Category: Uncategorized

The 2016 Presidential campaign keeps getting weirder and weirder. The longer the candidates talk, the more they say, the less people believe them.

Donald Trump keeps promising that Mexico will pay for a wall, China will suffer tariffs on all their goods sold here, Islamic terrorists will be wiped out in the Middle East, and we won’t need their oil because we’ll become energy independent. On Election Day, 90 percent of Republicans will say, “I don’t believe he can do what he claims, but I’m voting for him.”

Hillary Clinton keeps defending her personal email system for top secret messages despite a State Department report that her use of it was against policy (and against the law).

A year ago a third of voters thought Hillary Clinton was dishonest. Now two-thirds don’t believe her. At this rate by November 8, over 90 percent of Democrats will say, “I don’t believe a word she says, but I’m voting for her.”

While Trump has the nomination wrapped up, Bernie Sanders is having too much fun to quit campaigning. When Secretary Clinton refused to debate him before the California primary, he asked Trump to debate him instead. When Trump accepted, Hillary nearly choked on a Chipotle chicken burrito with hot sauce. She could imagine the catastrophe of Sanders and Trump ganging up on her for 2 hours in a debate from the Rose Bowl with fifty million watching on television. Well, Trump changed his mind before she needed a Heimlich maneuver.

If she ends up losing California to Sanders she may need mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.” WA # 31, July 15, 1923

“Another Decoration Day passed and Mr. Abraham Lincoln’s 300-word Gettysburg Address was not dethroned. I would try and imitate its brevity if nothing else. Of course, Lincoln had the advantage; he had no foreign policy message to put over. He didn’t even have a foreign policy.” DT #268, May 31, 1927

On CNN Thursday Hillary Clinton said firmly, “I will be the nominee.” But Bernie Sanders and his legion of young followers are refusing to give up. After all, he recently won in West Virginia and Oregon and finished in a virtual tie in Kentucky. He is drawing huge crowds in California ahead of the June 7 primary.

Mrs. Clinton was asked if Trump is qualified to be President. She said, “No.” I was not surprised because a lot of Republicans also question his qualifications. But the next question should have been, “Is Senator Sanders qualified?” Remember, he already said she is not qualified, so that would have gotten an interesting answer. She would have to say “yes” because she may need him as her Vice President to wrap up the election. Now, if she has others in mind for V-P, she could offer him a cabinet post. I suggest Treasury Secretary. If Sanders does not get a good offer from Hillary, he’ll apply to be the new President of Venezuela.

Donald Trump announced eleven possible Supreme Court nominees. He also listed half a dozen possible Vice President candidates. I think the most interesting one is Newt Gingrich. Their theme could be “2 Men, 6 Wives, and a Beauty Pageant.” That’s how you make American great again.

Meanwhile Clinton said she wants to be known as “Boring Hillary.” She prefers that over Heartless Hillary or Crooked Hillary. She probably got the idea from Calvin Coolidge, known as “Silent Cal.” He didn’t spew out an excess of words, but what he did say was never boring. He won the 1924 election on the theme of “Economy.”

Speaking of economy, Hillary said her husband would be in charge of reviving the Economy. As president, Bill Clinton did great with the economy, but he had Congressmen Newt Gingrich and John Kasich laying the ground rules for him. Together they balanced the budget three years in a row in the late 1990s. But I’m not sure the Clintons would be interested in any conservative principles now.

With all the young followers Bernie Sanders has with his socialist message, it makes you wonder about education in this country. When did our schools and colleges stop teaching about basic economics and capitalism? I suggest a required one week intensive workshop for every school and college so they can learn what we seem to have forgotten in the last 30 or 40 years. You may say, “That’s too much for those young minds to absorb.” Well, relax. This intensive training is for the teachers and professors. Every politician should get it too.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

“(Herbert) Hoover is formally in the race now.  The others are candidates by personal desires. It will be interesting to see what kind of race a known qualified man can make. This election will decide whether qualifications are an asset or a liability.” DT #484, February 13, 1928

Who would have guessed it? The Republicans started with 17 candidates and they already narrowed the field down to one. Here I had prepared a bunch of jokes and commentary for a contested convention in Cleveland. But this one might wind up as dull as the last one there, in 1924, when the Republicans stuck with Calvin Coolidge.

Surprisingly, there’s still hope for a raucous Democratic convention in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton still has pesky Bernie Sanders nipping at her ankles. She says she has all the delegates lined up, but Senator Sanders keeps winning states. Last one was Indiana, and West Virginia is next.

Clinton and Sanders both went to West Virginia to promise the coal miners cash for giving up their jobs. She promised $30 Billion but Bernie topped her with a bid of $41 Billion. See, a Socialist can outbid a Democrat because he is using other people’s money. Trump also went to West Virginia. He told the miners they can keep their jobs and earn as much as they can. Since they’re used to hard work, they seemed to like that idea better.

The only reason that Clinton and Sanders are offering anything to coal miners is because they are determined to finish destroying the coal business. They promised billions of dollars in West Virginia. But they didn’t say how much they will give to out-of-work miners in Kentucky or Pennsylvania or Ohio or Wyoming. Actually, the abundant supply of fracked natural gas is causing pain for the coal business. No reason for politicians and EPA to pile on and make it worse.

I guess they mean well and honestly believe that solar collectors and windmills can quickly replace all fossil fuels. But less than six percent of our electricity comes from solar and wind, and taxpayers had to pick up the tab for 25 to 50 percent of the cost to even get to six percent. Getting up to 70 or 80 percent of our electricity from the sun and wind can you imagine the billions (or trillions) of dollars it would require in subsidies. Wouldn’t be even a dollar left for coal miners.

In spite of Bernie’s persistence, the election will likely come down to Trump vs. Clinton. No matter what you think of either candidate, this will be a unique campaign. A television commentator said this morning, “There is no line between politics and entertainment.” That reminded me of my friend, professional speaker Scott McKain of Crothersville, Indiana, who says, “All business is show business.” You may not think this political campaign is business, but any time you spend a couple of billion dollars in “advertising”, believe me, it’s business.

Trump plans to meet on Thursday with Speaker Paul Ryan and other Washington Republicans to discuss strategy for the general election. Clinton will also have an important strategy meeting this month, with the FBI. Her strategy is to avoid indictment. Republicans hope she will be measured for a new pant suit (an orange one). Democrats are confident she did nothing illegal. Stupid, yes; perhaps even incompetent. But not illegal.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

          “Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of ‘em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they’ve been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington.” (Undated notes)

“Children, what was the first thing you learned about politics at school? It was that Politics was business, wasn’t it? That it was advertised under the heading of idealism, but it was carried on under the heading of business.” WA #356, Oct. 20, 1929

It looks like a big idea. I don’t know of any project that has any bigger field to draw from, ’cause practically everyone has a mother. So watch the Will Rogers Twelve Mother’s Day a Year Plan.

Father had a day, but you can’t find anybody who remembers when it was…  It’s been so confused with April the first.”

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

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.

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.”

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.

and “America First” or “America Only” 

Islamic terrorists killed more than 30 people in Brussels last week, including at least four Americans. The attacks were by the same gang that killed over a hundred in Paris last November.

The problem in Belgium and other European countries is they spend all their money on social programs and fine dining. There’s no money left to pay for a strong police force and military. That works as long as everyone in a country has the same belief system, the same culture, and a generous Big Brother from across the Atlantic. But when radical Islamists arrive by the thousands and set up their own isolated neighborhoods, with Sharia law and hatred for non-Muslims, that upsets the apple cart.

On Sunday Islamic terrorists (Taliban) killed more than 60 Christians and injured 300, mostly women and children, as they celebrated Easter at a park in Lahore, Pakistan. President Obama is home from his trip to Cuba and Argentina, but I heard no condemnation from him for this blatant attack on Christians.

After the Brussels attack, Republicans had criticized him for going to a baseball game in Havana with Raul Castro instead of flying home to work on a plan to destroy the ISIS Islamic terrorists. Now, if he had been on that trip alone, I’m sure he would have interrupted it and flown home for 24 hours, then on to Argentina. But since it was a Spring Break vacation for his wife, daughters and mother-in-law, why, he felt compelled to keep with the original schedule.

To his credit, President Obama did announce this weekend his own sure fire plan to defeat ISIL. In a calm voice he will say to them, “You are not strong; you are weak.” He plans to keep repeating it, over and over. After they hear “You are not strong; you are weak” maybe a thousand times, they will drop all weapons, and plead with the President to please stop the torture. Sure beats waterboarding.

Bernie Sanders swamped Hillary Clinton in all three states Saturday, Hawaii, Alaska and Washington. She seems to have the Democrat nomination wrapped up, but the strong showing by a self-proclaimed socialist means she may have to select a vice-president running mate with a similar record. Since there’s no Democrat as far left as Sanders, she might pick a man who could “appear” to be another Sanders. Julian Castro is HUD Secretary and former San Antonio mayor. He’s no socialist, but they might fool Sanders supporters long enough to get their vote. How’s this for a bumper sticker, “Clinton / Castro 2016.” Not a chance, not a chance.

Donald Trump announced a new idea called “America First.” Well, he may think it’s new, but ninety years ago Mayor Bill Thompson of Chicago started a Society called “America First.” Will Rogers responded with his own plan for one called “America Only.” He devoted an entire weekly column, kinda tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at the “America First” concept (excerpts below).

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“You have read about Mayor Bill Thompson’s Society, ‘America First.’  In America there was originally just one Society (well, it was really two combined): the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If you was here you was all members of the same club. You didn’t know whether you was 100 percent or 2¾ percent or what ratio you was. All you knew was that you belonged to this club called America, and all you had to do was work for it, fight for it, and act like a gentleman. As long as you did that, you could worship what you want to, talk any language you want to, in fact it looked like a pretty liberal layout. But after 150 or more years, it was immediately seen that this plan was no good, that the old boys that laid out the Constitution didn’t know much… ‘America First’ is all right, but it allows somebody else to be second. Now some times second can be almost as good as something that’s first. So that’s what my ‘America Only’ Society avoids. It’s with the whole idea of there being no one else. I can take my ‘America Only’ idea and eliminate wars. The minute we extinguish all other nations there will be no more wars, unless it’s a civil war among ourselves.  I am getting a lot of applications already, [from] real red blooded, go-gettum Americans that have seen this country trampled under foreign feet enough.” WA #255, Nov. 13, 1927

This Presidential election is coming down to another “Super Tuesday” that will likely be a “make or break” day for some of them. Trump and Clinton are winning, but this week will decide whether they are pushed ahead to an insurmountable lead or pulled back in the pack. Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Missouri are the battleground.

In Chicago a few rowdy guys who were too lazy or bored to go see their own candidates decided to gang up on a candidate they don’t like and cause a ruckus. MoveOn.org sponsored the disruption but they had a lot of help. And Trump deserves part of the blame for holding an event on a college campus where more so-called students major in “studies” of various cultures (Blacks, Women, Hispanics…) than engineering, business or agriculture. If he had held the big rally at Northwestern, for example, the students there are too busy studying to waste time organizing protests against a businessman running for President.

The Chicago young people who don’t like their current economic condition should be complaining to the Mayor or Governor or President Obama. Trump and the other candidates didn’t create their misery.

Ohio State University hosted a CNN Town Hall tonight with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but not at the same time. It was peaceful and apparently nobody from the other party caused any disruptions. I didn’t hear the whole 2-hour Q&A, but I did hear this question for Sec. Clinton. She was asked how she was going to help poor people, including poor whites. Part of her answer was, “We’re going to move away from coal. We’re going to move away from all fossil fuels.” Huh? Eliminating high paying coal mining jobs and shutting down the oil and gas industry will wipe out the cheapest sources of electricity and transportation fuels. Instead of helping poor people, she would create a few million more of ‘em.

Here’s good news for all of us who like to eat. Recently I attended a couple of events with about a thousand farmers. In discussions on politics I never heard a one of ‘em say they would leave the country if so-and-so is elected. That’s a relief because we need all our farmers. On the other hand, the prospect of losing a few hundred Hollywood folks for the same reason is no problem at all.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“The trouble with Chicago is there ain’t much ‘better element.’ There was no shooting in Chicago on Election Day, but it will drop back to normal right away.” DT #219, Apr. 6, 1927

“The locusts I saw swarming in the Argentine are houseflies compared to the destruction caused by a Presidential election.” WA #516, Nov. 13, 1932

“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.” DT #1948, Nov. 1, 1932

“It’s getting so if a man wants to stand well socially, he can’t afford to be seen with either the Democrats or the Republicans.” WA #26, June 10, 1923

 “You know the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.” WA #3, December 31, 1922