I’m a Sunday morning news show junkie. I hardly ever miss Meet the Press or Face the Nation. I just find the dialog of the analysts extremely interesting.

One of the main themes on Meet the Press today was “The first 100 days” of the Trump administration and what it had accomplished. Reince Priebus did a reasonable job of defending Trump’s record so far I thought. About as well as you could do for someone with a 40% approval rating. Then Nancy Pelosi came on and countered.

Just watching her reminded me of some things I have been thinking about for a long time. As a self proclaimed ‘lefty’, I probably agree with Nancy on 95% of her liberal policy positions. But at this point it doesn’t matter. I’d like to see her retire.

I’m not here to write about or otherwise add commentary on women’s looks, but it struck me that she just looked terrible. Not surprising when you’re 77 years of age and still getting up early on a Sunday morning to be interviewed in front of millions of viewers. I’m sure the makeup artists did what they could, and who cares what she looks like anyway, but it’s the first thing that struck me was that this country is being run by too many old people. It’s time for younger voices to start getting air time.

Pelosi is a polarizing figure. There are people on the right who HATE Nancy Pelosi. I do not hate Nancy Pelosi, in fact as I said, I probably agree with her on most of her positions, but I think if she were to retire and we could get a fresh, new, youthful liberal voice in there, it would energize the younger generation to get out and vote.

The same thing is true in music. I saw a picture if Iggy Pop on TV this weekend. The guy is still trying to look like what he looked like in the 1970’s, and it looks ridiculous. At some point it’s time to step aside and let the next generation take the stage. Bow out gracefully.

I can tell just from dialog from my children, the youth of this country feel disaffected and disengaged to some extent. The Boomers have held power for far too long and history will record that we didn’t do a particularly good job of stewardship with respect to fiscal policy, educational direction, or protecting the environment. Our foreign policy is dangerous at best.

I am a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, but he’s 76 years old. Bernie did a pretty fine job of inclusion of the younger generation in his bid for the White House in 2016, but unfortunately, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who I will never forgive, had her thumb on the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton and Bernie could not overcome the inside bias against his candidacy, though he came pretty close. Bernie embodies everything that needs to happen in the U.S. He’s got the perfect message in my opinion. But he’s too old now. He’s 75 and will be close to 80 in 2020. That’s just much of an age gap to run for President. I would love to see Bernie pick an heir apparent to the Democratic Socialistic movement and support that person in 2020.

I like Elizabeth Warren as well. She’s a fireball that doesn’t take guff off of anyone, and a true progressive. But again, at 70 years of age, she’s too old to be the messenger / leader of the younger generation.

It’s time to pass the baton to the next charismatic leader who can connect with our youth. We Boomers have had our turn in the barrel and it wasn’t a particularly great ride. “The Greatest Generation” as Tom Brokaw wrote in his book of our parents’ travels through WWII, we are not.

But I have witnessed the youth of this country up close and personal. In a previous role I went to college campuses and interviewed engineering candidates who impressed me to no end. There is no shortage of really smart, well educated, thoughtful, hard working youth in this country, contrary to what the right wingers will tell you. They get labeled the trophy generation for the way we raised them and for sure that approach didn’t help, but make no mistake, there are some high achievers in this group and we old fogies would do well to step aside and let them lead. It’s their future.

A Facebook friend recently ‘liked’ a post about a friend of theirs who was lamenting the fact that recent Greg Walden town halls in The Dalles and Hood River were difficult to listen to because there was so much shouting.  I was tempted to chime in but it wasn’t a Facebook friend of mine so I decided to keep my mouth shut (yes, every once in a blue moon this happens).  But I really wanted to chime in.   I deserve some credit for resisting the temptation.  Seriously.

I have no sympathy for Greg Walden.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  He deserved every ticked off constituent he had to face.  To his credit he faced them – unlike Marco Rubio who begs out of town halls altogether because they are too contentious.

His constituents are trying to send a message to him that if he goes back to Washington D.C. and gets behind Healthcare legislation that screws the common man in favor of yet another tax cut for the 1%, stands up there smugly with Paul Ryan on the national stage and pretends the bill is a ‘good deal’ for the average American, he’d better think twice because he’s not representing the interests of the people who put him in office.

The Affordable Healthcare act of 2009 turned out to be not as affordable as everyone had hoped.  Yet more Americans are covered than ever before and many literally depend on keeping their coverage to stay alive.  It’s recognized by both parties that there are obvious ‘fixes’ that can make it better.

Are the Republicans interested in fixing The Affordable Healthcare Act?  No.  Their primary intent is first and foremost to destroy any positive legacy from the Obama Administration.   As an example, selling across state lines has been proffered by both parties as a way to improve competition and lower prices.  Do you think this idea could possibly get any traction for the good of the American people?  With the Republicans governing, not a chance. To me it’s laughable that the bill failed the House because it wasn’t abhorrent enough for the so-called “Freedom Caucus.”

The primary thing that crossed my mind when I read “Why can’t we just listen to each other better” were scenes from my own childhood.  Remember a few times when you got in trouble with your mom?  Like, really in trouble.  You were getting a what-for for a reason.  To prevent future what-fors.

Walden’s support of Ryan’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) – which benefited the top 1% and kicked 24 million people off of covering under the canard of ‘choice is better’, was worthy of a tongue lashing from Mom.  His constituents gave him an earful and he deserved every rude interruption he received.

Normally I would be supportive of civil discourse.  If it were just a disagreement over a policy issue, sure.  Be polite.  Listen.  Wait your turn and voice your opinion.  But this is different.  Walden sold out.  He chose party over Country and he was getting called out for it.  I couldn’t be happier about that.  I only wish I could have been there.  I would have participated in making him as uncomfortable as possible.

I’m sad to say we’ve reached the point where civil disobedience is a reasonable option.  When the sins are so egregious that lives are at stake, courtesy can go out the window and I’m fine with it.  Sleep tight Congressman.  And welcome back to Oregon.

With each passing day I’m reminded of the opening scene from The Godfather Part I where business associates or “friends” of Don Vito Corleone wait their turn to ask a favor.  If you’re a friend of The Godfather and someone is hassling you, come to Don Vito, kiss the ring and he’ll take care of it.

The tough guy approach has its appeal with a significant number of voters as we found out on November, 8th.  Recall from the Art of the Deal, his negotiation strategy is to start at an extremely high price and then come down to what you wanted in the first place.  It’s used car salesmanship 101.

But if things aren’t going so well, he quickly falls back on intimidation.  I simply cannot separate him telling President Enrique Pena Nieto that Mexico is going to pay for the border wall from Don Corleone’s “Making him an offer he cannot refuse.”  I keep waiting to read about President Nieto waking up to a horse’s head in his bed in the near future.

Just this past week, after being told of a Texas state senator who wants to require convictions before the state can forfeit property, Trump asked for the senator’s name and said “We’ll destroy his career.”

Whenever he refers to Iraq he talks about how we should have kept the oil (never mind the experts are saying that’s easily classified as a war crime).

We are America.  We are exceptional.  Kiss the ring.

Don Vito’s story didn’t end particularly well for him, and I don’t think Trump’s attitude about the United States’ role as world citizen will serve us well either.

I’ll be curious if anyone else sees the same Mob boss mentality that I do.

This may surprise some people, but I actually DVR the O’Reilly Factor and watch as much as I can stomach.  I am fascinated to see the overall strategy of Roger Ailes play out in the segments of Fox’s #1 ‘News’ program.   It’s no secret that Fox has a conservative agenda that serves as an arm of the Republican party, but you have to watch a considerable number of shows to figure out the exact strategy; to fully understand what the Sr. Execs must be talking about behind closed doors.

The most obvious piece of the strategy is to smear Hillary and marginalize Sanders. Hence the steady diet of Benghazi and private e-mail server segments as well as making sure they mischaracterize democratic socialism by associating it with failed socialist governments in history.  They intentionally make this false association, knowing 90% of their viewers are either extremely gullable or too lazy to look it up.  I’d say about 50% of the show is devoted to smearing the Democratic party.  If it’s election season, they target specific candidates.  It’s clear they especially hate Hillary.  When the general election comes around, expect massive amounts of air time to be devoted to Hillary and ‘trust’. 

The second pillar of the strategy is to employ fear tactics.  We see a fair number of segments making the case that all the chaos in the world is President Obama’s fault and that this is Jimmy Carter all over again.  When Democrats hold the White House, we are weak on defense.  We require a strong leader or else more chaos will ensue.  Recall from the 1980 election, fear mongering played a big part in Reagan’s victory.  The Iranians were bossing us around making us look bad with those hostages and that just wasn’t acceptable to old Ronnie-boy.  So a key piece of his platform was a stronger defense.  No SDI program was too far fetched or too expensive for these guys and on the credit card it went. Never mind the facts or how we got here, a bunch of scary stuff has happened on Obama’s watch, so it must be his fault.  Reagan would have never let this happen.

Recently O’Reilly allocated a few segments to analyze the Democratic debates held in Las Vegas.  His chief complaint has been about the lack of questions about ISIS by Anderson Cooper.  In order for the Republicans to have a shot at the White House in 2016, Ailes and Fox understand that Americans must fear that ISIS is only minutes from our doorstep.  They must paint Clinton and/or Sanders as pacifists, unwilling to send troops to confront this threat directly.   This plus the idea that Democrats are muslim sympathizers, plotting to take away your guns represents the basic tenants of the fear package they have worked up. To their credit it works pretty well in certain parts of the country.

In order to be somewhat objective here, I will say that the private e-mail scandal rises to an unprecedented level of stupidity for a Secretary of State.  Anyone who has ever applied for a security clearance or worked in a secure area can tell you that Federal agencies have zero sense of humor about the slightest violation of classified information and the threat of jail time is always hanging over your head.  It’s a rather uneasy feeling actually because of the consequences that could play out over an honest mistake,  And that’s just for your average Joe Blow worker with a ‘secret’ clearance.  Serious investigations are routine for any worker who accidentally leaves a thumb drive in the wrong place.   They don’t just treat it like an oops.  This isn’t grade school, it’s about National Security.

So now we have the former Secretary of State thinking that a private e-mail server is an acceptable idea in the first place?   Really?  I’m going to multi-task a little using a server installed by the boys down at Geek Squad? 

These leaders are supposed to be setting the standard and leading by example with classified information.  It can’t work to have Sr. Execs thumbing their noses at the rules and expecting average Joe to risk going to jail if they make an honest mistake.  I’m afraid this was a pretty big boner on Hillary’s part and that she may well pay a big price for it if the investigation shows she was playing fast and loose with the highest classified information in the country.  Not okay in this writer’s opinion.   Sorry Hillary but that could cost you the nomination.  Dumb.

With that said, one of the reasons Fox has to go into attack mode is that the Republicans don’t have an issues candidate that has anything new to offer.  Nobody is selling anything except the same old retread ideas from Reagan’s trickle down theory that brought on at least 1/2 of the 19 trillion in debt they like to complain about.  So there’s no ‘there’ there to talk about.  Vote for me because I will cut your taxes and am tougher on defense.  I will kick ass on any country that messes with the idea of American exceptionalism.

I’ve often argued that if the Republicans could offer up a moderate with a pulse, they would have all three branches of government.  The party has veered so far right however, this seems unlikely.  The inmates have taken over the asylum and are dominating the airwaves.  Trump, Carson and Fiorina lead the polls.  More moderate choices like Kasich can barely muster 10 minutes of debate time to get his message across while they let Trump offend women and minorities with the limited time available.  Yet Kasich is exactly the type of candidate who might appeal to more moderate, undecided Democrats and certainly Independents.  If he were to win the nomination, it would be a real race against Hillary or Bernie.  But you can put money on the fact that the Tea Party will likely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again by being obtuse.

As far as I can tell, the strategy is time sliced this way:

• 50% Pick on Hillary.  These usually include a selected conservative babe of the week.  They rotate through a few of them but whoever it is is usually debating Kirstin Powers.  Kirstin represents the left about as effectively as Allan Combs did on Hannity and Combs.
• 30% Fear mongering if a Democrat is elected, ISIS will take over your city tomorrow! ( usually Charles Krauthammer weighs in on these matters, but it also is Karl Rove ).
• 10% Poor attempts at humor Dennis Miller is the most unfunny comedian on the planet.  Gutfeld and McGirk and slightly better but that’s not saying much.
• 10% O’Reilly patting himself on the back, bragging about his books, his show rating, and offering us a Tip of the Day

There you have it.  I’ve reverse engineered the formula for the time-slicing of The O’Reilly factor.

I’ll leave you with a bit of humor from this evening’s show.  Ed Henry, the White House correspondent for Fox, tried to use the logic that Democrats are offering a weak field versus the Republicans because “we have all these choices.”

That’s the same logic that might conclude that the buffet line at The Golden Corral is better than dinner at The Heathman Hotel.