The Sky Is Not Falling

Take a Deep Breath and Just Calm Down—————————————-

A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                To all my liberal friends, I want to say with utmost sincerity, I am sorry for your pain. Not your loss, mind you. I’m honestly relieved that Hillary Clinton will not be our next president, but I do understand your pain and disappointment.  I, too, was pained and disappointed over the choice we had.

 

But while I understand your pain and disappointment, I’m having trouble understanding the fear so many liberals who are citizens are expressing. Unless you are in the country illegally and have a criminal record or are a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, what exactly is it you fear? Tighter border security? Lower taxes? Fewer regulations from Washington? More affordable health care? I also don’t get some of the histrionics, the weeping and the sobbing? Are we really that fragile as a people?

 

A great feature of American democracy is hard-fought elections. You take everything a candidate says with a grain of salt. I challenge you to name one president who followed through on all his threats and promises. Another thing that has characterized our system is that we change governments without bloodshed or threats of revolution. No riots. No violent demonstrations. The losing party becomes the loyal opposition. We accept the results of a free election, rally around the new leader whether we like him or not and move on. At least until now.

 

I admit that I’ve never been a fan of street demonstrations. More often than not, they polarize and harden attitudes rather than attract supporters to their cause. They too often attract idiots interested mainly in breaking things, making noise and disturbing the peace. Although peaceful demonstrations are a right in this country, they too often turn violent. Disrupting traffic, forcing businesses to close, trashing streets, damaging public and private property, preventing people from getting to work or returning home or keeping medical appointments , threatening and injuring people is not an exercise in free speech. When these things happen in protest of a free election it starts to look like anarchy. It damages America’s reputation and threatens democracy. Protest organizers may have had the best of intentions but they need to reflect on their own responsibility for what happens.

 

It is particularly outrageous that high school children are permitted to walk out of classrooms and demonstrate in the streets while gutless school administrators excuse and even applaud their actions. It is also ironic that interviews reveal that many of the demonstrators, like half of Americans eligible to vote, didn’t even bother to. And what, exactly, are their demands? Among the protestors are signs supporting a variety of causes like “Black Lives Matter.” One sign read “Excuse the inconvenience, we’re trying to change the world.” By blocking traffic? Also prominent among the demonstrations are Mexican flags. In any other country, the waving of foreign flags at a demonstration protesting an election results would suggest foreign interference and would provoke outrage. Where’s the outrage here?

 

Some of the protestors, those, that is, with some degree of maturity, were demanding an end to the electoral college system. This happens after every election where the popular vote is close. It’s usually the losing side that wants to scrap the system, of course. Good luck with that since it would require a constitutional amendment. They also need a civics lesson. We are a union of states, not of individuals. Under our constitution, states retained certain rights when they voluntarily joined the union.

 

Each state gets two U.S Senators regardless of size or population. Members of the House of Representatives are apportioned to each state in accordance with that state’s population. The number of electoral votes each state gets is equal to the total of its U.S. Senators and Representatives. Thus, a huge but sparsely populated state like Montana with two senators and only one representative gets only three electoral votes. A small but densely populated state like New Jersey with two senators but twelve representatives gets fourteen electoral votes. The popular vote in each state determines who wins that state’s electoral votes.

 

If the election were determined by nationwide popular vote, the result would be determined by a dozen or so highly populated major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. Candidates would only need to campaign in the densely-populated northeast corridor, Chicago and the four major cities of the left coast. Would that be fair to the other half of Americans populating the other 90% or so of the nation’s territory?

 

The founders knew what they were doing which is more than one can say of the clueless protestors. Mr. Trump won the popular vote in 30 states. Mrs. Clinton won 20. It wasn’t even close. Now can we just move on with the nation’s business?

November 26, 2016

Welcome to the Politically Correct Navy

What’s in a Name?

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                                “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”       

                                                        (from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

Well, not always.  Sometimes, the other names just plain smell. Names and titles do matter, especially where rich custom and tradition is involved as is the case in the decision by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to eliminate ratings from Navy enlisted job titles. It may seem like a trivial issue to some civilians but not to thousands of sailors, 1oo,ooo of whom sent a petition to the White House asking their commander-in-chief, the president, to overturn the decision. Nor is a trivial matter to the many navy veterans who proudly wore the insignia denoting their well-earned occupational specialty.

 

Ratings titles serve to identify the broad occupational specialties of navy petty officers (non-commissioned officers), for example, Chief Machinist’s Mate, Boatswain’s Mate First Class, Operations Specialist Third Class, etc. Each specialty, or rating, has a distinctive emblem or badge as part of the insigne denoting their rate, or pay grade. When the new change is implemented, the rating will no longer be part of a sailor’s title nor will the rating badge be worn on the uniform, making it impossible to visually determine his or her specialty by just looking at the uniform he or she wears. They will be addressed simply by pay grade.

 

Achieving a rating is the result of formal training and hard work and represents a significant accomplishment. Sailors wear the rating badge with justifiable pride. Yet, apparently, this decision was made with little or no input from the people it most affects. It was the recommendation of a small working group and presented to the secretary by outgoing Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, Mike Stevens, who has since retired. Secretary Mabus was said to be motivated by a desire to promote gender neutrality throughout the Navy and Marine Corps.  According to the newspaper Navy Times, he was presented with several options to remove the word “man” from job titles and opted for the most extreme. In recommending it, according to Navy Times, Stevens told the secretary that the move would be costly and controversial but was the best proposal. Well, at least he got two out of three right.

 

Most sailors apparently disagree that it is a good proposal. They feel that it strips them of part of their identity, a part they worked hard for and deserve to retain. It also is a part of what makes sailors unique among service members.

 

Navies, including ours, are arguably the most traditional of the services. Life at sea and aboard ships is very different from life on land. Sailors through the centuries have developed unique vocabularies to denote things that are unfamiliar to landlubbers because the maritime environment is unique. Change is, of course, a constant and certainly the services are used to dealing with change. But some tradition dies hard, especially when the reasons for it are not clear and the changes appear motivated by little more than political correctness. The navy is dealing with many issues including an aging surface and air fleet and a new class of ship (littoral combat ships) experiencing major reliability and maintenance problems, so the timing of this change that so negatively affects enlisted morale seems ill-advised.

 

And speaking of names and titles, another tradition that appears to have been abandoned is the protocol for naming ships which is controlled by the Navy Secretary. You used to be able to tell a ship’s type by its name. Destroyers, for example, were named after Navy or Marine heroes or others who were especially venerated by the sea services such as Winston Churchill. Now, however, we have the new Guided Missile Destroyer Carl M. Levin (DDG 120) after the Michigan senator. There are many actual Navy and Marine Corps heroes who have yet to be so honored. Then there is the new Amphibious Transport Dock John P. Murtha (LPD 26), the Littoral Combat Ship Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) and the Oiler Harvey Milk.

 

Welcome to the new, politically correct Navy.

(Kelly, a resident of Coronado,  CA, is a retired Navy Captain who commanded three San Diego-based ships and a Navy laboratory. He writes on military and defense issues. This column originally appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune.)

Please Let It be Over

Survival of the Least Unfit——————————–     

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

What a difference a day makes. And the difference is huge. The biggest political upset since Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey in 1948 was a victory for the voices demanding change in the country’s direction and a crushing defeat for establishment politicians who weren’t listening, of whom Hillary Clinton was a prime example.

 

In the space of a single day the Republican mood went from deep depression to euphoria. Now, it is the Democratic Party, so recently serenely confident in the outcome of the election, that is despondent and in disarray, lacking strong leadership or even a fresh, rising star to groom, except perhaps for Elizabeth Warren on the far left fringe of the party.

 

To me, the good news is that Hillary Clinton lost, the Supreme Court won’t go liberal and America will be spared four or more years of government by presidential decree. The bad news is that we will be governed by an inexperienced, unpredictable, temperamental and sometimes crude man who has alienated many women and minorities. I, like many, was convinced that Clinton would win based on the polls and the demographics. I was wrong. I may never trust the polls again. So was the mainstream media who worked tirelessly to demonize Trump and promote Clinton’s candidacy.

 

Mr. Trump has his work cut out as he acknowledged in an uncharacteristically humble victory speech.    The honeymoon with his supporters may be brief. He won, not only by capturing the key swing states, some formerly blue states in the Rust Belt and just about all of rural America, but by tapping into white voter anger. Too many Americans felt left behind by globalization and Washington’s failure to deal effectively with immigration and excess regulation and they turned out to vote in record numbers. They will expect Mr. Trump to act promptly on his campaign promises.

 

These include building the wall, replacing Obamacare, revising trade agreements to favor American workers, reforming the tax code and the IRS, getting the economy to produce enough decent-paying jobs for the huge number of Americans who have simply given up looking for work, rebuilding the military and restoring respect for police. Change is easy to promise but much harder to implement and Mr. Trump can expect progressives and the liberal media to fight him every inch of the way.

 

Obama’s executive decrees can be easily overturned but changing or enacting legislation will require some cooperation from Democrats as well as some members of his own party who are less than enthused over some of his promises. It won’t be easy, especially if he tries to do everything at once or without the help of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. His capable and experienced Vice-president-elect, Mike Pence, should be of immense help in that regard.

 

Trump’s victory was a defeat for the Obama legacy as well as for Hillary Clinton who was Obama’s chosen heir and deemed essential to preserving that legacy. His legacy was on the ballot, as Mr. Obama himself said, and it lost. It was a legacy of government by regulation and executive order when he couldn’t have his way with Congress. It featured a reduced role for America as a world leader. It produced a feckless foreign policy that caused both our allies and potential adversaries to question our resolve and commitment. It included the neglect of the armed forces, poor treatment of veterans, a disaster of a health care plan and a spiraling national debt. Enough Americans were angry enough about it all that they elected the only one of the two major candidates that promised drastic change. We’ll see if he can deliver.

 

I wrote earlier that one of my concerns with this ugly election was that it won’t be over when it’s over. Rowdy demonstrations in some cities and college campuses and some truly pathetic, whiney, fear-mongering columns by liberal journalists are justifying that concern. It’s time now for the demonstrators, sore losers among the liberal journalists and university students and faculty members to take a deep breath and realize that they can’t always have things their way. It’s time now for them to do something more productive with their time. He’s going to be our president whether we like it or not. That’s the way it works in this country. They should get used to it.

November 14, 2016

 

 

 

What’s Next?

The Path Forward————————————————

                A commentary                 

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

America finally reached another crossroad and its citizens chose a path or rather some of them did. Others declined to vote and will be dragged along a path not of their choosing. But contrary to the popular saying that if you didn’t vote, you don’t get to complain, they will anyway.

 

It will be a rocky path and navigating it will be treacherous. The new president will be tested and will face tough domestic and foreign challenges. Americans are, understandably, suffering from election fatigue and need a respite, but the new president will have little time to prepare for the tasks ahead and must hit the ground running. The urgency of the challenges will require a short, steep learning curve.

 

The presidential plate will be full and overflowing but time must be found for healing divisions. As divided as the nation and the political parties are, there must be a coming together and It won’t be easy. Meanwhile, our nation’s problems won’t wait for politicians to get their act together. They can only be solved by compromise, not by claiming mandates that don’t exist. Democracy works only when opposite sides work to find common ground.

 

The most important function of the federal government is to provide for the common defense so that must be the first priority. Our armed forces have suffered from a decade of underfunding and neglect, caused largely by the Obama Administration’s determination that America should reduce its military posture and presence and lead from behind, relying on diplomacy and alliances. But diplomacy is useless without the credibility of military muscle to back it up and the determination to use it if diplomacy fails.

 

Our military aircraft and ships are aging and are not being replaced in sufficient numbers by new procurement. These numbers should not be determined by the size of foreign navies and air forces but rather by the missions we assign our forces. We are a world power, not a regional power and we have vital interests around the globe to protect. We have far more at stake than any other nation. We don’t have enough ships and aircraft to meet all current needs and we aren’t procuring enough new ones to even maintain current insufficient force levels. Our nuclear deterrent is likewise aging and needs to be modernized to ensure that we maintain nuclear superiority, not just parity.  Superiority, not parity, is the essence of deterrence that has kept us safe in the nuclear age.

 

Rebuilding and increasing our military capability will be expensive but diplomacy alone will not keep America safe in this dangerous world. Funding will be a huge challenge, given our $20 trillion national debt, but fund it we must and the new president must find a way by reordering priorities. Our potential adversaries will always find a way.

 

The new president will be tested soon and the major threats can come from four sources: China, Russia, Iran and Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS). China should be viewed as a rival, not an enemy, but that can quickly change as our interests collide, especially in the South China Sea and western Pacific. China seeks hegemony in this area and wants our presence and influenced reduced. We must prevent continued Chinese colonization of the South China Sea and ensure freedom of navigation throughout its waters.

 

Russia, similarly, is reasserting its presence and influence in the former Soviet republics of Eastern Europe. It wants to reduce or eliminate American and NATO presence and influence there and to continue to expand its own presence and influence in the Middle East. Iran continues to be the world’s largest sponsor of international terrorism. It seeks to be the dominant power in the Middle East and eventually to eliminate the state of Israel and rid the Middle East of American and western presence.

 

Islamic State will continue to be a constant terrorist threat to the U.S. and the west, whether it gains or loses actual territory. It has spread beyond its caliphate in Syria and Iraq to Yemen, Libya and elsewhere and has thousands of recruits, followers and sympathizers around the world capable of terrorist attacks against the west.

 

I don’t envy the president’s challenges of which these are but a few. They are made more difficult by the lack of a strong mandate. We can only hope for the best; for strong leadership, an end to the ugliness that preceded this election and a new determination by the winners to work together in the common interest.

November 11, 2016

Will It be Over When It’s Over?

A Defeat for the Two-Party System———————————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

The most depressing thought to me on the eve of this election is that it may not be over when it’s over. Donald Trump and many of his supporters are claiming that the election is a rigged process. Many of Bernie Sanders’ supporters are alleging the same regarding the nomination process because, if not for Hillary Clinton’s super delegates, the Vermont socialist might well be the Democratic nominee.

 

The acrimony on both sides won’t end after the election. Regardless of whoever wins, neither will have a strong mandate given the nation’s deep polarization and the next president may be particularly vulnerable to impeachment efforts. The Clinton email scandals will not go away and FBI Director James Comey has re-opened the investigation into her handling of classified material. Unfortunately, many voters have already cast their ballots so the final days of the campaign and any new revelations about the candidates will have no effect upon their votes. Other voters have made up their minds and just don’t wish to be bothered by any new revelations.

 

But the revelations will continue as additional emails are released. If elected, Mrs. Clinton will assume the highest office in the land in the midst of an ongoing security investigation which cannot help but diminish her effectiveness and the prestige of the nation she will attempt to lead. Then there are the fund-raising scandals associated with the Clinton Foundation while she served as Secretary of State that could provoke a separate ethics investigation. She will carry more unwanted baggage into the White House than any new president in the history of our nation.

 

She will also be dealing with a hostile opposition party. There will be little of the usual sentiment to accept an election loss graciously and rally around the new president. Her predecessor, Barack Obama was decent and likeable. Hillary Clinton is not perceived so. She is scandal-plagued, dishonest and has a reputation for saying or doing anything to gain or retain power and maintain privacy. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was recently quoted as saying he intends to spend years investigating her if she is elected. She will not have an easy term, even if she survives impeachment attempts.

 

None of this is likely at this point to be enough to swing the pendulum in Donald Trump’s favor and it’s doubtful that the nation would be better off under a man who is unfit by temperament and unqualified by experience to be president. We are stuck, therefore, with this sad choice which the political parties have foisted on us. It is a low point in the political history of the nation. I strongly believe that we must endeavor never to be faced again with a choice between two such deeply-flawed candidates, each disliked and distrusted by over half of the electorate.

 

To begin with, the election season is far too long. The media are fine with that, of course, because it provides news and is good for ratings. A single, six-year term would spare Americans this agony every four years and eliminate the need for first term presidents to spend much of their time posturing and campaigning for re-election instead of doing the nation’s business. We should consider measures to limit the length of the election campaign as some democracies do. And, as British historian Andrew Roberts recently suggested, the presidential debates should be better-regulated. They should not be moderated by the biased media who routinely ask questions designed to provoke the candidates and create fireworks that entertain audiences rather than clarify issues. The number of participants should be limited to six at most to provide enough time for substantive answers instead of sound bites and slogans.

 

There needs to be a set of qualifications and standards for candidates seeking the highest office in the land. The cherished American fantasy that anyone can become president may have been admirable in the early days of the republic when we were a small, remote nation but is dangerously naive in the nuclear age. Governing the world’s most powerful nation and largest economy requires more experience than closing real estate deals and hosting a TV show.

 

Finally, unless the parties can reform and learn to compromise, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the two-party system and the beginning of a multi-party system requiring governing coalitions forced to work together.

November 4, 2016