Guest Column: Girls in Boy Scouts

Today's guest column is by invitation.  Ed Fenstermacher, an MIT classmate of mine who has several guest columns to his credit here the past few years, has been a very active leader in scouting activities.  Accordingly, when the news broke of the Boy Scouts' decision to introduce programs for girls, I asked Ed, as an expert in Scouting, to comment.
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As a long-time adult leader in the Boy Scouts of America, I was surprised by the news that we would admit girls to the Cub Scouting program in 2018, and older girls to BSA “with a path to Eagle Scout” by 2019.  Unlike every media outlet I have heard from, and certainly unlike GSUSA, for me it was a pleasant surprise.  Let me explain why.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are both quality youth programs.  They both have an active outdoor program that promotes camping.  They both promote good moral values, many of which you do not get from, for instance, sports programs.  But Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are structured differently, and have different emphases.  My wife has been active as a Girl Scout leader for even longer than I’ve been a Boy Scout leader, and we contribute to both organizations financially.
 

Boy Scouts has the Cub Scout program for elementary school youth, and the Boy Scout program for middle and high school youth.  In addition, the Boy Scouts has the Exploring program, the Venturing program, and the Sea Scouts program.  All of those programs are open to youth from age 14 up, and all already admit girls.  If memory serves, Exploring was admitting girls when I joined in 1965.  This is nothing new.  Girls have been members of BSA for decades. 
 

Usually, when a boy joins a troop, he will be in the same troop as long as he stays in Boy Scouts, will learn from the older boys as well as adults, and grow to be a leader himself.  A boy progresses from Scout to Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life and Eagle, each building on the one before.  You cannot earn Eagle Scout without earning all the lower ranks.  Also, starting with Star, each rank requires several months of service in one of a list of leadership positions, all of which require planning and working with other scouts, usually younger scouts for whom they are expected to direct, teach, and set an example for.  In an ideal troop, most of the leading is done by boys, not adults.  Each rank promotion requires a Board of Review, where three to six adults sit with the Scout and review his progress.
 

Girl Scouts is organized more along grade-level lines, starting with Daisies (K-1), and moving to Brownies (2-3), Juniors (4-5), Cadettes (6-8), Seniors (9-10), and Ambassadors (11-12).  The programs at each level are distinct; certain awards may be earned only at certain levels.  The highest award, the Gold Award, is earned only by Seniors and Ambassadors, and they are not required to have earned the Silver Award as a Cadette.  Most leadership in Girl Scouts is from the adults, although leadership is required for Silver Award and Gold Award projects.
 

Both the Gold Award and Eagle Scout Rank require a project, but again the requirements are different.  They are both difficult and time-consuming.  Some projects would meet the requirements of either program, but many that would meet the Gold Award requirements would not meet Eagle Scout requirements, and vice-versa.  The Gold Award Project has defined service hour requirements, the Eagle Service Leadership Project does not, but it does require supervision of other persons.  There are other differences in emphasis on the projects.
 

The Eagle Scout Rank has other requirements as well.  In addition to the skills learned for the lower ranks, it requires earning 21 merit badges, 10 required of all Eagle Scouts, and three with a short list of options (e.g., swimming or hiking or cycling).  Merit badges required for Eagle include First Aid, Personal Fitness, Personal Management, Camping, and four involving Citizenship.  Many of the required badges require a significant level of effort.
 

There are many girls who are well served by the Girl Scouts, and for whom that program meets all of their needs.  There are others who may be better off, and get more out of, a program structured like Boy Scouts.  Only the girls and their families can make the decision as to which is best for a given girl, but I think that, in a country of 325 million individuals, we should be free to choose the best program for each child.
 

Let me dispel a couple misconceptions before I close.  It was already announced that for Cub Scouts, each den will be all boys or all girls, and the Cub Scout Packs will be able to choose to be all boys, all girls, or have dens (the smaller groups) of each.  While the announcement did not include details for the program for older girls, it can be expected to follow the same pattern.  I expect there will always be all-boy units, but there may also be mixed and all girl units.  There are already Explorer Posts and Venture Crews that are all female.  In one notable case, the same group of girls was registered both as an Explorer Post and a Girl Scout troop so they could maximize the number of events they could participate in.  For several years, in the winter camping Klondike Derby in our District, that Post won the best unit competition.
 

Also, as a result of the abuse incidents which occurred in the past, BSA has implemented a very strong Youth Protection programs, in which every adult who works with a youth must be trained every two years, and adhere to.  I can say for certain that, however things are implemented, boys and girls will not be sharing tents, etc.  That is a non-starter for all concerned, no matter what you have heard through the media.
 

On a survey I filled out last year about my thoughts as a Boy Scout Leader, I was asked about what I would change.  I thought about the fact that there was no aspect of learning and living by the Scout Oath and Law, no camping skill, no first aid skill, nor merit badge knowledge, that would not be just as valuable in the life of a girl as in the life of a boy, and I wrote, “We should admit girls, and allow them to earn Eagle.”  I believed it then, and still do.
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Ed Fenstermacher has been an adult leader in BSA for over a quarter of a century, serving as a Den Leader, Cubmaster, Scoutmaster, Unit Commissioner, Merit Badge Counselor, and currently as a District Eagle Advisor.  He is the father of a daughter who earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, and two sons who are Eagle Scouts.  A dozen scouts have earned Eagle on his watch as Scoutmaster, and Ed has worked with nearly 200 Boy Scouts who either have earned Eagle, or are well on their way.  He is looking forward to having the opportunity to work with some of the first girls who will earn the Eagle Scout rank.

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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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Time to Retire, John

I suppose that it is worth the words to go ahead and thank Sen. John McCain for his long service to the USA.  No one, not even someone who steps up to serve his country knowing the risks, should have to suffer years of incarceration as a POW in the heck-hole that was a North Vietnamese prison camp, as the senator did during his military service.

And although there are immense perks that go with the office and length of service, we should thank him as well, or at least the people of the State of Arizona should, for his long tenure as the senator from that great state.  We should thank him for running for president against Barack Obama in 2008, although he failed to expose Obama for what and who he was and, accordingly, lost -- leaving us with Obamacare, the Iran deal, ISIS, a reinvigorated Russia, countless leftist judges and Black Lives Matter, the last of which Obama clearly allowed to happen.

But it is time -- it is SO time -- for Senator McCain to step down gracefully from the national stage and be with his family and take care of the cancer that he is again suffering from.  It is, we can argue, long past that time.

As evidence #455 of that, I give you this excerpt from his speech earlier this week somewhere to some audience.  In a direct message to President Trump , McCain gave us these words:

"To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history."

I challenge you to diagram that sentence.  OK, you may be too young to know that in the bygone days of schooling we used to diagram sentences to identify parts of speech, which may be why kids today can't write a coherent sentence.

But I digress.

I'm going to try to extract one of the 17 points McCain was trying to make in that grammatical challenge, so he should forgive me if I don't quote his intent properly.  That point is that, under President Trump, we have, he says, "refused the obligations of international leadership", because we are excessively nationalist Americans who don't want to solve world problems.  That, he said, is unpatriotic.

That, Senator, is just wrong.  Now, you may think you have a better sense of what constitutes "leadership" in the world, and think you have a better sense of the USA's role in the world than I do, but I'm thinking that maybe you don't, and any American's opinion is as valuable as yours.

I have thought for a long time that the United States of America was a grant by God to the world, so that there would always be one nation on earth where people could see what happens when the shackles are taken off the ambition of the individual.  We are not so much the beacon of freedom to attract people to enjoy it here, but the demonstration of the success of freedom so that other lands can enjoy it there.

That more nations have not adopted our Constitution as the foundation of their own republics is not an indictment of its inadequacies.  It is, rather, a triumph of corrupt power unwilling to grant to its people the right to self-determination.

So our role in international leadership, Senator, is a nationalist one.  It is for us to unshackle our people repeatedly, continually and visibly.  A better USA is the great commercial for our way of life everywhere else.

And our role, to a certain extent, includes defending the oppressed in other lands against the internal powers there who would subjugate them.  It is why we have participated in the removal of the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Saddams, the Khaddafis.  It is why when we have failed to do so, the Pol Pots and Kims have murdered their people and created repressive dictatorships.  And it is why we must continue to demonstrate to Russia and China (and their people) that our way of life is a way of freedom and success.

This is not "spurious, half-baked nationalism" being practiced in the refreshing new Administration.  It is a clear understanding in this White House that what we do within our borders -- and, of course, that we have borders -- matters as much or more beyond them.

If you don't get that, Senator McCain, if you have let your personal disaffection with this president color your capacity to legislate in the best interest of the people of the State of Arizona and of this nation, then you have no real choice.

Retire tomorrow, Senator, and take care of yourself.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Antifa in Middletown? Who Knew?

Middletown, Virginia is a very small community at the rural confluence of two interstates in the northeast part of the state.  There is not a great deal there, but it is the home of the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical site, the location of a battlefield from the War Between the States where a significant battle was indeed fought.

It is a popular site for those folks whose hobby is to reenact battles from that war.  That means that I need to provide the necessary foreword stating that I have never participated in a War reenactment, nor I have I seen one, nor have I been knowingly close to one, despite many decades of living amidst where those things go on.

I trust that those who do that sort of thing enjoy themselves, learn a great deal and regard reenacting as harmless fun.  I certainly do not think anything bad of those who do participate, any more than anyone would think ill of me for singing barbershop music for 25 years of my life.

This past Sunday was to have been an annual reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek at the site.  This was advertised for a long time prior, and if I read correctly is indeed done every year and many folks come out to see it.

The reenactment, however, was not going to happen.  It was cancelled, you see, at the last day.  This was not related to weather, or lack of expected attendance, or lack of reenactors on one side or the other.

Nope, this was to be cancelled because of a threat received last Wednesday, and provided to the FBI, that there would be bombings on that afternoon, and it is reported that a pipe bomb was actually found at the site on the day of the scheduled event (a device was found; the FBI ultimately determined it to be safe and no one was hurt).

The FBI is investigating and we do not expect them to provide any further news on the matter, unless something very dramatic is uncovered.

Because law enforcement is not talking, we are speculating based on word from some of the disappointed reenactors as to what they have heard.  Primarily, the word is that the bomb scare was the work of the same types who are trying to get statues of Confederate generals taken down (along with Christopher Columbus and, I suppose, George Washington at some point).

The obvious inference is that the Antifa types are at it again, only this time the threat was not to statues of Confederate generals but, rather, innocent Americans pursuing a harmless hobby -- and those watching them do so.  And that, friends, goes over the line in a big way.

The cancellation of this event was news in the Washington, DC media outlets, at least for a day or so.  It is only now starting to get picked up by predominantly conservative outlets beyond the DC area.  That, in itself, is a bit scary.  We had Americans, actual Americans, threatened by a lunatic fringe which apparently cannot be called a terrorist organization because they don't have enough of an organization to identify any leadership -- textbook anarchy.

Do we think that anyone in Chicago or Houston or Los Angeles knows this happened?  Was it on the national media?  This is a real problem.  The next time Antifa strikes, and someone is killed, will anyone in the media bring up Cedar Creek and say that this was brewing?  Or will it be the case that the lack of publicity for what they did at Cedar Creek will mean that we weren't prepared?

There was one bright spot.  The reenactment actually ended up taking place on Sunday morning, by a set of reenactment hobbyists determined not to let Antifa or anyone else stop them.  The public was kept far from the "battle", and it was reported that the Confederate ranks were quite a bit down from last year's event.

If I actually were a reenactor on the Confederate side, I don't know if I would have donned the gray uniform.  But I'm glad that some did, if only to demonstrate that Americans are not going to put up with crap from a bunch of communist anarchists.  At the end of the event, the soldiers chanted "U-S-A, U-S-A" to let everyone know that 153 years later, we're not going to let enemies within or without stop us.

Will CNN say anything?  Not a poop out of them so far.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Nancy's Constituency

Nancy Pelosi, the geriatric, overly wealthy and entitled minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, has responded to President Trump's initial immigration proposal, the one with 70 points worth of things he wants to have in a resultant bill.

We all know the president, and we all know that this is his initial posture, hoping to get as much as possible of what is in his points put into a bill that the House and Senate can actually pass and put on his desk.  It's called an initial offer", and lots can get done -- including the border wall -- especially as long as border security is nailed down before going on to dealing with the illegals already here.

That, of course, doesn't seem to faze Mrs. Pelosi.  She and her good friend Chuck Schumer, made a bizarre statement. "The administration can't be serious about compromise or helping the Dreamers if they begin with a list that is anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to the vast majority of Americans [sic].  We told the president at our meeting that we were open to reasonable border security measures alongside the DREAM Act, but this list goes so far beyond what is reasonable. This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise.  The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations. If the president was serious about protecting the Dreamers, his staff has not made a good faith effort to do so."

So, one has to ask, what exactly is her constituency?

Nancy Pelosi represents a severely leftist district in California, but as minority leader she also has to represent the entire Democrat Party and Democrat voters as well, many of whom are not nearly as leftist as her district.  And lots of those people are not too thrilled with the idea that they have to pay, through their tax dollars, for illegal aliens who get more benefits than they themselves do.

She actually included in her statement that the "vast majority" of Americans saw President Trump's proposal as "anathema."  Who exactly was that?  It's hard to imagine that any of those who voted for him think the proposal is "anathema"; it is the core of what he ran on, and he is now the president (and Nancy Pelosi's party now leads nothing in Washington).  It's also easy to imagine that a lot of Democrat voters also see some things in the proposal that are worthy of discussion, or at least don't see it as "anathema."

But Nancy Pelosi is so frigging out of touch with the country, the one she only flies over, that she likely believes what she said.  I have no idea what the real constituency is that she thinks she has outside her district, but the USA is ready to have actual immigration reform on the table and debated in Congress, something that did not happen when her side had Congress, the White House, and a filibuster-proof Senate.

Look, we know what's up.  She can't possibly allow this president to be seen as leading, let alone to be driving an issue; that would grant him legitimacy.  And it is incredibly disingenuous to try to claim that the "vast majority of America" thinks anything other than that President Trump's proposal is a reasonable start, a start at something she should have led herself in 2009.

But Nancy does not hear what she only flies over.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

It's Not YOUR Money, Hillary

So we're all sort of caught up in that Harvey Weinstein thing, where the apparently powerful movie mogul (I had never really heard of him, but I rarely go to movies, don't typically watch the Oscars and couldn't care less about the moguls who make them) is accused of abusing female actresses.

A bunch of actresses are coming forward to assert that he did this or that to them, and one has to assume simply by (A) their large number, (B) the risk of industry blacklist, and (C) the fact that people are saying they knew all the time he was a louse, that it it is substantively true, and that Weinstein is a serial abuser of women under his employment power.  Classic workplace sexual harassment, casting couch, all that sort of thing.

This story is big in Hollywood, but not so much in the media.  That would be because Weinstein, along with being a serial abuser of women under his employment control, was a big Democrat donor and a very good friend of the Clintons, even having them rent a house in the Hamptons next to him.  Lots of money, many years.  God forbid a Democrat donor's legal issues get into the Democrat media.

So of course there were some calls, at least on the right and from some of the women abused, for Weinstein's campaign donations to be returned, particularly all the money he gave to Hillary Clinton last year.  People have done that before; when donors are problematic and it looks bad, they returned the donations.

It looked pretty bad when she wouldn't say anything about Weinstein for almost a week after the scandal broke.  I guess it took that long for her handlers to come up with the right statement one makes, when one's friend turns out to be a serial abuser and you probably always knew about it, you know, being married to one and all.  Oh, yeah, and you were supposed to be the "friend of women" and all that too.

So Hillary gets on an interview with a butt-kissing leftist host, and gets asked the logical question -- "Will you return his contributions to your campaign?".  What was her answer to that, you might ask?  Well, it was pretty curious, and if I transcribed it right it was this:

"Well, there's no one to return it to ... [then, in regard to returning the donations by giving them to charity,] of course I will do that; I give 10% [of my income] to charity every year.  This will be part of that."

No one seems to have mentioned, however, that those donations from Weinstein are not her money.  OK, I don't exactly know what the campaign finance rules are regarding funds left over after a completed campaign -- I believe they can roll to a subsequent campaign, maybe -- but they're not personal money.

The interviewer, of course, didn't follow up by asking the obvious questions.  "What do you mean 'no one to return it to'; your campaign should send it back to Weinstein, right?" and then the other obvious one, "How does the donation to charity of campaign donations that were given to the Hillary for President campaign, possibly become part of your personal donation to charity?  That money belongs to the campaign, not to you!  You can't claim a charitable deduction on your taxes and you can't claim any moral credit either."

The former question is a sidelight.  The latter is critical, and raises a real issue.  What, we have to ask if she said that, is Hillary Clinton doing with the other money that is left over in her campaign account?  I mean, people can't just give it to charity and then claim some kind of tax deduction against their own income.

So why did she even mention what she personally claims to give to charity each year?  What relevance does that have?  It has nothing to do with campaign finance at all, and to be clear, even if it did, it essentially, as documented, all went to the Clinton Foundation, which is a cesspool of corruption run by her family and select close family friends.  Charity, yeah, right.

So please, will someone in the press raise that?  Her own words, "It will be part of [my personal charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation]", are frightening, if in her own mind she sees the campaign, the "Foundation" and her own pocketbook as extensions of each other.    

Please, media.  Jump on 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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

No World Cup for You!

Oh, my God.

What a horrific day for soccer in the USA, and not for why you think it stinks either.  As you may possibly know, but might not have cared enough to have remembered, on Tuesday the USA soccer team lost to the team from the soccer powerhouse of Trinidad and Tobago.  By losing, their record in their group of six countries' teams dropped to where they are now eliminated from qualifying for the 2018 World Cup of Soccer, somewhere in Russia, I think.

Those are the facts.  Here come the opinions.

I have written multiple times about soccer here, none of which have been particularly complimentary.  Soccer, you see, has the problem of being lots of fun to play, but agonizingly dull to watch.  If I watch my Keurig machine making coffee, at least I know that in a minute or two there will be coffee.  Hooray.  If I turn on, God forbid, a soccer "match", I don't even know if there will be a winner -- I'm not even sure there will be any score.

It is an American thing, and probably a human thing, that if you have a reason to root for a team or a performer, and they are participating, you can tolerate more dullness in a sport.  I like watching golf on TV, I suppose, but I certainly watch it more intently if either (A) Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods is in contention; (B) it is a Ryder Cup or President's Cup where the USA is a team against foreigners; or (C) it is one of the four major tournaments a year, where the result is historic in the same way that a Super Bowl winner is, even if it is Seattle playing Kansas City.

That is why people in this country ever watch soccer, that is, in the every-four-years World Cup when we can root for the USA team against the world.  The other three years and eleven months or so, we don't care and don't watch.  That's important.

Now what I have written here previously has to do not so much with how dull soccer is to watch, but how the left is so intent on making us watch, or at least making us think we are supposed to watch.  I've written about how ESPN, a leftist outlet if ever there was one, runs the scores of soccer matches in Mexico, the UK and perhaps Mars (who knows or cares) on the bottom of the screen.

The left is a globalist entity, and soccer is a global sport.  We don't care who wins in "Bundesliga Deutschland"?  Shame on us for not caring, not on the game for being dull.  No, we will shove scores at you until you start watching, and we will continue to do so forever.  Maybe that will get you to hate America like you're supposed to.

But now, oh, Lordy, they have a problem.  You see, every four years we have to watch soccer, because the USA is in the World Cup and we root for our team and our flag (ironic, right?).  And every four years, there is all this talk about how our temporary fandom will translate into lots and lots of kids taking up soccer.

But it never translates into actually watching the game on TV or being interested in watching it, because as I said, it's fun to play but anesthetic to watch.  So now with no USA team in the World Cup, that means that the left loses us for eight years instead of four, and that is just terrible.

It is ironically terrible for Fox Sports, which paid a ton of cash for the right to broadcast a World Cup that no one will be watching without a USA team. [OK, at this point it probably makes sense to point out that all the above is about the men's team; the women will likely be back in it, but they haven't exactly endeared themselves to America by being flaming leftists themselves, and women's teams mostly don't draw the same.  And the first one of them who takes a knee for our anthem will kill it completely].

But the real loser, along with the USA men's team, is the left.  No USA World Cup team, no World Cup viewers, so no interest in soccer, so eight years of "who cares" for the sport here.  We Americans will stick with our sports, the ones that interest us, although the NFL is sliding down that list a bit.  In fact, it's got to be tough for the left.  Do they try to boost the NFL, because its players are actually doing that kneeling crap, despite the whole violence-and-concussions thing, while Americans are voting with their remotes and not watching?  Whose side do they come down on?  Oh, the torture.

Bummer for them.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Insulting Obama

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a pretty big surprise, possibly to everyone except for the current president.  We'll never know, of course, because he would probably tell you that he knew it all the time.  But one of the curiosities of it being such a surprise is that it was sort of a "before and after" thing.

What I mean is that the reality prior to the election was a different one from that immediately afterwards, in many respects.  Moreover, with some specific exceptions, we tend to have set aside and, perhaps, even forgotten, some things that we just took for granted when they were just superfluous garbage.

And speaking of superfluous garbage, let's look at the words of the immediately former president, Barack H. Obama, Jr.  As I get reminded every once in a while, back in September, Mr. Obama stated loudly that he would regard it as a personal insult if (in this case) black Americans did not vote for Hillary Clinton.

They did not, of course, in one sense -- the turnout was weak, and Hillary got 5% less support (93% to 88%) among black voters who actually did go to the polls.  Actually that's a pretty good "in one sense", and that probably makes some sense.

I suppose that, given the tangible outcome and Mr. Obama's own words, that he should distinctly feel personally insulted.  That voting percentage by which Hillary was lower than Obama, didn't exactly go out and vote for President Trump; his numbers were about the same as Mitt Romney's in 2012.  But they certainly did do what was supposed to be an "insult", and we ought to mention that.

Barack Obama hasn't exactly owned up to the fact that a bunch of "his people", at least on his father's side, insulted him.  He hasn't gone out and waved his finger in a typical Obama-like, professorial lecture and castigated the people who "insulted" him, probably because it is not in keeping with being a leftist to concede that there are people who disagree with your world view, certainly not enough to vote for the other guy.

But he said it.  "If you don't vote for Hillary you are insulting me" (not that he cared about Hillary or her presidency, of course).  And I would really like to have someone in the press -- why do I keep having to suggest stories to them? -- sit down with the mercifully-former president and talk to him about that line.

Why, we might want to know, does he think all those black voters were willing to insult him rather than pull a lever for Hillary Clinton?  He can't even invoke anything Trumpian at all, because those voters didn't vote for Trump either -- they voted for third-party candidates or stayed home.  Donald Trump certainly didn't destroy old "Crooked Hillary" in the mind of those voters; if anything, she did so herself.  Or (gasp) Obama and his failures did.

OK.  Reflecting on what I was saying about "before and after Election Day", Obama said it, and a goodly chunk of the black voters were willing to insult him by not voting for Hillary.  So which of her 1,277 reasons she lost does he think relate to the black voting public who voted for him in '12 but not for Hillary in '16?  James Comey?  Emails? The weather?  Russia? [OK, at this point, I don't even know what "Russia" would refer to, since there is no real indication that anything Russia did either hurt or helped her on Election Day, but she keeps invoking it so I will, too.]

So I really want to have someone ask him that question and make him answer it directly, no mealymouthed, diverting answer.  Was he or was he not insulted by the large number of black voters that didn't vote for Hillary, when he said he would be insulted if they didn't?

If no one asks, well, I will be personally insulted.  Do you care?

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

"Cinderita"

I realize that when you are writing five times a week, even though the subjects can be a bit varied, there is always the likelihood of going back and revisiting a topic -- not always intentionally -- and saying the same thing again.

But I guess if the same topic is raised in the news, or in some recent happening, that causes a revitalization of the topic, it might be worth a revisit regardless.  That's one reason we had several gun-control pieces last week, and why we're talking about ... yes, theatrical casting, yet again.

You might as well go read the first piece on it, which was this one from back in 2015.  The point is that when theater, or TV or movies, are done at a professional level, you need to do everything possible to suspend the disbelief of your audience so that they stay in the story.  And casting people who don't fit the audience's expectation introduces disbelief you don't need.

Television in 2017 is rife with that, of course, particularly in its desire to appear hip and with-it and, God forbid, decidedly not racist.  You would think that 90% of couples today are mixed-race, if you extrapolated from TV depictions.  But at least we know that the producers are not racists, which is all that matters, except when you get to the self-congratulatory award ceremonies and there are not enough non-white nominees.

In that piece, of course, I posed the silly notion that Matt Damon should have auditioned to play Martin Luther King when the movie Selma was done, just to help show that Hollywood is race-blind.  As silly as that notion is, I pointed out back then, the TV show "Once Upon a Time", which is based on the humanization of fairy-tale characters, had seemed to do that far too often to maintain the suspension of disbelief any show requires (my example was the odd casting of a Hispanic-looking Honduran-Canadian actress to play the English fictional character Maid Marian, of the Robin Hood tale).

Well, "Once Upon a Time" has officially done it again, except they went even farther.  This time, the the character was Cinderella, and the performer is the Dominican actress Dania Ramirez.  Now, Dania Ramirez is a perfectly fine actress to play any number of characters.  But not only have the producers decided to have a visibly Latina actress to play the part, she has a Dominican accent as well and does not suppress it.

Now, there probably is not a "right" answer as to what Cinderella (or, in this case, I guess, "Cinderita"), is supposed to look like.  OK, there is no right answer.  She is, after all, fictional.  I get it.  If the whole fairy tale were staged in a Latin environment, it would be perfectly fine.

But the rest of the characters are clearly, for lack of a better term, Anglos.  So not only do the producers get questioned as to why they would mix race and accents in a confined, if fictional, realm, they have made the Latina a stereotypically servile young woman, so they kind of messed up there too, at least from the PC side.

Now, I have already pointed out that the producers have already mixed accents all over the place, from American to many flavors of English and Scots accents, some of which are nearly incomprehensible.  That's pretty distracting on its own.  Why they feel the need to muddy the suspension-of-disbelief waters by adding racially-odd casting to verbally-odd accents is beyond me.

I don't know how this will play out.  I don't know, because we have taken the show off our recording list.  

Astonishingly to those on the left, it has nothing to do with that casting, nothing to do with race, nothing to do with suspension of disbelief.  That was only one story line, and we've watched the show for years with story lines we didn't enjoy (or couldn't follow).

It is simply that, presumably having run out of new realms to explore with the cast this season, they have let half or more of the principal actors go (or the principals got tired and left; don't know and don't care), and have gone off in a strange direction with the plot.  The main character is now the son of the former main female character (the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming), grown up, and since he wasn't even a fairy-tale character in the first place, who cares?

It is no longer interesting enough, nor easy enough to follow, to where it is worth an hour of our time.  It has, in the classic TV parlance, "jumped the shark."

I wish them luck; surely they are all good people trying very hard.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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What Really IS "Fake News"

I had the news on in the background last Thursday while I was working (and waiting for the baseball playoffs to start), and again there was an afternoon press conference at the White House.  The press was in a somewhat more sedate mood, I guess, although every one seemed to say "I have two questions ...", whereupon Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, would answer one of them and then turn to another reporter to try to give everyone a chance.

That didn't stop most of them from trying to shout their second question out after Mrs. Sanders said she was going to another reporter to give everyone a chance -- the CNN guy was particularly obnoxious about it.  But she was diligent about answering one question each, and got questions from a large number of the assembled troops.

So one fellow asked a question about something in the news, a report from NBC that the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, had referred to the President Trump in a defamatory way.  (The Secretary actually had answered a press question on that a day earlier, saying that he wouldn't dignify the notion with a comment, and that he was staying in his role as long as the president wanted him to.  "I don't come from [Washington]", Tillerson said, meaning that in his career he had never wasted a moment on petty crap like that.)  The president had then referred to the NBC report as "Fake News", meaning that NBC had pretty much made it up, and that it would be appropriate for the press to be subject to investigation when they abuse their First Amendment privileges.

But it was a subsequent question that got me thinking, because I wanted to answer it myself.  That reporter asked if the president thought there to be any difference between fake news as practiced by the American media and the "other" fake news, that is, promulgated by Russia in an attempt to create chaos in the USA, as we are coming to discover.

Mrs. Sanders answered the question, but really without a specific answer -- the press secretary typically comes armed with pre-written statements in regard to certain topics that might come up.  I've no problem with that, of course.  The purpose of the press conferences is to convey the opinions of the White House, and since the press secretary is answering questions about what the president believes, they always find it useful to come armed with statements about what he does believe.

So I was immediately, on hearing the question, conjuring up the answer I would have liked to have heard.  That would have been something like this:

"Thank you for that question.  You raise an interesting point about fake news spread by Russia and fake news spread by the American mainstream media.  The president believes that there is actually very little difference between the two.

"The Russian purpose is quite obvious to all of us.  They want to foment division in our country, as a way to portray the American way of life as somehow not a suitable aspiration for other nations.  They are not particularly interested in who actually wins elections here, as much as they are trying to make the elections themselves contentious.  They want the contention and the divisions, and elections are an ideal target for them.

"How is that any different from NBC, CBS or CNN or ABC putting out false, unsourced or unvalidated reports, knowing that there is no journalistic rationale for doing so, or there is inadequate sourcing?  We know that their reporting is well above 90% biased against this president, so we know that their motivation is divisiveness, the same as the Russians -- except that they are trying to foment division against this Administration, where the Russians really don't care which side wins as long as there is division.

"Fake news to exacerbate divisions is fake news.  The Russians don't have the First Amendment protection that the mainstream media do, so it is simply an act of adversarial aggression on their part to try to spread fake stories.  The American mainstream media are protected, yet they have a responsibility to maintain some level of journalistic integrity because they are protected.

"So perhaps not only is American fake news comparable to the Russians' actions, it is worse because it is protected.  Certainly the motivation is far, far more similar than it is different."

No, I don't want to be press secretary.  But I'll be happy to write this stuff for the White House.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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Guns and the Movies

We can close out the week with a thought that, I suppose, has been in the back of my mind a bit during this week that was begun with an immense assault on civilization in Las Vegas, and has proceeded, even in this column, with much discussion regarding firearms.

So I guess I can characterize that thought as this ... there are two very large aspects to this discussion, and we never hear anyone try to make the distinction.  First, there is the weapon itself and all that goes with it, including the Second Amendment, the regulation, the registration, the ammunition and everything that goes along with the firearm and its possession.

That's one thing.

But then the other is the less-discussed half.  That is the action itself; the person, the motivation, the influences around the use of the weapon.  And we really, really need to talk about that.

I was, I suppose, a fortunate child.  Not in assets, for sure; we were a rather low-income family.  But Dad was a former Army competitive marksman who could, as I've written, put five pistol shots in a quarter-size ring at age 95 though he refused to hunt.  When I was a kid, he taught hunter safety classes even though he did not hunt at all, and taught us firearms safety as any good parent should.

So growing up, my attitude toward firearms was shaped by a very rational approach, that is, by what they were intended to be used for.  I was a competitive target shooter by age 12, and I looked at firearms as the tools you used for target shooting.  Other people hunted, and that was fine, I knew, and for home protection, which was also fine.  Targets, hunting, protection -- that's what firearms were for, and that's how I see them to this day.

And then there is another generation -- maybe two or three of them, actually.  These are the people raised on what they see in movies.  There's very little hunting in the movies any more, and about zero target shooting and not much home protection except maybe in Lifetime movies.

What there is a lot of, though, is violence in every conceivable way.  War movies, sure, but criminal depictions, action films, science fiction, drug-action movies -- they're all out there and attract their own set of followers.  I even remember watching "Blind Side", a fine story of a current NFL lineman who grew up in the drug-infested streets in Memphis, and was taken in by a Caucasian family, learned to play football at a high level, and succeeded.  But there is a scene where he goes back to the streets and his old "friends", and one threatened to "bust a cap" -- to shoot him.  Even in a feel-good movie, you see the depiction.

Firearms violence is a staple of Hollywood and frankly, has been for a long time.  And here's the thing.  If you hand someone a pistol, they will see it for what they believe it to be.  Me?  I will take it, point it downward, ensure it is not loaded but treat it as if it were.  I will regard it as an item to be respected.  But others will see it as Hollywood has portrayed it -- an item of action, practically a toy in that sense, for what it invokes.  That's dangerous as all Hades.

You know, and I know, that Hollywood rakes in tons of cash on action movies (which means "shoot-em-up" flicks, of course).  It practically survives on them.

But where do the left and the anti-gun  folks go for their money and their loud support?  Hmmm ... the same Hollywood types who make their money off those portrayals.  Does anyone think that the proliferation of action movies is not a big factor in the attitudes toward firearms that many killers have today, including mass murderers?  Do we think that Chicago might just be a little safer place if there weren't examples of misuse of guns every 30 seconds in the movies they watch?

But Hollywood is taking no stand on self-policing.  People stand up at the Oscars and Emmys and protest trivia like the percentage of black or Hispanic actors being nominated for awards that they themselves in the industry both cast for and then nominate.  But will not the next actor or actress to stand up there and decry the violence in their own movies and shows, be the first to do so?

Hollywood is a bastion of hypocrisy and always has been.  But darn it, someone has to point out that hypocrisy as it relates to violence with firearms.  You can't make leftist decrials of firearm violence out of one side of your mouth and then make money on movies celebrating the same violence.

The actor who first points that out on stage will be my hero.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Insurance Fires and Puerto Rico

This is a difficult piece to write, and so I hope it will be taken carefully, and will be read thoroughly and with an open mind.  Please take your time.

There are a number of joking categorizations, some rather insensitive, of a type of insurance fraud that has been used to cover up failing businesses.  A store is failing, and the owner arranges for it to be burned down so he or she can collect the insurance money, dissolve the business and start over again rather than going bankrupt.

In any representation of that scam -- and it is, or was, a pretty common thing -- the problem is where there is failure and debt, no obvious way to recover, and something is staged that allows a destruction of the business covered by insurance, and an owner who walks away made whole again to start over.

Staged.  That's the big thing.

Our universal reaction is that our morality tells us something.  No matter what the status of the business at the time was, if it gets burned down by a lightning strike, or is washed away by a flood, we think the business owner deserves to collect on the insurance.  We don't think the owner's business should be any better than it was before, but if the owner bought insurance, he or she should be paid accordingly to cover the loss.

And our morality also tells us that a staged incident is fraud, and the insurance company should not pay, and the owner should end up in prison.  Right?  We all understand that.

And then there is Puerto Rico, the commonwealth of the USA that just got assaulted by Hurricane Maria.

I am not saying that this was not a horrific storm, not saying that there is anything other than that, as to what happened.  But I am saying that there is a huge prospect for financial decisions that affect a lot of us outside Puerto Rico, and we have to decide what morality applies here.

You see, Puerto Rico was a horrific mess before Maria visited.  The island's power authority was already six billion dollars in debt, and power plants were functioning erratically when they functioned, in places on the island.  I had already written on this problem over a year ago; it wasn't yet imaginable that a hurricane would devastate the island when Congress was already having to look at an imminent bankruptcy of the territory.

If you have indeed read carefully, and not been judgmental, you know where I am going.

The right and moral answer is that the good works of the Federal government can only be to restore the infrastructure of the island to where it was before the storm, or a comparable level of advancement, and to ensure that innocent people who have lost their homes and have no place to sleep and nothing to eat can be housed and fed in an emergency situation for some period of time.

What I do not want to see is that the specific part of our generous and compassionate response as a nation that comes through congressional authorization ends up making the infrastructure better than it was before.

OK, let me clarify.  Please.  I would be happy to see Puerto Rico have a roaring economy and a sound infrastructure, good roads and reliable power and water systems.  I would be happy if their people all had a bed to sleep on and three squares a day.

But they didn't have a roaring economy, good roads or reliable utilities before Maria.  The people of the USA, as represented by their elected representatives, already recognized that corruption and incompetence in the island's government had caused the problem, and refused to fund the same people to fix it.  I totally agreed with them.

And I agree today that, as money starts to pour in to help the island recover, we need to understand a few things.  The same people who caused the problems before the hurricane are in power now, with the exception of the governor, who is new since January.  President Trump has said that the governor is doing a very good job overseeing the recovery and I am willing to believe him.

I want the island to recover and I want it to be better than it was.  But I want that to happen because the people themselves there elect leaders (hopefully starting with this governor) who will plan a recovery that separates them from the corruption of their past.  I don't want Maria to be the "insurance fraud" that wipes out the island for a rebuild that the rest of the USA will have to pay for; I want a clear delineation -- and this is just for taxpayer funds through Congress, not charity -- between humanitarian aid helping people recover from losing homes and livelihoods, and aid that ends up replacing elements that were broken before.

I hope you understand the point.  It will be easy to characterize the above as insensitive.  But as Mick Mulvaney, the OMB director said yesterday, "We will help Puerto Rico rebuild from the storm.  Puerto Rico has got to figure out how to fix the errors that it has made for the last generation, from its own finances."

That's exactly right.  We are a sympathetic and generous country.  We will help with the storm.  But we cannot be expected to replace what was failing before the storm.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Confiscate Guns But Not Illegals? OK, Sure ...

We are in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting of Sunday night and, as I wrote yesterday here, the gun control types are in full fury and froth about passing a bunch of laws.  Of course, as I also write yesterday here, if the laws (A) wouldn't have prevented this from happening, and (B) haven't shown to be effective, nor give evidence of being effective, it is only a waste of time to pursue.

This may be a problem in search of a solution, and I certainly think that mass murder is a problem in need of one, but what would work needs to be a top criterion for specific action.

Oftentimes you can glean something from the consistency or, more accurately, inconsistency, of the person saying something.  And that's the point of today's piece, which will be mercifully brief.

Long, long ago I wrote that ideas assort, so that people with liberal notions in one topic strongly tend to have liberal notions in unrelated topics, at least where there is a "liberal" and "conservative" side of things.  So it is not particularly surprising that it is the same people who come down on the reflexive, knee-jerk side that says "We have to have gun control NOW", as are the ones perfectly happy to have 11 million illegal aliens roaming the streets.

I thought of that when there was a debate on the TV yesterday involving gun control, of course.  The questioner was having trouble getting the gun-control advocate to say something other than "We have to do something", especially when he kept asking how she thought this or that proposal would actually accomplish anything -- let alone have prevented the Vegas shooting.

The opposing debater, of course, pointed out that (as we seemed to think at the time) the weapons in the shooting were apparently all legally purchased, and that the shooter had apparently passed all the necessary background checks -- a key point of what the gun-control advocate was saying we had to do on a Federal level, and a complete refutation of her position.  Her recommendation, such as she gave any, would have done absolutely nothing to prevent this incident.  Nothing.

So then the opposing debater pointed out that if there were any new constraint on gun ownership -- and the gun-control advocate clearly did not even understand the difference between an automatic and a semi-automatic weapon -- that ended up criminalizing a class of weapons, there was going to be the issue of collecting millions of newly-illegal arms.

And that got me thinking.

I don't know the number of illegal aliens in the USA, but I've heard the number 11 million bandied about, and since the actual number is not at all important to my point, we can use that.  They are here illegally, which is what makes them "illegal."  The left wants them to stay here, rather transparently on the expectation that they will somehow end up being Democrat voters.

In order to further that end, they are quick to note that it would be immensely difficult to round up 11 million aliens in order to process and supposedly deport them.  I mean, that was a big deal in the 2016 election, and that phrase, in some form, was repeated all the time.  It would be hard to round up millions of people, and whether or not that was ever the strategy of those opposing illegal immigration, it would be hard.

But apparently it would not be hard to round up and confiscate millions of newly made-illegal weapons?  I don't want to characterize the owners of those weapons, but I am not really sure that such confiscation would be taken kindly to, by their owners.  Not that I think that illegal aliens would just walk up to the nearest ICE agent and surrender either, mind you, but it is fair to say that a healthy proportion of the public would find a way not to surrender their arms.

And that, of course, is without any discussion of the Second Amendment keeping any of this from happening in the first place.  We're having to set that aside for this discussion.

The left doesn't really care about logistics.  They can make the argument that rounding up millions of illegal aliens is impossible, but then try to make the same case against firearms ownership with them and sure, that's just fine, it will be a snap to round up millions of guns.

But then again, they don't understand that the Second Amendment was put in the Constitution so that government could be duly in awe of the citizens whom it serves; they think that citizens should be in awe of government.  They will never understand.

Of course guns don't vote, although their owners do.  There's always something.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

Trotting Out Gun Control

Yesterday, there was a press conference in the White House, held by the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  It was a pretty emotional time.  Chuck Schumer can do his fake tears at this or that invented slight, but Mrs. Sanders was clearly struggling through her introductory remarks, especially when invoking the Gospel to salute those who would lay down their lives for their fellow man -- and in Las Vegas Sunday night, had.

Almost to the expected moment, there was the obligatory chirping from one of the assembled press hacks, asking if President Trump was going to change his stance on gun control.  I want to say that was the second question from the press ... OK, actually, I'd want not to have to say that, but the press is the press, and they did, and it was.

I'm going to grit my teeth and say that I probably should have expected that, because if it hadn't been the second question, it would have been a later one; one of those clowns would have gotten to it (and another one actually did, apparently not hearing the original answer, which was that there was a time and a place for everything and this wasn't it).

OK, I know that the reporter asked the question because someone would have, but really.  What did he actually expect the answer to be?

I say that because there is no such thing as a logical "gun control" law or proposal.  As with every single law, there needs to be a desired effect, and there needs to be an expectation, presumably based on history, that the law will accomplish the desired effect.  History, of course, in Chicago and elsewhere, shows an inverse relationship between strict laws and firearm felonies, but when did facts ever stop the left.

Press hacks are free of that.  Had I been Mrs. Sanders, I might have taken a deep breath and replied with a question.  "What law", I would have asked the reporter, "do you propose that would have prevented the Las Vegas massacre?"

I certainly would have wanted to have heard that question answered by the reporter.  I would have wanted that simply because none of the reporters knew what the weapons were, where they were acquired, whether they were acquired legally by the shooter, etc.  If you don't know what happened as far as the firearms, you can't possibly know what would work to have prevented it.

[And Hillary Clinton, of all people, blathers out a tweet -- oh dear, how many more people would have died if a silencer had been on that gun, that the NRA wants legal! -- before even knowing what weapon was involved, and probably not even now knowing that you can't put a silencer on an automatic weapon.  In fact, the answer is "fewer people", since a silencer would have melted, but that's Hillary for you.]

We have already had that "gun-control" response after the murders in the school in Connecticut, where the anti-gun types were right there, proposing all sorts of strictures on the purchase and ownership of firearms, none of which would have prevented what had happened.  Then why, one would ask, pass such laws in the first place?

This is where we go from here, when it indeed does become time to discuss what happened in the context of the acquisition and ownership of the firearms involved.  I particularly want to see what happens if the weapons and/or ammunition were acquired or modified illegally, in which case it becomes an issue of enforcement as opposed to needing new laws.

What leftist anti-gun type is going to say, if it turns out that it was an illegal purchase, that OK, fine, nothing new needed; we need to enforce the laws we have on the books?  That's what we have been saying for a long time.   But I have to point out that we don't know yet if the firearms were illegal in the first place.  And if you don't know, you really can't raise the whole gun control debate -- after a few days, maybe, when it becomes reasonable to do so.

I just hope against hope that when it comes to that, the reasonability of legislation will be tested against a "would it have prevented this" kind of standard.  And I hope that if that standard is not raised, that it be immediately applied.

Because "reasonable" is a word needed here.  Desperately.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.

The Voice You Are Told to Have

Liberals can say anything they want to without fear of the press challenging their assertions.  Certain liberals can say stupid things without fear, because they are not only leftists but in the pantheon of worship on the left.  Michelle Obama is one of them.

"Inbound 2017" was a business conference of some kind held in Boston last week, featuring supposedly influential speakers helping you get your business moving and growing.  For some unknown reason, they invited the former first lady to speak, which was ironic given that her husband was easily as anti-business as any president in anyone's memory.  That must tell us something about the producers of Inbound 2017, and why the attendance for Inbound 2018 might be down a tad.

In her remarks, during which one could have hoped that she could have used her vast business acumen and lengthy experience and success in the private sector, she couldn't help but wander into politics and the 2016 election.

Women who voted for President Trump, she said, had voted against their "authentic voice."  Oh, yes she did.  And went on:

"Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice," she said. "What does it mean for us as women that we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said, that guy, he's better for me, his voice is more true to me.  Well, to me that just says you don't like your voice. You like the thing you're told to like."

My business is growing already, having just heard that.  Oh wait ... my business closed, primarily because the anti-business posture of her husband strangled small-business loan availability and access to capital.

That was a particularly egotistical thing for Mrs. Obama to have said.  "Egotistical", you ask?  Well, yes.  She was saying that, based on no professional psychological experience in the area whatsoever, she knows the "voice" of every female voter in the USA.  Yes, she does.

Over 41% of American woman voters voted for Donald Trump, which is a lot of people voting "against their own voice."  Mrs. Obama addressed the question as to what that means, and her answer, which egotistically was supposed to apply to all of those 41%, was that they, every one, by voting "He's better for me" than Hillary Clinton, don't "like their voice" but instead like "the thing you're told to like."

Those were prepared remarks.  That means that whoever wrote that for her had a point to make and chose those words to make the point.  Worse, if she actually wrote the words, that's how she actually feels.  Yuck.

So I have to ask this.  If 41% of female voters -- 30 million American women -- were told to like the "thing", which we assume to be Donald Trump, then who told all of them what to like?  I mean, 30 million women is a lot of women, and plenty of them were pretty passionate about voting for Trump, not voting for Hillary, or both.  Was that because they were "told" to feel that way?  By whom, ma'am, who told them to feel that way?  Men?

Worse yet, Mrs. Obama just told them, every single one, that they "don't like their voice"  What the heck does that even mean?  I'm sitting here trying to interpret what she said to them and I don't like what I just came up with.

Because, reading the words that were prepared for her and which she spoke, she is saying this:
Some 30 million women in this country are so weak that, even though they didn't want to vote for Donald Trump and didn't want to reject Hillary Clinton and all she stood for, and even though voting is done by secret ballot, they did so anyway.

Right?  They "don't like their voice" and "voted for whom they were told to."  That tells me that every woman in America did not want Donald Trump to be president.  She made a blanket statement to that effect, so I have to make a blanket assumption about what she said.

I'll tell you this, Michelle Obama.  The people who were the lemmings in the 2016 election were not the women who voted for Donald Trump, regardless of what reason they did so, but the women who voted for Hillary Clinton solely, or even in part, because she had a uterus.  Those women could not see past gender identity, to realize that Hillary clearly had no capacity to fix the nation's issues or even recognize them, because when she had had the opportunity to do so, she had operated solely to enrich herself by the corrupt "Foundation."

The women who voted for Donald Trump, in contrast, often had to be quiet about their views lest they be subject to the whining of the left, the precise kind of whining that you, Mrs. Obama, just laid on that poor audience in Boston.

I'll tell you another thing, Madam Former First Lady.  It's not the Trump-voting women who are weak -- they, after all, had to vote against what all the hectoring leftists like you said, the ones who told them they had to vote for Hillary because she was female.  You're the weak one.  In contrast with the current first lady, who has been willing to say when she differs from her husband on issues, you never said squat while your husband ran up $10 trillion in more debt, trashed the USA health insurance system and tried to stuff inadequately vetted Syrian "refugees" into my neighborhood.

So if you thought my wife voted for President Trump because someone "told her to", well, (A) you don't know my wife, and (B) go to Hades, do not pass GO, do not collect a red cent.

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."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.