Month: October 2016

Right before the end, in his bunker, Hitler decided the coming defeat was the fault of the German people.  They had proven to be too weak to prevail, and deserved to die.  He ordered that the subways in Berlin, crowded with civilians, be flooded, killing them all.  His orders were ignored, and shortly later he shot himself.

This isn’t Nazi Germany, and Trump’s no Hitler.  Hitler was a diabolical mad man, while Trump’s a simple narcissist whose self love is practically a mental illness.  No comparison.  But if Trump loses, it seems he wants to take the Republican Party down with him, in a kind of mindless rage.  The Republicans have proven unworthy of him, and must be punished.

I don’t think it will work.  Trump’s never really been a Republican, and the Party has an identity separate from his.  It’s not Trump’s to destroy.  It will survive, even if it loses the House.  But to restore itself to power, it will need to find a way to appeal to Trump’s constituency.  It can’t win without them.

We may get blown out like Goldwater in ’64.  Lyndon Johnson took his victory and squandered it in Vietnam, so four years later Nixon was able to bridge the gap between the Goldwater Republicans and the Party establishment.  The midterms in 1966 were a foretaste of Nixon’s victory in 1968.  This is what the Republicans need to do to win in 2020.

I don’t know who the new Nixon is, maybe Pence.  Whoever it is needs to understand what drives the Trump voter, and how to appeal to them.  What’s Trumpism without Trump?  As Joe Biden would say, three words:  America first.  American self interest in immigration, trade and foreign policy.  What’s the best for the citizens of this country, not what’s best for the world.  It’s a simple and powerful message, and it’s got nothing to do with Donald Trump, other than the fact that it largely accounts for his nomination.  Anybody can campaign on American nationalism.  And if the word “nationalism” make you uncomfortable, you’ll never get the Trump vote.

Normal Republicans are comfortable with American nationalism, but it’s not enough.  They want federalism as well.  They want to take power away from the federal government, and return it to the States, and the people.  In doing this, they can appeal to the libertarian minded millennials.  Issues like marijuana legalization, same sex marriage, education policy, LGBT rights, and abortion should all be decided on a state by state basis.  South Dakota may want to criminalize both marijuana and abortion.  The people in California want the reverse.  Every state decides what it wants.  Neither the Bible thumpers nor the extreme feminists may like that, but we’re all going to have to find a way to get along.  If you’re a radical lesbian in Rapid City, you’ll probably be more comfortable if you moved to the Bay Area, and vice versa.  I choose to live in the part of California where I do because I feel like I belong here.  I don’t really belong in the Bay Area.  Live and let live.

It’s called tolerance, and we’re living in an intolerant time, and that needs to change.  The man or woman who can figure all this out, and effectively communicate it, should be the 2020 Republican nominee.  It’s a political winner.  You go your way, and I’ll go mine.  I won’t tell you how to live your life, and don’t tell me how to live mine.  Just leave me alone, and we’ll make it mutual.

I’ll try not to make any more gratuitous insults of Trump on this blog, or on Facebook.  It’s not helpful to the cause of reuniting the Party.  And the thrill is gone.  It’s like piling on, now.  His angriest supporters will carry a grudge against everyone they think wronged him.  So I think we need a fresh face in 2020.  Pence fills the bill, but he’s not the only one.  There are outstanding people like Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin out there that no one’s heard of, and many others.

I thought 2016 would be a great year, and I was wrong.  But I was only off by four years.

As soon as this national enema is over, we can all look ahead to our next opportunity, four years from now.  Article V will hopefully be part of the political wave that, this time, we don’t screw up.   That’s the plan, at least.

Some good will be flushed down with the bad, and, barring a turn around, we’ll lose the Senate next month.  I don’t think we’ll lose the House, but that’s a guess.  I’d hate to see that happen.  It would be terrible for the country.  As useless as the Congressional Republicans are, Paul Ryan is a lot better than Nancy Pelosi.  But, on the other hand, if the D’s do get unbridled power, aided and abetted by a new liberal majority on the Supreme Court, they’ll screw things up so badly that 2018 could rival 1994 in terms of Republican success in the House.  The D’s should only have the Senate for two years, and, if they win the House, they’d lose it as well.  All setting things up nicely for the most consequential election of the century.  2020.

Even if Clinton wins big, I doubt we’d lose any state legislative chambers, at least none that matters for Article V.  And Clinton is extremely weak in Kentucky, so we should at last rid ourselves of the execrable Democratic Speaker, Greg Stumbo.  We could add Kentucky to our target list, and it might be the difference maker.

But it won’t matter until we take back the Senate.  Some on the Task Force disagree with me, but I think Majority Leader Schumer would use some pretext to refuse to aggregate our 34 Resolutions, and refuse to set a time and place for the Balanced Budget Amendment Convention.  Article V is an existential threat to the Ruling Class.  They’ll do anything to stop us.  This would cost them, politically, but I think they’d pay the price.  It’s that important to them.

But the new Republican Senate, elected in 2018, would aggregate, and at some point in 2019 the Amendment Convention will be held, an Amendment drafted and sent out for ratification.  The genie will be out of the bottle.  The people, and the State Legislators, will see with their own eyes what Article V is capable of.  It will help propel our Republican Presidential nominee to a landslide victory.

There will be a lot of discussion, between now and then, of what the Second Amendment Convention should cover.  The Convention of States has eight Resolutions in hand, and would like to go next.  But I don’t think people will be quite ready to go that far, not yet.  I think the second Article V Convention should propose one Amendment,  giving a supermajority of the States the power to overturn a Supreme Court decision.  60% sounds right to me.  This is just speculation, but I think by 2020 the liberal majority on the Supreme Court will have pissed so many people off that we’ll want to strike back at the phony bastards, parading around in their black robes, like priests.

Now if you’ve read this blog for a while you may be saying to yourself, Wait a minute.  Isn’t this the guy that swore up and down that Trump would never be nominated?   What the hell do you know about anything?  To which I respond, I underestimated them.  The Hive, and their shill, Trump, did this to our country, but it’s a temporary, and ultimately a very costly win. No President who has ever taken office in our history will be as disliked and distrusted  as she is.  She won for one, and only one, reason  — her opponent.  She’s another Carter, except some people actually liked Carter.  She’s the last of her line.  Look at the Democratic bench.  Tim Kaine, for God’s sake?

“Ah, I will vent my wrath against my foes and avenge myself on my enemies.  I will turn my hand against you; I will thoroughly purge your dross and remove all your impurities.  I will restore your leaders as in days of old, your rulers at the beginning.”  Isaiah 1.

He was a different man, 14 months ago, when he started his campaign.  At first, he wasn’t that serious, but he quickly learned he had the ability to tap in to long held grievances of a close to a majority of the Republican electorate.  And it was an electorate he could expand.   As the campaign wore on, and the momentum built, he bonded, in a way he never had before, with millions upon millions of ordinary, hard working Americans.  He was their voice, and bore a responsibility to them.  No one else would defend them, fight for them, and honor them.  He became a different man.

That’s his story, and those with more Christian charity than I have can believe it if they wish.  I think it’s pure B.S, but there’s a way for Trump to prove me wrong.  Withdraw, endorse Pence, and allow the Electoral College to save the country.  The Framers of the Constitution were an assembly of some of the finest minds in all history.  Every word, every clause, of the Constitution was thought through, carefully.  They tried to provide for every possible contingency, and it is for this reason that Section 1, of Article II, is written as it is.  Read it, carefully, as amended  by the 12th and 20th Amendments, and try to figure out why it reads as it does.  In those provisions of the Constitution is Trump’s, and the country’s, salvation.  But for it to work, he must withdraw.  This use of the Electoral College would be unprecedented, but so has everything else about this campaign.

I’m no business man, just a simple lawyer, but I’ve got to believe that having over half the country think you’re a swine is not good for business.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe bookings are up at the new Trump Hotel in D.C. that Ivanka built.  Those rooms look pretty pricey.  The Trump crowd I saw at the Reno rally didn’t seem to have many high rollers in it.  How’s business, Ivanka?  How is your foolish father’s antics affecting the bottom line?

The market had a minor meltdown today as the realization sunk in that the Republicans could lose the House.  Elizabeth Warren unchained.   If they get the House, sell the ranch, it’s over.  We’ll justly call it the Trump bear market.  His name will be mud.

I went through the 60’s, and all the Vietnam protests and riots.  We are more of a divided country now than we were then.  There is the Ruling  Class, and its allies and beneficiaries.  And there’s everybody else.  Which includes me, normal Republicans, and Trump, and his vast army of followers.  We’re on the same side, against the Ruling Class.  But I despise Trump, and his rabid fans hate me.  Together, we’re a majority.  But Trump can’t bring us together.  Only one man can.  Mike Pence, who is a normal Republican and a Trump man rolled into one.

I thought about fabricating a letter from Ivanka to her father, explaining why he had to withdraw.  I just got to spend some time with my twelve year old granddaughter, the love of my life.  I like to think that Ivanka and Trump have a relationship like I have with my granddaughter.  I’d do anything for her.  Trump would do it for her.

Was it locker room talk, or was it two swine bragging about sexual assault?   It doesn’t matter to some, but it is disqualifying to others.  So, when cornered by Anderson Cooper, Trump was forced to lie.  Asked if he’d ever groped or kissed women without their consent, he said, “No, I have not.”

That’s a lie.  The Democrats will show it to be a lie, and if a witness lies in one thing, a jury is instructed by the judge that they may disbelieve their entire testimony.   Trump is a pig, and a liar.  That will never change.  It’s who he is.  Enough women, and men, find that so disturbing that he will never get their vote.  I’m one of them.

Babbie and I watched the first half, and switched to Law and Order.  The country hit a new low last night.  I bailed out of the prognostication business when Trump won the nomination, so I’ll just wait to see the polls later in the week.

And, no, it’s not too late for Trump to drop out.  I’ll explain later, but it’s a live option for at least another week.  If Trump’s support among women craters, it will be the only hope of salvaging this election.

I exaggerated a bit in my last post, when I implied that I, like Jake Tapper, have been in fraternities and locker rooms.  I was never in a fraternity, and I never played a team sport.  My game was handball, and the few men I encountered after showering all studiously avoided looking at each other.  Hanging around a bunch of naked men never appealed to me.

So maybe if I had been in a fraternity, or played a team sport, I would have encountered swine like Trump and Billy Bush.  I have always been a confrontational person, and it would not have ended well.

We’re off to see our twelve year old granddaughter play a basketball game.  It won’t be too many years before she grows up to be one of those tall, slender, beautiful girls that Trump seems so attracted to.  If he was a bit younger, and got the chance, I can picture him assaulting her, as he has so many others.

But maybe I’m just old fashioned.  Maybe it’s not such a big deal.  To each his own.

They tell us the Trump Sex Tape was just discovered a few days ago.  God, they think we’re fools.  Maybe that’s what I hate the most about them, the way they think they’re fooling us.  Nobody’s fooled.  This has been in the works for a very long time.  I get the impression that NBC wanted to hold it for another week or two, when the damage it caused could not be recovered from.  But the Washington Post got wind of it, and broke it on Friday.  That was not the plan.  Because now the Republicans, and Trump, have an out.  If this had been released ten days from now, there would be no way out.  But for the next week, there is.  The WaPo is as stridently anti-Trump as any paper in the country.  But they do have some actual reporters there, who wouldn’t play NBC’s purely partisan game of timing.

I hope to see the real Trump tonight, the pissed off one.  Everybody says you’re supposed to be warm and friendly at these things, but I don’t think Trump’s got it in him, at least tonight.  I think Clinton will bait him, and he’ll bite her head off.  She’s certainly got it coming.   As the chief enabler of a serial sexual criminal she’s got a lot of explaining to do.  And she’ll come right back at him, and lay some more mud on him.  And back and forth.  This isn’t a Presidential Debate.  This is a reality TV show, featuring one of the stars of that medium, Donald Trump.

If it were fairly run, Trump would come out on top.  He hasn’t sold out his country to foreign governments for money.  He’s done some disgusting things, but he hasn’t done that, and she has.  He didn’t do Libya, with her displaying her inner Caesar  — “We came, we saw, he died.”  He didn’t do Benghazi, and then lie to the families of the American dead.  I hope Trump goes at her, hard.

He may hurt himself in the process, but he’ll never get elected anyway.  That sex tape ruined him.  He’s road kill.  All this talk about how this is just how ordinary guys talk in the locker room is bullshit.  As Jake Tapper of CNN said to a Trump apologist  —  he’s been in locker rooms and fraternities, and “I have never heard any man, ever, brag about being able to maul women because they get away with it.”   I’ll second that.   These guys like Jon Voight are probably pigs themselves, and do talk that way.   But most men don’t, and most men look down on the ones who do.

This guy  Voight is an idiot.  He tweeted, “Donald Trump’s words were not as damaging as Robert DeNiro’s ugly rant.”  What the hell is he talking about?  Who did DeNiro’s rant hurt?  Did it hurt Donald Trump’s feelings?   Like who cares.

He’ll wait to see the polls, but there’s no doubt about what they’ll say.  The women of this country can’t stand him, and he has no prayer without them.  I find that fitting, and just, in a way.

He has to withdraw in time for Pence to appear as the Republican nominee at the next debate.  As long as Trump withdraws before that debate, it’s still feasible, legally and politically.  He has, at the very most, ten days to make the  most important decision of his life.  If he won’t withdraw he’ll lose in a landslide, and take the Senate, and possibly the House, down with him.  Can you imagine the damage Clinton could do to this country with Democratic majorities in both Houses?  It really could be all over.  It could be the death of the Constitution.  Once it’s dead, can a Constitution be brought back to life?

Yes, the Framers gave us a way.  Article V would be the only way back to revive and restore the Constitution.  As bad as things would get under Clinton, maybe people will finally figure it out.

I hope it doesn’t come to that.  But if it does, we’ll all know who to blame.