The Dems Great Miscalculation

The Dems Great Miscalculation
The View from the Middle

It all started on September 10th, 2016 at a fundraiser in New York City. Hillary Clinton stated that you could put half of Donald Trump’s supporters into what she called a “basket of deplorables”. She called his backers racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic. Since she knew that there was no way to know which half any Trump voter was in, she was, in effect, insulting every Trump supporter with her elitist, multi-syllabic slurs. She either felt that she didn’t need their votes so she spewed this toxic, filthy, disgusting rhetoric to inflame her base. OR, she actually believed she could spit in people’s faces one day and convince them to vote for her the next. Either way, her official campaign strategy became the disparagement of Donald Trump and half of America. She was accusing over 60 million people of the most despicable behavior on earth and of having a fundamental lack of humanity. Good strategy!

I think I can speak for every person put in that basket of deplorables when I say that I was insulted, saddened and even shocked that a person who was running for President of all of the people of America could have so little regard for so many of us. In fact, wasn’t she modeling the exact behavior that she was accusing Trump of exhibiting? Certainly not. That would be hypocritical, and we know that type of behavior doesn’t exist in Washington.

But what is even sadder is that virtually every Democrat and the mainstream media (but, I repeat myself) has embraced this strategy. Don Lemon, supposedly a news person at CNN, said that “anyone who supports Donald Trump is complicit in racism”. Joe Scarborough, also of CNN, went through a long and torturous explanation of why Donald Trump is a racist and every Trump supporter must also be one. And, as you might guess, MSNBC is replete with hosts, like Chris Hayes, and guests, like Tiffany Cross who demagogue with the same story line. It never ceases to amaze me that these people can denounce hatred and bigotry while exhibiting that exact same behavior.

And it appears the Joe Biden, currently the Democrats’ leading Presidential candidate, is also adopting this same strategy. Back in 2012, Biden told a largely black audience that Republicans wanted to “put y’all back in chains”. That statement is beyond mere exaggeration. It is specious, malicious and inflammatory, and Joe knows it. More recently Joe claimed that Republicans wanted to, “bring back Jim Crow.” It is astonishing that Joe could say this, while at the same time accusing Republicans of fearmongering. Isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy? Certainly not, right?

And finally, to put the icing on this disgusting, slanderous cake, I give you Joaquin Castro. Joaquin is the twin brother and campaign manager for Julian Castro who is a Democrat candidate for President and past mayor of San Antonio. Joaquin listed the names and work places of forty-four Trump contributors putting them at risk of financial and even physical harm. And Julian wants to be President of all the people of this great country? He, and his party, preach tolerance and condemn hatred in one breath and spew bigotry and hostility in the next.

The Democrat Party miscalculation is twofold. First, they have abandoned all realistic policy positions and embraced delusional, utopian policies like guaranteed incomes, free everything and fantasies like the green new deal. Second, they seem to believe that they can attract voters by insulting them. This is not a winning strategy. Even if you love the Democrat Party, the party of my father and John Kennedy, the only way to save it is to reject its platform of hatred, hypocrisy and a two-tiered system of justice. I believe we are seeing signs of that rejection right now. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.

AOC's Big Lie

AOC and Her “Big Lie”
The View from the Middle

During WWII, Adolph Hitler appointed a man named Joseph Goebbels to the position of Minister of Propaganda. His job was to convince German citizens and then the world that the actions of the Nazi party were noble and the real enemy was the Jews. Goebbels invented a new and very effective strategy called “the big lie”. According to Goebbels, “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.” This despicable technique was and is so effective that some unscrupulous people still use it today.

I think the best example of a “big lie” today is when Alexandria Ocasio Cortez equates the detention centers on our southern border to concentration camps in (ironically) Nazi Germany. Ted Koppel, hardly a right-wing journalist, recently wrote a column politely criticizing AOC’s equation. He called her comparison of the US detention facilities on our southern border to concentration camps in Nazi Germany a “facile (shallow) analogy” and added that he believed they were rash and overheated. I’ll go a step further. I’ll call her comparisons an intentional lie. I will suggest that even she, a pampered 29-year-old, knows the real difference and if she doesn’t she just needs to read a book or look at a few pictures of emaciated prisoners from the second world war to understand.

Most of us have seen the pictures of the actual living conditions in the detainment facilities in Texas, Arizona and California and we’ve seen pictures and even some videos of the deplorable conditions in Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps. I’m going to go a step farther than Ted Koppel and call her comparisons ridiculous, irresponsible and even dangerous.

I’ve searched the archives of the Nazi concentration camps and didn’t find a single reference of these facilities having big screen TV’s for their prisoners to watch. Yet, I have seen repeated reports of the detainees on our southern border watching the latest soccer matches and playing video games on bigger and nicer TV’s than the average American can afford.

I’ve seen the examples of the good hygiene welcome packages that internees on our southern border receive. They contain toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap and shampoo. I’ve even seen videos of these detainees being checked by dentists and doctors. I’m pretty sure the inhabitants of Treblinka didn’t receive such welcome packets. In fact I cringe at the absurdity of that remark. If there were doctors at Dachau they weren’t there with the well-being of the prisoners in mind. Doctors like Josef Mengele performed experiments on the Jews, Catholics, Gypsies and homosexual occupants of Auschwitz.

And, of course, we must remember that the people who were eventually imprisoned at Treblinka, Auschwitz and Dachau were not trying to get into Germany or Poland or other Nazi occupied territories. If anything, they were trying to get out!! The people on our southern border are trying to sneak in to this country and flee the poverty, violence and oppression of their home countries. For most, if not all of these people who are illegally crossing our borders, these facilities with three meals a day, exercise yards and protection from the elements must look like an oasis compared to the conditions they left or the dangers of the treacherous journey they had to make to get here.

Finally, to compare the guards and other workers at the US detention facilities to the guards at Treblinka, Auschwitz and Dachau is also absurd. The watchmen in these camps were famous for their cruel, inhumane and even sadistic treatment of their prisoners. The stories are so horrific, I won’t even give examples here to save my reading audience from the revulsion they would experience. The US guards are doing the very best they can with the limited funds they have, and working in facilities that were not designed to handle the number of people who are now flooding over our border.

Tragically, there have been some deaths on our southern border. A young girl drowned as she and her father tried to cross the Rio Grande. Since 2003 there have been 188 deaths and each one is tragic. However, in the Nazi concentration camps there were 11 million people systematically exterminated in just the seven years between 1938 and 1945. These people didn’t die from “poor treatment” or “spotty oversight”. Any comparison of these two realities is just preposterous.

These facilities are not like staying at The Ritz, but to compare them to concentration camps is ludicrous. There are two things we should do to AOC and the like. First, the mainstream media should send a strong message to these people that comments to this effect are inaccurate, reprehensible and even dangerous. Second, we all need to demand that these people do their jobs and change the laws that are encouraging the deluge of illegal entries at our southern border and to properly fund the facilities and workforce that must deal with this humanitarian crisis. If we do not call out the “big lie”, as Joseph Goebbels said, “people will eventually come to believe it.”

The Mueller Debacle

The Mueller Debacle
The View from the Middle

I’m sitting here watching Robert Mueller testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee, and while I’m not sure what the media spin will be on his testimony, I can tell you what the story should be.

First, is Mueller a thousand years old or what. He has been mumbling and bumbling around for over two hours now and my only question is – does he have even a couple of marbles rolling around in his head anymore. His voice is shaking and he is asking almost every Congressman to repeat their questions. Does he need hearing aids or does he actually not understand these relatively simple questions that just refers to his own report?

Which brings us to what should be the second big story that should come out of this hearing. Did Mueller do any of this work at all? He spends most of his time looking through his own (supposedly) report for references or being assisted in that effort by his wing man, Aaron Zebley. He was asked directly, “how many of the 500 plus interviews done for this investigation did you attend.” His answer was, “Very few.” Wow! He was also trapped into admitting that he didn’t even prepare his own nine minute press conference speech that he delivered in May.

The questions on both sides of the aisle are not of any surprise. Democrats are trying, unsuccessfully, to get Mueller to indict the President during this hearing despite the fact that he didn’t do so in his 400+ page report. Republicans are trying to discredit Mueller, which, given the total lack of evidence of his mental acuity, seems to working better.

Mueller has been painted not only as a patriotic, hard-working and honest civil servant, but as an astute lawyer. To be honest, today Mueller has not given witness to any of these attributes, certain not the accusation of his sharp wit. He has been slow, unsteady and even incoherent today, and that should be the story.

Despite the spin that the media will try to put on this hearing, my guess is that this will have no impact on the positions of most Americans. If you thought Trump was guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice before this inquiry, you will probably maintain that position after it. If you thought this entire investigation was a hoax, you will probably still hold that position.

I do have one concern with the Democrat line of questioning is in this entire ordeal. They have talked much about Trump’s conversations with Don McGahn, where they talked about firing the Special Counsel or even where Trump might have told McGahn to fire him. The problem is, the Special Counsel was not ever fired, and other than not agreeing to a personal interview with the President, Mueller has already stated that he was not deprived of any access to people or documents by the White House. Is thinking about doing something now against the law. Watch out for the “Thought Police”.

The bottom line on what I will call the Mueller embarrassment campaign is that no minds will be changed, another day of legislative capability was wasted and our Congressmen showed themselves to be the partisan hacks we all suspected them to be. My hope is that they can now get back and do the work they should be doing to solve the crisis we are having on our southern border, do something to address our crumbling infrastructure and stop the toxic rhetoric that insults every American. But, unfortunately, that seems to be too much to ask.

Let's Talk Deficits and Debt, Lest We Forget

Let’s Talk Deficits & Debt, Lest We Forget
The View from the Middle

As a people, Americans can be very distractible, and you can be sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. love that about us. As they spend our money hand over fist, borrowing one out of every four dollars they squander, they will say, “Pay no attention to the way we waste your money, look at this illegal immigration problem that we have been marinating for you for over 40 years now.”

They will whistle right past the grave yard of deficits and debt and try to focus your attention on just about anything else – North Korea, Iran, that obviously racist Betsy Ross flag on the back of Nike’s shoes. Anything will do. They will even lie right to your face. Back in 2013, Nancy Pelosi famously said, “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem.” She said this just before she boarded her private jumbo jet for her weekly commute back to California at a cost of about six million dollars a year to the US taxpayers. No spending problem here!

There’s a reason why “we don’t have a spending problem” did not become a rallying cry for either political party. It’s a loser. Ronald Reagan once suggested that he wouldn’t say that Congress spent money like a drunken sailor because that would be an insult to drunken sailors everywhere, and I think that captures the sentiment of most Americans.

So, consider this my warning to all Americans. Do not be distracted from the existential threat that our deficits and debt pose for our country. Before the beginning of the 21st century, all of our Presidents combined had accumulated a US debt of about five trillion dollars. George W. Bush doubled that debt in his eight years in office adding five trillion dollars of debt to our total and ended his Presidency with a 10 trillion-dollar national debt. Barack Obama then double our debt again, adding another 10 trillion dollars to the country’s debt load bring our total debt to just under 20 trillion dollars. This kind of debt creation is just not sustainable.

The only thing that is keeping this from becoming an economic disaster for our country today is the unusually low interest rates that we are paying on this debt. Even at the current, ridiculously low interest rates, service on our debt costs us all over $350 billion a year. If interest rates would ever return to historically average rates like 5%, our debt service would triple to about a trillion dollars a year and would became the single largest element of our country’s budget. Interest payments on our debt would become almost 50% higher than our entire military budget and would be larger than our Medicare and Medicaid budgets combined. And where, exactly, are we going to come up with an additional $650 billion dollar for our government to spend from which we will receive zero benefits. That money will just be paid to our debt holders like Japan and China or to our own, soon to be insolvent, social security trust fund.

If all of this doesn’t frighten you, it should. It should especially panic our young people who will either have to repay this debt (never going to happen) or bare the burden of our debt’s crushing consequences. Young people will be paying dearly for my generation’s recklessness. And then there’s the threat to America’s financial preeminence in the world, which currently delivers untold benefits to our citizens.

The US currently ranks 8th in the world, out of 180 countries, in our debt to GDP ratio, and this isn’t a metric in which we want to be dominant. The only countries above us are countries like Japan, where the government, in effect, own the banking system and thus controls its own interest rates, and financial weaklings like Greece, Portugal and Italy. Let’s face it. We cannot be like these countries and maintain our position as the most important world financial superpower and boast the world’s predominant currency. China, our biggest financial competitor, has a third of our debt in terms of real dollars and half of our debt burden as a percent of its GDP. You can quickly grasp their plan for global financial dominance.

Debt is the one area where Trump has disappointed me. I’m good with the sanction and tariff pressure on North Korea, Iran and China. I’m a big fan of the tax cuts and regulatory relief of this administration. I can support his immigration policies which I believe includes both border security and paths to citizenship for the DACA kids and possibly legalization for many more, but so far, the debt clock has not slowed down.

Last year we spent almost $800 billion more dollars than our government took in. This year, some estimate the deficit to be more than a trillion dollars. We all should want to hear his plans to reverse this trend and even balance the budget over time. Trump’s current budget shows a balanced budget by 2027. We all need to hear more than just vague promises about this deficit reduction plan during the 2020 campaign because if the current trends are not reversed by that time, global warming (sorry, climate change) will be the least of our problems.

The Debate That Never Was

The Debate That Never Was
The View from the Middle

If you are anything like me, you tuned into the Democratic debate to hear about their plans to make our lives better. The economy is good. How can the Democrats make it better? Immigration is a mess. What is your plan to address this crisis? Healthcare is a complicated issue. What are your plans to improve access and quality while reducing costs? Instead we were all subjected to a combination auction, foreign policy pipedream and a utopian dream fest.

The auction started immediately with the first question to Bernie Sanders, and Bernie made a super-strong first bid. Bernie offered up free, universal healthcare, free college and the forgiveness of all student debt in America. Wow! I don’t even remember the question, but Bernie was determined to buy as many votes as possible with his first salvo. My first thought was that we need a spending clock at these debates so that we can keep track of how much of our money these purse-snatchers are squandering. Because, as I’ve said a thousand times, OUR GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY. Please remember, whenever Bernie or anyone else uses the word “free” they are taxing you to pay for it.

Not to be outdone by Bernie, Joe Biden said, “I’ll call your free college and raise you universal pre-K.” Kamala Harris then declared, “I’ll see your free college and Pre-K, and raise you $500 a month guaranteed income for anyone making less than $100,000 a year.” Not to be outdone, Andrew Yang proclaimed, “I’ll call all of that and raise you $1,000 a month for everyone over 18.” By this time the spending clock would have been smoking, with sparks flying and flames would have been coming from your wallets. But the final bid was a group bid as every candidate on the stage promised free healthcare for illegal aliens. The spending clock just exploded.

I don’t know what these guys and gals were smoking, but as soon as the auction ended, the foreign policy pipedream began. First, most of the candidates suggested that our country’s biggest geopolitical foe today is Russia. To paraphrase Barack Obama, “guys, 2008 wants its foreign policy back.” For those who were able to admit that China, Iran and North Korea are our biggest adversaries, their plans to address these challenges were farcical.

Pete Buttigieg is going to go to China and simply convince them to give up their plans to dominate the world, and us, economically by 2025. Yah, like that’s going to happen. We have, in effect, been trying to do that for the last 40 or 50 years and it hasn’t worked. They lie, cheat, steal our intellectual property, manipulate their currency and severely restrict our participation in their markets. They respect strength and exploit weakness. Talk is cheap and weak and that’s Pete’s plan.

Kirsten Gillibrand has a similar plan for Iran. She’s going to go to Iran and convince them to be good and kind and care about their own citizens and their place in the world community as they scream, “Death to America and death to Israel” in her face. Maybe she’ll try sending over a few more planeloads of cash that they can use to fund those sweet guys in Hamas and Hezbollah. Take another toke on that pipe, Kirsten. Iran would chew you up and spit you out. At least none of these people even tried to suggest a plan for that nut bag in North Korea. We should all just hope that the sanctions now in place will bring him to a real bargaining table.

And then the Utopian dream fest started. First, every one of these people would sign us up for the Paris Climate Accord immediately. Yes! We’ll give the 140 developing countries (which includes China, Russia and India) in the agreement about a half a trillion dollars a year and we can trust that they’ll manage it properly because of this non-binding agreement. And the tides will recede and the sun will shine (but not too much) and we won’t have any more hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. Dream on, and read my article on this agreement written in June of 2017.

Many, if not all, of these candidates also support the Green New Deal, which is more fantastical than a Disney movie and of course they will wave a magic wand and eliminate all prejudice in America, including their own. Maybe they’ll pass a law that says it’s illegal to discriminate against people because of the color of their skin or even their sexual orientation. Wait a minute. Didn’t that already happen? We need more than Utopian dreams. We need solutions, and we didn’t hear about any of those last night.

You know that the debates were a catastrophe when even the mainstream media dared to criticize them. Joe Scarborough even went so far as to call them “a disaster”. I actually hope that the Democrats wake up and start offering some real solutions to the problems we face. I want to hear them. If they don’t, there may be more crickets in the audience by the last debate than humans. WE HAVE 11 MORE OF THESE!!!

Hollywood and Bernie Sanders Duplicity

Hollywood and Bernie Sanders Duplicity
The View from the Middle

Sometimes even I am shocked at the level of hypocrisy and duplicity that can come out of our Hollywood “so-called” elites. The latest is a video starring Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, Stephen King and others. Despite the nearly two-year investigation by Robert Mueller which found no collusion between Trump or anyone in his campaign and the Russians, these deluded, pompous, self-promoting nitwits continue to wallow in the Russian collusion myth. Their final message is that “No one is above the law, not even the President”. That is about the only thing in their little propaganda video that I agree with. No one is above the law.

But aren’t these the same nut bags that don’t want to deport illegal aliens back to their country of origin? Isn’t what they did against the law? These simpletons can read a script and clearly harbor intense hatred in their hearts, but their jobs as entertainers obviously hasn’t required them to learn how to think. They can’t have it both ways. If no one is above the law then they must rethink their stance on sanctuary cities and on illegal immigrants.


And then there is the new big lie being told by Bernie Sanders. I think that everyone understands that while tariffs are paid by countries, it is often the consumers that eventually pay those taxes as the prices go up on the goods they buy. In general, I’m against tariffs and I believe so is Donald Trump, but his tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico et cetera are aimed at solving bigger economic problems that those countries have created. At least we all understand the impact of tariffs, however, as the result of the media coverage of Trump’s tariffs.

But Bernie says that he can forgive everyone’s college debt and deliver free college for all by taxing the evil Wall Street speculators. He will tax all stock trade transactions by one half of a percent and all bond trades by on tenth of a percent. This a lie in at least three ways. First, he has no idea if this will pay for his two trillion dollar give away over ten years. He hasn’t considered at all that Wall Street will figure a way around these taxes by either executing fewer trades or investing in other areas.

Second, Bernie isn’t telling you that the bad old Wall Street guys will simply pass these taxes on to you and me, just like the tariffs. But Bernie won’t be honest and tell you that. Finally, another thing Bernie won’t tell you is that this is likely to actually drive college tuitions up. There is no such thing as free college tuition. Professors are still going to get paid. Administrators will continue to draw a salary and construction and maintenance of campuses will cost money and WE will pay for it. Don’t fall for it. There is no such thing as FREE college!! Bernie and the others are just buying your votes with YOUR MONEY.

Socialism vs Capitalism

Socialistic Illusion vs Capitalistic Reality
The View from the Middle

I have to admit that I am amazed at the gullibility of many Americans, especially the young people, who can listen to the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez literally and shamelessly try to buy their votes with mountains of “free stuff”. As my old boss at Procter & Gamble used to say, “the promise is the easy part”, and in this case it’s the only part. Let me give you a list of just some of the things that these Democratic Socialists are promising:

-Free college tuition.
-And soon, I’m sure, the forgiveness of all college debt (1.2 trillion dollars)
-Free Healthcare for all.
-A guaranteed job, and
-A guaranteed living wage (whatever that is)
-Guaranteed medical leave and paid vacation.
-Guaranteed affordable, safe and adequate housing.
-Guaranteed economic security (again, whatever that means)
-And, of course, guaranteed retirement security.
-Guaranteed access to healthy food.
-Guaranteed access to water, air and nature.

As usual, these people are long on the promises and short on the explanation of how they are going to deliver on them. Their feeble plan always makes yet another promise – the other guy will have to pay for all of this “stuff” and you will get it for free. The estimated cost of these freebies and guarantees is over 90 trillion dollars over ten years and would more than triple the size of our government over that same period. As I explained in my article back in February, there are not enough “rich” (top 1%) people in this country to pay for all of this and every American would end up with massive tax increases to fund this wish list.

What these politicians are falsely promising in order to get you votes is a guaranteed, easy life with no effort on your parts. What they eliminate in the process, however, is the concepts of risk & reward, and incentive. And, when it comes to taking risks and creating incentives, why would anyone want to eliminate them? But this socialistic, guaranteed outcome, freebie platform will do just that. Risk and incentive, in fact, are key drivers of our current economic system. Capitalism rewards intelligent risk taking and incents hard work and productivity, and these are good things.

It amazes me the Sanders, Warren and AOC can sit in the most powerful, most prosperous country in the world that has been driven by a capitalistic economic engine almost since its inception, and suggest that capitalism doesn’t work. The proof of the power of capitalism doesn’t lie in our GDP or our military capability, although they are the best in the world. It lies in the fact that over a million people each year leave their countries of origin and come to our country legally, and another million risk their lives on a treacherous journey across the country of Mexico in pursuit of “the chance” at a better life in these United States.

It is true that Capitalism can be corrupted by monopolies, corruption and cronyism. We must always be striving to insure equal opportunity (not outcome) for all of our citizens and a fair marketplace for our goods and services so that risk and effort will be rewarded. Even with these watch outs, Capitalism has already lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the world. Don’t be lured away by the false promises of a guaranteed, easy, risk-free life. Stick with the system that has delivered for this country for over 200 years. It’s the best guarantee you can get.