Malkin Off The Rails Again

        Michelle Malkin has the dubious distinction of  being, in one fell swoop,  female, ethnic minority (Filipina), an anchor baby, and a close second to Ann Coulter for the person who, if they ran in front of my car, would most likely  be road kill. She ranks fifth, in the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute's list of influential Conservative woman writers.   Interestingly enough, ahead of Ms. Malkin are the names Palin, Bachmann, Schlafly and Coulter, which is indicative of the company she keeps. This is especially meaningful since Palin is barely literate and Bachmann is just bat shit insane.

         Like all of them she is a darling of the Far Right, actually alt.right,  crowd for her diatribes against essentially anything not politically hard right. What actual philosophical tenets she espouses are reminiscent of Ayn Rand, tempered with  liberal doses of Margaret Thatcher and Joe Arpaio. She has no use for feminists, concern for minorities, or any government which is not rigidly capitalist. Much of her screed is vicious and laden with harshly critical and hurtful  blasts against whatever or whomever the day's foe might be. Based on her background, perhaps the biggest riddle is how she became so vindictive and bitter towards immigrants and minorities.  

        What triggered this response is a recent op-ed in which she felt compelled (for some obscure reason) to chastise Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for remarks he made in regard to Fidel Castro's recent demise. For the record, I never thought much of Fidel, never cared for Communism, but then it wasn't my country, was it?  Had we (the USA) not buttressed up the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio  Batista, corrupt friend of the mafia and usurper of control in Cuba, it might well have been that the name of Fidel Castro would be just the heading of the obituary of a mediocre minor league pitcher and his cross dressing  brother.  As in other places, such as Vietnam, the very same sort of  rabid anti-communist fervor led us to support some extremely bad people in Cuba, and both Cuba and the US paid the price. Along the way (Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis) we came very close to paying an even more exorbitant price. 

         A significant number of Americans and even more others have died because as a matter of national policy we (the USA) regarded all Communists as identical and that identity was as clones of Josef Stalin. For the record we have tourism, normalized political relations and burgeoning trade with Vietnam today. The fact that they retain a Communist government seems to matter much less now than 45 years ago, no? North Korea and Vietnam could hardly be more different. Not all Communists are the same and they don't all want to kill us. Period.

        Malkin's op-ed is so badly written in some aspects that it is a little laugh provoking. It is also, however, indicative of just how far off the rails some Americans have fallen in their sense of realpolitik and  their understanding of real world realities. First off, Malkin is a BA holder from Oberlin College, which institution she has later lambasted as "Ultra-liberal." Her degree is in English, which eases one's struggle to understand her lack of nuance in geo-political understanding, but makes one gasp at some of her more heinous efforts at writing. The fact that she is a best- selling author simply means that there are more that think like her than we might care to acknowledge.

        The Trudeau hatchet job begins with analogizing two Canadian  Justins -  Trudeau and  Beiber, with the Beeb declared the victor because he's "eye candy" (Malkin's words, not mine.) She characterizes Trudeau as "the twinkly- eyed boy toy who makes informed adults want to hurl."  And I thought that was Beiber!  She them reflects on Trudeaus "drool stained global press coverage", but declares him instead to be simply a "baby faced commie apologist, and a naked twit" The mind reels at such sophisticated prose. Along the way one is reminded that it's been a while since we saw "Commie" used as an adjective. How long? Well, how about the McCarthy era? Or perhaps a 1950's  Mike Hammer novel - ol' Mike was always fighting "dirty Commie heels."

        Apparently the terrible comment made by Trudeau that triggered this splenetic outpouring was his characterization of Castro as  "A larger than life leader" and that he "served his people for almost half a century"  Wow! That pinko bastard! She then, simply because a day without an Obama slur is for Ms. Malkin a day without sunshine, says "Our neighbors to the north are discovering what disillusioned Obama  worshippers realized too late.........same old decrepit culture of corruption." I haven't seen that old Obama corruption, but his probable successor, on the other hand? Just watch the news any day, any time.

        She says a lot of other drivel as well, but she ends up with a masterpiece of purple prose unrivaled even by Sarah Palin: "The self aggrandizing commie fan-boy apple doesn't fall far from his Marxist tree". For this alone, she should be awarded the Joseph McCarthy chair at the Mickey Spillane School of Journalism and Shoe Repair. Whatever  will she do when Herr Trump makes nice with Putin? If there's a God, her head will explode.

Time to pack it in!

        A recent national op-ed column by Dr. Thomas Sowell shows just how sophistic even brilliant persons can be when it comes to misreading cause and effect. Dr. Sowell laments the decline of Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, from the prep school it was created to be, (by the white Presbyterian Church in 1870) servicing black elites and their children, to the public school it has become. Fair enough, but in a staggering leap of illogic, he then proceeds to blame this decline in academic standing on , of all things,  the 1954 USSC decision in  Brown vs Board of Education.

        Along the way he omits a lot of factors unrelated to race. Start with the fact that Dunbar then and Dunbar now  are almost identical, racially. Originally an all black school, today it is still 98% African American. Today, however, 46% of students are on the free or reduced price lunch program. Today,  Dunbar serves the community in which it is located, vice a hand- picked Black elite, many of whose government employee families now live in suburbs of  DC and attend race neutral private prep schools.

       Blaming Brown v Board for this change and lamenting it, makes little or no sense. In fact, Sowell himself, by any standard brilliant but now, at 86, a rigid doctrinarian, had to move to Harlem at age 9 just to find a decent school which he was able to attend.  Living in Frederick Md, a scant 40 miles from DC, in 1958, 4 years after Brown,  I  played various sports with several Black friends who were forced to attend segregated Lincoln High school. Lincoln got everything related to academics after it was no longer used by the (still, in 1958)  all white Frederick High school. This included texts, lab equipment and even desks. Lincoln got about 60% per student of the funding at our white school. This was the reality of public schools "pre-Brown."  For a person of color in America to blame the Brown decision for simple demographic shifts is ludicrous and lamentable. 

       Dr. Sowell, like some current entertainers, embarrasses himself because he doesn't  know when to quit. 

Refocus

        I Wasn't gonna do this, I swear I wasn't, but the continual spam bombing of my e-mail has pushed me over the edge. I'm talking about the continued "sign this petition, etc", crap from every Democratic organization imaginable. I get it. We lost the election, and trust me,  it would be difficult for anyone to be more unhappy about that than I am.

        Believing that some sort of frantic writing campaign or public disturbances will make Republican electors change their votes is ludicrous. State party operatives choose electors for loyalty, not conscience. Publically demonstrating and carrying signs is just the less violent version of what pre-election Democrats were predicting Trumpists would do if he lost. Well, he didn't.

        I am about to do something I rarely, if ever, do in an op-ed, and that is to use a sports metaphor, but it is apt in this instance. Following an unexpected loss, no coach worth the name will dwell on it for more than an hour or so, because there will be another contest, for which preparation, not carping and "what might have been,"  is essential. This means analyzing what wasn't done right, or what could have been done better, but only in the light of correcting the mistakes in order to do better at the next opportunity. Every calorie of energy expended in rage against the machine in this instance is wasted.

         If Trump had lost and his adherent deplorables had taken to the streets, we would be  criticizing them and calling them whiners. Look in the mirror. Then ask what can be done in an organized civil and legal fashion to at some point change direction. Trump will be inaugurated, as bitter as that is to even write, but no amount of public shirt rending and hair tearing will alter that.

       So what would be appropriate?  First, unlike the third parties who ran national candidates without much local organization, realize that state level races such as Senator and Congressional seats are "just" another two years away. While it may seem less glamorous to work hard for a representative than for President, the chance comes every two years to unseat every sitting Representative and 1/3 of the Senate. It wouldn't take 1/3 of the Senate, only three changes of seat!

        Second, find good candidates. If this election showed us one thing it was that even among members of her own party, there was a lot of "buyer's remorse" in choosing Mrs. Clinton. This manifested itself in grudgingly voting for her as the less objectionable candidate or in defections to Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. In fact every voter who defected to either "other" candidate hurts one party or the other, but in this case if half of the Johnson voters in just three states had voted Clinton, this screed would be irrelevant.

        At the State level, in Florida we had a lousy candidate opposing an even lousier incumbent. Not once did I see Big Sugar named as Rubio's banker nor did I see the Indian river lagoon cesspit tied to them. Instead I saw a poor Representative  with a bad strategy running against an absentee Senator. Again, lousy choice for the Democrats.  

       In fact, I believe it is likely that Tim Kaine, heading the ticket , would have had a better chance of winning.  In the final analysis, it almost looked  like, ....no strike that, it was true, that the Trump machine ran a  more efficient campaign. Clinton's brain trust, originally headed by the vapid and foul mouthed Debbie Wasserman Schultz,  failed to reckon with rust belt discontent and job statistics, ergo she  failed to campaign  in person in Wisconsin . Not one stop. Not one. She lost Wisconsin due to neglect. In addition,  someone tell everyone on the DNC that anything you put in an e-mail should be something you wouldn't be ashamed to see in print! 

       Finally, during the next Congressional session, bombard your representatives' offices  with letters and phone calls. Send petitions to them.  Let them know you're watching and they need votes in two years. Remember, they'll start campaigning in about 18 months!  Look carefully at their votes on things you hold dear, such as Social security, Medicare, The Affordable care Act. Do something many on the Alt.right can't - apply reasoned judgment, but as a dear friend used to remind me, "pick the hill you want to die on"

       This next four years (or less if he gets impeached) will almost surely have a suck factor of infinity. We can only hope that Trump is not the animal that some of his supporters are. Meeting frothing at the mouth and tooth gnashing with calm, reasoned and  measured response is a far better way to combat whatever ills beset us.   

Cognitive Disconnect

        "We all know that many of the (anti-Trump protests) are promoted and funded by George Soros",  begins a letter in Tuesday's local "news" paper.  If it were true, it would be his (Soros') right to do so, however, other than his long standing involvement with Moveon.org, no one, let alone "we all," knows any such thing.

       The letter is among  the most singularly self contradictory I've ever read. The writer claims the Republican platform is based on, among other things, Biblical principles. On the other hand, it continues, the cursed Democratic platform "denies God, ( and among other claims)  "Makes government a God and supports many special interests groups".....ad nauseum. My readers are well aware of my feelings re: organized religion, but, sometimes lunacy such as this demands response, not in support of religion, but of facts.  

         The USA is a  secular state where all are free to worship as they choose to (or not). A Governmental role in religion is specifically proscribed  and, as the founders made clear, the inverse is also true. If the author desires to live  in a state where political doctrine  is dictated by scripture, allow me to suggest Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or the Vatican. And, coincidentally,  the Republican platform shatters what Jesus referred to as the Second Great Commandment - "love thy neighbor as thyself."  It is probably worth mentioning that Jesus omitted the words "Only if they are white, straight, male supremacist, and believe exactly as you do."       

        Regarding piety, allow me to remind us all that the current president elect has avoided essentially all involvement with any religious activity  since his teens, with the exception of his three  publically stage managed, grandiose, trophy wife "trade ups."  Wife number two,  meanwhile, has acknowledged  that the marriage was the alternative to her having an abortion, proposed by him, refused by Ms. Maples.  This disaffection with religion, and plasticity re: abortion,  ignored by his sycophant fan base, was of course accompanied by incessant  slandering of his opponent, herself a  lifelong, devout United Methodist congregant.

        Regarding "special interests"  The writer has it backward (again).  Special interests support the government. An examination of the lobbying efforts of Big Pharma, the Energy Lobby. Insurance,   and the Banking industry make this pretty clear.   As a matter of curiosity I did a bit of research (remember "facts"?) re: lobbying expenditures and who gets what from whom.  The most sobering statistic was that if one adds all the (declared, as some is almost certainly under the table) lobbying expenditures for 2015 and divides by 535 Senators and Representatives the math will amaze you.

        Total lobbying expenditures for the year were over $4.4 BILLION , which, doing the math,  works out to $8.25 + MILLION for every member of the Congress. Of course none of these special interest groups (poor, immigrants, non-white) accounted for any of this money.

        Of the ten top industries which lobby Congress, in 2015, seven  of them gave the most to just 3 members of Congress. Retirees, Oil/Gas - Cruz (R) , Investment banking, Real Estate - Rubio (R) , Insurance, Big Pharma, Commercial banking - Ryan (R). Of the top 20 lobbying  interests, the only ones which did not give the large majority of its funds to Republicans was specific Democrat PACS and Education.     

        While we were being encouraged by those incessant ads on TV to be "Energy Voters" and assured that it was "a non-partisan issue", Ted Cruz was getting much of his $107 million campaign funding from the 90% of gas/oil lobbying which went to Republicans. 

          Now tell me again about those damned Democrats and the special interests?  

Pros Prose

          It's been a while since I felt like writing after the disaster of November 9th. Sometimes witnessing or being exposed to blatant  stupidity will shock one from a temporary doldrum and a letter in the local rag did it for me this morning. 

                 In an op-ed  letter of this past Sunday, the writer, probably unintentionally, laid bare an essential difference between the  two ends of the American political spectrum. The writer unleashed a modest diatribe regarding "ardent pro-abortion supporters," followed  by the mind numbing sophistry that, "If they had been aborted they probably wouldn't be alive to .......", well,  you get the picture.

        In my years as a social liberal I have never actually met an "ardent pro-abortionist."  The term "Pro-abortion" like "Obamaphone" is a meaningless term intended to convey a blatant falsehood. I know many "Pro-choice" persons who abhor abortion  and would probably be loathe to choose such an option. No one is pro-abortion, but there the   prefix "pro" takes divergent paths. Pro-choice means the belief that a woman should be free to make her own reproductive choices no matter what they be. A corollary to that is that no one without a uterus really has a stake in the matter. Period.

       Pro-life, on the other hand, means to its adherents that they should have the ability to prohibit that choice and punish those who make the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Many of those who are the most vocal also claim to be the most religiously driven! How odd, as well, that the only reference of any kind to abortion in the Bible is related to how to obtain one in the event of rape or adultery! The critical point here is forcing one's belief upon another.

        Most Progressives feel about abortion as I do about boiled okra. I would never choose to consume it, but if you feel driven to do so, it is your right. And, oh by the way,  Safelink Wireless offered the first free government cell phone in Tennessee in 2008,  during the Bush administration.   

That Damned Electoral College!

        The Electoral College actually derives from several concepts. Primarily, in the days when many traveled no more than 10 or 12 miles from their home, in any given year, there was some sentiment that most would never see or (being marginally literate in many areas) read the positions or opinions of a candidate for the Presidency. This led persons like Alexander Hamilton and, at the time James Madison to originate the concept with the purpose of insuring that  only "fit" persons were elected by insuring that responsible, and presumably informed  persons were chosen as electors.  The choosing of the electors, oddly enough,   is not specified.

        In justifying the use of the Electoral College (in Federalist 68)  Hamilton focuses on a few arguments dealing with why the college is used, as opposed to direct election. First, in explaining the role of the general populace in the election of the president, Hamilton argues that the "sense of the people", through the election of the electors to the college, should have a part of the process, but that those who actually choose should be, (and Hamilton absolutely viewed himself thus):    "Men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."   In other words the elite among us. It is also critical to recall that in 1789 there was really no party system in place and the  sense was far different than what it has become.

        In what has evolved into a two party system, with the odds stacked against third or even fourth party efforts, the states have led the way by making it extremely difficult to get on the ballot if you aren't  Republican or Democrat. It hasn't always been so, and 1824 demonstrates the flaws in the system.

        There were actually four candidates for the presidency: Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. All four actually called themselves Democratic - Republicans, which today sounds a bit strange in its own right. Then, as now, a majority (more than 50%) of the electoral votes was needed to win the White House. At 151,271 popular votes, Jackson still only had 41% of the electoral vote,   Adams with 113,122 popular had 31% electoral, Clay - with 47,531 popular, had 13% electoral, and Crawford with 40,856 popular had 10% electoral .

         In such a case, the Constitution requires that the winner be decided by the House of Representatives with each state getting one vote, casting  ballots until a majority of states for one candidate is reached. This is critical, and a reason why there will likely continue being an Electoral College for some time. This is the one and only time in the House where tiny Rhode Island or Delaware  carry  as much political clout as New York, Pennsylvania,  or Virginia. Any attempt to change this would require an Amendment, (which in the usual manner starts in the Senate with  a  2/3 approval vote). It is unlikely that Senators would vote to take from the smaller states the "equal power" their House delegations have  under that one (and rare) set of conditions.

          In 1824, per the Twelfth Amendment, only the top three vote getters  entered this new and very different election. Clay, actually third highest vote getter, was speaker of the House and as such was left out, but he publicly and strenuously declared his support for J.Q.Adams. On the first ballot, the results were Adams 13, Jackson 7, Crawford 4. Every single New England state and New York supported Adams, who won the Presidency with the votes of 54% of the states. It was later alleged that Clay was offered the Secretary of State gig by Adams, which he accepted,  in exchange for his support in the House. Jacksonians screamed that it was a "corrupt bargain." In any case it was also a situation where Jackson had 11% more of the popular vote than the eventual winner! This was the first such instance; there would be three more before 2016, the fifth time it has happened.

        I find it interesting that after the 1824 election, all of the remaining 4 minority popular vote winners (Hayes, Harrison, Bush43 and Trump) were Republicans.  In each case, as in the current one, critics decried the Electoral College and the process.  Since 1864, 6 third party candidates have actually received more than 20 electoral votes, with Roosevelt's Progressives getting 88 in 1912. In all those cases, however, the winner still had a majority of the electoral vote, thus avoiding an 1824 replay.

         What could be done without an Amendment? It's actually a simple fix, since the apportioning of votes to electors is delineated by each state, and the Constitution is mute on the issue. 48 of 50 states at present are "all or nothing" as far as electoral votes. In those states if a candidate wins the popular election by 3 votes, they still get all the electoral votes! Maine and Nebraska, however,  allow for splitting electoral votes. Although it is possible for an Elector to cast his or her vote for someone other than for the popular vote winner in their state, this is quite rare in modern times. 

        Maine and Nebraska, as mentioned,  take  a slightly different approach. Both states allocate two electoral votes to the popular vote winner, and then one each to the popular vote winner in each Congressional district (2 in Maine, 3 in Nebraska) in their state. This creates multiple popular vote contests in these states, which could lead to a split electoral vote. This , if adopted by each state would much more closely approximate a popular vote without touching the Constitution. In fact, most Americans don't realize how little election law is really federal! Other than the Electoral College, the remaining Federal laws related to voting are the specification for the day of election (first Tuesday after the first Monday of every other even numbered year), and the  26th Amendment which lowered the voting age to 18. That's it!

Adam Smith, Say Whaaat?

        Yesterday, as the election results were solidified, there was a momentary dip in the US financial markets, followed later in the day by a rally to a new high. The dip triggered a slew of panic warnings, which of course when the rebound occuerred seemed odd. What is interesting is that there was absolutely no "supply/demand/price....whatever" driver of this. It was based on sheer speculation and imaginary forces of the political winds. 

       Adam Smith would stand mute before the "Big Board" of  the DOW, FTSE, or Nikkei (also up 7% +!), in a daze of "What the f**k am I seeing here?"  In "...Wealth of Nations" generally considered the first scientific analysis of economics, Smith dealt with concrete concepts such as surplus/shortage, supply and demand, and how they affect markets , prices and even national priorities.

        Looking at the internet in the present, we have seen prognostications of everything from a booming market to  worldwide panic, not based on the recent election , but on "experts" (persons  with a briefcase who make money on your money)  simply giving best guess advice for free, usually followed by the offering that they, and only they, have the secret that will keep your money safe. Trust them!

        While many of us know of Michael Lewis' book "The Big Short" and have seen the movie, it is his first book on finance, "Liar's Poker," which lays out in print some sobering  reality about who handles your investments and how and why. Follow this with a reading of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. After doing these two chores you will, or should,  have  a better understanding of how much modern markets have left the realm of  "I have it, you need it, how much will you pay?" and entered into an alternate universe plastered with "what if?"

        It is this sort of what if/maybe so economics which led to the housing bubble collapse of 2008. What should not be forgotten in all the uproar is that in most cases of this nature, someone may lose, but others are positioned to win. Unfortunately, the losers are far more likely to represent institutional investors managing either private individuals savings or pension funds and similar instruments.  

        I write this because it appalls me that personal finances can be ruined by innuendo and fear, rather than real world economic shifts. From today's DOW and Nikkei, both up big and the very slight dip in London's FTSE,  apparently the Chicken Littles who play God with world financial markets have yet to be struck by a piece of the sky.