Thursday, November 10, 2016

More Commentary and My Own Thoughts! Obama To Rule Out Rule of Law?


If words offend just think what entire sentences can do and what happens when the shoe is on the other foot? (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)

There are many lessons one can and will learn as to why Trump sank Hillary and the Liberal's leaking ship.  (My own thoughts are expressed  in 2 below.)

Life is just not fair! Even for little French girls.

From the NY Post on yesterday's demonstrations in front of Trump Tower:
"Heloïse, a 9-year-old fourth- grader whose family moved here from France, was one of the youngest protesters at the march.
'I think it’s unfair. We voted for Hillary Clinton, but it is Trump who won. It is unfair,' Heloïse said.
'We were going to go for a school trip to Washington to watch Hillary come to power in January, but now we’re not because she didn’t win.' "

Will Obama pardon Hillary and rule out the rule of law? (See 3 below.)
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I expect Trump will move our Israel Embassy to Jerusalem: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/israel-donald-trump-netanyahu-
jerusalem?CMP=share_btn_link===
More commentary from loyal memo readers:

 Dick, I am especially relieved about future Supreme Court appointees!! :) C.G

Dick,
I want to reiterate that I have enjoyed all of your "musings" and op eds on the political scene. It is so refreshing to hear/read/see Jews actually not blinded by the received Liberal inheritance from so many years ago. If my father was still here he would have been on Trump's front line regardless of his flaws....it would have been the practical side of needing to get rid of the Clinton poison as the most important first step.
Thanks for your contribution to trying to explain the logical and more conservative views to those on the other side and perhaps those who might be teetering.
I think you did have Larry on your list at one time but in case not please add him ...he enjoys your "stuff",too.
Kind Regards,
I----

DICK!DICK!DICK!DICK! Stand up and take a bow! I was speechless this morning. I think he was shocked himself. Go Donald! I----

Good column. M-----

Dick: Thanks for all you've contributed to helping make America great again
You are a great American. W------

(I thank everyone and I thanked him as well but I also warned him not to go overboard.  He happens to be one of Georgia's finest football players.)

 This from my dear U.S/Israeli friend who is the number two administrator at the largest private university in Israel:

To Me:

God Bless America. This deplorable 
was up at 2:00 am to watch it slowly unravel, and 
watch NC, FL, Mi,Wisconsin,Ohio,your Ga.
gain the momentum. I felt the farmers,veterans,
factory workers, coal miners---the America in
which I grew up. So nice to have President 
Trump whose grandchildren attend the Ramaz
Jewish Day School in Manhattan. You can fool some of the people
some of the time but you cannot fool them
all of the time---not the backbone of the hard 
working and patriotic silent majority. The USA has 
a country in between California and New York.
And now the huge challenge of transition, wisdom,
and implementation. We should all pray 
"Shehechiyanu" the prayer for things
new and wonderful and look forward to a renewed
excitement of positive changes to Come! 
J------- D----

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Dick
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1) What Does It Now Mean to Be a Democrat?
By Carl Schwitzer

A lot of ink has been spilled discussing the impending demise of the irreparably-fractured GOP. What does it mean to be a Republican when a man such as Donald Trump can not only obtain the nomination but win the whole thing? Evangelicals, neocons, and globalists, oh my! How can the tattered fragments of the Reagan coalition be sewn back together?

The actual question of the week is, “What does it now mean to be a Democrat?”

The Democratic party had options. But it opted to float an ancient, utterly corrupt open socialist who is beholden to Islamic nations. Did the party leaders think nobody would notice those traits? Is that their best and brightest? Is that who Democrats are? Democrats invented the polished media-centric candidacy! Why did they pick a wrinkled, collapsible hag whose “soaring oratory” was most reminiscent of the sound of a bagpipes being chopped to pieces with a live goose?

I suspect that what it means to be a Democrat in 2016 is this: to be so focused on ‘what’s in it for me’ as to be blinded to one’s conflicts with the societal norms for decency, corrupted beyond redemption, and paranoid about competition, discovery, and prosecution. It means that one is so consumed by one’s lust for power, money, and control that one is utterly incapable of recognizing their culpability in the unintended consequences. It means that lies cannot be questioned if they are brazen enough, and hypocrisy is only a thing if one has objective standards to begin with. Above all else, it means to be distraught, confused, and angry (but not sure why) about the Western world’s first successful attack on Political Correctness (PC), yet earnest about attempting to repair the damage. PC is essential to the operation of today’s Democrat party, because PC has never been anything more than a method by which to prevent those with sense from revealing the lies to those without it.
What does it now mean to be a Democrat?

1.   The best at gaming the system is the best at representing the cause
2.   Endlessly dividing people into more and more and smaller and smaller categories and subcategories, and then stirring up internecine strife, is beneficial to the cause
3.   Cynical and disingenuous use of fear is the wisest method for motivating the base to support the cause
4.   A two-tiered technocracy comprised of a privileged elite and an impoverished base is not unjust
5.   “Correct” opinion is more important to the cause than correct action
6.   Intention is more important to the cause than results (not actually a new feature)
7.   Graft in reasonable quantities is not harmful to the cause
8.   Lying about the short term for the benefit of the long term is acceptable to the cause
9.   Manipulation of emotion to prevent the use of intellect for decision-making is beneficial to the cause
10. The misdeeds of opponents are the most important aspect when their misdeeds are exposed subversively
11. The methods of opponents are the most important aspect when our misdeeds are exposed subversively
12. Demanding opponents prove negatives while insisting that we never need prove anything, benefits the cause
13. The military exists for the whimsy of the cause

Think about what they’ve done with #3: large quantities of people are literally in fear for their lives because they believe the garbage they’ve been told about Trump’s social views. They believe he is going to wear sheets and a hood to the inauguration and then immediately drive all the dark-skinned and the deviant from this country, banish artificial contraception, and restore the divine right of kings.

Trump has been in the public eye for at least thirty years. He was never accused of racism until he opposed a Democrat.

So many of the mundane, working people now have an opportunity to see through all the lies, and to question all the propagandization and articles of faith masquerading as doctrine. This is disastrous for the left! Their coalition has long had competing and conflicting interests: Muslims and LBGTs, union labor and illegal immigrants, environmentalists and green energy proponents, government bureaucrats and Medicare recipients.

The Democrats are about to undergo a major internal crisis. They will want to blame one another for telling them what they wanted to hear, when that is their standard operating procedure. Suffering from severe psychological pain from the cognitive dissonance, they will form a circular firing squad, and swiftly commence to cannibalism.
First-stage thinking in most of what they’ve done since the 1930s has been a staggering burden upon our efforts to achieve American prosperity. But first-stage thinking is the hallmark of the policies of the modern liberal. Their shortsightedness in the use of #9 is their undoing. The postgraduate facts of life disabuse people quickly of the fantasy world that exists in academia.  


1a)

Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there


I couldn’t pull it off. There is a darkness about Trump that negates that sort of humor: a folly so bewildering, an incompetence so profound that no insult could plumb its depths.

He has run one of the lousiest presidential campaigns ever. In saying so I am not referring to his much-criticized business practices or his vulgar remarks about women. I mean this in a purely technical sense: this man fractured his own party. His convention was a fiasco. He had no ground game to speak of. The list of celebrities and pundits and surrogates taking his side on the campaign trail was extremely short. He needlessly offended countless groups of people: women, Hispanics, Muslims, disabled people, mothers of crying babies, the Bush family, and George Will-style conservatives, among others. He even lost Glenn Beck, for pete’s sake.






And now he is going to be president of the United States. The woman we were constantly assured was the best-qualified candidate of all time has lost to the least qualified candidate of all time. Everyone who was anyone rallied around her, and it didn’t make any difference. The man too incompetent to insult is now going to sit in the Oval Office, whence he will hand down his beauty-contest verdicts on the grandees and sages of the old order.
Maybe there is a bright side to a Trump victory. After all, there was a reason that tens of millions of good people voted for him yesterday, and maybe he will live up to their high regard for him. He has pledged to “drain the swamp” of DC corruption, and maybe he will sincerely tackle that task. He has promised to renegotiate Nafta, and maybe that, too, will finally come to pass. Maybe he’ll win so much for us (as he once predicted in a campaign speech) that we’ll get sick of winning.
But let’s not deceive ourselves. We aren’t going to win anything. What happened on Tuesday is a disaster, both for liberalism and for the world. As President Trump goes about settling scores with his former rivals, picking fights with other countries, and unleashing his special deportation police on this group and that, we will all soon have cause to regret his ascension to the presidential throne.
What we need to focus on now is the obvious question: what the hell went wrong? What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes?
Start at the top. Why, oh why, did it have to be Hillary Clinton? Yes, she has an impressive resume; yes, she worked hard on the campaign trail. But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.

She was the Democratic candidate because it was her turn and because a Clinton victory would have moved every Democrat in Washington up a notch. Whether or not she would win was always a secondary matter, something that was taken for granted. Had winning been the party’s number one concern, several more suitable candidates were ready to go. There was Joe Biden, with his powerful plainspoken style, and there was Bernie Sanders, an inspiring and largely scandal-free figure. Each of them would probably have beaten Trump, but neither of them would really have served the interests of the party insiders.




And so Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. They chose Hillary even though they knew about her private email server. They chose her even though some of those who studied the Clinton Foundation suspected it was a sketchy proposition.
To try to put over such a nominee while screaming that the Republican is a rightwing monster is to court disbelief. If Trump is a fascist, as liberals often said, Democrats should have put in their strongest player to stop him, not a party hack they’d chosen because it was her turn. Choosing her indicated either that Democrats didn’t mean what they said about Trump’s riskiness, that their opportunism took precedence over the country’s well-being, or maybe both.
Clinton’s supporters among the media didn’t help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted of:
How did the journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach
Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn’t all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn’t accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.
The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the “last thing standing” between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!
Thomas Frank is the author of Listen, Liberal

1b) Why The Establishment Were Wrong.
By Newt Gingrich

Dick:One of the most amazing things about Donald Trump’s historic victory was how badly almost everyone in media and politics misread the country.
Time and again in the months before the election, the establishment suggested I was either insincere or insane in predicting a Trump victory.

Our differences reflected two very different understandings of reality.

The establishment’s self-reassuring assumption was that the American electorate was the same as it was in 2008 and 2012, only more so. This led them to believe that no Republican could win the presidency without doing dramatically better than Mitt Romney among the groups Romney lost badly--Latinos, African Americans, and women.

They further assumed that Donald Trump could not possibly do better among these groups than Mitt Romney, because in their view, Romney was a pleasant, appealing candidate, and Trump was alienating and offensive.

They assumed that turnout among these demographics would be high. And they assumed turnout among white males would be low. (After all, their moment in history had passed.)

The lack of understanding and imagination became self-reinforcing. These assumptions were used to weight polls, producing results that appeared to prove the conclusions true.

The political-media establishment then set about talking to itself, and discovered that apparently everyone it knew was anti-Trump. This explains why Hillary Clinton and her team thought attacking his supporters was a good strategy. They really did see Trump voters as a fringe minority.
All of this led almost every voice in politics and the media to believe Trump would suffer a historic defeat Tuesday night.

In the end, their assumptions proved a house of cards. It turned out that demographics weren’t destiny after all. Leadership was destiny.

If they had not been so insulated from the rest of the country, they might have seen this: the vast majority of Americans found them deplorable. This is the reality the establishment refused to see.
As Pat Caddell reported in his essential essay on “the uprising of the American people,” Donald Trump’s closing argument was a winning one. According to Caddell’s research, Americans believe the following by overwhelming margins.
1. The power of ordinary people to control our country is getting weaker every day, as political leaders on both sides, fight to protect their own power and privilege, at the expense of the nation’s well-being. We need to restore what we really believe in – real democracy by the people and real free-enterprise. AGREE = 87%; DISAGREE = 10%

2. The country is run by an alliance of incumbent politicians, media pundits, lobbyists and other powerful money interests for their own gain at the expense of the American people. AGREE = 87%; DISAGREE = 10%

3. Most politicians really care about people like me. AGREE = 25%; DISAGREE = 69%

4. Powerful interests from Wall Street banks to corporations, unions and political interest groups have used campaign and lobbying money to rig the system for them. They are looting the national treasury of billions of dollars at the expense of every man, woman and child. AGREE = 81%; DISAGREE = 13%

5. The U.S. has a two-track economy where most Americans struggle every day, where good jobs are hard to find, where huge corporations get all the rewards. We need fundamental changes to fix the inequity in our economic system. AGREE = 81%; DISAGREE = 15%

6. Political leaders are more interested in protecting their power and privilege than doing what is right for the American people. AGREE = 86%; DISAGREE = 11%

7. The two main political parties are too beholden to special and corporate interest to create any meaningful change. AGREE = 76%; DISAGREE = 19%

8. The real struggle for America is not between Democrats and Republicans but between mainstream American and the ruling political elites. AGREE = 67%; DISAGREE = 24%
These numbers describe a reality the establishment is psychologically incapable of understanding. So they did not realize that the country--and the electorate--had changed dramatically, in ways that had nothing to do with demographics.

On Tuesday, Americans’ version of reality defeated the establishment’s version--in the form of President-elect Donald Trump.

Your Friend,
Newt
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2) Trying to assess why the American Voter votes, as he/she does, is complex. We are an increasingly divergent melting pot of a nation and one increasingly dependent upon big government. American is no longer a monolithic society. Perhaps we never were but in the days when our population was predominantly a mix of Eastern Europeans there were certain key threads one could point to that easily defined what it meant to be an American.

There are many cross current comments explaining Trump's victory and Hillary's loss. Most of these come from those who failed to predict Trump's victory so one should take their diagnosis with a grain of salt.

As for myself, I believe it is important to understand whether Trump's victory was because of a confluence of his unique personality combined with a series of events that are unlikely to repeat, ie. dissatisfaction with Obama's failed policies and the flawed candidacy of a thread worn pant suit lady or are we looking at a total political realignment and rejection of conservatism's philosophy.

I suspect it is a combination of both. I do not believe voters have totally rejected small government.  I believe the voter/tax payer wants a government sized to be efficient that delivers results and less failure.

Hillary had many natural positives such as money, a built in electoral advantage and population shifts that favors Democrats but, in the end, she could not win because a) she lacked personality, character and that lovability factor and b) her team and mass media supporters were never in tune with the deep level of voter discontent. 

Trump spent less of his own money, needed less of the money from elites and, I believe, this was a significant. When Hillary tells how she is fighting for the underclass with money garnered from fat cats and foreign sources that sends a strange odor.

Obama campaigned on change as did Trump and Hillary campaigned on continuance of the change Obama wrought.

 Obama proved to be the inexperienced incompetent I always thought he was and whatever he did accomplish was mostly achieved outside Constitutional boundaries and/or did not produce favorable results.  We are less feared, less respected, weaker, more in debt, militarily spent and you know the list of horrible 's.

 If Republicans can execute the rational ideas Trump is prepared to offer regarding reworked health care legislation, a tougher stance regarding Iran, if not  total rejection of Obama's feckless Deal, a more effective response to ISIS, protection of our borders and simplified tax relief then traditional Republican Conservatism could remain alive and well and prospects of Republicans positioned to retain The White House should rise.

 If Republicans fight among themselves and lose the golden opportunity given them by Trump's victory not only will traditional Conservatism suffer but the prospects of a Republican retention of The White House will fade.

 I do not put a lot of credence in the fact that Hilary received the largest total vote because New York and California explain that away.  I do believe Trump drove a crack in Black America's enslavement to The Democrats and if the economy shows improvement their plight will better and Trump and Republicans will benefit.

 Employment provides not only wages but dignity.  There is nothing dignified about being dependent upon government subsidies.  Liberals are not likely to learn this valuable lesson because they are too hidebound by their philosophy of beneficence and caring. They fail to equate their type of caring with the destructive consequences.

 The most critical issue is which Trump will we get as president?  That remains to be seen.  If he surrounds himself with truly qualified advisers who can help him cope with the reigns of government and Trump will listen to them as well as teach them the lessons that propelled him into office against all the prognostications of the genius elitist crowd then we are likely to be in for  a spectacular renaissance. 

 Oh to be a fly on the wall as the two scorpions meet today.

 Stay tuned and maybe the "good times will roll."
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3)Obama Has Not Ruled Out Pardoning Hillary
President Barack Obama has not ruled out pardoning Hillary Clinton before he leaves office in early January despite her not being charged with a crime.
"The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons," White House press secretary Josh Earnest responded Wednesday when asked by reporters.

 "And we didn’t talk in advance about the president's plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals — and that’s because we don't talk about the president's thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations," Earnest said.
"We've got a long tradition in this country of people in power not using the criminal justice system to exact political revenge," Earnest explained. "We go to great lengths to insulate our criminal justice system from partisan politics."
Clinton, who lost Tuesday's election to Donald Trump, has come under attack for using a private email account when she was secretary of state.
In addition, the Clinton Foundation is reportedly under investigation.
Clinton has not been charged with any crimes.
Trump said during his second debate with Clinton last month that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the 33,000 emails she deleted from her private server.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, suggested Wednesday that the issue had not been abandoned, the Post reports.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for any crimes he might have committed while serving in the Oval Office as a result of the Watergate scandal.
Ford said he took the action to avoid polarizing the nation further by putting Nixon on trial.
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