When I was in my 20’s, one of the biggest life lessons I had to learn was not to underestimate people.  I used to think that because a person didn’t appear a certain way, that they weren’t smart, or otherwise had little to offer.  Boy was I wrong.  After getting put in my place a few times, I learned that it was necessary to wise up in a hurry.

This is where I think my generation is making a huge miscalculation about the youth of this country.  In high school I was a perennial under-achiever.  On purpose.  I was very much into work-life balance even back then.  Centennial has never been a top high academic high school in the state of Oregon and probably never will be, but it was definitely middle class and sent its fair share of students to college every year.  I set the lofty goal of entering the local JC and whew, just made it.

Having lived in a few different cities now and familiarized myself with different school districts, I think I can honestly say that today’s youth is considerably more intelligent than my generation ever hoped to be.  If you consider the International Baccalaureate programs (IB) that many high school students voluntarily take it upon themselves to enter to enhance their chances at scholarships or college entrance, the skills they possess overall – they are most certainly more intelligent than practically everyone in my high school and certainly anyone who I hung out with.  Go to a talent show at your local high school sometime.  These kids amaze.

Politically speaking the problem has been that they haven’t been particularly engaged to-date.  But I think we’re turning the corner on that as I write this.

It remains to be seen how long it lasts but so far the students from Parkland have got momentum on their side.  Today they rallied at the state house in Tallahassee, several appeared in a town hall format with Jake Tapper of CNN, some families met with Trump at the White House for a ‘listening session’, and there’s the upcoming “March for Our Lives” in DC scheduled for March 24th.

I watched  the CNN town hall tonight and several passionate, articulate kids stood up to United States Senators and held them to task.  They didn’t let them dance around their questions.  I guess having to witness your friends getting shot down at school might be a motivator to do that.

The big question is, is this a real movement that history will remember.  I recall the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960’s very well.  Even though I was pre-teen at the time, the images stayed with me.  Back then the issue was also life threatening.  Our parents’ generation was fine sending 18 year olds off to die in a senseless war.  Out of that grew the hippie movement and anti-establishment attitudes in general.

The establishment did in fact underestimate the youth of the day.  There were anti-war marches on a weekly basis.  The young adults of the day registered to vote and made a difference.

The parallels between the 1960’s and today are striking.  The best way to motivate people to get up off the couch is to threaten and insult them.  Republicans have done both.  Today’s youth feel threatened by Republicans being bought off by the NRA and consistently obstinate when it comes to changing gun legislation.  Now they can’t even go to class without having to worry if the next tragedy will be at their school.

They feel insulted by the likes of former Republican congressman Jack Kingston — an occasional CNN panelist who suggested the Parkland students weren’t speaking their own minds but rather, were being “coached by liberals” for what to say.

I honestly think that one statement alone might increase the size of the March for Our Lives event by 100,000 people.

Having seen the achievements of today’s youth in person I’m perfectly comfortable saying to my fellow classmates — if we think we’re old and wise, we’re only half correct.  These kids are smarter than us.

Lastly, if you want to maintain the status quo, it’s a huge mistake to tick them off.  They’ll mobilize and eat your lunch.

I’ll be paying attention to the demographics of the next election cycles.  I think there will be a significant up-tick in young voters and I predict they will vote for a youth movement which is something I’ve been saying we need for a long time.

I’m with the guy who tweeted the other day:

I want to join whatever political party Emma Gonzalez just started

Republicans are fleeing Congress in record numbers.  The list is long.  32 at last count between the House and the Senate.

In some cases, like Jason Chavez, Trey Gowdy, Orrin Hatch, and Darrell Issa it’s good riddance.  But Jeff Flake, Charlie Dent and Bob Corker were relatively sane moderates compared to their peers.

While there’s little doubt I stand to the left of Bernie Sanders on most issues, I for one would not look forward to the day when there was one party rule.  I think it’s actually good to have a party there to keep things in check a bit.

This particular version of the Republican party — which Reagan would not recognize and it would be doubtful he’d endorse — is not fit to lead.  The reasons are obvious now and it’s not the main point of this blog post to regurgitate that issue one more time.  They just have no idea how to govern and are currently being lead by a would-be king who behaves as if he owes Putin a few hundred mil.

What I’d like to see is Democratic or Independent rule in the White House with Democrats in the majority of one or both houses, but with a strong Republican party to counter-balance all the wild ideas Democrats come up with.  We need a sane party in place to keep things in check.

Republicans have demonstrated they have no clue on how to lead so therefore, they must be relegated to the minority party.  Democrats, if left to their own devices will socialize every aspect of society and while some Americans would welcome more of a European lifestyle, I really don’t think that’s who we are as a nation.  It wouldn’t work here because as a people we are different from Europeans.

Democratic rule with a strong but moderate Republican party who is interested in keeping things in check and working to solve problems.  That sounds like the ticket to me.

So where are these moderate Republicans that we so desparately need?  Sadly some sensible Republicans are getting out because the environment under Trump is too toxic.  I don’t blame them for being discouraged.

In large part the problem can be traced back to Citizens United.   It takes money to get elected and lots of it.  Party bosses won’t fund but the most extreme candidates.  I read David McCoullough’s biography on Harry Truman several years ago.  As is typical with anything McCoullough writes, he goes into great depth on how party bosses ruled who could run and get support and who could not.  This was how it was back in the 1940’s and has not changed.

I can’t stress enough the need for a true clense of the Republican party right now.  It is in dire need of a tranfusion.  For the good of the country.

It’s impossible to imagine how Sandy Hook or the Las Vegas shooting didn’t spark enough outrage to result in Republicans taking the heat for being owned by the NRA, but they were barely scathed by it.  But this Parkland shooting could be a tipping point.

I just watched something I’ve never seen before and I have to give CNN credit for capturing the moment.  A grieving mother was given the microphone and went hysterical at lawmakers for not doing anything.  Absolutely hysterical.  And CNN just let it play out for several minutes.  This poor mother was grieving about the loss of her daughter and the CNN host Brooke Baldwin was quite emotional afterwards.  She had a really hard time composing herself.  That’s how powerful it was.

This video needs to be seen at every city council in the country.  I hope it is seen in every home of this country.  It needs to be.  We’re beyond “let’s just all get along and find solutions.”  That’s been tried for the past 30 years.

In addition to this event, it’s been revealed that the shooter was affiliated with a known White Supremacy group.  I’m sure it’s not lost on a lot of people that the enemy within was not muslim.  Was not an illegal immigrant.  It was one of Trump’s supporters.   Sort of makes the wall discussion a little more difficult to swallow.

I heard a rather interesting idea thrown out yesterday on MSNBC.  The basic idea was that changes to the drunk driving laws in this country were made possible in large part by a grass-roots effort from Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  They were relentless in their effort to change the laws and were eventually successful.

I honestly think that another grass-roots effort could have the same effect here.  People are pretty fed up with inaction.  The priorities are all wrong if we value freedom to move about the country with unlimited firepower over the safety of our children.

I’m hopeful for once that perhaps what we needed to see was some live hysteria to help us get off our asses.

Having lived through Watergate, I’ve often wondered if we’d see a national crisis of that significance again in my lifetime.  The Trump era is an order of magnitude worse than Watergate.

The thing about Trump is, there are so many scandals going on simultaneously, any ONE of them would have brought a different president down.  There’s the violations of the emoluments clause, his blatant racism, the Stormy Daniels payoff, refusal to implement sanctions against Russia, money laundering with Russian banks, playing agitator in chief with N. Korea, his horrible hires for his cabinet.  I literally don’t have time to remember them all.

I firmly believe he will go down as the worst president in American history.  I have no doubt in my mind.  And there won’t be a close second.

I’m consistently tough on the republican party.  The reason is, I hate the republican party.  Plain, simple, and honest.  I didn’t used to.  All it took was to have some semblance of an honorable man in the office and I could easily agree to disagree.  But I didn’t hate the party.  Now I do.  I believe at the core the party is founded on one of the seven deadly sins: greed.  I see it in every piece of legislation they produce.  It’s all about lining their pockets, at the expense of the poor.   I believe my hatred is well founded and backed by factual information.

But here’s where the rubber meets the road.  During the Trump era, I have come to admire many, many Republicans.  Ana Navarro.  Rick Wilson.  Bill Kristol.  Mitt Romney.  Cheri Jacobus.  Why?  Because they have the guts to speak out against their own party.

Rick Wilson is hilarious.  He’s a Reagan conservative, but he refuses to normalize the clown car that is the Trump administration.  Same thing with Ana Navarro.  She’s a once proud Republican.  John McCain is her hero.  But don’t mess with her on T.V. and try to normalize Trumpism.  She’ll kick your ass.

Bill Kristol is on Twitter daily railing against the Trump administration.  He knows all too well that this is not normal.

I sincerely admire these people for their courage to speak out when something isn’t right.   Before it becomes the popular thing to do.  What it does for me is, if they have a conservative opinion about something, I’m listening closely.  I don’t just write them off as a far right loon.  I really want to hear what they have to say because they have demonstrated courage to call out criminal behavior at the risk of being ostracized by their own party.

That’s my takeaway from the first year of Trump.  There are a few patriots within the Republican party and I am so glad to see it.   Hopefully more will emerge as time goes on.

The cavalier attitude that the Trump administration has demonstrated with regard to the importance of security clearance protocols really, really pisses me off.  Here’s why.

In 1982 I took a job at the Boeing’s Developmental Center in Seattle.  It was a multi-purpose building where some of the business that was transacted there was for Boeing Commercial, but some of it was also for the Boeing Military Airplane Company.  Consequently, some of the buildings required security clearances to get into.

In order to qualify for this job I had to fill out what seemed like my life history in security clearance forms to get even the lowest level security clearance.  Some of what I was working on was related to a wind-tunnel facility Boeing had that was used for both commercial and military use.

I’m talking 20 pages of forms.  At age 22 I was not a well-traveled person, but I had been outside the country twice.  Once to Tijuana, Mexico and once to Vancouver, BC.  It was painstaking work to come up with the plethora of details they required including exact dates and purpose for the trips, return dates, any materials bought.  How am I supposed to remember all this stuff?   What if I was a really well traveled person?  This would almost be an impossible task.

But I got ‘er done and got my paperwork submitted.  The next thing I know, federal agents are interviewing my neighbors asking questions to see if I was the type of person who could be blackmailed in any way.  Did I owe a lot of money to anyone?  Could I be compromised in any way?  And this was all for the LOWEST LEVEL SECURITY CLEARANCE in existence — Confidential.

I jumped through massive hoops to get the government the information it needed and for what gain?

In most jobs, it’s the norm that if you screw up, you know you can be fired.  That’s pretty understandable anywhere you go.  With a security clearance job, if you screw up and forget to cover a classified folder, you not only lose your job, YOU CAN GO TO JAIL.  The point being, it’s SERIOUS BUSINESS.  The federal government isn’t fooling around when it comes to security clearances.

At a company that handled military classified information, it was so important for candidates to get cleared before entering their jobs, that we literally had candidates for jobs at BMAC (Boeing Military Airplane Company), that would fill out their paperwork and then SIT IN THE LOBBY reading magazines for up to 6 months waiting for clearance to actually start their job.  No clearance, no work yet.  Hard stop.

So now we have a situation at the White House where staffers are exposed to the highest level of security information, and they aren’t even cleared.  Jared Kushner isn’t cleared.  Rob Porter was not cleared by the FBI.  Trump has the ability to override the FBI’s recommendation, that’s the law.  But this guy set the bar so low, he KNEW that this guy was a wife beater and let him work anyway.  No big deal.  What virile man hasn’t beat his wife a bit anyway, eh?  The Donald has been accused of this by Ivanka, so he can totally sympathize with Porter.

The guy has NO CLUE what attention to security means.  He blabs to the Russians about Israel.  He leaves open classified information on his desk while random oil executives prance around the oval office.  This isn’t speculation, there are pictures of it.

What makes it worse is that when Republican leaders are confronted with it, they write it off as “He’s new to the job.”  Bullshit.  Learn faster.

The rank and file are held to one standard, and Trumpy, with the most sensitive information on the planet, can’t be bothered to take care of it or stress the importance to his staff not to be careless with it.

I could get fired for not covering up a folder at the Confidential level of clearance.  He does whatever he damn well pleases with the Top Secret level.  Absolutely insanity.

CNN: Dow plunges 1,175 — worst point decline in history

I’ve actually been waiting for this day for a long time.  Not because I like to lose money.  I’m with everyone else.  Today was not a great day for the old portfolio.

But what it IS good for, is that for a period of time now, I don’t have to listen to the trickle-downers tell me how awesome that tax cut is working.

I like CNN’s choice of headline “worst point decline in history” and the fact that it happened on Trump’s watch.  Is it his fault?  No.  Markets advance and correct.  But the imbecile was taking credit for every point gain as if his brilliance was the reason the market was going up.  So he absolutely deserves this moniker on his watch.

To all those who told me to relax about Trump and just enjoy my 401k…. thanks for the sage advice.

My sincere hope is that it hurts enough to affect the outcome of the midterms.

If you were expecting a dissertation on the Nunes memo, forget it.  Nobody gives a shit about Carter Page including me.

Though I have to hand it to the Republicans.  Just like the magician at the carnival, the method involves a trick that plays with your head.

Republicans loathe unions and have been on a union busting mission since before Reagan took office. And to their credit they have been largely successful at it.

From 1960 to 2000 the percentage of workers in the United States belonging to a labor union fell from 30% to 13%.  The irony is that republicans like to harken back to ‘the good old days’ when there was a strong middle class but this was in large part because union wages provided blue-collar workers a shot at living the American dream.  Owning a home.  Buying a car.  Raising a family.  Welders, mechanics, carpenters all had union representation which held wages high enough to live a decent life on.

I remember when I graduated from high school in 1978, one of my best friends Vince Kirchmeier took a union job at Safeway as a checker and was making $9 an hour.  In 1978 that was a ton of money.  I chose instead to go the JC route and hopefully come out of that skilled enough to earn a living wage.  Two years later in 1980 I took a job at Boeing in Everett Washington for $7.50/hr.   It really made me think if my investment was worth it.  I was still behind Kirchmeier and I had just given up 2 years of my life to get educated.

For the most part, those union jobs do not exist for young people today.  They do not have that option in front of them.  It’s basically enter a college program at considerable expense and pray you’ll get your money back, or else something close to minimum wage.  Or the military.  There just isn’t a lot in-between.

In any case, republicans hate unions and some of their leading politicians have made careers out of busting unions.  Scott Walker comes to mind.

What’s clever about it is that Walker didn’t coin the term “union busting movement.”  Instead they came up with the “Right to Work” movement which basically starved unions of their dues and put them out of existence.

Right to work.  Sounds so…. innocent.  So righteous.

Similarly republicans are pulling off another sleight of hand move that will privatize everything including air traffic control – safety-be-damned – under the banner of “Infrastructure Plan.”  Pay close attention to the Infrastructure Plan because it’s likely we’ll have privately owned prisons where Jeff Sessions is a major shareholder.

Republicans held a retreat in West Virginia last weekend to discuss the road ahead.  There’s no shortage of issues facing the country.  The government runs out of money on Feb. 8th – just 6 days from now.  There’s DACA to deal with.  There’s infrastructure to build and a national opioid crisis.  What pray tell did they spend their time on at this retreat?

Given the massive tax cut to the wealthy that passed just after Christmas, republicans know we now have to address spending.  Just as we were warned, after gifting the billionaires more billions, now they are coming after medicare and entitlements.

But what’s step one in coming after entitlements?  Coming up with a clever name for it.  And they accomplished just that.  It’s no longer “Entitlement Reform.”  That’s too obvious that it will be cuts to the poor.  It’s now “Workforce Development.”  This has been Paul Ryan’s dream ever since he finished the last chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.”

So now we have a term for it that will sell quickly on Fox News.  As Republican consultant Frank Luntz aptly put it:

“Republicans are better at agreeing to a term and sticking to it.  There’s a simple rule. You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.”

That would certainly explain “Benghazi” and “E-mails”