Author: John Seiler

You might think the financial press would be a little bit more modest than the regular press. They write about money, and if they just do straight reporting, that’s one thing. But if they have opinions, the old question arises: If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich? Yet financial writers after the February 5 market crash immediately trashed Trump. Here are two from the popular Yahoo News. The first: “The Dow has given up all its gains since the day the Trump tax cuts became law,” by Isabella Steger, that evening. The second: “The Trump tax cuts are looking...

Once upon a time, Americans occasionally united. Here are some election percentages of presidential victors: FDR 1932, 57.4%; FDR 1936, 60.8%; IKE 1952, 55.2%; IKE 1956, 57.4%; LBJ 1964, 61.1%, the most of any candidate not named George Washington; Nixon 1972, 60.7%; Reagan 1984, 58.8%. Average: 58.8% Moreover, if you look at the issues in 1960, JFK and RN held substantially the same views, differing only in nuance, style and ability to rig state elections (detailed by Roger Stone in “Nixon’s Secrets” and Robert Caro, with all the facts on how LBJ ripped off Texas for himself and JFK, in...

It shows the immaturity of American politics that a vulgarity a U.S. president used in private becomes a mediastorm for weeks. But let’s look at the real reasons why one country at issue, Haiti, is such a mess: Co-presidents – as they fashioned themselves – Bill and Hillary Clinton destroyed Haiti’s economy in 1994 to put back in power a communist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been defrocked in 1990 by Pope John Paul II. That was just two more years after communism fell in the Soviet Union and the Communist Party was abolished on Christmas Day 1991, so the...

Although far from perfect – such as continuing the Obama-Bush Wars – one of the main benefits of electing President Trump is laughing at the liberal commentariat’s freak out, as we said in the ’60s. Pat Buchanan pointed out the attacks on Trump are worse even than those on Nixon. For an old conservative like me, what’s heartening is how Trump never takes it lying down. Attack him, and you can expect a response. That’s so different from almost every Republican in my lifetime, current examples being Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. An amusing specimen...

If you don’t know the term, “trolling” on the Internet means “sowing discord… with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.” President Trump long has been the master of it. One of his latest is a special New Year’s End gift to us, on Twitter: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!” Obviously, one day of record cold temperatures doesn’t tell the...

A good example of how the media are misreading President Trump’s foreign policy comes from the Los Angeles Times. Headlined in the Dec. 26 print edition of the paper, “Trump claims he’s boosting U.S. influence, but many foreign leaders see America in retreat” was pecked out by no less than three top-flight Timesies: Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis and Shashank Bengali. This really isn’t “news,” but an opinion piece masquerading as reporting. It gets wrong just about every policy, beginning, “China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has...

The debacle of Alabama’s Senate election shows why the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, electing U.S. senators by a vote of the people, ought to be repealed. Like other “reforms” of the Progressive Era – the Federal Reserve, Prohibition and the dreaded income tax – it made worse what it was supposed to improve. And World War I, the passion of progressive President Woodrow Wilson and ex-President Teddy Roosevelt, instead of “making the world safe for democracy,” paved the way for Lenin and Hitler. The original Constitution established a delicate balance between the more democratic House of Representatives, apportioned by...