Government Shutdown? Please!!
The View from the Middle
It is official. Chicken Little has become the spokesperson for the US Government, or at least the Democrat party. And this is no ordinary, confused, hysterical Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling when an acorn dropped on its head. This is an agenda driven, maniacal, duplicitous chicken intent on deceiving the public and creating a panic the original chick was famous for.
There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976. Some lasting just a day while others lasted a week or so. Bill Clinton still holds the record for shutting the government down for 21 days as he and Republicans fought over whether we should use the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to project our deficits. In other words, over nothing.
The last government shutdown, under President Obama, was equally unnecessary but particularly messy. Republicans, lead by Ted Cruz, tried to pass a continuing resolution to run the government, which defunded Obamacare. While the cause may have been noble (to me), even I had to admit that the chances of that bill passing was virtually zero. Harry Reid and the Democrats still controlled the Senate and Barack Obama was in the White House. Reid and Obama would have both taken a bullet in the head before agreeing to that continuing resolution.
But then the President decided to make that government shutdown especially painful. First, he shutdown the “open air” World War II Memorial. This memorial is not even regularly staffed, but Barack Obama actually spent extra funds to have it barricaded. That meant that 80 and 90 year old veterans, who had already booked flights, would be denied access.
Obama shut down over 400 national parks even when the act of closing them was greater than leaving them open. He closed Mount Rushmore, The Vietnam Memorial and even tried to close privately owned Mount Vernon because the Park Service maintained the parking lot. And let’s not forget that White House tours were still being canceled due to their tremendous impact on the budget.
A park ranger was quoted as saying, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.” He added, “It’s disgusting” and I heartily agree with him. When will we learn? It is clear that the government has evolved into something our Founders did not intend. Instead of a protector of our freedom, it has become a vehicle through which the masses can be fleeced and manipulated by a privileged few.
But there is good news in all of these government shutdown exercises. The truth is that these shutdowns prove the exact opposite of their advertised predictions. They prove that nothing of real consequence happens as a result of a government shutdown. For those of you who were alive, do you remember any cataclysmic results from the eight (yes 8) shutdowns during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency? Even after all the effort by Barack Obama to disrupt our lives, do you remember any national pestilence as a result of that shutdown? It didn’t even impact our economy. Our GDP, in fact, grew faster in that quarter than the quarters before and after! The people who were furloughed got paid when the shutdown ended, so the American people actually gave them a paid vacation.
So bring on the next shutdown. Let the government prove once more that it is too big, too inefficient, too corrupt and that we can get along quite well without all the “nonessential personnel”. In fact, now that we have identified those nonessential people, what if we actually eliminate those jobs? What a novel idea!!
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Understanding Trump – Part II
The View from the Middle
Donald Trump is a businessman, not a politician. With this fact comes some realities that we all have to live with. He’s not smooth and slick like a Barack Obama who spent practically his whole adult life in politics. Actually, I wish Trump had a little more of that in him, but he doesn’t. He’s been in the rough and tumble world of business and began his career in the tough New York construction industry. When people strike out at him, he hits back. When he hits a dead end, he changes directions. Results are the measure of his success, not popularity polls.
That brings me to his recent purported “flip-flops”. First of all, he has delivered on more of his campaign promises than any President in my memory for sure, and maybe any President. He approved the Keystone Pipeline, reduced regulations, put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and taken the US out of the TPP trade agreement. He is certainly working on repealing and replacing Obamacare, securing our southern border and reforming our tax system. If these things are done in year one, that would be a real “promises made – promises kept” first year of any Presidency.
And now, all the talk is about flip-flopping on his positions. Interestingly, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton changed their minds on when life begins or the traditional definition of marriage, they are “evolving”. Why did they change these positions? To get votes. If Trump changes his positions, it will be to get “results”.
I’ve already talked about his changes on NATO and China. As I explained, this was simply negotiating. The costs to us were minimal to nonexistent, but we received big behavioral changes from both as a result. Now, he’s being accused of flip-flopping on Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, and the Export-Import bank.
Let’s be absolutely honest. To these moves, most Americans say, “What?” Most Americans don’t even know what The Fed or the Export-Import bank do. So, what does it cost Trump to support Yellen and the EI bank now, and what does he get out of these changes? First, the cost is zero. Even if he was a politician, his next election is nearly four years away so he has plenty of time to produce positive results, which is what he is really after. And what might those positive results be? In both cases, I’m sure it revolves around jobs!! Janet Yellen is likely to keep interest rates under control to finance an economic expansion and the EI will help finance exports, which will fuel jobs in the US.
It’s all about results with Trump and while they aren’t in yet, I can connect the dots of the President’s activity to future economic growth in America, which was a huge campaign promise by Trump. Another huge promise from Trump was to keep America safe, and the jury is also still out in that area. I like what he has done in Syria, and even with Russia. The world was deplored by Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people and last week’s meeting with Putin and Tillerson in Russia gives me some hope that we may be able to use Russia to remove Assad from Syria. We’ll see.
The one area of the world that still concerns me, however, is North Korea. While we have had a couple of encouraging signs from the Chinese, who I believe need to be the real solution in North Korea, we still have what John McCain called “the crazy fat kid” (Kim Jong Un) leading that country. I have to agree with McCain on this one. He is fat, and I think he’s crazy. Having a crazy dictator armed with a nuclear weapon should scare us all, but we did get some encouraging signs this weekend when the CFK didn’t pull any ballistic or nuclear stunts during their Founder’s Birthday Celebration. The fact that he is crazy is his own fault. The fact that he has nuclear weapons belongs to at least a couple of previous administrations. Now, Trump has to handle this delicate situation and we should all be praying that he does it well.
The View from the Middle
Donald Trump is a businessman, not a politician. With this fact comes some realities that we all have to live with. He’s not smooth and slick like a Barack Obama who spent practically his whole adult life in politics. Actually, I wish Trump had a little more of that in him, but he doesn’t. He’s been in the rough and tumble world of business and began his career in the tough New York construction industry. When people strike out at him, he hits back. When he hits a dead end, he changes directions. Results are the measure of his success, not popularity polls.
That brings me to his recent purported “flip-flops”. First of all, he has delivered on more of his campaign promises than any President in my memory for sure, and maybe any President. He approved the Keystone Pipeline, reduced regulations, put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and taken the US out of the TPP trade agreement. He is certainly working on repealing and replacing Obamacare, securing our southern border and reforming our tax system. If these things are done in year one, that would be a real “promises made – promises kept” first year of any Presidency.
And now, all the talk is about flip-flopping on his positions. Interestingly, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton changed their minds on when life begins or the traditional definition of marriage, they are “evolving”. Why did they change these positions? To get votes. If Trump changes his positions, it will be to get “results”.
I’ve already talked about his changes on NATO and China. As I explained, this was simply negotiating. The costs to us were minimal to nonexistent, but we received big behavioral changes from both as a result. Now, he’s being accused of flip-flopping on Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, and the Export-Import bank.
Let’s be absolutely honest. To these moves, most Americans say, “What?” Most Americans don’t even know what The Fed or the Export-Import bank do. So, what does it cost Trump to support Yellen and the EI bank now, and what does he get out of these changes? First, the cost is zero. Even if he was a politician, his next election is nearly four years away so he has plenty of time to produce positive results, which is what he is really after. And what might those positive results be? In both cases, I’m sure it revolves around jobs!! Janet Yellen is likely to keep interest rates under control to finance an economic expansion and the EI will help finance exports, which will fuel jobs in the US.
It’s all about results with Trump and while they aren’t in yet, I can connect the dots of the President’s activity to future economic growth in America, which was a huge campaign promise by Trump. Another huge promise from Trump was to keep America safe, and the jury is also still out in that area. I like what he has done in Syria, and even with Russia. The world was deplored by Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people and last week’s meeting with Putin and Tillerson in Russia gives me some hope that we may be able to use Russia to remove Assad from Syria. We’ll see.
The one area of the world that still concerns me, however, is North Korea. While we have had a couple of encouraging signs from the Chinese, who I believe need to be the real solution in North Korea, we still have what John McCain called “the crazy fat kid” (Kim Jong Un) leading that country. I have to agree with McCain on this one. He is fat, and I think he’s crazy. Having a crazy dictator armed with a nuclear weapon should scare us all, but we did get some encouraging signs this weekend when the CFK didn’t pull any ballistic or nuclear stunts during their Founder’s Birthday Celebration. The fact that he is crazy is his own fault. The fact that he has nuclear weapons belongs to at least a couple of previous administrations. Now, Trump has to handle this delicate situation and we should all be praying that he does it well.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Understanding Trump
Understanding Trump
The View from the Middle
I still remember the first time Brenda and I went to buy a house. She walked into the first house we visited and began to tell the realtor and the folks who lived there how much she loved everything. “Wow, this is a great family room! I just love your back yard! Kevin, did you notice that the washer an dryer are brand new?” After I left the house, which we did not buy, I explained the fundamentals of negotiations with Brenda.
“Honey” I said, “ If you want to help me get the cost of a house down, you may want to point out some of its deficiencies, rather than focusing on its assets.” I told her she could always tell me about the advantages of any house when we were in private. That’s pretty basic, but we were young and I was in sales, not Brenda, and we were learning as we went along.
Donald Trump actually wrote the book on negotiations called The Art of the Deal, and he is negotiating all the time. In his previous life, he was negotiating for properties and I’m sure he didn’t start bargaining by pointing out the great qualities of the land and or buildings he was interested in buying. I’m confident, however, that he made the seller aware of every shortcoming he noticed and of every burden he would have to endure if he purchased a property.
Now he is President of the United States and he hasn’t changed a bit, and I wouldn’t encourage him to. As President, if you wanted something from NATO, would go out in public and tell the world what a wonderful organization they were and what good work they do? No! You might, however, tell them that they were obsolete, and that’s exactly what Donald Trump did.
This week, Trump had a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, and lo and behold Jens agreed to focus more on terrorism and making sure that member nations lived up to their commitments to defense spending in each of their countries. If I’m not mistaken, that’s exactly what Trump wanted. Negotiations 101.
During his campaign he called China the great currency manipulator, and many would have agreed with him. He warned that things would need to change with China in the area of trade. Last week he had a meeting with China’s President, Xi Jinping, during which he pumped 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria. Not only did Xi Jinping finish his meetings with Trump, but when he got home to China he ordered coal shipments from North Korea returned as a signal of their displeasure with Kim Jong Un’s behavior.
And when China abstained on the UN vote denouncing Syria’s chemical attack on its own citizens, this was another huge victory for Trump. And what did Trump have to give up? He simply said that he didn’t believe China was a currency manipulator any more. In my opinion, that’s small price to pay to get China’s help with the two maniac leaders in North Korea and Syria.
The lame steam media, in either a state of confusion or denial, has jumped on Trump for what they call “flip-flopping”. This just proves two things. First, they still don’t get Trump and the support he received from mainstream America. Second, they have little to no interest in actual results and treat Trump like a house they are trying to buy. Ignore the positives and focus on the negatives…at all costs.
More to come on “Understanding Trump” but enjoy this first installment!
The View from the Middle
I still remember the first time Brenda and I went to buy a house. She walked into the first house we visited and began to tell the realtor and the folks who lived there how much she loved everything. “Wow, this is a great family room! I just love your back yard! Kevin, did you notice that the washer an dryer are brand new?” After I left the house, which we did not buy, I explained the fundamentals of negotiations with Brenda.
“Honey” I said, “ If you want to help me get the cost of a house down, you may want to point out some of its deficiencies, rather than focusing on its assets.” I told her she could always tell me about the advantages of any house when we were in private. That’s pretty basic, but we were young and I was in sales, not Brenda, and we were learning as we went along.
Donald Trump actually wrote the book on negotiations called The Art of the Deal, and he is negotiating all the time. In his previous life, he was negotiating for properties and I’m sure he didn’t start bargaining by pointing out the great qualities of the land and or buildings he was interested in buying. I’m confident, however, that he made the seller aware of every shortcoming he noticed and of every burden he would have to endure if he purchased a property.
Now he is President of the United States and he hasn’t changed a bit, and I wouldn’t encourage him to. As President, if you wanted something from NATO, would go out in public and tell the world what a wonderful organization they were and what good work they do? No! You might, however, tell them that they were obsolete, and that’s exactly what Donald Trump did.
This week, Trump had a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, and lo and behold Jens agreed to focus more on terrorism and making sure that member nations lived up to their commitments to defense spending in each of their countries. If I’m not mistaken, that’s exactly what Trump wanted. Negotiations 101.
During his campaign he called China the great currency manipulator, and many would have agreed with him. He warned that things would need to change with China in the area of trade. Last week he had a meeting with China’s President, Xi Jinping, during which he pumped 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria. Not only did Xi Jinping finish his meetings with Trump, but when he got home to China he ordered coal shipments from North Korea returned as a signal of their displeasure with Kim Jong Un’s behavior.
And when China abstained on the UN vote denouncing Syria’s chemical attack on its own citizens, this was another huge victory for Trump. And what did Trump have to give up? He simply said that he didn’t believe China was a currency manipulator any more. In my opinion, that’s small price to pay to get China’s help with the two maniac leaders in North Korea and Syria.
The lame steam media, in either a state of confusion or denial, has jumped on Trump for what they call “flip-flopping”. This just proves two things. First, they still don’t get Trump and the support he received from mainstream America. Second, they have little to no interest in actual results and treat Trump like a house they are trying to buy. Ignore the positives and focus on the negatives…at all costs.
More to come on “Understanding Trump” but enjoy this first installment!
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Trump, Putin Puppet or Pest?
Trump, Putin Puppet or Pest?
The View from the Middle
President Trump either didn’t get the memo from Putin or forgot to look up the definition of lap dog. Someone from the NY Times needs to tell him that putting 59 tomahawk missiles into Syria, almost literally in Putin’s ear, does not follow the narrative that the media has been painting of the Trump / Putin relationship. This is hardly the action that a man would take if he were “colluding” with Russia. Do you think it’s time for the wacko media conspiracy theorists to give up on their manufactured story and start concentrating on Susan Rice, the great unmasker and serial liar?
The lame stream media may even have to compare Trump to Ronald Reagan! I know that would really drive them crazy, but doesn’t this remind you of when Reagan put a missile in Gaddafi’s ear after the Berlin Disco bombing? It was a quick response. It was measured, proportionate and the end results were excellent. Gaddafi put his tail between his legs and laid low until Reagan died. I think he was terrified of him well after his Presidency.
We don’t know the long-term ramifications of this action, but in the short term, the results look good. First, remember that China’s President Jinping was meeting with Trump in Florida when the missiles were launched. He could have canceled all his meetings with Trump and left the next morning, but he didn’t. They met the very next day without incident. That’s a good sign, and this week Rex Tillerson is meeting with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, in Russian to discuss a range of issue. They could have easily canceled those meetings, but they didn’t.
We’ve also had resounding support from our allies around the world and, considering Trump’s popularity at home, excellent support from the American people (57% support while only 36% don’t). For those of you who don’t support Trump’s actions in Syria, I would love to hear your alternatives. Would you send another nasty letter to Assad? Would you say “pretty please” to Vladimir Putin as you asked him to bring Assad under control? That’s hasn’t worked very well for the last six years and has ended with the loss of almost a half million lives.
Personally, I support the President’s actions and I pray for his judgment and for the future of our country. I pray that he can continue to deliver on his promises of economic and job growth while also securing our border and keeping America safe. For anyone, including the lame stream media, who is praying for this President to fail, I would suggest that those prayers are misplaced. While I disagreed with President Obama on almost every issue, I never hoped that he, and the United States with him, would fail.
A united and prayerful America is our best hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. Please join me in that effort.
The View from the Middle
President Trump either didn’t get the memo from Putin or forgot to look up the definition of lap dog. Someone from the NY Times needs to tell him that putting 59 tomahawk missiles into Syria, almost literally in Putin’s ear, does not follow the narrative that the media has been painting of the Trump / Putin relationship. This is hardly the action that a man would take if he were “colluding” with Russia. Do you think it’s time for the wacko media conspiracy theorists to give up on their manufactured story and start concentrating on Susan Rice, the great unmasker and serial liar?
The lame stream media may even have to compare Trump to Ronald Reagan! I know that would really drive them crazy, but doesn’t this remind you of when Reagan put a missile in Gaddafi’s ear after the Berlin Disco bombing? It was a quick response. It was measured, proportionate and the end results were excellent. Gaddafi put his tail between his legs and laid low until Reagan died. I think he was terrified of him well after his Presidency.
We don’t know the long-term ramifications of this action, but in the short term, the results look good. First, remember that China’s President Jinping was meeting with Trump in Florida when the missiles were launched. He could have canceled all his meetings with Trump and left the next morning, but he didn’t. They met the very next day without incident. That’s a good sign, and this week Rex Tillerson is meeting with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, in Russian to discuss a range of issue. They could have easily canceled those meetings, but they didn’t.
We’ve also had resounding support from our allies around the world and, considering Trump’s popularity at home, excellent support from the American people (57% support while only 36% don’t). For those of you who don’t support Trump’s actions in Syria, I would love to hear your alternatives. Would you send another nasty letter to Assad? Would you say “pretty please” to Vladimir Putin as you asked him to bring Assad under control? That’s hasn’t worked very well for the last six years and has ended with the loss of almost a half million lives.
Personally, I support the President’s actions and I pray for his judgment and for the future of our country. I pray that he can continue to deliver on his promises of economic and job growth while also securing our border and keeping America safe. For anyone, including the lame stream media, who is praying for this President to fail, I would suggest that those prayers are misplaced. While I disagreed with President Obama on almost every issue, I never hoped that he, and the United States with him, would fail.
A united and prayerful America is our best hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. Please join me in that effort.
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