August 27, 2015--TRUMP: Swimsuit Competition

Barack Obama's former senior political advisor, the savvy David Axelrod, posted a clever Tweet on Tuesday.

Attempting to sum up the TRUMP phenomenon, especially TRUMP's continued surge in national and local polls, knowing that The Donald has owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, Axelord said--

"In a parlance Trump would appreciate: We're still in the swimsuit competition. It gets harder in the talent rounds."

Now, I don't know if TRUMP knows how to play the harmonica or can pull off a hula hoop routine, but so far he is looking good and I think will continue to widen his lead over all the other candidates because his talent may be the swimsuit competition.

Not talent of the sort traditional political strategists such as Axelrod respect and feel is essential to a candidate who wants to be taken seriously as a potential commander in chief.

Ditto for James Carville and Mary Matalin. On Morning Joe yesterday, when asked why TRUMP is doing so well they both in effect agreed with Axelrod--TRUMP's electoral balloon will burst soon because of his lack of substance. They both said that once the public begins to pay attention they will want to know his specific policies about the Middle East, strengthening the US economy, fixing the education system, balancing the budget. His shtick will wear thin, they say, and the public will discover that the emperor has no hair.

Or, if you will, there's no there there. Or that there's sizzle but no beef.

They failed to note that the public they claim is not yet paying attention to the campaign is turning out in droves for his appearances and the largest TV audience in history, 24 million, tuned in to the first Republican debate. Four years ago, the initial GOP debate was watched by 3.2 million. Eight times fewer.

The next thing we'll hear from old-school political analysts is that these numbers have little to do with TRUMP but reflect voters' deep interest in Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

Oh really?

They don't get the fact that in addition to liking TRUMP's tell-it-like-it-is style (a quality that huge numbers of potential voters like to think they have), his can-do enthusiasm and optimism (Make America Great Again! is his campaign slogan), and his track record as a business man, a large part of TRUMP's appeal is that he seems to have just stepped out of a reality show.

In fact he did.

But beyond starring in The Apprentice for 11 years, he and his glittering family share many characteristics of the Kardashians. They are beautiful, smart, successful, comfortable with themselves, exhibitionistic, quirky, titillating, and intriguing in a Modern Family sort of way.

If you doubt this, wait until bionic wife Melania, extraterrestrial-looking daughter Ivanka, his three perfect boys, his second Daughter Tiffany (named after the store), and I suspect his previous two wives, Ivana and Marla Maples join him on the campaign trail. There hasn't been as glamorous a political family since the Kennedys.

This mix is very powerful political medicine in our celebrity-sodden culture.

Melania Trump

August 11, 2015--Michele, Ma Belle

Knowing my obsession with Michele Bachmann and her pray-away-the-gay husband, knowing how disappointed I am that she is not running for president this time around, knowing that with the exception of Donald TRUMP the current candidates are not that funny (I only made it through an hour-and-a-half of last week's two-hour debate), my Virginia brother and sister-in-law sent me a piece from Salon about how Michele is gleeful about the nuclear deal the Obama administration recently struck with Iran because it foretells the beginning of End Times.

As Salon reported, in an interview on the evangelical radio show, Understanding the Times (get it--the Times), Michele Bachmann gushed that we should all feel very "privileged to live" in the End Times which are rapidly approaching "now that Obama's negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran."

She claimed that this accord fulfills the biblical prophecy from Zechariah 12:3--"On that day, when all the nations of the earth are against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves."

The End Times are upon us, Michele revealed and "heaven's armies" are now advancing the cause. "The prophets longed to live this day. You and I are privileged to live in it."

The host of the show, Jan Markell, agreed. There "are consequences to doing things like this against God's covenant land [Israel], there are horrible consequences. You throw in other things such as the Supreme Court decision back in late June [about same-sex marriage] and a lot of other things--judgement is not just coming, judgment is already here."

It is only senators like Chuck Schumer," Bachmann sighed, who can forestall "God's wrath."

Here's where I get confused--

She cites Schumer (my mother used to call him Chuck Schmoozer) as the only one standing in the way of God's wrath, but aren't evangelicals looking forward to the End Times? Isn't that an essential step toward the emergence of the Antichrist (I know, he's already here in the person of Barack Obama), his reign, the Millennium, and ultimately the desired Last Judgement? So what's her problem? She should be ecstatic (etymologically literally) rather than bent out of political shape.

There's a solution--Michele, ma belle, it's not too late. The race is not over. In fact, no one is all that happy with the current field. The poll-topper, Donald TRUMP, has his theology all mixed up. When asked about his church going he admitted he doesn't attend that often. "When I go," he said, "I eat the little cracker." And though he's not impressed with the sacramental wine, he did admit he drinks "my little wine."

Think about how you could take him on. The discourse you two could engage in. For the rest of us, the two of you debating is almost too much to hope for.

Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble
Tres bien ensemble.

June 8, 2015--On, Wisconsin

At football games the University of Wisconsin Badgers' fans sing this song--

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the ball clear down the field,
A touchdown sure this time 
(U rah rah)
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight! Fellows!--fight, fight, fight!
We'll win this game.

Ah, if only Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and for the moment the front-runner for the GOP nomination, could appropriate this song instead of trying again to get John Mellencamp to let him use "Small Town"--

Well I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town,
Prob'ly die in a small town
Oh, those small communities.

Liberal Mellencamp told him, No way!

But with the governor recently turning his attention to undermining the quality of one of his state's institutional crown jewels--the University of Wisconsin--even he doesn't have the audacity to use the Badgers' fight song.

He finished off the state's municipal unions--his claim to national fame--survived a recall election, then reelection, and now is moving to take on the state's professors. A soft-touch group of opponents if there ever was one who are more used to taking sabbaticals than fighting a hyper-ambitious governor.

His plan for the university is to eliminate tenure.

Currently at UW, and almost all other private and public colleges and universities, tenure is universally available. Typically, anyone who holds the rank of associate or full professor who is rehired over three to five years is eligible for tenure, which, if awarded provides lifetime employment.

We could debate whether tenure is necessary or even a good idea. Advocates claim it allows professors academic freedom--to hold and teach any views they wish, very much including controversial ones. It protects faculty, they say, from being fired for their views, which has occurred at various times in our history, including the 1950s when Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against alleged communist penetration of our government and universities. Scores were intimidated and others fired for their supposed beliefs.

Others say tenure causes professors to lose their intellectual edge and too often, no longer interested in teaching but protected, to phone in their lectures.

Walker is not making similar claims, not demonologizing the faculty, merely asserting that tenure allows faculty members too much say about how universities are governed--it diminishes the power and control of the central administrations. In effect, he is saying, tenure and its privileges give too much authority to employees and too little to those that are expected to lead them--university management.

So much for right-wing Walker being true to his anti-government, anti-institution posture.

But Walker has a point. His real agenda is not university governance but to grab headlines by bully-style beating up on, in truth, rather powerless state employees who are stereotypically portrayed as absent-minded, lazy, and over-privledged. They typically "work"--teach--three days a week, at most nine months a year, and every seven years or so get the year off while receiving either half or full pay.

A pretty good deal by any measure.

As with other state workers, whose union he busted and from whom he then demanded and secured various financial givebacks, Walker is now going after another subset of Wisconsin employees who have little support among Wisconsinites, many of whom struggle to get by, not infrequently working two or three jobs just to stand still. How many trying to stay above water have any sympathy for others who they feel are less deserving of an easy ride? Walker is betting many and that that discontent, that anger, will propel him to the presidency.

Wisconsin has traditionally been a liberal state. Progressivism, liberalism has deep roots there. But now three times voters have turned out to keep Walker in office. He has been able to attract big Koch-brothers money likely because they see in Wisconsin's political transformation their hoped-for vision for America's future. If it can happen in the home state of La Follette, Proxmire, and Feingold, it can happen anywhere. But, we need to remind ourselves, Joseph McCarthy was also from the Badger State.

And, yes, Governor Walker is a college drop-out.