Category Archives: Politics

by Barry Kelly | November 22, 2016 · 7:36 am

THE PROFESSOR AND PROBLEM SOLVING

Standing in front of his large white board, the Professor said, “At our last class, I asked you all to come in with the names of people you believe President-elect Trump should appoint to his Cabinet. Just hold on to those while I set the scene for you. I know you all think you are here to study political science, whatever that is. This is not a history class, or a forum for debates, or a course that will give you insights into the arcane ways our government and others have been formed.

“The only job this class will qualify you for is problem solving. Problem solving is the reason we have government departments and agencies. I’m not interested in your ability to write analytical articles or become renowned ‘talking heads.’ When you leave here you will not have my support in landing good jobs unless I believe you are equipped to define and solve problems. Nor do I want to turn out teachers. No one should teach anything until they have proven they can perform in their chosen field.

“That may be harsh but this class is not for the ‘cupcake generation.’ I teach here because this small university does not support cry zones or safe zones for students. Nor does it encourage political correctness. Diversity by itself is meaningless as is the widespread use of sound bites or talking points to spread an ideology or solution. You should leave here smarter and tougher than when you were accepted into this course. A high percentage of the students that preceded you went on to good and challenging positions. All of them left here better able to cope with the real world.

“Now that we know we are to become first-rate problem solvers, which is how successful people and organizations are judged, let’s identify the problems facing President-elect Trump. This white board is blank and is ready for you to write the problems we will attempt to solve in the next month, starting with Barbara, come to the board one by one and write one problem on the board.”

When all eight students had posted their problem on the board, the Professor said, “Copy these eight problems and then pass the names of your two top Cabinet candidates up to me. Then form two-person teams.”

When the students finished, the Professor said, “I will give each team two problems from the board and a selection of your candidate names. You may work on the problem anyway you want. But in two weeks, each team will use the names given to them to fill the Cabinet positions relevant to the assigned problems. You may use the rest of the class time to get started.”

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The Professor – Fundamentals of Trump’s Success

The students trooped into their 11 o’clock political science honors class looking like they all needed at least a week of beach time. As they slouched into chairs around the conference table, the Professor said, “Well, I guess you didn’t get much sleep last night. I was up until well after 4:00 AM. The election was truly historic. I feel like a mantle of freedom and hope has settled over the land. Let’s talk about what happened. First, any questions?”

Alison raised her hand and the Professor nodded in her direction. “You told us two weeks ago that Donald Trump would win the election when all the polls were pointing clearly to Secretary Clinton. What was the reason you were so confident of a Republican victory?”

“First, I wasn’t talking about a Republican victory. The traditional Republican party is now part of history. It will never be the same. And for the nation, that is a good thing. Its time had passed. The victory I spoke about was only about the Trump movement. The Trump victory has given me a perfect ‘teaching moment.’ We are here to learn how to think about how humans govern themselves and that requires us to learn how to sift information.

“All of us were bombarded with polls, the analysis of pundits, party propaganda, government leaks, thousands of hacked emails from behind the scenes actions of the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign. Some of it was ugly, but it was all revealing and intriguing. Some of it was relevant, but mostly it was distracting. Many analysts thought the deluge of emails revealing the naked ambitions of Secretary Clinton trying to hide her efforts to balance her sworn duty as American’s Secretary of State with her drive to amass personal wealth and power would destroy her campaign.

“Instead of waiting anxiously for the next dump of emails that would dominate the news, journalists, commentators, analysts and political talking heads should have focused on the fundamentals. Instead, they couldn’t get past the day-by-day exposure of the Democratic National Committee, debate stumbles, and Donald Trump’s off-message comments and his need to defend himself from every attack. All of this was exciting and made the grist for hundreds of TV comments, newspaper columns, attack ads and maps of shifting electoral votes state by state.

“The fundamentals I focused on were the dynamics of the primary process of both parties, the gradual metamorphosis of Donald Trump from a flamboyant TV star and successful billionaire real estate tycoon to a disciplined politician who could sound and look presidential and the gap between the governing elite of the Progressive Party and the needs and hopes of the people. My most important indicator was the disparity between the polls and the energetic masses of people who attended Trump rallies. If you listened carefully, you could hear the rumblings of a revolution in the heartland of America.

“How could you miss Mr. Trump’s success after success in the primary campaign? Remember when he carried every county in several states late in the primary campaign? He felt and listened to the message coming from the forgotten citizens of the ‘rust belt’, those hunting a job where none existed, the citizens who wondered how their leaders could ignore the flood of people and drugs pouring across our open borders, the silent suffering of America’s veterans, the chaos of the Middle East and the failure of trade, the decades of wage stagnation and the total lack of a foreign and economic policy to deal with the realities of terrorism and increasing debt.

“Donald Trump and his campaign leaders heard these cries for help and crafted their message to respond. No one else did. The only missing ingredient was finding the right messenger with sufficient political maturing to talk to the people instead of at them and the unbelievable energy required to take this fresh message throughout the land. Donald Trump was the right messenger. In the future, if another messenger is required, I hope the people will find another Donald Trump.

“Your assignment is to predict who President-Elect Trump will select for his cabinet.”
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Filed under Barry Kelly, Clinton, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Middle East, Progressives, Republicans, Terrorism, trump

by Barry Kelly | November 3, 2016 · 7:01 am

Corruption and Democracy

The Professor was pleased with his class. It might be the best class I have ever had. All eight students are learning how to think outside the box and are articulate in presenting their views. Today, I’ll do the work. He looked over his class, notebooks open and wondering what the topic would be today. Half the fun of teaching was keeping the students guessing. He doubted that any of them were thinking about the impact of corruption on the democratic process.

The Professor walked over to the floor to ceiling window and looked out over the Bay. He loved the view and felt he did his best thinking staring out over the ever-changing scene. The feeling was humbling. His mind rambled over questions he wasn’t equipped to answer and never would be. Existence, origin, change without change, the meshing of infinite forces, all forever beyond human understanding, helped him put his role into perspective. Pushing those thoughts into the background of his mind, he said, “Democracy and the freedom it allows are not guaranteed. It was crafted by some very brave and thoughtful people who did their best to protect the governing process they had fought for. Democracy is constantly assailed by powerful forces. We have talked about some of those. The danger of the growth in size and scope of government, the inroads on the ‘rule of law,’ the limits on the freedom of individuals to achieve their own goals, and the breakdown of the checks and balances enumerated in the Constitution.

“Today, I want to talk about a more insidious danger to democracy. Corruption in the political process of governing, I believe, today is a very great danger to democracy and the freedom it needs to exist. Our founders knew there would always be greedy people seeking power and wealth by getting around the restraints imposed by following the law and regulatory procedures. There are several examples of abuse by elected and appointed officials in our history.

“When corruption is found, it must be destroyed. Otherwise, it is like a cancer and will spread throughout public and private organizations. Corruption begins when people believe they cannot achieve their selfish goals without putting themselves above the law. Whether this is a result of personal or ideological goals, it is still corruption and must be harshly dealt with. When the governed lose faith and trust in their leaders, the existing government will fall.

“Your assignment for our next class is to identify an instance of corruption in our government and present your solution to the problem. I do not want a term paper, just a short oral presentation and discussion.”

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by Barry Kelly | October 17, 2016 · 7:44 am

The Professor – What is Freedom?

The Professor was going over his file of past lectures and editorials to get ready for his next honors class. He felt that he had to get the class thinking in more basic terms. The hubris dominating this political campaign was driving out the discussions on basic issues that are critical to the survival of democracy, much the same way “Gresham’s Law” states that “bad” currency of questionable value will drive ‘good’ currency out of circulation. Certainly old and alleged sexual charges and published purloined emails have dominated this campaign, he thought.

If citizens do not know what freedom is, how can they protect it or even know if they have lost it? Freedom is the existence of individual choices. Without individual choices, there is no freedom. Those who have lived seven or eight decades have seen, sometimes up close and personal, societies in which the basic choices Americans exercise every day were unheard of or imagined. Current Russia and the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and some South American nations have tried various far-left ideologies. In every one of them, individual choices vanished.

North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, probably the best political organizer of the 20th century, had the North Vietnamese people organized into to a cascading staircase of political, economic, and social organizations. Everyone belonged to a peer organization with each peer group sending a delegate to the next higher group. There was no real individual choice.

Progressives and communists hate what capitalism and the free market stand for. They do not believe the forces of the free market are real and think greed is the only driving force of capitalism. Progressives will not believe the infinite number of choices made by a free people in a free competitive economy will result only in chaos. Instead, a small group of progressives can make decisions that will produce a vastly more efficient economy and much fairer distribution of wealth.

When you think about freedom, think about if the right of making choices is being taken from you and your family. Don’t be taken in by the words. They don’t mean anything. Look for the signs of freedom being eroded. Do government spokespeople tell the truth, or is their intent to mislead the people? Are there attempts to label dissenters as dangers to be silenced?

A few examples: The Clinton/Obama Administration’s desire to label people who do not believe manmade carbons cause climate change as “climate deniers.” The Administration is reported to have asked the Department of Justice to see if citizens who disagree with the cause of climate variations could be prosecuted. The Benghazi talking points, the benefits of the Iran deal, the claims for Obamacare, the misleading unemployment numbers, and the optimistic reports of the demise of ISIS are other examples of a government that is devoted to managing reports to the citizens.

The very essence of progressivism is to control choice because the political left believes it is chaos when people are free to choose their life’s occupation, their education, reading material, TV programs, news, religion, ways of raising children (including the choice to have children or not), health care, and the people who govern them. The current struggle in America between conservatives and liberals (the far-left liberals are progressives who now control the Democratic Party) is not over some obscure political difference. It is over who makes life’s choices, you or a progressive elite.

The Professor’s op-ed on the Middle East and the U.S.

In between honors classes one day, the Professor thought, “I just can’t stand it any longer. No one is telling the people the truth about the Middle East. Does the Obama Administration and the Clinton campaign think we are too dumb? Trump’s instincts are good, but he needs to bone up on the area. The Russians are not in the Middle East to fight ISIS and Putin is not about to make any deals that do not further his plan to hold a naval base on the Mediterranean and to be a major on the ground player in the oil patch. I just have to write an op-ed piece.”

He pulled his keyboard toward him, looked out over the bay, and began to write.

First, there are a couple of truths about our strategic past in the Middle East. Forget the lines and names drawn on maps of the Middle East. Think of the area divided between the Sunni Muslims and the Shia Muslims with the nation of Israel maintaining a stronghold in the midst of the struggle for dominance by the Shia and Sunnis. The Iranians are the leaders of the Shias and the Saudis, Arabs of the Gulf States and Egypt leading the Sunni opposition.

ISIS, al-Qaeda and their splinter groups are Sunni. The Obama-Clinton group has thrown American support to the Iranians, who want to use their new power to dominate the Middle East. President Obama always intended to follow the Shia/Iranian lead. That is why the abrupt pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as Obama came to power. The Iranians wanted the U.S. forces out of Iraq so that the Iraqi Shia could assume full control over the Iraqi military and economy and oust Sunnis from the military and government. (Remember, the Iraqi led Sunni government under Saddam Hussein fought a very bloody war against the Iranians.)

The Iraqi Shia government is now firmly allied with Iran. This is a government in name only. Iranians control all major moves in their drive to control a Shia empire of what is now Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. ISIS with all the terrible atrocities they have committed represented Sunni opposition to Iranian strategic goals. When they are destroyed, the strongest power on the ground will be Iran. When Mosel falls, it will be with the heavy involvement of Iranian weapons and ground forces. The Turks will stay within their territory and the only other viable fighting force, the Kurds, will be isolated with dreams of their own homeland shattered. With all of the talk from Washington about arming the Kurds, we never did. The Iranians and the Turks do not want the Kurds to be armed with modern weapons. All the arms we said were being sent to the Kurds went through the Baghdad Shia government that never sent them onward. The Obama Administration, of course, knew the Kurds would never receive the weapons. There is literally nothing the Iranians want that the Obama/Clinton group will not do their best to supply. Just look at the recent deal Obama made with Iran on their nuclear weapons program. While not called a treaty, that was what this deal is. Why take that route? Simply a way to avoid the need for Congressional ratification. We, the people, and Congress still have not seen all the pieces of this executive action.

On the Russian side, Putin is a modern day czar of Russia. His goal is to re-establish as much of the old Soviet Empire as possible. The weakness of the Obama presidency has given him a grand opening. For many centuries, Russian czars dreamed and planned to acquire a warm-water port for their navy. Without firing a shot or endangering Russian soldiers, he has acquired Tartus in Syria as a Russian warm-water port. That is now a fact. The fleet is there and weapons to defend it are in place. Putin will do what he must to support Assad. He is not in Syria to fight ISIS. Aleppo is the only evidence anyone should need. ISIS was not there but Syrian anti-Assad forces were. The city is now rubble as a result of Russian historic lack of concern for collateral deaths when their critical national interests are involved. Since Iran is the local protector and supporter of Assad and Syria, Putin will make any deal necessary with Iran to protect his naval base at Tartus and his new role in Middle Eastern oil. Obama’s plan for Iranian hegemony in the Middle East is on solid ground with both U.S. and Russia supporting Iran and the Shia Muslims.