harry S Truman was one of our most lettered presidents; no other president and few historians had his knowledge and understanding of the office and of the presidents before him.

Yet he never attended college, and had to go to work behind a brace of mules on the family farm and could not finish high school. He turned out to be one of the nation's most effective presidents, presiding at a particularly troubled time, first in war and then in tense peace.

Abraham Lincoln read the Bible and borrowed books to read by the flickering light of the fireside. "Educated" or not, he turned out pretty well. A college education is not a requisite for casting an intelligent ballot, either. William F. Buckley, a Yale man and an educated consumer of the book of knowledge, said he "would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard." Nevertheless, the book- proud sometimes never get over a sheepskin.

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, despaired on election eve of the grim consequences of enabling the white, the less educated and those deprived of a college education to cancel the votes of the credentialed. Hillary calls them the deplorables.

"Basically, less-educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump," Mr. Brooks said from his satellite pulpit at National Public Radio. "It doesn't matter what the guy does. And college-educated are going to Clinton. Sometimes you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool, and whatever it is."

Perhaps eugenics, the science of selective breeding, is the only way to deal with the vast right-wing conspiracy, though such a cure requires the passage of generations to accomplish lasting good. But we must be patient with the chattering class. They're still trying to figure out who and what hit them.

Professors at many places called "institutions of higher learning" felt moved to cancel classes to help their students deal with the trauma of life and the election results
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A professor at the University of Connecticutt told her students she understood if they needed "a personal day" to deal with the Donald having been elected president. A professor at Iowa State cancelled a class and postponed a test because the defeat of Hillary is "a life-changing event," and "I think many of you will need some time to cope due to the polarizing nature of the campaign."

A student at UCLA in Los Angeles told his campus newspaper that "it feels like we're cheated somehow. [Donald Trump] is a horrible person that doesn't deserve this title." But David Brooks and similarly disturbed pundits can take heart. If they can hold on reinforcements from the campus are on the way.

"The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak," says Will Rahn of CBS News, one of the rare media notabilities who does get it. "With few exceptions we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to anguish in the face of Donald Trump's victory. More than that and more importantly, we missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

"This is all symptomatic of modern journalism's great moral and intellectual failing, it's unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there would be a winking "we did it" feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar, and saved the republic."

No one should expect an outbreak of humility in the ranks. The giants of the media still have bitter lessons to learn, and "the less educated and non-educated whites" will continue to grade on a sharp curve.

1a) NYT: Clinton Admitted She 'Stepped In It' With 'Deplorables' Remark
Hillary Clinton knew she had made a mistake with her "basket of deplorables" comment about Donald Trump, according to a new report.
The New York Times claims Clinton told one of her campaign advisers she had "just stepped in it" following the backlash of her September comments in which she offended many of Trump's supporters.
"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables,'" Clinton, who lost to Trump in this week's presidential election, said at the time. "Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America."

 The comment went viral, causing Trump and his supporters to revolt against it. Pro-Trump t-shirts were eventually made using the word "deplorables," and Trump joked about his supporters by calling them his "deplorables."

 The Times also notes that Clinton's decision not to court white Catholics — a strategy former President Bill Clinton disagreed with — ultimately cost her votes.
"This is painful, and it will be for a long time," Clinton said in her concession speech Wednesday. "But I want you to remember this: our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love and building a nation that's hopeful, inclusive and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought.
"But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future."
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2)

Trump’s Secret Weapon: Obama

Not to take away from the GOP victory, but this was a rejection of Obama’s governing.


By Kimberley A. Strassel

President-elect Donald Trump paid a visit to the White House Thursday, and by all accounts he was pleasant toward the current occupant. He should be, since Mr. Trump owes his victory to Barack Obama.
Hillary Clinton’s defeat has left the Democratic Party a smoldering heap, its leaders pointing fingers over who or what to blame: James Comey. Robby Mook. Voter suppression. WikiLeaks. Sexism. Barely a mention has been made of the man who presided over one of the most epic party meltdowns in the country’s history: Mr. Obama.

Deep Democratic fissures have been on display for years, with Mrs. Clinton’s rancorous primary against Bernie Sanders only the most recent example. But the media chose to ignore this and instead to obsess about largely superficial GOP divisions. All along this election has been portrayed as a referendum on Mr. Trump. Tuesday’s results are far better viewed as a thundering repudiation, at every level, of Mr. Obama’s governing and policies.

In 2009, the president’s first year in office, the Democrats held 257 House seats, a majority that was geographically and politically diverse. After Tuesday the figure stands at 193, and fully one-third of these Democrats hail from three blue states: New York, California and Massachusetts.

The story is equally grim for Democrats in the Senate. In 2009 they held the first filibuster-proof majority since the 1970s, which evaporated in the wake of ObamaCare. Tuesday’s vote was the best chance Democrats will have in years to retake the chamber, but they lost nearly every close race.

When Mr. Obama took office, Democrats owned 29 governorships. After Tuesday it is 15, with ballots in North Carolina’s tight race still being counted. Democrats controlled 60 of the 99 state legislative chambers in 2010. Today it is 30. Now that Republicans have won the Kentucky state House for the first time in 95 years, Democrats no longer control a single legislative chamber in the South. The party of the left will hold the governorship and both chambers in precisely five states.

This isn’t to take away from Mr. Trump’s supporters, or his message. But the numbers above are a reaction to Democratic failure—to a president who rammed through unpopular legislation and governed via executive order and extralegal regulation. Tuesday’s results are a response to a government that targeted conservative nonprofits, left veterans on waiting lists, botched a health website and left the world to burn. “My legacy is on the ballot,” Mr. Obama said in September, in what was the truest statement of the campaign.

Let’s not be chintzy: There’s plenty of Democratic blame to go around. Mrs. Clinton could have run a “change” campaign and moved her party back toward the centrism that earned Bill Clinton all those white, working-class voters. She instead catered to the progressive left. One exit poll shows Mrs. Clinton won union households by 2 percentage points, when Mr. Obama carried them by 18. Of the 207 swing counties that went for Mr. Obama only once (in 2008 or 2012), Mr. Trump won 194. This is an utter abandonment of the Democratic Party that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton led.

It’s also an extraordinary grant of power to Republicans. They’d be wise to immediately understand that they now own the results. Voters are giving the GOP one chance to deliver on the change it has promised, and the party can’t afford easy mistakes.

The risks are obvious: First is the threat of internecine warfare. Mr. Trump has promised to “drain the swamp” that is Washington, D.C. But if he chooses to battle his own caucus—which, after years of primaries and turnover, is far more reformist than even a few years ago—he risks alienating his core supporters. Similarly, if GOP purists in Congress decide to ride herd on their leaders and on Mr. Trump, demanding perfection over progress, Republicans will look even more ineffective than they did out of power.

The nascent talk of firing Paul Ryan is as counterproductive an idea as they come. From the perspective of getting things done, Mr. Trump has an almost ideal team: a House speaker who is the ultimate policy wonk; a Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who is a master tactician; a vice president-elect, Mike Pence, who has great relations with both men, knowledge of Congress and the ability to serve as a go-between.

The other obvious risk is that Mr. Trump might try to fix all of the Obama mess, all at once. That’s a recipe for a muddle. Republicans could do nothing smarter in the coming weeks than agree to prioritize a few sweeping, key initiatives—say, health care and tax reform—that would immediately boost the economy. Earning public trust with big, early victories will buy time for more reform down the road.

Republicans have been elected as the anti-Obamas. Which means they’ve been elected to make things better. If they can remember that, they have a shot.

2a) Jews Shockingly Abandoned Clinton


Mitchell Bard
Mitchell Bard
Dr Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and a foreign policy analyst who … 

According to exit polls 71% of American Jews voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential election, while only 24% backed her Republican opponent Donald Trump. While Haaretz described the outcome as a reflection of overwhelming Jewish support for Clinton, the truth is the opposite. Jews rejected her in extraordinary numbers and may have contributed to her defeat in battleground states with large Jewish populations.

Just as the press misjudged the general population before Tuesday, so too did it miscalculate the Jewish vote. Take some of the hysterical headlines prior to Election Day, such as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s “Anti-Semitism unleashed by Trump followers chills Jewish voters,” or The Atlantic’s, “Has Trump Driven Jews Away From the Republican Party?”

The percentage of Jews voting for Clinton was apparently higher than any other religious group, but that is not unusual and hardly justified J Street’s claims that Jews had “an overwhelming disdain for Donald Trump and his policies,” or their pollster’s assertion that Jews are clearly in the “progressive camp.”

I cannot claim any great prior insight because I had expected Trump to potentially get the lowest percentage of the Jewish vote of any Republican in history; he did not. Similarly, most of the autopsies on the election so far have incorrectly asserted that Jews rejected him when, in fact, his share of the Jewish vote was about average for a Republican candidate. In fact, he did as well or better than every Republican since 1992 — George W. Bush (24% in 2004 and 19% in 2000),  Dole (16% in 1996) and Bush Sr. (11% in 1992) — with the exception of Romney (30%) who benefited from Jewish disillusionment with Obama’s Middle East policies.

The real story is how Jews abandoned Hillary Clinton despite her close ties to the Jewish community, major Jewish supporters (financial and otherwise), government experience, pro-Israel record, relatively hawkish foreign policy and liberal domestic policy. Most Jews were drawn to her record of public service and, simultaneously, repelled by Trump’s lack of experience, bigotry, misogyny and all of the other negative traits his critics assigned to him.

Still, Jews deserted Clinton in droves. Yes, she won a substantial majority, but all the previous Democratic candidates, going back to her husband did much better, with Bill’s 80% share of the Jewish vote in 1992 significantly higher. After 1992, Clinton followed that up with a 78% in his second campaign. Gore and Kerry lost despite getting 79% and 76% of the vote, respectively. Jews saw great promise in Obama and rewarded him with 78% of their vote, but the perception that he was perhaps the most anti-Israel president in history drove that total down dramatically to 69% in 2012. Thus, the pro-Israel Clinton didn’t do much better than the Democrat viewed as hostile to Israel.
Put bluntly, Clinton’s share of the Jewish vote was disastrous. Did it cost her the election? Probably not, since she underperformed with so many other constituencies and, in many respects, ran a terrible campaign, but losing Jews certainly didn’t help her in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, or Ohio.
There is no single explanation for Clinton’s poor showing. Jews were much more in tune with her liberal social policies and more hawkish foreign policies than with Trump’s ambivalent and scattershot social program and isolationism. Trump said the right things about Israel and the danger of radical Islam (which he rightly pointed out she refused to recognize was a major problem), but his overall foreign policy, to the extent it was discernible, was not consistent with Jewish views. Trump’s overall ignorance of foreign policy, threats against NATO, cultivation of Putin, and desire to withdraw from leadership in the Middle East and elsewhere were all troubling.

On the other hand, many Jews wanted a change after eight years with a Democrat in the White House, especially one they distrust even now to take a parting shot at Israel at the UN by recognizing “Palestine,” voting that settlements are “illegal” or setting some parameters for a final peace agreement at odds with Israeli public opinion. For all her positive statements about Israel, Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State and oversaw the first years of his deleterious policies toward Israel and the region. Though the Iran deal was not a major issue in the campaign, her support for that disastrous agreement undoubtedly turned off Jewish voters who are still angry about what they see as the appeasement of Iran.

The fact that Trump did far better than expected with Jews, especially given the way even Jewish Republicans ran away from him during the campaign, does not reflect any significant realignment of the Jewish vote. Though Jewish Republicans have touted such a change now for years, this election is not a harbinger of that dreamed of change. Trump does not reflect the traditional views of the party advocated by most Jewish Republicans and, even with a flawed opponent, he did not win new converts to the party.
The vote is always based on assumptions of what the next president will do in office. Now, we will have to see whether Trump’s statements reflected typical pandering (such as the promise nearly every candidate makes to move the US embassy to Jerusalem only to change their minds when they reach the White House) or conviction. The fact that one of his first acts was to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington was a good sign – exactly the opposite of the approach Obama took to immediately demonize Israel. Hopefully, we will hear more about how serious he is about fighting radical Islam and ISIS, ending the slaughter in Syria and whether he will indeed tear up the Iran deal. We will learn more when we see who he appoints for key positions. I hope he does not believe what he said in the campaign about being his own foreign policy adviser; Obama acted as though he were and the results were, to use Trump’s favorite word, a “disaster.”

Will Trump be good for the Jews and Israel? There are good reasons for trepidation, but also signs of hope. As others have said, he is the only president we have and Americans should give him a chance to demonstrate he can be a leader of all the people.

Dr. Mitchell Bard is the author/editor of 24 books including The Arab Lobby, Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews and the novel After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.

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