Clinton vs. Trump would alter high fashion

The New York primaries pretty much propelled Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton into an insurmountable lead. Polls say that in the November election, Clinton will win easily. Already, fashion designers in New York and Paris are preparing for the hot, new must-have styles for 2017: pant suits.

Sen. Sanders has not given up. He wants to ban coal mining, fracking and nuclear energy. Since coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear provide almost 90% of our electricity, he may as well say he wants us to spend our evenings listening to a battery-powered radio in the dark. Of course, he would arrange for free batteries to arrive weekly, courtesy of Wall Street bankers.

In their recent Democrat debate, Secretary Clinton said she would sign a minimum wage law of $15 per hour if Congress passed it. Sen. Sanders objected that $15/hr was his idea, and she campaigned on only $12/hr. While they were arguing over who first favored $15/hr., I wanted the moderator to ask two follow-up questions: Would you also sign a law for a minimum of $18 per hour? And what would you do with all the unemployed young people who aren’t worth $15 or $18 per hour, including a slew of college graduates?

In California, the Legislature and Gov. Brown did raise the minimum wage to $15/hr, saying, “It may not make sense economically, but it’s part of living in a world community.” Well, in the “world community,” 99% can only dream of earning $15/hr.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“These big politicians are so serious about themselves and their parties. This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super-nation. If by some divine act of Providence we could get rid of both parties and hired some good men, like any other big business does, why we would be sitting pretty.”  DT #1948, November 1, 1932

(All my professional speaker friends and Toastmasters Club members will get a kick out a few excerpts of Will’s comments below on the 1924 Democratic convention.)

“I saw something yesterday that for stupidity, uselessness and childishness has anything I ever seen beaten. It was the Democratic Convention [Day 5].

Imagine, if you can, thousands of people gathered at 10:30 in the morning from all over our Union being forced to sit there to 6:00 in the evening and listen to the very same identical speech made over and over again by fifty different people… This has been going on for four days. Just think of taking up the valuable time of 12,000 people, day after day, with: ‘The man I am about to name, that matchless leader, the man who can carry us to victory in November, that son of Democracy, the only true successor to that great man, Woodrow Wilson’.  Where these delegations get these speakers from, Heaven only knows.  

Can you imagine a theater audience sitting there listening to the same old hokum over and over again? Why, they would get the hook on you so fast these delegates would be back home in three days… Practice some of your oratory on your own family and see how quick they will walk out on you… Now, I never propose a thing unless I have a solution to it. Make every speaker, as soon as he tells all he knows, sit down.  That will shorten your speeches so much you will be out by lunch time every day.

I did want to run for Vice President, but I have changed since yesterday. I want to go down and take my rope and when the speaker has said enough, rope him and drag him to his delegation. I will be a bigger help to my country in that way than any way I can think of.  Now, my readers, I hope you will pardon me for not being funny in this article. But I like these delegates, and I want to try and do them a service that they will thank me for as long as they live.” Convention article, June 28, 1924

Will Rogers offers himself for Vice-President

During Day 3 at the 1924 Democratic Convention, there was nothing but boring, repetitive speeches. Will Rogers decided to provide his own content for his daily newspaper article by offering himself for Vice President. Kinda like today, no one wanted to be V-P. Three potential ones listed by Trump immediately refused the offer. I doubt if Sanders would accept a similar offer from Hillary Clinton either. In 1924, three Republicans turned down the “opportunity” to be V-P before Charles Dawes accepted. And for the Democrats, Charles Bryan became the V-P candidate only after one had refused the nomination.

Here are excerpts from Will’s article, June 26, 1924:

“Every man that wants to run at all wants to be President… So I just held a caucus with myself and said somebody has got to be sacrificed for the sake of party harmony. I hereby put myself in nomination, and to save some other man being humiliated by having to put me in nomination, why, I will just nominate myself… I think any fair-minded man will give me serious consideration. But the trouble is there are not any fair-minded men in politics.

They have got to nominate a farmer who understands the farmers’ condition. Well, I got two farms in Oklahoma, both mortgaged, so no man knows their condition better than I do. He has to be a man from the West. Well, if a man came from any further West than I lived last year, he would have to be a fish in the Pacific Ocean.

Another big reason why I should be nominated is I am not a Democrat. Another still bigger reason why I should be nominated is I am not a Republican.

I am just progressive enough to suit the dissatisfied. And lazy enough to be a Stand Patter.

When the President can’t go anywhere, why, the Vice President has to go and speak or eat for him. Now, I could take in all the dinners, for I am a fair eater. I could say, ‘I am sorry the President can’t come, but he had pressing business.’ Of course, I wouldn’t tell the reason why he didn’t come, so I am just good enough liar to be a good Vice President.

Of course, I have no dress suit [tuxedo]. The Government would have to furnish me a dress suit. If I went to a dinner in a rented one, they would mistake me for a Congressman.

I know I can hear a lot of you all say, ‘Yes, Will, you would make a good Vice President, but suppose something happened to the President?’ Well, I would do just like Mr. Coolidge; I would go in there and keep still and say nothing. He is the first President to discover that what the American people want is to be left alone.

P.S. I was born in a Log Cabin.

Sanders and Clinton will debate their qualifications

Donald Trump told us how he will get Mexico to pay for the Wall: any Mexican here illegally will not be allowed to send any money home to Mexico. That sounds good, but it won’t work.  Every one of the millions of illegal immigrants who are working here knows someone who is legal and who would gladly send the money for them.

If Trump wants to intercept money he needs to go after the millions (or billions) of dollars of drug money crossing the border. If drug cartels can’t get paid, they will stop shipping the drugs.

While Trump has been going after votes, Ted Cruz is angling for delegates. Cruz corralled all 37 delegates in Colorado and is picking them off one at a time in states that already voted. We’re just now learning that delegates select the nominees, not the voters.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are competing on which one can eliminate fossil fuels the fastest. At a time when low prices for gasoline and natural gas are providing great consumer benefits, they both want to replace these fuels with solar and wind, which are both expensive and inconsistent. We’re saving money directly on heating our homes and driving cars and trucks, and all kinds of businesses are saving, which translates to cheaper goods and services.

Clinton and Sanders finally agreed on a date for a debate on CNN. It will be this Thursday night, April 14, and amazingly it is on a night without major competition, except for folks frantically finishing their Income Tax returns. Of course you may point out that half the Democrat voters don’t have to pay federal income taxes so they can relax and enjoy the debate.

Sanders said Hillary is “unqualified” to be President. But he meant to say “disqualified”, because of money she accepted from Wall Street and certain votes as a Senator. Personally, I think the only disqualification could come from the FBI.

In an interview by Chris Wallace on Fox, President Obama continued to defend Clinton’s use of her own email server for Ultra Top Secret messages, “She did not intentionally put the United States at risk.” He also said that if the FBI and the Attorney General decide to charge her, he will stay out of it, “Guaranteed.”  Here’s my question: If Secretary Clinton did not recognize dozens of messages as Top Secret, does incompetence disqualify her? She’s a brilliant person, but she won’t want Trump or other Republican nominee calling her Incompetent Clinton.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

The 1924 Democratic Convention was historic. The 2016 conventions, for either party, won’t come close. Held in Madison Square Garden in New York City, it started June 24 and ended 16 days later! Today we hear about the possibility of a contested convention with maybe 3 to 5 ballots. In 1924 the Democrats nominated John W. Davis, finally, on ballot number 103. Will wrote 18 daily articles, long ones, on the convention. Here are a few comments from the first five:

“New York and the Democrats swamp Cleveland and the Republicans without ever having to start their convention… In fact I suggested to them that if I was them I would adjourn before they nominated somebody and spoiled it all.”

(Day 2) “The building is literally lined with flags. I could never understand the exact connection between the flag and a bunch of politicians. Why a politician speaker’s platform should be draped in flags any more than a factory where men work, or an office building, is beyond me.”

(Day 4) “We heard nothing from 10 o’clock in the morning until 6 at night but ‘The man I am going to name.’ Then they talk for another 30 minutes. There have been guys going to name men all day, and all we ever got named were about six out of a possible 200… You could never tell by a man’s talk who he was going to nominate. They all kept the names until the last word. It was safer… Illinois has forty delegates and they are all for different candidates and all have to make either nomination speeches or seconding speeches… (When Franklin Roosevelt nominated Al Smith) the galleries went wild and about ten state delegations marched and hollered for an hour. Talk about our civilization! Why, if they ever took a sanity test at a political convention 98 percent would be removed to an asylum.”

Will 2016 be like 1924?

Donald Trump has made a habit of talking with his foot in his mouth. Last week he stuck both feet in there when he was asked about abortion, NATO, and nuclear bombs.  Can you believe he made the anti-abortion folks mad, and also the women who want the freedom to terminate a pregnancy?

He said NATO is obsolete and we should stop defending Europe without them paying us. That made some European leaders so mad at Trump they called Hillary Clinton to complain. But they didn’t offer to pay any more.

He said that Japan and South Korea should pay far more than the one or two billion dollars they pay us to protect them from China and North Korea. Those counties know they are getting a bargain, but folks here shudder at the idea they might develop their own nuclear weapons.

Trump is a businessman whose main talent is negotiating deals. Hillary Clinton probably wishes she was equally skilled at negotiating deals because she is about to find herself dealing with the FBI. Director James Comey may question her personally about the use of her private unsecured email system for dozens of top secret messages. She is leading Bernie Sanders, but political observers say her biggest challenge to the nomination is the “Comey Caucus.”

The leading candidates remaining on both sides are so disliked and distrusted, it’s gotten to the point that voters would prefer to wipe out the last several months, bring back the original cast of candidates, and start over.

If you think the party conventions this year will be bizarre, unpredictable and unlike any ever held, let me take you back to 1924.

Both conventions in 1924 were peculiar, for opposite reasons. The Republicans met in Cleveland in early June. Will Rogers covered the convention, writing daily syndicated columns. President Coolidge was the obvious choice to continue. Will wrote, “He could have been nominated by post card…. [Coolidge’s popularity] started the minute he opposed Congress and the Senate. The people said, ‘If he is against Congress he must be right.’”  Will also wrote, “If these Delegates vote the way they were instructed to vote back home they will be the first politicians that ever did what the people told them to do. And if they do, this will be the first convention where the man won who had the most votes to start with.”

Will wrote, “This is the first Vice Presidential convention ever held in the history of politics.”  It took three ballots to select Charles Dawes after two others turned it down.

Will included a quote from a keynote speech by the Chairman of the convention, Frank W. Mondell, who said, ‘We want Republicans that will stick together, not Republicans in name only.’ (This phrase, shortened to RINO, was first used in 1920.)

Will wrote, “The biggest applause Mr. [Theodore E.] Burton got was when he said the Republican Party should remain intact, including [Robert] La Follette.” Well, they didn’t remain intact; the Progressives held their own convention a month later in Cleveland and selected La Follette, Senator from Wisconsin, to be their candidate for President. His run as a third party candidate failed and had no effect on the election.

The 1924 Democratic Convention was held in New York City, starting June 24. It did not end until July 10, requiring 103 ballots to select the nominee. Will Rogers wrote 18 daily newspaper columns about it. I may need several “Weekly Comments” to give you the full flavor of that convention.