The Trump Vision for the Planet -- and Getting There

It is only a couple days since President Trump added an eighth "war ended" notch to his diplomatic belt, getting out all the living hostages, innocents seized in a raid by Hamas two years ago, and facilitating a sort of cease-fire in the war in Gaza.

We can certainly debate and discuss the extent to which the action, celebrated worldwide, will indeed lead to a lasting peace.  I'm not all that optimistic, because much like Vladimir Putin does not operate in a rational manner, neither do the worst of the Islamist radicals, and Hamas fits that description.

But that's not the point -- it is that the deal that was indeed done involved nations which have been brought in, or volunteered, who a year ago wouldn't have come close to participating in such a negotiation.

Why?

It's not that hard to answer, but it certainly says a lot about government.

Donald Trump learned a great deal during his first term. A lifelong New York real estate developer with a worldwide footprint long before entering politics, he looked at his own background in 2016 as ideally suited to overhaul the problems of an entrenched deep state, protected by an unquestioning press that was as much of the problem as immovable government itself.

He looked at elections and winning the presidency as a means to an end -- not, as Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Democrats everywhere view them, the end in themselves.  Those people wanted power.  Donald Trump wanted a better world -- economically healthy and peaceful.

He won in 2016 for a variety of reasons -- the appearance of a fresh approach by a known individual, the poor legacy of the Obama terms, the poverty of ideas in the Hillary campaign and her inability to explain her candidacy other than entitlement and a uterus.

Reality hit even before his inauguration. The Federal Government in 2016 was a rigid and insulated body, bloated beyond belief and with a mentality of entrenchment; just let me have my job, get promoted, retire with a nice pension and not necessarily have to do very much along the way -- don't disturb that. 

Obviously that does not apply to many thousands who served diligently in government and did an excellent job -- but the fact that it did (and still does) apply to so many still there who haven't been DOGEd yet lets you know how deep things ran.

That entrenched state was governed by political appointees, not necessary there in those jobs for expertise but out of patronage.  Trump saw that as an impediment to his broad, long-term goals of economic prosperity and world peace through American strength.

To his unpleasant discovery, the people that now-President Trump had engaged for his Cabinet in 2017 included a number who were more attuned to the loyalties of the deep state than they were to the long economic and diplomatic goals. 

One could argue that, despite the putridity of the intervening Biden Administration, the USA and the world are better off for President Trump having a four-year period to reflect on what those impediments to greater success had been in his first term. With another opportunity, selecting people far more prepared to do the leadership jobs needed in the way he wanted them done, he could do a lot more.

President Trump's vision for the planet has nothing to do with his winning elections. It is a vision where war ends, whether after lasting two years, 30 years, or 2,000 years.  The people leading things now, he believes, can set that old nonsense aside and solve things.

The genius of this president's strategy in this is that he never attacks these problems by looking at the war itself, or the disputes themselves, or the land grabs that are so often involved.  Those are the kinds of issues that can drag on for years, or a millennium or two.

The genius is in looking years down the road and envisioning each situation as an end state, with a successful economic plan, peaceful relationships, and defused tensions.

Donald Trump will always be the real estate developer. Two thousand years of Middle East tensions, and when Donald Trump becomes president, he looks at the Gaza Strip, not as a homeland for a wandering people no one wants, but as a long stretch of beachfront coast ready to develop and create jobs and homes for all those people living there. 

About 99.99% of the world looks at Gaza and sees fighting, Islamist radicals, torture, guns.  President Trump sees Gaza ten years from now without all that, not based on years of failing negotiation for this territory or that land, and failing cease-fires, but based on things no one looks at -- a thriving economic future with productive employment for people now running scared.

Further, he doesn't just rely on the usual suspects to assist -- like the UN, which has no credibility in the region anymore after 80 years of failure and the inability even to ensure that aid to displaced refugees even gets there.

Who else would look at the problems in the Middle East and start by getting the Arab nations to be willing to sit down with the Israelis?  And who else would use the carrot, not the stick, to get them to the table, looking at economic relationships, mutual investments?

The Arab states are mostly rational actors. Their leaders depend for their wealth on oil, and as long as the pipelines and refineries are open, their stability is ensured. Guarantee that and, well, their disputes with Israel -- which ultimately wants only its own security -- fade far into the background.  It is not in the interest of the Saudis, or the Jordanians, Egyptians, or Qataris, that anything happen to Israel, because Israel is not a threat to them and they know it.

Getting some of them to be willing to make that first step, the 2020 Abraham Accords, only took an appeal to their sensibilities and ignoring historic, but irrelevant, disputes with no real roots remaining in present-day life.

Indonesia, a Muslim country, is going to send troops to support the interim peacekeeping force in Gaza.  Hamas would not dare attack them, nor would they do the same to Qatari troops provided by the nation that housed their leadership.  Why would those nations become involved?  Because the appeal to them was an economic one.

I'm over 70, and have seen a lot of diplomatic approaches over that time to try to solve international disputes.  They rarely work, because the proposed terms simply don't affect the people of the countries involved and so don't change the fundamentals. Country X hated Country Y because of something from 200 years ago, or ethnic disputes, or whatever, and nothing two scotch-sipping diplomats come up with changes that.

But if that diplomacy leverages economic development and investment to improve the lives of those people, well, all of a sudden the lion can lay down with the lamb, because there's plenty of opportunity for both, and the ability to feed one's family is far, far more important than whether you're Sunni and the neighbor is Shi'ite.  

No one looked at diplomacy that way.  But if you have a vision that stretches far beyond just a cease-fire and actually lifts the lives of the citizens of these nations, you see the creative solutions that don't come from a single-malt.

You see things like President Trump does. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

A Fun OSHA Story

OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, yet another nanny-state relic of the 1970s actually signed into law by Richard Nixon early that decade.  The intent was to provide Federal oversight and regulation of workplaces that were particularly unsafe and, only incidentally, create a regulatory workforce of more government employees.

The problem with such agencies is that when you create a regulatory workforce like that, they actually have to go find things to justify their existence, whether (in this case) they entail an actual work hazard or not.

I have a good friend from Chicago, a reader of this site, whom I have known for nearly sixty years since college.  We ushered at each other's weddings (a week apart) and although we've not been together much since, distance being what it is, have tried to stay in touch.  I'll call him "Tony", because it's his name.  When I was traveling on business in the late '70s, I visited him on my frequent trips to and through the Chicago area, getting to know his parents pretty well.

[On a side note, Tony's mother was from Chisholm, the small town near Hibbing, MN, that was the home of Moonlight Graham, the physician/ballplayer in the movie "Field of Dreams" and a long scene there.  The actual Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, who really did play in one game for the Giants and practiced medicine in Chisholm, MN, was her pediatrician.  You can't make this up.]

Tony's father had an electronics component factory in the Chicago area.  I believe I was there once, so I recall either the actual factory or Tony's description quite well. To my recollection, it was a fairly straightforward structure, a huge open area about two or three stories high, metal roof. All the assembly, packaging, shipping and the rest was done from that huge open area. Go with that.

In one corner of the building, the office area was raised up a flight of stairs, a level higher than the work floor.  The offices were there, and if you wanted to reach the offices, you climbed the stair a flight up to a small landing area and walked to the door of the office you wanted.  Well, something like that; if you imagine that, the point of this piece will be easily understood.

Imagine the stairs, those exposed industrial metal staircases, just steps and a railing, up to a landing area. Then imagine that at the top of the stairs, in the landing area, there is a pay phone about five feet up the wall for the use of employees needing to make calls in those days long before iPhones and Blackberries.

[Realizing that not everyone who reads this is as old as I, or even half as old as I, a "pay phone" is a communications unit that sits on a wall, or an even more forgotten location called a "phone booth."  You didn't need a cell phone or an app; you just put coins in little slots on top of it, and you'd get a dial tone.  You push buttons and call whomever you want.] 

Now imagine one other thing.  A little inspector from OSHA comes around to the factory for his annual safety review according to OSHA rules. He walks around the shop floor, inspects the assembly area and sees that everyone is properly dressed and the floors are clean and not slippery.  He sees that the shipping area is properly overseen  and tools everywhere are properly put away when not in use.  Safety thrives here.

Finally, he goes up the stairs. The ridged metal stairs are rough and grip well, and the railing is secured well, no slip, no rattle.  He makes it upstairs with no problem.

Except that he has nothing to write up.

Then he sees the pay phone on the wall. "Aha!", he shouts.  "A problem.  That phone is five feet off the wall, a perfect height for you, me, and almost everyone else."

But not, he declares, would it be a good height for someone -- I'm not making this part up -- in a wheelchair.  Nope, someone in a wheelchair would not be able to make a call from that pay phone, and it would have to be lowered in order to allow wheelchair-bound employees to use it.  Otherwise, the factory would be cited by OSHA and fined.

Before you start thinking how stupid that citation would have been, let me help you understand that it is even more inane than that.  Yes, I know that your first thought is to ask if anyone in a wheelchair actually worked there, and the answer was "no."  But OSHA was a forward-looking organization, and didn't want to rule out the possibility that the company might actually hire someone in a wheelchair.  And except for every other reason, that one is legitimate.

It should be obvious to you any now that, no matter how inaccurate my description of the building was, in actuality the pay phone -- and any access to the one-flight-up office area, for that matter -- required one to go up a flight of stairs.  

That's right; in order to use that wheelchair-accessible pay phone that OSHA demanded be lowered to three feet off the floor, the person would either have to maneuver a wheelchair up a flight of stairs (think about that one) or be carried up the stairs by one person, have the wheelchair be brought up the stairs by another person, and then use the newly-relocated phone.

They would need the wheelchair brought up, because -- oh, yeah -- if you lowered the phone from a normal standing-human-accessible height to three feet off the ground, you could only use it from a wheelchair. The rest of the employees, meaning all of them, could not stand and make a call.

Even if you simply lowered the phone to three feet and put a normal chair next to it to pacify OSHA and facilitate calls from the handicapped, you still have to appreciate the idiocy of the OSHA guy requiring this to be done for a phone whose use would require the person to ride a wheelchair up a flight of stairs.

It has been over fifty years since this happened, so forgive me if I can't recall what Tony's dad decided to do -- probably either lowered the phone and put a chair next to it, or just put a second pay phone on the main floor at three feet.

I'd be delighted to know if sanity has returned to the OSHA Inspectors' Guideline Book, or at least the one used by their staff in the Greater Chicago area.

I would imagine that, regardless, some DOGEing over there might even now be in order. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Open Debate -- the Needed Legacy of Charlie Kirk

Let's talk about two groups.

One of them is about power. They want to rule, and they want to ensure that the systems are aligned such that there is no possibility for their power to be challenged. They spout platitudes about this and that, but in practice, their highest -- actually, their sole -- priority is maintaining power for decades to come.

Now, "power" is not "leadership." Being the ruler doesn't mean you know how to lead the people. Nor does it mean that you know how to govern. Examples of that abound, including a few recent Democrat presidents. And when the people start complaining because their leaders won't (or can't) even fix potholes or keep them safe, rulers like that respond by suppressing dissent and fixing elections. 

They don't believe in the high-minded liberal ideas they speak of, like equality and justice; they use them to divide their constituents into identity classes. Then they claim that those groups need to vote for them because only they can protect the obscure interests of their identity class. When they're elected, of course, they do nothing for those classes, but that doesn't seem to matter -- fixing problems is not why they want power. 

Their leverage with these groups is to convince them that government is the solution to everything. If the people think they need lots of government, then such a group can use that to justify vast expansion of government -- lots of government jobs filled by people beholden to the group for paying their salaries. 

That group utterly despises democracy.  It's obvious why; in a democracy (or a Constitutional republic such as the USA) elected leaders who can't govern are subject to being voted out of office on a regular basis.  They can vote in a leader who can DOGE many of those useless government jobs. That's a risk they cannot afford.

The second group is about governance. Their goal is for the streets to be safe, for people to have jobs, to strive to be their best. They want criminals off the streets and in jail.  They want a stable currency, for mail to be delivered on time, and to be able to protect our borders. They want government to be constrained by the tenets of their nation's Constitution, limited to only the powers granted it there.

They need the power to do all that, sure, but that power is the necessary evil to be able to accomplish what is needed to achieve that goal -- a goal, again, for the citizens, not for the rulers.

If you're familiar with the notion that "You only get to vote for communists once", then it's no secret who those groups are, and the first group, the left, are the ones to fear. 

We fear them, because they combine dictatorial autocracy with managerial incompetence. We fear them, because once they get enough power to be able to fix elections, or at least affect them as was done in 2020 by mass implementation of corrupt mail-in and mail-out ballots, it's extraordinarily difficult to get them out of power.

But they have fear, too.

They fear Democratic institutions like well-regulated elections, because a free people will never vote for them, or if somehow they get in as in 2008, the people realize they're poor at actually governing and vote them out -- see the 2010 House flip as an example.

But more than that, they fear free speech and open dialogue. Free speech is anathema to the left, whether in the USA, or South America, or China, Russia or wherever.  When people can speak, they're going to say their version of the Emperor's New Clothes -- the left has no ability to lead, to solve problems, or to protect the citizens; they're only after power, and they do nothing whose goal is not to seize and expand that power.

The left cannot have that. 

They fear open dialogue as well. They do not want debate, because they have an Achilles heel in any discussion -- their governance ideas have never worked anywhere.  Socialism is a failure, because it disincentives people from working to improve their lot, which leaves them uninspired and relying on government for the basic needs that they should be pursuing themselves.

When people debate, they start to learn to think critically.  One guy says, "Poor this oppressed class, poor that oppressed class ..." and the other says, "But look what your policies have done to hurt those so-called oppressed classes; you have been allegedly trying for 60 years and they're all on welfare and not working!"  Reasonable people hear that and start thinking. Thinking?  Critically? The left can't have that.

Debate is so dangerous to the left that they have to take the most extreme measures to stop it. Taking over the school systems and teachers unions, to ensure that children are not taught to think critically, has been their first step. Working to put overwhelmingly leftist professors on campuses is another.

So when someone goes to campuses nationwide and takes thousands of questions in a rational way, when he encourages people who disagree with him to come to the front of the line to challenge him, that is a severe danger to the left.  It is a danger that they cannot allow to continue.

Donald Trump is a danger to the left, of course.  But Charlie Kirk was a bigger threat to them, because he was young (and would be a force for decades), brilliant, in tune with youth, and was successfully engaging with the very people the left needed to be meek sheep for them.  So they had to silence him.

This was a political murder. Do not let anyone convince you otherwise. The truth as offered by Charlie Kirk was the biggest danger to the left, and they did what the left does.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

The "Indian" in the Senate

A few years back, I did a few pieces that discussed the Government's set-aside programs that granted special access to contracts for people with the right ethnicity, presumably as penance for past discrimination.  In some cases those contracts could be done without competition, particularly for Native Americans.

One such piece came down hard on the set-asides, citing in one case a person in a commercial who had just discovered she was a quarter Indian, even though she had had no idea of it.  My point was that a person who didn't even know she was a quarter Indian had clearly not experienced discrimination and therefore had no right to claim any harm that needed to be rectified by giving her a no-bid contract.

In another, I asked how much of this or that preferred ancestry was necessary to enter into the program and get set-aside contracts, or reparations, or any preferential treatment -- such treatment, I argued, if it were even to be done, should reflect actual harm to the specific person (not their ancestors).

So Elizabeth Warren. 

Back in one of those columns, I mentioned her case of getting preferential treatment in college admission and some early jobs based on claiming Native American ancestry.  A commenter asked if she were ever going to take a DNA test to see, which at that time she had not. 

As you probably know, Elizabeth Warren DID, in fact, eventually take the test, which showed that she was in fact about 1/1024th Native American. That means one of her 8-times great-grandparents was an Indian; the other 1,023 were not. 

I have always been willing to cut her some slack on that; she's in her 70s, and growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, she was told that she was part-Indian and believed it -- we didn't have Ancestry back then to confirm or deny it, and Oklahoma was particularly likely to have its residents have a healthy titer of Indian blood. 

I'm almost the same age, and I can assure you that, as a child in Oklahoma, I would have believed any reasonable assertion my parents had made about being "part Indian."  I wouldn't have asked "how much" -- back then, before preferential treatment and casinos, it just would have been a neutral attribute.

Later on, when she recorded herself in applications for colleges and early jobs as being Native American, it was a different situation.  Yes, she likely believed herself to be part Indian -- again, going on family lore, with nothing else to say otherwise.  But at that point, she knew that a claim of Native American heritage was actually advantageous.  By that time (the '60s and '70s), being anything but a white male was worth a few preference points in leftist New England.

So yes, she believed back then that she legitimately took preferential treatment -- admission to colleges, jobs -- based on giving the institutions the ability to claim they had taken in an "Indian" in their student bodies and given one a job. They happily checked one of their hard-to-check boxes and signaled their virtue, while someone else lost a spot in the class or a job with the employer.

Like I said, I cut her some slack for those claims -- then.  She legitimately believed she was entitled to that preferential treatment, not for any discrimination she had ever encountered, but because the rules said "Native American", and she was told she was one (though how Indian she was supposed to be is lost to the ages, and she'll likely never say).

But now we know.  She took a DNA test, and if her reporting of it is to be believed, she has virtually no legitimate claim of Indian ancestry save for the possibility of an eight-times-great grandparent born around 1680 or so.

So why am I writing this?  Clearly, now-Senator Warren has suffered not a shred of discomfort or prejudicial treatment for her early claim of native blood. Yes, there has been a heap or two of ridicule for claiming it, especially strong since the blood test, but I distinguish between the before and after -- decades of believing, but now a decade of knowing the contrary.

Maybe only a couple people were affected by the early claims.  Maybe she won her first senatorial election in Massachusetts only because enough voters who weren't going to vote for her switched as a pro-Indian virtue signal. 

Either way, how much would it hurt to apologize to anyone who may have been hurt?  Wouldn't an apology for something that ultimately caused minimal damage, and was excusable, be received as a wonderful gesture?

I know that, despite my opposition to every policy she favors, I would do a positive piece on her were she to release an unprompted statement like this one:

To my constituents and my fellow Americans -- As you know, a few years back, I volunteered to take a DNA test to verify my ancestry.  As a young girl in Oklahoma, my family had always told me that the family had Native American ancestors and we were of Indian blood to some extent.  I certainly believed my family; after all, I had no reason to doubt the family stories, and there were no tests available at the time.

As a student and then early in my career, at times when the topic came up on applications, I indicated the native ancestry that my family had told me was the case. I understood even then that it may have afforded me an advantage in selection for schools and positions.  Of course, at the time I thought it was appropriate, since I believed myself a member of that group.

As we now know, the test showed I had only negligible Native American ancestry. I believe my family truly believed what they thought to be their background and mine.  But that means that any advantage that I have been given in my career has not been deserved.  More than that, it is possible -- maybe even likely -- that at least somebody has been denied an opportunity that was lost to them because of a preference given to me.

I need to put this issue to rest.  I would like to take this moment to offer a sincere and heartfelt apology to anyone whose career or life has been affected by my claims of Native American ancestry, however honestly made when it was what I believed to be the case.  I realize that any such person might not even be aware if they were indeed affected, but I prefer to be the the kind of person who feels the pain of injustice no matter the form.  Thank you and I am so very sorry.

I admit that I would be very shocked if she were ever to do such a thing. But I would devote an equally sincere apology to her and have a very non-grudging respect for her were she to do it.

But I'm not holding my breath. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

The Russiagate Discovery Made Clear

I don't doubt that a few of you were able to listen to the White House daily press briefing yesterday (23 July) and heard the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, elaborating on recently declassified documentation that provides a seriously upsetting view into actions by former President Obama.

Realizing that the readers of this column are found worldwide in large numbers, and may not have heard the briefing, and may be getting their information from biased, filtered sources, I wanted to clarify some things.

As I was listening to Miss Gabbard speaking, I was thinking of those readers.  I though that perhaps a translation of what she shared, a simple-language summary, might be in order and helpful.  So here goes.

You know what happened in 2016.  Throughout the 2016 campaign, the Hillary Clinton people pushed the narrative that Trump was somehow a "Russian asset", and perpetually tried to connect him to Russia, partly to try to paint him in an unfavorable light to tip the election, and thereafter, when they lost, to compromise his Administration by claiming that the Russians had influenced the outcome and helped Trump win.

There are several overlapping areas we now know, and I want to help you by explaining each one separately.

1. What Russia Actually Did in 2016.

The Democrats claim that the Russians "influenced" or "meddled in" the election. What we now know is that their goal was not to change the outcome; they assumed that Hillary was going to win, presumably because the US media assumed and kept reporting that.  Their goal was, however, to sow chaos by fomenting distrust in the integrity of the election, so Americans would see their cherished election process as suspect.

They did not care who won, so nothing they did was aimed at affecting the outcome. As the actual, reliable Intelligence Community assessments stated, the Russians were utterly incapable of influencing the election itself.  Not only is that hard to do, but with 50 states having separate election processes, nothing the Russians could do had any hope of accomplishing anything. 

They could have done something, though, had they chosen.  They had information that Hillary had been having manic episodes, was on medications, that sort of thing. If they'd wanted to help Trump win, they could have dumped that on the public -- but they didn't.  Remember, their goal was subverting public confidence. Knowing they couldn't change the outcome, they thought a more effective use of it was after the election to make it harder for Hillary, the assumed winner, to govern.  Ironic, eh?

Summary: Russia's goal was to cause chaos.  It was not to change the outcome of the 2016 election, which they couldn't have done anyway. And the CIA knew and reported all that to Obama, so he knew that they had no influence.

2. What the Obama Team Did in December 2016    

Here is the big news, and where potential criminal conduct comes in.  I'll try to make this simple. After the election, Obama received an intelligence briefing telling him all the above, meaning that Russia didn't try to swing the election, that they only tried to subvert Americans' faith in the process, and that they had dirt on Hillary that they held back to use when she got elected, as they assumed.

Importantly, that briefing was factual, was based on sound and standard intelligence-gathering practice, and reflected the inputs from multiple intelligence organizations. In other words, it was extremely reliable. In the normal course of events, it would have been also shared with President-elect Trump.

What it wasn't, though, was good for Democrats who had been trying to paint Trump as a Russian asset.

So Obama ordered the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and the CIA Director, John Brennan, not to publish that briefing (because then President-elect Trump would be given the briefing) and, instead, to go back and create a replacement briefing that had the content that Obama wanted in there. The analysts who created the factual briefing were told opaquely not to publish because of some "new guidance."

The replacement briefing was, of course, garbage, for a host of reasons.  It had a predetermined outcome.  It did not reflect inputs from across the various intelligence agencies. It was prepared by a small team of hand-picked analysts and a chief writer (who still objected to having their names on a report with no factual basis). Finally, it included already-discredited sources (such as the Steele dossier that the whole intelligence apparatus knew was just opposition research for Hillary's campaign and was full of made-up content).

We know that senior intelligence officials objected mightily to putting out a briefing that was so far below minimum community standards for sourcing and breadth of input. They were shut down. Not only were their opinions squelched, but the new, garbage briefing, was immediately leaked to the media to be splashed all over the news.

We also know that when the writers of the phony report went to back to Brennan, the CIA director, saying there was no factual basis for what they were asked to write, Brennan told them to put it there anyway because "... doesn't it ring true?" The American people rely on their intelligence agencies to provide accurate information for the President to make decisions. "Ringing true" is not what we want our presidents to use to act on.  Yuk.

Summary: Obama knew that there was no real Russian impact on the election; he knew that Trump was in no way connected to Russia, so when the sound briefing telling him that was developed, he squashed it before Trump could see it, and (the potential criminal act) ordered the creation of an essentially phony briefing that pretended to state as fact all the equally phony assertions that the Hillary campaign had been making.

Because this was all done after the election, it can be readily construed as not a political act but a criminal one specifically intended both to give false information to the incoming president and, by leaking it to the media, to diminish the ability of the incoming president to govern.    

We were all there. "Russia Russia Russia" tied up the first Trump Administration.  We were lucky they were able to get anything done at all.

3. The Media and the Government

Media outlets won Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on that story, even though it now turns out that their reporting was abysmal journalism, the result of their being manipulated by political sources on the left. "Russia Russia Russia" sounded so good as a story, and line up so nicely with their political leanings, that they tossed away journalistic standards, forgot about doing simple research, and got rewarded for it by their industry.

On the government side, you had the Schiffs and Swalwells of the world puffing out their chests and lying through their fake indignation. Adam Schiff, as we know, insisted that he had secret information, "factual evidence" that Trump was a Russian asset.  The media gave them plenty of air time, but failed to practice even basic journalism by asking follow-up questions and insisting on answers.

Summary: the Democrats did what Democrats do, but the media tossed aside all sense of objectivity, particularly as relates to the sainted Obama. 

                  - - - 

There are a few ancillary notes here from the last week.  You're hearing Secretary Rubio's name as having been part of a Senate committee back a number of years that appeared not to have dug into the matter deep enough to discover the original, factual intelligence briefing. I believe that was a red herring; the committee can only deal with what they were allowed to see, and as diligently as Obama squashed that sound briefing and hurriedly had a replacement made up with his predetermined content, you can be that the committee was never allowed to know the original even existed.

We also know that there are whistleblowers -- senior personnel who were in the intelligence community back then and who are still there, who were professional enough not to want what happened to stain the honor of their agencies. Their testimony before the House and Senate committees that are sure to take this matter up will be riveting.

Finally, there is the matter of justice. Director Gabbard has referred the whole matter to the Justice Department for investigation.  They will determine if there are criminal charges to be filed, and FBI Director Kash Patel and his team will look into it carefully and speak at length with the whistleblowers and others.

Obama is somewhat protected from charges, either where there is a statute of limitations issue, or in some cases by Supreme Court rulings that a president cannot be charged with offenses during his term if they are related to the scope of his official duties as president. Regardless, he can be forced to testify under penalty of perjury, and sitting there pleading the 5th will not be helpful to his precious legacy.

Personally, I am more interested in the truth coming out and being in some way certified as truthful than I am in seeing Brennan or Clapper or James Comey behind bars, fun though that would be.  But let there be no doubt -- I would very much like to see enough criminal trials and convictions to prevent anyone from trying to pull this type of stunt in the future.

Perhaps the best answer to the Russian subversion of public confidence is to see some jail time for some of the perpetrators. It would sure make me feel a bit more confident.

 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Has Trump Overhauled the Republican Party?

As I write this, the House of Representatives is debating the One Big Beautiful Bill, and this piece has little, if anything to do with that, mostly.

I have lived through a lot of U.S. presidents.  Harry Truman was in office when I was born, and that means I've experienced about 14 or 15 of them, depending on how you count and when I was old enough to care.

In every case but one, the new president had come in and approached domestic and foreign policy issues in pretty much they same way that his predecessors had, at least those of his party.  Active, passive, high tax, low tax ... same solutions tried whether they worked before or not.

When Donald Trump became president in 2017, he was the first president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 to have never served in elected office before becoming president.  He was the first in anyone's lifetime not to have taken a government paycheck of any kind before becoming president, and that's even more relevant.

Donald Trump was a businessman up until the day he was sworn in for his first term, when he was already over 70.  You can guess that business and economics were well-embedded in his approach to problem-solving by the time he said "So help me, God."  

He served a first term the best he could, hounded by the opposition party, lawfare and, frankly, sub-optimal decisions in selecting Cabinet members.  But he learned strong lessons that term about whom he could trust, for sure, and most certainly how to navigate the weirdness of Congress.  By the time he (and we) had to live through the four years of the incompetent Joe Biden presidency, he knew exactly how to go forward, as we'll see in a moment.

In fact, my point in this piece was exemplified at the end of his first term, when he was able to negotiate the Abraham Accords, the treaties between Israel and formerly hostile Middle Eastern nations. He understood as a businessman that the conflict between those nations, which had been fundamentally of a religious nature, no longer held sway as a religious conflict.

President Trump understood that the Arab nations had a common enemy, and it wasn't Israel.  A peaceful Israel held no threat to them -- but Iran did.  Trump saw that what the Arab states' leaders wanted was to hold onto their power, meaning a stable market for oil, a stable economy, and no external threat.  

Those that signed the accords looked at Israel and looked at Iran, and realized that the threat to what they wanted didn't come from Israel at all. Trump go them to see that the clear path to the stability they sought was economic -- and that there was no stronger world power to keep their economies stable than the USA.

Simple?  "Hey, [fill in the blank with an Arab nation], sign this long-term document guaranteeing peace between your nation and Israel, and we'll have a more favorable set of terms for trade with us and, by the way, if Iran threatens you, we'll have your back one way or the other."  Had Trump gotten his second term in 2021, the whole Sunni Middle East would have signed up.

So up comes Trump's second term, only now he has a vice president (J.D. Vance) squarely on his side, and a Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) and Secretary of Defense (Pete Hegseth) squarely on his side, and a Cabinet full of people he can trust.  How does he approach foreign relations?  America first -- implementing tariffs, an economic lever, on nations worldwide as his actual first foreign policy step.

Trump understands that FTM ("follow the money") is the driver for 99% of what goes on in the world. The rest of the world, that has been ripping us off for decades, will not take up arms if we sue for fair trade terms; they'll just come to the table and negotiate, in the outcome will be fair for the USA -- Trump's own country.

Republicans and Democrats alike have never had the cogliones to do that, ever before. "Oh, oh, we can't offend our allies!"  But the Trump Republican Party will have none of that. The other nations can take care of themselves; we are concerned about America first.

And funny how well it worked.  The NATO types have flipped and agreed to pony up 5% of their GDP for their own defense with barely an argument or naysayer.

No president has done that, taken that approach that is so economically based.  But Trump has broken the Republican mold -- ironic given that the Republicans are seen as economically oriented.  He is using the economic leverage of the USA to create a better USA and, by extension, a better free world.

I want to end by pointing out what President Trump said right after he bombed the Iranian nuclear program into oblivion, and how it reflects an approach we have not really seen from the two parties of recent decades.

Consider all the conquering dictators of recent memory.  How did they deal with defeated enemies?  They took them over is what they did, threw out, exiled or murdered the opposing leadership and annexed the territory.

Trump didn't conquer Iran, he just destroyed their threat, with immense credit given to our ally Israel and their destruction of Iran's air defenses.  And what did Trump say thereafter?  He wanted a commercially healthy Iran, he said, and that if they wanted to ship oil to China or wherever, they could go for it.  His vision was of an Iran that was economically successful, even under the same mullahs, as long as it posed no military threat to its neighbors (or us) and ceased threatening other nations.

The mullahs are surely talking among themselves, and at least one of them will likely say the Persian version of "So what if we just be a great Iran and let America work with us and be a trading partner instead of the Great Satan?" And what are the odds that a few others will allow the paradigm to be shifted enough to sit down and work something out that eases tensions in the region?

There is not a president in decades who would even think like that, because to Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, he sees that economics drive foreign policy as much as domestic.  "Politics" are a distant, bottom-level factor, because he has a vision of an economically successful world.

The Republican Party has the option to allow his policies and his successes to be the foundation of their principles going forward.  If the younger leaders in his Cabinet, who will be the ones to assume the mantle going forward, can maintain that approach, it will be good for the nation as well as the party.

Because the Democrats are still running on "We're not Trump", and when things are working, that's simply not a winning platform. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

DEI Infects the High Court

The sad left was publicly, chest-poundingly upset by yesterday's last-day decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, most particularly the case in which the Court's majority ruled on the issue of district courts' capacity to issue rulings with nationwide impact.

The case itself actually related to the concept of birthright citizenship and the interpretation of the Constitutional amendment that dealt with the concept.  Curiously, that aspect of the decision wasn't dealt with, for now.  What was decided, in a 6-3 majority opinion that now serves as legal precedent, is that district courts no longer have the ability to block the President from implementing executive powers, certainly not beyond the impact of the case before such court.

Beyond the celebration of those believing in law and the Constitution, and the tooth-grinding of the left, a non-trivial amount of the post-mortem appeared to deal with a minority opinion delivered by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most junior associate justice on the Court.

Justices deliver minority opinions all the time.  The interpretation of written law is a large part of why there is a Supreme Court in the first place; the law is the words of the legislation, and legislatures often produce ambiguously written legislation, as well as laws which are in potential violation of the Constitution. 

Jackson's minority opinion was fraught with issues, not the least of which being the lack of Constitutional foundation for her rationale; but even more so the problem that, as Justice Amy Barrett wrote in her commentary on Jackson's dissent, that Jackson was objecting to the concept of an imperial executive and replacing it with an imperial judiciary, a rather immature approach for a Supreme Court justice.

We should all be bothered by the presence on the Court of such a political individual, and we are, but it is even sadder that the opinions of this justice will forever be questions of competence related to her appointment itself.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is black.  Duh.  We all can see that. No would care; Justice Clarence Thomas is equally black, and certainly has strong opinions flavored by his own beliefs in the primacy of the Constitution. But Thomas was not appointed the Court because of his race, but because of his background and approach to Constitutional law. You might say race was not a factor in his appointment, but considering the hateful rhetoric thrown at him by senators -- including Joe Biden, then a back-bench senator from Delaware -- it was certainly part of the process.

But in Jackson's case, race was not only a factor, but a requirement.  Joe Biden, whose handlers had him appoint her, declared publicly that he was looking for a black woman; i.e., no white people need apply.  Joe Biden is of Irish descent, and I wondered if the irony would have struck him that, 100 years after "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common at job sites, this descendant of legal Irish immigrants put out a race requirement for a Supreme Court appointment.

Of course, Biden had no clue what was going on, so he gets a pass.  Someone made that decision, and Biden just blathered in assent.

So now we have however-many years of a Court with an associate justice whose primary qualification was race. And here is the thing.  Because of Biden's pronouncement that the appointment would be a DEI hire, Jackson will, for the rest of her tenure, be regarded as a DEI hire -- not a standard-issue associate justice, but one who was put on the Court to fill a quota.

Democrats never look at the downstream effects of their actions and, yes, I've written before about that very issue.  With them, it is all about power and votes, and if they think they'll get more votes in the next election by installing a black associate justice, they'll do it, regardless of their actual judicial competence or willingness to apply blind justice.

We are not privy to the internal debates of the Court when discussing cases after oral arguments, but one has to wonder how the other eight justices regard the opinions and inputs of the most junior member of the Court, knowing that she was a classic DEI hire, wasn't the most qualified candidate, just a black female with sufficient experience to get the Senate to confirm her.

The note from Justice Barrett suggests that the rest of the Court has its own concern about what Jackson is even doing on the Court (she actually wrote, to paraphrase, "We will not concern ourselves with Justice Jackson's opinion ...").  So there's that.

But there's also the situation that, to fill a racial quota, there is now a lifetime appointment on the Court of a DEI hire, someone whose opinions are starting to make it clear that her judicial opinions are political, reflecting the signs of protestors more than the history of the interpretations of the Constitution.

I'm not a lawyer, of course, but it is my semi-educated view that the impact of decisions should be only a minor, or even absent, factor in the Supreme Court's consideration.  Laws may have detrimental impact on some people, but if they are Constitutionally sound, it is not for the Court to overturn them. 

Justices like Jackson may have graduated law school, but if they haven't learned the lesson that their politics should not be a factor, certainly not to the extent of allowing impact to affect their assessment of Constitutionally, then Houston, we have a problem.    

And at bottom, every serious black judge in the nation should be concerned that the single outcome of the appointment of Jackson to the Court is to call in question the seriousness and qualification of them as competent members of the judiciary.

DEI strikes again. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Obrigado, Amigos Brasileiros!

Obviously I don't write in Portuguese, and as you might guess after reading the last 1,100 or so of these pieces, that's because I don't speak it.  My English is pretty good, though; I've been reading it for almost 72 years and have a pretty good idea from that experience. 

So it is of great interest that, joining my surprising readership in the Netherlands, recently there has been a huge number of readers of this column from Brazil.  And I mean huge.

Sure, I'm immensely grateful that you in the Southern Hemisphere (and the little part of Brazil that pokes above the equator) have been coming here and reading some of my columns here.  But with that gratitude comes an equally great curiosity, my never having been closer than Panama.

Tell me about yourselves!  Are you native Brazilians who enjoy reading the ramblings of a geriatric American with a terribly bizarre life story, to practice your English?  Are you expats living in Rio who share all my political opinions and appreciate the sentiments?

This is just to ask you to get back to me privately (contact information in the notice block below) and assuage my curiosity.  How did you come across the site?  A friend?  A search?  And do you know how the site got so popular in Brazil?  Inquiring minds want to know!

As our president might say, "Thank you for your attention to this matter." 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

 

 

When the War is Actually Over

As I write this, missiles are being exchanged between Iran and Israel, a situation which, despite the lack of ground troops involvement, constitutes a "war."

The exchange is not being done by FedEx or UPS, and we certainly know it's not the US Postal Service, since at least some of the missiles are actually arriving on time. No, the missiles are being launched from hundreds of miles away, using sophisticated guidance systems.

So yes, it is war.  And for the most part, people do not want war and certainly don't enjoy it.  War is heck, to paraphrase General Sherman during the War Between the States.

OK, so no one wants it.  How do we end it?

Well, the first problem is two paragraphs back, in that little disclaimer "for the most part."  There are people who want war, because what they want to accomplish is conquest, and if you want to conquer another nation, as Putin does in Ukraine and the Iranian mullahs do in Israel and, for that matter, the whole Middle East, you need war.  The people you're trying to conquer are not going to roll over, you know.

As I write this, I'm thinking of the old Roman Empire and the legions sent into battle to expand the Empire, and Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan.  Tons of soldiers sent into battle, hundreds of thousands killed but, for the most part, the borders of all these empires continued to change over the centuries.  Nothing was really permanent, and all those conquerors are dead. Memento mori.

I'm thinking of them, because it seems utterly ludicrous that a couple millennia later, there are still guys out there trying to do the same thing.  Since those old empires, we have implemented indoor plumbing, and electricity, and we can fly.  We actually have free nations without dictators.  Kingdoms have parliaments.  Civilization has advanced far beyond where we were back then.

And yet we still have dictators demanding that they conquer other nations.  We shouldn't have to have huge militaries and sophisticated armaments, given how far we have come in society.  But as the Iranian mullahs show, we haven't all come that far.

President Trump is, as we speak, deciding whether or not, and when, to provide Israel with a bomb capable of taking out what is believed to be the last nuclear bomb-development site in Iran, utterly wiping out the mullahs' ability to develop a nuclear weapon.  

Surely the left will be crying about "diplomacy", and how we just need to talk this through and achieve a negotiated settlement.  But here's the thing.  Much as I'd like to claim that I thought up this quote, it was probably Sun Tzu, or one of that crowd: 

The war is over when your enemy says it's over. 

Got it?  It's not when you think you've defeated them, but when they act in such a way as to concede defeat. Obviously, this is harder when the conqueror himself loses, because their concession of defeat isn't compelling unless they are, well, dead.

The problem isn't "Iran", as far as what is going on there; it is the Iranian leadership.  The people of Iran would be perfectly happy to live in peace with Israel, if only they were allowed to self-govern.  They are an intelligent and reasonably sophisticated people, sitting on enough oil to drive a thriving economy and enough brain power to manage it, if they could only implement a government whose primary objective was the elevation of the economy and the protection of the Persian people.

We wish we had a shred of confidence that a democracy of some sort could arise from the ashes, if the enemy "said the war was over" by being, you know, dead.  If the mullahs were wiped out, could a representative government be developed?

Remember -- the war only ends when the enemy says it's over.  The mullahs are never going to let it be over, let alone say it is, and Israel knows that.

I'm afraid that there has to be a complete wiping out of the leadership there in order to end the war, and someone has to be prepared immediately to create a government consistent with civilized principles before they get more mullahs.

The good news is that peace in the Middle East, an impossible task for centuries, could actually be possible (the rest of the Muslim Middle East has no use for the Iranian leadership either).  The "bad" news is that no one has a clue who's actually around to lead it.

Once, that is, the enemy has said it's over. 

[Update 26 Jun 2025 -- I don't mean to gloat and scream "See, I was right!", nor say "Oops, I was wrong" but, as we saw the past few days, the mullahs indeed did let it be over after the US obliterated their nuclear weapons program. So I was wrong about that, but I will say without gloating that the premise of the piece was actually borne out.  The Iranian version of saying it's over was to call us up, and tell us that they were going to send some face-saving missiles to Al Udeid AB at whatever time we said it was OK, so we could intercept them. So yes, it's over when the enemy says it's over, and the Iranians just proved the point.] 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

Fluffy at the Vanguard

Gabriel Iglesias, as we all know, is a (quite) portly Mexican-American comedian, certainly among the most popular stand-up comics of any genre or characteristic, and the greatest Latino comedian of our generation.

He is commonly known as "Fluffy", as in "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy", and Americans know him well from his comedy specials (recorded stand-up sessions) aired on Netflix.  He has many of these available, and they are funny by any standard of humor.  

His comedy is a storytelling style, vignettes from his life, his family, his touring, and layered over everything is his being Mexican-American, with many asides in Spanish, though quite understandable even for those of us who don't speak the language.  But I don't need to get into it; everyone pretty much knows who Fluffy is.

The state of American comedy is really what this is about.  Fifty years ago, you could do ethnic jokes with relative impunity.  Polish jokes were common and perfectly acceptable, although the same exact joke would be told by Northerners to make fun of Southerners, or Nova Scotians to make fun of Newfies, or Minnesotans and Iowans to make fun of each other.

Then woke-ism happened. It became impossible for a comedian to leverage ethnicity, not his own and certainly not anyone else's, for his humor.  Comedians were kept off college campuses for perceived insensitivity to this or that favored group.  Were he still performing, the now 97-year-old Tom Lehrer would certainly not be getting away with singing "National Brotherhood Week."

At its worst, it took comics of the stature of Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle to take a courageous stand.  They would point out that comedy is often an art exaggerating the more stereotyped attributes of groups; at the same time the left was making group affinity ultra-important and ranting about "diversity."  

Seinfeld and Chappelle were prominent in pointing out that the protection of such sacred cows would lead to the demise of comedy. They needed to look no further than the pathetic performance of the hosts on most late-night talk shows, who were destroying the Johnny Carson legacy.  Succumbing to the woke mob, and sympathizing with them anyway, their monologues turned into leftist pap, devoid of comedy.

It took a few comedians with "FU money" -- successful enough to be able to say what was actually true without fear of cancellation -- to put a line in the sand and defend the integrity and freedom of comedians to say things that were truly funny, even if they might be a little offensive, and that the offended just needed to grow a pair. 

Ultimately, the revolt against the incompetence of the left, under Joe Biden and whoever was telling him what to do, led to the 4-year delayed re-election of Donald Trump.  Trump, of course, is part entertainer, meaning that his competence blends with a personality contrast with Biden to attract younger supporters.  Those younger Americans had already had enough of unfunny "comedy", particularly political attempted humor. It was pretty hard to be funny talking about now-president Trump when he was making eggs and gasoline affordable again, deporting illegals, and actually answering questions often and honestly.

So it was quite something when "Fluffy" recently released his latest comedy stand-up special, a live stand-up recorded in Miami and available on Netflix.  The something wasn't just that he did an hour-and-twenty-minute routine, far longer than the typical recorded stand-up show.

No, the "something" was that at the very start, Gabriel Iglesias, who is popular enough -- and self-deprecating enough -- to say whatever he wants and tell whatever stories he wants, made a little disclaimer to the huge audience.  He said, in so many words, that his audience should not expect the usual political garbage that most of them weren't going to want to hear.

His stories were going to be about things that were actually funny, and were not going to get half the audience to want to leave.  He was going to be Fluffy, and tell Fluffy stories, and make Fluffy jokes.  No one was going to tell him how he had to think.  No one was going to be able to cancel him.

It was almost ninety minutes of pure funny.  Political correctness was not an issue.

When it was over, and I had a chance to think about it, it was clear that he had indeed been funny as all-get-out without having to be political, just as promised.  And it became equally clear that his disclaimer and the subsequent storytelling were at the vanguard of what is hopefully a new era in comedy -- making jokes and telling stories that are actually funny, without the attendant political crap. 

Fluffy at the vanguard.  Who'd-a thunk it? 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton. 

 

 

Fire Extinguishers, Fives of Clubs, and Five-Irons

The latest kerfuffle in the whole California high school athletics drama took place, not over a boy pretending to be a girl and walking away with an undeserved medal.  It actually was a biological female who won a girls' track race in the selfsame state competition.

She decided that celebrating by hugging her coach and congratulating her competitors, what people with a shred of sportsmanship would do, well, that wasn't good enough.  It wasn't self-congratulatory enough.  It didn't portray the "I am wonderful, look at me, me, me!" message enough.

No, that girl, right after winning, decided to grab a nearby fire extinguisher (which she may have pre-positioned for the event, but I do not know).  She sprayed her feet with the fire extinguisher in celebration of her wonderfulness, to tell the crowd how "hot" her feet were.

The California geniuses who run interscholastic sports there then compounded the idiocy by denying her from receiving her medal for winning the race. They wouldn't dare come down hard on boys pretending to be girls and walking away with undeserved medals, but they pull the medal from a girl for an overzealous, self-indulgent, unsportsmanlike act after the race was over.

Of course, lots of people are screaming about the action being racist (the girl was black), or noting, as I just did, the weird hypocrisy of the California athletic overlords in letting boys win medals in girls' sports.

You see, that's the problem.

We should be talking, not about the punishment she received in being denied an earned medal, but about the poor sportsmanship she showed in showing up her competitors whom she had just defeated.  

Here's the difference: I don't really want (or need) her to be punished.  I simply want her never to do anything so rude again, and I certainly don't want anyone else imitating what she did.

The consequences should be between her and her coach, school, and parents, more than between her and the California interscholastic sports federation.  But let's not talk punishment; let's talk about teaching sportsmanship to athletes who so badly need it.   

For many years, my Best Girl and I have played a Tuesday night card game with a neighbor couple who are close friends.  The game is for teams, and we cycle through the various pairings -- couples teamed up, then the next week guys vs. gals, then cross-spousal teams.

I would say that the games are very competitive, even with no stakes involved other than bragging rights. Losing is not fun, and although the cards may cause irritation, it is never against the opponent but just an expression of frustration.  It would never occur to us to allow our competitiveness to be focused on the opponent.  It's a game of cards, and if you draw a four of clubs instead of a five of clubs, well, that's the luck of the draw.

More importantly, it would be abysmal sportsmanship either to gloat over winning or to step on the losing team.  We simply do not do that.  Making a losing opponent feel bad isn't in our repertoire of acceptable behaviors.

Spraying one's feet with a fire extinguisher may push that line a bit.  If it turns out that she had staged the fire extinguisher herself prior to the race, though, it crosses the line into abysmal sportsmanship.

I would rather she fix her need to express her belief about how wonderful she is.

I'd like for her to take up golf.

Right now, the world of professional golf is dominated by Scottie Scheffler, the young Texan who is not only #1 in the world rankings for many months now, but who has established the biggest computed gap between #1 and #2 in over 20 years, since a fellow named Tiger was markedly the best.   

If the young lady runner were to take the game of golf up with the same diligence with which she turned herself into a winning runner, she would surely learn a few things.

She would observe Scottie Scheffler as he goes around the course in a tournament, focused on his plan for each hole and managing the course. She would observe his calm demeanor, and the way his temperament is so contained regardless of the score on a given hole.

Also importantly, she would observe how he wins. The last putt drops on the 18th hole of the last day, and Scheffler smiles, embraces his caddie, and then shakes the hand of (and often bro-hugs) his opponent playing partner and shakes hand with the other player's caddie.  The handshakes and embraces include kind words for the opponent's play and best wishes for him. He then walks off the green with waves to the crowd, is embraced by his wife, and carries his infant son over to the brief TV interview that follows.

Most of all, the young lady runner would come to realize that all the pros do pretty much the same thing. There is nothing more sportsmanlike than the behavior of professional golfers.  As frustrated as the game may get them, their behavior toward opponents is universally respectful and generous.  They're all playing against the course, not to celebrate another's defeat.  I executed that five-iron shot on #18 and won today, but your day will be tomorrow.

If that wasn't too meandering a tale for you, you'll have seen that what is needed is not punishment, but a lesson in sportsmanship that this young runner -- and many of her generation -- so desperately need.  

She needs to learn to compete the way older card playing neighbors do, with regard for the feelings of the other team and players.

She needs to learn to compete properly at a high level, the way professional golfers respect the work put in by their opponents.

She needs to learn that self-aggrandizing moments are for the self-important in our society.

She can do better.  Let's teach her. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

 

Daylight Savings -- Part Two

I hope you got to read the "part one" of this discussion from last December -- if not, here is the link so you can get the idea of where this idea is coming from.

In short, my point was that the Daylight Savings Time concept was unnecessary, and there was no need to change times twice a year with all the logistic challenges and emotional trauma.  The issue, in my view, was that the time zones themselves had been drawn arbitrarily, and with no regard for the actual astronomy involved.

The solution, then, was and is simply to redraw the time zones, such that there are no areas where, on the shortest day of the year, the sun rises absurdly late or sets absurdly early.  To do that, you identify the longitude lines (Pole to Pole) where, on that shortest day, the sunrise and sunset are most closely aligned to, say, a 7:00am to 5:00pm period, mapping to typical workdays.

Those longitude lines then become the center of each time zone, and you extend the time zone east and west of there to where the time zone borders are about halfway between those lines.

So, "part two."

In the previous piece, I explained the logic and threw out an example or two, but didn't map the whole country.  I thought it a good idea to go ahead and finish the argument here in case, you know, an actual congressman with some authority reads this and thinks it's a good idea.

The site that I used before turned out not to be so great as far as placing the sunrise and sunset times, so I did a lot more research before this article.  As it turns out, the astronomical center of what we would call the Eastern time zone is closer to Syracuse, NY than Worcester, MA.  That means that those four longitude borders (the centers of the four time zones) would run vertically, roughly, through Syracuse, and then St. Louis, MO, Denver, CO, and Santa Maria, CA.

We understand that when you create new time zones, you can't just draw a vertical line through the country at the appropriate point to delimit the time zones.  It makes far more sense to use existing logical demographic and political borders -- e.g., state borders -- to make it easier on the populations.

That, if you choose to use state borders wherever possible, would take the Eastern time zone from Maine over to Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas. Georgia actually should remain Eastern as well, while Florida could split as it does now, with the "panhandle" area west of the metropolitan Tallahassee area being in the Central time zone.

The newly defined Central time zone adds Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and the rest of Kentucky and Tennessee that weren't already in Central. The other big change is that while the zone's western border includes Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, it ends there.  The new Mountain time zone, centered east to west in Denver, would take in the Plains states -- the Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, all moving from Central to Mountain.

Pacific time, in the new configuration, would have only Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho, with Arizona, Utah and Montana staying in Mountain time.

And here is the part that makes the most sense -- with the realigned time zones, there is no need to do Daylight Savings Time at all; there would just be "Time."  No time changes, no disruption, no emotional trauma.

I urge anyone with influence to consider working on a formal proposal to implement a plan like this.  I guarantee it would go over well, because it is the one plan that does what is needed.

Really.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Sinterklaas Kapoentje, Leg Wat in Mijn Schoentje

It may be a bit surprising to some readers of this site that UberThoughtsUSA has a rather wide readership; "wide" meaning "around the world."  It's actually kind of interesting, given that the articles are in English, and outside maybe 3-4 of the ~1100 of them I've written, none are about topics of interest beyond our fair nation's borders.

Yet here we are.

Where "we are" is that for a few weeks now, of the thousands of perusals of articles here the past few weeks, readers from the Netherlands have totaled about three times the readings of all other countries combined, including those from the good old U.S. of A.

It can't be my familiarity with the Dutch tongue.  I titled this piece as I did because the children's Christmas song, referenced there, includes pretty much all the Dutch that I know, and that includes really not knowing what "kapoentje" actually does mean (yes, I do know the rest is about Santa putting little gifts in the child's footwear).

Well, mijn broers en zussen in Holland, it is a pleasure sharing my thoughts and recollections with you. But forgive me if I express my curiosity about what interests Dutch readers in those thoughts and recollections.

If you are among the now-hundreds of readers in the land of tulips, please reach out (contact information below as always).  I'd be honored to hear from you as to your interest in the column.

But please make it in English.  My Dutch, as noted, isn't really very good.

Talk to you soon!

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

My 201(k) and Why I'm OK

If you have been thoughtfully saving an adequate portion of your income by using the various pretax instruments available to Americans -- the 401(k), the IRA, the SEP-IRA, etc., then you are aware of, if not panicked by, the precipitous drops in the various equity investments those plans have been suffering the past week or two.

As we all know, those drops have come as a result of President Trump's fulfillment of a daily campaign promise to level the playing field as far as international trade is concerned.  You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, as they say, and the president is leveraging the awesome purchasing power of the USA to reach his (and our)goal, i.e., to lower or even remove tariffs imposed by foreign nations on USA exports.

The result, for the moment, is panicked selling of stocks, which has drastically lowered the value of those savings, and driven jokes about people's 401(k)s feeling like "201(k)s."  We get it. 

Not to provide more personal information than necessary, but I'm a full-time employee of a company, I'm in my 70s, and I have been setting aside savings for a long time.  That I haven't seen my savings drop as much as some is a tribute to the foresight of the financial services company I've used for ten years now.  But it has dropped.  And I'm not thrilled about it.

That said, I get it.  I get what President Trump is trying to do, and I support it.  Most of all, I support the idea of blowing up the international tariff and non-monetary rule status quo, one that allows Japan, for example, to export a huge number of cars to the USA while American car makers cannot export any to Japan.  

That's just an example, and there are many, many others. It is astonishing how much higher a tariff percentage had been placed by other countries on USA goods, effectively cutting off their markets to high-quality American products.  

It is equally astonishing to many to discover that it's not even all about tariffs -- the European Union, for example, puts ridiculous standards on some products (autos, for one) for the obvious purpose of keeping our products out -- so even if there were no tariffs on American goods, we still couldn't sell there.

President Trump said just last night, and not for the first time, "Other countries have been ripping us off for 50 years!"  And he is quite right. Foreign markets are often closed to American products, while we go on and import from them.  Our manufacturers here could expand hugely with open foreign market access.

Of course, where all this tumult affects the price of corporate stocks is where we need to focus, since those 401(k) values are a composite of all the stock shares held.  And where cooler heads prevail, we can see that if XYZ Corp. was worth ten dollars a share two weeks ago, its innate value (i.e., its value based on the profitability of the company) didn't suddenly drop; the price dropped because panicked people sold their shares more than other, saner people, were buying them.

What is going to bring the stock prices back to where they were?  Well, there are billions of dollars sitting on the sidelines ready to jump back in to the market -- the dollars those sellers got from panicking and selling their shares.  What they are waiting for are moves by some of the significant foreign trading partners -- Japan, South Korea, the EU, China -- to negotiate tariff and non-monetary trade deals.

Those negotiations are starting as we speak, and let's face it -- those Wall Street types sitting on the sidelines with their investment cash know quite well that Donald Trump is a force in negotiations.  Once the first few countries reach agreements -- maybe even after the first one does -- all that money comes back into the market and the stock prices go back to where they were.

Moreover, the smartest nations are going to be first in line.  The president's son Eric, who has remained with the Trump Organization (the real estate development business) and is not a politician, had a quote a few days ago to that effect.  He would not want to be the last nation to settle a trade deal with his father, he pointed out, noting that "I've seen that movie my whole life."

It will be interesting, for example, when you notice that some nations are responding by putting retaliatory tariffs on American goods exported to them -- but if they've already put non-monetary barriers in so we can't export to them, their threat is a paper tiger. We're already not exporting to them.

I see the coming weeks as being a series of customized deals with the smartest countries, one by one.  I'm betting Japan and South Korea are very early in that process.  And as soon as one of those major players makes a deal -- and by "deal", I mean opening their markets to American goods on the same basis under which we import from them -- the markets spring back to life and return to their former levels.

So my 401(k) is just fine to leave alone and not get all bothered about it.  

It may be a 201(k) for now, but is more likely to be a 501(k) soon enough. 

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Mr. Trump's Own BCECs

The name of our late, esteemed president, Ronald Reagan, is called to the fore often when discussions of his handling of the issues of his day are held. As a gentleman now in my 70s, simple math will show that Mr. Reagan was a formative presence in my thirties, and his election in 1980 was a memorable event for all of us.

Those too young to remember will have likely not heard the term "BCEC", which rose to prominence during that election, and faded into oblivion shortly after, although it would still have relevance if it were indeed still used.

BCEC stood for "blue collar ethnic Catholics", and referred to Americans of Irish, Italian, Polish and other extractions, generally descended from immigrants of the early 1900s who had been doing blue-collar work for generations.  The implication of that use was that they were generally union members and worked long hours at hard jobs -- trades, mills, factories.

Most relevant, they were Catholic.  Democrats too, of course, because the unions, much like today, supported only Democrats and obliged their members to vote for the candidate of their choice, meaning one who was paid sufficiently to support the legislative agenda of the respective, if not respectable unions.

The BCECs, long before they were so named, notoriously were all the above.  They constituted a solid Democrat voting bloc for decades -- while that was only because of the politics of their unions, it was still a reliable bloc, because the union was in sync with the second most important aspect of their lives -- their jobs.

The problem for Democrats, at least eventually, was the most important aspect of their lives -- the beautiful combination of family, country, and church.  An auto worker in Detroit named Wojciechowski would, as likely as not, have a wife and a half-dozen kids, and reliably attend Mass, along with a bunch of other auto workers named Kelly, Capelli, and ... well, you get the idea.

And that's where the 1980 Reagan campaign comes into the story.

The 1970s were memorable in America, starting with the winding down of the Vietnam war, followed by Watergate and the ultimately resultant election of Jimmy Carter for the great quality of ... OK, for not being Gerald Ford. This led inevitably to the disastrous, inflationary Carter economy and then the Iran hostage crisis -- and for the BCECs, this was an interesting confluence that challenged their ability to provide for their family, and ran up against their innate patriotism.

And then there was the last factor -- as Catholics, the Democrats' comfort with abortion on demand was highly unpopular with their faith and threatened their church's teachings.

The nation at the time was seriously balanced politically -- Richard Nixon had won handily in 1968 and overwhelmingly in 1972, and even as unpopular as Gerald Ford was for having pardoned Nixon to get Watergate off the front pages, in 1976 he had closed the gap by election day to that race being a toss-up that Carter, the Georgian, pulled out only by bringing the entire South.

The 1980 election saw Reagan capitalize on all that, but a key to his overwhelming defeat of Carter was his dramatic improvement, over all his Republican presidential candidate predecessors, in the votes of the BCECs -- so much so that in the latter stages of the polling in 1980, the term was popularized to reflect Reagan's new source of Republican votes.

The point of all that was to note that in 1980, Reagan was able to identify and win over a voting bloc that previously had voted predominantly Democrat.  He won a far bigger share of the BCECs, despite the unions not really rallying behind him, by appealing directly to their core values of family, faith, and country -- the 1980 issues being the economy, abortion, and the Iran hostage crisis.  Reagan, the "Great Communicator", had no trouble making his case on all those issues.

In the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump, in his own way, did the same thing with a different set of voting blocs. During that campaign, "Trump's BCECs" were black and Latino voters, whose votes would go quite strongly to the former president relative to their percentages in previous elections.

It's a bit difficult to get an accurate exit poll since, when black voters have been expected to vote Democrat since forever, and there is significant pressure to vote that way, the 13% who allegedly exit-polled as having voted for Trump is doubtlessly a severe under-count. But regardless, their proportion voting for Trump was clearly higher than in previous elections.

A similar situation applied to Latino voters, a bloc which split relatively equally between Trump and his opponent, Kamala Harris.  Again, Trump's proportion of Latino votes outpaced any previous election and flew in the face of Democrat expectation that his strong opposition to illegal immigration would cost him much of that voting community.

I believe the argument from 1980 comes all the way to 2024 and applies quite well.  The 1980 BCECs, like everyone else in the country, saw the Democrats and disagreed with their positions on issues close to them -- abortion, of course, but also a perception that they were inadequately patriotic, weak overseas, and economically incompetent, spending a buck and a half for every buck of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that were seized from the auto workers and steel mill types.

Come 2024, and sure enough, much like in 1980, the Democrats allowed their furthest-left wing to dominate their policies.  Only this time, those positions were -- I hesitate to say "even further left" -- just loony in the view of Americans.

Even those not as loony ("loony", as in biological males competing in women's sports, which nobody liked) were counterproductive. Opening the southern border was a transparent Democrat strategy to fill up America with presumed eventual Democrat voters -- but one that America saw as allowing drug trafficking, human trafficking and, as it proved out, an influx of hardened criminals and gang members.

For reasons we may never understand, the Democrats running for office embraced those moronic policies, thinking that ... ahhh, I don't know what they were thinking. 

And here is the point.  I see the major shift in black and Latino votes toward Trump as being a combination of two significant factors that hearken back to 1980.  

First, the Democrats allowed themselves to move themselves into utterly silly positions and did not allow internal dissent on them.  They forced their standard-bearer, the presidential candidate, to advocate those positions, or at least in her case, avoid taking questions on them for the whole campaign.  

Some black voters looked at the awful conditions on city streets under Democrat mayors and asked themselves how let gang members pour across open borders was going to make that worse. They asked how even the not otherwise-criminal illegals might be taking jobs away from them. And they didn't like the answer.

Latino voters looked at all that the same way, only on top of all that, they saw Joe Biden's FBI going after Catholic church members, too.  The overwhelmingly Catholic Latino voting bloc didn't like what they saw, and they really didn't like the Democrats' other stances on issues that flat-out contradicted Catholic doctrine.

Second, they started listening to the second coming of the original Great Communicator.  Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump had more than a few differences, but one thing they both could do is speak.  Mr. Trump was able to pack 20,000 people into an assortment of venues and have more standing outside just to be close.  And the more venues he packed, the more black and Latino voters saw other black and Latino voters who supported him -- and it became more, let's say, "acceptable" to vote for him and even to be quoted as doing so.

Sound familiar?  Of course it does.  A Republican candidate was able to peel voters away from a group that had previously voted as a Democrat bloc, by appealing to the issues of their actual daily lives, whether from foreign competitors undercutting US automakers and steel mills to cost jobs here, or assaults on women's sports, or, well, assaults from gang members who walked across unguarded borders.

After the 1980 election, the voter calculus flipped so far that the Democrats couldn't win the White House for 12 years.  The BCEC voter took a long time to be willing to consider voting for a Democrat again, and even then it took a far less radical candidate from a southern state, whose policies would be rejected by the current party.

It remains to be seen the extent to which the black and Latino voter who gave Trump a chance in November will, at the very least, allow themselves to consider Republicans in future elections.  They have broken free of the shackles put on them by their union bosses, their bought-and-paid-for pastors, their self-appointed "leaders." 

How free from those shackles they will be going forward remains to be seen.

But one way or the other, Trump found his BCECs for 2024, and the landscape may never be the same.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

To My Singaporean Friends

Just a quick note today ...

I am so blessed to have noticed a huge surge in readership in Singapore this week.  There has always been a fairly robust set of readers in Singapore, but it has really ballooned this past week.

If for no other reason than to track the reach and appeal of the column, and to be sure that the posts are of interest to such a large community outside the USA, I encourage you, if you are in Singapore, the Netherlands, or any of the other nations overseas where there is a large readership for the column, please do reach out (contact below and at the side).  Let me know what interests you about previous pieces.

As we all know, there is no limit to the range of topics covered here, so please feel free to reach out. I'd really like to know how you came across the column, and whether you are part of an expatriate community, or native to the country.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Maybe Tips Aren't the Priority

I am, of course, a Trump supporter, and so theoretically I support most of what he advocates, and most of what he proposes as solutions to the problems we all agree are the pressing issues of the day.

And I do, even though this column is about my disagreement with the priority of some of the solutions being proposed.

So let us not rush to condemn me for what I am to say, or worse, misinterpret.

I don't see the "No Tax on Tips" campaign promise as being a hill to die on, if it comes to hills and the dying thereupon.

President Trump posited three significant reliefs from taxation when he was Candidate Trump, and we all remember them:

• Removing the Federal tax on tip income
• Removing the Federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits
• Removing the tax on overtime wages
  

Now, I need you to think of the first and third bullets as different from the second.  Whatever one thinks of tips from the perspective of the waiter or caddie or nail technician, the fact remains that their tips are indeed earned income. That is enshrined in the law in the sense that tipped employees are not obligated to be paid minimum wage, the idea being that their primary income is, in fact, their tips.

Whatever argument there may be for not taxing tips, even that argument doesn't apply to taxing overtime.  Overtime labor is labor; it is earned income, and while perhaps there could be a stretchy defense for not taxing the uplift -- i.e., taxing only the "time" part of "time-and-a-half" -- it is earned, and should be subject to taxation.

[I'll remind you -- and myself -- that there really are required functions of government, and therefore the country does indeed need to raise money through taxation to pay for them.  As long as there is an income tax, the points above are valid.]

When it comes to Social Security retirement, however, the above has no bearing.  Although we understand that Social Security is not really the government taking 7% of our income and eventually giving it back to us if we live long enough to retire, conceptually it is quite similar and OK to think of it that way for our purposes.

That money was earned by workers.  It was taken as a tax on earned income at the time of employment and used by the government for whatever it felt like.  It is not invested; not put into an interest-bearing instrument, as we would do ourselves.  Nothing was done to use the money seized from us to dedicate it to our retirement individually, let alone for it to grow.

It is already treated differently from tips and overtime, in that federal tax on Social Security retirement benefits is not done on 100% of the benefit; it is taxed at a percentage of the total amount depending on your other income -- which in itself is inappropriate, given that we're simply given back money taken from us years back and poorly invested on our behalf.

I'm not actually arguing against ceasing taxation on tips or overtime. I'm simply pointing out priorities based on the nature of the earning.

And I strongly advise President Trump, the politics notwithstanding (and understood), to prioritize removing the tax on Social Security retirement first, with the other two pledges kept on an "if possible" basis.

 Arguments welcome.

Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton.  Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.