Category Archives: Politics

by Barry Kelly | September 27, 2016 · 2:40 pm

The Professor and The Debate

The first Presidential debate of 2016 had just finished and the spin rooms were already active with talking heads. Professor Clark shut off the wide-screen TV that dominated his home office. He said, “It is a pleasure to have this class in my home for this historic debate. There is no question that this is the most important election period in my lifetime. There are serious issues at stake. Many have been postponed for years. The very direction of the nation is being decided. The kind of world you will live in for the rest of your lives is being debated now throughout the nation. To verge on the sensational for a moment, I don’t think it is a stretch to say the very existence of this unique nation could be a casualty of the election.

“I know it is late and the sleep time hard-working students get is precious, but I want to go around the room and get some one-liners from you. Alison, let’s start with you.”

Alison said, “Secretary Clinton stayed on message and showed very good debate discipline, but I don’t think she scored many points. Her poll numbers will remain relatively constant.”

“Robert, you’re next.”

“It’s hard to pick a clear winner. Trump missed several opportunities to score but he did as well as he needed to. The moderator was clearly helping Hillary and that will resonate with his followers.”

“Carlos, what’s your take?”

“I agree with Alison and Robert. The debate was a draw or close to it. Secretary Clinton had the worst hand, having to run on the direction Obama put this nation on when the people are screaming for change.”

“Katrisha, comments?”

“I saw the debate nearly the same as my colleagues, but was struck by the body language. Hillary was ‘smirky,’ stiff and her voice was too high-pitched. Trump showed anger and some petulance. He couldn’t get over his ‘counter-punching’ instincts. As a result, he let his opponent direct the substance of the debate.”

The Professor nodded at Paul and said, “Go.”

“I thought at a presidential debate even a moderator from NBC would play it fairly straight. It could have been worse, but his frequent interruptions of Trump, the selective fact checking and the avoiding of any questions on e-mails, illegal servers, BenGhazi, the Clinton Foundation and many others showed a clear network biases.”

“Barbara you’re on.”

“I was struck by the fact the contestants seemed to be unconsciously addressing different audiences. Hillary’s comments, I believe, were directed to the wonks and the Washington establishment. Trump seemed to be ignoring that audience and speaking to the people outside the handpicked inside audience. His pitch should have resonated with mainstream America. Especially the working people and those who are having difficult times just feeding and housing their families.”

“Edward, comment?”

“Yes. Irrespective of the judgments coming out of the spin rooms, the wonks and talking heads have been wrong about nearly everything associated with this campaign. And they have been wrong because they dislike the Republican candidate deep in their core. Trump is not of them, he doesn’t look like them. He doesn’t share their beliefs and perhaps worst of all, he is not an ideologically pure right-wing conservative Republican. The Conservative establishment class, including those in Congress and the feckless national security crowd, are giving, at best, very tepid support to the Trump campaign. The entire Bush crowd is an example of these political correct Brahmans.”

“Not exactly a one-liner but then the one-liners have been growing with each speaker. Alice, it is up to you to wrap this up.’

“I’ve enjoyed the comments and have to admit some of them surprised me. Indicating that while we all witnessed the debate, we saw different things. This is not a traditional presidential campaign. Maybe this is closer to a revolution than an election. Maybe, just maybe, in most countries these issues would now be being fought in the streets.”

“Excellent comments. This is a remarkable class. Go get some sleep and we will pick up these threads in our next class. Thank you.”

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Capitalism, Clinton, Conservative views, democrats, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Presidential Debate, Republicans, trump

by Barry Kelly | September 13, 2016 · 1:41 pm

The Professor: Class Begins

Setting: Picture a 5,000-student liberal arts college on the Eastern Coast. It has a strong political science program and attracts students from all over the United States and a few other nations. Professor Mike Clark is the head of the Political Science Department and teaches a twice-weekly meeting of select political science honor students.

Professor Clark came out of an active retirement two years ago after the college offered him the opportunity to teach without the burden and distraction of administrative chores and attending functions. His ground rules before accepting the job stated he would be given no curriculum or college goals to meet and that he would have a number two who would handle the day-to-day operations of the department. He made it clear that his intent would be to help his students learn to think, and current events — whatever they are — would provide topics for discussion.

Seventy-five percent of the graduates who took his courses after his first two years back landed top jobs at successful law firms and Fortune 500 companies. The college was happy, the students were excited, the Political Science Department was over scribed, and the parents of his students wrote glowing letters with checks to match to the school.

As another year got ready to begin, Professor Clark was pleased with the eight students he had selected to take his political science honors course. There were no published pre-requisites for his course, nor could students just sign up to take it. He personally selected the participants from a stack of 25 files three young assistant professors sent to his desk. Students he selected were sent an invitation to enroll, and his invitations had never been declined.

This would be his first meeting with his new class of honor students.

The students filed in and selected seats at the polished cherry wood oval table near the palladium window looking out over the Bay. The room was not large and a normal speaking voice could be clearly heard. Professor Clark waited until the room had settled and said, “Good morning. Welcome. Some of the ground rules here are different from those you have learned in the past or that might be in place in some of your other classes. Here, you will be expected to play the role of several different officials, both domestic and foreign. To do that, you must keep up with current events, without me giving you a formal assignment. There is no room in this class for neutrality. One of Russia’s Cold War Premiers, Nikita Khrushchev, said that while nations might be neutral, there are no neutral men. You must be able to explain and defend the position you take on any issue.In the presentation of your positions, you must not degrade the value and integrity of your word. Once your peers lose trust in your word, it may never be regained.

“Grading will be simple. You either pass or you don’t. There will be no repeat courses or extra credit. I will pass out a general reading list. It is far from a complete list. You must understand the Constitution and how it was developed, the impact that slavery has had and still has our nation, and the doctrine of the separation of powers. There will be no tests on what you have read. The extent of your reading is up to you.

“You must have noticed all our classes are schedule as the last period before lunch. That is so we can run over the normal class period when we need more time. You can eat anytime.

“We are in the midst of a very important national election. The future of our nation will be changed by the result, maybe beyond return. I cannot imagine a better forum to bring political science alive than a class during this critical period in our nation’s history. The subject for Thursday’s class will be the role of the President as Commander-in-Chief and which candidate you support and why? You each will have ten minutes to defend your position. You will spend the rest of today’s class reading and studying global current events so that you are not only knowledgeable about what interests you and molds your opinions, but what also interests others and is shaping their opinions. You must know both sides of an argument to debate it well.”

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Filed under Conservative views, Intelligence & Politics, political solutions, Politics, Progressives, Republicans

by Barry Kelly | August 23, 2016 · 8:58 am

INSIGHTS 275: President Trump – What is the Risk?

These thoughts are for those of you who voted twice for Obama and are now in the Hillary Clinton camp.

After eight years of the progressive rule of Obama, what does your country look like? Have you noticed transparency of government operations never happened? The Obama administration can’t seem to tell the truth about issues as important as unemployment figures. Can you believe from what you see that the unemployment number is 5.5 percent? I hope not. Any accurate honest accounting would put the unemployment number at near 15 percent. If you drop all the spin and count people who have dropped out of the workforce because they have given up on finding a job, the figure would be much more accurate.

Have you noticed that the moderate centrist Democratic Party is gone? It has been taken over by the progressives, who will never give it back. The real goal of the progressives is to turn American politics into a one-party system where the government controls the economy and moves the United States into some form of an international world order.

Have you noticed that American economic, moral and military power has been greatly reduced from pre-Obama days? American warplanes have run out of the spare parts needed to keep our ancient planes operating and new ones are not being built. Our military manpower (male and female) is now near or below pre-World War II levels. Never has peace come from weakness, yet the progressive party of Obama and Clinton is trying the historical failed policy of peace through appeasement again. Part of the result is tragically apparent in the Middle East where the human costs of Obama’s failure to act is approaching world war levels and Clinton is promising more of the same.

Have you noticed the ‘Rule of Law’ no longer applies to government wrongdoing? No one or organization important to the progressives is ever held accountable. The Justice Department under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch has been politicized beyond anything we have ever seen. The Watergate Nixon affair that we all thought was so bad now seems like an everyday executive action.

Have you noticed the national debt has doubled under the Obama administration and that the economy is stagnating even after unprecedented stimulus funds were poured into the economy? Wall Street and its investor class has prospered while Main Street businesses have suffered. The Clintons and their questionable foundation have grown rich. The Justice Department, reportedly, has prevented the FBI from investigating corruption and conflict of interest issues regarding the financial affairs of the Clinton Foundation.

Have you noticed nothing in the progressives’ management of the nation seems to have worked? The IRS, VA, EPA, DOJ, education, foreign policy, the Pentagon, intelligence gathering and analysis and immigration. Just pick an area. The result will be the same. The nation needs real changes. A lot of crockery needs to be broken. I believe Mr. Trump can do that. He has the ego and I hope the expertise to solve many of our problems. He’s not a perfect candidate and he needs to demonstrate a higher level of discipline and analysis. But the risk of a Trump Administration is far less than four or eight more years of Obama through Hillary. I know where that will lead and do not want to go there under any circumstances.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Clinton, Conservative views, democrats, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Progressives, trump

Tagged as 2016, Clinton, hillary, Obama, presidential election, trump

by Barry Kelly | August 12, 2016 · 12:49 pm

INSIGHTS 274: National Security managers versus Donald Trump

This week, 50 national security bureaucrats signed a document stating Donald Trump wasn’t fit to be Commander-in-Chief. Devastating? Not really!

National security specialists look at the world through a very murky lens. They are often wrong about their own specialty. In fact, some noteworthy national security advisors have missed what have been called the most important security issues of our times.

This whole class of self-designated security elitists have presided over the decline of American power and prestige. They lacked the courage and honor to stand up and be counted during the terrible Obama wartime decisions. They knew the military power of the United States was being systematically diminished. They knew about the fiasco over Benghazi and the failure of the leadership to even try to rescue the valiant men who died there. They knew the Obama infatuation with Iran was leading to a terrible deal that would reward the No. 1 terrorist sponsor in the world. They knew we should not have withdrawn all our forces from Iraq. They knew the Obama polices were failing to deal with Syria and the growth of ISIS. They knew Putin intends to reconstitute the Russian empire and that the Chinese were expanding their dominance in the China Sea. And they all stood quietly by, obeying orders from an administration they knew had a view of the world very far from reality.

Where were their petitions and outcries then? Why didn’t they resign in protest? To resign and protest in the face of a vindictive leader takes honor and courage. It seems these critical characteristics were missing. These men are not leaders. They are merely failed managers who valued their careers over the needs of the nation.

Donald Trump scares these timid managers. None of them would last in a Trump administration.

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Filed under Barry Kelly, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, Obama, Putin, trump

by Barry Kelly | August 5, 2016 · 8:35 pm

INSIGHTS 273: Donald Trump and the politically correct world

America faces several critical problems. The national debt; stagnant wages; a real unemployment rate of plus 12 percent; an administration that cannot be trusted to tell the people the truth; terrorism that has reached our shores and shows no signs of being defeated; cash payments of 400 million dollars to Iran in the form of ransom for hostages; territorial aggression on the part of Russia and China; class warfare in America; a crumbling infrastructure network of roads, bridges, airports and utility distribution systems; a military that has to salvage parts from museums and junk yards to keep ancient warplanes flying; military manpower approaching pre-World War II levels; a war against terrorism our commander-in-chief refuses to recognize or to develop a strategy to deny ISIS safe havens in the Middle East; anti-American regimes in Iran and North Korea whose main national objectives is to develop and use nuclear armed ballistic missiles against the homeland; a tax and regulation load that kills existing business and prevents new start-ups; health care for the people, especially our vets … the list could go on.

And what is playing endlessly on our news media? Certainly not anything from the above list. No, we have become a nation of petty politically correct issues. Not just from the liberal media but also from conservative news outlets. The polls swing on the impact of politically correct trivia and not on a discussion of important issues that threaten America. The tyranny of the novel “1984” has been replaced by the politically correct dominated modern world of 2016. The progressives of the Hillary Clinton party know they cannot win a debate on real issues so have skillfully made the election about the real or contrived statements attributed to Mr. Donald Trump.

A few examples: The furor over Trump’s statements that some of the immigrants coming unopposed across the southern border were criminals, murders, and rapists. The PC spin is that Trump said all immigrants were criminals. Or his statement that Muslims should be temporarily banned from coming into the United States until they could be vetted. Sounds reasonable to me. But the PC version is that he is opposed to all Muslims entering the country. Or all nations in NATO should pay their required yearly proportion of their annual national budget. Reasonable, I think, but the PC spin version is Trump intends to withdraw from NATO. On the tax issue. Mr. Trump has said he would lower taxes on corporations and individuals. Not a bad idea. The PC spin version is that Trump’s tax plan will only benefit the richest Americans.

The Khan family dust-up. The Khans were recruited by the Progressives to attack Mr. Trump at the Democratic Convention over his stand on Muslims by doubting he ever read the Constitution and that he dishonored their son, an American soldier who was killed in Iraq. Again the motive of the PC spin was to attack Trump’s position on Muslim immigration. A long stretch, but the Progressives turned this into an attack on ‘Gold Star’ mothers when Mr. Trump unwisely questioned why Mrs. Khan had not spoken up at the DNC. His record shows Donald Trump is very pro veterans and military families. His stance on the Veteran’s Administration is far ahead of any past or present candidate.

Candidate Trump is not a politician. He often isn’t careful enough about what the progressive spin doctors can and will do with his imprecise words. The political world of dialogue about new thoughts and possible actions is very different from initial discussion of ideas and proposals in the world of commercial projects where the first mention of an idea is just the beginning of the negotiating process. In the high offices of government. Ideas are most often discussed, debated, and scrubbed before they see the light of day. Mr. Trump needs to recognize this difference and we need to reject the PC responses of the progressives and turn the debate to the real problems facing America. If not, four more years of the same. We need change before it is too late.