Blue-collar blog: The case against Bernie Sanders.By Dan DeFreestI...

Blue-collar blog: The case against Bernie Sanders.
By Dan DeFreest
I...: The case against Bernie Sanders. By Dan DeFreest In Republican circles, the term “RINO” means; “Republican-in-name–only”, and is us...

The case against Bernie Sanders.

By Dan DeFreest

In Republican circles, the term “RINO” means; “Republican-in-name–only”, and is used to label moderate Republicans who don’t express the conservative, right-wing views of the party mainstream. So, it seems appropriate, that the term “DINO” could be attached to Senator Bernie Sanders who, until he declared his Democratic candidacy for the Presidency, has been registered as an Independent for his entire political career.

To me, there are two primary reasons that Sanders isn’t qualified to be president, a long easy reason…and a short hard one. I’ll address each of them in that order.

First, the long easy one. Bernie Sanders is a one-dimensional candidate. Ask him a question on any issue from race relations to North Korea, and he will inevitably steer the conversation to his favorite target of his feinted rage -”The billionaire on Wall Street.” It doesn’t seem to matter what the subject is, Bernie will bring the conversation back to what he sees as the biggest problem facing American…and the World, income inequality. There’s one major problem with Bernie’s analysis of income inequality; it’s not a problem, it’s a symptom of a problem. The problem, as I explained in my book – Jesus Was a Democrat, is that income inequality, or as I prefer to call it, income disparity, is the byproduct of a repressive Republican ideology that glorifies Supply-side economics and inherently usurps opportunity and income from the middle class. Simply taxing the wealthy doesn’t fix the problem, it only exacerbates it. This is what Bernie doesn’t get, and never will, that legislation that has been enacted at the state and federal level since the Reagan administration, has essentially traded the middle class way of life away for corporate profits. We can’t tax it back.

Still, Sander’s primary appeal is rooted in dreams and promises for a socialistic world where the government takes away profits and wealth from the upper classes and redistributes it among the lower classes. This redistribution is realized, in Sander’s view, through his two primary campaign promises; free public education and free health insurance. Since the debate continues to wage in Congress about the Affordable Care Act after more than sixty votes to defund or overturn it, I’ll concentrate on Bernie’s biggest promise, free education.

What Sanders has proposed is free education at public colleges and universities. Sounds doable, right? Well, perhaps it does on the surface, but beneath the veneer, it’s an empty promise. First of all, the Federal government doesn’t own these institutions, for the most part, the states do. And, therein lies the problem. How do we make the states give away free education? Do we federalize these schools like we do with the National Guard during emergencies? If we could do that, what possible rationalization would we use? If Bernie wants a revolution…this would be a real good way to start one. So the only other way would be to subsidize public tuition, which sounds like what he’s talking about. So, how would that work, and what would it costs. The gross tuition for public universities and colleges in 2014 was approximately $78 billion. That’s a starting point. We then have to consider that since about 65% of high school grades currently go on to higher education, we can assume that those numbers with both grow substantially if education, as Bernie is saying, becomes free. Therefore, $78 billion could easily escalate to more than $100 billion with no end in sight. Would the government then institute a system of cost control like they do with Medicare and Social Security? Then the next question is who would the government be subsidizing, the institution, the state or the student? Clearly, every state would want their seat at the negotiation table and it would seem that it would evolve into a convoluted mess.

Then, of course, none of this can happen unless our conservative Congress, who is focused on entitlement cuts and repeal of Obama Care could even be talked into the idea. So the easy reason is that it’s all pie-in-the-sky.

Now the hard-simple reason is…he’s too old.

If elected, Sanders would take the oath of office at the age of 75 ½ years old. Those of us who were around during the 1980’s will recall that President Reagan was 73 when he was re-elected and during much of his second term he often appeared disinterested and un-involved. Many questioned who was actually calling the shots in the White House; Reagan…VP George Bush, Chief of Staff James Baker or Nancy Reagan, who had become the gate-keeper to the Oval Office.

Presidents such as JFK, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama often drew accolades for their ability to keep multiple conversations going and handle a crisis behind the scenes while meeting with a head of state. These men were all in the forties and at the top of their games when elected, it’s hard to visualize Sanders, who gets flustered in press conferences, performing with the same dexterity, grace and style. Perhaps no CEO in the last fifty years has garnered more respect or personified what a chief executive officer should look like than former GE head Jack Welch. As dynamic and successful as Welch was, he was retired at the age of 65. Being President of the United States is a demanding pressurized job that can suck the life out of the person occupying that position. Sanders has done nothing throughout his career that would indicate that he is somehow poised to rise to the occasion.

Our world today is a smoldering powder keg of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and financial uncertainty that threatens the freedoms that we hold so dear. We need, and deserve a president that is ready now to take control and negotiate these troubled waters. Hillary Clinton is the only candidate on either side who has the appropriate experience to qualify her for the job of President. Her eight years as first lady and four years as Secretary of State, gave her invaluable insight and experience at dealing with the incredible challenges of the office.

Idiot’s delight

It must have been comforting for Donald Trump to stand by and listen to Sarah Palin endorse him last week and hear someone that makes less sense than he does. Ms. Palin’s rambling endorsement of Trump, sounded ,more like a librarian reading Dr. Seuss to a third-grade class, than it did a serious endorsement for a presidential candidate. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that Mr. Trump has never been viewed either by his own (adopted) party, or by the rest of the electorate, as a serious candidate.

Mary Altaffer/AP

Listening to Ms. Palin identify Trumps crowd as - “teamsters and teachers, cops and cooks, you rock n’ rollers and holy-rollers”, it’s not hard to see how this campaign success is happening. You didn’t hear - doctors and lawyers, professors and business owners, being mentioned, Trump’s appeal, much like Palin’s, is obviously to the lower quadrant of the economic and education scale,

On the same day that she endorsed Trump, Palin responded to published reports that her son Track had been arrested for domestic abuse. Palin took a swipe at President Obama, implying that her son’s legal problems were a byproduct of the President’s failure to address the problems of Post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the Iraq war. A year earlier, an alcohol fuel birthday party degenerated into a drunken brawl involving most of the Palin family, including Track who appeared to get the worst of it. The trouble seems to have started with the Palins, who were traveling in a stretch limousine while celebrating husband Todd’s birthday, crashed another party where they were apparently were not welcomed. The altercation seems to have started or at least been centered on daughter Bristol, who, according to police reports, was intoxicated and belligerent when the authorities arrived. Bristol, you may remember became pregnant back in 2008 when she was seventeen and unmarried. At that time, her mother was the Bible-quoting governor of Alaska and running mate of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. Bristol gave birth to the child but never married the father and became a spokesperson for pre-marital abstinence. Unfortunately, she found herself unmarried and pregnant again in 2015.

This all seems to be just another bizarre chapter, in the bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump. Trump has, at one time or another, managed to insult women, almost every minority, his fellow Republican candidates and virtually anyone that he decides to, while alternately lavishing saccharin-laced compliments on those foolish enough to support him. Interestingly, Trump is also mired in an ongoing feud with Fox News, the only major network to openly support the Republican party. 

So while Trump, the thrice-married, four times bankrupt business-man turned politician, continues his attacks on Ted Cruz, the Canadian-born first-term back-stabbing Princeton and Harvard educated elitist who is hated by his own party, he has received a crucial endorsement from the half-term former Governor of Alaska, who is now the matriarch of a red-neck partying Alaskan clan who, while not pontificating in unintelligible-staccato poetry, is busy raising her illegitimate  grandchildren and bailing her brawling son out of jail.

The Republican Party is now the most fractured, ineffective political party in our nation’s history. If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he would have to admit, once again, that his party has left him.

Donald Trump Schlong

Donald Trump - The art of the schlong.

Recently, Donald Trump introduced a term into the vernacular of the average citizen that was previously only familiar to dwellers of New York and other cities with Jewish populations.

When referring to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Barack Obama in 2008, he noted that she had been “schlonged.” Schlong, as we now know, is a Yiddish term for a man’s penis. Schlonged is an expression that describes being hit hard or beaten badly by something or someone, which is what Trump was referring to. Trump would be something of an expert on being schlonged, over the years it appears that he has been schlonged, and schlonged back at his schlongers quite a bit.

Photo Gage Skidmore

In 1983, Trump bought into the fledgling United States Football League as owner of the New Jersey Generals. After his first year, Trump decided to sell out and concentrate on his real estate dealings and schlonged Houston oil man J. Walter Duncan when he sold him the franchise. The following year, Duncan re-schlonged Trump by selling the Generals back to him. Trump then convinced his fellow owners to file a billion-dollar lawsuit and schlong the NFL for anti-trust violations. Although they won the lawsuit, they were schlonged by the jury when they were awarded only $3. Trump’s lawsuit cause the league to fold which schlonged all of his fellow owners. Having schlonged Duncan when he sold him the team, Trump could have won on the schlongs had he stopped there. Unfortunately, he was schlonged three more times when he bought the team back, filed the lawsuit and finally when the leagued went belly up. Score: Trump out-schlonged 3 – 2.

Trump then decided to try his hand at the airline business in 1988, when he borrowed nearly $380 million to purchase a shuttle service from Eastern Airlines. Trump envisioned a luxury service, however passengers schlonged him by not buying into his vision and the airline never showed a profit. Two years later he schlonged his creditors by defaulting on his loans. The banks schlonged Trump back by taking over the airline and selling it. Score: Trump lost again 2 Schlongs – 1.

The water was no kinder to Trump that the skies. Trump must have felt that he got away with another schlong when he purchased a yacht which he named the Trump Princess from the Sultan of Brunei for $29 million. The ship had originally been built for a reported $100 million. Unfortunately, three years later Trump was again schlonged by his creditors when he was forced to sell the boat and take a $10 million schlonging. Score: tie.

Trumps biggest schlongings occurred when he decided to invest in the gaming business in Atlantic City. He loves to tell the story of how he schlonged Holiday Inn into investing in his first casino by hiring a construction company to come down to the site and move piles of dirt around, creating an illusion of a busting, active construction site. Holiday Inn bought the schlong - hook, line and sinker and signed the deal. Over the next twenty five years, Trump’s casino companies would be forced to file bankruptcies 4 times, each time schlonging his creditors. Trump was finally schlonged back during his last bankruptcy when he was forced to resign from his position Chief Schlong and Operating Officer. Score: Trump wins 5 Schlongs- 1.

On a person level, Trump schlonged his first wife Ivana when she discovered that he was giving his schlong to an attractive young actress named Marla Maples. Ivana counter-schlonged him by divorcing him and receiving a generous settlement. Maples then schlonged Trump by presenting him with an unexpected pregnancy and compound-schlonged him by forcing him to marry her. He then schlonged her back by divorcing her. Unfortunately for Maples, Trump had reportedly pre-schlonged her by having her sign a prenuptial agreement. Score 3 – 3, tie-breaker: Trump for giving Maples his schlong.

Since becoming a candidate for the Republican nomination for President, Trump has routinely and aggressively schlonged his opponents at every opportunity. Former candidates Lindsay Graham and Rick Perry attempted to schlong Trump after Trump schlonged Senator and former POW John McCain for being unheroic. Trumped then schlonged Graham by giving out his personal cell phone number, and schlonged Perry by describing him as unintelligent. When Trump schlonged Carly Fiorina by saying that she wasn’t attractive enough to get elected, she attempted to schlong him back but only ended up committing schlongicide when her response met with tepid applause. He has also schlonged Jeb Bush for being “dumb as a rock”, he schlonged Rubio - a “clown”, Ted Cruz - “a maniac” and schlonged Governor Chris Christi by calling him “a child”. Score: Trump wins, no contest.

It’s no wonder his opponents are reticent to respond to Mr. Trump, one thing that has become perfectly clear to all of them is that Trump is not only the best schlonger in the field, he is also the biggest schlong in the field. We can only hope that he doesn’t ascend to the White House where the rest of us have previously been schlonged by another Dick.

Ronald Reagan "Real"

The “Real” Reagan

Ask any Republican who was the best President during the 20^th Century and they will likely evoke the name Ronald Reagan, without hesitation. In fact, many will have Reagan listed at the top of their list of the greatest US Presidents in history.

According to conservatives, Reagan created anywhere from sixteen million to twenty-five million jobs while in office. They also credit him with cutting taxes, cutting the budget and the national debt. On foreign affairs Reagan is seen as a hawk’s hawk, a president that didn’t back down from anyone and wasn’t afraid to use our military might to enforce our political views around the world. In fact, many of the current candidates for the Republican nomination cite Reagan as the role model that they aspire to.

The real Reagan is a bit more of a complex contradiction than the Republican’s fantasy version. First of all, it’s important to understand that presidents don’t actually create employment for anyone but themselves and their appointees, many of whom are already employed prior to their promotions. The recession of the late seventies and early eighties saw a lot of layoffs; when those workers were called back to work, they were seen as new jobs added. Contrasting that with today’s economy, rarely do we hear the term “layoff” anymore, today they are simply “cuts” and those employees wishing to return to work must apply as new employees rather than be called back to work. The president states his agenda, but it’s actually the Congress who initiate and pass legislation to help employment, its then up to the President to either sign those initiatives into law or veto them. The head of the Federal Reserve is arguably more instrumental to the success or failure of employment since it’s the Feds control of the money supply that enables business to borrow capital to expand operations and add employees. Reagan inherited one of the best.

Paul Volker was one of Jimmy Carter’s last appointees after he fired nearly his entire cabinet in late 1979. By that time, the country had sunk into “stagflation”, which was a term that was coined to describe an economy that is stagnant while suffering from high inflation at the same time. Interest rates were also rising causing businesses to lay off employees. This phenomenon was originally created by Richard Nixon in 1971 with his failed Wage and Price freeze. Nixon was trying to manipulate the economy to create the image of prosperity in preparation for his 1972 re-election. Volker recognized the problem, and, with Reagan’s blessing, he began raising the discount rate exponentially. Today it’s big news if the Fed raises that discount rate at all, back then Volker was raising it as much as a point a month. Eventually, he raised the discount rate so high that he choked off the money supply and forced massive layoffs as the economy ground to a halt. Eventually, interest rates and inflation began to recede, employers began borrowing money again and calling employees back to work. The Reagan miracle had begun.

On the issue of taxes, Reagan did cut taxes, most notably the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, however he also signed five tax increases into law during his administrations. And the notion that Reagan was a fiscal conservative is totally biased. In fact, Reagan tripled the national debt during his eight years in office and added about 250,000 not military jobs to the federal payroll. Reagan often complained that our government had gotten too big and that the government was the problem, not the answer. In actuality, he grew the government while using it to improve the economy, both actions flew in the face of the vaunted Republican concept known as Supply-side Economics.

Although openly hawkish on foreign affairs, Reagan worked tirelessly to try to limit nuclear weapons proliferation. Near the end of his administration in 1987, he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treat (INF), which eliminated intermediate-range nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. Like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, Reagan seemed to feel the weight of his own authority and the repercussions of his decisions in regards to a potential nuclear conflict. Republicans can learn a lot from the actions of these Presidents on this matter and tone-down their inflammatory statements and comments.

In the end, Reagan was not all that he seemed, sometimes he was more, but more often he was not. He was simply a man for his time who cared about his country and did what he thought was right. It’s a shame that our conservatives today spew such venomous ideals and invoke Reagan’s name while doing so. Reagan and his legacy deserve much better.

Donald Trump Arrogance

Teflon Don

Donald Trump is his own raison d'tetre. We all should be, but he, more than the rest of us, appears to be enamored with his own image. Like Narcissus in Greek mythology, Trump seems to have fallen hopelessly in love with himself, his image, his name and anything associated with it.

Photo - Gage Skidmore

To this end, pity the poor fool that dares to offend Trump or attack him, his response is swift and visceral. Comments like:  “loser, stiff, idiot, waste of time, stupid, clown…” the list goes on and on, are slapped on the unfortunate target of his tongue. Occasionally he goes a step too far. When Trump commented that Senator John McCain wasn’t a war hero, fellow Republicans, Texas Governor Rick Perry and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, called Trump out and denounced his antics. Trump’s responses were quick and cruel, he implied that Perry wears glassed to appear intelligent…and then reassured his audience that he wasn’t, and called Graham a “nothing” and then gave out Graham’s personal cell phone number.

The ultimate fault was not Trump’s, it was Graham and Perry’s. Both have, in the past, solicited favors and campaign contributions from Trump. In 2012, Republican candidates journeyed to see Trump as he sat in his New York offices and received visitors like Don Corleone in a scene out of The Godfather. Although Trump doesn’t seem to possess a great deal of influence outside of his business dealings, what he does possess is a lot of money. Cash is a politician’s drug of choice and Trump is a dealer. Though estimates vary greatly as to how much he is actually worth, since most of the immediate threats to the Republican nomination are career politicians, suffice it to say that he dwarfs any or all of his rival’s wealth.  And there, as Shakespeare said, “lies the rub.” 

Those who made the sojourn to Trump’s castle are now finding out that just like a mafia godfather, all favors granted have paybacks, and the payback is that Trump can now use those visits as proof of his superiority to his rivals. The image is undeniably one of subservience. His rivals will pay more for asking for the money than they ever gained by getting it.

Trumps fellow Republican candidates also seem to fear his verbal reprisals. Trump has become copy for the news media in the same way the Joe McCarthy had in the early fifties. Although most of what he says is insulting and, at times, vulgar, the media can’t get enough of him. When Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio attack Trump, it’s the Trump response that get the fat headlines. Consequently, he’s spent the least amount of money on advertising of any of the Republicans. 

Ultimately, Trump is a bully who uses his perceived wealth, the same way a schoolyard bully uses his reputation and physicality to intimidate anyone that offends him. Senator McCain it seems, got off easy. Trump publicly disparaged fellow candidate Carly Fiorina for being too unattractive to be elected, implied that the reason Fox News personality Meagan Kelly asked tough questions is that she was having her menstrual cycle and described Hispanic immigrants as rapists and murders. In spite of these insults, Trump touts himself as the best person on women’s and veterans affairs, foreign policy and immigration. Looking at life from his point of view, perhaps he’s right. He’s been married three times with two of his wives being from Eastern Europe. He’s also been accused of employing illegal immigrants and he requested and received four military deferments while attending college during the Vietnam War. Upon graduating in 1968 at the age of 22, although having been a stud first baseman and captain of the baseball team, he was classified medically ineligible for military service for an undisclosed issue, so he might just be the best authority on staying out of future military conflicts.

The constituents backing Trump for President are no different than the lackeys that hung around with the bully in school egging him on to beat up every wimp in the schoolyard and will no-doubt abandon him when someone stands up to him and puts him in his place. Then it will become obvious to everyone - that Trump is a buffoon. Until then, it matters little to “The Donald”, he’ll keep spewing his insults and gazing into his own reflection while falling deeper and more passionately in love with what he sees.

Mike Huckabee Conflict

Mike Huckabee is a conflicted man.

Huckabee, who is one of the ubiquitous Republican candidates for president and an ordained minister, seems to have both a religious agenda and a political one for wanting to lead the nation. In many ways, Huckabee’s a typical Republican when it comes to domestic issues. However his primary concerns in regards to foreign policy center around the welfare of Israel. Huckabee’s recent comments where he implied that by trusting the Iranians, President Obama would essentially lead the Israeli people to another Holocaust, demonstrates exactly why he is unfit to lead this country. He doesn’t seem to understand that the role of President is to do what is best for the American people, not to use the American people to do what is best for the people of Israel. In this respect, Huckabee and his fellow Christians seem to be hopelessly lost in the Old Testament.

Photo - Gage Skidmore

Perhaps no president in our history had a better grasp or understanding of the will of God than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln often tempered his comments and writing with biblical quotations. However, Lincoln’s belief in God, which guided him in many of his most difficult decisions, seemed to be a very personal one, not one he attempted to enforce upon the country. His primary focus was on using his faith in God to lead the republic, rather than using his office to lead the republic to a faith in God.

The issue of the presidency and religion has evolved dramatically over the years. In the presidential elections of 1960, conservative Christians of Huckabee’s ilk, led by the late Reverend Norman Vincent Peal, were terrified that a Catholic president would allow the Vatican to annex the White House. That fear was completely irrational and unfounded. Although Democratic candidate John Kennedy was a practicing Catholic, he was not openly demonstrative or vocal about his faith. As president, like Lincoln, he relied on his faith to temper his actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy understood the risks to humanity of armed aggression with Soviet-backed Cuba and felt the weight of the consequences of his decisions. Although his military advisers, Congress, and most of his administration favored an invasion of Cuba, Kennedy knew that such an action would very well lead to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. His desire to negotiate allowed Khrushchev the opportunity to back down while saving face.

Today’s Republican candidates have no such concerns. Listening to comments about bombing countries back to the stone-age and taking out regimes, demonstrates a lack of understanding of the complexity of these decisions and the end results of their actions. We must never forget that we killed and vaporized more than a quarter of a million Japanese people, most of them innocent citizens when we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a horrific example of how powerful and destructive nuclear weapons are. At that time, we were the only country on the earth that possessed that capability. Today, we cannot be sure exactly who is nuclear armed or more importantly, who is controlling those arsenals. A wrong decision by our commander in chief could set off a nuclear chain reaction that would have catastrophic consequences.

With public comments by Huckabee and others that they are going to take back the country for Christ, today the Christian Right that seems committed to obliterating the Constitutional mandate of separation of Church and state. The question is, does Huckabee want to lead the country or lead the country to Jesus? Anyone aspiring to the office of President who doesn’t have the complete and best interest of the American people as his or her primary concern, should not ascend to that office. Huckabee’s public concern for the welfare of Israel seems to be heavily rooted in his Christian faith which, I believe, ultimately obscures his ability to look at the situation with Iran objectively. In this respect, Huckabee is conflicted because his religious beliefs are in diametric opposition to his desire to be a political leader. The Bible warns that “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James, 1:8 NIV). Another verse says that “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matthew 12:25 NKJV). Having a political leader who is also a religious leader is precisely why Iran is in the position that they are in now, and why we are faced with the difficult dilemma of how to deal with them.

Ultimately, the global roll of the United States should be that of a fair-minded moderator who only uses its military might as a last resort. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq has had dire consequences as it destabilized the entire region that was held in check by a paper-tiger dictator. By deposing Saddam Hussein, we opened the flood gates allowing insurgents with all kinds of agendas to rise up and threaten not only the region, but the entire world.

If Mike Huckabee really wants to help this country, he should withdraw himself from consideration for public office, and use his considerable speaking skills and voice to help modulate public policy, as the Reverend Martin Luther King did fifty years ago. His continuing comments disparaging the performance and character of President Obama, only serves to lessen the impact of anything meaningful that he can add to the discussion. His constant criticisms of our foreign policy also tend to fly in the face of the teaching of Jesus who refrained from interjecting himself into political activities while admonishing us to respect our leaders and pay our taxes.

Christ’s most powerful messages were ones where he told us what we needed to hear instead of what we wanted to hear. It’s time for Reverend Huckabee to realize that he should return to the pulpit and do the same. Constantly telling the conservative Right what they want to hear, only serves to divide this country against its leadership and ultimately undermines its authority.