Russian Allies

I have heard in the news that Russians have hacked into some voting machines across the nation and altered the outcome of our presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. It sounds very complicated and is even more nefarious if voting machines are not connected to computers into which to hack via the internet, also known, appropriately, as the worldwide web, which, as we know, was invented by Al Gore, who was cheated by hanging chads in Florida, prior to the involvement of Russia in our American presidential elections.

I, for one, am suspicious that the election fraud was not caused by computer hackers from afar but rather by Russian spies among us, who have wormed their way into the offices of election commissioners across the land, posing not only as Americans, but as election workers in the highest positions with access to counting ballots, or I should say, miscounting ballots.

These serious allegations do not trouble me. They teach me. In prior blog posts, I have announced my plan to skip traditional election campaigning to focus on obtaining votes in the electoral college from faithless electors. I have revealed my strategy of raising money by selling influence and using donations with strings attached to bribe electors to vote for me regardless of who wins in their respective states.

Now I see an alternate strategy. That is, I should recruit Russian spies and hackers to help me win the election in 2020.

I have a few years to learn the language in order to make friends with Russian spies and hackers.   It is all falling into place.

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

I am grateful to Hillary Clinton and her minions for explaining how to win an election.  She can really teach.

Campaign Finance

This is a sequel to my prior blog concerning my path to the Presidency.

You will recall, if you read that blog post, that I plan to bribe electors in the Electoral College to vote for me.  I estimated $1 million per elector would be sufficient.  I need 270 electoral votes.

Some might criticize my plan by questioning how I can raise $270 million. I am glad that you asked.  The answer is simple:  selling influence.  Admittedly, I am not the first to come up with the idea.  Some other political candidates have used the technique without always admitting it.  I am being transparent.

So here is the deal:  Pay me money, which I will use to bribe electors, and when I am successful obtaining 270 electoral votes, I will use the office of the Presidency to do favors for you.  The size of the favor depends on the amount of money contributed.  You scratch my back, I will scratch yours (in accordance with your generosity).

Some have used the term “pay to play” in connection with the Clinton Foundation, inferring some sort of access to the power couple for those donors.  I do not need huge donations.   I will provide small access to me for small donations.  Win/Win.

If 270,000 people donate $1,000 each, I will win the Electoral College.  Those donors will get VIP tours of the White House and a commemorative coffee mug.  For just $100, you get the mug.  For $10, you get an autographed photo of yours truly, suitable for framing.  We can do this.  Together.

Thank you in advance for your support.

 

 

A Modest Proposal For My Path To The Presidency

A couple days ago, I was talking to my friend, Kent, about the pressure being put on electors in the Electoral College, and I came up with a path to win the presidency on a reduced budget.

Kent is something of a Constitutional scholar.  He explained the concept of “faithless electors” voting contrary to the popular vote in their state.  I thought it was automatic that electoral votes, at least in “winner take all” states, automatically go to, well, the winner.  Apparently, Hillary Clinton supporters believe the electors should vote according to one’s “conscience.”  Presumably, it follows under their view that anyone with a conscience would vote for Hillary in the Electoral College.  That is, unless one’s conscience has to do with honoring the American system of electing our President.  At any rate, pressure is being put on electors to be “faithless” to their commitments to honor the popular vote.

And that is when I came up with my plan.  It is an improvement on Hillary’s campaign because it saves money by ignoring the costly campaign to win the votes of regular voters, who matter less than electors in the Electoral College.  You see where this is going.

My plan is to win the hearts and votes of electors regardless of any popular vote.  It is very costly to run television advertisements.  It is costly to travel to rallies around the country.  It is costly to put on a nominating convention.  My plan is to focus on bribing electors to vote for me.

As I recall, it takes 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency.  Let’s budget for $1,000,000 per electoral bribe to persuade electors to be “faithless.”  I would use the budget to heelp these people of conscience feel good about voting for me as a matter of conscience.   Who cares about nominated candidates and votes in the general election?  Let’s let 270 electors “do the right thing” by benefiting themselves and America as well.

My advice, dear readers, is to look into becoming an elector in 2020.  Then you can look forward to meeting me to discuss voting your conscience, unhampered by the votes of the deplorable voters in the general election.  It will be worth your while.

Now I just have to come up with $270,000,000.  I’d do almost anything for that amount of money.  Let’s talk.

Hey, I know, you could contribute to my foundation.  That’s the ticket.

Me, Colin, and the Constitution

Colin Kaepernick and I have never met, although we have some things in common.  He is an NFL quarterback  and I am an NFL unsigned free agent.  We share many of the same physical attributes.  (See post entitled Quarterback Material).  If I meet him at an NFL activity, such as a game or NFL Player Association meeting or party, I would probably like him.

Watching him sit during the national anthem, I don’t like him so much.  It seems disrespectful.  Actually, he himself says it is intended to be disrespectful.  He says:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

He has the right to say whatever he wants, of course.  The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech.

We Americans have other amendments in our Constitution too.  The Fourteenth Amendment says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

I, like most of you, am opposed to oppression and racial prejudice, and unfairness of any kind.  It appears that the authors of the Constitution and Bill of Rights were opposed to the same things to which Colin is opposed.  Not all the same things, of course.  As far as I know, they were not ashamed of our flag.  We probably did not have a national anthem yet.

I, like Colin, and all of you other Americans, have the right to freedom of speech.  That includes the right for me to say I don’t agree with Colin’s symbolic  speech by him sitting during the national anthem.  I don’t agree with disrespecting our flag.

I think his sitting does not make his message clear.  Many football fans who see him refusing to honor the flag have not read his words of explanation.  I have read those words and still do not understand.  He himself does not seem too oppressed.  He could do more to improve our nation by positive example than simply pointing out the obvious that racism still exists, despite such progress as the election of a mixed race President, who has appointed two black Attorneys General.  There is racism even in Denver, where we have a black mayor and a black chief of police.  My point is that, despite progress in fighting institutional racism by changing laws to ban discrimination, there are people who are still prejudiced.  Ironically, Colin is one of them, apparently, because he has judged from afar whether cases in which he did not participate are being handled under due process of law.  Colorblind law.

Colin seems to be saying that Black people have been killed by police who, in his opinion, should not get paid leave during an investigation because he already knows somehow that the police were not justified in using deadly force.  Maybe he doesn’t want the police to get due process of law per the 14th amendment.  Maybe he wants to be the one to decide from afar, without participating in the legal process.

Colin’s example of sitting has nevertheless influenced me to emulate him.  My wife has requested that I mow the lawn.  I mean no disrespect towards her, but it does not seem right for me to blissfully mow the grass when there is crime in our nation.  Sure, we have  passed laws against crime, but people still commit crimes.  Until there is no crime, I refuse to mow.  Oh, and until there is world peace too.  I will make the world a better place by sitting.  It would be selfish on my part to mow during these troubled times.

Would someone please explain my constitutional rights to my wife?

 

Funeral Etiquette

Dear President Obama,

Yesterday, in Washington D.C., where you reside, a funeral service was held for Justice Scalia, who served 30 years on the United States Supreme Court.  It would have been nice of you to have attended.  The flip side is that it was rude of you to not attend.

Maybe you had an excellent excuse.  I do not know what you were doing yesterday.  But you know.  It must have been extremely important.  It must have been top secret.

Of course, if it was top secret, I could have checked it out in Hillary Clinton’s email.

Supreme Court Justices’ lives matter.  They deserve to be honored when their lives end.  Even if one does not agree with all legal rulings made by Justice Scalia, he deserves the thanks of the American people for his service to our nation.  It would have been a good example for us Americans if you had put politics aside and attended the funeral of Justice Scalia.  Instead, you chose to send a different message.  Shame on you!

Sincerely,

An American Citizen

 

Proper Semantics About Terrorists

I listened to President Obama give an address in the aftermath of the terrorist killings in San Bernardino.  Let me see whether I followed his message.

President Obama does not want to call this terrorist act as an act of Islamic terrorists because Islam is a religion of peace so these particular terrorists cannot be Islamic terrorists, by definition, because they follow a perverted version of Islam that is not true Islam.

He is unwilling to accept that these terrorists themselves apparently thought (mistakenly, it now seems) that they were followers of Islam.

Therefore, he does not believe groups that use “Islamic” in their names, such as the ISIS and ISIL, are accurate in calling themselves Islamic.  It seems that he is the person who gets to decide who is Islamic and who is not, regardless of what they call themselves.

He ought to know, better than I, what constitutes true Islam.  Unlike me, Barack Hussein Obama’s father and his step-father were Muslim and, unlike me, Barack Hussein Obama attended an Islamic school when he lived in Indonesia.  I assume that while in the Islamic school Barack Hussein Obama was taught about the Koran and probably has read it enough to know whether the concept of jihad is contained therein.

I have not read the Koran.  I probably should so that I am not merely listening to hearsay.  It is my uneducated understanding that jihad means killing infidels per the will of Allah as taught by the Prophet Mohamed.  Infidels, I have been told, is the term for people who are not Muslim, such as myself.  It follows that I am among the targets for Islamic jihadists.  They want to kill me.  I take that personally.

It is verifiable whether jihad is promoted in the Koran.  If it is, a person reading the Koran could accept that concept and act on it in an attempt to be a follower of Islam.  The husband and wife who killed the people in San Bernardino could have decided to do what they did on their own, without having been recruited by a group that promotes jihad such as ISIS or ISIL or al Qaida.  Or not.  Either way, these folks thought of themselves as Islamic terrorists, or if you prefer, Islamic jihadists.

It seems like a question of semantics whether they are entitled to call themselves Islamic.  President Obama says they cannot do that accurately so he will not grant them that title.  You and I should not use the label Islamic in that context.  If we call them Islamic terrorists, we are doing just what they want us to do.

That got me to wondering about whether I should call Baptists what they call themselves.  Would it be wrong to do just what those Baptists want me to do, even if other Christians do not subscribe to the requirement of complete submersion for true baptism?  (If you think you are a Baptist, you might want to ask President Obama to decide whether you are entitled to call yourself a Baptist because even if you believe that you are a true Baptist, he might determine that you are part of a perverse version of the Baptist sect and tell us all to refrain from calling you a Baptist, especially if that is what you want.  We do not want to fall into that trap.)  Some might see the President’s supervision of religious labels as government interference with church matters but that only shows that such people are not as smart as our president.

While I have not read the Koran, I have read the Bible, many times.  What I got out of it is that Jesus said to love one another as He has loved us.  He was not advocating death to non-believers.  You can look it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Observations on Recent Events

Allow me to make a few brief comments about things that are obvious.  I do this because people smarter than me and more powerful than me are saying things that cause me to wonder whether they are missing some points and why.

Not all immigrants are the same.  There are those who want to come to America to assimilate.  They want to become Americans.  There are others who locate here and then want America to change for them, such as by adopting Sharia law.  There are people who come with the idea of attacking America by posing as refugees.  ISIS has admitted it uses this strategy.  These are not widows and children.  These are military age men who, in the case of Syria, choose to leave Syria rather than fight ISIS.  Some are part of ISIS.  It is not wise to welcome them just to look friendly.  It is okay to be suspicious.

I have read that President Reagan allowed many refugees into our country so we should follow his example.  Those were largely refugees who were fleeing Viet Nam.  Remember the “boat people”?  They did not want to live under Communism.  Churches helped them resettle.  In hindsight, we see that these immigrants from Southeast Asia did not commit any terrorist acts that I am aware of.  So, that turned out to be a good decision.  It resulted in many class valedictorians who are of Vietnamese descent and who are now proudly Americans.

On the other hand, it is not a coincidence that terrorist acts are being committed by men from the Mideast who declare that their murderous acts are in the name of Allah.  Having been told that, is it not stupid to pretend that we don’t believe it is dangerous to our own safety to bring in Islamic men who fit that profile?  President Obama wants us to feel ashamed to say we don’t want them here.  His job and sworn duty is to protect the people of our nation.  That does not require leading sensitivity sessions about not hurting the feelings of foreigners even if they pose a threat.  It is odd that a week after the Paris attacks, which we now know were done by terrorists who were refugees betraying France after being allowed to come there, that we are lectured to ignore what we just witnessed.

It is also interesting to me that Saudi Arabia is not welcoming refugees from Syria.  Is that because the Islamic terrorists would rather come to Europe and America because Saudi Arabia is already a Muslim nation?  Saudi Arabia is not a target.  Or, if that is not the reason, why would another nation with a similar culture not help fellow Muslims?  Why should America do what Saudi Arabia won’t.

President Obama has tried to shame us by saying “That is not who we are” if we are wary of Syrian refugees.  I disagree.  Who we are is a nation which has been attacked by Islamic terrorist and does not want to have that happen again.  We have our own widows as a result of those attacks.  We need to be protective of our own children.  This is an issue where a political correctness argument falls flat.

You are not paranoid if they are really after you.

 

 

 

 

Circles of Tolerance

Tolerant people

Are  not tolerant

Of intolerant people.

That is where

The tolerant draw the line.

It is politically correct

To be tolerant about

Shooting cops.

It is not politically correct

To “profile” terrorists.

It could offend.

And we can’t tolerate that.

The Arrogance of Immaturity

A young man was shot and killed as he broke into a store after hours when the owner was there because he feared looting during a night of protesting/rioting.  The next day, 600 students at a high school walked out.  You are probably assuming that the dead burglar was a student at the school.  He was not. None of those who walked out told me that they knew him, yet walking out seemed to them to be somehow a noble tribute to a sad end, ignoring the criminal endeavor.

Sounds like the situation in Ferguson last year but it was decades ago (I won’t say how many) at my school.  It was before the Make My Day laws.  It was purported to be about race too.  Even then, I did not see the connection with race because the more obvious reason for the burglar’s death, however sad, was his attempted burglary.  I am pretty sure the store owner would have shot anyone who broke into his store that night regardless of color.

A few years later, when I was in college, student organizers promoted a Student Bill of Rights.  I only remember one “right” that was part of a package of rights needed by us oppressed students.  That was the right to have girls visit the boys dorm without the rule at the time which required the dorm room door remain open.  It was a rule that was difficult to enforce because if a door was closed, how would a passerby know it contained a female visitor?  Oh, I seem to recall the girls had to sign in.  It was very oppressive to our right to privacy while entertaining in the location of our beds.  I was 18.  Before attending college, when I lived at home with my parents, as you might imagine, I could bring girls to my room in the attic whenever I wanted without checking in any of the long line of girls who desired to visit me behind closed doors.  If you buy that, I have ocean front property in Arizona.  Not.

Nevertheless, I was persuaded by the campus leaders to be outraged that the college would try to play the role of my repressive parents. “In loco parentis” it was called.  That was something up with which we could not put.   We demonstrated as an orderly mob at the home of the college president.  He did not resign.  He did not even come out to greet us.  Our demands were discussed later but never granted.  I did not complain to my parents, who were 300 miles away, about the unreasonable dorm rules.  I did not expect them to understand.  They would not understand why I and the other college protesters were offended by rules that implied we were not yet adults.

Several years later, the guy who was student body president and led the demonstrations for the Student Bill of Rights, was shot and killed at an armed standoff outside some textile factory fighting for the rights of workers.  I do not know enough about the cause to judge its righteousness, but I do not believe armed conflict was the solution for the textile workers.  Knowing the fellow who died leading the “movement,”  I realize that he was following his long-felt need to rouse the oppressed.  On one hand it is admirable.  On the other, it was tragic because he died unnecessarily due to his choice.

The students at the University of Missouri were successful in recently forcing the resignation of the university president.  I do not understand why that was necessary.  I am not smart enough to grasp why the university president is responsible for all offensive language on and off campus, nor was he obligated to endorse the Ferguson riots.  I certainly am not smart enough to follow the logic of the Yale students in their concerns about Halloween costumes at fraternity parties.  I have, I suppose, become less sensitive over the years.

When my father was 18-22, he was in the Army, in England, France and Belgium during WWII.  He had better things to do than stand up for a Student Bill of Rights concerning dorm rules.  He was defending the actual Bill of Rights, the ones written by our American forefathers.  The contrast between him and the college students fighting for (ironically) rules about Halloween costumes (seems anti-free speech), is immense.  IMMENSE!!!

I have heard or read that college extends adolescence.  I was certainly less mature during college than was my father at the same age.  Now I view this crop of college student protesters as ultra-demanding about things their college need not provide.  My own cause, those many years ago, was vastly more important — the right to bring girls to one’s dorm room!

P.C. Concerns about 4th of July

So I said to Mr. P.C. that I hoped he would have a nice 4th of July weekend.

He replied, “Thank you, but I don’t celebrate America’s self-centered sense of superiority.”

“Oh,” I responded, “I think we are celebrating the birth of our nation.  Isn’t that okay?”

“No because it is insensitive to the heritage of other nations.  It is not inclusive.”

“Can’t other nations celebrate their own histories rather than have their feelings hurt that they are not part of the United States?”

Mr. P.C. was not satisfied by my logic.  He repeated, unnecessarily, that “the 4th of July is exclusively an American celebration and thus not inclusive,” (which everyone knows is the highest standard).

I stubbornly persisted, “America can celebrate being America, I believe, without it being negative about other nations who are not, in fact, America.  When it is your birthday, I don’t think it is my birthday too.  I know it is not my birthday and do not resent that it is yours, nor that you are you and I am not you.”

“That is different.  I am an individual.  This conversation is about nationalism.”

“Okay.  I do not object, for example, that Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  I have even attended events on that date without being Mexican and without resenting the celebration by Mexicans.”

“Of course.  So do I.  It is important to me to show that I am not prejudiced.  My celebrating Cinco de Mayo shows that I am inclusive; that I honor the history of Mexico and all nations.”

I saw a flaw in his argument.  “Let me get this straight — you celebrate Cinco de Mayo because you are not a Mexican but you do not celebrate the 4th of July because you are an American.”

“Precisely.  Now you understand political correctness.  I do not want to appear biased toward America.  The 4th of July is all about pride in America. Americans need to get off our high horse.”

“Umm.  Well, I still wish you a nice 4th of July, Barack.”

“You still don’t get it, but I wish you a holy Ramadan nevertheless.”