Once and For All: Hillary, You Lost Because You’re Hillary

This will be a short post on a topic that shouldn’t need more discussion six months after the election. This week Hillary emerged from her safe space to once again blame FBI Director James Comey and the Russians for her defeat. Her claim is that Comey scared off the fence sitters. 

First, the number of fence sitters was statistically insignificant. Hillary Clinton was one of the most polarizing candidates in American history. Folks loved her or hated her. Very few were ambivalent. 

Second, the Electoral College proved valuable in disproving Hillary’s claim. If Comey and the Russians were such poison, how then did Clinton win the popular vote by 3 million? The brilliance of the Electoral College was that it pin pointed the source of Hillary’s problem. She didn’t give a damn about rust belt working class Americans and they knew it. Post nomination, not a single trip to Wisconsin, not a single one. And like Glenn Close, in Fatal Attraction, Americans don’t like being ignored.

To his political credit, good old red neck Bill Clinton reportedly told his wife that she wasn’t paying sufficient attention to rust belt whites. His warnings were drowned out by the elites surrounding Hillary. 

Kudos to Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen for co-authoring a book, “Shattered” that actually suggests the fault in Hillary’s campaign was not in the stars but in her campaign. The same campaign dysfunction that lost her the 2008 nomination killed her again. 

Hillary needs to go away and shut up. 

P.S. One of the classiest things George W. Bush did when he exited the White House was to go away and STFU. Barack, now it’s your turn. If America was that interested in your perspective, they would have selected your “inevitable successor”. They didn’t. Time for you to learn how to paint. 

What do y’all think? The bar is open. 

Update from Battle Creek

So, I don’t travel much anymore but I happen to be in Battle Creek, Michigan this weekend. While I slept in, my wife did some accidental field research. This is the verdict from one local business owner. 

School choice: major fail. 

Battle Creek has school choice and it is not going well. Students who can afford to, flock to the better schools in the area leaving the other schools to kids with fewer … ahem … choices. So I gave a typical conservative argument to my wife. “Take a capitalist approach. If a school wants to keep its students, it needs to up its game. The market decides which schools succeed.” Only one problem. Gov funding is based on attendance. Schools with more students get more funding. Those with less get less and fall further behind. A vicious cycle. 

Cereal ain’t selling. 

Kellogg will probably be laying off folks in the near future. The cereal industry is not what it was decades ago when this town was thriving. A local businesswoman said the city’s major mall is full of closed stores. The city now survives on conventions and events – which is why I’m here, a gymnastics event with my wife and daughter. 

So, Donald Trump. Looks like Battle Creek is among the many cities who need your business savvy to revitalize. They’re waiting. What ya gonna do? 

What do you think? The bar is open. 

Bombs Away!

Killing Obamacare failed. Banning immigration of folks from unstable countries failed. Monitoring his feuding protégés Bannon and Kushner is proving to be a challenge. Ok, he got Gorsuch – but not really. That was the work of savvy pol Mitch McConnell. 

So what’s a president to do to score big in the first 100 days? Start dropping bombs of course. Syria’s Assad gave Trump a wet kiss in the form of “your predecessor was a weak punk, how bout you?” Never one to shrink from provocation, Trump lobbed 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airstrip. And he did so while enjoying a delicious slice of cake with China’s Xi Jinping.  I think there’s little doubt he was showing Xi by example that no one screws with him. 

A few days later he drops a MOAB (colloquially called the Mother of all Bombs) on an Afghanistan tunnel complex killing a few dozen ISIL members in the process. 

But this is child’s play compared to the real big bully on the block. Yes we’re talking about that nut job Kim Jong-un, leader of North Korea. This dude is so crazy he kills his relatives if they piss him off. And he’s got nukes. And his missiles that can carry the nukes get better everyday. So much so, various experts are suggesting we strengthen our defenses. You know what that means, Washington and California, it’s duck and cover time!! 

I think it’s a damn shame that a punk (only in his 30’s) can have the strongest nation on Earth shaking in our boots. And make no mistake, we are scared shitless. While we were sweating Iran getting a nuke and those dangerous Muslims using them in their jihad, old Kimmy was having a grand time bulking up. Maybe if he had threatened Israel, we might have given a damn? 

So now he holds South Korea hostage and he can kill a few Chinese and Japanese while he’s at it. This greatly reduces our options. Can we say to Seoul, “hey, we can greatly damage his nuclear arsenal if you guys don’t mind losing a few thousand citizens.”  Somehow I don’t think South Korea will sign up for that. My history is pretty weak but I don’t think Harry Truman envisioned this outcome of the Korean War, a nation so badass it has the USA pissing in its pants. 

I’m torn on the whole thing. A part of me wants Trump to, in his words, bomb the shit out of them. But I have trouble accepting the massive bloodshed that will ensue. However is the bloodshed not a matter of if but when? 

What do you think? The bar is open. 

Update: As this goes “to press” (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase), Kimmy just launched another missile which was a dud. Don’t let that calm you. Public humiliation will likely only make him madder.