It is a real war, Mr. President!

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics and tagged , , , , , .

 

As we are writing this column, President Trump just left Rome, after what can be considered a highly successful visit to Saudi Arabia and the Holy Land, as even The New York Times had to acknowledge. The purposeful contrast in his remarkable speech to over 50 heads of states from Muslim majority nations in the Saudi capital of Riyadh from President Obama’s June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, was evident, and confirmed the historical importance of Trump’s election for U.S. foreign policy and America’s standing in the world. Hilary Clinton, most definitely, would not have given this speech!

Rereading Obama’s 2009 presentation immediately after listening to Trump’s talk, we were struck by how differently Trump addressed the basically identical individual building blocks of both speeches: While Obama’s presentation was a series of apologies for alleged past U.S. misdeeds and transgressions, followed by promises of reconsideration and restitution under a new Obama administration, Trump’s presentation in typical fashion was a deal-offer to the Arab-Muslim world, refreshingly and uncompromisingly formulated as “do good for us, and we will do good for you.” He also left no doubt in his speech about his administration’s position on Iran, when defining the country as the principal cause of instability in the Middle East and the primary state-sponsor of terrorism through militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah), in Yemen (Houthis), and in Gaza (Hamas). He only further reemphasized this message in Israel.

Most of the Sunni Arab world and Israel never were happy with Obama’s Cairo speech. Subsequent foreign policy decisions by the Obama administration, peaking with the Iran nuclear agreement, however, produced outright ire. Trump’s success in Saudi Arabia and Israel, therefore, did not come as a surprise. Historians will, likely conclude that Obama’s Cairo speech laid the groundwork for eight years of U.S. foreign policy that led to the destruction of Syria and Libya, the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives and the largest refugee migration from the Middle East and North Africa since WWII. In reaching these conclusions, they will point to pronouncements in Obama’s Cairo speech, like: “… that is why I ordered the removal of combat brigades by next August. That is why we will …. remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July and…. all of our troops from Iraq by 2012.”

Historians will also conclude that Obama’s foreign policy, at minimum, represented a realignment of the U.S. interests toward the Shiite government in Teheran, and away from Sunny Saudi Arabia, Golf States and Israel, reaching a climax with Obama’s signing of the so-called “Nuclear Deal” with Iran. Many Middle Eastern political leaders saw it, however, more as a “sell out” of longstanding friends and appeasement of a radical and expansive Shiite Iran.  

Judging by the reception President Trump and his delegation received from Saudi royals, over 50 Muslim government leaders and the Israeli government, sentiments toward the Trump administration are clearly more favorable. The radical pivot in U.S. Middle East foreign policy under Trump is not only remarkable because of its speed but also unprecedented by how quickly it elicited a remarkably positive response from most of the Muslim world and Israel. The last presidential election in the U.S., therefore, very obviously did matter not only for the U.S. but the whole world.

Trump, among the splendor of the royal palace in Riyadh, considering all the heavy gold and marble that also characterizes his buildings, must have felt quite “at home.” He also, likely, was relieved for, at least temporarily, being able to escape the toxic political atmosphere of Washington, D.C., where the “cold war,” the city’s political establishment and media have imposed upon the Trump administration immediately following the election, had, suddenly, significantly gained in temperature with the appointment of a Special Counsel by the Justice Department.

Trump, indeed, left town, leaving important unfinished business behind: One, we consider of utmost importance, was the promised appointment of a new F.B.I. Director before his departure. As sources are telling us, he seemed well on his way in keeping his promise, when letting it be known that former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was his preferred pick. Our sources, indeed, also told us that the President had formally extended the offer and Lieberman had formally accepted the position.

Why the appointment went unannounced, is as of this moment unclear because nobody in the White House really appears to know. The most likely explanations we heard is the engagement by Trump of Marc Kasowitz as outside lawyer vis-à-vis the newly appointed Special Counsel. Kasowitz is the senior partner in the law firm that currently employs Senator Lieberman. Strong opposition from some leading Democrats may also have swayed the President in holding off on the appointment.

The appointment of Robert S. Mueller, the former F.B.I. Director, as Special Counsel for the investigation of Russian interference in the last presidential election and “related subjects,” was clearly a new low for the Trump administration. A not unexpected consequence of an undisciplined president and, so far, poorly managed White House, this appointment makes an already difficult situation even more challenging. Even a successful administration after a landslide election victory, like in Ronald Reagan’s second term, was almost derailed by an “independent prosecutor” when the Contra Affair broke.

President Trump would be well advised to recognize how few real political friends he has in Washington, D.C., including in his own Republican Party. It’s time to stop acting like a spoiled brat, responding to every perceived insult with Twitter blasts and personal indignation, and accept the fact that, more than ever before, politics in Washington has become a blood sport with clear intent to kill. The president also must understand that the initial “cold war” is over and a really “hot war” has started.

For President Trump this means that he must fight back, making use of his position, and start hurting his enemies. Like in real war, there is no alternative to winning or, at least reaching  honorable peace. The position of F.B.I. Director is crucial for fighting back, especially with a politically weakened Attorney General and an apparently strongly independent Assistant Attorney General.

The only way Trump can fight back against leaks, innuendo and unsupported rumors, mostly the product of Obama administration remnants in the administration, and willfully distributed by hostile media, is by making sure that serious F.B.I. investigations into Obama administration conduct, that really matters to the public, are initiated. None of the not-for-profit organizations discriminated against in the IRS scandal were ever even interviewed by the F.B.I. In contrast to the Trump administration, the Obama administration had no problem in suppressing unfriendly investigations, even if guilt, as in this scandal, was freely admitted by the IRS. There, of course, also was no investigation of the Benghazi scandal, the sale of significant amounts of U.S. plutonium to Russia with help of the Clinton Foundation, the unmasking of Republican presidential candidates, including members of the Trump campaign, for political purposes. We, indeed, could go on and on.

And the F.B.I. Director, who did not pursue any of these potentially damaging scandals for the Obama administration, later also absolved Hillary Clinton from indictment over her private server. But, as we now know, he did initiate an investigation of Trump and his campaign regarding potential collusion of the Trump campaign with Russian government agents; yet also, apparently, never initiated an investigation into the flood of leaks, directed against President Trump and his administrations and over the unwarranted unmasking of political opponents by the Obama administration. Rumors have it that former F.B.I. Director James Comey that an investigation was never started because the F.B.I. was, itself, leaking like a thieve. No wonder, Trump fired him!

To facilitate the serious investigations of the Obama administration, Obama needs the right F.B.I. Director. Only once Democrats and the Trump-hating media will no longer be able to deny the corruption and illegal conspiracies during both Obama administrations, and the world recognizes the depth of constitutional maleficence during the Obama years, will Trump be given a chance to recover.

With currently only few friends in Washington’s political establishment, press and other media, likely even a majority in his own party would prefer a President Mike Pence. Though impeachment as of this point appears unrealistic, if Trump continues to twitter maniacally, and remains undisciplined in recorded talks with foreign dignitaries and network television interviewers, he may very well create majorities in House and Senate for his impeachment.

The accomplishments on his first overseas trip as president well demonstrate how to manage the presidency, – even when at home. Trump cannot allow the appointment of a Special Counsel to detract from his commitments to health care and tax reform legislation. Defaulting on these two promises (both much more important than “the wall” or moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem), would, likely terminally wound his presidency.

Like other presidents before him, Trump to a degree must learn to be feared. Friends and foes alike, whether in the House of the Senate, must know that they can rely on help from the President when needed but will be punished if they oppose his initiatives. Therefore, a president’s approval ratings and general popularity with voters are of considerable importance, – even in off years for elections, as this year. In the end, only popularity with the public gives presidents an electoral coattail, translatable into political power.

 

Principal questions about Comey’s firing and the alleged Trump-Russia Connection

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Elections, Foreign Policy and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Remarkably, without even a shred of established evidence, rumors and innuendo about an inappropriate Trump-Russia relationship, exacerbated by the firing of FBI director James Comey, have now persisted for months, even though all major media companies, from the New York Times, over the Washington Post and all major television networks, have with unprecedented intensity searched for even the most minute evidence, and come up short. Like these media outlets, and you the reader of these pages, we, here at The Canary, therefore have currently absolutely no idea whether President Trump and/or his organization did or did not have an inappropriate relationship with agents of the Russian government.

While unable to offer the public even minimal evidence of such an inappropriate relationship, above referenced media organizations, nevertheless present evolving news to the public as if there could be no doubt about such a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Therefore the New York Times’s page-one headline on May 10 read not Trump fires Comey (Director of the FBI) but Trump fires Comey amid Russia inquiry.

Presenting factually true but otherwise unrelated (at least so far) associations to the public as fact, of course, is “fake-news,” and is meant to subconsciously reemphasize to the public, without need of proof it, that something very stinky must be going on in the Trump White House.  

We here at The Canary wish to again point out that we have no inside knowledge as to whether the Trump campaign had contacts with agents of the Russian government and, if so, what the nature of these contacts was. Since the possibility of inappropriate contacts has been raised in such a public fashion, we support that these rumors be properly investigated. Like every other U.S. citizen, the U.S. President (and his staff) are, however, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Based on behavior, a large majority of the national media, however, feels differently!

The principal allegation made against the Trump organization is that Trump’s campaign conspired in secret with agents of the Russian government in defeating Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election. We previously in these pages made the point that, even assuming this accusation to be correct, putting moral considerations aside, such coordinated efforts involving the Trump organization and the Russian government would not necessarily be criminal. It is well known that the U.S. government through a variety of agencies is constantly trying to influence elections in other countries.

President Obama, as has become known recently, supported in the last election cycle opposition parties to Israel’s prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with staff and federal funds in a failed attempt to defeat him. President Putin’s strong dislike for Hillary Clinton, as has been widely reported in the media, is, likely, the consequence of Clinton actively supporting Putin’s opposition with U.S. federal funds as Secretary of State in the Obama administration during Putin’s most recent election.

In other words, accepting “help” from overseas sources, even from the Russian government, is in itself not necessarily a federal offense, – unless, of course, federal campaign laws were broken, the collaboration involves criminal activities (i.e., the hacking of computers and distribution of content obtained through illegal hacking), government secrets were revealed and/or quid pro quo arrangements were reached, obliging a future elected government.

Also, a campaign organization cannot necessarily be held responsible for potentially illegal acts of individuals committed out of self-interest. General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s short-term first Security Advisor, may be a good example. Should he, indeed, as has been suggested, have received illegal payments from Russian and Turkish sources. One, of course, would still have to wonder how such an individual survived an allegedly serious vetting process, especially since he also does not appear to be particularly bright: How else could the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency not understand that every word he exchanges on an open phone line with the Russian ambassador would be picked up by U.S. intelligence?

That after months of investigations by FBI and committees of House and Senate, still, nothing concrete has been leaked to support increasingly bizarre daily rumors, spun by the media, therefore, to us suggests that, likely, nothing is there to be discovered. We may be wrong, and Trump’s Russia connections may morph into Watergate II. Proving that something does not exist is, however, almost impossible. Considering the current political atmosphere of absolute confrontation and “resistance” in Washington, it, therefore, appears increasingly likely that this affair will stay with us at least until the mid-term elections. Then, it will be again up to the nation’s voters to decide who is right and who is wrong.

Trump, in the meantime, has, however, to recognize that he, in the end, will not be judged based on what Democrats and the media are trying to concoct but on his performance as President. If he continues to allow relatively unimportant things to rule the news, and take up his valuable time, he will be a failed president. If he can concentrate on what is important, he will succeed.  

The Canary

Smashing the “monsters”: It’s time to address the national debt

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

With the national debt rapidly approaching 20 trillion, it is truly remarkable how little attention the national deficit is receiving in the daily political debate between the Republican administration and the Democratic opposition but also by media and public. Everybody understands that at this rate the growing national deficit is not sustainable, and will bankrupt the country. But even maintaining the deficit at current levels burdens our children and grandchildren with unfair obligations, which we did not inherit from our parents and grandparents and, therefore, should not pass on to the next generations.

The almost uniform rejection of next year’s budget proposed by the Trump administration as “cruel” by Democrats and the left-leaning media, and as “unrealistic” by many Republicans and the right-leaning press, is, therefore, disturbing since even that budget proposal is likely inadequate, as it at best only maintains expenses at current levels.

Even more so than President Reagan after four years of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, President Trump, after eight years of Obama’s two administrations, must start rebuilding a by budget cuts devastated, U.S. military, likely at its weakest since before WWII, while facing the most dangerous geopolitical period since the end of WWII. Expanding the defense budget is, therefore, not an option but a must, even though waste and fraud at the Pentagon must also be eliminated concomitantly. Despite the universal sequester, few other federal government agencies have suffered as badly as defense since none of the other bureaucracies requires as quick replacement of used up resources as the military. Paradoxically, because of the ability to move funds between purposes, often at discretion of individual government departments, many agencies, even during the sequester, still succeeded in expanding staffing and raising salaries.

Since they were considered safer than jobs in private industry, government jobs used to offer lower salaries than the private market. Today, because of the political strength of government employees’ unions, government salaries exceed those of the private employment market, even though government employment is still considered a life-time job. Lacking therefore any motivation to innovate, the government bureaucracy has become a self-perpetuating steadily growing “monster” that consistently expands its political and economic clout. If the “monster” is not stopped soon, it will become unstoppable!

No private company could economically survive human and budget resource management like the government’s without adjusting growth, employment and salaries in accordance to market conditions, budget restraints, overall company performance and general economic circumstances.  Yet, even under Republican political hero and father of the last major tax reform, President Ronald Reagan, the size of government continued to expand, though at slower pace. Government cannot continue to grow unlimited just because it can. The expense is threatening to bankrupt the nations.

After decades of uninhibited bureaucratic expansion, every government department must be forced to radically cut expenses. Businesses attempting to cut cost to enhance productivity routinely cut budgets by 15-35%. The proposed Trump budget just mimics what is happening in private business every single day of the years, and, under Democratic and Republican administrations, has been overdue in government for decades. There simply is no reason why similar cuts and improvements in productivity should not also be possible in government, including the Department of Defense.

That Defense must receive significant additional funds does not mean that the rapidly expanding military bureaucracy at the Pentagon does not require drastic cuts, and that notoriously wasteful and overpaid acquisitions by the Pentagon do not have to stop. Neither defense nor health other “holy cows” within government can or should be excluded from radical budget reevaluations, with every useless program shut down and useful programs reassessed as to how they can be made even more productive.

Like in private business, these processes must become engrained in the routine DNA of government. Health care programs are timely examples, considering that the country’s health care system is, once again, under review, Health care represents between one-fifth to one-sixth of the national economy, with government and private industry currently still sharing responsibilities. Government influences have, however, steadily increased, whether through government offering health care coverage, for example through Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Administration, and, more recently, of course, via Obamacare.

But government influence on health care goes far beyond that: Nowhere has the outcry about proposed budget cuts been louder than at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which with federal funds administer two gigantic, though separate research programs. The so-called intramural program employs hordes of scientists, mostly around Bethesda, Maryland but also in the Research Triangle in North Carolina and some other places around the country and, like other federal agencies, practically guarantees lifelong employment. In addition, employees of this intramural NIH program, however, also receive lifelong research support from the government. On paper, funding is reviewed by peers and, therefore, competitive; but, in truth, a scientist in the intramural program does never have to compete for research support a fiercely as scientists outside of the NIH, who applies to the second program administered by the NIH, the so-called extra-mural program. The funding rate for the extramural program has, indeed, so badly deteriorated that many excellent investigators, simply, no longer find it time-efficient to even apply because even highly rates proposals never reach the funding threshold.

This important because having a system that discourage smart young investigators from submitting applications, is self-defeating. But, instead of acknowledging this fact and reducing funding for the intramural program, the NIH bureaucracy, of course, has always been more concerned about themselves and their in-house staff than about investigators on the outside.

A recent visit to the NIH confirmed this all over again because, while everybody was “really upset” about the potentially impending budget cuts for the NIH, nobody was particularly worried about the intramural program. Everybody was, however, absolutely convinced that the budget cuts would be devastating for the extramural program. The bureaucrats and their cronies at NIH, of course, would be the last ones to suffer.

This is, unfortunately, exactly what has been happening in every government office for decades, whether at city, state or federal levels. We have become a country where the government bureaucracy no longer primarily works to benefit the citizenry but primarily for best interests of themselves, the bureaucrats.

This is not to mean that non-government organizations may not become equally corrupted. Have you ever tried to speak to somebody at Verizon’s corporate offices, and gotten a worthwhile response? But, in private industry, if a company for whatever reason fails to be responsive to its clients, it is only a question of time until the consumer will punish the company. Therefore, the private company will either straighten out or the economic losses to management and ownership will be substantial (look what happened to United Airlines!).

The not-for-profit sector in many ways increasingly mimics government and, indeed, often fully overlaps with government bureaucracy. Especially the enormous power of the teachers’ unions over the Democratic party is a good example: bureaucrats caring little about the school children but sparing no efforts to enhance the interests of teachers and administrators. The same can be said about the private college industry, which for decades has been defrauding college students with empty promises by inducing them to borrow exorbitant amounts of money to pay college tuitions, fully aware that most will never be able to repay the loans with the salaries they will draw following often sub-par education from often invisible professors with life-long tenure.

All of these self-serving bureaucratic “monsters” must, ultimately be smashed to release the inherent competitiveness that is required for efficient functionality of economic systems, whether in private business, the not-for profit sector or the quasi not-for-profit government bureaucracy. A good start would be allowing federal employees to be hired and fired like their counterparts in private industry. Colleges would also do well if they did away with the outdated concept of life-long tenure. If we get to the point where everybody, physically and mentally able, earns his/her upkeep, society’s efficiencies will be more than adequately capable of taking well care of those who do not have the facilities to do it for themselves.

Behind education reform & Trump’s most important cabinet appointment

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It is difficult to ascertain which of President Trump’s cabinet appointment elicited the most resistance (because practically all were strongly opposed by Democrats); but the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education was, certainly, one of the most contentious. Because two female Republican senators joined the Democrats in opposing her nomination, Vice President Mike Pence had to cast the decisive vote in her confirmation in a 50/50 split senate.

The aggressive opposition to DeVos was led by one of the strongest constituents of the Democratic Party in recent election cycles, the National Teachers Union. This union’s power in opposing school choice and Charter schools was well demonstrated when President Obama, after being elected in 2008, in one of his first executive actions, ordered the dismantling of a highly successful inner city Charter school program in Washington, DC, which almost exclusively benefitted African American children, and was very popular in the Black community of the U.S. capital, which constitutionally is under federal government administration.

The country’s first African American president, as one of his first administrative actions, thus, as public demonstrations by the parents of affected children amply demonstrated, terminated a well-liked and successful school program, greatly benefitting Black children in a city with an, otherwise, dismal public school program, forcing children who had been lucky enough to have been admitted to the program, to return to failing public schools.

Not very widely reported by the media (and with no follow in New York Times or Washington Post about what happened to the children who were affected by closure of this program in DC), this occurrence not only demonstrates the fakeness of the alleged support of the Democratic Party for betterment of the Black underclass in inner cities but also emphasized the power of the National Teachers Union within the Democratic Party, when even the first Black president of the country (who obviously knows better) follows the union’s drumbeat. Under the pretense of defending public schooling, the union has in all 50 states been the dominant force in opposing school choice and Charter schools and, because of a wealth of financial contributions to Democratic candidates and the Party, itself, the National Teachers Union nowadays, possibly, represents the single most powerful interest group within the Democratic establishment.

As, likely, the most recognized proponent of school choice and Charter schooling in the nation, it, therefore, was not surprising that the Teachers Union, and with it the whole Democratic establishment, went all out in opposition to Betsy DeVos. But when the media, like the union, present their opposition as exclusively a pro-public schooling stance, they are not only mistaken but, likely, on purpose misleading. The here involved issues are much more complex and much more important than that for the future of the nations. Indeed, they go even beyond the increasingly obvious recognition that the plight of inner cities in this country will not be improved without a radical reorganization of inner city school systems that offers parents choices about the schools their children can attend.

The importance of Betsy DeVos’ appointment lies in the recognition of the importance of the federal Department of Education in forming the future of the nation. Economically speaking, elimination of the federal Education Department and assigning its responsibilities to the states, as had been Republican policy in the past, would not improve the deteriorating competitiveness of U.S. graduates in comparison to many other countries. Politically speaking, eliminating the Department would also not reverse the leftish-liberal indoctrination of the country’s children at all school levels and, indeed, beyond that into college.

If the country is to succeed economically and socially, reeducating our education system from preschool through college must be an essential step not only in fighting hopelessness and resurrecting our inner cities but also in improving our economy and, likely most importantly, in combating the political strategy of divisiveness between races and economic classes of citizens that are currently propagated throughout our education system.

The current one-sided leftish-liberal indoctrination in our schools and colleges goes almost unopposed because it reflects the education the current generation of teachers, themselves, received, characterized by almost complete disappearance of objective education in world history, which, after all, should represent the most basic building block in any education.

One often hears that those unaware of history are destined to repeat the mistakes of history (originally attributed to George Santayana, Madrid, Spain, December 16, 1863, but later widely attributed to Winston Churchill). Those uneducated in history, however, also are more easily influenced by political demagoguery because they, simply, would not know any better. Knowledge and experience matter. It was also Winston Churchill who said that, any young person who is not on the political left has no heart; but every older person who still is on the political left, has no brain.

How should a college student who is taught the idealistic principles of radical Socialism and/or Communism reach an appropriate judgment, without concomitantly being taught the historical truth that every radical Socialist/Communist political experiment in the world has bitterly failed and, many indeed, like fascist movements on the extreme right, ended in violent dictatorships.

Who can blame our youth about reaching the wrong political conclusions, if we do not offer them a balanced education?

It may, indeed, be time to consider a new constitutional amendment that mandates separation of state and education, so that children at all ages are taught objective world history before they are exposed to social philosophies. And objective education must start at young ages. The Jesuits’ boast, “give me a child until age seven and I will give you the man” (attributed to the co-founder of the Jesuits, Francis Xavier) is historical evidence in support.

Indeed, how important the teaching of objective history is can also be seen worldwide. Had Germany not committed to objective education after World War II, the country’s democracy would never have developed. The opposite is also true: Israel is, correctly, making the point that, as long as Palestinian textbooks for even young children demonize Israel, and Jews in general, there will be no peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. And as long as the male children of Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to receive most of their education only in religious madrassas (and the female children are kept out of schools), nothing will change in the many-hundred-years-old tradition of constant warfare that the Taliban is built upon.

If Donald Trump, indeed, wants “to make this country great again,” then he and his administration must understand the importance of a radical education reform from kindergarten to college. Similarly, if the administration wants even the slightest chance of affecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of influencing the fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan, then careful attention will have to be paid to the education systems in those countries. The sooner we start, the better!

In the end, he just “cannot help himself,” – a final assessment of Obama

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Psychology of Obama and tagged , , , , , , , , .

With less than a month of Obama administration left, it would be a mistake to assume that no further consequential activities by the White House will occur out of respect for the incoming administration, even if the President and his family are at their usual Christmas vacation in Hawaii, symbolically within the U.S. at the, likely, farthest territorial spot from Washington, DC.

The last two weeks have, indeed, been telling, with the Obama administration utilizing an obscure law from the 1950s to declare huge swaths of coastal areas off limits for oil and gas explorations, knowing full well that the incoming Trump administration will do everything possible to reverse this decision. Showing, despite all assertions to the contrary, the finger to his successor even more blatantly, was his government’s non-action (i.e., abstention) in the U.N. Security Council vote that condemned Israel’s settlement policies and, for all practical purposes mandated that Israel return all occupied territories to the Palestinians without receiving anything of substance in return to secure the country. The decision to abstain, and allow the absurd condemnation of the only democracy in the Middle East at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are being murdered next door in Syria (with active participation of permanent Security Council member Russia, and millions have become refugees without U.N. Security Council interventions, not only reflects a momentous change in 40 years of U.S. government policy over Democrat as well as Republican administrations but is also very telling about Obama’s character.

Over the last few years, we here at The Canary, have repeatedly attempted to described who, behind his widely acclaimed façade of reserved “coolness,” Obama is. In doing so, we studied his upbringing under the old Jesuit believe that strong influences in their “youth,” ultimately, make the adult man or woman. We, thus, followed the young Barry Obama through religious Muslim schooling in Indonesia, his return to Hawaii, where under truly radical Marxist tutelage (for details, please revisit our 2015 blogs) he graduated high school and went on into a radical leftist environment at Occidental College in California, only to transfer to Columbia University in New York City and later attending law school at Harvard University, throughout, though, remaining within a cocoon of radical Marxist colleagues and teachers, intermingled with Afrocentric radicals and friends from the Muslim world. From the Canary, this is a final assessment of Obama.

Simply based on his biography, we therefore, concluded a long time ago that Obama had to be viewed as sympathetic to Third World anti-imperialism, classical Marxist dialectics and would, likely, be hostile to the idea of Zionism and, therefore, the State of Israel. To expand on the latter, we furthermore concluded that his decades-long extremely close relationship with the Pastor Jeremiah Wright, a virulent Afrocentric Anti-Semite of no lesser proportion than the Nation of Islam Leader, Reverend Louis Farrakhan, Jr., located just a few blocks away from Wright’s church on Chicago’s South Side.

It was over nine years ago that, then first-term Senator (from Illinois) Barack Hussein Obama decided to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination for president. Reviewing Obama’s political evolution in his explosive career from that early starting point, is not only fascinating but also highly revealing because it demonstrates an intelligent and determined individual and unscrupulously masterful politician, willing to use anything and anybody to achieve his goals.

When it came to Afrocentricity, Anti-White rhetoric and Anti-Semitism, Pastor Wright’s church was since its inception known as the Christian counterpart to Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam Headquarters on Chicago’s South Side. Both religious leaders, preached in each other’s religious facilities, and both did not mince words in their sermons, when it came down to the wickedness of Whites, and especially Jews. And, yet, Wright’s church remained Obama’s and his family’s religious home until Wright’s sermons became public knowledge, and threatened to derail Obama’s chances against Hillary Clinton in 2008. Likely even more importantly, however, his association with Wright threatened the backbone of his financial support, which primarily came from two wealthy Jewish family dynasties in Chicago, The Pritzkers and Crowns.

Though they practically considered each other family, Obama, overnight, distanced himself from Pastor Wright, who over all eight years of the Obama Presidency has remained invisible, – and the Jewish money continued flowing (Penny Pritzker also became Secretary of Commerce in Obama’s second administration). Attending an obviously Afrocentric, Anti-White and obviously Anti-Semitic church and developing a close relationship with its pastor, can be a potentially useful strategy for an African American politician building a political career within the African American community, which has become more Afrocentric and Anti-Semitic. But doing that, and at the same time catering to White Jewish Chicago Gold Coast Liberals is, of course, politically ingenious, – if it can be pulled off. And Barack Hussein Obama was the one politician who could pull off this feat, and he could even do it with his Muslim middle name.

This, however, did not mean that, once elected, he would feel an obligation “to give back.: This is, indeed, one of the most surprising of Obama’s character traits: he never felt that he owed anybody for their support; he simply thought he deserved support, whether financial during campaigns or politically, once elected. His narcissism, simply, did not allow him the understanding that people who helped, at least, wanted to hear a “thank you.” Yet, when politically opportune, he would have no hesitation in “rewarding” those who he needed. So, while attempting to develop Obamacare, he was willing to sacrifice even some of the most important principles to “buy off” those groups that had conspired against earlier attempts at building a national health care system under the first Clinton administration (”Hillary care”), including medical insurances, hospital organizations and drug companies.

Following his Marxist education during his youth, later amplified by Saul Alinsky’s “Twelve Rules of Radicals,” Obama never forgot that an important goal warrants all possible means. This became very apparent when major laws, like Obamacare or the rescue legislation for the U.S. car industry, were passed without even a single Republican vote, and when, later in his second administration, after the Democrats lost the House and Senate, he started an unprecedented rule by executive orders and, like in the Iran deal, circumvented the need for Congressional approval by other means. Since the goals warrant the means in Marxist dialectic, these authoritarian actions taken by Obama should not surprise, and more can be expected.

What we can expect in the next three weeks, is difficult to predict. But we only recently noted our suspicion that President Obama will offer generous pardons to a surprisingly large group of people in his administration to prevent further investigations under the Trump administration. And, despite severe criticism not only form Republican but also from leading (though, interestingly, only Jewish) Democratic politicians, we would also not be surprised if further anti-Israeli activities would occur. After all, eight years of Obama administration have very clearly demonstrated that, while Obama may not be the obvious Anti-Semite, Pastor Wright or Reverend Farrakhan are, he, most certainly, has never been and never will be a friend of Israel.

Knowing his background as the child of a Muslim father, his youth in a Muslim school system in Indonesia, his Muslim friends in college, his close friendship with the official representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasser Arafat in later years, and his close emotional association with the third world and the radical left, which both view Israel as a Colonial power usurping legitimate Palestinian rights, one can really not blame him for being more sympathetic to the Arab world. After all, we all have our biases!

What is, however, worrisome is the impression that arises from Obama’s recent activities that, now unimpeded by political considerations (i.e., elections, fund raising needs, etc.), he is free to pursue his most extreme ambitions without fear of reprisals. And as president of the U.S. that gives him almost unlimited power until January 21, 2017, which is a quite concerning thought, considering the potential damage that can be done to this country and the world in the dangerous times we are living in.

 

Why all we hear about Russia is really about “drain the swamp”

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Elections and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Josh Earnest, President Obama’s Press Secretary was anything but earnest, when in official function and from the podium of a press briefing in the White House he, for all practical purposes, accused President Elect Trump of willfully ignoring the Russian interference in the presidential elections and, indeed, encouraging it. Doubling down on his comments the next day, he not only claimed that Trump “knew of the Russian interference” but also was fully aware that these Russian activities “hurt Secretary Clinton’s campaign” and by implication, therefore, helped his own election “by encouraging Russia to hack his opponent.”

Describing his statement as an “indisputable fact,” while referring to a very obvious joke Trump made on the campaign trail when commenting on the 35,000 e-mails Hillary Clinton had made disappear by ordering their professionally erasing, a last line of decency was crossed in the rapidly deteriorating political relationship between the country’s two main political parties.

Though in this election cycle almost nothing surprises any longer, the evolving hypocrisy in how the Democrat party establishment, now apparently including President Obama’s White House, is handling the November election losses (and not only in the presidential race), is disturbing. Instead of analyzing what lead to the disastrous performance of the Clinton campaign, the party, as we outlined just a few days ago, with increasing vengeance has been propagating a typical “Dolchstoßlegende,” which can have only one purpose, – the delegitimization of Donald J Trump as the incoming 45th President of the United States.

One, therefore, has to ask what, likely, motivates such behavior, especially since Trump, after an obviously aggressively fought presidential election campaign, has been surprisingly accommodating. He, after all, was willing to forgive excesses of his opponents, including those of Hillary Clinton, practically, offering her legal amnesty. Superficially, President Obama and President Elect Trump also appeared to have found political detent, – at least until Josh Earnest’s comments suggested otherwise. And that President Obama allowed their reaffirmation, sends the very clear message that Trump better get ready for more proactive opposition to the promised smooth transition from the current White House and, possibly, outright warfare.

Here at The Canary we are not surprised by these developments. We, indeed, were caught somewhat off guard by Obama’s initially very accommodating comments following his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. While such behavior is what one would expect from any sitting president, it did not match our psychological profile of President Obama. As our very detailed series of biographical articles on Obama documented, we from the very beginning saw him as a highly partisan, Afro-centric third-world Marxist ideolog, more in line with the highly malignant personal attacks (for a sitting president) he unleashed against Trump during the later stages of the Clinton campaign, when serving as her principal surrogate. History proved us correct, we believe, and there is really no reason to assume that his personality has or would change in his last few weeks in office.

We, indeed, predict that in these last few weeks in power, President Obama will do everything possible, overtly and covertly, to subvert Trump’s successful ascendance to the presidency, and not only for political and/or ideological reasons. Much more is at stake, as we also noted a number of months ago in these pages, in trying to understand why the Obamas, suddenly, so vehemently embraced Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, even though many reliable sources had let it be known that there was no love lost between Obamas and Clintons.

We suspect that a principal reason why Obama and the Democrat Party are striving to delegitimize President Elect Trump as much as possible, is the still existing threat to the Obama administration from Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp.” As we also previously noted in these pages, considering the extreme partisanship of Obama’s Justice Department under two Attorney Generals, the swamp two Obama administrations are leaving behind is deeper, smellier and more contaminated by fraud and other crimes than anything seen in recent memory (including the notorious second Nixon administration). We, therefore, would not be surprised if Obama “in the national interest” proactively pardoned Hillary Clinton and a whole coattails of other members of his administration under the offered rational “that they, otherwise, would be subject to unfair prosecution by an illegitimate President.”

The more delegitimized Trump can be made to appear prior to assuming his presidency, the more credible will these pardons appear, especially if presented by public unions and the overwhelmingly liberal media as the rescue of well-meaning public servants from the venomous ire of a vicious and illegitimate president.

President Obama cannot permit such prosecutions even to be initiated since, not only would they negatively affect his legacy, but, once a first dam brakes, the waters threaten to wash away much more than that downstream. It would become quickly apparent how politicized the Justice Department had become under Obama, how much under direct White House orders FBI and CIA civilian and military analyses were dictated by political expedience, and how much obstruction of justice took place at the FBI and at Justice, itself, at the IRS and at other government agencies, like the Veterans Administration and the State Department (remember, we still don’t know where President Obama was during the hours of the Benghazi crisis when Hillary was “in charge”). And since nobody knows more about all of these hidden skeletons than Hillary Clinton, nobody’s legal protection is of more importance for President Obama than Hillary’s. Unless she (and the Clinton Foundation) feel protected, everybody in the Obama administration will be at legal risk, and everybody in the Obama administration knows that.

On the other side of the equation, this makes really “drain the swamp” absolutely essential for the upcoming Trump administration. Not doing so, would not only lose significant credibility for the Trump agenda but would remove the fear factor from dealing with Trump. Successful political leaders are not only loved but also feared by many, – not different from what happens in foreign policy!

The Canary

Trump’s vow to end mutual absolution between parties threatens Democrats

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Elections and tagged , , , , , , , , .
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Following the FBI’s resurrection of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail affair, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, less than a week before the presidential election, faces the previously almost inconceivable possibility of a Trump victory and, therefore, of a Trump presidency. This appears particularly ironic because during the Republican primaries, the Clinton team had literally prayed for the opportunity to run against Trump. Since they considered Trump the weakest Republican opponent, they, indeed, actively encouraged their media minions to favor Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination.

But once he won, something rather unexpected happened: True to his claim of being a political outsider, Trump broke with an unwritten rule that Republicans and Democrats historically had abided by. Under that understanding, administrations of both parties basically guaranteed implied amnesties for legal breaches to outgoing administrations. The best recent example for this implied agreement was the failure of the Bush Junior administration to pursue any of a number of potential criminal claims against members of the Clinton administration. In other words, any administration that made it through its term without being indicted, was basically assured of no further legal consequences.

The knowledge that one just had to survive till the end of an administration, has been at the core of quantitative and qualitative increases in government corruption this country has witnessed in recent decades, and nobody has been better in “surviving” than the last two Democratic administrations of Presidents Clinton and Obama.

It should not surprise that the years of the two Obama administrations, initiated with the promise of being the “most transparent ever,” turned out to be the least transparent ever (at least since the Nixon administration), and certainly the most corrupt. Combining the intimidating Chicago school of political corruption (which trained Obama) with the finesse of survival, developed to by the Democrats under the two prior Clinton administrations, resulted in the most egregious chain of corruption scandals the country has ever witnessed, from “Fast and Furious” to the IRS scandal, outright bribery to pass Obamacare, the Veterans Administration Scandal, corruption of State and Defense Departments in the Benghazi scandal, and unprecedented corruption of State Department and Justice in Hillary’s e-mail scandal. Never before has the Justice Department been as politicized as under Holder and, now, Loretta Lynch (Bill Clinton’s secrete date at an airport tarmac in Arizona).

Even the President, usually protected by multiple layers of deniability, has been implicated in repeatedly lying to the public in reference to Obamacare, the Benghazi affair and in his knowledge about Hillary’s e-mail server. How far the dirt in this White House reaches toward the skies was recently revealed when Bob Creamer, Founder of Democratic Partners, was revealed to the public by Project Veritas Action as a “dirty trickster” for the Democratic Party. Most remarkable about the whole story was, however, that the media almost unreported the fact that he had visited the White House over 350-times during both Obama administrations, – more frequently, indeed, than likely any other person in the country who was not employed at the White House. He, quite obviously, received his instruction directly out of the White House!

In no administration in recent memory have government employees without any consequences taken their Fifth Amendment rights as often as under Obama. After all, they had just to delay the legal process until the end of the administration, and all would be forgotten.

And then Trump in the second debate with Hillary Clinton, suddenly, made it clear that he had no intention of continuing this policy of mutual absolution between the two parties, should he be elected president. When he announced that he would ask his Attorney General to immediately appoint a special prosecutor to pursue “the truth” in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server and the Clinton Foundation, the Democratic leadership, suddenly, understood that circumstances had changed and that, should Trump win the presidency, they all may be subject to prosecution for illegal activities during the two Obama administrations. This, of course, made a Clinton win appear even that more urgent!

That six days before the election Trump has in national opinion polls pulled even with Clinton, therefore, set off alarm bells among the Democratic elites. The election, suddenly, has become an existential fight for survival, far exceeding the traditional conflict for power and the spoils of power.

We, therefore, can expect Clintonians and Democratic party, in cahoots with a majority of major media, in the last few days before the election to initiate a political bloodbath in attempts to derail Donald Trump. The election no longer is about who gains or retains the privileges of power but, as Trump stated, who goes to jail.

The Canary

 

The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Elections and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

The unprecedented election campaign of Clinton versus Trump

So here we are, barely three weeks from what, likely, will be the most consequential presidential election since WWII, and the descent into gutter politics by the campaigns of both major contenders has hit unprecedented lows. Both candidates are disliked by a majority of the public and their approval ratings in public opinion polls are unprecedentedly low.

As the Clinton campaign and the overwhelmingly liberal press that supports Clinton’s candidacy with unprecedented fervor suggest, Donald Trump has gone from just being a relatively benign BS artist (as we discussed in a prior communication) to being a disgusting sexual predator. Such attacks in at least recent election campaigns are unprecedented, and them coming from the Clinton camp can only be characterized as amazing political “chutzpah.” Yet, we are witnessing an, indeed, unprecedented presidential election campaign, which will not only rewrite standard campaign strategies but may also lead to unprecedented political consequences for party politics and even the two-party system, which has provided political stability for the country for so long.

Hillary, based on WikiLeaks, has again and again been exposed as what she already for decades has been known to be, – a conniving pathological liar, self-serving, unprincipled and ready to say and do anything to achieve power. How much she, indeed, strives for this power, and how much she is willing to sacrifice in the process became shockingly apparent when, after fainting at a public event, she refused to be taken to a hospital for fear that this could impede her election chances. Which person of sane mind would behave that way, – rather taking the chance of significant bodily harm than the risk negatively affecting her campaign for president?

At least subconsciously the public understands how sick a mind must be driving Hillary. Otherwise, it is unexplainable that she has not already “run away” with this election, considering Trump’s at times truly bizarre behavior and her enormous fund raising advantage. Her razor thin advantage in national poles is, in addition, likely exaggerated by biased media reports and, more importantly, by a Brexit-like effect on polling that, likely, underestimates Trump’s electoral following by four to five percentage points.

The, likely, most interesting opinion on this race came from David Gelernter, one of the country’s most original geniuses (and past victim of the Unabomber, whose explosive device, sent through the mail, mangled one of his hands). An artist, writer and professor of computer science at Yale University, he recently published in the Wall Street Journal an article, titled

“Trump and the Emasculated Voter” (October 15-16, 2016). Though also a Contributing Editor at the conservative Weekly Standard, which in its editorial policy strongly opposes Trump, he concluded that “there’s only one way to protect the nation from Hillary Clinton, and that is to vote for Donald Trump.”

And the reasons(s) why the nation needs to be protected from Hillary?

Gelernter astutely notes that over the last few decades the people’s opinions have grown increasingly irrelevant to the political class (whether Democratic or Republicans, though at greatly accelerated pace during the two Obama administrations). He offers examples when asking since when the American public, for example, endorsed affirmative action that has become integrated in our lives in schools and at work. Or since when did the American public accept the fact that men and women should have equal responsibilities in combat in the military. He poignantly asks why are women now in combat in the military but not allowed to play football in the NFL, and reaches the very troubling, though absolutely correct conclusion that we are led by a political class that takes football more seriously than the military.

The larger theme behind these examples is the rapidly increasing encroachment of political correctness, dictated by a political and judicial elite in cahoots with national media, liberal universities and an uber-liberal entertainment industry, telling the American public what can or cannot be said in schools, on campus and at work, who we have to share bathrooms with and, ultimately, how we have to think. Reading some of the ideas behind “safe-zones” in colleges, one is reminded of Communist reeducation camps. One is also reminded of Communism and other dictatorships when our children in college tell us that they cannot express their opinion freely to many of their professors because they would be downgraded if they did not agree with politically correct opinions, like affirmative action, safe spaces, black lives mater, Israel as an Apartheid state, global warming, open borders and others.

Gelernter describes the feeling like that of “encroaching numbness.,” and the American public has, simply, had it with being told how to talk, how to behave and especially how to think. This is where Trump’s popularity stems from, and why accusations against him have been largely ineffective. He is perceived as the only politician who does not play the “political correctness game,” and says it how he sees it. The more outlandish an accusation, the stronger the public, consciously or subconsciously, therefore, will perceive him as unfairly attacked by political correctness. This is also the reason why we here at The Canary believe that Trump under-polls by four to five points.

The third Trump Clinton debate will be important. If Trump manages as similar performance as in the second debate and after that, until November 8, does not self-destruct, we predict that the American public, contrary to what most media want us to believe, will elect Donald Trump as the next president. Using a static pool of representative voters who get interviewed serially, the Los Angeles Times poll is the only one, which has had Trump persistently ahead of Clinton. Considering the unprecedented nature of this upcoming election, we believe that this polling structure is superior to standard polling methods.

President Donald Trump is, as we previously noted in an earlier communication, undoubtedly a risky choice. But, as Gelernter, we also believe that, as of this point, he is the only choice that can protect the nation from Hillary. And nothing is more important than that!

What do Bill & Hillary Clinton have on Obama?

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics, Psychology of Obama and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , .
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Something peculiar is going on in the Obama – Clinton relationship, and The Canary is not the only one wondering what that is. As based on multiple sources we reported months ago, there is no love lost between the Obamas, especially Michelle and Valery Jarret (considered the third Obama in the White House), and the Clintons. Rumors, indeed, suggested that Michelle and Valerie, with the quiet consent of the President, were actively conspiring to prevent Hillary from becoming the Democratic nominee for the November election.

For a while it, indeed, looked like a grand-scale political charade was underway, with the White House publicly fully supporting Hillary’s candidacy but, behind the scenes, planning an alternative scenario, which ultimately would force Hillary to end her campaign because of a legal quagmire. “Discovered” erased e-mails that were anything but “private,” as claimed by Hillary, and the shenanigans between the Clinton Foundations and the Department of State while Hillary was the Secretary, of course, offered ample opportunity. As even President Nixon found out during Watergate, the willful destruction of government property, especially in the process of the cover up of a crime, is considered obstruction of justice and, therefore, a felony. And, as former States Attorney and New York City Mayor Giuliani repeatedly publicly suggested the “pay to play scheme” between the Clinton Foundation and the States Department should be viewed as a criminal enterprise under the RICO law (Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organization Act), an idea also supported by former Attorney General Mukherjee.

But then, nothing happened to that effect, – except, of course, for the highly unusual 30-40 minute long unannounced (likely, meant to be secret) meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the current Attorney General on the evening of June 27 at the tarmac of Phoenix airport. Four days later, the FBI investigation (if there really ever was as serious investigation) was over, with the FBI Director rejecting a formal indictment of Hillary Clinton but, nevertheless, rather forcefully exposing her misrepresentations to the public and what he described as her highly negligent activities as Secretary of State in keeping the nation’s secrets. President Obama and his wife (though not Valerie Jarret), nevertheless, offered effusive praise for Hillary at the Democratic Convention who, despite almost daily new disclosures reinforcing her insincerity and earlier misrepresentations to the public, has ever since been cruising along in her campaign with apparently considerable safety margins over Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

At least on the surface, the unmitigated support from the White House can, of course, be easily explained: The most frequently heard explanation is that President Obama is, simply, keeping his word after promising the Clintons in 2012 that he would support Hillary as his successor over Vice President Biden if Bill agreed to campaign for his reelection. There are those who argue that only Bill Clinton’s rhetorical mastery after that pulled Obama over the goal line toward reelection.

A second frequently heard argument is that there is really nobody but Hillary in the Democratic party who could win the November election. Had the Democratic Party’s leadership not conspired against him, and aggressively supported Hillary Clinton, the likely nominee of the party’s primary process would have actually been Senator Bernie Sanders. The party leadership, however, concluded that the country would not elect a Socialist president. Though Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz lost the Chairmanship of the party, and five other leadership positions were replaced after Vicky Leak posted internal e-mails, the media never reported that President Obama, until election of Hillary Clinton as the 2016 nominee of the party, was the actual titular head of the Democratic Party. He, and the White House, therefore, must have been fully informed about how the Democratic party leadership biased the primary election process in Hillary’s favor.

The Clintons also smartly exploited the leadership vacuum in the Democratic party by choosing as VP candidate, Tim Kaine, U.S. Senator from Virginia, a safe but not very inspiring candidate who, therefore, posed no real “threat” to her survival as the principal candidate of the party, even if a threat were to arise to her candidacy during the pre- election period. The party still would have no choice but to unite behind her. The press has been speculating broadly about a promised October surprise from Vicky Leak, including releases of further “erased” e-mails from Hillary’s drove of ca. 35,000 allegedly only “private” e-mails.

Our sources still claim that from the beginning of the primary season the White House really had favored Vice President Biden as a one-term candidate. The concept was that this would allow the grooming of a serious future presidential candidate in the position of Vice President. Emphasizing a desire for a future female president (other than Hillary), the V.P candidate was, therefore, expected to be a female, with Valerie Jarret, Senator Elizabeth Warren and even Michelle Obama being considered as possible candidates.

And, yet, it is Hillary Clinton who, despite strong headwinds, is successfully steaming full speed ahead with, supposedly, full support of the White House. This is that more amazing, considering that almost daily new disclosures about Hillary’s e-mails and the “pay to play” relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department have to be highly embarrassing for the Obama administration. Concerns about exactly such behavior by the Clintons (for which they have been known for decades) had motivated the administration to sign a formal written commitment with the Clintons, committing them to avoidance of any conflicts of interest once Hillary assumed the position of Secretary of State.

Not only is it now obvious that the Clintons breached this agreement, but released e-mails also demonstrate that they, with full intent, circumvented the will of the White House, when, for example, the Clinton Foundation assumed salary support for Sidney Blumenthal, the decade-long stooge of the Clintons, who the White House refused to offer a position in Hillary’s State Department. Though not employed by State, and not approved for appropriate security clearances, he, nevertheless, as e-mails demonstrate, served as a principal adviser to Hillary during her term as Secretary of State (he, inappropriately, also was given access to highly confidential national secrets).

Considering such targeted actions by the Clintons to evade the President’s will, one has even more to wonder about the unflagging support she is receiving. Indeed, not one unflattering word has been heard in months from the White House, on or off the record, in expression of anger about the Clintons’ duplicity. Their misbehaving, after all, also negatively reflects on the Obama administration.

Democratic operatives and pundits in a majority express the official party line that the White House is so glowingly supportive of Hillary because she is the only realistic chance of beating Donald Trump and regaining the Senate. A minority of Democratic officials, and always only off the record, are, however, also wondering, as we here do at The Canary, what the Clintons may have on President Obama that has “converted” the Obama White House into such a “dedicated” servant of the Clinton campaign. Even previously rather frequently heard anti-Clinton comments by White House staffers have been completely silenced.

Though on the left one can never underestimate the importance of solidarity to the movement as a potential motivating factor for the sudden expression of profound love by the Obamas for Hillary, we here at The Canary suspect a much more devious motivation. A more likely explanation may be that the Clintons are in possession of information, which, if made public, would threaten the President’s legacy.

We, of course, have absolutely no idea what that information could be. But, considering the many scandals the Obama administration suppressed over almost eight years through an unprecedented partisan Justice Department, delaying tactics in providing government records to Congress and courts, and unprecedented lack of transparency, any one of those scandals could be highly damaging, if blown open by a Clintonian revelation. What, for example, if it turned out that the instruction for publicly declaring Benghazi the consequence of a silly California movie about the Prophet Mohamed, rather than a terrorist attack, a few weeks before (re)election day, came from the President, himself? Or what if instructions for the IRS to discriminate against right wing and pro-Israel not for profits prior to his reelection came straight from the White House?

Could an appropriate warning from the Clintons to President Obama have been the real subject of the Phoenix airport tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and the Attorney General? We will probably never know; but, knowing the Clintons, would anybody be surprised?

The Canary

How we are losing all perspective of relevance and are becoming less and less productive

Posted on by in Blog, Domestic Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Over the last three economic quarters for the first time in many years the U.S. economy demonstrated negative productivity gains. This means that, instead demonstrating steady improvements in productivity, as the U.S. economy has witnessed over the last few decades at record levels in comparison to most of the world, we now demonstrate the same poor to absent productivity gains that have plagued Europe and many other Western democracies for over a decade earlier.

The decline in national productivity during the Obama administration has, indeed, been remarkable, yet, found little attention in the national media. When the issue was addressed, it was mostly dismissed as a temporary and irrelevant phenomenon, since the country’s amazing technological advances, ultimately, had to translate into productivity gains, as they have done in the past.

Suddenly, the tone of the debate, however, appears to be changing. At least partially this can be attributed to public concerns expressed by Federal Reserve that lack in productivity gains will impede growth of the national economy. But, like the national media, the Federal Reserve appears puzzled by the rapidly declining productivity of the nation. They shouldn’t be.

National productivity can be defined as the sum of the national work product per time unit. The more the country produces per time unit of work, the more efficient the national economy produces its national growth product and the more competitive the nation will be vice versa other nations with lower efficiencies.

This is not different from our personal efficiency in completing tasks, whether at work or at home. A crucial component of being efficient in completing our tasks, as everybody will acknowledge, is our ability to prioritize: What is more important, of course, should be tackled first, while less important tasks will follow when time allows. In other words, to prioritize certain tasks over others because of their importance is an essential component of productivity.

We here argue that our society is rapidly losing the perspective on relevance as to what is and is not important. As a consequence, we lose our ability to prioritize and, therefore, become progressively more inefficient in producing work product. The consequences appear obvious and deeply worrisome: Unless we, as a society, strive to regain proper perspectives in prioritizing importance within our daily lives, including our political lives, we will face continuous declines in national productivity and, therefore, at best economic stagnation.

Examples for loss of perspective of relevance abound: In middle and high schools, emphasis on political correctness outweighs in importance the learning process. On the political front, teachers’ unions receive political priorities over the product schools are meant to produce, – properly educated students. Poorly educate graduates will, of course, lower the country’s productivity. In colleges, this trend has reached paradoxically excessive levels, when students are more concerned about being given “safe spaces” to be kept away from the realities of the world, than attaining proper educated to join the work force. The contribution of college education to poor national productivity is further enhanced by the excessive and still disproportionally rapidly rising costs of college education.

Increasing loss of perspective is, however, also demonstrated by government. As valid an accusations of racisms against law enforcement may be in some municipalities, prioritizing solving this problem over the murder of thousands of African American youths in inner cities, like Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC, demonstrates obvious loss of perspective of relevance. Allowing such a circle of violence, unemployment and poor education in inner cities not only to fester but to get worse, is not only inexcusable but very obviously reduces the nation’s productivity.

As important as international trade agreements may be for the growth of the economy, to reach such agreements without considering and preparing for negative consequences of such agreements on the U.S. labor market also demonstrates complete denial of what should be priorities. Take, for example, the Obama administration’s directed efforts to bankrupt the coal industry, its handling of the Keystone Pipeline and the billions of dollars wasted on clean energy companies that went bankrupt.

To favor productivity, as valid as concerns about Global Warming may be, government interventions have to be rational and cost effective. The world’s climate will not improve if the U.S. closes one coal mine, while China and India open 10 new ones at the same time. Nor will the nation’s productivity be enhanced if laid off miners, willing to work, become unemployed recipients of government handouts. Similarly, productivity will not be improved if oil has to be transported by rail rather than through a pipeline, since rail transport is not only much costlier but also prone to more accidents and, therefore, environmentally more damaging. Crony-capitalism, when government chooses winners and losers, also has never been shown to improve a nation’s productivity. To the contrary, when big corporation and government get together, it usually sucks productivity out of the U.S. economy.

In summary, unless the nation comes to its senses, and starts to understand that productivity levels have been lagging behind what this country historically has been able to achieve and, going forward, have to be dramatically improved if we, ever again, want to be the beneficiaries of a growing national economy, our economic picture will remain bleak and, probably, will even continue to deteriorate.

This is as much a wakeup call for Millennials, apparently the most spoiled and “entitled” generation in history, as it is for business and government. Our priorities in life have to return to what makes sense, and produces results before we waste our time (for an average of three hours every day) on Facebook or on chasing Pocahontas through the streets of our cities. Most importantly, however, our government structures have to recognize that a hierarchy of priorities is dictated not by political expediency but by proper perspectives on what is more important for success and, therefore, should be prioritized.

The Canary