AOC is Not Animated...Or IS She??

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Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen Weren't the Only Things On!

Just Seven More to Go!

The Genesis of Leaks: Schiff Happens

Bader to the Bone

Democrats' Schiff Into Damage Control

"This investigation is starting again, for political purposes. This is another investigation of Hillary Clinton, long after she's no longer a presidential candidate, no longer the Secretary of State, apparently there's more interest in what happened seven years ago with Secretary Clinton than there is in the (phony Trump) investigation. And that's quite by design."-Adam Schiff, Dimwit-California

Let me get this straight...last year, month after month, Democrats like yourself told us over and over and over again that the ONLY reason Republicans and conservatives were asking for accountability for Mrs. Clinton, was purely political, "to defeat her in November". Remember that? Apparently not. Now you're telling us that it's not to defeat her, since dear old granny Clinton is no longer Sec State or a political candidate?

If by "design", you mean "actual evidence of wrongdoing", then yes, it's by design. And there's far more actual evidence of the Clinton campaign and Clinton and Obama cronies colluding with the Russians than there ever was about Trump. The "dossier" which started the whole "Trump collusion" baloney was apparently bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and possibly elements of the corrupt Obama administration.

There is also an informant, who has been under wraps since 2009 (for you math impaired liberals, that is LONG before Trump ever announced his run for the presidency), with information about Russian bribery, corruption and collusion with Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration over obtaining US uranium, which through the neglect, incompetence and/or criminal collusion of Hillary and the Obama administration, Russia eventually obtained.

BTW, someone should put this informant on a "suicide" watch, as people who have dirt on Hillary or the Clintons apparently tend to become suicidally depressed.

Dear Adam Schiff, bless his heart, is trying to argue the opposite of what Democrats were bleating all throughout 2016. Why then, according to the brightest minds of Democrats (stop laughing!) would the accusations continue after the election, unless there really was something of substance to cover up, as perhaps witnessed by the largest sudden destruction of smart phones and computer hard drives in recorded history?

The Democrats hitched their wagon to the colossally corrupt Clintons, with all their tremendously famous ethical shortcomings, and are in full damage control mode trying to staunch the bleeding.

The ship is sinking. Tell everyone how shocked, SHOCKED you are over the Clintons' corruption, then head for the lifeboats.

Warped

Ain't no hangover like a Vulcan hangover!

Hereafter.Com

Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Melania Trump Walk into a Bar...

...the bar of high standards. What do these three have in common? Together, I believe they illustrate the difference between plagiarism and allusion. With Melania, the Jayson Blair of presidential candidate's wives, it was clearly plagiarism. Not that it was that big of a deal. No one expected the equivalent of the Gettysburg Address from her. Many people think the unforced error of the kerfluffle which came when the plagiarism came out, with the initial denials from the Trump camp, were largely due to Trump being too cheap to hire a decent speechwriter for her, and the attempt at cover up was just pure Trump.

But I read something by Mike Rowe, of "Dirty Jobs" fame, and former opera singer:

I remember, in the wake of the Challenger disaster, Ronald Reagan gave a truly extraordinary speech. Every sentence was brilliant, but this part was unforgettable.

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey, waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

I was 22 at the time, and I literally cried when I heard those words. I was truly touched. Later, I learned those words had been written for Reagan by Peggy Noonan. After that, I learned Peggy Noonan had lifted those words from a poem called “High Flight,” written by an airman who died in WWII named John McGee.

Did Ronald Reagan plagiarize Peggy Noonan? Did Peggy Noonan plagiarize John McGee?

Now I'm a little bit older than Mr. Rowe, I predate the 24 hour news cycle. In fact, I not only predate 24 hour news, but I predate 24 hour TV!

Back in the olden days, when there were only three networks, and cable was what you used to suspend bridges, TV stations didn't broadcast 24/7. Typically they ended their "broadcast day" around one or two in the morning. And typically, the station just before signing off the air, would play the National Anthem and a short video of a jet fighter flying, while a narrator recited the poem "High Flight". Having on more than one occasion stayed up past the end of the broadcast day, and because there was literally "nothing else on", people would watch and listen to the stirring words of Airman John McGee. For those of Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan and my generation (heady company!), the words of High Flight were totally familiar and totally appropriate for Reagan to allude to. Whippersnappers like Mike Rowe may not have known where the words came from, but there was no attempt at plagiarism there, or anything like it.

But people often attribute a quote to the person they heard it from first. Many people attribute the line to Robert Kennedy that he quoted from George Bernard Shaw:

You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”

A more famous attribution of a literary allusion to the wrong source comes from the aforementioned Gettysburg Address. It concludes:

...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln was alluding to John Wycliffe's prologue to his Bible translation of 1384:

This Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Lincoln knew the source of the quote, as, no doubt, did the majority of those who heard it. No one rose up to yell that Lincoln had cribbed part of his speech. But his allusion to it immortalized those words, and today, people who never heard of Wycliffe (that's okay. Today's government schools the kids don't hear about anybody!), have heard his words echo through the years.

So we have one plagiarist, small potatoes in comparison to the plagiarisms of Teddy Kennedy, Joe Biden and even President Obama, and two well read presidents, able to make allusions to words well said by others. If we were to stack every literary or cultural allusion in the same boat as plagiarism, we need to get a bigger boat!*

You may quote me.

* Jaws (1975)

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And Now, For Something Completely Different...

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Natural Selection

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Hamster (Enlarged to Show Texture)

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Clown Syndrome

 
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Nary a Fare Thee Well, Too

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Nary a 'Fare Thee Well'

 

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Hillary Control, We are Standing By!

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Awaken a Sleeping Giant, Fill Him With a Terrible Resolve

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"Give us Your Tired, Poor Teeming Masses, No Huddle, Fourth and Long"

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus  

"We can't turn them away! That's not who we are!" Maybe we are, but even if so, I suspect that's not how we always were. But, before we move to make "The New Colossus" our 28th Amendment, let's parse it a bit and apply it to our present situation. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." I think that's an important qualifier right there: "yearning to breathe free". People came to America, come to America, because it is a land of freedom and opportunity. People who love freedom and desire it for themselves and others should always be welcome here.

The irony of so many people quoting the Emma Lazarus poem, ensconced on a bronze plaque on Ellis Island, is that while most of our European immigrants came through Ellis Island, it was also a point to turn some away. If you were healthy and could support yourself, Step this way! Right over here! If you were too sick to work, you were invited to go back wherever you came from, regardless of race, creed or color. I guess that was 'who we were'?

I was reading in my dead tree paper the other day, an account of a man who was seven years old in 1939, on a ship of about 800 Jewish refugees, being turned away from Florida ports. Was FDR afraid of seven year olds, Mr. Obama? They were fleeing the advent of the Third Reich, and unbeknownst to them at the time, the gas chambers of concentration camps. FDR must not have thought "That's not who we are" at the time when he turned them away.

Do we want to emulate Mr. Roosevelt? I don't think so. It does give a little historic perspective: just because you are needy, even fleeing a war zone, does not entitle you automatic entrance into the US.  (This also includes our southern border) I don't think FDR feared the potential presence of a jihadist among the Jewish refugees. Nor do we want to emulate Bill Clinton, whose jack booted thugs grabbed little Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint to forcibly remove him back to Cuba.

Seems to me, there must be a path between the two extremes of let everybody in and let no one in. I do believe though, that as we did once on Ellis Island, we should try to vet those immigrants who are yearning to breathe free and would be a good fit in our country. Despite President Stompy Foot's assertion that "Republicans fear 3 year olds", there is a real concern that an influx of single males, of military age, could contain ISIS sleepers, or yet more malcontents like the Tsarnaev brothers of Boston Marathon bombing fame and their dear sweet mother!

Our immigration policy ought not to be a suicide pact. Obama beclowns himself when he tries to minimize the genuine concerns over letting potential terrorists into the heartland, by his use of ridicule and scorn. Care should be taken to screen those coming into the country, not just for terrorist ties, but for their ability to assimilate and to keep the American dream alive for yet another generation.

Good people can differ on exactly how they might accomplish that, though I suspect the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes.

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Waiting for the Donald

Waiting for Godot, the play by Samuel Beckett, had characters waiting endlessly and fruitlessly for the arrival of someone named "Godot". Spoiler alert:  Godot never shows. Was he real? Was Godot a symbol of something else? God maybe? Unfulfilled aspirations? The genre of "Godot" is sometimes referred to as "theater of the absurd". It is a play in two acts, and it is my understanding that some theater companies perform the second act first and it in no wise detracts from the point of the play, nor can the audience generally tell the difference!

Well, you might ask, "How could this possibly apply to Donald Trump? He is ubiquitous and if anything, the complaint is that he won't go away!" That's the candidate Trump. As a candidate, he is indeed ubiquitous. But on substance? Not so much. Lots of sizzle, not much steak. As a candidate, Trump appeals to the dissatisfaction of conservatives with the mainstream Republican party. Every election it seemed, the Republicans have begged conservatives for their votes, in exchange for promises that they would decrease the size and scope of government and reduce spending, only to  repeatedly break those promises. Trump has tapped into that vein of discontent, much of which has fueled the Tea Party and propelled it to prominence in recent years. He's making promises that he most likely will not be able to keep, but talking a good fight. Personally, I'm waiting for the substantive Trump.

Now I will admit the possibility that my perception of Trump may have been colored in part by selective reporting in the media. Most of what I hear Trump saying is how good his poll numbers were compared to everybody else. (That ship has largely sailed). Now you hear him dismissing the polls as insignificant, now that he no longer leads them. I hear childish, schoolyard insults from him, whining about how Carson was criticizing his religion, followed by a cheap shot at Carson for Carson's Adventist faith. Go figure.

Now, if you're a Trump fan, you've probably only read down this far to try to find a hole in my reasoning that you can use with which to beat me over the head. Fine. But treat Mr. Trump the way you would any other candidate for a moment and ask yourself, "Is he the real deal?"

His plan to build a wall on the southern border and "have Mexico pay for it", do you really believe that? Sending immigrants north is a source of income for Mexico, as immigrants legal and not send cash back to the relatives they left behind. Net benefit. Sending or encouraging criminals, malcontents and the uneducated poor north of the border, acts as a pressure relief valve on their society. Net benefit. Where is the incentive for the Mexican government to cut themselves off from all the benefits of northern migration and then, on top of that, pay for the privilege of doing so? I don't think so.

In another place last week, (Donald Trump and the Spending Cuts of Doom), we examined whether or not Mr. Trump's suggested slashing of certain cabinet level departments, was realistic or even consistent with the separation of powers available to him as president.

Consider too, Trump's a propensity to take credit where no credit is due. Conservatives have been arguing about and fighting illegal immigration for decades. After Trump got in trouble over a poorly worded statement about illegal immigrants, he repeated said, "We wouldn't be talking about illegal immigration if it wasn't for me". Really? That's borderline delusional.

Recently, he's been claiming credit for the move of a Ford automobile plant from Mexico to Ohio. Only it appears the John Kasich may have negotiated that move with Ford back in 2011. If this is true, and his business career is as fabulous as he says, why would he feel the need to embellish it, taking credit for things he had no control over?

Is it to much to ask him to put forth detailed reasons to elect him based on principle and proposals that don't involve, "Trust me. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I'll surround myself with people who do, because that's what good businessmen do." Or the braggadocio of how much more than his rivals he will know by the time the inauguration rolls around.

Trump's message appeals to the Zeitgeist of the Right, with a little bit of "We're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore" thrown in for good measure. Although the office of the president is sometimes referred to as America's C.E.O., there's a very different skill set involved. I sometimes hear the argument for Trump (and Carson, too) that George Washington was not a politician before he became president either, implying that therefore he's equally qualified. The analogy might be like those who say if you're going to fail math like Einstein did (he didn't, by the way), that it helps to be Albert Einstein. Mr. Trump: you're no George Washington.

Trump recently said, "I will be a great unifier for our country". So far, it seems like all he has had time to alienate are Hispanics and Seventh Day Adventists. Give him time! In 2008, there was a candidate who said something similar. He said all the right things*. He talked a good fight, 'unifying the nation along racial lines', promising fiscal responsibility, and budget cuts. Senator Obama promised to go through the budget line by line to eliminate waste fraud and corruption. He claimed to be a moderate candidate who believed that marriage was between a man and a woman, professed to be a Christian, and presumably would uphold traditional Christian values. A candidate who promised to bring jobs, heal the economy and heal the divide between America and the world community.

  All hat. No cattle.   How's that working out for you?

*The mask slipped a bit with "Joe the plumber". But there were those of us who saw through the disguise.

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Donald Trump and the Spending Cuts of Doom

Donald Trump's greatest strength is that he is a successful CEO. He's a tough negotiator who gets what he wants. Right? In a top down organization, like a private business, a CEO has the authority to get a lot of things done. That's why they pay him the big bucks. But, just exactly how will that translate into public service? I want to focus here on just once aspect of Mr. Trump's proposed leadership. 

Donald Trump told interviewer Chris Wallace that he would cut government agencies if he were to become president. "Slash" is the word I've heard him use more than once.

Chris Wallace: "Would you cut serve -- would you cut departments?" Trump: "No, I'm not cutting services, but I'm cutting spending. But I may cut Department of Education. I believe Common Core is a very bad thing. I believe that we should be — you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education. So the Department of Education is one. Environmental Protection, what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations."

Before we focus on the specifics, I want to take a small, anecdotal overview of government budgets: city, state and federal. See if you cannot identify with my analysis. The people in charge of whatever government agency, mayor, governor, county supervisor, comes before the taxpayer with the sad news that there is not enough money in the agency's coffers to cover everything in the budget, so we need to raise your taxes. These days, the peasants have to assent to having their taxes raised, so if the peasants revolt and do not volunteer to raise their own taxes, our betters in government have to take drastic action.

Now you may know, or at least suspect, that there is a certain amount of waste and fraud at every level of government spending. There are certain nonessential services that no one but a small circle of friends would miss. Is that where the cuts come? Of course not. What are the most visible and popular areas that interact with the public? Schools, police, fire, and libraries. Where do the most visible and drastic cuts take place? Extra points if you said "Schools, police, fire, and libraries".

I have seen this little kabuki dance take place at all levels of government. No matter how many times a candidate for office avers to eliminate waste and fraud*, once they are a part of the system, with a very few exceptions, the will to govern with fiscal responsibility evaporates faster than Michael Moore decimates an all you can eat buffet.

After an indeterminate period of time, having been inconvenienced or annoyed with the cutbacks in services, the people will usually,  begrudgingly pass some kind of district user fee or tax to ransom back those lost services, or simply learn to live without them.

Which brings us back to Mr. Trump. If you were the head of one of those departments that Mr. Trump proposes to cut, or "slash", what would your response be? I can tell you what I would do. If I were running the Department of Education, which in my estimation has not contributed anything positive to the education of the American schoolchild,  has been a colossal waste of money, and a boondoggle of the first order, I would do what bureaucrats from time immemorial have done, and slash the programs with the highest public visibility, and then, to further twist the knife, as soon as my budget was cut, I would begin to attribute every failing and shortcoming in my organization on budget cuts.

I would go to my willing co-conspirators in the media, who would paint the new Trump administration as anti-education, and anti-children. Remember when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House? Newt proposed devolving school lunch funding to the states. He proposed block granting MORE money to the states than they were currently getting. It was an act to decrease the power of the federal government. Democrats, who never met a dollar they didn't think was theirs, immediately responded by accusing Newt of "cutting money for school lunches" and "starving" school children. Their willing accomplices in the mainstream media picked up the mantra, and even though the reality Newt proposed was to give more money to school lunches, the public's perception was "mean, nasty Republicans hate kids and want to balance the budget on the backs of schoolchildren."

Toxic lies 1, truth 0.

Does anyone with greater than a room temperature IQ believe that "slashing" the Education budget will result in an outcome substantially different than the one I have described? And Trump proposes to do the same not to one, but to multiple agencies, who will all attribute any failures or shortcomings to a lack of funding and mean Republicans. (Not necessarily in that order).

There is an old maxim in life, to quote Emerson, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." Meaning, if you merely wound him, he will have the power to retaliate. Better to eliminate the entire department than to leave a mechanism in place to actively lobby for their own self preservation, on the taxpayer's dime.

And that doesn't even get into the problem that the president can propose budget cuts, but as a coequal branch, spending bills originate in the House. Who also read polls. Could a president Trump persuade a majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate to make enemies of the education establishment and leave the remnant to run a propaganda war against them? I don't think so.

And that's the difference between a politician and a CEO. Different skill set. Different problems. Different realities. The rhetoric of "slashing budgets" may be red meat to his followers, but there's no guarantee that he will be able to successfully follow through.

*In 2008, candidate Barack Obama promised to go through the budget line by line to eliminate waste and fraud. Other than the military, can anyone name a single line item in any budget in the last seven years that Obama has proposed cutting?

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art