Month: September 2015

Down South they take college football seriously, and this weekend the student athletes of South Carolina will travel to play a game against the student athletes of Georgia.  Our man in Georgia, Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert, will host the South Carolina House and Senate Majority Leaders, and possibly the Speaker, in a private box at the game.  He has also arranged a meeting with the KIngfish of South Carolina politics, octogenarian Hugh Leatherman, Senate Finance Chair.  Bill is a very savvy guy, and we could not possibly have a better envoy to the, frankly, bizarre world of the South Carolina legislature.  If we’re going to get South Carolina next year, it will be Bill Cowsert’s doing.

Speaking of football, I think broadcaster and former NFL coach Jon Gruden, or “Chuckie”, as he was called, should do an imitation of Trump.  There is an eerie similarity.

Bill Fruth confirmed this morning that he will meet with Senate President Phil Nicholas on 9-22.  He’ll spend a few days traveling in Wyoming, seeing other legislators, but Nicholas has always been the key. My bones tell me Bill pulls it off, we get Nicholas, and we get Wyoming.

Mike Sterns says our chances in Virginia depend on the November elections to the State Senate.  Right now R’s are up 21-19, and hope to add a seat, or maybe two.  But they may wind up losing one instead, which would put the D’s in charge, and end our chances.  Biddulph will be doing what he can to help in the key races.

Because Trump brought such a huge audience to the first debate, it was far more important than it normally would have been.  24 million of the most politically aware voters in the country got their first impressions of the candidates.  A first impression creates a presumption in our minds.  We presume we know something about what we see.  It is a rebuttable presumption.  But until it is rebutted, it is our opinion.  Scott Walker did not make a good impression.  According to a new NYT poll, he’s down to 2 from 10, Bush is down to 6 from 13, and Carson is up from 6 to 23.

Now the candidates get to make another impression.  In most cases, they seek an improvement, but there’s that little thing called authenticity.  Take Walker, and his wild talk about going to Washington and “wreaking havoc.”   He reminds me of these pretty boy actors, like Brad Pitt, when they try to play the role of some tough guy.  It doesn’t work.  They’re not believable.  And neither is Scott Walker as a berserker.*

I saw clips of Trump in Dallas, and it’s so obvious what’s going on.  He’s putting on a one man show.  Improv with the Donald.  It’s got nothing to do with politics.  It’s entertainment.  People would pay to see it.  He’s a goddamn rock star.

This has very little to do with politics. It’s all pure theater, and good theater at that.  He’s a great entertainer, kind of like a cross between Don Rickles and Bob Hope.  I said last week that we’d reached peak Trump.  If I’m wrong it ‘s because Donald Trump knows how to put on a show.

Politics is more fun than football.

*In Norse folklore, one of a class of warriors who in battle were seized with a frenzy, howled, bit their shields, foamed at the mouth, and were believed invulnerable.

$25,000 will get an initiative drafted that could save Uber.  It would redefine employment in California law, so as to exclude Uber drivers.  Written by Tom Hiltackh, the foremost attorney in California in this field.  If this sum can be raised in the next month, the initiative would be submitted for a 60 day review by the State.  And when it is approved the Ubervolk would decide, in January, if they want to spend the money to put it on the ballot  — a couple million, tops.  Thanks to Bob Naylor, and Tom Hiltackh, for arranging to make this option available.

I emailed this info to Greg Wendt, along with a venture capitalist I have a passing acquaintance with.  If anyone reading this blog knows an Uber executive or investor, please pass it along.  I think the powers that be in the State of California are out to kill Uber, and the sharing economy in general.  The people of California, if given a chance, would stop it.  Thanks to this blog, I’ve run this thing up the flagpole.  Now it’s up to all the smart people in Silicon Valley, with all their smart money.

I see my friend Bill Cowsert, Georgia Senate Majority Leader, has signed on as Kascih’s Georgia Co-chair.  Good for Bill, good for Kasich.  I wish more Article V activists, like Bill, would follow his example.

It’s frustrating to see all the fires in the West.  Idaho Speaker Bedke explained to me that forest land in Idaho that is owned and managed by the State doesn’t have much of a fire problem.  Scientific forest management, selected harvesting, and other methods on State land all work very well.  But the 60% of Idaho owned  by the federal government is not managed properly.  Environmentalists, bureaucrats, and politicians see to that.  So Idaho burns.  Someone explain to me, please, why the federal government owns all this land?  Let’s help balance the budget by giving this land to the states where it’s located, and the people who live there.

I said last week we were at peak Trump, and nothing has changed my mind.  The latest national poll, Monmouth, puts him at 28%.  I don’t think he’ll ever be north of 33% again. We will see.

I’ve figured if Biden gets in, he wins. He wouldn’t run if he didn’t have some sort of assurances from Obama and the NYT that they’re going to take Hillary out.  I wasn’t taking Sanders seriously, and that may have been a mistake.  I remember McGovern in ’72.  He caught lightning in a bottle, and came out of nowhere.  And Bernie is actually a more appealing figure than McGovern, who usually wore a snarl on his face.  Democrats were really, really pissed off about Vietnam in ’72.  I know that Republicans today are just as pissed off as the Democrats were back then.

Are Democrats that pissed off today?   Maybe so.  Maybe everybody is pissed off.  Maybe somebody should run like that.

Be the leader of the pissed off party.

I like to think that I can spot a trend as quickly as the next guy. So I was thinking about how awful Hillary is, has been, and will be, and that she’s walking dead, politically.  So why not Bernie?  But he’s a socialist!  Well, so’s Obama, and Hillary for that matter.  They’re all a bunch of damn socialists.  Bernie’s just honest about it.  And then I read about this new British Labor Party leader who’s a little to the left of Trotsky.  There are a lot of interesting parallels between British and American political cycles, and I think this bodes well for Bernie.  So I decide Bernie has an honest to God shot at the nomination, something you can’t say about Trump, whose act is already wearing thin.  So I decide to take a look at Bernie on Face the Nation, and, bam!, I see CBS has a new poll showing him up by ten in Iowa and twenty-two in New Hampshire.  So I’m a little late to the party.

Now I see he’s drawing big crowds in South Carolina, in the company of Cornel West, who’s telling the brothers to listen to this man.  Mostly white crowds, it’s true, but it’s a start.

We’re told Bernie has no appeal to blacks, who are supposed to be crazy about Hillary.  Oh, really?  What’s she ever accomplished on behalf of black people?  What is the source of her great strength in the black community?  It’s got to be her husband, who did have real support there.  So, I guess, it just transfers to her.  I’m not buying it.  I think blacks can be detached from Hillary.  I can’t say this for sure, because I really don’t interact much with black people, except at baseball games.  But she is such an unattractive candidate, and race has nothing to do with it.  Black people look at her and see the same thing everybody else does, an entitled, humorless bitch, as phony as a three dollar bill.  You think black people can’t pick up on that?

Bernie has a bit of a dilemma, though.  Even though he’s a socialist, and therefor economically illiterate, he does seem aware of the fact that massive immigration of unskilled labor into this country is a very bad thing for blacks.  If he says this he pisses off La Raza, but it’s the one way he can prove to the blacks of this country that he’s got their back.  Man up, Bernie.  Even politicians should tell the truth once in a while.

Then I see Kasich on Fox, and he was in fine form.  He screwed up the birthright citizenship question, but, then again, he’s not a lawyer, so I’ll blame it on his staff.  You don’t need to amend the Constitution to end it, as Professor Rob Natelson has pointed out, here.  Congress passes a law interpreting and implementing the 14th Amendment in a way that ends the practice, the President signs and enforces it, and than it’s up to the Supreme Court to contravene the other two coequal branches of government and require birthright citizenship.  Which, depending on the attendant circumstances, it might not do.

But Kasich is very comfortable with Chris Wallace.  It’s like these guys used to hang out together.  As they bade farewell, Wallace looked at him with such affection that I thought he had a man crush on him.  Rein it in, Chris.

Kasich answered all the questions just fine, but that was not what impressed.  He was in a good mood, and he let it show.  At the end he was perfect.  The Happy Warrior.  It worked.  Now all he has to do is replicate that performance Wednesday night.  Johnny be good.

That’s what we say to our kids, here and in the Anglosphere.  Be good.  In France they say, Be wise.  In Germany, Get in line.

What do these crazy Islamic fanatics say, Death to Israel?

Maybe the smartest kid I knew at Cal was one of my roommates, Tom Bull.  He was a star student in physical chemistry, whatever that is, and Cal had one of the best faculties in the world on that subject.  He was very bright  — in science and math.  Naturally, he assumed he was smart about things like politics.  He was very impressed with the political thinking of Albert Einstein. Now Al was as bright as you get  — in science.  In politics he was a child, a half wit.  He had absolutely no idea of what he was talking about.

Herbert Hoover was one of the great engineers of the 20th century.  Politically, he destroyed the Republican Party for generation.  Jimmy Carter was an engineer, or so he claimed.  Read, and weep.  When I was elected to the Alaska Senate, the Republican Speaker of the House was an engineer named Joe Hayes.  He singlehandedly did more damage to the Republican Party in Alaska than any man I knew.

I have theories about why engineers are such lousy politicians, but what matters is that so many of them are political progressives, or liberals.  Silicon Valley is a gold mine for Democrats.  Almost all the megastars there are progressives, and they share their wealth for the cause.  This is a problem.  And this is why the Freedom to Work initiative is so important.  It drives a wedge between the techies and the Democrats.

I talked to Lew Uhler about it this morning, and he’s all in.  His NTLC has been heavily involved in  California initiative campaigns for over 30 years.  He told me the guy to draft this thing is a Sacramento lawyer named Tom Hiltachk.  For this sort of thing, he’s the go to guy in the state.  It turns out Bob Naylor, a member of our old College Young Republican crowd, is associated with this firm, so I asked Bob to get a quote on what it would cost.  The good thing about Hiltachk is that if anyone else was pursuing this idea, he would know about it.  Because if you know what you’re doing you would call him about it first.

Lew says we want to submit the language the first week of November.   The 60 day review process will be completed by January, giving us 150 days before the June cutoff date to get signatures.  Lew explained that because the 2014 turnout was low, we’ll probably only need half a million valid, or 750,000 total, signatures.  He says you want to “earn” 1/3 of your signatures, since that forms the basis of your campaign to pass the initiative once it’s qualified.  The other 2/3 you pay $2 each for.  His best idea was having all the Uber drivers in the state carry the petition in their cars, and solicit passengers for signatures.  I’m guessing there are 30,000 Uber drivers in California.  If every one of them got 25 signatures, you wouldn’t have to pay for any.

I think I’ve met a big Uber investor, a Kasich bundler named Greg Wendt.  I’ll see if he’ll take my call on Monday.  This is worth pursuing.

I found out this lawyer, Hiltachk, is a partner in Bell, McAndrews and Hiltachk, and the McAndrews in question is my old friend from Cal YR’s, Colleen McAndrews.  Colleen’s former husband, Pete, from St. Mary’s College, was the ringleader of our YR group, and he arranged for me to made Chairman of the Berkeley YR’s when I got back into Cal as a junior.  Colleen didn’t know any of us at the time, and she called me up, out of the blue, and said she wanted to meet me.  She’d been to some college Republican leadership seminar in D.C., and she had a lot of ideas.  I told her to come by my apartment Saturday morning and we’d talk, and then I forgot about it.  So when I answer the door I’m in my underwear.

She walked right in.

IQ, the standard measure of human intelligence for well over a hundred years, has two equally important components, math and verbal.  Just because you’re are good at one doesn’t mean you’re good at the other.  I’m almost two standard deviations, or 30 IQ points, better at verbal than I am at math. I get the impression that Silicon Valley is filled with people who have that ratio reversed.

Nate Silver and the gang at 538.com are math types, as are Sean Trende and others at Real Clear Politics.  These math guys are everywhere.  They’re always coming up with computer models and complicated equations to explain everything.  I don’t  buy it, but these guys do have their place.  Nate nailed it in 2012, and you can’t argue with results.  So I go their website once in a while to see what they’ve got.  Right now, they’ve got nothing.

A while back they tried to use their charts and equations to see how long Trump would last, comparing him to Bachmann, Cain, Perry and Gingrich from four years ago.  It was nothing but mathematical masturbation.  Trump bears no comparison to any of those people.  Now one of them has come up with some elaborate mathematical analysis of “continuation elections”, which occur when one party has controlled the White House for eight years.  In 2016, a generic Republican’s chances are directly tied to the Obama’s approval rating right now, in his sixth year in office.  Not his fifth, or eighth or seventh, but the sixth.

It’s science.

It’s also bullshit.  These guys are like the geeky baseball statistics guys who’ve never played the game, but have all the answers.  Baseball has been overrun by these nerds for years.  I turn off the sound watching a game so I don’t have to listen to the pitcher’s record against left handed pinch hitters in late innings.  Stop with all the numbers!

The Democrats are going to get their asses handed to them next year.  I don’t need a slide rule to figure that out.  It’s based on a long lifetime in and around politics, of reading, and thinking, and talking to people.  And it will be either Kasich, Cruz or Rubio who does the ass kicking.  That’s not based on some numerical analysis.  It’s based on understanding what I’m seeing with my own eyes.  These guys could make it.  The others won’t.

Take Jeb!  The 538 boys look at the amount of money he’s raised, the number of high profile endorsements he’s received, and any other numerical metric they can get their hands on.  Then they figure his chances.

What they don’t understand is that he never had a chance.  I figured that out two years ago, and it wasn’t based on any number.  It was based on exactly who Jeb! was, and exactly where I knew he would be coming from.  He’s a Bush, to his core.  We’ve had two of them.  We don’t want any more.  It’s that simple.

It’s not that Jeb! is a bad person, or was not a conservative governor.  He’s a Bush, which means he can’t be trusted.  We’ve had it with “kinder and gentler” and “compassion”, and now “joy”.  Stop, now!  We don’t want anymore of that soft shit in your mouth Bush bullshit.

Here’s a nugget from some poll in Iowa.  For every voter who chooses Bush, there are four who say they’d never vote for him.  Maybe it’s time to add another exclamation point, Jeb!!  Now that you’ve got Eric Cantor’s endorsement, maybe you should go down to Mississippi and call on Sen. Thad Cochran.  If you can wake him up, you might get his endorsement too.  That’ll get you some real grass roots enthusiasm.

We’re in the middle of a fire zone, and I can’t see across the valley because of smoke from a fire 40 miles away.  Yesterday two spot fires broke out less than two miles from our house.  CDF was right on it, with truck crews, airdrops, and helicopters.  They kept it to 80 acres.  I watched the whole operation.

It was good, really, to see that an arm of government can work so efficiently.

Thank you, firefighters.