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”)

Race Relations In America Have Gone Berserk

  By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Americans of all colors, ethnic backgrounds and religious preferences owe the present tragic state of affairs to the un-American racist and anti-Semite Barack Obama.  Indeed, If one person could be singled out for having exacerbated race relations in the United States, it is Obama who has torn our great nation asunder.  

He has done far more than any President in our great nation’s history to sow racism, strife and discord.  And he has done this at a time when China’s Coronavirus has killed or hurt so many Americans, physically, psychologically and economically.[2]  Aside from trying the destroy the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump from Day One—which is treason—Obama has produced a racial divide that may take years if not generations to heal.

Obama should be in prison today, for his many crimes.  Indeed, this was all predictable if Americans had read his book, “Dreams from My Father,” before he was elected to national offices.  It sets out his racism explicitly and in his own words, which have withstood the test of time.[3]

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 “Who and What Killed George Floyd?” as follows:

Friday, as the jury was being empaneled for the trial of fired police officer Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis City Council voted 13-0 to approve a record $27 million civil settlement with the family of George Floyd over his death in police custody.

The jury will not likely miss this message sent by the city fathers:

I.e., an atrocity was perpetrated by our police, and we are admitting our responsibility and doing our duty by offering these reparations for Floyd’s cruel and unjustified death and the suffering visited on his family.

Most Americans who saw the nine-minute tape of Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd as he pleaded, “I can’t breathe,” will probably concur with the charge of criminal culpability of Chauvin.

Yet, over the months, new facts and factors have emerged.

George Floyd was not choked to death. He was not asphyxiated. He was not killed by Chauvin’s knee on the side of his neck. An autopsy showed Floyd’s neck muscles were not even bruised.

Floyd died when his heart stopped. Yet, he was already suffering from an enlarged heart with constricted arteries, one of five of which was 90% blocked and two others were 75% blocked.

An autopsy found heavy concentrations of fentanyl in Floyd’s system and traces of methamphetamines. If Floyd had collapsed and died in the street while being wrested into the squad car, his death would have been attributed to a drug overdose and a bad heart.

Also, a videotape of the minutes prior to Floyd’s being put on the pavement, his neck under Chauvin’s knee, shows Floyd crying, repeatedly, “I can’t breathe,” while resisting the two rookie cops trying to put him in the patrol car.

Moreover, there is testimony from those with Floyd when he was stopped for passing an allegedly phony $20 bill, that he had passed out in the car before the cops arrived. And the arresting cops claim he was foaming at the mouth before being restrained.

In short, Chauvin’s defense attorneys will likely make a credible case, backed by evidence, that Floyd’s death was not caused by the knee on his neck but by the battered condition of his heart, the near-lethal dose of fentanyl in his system, and his anxiety and panic at being arrested and fearing, as he wailed, that he was going to be shot.

The prosecution will counter-claim that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck, and the two other cops sitting on him, precipitated the stopping of his heart.

But the prosecution faces other questions.

How could Chauvin, who arrived late to the scene, know Floyd was a drug addict with a serious heart condition and a large amount of fentanyl in his system, before using the restraint technique of sitting on him and putting a knee on the side of his neck?

What was Chauvin trying to do when he arrived to see two rookie cops trying to cope with a powerfully built, six-foot-four-inch, 220-pound man violently resisting arrest?

Did Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck to kill him? To torture or injure him? Or did he use the technique to restrain him?

Prosecutors will contend that the knee on the neck was criminal assault, a felony that caused Floyd to black out and his heart to stop?

But that raises another question:

Is placing a knee on the side of the neck an outlawed or a prohibited procedure for police to use to restrain a suspect violently resisting arrest, as a chokehold is in some precincts?

Or is it a procedure some police use legally at times?

Chauvin was clearly familiar with the technique. Had he used it before without injury to a suspect?

In a motion to dismiss the charges he himself faces in the death of Floyd, former police officer Thomas Lane included 30 pages of Minneapolis PD training materials including information on the “maximal restraint technique.” Lane included a photo of an officer with a knee on a suspect’s neck, similar to the hold used by Chauvin.

In preparing for the trial of Chauvin, Minneapolis has fortified, with concrete barriers, fences and razor wire, the courthouse where it will be held. Understandably, for any acquittal of Chauvin, or conviction on a lesser charge than murder, could trigger a riot like those that plagued the city through the summer of 2020.

And if a mob does take to the streets in Minneapolis, as it did all last summer, the national reaction will be telling.

How does one accurately describe a crowd that gathers outside a courthouse to demand, on the threat of a riot, a verdict of guilty?

And should a riot occur — and violent protests in Louisville, Seattle and Portland over the weekend seem to point to another such long hot summer — may we expect our new national leaders (Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer) to denounce the mob and stand up unequivocally for the rule of law?[4]

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.  Instead of being coddled or embraced by Joe Biden and his Democrats, they should be put down like rabid animals.

America’s blacks constitute less than 14 percent of our population.[5]  Yet, turn on TV any given day, and one might think that they are the dominant group in our population. This overcompensation permeates and distorts our society; and it is creating anger and revulsion among non-blacks.  Rather than improving race relations, it is exacerbating them.

Preferences have been given in academics, which the voters of far-Left California have rejected.[6]  On men’s professional football and basketball teams, there are very few white players.  When the football players take a knee as our flag is saluted and/or our national anthem is played, more and more of white America tunes out and refuses to watch. And when this occurs, they are branded as racists by the Democrats and the Left.

But it must never be forgotten that the Democrats gave us slavery, and perpetuated it after our Civil War with the KKK, segregation and later Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs that destroyed black families and consigned them to economic servitude.  Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans ended slavery.

Many on America’s Left do not want inclusion or equality; they want racial preferences, which would distort the United States forever.  Of course the idea of reparations is patently absurd, but it has become the mantra for many on the Left.  Like Barack Obama, they hate America and believe its history is fundamentally flawed and racist.

Unlike the first black to serve in the U.S. Senate after Reconstruction, Edward W. Brooke—who came from a loving family, and served as an Army officer during World War II—Obama came from a broken family.  He was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, and never lived on the American mainland until he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.  And on some level, he hates the United States, its history and its values.[7]

Lastly, as I have stated previously:

I believe in this country, and I believe in Americans of all colors, faiths and backgrounds. The United States is the only true melting pot in the world, with its populace representing a United Nations of the world’s peoples. Yes, we fight and we even discriminate, but when times are tough—like after 9/11—we come together as one nation, which makes this country so great and special. Also, all of us or our ancestors came here from somewhere else. Even the American Indians are descended from those who crossed the Bering Strait—or the “Bering land bridge”—according to anthropologists.[8]

I believe this fervently.  All of us are equal in the eyes of God.

 

 

© 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). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see, e.g., Timothy D. Naegele Resume-20-6-30). 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, 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., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See Timothy D. Naegele, The Coronavirus and Similar Global Issues: How to Address Them, 137 BANKING L. J. 285 (June 2020) (Naegele June 2020) (Timothy D. Naegele) [NOTE: To download The Banking Law Journal article, please click on the link to the left of this note] 

[3] See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) 

[4]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/who-and-what-killed-george-floyd-142867 (“Who and What Killed George Floyd?”)

[5]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/american-blacks-constitute-less-than-14-percent/ (“American Blacks Constitute Less Than 14 Percent”)

[6]  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 (“2020 California Proposition 16”)

[7]  See supra n.3.

[8] See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/america-a-rich-tapestry-of-life/ (“America: A Rich Tapestry Of Life”) (quoting http://www.philstockworld.com/2009/10/11/greenspan’s-legacy-more-suffering-to-come/ and http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/2951-ilene/31177-interview-with-timothy-d-naegele) 

War With China?

  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 “Is a Cold War II with China Inevitable?” as follows:

Today, the four premier leaders of The Quad — the U.S., Australia, India and Japan — conduct their first summit, by teleconference.

The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal strategy forum of the major Indo-Pacific democracies that some wish to see evolve into an Asian NATO to contain China, as NATO contained the Soviet Union for 40 years of Cold War.

Next week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan meet their Chinese counterparts midway between Beijing and Washington — in Anchorage, Alaska.

The Chinese are said to have sought out the two-day meeting since before the inauguration of Biden.

And understandably so. For while the Chinese are hoping for a reset of relations after a troubled last year with the Trump administration, leaders of both U.S. parties — to compensate for decades of congressional indulgence of Beijing —suddenly seem to be on their muscle.

Consider. During the transition, the Biden foreign policy team gave a war guarantee to Manila to fight alongside the Philippines in any clash with the Chinese over disputed rocks and reefs in the South China Sea.

Tokyo was informed that its mutual security treaty with the United States that dates to the 1950s covers the uninhabited Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. But Beijing also claims these islands as her own.

On the eve of his taking office, Blinken said he agreed with Mike Pompeo’s view that China’s brutal repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide” and crimes against humanity. That latter charge is what the Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg.

How can the United States send athletes to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, if the Chinese are still crushing Hong Kong and committing crimes against humanity in western China that compare to the worst Nazi crimes of World War II?

Testifying before Congress this week, four-star Admiral Phil Davidson, retiring commander of the Indo-Pacific, called for new defensive missiles to protect Guam against Chinese DF-21 and DF-26 missiles. China calls these missiles “Guam killers.”

The admiral also called for the U.S. to develop intermediate-range missiles that can be fired from Guam and allied territory closer to China. Describing the need for offensive missiles to hit Chinese targets, Davidson said, “If I can’t score some runs, I can’t win the game.”

Addressing Taiwan, Davidson said:

“Over the past year, Beijing has pursued a coordinated campaign of diplomatic, information, economic, and — increasingly — military tools to isolate Taipei from the international community and if necessary compel unification with the (Peoples Republic of China.)”

Chinese warplanes have lately flown in formation toward the island of 25 million, which Beijing claims as its national territory — a claim President Nixon seemed to concede in the Shanghai Communique after his Peking summit of 1972.

“Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid,” was how the Biden State Department answered China’s aggressive moves.

If we don’t establish rules of the road for U.S. and Chinese ships and planes in the East and South China Sea and Taiwan strait, how do we indefinitely avoid the kind of collision that could turn into a shooting war?

In this widening and deepening confrontation, China is not backing down. She makes no apologies for the crackdown in Hong Kong or the concentration camps of the Uighurs. She continues to stonewall about how the coronavirus escaped from Wuhan to kill 500,000 Americans and many times that number worldwide.

Meanwhile, Chinese bombers, fighters, warships and patrol boats approach closer and closer to planes, vessels and territory of America and her friends and allies. Nor has China surrendered a rock or reef or shoal in the South or East China Sea.

Last week, Blinken called China the “biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century,” the only country able “to seriously challenge the stable and open international system.”

And in America, whatever your political party, “standing up to China” seems to be a winning posture. But where is all this going? Where does all this end?

Beijing is not apologetically but proudly Communist. It believes its system has been proven superior in this century. It does not believe in an equality of ideologies, religions or peoples. It openly rejects American democracy as a failed and failing system, and rejects any suggestion of American primacy in creating a “rules-based international order.”

And if it continues to grow in real and relative terms for the next two decades as it did in the last two decades — given that China has four times the population of the United States — it could emerge not only as the dominant power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific but in the world.

And what can we do to assure that does not happen — short of a war that could be disaster to us both, as World War II was for the British as well as the Germans.

How do we decouple from a country that provides necessities of national life — such as pharmaceuticals — for our people?[2]

I beg to differ with Buchanan.  The United States and the American people have been at war with China ever since it launched the deadly Coronavirus, inadvertently or as a bioweapon.  As my Coronavirus article stated clearly and unequivocally—leaving aside governmental entreaties and diplomatic niceties—Americans and other global consumers must boycott anything and everything from China, until it is brought to its knees economically.  Nothing less will suffice.[3][4]

Lastly, is the Biden-Harris administration leading us to a shooting war with China?  Will we boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing?  Time will tell.  

 

 

© 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). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see, e.g., Timothy D. Naegele Resume-20-6-30). 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, 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., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/is-a-cold-war-ii-with-china-inevitable-142861 (“Is a Cold War II with China Inevitable?”)

[3]  See Timothy D. Naegele, The Coronavirus and Similar Global Issues: How to Address Them, 137 BANKING L. J. 285 (June 2020) (Naegele June 2020) (Timothy D. Naegele) [NOTE: To download The Banking Law Journal article, please clickon the link to the left of this note] and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/can-we-coexist-with-asias-communists/ (“Can We Coexist with Asia’s Communists?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/coexistence-with-china-or-war/ (“Coexistence With China Or War?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/16/the-coronavirus-must-become-chinas-chernobyl-hastening-the-collapse-of-its-evil-regime/ (“The Coronavirus Must Become China’s Chernobyl, Hastening The Collapse Of Its Evil Regime”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/why-should-the-world-trust-china-ever-again/ (“Why Should The World Trust China Ever Again?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/china-infects-the-world-then-lies-and-blames-america/ (“China Infects The World, Then Lies And Blames America”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/expert-warns-quarantine-process-failed-as-china-stands-ready-to-crash-world-economy/ (“Expert Warns Quarantine Process Failed, As China Stands Ready To Crash World Economy”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/china-is-americas-enemy-and-the-enemy-of-free-people-everywhere/ (“China Is America’s Enemy, And The Enemy Of Free People Everywhere”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/china-is-americas-enemy-make-no-mistake-about-that/ (“China Is America’s Enemy: Make No Mistake About That”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8957019/China-used-secret-microwave-pulse-weapon-Indian-soldiers.html (“China ‘used secret microwave pulse weapon to cook Indian soldiers alive’ and force them into retreat in Himalayan border battle”) 

[4]  See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/trump-begins-his-triumphant-return-to-the-white-house/ (“Trump Begins His Triumphant Return To The White House”) and https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-cpac-speech-2021-b1809208.html (“Donald Trump CPAC speech 2021 – read the full transcript | The Independent”) and https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-cpac-2021-speech-transcript (“Trump CPA speech transcript”)

 

Facing Racism, Two Black Deaths

  By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

Bill Hoffman has written at Newsmax.com:

Herman Cain — the maverick American business czar and Republican presidential candidate who campaigned for a sweeping tax reform plan called 9-9-9 — died Thursday morning after a month-long battle with the coronavirus. He was 74.

Cain, who recently joined Newsmax TV and was set to launch a weekly show, died in an Atlanta-area hospital where he had been critically ill for several weeks.

He was admitted on July 1, two days after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

Ten days before, Cain had attended a rally for President Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But it is not known for sure where Cain, chair of Black Voices for Trump, was infected. He had been on a whirlwind travel schedule in June, stopping in multiple cities.

“He was one of the most original thinkers in American politics. He [had] creative strong convictions, an open mind and a deep sense of patriotism,’’ veteran political consultant Dick Morris told Newsmax.

“He was a great friend, a great guy.  Suddenly, the plague strikes home.’’

Cain was a self-made man with an extraordinary backstory — one that made him a towering example of hard work paying off.

He was born Dec. 13, 1945, in Memphis, Tennessee and [] grew up poor in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father worked three jobs — as janitor, barber, and chauffeur — while his mother toiled as a domestic.

A stellar student who worked hard, Cain graduated from Morehouse College with a mathematics degree in 1967.  A year later, he married Gloria Etchison, who he had met when he was a sophomore at Morehouse and she [was] a freshman at Morris Brown College.

Cain went on to earn a master’s in computer science from Purdue University in 1971, and helped develop fire control ballistics for ships and fighter planes for the U.S. Navy.

Next, he joined the Coca-Cola Co. as a systems analyst, and after considerable success, moved to the Pillsbury Co.

After serving as regional vice president of Pillsbury’s Burger King, Cain then took on the biggest challenge of his career as president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, a national chain teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

In 14 months, he returned Godfather’s to profitability and led his management team to a buyout of the company.

Later, Cain said he could explain his success at Godfather’s Pizza in one word, “marketing.”

Cain, who long held an interest in public policy, became chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 1995, serving in the position for 20 months.

In 2019, Trump nominated Cain to [the] Federal Reserve Board.  But the nomination drew serious flak from Congress and Cain’s detractors.

“Because I ran as a Republican for president and the United States Senate, and because I am an outspoken voice of conservatism, an outspoken voice of the Constitution and the laws, I’m being attacked,” Cain said, shortly before asking the president to withdraw his nomination.

Cain’s first dabbling into politics came in 1996, when he was tapped as senior adviser to the Dole/Kemp campaign for the presidency.

He ran for a Senate seat in Georgia in 2004, but was defeated in the Republican primary by Johnny Isakson.

In 2006, Cain was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, but with aggressive treatment was able to beat the disease.

In his book, “This is Herman Cain!,’’ he discussed his life-threatening illness, writing: “It’s been more than six years since then. And guess what? I’m completely cancer-free!  Cured!  Why was I spared against those odds?  God said, ‘Not yet!’’’

Cain told CNN he began mulling a run for office because, following his triumph over cancer, he felt he had to do “something bigger and bolder.”

From 2008 to 2011, he hosted “The Herman Cain Show’’ on Atlanta radio station WSB. Then, in May 2011, he announced his candidacy for president as a conservative on the GOP ticket, his major campaign issue being the urgent need for top-to-bottom U.S. tax reform.

According to Cain, 9-9-9 would replace the current imbalanced, unfair tax code with three flat taxes: [a] 9-percent business transactions tax, a 9-percent personal income tax, and a 9-percent federal sales tax — a switch that would trigger a great savings to taxpayers.

While his fellow candidates were skeptical of 9-9-9, the plan resonated with Americans and he soon, with the help of a strong Tea Party base, [] rose to the top of Republican polls in the race.

In October of 2011, a Public Policy Polling poll had him leading Mitt Romney by 8 percentage points — 30% to 22%.

“His proposal for 9-9-9 captured the public imagination for months.  And it might still pave the way for a fundamental tax reform,’’ Morris said.

During his run, Cain readily spoke his mind on a variety of subjects.

On Bloomberg View, he said:  “The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking that the Tea Party is racist.  The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period!  If it were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning?  That’s a rhetorical question.

“Let me state it:  The black guy keeps winning.”

In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Cain said:  “Stupid people are ruining America.”

And in a campaign event in South Carolina, Cain said:  “If Obamacare had been fully implemented when I caught cancer, I’d be dead.”

He was an unabashed conservative: opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage.  He told the Chattanooga Times Free Press: “We have a war on our moral fiber.  We will not allow the godless few to destroy our moral foundation.”

“Herman Cain resonated with Americans at every level because they sensed his authenticity,” Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, said of his late friend. “He had a folksy, disarming appeal.  You immediately felt his love of country and God.”

This past February Ruddy said he invited Cain to visit Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Golf Course in West Palm Beach.

“The president spotted Herman and yelled out ‘9-9-9’, and everyone roared with laughter,” Ruddy said.

Cain reveled in Trump’s business approach to politics and his independent style – one that mirrored his own.

“I’m not a professional politician. I’m a professional problem solver,” he remarked.

Cain’s meteoric political rise was cut short when he was forced to suspend his campaign in December 2011, after two women accused him of sexual harassment during his stint as CEO of the National Restaurant Association from 1996 to 1999.

Despite his exit, Cain vehemently denied the charges, and his wife solidly stood by her man, insisting “he totally respects women.”

After seeking the presidency, Cain formed Cain Solutions Revolution, which worked with political and business leaders at the national level to promote problem-solving policy ideas.

He also served as an ordained associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Cain[] had hosted a radio talk show and was a familiar face to cable news viewers.

In April, [Cain] joined Newsmax TV, saying he was “very excited” to be joining “one of America’s leading cable news networks.”

After he was hospitalized, Cain seemed to be responding to treatment, with his Twitter feed announcing that his breathing was “getting stronger every day. Make no mistake:  He is improving!”

But in the past week, his health took a turn for the worse.

In one of his videos aired June 11 on his hermancain.com blog, Cain said:  “We must continue to spread the coronavirus message: social distancing, sanitizing, hair-washing and masks.  Don’t take it for granted, take it seriously.’’

Cain is survived by his wife Gloria, and two children, Vincent and Melanie, and four grandchildren.[2]

Herman Cain was and is an authentic American success story, not a pompous politician.  He will be missed, as China’s deadly Coronavirus continues to take its toll globally.[3]

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 “American ‘Stormtroopers’ — A Bright Shining Lie”:

With the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse under nightly siege from violent radicals, and Portland’s police hard-pressed to protect it, President Trump sent in federal agents to secure the building.

The reaction from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:

“The use of stormtroopers under the guise of law and order is a tactic that is not appropriate to our country in any way.”

Majority Whip James Clyburn endorsed the speaker’s equating of the U.S. law enforcement officers to Ernst Rohm’s SA thugs being deployed to do the dirty work of Adolph Hitler.

“Nobody asked the federal government to come into Portland. Nobody asked them to come to Seattle,” ranted Clyburn. “This is something that’s made up of whole cloth by this administration as an excuse for sending in stormtroopers to incite the people.”

Clyburn had earlier compared the U.S. officers sent to Portland to Heinrich Himmler’s Nazi secret police: “This president and this attorney general seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities on local communities, and this is what I’ve been warning about for a long time.”

His Gestapo comparison recalls Sen. Abe Ribicoff’s denunciation of the Chicago police of Mayor Richard J. Daley during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, after police clashed with radicals in Grant Park: “With George McGovern, we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago!”

What do the men and women of the FBI, DEA, ICE, DHS, CBP and the U.S. Marshals Service think of congressional leaders who equate them with Nazi stormtroopers and the Gestapo?

Outraged that Trump sent in federal agents to protect a building they had under siege for weeks, the Portland mob came out in even greater numbers and rioted through the weekend. Saturday night, there were solidarity riots with Portland in Seattle, Oakland, Austin, Richmond, and other cities.

Consider the depth of hatred of Trump that would cause leaders of the Democratic Party to compare U.S. law enforcement to Nazis.

Still, to date, no apologies have been heard.

Yet, as police are again being cursed and showered with debris, it is hard to see how this country reunites, and around what, no matter which party prevails in November.

In addition to the reigniting of protests and riots in urban centers there has come, in tandem with demands to “defund the police,” a surge in violent crime. Last week, Trump offered some staggering statistics:

“In New York City, over 300 people were shot in the last month alone, a 277 . . . percent increase over the same period of a year ago. Murders this year have spiked 27 percent in Philadelphia and 94 percent in Minneapolis compared to the same period in 2019.

“Perhaps no citizens have suffered more from the menace of violent crime than the wonderful people of Chicago. . . .  At least 414 people have been murdered in the city this year, a roughly 50 percent increase over last year. More than 1,900 people have been shot. These are numbers that aren’t even to be believed.”

As Black Lives Matter protests revive, ostensibly for greater justice for black folks, a vastly disproportionate number of victims of these urban shootings and killings are black, as are a disproportionate number of the criminals doing the shooting and killing.

The New York Times suggests that a new “Silent Majority” of 2020, unlike Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority of 1969, backs the protesters and their causes.

A dissent: While the country was disgusted and outraged at George Floyd’s death from that cop kneeling on his neck, and supported the protests and the calls for police reform, two months of leftist rampages have taken their toll.

When the protests turned into riots, when the looting and arson began, when the statues began to be pulled down, when the rampages went on and on for weeks and months after Floyd’s death, support began to wane. And it is dissipating quickly.

The country is not going to sit still for three more months of this. At some point soon, America is going to say: Enough is enough.

Moreover, Trump has turned a permanent presidential spotlight on a real outrage: The shootings and killings that go on year in and year out, and are now escalating, especially in poor black neighborhoods of major cities, and are accepted as normal by the same liberal Democrats who have misruled those cities for decades.

Trump has put this issue on the table for the indefinite future. And the ferocity of the liberal reaction testifies to the validity of the issue and the terror of the left that a consistent stand for law and order — and with the cops who guarantee it against the mobs that threaten it — might turn the tide in Middle America back to where it naturally resides.

The majority of Americans believe, and rightly so, that this is a good country. And they will eventually tune out radicals who visibly hate its heroes and history and have on offer nothing but their own inchoate rage.[4]

The thugs, slugs, hoods and mongrels of the super-racist “Black Lives Matter” and Antifa groups—and others like them—must be put down like packs of rabid animals.

Indeed, similar to his vicious congressional colleagues Elijah Cummings and Maxine Waters, the idea that any Americans would lionize and celebrate the life of John Lewis is repulsive, and underscores the depth of depravity and sickness in the United States today.[5]  Obviously, it is not surprising that the ultimate un-American, racist and anti-Semite Barack Obama—who should be in prison today for treason, at the very least—has honored him.[6] 

 

 

© 2020, Timothy D. Naegele

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[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). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and Timothy D. Naegele Resume-20-6-30). 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, 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., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/herman-cain-obituary/2020/07/30/id/979733/ (“Herman Cain Dies From Coronavirus at 74”); see also https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/herman-cain-covid-19-obituary-tweet/2020/07/30/id/979836/ (“Trump Hails Herman Cain in Tweet”—”My friend Herman Cain, a Powerful Voice of Freedom and all that is good, passed away this morning.  Herman had an incredible career and was adored by everyone that ever met him, especially me.  He was a very special man, an American Patriot, and great friend.  I just got off the phone with his amazing wife Gloria, daughter, Melanie, and son Vincent to express my deepest condolences to the entire family. @FLOTUS Melania and I loved Herman Cain, a great man.  Herman, Rest In Peace!”)

[3]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/16/china-must-be-crushed/ (“China Must Be Crushed”) and Timothy D. Naegele, The Coronavirus and Similar Global Issues: How to Address Them, 137 BANKING L. J. 285 (June 2020) (Naegele June 2020) (Timothy D. Naegele) [NOTE: To download The Banking Law Journal article, please click on the link to the left of this note]; 

[4]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/american-stormtroopers-a-bright-shining-lie-138977 (“American ‘Stormtroopers’ — A Bright Shining Lie”)

[5]  See https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html (John Lewis: “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation”)

Lewis’ failure to recognize and condemn black-on-black crime—which is directed at elderly blacks, and especially elderly black women who have lived in fear for decades—perpetrated by the thugs, slugs, hoods and mongrels of the “Black Lives Matter” and Antifa groups (or others like them), is tantamount to racism itself.

And what about the rights of white Americans, and Hispanics, and Asian-Americans, and so many others? 

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2020/06/26/american-blacks-constitute-less-than-14-percent/ (“American Blacks Constitute Less Than 14 Percent”)

[6]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”) (see also the comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/when-will-barack-obamas-trial-for-sedition-begin/ (“When Will Barack Obama’s Trial For Sedition Begin?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?”) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_(civil_rights_leader) (“John Lewis (civil rights leader)”) and https://apnews.com/76a63a9d89f53018f9347206b98ae9a9 (“3 former presidents mourn John Lewis at funeral in Atlanta”)