Monthly Archives: April 2016

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Saving the saviors: don’t abandon our Afghan partners

Thousands of desperate people in Afghanistan who want to emigrate to the United States legally face government restrictions and bureaucratic delays that put them at risk.

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An Afghan interpreter assists U.S. troops

 

 

On Thursday, the House Armed Services Committee approved 60-2 the 2017 Defense spending bill that would abandon thousands of these people who risked their lives, and the lives of their families, to help U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

The U.S. State Department can now approve just 4000 visas for at least 10,000 of these brave men and women who are waiting for America to reach out its hand to them.

Not only does the Defense spending bill now being considered not relax that limit, but it would add restrictions.

The only Afghans who could apply to the program would include interpreters who served with the U.S. military and went “traveling off-base with such personnel or performing sensitive and trust activities for United States military personnel stationed in Afghanistan.”

That language would leave out Afghans who do maintenance or security on U.S. bases as well as those who work at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

“These are people who have put their lives on the line not just for their country, but for ours,” Representative Seth Moulton, (D-Mass) a former Marine Corps officer, said when he introduced an amendment to create additional visas. “The very least we can offer them is a chance to stay alive.”

Moulton’s amendment failed, but the bill has more hoops to go through before coming law.

Going forward, Congress should protect the Afghans who protected our troops.To do otherwise would be a stain on our country’s commitment to justice.

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America First: of course.

When Donald Trump laid out his foreign policy agenda on Wednesday, April 27, many of the critical commentators latched on to his statement, “America first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.”

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, Wednesday, April 27, 2016. ePhoto/Evan Vucci

“Trump’s New Slogan Has Old Baggage From Nazi Era” was the headline of a Bloomberg column. “America first” and the idea it represented — American neutrality towards the Nazis — has been largely banished from respectable discourse, the column said, in an attempt to discredit Trump.

Critics suggested that Trump was advocating a discredited policy that had been soundly rejected by Americans before WWII. It’s not that simple.

The fact is that until Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were genuinely divided between interventionism and isolationism. Millions of patriotic Americans believed that it was not in the nation’s interest to get involved again in European turmoil. Some polls showed that in June 1940, American opinion was split two-to-one in favor of staying out of the war, even if it meant Britain losing.

Started on September 4, 1940, the America First Committee, which favored nonintervention in Europe’s war, had 450 chapters across the country at its peak.

America First’s most outspoken leader was Charles Lindbergh, famous for having been the first to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1927.

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Lindbergh speaks at an America First Committee rally in Oct. 1941

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, Lindbergh became active in the war effort.

As for America First, it was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

I’m not a big fan of Trump, but attempts to discredit him by his reference to America First are off-base. The hard-headed philosophy of putting America first in foreign policy decisions is not obsolete and Trump’s foreign police prescription is not isolationist.

“No country has ever prospered that failed to put its own interests first. Our friends and enemies put their interests above ours, and we must start doing the same,” Trump said on Wednesday.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the same thing, though in a different way.  “In a democracy as pluralistic as ours, the absence of an articulated ‘national interest’ either produces a fertile ground for those wishing to withdraw from the world or creates a vacuum to be filled by parochial groups and transitory pressures,”she said.

Ensuring a nation’s survival is a critical obligation of a leader in foreign policy. You will not be a successful leader of America if you recoil from the urgency of protecting the national interest, of making America first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Talk about inequality!

Buying a Tesla? You’re probably pretty well off.

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2016 Tesla Model S

After all, the 2016 Tesla Model S 70 has a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $71,200. For the high-horsepower Model S P85D, you’ll shell out $106,200. Check off all the options boxes and you’ll be looking at more than $131,000.

Or how about other electric car options, such as a 2016 BMW i8 for $141,695, a 2016 Cadillac ELR for $64,995, a 2016 Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid for $94,250 or a 2016 Porsche Cayenne S E-Hybrid for $78,250.

If you want to go downscale, there’s also the 2016 Nissan Leaf at $29,860, the 2016 Chevrolet Volt  at $33,995 or the 2016 Volkswagen e-Golf at $29,815.

Whatever the price, the rest of us will be helping you out with a federal tax credit of up to $7500. Maybe that would make some sense if the credit was helping a broad swath of the population. But it’s not.

Even though some electric vehicles on the market are relatively low-priced, it’s the affluent who are buying them. Well-off people who have incomes in the top 20% of all taxpayers are claiming 90 percent of federal electric vehicle (EV) tax credits, according to a recent study out of the Energy Institute at Haas, at the University of California, Berkeley.

The impact of the tax credit on the federal budget is the same as it would have been with a direct subsidy because the federal government ends up with less revenue.

Maintaining such tax credits for the affluent is insane public policy.

At a time of rising national debt, and struggling efforts to meet the country’s essential needs, subsidizing the well-off to encourage them to buy electric vehicles makes no sense and exacerbates inequality.

Perhaps  Oregon State Representative Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene, Chair of the House Revenue Committee, could be the Oregon leader of an effort to repeal of the federal electric vehicle tax credit and state-level electric vehicle tax breaks. After all, Barnhart, who is always railing about the need to close tax loopholes that favor big business and the rich and to adjust our tax system to increase fairness, owns a Tesla.

 

 

 

 

 

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Clinton’s winning… and losing

Like the houseguest who overstayed her welcome, Hillary Clinton is losing admirers the longer she’s on the stage.

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She won a decisive victory in New York’s Democratic primary yesterday. You’d think the victory was evidence of her steady climb in popular approval, a sign of voters’ deep and growing affection for her.

But the closer she comes to victory, the more people dislike her.

In January 2013, just prior to her official resignation as Secretary of State on Feb. 1,  just 25 percent of voters from both parties held a negative view of Hillary.

By March 2016, a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey revealed that among voters in both parties, 51 percent held a negative view of Hillary and 38 percent held a positive view.

This month, things were considerably worse. An April 10-14 poll showed that among voters in both parties, 56 percent held a negative view of Mrs. Clinton and 32 percent held a positive view. The way things are going, nobody will really like her by November.

Her only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that no candidate on the Democratic or Republican side is seen favorably by more than 50 percent of registered voters.

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By the way, Hillary’s New York victory yesterday was less impressive than her performance in 2008. That year, when she won the primary against Barack Obama, she carried all but one of New York’s 62 counties.

This time, she lost all but 13 of New York’s counties to Bernie Sanders, an astonishing shift. What saved Hillary in the popular vote was that her wins were concentrated in populous urban areas, including Buffalo, Syracuse and New York City.

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Memo to Verizon strikers: you’re doomed

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are mining for union votes, so their pandering to the 39,000 Verizon strikers is par for the course.

Both greeted strikers yesterday at Verizon offices in Brooklyn and Manhattan. “This is just another major corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans,” Sanders said  in Brooklyn. “And today you’re standing up not just for justice for Verizon workers. You’re standing up for millions of Americans who don’t have a union.”

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Bernie Sanders addressing striking Verizon workers IN Brooklyn. “Thank you for your courage in standing up against corporate greed,” he told them.

 

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Hillary Clinton speaks to union leader, Denis Tranor, while she visits striking Verizon workers in Manhattan.

The full-throated proclamations of support from Clinton and Sanders don’t, however, change the fact that the jobs of most of the strikers are doomed.

That’s because, as was the case with a 2011 Verizon strike, many of the strikers service the company’s shrinking landline, or wireline, phone business, or the company’s FIOS network, where Verizon is trying to reduce its role. They don’t service Verizon’s Wireless network, which provides most of Verizon’s profits.

The striking workers are complaining about not sharing in Verizon’s profits, but ignoring the fact that they are not the ones generating the profits. Why in heaven’s name would Verizon want to go out of its way to accommodate the strikers when the customer base they serve is collapsing?

All the public back and forth accusations being covered in the media, which love conflict, obscure the simple fact that the business is changing and nothing the strikers or the politicians grasping for votes say will change that.

 

 

 

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Rocket Man: a retiree’s encore act

   “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.” Dennis Gabor, 1963

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The International Space Station. Magical, isn’t it?

Retirement can be a new beginning, not just an end.

Jim Nadir, who retired from Intel after 33 years there, is a space enthusiast with an impassioned commitment to kids.

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Jim Nadir mentoring a student

When he retired, Jim chose not to spend his time in an easy chair or on the golf course. Instead, he served as a volunteer at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, CA. For the past three years, he’s been mentoring students in the school’s unique advanced space program. The highly lauded program develops student experiments for the International Space Station (ISS), develops rockets and will launch the school’s first satellite from the ISS next year.

The ISS Program is a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) outreach to schools around the world. Together with the partner schools, it has launched 73 experiments to the ISS over the past 6 years.

Enthusiastically devoted to mentoring, Jim has helped junior high and high school students put experiments aboard the ISS. He also participates in the school’s satellite development and rocket programs. The rocket program launches high powered sounding rockets from the San Joaquin Valley and Black Rock, Nevada that go from two to eight miles into the atmosphere.

Allie is one of Jim Nadir’s success stories. When they first met three years ago Allie was in 7th grade at Valley Christian Middle School. She was withdrawn, so shy she often hung back from even telling her teachers and classmates her name.

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Allie working on a project

A teacher noticed that Allie had a natural curiosity and placed her in the newly created junior high ISS class, a challenging class attended mostly by A-level students. The class was a proof of concept that junior high students were up to the task to put experiments aboard the ISS. There, Allie began to go through a gradual metamorphosis, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

Her enthusiasm ignited, Allie joined the high school’s ISS program as a freshman. “She got motivated and charged up there and just suddenly blossomed into a very responsible young person,” Jim said.

Once timid Allie, now a sophomore, recently made a video interview with NASA, describing her involvement with the ISS program. “She couldn’t even tell you her name three years ago and now she’s confidently standing in front of a camera,” Jim said. The video ran on NASA TV in connection with a March 22, 2016 launch of a resupply mission to the ISS.

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International Space Station, with Valley Christian High School experiments on board,  lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 22, 2016

“One of the most exciting aspects to the ISS program is that students are given a chance to apply what is learned in the classroom to a project which will deliver unique results that can be applied to real world problems,” Allie said.

“When I first entered the program, I was not particularly sure what my true passions were,” Allie added. “ I have found that I possess talent in both science and mechanical engineering. I know precisely what my skill sets are and what I am actually capable of, and I owe it all to the ISS program.”

Andy’s another success story. He was in the same junior high ISS class as Allie where he innovated new fluidic bags, spore injectors and pioneered the use of peristaltic pumps. His innovations propagated into the high school and went to other schools as well. “I found out that I could innovate and make decisions,” said Andy.

His junior high experiment was presented at the ASGSR (American Society for Gravitational and Space Research) Conference in Pasadena where it won “Best Use of the Space Station” award from CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space), the sole manager of the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory.

Valley Christian High School offers students the opportunity to specialize through its Applied Math, Science and Engineering (AMSE) program. The ISS Project provides students with the opportunity to conceive, design, build, test, integrate, and qualify computer-controlled science experiments that are then sent into space and are active on the International Space Station for a minimum of 30 days.

Recent experiments studied plant growth, protein crystallization, radiation profiles aboard the ISS, the behavior of ant colonies, and bacteria growth in a microgravity environment.

Many of these experiments have their roots in previous NASA experiments and are extending them to the next logical step. For example, Dr. Jan Leach (Colorado State) discovered that soy bean plants in microgravity are more susceptible to fungal infections. The students, after reviewing her NASA paper, sent two experiments to combat fungal infection, one uses inoculation and the other uses vibrations in an attempt to strengthen the plant’s cell walls to resist infection. This vibration experiment has caught NASA’s interest because of its unique approach.

Jim spends most of his time mentoring students developing experiments, guiding them on satellite development or developing rocket simulation environments. This involves helping with such things as how to design a transistor circuit, building reliable fluid bags, micro fluidic component validation, PCB design, mechanical planning, and software development.

Jim retired from Intel’s Santa Clara, CA site in 2007. He told me his story in the hope it will inspire other retirees who would enjoy “putting their DNA into space” while doing something meaningful for the next generation of students or whatever else will help change the world for the better.

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Jim Nadir’s Intel career: Jim began his  33 year career at Intel developing peripherals for the 8086. He subsequently developed the layout and circuits for Intel’s first standard cell library and logic synthesis (pioneered at Intel Haifa), and later was the leader for the Pentium Instruction cache and the Itanium Data Cache. He then moved into New Business Development ASIC group and later pursued FPGA technology and other programmable fabrics for custom and small volume runs.

Resources:

The Encore Career Handbook, a comprehensive, nuts-and-bolts guide to making a difference and a living in the second half of your life.

http://www.Encore.org – A non-profit that is spearheading efforts to engage millions of people in later life as a vital source of talent to benefit society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The truth be told: Bill Clinton and Black Lives Matter

The real truth-teller in Hillary’s political campaign isn’t the candidate. It’s her husband.

Yesterday, Bill Clinton got into quite a set-to with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia. What set it off was the chants of protesters repeatedly interrupting his remarks to protest his 1994 crime bill on the claim it was anti-black.

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The protesters also held up signs saying things such “Clinton’s crime bill destroyed our communities” and “Black youth are not super-predators,” referring to a remark Hillary made in a 1996 address at New Hampshire’s Keene State College in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act. “We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel,” she said then.

Earlier this year, Hillary backtracked in an effort to pacify Black Lives Matter and other critics. “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today,” Hillary Clinton told the Washington Post.

Bill Clinton’s lengthy and spirited response to the Philadelphia protesters was more clearly a full-throated defense of his own administration’s record than an endorsement of his wife, but much of it was right on.

Sounding like a conservative at times, Clinton defended strict law enforcement as something that was necessary to protect black families from marauding black gangs and drug dealers committing black-on-black violence in inner cities.

“Let’s just tell the whole story,” Bill Clinton said, asserting that his crime bill was flawed because of Republican objections, but it was still a critical, necessary bill. “I talked to a lot of African American groups. They thought black lives mattered. They said ‘take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals.”

“And because of that bill and the background check law, we had a 46 year low in the deaths of people by gun violence, and who do you think those lives were,” Clinton said. “Whose lives were saved that mattered?”

When the protesters continued interrupting him, Clinton got even more animated and defended Hillary’s use of the term “super predators” in 1996. “I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African American children,” he shouted. “You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.”

“When somebody won’t hush and listen to you, that ain’t democracy,” Clinton said. “They’re afraid of the truth. Don’t you be afraid of the truth.”

You got it, Bill.

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Correcting history: no more good guys (or girls)

In the face of student protests, Princeton University has decided that while it will retain Woodrow Wilson’s name on the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, it will be transparent about Wilson’s “failings and shortcomings”. A special Woodrow Wilson legacy committee of the Princeton Board of Trustees called for the University “to acknowledge that Wilson held and acted on racist views”.

Some students, under the banner of a Black Justice League, had demanded that Princeton remove Wilson’s name from the school because of his clear racism during his academic and political careers.

So now that we’re on the path of publicly highlighting not just the achievements, but also the warts-and-all failings, of Americans in the context of current thinking, I offer the following new text to accompany all monuments, displays, etc. intended to honor some prominent people.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

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Wilson (1856-1924) served honorably as President of Princeton University and as the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921) After WWI, he tried to build an enduring peace through creation of the League of Nations. He was also a leader of the Progressive Movement. In 1918 he endorsed the 19th Amendment whose ratification provided all women the right to vote by its ratification in 1920.

P.S. Arguing that segregation lessened “friction” between the races, Wilson permitted it throughout the government during his presidency. Though Wilson had initially been friendly to the Russian Revolution, his attitude changed once labor strikes, race riots, and anarchist attacks broke out across the United States in 1919. In response, Wilson’s attorney general deported left-wing activists, raided political groups, and arrested thousands. In the words of one historian, Wilson’s “legacy of repression lasted for decades”; his administration’s violation of civil liberties served as a precedent for McCarthyism in the 1950s.

In short, Wilson was a sleazeball.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh

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Lindbergh (1902-1974), an American aviator, made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927.

P.S. Because of his initial opposition to U.S. entry into WWII, some accused him of being a fascist sympathizer. Also, after his and his wife’s death, it was learned that Lindbergh had maintained three secret families in Europe that included seven out-of-wedlock children borne by three different mothers. So much for the greatness of The Lone Eagle. What a sleazeball.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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Roosevelt, who assumed the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression as 32nd President (1933-1945), guided America through one of its greatest domestic crises and helped lead the Allies to victory over Germany and Japan in WWII.

P.S. Roosevelt cheated on his wife, Eleanor, all over the place, most notably with Lucy Mercer (later Rutherfurd), endorsed the internment of thousands of Japanese, Italian and German aliens and U.S. citizens in American internment camps during WWII, tried to “pack” the U.S. Supreme Court to impose his will, and failed to protect millions of Jews from being slaughtered by Hitler’s armies. In short, he was a cheating, power-hungry, civil rights ignoring sleazeball.

Martin Luther King Jr.

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Dr. Martin Luther King is widely regarded as America’s pre-eminent advocate of nonviolence and one of the greatest nonviolent leaders in world history.

During the years of his leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, African Americans achieved major, genuine progress toward racial equality in America. Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Nobel Peace Prize lecture and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are among the most revered orations and writings in the English language.

P.S. King’s critics accused him of an overblown need for adulation and a complex personal life that included a myriad of affairs during his marriage to Loretta Scott King. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, a close associate of King, said in his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down that King had a “weakness for women.”Clayborne Carson—who was engaged by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to compile a collection of her husband’s writings—said extensive portions of the dissertation King prepared for his Ph.D. in theology from Boston University, “A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” was plagiarized. In summary, King was actually a sleazeball.

Suzie Baldwin

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Baldwin, a senior at Princeton University, comes from Lexington, Kentucky and graduated from Eastview Prep School as an AP Scholar with distinction. She was captain of the debate team and earned several awards in regional competitions. She also participated in the National Honor Society and student government. At Princeton, she is pursuing a major in Political Science with a minor in Religion. She is a member of the Varsity Equestrian Team and volunteers at the Eastside Homeless Shelter. After graduation, Baldwin intends to travel in Europe, enter Harvard Law School and then work for the ACLU.

P.S. Baldwin, born in 1996, was raised an only child on a massive estate with a thoroughbred horse farm in Kentucky where she was a spoiled brat. She frequently threw temper tantrums, both in public and at home, hated to hear the word “no”, refused to clean up and put her toys away, expected to be listened to at all times, and frequently interrupted adult conversations. In high school, Baldwin exuded an air of condescension and was widely disliked by teachers for her unwillingness to listen to opposing points of view. At Princeton, she’s a royal pain-in-the-ass in class, where she constantly insists that “the revolution is coming”.  Baldwin is, in essence, a sleazeball.

John Q. Smith

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Smith, born Feb. 4, 1960, has, to all appearances, lived a fairly ordinary and honorable life. Raised in Hillsboro, OR, during his early summers he sold lemonade in front of his home and sent the proceeds to a local homeless shelter. In high school he played quarterback on the football team and participated in the robotics program. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in accounting, after which he went to work for Precision Castparts in Portland. He is married to the former Jamie Lynn Wilkinson and has two children.

P.S. Smith presents a public picture of himself as a normal, stand-up guy.However, as a child he had a habit of shoplifting items at major retailers, in college he bought liquor for underage fraternity brothers and he hid a brief cheat sheet in his shoe when taking his CPA exam. He repeatedly overvalued his old clothes contributions to Goodwill on his tax returns and fudged on his resume.In addition, at an accounting convention in New Orleans in his 30s, he smoked some marijuana and engaged a prostitute (though he thought, at first, that she was just an attractive woman at the hotel bar). In short, beneath his thin veneer of respectability, Smith is a sleazeball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’ll be too damn bad if Trump gets walloped

The glee was palpable. This past weekend, E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist at the Washington Post, exuberantly declared that Donald Trump’s candidacy is set to implode.

But such elation may be misplaced if Trump’s defeat allows the status quo politicians, power brokers and so-called thought leaders to claim victory and dismiss the concerns of many of his frustrated and embittered supporters.

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Trump’s supporters reflect a lot of discontent that’s boiling up in this country. If it’s just dismissed as the complaints of a fringe and we return to politics as usual, that would be a tragedy.

It would mean ignoring millions of Americans like Sam W., a longtime friend from back East.

Sam called me the other day to shoot the breeze. We started talking about cycling tours and our children, but it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to politics.

And off he went, hardly pausing for a breath.

Sam’s a professional, has a graduate degree and is drawn to Donald Trump, partly because of his disgust with politics as usual. In an exasperated tone, he said he felt that the pundits, the media and political leaders in both parties are demonizing him and others like him as poorly educated, ill-informed, racist bumpkins who need to get with the program.

“It’s really discouraging,” Sam said, “to be labeled a nutcase and a low-knowledge voter because I think the leaders of both parties have utterly failed us in confronting America’s problems.”

His litany of frustrations was a long one.

When he argues that massive illegal immigration and sanctuary cities undermine the rule of law, sanctimonious liberals call him a bigot, he said.

When he lambastes Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s disastrous lead-from-behind foreign policy, the collapse of one Middle East country after another, Russia’s takeover of Crimea and ascendency in Syria and other international messes, he said he’s dismissed or ignored.

Sam also endorses the argument that some international defense agreements need to be reexamined. “Too many countries are only able to afford their cushy social welfare programs because the U.S. picks up the tab for their security,” Sam said. “That’s crap. When our own budget is strained, isn’t it legitimate to consider more sharing of the burden?”

When he expresses his frustration with the latest PC controversy, such as  the complaints by Emory University students that somebody writing “Trump 2016” in chalk on a campus sidewalk makes them feel unsafe and in pain, he’s accused of being a narrow-minded old fogie.

Sam is also disheartened with the failure of both parties to honestly tackle the ever-expanding national debt. When George W. Bush left office in January 2009, the national debt was $10 trillion. Now in the eighth year of Obama’s presidency, it is over $19 trillion.

But neither party is talking seriously about the critical need to reduce federal spending and avoid a debt crisis. Democrats never seem to give a damn, Sam said, but the Republicans aren’t much better because they say they care, but the truth is they still vote for budget busting bills.

Sam also doesn’t think either party has really shown much real concern for the poor. The Democrats just want to expand the welfare state and generate thank-you votes, he said, and the Republicans seem insensitive to the legitimate concerns of struggling Americans.

For that matter, the establishment elite of both parties doesn’t seem to understand the legitimate worries of the middle class either, Sam said. A lot of Americans are really scared and struggling just to stay in place, he said, but politicians seem more focused on catering to big banks, corporations and the wealthy.

And think about what we may end up with if Trump is pushed out, Sam said. “On the Republican side we could be faced with Ted Cruz, a right-wing bible-thumping moralist who is a pariah in his own party. On the other side, Hillary Clinton is an uninspiring and widely distrusted candidate whose entire family stinks of greed and appears oblivious to common standards of conduct.”

“An awful lot of Americans are just completely disillusioned with U.S. politics as usual,” Sam said.

 “Whether they are the academic, media, and entertainment elites of the Left or the political and business elites of the Right, America’s self-appointed best and brightest uniformly view the passions unleashed by Trump as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval peasants’ revolt. And, like their medieval forebears, they mean to crush it,” the National Review said earlier this year.

If they succeed, and then ignore the concerns of Sam and millions of Americans like him, the prognosis for stability and progress is not good.