Category: Politics

I normally don’t repost full articles from other sources but the following piece needs to be read in its entirety by those of you, who, like me, voted for Trump as the lesser of two bad choices, but while having come to admire him for keeping most of his campaign promises and standing up to the media, still find ourselves doing all too regular face plants at what and how he sometimes speaks and Tweets. It’s a bit of a long read for the TAH format, but I promise that this enlightened essay from American Thinker, written by aviation physicist, Chet Richards, is going to make you feel a whole lot better about your original vote and your continuing support. You may even want to write a check for his 2020 re-election.
Poe
September 12, 2018

Presidential Chaos
Chet Richards
American Thinker

The Oval Office is in chaos. Donald Trump is mercurial, scatter-brained, given to changing his opinion every few minutes. Talks all the time. Doesn’t listen. Is opinionated. Often wrong. He is interested only in today, not tomorrow. He lacks caution. It all adds up to a president who clearly is mentally deficient – insane even. Or so some say. They say it is vital for the Nation’s future that Donald Trump be relieved of his office – or at least tightly controlled.

All of the above may, or may not, be true. Only those in a day-to-day working relationship with the president know the reality, and publicly they say only positive things about the man. Whatever the truth, the simple fact is that Donald Trump is, thus far, perhaps the most productive president in American history. Only Teddy Roosevelt is a productive rival, and chaos surrounded him, as well. How can Trump’s purported chaotic insanity produce such positive results?

The simplest explanation is simple: Donald Trump may be a genius! Don’t laugh. He may be the real thing. He jokes about it, which suggests he doesn’t realize that he really is (see the Dunning-Kruger Effect). His career record certainly suggests he is a major creative talent – and a gutsy one at that.
Perhaps President Trump is the kind of genius who thrives on turmoil. If so, that explains the chaos. In my profession of physics, there have been several brilliant notables with exactly that characteristic. It is not to say that Donald Trump lacks self-discipline. He wouldn’t be where he is today if discipline was lacking. His discipline is probably very different from the norm, but it clearly works. Creative people understand chaos. They especially understand it if they have collaborated with other talented people on a difficult problem. Creative chaos is the norm in such an environment. Without that chaos productivity can vanish.
More than half a century ago, equipped with a fresh physics degree, I attracted the attention of a group of professional inventors and was hired. Most of the time the work was routine. The real fun came, most days, when things were winding down. Then a few of us would gather together for exercises in pure invention. We were led by the group’s technical boss, a master inventor. It was in these sessions that I received my training as a professional inventor. The most noteworthy things about these sessions were their chaos and their entertainment value – they really were fun. A problem would be posed. It didn’t matter what kind of problem as long as there was no known solution. Then came a great deal of discordant, often simultaneous, often loud, back and forth. Chaos. Then, sometimes popping out of the blue, a solution magically appeared. Almost always these sessions would produce at least one patentable invention (and often more than one). We usually didn’t file patent because the invention was seldom relevant to our business and patents are expensive. Given the creative ferment there it is little wonder that the group produced a series of engineering masterpieces.
Later, after several uninspiring years in graduate school, I found myself working directly for one of the aerospace industry’s great geniuses. Chaos again. I was back in my element. People change, personalities change, but the creative chaos is always the same – provided the talent is there.
Trump faces a problem: the Government. The Government is not, by its nature, a creative institution. When it tries to be it almost invariable gets it wrong. Just consider all the failed social programs if you doubt this. Government is good at routine. Routine minds are repelled by the kind of turbulence that surrounds Donald Trump. Which, of course, is the reason they have routine minds in routine jobs. Government is process oriented and rule bound. Once a routine is established things tend to go smoothly for a while. Unfortunately routine breaks down in stressing situations. Then, creative thinking is required. But the creativity is usually not there. Creative people just don’t fit comfortably in a process oriented organization.
The aerospace industry has many examples where process breaks down. One program, where I was involved at a senior level, suffered from excessive process. The program manager was a retired Lieutenant General who had had great success managing a key part of the first Gulf War. He was highly intelligent and accessible. But he did not understand the creative chaos required for success in this kind of program. What he did understand was process. Key decisions were to be made according to a detailed schedule, not for technical merit. After an expenditure of more than a billion dollars of government money, and hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate investment, the program was canceled. Process had killed the program.
The people who thrive at upper levels in Government are mostly highly intelligent conventional thinkers. Put them in the service of someone like Donald Trump and they may do outstanding work. Or, they may rebel and engage in subversion. Such rebellion seems to be a problem today. According to the notorious 9/5/18 New York Times OpEd piece by Anonymous, there exists an informal Steady State conspiracy at high levels in Trump’s administration. Reportedly, this group has interfered with the president’s decision process. It has done so by pilfering documents that were put in front of him to sign. Implied, this group also biases the information going to the president. Is this editorial factual? Or, is it just malicious disinformation from the swamp? If it is real then substantial housecleaning is in order. In any case, among a cast of hundreds, or even thousands, there inevitably will be those who will be disaffected.
In time the mix of the people around the president will have evolved to be a buffer between the productive conventional thinkers and their highly unconventional boss. In engineering terms, Trump’s senior staff should serve as an efficient impedance matching device. Given Donald Trump’s major talents, and with such a mature staff around the president, we can expect this administration to go down as one history’s greatest.

John Kerry, riding on his foreign policy “record”, and on the “raving reviews” he got from his former shipmates… Decided to offer his “words of wisdom” regarding President Trump’s understanding of America. He argued that this was a dangerous world, and implied a need for a “blue wave” to change us from the course that President Trump has us on.

From the Washington Times:

“You have a president who clearly doesn’t understand America, doesn’t understand the Constitution, doesn’t understand the role of the Justice Department, the separation of powers, and that’s dangerous,” — John Kerry

This is the same guy that decided to do some diplomacy on behalf of another work of his “wisdom”… The Iran nuclear deal. This isn’t the first time he has pulled this stunt. He was reported to have met with representatives of our enemies during the Vietnam War.

Given that his actions and words amount to policies and actions that put the United States at a disadvantage relative to its enemies and adversaries, it doesn’t seem like he’s all that concerned about a dangerous world.

He certainly didn’t care about how dangerous the world was by offering himself as an option for President. Does this mean that he was for actual reckless foreign policy before he was against a perceived one?

The UN was supposed to be a place where nations could settle their differences in a peaceful way. Unless I misunderstood the idea behind it, the UN was not meant to be a place of appeasement, which is what it has turned out to be.

Except for the post-9/11/01 resolution mentioned below, nothing has been done to contain or even acknowledge terrorism by that organization. NATO has been a more useful alliance. Perhaps it’s time Woodrow Wilson’s bright idea, which was originally the League of Nations, was given its walking papers and disbanded. There is no real evidence that it has done anything other than cost the more affluent countries like the USA and USSR/Russia and China funding that could have gone into other things.

It was not the UN that resolved the North/South Korea issue. It was an American president who was bold enough to take the bit in his teeth and move forward with ‘do this or else’ approach.

The UN’s Security Council passed a resolution condemning the 9-11-2001 attacks on New York City, Washington, DC, and the Shanksville, PA, crash.  https://www.un.org/press/en/2001/SC7143.doc.htm

Nice words, but has anything stopped terrorism since then?  No. In fact, it has become worse than it was, with the constant ongoing war in the Middle East, which has not ceased since the defeat of Sennacherib.

Nor has the problem dissipated with Angela Merkel’s idiotic flooding Europe with so-called refugees who have proven themselves to be more of a problem than anything else, and a costly one, at that.. They have cost Europeans enormously in taxes, security and flagrant criminal activities that would get anyone else thrown into jail. The malignant refusal to acknowledge that these people are criminals from the get-go indicates an unwillingness to face the fact that the whole idea of “open borders” and “one world” is a denial of reality.

There is, in fact, no real evidence that the UN has done anything except become a costly club that seemed like a good idea at the time, but has proven to be a waste of resources and time. NATO has been more effective.

What has the UN done to help the people of Venezuela living in grinding poverty under Maduro’s regime? When was the UN ever willing to go in to Cambodia to stop Pol Pot’s rampage, or to up-stakes and go into Kuwait to help the Kuwaitis stop Saddam Hussein’s confiscation of their tiny country? What did the UN do about the 32,000,000 people who starved to death under Mao Tse-Tung’s dingdong approach to agriculture?

What, in fact, has the UN done besides occupy real estate in New York City and let its diplomats get away with offenses for which the rest of us would be facing some hefty fines?

Unlike previous administrations, the Trump Administration doesn’t seem willing to roll out the red carpet for the PLO.

The Trump administration is expected to announce Monday that it will close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, administration officials said Sunday night, widening a U.S. campaign of pressure amid stalled Middle East peace efforts.

“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” national security adviser John Bolton is planned to say in prepared remarks he is scheduled to deliver Monday, according a draft reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” he is planned to add.  Senior Palestinian officials strongly condemned the Trump administration decision and described it as a “reckless escalation.”

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian representative to Washington, said in an interview that the State Department informed the Palestine Liberation Organization of the U.S. decision to shutter its Washington office in a move that he said is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to begin enacting its so-called “deal of the century.”

Maybe its about time a different approach is tried with these people.  Every time some peace initiative is started some radicals throw a wrench into the system.

He said the Trump administration’s move to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians and to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency; its criticisms of the way Palestinian refugees are defined at the United Nations; the Jerusalem move and its policy on settlements are evidence that the Trump administration is pressing ahead with its yet-to-be-revealed peace plan.

Throwing money at them for decades does not seem to be paying dividends.

In the U.S., the ICC has long been the bane of conservatives, including Mr. Bolton, who consider it biased against the U.S. and a danger to U.S. sovereignty. Mr. Bolton is scheduled to deliver his speech, “Protecting American Constitutionalism and Sovereignty from International Threats,” to the Federalist Society, a conservative group, on Monday.

Well, well, well,  it looks like our favorite little swindlers had some visitors.

 

Police raided a New Jersey couple’s home and hauled away a new BMW on Thursday after a homeless veteran accused them of helping themselves to some of the $400,000 in online donations they supposedly raised to help him start a new life.

Citing “enormous public interest” in the case, county prosecutor Scott Coffina confirmed in a Facebook post that Mark D’Amico and Katelyn McClure are under investigation, though no charges have been filed.

It was the latest twist in a onetime feel-good story about Johnny Bobbitt, who spent his last $20 to buy gas for McClure when she became stranded on a highway in Philadelphia last year, and the couple who found 14,000 people online who were so touched by his kindness that they donated to a fund to help him start a new life.

I wonder what they might have found.