Author: John Seiler

This is long overdue: “President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are drawing up plans to take on the government bureaucracy they have long railed against, by eroding job protections and grinding down benefits that federal workers have received for a generation.” No wonder Virginia voted for Hillary. After the South switched to Republicans around the 1970s, the Old Dominion regularly voted for the GOP. When I lived there during the mid-1980s, the Maryland suburbs of D.C. were the place Democrats liked to live, while Northern Virginia was where Republicans tended to move, probably because that’s where the Pentagon and...

Historically, presidents are “successful” if they can achieve two, maybe three, great things in office. I define “successful” in their own terms – what they wanted, not what they ought to have done. Thus, Reagan was “successful” because he beat the Soviets in the Cold War, revived the U.S. economy and was the only president since World War II to be succeeded by a member of his own party. He was less “successful” with such goals as bringing “strict constitutionalists” to the Supreme Court; of his three appointments, only Antonin Scalia approached that goal. President Obama was “successful” in passing...

  I’m gloating over how the Electoral College worked as it’s supposed to, as designed by the Founding Fathers: It kept California from being relevant. Was California in 1787-89 part of Spain? No matter. The Founders had a dream in Philadelphia and saw how disastrous this state would become. Leftists of all stripes now are screaming, as they did in 2000, about how the EC is “undemocratic.” Screeched a letter to the Washington Post, “The Electoral College, an undemocratic vestige, distorted the election by giving battleground state voters more weight and smaller states disproportionate representation.” Thank you for making my...

To quote the late Jackie Gleason: How sweet it is! How for months did I correctly predict a Trump victory, including right here on this site? Because, although I now live in California, I grew up near Detroit. I keep in touch with friends and relatives back there. They’re what Trump called the “forgotten Americans.” The bum trade deals – which aren’t “free” trade, but “managed” trade – hurt them, especially NAFTA and TPP. Meanwhile, just about everybody else was getting special government benefits paid for by the real producers. Not just Elon Musk’s Tesla, which wouldn’t exist without massive subsidies,...

“Barnes was at the eye of our rage – and through him, our Captain Ahab – we would set things right again. That day we loved him.” – Chris in the Movie “Platoon.” “I’m fed up,” a friend told me last Sunday after church about why she’s voting for Donald Trump. That sums up the election for me. It’s why I’ve been saying for months that Trump will win big. Americans are fed up with: idiot foreign wars, political correctness, crony capitalism, the Clintons, the Bushes, economic stagnation, moral putrescence, repressive leftist professors, the Main Sleaze Media, “Pay to Play” politics, the Clinton Foundation,...

Back in my infancy I joined the U.S. Army, 1978-82, and became a Russian linguist in the National Security Agency for the last three years of that, stationed in West Germany. During boot camp and while learning Russian for a year at the Defense Language Institute in idyllic Monterey, Calif., the FBI performed a background check on me, interviewing family, friends and neighbors back in Michigan. They wanted to make sure I wasn’t a Soviet agent. I was given a Top Secret security clearance with Special Intelligence Access. I then received two months of cryptographic training at Goodfellow Air Force...

Before I watch Tim Kaine debate again, I’m going to have Tom Hanks strap me into Old Sparky and pull the switch, as in “The Green Mile” movie. Basically, the Mark of Kaine said executing murderers is wrong according to his Catholic faith, but he did it as Virginia’s governor because that’s what voters wanted; that killing an unborn child is wrong, again according to his Catholic faith, but abortion should not be banned, even if voters want that, because doing so would violate a woman’s right to “choose,” similar to preventing her from choosing red over blue shoes; and...

Pundits and polls are all over the place on who “won” the First Debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Gorgon. But I haven’t seen any major analysis of how they did among those who will decide this election: suburban, white voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. It’s because, assuming he wins Florida and North Carolina, which he likely will, those are the “swing states” he needs to win. Any combination of Ohio + Michigan or Pennsylvania and he’s in like Ronald Reagan. The New York Post reported from a bar in Youngstown, Pa., “[Ken] Reed, 35, is a registered...