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“I know what you’re thinking: what a bastard I am. And you’re right. But the vast majority of successful people don’t become bastards, we were bastards long before. That’s why we’ve become successful.”This is a passage from “The Deal of a Lifetime,” a novella by Fredrik Bachman, the Swedish author who wrote A Man Called Ove. (BTW: If you have not read A Man Called Ove, I highly recommend it.)Initially when I read this passage my mind wandered to our President. Could this have been his apropos response to any of the multiple insults thrown at him from the left? Is Donald Trump a bastard? Was he always? Is what you see today, the real Mr. Trump or has he changed since he was elected? To help answer that question I am going to refer to Mr. Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal,” initially published in 1987.

How many of you have read The Art of the Deal? Yes, of course I have read it, and no, I do not recommend it. For those of us who do not or have not lived in New York City, the local geography, the references to different buildings and parts of the city, as well as the complexity of the local politics all make for tedious reading. However what is fascinating are many of Mr. Trump’s basic  philosophies (chapter 2) which have, indeed, morphed into his basic philosophies in his running the country.

The following are direct quotes from The Art of the Deal:

– “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is to seem desperate to make it. The best thing you can do is to deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength that you have.”

– “If you are a little different or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

– “You cannot con people, at least not for long. If you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

– “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration – and a very effective form of promotion.”

And finally:

– “Much as it pays to emphasize the positive, there are times when the only choice is confrontation. In most cases I am very easy to get along with. I am good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back, very hard!”

I do not think that Mr.Trump has essentially changed since he wrote “The Art of the Deal” over thirty years ago, and even though he probably would never be my best friend, I am glad that the bastard is in my President!

The headline read: California’s Move to Earlier Primary Reshapes Strategies. 

This piece was not solely about California, as the presidential primary dates in multiple states have been adjusted. As I read the article I wondered if this moving forward of the dates of some of these primaries would benefit any party in particular, and I was especially querulous about what the effect would be of the moving up of the California primary. For years California held its primary in June, and in 2020 the California primary will be held on March 3. The reason for this movement forward is so that californians can have “more influence in picking presidential nominees.” Since I would assume that this would be the goal of every state, one wonders why all of the states don’t hold their presidential primaries on the same day. If all of these primaries were held simultaneously, then each state would have the same set of candidates to pick from. Now, by the time some of the states vote, a number of potential candidates have already been essentially eliminated. Be that as it may, let’s get back to California.

For the Republican Party the earlier primary date makes no difference. First off, in 2020 Donald Trump is going to be the nominee, and for at least another decade the Democrat’s nominee for president will win California’s electoral votes. The Democrats could run Joe Schmo for President and still win in California!

However for the Democratic Party what will be the effect? In order to try to prognosticate, first we should look at some of the people that the glorious state of California has elected and continues to elect. Only a partial list is necessary in order to make a point: Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Kampala Harris, Dianne Feinstein. Other than Sen. Feinstein all of the others are ultra-liberal and some of them have been in office for upwards of 20-30 years. So if one would have to predict which presidential candidate will be the favorite in the now much earlier  California presidential primary, the money would necessarily have to be on a very liberal candidate. California will indeed possibly have a “very significant influence on picking the nominee.” Okay good for the Democrats in California, but does that translate into being good for the Democrats in the rest of the country? 

My answer to that question, “No!” Why is it not good? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind; the answer is blowin’ in the wind” . . . the rest of the country is not ready to elect an ultra-liberal. That ultra-liberal candidate will win California, no matter what, but can such a candidate win in the heartland of America? (Think George McGovern versus Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter versus Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale versus Ronald Reagan, Michael Dukakis versus George H.W. Bush, Al Gore versus George Bush, John Kerry versus George Bush). 

So who will benefit from moving the California presidential primary to an earlier date? I think that it will benefit the Republicans come November, 2020, because the odds are that an ultra-liberal will be the Democratic presidential candidate – thanks in large part to California. 

Maybe we can convince the powers to be to move the presidential primaries in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all earlier . . . for the benefit of whom?

Most of us remember Mission Impossible with the catch phrase, “your mission should you choose to accept it.” Hold that thought! On 12/15/18 in my local newspaper there were two articles that dealt with illegal immigration. One was written by Gustavo Solis, presumably a local writer, and the other by Ron Nixon who writes for the N.Y. Times. The piece titled, “Activists Call On Democrats to Fund Border Wall” was written by Mr. Solis; let’s call this exhibit A. The other one was titled “Immigration Arrests, Deportations on the Rise” was written by Mr. Nixon; let’s call this exhibit B. One of these was on the front page and the other was on page 10. Similar to Mission Impossible, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to identify which story was on the front page and which was on page 10. I will do my best to summarize each.The subtitle of exhibit A was “Support for Trump’s plan at San Ysidro news conference.” (San Ysidro is the country’s busiest port of entry.) The news conference featured four “Angel Mothers,” women whose children have been killed by unauthorized immigrants or who died in accidents involving people who were in the country illegally. The mothers feel that a border wall would go a long way to protecting Americans from dangerous illegals. “If we do not do something now, how much further is this going to go,” said Catherine Hall from Colorado Springs. “My daughter was 18. She had dreams. She had a life.” One of the mother’s, Angie Morfin-Vargas, who son, Reuben, age 13, was killed by a gang member, described her meeting with candidate Trump. “He held my hand and told me that everything was going to be OK. I know that he is here to fight for the American people.”Several of the Angel Mothers, who had driven from as far as Colorado, said that Democratic politicians ignore their concerns. One of the spokes-persons for the group went so far as to call Democrats domestic enemies of the American people.
Exhibit B was the piece by Mr. Nixon of the N.Y. Times.  He noted that ICE said that it had arrested about 59,000 foreigners in fiscal 2018, an 11% increase over the year before. On 12/14 the agency apparently attributed this increase to Trump’s executive order that rescinded a prior policy that prioritized arrests and deportations to those with criminal records, or those who posed a threat to public safety. Mr. Nixon states that critics are unhappy that unauthorized immigrants who pose no security threat have been arrested for minor violations. In this article there was a number of quotes from Mary Bauer, deputy legal director of The Southern Poverty Law Center. She was quoted as saying that it is “appalling and morally unconscionable that this is the place that we find ourselves” – deporting people “without a sense of priorities.” Ms. Bauer added that under the Trump administration there has been a sense that officials are “looking for everyone,” and this has created “fear and terror” in immigrant communities. I have tried to be as objective as possible in describing the two articles. Since you have read everything thus far, I am assuming that you chose to accept the mission, and so you must answer these questions:

Did exhibit A or exhibit B appear on the front page?

 Which of these two articles was hidden on page 10?

Is there any doubt as to which side of the political spectrum my local paper falls?

Would you call their coverage “fair and balanced?”

I did something today that I am not proud of. Once or perhaps even a few times in everyone’s life, circumstances are such that there are few options and so . . . each of us may be forced to do something that under ordinary circumstances we would not usually consider, and if our kids did the same thing they would certainly need some significant parental education! Often we might try to conceal these embarrassing acts, and certainly we do not go out of our way to tell friends or family that we have strayed from the straight and narrow, but I have decided that “honesty, etc.”Today I watched MSNBC! Mea culpa! I am told that catharsis is good for the soul, so here goes: While I am not trying to make excuses, please let me explain. I was at the gym and got on a treadmill while there was a commercial on the T.V. directly in front of me. When the commercial was over, I was well into my short workout and on the T.V. directly in front of me was MSNBC! Against my better judgement I did not change to a different treadmill. For the record, I am not proud of my actions, perhaps more precisely, my inaction.I exercised and thus watched MSNBC for 20 minutes total. Not once during the “discussion” on three different subjects was anything remotely positive said about our President. Panelists were from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Move-On.org. and they were especially brutal and insensitive when referencing Mr. Trump’s insensitivity! For me today’s workout was very painful! However I have learned an important lesson, and will not in the future let myself be coerced into doing something that I would not want others to know about.Please forgive me!

P.S. Since that traumatic day, I have discovered the treadmill that is directly in front of the T.V. that is tuned into Fox News . . . whew!

One of my liberal friends sent me an article from Politico on 12/10/18 that summarized the opinions of 44 ex-senators who warned current and future members of the Senate about their “political and ideological bickering.” One of the 44 was quoted as saying, “We were allies and at other times opponents, but never enemies.” Who were these 44 who warned that the U.S. was entering a dangerous period, and urged them to “defend America’s democracy rather than political ideologies.” The 44 were made up of 32 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and 2 Independents ( most likely 2 Independents that vote with the Democrats.) I found this to be particularly interesting because this was sent to me by a liberal friend. In my opinion, this predominately Democrat, although technically “bipartisan” group, could only have been aiming their remarks at the Democrats in the Senate after the recent Kavanaugh debacle orchestrated by left-wing Senate Democrats. It was an embarrassment to the Senate itself. As I review the statements at these hearings there appeared to be multiple examples of “political and ideological bickering.” Who does not recall the Spartacus comment of Cory Booker (D,NJ), and  doesn’t everyone remember Sheldon Whitehouse (D,RI) who said those values that “Republicans supposedly care for in Supreme Court cases – judicial modesty, originalism, respect for precedent – all go out the window if they come up against corporate interests or Republican partisan interests.” To my ear this certainly sounds like “political and ideological bickering!” Senators Hirono (D,HI), Blumenthal (D,CT), and Harris (D,CA) were not shy about throwing stones at their Republican counterparts. All of these Democrat Senators did not appear to be “defending America’s democracy”, but rather appeared to be just spouting “political ideologies!”Just to be certain that I was not misinterpreting the conclusion and the subsequent advice of these past Senators, I reviewed the confirmation votes of all the present Supreme Court Justices to see if the recent Kavanaugh confirmation vote was an outlier, or if it was reflective of the Senate votes over the last 30 years or so. The following are the nine present Supreme Court Justices and the “votes for” their confirmation:Ginsberg – 96 votes for; Breyer – 87; Roberts – 78; Sotomayor – 68; Kagan – 63; Alito – 58; Gorsuch – 54; Thomas – 52; Kavanaugh – 50 . . . which means that four of the top five vote getters were nominated by Democratic presidents, and had a significant number of Republican votes. Similarly, all of the lowest four vote-getters were nominated by Republican presidents and garnered very few Democrat votes. This suggests that in the past, Democrat Senators were not as non-political as they remember themselves to have been! Could this be an example of “the pot calling the kettle black? – with the kettle now generating much more steam!

Raise your hand if you are familiar with AB 1921, a bill signed by Jerry Brown in 2016. I do not see any raised hands! Do not feel bad, as the California Republican Party apparently was not familiar with it either, as became apparent in the most recent midterm elections. The California Democrats, however, were very familiar with AB 1921, and they used it to their big time advantage on November 6, 2018. As background there are approximately 20 million registered voters in California, and this year about 5 million ballots (approximately 40% of the overall total votes) were counted after Election Day . . . in fact some counties were still tabulating ballots as of Nov. 30th! You might be asking yourself, “Is this Florida all over again?” The answer is “probably no” although AB 1921 makes skullduggery a real potential issue, and I will not be at all surprised is some voting irregularities are discovered. FYI: in L.A. a ring bribed homeless to register fraudulently, and the DMV registered 1500 ineligible voters, but this unlawful registering is small potatoes compared to AB 1921, which is legal . . . I mean it has to be legal as it was passed by a Democratic Legislature and signed into law by our Democratic Governor!Drum-roll, please!AB 1921 was a change in California law that now allows anyone to drop off a person’s absentee ballot, rather than a family member as previously required. In 2018 more than 42% of the votes were tabulated after Election Day because of a huge number of absentee ballots that were turned in by ??? on Election Day. In Orange County alone more than 250,000 ballots were dropped off on Election Day! (In Orange County no Republicans were elected, even though it had previously been a Republican stronghold.) This collecting of absentee ballots, and then turning the ballots in (a vast majority on Election Day) is called “ballot harvesting.” I have many questions about “ballot harvesting.” My main question concerning this practice is, “are these ‘ballot-transporters’ bonded,” or are they just random impartial Democrats? Are all of the harvested ballots sealed? Can anyone be sure that the voter actually filled out the entire ballot? For instance if the actual voter voted on only a few of the candidates or on only a few of the ballot measures, what’s to stop the “ballot-transporter” from filling in a few of the empty spaces in an unsealed ballot. How long can these “ballot-transporters” hold on to the ballots that they have collected? If 250,000 absentee ballots were turned in in Orange County on Election Day, does that mean that 1000 separate “ballot-transporters” each collected 250 ballots that day? (25 ballots per hour for 10 hours on Election Day – turned in before the polls closed by each of these 1,000 separate “ballot-transporters . . . extremely unlikely, if not impossible!). Worse yet, everyone knows that these good-hearted individuals who presumably deliver and then later pick up the absentee ballots would be more than happy to offer “suggestions” to these absentee voters . . . Duh! The only question in my mind is not did some “irregularities” occur, but how many thousand of these absentee ballots were, in fact, tainted!

On Saturday, 12/8, my wife and I sat down to watch the annual Army-Navy football game. No, it had not been a prior tradition. No, we were not big college football fans. No, the weather outside was not frightful, as it was sunny and in the 60s. No, we did not watch it because our President was going to be in attendance. My wife and I both watched the entire game because one of our friend’s grandsons was the punter for Navy. The game itself was “slow” . . . I would call it a “defensive struggle.” However, the pomp and circumstance surrounding the actual game was very cool, and watching the midshipmen and the cadets in the stands was motivating, and I learned a lot on-line during the commercials about the tradition of the Army-Navy football game. The game was first played in 1890, and in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to attend the game . . . in a snowstorm, no less. He also started the tradition of switching sides at halftime. Since then nine other sitting presidents have attended the game. President Trump was the tenth. (He also attended the game as president-elect in 2016.) Ford, Clinton, and Obama each attended once, while JFK attended twice during his abbreviated term. George W. Bush attended three times.Some presidential Army-Navy football trivia that could possibly come up when you are a future contestant on Jeopardy!Which president attended the most Army-Navy games . . . President Truman attended all seven games during his presidency. Likewise who was the only president to actually play in the game? . . . President Eisenhower!Since our friend’s grandson is only a freshman and will probably punt for another few years, we have put it on our schedule for next year, and will make it a tradition.
12/10/18

Just today I came across two different things that made me shake my head and say to myself, “Really! Is this representative of who is educating our children ?” First, let me be very upfront about my feelings about teachers . . . for the most part, they are saints!

But I get concerned when I read about those in school administration who seem to be multiple standard deviations from what I would refer to as normal. I hope that these following two episodes of “going off the deep end” are outliers, but two different episodes in one day makes me wonder.

These two incidents involving going off the deep end were not from the usual bastions of liberalism like San Francisco or New York City, but were from places that I would consider to be bastions of normalcy.

The first comes from Elkhorn, Nebraska where a grade school principal, Jennifer Sinclair at Omaha Manchester Elementary School went off the deep end! She was doing her best to go from a princi-pal to a princi-ple-maker when she in essence banned Christmas at her school. A few of the things that she banned included:

• Christmas trees in classrooms
• Santas or Christmas items (clipart) on worksheets
• Singing Christmas Carols [?White Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, A Holly Jolly Christmas, or I’ll be home for Christmas?]
• Playing Christmas music
• Elf on the Shelf – that’s Christmas-related

But she didn’t stop there, and this is where she goes from being a grinch to being a wacko. Sinclair’s list had more:

• Sending a Scholastic book that is a Christmas book 
• Making a Christmas ornament as a gift – (This assumes that the family has a Christmas tree which assumes they celebrate Christmas.)                                           And the ultimate topper . . .
• Candy Canes  “Historically, the shape is a ‘J’ for Jesus”. This conclusion cannot be considered to be included in any umpteen standard deviations from normal!

Ms. Sinclair defended her extreme position by saying that students need to learn to be “inclusive and culturally sensitive to all of our students.” Wow! Keep in mind that this is in Nebraska!

The second episode has no segue to the first other than they are both examples of liberalism going off the deep end. This episode occurred in Florida at Chasio Middle School where a school administrator reprimanded and threatened to transfer a P.E. teacher and coach who refused to oversee a biological female student, who “identifies” as male, get undressed in the boy’s locker room. Apparently the school district LGBT liaison agreed that the P.E. teacher was “not doing his job in the locker room!” What the hell is a “school district LGBT liaison?” Do the school district also have a normal people liaison? I want a liaison!

Where do these people get the idea that this type of behavior is indeed good for their liberal cause? Well perhaps they are listening when the leaders of the Democratic Party speak. Just this week Tom Perez, The Chairman of the DNC, made a statement that shows that going off the deep end is not restricted to school administrators in Nebraska and Florida. He said that, in essence, church goers vote for the G.O.P. because they buy what they hear from the pulpit which is their only source of information! This sounds familiarly similar to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment which sunk her in the deep end! My advice to Tom Perez, “Keep talking, Tom.”

Over the last few days, I have read multiple newspaper descriptions of what was happening in France with the protests of the “gilets juanes.” The fires and the widespread rioting were precipitated by a gas tax increase. As I read the various articles I could not help but play a substitution game – substituting “California” for “France” and “Governor. Brown” for “President Macron.” (A lot of what follows are sentences taken directly from various news articles.)

Last month the ACT released its annual report, the Condition of College and Career Readiness, and the news is not good. As a whole the nation did not do very well, as the percentage of students meeting college-ready benchmarks (CRB) dropped slightly in all subjects tested, specifically English, science, reading , and math. More disturbing in this age of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) is that math readiness was at a 14 year low indicating that only 40% of 2018 graduates could succeed in a first year college algebra class! This is down from 46% in 2012. (National grade = ‘C’) What makes these numbers even worse is that the graduating students who took this test made up only approximately 60% of the graduating class, and in some states only those students who were applying to higher tier colleges found it necessary to take the ACT. Worse yet 35% of the graduates who took the test met none of the four ACT benchmarks that determine college readiness in subject areas (up from 33% in 2017). (National grade = ‘F’) In conclusion, for the nation as a whole, the average grade would be ‘D’, as the country as a whole did not do very well, and actually appears to be regressing.