Mitt Romney's Advice to Millennials

I got to see Mitt Romney today! He came to Georgetown, my alma mater, to talk to students. It's always good to see a speaker like this, but not without risk - this was held in the same auditorium where, years earlier, I had seen students hijack a question and answer session and use it to harass Ann Coulter (who absolutely embarrassed those kids with her responses, by the way).

Romney was gracious and relaxed. He filled a 400+ seat auditorium.This is a victory lap of sorts for him...I have a feeling I wasn't the only person who was there to see The Guy We Wish Was President.

He knows that Obama's leadership (or lack thereof) has made things bleak for college students. Romney said that real income for recent college grads has declined about 7% under Obama. For high school graduates, the drop is 9%. Income inequality is greater. Opportunities are fewer. This is bad news for all people, and especially young people.

His career advice to us? Go out and be in the world. "Learn how the economy works. Learn how education works. Learn the healthcare system...learn something else you can bring to public service." Before you can even think about leading the country, or about making rules for even a small segment of it, you HAVE to learn how it works.

Romney also noted: "If you get the chance to run for president, do it!" He did make it sound like fun.

Romney also talked about generational poverty, and how what we are doing to combat poverty has failed, and has been failing for decades. The welfare system creates a dis-incentive for marriage. The strategies for combating poverty are older than anyone in the audience - they're from the 1960s, and they don't work. We're from the 1990s, and we know better than to stick with something that's terribly outdated and ineffective.

Someone asked Romney if his faith has ever conflicted with his job. He said that if you're good at your job, if you produce results, nobody cares what religion you are. "I don't think most Americans could give a hoot what religion you practice. They care about how you perform." BINGO. Young people don't care who you are - are you an Uber or a taxi? A hotel or an AirBNB? - we don't care what sector you come from - just do your job, and do it well.

As far as the 2016 GOP primary, Romney predicts that it will come down to two candidates: one from the Tea Party/Outsider contingent, and another from the mainstream segment. He went further and said that the mainstream candidate (not the Tea Partier) would win the primary. The Bear dissents from this view, and thinks that there is a pendulum swing of people now sick of professional politicians because we see they're terribly ineffective. We already kicked out Boehner - the tides are turning, and they're bringing in a new wave of leadership.

On Donald Trump: Romney thinks that the attention Trump has brought to the race is good - but what Trump has said to his huge audience sometimes lacks politeness.

On being pulled in a million different directions at once (something all Millennials can relate to!): "I wasn't doing as much for my family as I should. I wasn't doing as much for my job as I should, and I wasn't doing as much for my church as I should. So all in all I figured things were pretty balanced."

On President Obama's foreign policy: This is where Mitt came out swinging. He traced back to Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo, which Romney sees as the beginning of America's retreat on the world stage: "They say that nature abhors a vaccuum, but Putin loves one. So does Xi Jinping." "The President has painted himself and America in a corner with terrible foreign policy choices." "Whether you love him or hate him, he's been a disaster as a foreign policy president."

On conservative principles: "The reason I'm a conservative, the reason I'm a Republican, is that I am absolutely convinced that conservative principles are designed to help people get higher incomes and lift people out of poverty." "The rich do well under Republicans and Democrats. The poor and the middle class need conservatives."

Romney talked at length about how much greatness he sees in the American people - how our lives are to be measured in our families, our friends, our kids, not our balance sheets. This is a guy who loves his family and loves his country. Those guys are rare, and they shouldn't be. 

He's also a guy with a great story about being recognized in public: "Someone came up to me and said, 'You look familiar...who are you?' and I said 'Tom Brady!"

Hillary's Hiding 5 Months' Worth of Emails. Oh, and Committing Perjury, Too.

This country might be taking 90s nostalgia a little too far - we're about to have another Clinton on trial for perjury.

On July 31st, a federal judge ordered her to certify under oath that she had turned over all of her work emails to the State Department. Hillary signed the statement - which includes "under penalty of perjury" - on August 10th. Judge Emmet Sullivan also ordered Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills to sign the same certification, but they have ignored this court order so far.

Hillary Clinton signed that statement, even though the email records she turned over have big gaps, some over a month long - and all the gaps total about 5 months. This makes Nixon's 18 minutes of blank tape look like child's play.

One of the following must be true:

1. Hillary took several extended vacations and never told anyone, OR
2. Hillary is deliberately hiding information.

It turned out to be the second one. On Friday, the FBI found an email chain between HRC and General Petraeus that was never turned over to the State Department. Hillary didn't turn over all of her work emails, but she certified under penalty of perjury that she did. And this is just what we know so far...as the FBI dredges up more information off her wiped server, there may be more emails that she never coughed up - and that means further instances of perjury, and - if the Justice Department does its job - that means multiple felony charges.

With a felony record like that, Hillary wouldn't be allowed to manage a Jamba Juice . It is beyond my comprehension that there are people who think she should be allowed to run the Executive Branch.

I'm just waiting for the DOJ to wake up and indict Hillary for this very obvious crime she has committed. Until real justice hits, we do have a tidbit of poetic justice to hang onto in the meantime: The federal judge who ordered Hillary and Co. to sign statements under oath? He was appointed by...Bill Clinton.

I Don't Believe You, John Boehner

John Boehner announced his resignation today, effective on October 30th. The story goes that he told his wife he was thinking about it last night, and this morning - on the way back from a Starbucks run - he decided to resign. I don't buy that story, and I don't think I'm alone in my skepticism.

My generation is used to challenging what we are told by bureaucrats. (Mainly because we've been lied to so much...we grew up in the Clinton years, y'all.) We also grew up in the era of the perfectly packaged celebrity. That Kardashian Instagram selfie? Nothing "insta" about it, it's been staged and photoshopped. That viral *home* video? Had a production team. We know this. So we don't believe an important person when he or she tells us something was "spontaneous" - especially something so huge as resigning as the Speaker of the House.

There is no way that Speaker Boehner decided to resign his position of national leadership on a Starbucks run. Love him or hate him, he's a smart guy - too smart to make an important career decision while he's in line for a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

The real story on this decision might come out over the next few weeks, or it might not. We don't know. But the lack of trust in leadership - is probably one of the reasons Boehner saw it prudent to check out.

Pope Francis' Address to Congress

Pope Francis came to Congress today in a spirit of humility and service. Ideally, that's how the members of Congress would show up, but we know that's not always true. At least today, these people showed up and listened. They listened to a Pope who has inspired the world, in part because of his willingness to go out into it. The 300 million people in this country can't all go to the Vatican, so he brought the Vatican to us. There's an authentic generosity in Pope Francis' coming to America and speaking to Americans.

Every hot-button issue made it into the address - the economy, immigration, the refugee crisis, inequality, education, civil rights, and so on. The biggest themes, though, were the environment and the family. The Left wants to talk about the environment; the Right wants to talk about the family. Pope Francis asked us to talk about both. He also called on us to end the death penalty and to end abortion. Yet another situation where the Right calls for one and the Left calls for the other, and Pope Francis says we must do both. He is holding us all to a higher standard than our political affiliations. He's telling us to color outside the party lines.

You cannot take that speech and fit it neatly into a "Right-Wing Box" or a "Left-Wing Box." That's part of what makes Pope Francis such an appealing world leader. It's also what makes much of the media coverage so unreliable - they want to cherry-pick the parts of his message that fit their political opinions, and that just doesn't do justice to the Pope's message.

This is not a Pope who shies away from big issues - that's what makes him a leader. He takes those challenges on (and, in the speech, encouraged others to do the same). It was one of those rare speeches that maintained a hopeful tone without being fluffy - and, in fact, while discussing the world's greatest challenges.

If you didn't get a chance to see the speech yet, I encourage you to read the full text here. Or, better yet, see if you can YouTube it - especially the very last part. When most politicians say "God bless America," they say it like they're issuing a command. When Pope Francis says "God bless America," he sounds like he's asking God, humbly and honestly, to take care of us.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And just a note about Maria Shriver's comments....she went on MSNBC today and said that before Pope Francis, "it was kind of embarrassing to walk into your church." That's crazy. No one should be embarrassed to worship God. No one should be embarrassed to be Catholic. Has the Vatican had some embarrassing scandals? Yes. The people who committed those heinous acts, and who covered them up, should be embarrassed. But there is nothing in Catholicism that should embarrass someone. 

There is no institution on the planet that is more hopeful, and no institution that has done more good for more people, than the Catholic Church. If you are embarrassed to be affiliated with that, then that's wrong, but we should forgive you - and who teaches forgiveness? Oh yeah...the Catholic Church.

Pro-Hillary Group Releases Ad Blaming Jeb Bush for...

Every time I think progressives have hit rock bottom, they just keep digging. Case in point, this doom-and-gloom attack ad, published by a pro-Hillary group called "Americans United for Progress." It blames Jeb Bush for George Bush - and blames George Bush for 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the economic crisis. See for yourself:



If the Katrina response was bungled - and I'm not doubting that it was - then that's because government is too bureaucratic and clumsy to execute an efficient response. If anything, GWB should have been more conservative, not less.

The housing crisis? Largely accelerated by legislation signed into law by Bill Clinton. If Jeb Bush is responsible for the actions of his brother, then Hillary is responsible for the actions of her husband. The progressives' rules - not mine.

Blaming George Bush for the Iraq War has merit - but let's not forget that Bush went into Iraq with the support of NATO and the UN Security Council...and also the support of Hillary Clinton, who voted in favor of invading Iraq. How is Jeb Bush responsible for his brother, if Hillary Clinton isn't even responsible for her own voting record in the Senate?

And finally, the ad blames Bush for 9/11. That is offensive and obscene. It's also entirely illogical. If I were to get mugged walking to the grocery store, would I blame the mayor of D.C.? No, I don't, because I am not an insane person. I would blame the guy who did it. In this case, the guys who did it were radical Muslims - something progressives never seem to be able to say out loud.

This video clip is the embarrassing product of a group trying to stop its own candidate's implosion. It has nothing to do with Jeb, hardly anything to do with George, and everything to do with liberal desperation about a bad candidate.

51 people vying for Miss America. 20 running for President.

Tonight is the Miss America pageant, and the inevitable thinkpieces about beauty pageants will trot across the internet right after the last bikini'd beauty queen trots across the stage. People have a lot of feelings about the Miss America pageant, not all of them positive. This post is not about those feelings. It's about how we find a Miss America - and how that system is arguably better than the one we use to find a President.

The field of 51 women onstage tonight represent the best and brightest of the tens of thousands of young women who compete in the Miss America Organization each year. It's an amazing turnout considering the strict criteria that must be met before a contestant steps onstage.


 In order to compete for Miss America, a person must:

• be a natural-born female
• be between the ages of 17 and 24
• not be married
• not be a parent 
• have a talent she can perform onstage
• be ambulatory (they judge you on your walk!)
• have a community service platform
• win a local pageant to qualify for a state pageant, and
• win a state pageant to go on to the main event.

Now think about what it takes to run for president: Be 35 years old. Be a natural-born citizen. That's it. The end. Get some signatures, file some paperwork, and look at you - you're running for president! And we've got only 20 major candidates - 16 Republicans and 4 Democrats - to show for it.

If every single state in the United States has a woman in a narrow age range who is pretty, poised, talented, and willing to appear onstage in a bikini in front of a huge audience...how does every state not have a natural born citizen over the age of 35 who can competently manage the Executive Branch?

There's an argument to be made that the bar is lower to be Miss America than it is to be president. I wouldn't say the bar is lower - I'd just say that the bar is different, because the jobs are different. Think of the presidential election as a Miss America pageant in which community service is replaced with public service, and everyone has the same talent: Answering questions about policy. In the presidential race, they don't even have to wear swimsuits! (Thank goodness.)

Candidates are judged by competence and by likeability, in both contests. The presidential race has a much better panel of judges - the judges are millions of voters, instead of at Miss America where the judges are celebrities who didn't have anything else going on that night. The pageant starts with a big group of people who each get a small blip of screen time, and then narrows it down, step by step, getting to know each remaining contestant better, until one is left standing. That's no different than how the presidential races are run, except we stretch it out over years instead of knocking it out in one night.


How do we have 51 potential Miss Americas, but only 20 potential presidents? Everyone's saying it's a crowded GOP field this year, but I don't think it's crowded enough. Maybe it's my generation - we're used to having options. We might swipe left on 99% of those options, but as long as you find the one that works, then it's a success. We'll find our new Miss America tonight, one of 51 candidates who would be great at the job. Why can't we have a Presidential field with that many good options?

Never Forget

When terrorists attacked America on 9/11, most Millennials were kids. We were too young to fully grasp what was going on, and shielded from it by our parents. The largest American tragedy in our lifetime was something we witnessed through a child's eyes - and an event whose aftermath shaped our generation. On that day 14 years ago, we were too young to see the events unfold on television, or to see how President Bush responded to a nation deeply traumatized by an act of terror. The videos below are just a start at understanding what the world witnessed on one of America's darkest days - at what our parents saw on television after sending us off to school on that Tuesday morning. These fragments of American history are worth watching. May we never forget.

Queen Elizabeth II Becomes Longest-Serving Monarch in British History

On September 9th, at 5:30 PM GMT, Queen Elizabeth II will officially become Britain's longest-serving monarch. The 89 year old Queen will be breaking the record now held by Queen Victoria, who ruled for 64 years, 213 days.

At her coronation, in 1952

For those of us on Eastern Standard Time, the record gets broken at 12:30 PM in our time zone. Queen Elizabeth II didn't want to be seen as celebrating her great-grandmother's death - so she's spending the day conducting business as usual (when you're the Queen, that means attending a ceremonial opening of a new railroad line).

Though it seems she prefers traveling by car. #RidingDirty?

This woman - who served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service in World War II - has seen 12 U.S. presidencies in her time as Britain's Head of State.

She - or one of her shoulder pads - must have said something funny.

You go, Lizzie. #makeitreign

Kentucky Democrat Won't Issue Gay Marriage Licenses, Cue the Freakout

Ahhh, remember the good old days when we were all arguing about gay cake?  There was a whole conversation about whether or not a baker or a photographer should be able to turn down providing their services to gay weddings.

For the record - yes, the vendors can turn down those jobs. We have a right to free association in this country, and you have a right to choose who you enter into a contract with. Say you're a DJ, and someone wants to hire you for an event. Say that the event is a puppy-punching rally. You have the right to say no. They are offering you a job and you can turn it down.

Now, let's say you own a grocery store, and someone comes in to buy some cupcakes that they'll serve at a puppy-punching rally the next day. You, like all rational people, staunchly oppose puppy-punching. Do you have to sell those cupcakes? Yes, you do. Your store offers goods, not services - and you don't get to decide what those goods will be used for.

Enter Kim Davis, a Democrat who was elected to serve as a county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky. She says that her religious beliefs prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Well, issuing marriage licenses is a big part of her job, AND the Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples have a legal right to marry.

So, Kim Davis should resign her position, because she cannot or will not perform an essential job function. Why she has refused to resign is beyond my understanding - wouldn't she want out of this situation? There can't be anything fulfilling about purposefully obstructing the normal processes of government, can there? (Did I mention she's a Democrat?)

If Davis understands her religion to mean that marriage is between a man and a woman, that's okay! She is free to practice her religion. What she is not free to do is to continue receiving a paycheck from the taxpayers, while she refuses to do her job.

This woman is an elected official. She probably won't be a re-elected official - you can't refuse to do your job and expect to keep your job. (Did I mention she's a Democrat?)

There are thousands of jobs out there that do not involve issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Kim Davis should go get one of those jobs.