Where Does One Begin, When Describing The Collapse Of America?

  By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written an article entitled “Virginia Secedes From Biden’s Party:  

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

With this remark — arrogant, dismissive, contemptuous — in his debate with Glenn Youngkin, Terry McAuliffe committed a historic gaffe.

From that debate forward, his poll numbers steadily sank until McAuliffe lost his lead, and with it, the election.

And going down to defeat, McAuliffe dragged with him his fellow Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general and watched Virginia’s House of Delegates revert to Republican rule.

What was McAuliffe saying, and what were Virginians hearing, in his remark? McAuliffe was saying that, in deciding what should be taught in its public schools, Virginia parents should just sit down and shut up.

Thus, a year after Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points did McAuliffe lose the state by three, a 13-point turnaround. In New Jersey, which Biden had won by 16, the popular Democratic governor barely survived a cliffhanger.

These dramatic shifts in voter behavior testify to a serious misreading by Democrats of the presidential election returns of 2020.

Biden’s total of 81 million votes, with a 7-million vote margin over former President Donald Trump, had been hailed as testament that his time had come and that the American people had both rejected Trumpism and embraced the liberal policies and politics of good old Uncle Joe.

But the 2020 election was in reality a referendum on a single simple question: Do you want four more years of Trump? Yes or no?

Some 74 million people came out and voted to keep Trump in the White House, the largest number of voters ever won by a president.

However, an even larger number of voters were saying, “Enough!”

As moderate Democrats, desperate to halt the progress of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primaries, had voted for Biden to prevent a socialist from winning their nomination, voters who wanted an end to the Trump era cast their votes for the other name on the ballot, which was also Biden.

In 2020, Biden lit no fires in the primaries and spent most of the general election sheltering in the basement of his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

A vote for Biden was a mandate to replace Trump, not to overturn Trump’s signature policies of no more wars, secure the border, cut taxes, rebuild the manufacturing base, reduce trade deficits, deregulate the economy and unleash the power of the U.S. free market system.

The Biden victory was a rejection of Trump, not a mandate for the agenda of Biden’s party, which, with its left-wing core dominant, is outside the mainstream of America.

When the American people voted for Biden, they were voting for competence and an end to the daily conflict and chaos, not a Second Great Society.

They were not voting for $6 trillion or $3.5 trillion for cradle-to-grave socialism. They were not voting to “Defund the Police!” or tear down statues of Christopher Columbus and Confederate soldiers, or rename schools carrying the names of George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

They were certainly not voting to abandon Trump’s wall and throw open the nation’s borders to anyone who can make it through Mexico to the Rio Grande — or to give $450,000 in reparations for migrant families who were separated from their children after breaching our border.

They were not voting to have their children taught in public schools that the country they love is shot through with “systemic racism,” and most children in America are born into “white privilege” and belong to an oppressor class whose victims are children of color.

The message to the Democratic Party Virginia sent was this:

“You can indulge the crazies in your party, but if the American people come to believe you share their ideas and intend to implement them, we are going to relieve you of control of Congress in 2022 and of the White House in 2024. Rely upon it.”

Biden, who is today 10 points down from where he began his presidency, is facing some seemingly insurmountable problems.

More than 1 million people have illegally crossed the U.S. border into our country since he took office. The debacle of the early days of our withdrawal from Afghanistan are indelibly fixed in the public mind and identified with him.

Prices of food and gas and other necessities have risen even more rapidly than the 4-5% inflation that shows no sign of abating.

Supply chains for U.S. goods from abroad, from autos to appliances, are clogged, with container ships backed up in the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors. And Biden is himself a portrait in confusion and contradiction.

Daily he loses his train of thought in public fora, forgetting places and names. While shutting down pipelines from Canada into our country to save the planet from the scourge of fossil fuels, Biden is calling on the Saudis to pump more oil to cut gasoline prices at the pump in the USA.

Having lost Virginia, Biden and his party look today like they are beginning to lose America.[2]  

What Pat Buchanan has written in this article is true.  And yes, a fair question to ask is: “Where Does One Begin, When Describing The Collapse Of America?”[3]  

As Buchanan stated, one might discuss the notion of paying illegal aliens a half million dollars for their “injuries,” while vast numbers of our fellow American citizens are struggling to make ends meet and to avoid—or deal with—chronic homelessness. Or we might discuss how our already-blighted, crime-ridden and dangerous cities are becoming even more lawless as police officers and firefighters are sent home because they refuse to be vaccinated.

For many years now, the thugs, slugs, hoods and mongrels of “Black Lives Matter,” Antifa and other far-Left groups have burned our cities; killed or hurt innocent Americans including our police; and destroyed black and other businesses. Yet, thugs like George Floyd are lionized, and treated as heroes. And Leftists describe themselves as “Progressives,” which is the farthest thing from the truth.

Or one might discuss how mothers and fathers of young children are petrified at the thought of them being vaccinated because of the risks involved. Many are seriously considering the idea of homeschooling their kids for the first time. Or how little kids are being taught things that the parents find abhorrent, and the parents are told to “butt out” of their kids’ educations.

Or we might discuss how oil and other prices have soared as the Keystone Pipeline was scrapped and thousands of American jobs were lost; and our realistic goal of energy independence is trashed, and we are dependent on oil from the volatile Middle East again.

Or how the lots of auto dealerships are bare because of the shortage of chips and other parts that are essential to new state-of-the-art vehicles. And how ports on our west and east coasts have been crowded with ships offshore because of the shortage of workers to unload them and truckers to transport their contents. 

Or we might discuss how China unleashed the deadly Coronavirus, which has killed or hurt millions globally. Yet that Communist-run country has not paid any reparations for doing so, much less trillions of dollars. And how China’s goal of global domination by the end of this decade is not a pipe dream anymore.

As I concluded in an article that I wrote about the Coronavirus:

This is a bizarre new Orwellian world in which we are living—as if in a dream (or nightmare), or straight out of a horror movie—surreal. But it is real, and each of us is living in it.[4]

 

 

© 2021, Timothy D. Naegele

_____

 

[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass).  See, e.g., Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6  and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/  He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams.  He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com   

[2] See https://buchanan.org/blog/virginia-secedes-from-bidens-party-158712 (“Virginia Secedes From Biden’s Party”)

[3] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/09/14/who-and-what-is-tearing-the-us-apart/ (“Who and What Is Tearing the US Apart?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/30/the-taliban-are-victorious/ (“The Taliban Are Victorious”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/27/censorship-at-dia-no-wonder-we-lost-afghanistan/ (“Censorship At DIA, No Wonder We Lost Afghanistan”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/20/afghanistan-the-future-looks-grim-for-those-left-behind/ (“Afghanistan, The Future Looks Grim For Those Left Behind”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/15/the-tragedy-of-afghanistan/ (“The Tragedy Of Afghanistan”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/12/is-america-becoming-a-failed-state/ (“Is America Becoming a Failed State?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/07/26/will-the-coronavirus-mutations-cripple-america-when-it-is-becoming-clear-to-the-world-that-joe-biden-is-not-fit-to-serve-as-president/ (“Will The Coronavirus’ Mutations Cripple America When It Is Becoming Clear To The World That Joe Biden Is Not Fit To Serve As President?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/03/12/war-with-china/ (“War With China?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/13/the-day-america-died/ (“The Day America Died?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/22/2020-annus-horribilis/ (“2020 Annus Horribilis”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/biden-is-brain-dead/ (“Biden Is Brain Dead”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/chinas-goal-is-global-domination-and-it-must-suffer-the-soviet-unions-fate/ (“China’s Goal Is Global Domination, And It Must Suffer The Soviet Union’s Fate”) (see also the comments beneath each of these articles)

[4] See https://naegeleblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/timothy-d.-naegele.pdf (Timothy D. Naegele, “The Coronavirus and Similar Global Issues: How to Address Them”), p. 305.

Can A Hack Sportswriter Resuscitate A Failing Newspaper?

  By Timothy D. Naegele[1] 

Some of us grew up in Los Angeles, and became fans of the UCLA football program at an early age.  From the home that my parents built a mile or so west of the university, we could hear the campus chimes when they played.  My friends and I would ride our Schwinn bikes into Westwood on Saturdays to watch movies at the Village or Bruin theaters. 

Years later I became a UCLA graduate; and even later, I had season tickets at the Rose Bowl on the 50 yard line, right below the press box. Growing up, my father had the Los Angeles Times delivered to our home; and the “classified ads” section alone was thicker than the newspapers in most large American cities.

Fast forward to today, and the Times is a mere shadow of its former self. The Chandler family that had owned it are long gone, and each edition is “paper thin.” Newspapers generally are dinosaurs, and became a dying breed when the Internet gained traction. Now one can read newspapers from around the world for free.[2]

With so many sources of news at our fingertips via our smartphones that are mini-computers, one wonders how or why the Times exists today, much less has the money to pay its reporters. For many years, UCLA football was covered by a fine writer, Bill Plaschke, who received national recognition.[3] Today, it is followed by a “Staff Writer” named Ben Bolch, who is crusading to get UCLA’s football coach Chip Kelly fired.

Bolch’s latest ad nauseam attack reads as follows:

Martin Jarmond constantly talks about being elite. The word reflects the ideals of a UCLA athletic department that uses excellence as a baseline for everything it does.

Then there’s what’s happening with Chip Kelly and the football program. Elite never enters the conversation.

Elite is not going 15-25, a .375 winning percentage that is the worst in school history for any coach who did not hold an interim tag.

Elite is not hoping to finish with a record above .500 for the first time in Year Four.

Elite is not keeping a failed defensive coordinator, at $700,000 per year, because of loyalty to a friend.

Elite is not losing three consecutive home games, failing to reward fans who show up before dawn for ESPN’s “College GameDay” because they’re desperate to support a winner.

Elite is not hoping to make the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl.

Elite is not touting how your team never gives up and intends to correct the same mistakes it makes week after week.

Elite is not talking about having a really good Wednesday when Saturdays are all that matter in college football.

Elite is not Chip Kelly.

Forty games into the most expensive experiment in UCLA football history, the evidence is incontrovertible. Kelly is guilty of fleecing the Bruins for $16.7 million since his arrival. You don’t need a degree from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management to know that this is not an acceptable return on investment.

The Bruins are eating lavishly, they are getting enough sleep and they are staying hydrated. That’s all great and admirable. They are not winning nearly enough games to justify another season of this madness.

UCLA’s 44-24 loss to Utah on Saturday night at Rice-Eccles Stadium was the latest referendum on Kelly’s failures. The Bruins gave up touchdowns on each of the Utes’ first four possessions. They surrendered 290 rushing yards. They were undisciplined, snapping the ball before quarterback Ethan Garbers was ready and failing to even momentarily deter a Utah defender who surged into the backfield to smash Garbers into the turf for a safety.

Given a chance to take sole possession of first place in the Pac-12 South, UCLA (5-4, 3-3 ) instead fell into a tie with USC for third place during a season in which the Trojans are operating with an interim coach.

Kelly was crabbier than usual afterward, refusing to address the one constant stain on his time in Westwood: defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro. Kelly deflected a question about how he could justify keeping Azzinaro given the team’s ongoing defensive struggles.

“Yeah, well, I’ll just talk about tonight,” Kelly said. “We didn’t do a good job in the run game. We played — even this year — very well on the defensive side of the ball and I think our defense has improved. Our defense improved last year and when you look at some of the games we did early in the year, I thought we played really well.

“Tonight, we did not play well in the rush category to give up that many yards.”

Kelly was also unnecessarily difficult when addressing the status of injured quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, saying he wasn’t trying to evade questions while doing exactly that.

Reporter: “How close was Dorian to being able to go?”

Kelly: “He was unavailable.”

Reporter: “When did you find out he was unavailable?”

Kelly: “We talk about all the things and when the doctors and Dorian put their heads together in terms of where we are, made a decision today that he was unavailable.”

Reporter: “Was the decision made earlier today, after warmups?”

Kelly: “Just, we just talk it through as a group and they told me he was unavailable.”

Reporter: “The question is because we saw him warming up.”

Kelly: “You saw him practice this week too.”

Reporter: “Was it after warmups, before the game?

Kelly: “He was unavailable.”

Reporter: “Do you expect him back next game?”

Kelly: “I don’t expect anybody back. I don’t have any answers to the crystal ball, so we will see how the week goes and how our training session goes and then we’ll get ready.”

UCLA’s latest loss likely ended its bid to contend in the Pac-12 South and any hopes of extinguishing a 22-year Rose Bowl drought. It may not matter that the Bruins are about to hit a soft pocket in the schedule with games against Colorado, USC and California given their continued stumbles.

Kelly sounded almost defiant when asked if fighting hard and coming close was enough.

“We still got a lot of football to be played this season,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bet against that group in that room there, that group in that room there’s awesome and I love those kids. So we’ll be right back at it, those guys will get in on Monday for film and lifting, we’ll be back on the field on Wednesday and Friday next week and then get ready to go play our next game.”

Even with Jarmond’s heroic marketing efforts, the Bruins could play before a record-low crowd when they face Colorado at the Rose Bowl on Nov. 13. Karl Dorrell, the Buffaloes’ coach, might leave longtime UCLA fans wistful for the days when he guided the Bruins to a succession of Silicon Valley and Las Vegas bowls.

There will be those who point to Kelly’s $9-million buyout that expires Jan. 15. as a possible saving grace allowing him to finish out the final season of his contract in 2022. No way. If the amount can’t be negotiated to a negligible figure, if not abandoned altogether, Kelly can’t be allowed to further sully a decaying brand.

You want elite? It’s time to look elsewhere.[4]  

I have tried to watch each of Kelly’s post-game interviews online; and it is clear that Bolch has been “gunning” for Kelly, and there is antagonism between them. The other sportswriters who ask questions are respectful, but not Bolch. Presumably he views the article above as his “crowning achievement”: the ultimate “hit piece,” which is intended to get Kelly sacked, and have the University pay him a paltry sum, instead of what is owed under his employment contract. And by writing a flattering article about UCLA’s Athletic Director Martin Jarmond, who was a former basketball player at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Bolch is trying to achieve his goal of being a “giant killer.”

College and professional sports are brutal in terms of coaches’ longevity; and the fans often release their frustrations accordingly, even in “normal,” pre-Covid times. Ed Orgeron is a perfect example. Having been fired unceremoniously by the Bruins’ crosstown archrival USC, “Coach O”—as the Cajun with a gravely voice is affectionately known—went to LSU where he won a national championship in 2019, and his quarterback Joe Burrow won the Heisman Trophy.

Afterward, and predictably, many of Orgeron’s players left for lucrative deals in the NFL, and his coaches left for other opportunities. Hence, the school’s pathetic Athletic Director Scott Woodward pushed Orgeron out, albeit reaching a deal whereby he would be paid approximately $17 million pursuant to his contract with LSU, and he would coach through the end of this season.

Now the hack Bolch is appealing to Jarmond to fire Kelly and pay him “peanuts” instead of what is owed contractually. At USC, its football coach Clay Helton was fired earlier this season because the school’s alums and fans seek a return to its long-gone glory years, which Orgeron achieved almost overnight at LSU.

Americans have been living through stressful and horrendous times, as the Chinese-launched Coronavirus pandemic has killed or hurt so many: physically, psychologically and economically. Only now are sports fans attending stadium events as they did pre-Covid, with precautions such as masks and social distancing being lifted or ignored inside the stadiums, and proof of vaccinations being honored in the breach.

If the Times had any integrity at all, it would terminate Bolch now. But since it is struggling to survive, a hack like Bolch is retained to fan the flames of controversy, in the hopes of reviving its readership.  Bolch has never accomplished even a tiny fraction of what Chip Kelly has accomplished thus far in his life.  That much is crystal clear and undeniable.[5] And the word “elite” will never appear in a sentence describing Bolch, yet jealousy vis-a-vis Kelly may be eating him alive.

 

 

© 2021, Timothy D. Naegele

_____

 

[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass).  See, e.g., Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6  and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/  He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams; and he can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com   

[2] See https://thehill.com/homenews/media/545004-la-times-san-diego-union-tribune-lose-north-of-50-million-in-2020-revenue (“LA Times, San Diego Union-Tribune lost ‘north of $50 million’ in 2020 revenue: report”); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times (“Los Angeles Times”)

[3] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Plaschke (“Bill Plaschke”)

[4] See https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2021-10-31/commentary-chip-kelly-is-nowhere-close-to-elite-and-ucla-can-do-much-better (“Chip Kelly is nowhere close to elite, and UCLA can do much better”)

[5] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Kelly (“Chip Kelly”)