Month: May 2020

If you want to get ahead in a city of 8 million people, you have to be aggressive.  If you want to rise to the top, you may have to get belligerent, antagonistic.  And if someone pulls a knife, you pull a gun.

This is Donald Trump’s world, the way he’s lived his life, the way he campaigns.  We’re not used to seeing people like him in politics.  In politics, you’re supposed to be a nice guy.  A guy like Mitt Romney, a guy who’s too nice to fight.  Romney refused to attack Obama in 2012, because he didn’t want to come across as mean.  So he lost.

Then along comes Trump, a man who glories in ridiculing his opponents.  He goads them, taunts them.  He’s completely fearless, and loves to ridicule anyone who attacks him.

He now knows, for sure, if he didn’t before, that Barack Obama orchestrated the illegal surveillance of his campaign, and the attempted subversion of his presidency.  So he does what he always does, he goes on the attack.  By coining the term “Obamagate” he goads all the Democrats who hate him.

Barack Obama is no mere politician to the left.  He is an icon, and a saint.  As the first black man to be elected President, he has a unique status, and must be defended at all costs.  By calling the plot against him Obamagate, Trump throws a match in a room soaked with gasoline.  They’ve always hated him, but now their anger will reach new heights.

How dare he?  How can he belittle and smear our black messiah?  For this, he must be destroyed.  Trump derangement syndrome just became even more severe.  Any and all methods are now justified to destroy him.

A prudent politician would never do such a thing.  But Donald Trump is not a politician, and prudence is not his style.  That’s not the way they do it where he comes from.

So it’s not Trump vs. Biden.  Biden is just a stand in, running for Obama’s third term.  This election is now between Donald Trump and Barack Obama.

On Friday the Wyoming legislature convenes for a two day special session, and, I believe, will make some history.   As far as I know, no other state legislature has had a virtual session, where most participating members will not be present in the capitol.  They’ll be in their home towns.  They will meet in effect, but not in reality.  If all goes well, a precedent will have been set which can be repeated all over the country.

I was the House Minority Leader in the summer of 1987 when Gov. Steve Cowper called a special session to again take up a constitutional amendment to give Alaska Natives a preference in the taking of fish and game.  I was in Santa Barbara with my wife and three sons, and had to immediately fly back to Juneau for two days to once again kill this pernicious idea.  Too bad we couldn’t have met virtually, like Wyoming is doing.

If they succeed in Wyoming, it can also serve as a precedent for Conventions of States.  One of the proncipal obstacles to such conventions has been the difficulty of physically assembling the delegates from 50 far flung states.  No more.  Thank you, Wyoming.

 

 

It could be a daily soap, like “As the World Turns”.  The star of the show is intrepid Attorney General Bob Barr, supported by a cast of patriotic lawyers.  Yes, there are such animals.  I’m one. It will unfold before us, day by day, for months and months, if not years.

The villains are familiar to all of us, and Comey, Brennan, Clapper etc. etc.  will all face justice, at least in the sense that they will all be publicly humiliated, and condemned by history, as partisan hacks who attempted to subvert the Constitution itself, engaging in a vast criminal conspiracy.  They were trying to cover up the crimes they had committed during the campaign.  It was an exercise in self preservation.  And more.

The real suspense in As the Swamp Drains is where it leaves Barack Obama.  Did he know of, and was he complicit in, the dirty tricks against the Trump campaign?  It looks as though he did, and this explains why such extraordinary measures were resorted to.  They were doing it to protect Obama.

I was a second year law student at UCLA when Watergate went down.  A liberal friend and I would read transcripts of the hearings in the Los Angeles Times, and try to make sense of it all.  I’ve learned since then that Watergate was a carefully orchestrated political coup, masterminded by “Deep Throat”, aka Mark Felt, the Associate Director of the FBI, who hated Nixon.

Russiagate is far more significant, and the crimes committed in the two cases don’t bear comparison.  This is, by far, the greatest political scandal in American history.

The most significant difference between Watergate and Russiagate is that the FBI got Nixon in Watergate, because there was an actual criminal predicate.  But the FBI didn’t get Trump with Russiagate.  Instead, they have set themselves up for a Congressional investigation, where the question will be asked, “Why do we even need an FBI, a federal police force?”

Good question.  No good answer.

 

 

Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination, but he won’t be able to keep it.  Does anyone remember seeing a serious presidential candidate like him?  He’s losing his mind, and would be a catastrophic candidate.  To allow him to leave gracefully, he should be allowed to formally accept the nomination at the August Convention, and to pick his woman running mate.  When he withdraws, that Vice Presidential candidate will replace him, and pick her own running mate.

So for the second cycle in a row, the Democrats will offer a woman as their choice for President.  Whoever she is, she won’t be disliked and distrusted as Hillary was.  So she’ll have a shot, and Trump will need all his skills to beat her.  She won’t really be the problem.  That’s the media, shamelessly in her corner, cheering her on, covering up any mistakes, and demonizing Trump.

I hope I’m wrong, and all the king’s horses and men are able to cover up Biden’s incapacity enough to at least make him plausible.  Or Biden resists, and has to be forced out.  Or Sanders demands the right to succeed Biden, since he came in number two.  There are a variety of ways the Democrats can screw this up.

I’ve participated, in one way or another, in fourteen Presidential elections, going back to 1960.  2020 is unlike any other election year, and as important as any.  We live in interesting times.

IN                                                                                            OUT

Intimacy                                                                                   Crowds

Friends                                                                                    Strangers

Home Cooking                                                                          Restaurants

Work from Home                                                                 Downtown

Neighbors                                                                                  Outsiders

The Country                                                                                    The City

Home Entertainment                                                              Hollywood

Remote Learning                                                                      The Educators

Libertarianism                                                                          Liberal Fascism

The States                                                                       The Federal Government

Federalism                                                                                   The Center

Article V                                                                                         Congress

The United States of America                                             The World