Restoring voting rights to felons …

There’s a movement across the nation to restore voting rights to convicted felons. It’s framed as a civil rights issue. The claim is felons are unfairly being disenfranchised of a basic right.   

In all but a handful of the most liberal states, there’s little chance ordinary voters will vote to allow convicted felons to have their voting rights restored. So some proponents of restoring voting rights are doing an end-around to bypass voters.   

Virginia’s Democrat governor used an executive order in 2016 to restore voting rights to about 200,000 felons, about half of whom were African American – a core Democrat voting bloc. In the 2017 gubernatorial election in Virginia, the otherwise lackluster Democrat winner won by a bit more than 200,000 votes.

The executive-order route doesn’t always hold.  In Kentucky, a new Republican governor rescinded a similar order from his Democrat predecessor. 

In Florida, there will be a referendum on the ballot in November to amend the state’s constitution to restore voting rights to convicted felons. If passed by 60% of the voters it might affect as many as 1.5 million felons here. 

Knowing Florida, I don’t think passage is likely.

Perhaps like me you’ve been asked a number of times – usually by college-age people – to sign petitions supporting restoring voting rights to felons.  

I always decline. And when the vote comes up in November I will vote to oppose any measure that enables convicted felons here to vote. 

I’m not entirely heartless. One of my best friends is a felon; he did a particularly stupid thing, went to prison here, and served his time.  He didn’t commit a violent, sex, or drug-related crime, so he would be eligible to vote under the proposed Florida amendment.

As much as I love him like a brother, I can’t vote for the amendment. Sorry.

A felony is a felony. It’s a serious crime. One of the lasting penalties – and long-term disincentives to committing a felony – is that except under extraordinary circumstances a felony conviction follows you for the rest of your life. The threat of a felony conviction is one of the most powerful tools a prosecutor has; anything that diminishes the lasting impact of a potential felony conviction is a bad idea.   

The reality is that it typically takes quite a lot to be convicted of a felony, even here which has a well-deserved reputation for being tough on crime.  In most cases that don’t involve murder, attacks on police, or violent sexual assault, first-time offenders usually get a break – lesser charges with court-ordered community service, restitution and/or probation.

Florida is not alone in this; it’s the norm in most states. 

Capital crimes, grand larceny, and repeat offenders are treated much differently. Especially if you are an adult and commit a violent crime. Florida will throw the book at you. 

You may be a New Testament type of person at heart, but when it comes to violent crimes Florida’s an Old Testament legal system.  

For years Florida was one of the leaders in sending people to the electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” before it was retired.  As Florida native Dave Barry once wrote, Florida is a state where many people would be happy to see Old Sparky set on slow roast for some criminals. 

When Florida abandoned the electric chair for other perhaps more humane means of execution that was okay. But when the state supreme court ruled death-sentence convictions could be commuted to life without parole if the original jury verdict wasn’t unanimous, not everybody was happy.  Except, perhaps, death-row inmates. And their lawyers. 

This is still a mostly pro-death penalty state.  When a state’s attorney in Orlando announced she would no longer seek the death penalty in capital cases, the governor reassigned all her capital cases to other prosecutors who would. Most people here probably agreed with the governor. 

Florida residents as a whole aren’t all that forgiving. 

That’s why restoring rights to felons as a ballot issue here will probably fail.  Sure, it will probably pass in certain parts of the state – especially in Democrat-controlled cities and counties – because Democrats see allowing felons to vote as another way to change the electorate more to their favor.

It’s the reason why those same Democrats want to gain amnesty for illegals. More potential Democrat voters. That’s all they are seeking.    

Yet the potential for spiking the electorate is not the primary reason I am opposed to giving felons the right to vote. My opposition is more on principle: we can’t continue to change the rules to take away the consequences of bad decisions someone makes. 

That’s why I am also opposed to cities, like Philadelphia, that have outlawed potential employers asking job candidates if they have ever been convicted of a crime.  What are they thinking?

That it’s perfectly okay to commit a crime?

No, it’s not. Especially a felony. There must be consequences. 

The shitstorm over shitholes …

Trump is reported to have called some places in the world "shitholes" in closed-door discussions on immigration.  

This created an another opportunity for manufactured outrage.  Now, like naughty little boys and girls, the media can’t get enough of saying shit in one form or another.

Shitholes. Shitstorms. Whatever.  

Did Trump say shitholes, or didn’t he? Did he use it to describe mostly African countries? And Haiti? And other places of non-whites? Is it proof that he’s (gasp) a racist? 

Hey folks. Get a grip. 

I’m pretty sure most of us know he said shitholes. Seriously, we all know that.

Now you can draw whatever conclusions you want about whether it was culturally insensitive, politically incorrect, or something else. It probably was. But the truth of the matter is we don’t need more immigrants from shithole countries. Or Haitians. 

It’s true as well there are a lot of shithole countries out there. They’re not all in Africa. 

Ever been to Jamaica?  Get outside the heavily guarded resorts and it’s a shithole.  Sorry, mon, but it is. So is much of Mexico, again once you leave the resorts. When you see large numbers of people living in shacks with hammered soda cans for a roof, and toting water for drinking in recycled gas cans, that’s a shithole. I’ve seen all that firsthand in Jamaica, in Mexico, in Belize, and elsewhere.    

Soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan will tell you those places are shitholes, too.  

I can’t speak for Africa. However, I strongly suspect there are many shithole countries there.  

Any country where most people are illiterate, have no access to clean water, much less toilets, or education, where pre-teen females are traded for goats, and where it’s an accepted belief that men can cure AIDs by having sex with a virgin, is likely a shithole.  

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Parts of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are quite literally shitholes; ask anyone who has been to these. When people are crapping in the streets, that’s a shithole by definition  

Many countries in Central and South America qualify as shitholes as well.  After you get past the guards at your resort or cruise terminal, see how people in the countryside live. It’s typically in abject poverty under the constant threat of abuse by the police or army or criminal gangs.

I don’t blame the people who live in these shitholes. They don’t have much choice.  

And it’s no wonder they’d want to be someplace else. Like here.

Unfortunately, we can’t take them all. The Pope can say all he wants about our duty as Christians to welcome these people to our country but we have our own people to care for.  I’m sorry for the plight of the displaced Syrians, the Somalis, the Guatemalans, the El Salvadorians, the Mexicans, the Nigerians, the Sierra Leoneans, the Congolese, Haitians, and everyone else struggling to survive where they are and holding out hope for a better life here or in Europe.

The harsh reality is we don’t need them.  

We need immigrants, for sure, if for no other reason than our aging workforce and low birth rates among our legal citizens.  We’re in a looming demographic crisis, not as bad as Japan and many European countries, but in time just as serious. 

No one doubts that.

The real issue is which immigrants.  We don’t simply need more warm bodies to feed and support; we already have quite enough of those. We don’t need more illiterate immigrants with no discernable job skills applicable to our changing economy either. And we certainly don’t need to import people who hate our way of life, our culture, and have no intention of respecting our laws. 

Do they have to be white? Of course not.  Nor do they have to be Christians. They just need to have skills and functional mastery of English to contribute meaningfully to our country over time.  The key is not skin color or religion, or even country of origin, but attitude, desire to be a part of America, and the ability to bring something we need. 

Immigrating to America is a privilege, not a universal right. It must be earned by meeting objective standards for admission.

As cold as this sounds, there are plenty of other desirable people in the world – people with education and valuable skills – who want to come here and become citizens; we can afford to pick and choose who we want. We don’t have to open the floodgates and allow everybody in regardless of their ability to contribute, or allow those here illegally to stay, just because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or large agribusinesses want a perpetual source of cheap labor. Or because some politicians want that. 

It doesn’t mean we should only accept rich people with PhDs in quantum physics. However, we should require certain thresholds be met, much as Canada does.  (Far from a wide-open immigration free-for-all see https://www.canadavisa.com/canadian-immigration-requirements.html for reference.) We need to have a merit-based system in place, like Canada.

Now, in fairness, I don’t care if someone comes from a shithole country, or anyplace else for that matter, as long as they meet certain criteria. 

Simply having a pulse and the ability to fog a mirror isn’t enough. Or the desire to escape the crappy place where you now live. Frankly, if you are poor, have no education or skills except to reproduce, and have no ability to support yourself or your family without government assistance, we’re already full up on people like you. We don’t need more.  

And as far as increasing our “diversity,” that’s also a non-starter. Importing people who have nothing to offer just because they are from an obscure place that culturally and educationally might as well be another planet doesn’t make sense.  For a zoo, maybe; not for a country.  

You have to bring something valuable to us to get in. That’s what Trump is after. I suspect most American citizens would agree with that as well. 

No random drawing or quota system can insure that. 

And yes, there are shithole countries.

We don’t need to discriminate against them; nor do we need to favor them. We certainly don’t need to make sure we get a certain percentage of our immigrants from them.

Especially if they have nothing of value to offer us. 

Turning off the noise …

I’ve been a fan of Tucker Carlson for years. He’s bright, articulate, funny and makes good commonsense points much of the time.

But I can’t watch his show anymore. It’s simply too annoying.

It’s not Tucker; it’s his guests. 

I’m tired of the same guests. The same talking points. The same bullshit night after night.

There’s far too much Richard Goodstein, a Democrat strategist.  No matter what the question is – immigration, voter ID, mid-term elections, whatever – Goodstein always doubles back to the U.S. intelligence agencies who said Russia interfered in the last election, and that former Trump campaign officials have already pleaded guilty. Talk about conflating. 

Left out is that no former Trump campaign official – or anyone else, for that matter – has provided anything that proved collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Or that the oft-quoted intelligence report never said there was collusion between Trump and the Russians.    

One scalp collected so far by the Mueller's team is General Flynn, who entered a guilty plea for lying to the FBI, not anything else.  Another was George Papadopoulos, a power-broker wannabe on the campaign staff, who also entered a guilty plea for lying to the FBI.  Paul Manafort has been indicted for financial shenanigans that occurred long before he joined the Trump campaign.

None of these has anything to do with Trump or the campaign. The only thing close – and only tangentially – is the plea by Papadopoulos who had bragged to Russian operatives he could set up a meeting with Trump, and then lied about that to the FBI. Papadopoulos did try repeatedly to get anyone in the campaign to set up that meeting, but he was such a lightweight and the idea was so preposterous nobody in the campaign would even respond to him.    

But Goodstein blathers on. Why this blowhard is always on escapes me. 

Tucker is also often joined by radical feminist Cathy Areu.  Why? I have no idea. 

Areu is a true believer that all men are guilty of toxic masculinity from birth; it’s just a matter of time before every male acts on it to the detriment of society as a whole and toward women in particular. Consequently, every man is automatically guilty of sexual harassment or abuse if they’ve been accused of either by a woman. He’s a male, that’s all anyone needs to know. 

Her looneyness doesn’t stop there. She believes calling breastfeeding by women “natural” reinforces gender stereotypes and puts too much pressure on a woman to feed her children. In the same interview she seemed uncertain as to whether men can breastfeed. 

I guess she skipped Biology 101. Why give air time to this obvious nutjob? 

How about Jorge Ramos? This “journalist” has nothing to add to the immigration debate except that America has a moral obligation to give illegal immigrants amnesty.  And also, no choice.

It’s the same crap every time he’s on: illegals are already here, they are contributing to our economy, they’re paying taxes, and without them there wouldn’t be anybody to harvest our food and do all the jobs Americans won’t do.  There’s no way we can deport them all, either. 

Left out, of course, is that every illegal here is a criminal, having already committed a felony by coming here illegally. There’s also the fact that any illegal “paying taxes” is using forged or stolen Social Security numbers, another felony. Or that Mexico, where Ramos is from, puts in prison anyone who crosses their borders illegally. But we have a moral obligation?  

There’s almost always someone on if Ramos isn’t to talk about the “Dreamers” and how cruel it would be to deport them, as well. It usually focuses on how mean Trump is to announce the end of DACA, the Obama-era program to protect from deportation the hundreds of thousands of kids – most now adults – brought here illegally by their parents, who also came here illegally. 

The argument is always the same: the Dreamers are innocent people serving in our military, police forces, and among the best and brightest – everyone knows that.  Why punish them for the acts of their parents?    

What about the laws the Dreamers have broken – like being here illegally, falsifying documents, getting financial aid and free public education under false pretenses?  And as far as the “serving” in our military and police – maybe at best that’s less than half of 1% of the Dreamers.

Finally, no one wants to bring this up but DACA was an unconstitutional Executive overreach from the get-go. It would never stand up if it hit the Supreme Court docket. Obama knew this. So did every member of Congress. But nobody wanted to do anything.  

DACA was indeed on a path to the Supreme Court when Trump acted.  If overturned there every DACA recipient would be liable for immediate deportation.  When Trump put an end date on DACA, and pushed it over to Congress where it should have been handled legislatively from the beginning, he merely forced Congress to do what they should have done already.   

Nobody defending DACA wants to acknowledge that the real issue is not protection under DACA, but the push to end chain migration.  Without new limits on chain migration, everyone granted permanent legal status could legally bring in a large number of other family members as new citizens; they could also give a pass to their parents, who committed the original illegal immigration crime. 

We’re talking millions of new people, most with no job skills, eligible for benefits. 

Ramos has already said everything he’s going to say. We’ve heard it all before.  Why continue to give this guy – or the Dreamer advocates – a chance to say it all again, and again? 

Then there’s the clueless crackpot of the day. These barely coherent buffoons can’t articulate much less defend whatever bizarre thing they’re promoting.

It could be a call for white genocide. It could be for impeaching the President, although they don’t seem to know how or what reason would qualify as grounds. It could be for abolishing the Electoral College although they seem unaware that would require amending the Constitution. Or it’s about giving lesser sentences just to black male criminals because their mostly illegitimate children grow up without a father. Or it could be for granting “personhood” to animals. Or allowing anyone to choose their own gender or race because that’s how they identify. 

It’s all just more bullshit.

Is Jerry Springer now in charge of programming? That’s what if feels like to me.  What’s next? Interviews with people claiming to have been abducted by aliens who told them Trump is actually an alien replicant? Or that Hillary is secretly a member of the Illuminati?  

It’s getting to be just too much foolish noise. 

I already won’t watch any shows where guests shout at each other.  Or shows where panelists gang up on the token far-left liberal or far-right conservative apparently selected to be the designated punching bag. Or shows so biased and predictable you can almost outline their opening monologue with 98% accuracy before they even come on the air. 

The upside is it’s dramatically reduced the number of shows I feel compelled to watch. This gives me more time for shows not pretending to be anything but fiction.  And those are more entertaining and enlightening than the standard fare today of opinion shows.

Far less annoying, too. 

I still follow the local news on the Orlando stations, mainly for the weather.  For factual national and international news I rely almost entirely on the printed WSJ.

Nobody shouts at each other on those. And they take reporting seriously. 

I appreciate that more and more every day.  

Pleasing the world …

Someone visiting from Canada recently told me Trump needs to be nicer to other world leaders.  They said he comes across as arrogant and a bully when dealing with other nations, and that’s not good for America’s reputation.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this. Nor will it be the last. 

I suppose much of the world longs for the days of Obama. He made a practice of diminishing the importance of his own country at every opportunity. He publicly apologized for what he claimed was America’s arrogance and bad behavior in the past. Things would be different going forward. America would be a better, and more respectful, partner in the global community.      

No wonder so many other world leaders liked him.    

Why wouldn’t they?  He was happy to put our money where his mouth was. He made one-sided deals that helped them and hurt us economically. He made clear there was no reason to fear the military might of America anymore. Under Obama, we went from being military superpower that kept would-be aggressors in check to a paper tiger easily ignored.   

Take Syria, for example. He said there was a “red line” in Syria that couldn’t be crossed by Assad. But did nothing when Assad’s forces used poison gas against their own people. 

Or Libya. There he did nothing when militants sacked our embassy in Benghazi, raped and killed our ambassador, and killed other American security personnel. Obama’s response? An apology for an obscure video no one ever saw he and his State Department blamed for the attack. 

Through his indecision he allowed tyrants in Syria, Iran, and North Korea to thrive and emboldened Russia to annex Crimea. He also created power vacuums that enabled the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to Afghanistan, the growth of ISIS, and set off the mass migration of refugees to Europe. 

Obama was everything European leaders wanted. Someone just like them.

Too politically correct to acknowledge the terrorists were Muslims. Too gutless to pull out all the stops to defeat ISIS. Too timid to do anything about Russian aggression in the Ukraine.  Too willing to do a deal with Iran in the false hope that would make the mullahs less hostile.  Always eager to throw Israel under the bus to appease the Palestinians and their supporters.   

He pushed for the Paris Climate Change Accord, the Iran nuke deal and anything else European leaders wanted, including turning his back on Israel.  In return they loved him. He was their man in Washington; finally they had the American President they always wanted. 

He was a fan of big government, the UN, ruling by regulation, cutting military spending, increasing funding for socialist utopian programs, and open borders. In short, just like most European leaders. It was if America was suddenly no more than just another country among others, and now desperate for the approval of others. 

They really liked this new, humble America.

And they took advantage of us whenever possible. They were confident that when Hillary was elected President, business as usual would continue. 

Then shock of shock, Trump was elected. Suddenly all their plans of manipulating American policy from abroad came crashing down. 

Instead of a like-minded globalist running America, a barbarian took over. Someone who had no interest in hobnobbing with intellectuals and cultural elites in Davos; someone more inclined to hold rallies with the blue-collar types in grimy factory towns. Someone who openly praised Brexit. Someone who planned to wage war on bureaucrats domestically and at the UN. Someone who cared less about what other world leaders thought and more about taking care of American interests first.

Someone quite willing to tear down their carefully constructed world order and make them pay their fair share to have America defend them.  And someone quite willing to use American military and economic power as leverage to get what was best for America. 

It was if the progress they’d made in the past eight years under Obama had never happened.

America pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. Trump threatened to crack down on illegal immigrants and refuse to accept Syrian refugees. He stepped up military actions against ISIS, with a promise to “bomb the shit out of them.” He told NATO members to start paying up or America might leave the alliance.  He said he was no longer interested in big multi-country trade pacts and would go for deals with individual countries. 

He also called the terrorists what they actually were: radical Islamic terrorists. 

He put military types instead of career diplomats in his administration wherever possible. Rather than a European wannabe like John Kerry running the State Department, he put in a seasoned business executive – Rex Tillerson.  Rather than weaselly political hacks like Samantha Powers and Susan Rice as our voice in the UN, he appointed Nicki Haley to kick ass and take names.  And instead of naming yet another political opportunist as Secretary of Defense, he appointed James “Mad Dog” Mattis, a widely admired Marine general who had actually led troops.    

He put the world – and especially the UN – on notice there would be no more blank checks from us. If they didn’t treat us fairly, and provide value commensurate with our contributions, they might get cut off or at least see our funding reduced. 

The world shuddered. And it wasn’t just those overseas. 

He told our closest neighbors – Mexico and Canada – he would take a cold, hard look at NAFTA. He said they should prepare for renegotiation of key provisions that currently favored them and cost American jobs.  He let American firms know there would be serious consequences, such as new hefty tariffs on their products, if they closed their plants here and moved those jobs to other countries. He hinted there would be penalties on corporate inversions, done to escape U.S. taxes, as well.    

Now Mexico and Canada shuddered. Especially Mexico.   

He planned to complete a wall on our southern border, and beef up border security there to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs. Oh, and he said Mexico would ultimately pay for his “big, beautiful wall,” one way or another. His plan to step up enforcement of our immigration laws would include deporting perhaps millions of immigrants here illegally, and to seek to stop chain migration. All of that could dramatically cut the volume of remittances from illegals here back to Mexico and potentially flood Mexico with an influx of additional people with no jobs.        

So let’s see: he alienated European elites, he threatened our traditional European allies, he sent an economic shot across the bow to Mexico and Canada, and criticized the UN. 

Obama would have never done this. That’s how we got here after his eight years. And, sadly, after pretty much every administration since Reagan.    

Recently, a lot has been made about how Trump has cost us allies.  And how much we can ill afford losing our allies in Europe and the Middle East. 

But has he really? And is there a case that many of our “allies” are actually “frenemies,” in practice? Could we ever count on them to support us as we’ve always supported them?

For example, have all the NATO members lived up to their financial obligations, or have many used our military presence for protection instead? Have they been perfectly content to have us spend our money for decades to defend them, so they could spend their money on other things? 

More to the point, are our so-called allies ever willing to forgo their own national interests when there’s money and jobs involved?

Does anyone honestly believe there aren’t European companies and others from our “allies” like Pakistan doing business with Iran and North Korea, and selling technology and weapons to other “rogue” states and sponsors of terrorism around the world?

Does anyone think Mexico tries to keep illegal immigrants and drugs from crossing its borders into our country? Can anyone say Mexico and Canada haven’t successfully pulled jobs from the U.S. through NAFTA, albeit with help from naïve American politicians?

Does anyone really believe the UN today is anything more than a forum for haters of America and Israel? And that it’s not a bloated bureaucracy staffed by overpaid paper pushers, all only looking out for the interests of their own countries?

Look, it’s only natural for the leader of any country to put the interests of their own nation first. I don’t blame them. Nor does Trump, for that matter. 

However, when Trump does it and puts our interests first, the same world leaders recoil. 

Screw ‘em.  Trump was elected President of the United States, not the world. 

Obama saw the job differently. 

I prefer Trump’s approach. 

You crazy bastards …

The more Trump is attacked, the more it helps him.  

This is making his critics even crazier than ever before. 

Sure, his supporters wish he wouldn’t tweet as much.  Of course they wish he’d stop getting into Twitter wars at 3AM.  Or saying outrageous things.  But that’s who he is, for better or worse, and on the whole they’re happy with his policies if not his behavior.   

They’re especially happy that he is pissing off the left-leaning media, pissing off the Republican establishment, and pissing off Democrats like Schumer and Pelosi.

As Michael Moore noted, voting for Trump was a symbolic way to give the middle finger to the political establishment of both parties. That’s precisely what Trump’s doing. 

A majority of Americans do disapprove of his job performance as President. I suspect that’s more about his style than his actual performance.  Many just wish he’d act more like a traditional President. Instead he’s the Happy Gilmore of Presidents – purists hate the way he plays; his fans love when he beats the snooty elites at their own game. 

He is beating them at their own game, BTW.  He’s controlling the narrative, bypassing the media through his Twitter account. He’s not above rubbing their collective noses in it when they get something wrong. So what most people remember – especially among his base – is when the media screw up. That makes the media more likely to lash out, but in their fervor they get sloppy, stretch the truth, and make even more mistakes which he’s all too happy to highlight. 

Again. And again. 

The majority of Americans now believe the media are generally untrustworthy. The media can thank themselves as much as Trump for this. 

In the meantime, Trump is also delivering what he promised his supporters. That’s despite all the attacks on him personally and how he treats the sacred cows here and abroad.   

The economy is picking up, unemployment is way down, wages are going up, and consumer confidence is now higher than it’s been in years. Tax cuts and tax reform have also just been passed, and workers will start seeing the effect in their paychecks as early as February. 

Americans may dislike how Trump does his job but economic results are more important to voters.  As James Carville said when running the campaign for Bill Clinton: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The rest is background noise.  That’s not working out so well for the haters, either. 

The Russian collusion investigation is a bust. Democrats know this. Even Adam Schiff who keeps flogging that dead horse knows it. The media know it, too. They all keep saying the same crap: with this much smoke there must be a fire somewhere. Really? Then show us. They can’t. 

The infamous Trump dossier? It’s becoming more likely to entrap the DNC and Hillary’s campaign, and some “intel community” poohbahs, including top FBI bureaucrats, than Trump.  

Democrats, the left, and the media are desperately trying to find something.  After more than a year there’s still nothing. No collusion. No corruption. No fascist tendencies. No ties to white supremacists or neo-Nazis. No treason. No “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nada. Zip.  Bupkis.

What about Trump’s possible obstruction of justice by firing James Comey?  As more comes out about Comey the more it appears he broke any number of laws himself as the head of the FBI. Comey will be lucky to avoid being indicted. 

Firing Comey appears more justified every day. Not just because he was breaking established FBI protocols and overstepping his authority, which he clearly did, but because he was too ethically challenged to be the head of the FBI. And that’s saying a lot, since J. Edgar Hoover brought a whole new meaning to ethically challenged long ago. 

What about the decades-old allegations that Trump groped or kissed some women against their wishes? Unfortunately, some of those women have only been persuaded to come forth again with the promise of payoffs. One had her mortgage paid off by a DNC donor to the tune of about $30,000.  Yeah, that always helps one’s credibility. 

In short, there’s no there “there” for the Trump haters. Every time they think they have something to hammer Trump, it falls apart. Trump’s certainly no angel, nor is he a monster. 

And by relentlessly portraying him as a monster, they help him. 

That’s lost on the media, the Democrats, the far left and some in the Republican establishment. They don’t know when to give up.

They keep going for the kill shot – the home run that will seal the deal.  But they keep striking out.  It’s starting to get embarrassing. 

CNN hyped “proof” Donald Jr. had access to the Wikileaks e-mails of Hillary’s well in advance of their release to the public, demonstrating collusion with the Russians. Oops.  According to the Washington Post those were in the public domain at least 10 days before he saw them.

How about the report Trump was getting ready to fire Mueller in days? Oops.  Trump made a public statement he had no intention of firing Mueller. A few days ago, Trump also said he expected Mueller to treat him fairly and that he wanted the investigation to go forward. 

Swing, and a miss.  

Trumps been attacked more often than a piñata at a birthday party for starving kids.  So far, nobody seems able to land a solid hit on him. It’s certainly not for trying. 

He’s had to fight against the media, the Democrats, and even members of his own party.  

There have been marches and violent protests against Trump’s election across the country. Trump has been deemed a racist, a misogynist, a white supremacist, a sexual predator, a neo-Nazi, and of course a fascist.  There were Antifa riots on various campuses. There was a Pussy Hats march, where Madonna said she had thought seriously about blowing up the White House.

Let’s not forget the screaming at the sky event.    

In Congress there was and still is talk of impeachment   

You know what all this has accomplished? Not a damn thing. 

Except, of course, to add proof to Trump’s claim that he’s the target of the media, the political elites and government bureaucrats afraid that he may actually drain the Swamp.

When the top dogs at the FBI get caught red-handed trying to put their thumbs on the scales of justice, when bureaucrats and politicized judges ignore lawful orders, when states like California and New York defy Federal laws, and when illegal immigrants march in the streets demanding amnesty, it shows ordinary Americans why Trump was elected in the first place.

To stop this nonsense and restore order and the rule of law.          

So keep it up you crazy bastards. You’re helping Trump. 

The swamp never changes …

Real Federal tax reform should be a relatively simple thing. 

Eliminate all the subsidies, special tax treatments, tax offsets, tax credits, loopholes and the like, and start over. Get back to basics: tax income however it’s received and from wherever it’s derived. Keep graduated tax brackets if that makes you happy. 

But stop the rest of the nonsense. 

I know that’s hopelessly naïve on my part.  I can always hope. 

Of course, that’s not going to happen. Too many people, too many companies, too many state legislatures, and too many special interests are in the way. Everybody wants to keep what they have now, or even expand what they’re already getting.

That parliament of whores we call Congress are all salivating at the renewed opportunity to kiss the butts of their campaign donors and constituents by bending, twisting, and perverting arcane sections of the tax code to keep them happy.

There’s absolutely no reason – economic or otherwise – that our tax code is so complex.  Our tax code should only be focused on getting revenue to support Federal government operations.  Everything else in the code is crap put there by special interests. 

It’s a tax code; it’s not supposed to be a cornucopia of handouts for corporate welfare or social engineering. As such, it should be designed solely to raise money, not give it away. 

People who expect the Federal tax code be “fair” are fooling themselves. The courts ruled long ago that nothing about taxes needs to be fair or equitable. 

Moreover, those who usually argue vehemently for “fairness” aren’t really interested in that; if they were they’d be in favor of a flat tax where everybody – the poor, the middle class, and the rich – would all pay the same rate on their income. And it would cover all income. 

Don’t hear self-anointed champions of the poor hollering for that, do you?  Nope.  What they want is to dramatically raise the income threshold for who qualifies to be “poor” so more get more tax payer dollars and benefits without paying anything in. And Congress goes along. 

Doubt that? Consider this: Congress under both parties routinely passes laws to give tax rebates and other payouts to people who don’t pay any Federal income tax at all.    

Think about that logic for a moment.

People get tax rebates on taxes they didn’t pay.  Our government also sends checks to non-taxpayers who claim multiple dependents they don’t have, people who have jobs but fall below a certain income level, and others, including people here illegally. 

And now that same Congress is debating whether to raise those payouts even more.  Just to get the votes Republicans need to pass this “tax reform.”

Our media have generally focused on only a few issues in this legislative effort.

First, the rich might pay a bit less in taxes. Corporations would see their tax rates go down. In about 10 years the middle class might have to pay a bit more in taxes.  The poor won’t benefit. And the now heavily subsidized premiums for ObamaCare will go up, affecting millions. 

Got to be honest here: I’m okay with all that. Especially if loopholes are closed.   

The rich pay almost all the Federal income tax already; close all the loopholes and they’ll probably pay more. The lowering of the tax rate on corporations is meaningless – hardly any big corporations pay much if any tax at present because of all the credits, subsidies and loopholes.

The middle class should pay a bit more in taxes when all their specious tax breaks and credits go away; those have never accomplished anything that wouldn’t have happened anyway without them. Most of these are designed more to tilt the marketplace for special interests, like realtors, childcare providers, and solar energy panel installers, for example, by subsidizing their cost. Strip away the tax breaks and  credits and the free market will drive prices down for the middle class.

What about the poor?  Honestly, why should people who don't pay any tax now get an additional tax break? On what? 

Here's a better idea.  How about we stop subsidizing and incentivizing poverty?  If we really want to help the poor then don’t reward able-bodied people for pushing themselves into poverty. Don’t reward getting pregnant at 15, dropping out of school, becoming a drug addict, or committing a felony. That way people can qualify for a real job, make real money, work hard and do better. Tax policy has nothing to do with poverty, defeating it or increasing it. 

Finally, ObamaCare premiums were already skyrocketing long before there was talk of eliminating the personal mandate and payoffs to the insurance companies. The people who couldn’t afford health insurance before didn’t gain practical, useful health insurance under ObamaCare.  If they were only paying a few bucks per month for ObamaCare. but couldn’t afford the deductibles in the thousands, did they ever have real coverage?    

One thing I particularly like about the tax reform package in its present form is that it rights a grievous wrong that's been perpetuated for decades. It could eliminate some of the Federal tax offsets given to residents of high-tax states.   

Right now that’s a $100-billion a year tax break people in high-tax states enjoy, at the expense of the residents of other states. Politicians in those states rightfully worry their current residents, especially the rich, will flee to lower-tax states once they can’t offset their state and local taxes against their Federal tax anymore. That’s a possibility. 

However, what really keeps these state and local politicians awake at night is that they finally may have to rein in their spending on increasing the size and cost of government.  They’ll lose the freedom to raise state, local, and property taxes whenever they want on whomever they wish, knowing the offset minimizes the bite. The speaker of the New Jersey Assembly already said they might need to reconsider the recent “millionaire tax” they passed if they lose the offset.  Boo-hoo. 

Then there’s the supposed closing of other loopholes that continue to favor the rich and corporations.  There are so many of these hardly anyone can keep track of them.

Except lobbyists. Make no mistake, when tax policy is being written, the lobbyists come out in droves, like ants at a picnic. They all want their piece of the goodies.    

That’s when you can see the real swamp in action. 

And that’s when you can clearly see how our elected representatives are willing to sell us out at the bidding of powerful special interests.

How they are willing to trade their vote – or hold up the passage of a bill – for some bit of pork that benefits a single company or handful of companies in their state or district. How they preach about simplifying the tax code at the same time they weave in more complexity, written so specifically that it can only apply to a favored few.  

How achieving the promise of substantive tax reform always fails these days because practically everyone in Congress is beholden to someone or some group opposed to anything that might strip away some of their special deals and require them to pay more taxes.  

Last but certainly not least, how petty they are, using their vote to settle old political scores. Think Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and John McCain.   

Or as a bargaining chip to get something else that has absolutely nothing to do with the tax-reform legislation at hand. Think Susan Collins.   

Then you have the grandstanders now opposed to anything that might increase the deficit, unless it’s something they want which would also increase the deficit.  Or the clowns on the left like Schumer who never met deficit spending he didn’t like until now; now he’s a budget hawk. 

Does everybody in Congress think we’re idiots? They must. 

After all, we keep voting them in. What does that say about us?    

The swamp never changes. It will never change on its own. The tax-reform package just floats the crap to the top again so it’s more visible. 

There’s only one way to change it. Vote them all out.  Every last one of them. 

Then maybe we’ll get term limits.  Ethics Committees with teeth. And a reduction in the pay-to-play mentality of incumbents from both parties that thrive in the swamp.   

Explaining this country …

It’s usually when you’re travelling. Someone from Canada or from Europe will ask you how we could have elected Trump instead of Hillary, why everybody here can have a gun, and why we don’t have free nationalized healthcare as they do, for example.   

What they really want to know is why we aren’t more like them.    

I seriously doubt citizens of other nations get questioned as much so frequently. I’ve never asked someone from Canada or Europe why they aren’t more like us.

The less-than-subtle implication of their questions is that their country and its people are somehow morally and socially superior to us. And that we really aren’t as smart or enlightened as they are, or we would be more like them. 

It’s easy to chalk some of that up to ethnocentrism. But clearly they don’t understand us. Nor should we expect them to.  

Our own media consistently distort reality here to feed a specific narrative. Foreign media then pick that up and never bother to do their own homework. It’s dishonest, disingenuous, and lazy, but it is what it is. That’s why the world has trouble understanding us.    

If your entire opinion of America is shaped by what’s presented by CNN or MSNBC or the Washington Post or New York Times, or the AP wire services, you’ll never understand us.

There are millions of other Americans that don’t live or work in New York, on the West Coast, or in the D.C. metro. And those millions don’t necessarily share the same values or political views of those places. Or support the same agenda. Those millions are not ignorant hayseeds, they’re not religious bigots, they’re not homophobes, they’re not racists, either. 

Despite how our media and the entertainment industry here typically portray them.    

They’re just ordinary folks. Their concerns are pretty down-to-earth: protecting their families, keeping food on the table, earning a decent living, safety and security. They have about as much in common with the talking heads in the media and Hollywood stars as a fish does with a horse.

These folks weren’t stunned Trump won over Hillary – they voted for him. They weren’t alone. However, they were conveniently overlooked by our media leading up to the election. Their opinions simply didn’t matter as much to big-city journalists, news anchors, and pollsters.

Or the Democrat Party or Republican Establishment, for that matter.   

That’s why so many in the media – and the major political parties – were shocked that Donald Trump won the Republican primaries. When he won the election, the media and their Liberal and Democrat pals were caught completely by surprise; everybody they knew, everybody whose opinion mattered to them, voted for Hillary.

Based on how our media had constantly dismissed Trump as a blow-hard buffoon with absolutely no chance to win, imagine how the world felt. How did this happen?   

The answer is in a map showing which individual voting precincts went for Hillary and which for Trump. There’s a sea of red – for Trump – and scattered little pockets of blue for Hillary. 

That map makes it startlingly clear how ridiculous it is to judge all Americans’ opinions only by what’s important to a relatively tiny part of America – that tiny part obsessively covered by our media as the supposed bellwether of American public opinion.      

Listening only to our media, you’d never suspect that the number one concern of Americans is the economy and jobs – and has has been for years – not protecting illegal immigrants, transgender rights, or alleged Russian meddling in our elections or possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.

As widely reported, it's true that healthcare is a top concern for most Americans, too.

But Americans’ concerns are focused primarily on skyrocketing rates and deductibles under ObamaCare, and little on whether women should get free contraceptives. 

Here’s what our media rarely if ever report: most working Americans still get their health insurance through their employers. Less than 3% - 5% of American citizens lack any health insurance, and even they can’t be turned away from hospital emergency rooms because they lack coverage or the ability to pay. Everybody here gets healthcare already. Citizen or not. 

It’s the law.    

Contrary to media reports, there’s no great groundswell of support for nationalized single-payer healthcare either, especially if means higher taxes for everyone and limits on the doctors you can see and longer wait times to see them. That may work for people in Canada and other countries, but it simply won’t fly here; Americans aren’t willing to make those tradeoffs.   

But you wouldn’t know that if all you see are interviews with people and groups focused on promoting liberal and progressive agendas and single-payer healthcare for all. And that’s pretty much all the world sees in our media. 

It’s too much to ask that Canadians and Europeans look beyond that and discover what really is important to most Americans. Honestly, I don’t blame them for their ignorance of us. Much of the time we are woefully ignorant of them, too. 

One thing that would be especially useful for people from other countries to know is how our distrust of too much power in too few hands is such a big part of our cultural DNA.

We always want to prevent the consolidation of power by a privileged few and instinctively distrust anyone or any entity that makes an attempt to gather and wield too much power. We are leery of banks and businesses that get too big, politicians and special-interest groups that get too powerful, and faceless bureaucrats accountable only to each other.

It’s why we don’t think highly of the United Nations or other world bodies making decisions for and about us. We would never tolerate having our lives and our economy managed by something like the European Commission, either. 

Our instinctive resistance to centralized authority and world opinion may be the most puzzling part of our culture and politics to citizens of other countries. They welcome the “one world” concept of some commission or another dealing with global issues. We are the outlier.

Foreigners also routinely underestimate how much Americans in general hate what they see as bullshit. More to the point, especially when we suspect someone is feeding us bullshit, whether that’s from diplomats, our politicians, our media, or even a salesperson.  We have an extraordinarily low tolerance for “political speak” or political correctness.  It’s all bullshit to us.   

Want to know a big reason Trump was elected? Part of it was our aversion to bullshit.  He spoke plainly like a regular guy and cut through the politically correct bullshit; he said out loud what a lot of us thought. Warts and all, he came across as genuine.

Hillary kept spewing the same old stuff, got caught in outright lies, and then tried to pass off more bullshit to distort what she’d done, who she was and what she really thought.  She came across as a phony who relied on bullshit more than honesty. 

Want to know why so many here oppose ObamaCare? Again, too much bullshit – you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor, rates will go down by thousands per family. All bullshit. 

You can dress up bullshit any way you like, but if it still seems like bullshit to ordinary Americans they simply won’t buy it. That applies to blaming humans as the sole cause of climate change, saying illegal immigrants are a plus for our economy and never receive government benefits, and that lax gun laws alone are why “gun violence” is increasing.           

But that’s what our media keep reporting, even when the facts don’t bear them out. That feeds our  distrust of the media. Our media have been caught so many times making up stuff or reporting as fact what turned out to be false, they’ve lost our trust. When Trump called the media liars many Americans knew that was an overly broad overstatement but essentially true. 

That’s why there’s been so little pushback from the general public to his attacks on the media. Which is probably a shock to many in the world because we put such a high value on “freedom of the press.” Sure, the media are outraged as are their fans on the left, but the rest of us are “meh.” Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Welcome to America. 

Relatively easy access to guns here puzzles a lot of people from other countries, too. They seem to be under the false impression – fostered by our media – that we don’t have any real laws to control the sale of guns.  And that gun owners here, especially members of the NRA, fight tooth and nail to stop any reasonable gun control legislation.     

That, of course, is not true.  Despite our Second Amendment, the right to own a gun here has limitations. The NRA is on record as supporting extensive background checks to prevent the wrong people from buying guns.  We also have more than enough laws on the books to prevent people who shouldn’t have access to guns from getting them. 

But those laws aren’t enforced, not because people ignore them or the laws are too loosely written, but because our sloppy and inefficient bureaucracy doesn’t do its job screening out people legally disqualified from buying a gun. Like people with a history of mental illness. People with a history of domestic violence. Convicted felons, etc.

The laws are there. The requirements for background checks are there. But in almost every recent case of mass shootings in America, some bureaucrat dropped the ball. That, and people close to the shooters failed to step up and let authorities know in advance something was dreadfully wrong; rather than risk hurting someone’s feelings they did nothing. 

Incompetence and political correctness resulted in the mass shootings, not the lack of laws controlling access to guns. And not because of the Second Amendment, or the NRA.   

Now, there’s no way you can expect anyone from somewhere else to sit through all this. Yet these are the real answers to foreigners’ FAQs.

But as long as the rest of the world gets their news second-hand from our own media, they’ll never believe you.