Donald Trump has had a free ride long enough, Washington based Club for Growth has apparently decided. Here’s an item on CFG and Trump just released by Liz Benjamin.  Strong stuff.

Here’s the CFG quote:

“Donald Trump for President? You’ve got to be joking,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. “Donald Trump has advocated for massive tax increases that display a stunning lack of knowledge of how to create jobs.

His love for a socialist-style universal health care system and his alarming obsession with protectionist policies are automatic disqualifiers among free-market conservatives. This publicity stunt will sputter and disappear just as quickly as the ‘The Apprentice’ is losing viewers.”

I suspect Trump will have a statement of his own shortly.

Someone had to do it. So former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown Jr. stepped up this weekend and kicked off the conversation that has to be had: Should Vice President Joe Biden be replaced on the 2012 presidential ticket?

Brown used the old prediction method: New York governor Andrew Cuomo will become the VP nominee and Biden will land the coveted Secretary of State spot, he conjectured.

There are two problems with that scenario, though: 1.) Cuomo is on the ascent. President Obama is on the decline. No way Cuomo swaps positions. 2.) Biden, God bless him, has been nothing but a headache to Obama as VP. Is the President going to hand loose-lips a higher profile job?

I suspect Brown knows that, but now the subject of musical chairs has been broached. He’s done his job.

This discussion has little to do with Biden’s inveterate gaffes — they are almost charming — nor does it have to do with the brief moments of slumber Biden enjoyed at the President’s deficit speech last week.  It has everything to do, instead, with electoral politics. President Obama’s re-election is anything but assured, and Vice President Biden no longer adds much to the ticket.

In 2008, Biden made sense. Obama was a virtual unknown. He had been an obscure Illinois state senator just two years before, and candidate Clinton was hammering away on the trust issue.  Senator Obama needed a gray-hair standing next to him — one with foreign policy experience who  Americans knew. Biden, a regular on the Sunday talk shows, fit the bill.

But what about now?  What does Biden add today? The President will win Delaware, Biden’s home state, anyway. And whether one agrees or not with President Obama’s foreign policy direction, he is no longer a novice in world affairs.

Where does Biden help?

The argument for keeping Biden is that it shows confidence and stability in the ticket. Replacing him outright would be a risky move, one to make only if deemed necessary. And I suspect that’s what the Obama team, with one eye on the President’s sliding poll numbers, is already quietly discussing. How low do the President’s numbers have to reach to warrant such a dramatic move?

Brown’s prediction this weekend won’t be the last one. The cat’s out of the bag.

There’s something about a good old-fashioned publicity stunt that makes me want to jump up and cheer –  to call every single person I know to tell them about this most amazing thing going on.

Taco Bell has to win the prize for best stunt ever:  When the Mir space station was plummeting to earth in early 2001, it floated a small target in the middle of the South Pacific and promised to give every American a free taco if the thing hit the sign. Genius.  Bliss!

A friend once called to say that she had been offered to help judge the Nathan’s hotdog eating contest.  Should she do it? I almost fell off my chair.  I would walk to Coney Island from Cincinnati to do that.  I would rather judge that contest than flip the coin at the Superbowl.  Seriously.  (She’s mad at me for convincing her to do it. Said it was “gross.”)

I don’t know what this thrill is about.  But I know I’m not the only one who feels it.  A former colleague who ran press on a gubernatorial campaign in the mid-1970’s once told me an hysterical story.   His candidate was  rich, smart, and B-O-R-I-N-G.  And he tended to give Fidel-Castro-length speeches, nothing under an hour.

One day on the campaign trail, he was delivering one of his trademark, mind-numbing policy speeches when an ice cream truck down the street exploded.  Frozen custard was sprayed everywhere; it was hanging from tree branches, splattered across car windshields — everywhere. And there were kids around to appreciate it. My friend had spent days inviting reporters and television camera crews to attend this speech, and he watched as one crew after another drifted away from his candidate to cover this spectacular occurrence.  And why did the press cover that instead of a significant policy address that might impact tens of thousands of Americans?  Because AN ICE CREAM TRUCK BLEW UP!

I often recall that story to young press people looking for advice.  No matter how good you think your event might be, Burger King might re-release its left-handed Whopper or a tomato that looks like  Mahatma Gandhi might suddenly be discovered.

I ran across a press release from Papa John’s Pizza this morning that got me thinking about this.   Papa John’s has created a special pizza in honor of the marriage between Prince William and Kate Middleton – a portrait pizza of the royal couple to be.   “Kate’s veil is made from mushrooms and her dress from cheese,” Papa John’s spokesman explains, “while William’s morning suit consists of salami and peppers.” Delicious.

It’s a happy day at the O’Reilly household.  So many people to call!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFULUWFTgg0

One more video today.  This one a trailer for a documentary film coming out in movie theaters later this year.  If you don’t know the story of New York Say Thank You, you should learn it.  New York Says Thank You is one the great stories and organizations of our time.  It will make any cynic a believer again in the human spirit.

I am fortunate to know the foundation’s creator, Jeff Parness, and to call him a friend.  What Jeff and a growing group of New York firefighters — and now everyday Americans — have built is the stuff of miracles.  They should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This video trailer offers a tiny glimpse into what they do.

P.S. You can sponsor a stitch on the 9/11 Flag for as little as $5.  You know the one — the one that was still flying that day.

My father in law sent me this video a week ago, but for some reason I could not post it on here.  It’s finally working now.  Apologies if you already have seen it. You’ll like it if you’re in the word business.  Even if you’re not.

http://youtu.be/Hzgzim5m7oU

The first time I saw talking points I was shocked by them.  I was 25 years old, and I suppose naïve, because my first inclination was to hide them down the back of my pants.  They struck me as illicit at worst and cheating at best – like Cliff notes in high school.  I didn’t want to be caught holding them.

Here were other people’s ideas, honed into pithy sentences that could be used in debates or in media appearances. You didn’t have to understand the subject matter to sound smart, you just had to have these three or five points memorized for recitation. I had no idea at the time how cynical and organized American politics could be.

Since that time, I’ve probably written 100,000 talking points for various candidates and committees, but I have never liked them.  They are useful, but unoriginal.  They will get you through an argument, but will not allow you to advance it or arrive at consensus with the other side.

I don’t know when talking points first emerged as a concept – they could go back 1,000 years for all I know – but their glory days almost assuredly were in the past decade when cable news networks began airing talking head shows. What the American public became subjected to watching was an endless volley of partisan talking points, political ping-pong matches with few spectacular points ever scored.

The thing that lights me up about the Tea Party rebels in Washington is that they don’t sound rehearsed in this way.  They sound passionate, slightly wild even.  To this ear trained for measured tones, this new sound is almost intoxicating in its honesty.

I am beginning to hear that honesty in established political leaders as well – certainly in Congressman Paul Ryan.  He never sounds restrained in his thinking; he calls things as he sees them and he has his own ideas.  So does Chris Christie.

I don’t know this for sure, and I have not seen it measured in polling, but my gut tells me that the American public is thirsting for this new sound, too.  They can hear the difference between propaganda and genuine thought, as clearly as Soviet citizens did in Solzhenitsyn.

I don’t know if that will keep people in office, though, or allow them to achieve higher office.  That is the big question I am struggling with.   Because talking points are designed not only to advance a political agenda, but to keep candidates out of hot water.  Where you speak freely in politics, you eventually get burned.

That said, I would venture to guess that the Republican candidate for President in 2012 will be the one not reading off his sleeve in debates.

President Obama released this Proclamation Tuesday commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.  Including it here in case any of you have not seen it.  I had not.

On April 12, 1861, artillery guns boomed across Charleston Harbor in an attack on Fort Sumter. These were the first shots of a civil war that would stretch across 4 years of tremendous sacrifice, with over 3 million Americans serving in battles whose names reach across our history.

The meaning of freedom and the very soul of our Nation were contested in the hills of Gettysburg and the roads of Antietam, the fields of Manassas and the woods of the Wilderness. When the terrible and costly struggle was over, a new meaning was conferred on our country’s name — the United States of America. We might be tested, but whatever our fate might be, it would be as one Nation.

The Civil War was a conflict characterized by legendary acts of bravery in the face of unprecedented carnage. Those who lived in these times — from the resolute African American soldier volunteering his life for the liberation of his fellow man to the determined President secure in the rightness of his cause — brought a new birth of freedom to a country still mending its divisions.

On this milestone in American history, we remember the great cost of the unity and liberty we now enjoy, causes for which so many have laid down their lives. Though America would struggle to extend equal rights to all our citizens and carry out the letter of our laws after the war, the sacrifices of soldiers, sailors, Marines, abolitionists, and countless other Americans would bring a renewed significance to the liberties
established by our Founders.

When the guns fell silent and the fate of our Nation was secured, blue and gray would unite under
one flag and the institution of slavery would be forever abolished from our land.

As a result of the sacrifice of millions, we would extend the promise and freedom enshrined in our Constitution to all Americans. Through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, we would prohibit slavery and indentured servitude, establish equal protection under the law, and extend the right to vote to former slaves. We would reach for a more perfect Union together as Americans, bound by the collective threads of history and our
common hopes for the future.

We are the United States of America — we have been tested, we have repaired our Union, and we have emerged
stronger. As we respond to the critical challenges of our time, let us do so as adherents to the enduring values of our founding and stakeholders in the promise of a shared tomorrow.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 12, 2011, as the first day of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. I call upon all Americans to observe this Sesquicentennial with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the legacy of freedom and unity that the
Civil War bestowed upon our Nation.

So the Chinese have now banned thinking about or viewing television programs or movies that simulate time travel.  Plot lines on Chinese television may no longer engage in “fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking.”

That’s a mouthful; probably more so in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Funny, I don’t recall the Chinese saying anything to the Khmer Rouge when the Mao-inspired ally declared it “Year Zero” in Cambodia — right before slaughtering a couple of million of its countrymen in Years One, Two, and Three.  In fact, the short-lived agrarian paradise seemed to embrace many of the elements now prohibited in China:  fantasy, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, fatalism, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking.

Maybe what the Chinese really fear are recollections of a time when the communist autocrats were not in charge in Peking Bejing.

Prince Harry

I had a wealthy client some years ago who took to inviting me to the fanciest New York dinner parties. They were the type of parties where one or two guests might arrive wearing sashes, and no one would burst out laughing. Would you please pass the salt, Contessa? That sort of thing.

I was what you might call a filler — a warm body that could fill out any gap in the boy-girl-boy-girl continuum without getting all too drunk or starting an indoor fist fight.

A good chunk of the guests were typically European or British, and all them were, or appeared to be, rich, rich, rich. I got to know a couple of these well-heeled Brits a little over the course of a few dinners, and the thing that struck me most admirably about them was their deep military tradition.

Virtually of all of their class considered it a duty and an honor to serve. In the highest ranks of course — in the Scots Guards or the Coldstream Guards usually — but to serve nonetheless and to enter combat if circumstances required it.  It was the same for their sons as it was for their ancestors, going back, in some cases, to the Middle Ages. Serving is something one does, as the British so well put it. Witness Princes Harry and Andrew.

America’s elite no longer have that tradition, and we are certainly the lesser for it. Yes, there are McCains of this world who continue to serve generationally, but for the most part, we leave our fighting to the poor and lower middle class. (My father fought in combat in World War II along with virtually all of his college classmates; his sons only registered for the draft. We would have gone, but we didn’t volunteer to do so. There is a difference.)

I’ve always thought that was bad for the country. Not in an unfair sense — and, indeed, it is unfair — but in a social compact sense. Are we in this together or not? It’s why I support a resumption of the draft, and even compulsory national service for every young American, without exception.

This is the inverse of what President Obama was up to yesterday. The President, as is typical of his party, demagogued “the rich” — according to him, families making $250,000 annually — in a national speech, suggesting that they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

That’s true. They don’t. They pay far more than their fair share of taxes. Truly wealthy Americans foot the bill for tens of millions of Americans who pay no federal income tax at all — about 47% of citizens.    We’ve all heard the stats, the top one percent Americans pay almost half of all federal taxes.  How is that fair?  By any objective assessment, it is not.

These two disparities — military service falling disproportionatley on the poor and political blame being heaped on “the rich” — strike me as entwined. Was this the America our forefather’s envisioned? Were two Americas intended or just one?

There is a larger conversation that needs to be had in this country, but it will need to be led by bigger minds — bigger spirits even — than the ones we are forced to listen to today.