Democrat

Seven Things That Won’t Happen in 2018.

JP Mac Politics, Predictions , , , , , ,

Happy New YearEveryone likes to make New Year’s predictions. Just to be a little different, here is a list of things that are exceedingly unlikely to happen in 2018. Although there are scores of pundits, celebrities and other talking heads who will try and convince you otherwise, here are seven things that logic and clear thinking suggest won’t occur in calendar year 2018…

  1. Global Warming. Have you been outside lately? The polar bears will be quite safe in 2018.

  2. Nuclear War. No, WWIII won’t start over a tweet, despite what the pundits from MSNBC and CNN want you to believe. (Gotta hedge a little because we’re talking about Kim Jong Un here after all. ) If it does happen it will be because N. Korea does something tragically stupid, and God-forbid maybe even gets in a single blow before they cease to exist. It won’t happen however, because President Trump calls Kim Jong Un fat or “Rocket Man”.

  3. The Taxpocolypse. Lower Taxes won’t destroy the country. On the contrary, expect more economic growth.  The promise of lower taxes has already helped the economy and should continue to do so in FY18.

  4. Immigration Stormtroopers. Democrat scare tactics are just that, scare tactics. There will be no squadrons of ICE rounding up foreigners and people of color for mass deportation. There will be no liquidation of East L.A., or South central Chicago.  Yes, plenty of illegal immigrants will be deported, after due process and according to existing law, but if you seriously believe they’re coming for you, and you’re a legal alien- well, you’re a just a little bit gullible.

  5. Venezuela: “A socialist success story”. There’s an outside chance of them becoming a capitalist success story some time in the future, but will take some doing and would probably take years. On a related note, the Che Guevara-T-shirt wearing-die-hard-leftists in this country (still) won’t acknowledge that socialism destroyed that country.

  6. A “wave election” for the Democrats. Conventional wisdom says the party that holds the White House loses Congress during the mid-terms. The Democrats have little to offer except anti-Trump sentiment. If the stock market continues to go up, and GDP growth stays where it is or increases, the public won’t have much incentive to change course. Only if the economy goes south or a major crisis arises and is bungled by the White House will the Democrats have any chance of retaking either branch of Congress. That having been said, Capitol Hill is the Republicans’ to lose.

  7. Impeachment proceedings. Since the Republicans hold Congress and probably will after 2018, Trump would have to have committed an actual high-crime or misdemeanor, not an imagined one to get himself impeached. Sorry left-leaning news media– not gonna happen, not in 2018 and probably not ever.

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The Freedom Caucus won the battle but still could lose the war.

JP Mac Politics , , , ,

trump-1st-100-daysIf President Trump is correct, Obamacare will implode and the Democrats will have little choice but to join the effort to fix healthcare. Don’t count on them to bring conservative solutions to the table though. The problem for the Freedom Caucus if this happens will be to hold onto the concessions they gained during the last few days. The more Democrats elect to take part in the effort the less chance any further conservative initiatives will make it into any new healthcare legislation. The Freedom Caucus having won this most recent battle, may well lose the war.  The best hope for the Freedom Caucus going forward is to continue to explain to the American people at every opportunity the virtues of their positions on healthcare and build public awareness of them to the point that by the second go-round they seem common sense.  They will need to expand their sphere of influence beyond conservative diehards to the more moderate Republican constituencies and Trump supporters if they are to have any hope keeping their gains in tact much less building upon them in the event that Democrats decide they want a hand in fixing the mess they made with Obamacare when next attempt at healthcare reform is made.

The 2016 Presidential Debates Drinking Game

JP Mac Election 2016, Just for fun, Politics , , , , ,

2016-debatesThe 2016 presidential debates promise to be something extra special.  The debates will be a battle royal between two heavy weights (metaphorically speaking)  for the political championship of the world. If you’ve paid any attention at all to the race so far, you may have heard some of the favorite words and phrases from each of the candidates. You may be sick of hearing them, so here’s a fun way to reward yourself for having to hear them again, and again, and again….

The rules are simple, every time during the debate one of the candidates says one of the designated words or phrases, you take a drink of your favorite adult beverage.  You must of course, be of legal drinking age to play, unless your favorite adult beverage is non-alcoholic, in that case…you’ll probably make yourself sick either way!

Take a sip anytime any candidate says one of the magic words or phrases:

  • Disqualified
  • Tremendous
  • Unqualified
  • Leading from behind
  • Fair share
  • Reckless
  • What have you got to lose?
  • Historic election
  • For all the people
  • Fat cats
  • Unhinged
  • Failed Policies

Expert level:

  • Drink every time any candidate breaks out into a coughing fit.  (one drink per instance)
  • Drink at any remark that gets booed. (counts for moderator remarks too)
  • Drink every time the moderator “fact checks” a statement by one of the candidates.

Think you can last all the way through?  You might want to have a good supply of chips and pretzels on hand. Enjoy!

Disclaimer:  No-one except you is responsible for any foolish thing you might do after playing this game, like: driving, drunk-texting your boss, or voting third-party. So there!

The Politics of Division

JP Mac Election 2016, Politics, Progressivism , , ,

Politics of DivisionThe Democrat stock in trade has always been division.  Whether it was the quite literal division they sought between American Indians and whites during the 19th century, the societal division between blacks and whites during the 20th, or the division of every minority group against every majority group in the 21st. Pitting American against American has been part of the formula that has driven virtually every Democratic campaign in this country since Andrew Jackson.  Through most of American history, they have been on the wrong side of virtually every civil rights issue.  In the 1960’s they came up with what would become their new template for their politics of division:  Identify a group, offer them help, but then implement laws and regulations that insure they continue to need it.  Anyone opposed to their scheme is then be labeled a bigot.

Another way to describe their Democratic divisive formula would be:  Favor one group that constitutes a large enough voting bloc, and offer them just enough, not to solve their problems, but to get their vote.  Most of the time, the quickest and easiest way to buy a group’s vote is to create a program with a high-sounding name, like “the war on poverty”. The program may or may not actually help the community, but regardless, the administrators who lobbied and donated to the proper candidates get paid or otherwise rewarded. The obvious question then becomes: Who do you get the money from?  You can only take so much money from the middle-class before they stop voting for you, so you take from the rich.  How do you get the voters to go along?  Convince them that the money the wealthy have was ill-gotten and at the expense of one or more of the favored groups.  To do this, you first need to portray the economy as a zero sum game– stress the notion that the economy is a pie, and every slice that someone takes out of it leaves less for everyone else.  If someone is making more money, someone else, probably you, must be making less.  If you convince a large enough segment of society that the rich one’s gain the poor one’s loss, then it is easy to pit one segment against the other.

When it comes to civil rights, Democrats have consistently been on the wrong side of history.  The civil rights battle at the forefront of the American psyche is still the one for black equality.  They got that one wrong and have been trying to find new civil rights causes that they can get right ever since. Liberals have to feel good about themselves.  Problem is, the policy that feels good may not actually be the best policy. Conservatives have a nasty habit of pointing this out when it occurs.  Nothing can stand in the way of the liberal and their need for unconditional approval.  Anyone who stands in the way must be demonized and marginalized.

If you believe in dealing strongly with the issue of illegal immigration on the basis that it robs citizens and legal immigrants of jobs and wage earning power, you’re anti-immigrant.  Of course the logic involved in calling someone who supports legal immigration anti-immigrant when they don’t support illegal immigration is questionable, but it’s never been about logic with liberals, only emotions.  The same thing can be said about how the left tries to portray those who don’t want to let in refugees from predominantly Muslim countries who can’t be properly screened.  If you’re against letting in vast numbers of Syrian refugees in without proper vetting, you’re anti Muslim. To be vocally against Islamic-extremism, is somehow to be against all Islam.  The left needs to see themselves as not just right, but morally superior to those who disagree with them.  If there is no real point of disagreement then one must be invented.  The language that the other side uses must be condemned and discredited in order to maintain that sense of superiority, hence if conservatives use the term “Islamic extremist terrorism” and that goes to the identity of a group, then identity politics demands that the term be deemed wrong.  Those who seek to be the arbiters of right and wrong with regards to a group must then control its identity so it can be tied to a voting bloc.  No one really cares about hurting the feelings of terrorists, so that sub-group must be tied at all times to a group that voters do care about i.e.:  Muslims.  The use of the modifiers “Islamic” and “radical” to describe “extremists” by conservatives affords the liberal a chance to create an imaginary division between they who don’t use the term and the those who do; even when it is clearly understood both sides are speaking about the exact same group of murderous fanatics.  It’s a complete contrivance meant to create division where there is none for the sake of being on the ‘right’ side.

The politics of division is the main weapon in the Democratic arsenal.  Their strategy is simple:  divide and conquer.  They pick a voting bloc, along any lines it doesn’t matter, give them victim status then assign a villain.  Then come the promises…  Give the ‘victim’ a largess, and/or take punitive action against the alleged bad guy.  The oppressor is always the larger party, usually they call them ‘big’ as in ‘big oil’, or ‘big pharma’, just so you know who to blame.  As an aside, you’ll never hear reference to ‘big academia’ or ‘big government’ from the left as those are clients and are thus exempt. Anyone who would dare to criticize their divisive agenda is demonized as a bigot, sexist, or (fill in the blank)-phobe.  They claim to stand for tolerance while at the same time exercising extreme intolerance when it comes to opposing viewpoints. Theirs is the only morally defensible position, therefore tolerance is not required.  If public sentiment is not initially on their side, a massive propaganda campaign is launched to ensure you know who the opponents of their agenda are and who to despise.  There are no exceptions, countries, competing political philosophies, even major world religions are fair game to be condemned and marginalized as it suits the Liberal cause.  Finally, they ensure their propaganda cannot be assailed by argument, as they control the very language to be used around it.  Their allies in the media and academia see to that.   Their words need not be honest, their ideas need not even work, so long as the formula works to get them the power they seek before their charade is exposed.  By the time that happens, they have moved on to the next con, the next group in need of their “help”.  And so it goes….

 

 

 

Originally posted in Poliltical Storm as: The Politics of Division

Should other Republicans emulate Trump’s pivot to the black community?

Link JP Mac Election 2016, Politics , , , , , ,

Election 2016“…I love France so well I will not part with a village of it.” – Shakespeare, Henry V 5.2

Republicans should take note of this famous line from the Shakespeare play.  Republicans love America at least as much Shakespeare’s Henry V loved France, so why do they every four years, simply cede roughly 13% of the population to the Democrats?  That is exactly what they do when they fail to court in any meaningful way the black vote.  Why do they, as King Henry put it, “part with a single village of it”?  Donald Trump does not seem to want to part of a single village (read precinct).  He does not seem prepared to let the Democrats have the inner cities without a fight.  Given the Democrat’s dismal record of running cities, especially those with large African-American populations, this should be considered low hanging fruit by any Republican with the guts enough to try and grab it.  There are reasons, one’s that should be revisited, but there are reasons:  First, the electoral map puts a premium on winning entire states.  Democrats have done such a good job of demonizing Republicans in the eyes of the African American community that it takes courage for a Republican to go into the inner city.  Lastly, some conservative solutions are less obvious to the voter than Democratic ones. Republicans need to revisit their reasons for not actively courting the black or any other minority vote.  Trump had made the determination to do just this, other Republicans would do well to take note.

In the electoral college, the Democrats already have a big head start on the race to 270.  This is almost entirely because of demographics.  States with large urban areas populated with large numbers of minority voters have something else, huge electoral vote counts.  Cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and NYC can sway their entire state to go blue on election night. If Republicans ever want to get those states back they’ll have to start winning precincts in those cities, or at least doing competitively in them.  The experts will point out that even if you do well in a state, but lose it by a single vote, all your campaigning there was for naught. It’s better then to campaign in those states you have a reasonable chance to win.  The problem for Republicans is, demographics favor less and less states if you don’t do well with minorities.  Republicans have to either push to admit more states into the union with favorable demographics, or do better with the minority vote in the current fifty.  The good news is that many GOP candidates for Governor have figured it out.  New Jersey is a deep blue state with every one of its citizens living in an urban county. Currently it has a Republican Governor.  Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, even California have, or have recently had Republicans in the state house. You don’t win any of those states without at least some minority support.

Democrats with the aid of a sympathetic left-leaning mainstream media have successfully crafted a totally bogus, cartoonish image of Republicans and conservatives as being racist, sexist, homo-phobic, and now Islamo-phobic.  So thoroughly have liberals perpetuated this fraud, that cable news anchors and pundits regularly and with a straight face compare conservatives with fascists, Nazi’s and the KKK.  It’s a ridiculous notion, one that Trump until very recently, has unfortunately contributed to.  Now, if you’re an African American in the inner city, and never actually met or had a Republican hold a speech in your neighborhood, that fallacious image of the white-hooded, jackbooted, fascist is all you have to go by.  If you asked the average black person living in Baltimore just how many Republican candidates have actually come to address their church congregation or civic organization, they answer would probably be “none”.  Rand Paul during his presidential run did to his great credit, actually attempt to redress this situation. He challenged his fellow Republicans to do the same.  Sadly, hardly any did.  Several GOP candidates did reach out to the Hispanic community during the primary season, so at least that is a start.

It is not always them messenger that has to break through to the minority voter, sometimes it is the message. The Democrats have a simple to understand message that they offer to each and every minority constituency:  Give us your vote and we’ll send your community money.  Conservative policies tend to be a little less straight forward:  Keep your money, don’t give it to the government in the first place, that’s better than us giving it back to you with strings attached, or worse yet, to someone else with no stings.  It’s so much easier for the voter to understand how putting money directly into their pockets benefits them than it for a conservative to explain to them that the more money their employer gets to keep, the more money they have to pay you with, or use to grow their business so that they can hire you.  On this front, simpler is better. Republicans then must be able to cite examples that the voter can relate to where their policy has worked in the past, or cite examples of where liberalism has failed them.  Trump, say what you will, is a master at putting things into terms that anyone can understand, like recently in Michigan:

“Tonight, I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen in this country who wants a better future. The inner cities of our country have been run by the Democratic Party for 50 years. Their policies have produced only poverty, joblessness, failing schools, and broken homes.”

No getting into the policy weeds for Trump here, just a straight-out request for support from African-Americans.   Do Democrats have better policies for the inner-city?  No, in fact liberal policies keep many citizens in these urban areas from advancing economically.  They have created what Dinesh D’Souza in his new movie Hillary’s America refers to as the ‘new plantation’.  Whereas the old Democrat plantations exploited blacks for their labor to produce crops, this new plantation– the inner city, produces something else for their Democratic masters:  Votes. What if a Republican, or many Republicans came to the inner city, pointed this out and offered a solution?  What if blacks and other minorities could be convinced that decades of top-to-bottom Democrat rule has produced the conditions they now find themselves in? They might try another direction, or as Trump put it in his own special way: “What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump?”

Trump had determined not to cede the urban areas of this country to the Democrats this time without at least a fight. He may or may not succeed in this, but make no mistake, Republicans need to find a way aggressively go after the black and Hispanic vote.  The changing demographics of this country demand that Republicans start to change how they deliver the conservative message to the inner city, but before they do that, they have to move out of their comfort zones and expand their campaigns there.

Originally posted in Political Storm:  Should other Republicans emulate Trump’s pivot to the black community?

The faulty rational of persistent #nevertrump’ers

JP Mac Civil Liberty, Election 2016, Liberalism, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

Election 2016While the primaries were in full-swing, it made sense for movement conservatives to speak out against Donald Trump.  He made many a comment that would have ended the campaign of any other Republican.  His statements about Senator McCain immediately turned off many a patriotic conservative.  He made statement after controversial statement and yet his popularity with the working man only increased.  His has policies were all over the political map, some being conservative, some to the left of even Hillary, mostly all of them populist.  He was outmatched in knowledge about foreign affairs by nearly all of his opponents.  His near absolute ban on Muslims was completely unworkable, but since then has been refined away from populism to pragmatism.  He’s also made it a point to surround himself with foreign policy and military experts.  Still, there were preferable alternatives who showed greater aptitude for conservatism, and who had nearly mistake-free campaigns.

Marco Rubio had great foreign policy credentials. Carly Fiorina also proved herself equal to any of her rivals in that department and focused like a laser beam on Hillary from the beginning.  Senator Cruz has the support of the Constitutionalists and had by far the best ground game of any of the candidates, rivaled only possibly by the Clinton machine.   This was to finally be the year of the movement conservative.  What none of them realized, was that the white, non-college educated working man had abandoned the Republican party two elections ago. With no popular support for so-called ‘establishment’ Republicans (read Jeb Bush) and young, intelligent candidates who could speak the language of conservatism fluently, this election was to be the era of Regan reborn.  The problem was, the average American spoke the language of not conservatism, but populism.   Trump, like his followers, feels free to cherry-pick from any political school of thought, conservatism, nationalism, populism, and even liberalism.  In short, Trump followed former Republican constituency to where it wanted to go.

Everyone knows the result, Trump won the nomination.  the #nevertrump crowd now had (and still has) a decision to make, reluctantly follow the new GOP standard-bearer, for all his flaws, or stick with Republican and  conservative orthodoxy. As Trump filled in the gaps of his foreign affairs and military knowledge, and softened on some of his more problematic stances on immigration, the opposition of many Republicans against him softened.  Little by little, Republican diehards resigned themselves to the reality that it was Trump or bust.  Others though, convinced of the certainty of a Trump loss, and fearful of down-ballot losses stubbornly dug in their heels on the subject of never Trump, even to the point of actively undermining his candidacy.

Reluctant, even stoic support for Trump is to be expected and understandable.  He is not the second coming of Reagan, but the first coming of Trump.  Those who insist on ideological purity won’t find it in this GOP candidate.  Those who had fought hard to rehabilitate the Republican Party’s image after losing virtually all of the black and most of the Latino vote four years ago find themselves besides themselves with frustration in their candidate.  He is their candidate though, and for all his shortcomings with regards to many conservative principles and a maddening lack of political sense, is still better for America in many ways then his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The key is to show that while Trump says controversial things, Hillary has done, time and again, many things that were deeply dishonest, maybe even illegal.  While Trump’s thoughts get him into hot water, Hillary’s actual deeds (or occasional lack of) have gotten Americans killed or put in jeopardy.  While critics can theorize about Trump being bad, we have proof positive that Hillary would be worse.  Evidence of her corruption is well documented.  We don’t have to wonder how she would govern, she would turn America into her own personal fife, and we her serfs, existing only to provide her and her sycophants  with wealth.  On the subject of Supreme Court appointees alone, there is no real choice for the constitutionalist that wants a Scalia type justice on the Court.

There is no chance of Trump being replaced as GOP nominee, any talk to the contrary is pure fantasy. There is no realistic chance of someone not from the Republican or Democratic parties becoming our next president.  Even if the #nevertrump crowd could come up with a candidate with the financial means to do so, it’s too late to get him or her on the ballot in many states.  So why does anyone claiming to be a Republican seek not to simply withhold support, but actively act to undermine his campaign?  They are ideologues, but ones who fail to understand that under a Hillary presidency, none of their conservative initiatives will come to be.  Clinton will enact her liberal, even socialist policies.  If she can’t get her agenda done under a Republican Congress, the Democrats will appeal to the American sometimes pathological need to just “get things done” regardless what that actually means.  Republican control of Congress his hardly guaranteed.  Democrats are already counting on the fact that the Republicans were put into power on Capitol Hill for the express reason of stopping the liberal Obama agenda.  Whatever political victories Hillary can garner, she will lock in by appointing active judges and an ever-growing, compliant regulatory machine.

The never Trump crowd has fooled themselves that in four years, they will get a do-over if Trump loses and finally undo the Obama/Clinton agenda.  It won’t happen, what they dont’ realize is this election may be the last one for America as a true constitutional democracy.  The next election, should Clinton win, will be more like those in the democratic-socialist countries of Western Europe– mere referendums on how quickly or slowly to descend into the socio-economic oblivion, and who will go out on top. The fact is, regardless of how much the conservative true believer would rather not, there is no real choice when it comes to any meaningful governmental reform.  There is only one candidate that will appoint justices that will respect the letter and spirit of the Constitution.  There is only one candidate with a pro-growth agenda, only one candidate that will turn America away from an otherwise certain, yes certain, move toward a single-payer healthcare system.  Like it or not, the only viable choice, for all his shortcomings, is Donald Trump.

There I said it.

Corruption vs. Self-interest

JP Mac Election 2016, Politics , , ,

Simple Definition of corruption

  • : dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers)
  • : the act of corrupting someone or something
  • : something that has been changed from its original form

Source: Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary

Most Americans with any degree of political awareness believe that Hillary Clinton is corrupt. It’s really hardly disputed even by her supporters.  Whether her association with shady land deals, Travelgate, or the apparent links to Clinton Foundation donations and favorable actions by Hillary toward donors as Secretary of State.  If elected President, Mrs. Clinton would likely continue behaviors that the public will consider corrupt.  The election is still a long ways off in political time, right now she is candidate Clinton.  What sort of corruption might she be engaging in with the voters and, dare anyone suggest, are some of her supporters complicit in this corruption?  Does voting one’s self interest ever cross over into corruption?  Is corruption a two-way street?

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Benjamin Franklin

If you’re a college student or recent graduate and Hillary tells you she’ll help you pay off your student loans you might be tempted to vote for her out of self-interest. Similarly, if you’re a parent and are looking at paying tens of thousands of dollars for your kid’s college education and you’re promised free community college, that’s a tempting offer.  There is another voting block that block these programs really benefit, one that is always overlooked: the faculty and administrators of colleges.  They can absolutely be counted on to support Hillary.  Why?  They stand to gain the most from these deals.  Who do you think ends up with all of the public money?  They do, the parents and students are merely a conduit between the taxpayers and themselves.  Never mind that the value of a college education has been inflated, and that a trade school might be better fit for many students.  Never mind that there are legions of service sector workers with four-year degrees. You’re not to meant to consider such things, your meant to put your money in the right pockets—theirs.  When you run out of your own money, there is always someone else’s, the evil rich’s. Normal free market restraints on tuition rates don’t apply when everyone has the buying power of a millionaire. Big education wants a system that takes money from one group and give it to another that gives it to them.  In the process free market forces that would normally limit how much they can charge gets circumvented. That’s dishonest, a corrupt deal between Hilary and the higher education elites.

Another deal with easier and easier to spot corruption angle is Hillary’s promise of ‘comprehensive immigration reform’.  Republicans often receive criticism for wanting cheaper, illegal labor.  That’s certainly fair and would qualify as corrupt voting. The mistake is to assume that Democrats have any less reason to be accused of corruption.  First of all, when have you seen a Democrat really take a stand against illegal immigration?  You haven’t, not just because they take advantage of illegal labor as well, but they see further benefits to illegal immigration.  People crossing the border illegally or over staying their visa are not much of a concern for Democrats.  New immigrants who become citizens are more likely to need public assistance, and more likely to vote Democratic.  They problem for Democrats is how to get immigrants over from the illegal side of the ledger to the legal side in such a way they can also become citizens and do their patriotic duty to vote Democrat.  Illegal aliens after all, can’t vote for their own self-interest, (not in a U.S. election anyway). If you read recent legislation proposals for comprehensive immigration reform from both Republicans and Democrats you’d be hard pressed to find many differences between the two.  Really the difference comes down to a single word:  citizen.  Many Republicans are fine with a pathway to legal status for undocumented aliens, just not citizenship.  Democrats desperately want any legislation on the matter to take that one extra step, to offer a path to citizenship and Democratic voter-hood.  Republicans say they want to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the country generally by reducing the influx , increasing deportations, and reducing the incentives to come and stay illegally.   Democrats have a plan to do reduce the number of illegal aliens too—just make them citizens, and hence, legal.  Democrats count on the average voter not getting into such fine detail.  It’s not the average voter that’s corrupt, but their views on the issue have been corrupted by the dishonesty of the Democrats of their true intentions.

Most voters vote their own self-interest, it’s a natural part of the process.  Sometimes there is a special interest group that quietly hides their vested interest in the outcome of an election.  Sometimes politicians dishonestly represent what a vote will get the voter or what it means for them and their party.  Corruption is seldom a one-way deal– it takes two parties prepared to strike a corrupt bargain. For every vote bought, there is a vote sold.  For every vote unwittingly given, there is a vote taken through deceit. When you vote you should make sure your own interests in casting it are fairly and honestly balanced with those who want it.