Our Topsy Turvy World

 

When those who praise freedoms and liberties turn on the nations which have measurably the most freedoms and liberties and condemn their every move, one has to wonder where sanity has gone. When these demonstrators declare these nations to have policies which are Apartheid, fascist, dictatorial, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and operating as a police state all the while being given complete freedom to demonstrate without interference, things just do not add up. We are speaking of two nations who have a whole sector of the society, the left, who claim to be for equality of rights, free speech, equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity and the litany by which a free society is measured and considered to have liberty and respect for the individual, spend inordinate amounts of energy decrying the duly elected leaders without being rounded up, arrested and taken away never to be seen again; it leaves the thinking individual to pause and question the sanity. When the media backs these demonstrations and calls for the leaders to resign, be impeached or even to be toppled in a revolution and put on trial for crimes against humanity and duly executed, and yet these media outlets are permitted to continue to print and broadcast these accusations and demands day in and day out, one must question their sanity. There are no signs of the government being fascist, a police state, limiting free speech, showing racist or sexist preferences in hiring or breaking any laws as these demonstrators insist have been crossed. One can only come to the conclusion that for these leftist demonstrators, the only governance which can meet their definition of having freedoms and liberties is one which completely agrees with their agendas and anything else is to them totalitarian and insufferable.

 

Allow us to back up for a moment and define how we are measuring freedoms and liberties and thus believing the two nations we have in mind (be patient as we will name them eventually) can be considered perhaps the two nations with the highest amounts of freedoms and embodies the ultimate in liberty. Such a nation would permit any and all speech even that which many might find offensive. They would claim that it is by protecting that which is most offensive to be spoken freely without fear of the government locking you up and throwing away the key is a high water mark for free speech. If all you permit is speech which has been defined as acceptable and all else is forced to be shut out of the exchange of ideas, that is not free speech, that is freedom from being offended or challenged. Free speech must allow for opposition to any and all ideas and position to be freely stated by any who believe as such as allowing everyone the right to be heard is the very essence of free speech. These college campuses where conservative speakers are all but barred and should one attempt to be heard they are shut down with violence if necessary or the group inviting them is required to meet a different and far more expensive criteria for security or whatever reason, that is limitation of freedom of speech and in no way can such be seen as free speech. What that is, is indoctrination with only the single-minded administration and those students who either actually believe the same or back this as they have never heard a challenging word, idea or concept and thus know only the liberal leftist side believing what they have been told, the conservative ideology is toxic and infectious. These students have had their mushy little heads filled so completely with leftist ideology that it has even reached into the hard sciences where math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and the other hard sciences are now taught with insidious references in the word problems reinforcing the leftist ideology.

 

An example would be a word question in a math algebra course where the person is given the facts that a corporation had doubled their net sales while their overhead remained as five percent and sixty percent of the net was disposable income and as a result of the increased business the wages of their workers was increased from ten dollars an hour to twelve dollars an hour. What should have been commensurate increase in workers salaries warranted by the business and profit increases and how much did the greedy capitalist steal from the workers with the paltry raise they received if there are twelve senior officers splitting the stolen assets? Perhaps their wording might be more subtle, but the concept that worker must be granted an even share of profits is a socialist concept and if on the other hand the business were to take a one third loss the next year, these same people would demand the workers not take a one third cut in pay as they would claim the bosses were to blame and should pay for the loss of revenue. This has been the way of unions with other practices such as demanding and requiring that despite automation replacing workers on an assembly line, the company is not permitted to lay off the workers who are no longer required, even if they sit in a room and read magazines, watch the company provided television and after a couple of years the company will be forced to provide three pool tables and a dozen video games and six pinball machines plus a ping-pong table, balls and paddles. This is basically what one company which almost went bankrupt was required to do by their workers’ union.

 

Further, freedom to assemble and to also petition the government for grievances are two more rights in a free society with complete liberty. An example would be the women’s marches which have been held twice in the United States since the last election and are planned to be an annual event until the people select a proper leader and Congress. Just for clarity, there were no such protests, marches, during the eight years that President Obama was in office as things were pretty much the way they should be, or so we are told constantly. There have been a litany of accusations against the two leaders of these nations we have yet to name, bet you have guessed already, with one being reelected regularly despite efforts made by not only the left within their country but with leftist from Europe and North America working on the campaigns of his opponents on the left, the far left, working to completely over turn his chance for reelection. These efforts did succeed once for a brief period before that, government fell and in the ensuing election the left lost though their favorite target from the right also did not win, his party ran a different person who won.

 

President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu

 

Obviously, we are talking about Israel and the United States and the beleaguered leaders are equally obviously Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and President Trump. Prime Minister Netanyahu is closing in on becoming the longest serving Prime Minister in Israeli history surpassing David Ben-Gurion who served 4,575 days in office. President Trump is also an exception as he is the first President in modern times not to have come from within the ranks of serving politicians or from the military as did President Eisenhower. Even President Reagan had been in politics as well as entertainment as he served as Governor of California and had worked with the campaign of Barry Goldwater when he ran for President losing to President Kennedy. President Reagan is also credited with being one of those instrumental in redefining what it meant to be a conservative which led to the conservative revolution making conservative politics acceptable once more. President Trump has been under investigation since before he even took the oath of office. Many on the left see his Electoral College victory as one more reason that this particular institution need be placed on a ash heap of history. That will be difficult as it is in the Constitution and is the defined method for electing the President and was chosen so as to make the less populated states still valuable thus preventing a small number of states controlling the Presidency amongst them. Some claim that the Electoral College did not go far enough in allowing for the smaller populated states to have their say and point to the fact that New York has produced seven Presidents, Ohio has six, Virginia Five, Massachusetts four with California, Illinois, Tennessee and Texas each with three and a number of states with one and many with none such as Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Colorado (see map below).

 

Map Showing States from which Each President Hails

 

Continuing with the scandal sheets, Prime Minister Netanyahu has also been under investigation endlessly with one of the investigations being over the amount of ice cream the Netanyahu family had been consuming. One would have thought they were operating a black market ice cream business with the importance the media made over their ice cream budget. Often it appears that sanity has left the building. The main scandal which Trump has been accused of has been his presumed working with Russian President Putin to get elected by having the Russians hack the DNC computers, the computer of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John Podesta and then dumping information about misuse of power and other potential criminal acts and bad behavior by Hillary Clinton and defaming her in the media which of its own volition was never going to happen. The media, until the information was disclosed by WikiLeaks, not the Russians, had been treating and continued to treat Hillary as the unstoppable candidate about to be elected as the first woman President. Their coverage up until the final week had been a congratulatory media explaining all the wonderful accomplishments Hillary had to her credit which were to serve her well as President. The information which was released by WikiLeaks was simply doing the media’s job for them, as it is not for the media to choose and celebrate the presumed winner; they are to be equally harsh and revealing of both candidates. We must also point out that the media in some unintended way served President Trump’s campaign when he would sucker them in and they believed they were destroying Trump when actually they ended up helping him. President Trump also ran a better campaign giving people position of his platform, what he intended to do in office and how he would achieve his goals all while the media poking fun at his positions which still got his message to the people. President Trump used Twitter to communicate directly with the American people and he is still at it.

 

Between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, what are the main things which make these men such enemies to such a loud and boisterous with their vindictive and often hateful and vile rhetoric of those who apparently are going to protest constantly as long as these men hold power? The most obvious is that they were elected from conservative, right wing parties. They both have a deep and almost old-fashioned love for their nations. They face threats head on and do not flinch from a fight. They are alpha males which drives leftists right up the wall. They are both not apologetic and meet accusations with bold defiance. They are nationalistic, and both happen to love the other’s country. They will support one another and neither is afraid to reach across political boundaries in an effort to have their adversaries on the left join and help where it is to their advantage. Their adversaries act more as if they are enemies lauding over every perceived misstep using any sign of weakness or vulnerability as an opportunity to go for the kill and their adversaries will stop at nothing to see them out of office. There are those from the far left who actually drool over the idea of these leaders departing the mortal coil. Both men are successful and have led their nations ahead economically and are bold in their statements and fully love and back their country. These are leaders who are strong and certain and will not shrink from and fight where the future of their nation is concerned. They have no doubts about taking actions when required and both would do whatever was required including open warfare to keep their nation and their allies safe. They both know that it is through strength and not concession that you gain peace. They are definitive in their support for their friends and allies and no nonsense when it comes to dealing with enemies of their nation. And most unusual of both men is they love the people of their nation even to include those who have protested them from the start and desire their failure and removal from office and are willing to do whatever it takes to attain their goal. Both men are self-assured believing they have a destiny to fulfill. And both men lead two of the most freedom loving nations filled with liberty and justice for all, and they epitomize those ideals.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Trump and the New Syria Policy

 

Trump has a new Syria policy which, except for one major change, which may not even really be any change, looks awfully similar to the Trump old Syria policy. What we witnessed last Friday was the Trump policy on the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians. It mattered not whether it had been Syria, North Korea, Libya or any other place where such hideous acts might have been carried out. Wherever there would have been any use of chemical, biological, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction against civilians; whoever or whichever nation or leader who would have utilized weapons of mass destruction murdering any number large or small of civilians; would have probably been the recipients of an American strike by Tomahawk Cruise Missiles or B-52 long-range heavy bombers or other long arm of United States military reach to send the message that the United States would no longer stand by and simply twiddle our thumbs or make empty threats setting erasable red lines against such use of these weapons. The message might even have been extended for any mass murdering of civilians using even normative weapons such as barrel bombs or even artillery bombardment. This was President Trump announcing that the United States of old has returned and that nations and their leaders will be held responsible for their actions. We bet that exactly what Trump announced as a challenge to the rest of the world during his short commentary on the Syria attack was the meat that we should take away from the action against Syria, that he desires leading the world in efforts to end the horrors of terrorism by targeting the terror leadership.

 

So, what about this war against Syria everybody claims President Trump just declared? Well, first thing is that, as a number of Congresspersons mentioned, Congress is the body of the government which declares wars and also must be conferred with and approve any sustained military engagements. If President Trump plans an extended military confrontation against Syria, he will be required to get Congressional approval. We would advise not holding your breath waiting for the speech from President Trump before Congress asking for either a declaration of war or an extension for military operations in Syria. President Trump was simply sending a message with an exclamation point. His promise not to enter the Syrian war remains in place as does his promise not to get mired down in any Middle East war. Syria will remain a Russian playground unless Bashir al-Assad has not learned his lesson. Even if Assad is thinking that he might just desire to test the mettle of this new American President and see if this was just simply a one-off and that President Trump simply really is no different than his predecessor, President Obama; the odds are that Russian President Putin likely would advise him against any such stupidity. Even if Bashir al-Assad did not get the message or believes the message which was sent, we can trust that President Putin definitely got the message and that will serve just as well.

 

 

But what about the long term cost of this military adventure? Has President Trump completely alienated President Putin? After all, President Putin did cancel the agreement where the United States and Russia exchanged information between their military commands so as not to have any misunderstandings or run any risk of their two militaries running into one another as a surprise. That action by President Putin was more posturing than actual anger as that communication likely was used before the attack so that the Russians were advised, likely with insufficient time to warn the Syrians and just sufficient time to get their own people to safety. Even if the Russians were able to warn the Syrians, the message still was received and both leaders, Putin and Assad, likely also know if another such punitive attack should become necessary, there will be no warnings next time. This was a message for more than Assad or Putin; this was a message to the world and most definitely was not a declaration of the United States entering the Syrian war. Those claiming such are simply attempting to be alarmist and are simply people who were not strongly supportive of Trump and were seeking a reason, any reason to run from him and joining those bashing him daily on social media. Those others who would love nothing more than for President Trump to get mired down in the Syrian war and have come out of the woodwork to support this military actions and are calling for more follow-on military actions are not friends of the President and are not seeking the best for him. These are the ones who have opposed President Trump and his non-interventionist policies and are hoping beyond hope that they can finally force him into supporting their policies. They will lose as President Trump if nothing else is his own man and will do as he desires. He signaled exactly his desired path during the campaign and this attack was no deviation.

 

On another front, this attack should remove some of the silliness that President Trump was nothing but President Putin’s marionette. The distraction from the real scandal should be dead and buried and we can now get on to looking for how deep the rabbit hole which starts with President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice and likely leads right to the President himself. Even if the Russians did actually purloin e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chief, John Podesta, e-mails and make them public, had the media been worth their salt they would have found this information themselves. The Democratic National Committee e-mails were not stolen anyway as it is already a known fact that they were leaked by somebody inside the DNC. This means that the media was probably given access to this information and decided to sit on it as it did not serve placing Hillary into the White House. That would even include FOX News as many of the reporters and editorialists even at FOX were in the, “Anybody but Trump Camp,” even if that meant Hillary Clinton. It took somebody not so much interested in the election as they are in releasing anything which was factual and the public should have the right to know. Information on a Presidential candidate definitely fell into those criteria. That was likely the main driving factor behind Wikileaks putting out the information which was in those communications. They actually provided a service for the American voters by placing before them news which the media refused to provide despite its obvious importance. These leaks were more of a shaming of the media than it was a shaming of Hillary Clinton, as it was Hillary Clinton which shamed Hillary Clinton. President Abraham Lincoln loved the truth and trusted the people and his words should be revered by the media and rejoiced by bartenders. President Lincoln is quoted having written or said, “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.” We too favor his opinion, waitress, another pitcher if you please.

 

Pitcher of Beer

 

Kidding aside, Wikileaks should be given a great amount of thanks for revealing truths which the American media refused to release. Where we doubt that their releases actually cost Hillary Clinton a single vote, but we do believe that they may have pushed a few wavering voters to change from simply sleeping in and then going golfing to actually voting for Donald Trump. Our friends in Michigan and Wisconsin will tell us that their going for Trump had nothing to do with people not going to play golf; nobody plays golf there except in July or August because the rest of the year the weather and lake effect storms make such an unpleasant venture. Whatever those few people who were swayed by the information, the truths, released by Wikileaks may or may not have made the difference, but we doubt they did sway the election for Trump as the two camps in the United States have drifted to such extremes that there are probably not sufficient people sitting on the fence and the majority of voters are all from each candidate’s base. The problem is for the candidate who does not excite or have the trust of their party base of voters. As far as getting into the war in Syria, that would have been Hillary’s game, not President Trump. We can close telling our friends in the United States and elsewhere, President Trump was taking a shot across the bow of any state actor who might be misjudging him and thinking that they can use weapons of mass destruction or any weapons indiscriminately, and they had best rethink, as that is something he will not suffer. Instead, President Trump will make such a reckless leader suffer and take the side of any suffering people as long as it will not lead to harming the United States. Do not get to thinking President Trump changed as his number one love and devotion outside of his family is his country, the United States of America.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Russian Interference in the American Elections

 

The Washington Post released the “secret” discovery that American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials. Wonderful thing that intelligence secret research and discoveries are plastered on the front page top of the fold of the Washington Post. Wonder what “secrets” we will see next and in which left-leaning mainstream print media and whether the broadcast mainstream media will be next to enter the “secret” intelligence discoveries. There was more information that the Russians also cracked the Republican National Committee (RNC) computers but did not release any sensitive information they gleaned. The Russians released the secrets from Hillary Clinton’s computers and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) because they desired to have Donald Trump as President. This is a very interesting conclusion and may be missing some vitally important piece of possible information. Perhaps almost everything they gleaned from the RNC was mostly public and discussed mostly debate points and policy discussions. Meanwhile the DNC and Hillary’s e-mails had secrets, many secrets, and they were damning secrets at that which were not known in the public and revealed actions which would have been prosecutable had these facts been about the Republicans instead of the Democrats. So the Republican computers had run of the mill data and research for the election and polling and records of donations and other records which are required by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) which is very boring stuff and would not have been of any real interest. While on the other computers they found records of cheating and pay for play of the Clinton Foundation and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and shared debate questions and the entire attack plan to deny Bernie Sanders a fair and even run for the nomination favoring Hillary Clinton while crippling Bernie Sanders’s opportunities and any chance of winning the nomination.

 

Which information would be important in a free society anyway? Would it be polling data, contribution records and policy statements defining the platform or cheating, bribery and criminal activities? The answer is obvious. The Russians did not release the information gleaned from the RNC because most of it was already public knowledge or was filed with the FEC or other government agencies as required by law thus mostly position data, platform positions and basic data and information which was filed already with the government and available to the public. The DNC, Hillary’s e-mails, well, now we know what was found there whether it was Russia or Wikileaks who cracked these computer systems as it was made public. So the RNC information was already public while the DNC and Hillary’s e-mails were secret and the Democrats were going to great extremes to continue hiding what was on their computers. Which information had you gotten would you believe might be of interest to the people, the already public information or deep secrets being hidden fearing public reactions if these bits of information would become known. Secrets are the only thing which people care to hear and simple data which are already publically available is totally uninteresting. So of course whoever had secret information would believe releasing such information might be of interest and might be useful information for the voters. So it was secrets which were found interesting and thus released.

 

Computer Secrets Revealed

 

Americans were actually served well by the releasing of this information as democracy works best when there are no secrets. Secrets are poison to democracy, always was, always will be. Democracy is served best when all secrets from all sides are aired rather than hidden and concealed from the people, the voters. The squirming on the left is that they were found out and their secrets and sins were revealed and the left firmly believes that only the right has secrets, the left has valued information which must remain concealed because only the selected few may be permitted to know the secrets. Conservatives are secretive and thus the Republicans must have had more secrets than Hillary or the DNC could ever have hidden because the Democrats, the leftists are the holders of truth and the only holders of truth even if most of that truth must be kept from the public because they could never understand these things they must hold secret because the other side has even deeper and more evil secrets. The Russians or Wikileaks released secrets and damning information about the Democrats because they wanted Trump to win the Presidency. They were out to destroy Hillary. The fact is that Hillary had played loose with morality while as Secretary of State using her position to enrich herself and her husband while Trump was running his companies and the Republicans were working their way through seventeen candidates. While the Republicans were trying to figure their way through debates the DNC was receiving debate questions to feed Hillary but not Bernie. Which would be of interest to the American voters, the Republican debate schedule or the fact that one Democrat candidate was receiving debate questions through a DNC operative working for CNN.

 

But all other considerations aside, there is actually a reason that the revelations by Wikileaks, wherever they originated, were a good thing for the election. First is they probably did not sway more than a few thousand voters from Hillary to Donald Trump in the entire company as those who were going to vote for Hillary would commit suicide before voting for Trump. Democracy works best when the voters have all of the information possible and are making reasoned and intelligent decisions in the voting booths. Unfortunately there will always be secrets and there will be secrets with both parties. Most of the secrets are how they plan on formulating their campaigns and which states they believe are in play and where they are not bothering to put up a fight. Those are tactics and none of that information from the DNC was released. None of the RNC tactics were released either. Hillary and the DNC had lots of hidden information while Trump had tweets which are rarely secret. Hillary was running while attempting to conceal much of her past from the FBI as well as the voters while Trump Tweeted every thought which crossed his mind and often his Tweets contradicted earlier Tweets proving even he did not know all of his positions. Hillary was running under a dark cloud of secrets, deep and dark secrets. Trump ran as open a campaign as humanly possible and his Tweets proved one thing, that he will need many advisors to mold his thoughts through providing information, one can only hope truthful information. The reason that secrets were released about the Hillary Clinton campaign and not the Donald Trump campaign was simple, Trump has a totally public campaign and everything the media could possibly find to report derogatory about Trump, it would be repeated ad-nauseum until even the least news observant American could repeat that piece of news verbatim. Hillary’s and the DNC’s secrets would have remained as deep, dark secrets and the voters would have never known any of the crooked and potentially illegal actions and secrets which were ensconced on those hard drives. The truth is that the released secrets might have served the American public well and perhaps had an influence by pushing many who were debating on whether to vote Trump or stay home to actually go vote. If these releases of secrets allowed more Americans to cast votes and have their opinions represented in the election, is that not a good thing. Is not the lack of voting Americans in election cycle after cycle not one of the reasons given by the political theorists that the democratic voting part of the American Republic as something dangerous that threatens the governance? If that is the case, then was not the American Republic Governance helped of these releases sent more people to the polls? If your answer is that it depends who these additional voters were voting for then that is a partisan answer. Whenever more people express their opinion the closer the government will represent the people, which is the purpose of the governance.

 

Beyond the Cusp