John T. Reed’s news blog

I have written in the past about Bush, Cheney, and Palin derangement syndrome. It is a psychiatric defect suffered only by Democrats. Now we have Trump derangement syndrome. He is the Republican presidential nominee. Paradoxically, this syndrome afflicts only former Republican elites.Apparently these folks thought they owned the Republican Party. However, because they need 70 million voters to win in November every four years, they led the rank-and-file Republican voters to believe that THEY owned the party and got to choose its nominee. It is fair to say that the Republican Party elites regret that they did not create a...

I came across a great compound word today in an old review by Martin Amis of Hillary’s book It Takes a Village. It’s on today’s WSJ editorial page. He said the books was the product of a large staff effort to achieve “pan-inoffensiveness.”Not only is that the goal and “skill” of politicians, nowadays, about 99% of the population are also “politicians.” Most are amateur politicians, water-cooler politicians, high-school-cafeteria politicians. They all are convinced the only way to succeed in life is to avoid pissing anyone off.The only way to do that is to do nothing and say nothing, which is...

The fear about Trump is that he would do crazy things as president because he says crazy things. I suggest that readers look at the actions Donald has taken during the 52 years since he graduated from high school, not his words, and ask if any are crazy.They were not. In college from 1964 to 1968—the same years I was in college—a lot of kids, maybe most, did drugs, got drunk, adopted radical positions like burning their draft cards and going to Canada or blowing up police stations.Many others dropped out of college, like Scott Walker and Rush Limbaugh or...

The amount of money amassed by Bill and Hillary, a couple who have had virtually no association with the for-profit portion of the world economy, is obviously influence peddling. The money came to them in the form of both excessive speaking fees and in the form of contributions to the Clinton Foundation.The speeches they made can be appraised. The comps would be speeches made by other similarly situated persons—former presidents, former secretaries of state, former Senators. It is possible that the Clintons made a market-value speech somewhere along the line—where they got paid a cut of the take—but I doubt...

The Constitutional process for becoming president is fatally flawed and must be changed. I am finishing a novel where the selection process was almost absent. It causes interesting consequences: http://johntreed.com/products/the-unelected-president-novel?variant=7088367555 Get the parties out of the presidential selection process Get the two major parties out of it. At present, each of those private organizations is guaranteed a place on every state ballot. Get all parties out of it. There should be no state or federal government anointing of private parties on an official government ballot. March-Madness-type tournament We should have a non-partisan, March-Madness-type tournament. The first election will have blank ballots. All voters write in...