John T. Reed’s news blog

This “we must vote for Trump because of the Supreme Court” argument needs to be thought through more. While writing my novel The Unelected President, I had to research and think about such things very thoroughly and hard. The president nominates justices. They do not become justices until the Supreme Court confirms them. The Republicans now have a majority in the Senate. In the event of a tie, the VP casts the deciding vote. Any senator including from the minority party can filibuster the Senate to stop a Supreme Court nomination from coming to a vote. It takes 60 votes...

My new novel The Unelected President is about a libertarian author, “Mike Medlock,” who suddenly and unexpectedly becomes President of the United States. Does saying he is libertarian means he is a clone of Libertarian Presidential nominee Gary Johnson? No. Deficit spending Johnson is in favor of a balanced budget amendment. “Mike Medlock” favors a Constitutional amendment to abolish new federal borrowing that increases the national debt and to require that all refinancing of existing federal debt be in the form of 30-year, fixed-rate, self-amortizing bonds. The problem with a balanced budget is that it includes revenue projections. Politicians will deliberately overestimate revenue...

This ABC TV series starts with the President-to-be being told he is about to be fired as HUD Secretary. His wife seems to want him to try to save his job to avoid disrupting her life or that of their kids. In Designated Survivor, they are not sure initially that the original President is dead. That is not the situation in my Unelected President. I am not sure how they confirm the President is dead so quickly with such a massive explosion as they depict. My book has another such explosion in a different country and it takes weeks for people to conclude that the head...

I just set my DVR to record the new TV series “Designated Survivor” on ABC at 10PM on Wednesday. The review in today’s paper said it’a fantastic.   My new book The Unelected President is supposed to arrive today. Both Unelected President and Designated Survivor are about a non-politician suddenly and unexpectedly becoming President of the United States.   The review buttressed my impression from watching the trailer. The Designated Survivor guy, “Tom Kirkman” is bewildered at becoming president, and remains so for a long time. My guy, “Mike Medlock,” is shocked, but gets over it in minutes.   The...

When he was White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”Well, he’s got one now doesn’t he? They had 90 murders in August, the most in that month in 20 years.When Barack Obama was in college and working in NYC for two years afterward, he decided to go into politics and chose the South Side of Chicago, apparently because it was the blackest district in America. Obama never had any connection to Chicago. He was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia and went to college in Pasadena and NYC.Anyway, he...