I was just expelled as the only Black Republican from AZGOP executive committee by RINOs in AZGOP LD2 for: supporting President Trump, signing up 285 new Trump Precinct Committeemen & holding the Republican AZ state legislature accountable for allowing 2020/2022 stolen elections. pic.twitter.com/AIqi7NNu4D

— Christian Lamar (@christianllamar) June 25, 2024

#GaveledOut: Return of The People’s House (2023)

🎬 **PREMIERING NOW** 🎬#GaveledOut: Return of The People’s House (2023)

Get ready to dive into the heart of the battle for the gavel that led to the ousting of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

It's not just a film, it's a movement. pic.twitter.com/txq8rUKzxm

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) November 10, 2023

The challenge for Republicans and Trump opponents

 After what we have seen, especially after top Republicans like Mitch McConnell dumped on the revelations from the tapes Tucker Carlson showed:

There are a significant number of republicans who would very much like to move on from Trump. Okay, that's a perfectly acceptable position.

However, Trump supporters will need to be convinced that the next set of "leaders" put up by our GOPe "leaders" will actually represent them and all the old lies the GOPe leadership have told over the years to retain power are no longer operative.

So, what is left for a "Let's Move On From Trump" type to do? Well, you could actually try and present an argument for why another candidate or candidates will actually support the economic/foreign/trade etc policies that Trump pushed that worked so well for the working/lower classes.

But the "Let's Move On From Trump" crowd can't really do that because its thus far it's not clear yet any other candidate will do or ever do any of that. Including DeSantis. Perhaps because DeSantis remains a Paul Ryan clone as he was during his congressional career or perhaps because DeSantis is not a Paul Ryan clone but doesn't possess the campaign cash/infrastructure independence to do that.

So the default argument, by necessity, becomes Trump is so dumb and yucky and this and that and the other that we simply have to dump him and hope for the best!

But that won't work in 2023/24 because if that is truly the only argument put forth then the bulk of the base voters know, intuitively, they are going to get screwed again. So they'll stick with the only guy that has ever fought for them in those economic/foreign affairs/trade matters and actually seemed like he liked them over the candidates pushed by people that literally and explicitly despise the base voters.

But hey, knock yourselves out and make your case to the people. Stop kissing up to the democratical narratives because you want Trump gone so very badly but you don't want to bother with the much more difficult task, which requires hard work and reasoned persuasion, of convincing your fellow republicans that things truly can be better with an alternative candidate.

Time to face reality, realize when we're wrong.

 House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., blamed the right's "demonization of Nancy Pelosi" for the attack on Paul Pelosi in their San Francisco home, saying that this is what happens in a country that follows "Germany in the early '30s."   

The man most responsible for putting Biden in the White House – the Democrat Kingmaker – called Republicans Nazis.  Accusing Republican critics of Nancy Pelosi of inciting the attack on her husband.  

We tend to think that attacks like this are so far out that nobody would believe them.  We are wrong.  When Biden says to a group of Black supporters: “They’re going to put you back in chains,” people on the Right use it as an example of rhetoric that’s so overheated that it is counterproductive.  It’s not.  

Normal people view this kind of rhetorical excesses through our Overton Window and don’t believe that others will not view them the same way.  We’re wrong.  

When Clyburn accuses us of being Nazis and Donald Trump of being Hitler, many people nod and agree.  They see us the same way.  They may be our neighbors and even nod as they pass us on the street, but they believe that if given power, we’ll bring back slavery, send our enemies to concentration camps and begin gassing Jews.  If you think that’s an exaggeration that no one would believe, you’re wrong.  

That’s the situation we find ourselves in.  It’s partly our fault; we ignore these accusations at our peril because we know these are lies that anyone can see through.  That’s wrong.  It’s partly because, with very few exceptions, the mass media is on the other side, and acts are the megaphone to amplify and spread these smears.  The press is an oligopoly controlled by the opposition.

It does not have to be this way.  The first order of business is to create – or buy – our own press.  Musk’s takeover of Twitter is a good start.  But the press is financially precarious, and what Musk has done with Twitter can be done with local and regional organs, including local broadcast affiliates.  

More thoughts on that anon.   

The purveyors of the COVID response are merchants of evil

Jack Kerwick in Frontpage writes about The Death of Outrage over COVID

Asking why Republicans have lost the trust of so many of us who called ourselves Republican, he says:  

Frankly, it’s astonishing that, at this date, traditional Republican voters are still willing to vote Republican at all.

It's worth reading the whole thing, and here's the bottom line: 

 The purveyors of the COVID response are merchants of evil, for the incalculable pain, of every conceivable sort, that this response visited upon the Earth was all avoidable. Those who could’ve spoken out but refused to do so are accomplices to these crimes. Republicans and their apologists in the Big Conservative media subscribed to COVID Orthodoxy.

Will they redeem themselves now? After all, the verdict is in. The last two years have been an unmitigated disaster, both in reality and, critically, relative to the tenets of COVID Orthodoxy itself. The “two weeks” that the Experts told us they would need to “flatten the curve” and “save lives” has turned into two years—despite “social distancing,” mask mandates, the interning of society, and a mass vaccination campaign the likes of which the world had never known.

On their own terms, Anthony Fauci and his fellow partisans everywhere have proven themselves to be colossal failures. Whether through incompetence or dishonesty (doubtless a combination of both), they failed.

Unless and until Republicans and Big Conservative media actors spare not a moment to hammer this point home, they deserve the trust of their constituents about as much as the public health officials of places like Israel and America deserve the trust of the public.

There must be a reckoning for this much evil.

A Fresh Wind is Blowing In Virginia

 CHANGE:

● VA Governor Glenn Youngkin Overturns Mandates and Takes on Critical Race Theory Immediately Upon Taking Office.

● New Va. Gov. Youngkin issues executive orders on COVID mandates, CRT and more. “Executive Order Number Two delivers on his Day One promise to empower Virginia parents in their children’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.”

● Winsome Sears to make history as first woman — and Black woman — to be Virginia’s Lt. Governor.

UPDATE: Virginia’s New AG Fires Civil Rights Division, Will Start Prosecuting Cases Dropped By ‘Social Justice’ DAs.

Ace of Spades: Sean Davis, Rush Limbaugh: Republicans Can Either Confirm Kavanaugh or Lose the Senate in November

I don't think Republicans want to hold either chamber of Congress; many Republicans prefer being like Ben Sasse, having no power whatsoever except to burble up baby-talk homilies that he can quote in fundraising letters.

Having power is scary -- you are forced to make decisions that actually have consequences, and those consequences may involve the leftwing media saying mean things about you.

So it's better to be a Controlled Opposition. They don't want actual power, which is a hard thing to have; they just want position, privilege, prestige and perks.

Since these dirtbags, sell-outs, and corporate shills prefer being in the minority, I say vote to keep them in power to spite them. Make them squirm.

The rubber is about to meet the road for Senate Republicans. They have a simple choice: they can vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, thereby ending the baseless and unsubstantiated Democrat- and media-fueled smear campaign against him, or they can kiss House and Senate majorities goodbye for the next decade, if not longer.

In case the election of one Donald J. Trump was not enough to compel the D.C. Republican establishment swamp creatures to wipe the muck from their eyes and see what's happening with their own constituents, Republican voters have had enough of feckless do-nothings whose careers consist of little more than not doing everything they promised to do.

Give us the House, the Senate, and the White House, they said, and we'll repeal Obamacare. Give us power across the major elected branches, and we’ll secure the border, they promised. With a Republican president in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, we’ll confirm the most conservative Supreme Court nominees you can imagine, they claimed.

Yet here we are. Obamacare is still on the books, and a wall is still not on the border. The only compelling reason left for Republicans to continue voting for Republicans is the confirmation of conservative jurists to fill the federal judiciary. The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was nice, but it changed nothing, as he replaced the staunchly conservative Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch's appointment merely maintained the status quo.

...

Republican lawmakers have to understand that their voters have zero patience for their excuses for not doing what they promised. It's why they elected Trump in the first place. Republican senators failed to repeal Obamacare after promising to do so for years. That was strike one. They've steadfastly refused to secure the border, let alone build a barrier along the most porous sections of the nation’s border with Mexico. That was strike two.

A refusal to vote to confirm Kavanaugh in the face of a blatantly obvious Democrat smear campaign, orchestrated in concert with a compliant and obscenely partisan national media, will be strike three, and there will be no more at-bats. I have spent a career working in and covering politics, and I have never witnessed the kind of anger among rank-and-file GOP voters generated from a combination of the unsubstantiated Democrat attacks on Kavanaugh and the flaccid response of emasculated Republicans.

Gallup: Republican Party Favorability Highest in Seven Years

Google is Evil

GOOGLE LISTED “NAZISM” AS THE IDEOLOGY OF THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN PARTY

Does Anybody Understand What These Never Trump Republicans Think They’re Achieving?

Kurt Schlichter

What's the end game for these preening, posturing doofuses who call themselves Republicans, but who can't pass a CNN camera without slamming their party’s president? There is a lot of blue falconry going on in the GOP right now, and while it's pretty clear why, what's not so clear is what these fair weather frauds believe they're accomplishing.

We know why they do it. Some of them are truly shocked and upset by Trump's rough edges. He's not your grandfather’s Republican. He's more like your grandfather's buddy who got Pops drunk and took him to a brothel long before he ever met grandma. Trump’s rude and crude, and that rubs a lot of Republicans the wrong way. His cheerful vulgarity and vindictiveness, which many find his most attractive qualities, offends some people because they're decent people of moral character who just can’t go there. It rubs others the wrong way because they're hopeless wusses who would rather be loved by the WaPo than kick liberals in their Harry Reids.

Others undermine our party’s leader because Trump dropped a deuce in their profitable punch bowl. They used to have power, and now they’re on the sidelines, and it gnaws at them. For so long they had control of the Republican Party, and they could shamelessly lie to our faces at election time back home in the sticks, then return to Washington, D.C., take off their sensible shoes, slip on their Gucci loafers, and proceed to do the bidding of their donor masters. Ka-ching!

Oh yeah, we’ll repeal Obamacare. Oh yeah, we’ll defend the border. Oh yeah, we’ll defund the baby-butchering cartel. Oh yeah, blah blah blah blah blah. All lies, but they didn't care. They had their power and prestige and the promise of a fat paycheck down the road when they moved from Congress to K Street. Actual conservative ideology? Well, that was for the rubes. And we were the rubes. We in the base, who are suffering from the establishment’s incompetent mismanagement of the society it had been foolish to try to micromanage in the first place, tried to warn them. But the Fredocons wouldn't listen, because they're smart, not like everyone says, like dumb…

That warning was called ‘the Tea Party,” and the GOP establishment didn't like it either. Remember how all those activated Republican voters helped recapture Congress, yet most of the establishment types looked at them like they were something nasty that was smeared on their shoes? See, the base isn’t supposed to be activated. It's supposed to be obedient. It's supposed to turn out on election day to do volunteer work and write checks. It's not supposed to try to have input. That's for our betters, not for us.

But the thing is, now we're woke, and we’ve realized that our establishment sucks, and that we’re tired of being the suckees. They didn't listen to us when we gave them the Tea Party, so now we gave them Trump. And they're very, very upset with us. That's a key reason they want to undercut Trump. Some people are just always going to want to trash the guy getting the attention and wielding the influence they think rightfully belongs to them. That's true whether they are some donkey–looking senator from Arizona or Nebraska pimping a book about his agonizing moral struggles, or some tiresome op-ed scribbler serving as the domesticated house conservative on a failing liberal rag, or the invasion-happy beneficiary of his parents' success who finds he can't fill the cabins on his brochure’s cruises anymore.

But what's the end game? What are they thinking is going to happen? Do they think that one morning Trump is going to wake up and think “Gosh, all these people telling me I'm wrong and mean and crude and tweet too darn much must be right. I'll change, because I always take the advice of people who I've already broken and humiliated.”

Unlikely, because Trump doesn't respect you. And he doesn't respect you because he's already beaten you. He's not a gracious winner, but to be fair, you've hardly been gracious losers. Oh, how it must gall you to be so utterly defeated by someone you consider your moral and intellectual inferior.

So if you're not going to change Trump, what do you think you're going to do? Do you think you're going to somehow drive Trump out of office? Let’s run down that scenario. Now we have President Pence, and about 75% of your party’s base infuriated at your backstabbing betrayal. That seems disastrous even if you buy the idea that President Pence would somehow preside over a return to something like business as usual. He might, at least until the next election. Then you're all toast. Let's just say that in addition to your treachery, your past track record of total failure to achieve the conservative goals you promised won’t particularly inspire Trump supporters to lend you their support.

Or maybe you think our voters would just be so disgusted that they would let the Democrats grab a majority on Capitol Hill and the White House too. Maybe you figure you could live with that. Maybe you think you can wait out the base’s fury by crawling back into the comfortable gimp box of submissive GOP congressional opposition.

Except it won’t work that way. Through all this Tea Partying and Trumping, we normals got a taste for power, and we like it. We're not just going to just shrug our shoulders when the guy we picked gets deposed in a coup. We’re going to get mad. Really mad. And you're going to get primaried. Just ask Jeff Flake (Dork-AZ). Have you seen his approval numbers? There are strains of the herpes virus that poll higher.

No, there's no going back to the old days. This is the new normal, and there are new rules, rules you better learn to play by. The most important of these is, “Take your own voters’ side in a fight.” You should try it, because if you didn't like the Tea Party, and you hate Donald Trump, you are going to be really, really, really unhappy with what we normals will do next.

Maybe Republicans want to lose the House

Don Surber:

Mike Kelly was the Erie, Pennsylvania, car dealer who challenged Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper in the Tea Party Year of 2010, and beat her by 10 points. His margins of victory were bigger in 2012 and 2014, and last year he ran unopposed.

Home from Washington this month, Congressman Kelly sees an America the media does not see.

From Fox Business News:

"Back home, people aren't mad at the president. They're mad at the Republican Party for not working with the president to try and get things done," said Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.), who said he hears complaints while doing errands at Wal-Mart in a district that Mr. Trump handily won.

How Republican lawmakers respond to such frustration -- and whether they move past the health defeat or get swept back into that fight -- will determine whether the GOP-led Congress returns as a unified force. August is the longest recess of the year, and constituents can both energize and draw energy from lawmakers who appear at town halls and other meetings.

Many Republicans are worried that an inability to deliver major legislative accomplishments would result in significant GOP losses in midterm congressional elections. Although Republicans have a favorable map in 2018 that should bolster their chances of holding their Senate majority, GOP strategists see a greater risk of losing control of the House.

The story went on about polls and the like which show gloom and doom for Republicans hanging on to the House.

Certainly the Senate is unhelpful.

And what is Paul Ryan's incentive to stay on as speaker? He could make five to ten times as much money as a lobbyist. He's never going back to Wisconsin. He is a creature of the swamp. He has lived in Janesville only one year since turning 18, and that was to run for Congress the first time. College in Ohio followed by living in Washington.

Eric Cantor lost a primary to David Brat. Cantor was rewarded with a nice lobbying job.

'Tis their nature. Washington has become a magnet for men of weak will and poor character.

The One Sentence That Explains Washington Dysfunction

The political class never expected Donald Trump to become president

Read the whole thing.

New Republican ad in Georgia

Why Trump won Florida

Robert Stacy McCain explains:

Somewhere in Florida:

Donald Trump got 61% of the vote in this county, winning it by a margin of 40,000 votes. Considering that Trump’s statewide margin in Florida was only 120,000 votes, that means he got a third of his win right here.

We can explain this in four words: Rich, old, white people.

This county is nearly 90% white, about 30% of the population is 65 or older, and the median value of homes is over a quarter-million dollars. About a third of the residents have a bachelor’s degree or more.

For all the talk about the economic woes of the white working class, which supposedly explains how Trump won the “Rust Belt” states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, the fact is that middle- and upper-class voters, and especially older white folks with money, were the core of Trump’s 62 million voters. This was clearly evident in the Florida exit polls, where Trump got 57% of voters 65 and older, and 56% of those with incomes of $100,000 or more.

While progressives are trying to frighten people with the “Alt-Right” bogeyman, there are no neo-Nazis marching down the palm-tree-lined streets here. Trump won Florida by getting the votes of the same kind of people who always Republican — not angry skinheads, just regular middle-class people and, of course, old white folks with money.

There are a lot of old white folks with money in Florida, and thousands more of them move here every year. This county’s population is growing at about a 2% annual rate, and if you think about it, who retires to a Florida resort community? People with money, that’s who. OK, so go back about 20 years, to when today’s newly retired Floridians were in their 40s, what was happening? Republicans in 1994 took control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, and Newt Gingrich was leading the conservative opposition to Bill Clinton’s policy agenda.

Go to hell!

A reader, commenting here as Reader, drew my attention to a Ross Douthat article today in the Journal of Mexican billionaires

The piece is a keening lament at the failure of Republican Party elders to quash the Trump candidacy at its spring crest. He views their capitulation to primary results as the fuel that is lighting the party’s self-immolation. That Republicans agreed to field the voters’ preference is something he regards as a stupendous mistake. Douthat deploys the term “compromise” multiple times in describing the party’s concession to its voters. And finding that description wan through overuse, he proceeds to brighten the sentiment by calling the acceptance of Trump’s nomination a “surrender.”

A surrender to whom, motherfucker?

It certainly wasn’t a surrender to Donald Trump. A candidate holds no power beyond the votes he has accumulated. I notice the party didn’t compromise with or surrender to Tom Tancredo in 2008. That they have now done so to Trump is not what is more favorably regarded as sacred democracy when blacks and the dead vote democrat but rather, by Douthat’s implication, a grim example of Republicans’ moral infirmity.

What a statement of cake-eating contempt.

The Republican party’s alleged ‘surrender’ was to its constituents. The people that party exists to serve. This being a relationship enduringly confused by those at the Acela end of it.

Politicians, lobbyists, pundits, and every one of you scavengers and parasites in the Republican ecosystem exist because its base of voters makes the party viable. Not you. A tick rides on the dog’s back for so long it eventually forgets who’s doing the walking.

You Paul Ryan, Ben Sasse, Rick Wilson, and John McCain are apparatchiks. Stewards. Showmen and functionaries. You only have value in the party to the extent you have value to its voters. They don’t serve at your pleasure, and they don’t require your approval of their choices. That choice was made clearly and unequivocally by tens of millions of people who do the actual work in this country that pays for your prostitutes and pomposity.

I understand if you disagree with the selection. Keep your goddamned mouth shut. Your fiduciary responsibility as a party hack is to lubricate the political machine. If unable to perform even that menial task, then you are merely worthless. Yet so many of you have aspired to be worse. You have actively sabotaged your constituents’ choice. The people who made that choice have every right to their candidate receiving a fair hearing in the general election. But with that possibility foreclosed by a uniformly corrupt media, they at least expect their own party apparatus to sulk when it will not help.

But that was asking too much. No, a phalanx of you leap on 11 year-old pretext to withdraw support and demand the nominee step down a month from the election. You could have observed the obvious: that far greater concerns are at issue in this election than antique machismo. Or you could have simply said “no comment.” Instead you unsheathed the knives.

But you didn’t stab Trump in the back. Just as it wasn’t him you originally surrendered to. It was millions of republican voters who took your blade. Win or lose, Donald will remain an aging playboy plutocrat fully-insulated from the malign globalism he was nominated to combat. Your constituents–unlike your donors and patrons–do not enjoy that felicitous buffer of 10-figure wealth. They are who you have betrayed, not him. It is their values you have defecated upon while sententiously droning about your own. And if God grants man memory beyond the end of his nose, I pray they never forget.

Some neocon pundits, politicians, and pilotfish have announced to the interest of absolutely no one that they can not share a party with Trump’s plurality base. I imagine more will follow. None of you will be missed.

Go to hell.

After the Republic

A MUST READ essay by Angelo Codevilla ...

The overriding question of 2016 has been how eager the American people are to reject the bipartisan class that has ruled this country contrary to its majority’s convictions. Turned out, eager enough to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. The ruling class’s united front in response to the 2008 financial crisis had ignited the Tea Party’s call for adherence to the Constitution, and led to elections that gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican Party. But as Republicans became full partners in the ruling class’s headlong rush in what most considered disastrous directions, Americans lost faith in the Constitution’s power to restrain the wrecking of their way of life.

From the primary season’s outset, the Democratic Party’s candidates promised even more radical “transformations.” When, rarely, they have been asked what gives them the right to do such things they have acted as if the only answer were Nancy Pelosi’s reply to whether the Constitution allows the government to force us into Obamacare: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”

On the Republican side, 17 hopefuls promised much, without dealing with the primordial fact that, in today’s America, those in power basically do what they please. Executive orders, phone calls, and the right judge mean a lot more than laws. They even trump state referenda. Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. As for the Supreme Court, the American people have seen it invent rights where there were none—e.g., abortion—while trammeling ones that had been the republic’s spine, such as the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. The Court taught Americans that the word “public” can mean “private” (Kelo v. City of New London), that “penalty” can mean “tax” (King v. Burwell), and that holding an opinion contrary to its own can only be due to an “irrational animus” (Obergefell v. Hodges).

What goes by the name “constitutional law” has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose “discrimination” for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it “could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.” California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.

This arbitrary power, whose rabid guard-dog growls and barks: “Racist! Sexist! Homophobic!” has transformed our lives by removing restraints on government. The American Bar Association’s new professional guidelines expose lawyers to penalties for insufficient political correctness. Performing abortions or at least training to perform them may be imposed as a requirement for licensing doctors, nurses, and hospitals that offer services to the general public.

....

We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.

Read the whole thing.

Reply to Bud and his death wish.

Bud Norman writes a blog called Central Standard Times.  I shared some thoughts with him.

Why do some fringe brands of Conservative have a death wish?  I mean that in a figurative sense of course, since this death wish manifests itself only during an election.  But Bud here is a great example.  When I began reading him I found a conventional Republican with a talent for droll humor.  But as the election cycle heated up the inner maniac showed up.  We’re now past he point where Bud’s Hail May passes miss the receiver and he realizes that third party candidates are not going to be the next President.  But we still hear the lonely laments that the Republican does not act like the standard issue M1A1 Republican loser. 

Here’s an outstanding example of the #NeverTrump mindset as it demands that the Republican nominee cut his throat in the town square at high noon. 

“Neither candidate seems at all concerned about the nation’s unaffordable debt, much less expressed a willingness to address the entitlement programs that is driving it…”

Of course that sentence is nonsense on two levels.  No one this side of an insane asylum expects the Democrat to do anything but ignore the national debt – or blame it on Bush as Obama did.  And the Democrat is guaranteed to fatten current entitlement spending and invent new entitlements.  In fact, “free” college education is part of the Democrat platform.  So Bud’s not really being honest with his readers when he talks about “neither candidate.”  He’s talking about Trump.

He’s demanding that Trump run on the Scrooge platform.  He’s demanding that Trump spend the campaign telling people how if he’s elected he’s going to cut Social Security and Medicare and take food out of the mouths of starving orphans and widows.  And lest anyone accuse me of hyperbole, keep in mind that during the 2012 elections the Republican ticket was shown throwing a wheelchair-bound grandmother off a cliff.

There are ways of solving our deficit spending problem; ways of making this country and its people less dependent of government and more independent in every way.  The last time the budget was near balance was because the economy was growing fast enough that tax receipts actually kept up with spending. 

But first you have to get elected.  And you do that by appealing to people’s emotions. 

Republicans have been doing that for decades by promising their constituents fiscal frugality and loosening the bonds of government.  And when they get into office they deliver goodies to the people who bankrolled them while lying to the rubes that they didn’t have to votes to cut spending.

Democrats have an easier path to bribing their voters and supporters: they just tell them right out that they’re going to pass out free stuff from the cornucopia that’s the federal treasury.   How’s this for an appeal to the youth of the nation – and their cash strapped parents?  “Wanna spend four years partying at State College?  Elect us and we’ll pay the bill.”

So this election is not going to be about who’s Scrooge and who’s Santa Claus.  It’s a battle between a sick, corrupt woman who’s expecting to ride into office on the coattails of her husband, and a political novice who’s vanquished the corrupt, lying Republican establishment with the promise of Making America Great Again. 

I think the novice will win.  

Imagine

Imagine that you can go back in time and have a conversation with your younger self, maybe explaining events of today. Since my audience is getting younger all of a sudden, I’ll keep this bit of make believe relatable for all ages. Imagine you go back to 2005 and meet your 2005 self with all the knowledge and experience of your 2016 self. I’m picking 2005 because that precedes the collapse of the Bush presidency and the beginning of the manic phase of the Great Progressive Awakening that started in the 90’s.

Now, 2016 you sits down with the 2005 you and says, “In a decade, our black Muslim president, who may be bisexual (Google Reggie Love), will issue an edict forcing schools to let mentally ill men in dresses into restrooms, so they can watch your daughter pee. The Republican Party will sneak a provision into a mammoth budget bill legalizing this edict. When challenged, the President will claim the Christian Bible requires it.”

It is reasonable to assume that your 2005 self would think your 2016 self had gone insane or was pulling some absurd joke. A normal person in 2005 could not imagine that serious people would be talking about trannies at all, much less allowing them a free shot at children in restrooms. Think about it, in 2005, Obama and Hillary Clinton were against homosexual marriage. Now, Clinton is a click away from coming out as a lesbian.

How in the hell does this happen?

Read the whole thing.

King of the GOP vs. King of Bureaucracy

Charles Hurt on Trump and Sanders

In this brief cessation of hostilities between enemy forces on both sides of the political divide, it is a good time to take stock of where primary voters have taken the two parties.

Real estate magnate and political neophyte Donald Trump is on the cusp of truly revolutionizing the Republican Party. He has slain the establishment GOP and awakened long-dormant voters dissatisfied with everything Washington and its politicians have been up to for decades.

Over halfway through the nomination process, Mr. Trump stands to walk into the Republican Convention in Cleveland with a sizable plurality — if not an outright majority — of votes from primary voters. It will be his first priority to unify the party around him, the new king of the Grand Old Party.

Across the aisle, Washington’s longtime political gadfly, Sen. Bernard Sanders, is on fire with elite Democratic voters. By that, of course, we mean elderly white professors, united with out-of-work young “progressives.” And by “progressive,” of course, we mean those who support utterly regressive totalitarian regimes led by great “progressives” such as Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara.

Funnily enough, Mr. Sanders insists on describing himself as a “democratic socialist.” Why he insists on repeating himself I cannot tell you.

Anyway, the media is all agog over finding comparisons between the Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders.

It is true, both candidates have their highly enthusiastic supporters. But that should hardly be unique in politics. Only the rarest of political candidates are able to inspire the kind of apathy spawned by Mitt Romney, Jeb! Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Also, supporters of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders share a few policy positions such as distrust of global trade. But even in that, there are differences. Trump supporters lament the loss of jobs they would like to work while Sanders supporters have never actually worked a job outside of academia or maybe as a part-time barista at the campus Starbucks.

The truth is, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders could hardly be more different from one another.

Mr. Trump’s entire campaign is that of a highly disruptive outsider. Sure, he is not the conservative firebrand many Republicans would like. But, really, who can you most likely imagine actually abolishing the federal Department of Education and firing all those bureaucrats?

And every new day, Mr. Trump shocks the Washington political garden party by insisting that, yes, he really does intended to build that wall and, no, he is not kidding when he says Mexico will pay for it.

Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, is a deeply entrenched barnacle of the Washington establishment and federal bureaucracy. He has, last I checked, been in Congress for 573 years, first as a member of the House and now the Senate.

His greatest (only) accomplishment was “reforming” the Veterans Affairs Department. Truly, its never been the same ever since.

Just ask any wounded vet how great that bureaucratic overhaul by the King of Bureaucracy has worked out. I can think of another 2,000 vets you might ask, but they have all committed suicide waiting for the VA to help them.