TRUMP'S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Conflicts of interest between the President Elect's public duties and his various business ventures around the world are worrying many observers. Will his Presidential decisions be influenced by his businesses? Will he use the powers of his office to benefit his businesses? Is a wall between his office and his businesses even remotely possible?

But his businesses just might provide a solution to a most troublesome problem, which is the President Elect's obvious lack of talent and temperament for being the leader of the United States of America. If his staff can keep the President Elect's focus on his businesses and away from affairs of state, we just might be able to survive his time in office.

So instead of seeking to remove The Donald from his beloved enterprises, let's all encourage him to immerse himself in their operations. If he enriches himself, so be it. Better that than having him make decisions regarding the fate of the planet. Hopefully, Mike and company can keep things under control until the nation can correct its most egregious error in at least the last century. 

NO INTEL BRIEFINGS FOR TRUMP

The new President has apparently been skipping his intel briefings, and the usual media and Democratic busybodies are concerned. But perhaps they should not be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Keeping The Donald as far as possible away from serious matters of national security and international relations might just be the most desirable course to follow.

Let VP Mike Pence and others handle the hard stuff. Leave The Donald to focus on his titter wars and on brow-beating American businesses to stay home.

"Hey Mike, how's that dispute with Russia over Ukraine working out."

"We're handling it, Mr. President. No need for you to worry. Hey, didja' catch that last SNL bit on you? They're really having fun."

"Those cockroaches! Where's my twitter machine? I'm gonna smoke those lying unfair rats!"  

2017 TURKEY PARDONING, NOT

According to an inside source, President Trump will not be pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys. The source characterized the long-practiced tradition as "frivolous" and "not indicative of what made America great." The pardoning ceremony would also present logistical problems as President Trump intends to spend most of his time in New York City or Mar-A-Lago, avoiding the nation's capital as much as possible.

Instead of being pardoned, two turkeys will be publicly waterboarded and then dispatched by the President's big-game hunting sons, Eric and Don Jr. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will also participate.

IS THIS THE NEXT FOUR YEARS?

Is this the next four years? Whinny-boy, thin-skin Prez goes ballistic every few days and throws a tweet-storm; media react in mock horror and spend their few days analyzing the tweets as if they were Einstein's equations; and then we repeat?

If this is our future, a national nervous breakdown might be in the cards.

The whinny-boy, thin-skin Prez ain't likely to change. So the monkey is on the media's back to tone down the drama. And that's the main-stream media, the supposed grownups in the room. Ignore all those fringe outfits, such as Fox, Breibart News, and so on. They desire something akin to a national nervous breakdown. It's what gets them out of bed in the morning.

One thing the main-stream media should do is to only deal with Whinny-Boy on an arms-length, transparent basis. No off-the-record stuff. No opportunity for the he-said, she-said that infatuates the populace's lowest-common denominator. That just plays into Whinny-Boy's strong suite of putting his own spin on what happened in the back room.

As for reporting the tweet-storms, well, they are news. But they don't have to be front-page, the world-is-ending news. Just a little box at the bottom of page 2 or at the end of a newscast giving Whinny-Boy's tweets of the day. No need to analyze and dissect them. Twitter is just a toy, not a step forward in civilization's journey. 

ELECTION POSTMORTEM

People, at least a few anyway, often try to find the bright side of an appalling situation. Hence this effort to find a glimmer of light in recent dark events.

There is a possibility that the election of Donald Trump to the Office of President of these United States is a move toward the center of the political spectrum. Over the last decades, at least since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the extremes of the two major political parties—Democratic and Republican, most particularly the latter—have been on the ascendency.

On the Republican side, the rise of the extreme right has been steady. Some rhetoric at the beginning of the Administration of George W. Bush suggested a desire for inclusiveness, but the tone quickly faded. The strength of that Administration’s conservative leanings was evidenced by the adoption of significant tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the latter year of course being when major, hence expensive, military actions were underway against a foe called “Terroism.” Incidentally, though many conservatives will vehemently argue the contrary, those tax cuts likely contributed to the financial exuberance that culminated in the Great Recession of 2007-09.

The creep to extreme regions on the left by the Democratic Party has been more meandering. Democrats even pursued a somewhat centrist path during Bill Clinton’s two terms (1993-2000). And Democrats have not been in power enough to get too deep into the progressive swamp. Barack Obama had a mere two years of maneuvering room before he was largely corralled by the increasing power and belligerency of the Republicans. Nevertheless, the extreme left still preached a most progressive agenda, as witnessed by the calls in the recent election for free (meaning government paid-for) college education.

A result of these decades of political polarization, recognized by members of both parties, by the media, and by the public, has been political gridlock. The general feeling is that nothing is getting done. One major thing that is certainly not getting done is any progress toward controlling entitlement spending. As the population ages, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is capturing an ever greater, and unsustainable, share of the federal budget. Neither party has shown a willingness to confront the American people with the unattractive but necessary options for tackling this most serious threat to the nation’s financial well-being.

Thus there is a need for someone or some group unorthodox enough to assault the rigid political and ideological ramparts that are preventing Americans from doing what we think we are best at: solving problems. There is also a need for educating the American people on what is and is not possible. For example, promising an annual GDP (gross domestic product) growth of 5 or 6 percent if certain policies are adopted or abandoned is just not realistic.

But forget the second need for the time-being and focus on need number one: a significant reduction in the polarization that is preventing problem-solving. Just maybe that is what break-the-mold Donald Trump can accomplish. He may not achieve many, or any, of his concrete goals, but if he manages to get Democrats and Republicans, at least some of them, back toward the center of the political spectrum, he will have done a service.

Of course, this result depends on whether he can move from the rabble-rousing Donald Trump of the last year and a half to being a much more controlled and even-handed individual. The jury is very much out on that possibility.