Politics, Government & Public Policy: June 2016 Archives
At the root of legitimacy is the belief of the people that the government can and will protect their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. During the Obama administration it has become obvious that the authorities can't or won't protect us here at home.
Personally, I have great respect for our law enforcement agencies... but they can't be expected to make up for the disaster Bush, Obama, and Hillary created in the Middle East. We decided not to fight our enemies there, so now we're fight them here.
The most disturbing aspect of recent terror attacks is that the authorities were taken by surprise each time despite advance warning. This serial failure undercuts the administration's claim to competence.This is something the non-expert public understands. Suppose someone came to you claiming he was a brain surgeon. Even if you were not a doctor but had questions only a brain surgeon could answer correctly, you could evaluate the "brain surgeon" by giving him one exam and another to the cleaning person in the hallway. If they scored the same, you would begin to suspect the brain surgeon might be fake.
If the cleaning person continually outscored the "brain surgeon," a rational employer would consider hiring that person as head of surgery, which possibly explains the rise of Donald Trump.
The administration's demand for more gun control crucially rests on the claim of competence.
The State Department's assertion that it will take 75 years to release emails in response to a Freedom of Information Act request makes a mockery of the law and spits in the face of transparency. Interagency reviews and classifications shouldn't supersede the right of Americans to know what government officials are up to. If the reviews can't be completed in the timely manner, then they should give way to transparency requirements.
The RNC has sued the State Department under FOIA, seeking all emails to or from four aides to former Secretary Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013.The State Department has claimed that the result would yield roughly 1.5 million pages of documents that it and other federal agencies would need to go through page by page.
The department claimed in a court filing last week trying to kill the lawsuit that the emails are "complex" and include "classified documents and interagency communications that could have to be referred to other agencies for their review."
After discussion with the government, the RNC offered to impose some limits on the subject matter and dates of the emails of three aides, to pare the list of emails down to roughly 450,000 pages.
Because the State Department expected that it could process roughly 500 pages per month, processing all 450,000 pages would take 900 months, or 75 years.
Sanders knows at this point that he can't win the nomination outright from Hillary, so why does he keep fighting? Why does he promise to go all the way to the convention? Because he wants to make sure that when Hillary withdraws he's in position to take her place.
Meanwhile, former Bill Clinton advisor and pollster Douglas Schoen gave the strongest signal yet in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week ("Clinton may not be the nominee") that worried backstage huddles in the Democratic party establishment are reaching fever pitch. The article's floating of the idea of a Joe Biden-Elizabeth Warren substitute ticket (which I've been privately predicting to friends all year) is so evenly and magisterially phrased that I wondered if the text had been vetted by an approving White House. So this may be why Bernie Sanders (my candidate) has gone into overdrive--not to damage Hillary, as her acolytes spitefully claim, but to fight off the tactical insertion of Biden at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. Sanders could rightly claim, on the basis of his long and strenuous primary campaign, that if anyone deserves the nomination vacated by a tarnished Hillary, it is he. If Sanders does defer to Biden, it will only be via enormous concessions, beginning with the unceremonious removal of devious DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
It seems likely to me that after the California vote next Tuesday and before the convention, the major players will negotiate some kind of arrangement that accomplishes the following:
- Hillary drops out
- Hillary gets a pardon "for the good of the country"
- Sanders drops out in exchange for "enormous concessions"
- Joe Biden swoops in
The real question is, though, why would Sanders drop out for anything? Presumably the Dems have tried to blackmail him by now and have failed. What concessions would really be worth giving up a chance at the presidency?
The number of Latinos who support Donald Trump is greater than zero. The Left and media are trying very hard to paint Trump as a racist, when really he is more of a nationalist. Nationalism has ugliness in its own history, but is distinct from racism.
Taking Trump at his word, he wants to put "America first" -- which means ahead of Mexico and Mexican citizens, but not to the detriment of American Latinos. I can't recall Trump ever speaking negatively about Latinos, although he has denigrated Mexicans and Mexico. (I completely disavow Trump and his anti-Mexican sentiments.)
Is this distinction between ethnicity and nationality a needle Trump can thread? Trump is not known for his subtlety and finesse. However, if he is able to capture even slightly more Latinos (and blacks) than Romney did in 2012 he will pull the rug out from Hillary. He doesn't need to win every Latino, or even a plurality, to win the presidency.
"My name is Angelo Gomez and I have something very clear to say to the liberal media and Hillary Clinton: yes, I'm an American Latino who supports Donald Trump."Yes, I come from a family rooted in immigrants and I support Donald J. Trump to be the next president of the United States.
"I support Donald Trump with every ounce of my being," Gomez says, "for the very reasons that this country, that the Constitution, that this flag behind me was founded upon and that's putting the American people first. That's putting this country first."
He adds, "Hillary Clinton is the face of an incompetent politician who has lied to, who has cheated, and who has gotten Americans killed.
"If we get this wrong, our country will no longer be here for the future generations," Gomez says.
The video shows dozens of Latinos at rallies and around the country supporting Trump.
