2016 Oct 7^th

This morning while most television stations were focusing on news of the hurricane, I thought to find out what Fox News was talking about. I tuned in to “Outnumbered” a Fox format in which four slim, short skirted, young women are seated two on either side of an honored guest, typically male. We all know that Fox News is fair and balanced, just not this morning. The guest was a Wall Street Journal editorial writer named Daniel Henninger. Mr. Henninger produced a nonstop indictment of President Obama’s policies in Syria. When he had finished it was clear that the President was entirely responsible for all of the Syrian deaths. I heard no dissenting voices from any of the women present. Dissenting from an anti-Obama tirade from such an august personage as a WSJ editorial staffer might well risk unemployment for the dissenter. Fox does not take kindly to unhappy campers; Andrea Tantaros, formerly of “Outnumbered,” knows about that. She sued Fox and now she’s gone.

Given Fox’s predisposition to favor Trump and all things Republican, one wonders how the pretense of “fair and balanced” can be maintained. There are other more obvious examples. Matt Drudge in his Drudge Report claims that the Obama administration is telling lies about the severity of the Hurricane that has devastated the Caribbean and now is threatening Florida. This, Drudge tells us, is because the Obama administration wants to make a stronger case for the perils of global warming. Just forget the three hundred plus deaths the hurricane has caused across the Caribbean; those are just government lies.

The premier conspiracy theorist is Alex Jones. This guy has his own radio show in Texas and he’ll broadcast some amazingly unbelievable stuff. Even so there are lots of gullible people who will believe whatever Alex says.

We begin with his assertion that the government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing. Tim McVeigh was convicted of this crime that killed 168 people but Alex Jones is sure the government had a hand in the crime and, apparently some people believe him

You will be happy to know that no children died in the Sandy Hook school shooting. The 27 fatalities were not fatalities at all because these were all actors, just young kids coached to play dead. The scheme was designed to push a global initiative to stop Americans from owning guns and make it easier for these globalists to take over our country. Lots of people believe that but none of the parents of the dead kids and not all that many other sane citizens.

How about that moon landing; you know that was faked. Alex Jones says so and that’s good enough for many folks.

Trump had assured us until very recently that the President wasn’t born in this country and so his presidency was illegitimate.

Why do people fall for so many simply ridiculous stories? I have no idea but when we find out we’ll understand why so many want to vote for Donald Trump.

2016 Oct 6^th

Everyone is recovering from the sleeper that was last night’s debate. It didn’t draw much of an audience and for Clinton fans that was just as well for Tim Kaine did not distinguish himself. Kaine spent much time trying to interrupt Pence to point out Pence’s misunderstanding of Trump’s positions on various issues. That was a loser because whatever Trump’s position was, say, on keeping out Muslims until, “…We can find out what the hell is going on,” Trump apparently now knows what the hell is going on so he has changed course on Muslims. Trump changes his position on most issues daily so it is hard to attack him on much of anything. He does stay constant on his border wall and on Mexico paying for it.

The Pence performance was interesting on several counts: he doesn’t agree with his leader on how to deal with Russia and his evaluation of Putin. Pence proposes a much harder line than does Trump. Trump tells us how nice it would be if we just got along with Russia and that he admires Putin. Pence, during the debate, called Putin a small bully and claimed that if Trump was elected we would deal with Russia from a “position of strength.” Here is another Pence comment about Aleppo: “If Russia continues to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the US needs to be prepared to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from [taking part in] this humanitarian crisis taking place in Aleppo,” These strikes would involve military action against Russian forces.

Did Pence deliberately undercut Trump’s make nice response to all things Russian? You may remember the sudden removal from the Republican platform of a plank authorizing arms for the Ukraine when Trump had secured the nomination. Pence’s position here is not Trump’s position; why?

Is it possible that Governor Pence is preparing for the inevitable defeat of Donald Trump in next month’s election. The man is 57 years old and may be pushing himself toward a more traditional Republican position on Russia than Donald Trump holds.

Nevertheless, Pence comes with some heavy baggage of his own. As Governor he pushed for the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; sounds great but it was a license to discriminate against serving anyone whose sexual preferences you found religiously unacceptable. An explosion from the business community followed when many organizations decided to leave Indiana. Pence capitulated and modified the bill.

In 2000, Pence stated, “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual’s [sic] as a ‘discreet [sic] and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.” He called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and instead advocated that resources be directed towards Conversion Therapy programs.

Not only is the man a sexual bigot but hopelessly ignorant as well; Conversion Therapy is not only punitive, but also worthless.

2016 Oct 5^th

Dr. Thomas Sowell offers us a “Peek behind the ‘Academic Curtain.’” The title should have been a, “Peek behind some selected Academic Curtains” because Sowell carefully confines himself to Ivy League schools and a few other elite universities.

This is not a new rant for Sowell; periodically, he feels compelled to tell us how upscale schools deny their students the splendid right wing wisdom that would move them toward a sound right wing political view, or even a view not so leftist leaning.

Sowell has a near reverence for the Federalist Papers. This is interesting on two counts at least: First, Federalist paper #84 specifically argues against the necessity for a Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the constitution. Accepting that argument there would be no Second Amendment and a very upset NRA.

Sowell excoriates the Ivy League for excluding the Federalist Papers from reading lists and including the Communist Manifesto; but many of the Federalist papers are aimed specifically at the American government while the Communist Manifesto is much more broadly targeted. Then Sowell’s rant about these liberal Ivy League institutions come up against the fact that the Federalist Society, the premier organization pushing a wider belief in the political philosophy of Federalism was founded by students at Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago in 1982.

Sowell’s own bias is obvious. There are colleges where Democrats are demonized but Sowell can’t bring himself to mention these. At Biola University in Los Angeles, the issue for discussion recently was whether or not it was possible to be a Democrat and a Christian. (Biola University was once the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Perhaps they found it helpful to have a more secularized name for their institution.)

When a faculty member applies for tenure at Biola he, or she, must include a description of how their Christian faith informs their scholarship. It seems obvious that there will only be Christians on their faculty, and that there will be some interesting applications for tenure from those in the mathematics department whose field is Riemannian manifolds. But Biola University enrolls only a little over 6 thousand students. What about larger schools?

Liberty University has an enrollment of nearly 85 thousand students. That’s a higher enrollment than all of the Ivy League colleges put together. Liberty University has decided that its Democratic student organization no longer has a place on campus, Why is that? That’s because the values of that political organization do not agree with the values of Liberty University. Perhaps Sowell can show us a left wing college or university that has removed a Republican student organization because the college doesn’t agree with the Republican organization’s principles. I’ll bet he can’t name even one.

2016 Oct 4^th

We know that the “Times” has released information showing that Donald Trump lost very nearly a billion dollars in 1995. As a result his tax attorneys have filed returns for him claiming he owes no taxes and with that loss carried forward will possibly owe no taxes for some years. Now his sycophant, Rudy Giuliani, is hailing him as a “genius” for taking advantage of the tax code. (Giuliani recently gave a speech to The Commercial Finance Association at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC where he felt it necessary to insult their Mexican kitchen workers. It was so embarrassing that the people who arranged for Giuliani to speak apologized to the membership for his remarks.) Giuliani must believe that Trump does his own tax returns. If there is any genius here, it is the hired tax preparers not Donald Trump.

This “businessman” managed to lose very close to a billion dollars in 1995 running gambling casinos. How can that be? We have gambling casinos here in Michigan run by Native American tribes that are prosperous year after year. Trump tried desperately to stifle the competition from Native American tribes in New York that he felt would compete with his Atlantic City casinos. He was fined by the government for ads lobbying against the Ramapough Tribe’s casino. In testimony before the House of Representatives Native American Sub-Committee Trump complained that the Pequot Tribes’ officials “Don’t look like Indians to me.” Now Trump has managed to lose nearly a billion dollars trying to run gambling casinos while the Pequots are doing nicely running Foxwood, a giant gambling location just north of the city. If you ask his paid help they’ll tell you that “Mr. Trump is a genius as a businessman.” Maybe he should hire a few Pequot Tribe members to help him if he goes the gambling casino route again.

Trump has produced an enormous amount of detritus this week, everything from fat shaming a Miss Universe over and over again, to recommending his tweet readers watch a little porn staring that same Miss Universe, to suggesting that Hilary Clinton was staggering away from a meeting, to suggesting that she hadn’t been faithful to Bill Clinton…”And really folks, why should she be?”

You would suppose that his surrogates bouncing about on various TV shows would have some difficulty defending him; not at all. Their script is easy to follow: Regardless of the question do not talk about “Mr. Trump.” Begin immediately to talk about Hilary Clinton; you can mention her hidden emails, her disgraceful treatment of Bill Clinton’s girlfriends, and her soliciting funds for the Clinton Foundation, even the Benghazi raid;  but under no circumstance let the mainstream media force you to talk about Mr. Trump.

2016 Oct 3^rd

The “Times” has a copy of Trump’s tax returns and, due to clever tax lawyers. he pays no income tax and has paid none for several years. At first his campaign insisted that he had to pay the minimum tax for fiduciary reasons because the shareholders in his companies could sue him if he didn’t. You may remember that he said not long ago that he couldn’t release his tax returns because he was being audited. Then the head of the IRS blew that apart by telling us that the IRS had no problem with those being audited releasing their returns. Now the fiduciary responsibility to pay the minimum tax also blows up because these are his personal tax returns, not the tax returns of any business. It seems that we can only be certain that Trump is not misleading us, or lying to us, if he is asleep.

At the end of his debate Trump made some comments about the Clinton’s various marital problems resulting from Bill Clinton’s affairs and Hillary’s spirited attacks on his paramours. These attacks are used by the Trump campaign to demonstrate that Hillary Clinton is not really concerned about women’s welfare. They may be right, at least she seems less concerned about the welfare of women having sexual relationships with her husband.

Trump claims that he didn’t talk about Hillary’s comments because after all it was a family matter and their daughter Chelsea was in the audience. How clever….and how obvious. Trump, although he may not know it, is using paralepsis here, This is a rhetorical technique as ancient as Cicero in which you claim you won’t mention your opponent’s faults and shortcomings, although by claiming that you won’t mention them, you have mentioned them.

Reagan, claiming that he would not call attention to his opponent’s youth and inexperience when he was debating Walter Mondale used this technique. (I’d bet he didn’t know what it was called either.)

Then, off script once more Trump announced that he didn’t believe that Hillary had been faithful to Bill, “Why should she?” he asked. Marriage faithfulness isn’t a high valued ethic among some of the Top Trump supporters. Trump, Giuliani and Gingrich have been married a total of nine times. On a Sunday, “Meet the Press” Giuliani claimed that all males were unfaithful in their marriages and because he was Roman Catholic, he could confess and be forgiven. That comment got him some outraged responses.

It is amazing to see how far some Trump supporters will go to avoid being politically correct. 

2016 Oct 1^st

The Congress passed a bill giving victims of the 9/11 disaster, standing to sue Saudi Arabia. Nine of the 15 hijackers were Saudi citizens and the Saudi government sponsors schools whose focus is on the evils of any non-Wahhabism religion. There is general agreement that this version of Islam, funded by the Saudis, bears some responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

Now, 15 years later, the various victims want to sue the Saudi government for their perceived role in this terror. It is an election year so can there be any doubt that the victim’s Congress persons will agree with them.  There are two problems here: Most obvious is the vanishing probability that, regardless of the legal outcome of any suit, that the Saudi government will agree with the result of any negative judgment. Second, and perhaps more important, our citizens suing the Saudi’s opens our government to lawsuits against us from the citizens of other governments and the confidential information we might have to reveal if such legal actions go forward.

Can you imagine the mess we would have if Osama bin Laden’s wives and children and the relatives of his slain bodyguards decided to sue this country for their wrongful deaths? We may know bin Laden was guilty and he has admitted it, but there was no trial.

Obama vetoed this legislation and in a rare (and stupid) bipartisan effort the Congress passed the bill over the President’s veto. This action came after the President sent a three-page letter to Congress explaining why he vetoed the legislation. The letter didn’t stop the veto override. Then just a few days later came some buyer’s remorse for the Congress. Twenty-eight members have publicly declared that parts of the bill need to be changed, Maybe they finally paid attention to the President’s letter.

Now follows the ultimate absurdity: Mitch McConnell the leader of the Senate, and John Cornyn, the Senate majority whip, both agree the veto override was all President Obama’s fault. It was his fault because he didn’t adequately consult with the Congress. Cornyn said that he was “missing in action.” But what about that letter? Oh, that came too late to do any good. Of course President Obama made his views known on this issue long before a vote was taken but if the Republicans can possibly blame him for their screw-ups they’ll be happy to do it.

Why should we be surprised that the Republicans have at the head of their ticket, a man who feuds with a former Miss Universe by tweeting insults about her at 5:30 in the morning.

2016 Oct 2^nd

It is now Oct 3^rd   There was no detritus on Oct 2^nd; well, of course there was detritus, there is always detritus, I was just unable to write about it.

Here are some interesting odds from Paddy Power. This is a British betting outfit I sometimes cite because they have only money in mind; they are not concerned at all with ideological matters. Here are the odds over time for Hillary Clinton continuing as the Democratic party’s nominee for president. These are not the odds of her winning the election, these are just the odds of continuing to be the candidate, of not withdrawing for illness or personal preference.

August 21,  33 to 1  (Meaning that you can bet 33 dollars on Clinton to continue as the candidate. If you’re  right you win a dollar and if you’re wrong you lose 33 dollars. In short, the house is virtually certain that Clinton will stay the course.)

August 31, 25 to 1 (Notice the slippage in just ten days).

September 8, 20 to 1 (Slippage continues).

September 15, 3 to 1 (This might reflect the pneumonia diagnosis and Trump’s constant yammering about her health. It’s having an effect).

October 2,  8 to 1 (An improvement but a long way from the 33/1 point from which we began just six weeks ago).