Monday, March 7, 2016

Also worth listening to.

9 comments:

  1. Just because someone does not support Trump does not make that person part of the GOP establishment.

    What is a member of the GOP establishment? If a person was a GOP candidate for the Presidency, but walked around meekly trying not to say mean things about his opponent during the race but then comes out dropping napalm on Donald Trump four years later, that person is part of the GOP establishment. If someone was a Senator with a voting record that would make a Democrat proud then runs for President and tries to sabotage his candidate his choice for VP because her conservatism is too embarrassing, that person is a member of the GOP establishment. When someone is a senior member of the GOP and says he would support Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton should Trump win the nomination, that person is a member of the GOP establishment.

    You did notice Scott Ott say that IF Trump were to get the nomination, he would drop the work NOT from his statement. Right now there are five candidates of note vying for the Republican nomination, so obviously not all non-establishment Republicans are supporting Trump. I saw that Chuck Norris supports Cruz, and Chuck Norris is certainly not a member of the GOP establishment.

    The GOP establishment consists of those who won huge majorities in the last election but have been falling all over themselves to do Obama's bidding since then. Obama got his spending package. Obama got his continued funding for Planned Parenthood. I submit that Obama will get his SCOTUS nominee confirmed. The GOP establishment will huff and puff, then will cave like a house of cards.

    I lean towards Cruz, myself, although I don't think he has been doing himself any favours lately. I want a Republican candidate who can win, and will attempt to do what he said he was going to do. I do not want someone who, while having a position of power, cedes that power to the Democrats simply because it seems like the nice thing to do.

    Perhaps Trump may seem like driving your car into a ditch -- not exactly a recommended thing to do. However, when the only other choice is to have a head-on collision with a Mack Truck, then the ditch is certainly a better option.

    The GOP Establishment wants to pass amnesty. If you check, I am sure that you will find that Scott Ott does not. The GOP establishment is pushing Marco Rubio -- another member of the "I may as well be a Democrat" crowd.

    I wish Allen West were running. I think he has the background and experience to do the job well. Unfortunately, he is not. I am tired of these GOP leaders who ignore what is important to the American People telling us what we should think is important. It doesn't really matter: they would not do whatever it is they say they are going to do anyway.

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  2. Great find lewy! I guess I haven't run across the whole "you're a cuck if you don't support Trump" (except at Vox's place). I've quit using the "cuck" label; there is no sense of running the risk of offending a fellow traveler. Ott is a good example.)

    There is a growing movement to get behind Cruz, and these folks definitely are not democrat-lite. I'm actually beginning to lean that way myself.

    Matt, thanks for your post. I too love Allen West, but he doesn't have Trump's money. I can't see the GOP money getting behind him at the present time, but times they are a-changin'.

    I understand Ott's strategy to literally take over the GOP and transform the party at the grassroots level, but we tried that by sending a gaggle of Tea Partiers to D.C., and they were corrupted so fast it made my head spin.

    And yeah Matt. A ditch is preferable to a head-on collision.

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  3. I was talking with a friend the other day, someone I've know for years and really like. We've never talked about politics before. She has a full-time job in the private sector, plus a small home-based business selling cosmetics and such. Her husband was brain injured in a motor vehicle accident six years ago, and is bed-bound. They have caregivers in their home for 16 hours a day, and she cares for him overnight on her own. All this is paid for by medicaid of course, as it should be.

    The conversation started when she asked me if I'd heard that Nancy Reagan had passed, and how she thought that Nancy was a great first lady and very classy. It segued into other things...she doing most of the talking, and me doing the listening. She commented how impressed she was with the substantive nature of the debate between Clinton and Sanders, and about how informed they were about the issues, and about how they both had a PLAN to go forward (as opposed to the R's).

    I responded with a short comment about taxes being too high already, and that we need to rein in mismanagement and corruption and strive to spend our dollars more wisely. She did not like that. She told me that her cousin lives in {redacted}, and that the taxes are so high there that people have to rent instead of buy homes...but that the cousin was expounding how nice it was to live there, with the beautiful streets with no potholes, street lamps everywhere, and grand parks. My friend said that we must pay more taxes if we are to have nice things.

    She also said that her degree is not in business or politics, and we working taxpayers need to trust the people running our country, because we're not qualified to do it ourselves.

    The whole (mostly one-sided) conversation depressed me to no end. Is all this a failure of our education system? Perhaps partially.

    I'm beginning to think that it is simple human nature; who wants to admit that the gov't largess they receive is borne on the backs of their friends, family, and neighbors? Who wants to feel in the position of having to thank them for their financial support?

    It's easier to talk yourself into feeling that this support is your "right", I think. I've been pondering all this, and kicking the can around the old brain pan trying to sort out this entrenched view.

    It seems like I see this thought pattern mostly in folks (good folks, many of them) that receive substantial federal/state dollars, whether it be assistance, a paycheck (teachers, gov't entity employees, etc), or the protection of a paycheck (unions). There are exceptions, of course, on both sides; republican teachers, private sector democrats. But still, for the most part....

    I don't know. It's a rainy day day off, made for extra coffee, a bean pot, and contemplating confusing things.

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    1. And I wonder too...will my views change once my stepdad's retirement accounts are empty and medicaid picks up the cost for his nursing home? Or when I live to be a 100 and my medicare payments are long past contribution plus reasonable return? What if I have to go on disability? What will be my thoughts then?

      Deep thoughts for a simple mind. More coffee would be good.

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    2. Will there be any money in those programs when you get there? I can gauruntee you that there will be money left in the Democrat Voter Recruitment Fund, but there won't be any money left in the Take Care Of Those Who Worked Hard Fund.


      Remember the last government shut down? We did not have money to keep parks open, but we had money to go and barricade an overlook on a state highway to prevent people from stopping to look at Mount Rushmore. We had money to close the parking lot at Mount Vernon, even though Mount Vernon is not owned by the government.

      How many of the things of which you speak would we be in a better position to afford if we did not have to pay taxes.

      Here in BC, eye exams for healthy adults used to be covered by the government healthcare plan, but they no longer are. A number of people are not happy with that. However, I heard someone explain that if the plan covered things such as eye exams then 90% of the provincial budget would be spent on "health care."

      How many people love getting huge income tax refunds, thinking that those round come from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. They do not realize that the reason they get huge refund is because they let the government use that money interest free (yes, there are exceptions, but generally not).

      It is interesting to note that people in North America who had lived under totalitarian regimes generally cringe at the thought of doing it again.


      People on the left scream for their rights on so many things, but somehow believe that they would have any semblance of rights if the government controlled things they way they want.

      Is it a failure of education? I don't know if you can say it is a failure. It is the result of a specific course of action. The people who want government control also tend to believe they are better than everyone else and would not be subject to such control. "Totalitarianism for thee but not for me." When those people find out it does apply to them then it is to late.

      Trotsky, anyone?

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    3. Plus, do we need to look at how well government took care of the Flint water supply?

      And as for the nice streets and parks, notice how they are nice where the important people are while visitors are not allowed to go where the common folk live?

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    4. Thanks for your thoughts Matt. It baffles me how people can happily surrender their God-given right to rule themselves, and buy into to the Utopian dreamworld championed by socialists. Are they truly brainwashed? Brain dead? Cowards? They have no knowledge of history, no ability to think for themselves, and no longing to solve their own problems.

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    5. I am not sure if it is brainwashed. It is probably more like stupidity. Look back when tens of thousand of people in Iran would march in protest of the United States. People here would say, "See, we must be bad if some many people in Iran are going to protest us." It never occurred to them for a minute that those people know they would die if they did NOT march.

      People just assume that they will continue to have the same rights they always had no matter what control the government had. The old saying about not knowing history is true.

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