Obama - Hypocrisy as an Art Form

Obama – Hypocrisy as an Art Form
The View from the Middle

The average hypocrite will try to say one thing one day and then do the opposite in the weeks, months or years that follow. President Obama is more than capable of that kind of hypocrisy.

The President used his famous “there is no black America and no white America” speech to paint himself has the great uniter, and it was on more than race. In the same speech he said, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is (just) the United States of America”. These are really great words that paint a wonderful, positive picture, but let’s see how this Duplicitor In Chief did against this promise of unity.

From “the Beer Summit” to Trayvon Martin to Ferguson, the President has taken sides, and the wrong side at that. The Beer Summit was a clumsy apology, George Zimmerman was found innocent and “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened. By virtually every measure, today this country is more divided racially than when the President took office. Even the President himself was forced to admit this lack of unity earlier this year and paint it as one of his great regrets.

But certainly he must have done better delivering on his promise to reach across the aisle and unite Democrats and Republicans. Not really. In fact, he has done the opposite. Remember when he told Republicans that they would have to “sit in the back seat” when it came to legislation. How about when he passed his signature legislation (Obama Care) without a single Republican vote in either House of Congress. And of course we all remember his notorious “I’ve got a phone and a pen” statement that told the Republican Congress he was going to by-pass them completely.

Now, that’s what I call “reaching across the aisle”. Unfortunately it has been with a fist instead of an open hand. But this kind of hypocrisy is child’s play compared to recent events. Many people had forgotten his promises by the time he delivered the opposite. These days, The President can make and break promises within days and sometimes within the same speech.

After the election of Donald Trump, The President promised the most positive and effective transition in history. So, what has he done? First, he came out and stated that he would have won a third term if he had run again. This, of course, is totally unprovable either way and simply serves as a slap in the face of the President Elect. I guess it’s part of his plan to deliver the best transition ever, and just a real classy thing to do.

Next, The President decides that he is finally going to get tough with Putin, in the last 21 days of his Presidency. Never mind that Putin laughed at Hillary’s “reset button”. Never mind that The President let Putin run wild through Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Syria. As he is closing the door on his Presidency he has decided to take a hard line and make some threats to Putin that he can’t possibly deliver. This is also a “no-win” situation for Trump. If he makes good on Obama’s promises, it will certainly make Putin even more difficult to deal with in the years to come. If he cancels the sanctions, Trump will be seen as Putin’s puppet. Thanks, Barry.

And finally, the piece de resistance of Obama’s hypocrisy is his betrayal of Israel at the UN. This act is a classic because it allows Barack Obama to break two promises simultaneously and caused John Kerry to contradict himself within his own speech.

Let’s be clear. This treachery will not help Donald Trump get off to a fast start as President and is not part of a seamless transition for the President Elect. This will be a distraction in the first, critical 100 days of the Trump Presidency. It will delay or totally prevent work the new President must do to deliver on his promises to create jobs, secure the border, reform the tax code and reduce the country’s regulatory burden, etc., etc., etc. Again, thanks Barry.

Finally, John Kerry’s speech may go down in history as the most illogical spiel ever given as he tried to hide the betrayal that was so evident to the rest of the world. He actually tried to claim that the Obama administration was the most the most pro-Israeli administration in our history – AS he was stabbing them in the back. That was the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

Kerry compared Israel’s building of apartments (settlements) in the West Bank to the Palestinians’ practice of launching rockets into Israel and blowing up innocent women and children. He also failed to remind the world that the Palestinians and their terrorist arm Hamas will not recognize Israel’s right to exist and have, in fact, promised to wipe Israel and all Jews off of the face of the earth. How would you like to have these guys as your neighbor?

Personally, I’m never surprised with hypocrisy in Washington. This last gasp of duplicity by the Obama administration, however, has set a new outrageous standard.

Prayers For Our President
The View from the Middle

Franklin Graham just sent out a Facebook post asking all of America to pray to God to give Donald Trump wisdom and to bless his Presidency for the good of the country. I want to double down on that request.

Donald Trump will receive an unprecedented campaign of harassment, negative opinions and even false reporting, and it has already begun. Paul Krugman of the New York Times actually suggested that Donald Trump might try to engineer another 9/11-type attack to build his own personal popularity. Unbelievable! Now, Michelle Obama is trying to tell the people of America that there is no hope for America because Trump is our President. I guess the Obamas are not going to follow the example of George W. Bush and not second guess or impede the sitting President, even though President Obama said he appreciated Bush’s discretion.

Donald Trump needs our prayers for wisdom, strength and even success, not only for him but for all Americans, Democrat or Republican or Independent.

Of Electors and Putin, Two Quick Thoughts

Of Electors and Putin – Two Quick Thoughts
The View from the Middle

On the Electors:

At a time when the Democrat Party should be going through some self-analysis to figure out how it can compete for voters in the future, they have become the spoiled kid at the mall, kicking and screaming in a tantrum at the election results.

The latest effort by Hollywood elitists to convince Republican electors not to vote for their party’s candidate is particularly misguided and desperate. First, the message is coming from snooty Hollywood “B” actors who know nothing about the concerns of average Americans. These are the elitists who 60+ million Americans said they were sick of listening to when they voted for Trump in the first place.

Second, what do these Hollywood snobs know about the original intent of our Founding Fathers? Nothing! They are just spinning a twisted, self-serving tale that caresses their narcissistic fantasies. They don’t even like the constitution. They just want all of us worker bees to shut up, get in line and do as they tell us. Good luck with that.

Do we really want 538 individuals, who where not actually elected but appointed by each state’s respective parties, to subvert the wishes of 120+ million voters across the country. Why should we even have a popular vote? Sounds like a fast track to despotism or an aristocracy at best.

On Putin, President of Russia:

Are any of you shocked that Russia is trying to hack into our government databases? Obama has known for eight years and done nothing about it. He even advised Trump as late as October to “stop whining” and go out and compete for votes. Of course, that was when Trump was a 100 to one long shot in Vegas. Now that Hillary lost and Obama only has four weeks left in office, he is talking tough and laying down threats that Trump will have to make good on.

Hillary has been blaming Putin for the leaks from the very beginning and suggesting that he was doing it to help Trump. She obviously thought that connecting Trump to Putin would work in her favor. I think she was right. The content of the emails was balanced by linking Putin to Trump, so the whole Wikileaks dump was a wash. Hillary lost because her main message was that she should win because she was a woman. She also ignored working white Americans and whole states like Wisconsin.

I heard a left-wing commentator admit that Russia has been hacking us for a long time, but suggesting that they usually do this just to get to know us better. Ha! This time, the commentator suggested that the Russians had evil intentions. News flash for all Americans, Russia always has evil intentions when they breach our systems. They could have released these emails, as they did, so that every American could see what Hillary and her campaign team really thought. They could have, however, saved these emails to bribe a sitting American President, assuming Hillary won. What they did was actually the lesser of two evils.

This reinforces the importance of properly protecting our government’s data. Personal servers in your basement are a real No-No, Hillary.

Lincoln's Advice to Mainstream Media

Lincoln’s Advice to Today’s Mainstream Media

The View from the Middle

As I retired from P&G, I wrote a book called Mastering Sales, and I certainly encourage you all to visit Amazon and buy it.  In that book I quoted one of my favorite Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, in my chapter on leadership.  I believe that one of Lincoln’s vital qualities that made him a great leader was his love for people.  I use a quote from Lincoln to demonstrate his affection for the common man.  Lincoln said,

“If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.”

And of course, the opposite is true.  If you look for the good in people, expecting to find it, you surely will also.  Lincoln was talking about the importance of perspective in everyone’s thinking.  What is your predisposition in any situation, particularly in your assessment of people?

I would suggest that the mainstream media has a built in favor for Obama and an inherent prejudice against Donald Trump.  Let me give you some hypothetical examples.

Obama - Saves 1,000 jobs at Carrier right before Christmas:

Mainstream Media – Obama is an incredibly compassionate person and a savvy negotiator rolled into one!  Merry Christmas!  I mean, Happy Holidays.

Trump – Saves 1,000 jobs at Carrier right before Christmas:

MSM – Trump is destroying the free market.  This is just an example of too much government intrusion, and the world it going to end.

Obama  - Takes a congratulatory call from Taiwan President, Tsai Ing-Wen:

MSM – Obama is brilliant and thoughtful.  He is breaking the shackles of the past and forging a new relationship with a strategic partner.

Trump - Takes a congratulatory call from Taiwan President, Tsai Ing-Wen.

MSM – Trump is a thoughtless, bumbling idiot and is destroying all the great progress we have made with China in the last eight years.  (Progress with China?  Really?)  Oh, and the world is going to end.

Obama – It’s been three weeks since he won the election and Obama has only nominated one person to his cabinet:

MSM – Obama is thoroughly and thoughtfully vetting all candidates which clearly means that his cabinet will be awesome.

Trump – It’s been three hours since Trump won the election and Trump hasn’t filled his cabinet.

MSM – The Trump transition team is in utter chaos and no one even wants to be in his cabinet.  Oh yah, and the world is going to end.  No fear mongering here!

I don’t think I have to remind my readers that I am not a “Trump or die” supporter.  Do I have concerns?  Sure.  The world is a scary, complicated place, and the mainstream media has changed their role from “reporting” to “sabotage”.  It is difficult enough to run the most powerful country in the world with the press playing their intended role as reporters of fact and watchdogs.  Today, the mainstream media is actually trying to derail the Trump administration before it even gets started.

To the mainstream media - if you really want America to prosper, you will want this President to be successful, whether you voted for him or not.  Listen to the wise counsel of one of our greatest presidents.  Occasionally, look for the good in Trump, expecting to find it, and you surely will.  At least don’t start with a negative preconceived notion and then write your story to support it.

PS – Here’s a link to my book.  Check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mastering+sales+kevin+canfield

No Electoral Votes in the State of Denial

Harvard Forum Conclusion – Left is in Denial

The View from the Middle

If you have had a chance to see or listen to any of the clips from this year’s post-presidential election forum held at The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, you would have to come to the conclusion that the Democrat Party is in a severe state of denial.  They have concluded that it couldn’t have been their message that lost Hillary the election.  It couldn’t have been their policies.  It couldn’t have been their strategies or ground game.  Above all, it couldn’t have been their highly accomplished “most qualified person EVER to run for President” candidate, Hillary Clinton.  This leaves them with only one scapegoat.  It must have been those deplorable, irredeemable voters, right?

The Democrat Party spent over a year calling the 60+ million people who voted for Donald Trump misogynists, xenophobes, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes and bigots.  At the Harvard Forum, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton campaign communications director couldn’t resist heaping one more insult onto half of the American voting public.  Now, according to Jennifer, they’re all “white supremacists”. 

Well, here are a couple of messages for Jennifer Palmieri.  First, the typical Trump voter is not reflected by any of the insults you continue to hurl at them.  Do you really think that Ben Carson is a white supremacist or would have anything to do with one?  How about Larry Elder?  Herschel Walker?  Dennis Rodman?  I could go on, but do you also think that the 13% of black men who voted for Trump are white supremacists?  Jennifer, you are talking about MILLIONS of black people who voted for Trump.  Would you call them any of the names mentioned above to their faces?

Second, as long as liberals continue to stay in the state of denial, which by the way has no electoral votes, they will continue to lose elections.  The people of America are tired of being called names and REALLY tired of being ignored.  The typical American is actually a pretty good person, and I’m talking about Republicans and Democrats alike. They are hard working, decent people who are just tired of our government lying to them, spending their money like drunken sailors and trapping their children in a future riddled with debt.

Are there racists in America?  Sure, but it is my experience that they represent a small extreme fringe of the citizens and no particular party has a monopoly on them.  Jennifer, the sooner you see the American people for who they really are and stop your incessant insulting, the sooner you can begin to heal the divide between the Democrat party and the US citizenry.  Maybe then you can have a real shot at making America great again.

The Electoral College

What is the Electoral College Anyway?

The View from the Middle

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that Democrats and Republicans alike where ridiculing Donald Trump for suggesting that the RNC change its primary election rules?  While these rules have changed through the years and are different by state, they have been in place “for years” according to Reince Priebus.  So, Trump was portrayed as a “whiney baby” who was just trying to change the rules of the game to his advantage. 

Now, we have Democrats ridiculing the general election process because Hillary Clinton won the nationwide popular vote but lost in the Electoral College.  I’m actually stunned that the hypocrisy is so thick and yet it goes undetected by the lamestream media.  Do these people think we have no videos, newspaper articles or even memories to refer to?  Before we talk about why Democrats want to terminate the Electoral College, let’s talk about what it is and why it was created.

The Electoral College is a collection of electors selected by the states to correspond with each state’s total of Representatives in the House and its two Senators.  That comes to 535 (435 House Reps and 100 Senators), but in 1960 the 23^rd amendment granted Washington DC the status of a state and thus three electors to bring the total to 538.  That’s why it takes a total of 270 electors to guarantee a candidate a majority and thus the Presidency.

If you read anything about the Constitutional Convention you realize that it was a very contentious affair.  Two of the biggest issues they debated were the balance of power between the state and federal governments and between big and small states.  The Founders, in their infinite wisdom, created two houses of congress, one based on population (the House of Representatives) and one with equal representation (the Senate). 

This configuration requires the federal government to be concerned about and work with all states and not just the big states to get things done.  The Electoral College is simply a manifestation of the same concept but expressed through an electoral process.

In the most current election, Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote by about 1.2 million votes.  She will win two states, California and New York, by almost five million votes.  That would mean that Donald Trump took the remaining 48 states by four million votes, which would be considered a landslide by most analysts. 

Do we really want to live in a country that can be so easily dominated by just two states?  New York and California account for almost 20% of the country’s population and they are extreme in their views and almost robotic in their voting habits.  A popular vote system would promote New York and California to positions of “capitals” and reduce the other 48 states to a status of colonies or districts.  If you throw Illinois and Massachusetts into the mix, which are similar in size and extreme partisan voting support, the Democrat party could control the entire country through just four states. 

So, if you live in one of the other 46 states, I would encourage you to read the book The Hunger Games to get a glimpse of what this “capitals” vs. “districts” relationship can evolve into.  New York and California would tell the people in Wyoming or Arkansas or Mississippi how to live and even think.  But, if you want to live in a country where every person in every state is free and considered important by our government, you will continue to support the Electoral College process.

Long live the “Flyover Country”.

Obama's Big Mistake

Obama’s Big Mistake

The View from the Middle

Back in 2009, Barack Obama was ushered into the White House with a 79-vote majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster proof majority of 60 votes in the Senate when you include the two so called Independents who caucused with the Democrats.  He read this as a mandate by the people to embrace his far left ideology when it might have been more of a rejection by the people of the performance of a two term sitting President.  Sound familiar?  I don’t believe that George W. Bush deserves all the blame for the financial collapse of 2008, but he has to bear part of it.

Obama was confident.  I would say cocky.  He assumed that the world had fundamentally changed and that he would always enjoy the advantages he inherited.  So, he told Republicans to “drop dead” in three different ways during the first two years in office.  First, he humiliated John McCain, Eric Canter and John Boehner by telling them in a very public fashion that “elections have consequences, and I won”.  This would hardly be described as being magnanimous in victory.

During the mid-term campaigning in 2010, he gave speeches ridiculing Republicans.  He created an analogy that compared the US economy to a car in a ditch.  He suggested that he and the Democrats had dragged this car back onto the road with no help from Republicans.  You can argue the accuracy of the analogy, but the insult that followed was unnecessary.  In terms of moving forward, he said Republicans could, “come along for the ride, but they gotta sit in the back seat.”  As you can imagine, Black Republican leaders were particularly offended. 

Finally, not chronologically but in terms of the intensity of the rejection, President Obama passed his signature legislation, Obamacare, without a single Republican vote in either house of Congress.  In a bill that was close to 3,000 pages long, he couldn’t include one conservative compromise idea, like tort reform or selling insurance across state lines, to cobble together a few Republican votes?  This would have at least given some appearance of bipartisanship?

This hardline rejection of roughly half of America led to what Obama described as a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.  But he didn’t learn any lessons.  He proceeded to use Stalag Commandant Harry Reid to suppress any possibility of conservative ideas seeing the light of day in the Senate.  Republicans were allowed no bills to be debated and no amendments to Democrat bills.  Even as the ship was sinking, he would not seek consensus, which could have bailed him out.

Then, when he lost the Senate in the 2014 midterms, rather than reach across the aisle, he boasted that he “had a pen and a phone”.  He now planned to run the country as a monarchy through executive orders.  He has no compromise in his blood and this final attempt to dismiss the will of the people has cost him and his party the White House.

Now, he is about to learn a hard lesson.  In politics, if you run the country in a savagely partisan fashion and without any consensus, everything you put into place can be undone with the same stroke of a pen you used.  I get no joy out of writing these words, but I write them in the hope that Donald Trump won’t make this same mistake.

Mr. Trump inherits a similar situation to Mr. Obama’s.  While he doesn’t have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, he will find a more pliable minority opposition since 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for reelection in 2018 will be from the Democrat Caucus.  My hope is that Mr. Trump will reach out to the other side and find solutions that garner bipartisan support and will work for the American people.  Let me give you a few examples of some fertile compromise positions.

On immigration, the vast majority of Americans are in favor of better border security.  Mr. Trump should deliver on his campaign promise to secure our southern border, whatever that looks like.  Most Americans, if not all, are in favor of sending illegal alien felons back to where they came from.  Do it!  For the remaining, law-abiding Hispanic citizens (other than the fact that they are here illegally) we must offer them a path to legalization (not citizenship).  I wouldn’t even be so foolish as to suggest that they pay back taxes.  What a mess that would be.  They should pay a small fine, get legalized and then we can all put this nagging problem behind us.  Even a $100 fine would bring in a billion dollars, which we can put towards border security.

On Obamacare, there are some popular elements in the FCA.  I agree that the total law is a disaster waiting to happen, but as one of my old bosses used to say, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Term limits is another area where President Elect Trump can find broad consensus, if not with members of Congress, with the American people.  75% of Americans are in favor of term limits and a President Trump could use his bully pulpit to bully congressmen and women to support a constitutional amendment to impose limits on themselves.

There are other areas where there is bipartisan support.  My hope is that a new President Trump would not make the same mistake that President Obama did, and reach out to the other side of the aisle to bring Americans together and to move America forward.  Early signs are good, but we have a long way to go and many wounds to heal.