Why Trump's Supporters Still Support Him

Trump haters keep asking this question, "Why to people still support him?" This is usually accompanied by a list of heinous acts Trump has done and sometimes a list of virtues that the Obamas embodied.

There are some interrelated reasons. It starts back in the early 1990s with Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton. During his confirmation hearings in 1991, Thomas was attacked as unfit for the court because of accusations of sexual harassment. But then, the following year the Democrats nominated Bill Clinton. Clinton has has multiple extra-marital affairs, before, during and after his presidency. Some of these were clearly worse than anything Clarence Thomas was accused of. His supporters made it clear that they didn't care what his personal life was like as long as he supported the proper policies in the White House (starting with abortion). There was no question that George H. W. Bush was the more upright person but Clinton supporters didn't care. In fact, when his affair with Monica came out, Clinton supporters outright admitted that their outrage to Thomas had all been an act to keep him off of the court.

Once you've admitted that your moral outrage depends on the policies of candidate it's hard to be taken seriously. And this wasn't ancient history. We almost had Bill back in the White House again as First Gentlemen.

And it's not like Hillary Clinton was a spotless candidate, either. The choice wasn't between Trump and Obama. It was between Trump and a Clinton. The list of scandals she has been involved in is far longer than I want to devote space to here. It was bad enough that, on Inauguration Night, 2001, SNL did a sketch about all of the last-minute Clinton scandals with the punch-line "What do you expect, we're the Clintons?"

In addition to having an unsteady moral compass, the Democrats also showed that no one was virtuous enough to escape attack as a racist. McCain was going to roll back civil rights to the 1950s. Romney was going to roll them back to the 1950s and bring back slavery. The two primary attack against Trump, moral superiority and racism, were blunted by overuse.

Many of the attacks on Trump were exaggerations or outright lies and his supporters know it. He did not call the neo-klansmen good people. He did not follow Hillary around the stage. He did not collude with the Russians. It's not racist if Speaker Pelosi attacks the Squad but if Trump does it's a top news item for days (complete with a twisted version of what he actually said). Never-Trumpers seem to believe that the louder they say these things the more effective they are but instead Trump supporters just tune them out.

There's also a matter of policies. Obama's policies hurt a lot of the middle class. He presided over the slowest recovery in history. Obamacare caused a dramatic rise in insurance costs for people who had been buying catastrophic insurance. His middle-east policies were a disaster. He inherited a stable Iraq and, through mismanagement, allowed the rise of ISIS. He allowed Russia to expand. He signed the Paris Accords which would have hurt American industry in exchange for a rounding error in CO2 reductions. Clinton promised to continue or expand on these policies. The current crop of candidates has moved far to the left of candidate Obama.

The Democrats have become the party of heavily urban areas. They openly disdain people who live in the suburbs and rural areas.

So, the question really becomes, "Why don't Trump supporters abandon him and embrace a candidate who despises them and who's policies will hurt them but who is a certified member of the ruling elite?" To ask it that way is to answer it.

A final note on the Obamas: The image we have of them as the ideal couple is a media creation. She hated being First Lady. He didn't like working with people and preferred to go over briefing papers alone at night. Foreign leaders hated meeting with him because it always came with a lecture. He was ultra-competitive, a poor loser and a worse winner. He also had a poor opinion of rural voters, describing the people who preferred Hillary in 2008 as bitter, clinging to guns, religion and racism.

Why Conservatives Mock PolitiFact

Several days ago Representative AOC posted a picture of herself during a visit to an immigrant detention center last year when she was still a candidate. She was nearly doubled-over in grief in front of a chain-link fence giving the impression that seeing children in cages was to much for her to bare. A few days later conservative sites posted photos takes from a different angle. These showed that there was nothing on the other side of the fence but an access road with some parked cars and a nondescript building in the distance. There was not a child to be seen. This gave rise to an Internet meme about AOC crying in front of a parking lot.

Enter the "nonpartisan" fact-checking site PolitFact. They decided to do a fact-check on this but they didn't fact-check AOC's original picture which implied she was crying over children, nor did they fact-check the conservative sites which accurately described the pictures. Instead they fact-checked the Internet meme's use of the word "parking lot". They carefully showed pictures documenting that what was in the background was cars parked on a road rather than on a parking lot. Based on this, they rated the meme false.Left unrated was the fact that AOC was weeping in front of a mass of pavement and parked cars.

This is a perfect example of why conservatives mock PolitiFact. Any real fact-checking would have made AOC look bad. They managed to phrase the question in such a way as to ignore the whole AOC question and concentrate on the work "parking lot". Even then, a fair site would have rated the meme mostly true. After all, she was in front of cars on pavement. But they managed to ignore the context of the picture in such a way to give the impression that AOC did not fake her histrionics. More people will see the false rating and not bother to read the details so by framing it this way they covered for AOC.

Why I Couldn't Care Less About the Women's Soccer Team Win

The American Woman's Soccer Team won the World Cup. Big Whoop. I'm sick of hearing about it. I've never been much of a sports fan and even less a soccer fan. But there are several other reasons that I'm less than thrilled about the team.

They got off to a bad start by showing poor sportsmanship (shortspersonship?). They were always the favorite team. They made a big show of celebrating each score against a team that never stood a chance against them.

Then there's the politics. Star player Megan Rapinoe made a show of not standing for the national anthem and saying ahead of time that she'd never accept an invitation to the White House from President Trump. This isn't a regular pro team playing in an American league. She's a member of a team representing the USA but her actions show that she does not represent all Americans. She doubled down on this in a post-win interview when she said that she'd be willing to meet with Nancy Pelosi, AOC and anyone else who she agrees with. But she won't meet with any politicians she disagrees with. Again, she's supposed to be on a team representing all Americans. And she's a soccer player, not an elected official.

And, finally, there's the pay issue. The team's been very vocal about wanting pay equity with the men's team. But the issue is a LOT more complicated than they are making it out to be. In the World's Cup, the men's tournament makes a lot more money than the women's does. Both teams are paid a proportion of the earnings. The women get a bigger share of a smaller pot. In the US, the woman's team's pay is figured very differently. They are on a salary with benefits. The men are only paid when they play and have to pay their own benefits.

When a team representing the USA wins a championship then it should be a cause for a national celebration. This isn't. It's become multiple reasons to browbeat the country instead of uniting it.

Trump, Kim and the Editorial Staff

I saw an editorial recently that was written after President Trump became the first American President to enter North Korea. Naturally, the editorial downplayed that historic event and said that he should leave the negotiations with North Korea to normal diplomatic channels. This is an excellent example of an editor who reflexively hates anything that Trump does without bothering to use any sort of historic perspective.

Regular diplomatic channels were used by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. The result of that was that North Korea is now a nuclear power with intercontinental missiles capable of reaching Washington DC (although it's doubtful they can get anywhere near as far with a nuclear payload and their guidance systems are iffy). They also celebrated their chairman's birthdays by releasing videos of their missiles destroying American cities. Regular diplomatic channels were so ineffective that the Obama administration gave up and adopted a policy of "strategic patience" which was a euphemism for kicking the can down the road. So, after 24 years of letting diplomats handle the negotiations we were left with a country that is more dangerous than nuclear powers like Pakistan and India (neither of them has tested intercontinental missiles).

Our dealings with other countries made a deal with North Korea even less likely. The Bush administration toppled two governments. Afghanistan was understandable since they were sheltering the perpetrators of 9/11 but Iraq had given up its nuclear program and we overthrew it on suspicion that they had restarted it.

The Obama administration doubled down on this. First they helped overthrow Libya, a country that had voluntarily given up its nuclear program. Then they ratified Iran's program and sent them billions on condition that they simply slow their nuclear program down a bit. We even let them keep their missile program.

The clear message to the North Koreans was that the US is more likely to overthrow a country that gave up its nuclear program and to reward one that refuses to give it up.

Following the tradition of leaving advice for one's successor, Obama warned Trump that North Korea would be his first challenge.

So Trump took a completely different approach. He realized that North Korea will never give up its nuclear program without the consent of Kim Jong-un but if Kim agrees to disarm then it will happen. He also employed a carrot and stick approach. He used Viet Nam as an example of a country that went from being at war with the US to being a prosperous trading partner. At the same time he tightened sanctions. His message is that North Korea can be like South Korea or Viet Nam and become peaceful and prosperous but first they have to give up their nuclear program.

So far North Korea has refused to disarm but, and this is important, they also stopped testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. This may be the best that can be accomplished but it's still a major improvement over the state of affairs when Trump took office.

And that is why Trump is pursuing the proper course and the editorials are wrong.

A Few Final Thoughts on Colin Kaepernick and Independence Day

First Nike announced that it was recalling a new line of shoes because Colin Kaepernick objected to the Betsy Ross flag on them. Then Colin himself out out a tweet on the 4th of July quoting from Frederick Douglass saying " This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

This is all very childish and ignorant. The American Revolution was not about slavery. Slavery existed world-wide before and after the revolution. It did not completely end in the United States until the Civil War but this was the beginning of its end. Massachusetts incorporated language from the Declaration in it's state constitution in 1780 and by 1783 this was used in court cases to outlaw slavery in that state. By 1804 every state in the north had abolished slavery. The middle states were slower to abolish it with the last two, New Jersey and New Hampshire being the last in 1865. While new southern states were allowed slavery, it was always outlawed in the Northwest Territory.

Great Britain freed it's slaves with an act in 1833 that required slaves to remain apprentices until 1840. Mexico outlawed it in 1829. France alternated abolishing slavery and allowing it again in its colonies until it was outlawed for the final time in 1848.

The point here is that slavery was not "America's original sin" and unique to the US but rather something practiced by all of the European powers. I won't get into what the Indians did to each other because it's irrelevant to people enslaved and transported from Africa. Anyway, claiming that the flag Washington fought under is tainted is quite a stretch.

As for Kaepernick's 4th of July tweet, that was excerpted from Douglass's " The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" speech which was given in 1852, well before the Civil War, and was give by someone who was born a slave and was calling for the abolition of slavery. Was Kaepernick who is part of the 0.01% comparing himself to a slave? Seriously? Or did he just find a pithy quote without looking up the context?

Save the Flag

Nike just cancelled a new line of shoes with a small Betsy Ross flag on them because of protests from Colin Kaepernick. Depending on who you listen to, the flag is either offensive because it was used when slavery was legal or because it's been adopted as a symbol by white supremacists

Addressing the second reason first, no, this flag is not on anyone's list of hate symbols.

"Most white supremacists would not know what the Betsy Ross flag was if you asked them about it, compared to all the other symbols that they constantly use," Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said.

So that's just a lame excuse someone thought up to excuse the cancellation.

The first excuse is equally lame. The 13-star flag was used from the 1770s to the 1790s when two new states were added. Yes, slavery was legal in the US during that period in some of the states but not in the majority and slavery was also legal in most of the rest of the world at the time. It was not used by the Confederacy or any other uses beyond patriotism. So it's only a "symbol" of slavery because it's from the 18th century. 

Despite what Nike said, the real reason for Kaepernik's objection is probably a general dislike for the United States and its history. This is in contrast to when he first began sitting and then kneeling for the National Anthem. It was claimed then that he was objecting to the treatment of contemporary blacks and not showing disrespect for his country.

Regardless, this is part of a general trend in declaring American icons to be tainted. What started with Confederate statues has spread to Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, even General Grant because someone gave him a couple of slaves who he quickly sold (it was very difficult to free slaves at the time).

This also has the possibility to become another "Ok" symbol where some pranksters decided to start a rumor that it's used as a symbol of white supremacy and it spread. Now that the sainted Kaepernick has declared the Betsy Ross flag to be forbidden, trolls from the left will emerge to defend that, even if they have to make things up.

We need to take a stand and push back. We can't let the symbol of America's founding be tarnished by lies and a second-string quarterback.

The Question Not Asked

Here's a question that an unbiased moderator would have asked the candidates during the two-night Democratic debates:

You have said that you are in favor of decriminalizing immigration and giving free health care to illegal immigrants. Most of you have also signed on to the New Green Deal which promises $15+/hour jobs for everyone (presumably including immigrants). Beta even went to far as to make a statement in Spanish that seemed to promise allowing non-citizens to vote. All of this put together is guaranteed to lead to an influx of immigrants not seen since the 19th century. Do you welcome an influx of 10s of millions of new immigrants or do you have a plan for preventing this?

The First Night of the Democratic Debates

First, Elizabeth Warren lost the election last night. Even if she manages to be the candidate she came out on record as wanting to take away everyone's insurance. That's a problem for her for numerous reasons. The majority of Americans are happy with their insurance. Insurance is one of the biggest benefits to being in a union so she's piratically inviting unions to endorse Trump. And, eliminating insurance will throw at least a million people out of work and throw the stock market into a tailspin. Out of the ten candidates on stage, only one other came out in favor of Medicare for all which shows how out of step she is with even the far-left contingent of her party that was on stage.

But she won't be the candidate. Despite being given more than her share of airtime at the beginning she failed to establish a presence. The longer the debate went on the more she faded.

Booker did well, a lot better than I expected after his Spartacus moment last fall. Regardless, Trump would rip him to shreds in a real debate.

Beto's stunt of answering a question in Spanish was foolish and made him the subject of numerous hilarious memes.

Castro's insistence on "reproductive justice" was just puzzling. He didn't make it any better by talking about how trans-women need access to abortions, too News-flash, Castro, a trans-woman was born with male reproductive organs. You meant trans-men.

MSNBC came out looking terrible. The broadcast had several momentary blackouts, there were screw-ups with the microphones, one caused a long, unintended commercial break while they straightened it out. Rachel Maddow was a poor moderator, giving speeches and asking candidates to comment on them rather than asking questions. Most of the candidates were unknowns to the audience and they should have had name tags under them the entire time they were talking but the name tags came and went fast.

The set was meant to look high-tech and exciting but it had problems. The podiums were a cool blue but turned red at some point for some reason, possibly to show who was talking. This may have been nice for the live audience but TV audience only got brief glimpses of it as they pulled away after a candidate's time ended.The giant screens behind the candidates were distracting during close-ups.

All told, it made MCNBC look amateurish.

The first Democratic Debates

The first round of Democratic debates begins tonight. With 20 contenders, it was broken into two debates over two nights. Here's my quick take on the candidates:

Biden. As the front-runner he has little to gain and a lot to lose. He did poorly in his two previous runs for president. He's the front-runner now because of his association with Obama. So far he's largely stayed out of the public eye since entering the race. He runs a big risk of being the next Jeb!, a front-runner who fades as soon as he shares the stage with more dynamic candidates. His best hope is to emulate Trump. Trump got more speaking time than anyone else because all of the other candidates attacked him giving him a chance to respond. Duplicating Trump's performance will require Biden to be fast on his feet and avoid the slightest gaff.

Sanders. Four years ago Sanders entered the race to move Clinton to the left and to increase his own standing in the Senate (both worked). He knew he didn't have a chance so he could be gracious and declined from personal attacks. As the race progressed he began to think he had a real chance and he became a humorless scold. This time he's entering the race with a real shot at winning the nomination. At the same time, he has a pack of younger candidates snapping at his heels from the left. There's a real risk that voters will tire of him and turn to a younger, less grouchy candidate with similar ideals.

Warren. She's at a real disadvantage. She's the only major candidate in the first debate. Everyone else will be attacking her. She does have debate skills from her high school debate team but a presidential debate is vastly different from a high school one. Voters don't look for points. They see who connects with voters the best. Trump understood that and Clinton didn't in 2016. He spent his opening remarks saying what he would do for the voters while Clinton spent hers telling us what a bad person Trump was. Journalists gave the win to Clinton on points but Trump actually connected with the voters.  Political writers insist that Warren can be charming and authentic on the stump but the version most of us have seen was her stilted video where she announced "I'm gonna get a beer." She could be the break-out winner of the first debate, ready to take on Biden and Sanders or she could be seen as stilted and inauthentic.

And the Rest. Everyone else is struggling for name recognition. Even political junkies like me can't put a name to half of their faces. This is their chance to be see on a equal footing with the front-runners. For many, possibly most of them, this is their last chance. If they don't break out of the pack now then they will have difficulty meeting the standards for the next debate. They will all be trying to explain why they are different from the 19 other Democrats with the same platform and to convince people that they have the best chance against Trump. This will be exceedingly difficult for them.

Sleepy Joe and the Segregationists

A few days ago Joe Biden was trying to make a point about working with people he disagreed with and recalled working with some prominent segregationists when he was first elected to the Senate. Naturally it went badly. Joe has real problems keeping from putting his foot in his mouth. Regardless, here's some thoughts on it:

First of all, the point he was trying to make is a good one. Even if you strongly disagree with someone on a major issue that shouldn't mean that you disagree with them on everything. That's not something the modern Democratic Party wants to hear, though. To them, it's all or nothing. As recently as the wave election of 2006, President Bush was still able to assemble a working coalition of Republicans and Democrats to pass legislation. That changed with the election of Obama and the Democrats gaining a super-majority in 2008. Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote through some legislative slight-of-hand and Republicans were not even able to offer amendments to the legislation. That happened with most other legislation during that period. When the Republicans took the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 they treated the Democrats much the same as they had treated the Republicans. With the election of Trump in 2016, the rallying cry of the Democrats was "Resist" which means denying the president a win, even if it's in the country's best interests. Biden's goal of backing away from such partisan politics is both admirable and out of step with his party.

Biden reminded us of how different the party was when he was first elected in 1972. The segregationists he mentioned were powerful Democrats. It's an uncomfortable reminder that he was rubbing shoulders with actual white supremacists at a time when they held real power in the Democratic Party.

Biden's lack of message control ruined his point. He said that one of them called him "son" instead of "boy". It's puzzling why he would think this was relevant since "boy" is regarded as a put-down for backs rather than white. This gave Corey Booker an opening to denounce Biden's comments and make the case for the current super-partisanship. Ever tone-deaf, when asked about apologizing to Booker, Biden suggested that Booker owed him an apology instead.

Biden's lack of message control and tone-deafness are why he never got very far in his previous runs for President. Despite his status as front-runner, he still struggles with this.

AOC and Concentration Camps

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put out this tweet:

This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.

This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ …

The expert she's quoting is from Esquire which is not my first choice as a scientific or historic authority. Regardless, it's pushing the idea that the term "concentration camp" predates Nazi Germany. This may be true but today the term is exclusively used in relation to the Holocaust. No one uses of "concentration camp" and "Boer War" in the same sentence. AOC gave it away when she used the term "Never again" in a back and forth about her tweet. That's another term from the Holocaust.

But regardless of how you frame it, the detention facilities used for immigrants fail the definition of concentration camp several ways.

The argument that they are concentration camps comes from the fact that immigrants are being confined for long periods without having broken any laws. While this is true, it's also a voluntary confinement. They can be released if they want to go back to Mexico (since they crossed at the Mexican border) or elsewhere.

The Democrats are largely to blame for the conditions the migrants are housed in. They refused to even begin negotiations with President Trump in the name of #Resist. So no money has been allocated to expand facilities or to hire more caseworkers.

The vast majority (90+%) of these migrants will have their application as a refugee turned down and will be sent back. What AOC and other Democrats want is for anyone who presents themselves at the border to be given a green card and a court date and released into the country, possibly with a path to citizenship.  We're already seeing a surge in migrant applying at the border. We're beginning to see Africans and others trying to enter the US through the Mexican border. If we allow anyone who presents themselves at the border legal residency then the current surge will be nothing compared to the flood we'll see.

Exaggerated outrage like AOC's serves two purposes. One is yet another attack on President Trump. The other is to force open borders. She's said before that anyone from the Americas should be allowed into the US. Now she's trying to force it.

Why Biden will be 2020's version of Hillary

Watching the Biden campaign is like watching history repeating itself. Consciously or unconsciously, he's using the same strategies that Hillary Clinton used and making the same mistakes.

First a couple of little things - everyone knew that Hillary was going to run in 2016 but she kept insisting that she was still making up her mind and teasing the press for weeks before announcing with a video. Biden did the same thing. He was the last major candidate to announce and he did it with a video.

After dropping the announcement video, both candidates vanished for a while, preferring small, controlled events to large, spontaneous ones. Biden just skipped a big event in Iowa that the other 19 candidates attended. Binden's excuse was that he wanted to attend a grad-daughter's graduation. While that's noble of him, it also leads into the important similarity with Clinton...

Neither one took the primaries seriously enough. Hillary was the front-runner in 2008. The race was hers to lose. She assumed that she'd have the nomination seed up by Super Tuesday and didn't keep any cash reserves on hand in case the campaign lasted longer than that. In contrast, Obama planned a 50-state campaign from the beginning and seized the nomination from under her nose.

In 2016 Hillary again assumed that both the nomination and the presidency were hers. She was surprised by the strength of Bernie Sanders then surprised again by Donald Trump.

Biden seems to assume that he only needs to show up to secure the nomination. He sees himself above the fray and is trying to start his campaign against President Trump. That's a mistake. After a strong start, he's dropped in the polls. He's going to have to work for the nomination, especially since the party reduced the role of the super-delegates in enforcing party orthodoxy.

Hillary counted on the Obama coalition to turn out for her and made no effort to woo swing-voters. Her plan was to suppress Trump voters by on-stop negative advertising while appealing to the Obama coalition as his rightful successor. This was unlikely to happen. Obama was a special case. Blacks turned out for him in record numbers because he was black. Immigrants and their recent decedents saw Obama as one of them because of his African father and foreign up-bringing. Obama was a youthful candidate running on a blank slate of hope and change. Groups across the political spectrum from Progressives to Libertarians were convinced that Obama was really one of them.

Hillary failed to motivate a lot of Obama voters. She saw herself as a pioneer because of her gender but many voters simply saw an old, rich, white woman and stayed home. Trump was able to appeal to working-class voters who felt left behind by Obama and ignored by Clinton.

Biden will have a worse time trying to motivate the Obama Coalition. As a rich, old, white guy who has been in politics since before most of the electorate was born, he has nothing exciting to offer. He does have a history of working class appeal but that was with a different generation. His last Senate run was 2002 and his 2008 Presidential run folded in 2007.

Biden ha an additional problem that Hillary didn't have. He'll have to run against an incumbent. In 2016, Trump was a complete unknown. Given that he is from New York and has switched parties a few times, the best conservatives could hope for was a RHINO. Instead his administration has been the most conservative since Ronald Reagan. Voters seldom if ever turn out an incumbent president during good economic times. Trump is not the madman, ready to launch a nuclear war that some painted him as. Neither is he the totalitarian that many claimed. It's impossible to define a sitting president the way you can a candidate so there's one more tool denied to Biden.

There is one final similarity between the two - voters like the idea of them better than the candidate. Hillary always polled highest when she was out of public sight. The more she was seen the lower her poll numbers. It's too early to say for sure but Biden seems to be suffering from the same problem.

The Intolerance of the Democratic Party

A couple of days ago Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden expressed his continuing support for the Hyde Amendment. After heavy criticism from his party he reversed his position the following day. This is important because it shows how the Democratic Party has become intolerant of opposing opinions.

The Hyde Amendment says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. If was passed because even abortion supporters like Biden realized how unfair it is to ask people to pay for abortions (through taxes) when they believe that it's murder. That received bipartisan support because back the Democrats recognized that other people could have a different opinion without being an evil person.

That's changed in the current Democratic Party. The official position is that abortion is always the woman's choice, even when the fetus is well past the point if can survive on it's own. Bernie Sanders reflects the party line when he says "It's up to the women. I trust them to make the right choice." 

The Democrats used to brag of their Big Tent meaning that they embraced a variety of opinions. This is no longer true. There is a party line and anyone who doesn't follow it is denounced and possibly excommunicated.

Biden is an old-school Democrat with an accent on old. While he sees himself as a progressive, at one point or another he's held positions that are anti-ethical to today's Democrats. He's also from a time when politicians recognized that well-meaning people had different positions and it was permissible to make accommodations with them. He just ran smack into today's intolerant party.

Why Trump's Wall is Not the Berlin Wall

I saw a legal blog comparing President Trump's wall across the Mexican border with the Berlin Wall. This was in the Volokh Conspiracy and framed as Trump's Plan to Force the Mexicans to Lock in Their Own People. So, why is this comparison wrong?

1) The Berlin Wall separated Germans from Germans. In the wake of World War II, Germany was divided into four sections managed by the US, England, France and the USSR. The first three were merged into a single government but the USSR-controlled region was kept separate. The Berlin Wall was built 12 years after the founding of East Germany. So it was separating Germans from Germans. Mexico and the US are separate countries with very different histories and cultures. Even the parts of the US that were previously owned by Mexico have been states for over a century.

2) The East Germans were prisoners in their own country. The Berlin Wall actually surrounded West Berlin which was deep in East Germany. Prior to the wall, Germans had escaped to the West by crossing into West Berlin then traveling to West Germany. The border between East and West Germanies was also closed. In contrast, Trump is insisting that Mexicans and South American refugees be prevented from crossing the US Mexican border but he in not insisting that Mexico's other borders or coast be closed.

3) It was death to cross the Berlin Wall. There were actually two walls with a killing ground in-between. Anyone seen in the killing ground was shot on sight. That's very different from the US/Mexican border.

This comes down to the question, does the US have the power to determine who enters it? If the answer is yes then the President is justified in taking steps to secure the border.

There is a substantial group who does not believe in borders and believes that anyone should be able to go anywhere with no attempt at assimilation. This will ultimately be self-destructive. Allowing multitudes of an-assimilated immigrants will eventually over-tax the country and destroy the institutions that made it desirable in the first place.

Talk of Impeachment Should Be Disqualifying

Despite the Mueller Report failing to find that President Trump actually committed high crimes or misdemeanors, there is still talk of impeachment. This is rather silly. Impeachment requires the the House of Representatives pass Articles of Impeachment. This takes a simple majority but to date less than 1/10th of the House has come out in favor of impeachment. But that's the easy part. The process moves on to the Senate where it takes a super majority of 67 votes to remove the President from office. Given that Republicans control the Senate and the lack of actual crimes, this is doomed to failure.

Even the Washington Post is admitting that people knew what they were voting for when they elected Trump. Simply disliking a President is not enough nor can you impeach a President for wanting to do something but not following through. It's "high crimes and misdemeanors", not "thought crimes".

Plus there's a presidential election coming. It's just a year and a half away. That's the proper way to remove a president, through the ballot box.

But there is one group that is dad-set on impeachment - Democrats running for President. I'm sure that they have to restrain themselves from promising that their first act as president would be impeaching Trump.

I can understand why these people want Trump weakened or removed from office. They expected that Trump would be so unpopular that whoever won the game of Democrat Survivor would win the White House in a landslide. But Trump's popularity is growing, he has the advantage of being an incumbent during an economic boom, and he showed in 2016 that he's a shrewd campaigner. The best chance that the passengers in the Democratic Clown Car have is eliminating Trump and running against Pence.

But every one of thee clown who are calling for impeachment should be disqualified from running for the presidency. They are unfit to hold that office.

Trump is often accused of breaking norms. There is a double or even a triple standard here since President Obama broke all sorts of norms as have Trump's detractors. Obama's Attorney General established the president for ignoring a Congressional subpoena and being found in contempt of Congress. The Nuclear Option was triggered under Obama. Both of these came back to bite the Democrats. I could give other examples but you get the idea.

There are two rationals for impeaching President Trump. One is to impeach on the grounds of obstruction of justice in the Russian investigation. This is difficult to prove since there was no collusion and Trump knew it. The other rational is to start impeachment proceedings on general principle in order to open sealed Grand Jury records in the hope that something would turn up. The satire site the Babylon Bee ran this as "Congress files Articles of Impeachment with the reasons to be filled in later".

So, let's imagine that they succeed in impeaching Trump on these grounds and get as far as passing the articles in the House before the measure fails in the Senate. This will be yet one more broken norm. Democrats are still angry about Clinton being impeached but at least there he was actually proven to have committed perjury. Nothing has been proven against Trump so imagine how angry Republicans will be.

And this will establish the new norm - from now on, any time the opposition party controls the House then it will stat impeachment proceedings against the President.

None of these presidential-wannabies have realized that if Trump is impeached and they win they will be facing impeachment themselves. It doesn't matter if they actually do anything wrong. Simply hating the President is enough to justify impeachment. They are proving that with Trump right now. And that's why none of them should be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

Why Rep. Rashida Tlaib needs to apologize

On a recent podcast, Rep. Tlaib said this:

There's always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, and it was forced on them.

She was quickly criticized by President Trump among others. Then House Speaker Pelosi claimed that her statement was taken out of context and that the President should be the one to apologize. Pelosi is wrong.

It's true that, taken out of context, the first part of this gives the false impression that Tlaib said that the murder of Jews gives her a calming feeling. But Trump didn't repeat the quote in part or in all. He simply referenced it.

Tlaib was engaging in Holocaust revisionism. She was claiming that the Palestinians welcomed the Jews into Israel to escape the Holocaust. Lots of groups and countries do that to escape the guilt of having done nothing. The entire world including the US stood by and did nothing to help the millions who were murdered. In fact, the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular never welcomed the Jews.

But then Tlaib goes a step further and frames it as "we invited the Jews in and they took our land, our jobs, our dignity and our existence". So Holocaust Remembrance became an excuse to vilify Israel. And that's why Tlaib needs to apologize.

Handicapping the Candidates

Here's my take on the front-runners so far:

President Trump: Various Republicans are planning to challenge him in the primaries. He will smash them just as he did the other Republicans in 2016.

Joe Biden: It's common for a Vice President to run for the presidency but it's rare for them to win. George H. W. Bush is the only one to have done so (plus Nixon on his second try running against Vice President Humphrey). Biden is following Hillary Clinton's lead and running as the presumptive candidate. Like her, he teased his candidacy for months then announced that he'd be announcing before finally announcing with a video. Biden is already looking past the primaries. His announcement video's message was "Orange man bad, vote for me". Hillary's 2016 campaign showed that you have to do more than attack Trump if you want to win the White House. Also, like Hillary, Biden carries a lot of baggage. He was first elected in 1972. He's always supported mainstream Democrat positions but the party has drifted so far to the left that votes for tougher sentencing and the Defense of Marriage Act in the 90s, both of which were overwhelmingly supported by the Democratic Party, are now negatives. Biden has a reputation as a gaffe machine and his campaign is following his lead. On his announcement day he received criticism for misrepresenting what President Trump actually said about Charlottesville, using Charlottesville as a campaign prop, his treatment of Anita Hill in 1991, and releasing a picture with a big "N" on President Obama. Biden has name recognition and some reflected glory from Obama but little else. Binden's going to have difficulty securing the nomination but he's the Democrats' best chance at winning back the White House.

Bernie Sanders: In 2016 Bernie was the fresh face of the Democrats (and the oldest person running). He brought a far-left agenda which excited a lot of younger Democrats. He originally ran in an effort to move the party to the left. He was so successful that his positions are now accepted by early all the other candidates. That's going to cause problems for Bernie. In 2016 he pledged to run a positive campaign but once he realized that he might have a shot at winning his natural crankiness came out. He's going to have a huge advantage in fund-raising but he's ancient and crotchety and probably too far to the left to beat Trump.

Elizabeth Warren: Her time came and went six year ago. She seceded her role as far-left spokesperson to Bernie. She got a start on her career by claiming Indian heritage. She tried to put that behind her last Summer with a DNA test that not only flopped but angered real Indians. She's struggled to get traction with her proposals. He proposal for college loan forgiveness was criticized on all sided. Her live-cast last Winter seemed forced and unnatural. Her campaign manager resigned over her decision to reject corporate donations. She's also struggled to break into the double digits in polls. With neither cash nor wide-spread appeal and no message that resonates her candidacy is doomed.

Beto O'Rourke: His main attraction is that he attracted a record amount of out-of-state donations in a losing Senate race. For a while the press loved him but they've moved on to Pete Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg: The mayor of South Bend Indiana came from nowhere to vault into the top contenders. He's already secured a spot in the debated based on the number of people who have contributed to his campaign. Buttigieg's main claim to fame is that he's openly gay. He uses this as a bludgeon, constantly insisting the Vice President Pence hates him for being gay. This is an outright lie. Pence has always been cordial to him. I suspect that Buttigeig's current popularity comes mainly from gays and he's already reached his ceiling. His record as mayor of a mid-sized city isn't that strong and doesn't really qualify him to be President.

Launching with a Lie

After months of speculation, Joe Biden finally launched his presidential campaign with a video. I was going to point out how well the multiple launches worked for Hillary Clinton (I'm going to release a video launching my campaign, I released a video, I'm going to hold an official launch event, I'm going on a listening tour, etc.) but after watching Biden's video I'm too mad at Biden.

The video starts out OK with a quote from the Declaration of Independence and an admission that Thomas Jefferson was flawed but still relevant. But then it switches tone to the neo-Nazi tiki torch parade that ended with a woman's death.

It was less than two years ago but people have already forgotten how that event happened. It began as a protest against removal of Confederate statues. Then a bunch of Nazi and Klan wannabies from all over the country decided to turn it into a white supremacist rally. They had their tiki torch parade with their anti-semitic chants about "Jews will not replace us". The next day they were supposed to have a second demonstration with a counter-demonstration across the square. But the police screwed up and herded both groups together then, when the inevitable violence broke out, they stood and watched because they were not in riot gear. A kid from Ohio panicked and drove his car into an empty car, driving it forward and killing the woman in front of it.

President Trump condemned the Nazis basement-dwellers and the Klansmen wannabies but he also said that their were good people on both sides. He was referring to the people who were simply protesting against the removal of the statues. They had held peaceful protests before and they were not protesting in favor of white supremacy.

At least twice President Trump explicitly condemned the white supremacists. Not that you'd know if from the news.

BIden says that he's running because of that incident. It sure took him long enough to react. There are early two dozen announced candidates ahead of him.

He also claims that that rally was unlike anything that's happened in his lifetime. He was born in 1943, during the Japanese interment program. He was a teenager before segregation ended in the South.

Biden is also ignoring the antisemitism that's gnawing away at his own party. The Republicans have condemned racist and antisemitic groups but the Democrats turn a blind eye.

I believe that Biden is serious when he says that Charlottesville upset him but he's guilty of the same thing until he condemns Farakan and Al Sharpton for saying things just as bad as the tiki marchers. If you're going to base your campaign on Trump being too friendly to racists then you have to call it out on your own side or you are a hypocrite.

This is not BIden's only example of hypocrisy. After the release of the Access Hollywood tape of Trump talking about liking to touch women Biden talked about taking Trump out back and beating him up. But Biden has his own issues with women. There are dozens of pictures and videos of women looking uncomfortable as he touches them and plays or sniffs their hair. He was also known for making female Secret Service agents uncomfortable by swimming naked.

Instead of telling us what he'll do for America, Biden launched with an attack ad. Suddenly Bernie doesn't look so bad.

Annotating the Future Green New Deal

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a video looking back from sometime in the future at the Green New Deal. You can see it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ&feature=youtu.be

There's a lot here and she glosses over a lot pretty quickly. It's in the form of water colored paintings so I'll take each painting.

It opens with AOC on a the bullet train from DC to New York. She's on that, because air travel has been eliminated or drastically curtailed. The time scheme is unclear but she's older with some white streaks in her hair. I guess hair dye isn't carbon-neutral.

She reflects back on being a freshman in the "most diverse Congress ever". This begins an interesting theme - the video is supposed to represent "diversity" but it does so in a very un-diverse way. Nearly every face represented is brown. There are some blacks represented but virtually no whites or Asians.

She moves on to the Green New Deal, assuring us that we already have all the technology needed to implement it (we don't).

In 1977 a scientist made a presentation about CO2 causing warming. She seems surprised that the world didn't immediately jump of and take notice but this was one of dozens of doomsday predictions that had been going on for a decade. And yes, there were predictions of a new ice age at the same time.

She then claims that Exon-Mobile was doing research to confirm this within two years. Exon is represented by the first white man we've seen - a fat guy with an evil look on his face. Plus there's another white guy representing politicians who "knew all along and did nothing". This launches into a long-standing conspiracy theory on the left: that the oil companies knew that global warming was real and suppressed the information

Onto James Hansen's presentation to Congress in 1988. She tells us that Hansen was a top NASA scientist but fails to mention that he spent decades saying "we only have 4-5 years to save the planet". Hansen is the only white guy who doesn't look evil in the video. She tells us that Hansen was 99% certain that global warming was already happening. That's a meaningless figure since it just tells us that Hansen was certain, not that he was right.

Back to Exon and how terrible they are. She doubles down on the conspiracy theory that Exon is behind any doubt about global warming.

She talks about the time lost because of the evil Exon and the animals that have gone extinct. The graphic shows a pair of rhinos. This is an outright lie. Rhinos aren't threatened because of global warming. They are threatened because of poachers who kill them for their horns.

She talks about the hurricane that hit "the place where her family is from, Puerto Rico". She calls the hurricane a "climate bomb" and compares it to 9/11. Technically, her family isn't exactly from Puerto Rico. She's decided from Spanish who colonized the island before moving to New York. The damage the hurricane caused was because the country's electrical system was already failing because of governmental corruption. The estimated death toll used highly questionable methodology.

And she threw out the "12 years to cut emissions in half" warning. That's just the latest in three decades of "act now or else" predictions. They are not based on science, they are propaganda. If these predictions were based on science then we'd have been past the tipping point years ago. But, AOC is young and hasn't learned to be skeptical. Instead she's calling on us to change EVERYTHING.

Now we hit the meat of the video. Socialism. The economy's broken, too much money goes to the people at the top. The Great Depression! World War Two (with Rosie the Riveter as a black woman).

Then she moves on to her future history with the Democrats taking the Senate and the White House in 2020 and launching the "Decade of the Green New Deal" which includes Medicare for All and nationalization of wages.  Look, even if the Democrats gain complete control of Congress and the White House, the rest just isn't going to happen.

According to AOC, the biggest problem at the beginning was that there was a labor shortage. This is a nod to illegal immigration. We need to import all the workers we can get to rebuild everything.

Then she personalizes it with a girl from AOC's old neighborhood, Iliana (I may have gotten the spelling wrong). Iliana's first job after graduating from college (at government expense?) is to restore wetlands in Louisiana. They are shown planting mangroves and removing pipelines BY HAND. No polluting earth movers here. This answers why there's a labor shortage.It takes a lot of people to replace machines. By the way, they had to get "generational knowledge" from native Americans on how to plant mangroves and remove pipelines.

Ileana soon realizes that digging by hand in Louisiana is hellish work and moves on to being a solar plant engineer before getting a job at a child care center. Since everyone seems to get the same wages no matter what the work, there was probably a waiting list years long to get one of those easy child care jobs. We never do get a hint of what Ileana's degree is in.

But not everything is perfect and Hurricane Sheldon put parts of Miami underwater "for the last time". That's not how hurricanes work. They cause a storm surge which recedes.

There were still hurricanes and droughts and other problems but making universal health care and government jobs a human right made everything just swell.

Eventually Ileana runs for Congress and wins AOC's seat in a publicly funded election. I'm not sure how digging in the swamps or minding kids qualifies you for Congress but if they let a waitress in, I guess they'll let anyone in.

AOC closes by thinking back to riding the old school Amtrak train in 2019. This is another lie. It implies that she used the train to travel between DC and NYC but she always takes the plane.

So that's AOC's vision for the future - a socialist paradise where everyone has brown skin, college graduates go on to dig in the swamps, and everyone seems to work for the government. It's framed as a kids story so all of the hard stuff is glossed over and everyone lives happily everafter.

What Really Happened

The Meuller Report is due out in a few hours. In advance of it, here's what really happened that led up to it.

Let's start with Putin. He misses the old USSR and has been trying to reassert Russian as a dominant world power since the Bush administration. But Putin was afraid of Hillary Clinton. It was no secret that she was the hawk in the Obama administration. She was the one who talked Obama into carrying out the raid that killed bin Ladin and into overthrowing Libya. Putin worried that without Obama to restrain her, he'd be the next one she toppled. So, when Bernie Sanders emerged as Hillary's chief rival, he took some actions to help Bernie. Specifically, he had the DNC's mail server and Clinton's campaign chief's email account hacked.

Julian Assage, founder of Wikileaks has been praised as a truth-teller and a journalist. Actually he's nothing but an anti-American crank who delights in publishing anything that will embarrass the US, regardless of who gets hurt. He wasn't working for the Russians but he was all too happy to publish any dirt they could dig up. Most of it was published early in the campaign and did more to help Bernie than anything else.

But the game was rigged from the beginning. The Clintons owned the DNC. In exchange for bailing them out from potential bankruptcy, the Clintons got control of the party. Poor Bernie never had a chance.

Enter Donald Trump. He was one of a gaggle of candidates. When Putin said something complimentary about him, Trump refused to disown it. And Trump had done some business before in Russia. Since Russia is corrupt, you can't do any business there without working with people who have ties to the Kremlin. Plus, Trump wasn't expected to win so he continued to pursue business deals including some already in progress in Russia (which fell through in part because they didn't have any direct ties to the Kremlin).

That was enough for the Clinton campaign. They started floating rumors about Trump and Russia. Then they used a shell company to hire Fusion GPS to find some Russian connections. They subcontracted an ex-British spy named Steele who subcontracted the work to some contacts in Russia. They collected a bunch of salacious stories which became the Steele Dossier. This was shopped around to members of Congress including Sen. John McCain who passed it on to the FBI and to several newsrooms. The Justice Department already had a copy of the Dossier because a top Fusion officer was married to a top DOJ official and she passed it to him.

For good measure, Fusion had some Russians offer information to the Trump campaign.

During his presidency, Obama had staffed the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA with people who were personally loyal to him. They didn't care much for Hillary Clinton but they recognized her as Obama's chosen successor so they moved against the Trump campaign. They chose a low-level staffer and used the Steele Dossier to get a FISA warrant to spy electronically eavesdrop on the Trump campaign.

None of this was used because Trump was expected to lose the election. A few rumors were floated but no serious charges were made.

At the same time they conducted a show-investigation of Hillary's use of a private email server. This was difficult because they found several actual felonies. In order to keep from discrediting the Clinton campaign they were generous in granting immunity in exchange for testimony. They also had to rewrite the laws concerning handling confidential information to include intent. And they had a last-minute problem when an unrelated investigation into Anthony Weiner for  child-porn discovered that Clinton and her assistant had been forwarding emails to Weiner to print. After putting off the field agents for weeks, James Comey, the head of the FBI, made a show of reopening the investigation. It was all a show and Comey lied about the results, hiding the fact that Hillary had forwarded confidential emails to someone who didn't even work for the government so he could print them off at home.

Besides their involvement with Wikileaks, the Russians bought some targeted ads through social media. They spent less than $1 million. More than half the ads were anti-Clinton but they also ran anti-Trump ads, too. The purpose was not to swing the election. It was to create divisiveness. If you will remember, Putin hated Hillary, and she was projected to win anyway so they ran more anti-Hillary ads than anti-Trump ones but they an both. This is what the Russians do - they run ads to try to disrupt elections and weaken their rivals.

Unexpectedly Trump won. The Clintons couldn't just let it go that she lost a race that was hers to lose. So the day after the election they invented an excuse - it wasn't her fault, it was Comey and the Russians. You heard Hillary say variations of that again and again.

The Russians continued to push divisiveness. The weekend after the election they were pushing pro and anti Trump rallies.

This left FBI Director Comey with a dilemma.He now worked for a man he hated. So he started undermining Trump. He knew that all the major newsrooms had the Steele dossier but that it was too unsubstantial to print without a hook. So he had a private briefing with the president-elect and informed him that the Russians claimed to have a tape of him hiring prostitutes to pee in a bed that Obama had slept in. Then he told the press that he had informed Trump that the Russians had possible blackmail material on him. This would have totally undercut Trump's presidency except Buzzfeed got carried away and printed the entire Steele Dossier. Once it became public, it was easily disproved.

Regardless, the FBI went after Trump's security advisor, Ret. General Flynn and engaged in possible entrapment. Trump made a comment to Comey about hoping that they went easy on Flynn. Comey later claimed that this was obstruction of justice..

Comey was playing a double game. The FBI revived their investigation into Russia and began investigating Trump personally. They leaked that to the press while repeatedly telling the White House that Trump was not being investigated. Eventually Trump got fed up and fired Comey.

But Comey had one last shot. He took some confidential memos with him and leaked them to a friend who in turn leaked them to the press. The goal of all of this was to get a special prosecutor appointed. Comey must have known that there was no Russian collusion but once a special prosecutor starts, he seldom wraps up his investigation without finding something.

And yes, Meuller did find some things. None of them were related to the Trump campaign but he did get some people indicted.

Which brings us to the upcoming release of the Meuller report.