Cold Hard Reality

Bill Clinton was a corrupt, smooth-talking hick president whose priorities were Lewinskis, money, power, golf, cheeseburgers and America ... in that order.

Hate

Why do so many people despise Trump with a white-hot hate? Let me count the ways:

He’s a phony, a fraud.
He reminds them of Mussolini.
He named his son Baron.
He is a serial liar
He’s a billionaire.
He has a very attractive wife who has a foreign accent.
He embarrassed the deadbeat NATO members.
He plays too much golf.
He is against late-term abortions.
He does not embrace shit-hole nations.
He fires people who work against him.
He uses locker-room language from time to time.
He is too opinionated and speaks his mind.
He is adored by the smelly shoppers at Walmart.
He fights back against those who are trying to take him down,
He is vainglorious.
He is a global-warming skeptic.
He would like to find common ground with Russia (against China?)
He calls out corruption and incompetence.
He is a racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, fascist homophobe.
He likes to get something back for US taxpayer dollars.
He is overweight and has orange hair.
He loves America and wants to make it great again.

Afterward: Yes, even Nancy Pelosi too!

While Our President Slept

The contrast is dramatic. Donald Trump's ability to multitask effectively is quite impressive. His focus and energy are daunting. In comparison, our current much-younger president is lackadaisical by his nature and ideological by his actions ... but I suspect history will judge him even more harshly because of this Trump juxtaposition. Most of the kinetics in the Obummer administration came not from our Teleprompter-in-chief (apparently, his primary function) but instead from his bloated go-get-em staff. He can often sound and look sincere when reading his staff's well-crafted rhetoric. But his indifference to the full spectrum of his presidential duties is often obvious by his body language or lack of action ... and is brought even more into focus by comparison to our new president elect.

Obummer was too often an inattentive president. There is little argument that he would mainly focus on five things: getting back at those whom he saw as oppressors of blacks, open borders, global warming, setting Muslims a place at the table ... and his golf game. Everything else; the economy, entitlement reform, the loss of our middle class, rebuilding our infrastructure, defeating terrorism, strengthening our national defense, reducing government waste, tax reform, regulation reform, etc. seemed to be distractions to him. I don't think he even gave a hoot about health-care reform or free trade These were treated merely as check boxes for his expected legacy. I think if you were to ask him to explain the ups and downs of Obamacare or TPP in detail without his Teleprompter, he would stutter and flounder.

zzzzzzz!

The Ryder Cup

Thank God for the Ryder Cup golf tournament! Staying loyal to my pledge not to watch NFL football games as long as these Anthem protests continue, I do need some excuse to stay supine on Sunday afternoons. Enter the Ryder Cup yesterday ... providing some excellent suspenseful matches between the US. and European duffers. Not one of these golfers took a knee or raised a fist showing their hatred of his country. Yes, all these players were male ... and white ... so I was guilty of not necessarily respecting the Black Lives narrative. Sorry ... I did escape into escapism and will, I am sure be punished in the afterlife. (For you die-hard football fans, the U.S. did  prevail.)

In the meantime, since golf is soon going away for the season, I need to find some other excuse to laze away my Sunday afternoons.

Ice hockey?

Chinese Hegemony

China is flexing its expansionist muscles ... making outrageous claims to large swaths of the South China Sea ... and building artificial islands to reinforce its sea lanes, oil exploration and fishing assertions in this region. All of its Asian neighbors (the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia) are pushing back and the Philippines just won a important victory in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague wherein China's claims have been denied ... see: AP Story. Unfortunately this decision in the Netherlands carries no force of real law ... just moral suasion ... and China is not swayed by suasion. This blatant Chinese hegemony presents one of the most serious threats to world peace in quite a few years.

In a related matter, President Obummer, after he returns from his current Black Lives Matter trip, is planning a few rounds of golf and a White House rap concert.

Afterward: See: Chuck Hagel Weighs In On CNBC and Enews: China Rattles Sword.

One Finger Salute

I have previously predicted that President Obummer would do many things in his last year in office to show his disdain for the American people ... see: Hell Year and Skulduggery. Now we see yet another of his one-finger salutes ... coming on the heels of the San Bernardino, Paris and Brussels Islamic terrorist attacks ... and defying the obvious concerns of his citizenry. Obummer is re-pledging to admit 100,000 Syrian immigrants to the U.S. this year ... not in 2017 as he originally dictated ... posing an obvious threat and economic burden to the communities wherein they are to be settled ... see: Washington Examiner Story.

Me thinks that the more criticism that Obummer gets, the more punishment he intends to inflict on us. Maybe we should try a different tactic and distract him for another ten months with oodles of paeans, encourage him to play more golf, and have him teach economics at Columbia ... he is obviously well qualified ... see: Real Clear Politics.

Pop-Culture Presidency

Donald Trump has taken up residence inside my head ... and he is a messy tenant ... leaving dirty socks and his pajamas on the floor and cookie crumbs in the bed, And apparently he has also gotten to President Obummer, as he has repeatedly said that Trump won't replace him in the White House because he is just a "reality show host" ... see: ABC News Story. This is rather ironic coming from a man who has repeatedly used pop-culture media himself to burnish his hip image ... remember "Between the Palms?"

Actually, The Donald and our current selfie-stick president are two sides of the same coin. They both are glittering flotsam in the roiled stream of mindless entertainment that our pop-media culture has created. They both have forsaken what once was the gravitas associated with the presidency for the allure of social-media fluffery. This is why Trump can't be bothered to say exactly how he is going to "make America great again." And Obummer's strategy for defeating ISIS seems constructed out of "hope and change" Twitter posts. This is what their publics apparently want.

There is a karmic parallel between Obummer's number one priority, his golf game ... and The Donald's current investment obsession, golf courses.

A Good Walk Spoiled

A Japanese Golf Course

I better be careful here for my son is a golf aficionado and I myself have played a few rounds in my salad days. But Mark Twain was on to something when he called this links game "a good walk spoiled." I guess I didn't mind President Eisenhower playing so much golf as he seemed to get his other work done. But for some strange reason President Obama's obsession with golf gets under my skin. And President Clinton's constant use of Mulligans while on the golf course bothered my sense of fair play ... as did the man himself.

Now the Chinese leadership seems to feel the same way about golf as they do about prostitution, gambling, bribery, drugs and gluttony. Dozens of golf courses have been shut down for excessive use of natural resources ... and government officials in one province have had restrictions placed on their playing times. Golf is increasingly viewed as a "capitalist pastime" (shh ... don't tell Obama) ... see: CNBC Story.

The General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, seems to be behind much of this crackdown ... as he is against the other mentioned excesses in China ... even having some government officials executed for corruption. I don't know but I  have a sense that golf handicaps can be much better trusted in Beijing.

Scrambled Eggs

The United States' policy in the Middle East is a plate of scrambled eggs. We have been launching air strikes against the ISIS powers (partly Sunni Muslims) in Tikrit, Iraq along side the Iranian-backed Shia Muslim militias ... which were not gaining an edge and are now pulling back ... see: Powerline Blog Comments. In Yemen we are encouraging the Saudis (Sunnis) to attack the Iranian-backed Houthi Shia rebels with both air power and soon possibly with ground troops ... see: Al Jazeera Story. So we are helping Iran with one hand while slapping it down with the other.

The situation is somewhat duplicated in Libya where Egypt (Sunni) is bombing the ISIS forces there ... see: BBC Story. Simultaneously, we are grabbing our ankles in order to close the nuclear deal with Shia Iran. What a mishmash!

And all the while, President Obama (a Shia sympathiser IMHO) is playing golf in Florida ... see: Washington Times Story.

Hand on the Throttle

Many years ago a math teacher of mine had a rather charming expression for students who were attentive … he said that "they had their hands on the throttle and their eyes on the rail.” Now this country has a rather inattentive chief executive who has "his hand on the five iron and his eye on the sand trap.” Yes, I know I am covering Maureen Dowd who also used President Obama’s penchant (obsession) for golf as a metaphor for his failed presidency … see: NY Times Item. But let us face it … the reason the world is in such a mess right now is that our president refuses to focus on his job.

Obama doesn’t really seem to give a rat’s patootie that ISIS has turned what was a reasonably successful Iraq campaign into a maniacal morass … or that Putin is on the march. All our investments of lives and treasure in Iraq have now gone for want. Yes he gives a nice Teleprompter talk about how much he is concerned about this ISIS threat … and has some bombs dropped on a few targets … but then grabs his putter and meets Alonzo Mourning for some more inattentiveness on the links.

I’ve always been rather perplexed at the vitriol directed at Dick Cheney during the Bush 43 years. Yes, he, early-on, had a series of private meetings with CEOs of energy companies about how to formulate a national energy policy … big f-ing deal! How many of such non-transparent sit-downs has our current president had from which we can also draw equally nefarious inferences? At least after 9/11, Dick Cheney help the Bush administration formulate policies and operations that pushed back al Qaeda into the shadows. Now we see that al Qaeda is fearful of ISIS … that new band of radical Islamists led by a former U.S. prisoner who was released in 2009 … see: Fox News Item.

So we have a contrast in management styles … the adored Barack Obama who leads from (his) behind … and the reviled Dick Cheney who got things done. Cheney at the very least had his hand on the throttle and his eye on the rail.

Fun in the Sun

President Obama is on top of things. Despite the Ukraine being squeezed to death by the Russian bear, serious delays in Syria destroying its chemical-weapon stockpiles, and 239 Malaysian airline passengers apparently being blown to smithereens by terrorists, he is deeply involved. He has called Vladimir Putin of Russia two times for long conversations. How do we know this? Because we see pictures of him on the telephone. And he is also talking to many world leaders about these many crises. How do we know this? His administration says so in a brief talking point … see: The Hill Story. 

Not to mention his plethora of serious domestic issues: the Obamacare sigh-up deadline rapidly approaching, the President’s budget proposal being dead-on-arrival in Congress, the administration’s gutting of our military, little or no White House attention to tax reform, our continued national economic lethargy, etc.  Is Obama concerned with all these domestic failings? It must be so … for there is no wringing of hands on the nightly news.

So all must be roses … for our President is hitting the links once again in Key Largo in sunny south Florida.  This time his playing partners are a former basketball great, Valerie Jarrett’s cousin, and a former football star. Why isn’t he in the White House Situation Room with his key advisers mapping out administration actions to all these issues?  Beats me. I guess fun in the sun trumps the serious business of governing … particularly after all that nasty cold weather in Washington.

Yes, President Obama is on vacation again … just two months after an extended three week stint in Hawaii.  In fact, he is on vacation so often that he hardly has time for all his many Democrat fund-raising trips. Do the U.S. ever-alert media make a point of highlighting these derelictions of duty (see: AWOL)? Do we ever hear a tsk-tsk from his many cable-news sycophants? Does Saturday Night Live run stinging parodies about his lack of focus on world and domestic events?  Does an arm-waving Jon Stewart on the Daily Show mock this inattention?  Get serious!  It’s a wonder that we even know he is playing golf in Florida.

And I do ponder what message this sends to Putin?

Obama ...

works to craft response to surveillance uproar ... see: McClatchy Story.  Am I wrong or was he going to have this all worked out during his extended vacation time in Hawaii?  Perhaps some serious family matters (and golf) interfered?

Inattentiveness

President Obama’s management style is inattentiveness … fund raisers, golf, and his March-Madness brackets always have precedence over the business of governing.  This might be less of a flaw if our fearless leader had surrounded himself with competent managers instead of political hacks.  But, as it turns out, this administration failing is both good and bad.

We are seeing much of the malignant results in the Obamacare debacle, our still-suffering economy (despite the recent unemployment rate), and our many foreign policy disasters.  It seems to this observer that, any time a policy issue does make it onto Obama’s radar screen, he guides it into a mountain side.  These management flaws are too often adroitly covered up by his likable folksy nature and political spin that rivals Hurricane Katrina ... dished out by his legions of acolytes (including that common streetwalker, Jay Carney.)

But some beneficial results also occur due to his and his administration’s inattentiveness.  Many pockets of our government, when left to their own devices, still are achieving remarkable results … witness the Republican-led deficit reduction programs, our nation's drive toward energy independence, the development in Area 51 of a super-secret high-altitude drone (see: Foreign Policy Article) and, I do believe, the Bin Laden and Somali pirate killings. There are surely other national successes that have escaped Obama's heavy hand.  Perhaps if he were encouraged to play even more golf ...?

The Upcoming Debates -- Obama

In the upcoming debates, there are ten questions I would like to be asked of Barack Obama:

1) It's been speculated that you have a borrowed Social Security number since it was issued in Connecticut, a state in which you never have resided, and at a time when you were a child in Hawaii.  How do you explain away this enigma?

2) You have played golf nearly 120 times during your White House tenure ... about once every 10 days. Add this to your many vacations, your pick-up basketball games, your recent constant fund-raising trips, your frequent White House celebrations, and your many other distractions.  Do you believe that you have paid sufficient attention to your job-one during these difficult times?

3) Do you still believe that Israel should return to its 1948 borders ... and is Jerusalem Israel's capital?

4) Since your well-over one trillion dollars of government pump-priming spending has not caused an economic recovery in the United States ... do you still believe in Keynesian economics?

5) Seeing that the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that the penalties specified under Obamacare are a tax, do you still claim that you have not raised taxes on the middle class?  Or, to the contrary, if you endorse the Court's decision, are you then willing to reform this legislation to remove this tax?

6) You formed the Simpson-Bowles commission to help solve our burgeoning national debt crisis.  You then ignored their recommendations and have instead proposed raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 as your only solution.  Have you any other suggestions ... such as some specifics for reforming the U.S. federal entitlement programs?

7) You have been widely quoted as saying "you didn't build that" and accused of being a statist.  Did you, in fact, write your two books by yourself ... or did you have ghostwriter help?

8) In order to move toward a balanced federal budget, would you pare back spending in the discretionary portion of the federal budget … if so, where ... and how far will you still go with Defense Department cuts?

9) The Consumer Protection Agency was created by Congress and Elizabeth Warren over two years ago to eliminate the risks to our financial systems like those created by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.  Recently, two new financial shocks have occurred -- J.P. Morgan’s over five billion dollar trading loss and the Libor interest rate fixing scandal.  Is more regulation really the answer to such shenanigans?

10) Two of your foreign policy initiatives that have not succeeded have been your and Hillary Clinton’s “reset’ attempt with Russia ... and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Syria … only weeks before the current savagery began there.  What foreign policy initiatives then are you most proud of?

Hold That Tiger

Tiger Woods is back playing golf in the Masters this weekend in Augusta, Georgia. I might in fact watch some of this august tournament ... but whereas, in the past, I would be rooting for Tiger to win ... this time I will be hoping that he loses.

"What immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" -- William Blake