Education and the Electorate

As I write this, there is the expected amount of carping among the left and the press (but I repeat myself), poring over the election results and making what are far-too-premature analyses about why Hillary Clinton lost the election embarrassingly.

These analyses include that the election was swayed by the "uneducated" in the electorate, meaning particularly the "flyover states" they simply don't feel like understanding.  The analysts are, of course, people who think you get milk from a grocery, not from a cow, if you get my drift.

They are the parents of the snowflakes, and in some cases the snowflakes themselves, who shared Hillary's arrogance about knowing what was right for the country better than the voters.  "Oh, dear", they're thinking, "how are we in a country where they could vote for Trump!  Ew."

Well, there is so much wrong with that.  First of all, the raw numbers tell you a different story about actual voting, as in who went to the polls on Tuesday or whenever they voted.  Donald Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  Hillary Clinton just got way fewer votes than Obama did.  So it was actually a lot more about how their candidate, the entitled, privileged former first lady, turned off those who might have voted for her, than it was about the people who voted for Trump.

The Democrats had a huge capacity to contact people and drive them to the polls.  We all knew that.  That actually makes the dive in voting for the Democrats (from Obama to Hillary) even more telling, as even with that machine they couldn't get Hillary within a country mile of the number they needed to win.

Simply put, Trump got a significantly higher proportion of those who preferred him, versus what Hillary got of those who might have preferred her.  Her voters didn't show and, as I said, the existence of the machine makes it even worse.  Every time Trump said something the press thought or made out to be terrible, his number went down, OK, but hers didn't go up.  It was all about enthusiasm, meaning that we should have inferred a lot from those huge Trump rallies.  Trump's joke about Hillary's never having a bigger crowd than that night, at the Al Smith Catholic dinner, rings true now.

And that's where "education" comes in.  It is not that the Trump voter lacked education; that's so easy for the press to try to jump all over.  The Trump voter was educated, looking at things like each candidate's view of the Constitution, the business of medical insurance, the national debt.  The Trump voter, when asked, had at least a reason to vote for him, while Hillary's campaign was hung up on voting for her because she had a uterus.  She never made the "issue" case nearly well enough to offset her perceived pomposity and arrogance (see "deplorables, basket of").

That's not the Trump side.  No one pretends to say that Donald Trump was the best debater in presidential history.  And no one pretends that he has tactical-level plans for every Cabinet department's detailed objectives -- nor does he need to.  What he does have is a broad set of principles on what is good for the nation, a laser focus on getting things done (on time and under budget, by the way), and an understanding that you hire good people to run the agencies that execute the right tactical-level plans.

It's the same concept that a president has to use to conduct war, telling his generals what the goal is but relying on them to tell him how to achieve it, and trusting their functional expertise.  Barack Obama had no goals, so he second-guessed his flag officers constantly and bound their hands, which is why our enemies no longer fear us.

We are educated.  We know what it means to have principles and hire experts to do their jobs within those principles.  It's actually very much the model that Ronald Reagan worked under, and we know enough to understand that it works, if you hire the right people.  We also understand that Trump has certain principles and he will govern under them, and that he will work with Congress to get them done because negotiating has been his life.

It's OK, we get it.  The press lost the election, and has to defend itself by putting down the voter.

But we're educated.  We knew that already.

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.

Brexit in the USA

I'm not typically going to fill a column with separate thoughts; I rather pride myself in constructing pieces that make a structured argument or discussion toward a particular conclusion or in an organized defense of a point.

Tuesday, however, was not typical in any way whatsoever, and so I have been having these random thoughts strike me about the election results that do not lend themselves to a consolidated conclusion.  If they are all of a piece, to make a weak pun, so be it.  But to me they are nothing alike and are far better as bullet items.  Unconnected thoughts, as in:

- I will not have to hear that awful, screaming, grating voice of Hillary Clinton's addressing her deplorable lackeys and toadies, ever again.  My ears may heal by this time next week.

- The Brexit vote in the UK could have been looked at as a one-time thing, in a vote that was polled wrong, and badly polled wrong, right up through the voting day.  But it wasn't, now that we look back on it through the lens of the Donald Trump election Tuesday, which was equally wrongly supposed by the polls as impossible.

- Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist who is an expert in election forecasting and whom I greatly respect, went on TV yesterday.  His first words were "We were wrong", and so were most of his next 40 words.  More than that, he pointed out that being so wrong meant that election forecast models were themselves broken, and the whole methodology of polling and sampling had to be scrapped.

-  Hillary Clinton lost the election first not on Election Day, but when she called Trump's voters "irredeemable" and a "basket of deplorables."  That's the day she lost the pulse of America, showing her utter arrogance and contempt for, well, me.

- We should expect, at least for four years, not to have to be so roiled about silly things like transgender bathrooms; not that the people are worth any less, but the issues are so inconsequential they should not occupy either the public discourse or a moment of the time of the president of the United States.

- Donald Trump will get to say "You're fired" to some people who richly deserve it, starting with Loretta Lynch and every political appointee in the Justice Department.  Every one of them.  They have embarrassed their agency by politicizing what should be the least political part of government.

- Hillary didn't not win because she was a woman, nor did she lose because of it.  Ultimately, her gender was a net nothing, certainly no conscionable number of voters voted against her because of it, but apparently few voted for her just because of it either.  We all would be fine seeing a female president; just not that one.

- The shock and awe on even the Fox News people's faces when Wisconsin was called for Trump was palpable, his having already won the three states he "had to have", Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.  The one commentator (might have been Brit Hume) who said at that point that Trump had broken through the "Blue Wall", was utterly shocked as he spoke, realizing that Trump was actually going to win.

- I had only hope, not faith.  There was no real reason for thinking that Trump was going to win, given the difficult electoral road he had to navigate.  I'd like to replay the evening, knowing what I know now.

- Trump's people had a whole lot better quality polling and research than anyone else did, as illustrated by his last-minute decision to go to Minnesota for a rally.  He didn't win the state, but his people saw something that the other pundits didn't.  This is a moment for extraordinary intellectual humility on the part of the entire forecasting profession.

- Kelly Anne Conway, Trump's campaign manager who took over fairly late in the campaign, is really, really good at what she does.

- Trump has access to some truly great people to populate his administration with -- Ben Carson, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Gen. Flynn, to name a few -- who are in tune with what the voters were saying Tuesday and would be committed to delivering solutions for the problems left by Barack Obama, in the Trump Administration.  And that also includes the list of Supreme Court candidates Trump already put forth, about which there was no contention (had there been issues about any of them, Hillary would have been all over it).

- My ears are already healing, by the way.  Hillary's concession speech was sufficiently subdued as to be irritating only in its content, and that content was only a little bothersome (and it needed to have been delivered ten hours earlier when her campaign people were still there).

- Trump ran his campaign as if it were mostly his own money -- on time and under budget, same as his rebuilding of the Post Office building in DC that he just finished.  That's how I want my government to run.  I'll take eight years of that.

- He must not sleep at all, which is fine too.  He has a lot of work to do, not the least of which is having his lawyers figure out quickly how to divest himself of his business interests so the media won't be second-guessing him all the time.

- Washington is a pretty big swamp to drain.  But first you have to want to drain it.

- Melania Trump will be as elegant and classy a First Lady as we are ever going to have.  Not that it would have been a shred of a reason to vote for her husband.  I care what he does, not his wife.  The USA has a lot more to worry about than that.  But those people who couldn't wait to write books about the "style" of Michelle Obama before her husband was even inaugurated, well, let's see if they do the same for Melania.

- Ground game?  Hillary was supposed to have this great ground game, right?  Donald Trump's ground game was a long and busy series of rallies, at which 20,000 people routinely showed up no matter where it was.  First, that's why he spent so much less money.  Second, it is a model for the next candidate who can raise great excitement about his or her campaign.

- If I had to bet, I'd say that Trump tells his new Attorney General to let the FBI run its investigation of the mishandling of classified material as it sees fit, hands off by Trump -- but to tell the FBI to spend what it needs to on the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.  That, friends, is a RICO investigation that needs to be done to completion, lest someone else ever try to set up a corrupt foundation to route money to themselves, and serve as a funnel to sell influence to a Cabinet official.

- Already the left is rioting in the streets.  Don't recall that from 2008, because conservatives don't do that.  But that's what the left does.  It is not an endearing quality, and it does not get their ends any sympathy.

- Finally, it is a point of wonder whom the Democrats will put up to run next time.  Hillary was so entitled that no one dared run against her in the primaries by pointing out that her time had come and gone.  As a result, while the Republicans going forward have a decent number of younger senators and governors with new national platforms as a result of this campaign, the Democrats are pretty barren.  Hillary will be 73 next election, Bernie Sanders 77 and Elizabeth Warren 71.  My take is that their ideology is so hollow, that they cannot attract younger leaders who would bring the party out of the leftist pit it has put itself in by putting Obama forward.

I'm going to get some sleep, real soon now.

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.

Election Day Hangover

For what may seem like obvious reasons, I'm going to let the column rest today to recover from being up late watching the returns.  There is a lot to say, maybe even something I had not previously said, about last night's victory of the Trump campaign and the retention of Congress.

I'm hoping that Barack Obama fades slowly into the night of his dim presidency, and takes the high road (for once) and doesn't do anything in terms of executive orders and pardons in the last days of his presidency.  He has just been repudiated professionally and needs to take his lumps and just go quietly.  I somehow doubt that will happen.

More when I can get some much-needed sleep.  But what a victory for the deplorables.

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.

Cats and Dogs

Today, as millions of Americans (and, unfortunately, an indeterminable number of people who are not) go to the polls, I'm setting all that aside to talk about something totally different.

I do not like dogs.  And I'm not ashamed to say that.  You know those "looking for a date" ads where the person "must like dogs"?  Well, it's a good thing I'm married already, because I would flunk that criterion and would do so unashamedly.

I really don't know if this piece is going to be one of those where two-thirds of the readers look furtively one way and then the other and, seeing no one there, nod in silent, unseen assent.  Maybe I'll lose 90% of my readership.  It pretty much doesn't matter.  I do not like dogs.

Surely the first thing anyone is going to assume is that it's all about the walking with a poop bag, or the smell when they get wet.  Or the barking, which is a sound that makes me want to scream.  Loudly.  Or that they make messes on the floor even when they're no longer young, and rip up furniture.  Or that they bite and jump on you when you don't want them to.  Something like that.

Well, sure, all of those are on the list, but they're pretty much ranked from #2 through whatever number.  They are not the top reason why I feel the way I do.  That reason is pretty simple.

They need me.  And I do not want to be needed by an animal, at least not that much.  I have a finite amount of freedom, and I do not need or want to have to have any more of it occupied with the attention of an animal who will explode if I do not attend to it, or jump all over me until I do, and whose needs force me to curtail or shorten my ability to go out, with or without my best girl, and do something I actually want to do, which may simply be to take her out for a day ("her" as in my best girl).

Dogs are needy.  I am not a caregiver.

So we have a cat.  Now, outside of the fact that I would be just as fine if we had not acquired the cat thirteen years ago (to replace the 14-year-old cat which had just passed on), I suppose I am reasonably glad that we do have her.  She is a beautiful cat, although you can look at plenty of pictures of beautiful cats on line if you wanted to see them.

Tashi, staying warm while making sure that I cannot watch
 the ball game easily -- and showing that she doesn't need me

She is also extremely benign, and always has been, sort of friendly with visitors and then going back to doing what she does best, which is to sleep and not get in the way, eat when she feels like it (and then sleep some more), and occasionally use the litter box.

Most importantly, if somehow we needed to be away overnight on short notice, or were out and somehow couldn't get back, we would not worry about the cat.  She would figure things out, if she even noticed we were gone, and then be at the door when we finally returned, to remind us that her dish was empty.  Maybe.  And then that evening, she would crawl up on my best girl's lap and snooze for a while, still insisting that she really didn't need us in the first place.

She would be proud of that, and I would be happy that she knew she was independent of us.

On that note, please remember to go out and vote, if you have not done so already.  And if you are actually American and entitled to do so.

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.

Guest Column: Election 2016 Arrives

I'd like to welcome back Anthony Scandora, a friend for over 40 years, as guest columnist again today.  Tony is a native of the Chicago area and long-time resident there, an intelligent and talented gentleman and a fine writer and observer of the world.  The opinions below are, of course, his, and not necessarily the views of the host.  Tony can be reached at scandora@alum.mit.edu.

Until last year, I thought Hillary Clinton was the most revolting possible candidate for president. Then the primaries happened. Tired of a government of K Street, by K Street, and for K Street, voters rebelled and propelled The Bern and The Donald to far greater stature than either ever deserved. With the vice president sidelined by family tragedy, and a few other Democratic senators and governors never gaining traction, Hillary rose to the top. Barely. The best the other side could do (other than The Donald) was a first term senator with no legislative accomplishments?  Didn’t we just try that? We’re now stuck with the two most reviled candidates ever.

Regardless of who wins, there will be an unrepentant sexual predator living in the White House, with a wife doesn’t care. We don’t have enough evidence to know who is worse, and evaluation along party lines might be satisfying but is meaningless. Let’s call it a draw and move on.

Email? The private server was certainly a bad idea and might well have been illegal. So what?  Social Security numbers and other personal information from about 20 million applicants for security clearances were stolen from the Office of Personnel Management. Department of Energy and IRS computers each coughed up personal, including financial, information of six-figure counts of individuals in their files. The Manning/WikiLeaks fiasco exposed 250,000 State Department cables. 

Secretary of State Kerry said it was “highly likely” that Russians and Chinese were reading his email. Last year, State shut down its email system for a while to try to mitigate what it knew was massive compromise of its email. On the other hand, despite a determined, seemingly desperate, search, the farthest any email from the private Hillary server has gotten is to a personal computer belonging to the estranged husband of a top aide, and it stopped there. If it had gotten any farther, her enemies would have been broadcasting it by now. 

There is already talk of impeachment by people who I suspect are clueless about the two-thirds of the Senate requirement for conviction. Do we really want to waste time and money on a futile pursuit like we did on her husband? Regardless of its legality, the fact is her private email server was more secure than official government email servers. Let’s move on to substantive issues.

Secretary of State Clinton accepted a large donation to her family’s foundation from a foreigner of questionable character who was having trouble getting a visa. He didn’t get it. Trump, facing lawsuits in several states on behalf of victims ripped off by his bogus “university” scam, gave a large, illegal donation from his foundation, not his own money, to the Florida Attorney General’s re-election campaign. Is anyone surprised that the Attorney General abandoned the lawsuit shortly after that donation, and left his victims out in the cold? Who’s more crooked than the other? It’s impossible to know.

On the left, we have a candidate who during many years in exalted government positions established herself immune to the concept of transparency. She’s Richard Nixon, but without his personal charm. For just one example out of countless lies, she told us the Benghazi attack was in response to an amateur video. How could she think legitimate journalists wouldn’t soon discover an organized terrorist attack?

On the (relative?) right, we have a guy who is on tape saying what he now denies he ever said, and who abusively attacks anyone who refers to those tapes. Unlike his opponent, he has had very little public scrutiny, no more than is fit for a TV celebrity/casino mogul. We do know that he has built with Chinese steel, exploited the same illegal immigrants whom he excoriates, and is famous for stiffing many individuals and contractors too small to have the legal resources to sue him, and for sticking it to creditors by going bankrupt. Last week the Trump International Tower and Hotel in Toronto went into receivership, with 3000 people losing jobs and untold creditors getting stiffed, many to go bankrupt as in his previous get-out-of-debt-quickly schemes. Deeper examination can only reveal deeper dishonesty.

Like the sexual predator issue, we don’t have enough evidence to know who is the worse liar and crook, and evaluation along party lines might be satisfying but is meaningless. Let’s agree that both candidates are unconscionable crooks and liars, and move on to what, if elected, would be their effect on the economy, the security, and the general welfare of the people of this country and of the world.

The economy is doing well according to numbers cooked up by our government. If it really were, The Bern and The Donald would not have riled up the support they did. The 1% are doing really well. Financial services firms are cleaning up on volatility, but not investing in anything productive. The middle class is shrinking in both numbers and in income.

A printed copy of the tax code might outweigh me. It’s great for accountants and attorneys, and it prevents industries that pay the largest bribes to Congress from paying their fair share, while soaking the rest of us. It’s highly regressive, far more painful to the lower and middle classes than to the rich. Hillary had to capitulate to the far left, and they want to keep its complexity, charge favors to industries that bribe the left wing of Congress, and raise taxes on high-income taxpayers to the point of punishing them for making money. Trump says he’ll make it fairer, but like all of his promises, he offers no details.

Our $20 trillion in debt, with no relief in sight, will eventually have painful consequences. Hillary, apparently not believing in arithmetic, wants to increase taxes and increase spending by even more. Trump is even less cognizant of arithmetic, proposing some rather substantial infrastructure investments along with tax cuts. Eventually there will come a time that investors will resist buying US debt. When asked about it, Trump said, “you deal.” To him that means don’t pay the full amount of some debts and cancel others. I shudder to think what would happen to the domestic and world economies upon news that US debt is no longer a sure thing.

Whoever says he can round up and deport 11 million illegals and get the Mexican government to pay for a wall is either a liar or smoking some really good weed. I do admire the billboard for a restaurant that claims, “Best Mexican food this side of the wall.”  I knew that deposing the Sunni Hussein and replacing his government with an Iran-backed Shi’ite government would leave a large population of angry and well-armed Sunnis. I didn’t know the Islamic State would shoot off al Qaida in Iraq, but I certainly knew both sides were willing and armed to fight a never-ending civil war that neither could win. 

Why didn’t the Bush administration and Sen. Clinton know what I knew? At least she had the decency to admit her support at the time and apologize for her bad judgment. On the other hand, The Donald, who at the time might not have paid much attention to foreign affairs, also supported that action but now lies and says he didn’t, despite tapes proving he did. He reminds me of an old Teamsters head who upon hearing wiretaps in a racketeering trial maintained his innocence by asking, “Who you gonna believe? Me or those tapes?”

After failing to learn a lesson from our destruction of Iraq, Secretary Clinton did the same to Libya. As nervous as I am about letting her do it again, I’m far more nervous about Trump carpet bombing enemy-held territory, killing far more civilians than terrorists, and resuming waterboarding and other Geneva Convention violations, which would put us against our current allies and the rest of the world.

Beyond that, he admires Putin, who takes care of political dissidents and objective journalists by methods ranging from prison to bullets to polonium poisoning (a lingering, painful, torturous death), who thinks it’s OK to shoot down civilian aircraft loaded with passengers and to bomb aid convoys trying to help war zone civilians, and who wants to re-conquer the former Soviet captive nations. While admiring all that, Trump has expressed contempt for NATO and said he might not defend a member from attack.

Even beyond all that, Trump has talked about nuclear arms for Japan and South Korea. We can hope that despite what’s looking like a new Cold War, China and Russia are not stupid enough to fire a nuclear weapon. Arm Japan and South Korea? What might North Korea do?

Both candidates’ partisans overlook their spectacular flaws and dwell on their opponent’s character. They’re both despicable, so rather than concentrate on their character or lack thereof, let’s concentrate on the damage they could do to the country and the world if Congress and the Courts let them. Which would drive the national debt past a breaking point sooner? Which would better handle the consequences? We have Hillary, with a military history looking like a neocon, or Trump, who believes in shoot first, aim second, and ask questions third. 

Should we leave NATO wondering about our support while we express our admiration for Putin? Should we continue destroying evil foreign governments that nevertheless keep some semblance of order and then wish for their people suddenly to develop democratic governments with malice toward none and charity toward all? Should more countries, particularly in troubled parts of the world, be encouraged to get nuclear weapons?

Those bother me a lot more than email or who’s the bigger liar or crook. The misery of this election season could wind up being nothing compared with four years of either of those two in the White House.

Copyright 2016 by Anthony Scandora
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.

Trump Be a Lady Tonight

For the 466th time, at least that I'm aware of, Barack Obama made a blithering idiot out of himself by something he said.  This one was the part of a campaign speech he made this week to "guys" telling us that maybe the reason we weren't tripping over ourselves to get to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton was that she was a female.

And, by the way, that her setting up of a private server and conducting all her official electronic communications on it was, in his words, "an honest mistake", as if you can use "Hillary" and "honest" in the same sentence without a "not" or "never" to qualify it.  Obama must really be enjoying having to defend that.  But he brought that part on himself.

So let's get back to the "female" thing.

Mr. Obama does not seem to have the greatest grasp of history, and not for the first time.  I remember, for example, 2007-08 and the Democrats' presidential campaign.  I confess to not remembering every word of Barack Obama's primary campaign speeches, but I'm pretty darn sure that he never once said something like "I think I'm going to drop out of the race, since my opponent is a female and we have to have one of those."

I'm not sure of Hillary Clinton's grasp of history either.

After all, I believe she is the one who has been advocating for transgender bathrooms and the like, and how gender is an optional thing, so fluid that you can select it based on how you feel that day.  Sort of like race, you know, in the whole Rachel Dolezal model.

So if gender is such a fluid thing, and people who are utterly born with the parts of one gender and the chromosomes of that same gender, can decide one morning that they are actually of the other gender, then gender can't really be all that important, can it?

And if it isn't that important, then I think it is perfectly reasonable that she stop playing the woman card, and stop claiming that her being female is of any relevance whatsoever, since tomorrow Donald Trump could decide that he, too, is female, and neutralize the gender argument once and for all.  If anyone else can actually do that and Hillary is fine with it, then why can't Trump do the same?

Obviously the point is that gender doesn't matter in a presidential campaign, and is 47th down the list, far down from competence, belief in American values and ability to tell the truth at least once a day.

And that's the truth.

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.

Corruption Risk of Early Voting

My best girl and I voted yesterday, which is allowable in the state in which we live.  She was a fan of the idea, despite the piece I wrote this past week condemning the practice and favoring a 24-hour voting window across all jurisdictions in the USA.

It is certainly convenient.  Polls in my district were opened last week, and we went over to our community center where the voting was to be done, at 3:00 pm.  There was one campaign person there handing out literature, and he was a friendly Republican.  Not a Democrat campaign person in sight, friendly or Hillaryesque, which may say something about our state and how it might flip.

There were about five machines and, although they were pretty much all occupied with voters, there was no line and we were able to vote directly without a wait after signing in.  There's no question about the convenience.  But there was a problem I saw, and it was scary.

They did not ask for ID.

Right now, my state does not have voter ID, because the most recent version of our voter ID law was struck down by a Federal court, and hasn't been reinstated in time.  So we just showed up, identified ourselves just by name and address, and were electronically crossed off the list by the nice lady with the laptop.

"Somebody" with my name and my address has now been recorded as having voted here.  That "somebody" happened to be me, but having voted early and without ID, I instantly saw the opportunity for fraud, the kind of fraud that Hillary Clinton and people associated with Hillary have shown that they would be quite comfortable committing.

How so?

Let's say that voting started, say, October 25th.  And let's say that a week earlier, an unscrupulous candidate, let's call her "Hillary" (a made-up name) had her minions drive around and record the addresses of people who had yard signs for her opponent, whom we'll call, oh, I don't know, "Donald Trump."  They then go back to their disposable laptops and google the names of the owners of the properties at those addresses.

Armed with the names and addresses of people who would be expected to vote for "Donald Trump", they hire warm bodies from out of state to go to the polls on October 25th, before the real people of those names and addresses vote, and cast a vote for Hillary.  Since they are not required to have ID, no one will be able to challenge them.

Of course, when the actual people showed up to vote and were told they already had, there might be a little kerfuffle, but according to the Democrats and the Washington Post, we don't have election fraud worthy of actual, reasonable voter ID laws.

This potential for fraud was so apparent to me that I left the building thinking through how easy it would be to do it, and how easy it would be for Hillary Clinton to have already arranged to have done this.  After all, given that she and "ethics" aren't even on the same planet, she would have just said to the toady or lackey who proposed the idea and chuckled, in that funny laugh of hers, "La, la, la, have fun" and bang, 50,000 extra votes.

Do we need to make fraud any easier?

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.

Corrupted Brazile

That's not the country, without the "e"; it is "Brazile", as in Donna Brazile, the now-former CNN commentator and possibly soon-to-be-former Democratic Party chairman.

Miss Brazile was just fired by CNN, having now twice been caught supplying advance questions that were going to be asked in debates in the 2016 primary season -- to Hillary Clinton.  The CNN chairman who canned her had candor in their internal meeting yesterday, in which he described her actions as "disgusting" and "unethical", a rare show of accuracy in the media, albeit behind closed doors.

It is sad that the media are in the tank for Hillary during the general election campaign; it is beyond contemptible that they were taking action on her behalf during the primary.

Why?  Because it is one thing for the media to claim a level of self-interest now, and operate on liberal "principles" as an excuse to endorse one candidate (although interjecting themselves is another thing).  It is quite another, when you are in a primary, the candidates are debating issues on which they mostly agree, and you pick a person over another.  That's disgusting and unethical.

Meaning that it is quite standard operating procedure for the left.

So fine, we all agree that Donna Brazile is a contemptible person who deserved to be fired from CNN and never hired again by any legitimate news organization.  We also agree that she deserves to be fired as party chairman, and ought to have a bloody hard time finding a job anywhere again, given her lack of ethics -- although some Democrat donor will keep her employed somehow.

Nope, my gripe today is with the recipient of those questions, the queen of unethical behavior herself, Hillary Clinton.  She received the questions and knew that they were legitimate, given that they were routed from the source through Donna Brazile Herself.

Why did she not tell Donna Brazile to roll the questions into a long tube and stick them somewhere where the sun doesn't shine? 

I'm serious.  If you are an ethical person, then even in the middle of an election cycle, your first reaction to cheating would be to walk briskly away.  The problem is that Hillary is not an ethical person, and ethics are nowhere near her default mindset.  Advance questions?  Heck, yeah, let me get some of them advance questions.

We know it happened.  We know it happened because Donna Brazile didn't go straight to CNN and plead her case, and broadcast to the world that she was framed, as would have been the case had she not actually slipped Hillary the questions.

Dang, I wish that had been exposed before the last debate.  I'd have loved for Chris Wallace to have asked Hillary why she had not walked away from Donna Brazile, and to have not let her try to get away with "russiansrussiansrussiansrussians", her usual response on anything exposed from the release of Wikileaks emails.

"Secretary Clinton", he would have followed up when she deflected to the Russians, "we know that you received the questions because Miss Brazile was fired by CNN over it.  Tell us why you did not immediately decline the question, and why you did not tell Miss Brazile in no uncertain terms that your ethical compass did not allow you to cheat, even in an election campaign?"

Ah, what a question.  Anyone on her plane want to ask that today?

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.

Proximity to Election IS Relevant

Oh, my gosh.

All across the grand United States of America, panties are in a wringer, boxers are in a wringer and, let's face it, undergarments of all sorts are in wringers.  Wringers are really stuffed, if not busy, and all because apparently our official national product is hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy is now abundant on the part of the left, the media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, which appear to be pretty much one continuous blob these days.  They're all in an uproar about FBI Director James Comey's revelation to Congress that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton, eleven  days before the general election.

The uproar stems from the "unprecedented" nature of the action, i.e., any remotely public pronouncement by the FBI that was within 60, or 90, or however-many days before an election that could possibly affect it.  Hillary was particularly whiny about it (could we possibly survive listening to that grating voice for four minutes, let alone four years?)

The Department of "Justice" (the quotation marks remain until Loretta Lynch is no longer in charge of it) apparently does have some kind of "rule" about not speaking about any investigation that might affect an election.  Of course, "rules" aren't "laws", and I would contend that the rationale for not "speaking about an election-related matter" is the same rationale for speaking.

In other words, assume the other FBI investigators, the ones investigating the Anthony Weiner case, discovered emails from Hillary or communicated via her private server containing classified information, forcing them to notify the brother FBI team that investigated Hillary.  You want to bet that would affect the election, right?

Well, here's my point -- not announcing the reopening of the investigation would itself have influenced the election.  Silence would affect the election; announcing the reopening would affect the election.  Either way, the public would react.

Therefore, the FBI, rules notwithstanding, needs to err on the side of providing information to the public.  Why?  Because the public needs to be trusted to the point of making its own decision with the available facts, whatever they might be.  People can decide to ignore what the FBI puts out, or they can decide to take it into account and vote for (or against) a candidate accordingly.

But the voting public cannot take into account what they do not know.

This case is indeed unprecedented, but we have to note that we have not had a presidential candidate under FBI investigation in recent years, certainly not the last 40 years.  Of course there is no precedent, because we haven't had major parties putting forth candidates who have done things like:

- Setting up a private email server to thwart FOIA investigations
- Bleach-bitting computer servers that were under subpoena
- Hammering cell phones into oblivion that were also under subpoena
- Lying to Congress about having submitted all her subpoenaed emails
- Lying to Congress about the existence of many devices
- Lying to Congress about the existence of classified material on her server.

And, let's point out that we haven't had attorneys general meet in private with the spouses of individuals under investigation; that's "unprecedented" too.  Nor have we had those attorneys general try to squash investigations of the spouses of the individuals who appointed them to senior U.S. Attorney positions.

This whole thing is unprecedented.

So let's let the people know, and not bury things under the rug before people are tempted to vote for someone who ends up being indicted.

As hopefully she will be, and soon.  Today would be nice.

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.

The Stench of Early Voting

I'm going to be voting this week, not next week.  My State allows that sort of thing for a couple weeks or so prior to the actual Election Day.  That, of course, does not change the fact that I am quite opposed to the concept, and while I'm fine with the absentee ballot concept, properly regulated, I am of a mind that Election Day is Election Day, not Election Month or (apparently in California, since half their votes have already been submitted) Election Year.

I wrote about something like this a couple years back, here.  My contention was, and is, that there is a problem with a misaligned system that allows returns from one state to be announced while other states are still voting.  So that was the point of the earlier piece.  This one is about the start of voting.

My point then was that, allowing for true absentee ballots (disabled, military, etc.) there was no reason we could not confine voting to a full, astronomical 24-hour window in all states and in DC, starting and ending at the same moment.  No matter where you worked, you could find a spot in the window to get off your butt and go cast your ballot (as had been done for centuries).  To be honest, only the media would be hurt, as they wouldn't have your rapt attention for hours as new states got to the end of their polling times and they could "call" states for this or that candidate.

And it is "news" that is the reason for putting a halt to this absurd early voting.  I mean, if people only needed to be counted based on party affiliation, we wouldn't need to vote.  The same country, though, that elected Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and two George Bushes obviously is reactive to external information and changes its mind.

Believe it or not, that can happen within two weeks of an election, as illustrated by the potential impact of the reopening of the Hillary Clinton criminal investigation by the FBI.  In fact, I promise you as sure as I'm sitting here that the Clinton mafia will be tripping all over themselves to dump some new incriminating stuff on Donald Trump this week to try to take the edge off her possible indictment.  You heard it here first, if it hasn't already happened.

I'm sorry, but if you can have releases of potentially game-changing news a week before an election, there's a real problem with people out there having already voted and potentially wishing they could change their ballot.  Now, I have no sympathy for them.  Their convenience cost them the opportunity to cast an informed ballot.

We need to rip apart this whole scattershot approach to the franchise of the ballot.  Legitimate absentee requirements aside -- and that's a tiny percentage -- I think we can all make plans within a nationwide 24-hour window to get our butts to the polling place and take advantage of the gift given us by our Founders, and that should be treasured by us as much as it was by the post-Saddam Iraqis walking around with proudly empurpled thumbs.

Let's all elevate the value of our vote and get the national election times shrunk to the one day it should be.

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.

Was THIS What They Intended?

I can point you to any number of articles, but they would be superfluous; Obamacare prices and health insurance prices, are going nuts for 2017.  You will be paying and paying and paying, and getting not a blessed thing more for the additional cost.

On average, if you were paying $1,000 a month this year, you will be paying $1,250 a month in 2017, except you will get nothing more than you did in 2016.  Oh, and your deductible, the part you have to pay out of your pocket before the insurance kicks in, will be higher.

Of course, the deductible was supposed to be lower with Obamacare, which was of course one of the number of lies about the program that were tossed out there by the president with one hand, while ramming it through a lapdog Democrat-controlled Congress.  Just in case you had forgotten what those lies were, well, here is a lovely and beautifully-written piece with a bunch of them.  OK, yeah, I wrote it, but it's still true.

Yesterday there was a TV interview with good old Jonathan Gruber, the fellow who is amazingly still a professor at my alma mater, M.I.T., and who is the reason that I no longer donate a penny when the Alumni Fund people come after me each year.  Gruber was the architect of this mess, and astonishingly is still willing to take "credit" for it.

His message to us was that the big spike in cost that Obamacare delivered this year (and last year, and will next year if Hillary is, God forbid, elected), was simply a natural market force and we shouldn't be so concerned about it.  Of course, Gruber and his dependents are covered by the health plan of his employer, M.I.T., so like those Democrats in the 2009-10 Congress that stupidly voted for this, the rate hikes and deductible increases don't affect him at all.

I think there is a simple question here.  It is one that could have occupied about a third of one of the debates, if the Obama administration had allowed the rate hikes to be made public before the last of the debates (they couldn't help the fact that they had to be announced before the election, but they would have tried that to delay that, too, if it were possible).

Is this what they intended?

Hillary Clinton wants to keep Obamacare and work around the edges.  Well, that's what she says in public; her lips were moving so it can be assumed that she was lying -- she also told the Canadians in private (for money) that she wanted a total government-run system.  But she says, for us, she wants to fix it a bit.

But ... but ... but ... if this is what they intended when the law was rammed through, it's pretty clear that we can make two conclusions that don't smell very good for Hillary and the Democrats.

(1) If this (massive rate hikes, out of control) was not predicted when the law was rammed through, then the people who created the law, sponsored it, shoot, voted for it, all have proven themselves totally incompetent or, at a minimum, corrupted.  It has led to this; if they didn't see it coming they should be out of a job tomorrow and certainly not allowed ever again to be in a position to make a decision affecting the USA.

(2) If this was predicted, and Gruber, Obama and the Democrats in Congress and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton knew it was a likely outcome, then they are indeed liars and utterly corrupt.  They not only should be removed from office, but should be subject to criminal liability in some form.  Jonathan Gruber should be in jail, not in rosy academia (OK, M.I.T. is not the rosiest campus on earth, and it's bloody cold up there nine months of the year).

I don't have to pay Obamacare increases, truth be told.  I'm 65, so I'm on Medicare, for which I pay now but in truth had been paying, by withholding taxes, for during my entire working life before age 65.  And the government is not exactly "running" my insurance; I have a Medicare Advantage plan so the insurance company itself actually runs it for the government.

But I have a lot of sympathy for those who do.  They didn't deserve to have been scrod by Obama and Congress, even if they voted for those people.  And now we have to ask ourselves if the disaster we have now was what they intended when they passed the law, or not.

If it was intended, they're corrupt and criminal and should be jailed today.  If it wasn't, they're incompetent and should be fired today.

And Hillary is going to use all those people either way.  Think about it if you were even remotely considering voting for her.

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.

Germany's Immigrant Lesson to US

I was reading a day or two back that a Syrian "refugee" (we do not know; if the USA cannot vet these people to determine if they're actually refugees, I"m pretty sure the Germans can't do much better) had immigrated to Germany.

The Syrian man, who is 49, he says (can't verify that either), is now living in a city in Germany, happily out of the line of fire in his home (we assume) country and possibly learning German, the language of the place he lives in, although we tend to doubt that.

More important, at least for the Germans, are three numbers.

Four.  Twenty-three.  Three hundred ninety-two thousand.  And you aren't going to guess what those refer to, although you could try and maybe get lucky and nail one of them.

The Syrian man came with his wives.  Not "wife", but wives.  All four of them.  The German taxpayers are now not only on the hook for the man, but four wives, in a country that does not allow polygamy.  The man was kind enough to recognize only one of them "officially."  But he is Muslim, and Muslim law, which he would, we assume, like to apply to Germany and the rest of earth, allows four, as long as you can provide for them.

His four wives, it can be added, were nothing if not fertile.  I have no problem whatsoever with people having as many children as they can afford, so fertility is a perfectly fine thing.  Certainly, fertility was a fine thing in this man's family, since across the four wives they produced 23 children (the second number, if you're following the theme), all of whom are now living in one of the four homes paid for by the German taxpayer.

And that, friends, gets us to the last number and perhaps the most relevant for the USA as they go to the polls in a couple weeks.  This multiple family which, whatever their motivation, is now living in Germany, is providing a net draw on the German government -- not just the overall economy but the taxpayers' contributions.

That "draw" is the cost of the government providing housing and living expenses for 28 people who simply showed up on their border and were welcomed in because it's what liberals do, without any thought about where the money is coming from.  And that cost, the amount the German taxpayer will pay because Germany doesn't want to have borders, is $392,000 per year for this man, his wives and all his children. 

That, dear readers, is one family.  One of the daughters has married and moved to Saudi Arabia, so it is down to 27 people draining the German taxpayer wallet, but you get the idea.

So ... Hillary Clinton wants us to take in, sight unseen and without the capacity to identify them, more than five times as many people claiming to be Syrian "refugees" as we are now.  She talks not about the actual reason for wanting that, which is the assumption that they'll vote for Democrats, but how we're supposed to be this welcoming-to-everyone society.

At the same time, we are $20 trillion in debt, we owe it to creditors who hate us, like China, and we're not coming close to paying the principal as we scramble to pay just the interest.  You can do the math.  Given the numbers she's talking about, we're supposed to be adding close to $1 billion in additional taxpayer funding to bring people over whom we then have to feed, clothe and house with money we need to borrow from China to get.

So I ask a simple question: If we have to borrow money from China to pay for these people's well-being, why aren't the people simply sent to China to live?

Makes sense to me.  Voting for Hillary certainly does not.

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.

PTSD and Lies about Rape

As we speak, there is a civil suit going on in Virginia, where the person who was a Dean at the University of Virginia made out to be a victim in the faked rape case I wrote about here, here and here, is suing Rolling Stone magazine, who printed the story.

Nicole Eramo, the Dean in question, also sued the fake accuser, who for some reason is still referred to only as "Jackie" in the press, although she has a name, there was never a rape, and the actual damages were entirely suffered by other people.  There is no reason on God's green earth why she is being protected, but that's our press for you (note -- I'm fine with the protection of the names of actual rape victims).

So now, at the trial, this "Jackie" person is claiming some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as the reason she ran to Rolling Stone with a made-up story about being gang-raped at a Phi Kappa Psi chapter during a party.  Rolling Stone ran with the story in a big way, forgetting to check some basic facts (such as the fact that there was no party at the Phi Psi house that day, and the person she is supposed to have attacked her, and whom she identified by having known that he worked at a certain place, never actually worked there).

Dean Eramo is still employed by the University; however, she is not a Dean any longer and has a different job.  The court limited her protection within this lawsuit, and the extent of her case, by virtue of her being a "partial celebrity", a ruling that defies rationality a bit since no one outside the Charlottesville campus had any idea who Nicole Eramo was before her reputation was trashed in Rolling Stone.

This "Jackie" is, we think, still at UVa, or maybe she isn't.  I don't really care.  I do care that she is reported to have an ego problem and a relationship desperation problem, as reported during the more fact-oriented and research-oriented parts of the later (i.e., post-Rolling Stone) reporting on the case.  And I care that now, having destroyed the reputation of Nicole Eramo, the Phi Kappa Psi chapter, and the entire UVa fraternity and sorority system, she's claiming PTSD.

PTSD is supposed to have blacked out her memory of the event enough to have had her make up the story in the first place, although if there wasn't an event in the first place, it is not clear what the "trauma" was for her to have had stress after.  Get it?


Now, you or I, if we were to have had PTSD after some traumatic event, well, we would go to our physician or psychologist, and try to deal with our issues in a rational way that focuses on us getting our arms around circumstances.

We would not run to Rolling Stone magazine and make up a story.

Then again, I (and, presumably, you) do not have a need for attention so strong as to make up phony stories about an event that never happened, and certainly would not do so, regardless, in such a way as to allow the destruction of the reputations of otherwise innocent people.

The trial of Rolling Stone and this "Jackie" person is going to come to a conclusion here in the next few days.  I only have the evidence before me reflecting the reporting that has gone on since, but in this case I know exactly how I hope the trial turns out.

At which point at least one news outlet with a shred of decency should protect actual rape victims by identifying and publicizing the name of this "Jackie."

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.

Paid to Riot: No Story?

I'm sure that we're all now aware from the Wikileaks emails that, according to senior Hillary Clinton campaign official John Podesta, the Clinton campaign itself, presumably through laundered money and surrogates, actually paid people to riot and incite violence at Donald Trump rallies and events.  It was also apparent through these emails that Mrs. Clinton was aware of this effort -- a question to that effect was actually asked and answered in a parallel research effort, complete with videotapes.

And so ... I'd like to ask a few questions.  And so should the American public, and certainly so should the press.  Of course, those questions will not be asked, let alone answered.

(1) Hillary was aware of the fact that rioters were paid to cause violence at Trump rallies; that is now out there and she can't deny it.  There is no plausible deniability available when someone asks on video, for the record, if she knew about the activities and the answer is "yes."  People get hurt when violence is incited; that's what "violence" means.

Why did Hillary Clinton not respond immediately when the suggestion to pay rioters was raised, by saying that such activities were not to be tolerated on her campaign?

(2) Actual people are shown discussing actual plans to incite actual riots.  They're right there on tape, and it is quite clear who those people are that are doing so.  Incitement to riot is illegal; conspiracy to do so or to commit violence is illegal; it is similarly a violation of Federal election law to do all that stuff.  We know who those people are -- it's a video.

Why is the FBI not opening an immediate criminal investigation into these activities, subpoenaing witnesses and hauling the people on the videotape up for a heavy grilling on this activity under penalty of law?

(3) The immediate answer by any Democrat in regard to anything associated with this explosive revelation, or anything else associated with the illegal activity here, is to parrot back the party line, which is "Russians Russians Russians Russians Russians."  Because the Russians might have been the ones to (or if you ask any Democrat, "did") hack into Podesta's email, the contents of anything found there, no matter how repugnant, are apparently less of an issue than the suggestion that the nasty old Russians were involved.

Why was Chris Wallace the only one in the entire press corps, from any news organization whatsoever, with the opportunity to ask Mrs. Clinton directly anything whatsoever associated with the content of the emails, who has actually tried to ask her that? 

I have to say, I wish that Wallace had not let her go on about the Russians for so long, and had made her answer the question.  It was so predictable that when I was watching the debate, and he asked her a question about one of the Wikileaks revelations, I turned to my best girl while he was just starting to ask the question, and said "Watch her ... it'll be RussiansRussiansRussiansRussians", and sure enough, it was.

It is quite evident that there were serious criminal activities and serious violation of election laws exposed in the last two weeks.  The Russians didn't do that.  The press need to be writing about this and asking Hillary and her campaign some bloody serious questions and making them answer them without the word "Russians" in the answer.

More importantly, though, the FBI has a big, fat investigation staring it in the face that, I'm afraid, may never get started, and certainly not before the election.

That's a bloody shame for my country.

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.