Fun with the Press

The president-elect, Donald Trump, held a news conference this week for a few announcements, including a Veterans' Affairs secretary nominee, and for an opportunity for the press to ask him some questions.

That sure was a fun time, and I think more fun was had by Mr. Trump than by almost anyone else there.  Certainly he had a better time than the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, whose network had already asked a question and then wanted the president-elect to answer another.

Now, Mr. Trump could have declined to allow him a second question solely on the merits of the fact that 400 other reporters were there wanting to ask a question, and that CNN had no innate right to ask any more than one question, given that lots of reporters were not going to get to ask one.

But that, of course, was not the reason.  Mr. Trump was not happy with the fact that CNN had picked up a story from the fake-news outlet "Buzzfeed" relating to some type of information that Russia had that was compromising to Mr. Trump, and that theoretically could be used as blackmail to get some type of leverage on the incoming president.

Given that the story had been out there in the undercurrent of the news media for several months, the fact that it had never been published until now is testimony to the fact that even the media outlets that detest Mr. Trump, such as the New York Times, refused to publish it even in the middle of a presidential campaign.  That was simply because their microscopic, but not totally eliminated journalistic moral compasses recognized that there was not a shred of corroborating material.

Even the New York Times walked quickly away from that non-story, but CNN decided to ensure that it was out there, regardless.  They had a right; it's a free country with a free press.  And Donald Trump also has the right to decide whom he is going to take questions from, and after allowing them one already, it was certainly not going to be CNN.

The CNN reporter would not shut up, and rudely kept saying that he wanted (to ask) another question.  Trump recognized a different reporter to ask, but the CNN guy kept at it, until Trump finally referred to CNN itself as "fake news" and moved on.  We all saw it, and it was fun for at least some of us to see the press treated in accordance with the level of journalistic integrity each outlet may or may not have.

Aside ... I was in New York on business some time in the late 1970s when Ed Koch was the mayor of New York City.  Koch was a pretty straightforward, all-business, no-nonsense guy.  This one day he was doing a news conference and some reporter asked him about a story that had come out about something Koch would probably not be pleased with.  Koch asked him what his source was, to which the reporter answered "The Village Voice."  Koch sneered "That's your source???", and then immediately moved on to another question without answering.  I loved it. 

The press is granted Constitutional protection beyond that given to almost any other institution in the USA.  It will never be withdrawn, but it is a treasure that must be appropriately handled.  If the media choose to run with under-validated stories, well, they will be allowed to do so the next day and the next, without fear of government intervention.

But it doesn't mean that the president will be under any obligation to take their questions.  And the more that formerly reliable outlets such as CNN continue to act with fractured ethics, the more scenes such as Wednesday we will be treated to.

That's OK.  I had fun, and expect more amusement in the coming years.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Struggling with "Hate Crimes"

As much as I would be happy to see the four perpetrators of the kidnapping and beating of the mentally-challenged young man in Chicago sent up the river for 40-50 years or so, there is an aspect of the case that is troubling to me, and I am trying hard to be consistent.

This is the fact that their sentences, assuming conviction, will be affected by the designation of what they have done as a "hate crime."  That it was a hate crime is pretty evident; when you kidnap someone of another race and scream epithets against his race, while streaming their actions live on Facebook, it is fairly clear that racial animus was part of what happened.

The question, of course, is that "hate", however defined, for a specific group -- whites, blacks, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Martians, Indians of both kinds -- is singled out in the law, for reasons that don't make sense when you start to dig a bit deeper.

Hundreds and hundreds of black men are killed on the streets of Chicago annually, these recent years of the Obama Administration.  These involve gangs, they involve drugs, and some homicides involve neither.  Is it not "hate" that drives a gang member to kill a member of a rival gang?  Is it not "hate" that is involved in the murder by a drug dealer of a rival drug dealer?

Do you follow where I'm going?  In the drug dealer case, one person got shafted by another and kills him or her.  But in the gang case, it may very well be that the dead gang member was killed by virtue of membership in the wrong gang -- the wrong "group."  How is it any different when the group for which a person is killed or attacked is a street gang, vs. the group being their religious denomination?

That's the slippery slope that hate-crimes laws take us down, and I don't really like that slope.  My point is simply that the reason that a murder is committed (or a kidnapping, in the case cited above) should not be a sentencing factor, and certainly not be to the point of adding an additional crime beyond what the actual action was.  Reason may be a prosecutor's tool in persuading a jury that motive was present to establish premeditation, but it doesn't make the wound bigger.

I am most uncomfortable with the fact that we are distinguishing what kind of "hate" we decide to punish differently.  A gang member murdering a person from a different gang because he hates the rival gang is somehow different from a group of people kidnapping and assaulting a person because he is of a different race?

Of course I'm uncomfortable.  By virtue of distinguishing what flavor of "hate" is punishable and what flavor is just fine, we have, whether intended or not, legislated thoughts that are nothing more than thoughts, and that is frightening and no place for an American government to stray.

No, we have not said in our laws that we may not hold bigoted views.  But we have distinguished that, somehow, crimes committed by people who hold those views are somehow more serious and require heavier punishment than identical crimes committed by identical people who hate their victim just because they hate their victim, or because the victim happens to belong to a group not blessed by hate-crimes laws.

I hope that the four assailants of the victim in the Chicago incident get most of the rest of their lives to rot in prison and never have the opportunity to hurt anyone again.  But I hope that sentence is assessed for the miserable crime they committed, and not for their views on white people that appeared to motivate their attacks.

We are free to think as we wish in this country.  Laws need to respect that, regardless of the thoughts.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

But the Key Was in the Ignition, Mr. Podesta

When I go to the store, I park my car, lock it and walk away.  Back when I had a car with a "key" as opposed to keyless ignition, the process was to park the car, turn it off, take out the key and lock it.  We lived in northern Virginia, but no matter where we lived; no matter where I traveled to on business and rented cars, I did the same thing.  I always lock the car.

So do you.

What would not occur to me would be to park the car, leave the key in the ignition and go in to work, or the store, or whatever, and certainly not leave the car running with the key right there.  Gee, let's ask, why would we not do that?

Because there are such things as "car thieves" out there for one, that's why.  But that's not it entirely, either.  Admit it, if you walked by an empty car with the engine running and the key right there -- and you know you have before -- you would have at least a fleeting thought that the car was right there for the taking.  And I don't care whether you thought it was there for you to do the taking; you would certainly think it was set up for a GTA, as they say in the law-enforcement biz.

Ron White, famous as a member of the Blue Collar Comedy group and a very funny guy, had a tag line that applies perfectly here -- "You can't fix stupid."  He meant exactly that, and if you think about it, he's right.  By the time you are old enough to make a decision to leave a car running and empty of people, you're old enough such that you're not going to get any smarter.

Ron White would walk by an empty car with its engine running and mutter "You just can't fix stupid" to anyone who would listen, although he probably wouldn't take the car.  OK, he might move it a few rows over to teach a lesson, but probably not (because you can't fix stupid).  And we all would think that the person who left the car was stupid, indeed.  That's important, and part of the point here -- we would think the person was so stupid that whatever happened as a result of leaving the running car unattended was a just outcome for stupidity.

Why do I care?

Because John Podesta, who was the chairman of Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign, left his car running with the key in the ignition and walked away.

OK, he didn't exactly leave his car running, not exactly.

But he did something that is a perfect analogue.  Two things, actually.  He set up his email account with the password "password", and he answered a phishing email by clicking on the link that ultimately facilitated his emails being blasted all over WikiLeaks.  This embarrassed the Democrats, day after day, as we came to understand how they had rigged the entire primary campaign so that Hillary Clinton would end up as the nominee.

We also discovered that there were racists and anti-Semites and, apparently, virulent anti-Catholics in the Democratic National Committee.  We also discovered that at the same time Hillary was calling half the country "racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic" and the rest, the DNC in general did not think a whole lot of a goodly part of America themselves.

The Democrats, and Hillary in particular, lost whatever moral high ground they ever might have had when all that came out.  Did it influence the election?  It's hard to say either way; no one is actually coming forward to say that they changed their votes because of the exposure of the contents of those emails, but then Hillary never had her poll numbers go over about 48% anyway.

But here's the thing.  Hillary and Hollywood and the press and the organized left (but I repeat myself) can scream all they want to about the exposure of the truth costing them the 2016 election.  But we out here in the USA that voted in the majority for Donald Trump (i.e., leaving out five counties in California that were her whole margin, plus some), don't look at it that way.

Nope.  We look at what happened as a moron being in charge of the Hillary campaign, so stupid that he not only bit on a phishing email but had a default password, even though his email account was a pathway to incredibly expository and condemning communications among the Democrats.

John Podesta left his car running, key in the ignition, and his car got stolen.  We in the USA just shake our heads and have zero sympathy for him, or for the outcome his stupidity wrought.

You can't fix stupid.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

OMG, Now I Have to Defend MMA?

Five hundred and sixty-eight columns, and I have managed to avoid a single word about mixed martial arts and anything to do with MMA and its apparently various organizations.  But now I feel obliged to weigh in.

Now, as a kid I remember watching professional wrestling, which was not really "wrestling" in the sense that amateurs in high school and college wrestle.  It was more of a show, with the lead players being people like Buddy Rogers, Bruno Sammartino, Arnold Skaaland, Bearcat Wright, and various brothers named Lewin, Bastien and, well, you get the idea.  I'm old and I watched some crazy stuff as a kid.

Of course, that was what was on TV; back when you had three or four channels.

I think that sort of thing has been completely subsumed by MMA fighting, which still seems to be a bit, um, not necessarily unstaged, but people do get hurt, and there are enough people who watch it to where it will be around for a while.

I do not watch it.  Ever.  I don't hate it, but I don't exactly know how much of what I watch is real and what isn't, and I'm not a real fan of tattoos on women (lots of women in MMA), so it doesn't compare to regular competitive sports like baseball and whatever passed for the NFL playoffs this past weekend.

But I still have to defend it, at least a little.  Because the term "mixed martial arts" is a reflection of the fact that it (assumedly; remember, I never have watched it) is derived from actual martial arts, like karate, jiu-jitsu, t'ai chi and that sort of thing.

I never did any of that, either, but I certainly have seen it practiced.  I can assure you that by most people's definition of what those people who do those arts are doing, it is indeed "art."  Those with actual talent at performing karate and the like are really fascinating to watch; the fact that they are a sort of self-defense form does not detract from the fact that people would (and do) spend money to watch exhibitions by black-belt types that are not really fights.  It's art, all right.

That seemed to be lost on, of all people, Meryl Streep, the actress who foolishly ruined the celebration of her lifetime of achievement in the theater and in film at the Golden Globes Sunday night.  Instead of sitting appreciatively like the awardees at the Kennedy Center Honors, who don't speak, or simply saying a humble "thank you" (by the way, I didn't watch this either; I'm not a fan of theater people giving awards to other theater people in a big love-in), Miss Streep decided to make this a political event.

After working up a self-righteous storm about Donald Trump, who has not even been president yet, but has already boosted the job opportunities in this country of a large number of union auto workers, Miss Streep apparently imagined that Mr. Trump wanted zero immigration and the deportation of all people not born here.  Then she acted on views that Trump does not, in fact, hold, but facts never get in the way of the left.

“... So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners,” she said, “and if we kick them all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.”

Of course, amidst all the howls from the MMA types, and their then being drowned out by the adulation from the Hillary types who were enraptured, and for whom Miss Streep, like Mrs. Clinton, can do no wrong, I reacted a bit differently.

How pompous, I thought, of Meryl Streep to decide what is and what is not "art".  She is, after all, an actress, not a painter, not a musician, not a sculptor.  She is not a dancer, and she is not a lot of other things that are "art", however defined.  And she is certainly not a practitioner of martial arts.

I thought of that the next morning as I heard what she had said.  I don't really care whether MMA is or is not an "art", but I really care when people take it upon themselves to decide what an art actually is, especially when they are so immodest as to decide at the moment they are being honored for what they do in one art, that another one does not deserve her regard.

This is one time we can actually ask, "Who the heck does Meryl Streep think she is?" and be morally justified.

You see, hypocrisy is rampant in Hollywood, so rampant that no one even seems to notice that the same people who clamor for "women's rights" and the end of the "over-sexualization of women" showed up for the Golden Globes specifically dressed in as little as possible, designed to expose as much of themselves as possible.  They pose in those outfits before going into the venue, for God's sake.

Dear Lord, Miss Streep, you will never get it.  You will never understand why we, in the part of America you only fly over between LA and New York, don't agree with your assessment of what the country needs.

You will never understand that no one asked to "kick all the foreigners out of Hollywood", not ever, not by anyone and certainly not by Donald Trump.  If you do not even distinguish between legal immigrants and illegal aliens, then you don't understand why we didn't vote for your candidate.

You will never understand that if you that grossly misrepresent what someone says, and then use your incorrect statement of what the person says to make a point, well, we see past that.  We recognize that if you have to use a strawman, you have already lost the argument.

You will never understand that you lost.  I guess "understanding" is an art, also.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Everyone Has a Story

I am 65 years old.  There's no way around that fact, and I'm happy to own it, along with the little aches and pains that go along with it.  But there are some really neat things that also go along with that, and those of you reading this who are far from being 65, well, this may be a happier thought for you.

Our home is in one of those "communities" in the Carolinas that practically cover the entire contiguous shore-adjacent area from southern North Carolina all the way down to coastal Georgia.  They are typically wrapped around a golf course, meaning that even those which are not specifically set aside for people 55 and over are predominantly populated by people whose work life is behind them.

I am not at all retired, but my job allows me to work wherever I feel, and we are where we want to be.  I can work full time and still get out to the course ("courses" actually, my community has four of them) when I feel like it.  We're renting while our house is being built, and insisted on renting inside the community so that we could become part of it -- now.

I also should add that although there are about 3,000 people living here, my best girl and I knew exactly none of them.  Zero.  We moved into a community as total strangers; the closest we came to knowing anyone was a gentleman who had gone through the same fraternity as I at MIT, but who had graduated several years before I joined, and whom I had never met.

You cannot avoid meeting people, and we were actually not trying to avoid them but, rather, to meet them gradually; we were told that you can get overwhelmed quickly.  And that is the interesting discovery that this column is about.

In the short few months we have been here, we have had several times where we had dinner, or a drink, with another couple here and there who lived here, and whom we had only met for a moment some time earlier.  The first time that happened, it was curious -- while we had scheduled maybe a couple hours, we found ourselves still talking four hours later, and feeling like we had not scratched the surface.

That kept happening with couple after couple, no matter how long they had lived here or where they had moved here from.  And it became patently obvious that people our age have stories, and perhaps because we are more receptive, those stories are really, really interesting.  I mean, I will admit that I have had a particularly curious life story (600 essays on line probably attest to that), so it's fun to know that no matter whom we break bread with, I could sit there for hours, silently sipping a Merlot, and be utterly enraptured by the life story of someone I had mostly never met.

We will not get to meet everyone here, and obviously have barely gotten started with the "two-on-two get-togethers" for the people we have crossed paths with.  But something we never thought would be a part of our lives here to look forward to, is now an excitement for us.

This is a remarkable discovery, and I wanted to share it with people younger, or much younger, than we are.  Perhaps we are simply more intrigued than most by the life stories of other people who have lived much of their career already.  But I don't think that's it.  I think that a decent level of maturity teaches us the lesson that we learn -- we build "cubbyholes in our mind" -- from what others have done and the outcomes of their actions, as many as we build from our own stories.

I've shaken hands with a president; I've knocked Lucille Ball over; I've sung at packed baseball stadiums, one time as four people (yep) and started four companies. I've invested and lost everything I own.  I've been declared "black" by one state.  I have four world championships and a hole-in-one.  And I have mentioned none of those things to our new friends, because your story is more interesting to me.

We're going to enjoy this.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

The Other Side of the Tweet

This week it has become even more clear that the president-elect, Donald Trump, is far from abandoning his Twitter fingers.

Having discovered that he can bypass the mainstream leftist media, he has determined that his go-to model for communicating with the public is going to be on this immensely personal medium.  And why not?

He gets his purest thoughts right in front of the public without the filter of commentary from the leftists in the media.  Oh, they'll comment all right, but they have to compete with the new president himself.  Trump's tweets are an accurate reflection of his mindset on a specific issue at a specific time, in the specific words of the president-elect.

Right now, we like it, at least outside New York and five counties in California.  We like it because it is novel, no previous president has communicated in that way.  Franklin Roosevelt started with his Fireside Chats in the early days of radio's popularity, and may be thought to be the primordial source, but Trump's tweets are direct, personal and very, very immediate -- and if you miss them, they're out there on Al Gore's Amazing Internet whenever you like.

They are also "very Trump" in that the language is the stream-of-thought communication model that reflects how he does communicate.  It is not the prepared-speech language, which he historically (in the campaign) has used successfully, even when subject to the ad libs that were equally "very Trump."

As I write this, there are four such tweets in the last seven hours alone, from a three-tweet series (140 characters is not a lot) about Obamacare, to something about the Russian hacking, to slamming Toyota for planning to build cars in Mexico and then import them here.  Bang, bang, bang, the actual from-the-heart view of the president-elect is right there for all to see.

I really like that aspect of it, for all the reasons cited.  But there is another side of it.

Donald Trump has set a precedent of responding to a certain set of impeti with a tweet.  This happens, then a tweet.  And he keeps doing it because we like it and it is effective, and because the bypassing of the leftist media ensures that we know what he is thinking, or what his process is, or where his first negotiating posture is.

But the precedent is a fragile one.  President Trump cannot reply to everything with a tweet; there are a lot of things meriting a response and there's only so much time in a day, even for the tireless president-elect.  So when does he not tweet?  And what does it mean when he declines to tweet, or simply is too busy?  What are we to infer from that, if he has been tweeting in so many other cases?

This is not the most important thing for him to worry about, certainly.  But he has pretty much set the bar already.  The press and, for that matter, the people, will start to connect the dots, even if the dots aren't really connected.

"Gee, four imbeciles in Chicago kidnapped and beat up a white special-needs kid while yelling racially-rotten things and anti-Trump slogans at the poor kid.  How come Trump didn't tweet about that?"

And, if he hasn't gone ahead and tweeted about it since I wrote this, they would be right; that's a legitimate question right now.

I don't know the proper approach, but somehow the president-elect needs to figure out how to make his Twitter pattern work, without causing a firestorm when he simply does not choose to send out a tweet about something.  That is going to take a bit of thought, and it would be a pretty good idea if that pattern were either intentionally all over the place (i.e., a pattern of "no pattern"), or some proactive thought went into when to tweet and when not to.

As a musician and singer for decades, I am well aware of the aphorism that there is as much music in the rests as there is in the notes themselves.  The analogy is sound here -- Trump will say as much when he does not tweet as when he does, and I hope he will have his team consistently assessing how it looks and whether Trump's goals for communication are being met.

This, friends, will be a fun presidency.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Does Nancy Believe What She's Saying?

I was just listening to the minority leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, one of the "clowns" among the Democrat congressional leadership, as characterized by Donald Trump in a tweet yesterday.

As the Republican leadership was busy getting a cure for Obamacare together, Mrs. Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and a few unrecognizable other Democrat leaders gathered to make a series of statements about Obamacare.  It was remarkable for the series of strawmen (and straw-women?) posed, stating things that Republicans never said, things that certainly were not true, and then saying why this was going to be a problem.

They put together their "Make America Sick Again" line, which each of the speakers made sure they put into their statements, as they were making idiotic statements suggesting that Obamacare had done anything good that was going away.

Schumer even said -- and this is hysterical -- that "if the Republicans think they can keep the good parts of Obamacare and get rid of the rest, and it will still work, they're sadly mistaken."  Which means that Schumer thinks that there is a lot of garbage in Obamacare, and if it weren't there, the law would collapse, right?  That's his statement.  He doesn't get that as being precisely what's wrong with the law in the first place.

But let's stick with Mrs. Pelosi, she of the "You have to pass it to know what's in it" line back when the bill was passed with exactly zero consultation with Republicans and zero Republican votes, stuffed under "budget reconciliation" to avoid opposition.

Mrs. Pelosi stated three things that Obamacare was supposed to do, and then tried to state, against all facts, that it had succeeded at them:

- Lower costs of health care.  OK, it didn't; health costs are still rising, and insurance costs, especially for those who actually had to buy Obamacare, have skyrocketed.  I wrote of my own situation, where our private health insurance options (I do not have an employer) shrank in 2015 to exactly three, meaning that I was luckier than the 35% of USA counties with only one insurance company providing policies.  My monthly insurance went from $550 in 2014 to $1,092 in 2015 with no change in health.  But at least I got pediatric dentistry covered under my new policy for my non-existent dependent children (oh yes, read the link).

- Improved service.  I don't know if she meant "better actual health care", or "better coverage", or "better interaction with insurance companies" or "better results for the Cubs."  The Cubs did better.  The coverage, not so much, given that at the same time Obamacare removed our option for a high-deductible, low-cost policy (as a healthy couple in our sixties, that was our choice), it quickly raised deductibles on existing policies.  See the previous paragraph; not only did insurance costs go up but so did the out-of-pocket costs to make up for the high deductibles.

- Increase access.  This is the sad joke.  "Ohhhh, 25 million people have health care they wouldn't have had, you can't take that away, you nasty Republicans!"  But access has not changed.  First, a little more than half of the 25 million got their policies through the Medicaid expansion, not from the Obamacare exchanges.  Second, those without insurance always had access; hospitals could not turn them away.

What they got was actually a gunpoint mandate that they buy a policy or be fined.  It's pretty much like looking at prison as a source of three meals a day, and claiming that it's a good way to get fed properly.  Gee, they increased access to health insurance all right, but it was under the notion that you will buy access or we will fine you. And then claiming that because of the threat, we're better off.  Nanny state, right?

Nancy Pelosi can't possibly actually believe that any of the things she is saying are true, let alone that they are good for the country.  Of course, she has a solid leftist constituency in her district in very leftist San Francisco, and commutes to Washington, meaning that she never sees a human being from the majority of voters in the 49 states and all but five counties in California which combined to elect Donald Trump as the next president.

If she believes it -- if Schumer and the rest of the "clowns" believe it -- I certainly don't want what they are smoking.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Seats at the Table

Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, was thoughtful enough to insist that the Democrats "deserved a seat at the table" of the incoming Trump Administration in setting policy for the USA.

This is the same Donna Brazile who helped fix the Democrat presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton while a contributor to CNN, by feeding her questions that were to be asked at debates, questions that were not provided to Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley or Jim Webb, who also happened to be candidates from the Democrat side of the primaries.

That, of course, got her canned as a contributor to CNN, although it's a bit hard to tell if that happened because of her actions or, well, because CNN doesn't get watched as much anymore, possibly because their "contributors" cheat on behalf of their favored candidates.

I have to tell you, I don't think the Democrats "deserve" anything, on the merits.  They lost all manner of elections in November, up and down from the state legislatures to the House and Senate, to governorships and the presidency.  They were rejected, in no small part, because of who actually had seats at the table.

There was Harry Reid, their leader in the Senate, who lied in the protected well of the Senate about Mitt Romney's taxes and then admitted later both that he had lied, and that he lied for political purposes.  There was Al Sharpton, who dined regularly at the White House, although his taxes get paid "erratically", to be kind, and "eventually", to be less kind.  The word Americans would use would be "feloniously", but he had "a seat at the table."  Sure the party of the guy that invited him deserves "a seat."

You know how you get a seat at the table?  You win elections, which is something that has not been an area of success for the Democrats much since 2008.  You forfeit that seat when you act like the Democrats did in 2009, ramming Obamacare down the throats of the USA through a parliamentary fudge move without a shred of Republican support, not a single vote.

Did not the Republicans "deserve a seat at the table" in 2009?  Apparently they did not, as they were not reached out to by the Obamists to comment or consult on U.S. policy.  But Donna Brazile feels that works one way for them and another way for the Democrats.  Why it should be different, she does not say.  Do as I say, not as I do.

The 2016 election, more than any in decades, was a choice of approach for the voting public.  Very important point: The person that Donald Trump is -- the billionaire businessman and celebrity of decades standing -- did not get elected because he was famous, rich and had a TV show.  The person that got elected president was elected because he was someone who tapped into all the frustration about Congress and the White House having not done what the nation wanted; who said he would "drain the swamp", protect our veterans, cut taxes, get jobs going hard from private business.

That person just happened to be Donald Trump.

Do you understand the point?  This was an election of approaches, of policy, and not, as it may have appeared given the celebrity of the victor, an election of personality.  It is precisely that which means the Democrats, who caused the problems in the first place, do not "deserve" a seat at the table of leadership.

We didn't just select Donald Trump the man; we selected an approach that says to "do things differently from the way that have been being done."  That is utterly impossible for Democrats to do.  They need to play the loyal opposition and try to work with the incoming administration to represent their views, but they were "selected out" by the voters.

The new administration should be doing what it was elected to do.  The table is fully seated.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Guest Column: The Future of Nuclear Power

I have wanted to comment about how the removal of shackles on nuclear power under the incoming Trump Administration would have even more of a positive effect in energy prices, adding to more drilling of natural gas and oil, and truly push the USA toward energy independence -- and the political benefits of that.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy and regulation is beyond my ken, so I asked Ed Fenstermacher, who has written a few guest columns before, who is a friend and classmate of mine from the M.I.T. Class of 1973, about 45 years back, to write this column.  Ed is a former Air Force officer, but more importantly nuclear energy is his business, as he is currently a nuclear engineering consultant (and a husband, and proud father of three.)  Ed can be reached at efenster@alum.mit.edu.

                                                              _ _ _

 

There are several main factors that will determine the viability of nuclear power in the near future, the same factors that affect all its competitors for generating electricity: coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, solar and other “renewable” power sources.  These are the cost of generating power, the availability of the energy source, the environmental impact including waste disposal, and safety.  All of these are also shaped by government regulatory conditions, both at the national level and local level.  All of these fold back into the cost.

As far as availability is concerned, nuclear fuel is widely available.  We are reaching the point where it can be economically extracted from seawater, making it effectively a renewable resource, like hydroelectric power, wind and solar.  Unlike hydroelectric, it is widely available (nearly all possible hydroelectric sources in the US are already in use.)  Unlike solar, it is available at all times of the day; and unlike wind, it is available in all weather conditions.   Nuclear fuel is far more comparable in availability to fossil fuels, such as coal (about 400 years’ worth at present consumption levels).  Fracking has greatly increased the availability and decreased the price of both oil and natural gas, and consequently decreased the price of these fuels as well.

Regulation of nuclear power is done at the federal level for safety and environmental reasons.  Nuclear plants need to comply with a plethora of Federal Regulations issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the EPA, and others.  Fortunately, the NRC and Congress realized some time ago that their regulations had to be more rationally applied, or they would not have an industry to regulate.  Thus, NRC regulations now make it easier to build a nuclear plant than it was 40 years ago.   

At that time you had to get a Construction Permit to build a plant, and a separate Operating Permit to run it.  If rules changed in the years it took to build the plant, though, well, tough!  You would then either have to do costly modifications after the plant was built, or never get to operate it at all.   

This is what happened to the Shoreham Plant on Long Island, which operated at low power just long enough to test and to ensure that the equipment was radioactive, and then shut down before producing a megawatt hour of commercial electricity.  The licensing process is now a single step:  if a utility gets a permit to build the plant, and builds it as planned (meeting all of the quality standards needed), it will be allowed to operate it.

At the state and local level, the regulation is largely economic, and there are rules which require that any new facility be used and usable in order to be included in the rate base.  Unlike Apple, which can use the profits from the iPhone 6 to finance development of the iPhone 7, a public utility has the profit from Nuclear Plant 2 regulated to keep its profits from being excessive, and can’t use them to finance Nuclear Plant 3.  

These rules nominally apply equally to all forms of power, but end up having an impact proportional to how long it takes to build a plant, because interest is accruing during that period that can only be paid off after the plant is operational.  Nuclear power plants take about six years to build under good conditions, while gas-fired plants take only about a year.  Thus, the used and usable provisions hurt nuclear more than other types.

Another type of regulation requires utilities to buy back excessive solar power from rooftop residential generators.  Similarly, they may have wind generation facilities that generate power unsteadily.  Unfortunately, this power may be available when it is not needed.  If the remaining power is nuclear, the excess power is wasted, because nuclear plants cannot change their power quickly.   If that power is gas generated, the plant generation can be easily adjusted to accommodate these changes. 

Despite the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, any new plants in the United States will be safe.  The Chernobyl design would never have been licensed here, while the Fukushima plant had not had upgrades that are required in the USA.  The designs of new nuclear plants being built now have passive cooling systems that avoid meltdowns under any conditions, short of a nuclear war. With Fukushima, there were no radiation-related deaths or injuries, but considerable and costly environmental damage.  This will not happen with the new designs, because the nuclear industry has an unequaled record of learning from its own safety issues.

Another environmental issue, of course, is disposal of nuclear waste.  The Obama Administration and Harry Reid colluded to kill the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository, with Obama appointing Gregory Jaczko, formerly of Reid’s staff, to chair the NRC.  Jaszko was eventually replaced, after the NRC’s Inspector General found he had been withholding information from the other commissioners, in order to stop Yucca Mountain from being licensed.   

This led all the other commissioners, including the Democrats, to complain about him to Congress.  He was replaced, but that damage had been done.  This is one thing the Trump Administration could, and needs to, reverse.  Objectively, the repository should have been licensed.  Bringing it back would improve the outlook for nuclear power.

What doesn’t help, however, is that the nuclear supply chain has been shut down for decades.  Just as we can no longer build a Saturn V rocket, we have lost the capability to make a lot of the parts required for plants, and we have to tool up to do that.  The parts need to be of the highest quality.  This has become an issue particularly in recent weeks with supply problems with Toshiba’s Westinghouse subsidiary -- causing a precipitous drop in Toshiba's valuation -- and with the discovery of quality problems being covered up by the French nuclear supplier Areva.  These supply line issues raise the possibility that schedules cannot be met, costs will increase, and plants may be abandoned partially completed.

The net result of all of these factors is that right now, the short-term costs of natural gas make new nuclear plants, and even some existing plants, non-competitive.  I would love to see people start thinking about the long-term impacts of their decisions, but the decisions of utilities are driven by the interests of their stockholders and by the Public Utility Commissions that regulate their prices.   

The chances that either group will have a planning horizon of several decades or more is about the same as of the AARP worrying about the viability of Social Security several decades hence.  As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I don’t see a lot of new nuclear construction in the near future, even if Trump adopts policies more friendly to it -- Ed Fenstermacher.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

The Mikado Strikes Again

Last spring, I did a piece regarding the proposed (and, since, executed) production of Gilbert and Sullivan's classic operetta "The Mikado" by the Lamplighters, a repertory theater company in San Francisco.

As you will recall (read the link if you have not yet, please), a local protest by the Bay Area community of Asians in theater -- after having been asked for their input in good faith -- led to the expected result.  The professional protestors insisted that all the roles go to ethnic Asians, so the Lamplighters simply re-staged their proposed production to an Italian setting, cheating some number of Asian-American actors out of professional roles.

The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players (NYGASP) is a similar company that performs the Savoy operas in New York and on the road as well, but far more frequently during the year.  Since "The Mikado" is one of the classic three operettas of the series, they couldn't drop it from their repertoire, nor could they do anything as drastic as changing the setting to Italy.

Their attempt at a solution included a casting one -- trying to get more Asian-American actors to audition for the company, which was, I have heard, the most difficult of all aspects to do.  This, among other things, was documented in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine, linked here.

This is the quote from the piece that I found most curious:

"After an additional round of auditions, focussed [sic] on “diverse” casting, Viet Vo, a lapsed business major, was hired into the ensemble, and three Asian-American actors were given key roles. A recent study found that, in the 2014-15 theatre season, only four per cent of Broadway and off-Broadway roles were filled by actors of Asian descent. After N.Y.G.A.S.P.’s recent round of hirings, ten per cent of the company was made up of Asian-Americans."

If ethnically appropriate casting matters, it matters.  If it doesn't matter, then it doesn't.

So apparently it does, because the people at NYGASP decided to do something, in the form of engaging a Chinese-American assistant director (curiously, the article mentioned him at least a dozen times without once mentioning the name of the actual director) and three "Asian-Americans" in key roles.

We don't know their names (I couldn't find a link), so I'm not sure if any of the three is actually an ethnic Japanese, but the two names I did see were the assistant director and the "lapsed business major."  One of them is ethnic Chinese, and the other Vietnamese, neither of which, at my last analysis, equated to being any more suitable to lend their talents to make the production more Japanese than I am able to.

I see a lot of things in black and white, of course, but there are shades of gray for me -- when shades of gray are appropriate.  This is not one.

First, how are the protestors supposed to be satisfied with an assistant director and three or four actors in the production being "Asian"?  Is this about authenticity, or is this about winning some kind of battle?  Either the whole company needs to be ethnically authentic or the protestors should not be satisfied.  If the complaint is about authenticity, and it had better be, then nothing short of a full cast of racially suitable actors should be OK.

Second, I don't know how to say this any better, but all Asians are not the same.  Chinese culture is not the same as Japanese culture.  Koreans are not Vietnamese.  Some groups hate each other with a white-hot passion that ... you get the idea. There are obviously language differences, but the cultures are unique, and the racial distinctions are certainly noticeable across the continent.

So how exactly does it satisfy anyone's checklist to say that a Vietnamese-American actor can play a Japanese character, even when the character is only "sort of" Japanese (the characters are meant to represent and satirize Englishmen, in the attributes Gilbert lampooned in "The Mikado", by using a Japanese setting and what I can only call "faux Japanese" characters).

In other words, if (A) you object to "Mikado" because of its portrayal of Japan and Japanese people; and (B) you believe, somehow, that your objection can be satisfied by casting racially suitable people, then how the heck can it possibly satisfy you to have a handful of ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese actors -- not even half the company -- enough to withdraw your protest?

Here's the thing.  Any self-respecting Japanese person, even a Japanese-American, can tell a Japanese from a Vietnamese.  I mean, I can, and I'm a European-American.  My wife is Italian all the way.  Suppose that someone made a movie of Sylvester Stallone's life and cast a blond, obviously non-Italian actor like, say, Owen Wilson, dyeing his hair and making his face up a bit more olive.  Let's face it, Stallone is stereotypically Italian-looking.

Would my wife scream about the casting?  I don't know, maybe, but plenty of other Italians sure would, and some of them live in New Jersey and you don't want to cross them.  Now, I don't know if Asian-Americans of any ethnic background would readily see the difference, but plenty of people would be plenty unhappy.

My point in all this is that parsing ethnicities is a slippery, slippery slope.  I feel that protesters in this case, if somehow they decide that NYGASP's casting solution is acceptable, are totally hypocritical, even if I am somehow rationalizing what the Asian theater people in San Francisco did in insisting on a full casting of Asian-Americans (hint: I'm not; I didn't say they were right, just that they were consistent).

Now -- the facts of this case are (and I checked) that before the production was announced, NYGASP proactively took many steps to ensure that the Asian community in (at least) New York would feel like it had been reached out to.  Props to NYGASP for working very hard at this after the lesson from San Francisco!  Certainly the show did not get the protests before opening night that forced the Lamplighters on the other coast to Italianize their own version.  And NYGASP did work hard with the various purported representatives of Asian New York to show that they truly cared, which they did.
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All this reminded me that earlier this week, the Japanese prime minister, Mr. Abe, was at Pearl Harbor for ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the base there.  Lots of news reporters commented, "Ooooh, he didn't actually apologize for the attacks!".

I didn't care.  It's 2016 and the Japanese are our friends now, and my father was in the Army when those bombs dropped.  Anyone who flew a Zero that day and is somehow still alive is over 90 years old and didn't issue the attack orders anyway.  Those who were complicit in the decision to attack us are all dead now.  Their successors have no more need to apologize to the USA or to the families of the lost servicemen than I, who have no ancestors in the USA prior to 1880, have to apologize for slavery.

I digress, but only a little.  Happy New Year!

 Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Scott City is a Nice Place for the U.N.

I have never been to Scott City, Kansas; let's get that out of the way first.  I have seen it on a map, and even know someone who lives there, and I'll assume that you likely do not.

If you were to look at Scott City on one of those map programs that shows you satellite views of what it looks like, you would assume that it is a typical western Kansas town, maybe 4,000 residents, whose residents' primary purpose is to support agriculture on the plains that surround it; that the town itself probably has its share of feed stores and tractor supply places, and you'd be right.

If you look at that satellite view, you will see all those neat circles that are the artifact of the watering machines that travel in circles in order to water crops efficiently.

And it has an airport too, out on the eastern side of the town.  That's plot material.

Last week, the United Nations, of which we pay a healthy share of the budget, decided to issue a resolution condemning Israel for constructing settlements in areas it has occupied for 50 years or so.  The scandals are many, but let's confine ourselves to two -- first, that this was simply the latest of 20 resolutions condemning Israel this year alone, more than five times as many as the U.N.'s resolutions condemning all other nations combined, including Iran, North Korea and Syria; and second that the USA, for only a few weeks more represented by Barack Obama, chose not to veto this resolution.

Notwithstanding the venom of Obama choosing his "way out the door time" to decide to screw our friend and ally in the Middle East, we do indeed need to look at the other scandal, the preponderance of anti-Israel Security Council resolutions.  Because if that is the apparent purpose of the Security Council -- really, can we point to anything that it has done productively since maybe the Kosovo wars? -- then why is the USA even wasting its time?

And that's where Scott City comes into play.

You see, right now, the UN Headquarters are located on otherwise valuable land in Manhattan, by the good graces of the United States of America.  If we are going to start caring about how our taxpayers' money is being spent, then I can think of no better place than our hosting of the U.N.  Why is it necessary to put them on expensive land in New York?

Scott City is a perfect place to relocate the U.N.  There is plenty of land; so someone could not only build a building to serve as Headquarters, but also a big hotel for the ambassadors and their staffs during the active sessions of the U.N.  While the airport is being expanded to support the uptick in travel there, you can fly into nearby Garden City, reachable from, say, Washington-Dulles with only a connection in Dallas, or just a quick Dulles-Charlotte-Dallas-Garden City loop.  There is bus and taxi service up to Scott City.  Viola!

There are so many benefits that I can barely fit them into one column.  For example, people would actually see a part of America they never do, especially the press who would have to go to a new part of the country to cover the U.N.  In fact, precisely because there is little do in Scott City other than buying cattle feed and fertilizer, it is possible that the U.N. might move to a few brief sessions each quarter and have everyone go back home most of the year, where they can do things other than pass resolutions condemning Israel.

Of course if some of the pompous jackals in the U.N. decide that the middle of western Kansas is not splendid enough for them, well, they are free to move U.N. Headquarters to their own countries, like, you know, Kazakhstan or Burkina Faso or Yemen.  Yeah, maybe Yemen.

President-elect Donald Trump is just the kind of person, and just the kind of president, who would consider this sort of thing, so I will be sure to tweet him a link to this article.  I guarantee that if it gets to his attention, he will chuckle and then maybe give it some thought.

Wouldn't you?

 Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Obama's Third Term?

Yesterday I started talking about the odd statement from the outgoing-but-not-soon-enough president, Barack H. Obama, to the effect that he thought he would have won had he been able to go for a third term.  That pesky Constitution, of course got in the way, but some other things might have as well.

There is no denying that Obama's personal popularity has finally gotten to a decent level, at least as far as the polls go.  Now, exactly what is asked in those polls is probably suspect, although I usually don't challenge the methodology of experienced professionals in the business.

They may be wanting (or claiming to be wanting) to know if the respondent is approving of the job performance of the guy, and may actually ask that.  But that isn't exactly ensuring that the respondent is answering that.  There are, after all, polls asking about -- or allowing the respondent to answer about -- personal popularity.

Either way, I don't want to get into a debate about the way people answer those things.  After all, if I get a poll on the phone and someone I don't know asks me if I approve of Barack Obama's job performance or, worse, if I approve of him personally, I'd probably hang up.  I consider the fact that everything negative about Obama that's said in the press is turned by the left into a racial statement.

Ask Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, who declared in Obama's first term that he would try to make him a "one-term president" and was immediately castigated for some kind of racial statement.  Ask the "birthers" who, even this year, were categorized as trying to de-legitimize the "first black president", even though Obama's birthplace had nothing to do with his race.

So I'm not about to comment to a stranger, polling me on the phone, about Barack Obama, no matter how they phrase the question.  Not happening.  There's racism, murder and rape in descending order of animus among the left, and murder is slipping a bit.

That's me.  I'm a big boy who can take it; besides, with nearly 600 essays online and many of them not exactly flattering to the outgoing president, I'm out there as a non-admirer of his enough already for all to see.  Bottom line is that I doubt the accuracy of the polls, not because they're worded oddly, but because we're likely only to have a few weeks more of them, and surely a lot of respondents are saying "Yeah, sure, he was fine, loved him, blah, blah, glad he'll be gone but I'm going to lie to you because it's easier than getting called a racist and by the way, he'll be gone soon, did I mention that?"

Because I really don't believe for a minute that 55% of the USA thinks he did a good job.  After all, 46% just voted for Donald Trump and actually elected him president, and not even 1% could possibly think Obama was worth the time to talk about -- and yet still vote for Trump.  And that's before you throw in the 5% or so that voted for the other extra-party candidates.  Surely a lot of them weren't too happy with Obama either.

But more than anything, Obama, as much as anyone, lost the election himself.  Donald Trump was quite consistent in tying Hillary Clinton to Obama's legacy and calling her a potential "third term of Obama."  Barack Obama himself said the same thing -- that when campaigning for her, he said he would consider it "a personal affront to his "legacy" if she were not elected.  And he certainly campaigned, right out there with Beyonce and Jay-Z and all those other statesmen.

Guess what, Barry -- she was not elected.  And it was your presidency and your legacy -- not your race -- that was on the ballot, and the voters rejected it (outside of California).  They rejected a continuation of your feckless, weak foreign policy.  They rejected abysmal economic growth.  They rejected the steady decay in the percentage of Americans in the labor force.  They rejected your sending Guantanamo detainees back to the battlefield, your inane Iran nuclear deal, your inability to call Islamist terrorism what it is and wondered why it was a stand you would make.

Shall I go on?  Black Lives Matter and the taking the side of the convenience store robber and assailant Michael Brown instead of the cop who kept any other victim from being possibly killed by him?  The apology tour?  Contemptible treatment of our ally in Israel, ending with the vicious action by Obama in the U.N. this past week?

Nope, I don't think Obama was that likely to have won against Trump, as I think about it, unless somehow he got the lemmings to the polls.  Which could have happened.

But if it came to that, I think it would have been tough for Barack Obama the man to have overcome Barack Obama, the president.

Especially with Donald Trump making the case.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Obama Thinks He'd Get Reelected, Eh?

In what might otherwise be a slow news week with all the jackals on vacation, Barack Obama is out there trying to set the stage for his "shadow government" by trying to claim that he is relevant enough.  His protestation this week was that he would have won had he been eligible to run again, which thankfully the Constitution now prevents.  Quoth Obama:

"In my travels around the country, talking to people .... Even people who disagreed with me thought that our vision was the right one."

Now, we don't know whether or not Obama would have indeed won a third term.  He ran twice against Republicans who would not actually take him on -- McCain never made the case that no one knew squat about the guy, while Romney declined, even with the last word in the last debate, to rip Obama apart over Benghazi, at a time when well-rehearsed words would have really helped.

Donald Trump would not have held back in 2016 no matter what color Obama's father was -- and you know that Obama doesn't even get nominated in 2008 if he wasn't half-black, certainly not against Hillary's machine.  Trump spent half his criticism time on the stump ripping everything Obama did, when he wasn't ripping everything Hillary did.

But we'll never know what would have been the case had a third term been legal, of course.

What I do think is that Obama's answer is a bit bizarre.  I mean, how many of those ordinary Americans do you think ever talked to Barack Obama in his "travels around the country"?  When exactly was that, that he talked to Americans, by the way?  On the golf course?

Who were the people who "disagreed with him" that he actually talked to about the direction of the country?  Caddies?  Oops, no, he used a cart.  No, Obama wouldn't even allow people who disagreed with him within a mile of the White House, and their opinions were clearly not welcome, which is why there was a flood of generals and admirals retiring during his administration, rather than work for an autocrat who "knew better" than they.

You have to take statements like Obama's apart before they get any traction.  Barack Obama never talked to anyone who "disagreed with him, but thought he was going in the right direction", because there aren't any, and it doesn't make sense that there are.  Obama is a dogmatic ideologue, so that opposition to him is not on methodology but on ideology.  You disagree with him because he's aiming in the wrong direction.

The existence of such people who do not exist, is the premise for Obama claiming that he would have been re-reelected.  The claim that he would have been the election winner is, in his plan, the premise for his shadow government -- "The people wanted me still to be president, so I should set up a parallel government to represent them."

Look, I don't know if Obama would have won the election.  Trump won, electorally, because he carried states he had to, plus some states like Michigan and Pennsylvania where black voters didn't show up at the polls for Hillary.  They might have shown up for Obama, and they might have not done so.  The ones in New York and California wouldn't have mattered. 

Had Trump been facing Obama, he might very well have pressed the fact that Obama was absolutely horrible for black Americans, even harder than he appealed to them against Hillary with pretty much that message.

Just know this -- Obama is trying to stay relevant.  He is an ideologue, and cannot just go away to some professorship, in some leftist university environment, to teach and be adored.  He has to poke his nose in, and there will always be those who, because of his race, will try to press his relevance.

America knows better, we can certainly hope.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Yes, the "Emperor's New Clothes" Returns Yet Again

Donald Trump is a very, very different fellow.  More importantly, he is going to be a very, very different president.  How that becomes an "Emperor's New Clothes" story without anyone assuming that Trump is playing the character of the Emperor is fascinating -- in fact, it turns out that the rest of government is, but that's plot material.

If you hadn't noticed, Trump has been doing some "president things" lately, beginning with intervening in the move of a thousand-or-so employees at Carrier Air Conditioning in Indiana and, more recently, negotiating rather publicly with Boeing to cuts costs on the two planned presidential and vice-presidential aircraft and now with Lockheed Martin to cut costs on a fighter jet.

My best girl, often unintentionally the source of these essays, commented Friday on the Lockheed story as it was on TV.  "Trump just looks at these things differently", she said.  "He looks at them the way we would look at them, or any businessman would.  It's about time."

She was, of course, right.  [Note for "full disclosure" ... I receive a $30.33-per-month pension from Lockheed Martin, although I never worked for them; it's the artifact of Lockheed's acquisition of the pension fund of the former Singer Company 25 years ago.  I'm pretty sure that $30.33 is not going to affect my ability to write about Lockheed.]

"The way a businessman would look at these things."

Of course.  Why didn't we think of that?  And that's the whole point of the piece.  The USA has been suckered into believing that there was something essentially and innately different between the way a government operates and the way that an ordinary business operates, and it has turned us into lemmings who think government has to operate that way.

Hint: It doesn't have to.

Let us dispense with the fundamentals.  Government is financially no different from a non-profit organization in that its fiscal goal is not to accumulate profit (surplus) for the purpose of distribution to "shareholders" as would a for-profit firm; any surplus is assigned to funds to be used in a subsequent period for the operation of the organization or execution of its services.  Of course, our Federal government wouldn't know a surplus if it bit them.

While a non-profit has an obligation to its donors to maximize its services, Government has an obligation to its "donors" -- taxpayers -- to exercise fiscal restraint, precisely because they are not donors; the money provided is mandated by law to be seized from the citizen as taxes.  A proper government respects that its funding was taken by law and not donated of the citizens' free will.

The law addresses this, beginning with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, by allowing government to do only what it is granted the rights to do.  That means that for the Federal government to go into debt to pay for services that it is Constitutionally not supposed to perform is fiscally and morally bankrupt.

And that, of course, is the point.  Donald Trump sees government as those of us outside government should see it, but doesn't.  For years, we saw government's right to do whatever it felt like as unfixable.  That was until 2016 when a New York businessman with a lot of hair got us thinking that maybe government should respect a basic fact -- that its funding was not provided under free will, but through the confiscatory nature of tax law.

Government itself was the Emperor.  The encrusted Executive Branch agencies, and the encrusted Congresses of years past, were their own tailor, spinning a tale that it was OK to borrow and spend beyond the taxpayers' means.  We were the people, the lemmings who went along, afraid or unwilling to "say the concept nay" -- or in the case of the left, happy to use the fable to spend, spend, spend to gain and hold control of power.

Donald Trump will not allow himself to see government improperly.  To Trump, the protection of the taxpayer's seized dollar is vital; we should not, as government always has, ignore price when you've confiscated the money to pay for it.  He is showing that in his pre-presidential actions, demanding that fiscal sense becomes a first-tier rationale for spending decisions.

I am optimistic that Washington will not ruin Donald Trump but, rather, Trump will change Washington.  If we are not pretty bloody close to a balanced budget by the end of his (first) term, I'll be disappointed, but also very surprised.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Transporting Audiences

This will be a very intriguing topic; I can only hope the piece lives up to it.

I believe that I've mentioned previously that I am a member of a worldwide email group of aficionados of the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.  That should be no secret to regular readers of this column, of course, who are aware that I used to perform those works through most of my, er ... "remote" youth.

There has been a long-running thread on that list about the issue of casting people who are not necessarily racially expected in their roles, not just in the Savoy operettas but in entertainment in general.  I wrote about this in regard to a production of The Mikado that was turned into an Italian setting after protests from "professional victims" in the local community.

I am not a fan of racially distracting casting.  If a character is supposed to be black, particularly historically, then don't be using a white actor to play the character.  The piece I did on that topic is one of the most widely-read on this site, and is cited here, primarily because I need to be consistent and not self-contradictory.

At any rate, one recent thread in a topic on the mail discussion list wasn't even about Gilbert and Sullivan, and not so much theatrical stage performances, as it was about the performance of a particular song from a particular musical, in a particular setting.  The song was "Ol' Man River" from the Kern and Hammerstein musical "Show Boat", when done in a concert setting or other non-theatrical show by a singer (i.e., not as a part of "Show Boat").

Now, in context (i.e., in the musical), it is sung by a black character who works at the boat as a stevedore, and the song is meant to provide the dramatic contrast between the suffering of the people and the lack of concern on the part of the Mississippi River (that "just keeps rolling along").  In the context of the musical, it would be difficult for the character to be anything but black, so in that context it makes little sense to think of someone non-black singing the song, unless it is set in some kind of mixed-race, impoverished place.

But that wasn't the context of the discussion.  Aside from the subtopic of purging the most offensive lyrics from any contemporary performance (which is a separate issue completely), the discussion focused on whether it would ever be acceptable for a white performer to sing the song (in a non-theatrical, concert setting).

Obviously, there are a number of members of the discussion group in the U.K., as well as in Australia and the USA.  And one of them made the point, which is the topic of this piece, that it would be perfectly reasonable for a white performer in the U.K. to do the song, as long as it were done well, in that there was not really a cultural barrier to such a performance -- over there.

So I found myself thinking about that concept.  In a sufficiently professional production of "Show Boat", I would not want to see a white actor in a black leading role.  It makes no sense to do so, as you will have reintroduced disbelief and lost the audience.  There is, after all, dialogue to deliver and no amount of good acting will overcome the loss of the audience.

Why, then, do I believe that a concert performance of the one song, in isolation, could be OK?  Why is it the case that we would be open, at least in the U.K. if not in San Francisco, to a white singer presenting "Ol' Man River" in context?

Because it is a challenge, that's why.  When you take that particular piece of music on as a white performer in concert, it is pretty darned hard to transport your audience to where they have a white singer in front of them, convincingly taking on a lyric designed for a black stevedore on a boat on the Mississippi.  And I, if not people in some parts of the USA, am absolutely open to allowing someone to take on that challenge in a concert setting, even though I would not be open to seeing them do it as an actor in the show.

Assumedly the English are open to that as well, and it is to their credit, in my humble opinion, that they do so without some kind of politically-correct mind torture of the kind that the left in the USA wants to jam down our throat.

Either way, I will give a great performer the right to try to transport me, if only in the period of a single song.  Have at it.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

An Especially Merry Christmas

So this past week, Barack Obama was quoted as saying that his definition of "political correctness" and that of Donald Trump, the president-elect, are probably different.

He gave a bunch of examples, and I don't think you could walk away from his words assembling those examples into a coherent definition of what he believed in as being proper behavior.  For example, he said that it should be possible to feel that affirmative action was not the best way to achieve racial opportunity in such things as college applications and workplace hiring, without being labeled "racist."

That was a pretty reasonable statement.

Of course, then he got into the whole "who might be offended" thing, and that's where he slid into the morass that political correctness is and has always been.  Because the problem, of course, is that "offense" is a spectrum.  I do not want to think about whether something I say may offend Paraguayans or Lutherans by exclusion.  At the same time, I would not want to feel it's OK if I were to make a comment ridiculing, say, Catholics, without being acutely aware that a Catholic in earshot would be offended.

By "spectrum", I mean that we truly shouldn't care if we joke about Kazakhstanis or albinos in a passing way, knowing that no one present will be offended.  So when should we be careful?  When does it get absurd to go looking for offended people before we utter a sentence?

I think that was the point of Trump's whole campaign-long tirade against PC behavior -- that if it is allowed to go on unchecked, eventually you will be able to say nothing for fear of offending.  And the corollaries are equally bad -- that people will go looking to be offended, to put themselves into an offendable group so they can play the victim for profit as could be done in this hypothetical case; that we will dumb down our communications; that we will actually become unwilling to do things like ...

Say "Merry Christmas."

It is certainly not a rare thing these days and this season, to hear people far more likely to say "Merry Christmas" in what is a normal Christmas scenario, than the bland, inoffensive "Happy Holidays."  More than once I've heard people actually say that they "feel it's OK to say 'Merry Christmas' now."

And it seemed utterly bizarre when a Kohl's store commercial just appeared on TV as I was writing this, with reindeer and Santa Claus, and the message was "Happy Holidays", as if reindeer and the jolly bearded guy were somehow not explicitly Christmas-specific characters.

I was recently in contact with an acquaintance in another part of the country, looking for a recording of a barbershop version of a Christmas song he had arranged.  Now this fellow, whom I've known for 25 years but only met a few times, and never known well (hence "acquaintance") is extraordinarily successful at our art form, having been both a member of a world championship quartet, and having directed a world championship chorus (not the one that I was in).

In the course of his reply, he casually used the phrase about it being "OK to say 'Merry Christmas' now", and that startled me.  For one, our organization actually has a founding principle that we do not let politics or religion intrude upon our dealings.  My best friends for decades are in the Society, and many of them have political leanings I'm totally unaware of.  So even hinting at something that could be thought to be political is unusual.

What struck me more is that because ours is essentially an arts organization, it is quite unexpected for a member to have such a feeling about Christmas and PC, let alone to hint at it in a passing sentence to someone who is not a close friend.  After all, that would seem to be a conservative leaning in an arts environment.

I was certainly not afraid to reply back with a comparable passing statement, if only to take the bait and let him know I agreed with the notion.  Multiply that interaction by a few million, and perhaps we get to take off the PC blinders, and say "Merry Christmas" to our Christian, or presumed-Christian friends, and say "Happy Hanukkah" to our Jewish or presumed-Jewish friends.  (Apparently the invented "Kwanzaa", whose guiding principles are rather explicitly communistic, by the way, no longer seems to exist in the public forum).

I think that celebrating what our friends celebrate brings us together, a lot better than having others play victim does, to make a better USA.

Merry Christmas, my friends.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Why Rehash the "Emperor's New Clothes", NBC?

The other night, we were treated to a Christmas show on NBC, featuring some of the talent that competed in the final round of the America's Got Talent competition for 2016 that ended in September.  These acts were supplemented by some of the winners from recent seasons as well, including its Season 2 winner, the amazing ventriloquist Terry Fator, now on a long-term gig in Las Vegas, the teenage singer Jackie Evancho (a finalist), who has several top-rated recordings out, and the magician Mat Franco, who is also a Vegas regular.

These latter were among the successes of the show, winners who actually had talent, the kind that you would pay to see, sometimes a lot.  And the singing acts from this past (2016) season who were in the show's opening musical number, well, they were really good singers and polished performers as well.

Which made the absence of this season's winner from the opener all the more telling.

I would like to let the 2016 season of "AGT" go as a distant memory.  I thought I wrote all I needed to about the season in this piece, where I pointed out the utter lack of singing ability of the winner, the 12-year-old "singer" Grace Vanderwaal.  But I also thought that by now either (A) it would all go away, or (B) someone at NBC Universal would get busted for "fixing" the result.  I mean, the girl can't sing!

And I mean "can't sing" like her voice is a 12-year-old's whisper, she is very nervous on stage, and in a "talent" show, other than in her middle school, there was simply nothing to see that said "talent."  You certainly wouldn't pay to see her perform, although she seems like a very sweet, polite little girl I'd be happy to have as a daughter. 

Of course, if she were my daughter I'd have kept her from embarrassing herself on national television.  But that's for another day, and she is getting $25,000 a year for 40 years, if NBC lasts that long.

So when the opening number appeared, and one by one the singers from this season joined the festivities, it was pretty clear that no Grace would be part of that number.  Note -- Laura Bretan, the last singer from this season, an amazing 14-year-old operatic star-to-be, did not or could not appear on this show.  I, for one, missed her, on a show she could have really moved us on.

It was, of course, pretty obvious why Grace was not in that number.  The strong voices of the real singers from the season meant that the opener would need to be at a strong level, one that Grace's weak, whispery voice could not possibly have kept up with. Considering that in every round of the competition, she sort of bent over her ukulele and whisper-sang into a mike with nothing else going on, I don't know what she could have done with anyone else, in an ensemble.


Unfortunately, toward the end of the show, we heard.  To great applause, Grace got her own time on stage, singing, yes, "Frosty, the Snowman" with two lines of singers, presumably from the union, behind her.  Grace was Grace, meaning no projection, whispered words, nervous voice; and she did fine only in terms of her playing skill on the accompanying ukulele.  She played Frosty, and Frosty lost.

Because I'm always willing to let the reader judge, here is that performance.  You tell me; there's a big old comments section below.

Of course, the judges, paid to the end for their services, groveled about how wonderful she was, and NBC tweeted out how "magic" her performance was.  It won't help; I'm dying to see if anyone showed up at the single Las Vegas performance she won as part of her "victory", and what the sales are if she ever records.  Seriously?  A show? People are going to pay to hear a 12-year-old whisper near the right pitch with a ukulele for two hours?

The Emperor's New Clothes were on display for all to see, and a theater audience not realizing -- or intentionally ignoring -- that there was no "there" there.  I just don't understand how NBC thought it was a good idea to trot out their dramatic mistake (or, sadly, their corrupt selection process) once again, as if to rub in our faces the fact that they can do whatever they want.  But they did it.

And we'll see if it affects their ratings next season, for which they are already auditioning.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Negating Obama's 2017 "Shadow Government"

Having failed after eight years as president to have accomplished anything whatsoever to the betterment of the USA, Barack Obama is apparently not done trying to continue his incessant damage to the nation.

Yes, while Obama wants people to think he is going to continue to live in Washington so his kids can stay in the same schools, that's not exactly in the same area code as the truth.  No, he is apparently setting up the equivalent of an alternative government, to try to provide continual opposition to the Trump Administration, although exactly how they plan to operate, and what they will do on a daily basis is a bit of a TBD.

What isn't at issue is how it is going to be paid for, since leftist moneybags like Tom Steyer have committed nine figures worth to pay for it (Steyer has pledged $100 million himself just for commercials).  So Obama will still have plenty of income to support both his golf habit and this subversive activity, in whatever form it might take.

So ... if we assume this to be true, and we assume that he is doing this "shadow government" thing, then what is the best course for the actual, real government, the one voted in by the people?

I have that answer, thanks.

Donald Trump did not run a wonky campaign.  I know that may be the single most superfluous sentence in the history of the written English language, but it is actually the point.  During Trump's campaign, he said he wanted, or would do, the following things and little else:

- An "America First" foreign policy
- Securing the border with Mexico to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking across it
- Deporting criminal aliens
- Repealing and replacing Obamacare
- Returning jobs, particularly in manufacturing, to the USA and deterring their leaving
- Lowering corporate and personal tax rates
- Beginning to clean up destroyed inner cities.

That was the core of it, plus another item or two here or there.  As I said, this was not a wonky platform, it was a set of goals for which either legislature or executive action (or, in the case of deportation, simple enforcement of the law) would implement the goal.

And that's the point.  Barack Obama can set up a whole alternative government complete with his own putting-green on the bizarro White House he is going to inhabit.  But it will all be for naught if Donald Trump does the things that he said he was going to do, and doing them has the effects he said they would.

And that was the point of the simplicity of Trump's campaign platform.  The economic metrics are pretty easy to predict; in about a year, the unemployment rate will sneak up (it is a fairly useless figure as currently computed) but the labor force and job count will rise, as people who had left the job market and stopped being counted, flood back into the market faster than the economy can produce jobs for them.

Economic growth, let loose by huge reversals of regulations, will be a hiring engine.  Tax revenues will drop at first, but within 24 months revenues will flood into the government, as the economic upsurge from lower tax rates generates more in taxes than ever before, despite lower rates.  Specific companies will start hiring here in the USA, and others will cancel outsourcing and remain here.

Obamacare will be replaced, slashing big chunks from the Federal budget and, before long, cutting individual insurance costs.  There will be a wall on our southern border.

And finally, but not least, something -- I don't know what -- will be done to try to address inner-city crime and high murder rates.  It may or may not work, but it will be more than Barack Obama did in eight years if Trump even lifts a finger.

That is my point here.  If Donald Trump does what he said he wanted to do, which in concept is fairly straightforward, and gets most or all of the above done, the result will be so dramatic -- a roaring economy, lower crime rates, something improving in the cities -- then eventually we will forget Barack Obama and his shadow government entirely.

There is nothing more effective at defusing your enemy than making him completely unnecessary.  And it will be impossible to try to hide a dramatically successful economy and way-higher employment counts from the people.  If he does all that -- and Ronald Reagan did it in a comparable amount of time -- there will be no need for Obama, and he will wither into a pathetic little troll, loved by Hollywood but shown by Trump's successes to be the failure we all know he was.

And I will end this by saying that even a revived economy will be an incomplete result if he can't make at least a little headway in the inner cities.  He very much needs to be visible early on in that specific area.  It will show him to care about the cities more than Obama ever was.

Trust me, all of that will be seen by the voters -- of all colors.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.