Category: Seiler

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How to “Get” Trump

  Most people, especially left-wingers and neocons, still don’t “get” President Trump. Yet the clues are right before our eyes, if you just look. Numerous books and articles describe who he is, and how he operates. A big problem for left-wingers, neocons and others is that they expect politicians to be a certain way, even though they know Trump never has held elective office. They expect him to be like one of the Bushes, or the Clintons, or Obama, or even Reagan or Jimmy Carter. They expect him to be someone who “plays the game” of politics. And they expect...

2

Waiting for Godot–and the Republicans’ Tax Cuts

What’s With Republicans and Taxes? By John Seiler Why haven’t Republicans cut our taxes? It’s their signature issue. And now that they control both Congress and the White House for only the third time in a century, why haven’t they enacted their signature issue? Their past actions in this situation aren’t all that good, either. In the 1920s, the Harding-Coolidge Administration and Republican congresses certainly cut taxes, putting the roar into the Roaring Twenties. But that’s it. Nothing during times when Republicans controlled both the Oval Office and the Capitol Dome. Only split government has brought decent tax reform. Republicans...

11

Russia Hoax Finally Dying

Events are confirming what I wrote on this site six months ago, that there’s no way the Russians could have rigged our election because it’s just too complex. It would involve not just putting up anti-Hillary, pro-Trump stuff on social media, but knowing what to put up, and when to do it. Elections are more about intuition than anything else. Trump intuited he would win if he campaigned for working-class voters in October in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Hillary’s bad tuition sent her to Silicon Valley to collect bucks from the digital oligarchs. The latest developments: This past week, former...

4

When Will Trump Strike Back?

Granted, the presidency is one tough job. Even eight years isn’t long enough to master it. The job includes the ability to launch 7,000 nuclear weapons and wield the world’s largest conventional military. Then there’s the economy, which if it crashes mean you’re not going to be re-elected. It also includes the ability to use presidential powers to achieve policy and personal ends. As Bill Clinton once put it in typical fashion while in the White House, “I reward my friends and (expletive) my enemies.” Trump is a proud man. And one of the more entertaining parts of last year’s...

10

Why I’m a Global Warming Skeptic

Now the alarmists call it “climate change,” which can mean anything from California enjoying even better weather than it already does to a meteor slamming into Los Angeles and extinguishing all life on earth (small “e,” please). But they really mean “global warming,” the phrase used to scare us until the late 2000s, when it became clear it wasn’t happening. I’ve been a skeptic – or denier, as the alarmists say – all along. I remember the 1970s global cooling scare. A 1975 Newsweek article warned of “The Cooling World”: “There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have...

2

What Conservatism?

“I remember the days of long ago.” Psalm 143:5 If you haven’t chuckled at it yet, check out George Will’s attempt to resuscitate Bill Buckley. I’ve always been a conservative and started out long ago a great admirer of both men, later disillusioned. Buckley’s old National Review I discovered in the library of Franklin Junior High School around 1967, when I was 12. Will wrote for it then, but later moved to write a column for the Washington Post. His column was especially valuable in Stars & Stripes when I was a Russian Linguist with the U.S. Army in West...

3

Ridiculous Establishment Attacks on Trump

If you wonder why the American Establishment lost its grip on power, at least a little bit, look no further than its ridiculous attacks on President Trump over Russia and deposed FBI Boss James Comey. The Establishment, which I call the Rancid Ruling Elite, just isn’t serious. Maybe they still can bring down Trump, although I doubt it; but that only would mean the whole country isn’t serious – something that also seems more evident every day. What serious person even takes these allegations seriously? As I pointed out here five months ago, there’s no way the Russians could have...

1

Trump’s 114 Days

“How am I doin’?” the late Ed Koch used to go around New York asking when he was its terrible mayor. In my article here, “The Hundred Days Myth,” I debunked the need for judging President Trump so early. Now, after 114 days, we finally have some developments that show how he’ll be governing the rest of his term in office. Presidents, being human, naturally govern the way their lives were before being draped in the imperial purple. President Obama was a “community organizer.” Hence, Obamacare and its ever-inflating premiums; and what’s being called the “out of control” murder rates...

6

Andrew Sullivan’s Reactionary Nightmare

One of the worst commentators anywhere is Andrew Sullivan. Even though he edited the left-liberal New Republic, and hasn’t changed his views, he sometimes fashions himself a “conservative.” Granted, “conservative” doesn’t mean much nowadays – or maybe means so many contradictory things the word has become meaningless. Yet, although he took back his massive support for the Iraq War, his major lack of judgment in that murderous folly should have pushed him from the field of opinion-making and into a monastery to do penance for the rest of his life. Even with his mea culpa, in 2008 Sullivan excused himself...

6

The Hundred Days Myth

The chattering classes are all aTwitter about Trump supposedly failing to do much in his first “Hundred Days” haunting the Oval Office, which ends on April 29. Actually, I think he has done fairly well, as I’ll write about more in detail once he actually has passed the supposedly crucial milestone. FDR started the Hundred Days craze in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression. He used it as a marketing gimmick to push his New Deal socialist schemes which, far from ending the Depression, extended it. His New Deal actually was an expansion of President Hoover’s schemes –...