aurorawatcherak "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
If there’s any message I gleaned from the 2022 Midterms it’s that Donald Trump shouldn’t run for President in 2024.
That doesn’t bother me because I never voted for Trump. I don’t like him. I was pleasantly surprised by his policies. He kept (most of) his campaign promises, which was refreshing from a politician, but that didn’t mean I liked him personally. I didn’t care about mean tweets. I’m all for free speech and nobody wields free speech quite like Trump. When media heads exploded over his tweets, I found it entertaining not because I liked Trump, but because I recognized he was trolling the media and that needs to happen. The legacy media needs to be trimmed back to their intended purpose, which is not to judge those who aren’t like them. Admiring his ability to cause such stress is not the same thing as wanting him to be president.
I do think the country needed the four years of his presidency. The combination of lower taxes and reduced regulation gave us enough of an economic bump to survive covid. He also inspired a fighting spirit in his constituency that we’re going to need to get through the tough times ahead.
That doesn’t mean he needs to be president again.
Why?
Trump’s Covid Response Hurt the Country
Yes, I know. Covid would have killed “everybody”. That’s not actually true. It had an untreated death rate of less than one-half of one percent, mostly in the elderly or those with comorbidities. A lot of people, including myself, got covid and survived. It was the flu or a bad cold for 99.7% of people. In 3% it was a bad disease and in a tiny fraction of those, it resulted in death, but usually as a consequence of another condition that would have resulted in death eventually – cancer, morbid obesity, old age.
Trump outsourced his authority to the CDC and a politically-climbing failure of a virologist who didn’t have a clue of the economic and social damage his lockdowns would do. Sixty percent of small businesses closed, and most will never reopen. If you don’t live in the United States, you might not understand the importance of the small-business sector in American life. They provide 60% of the jobs in the United States. So that approximately 50% of American companies no longer exist to provide jobs is a problem. If you want to know why people are participating in the job market these days, that’s one reason. There is a large sector of the American population who temperamentally unsuited to work for large corporations or government. They either become entrepreneurs or they work for an established small business that will put up with or even embrace their non-conformist behaviors.
By shutting down small businesses and allowing corporations to remain open, Trump skewed the economy away from its capitalistic foundation toward a more corporatist fascistic formulation. He deeply hurt his base when he did that.
They’ve Had Time to Think about It
In 2020, they saw no viable choice. Trump had hurt them, and the alternative was a senile old man who seemed moderate. He didn’t seem that bad. How bad could Grandpa Joe be?
It turns out, pretty bad. Biden promised unity, but then within a week of his inauguration gave a speech saying unity was doing it his way. He wasn’t planning to compromise and if we didn’t like it, we would regret our resistance. With speech after speech and action after action, Biden showed himself to be anything but moderate and made Trump voters very nostalgic for him, but not enough to vote for the candidates he backed.
Need an example?
In recent weeks, Trump has begun to attack Ron DeSantis. Why? Because Ron DeSantis is being put forward as a presidential candidate in 2024, which threatens Trump’s own plans. DeSantis is 30 years younger and he has a great record of not hurting his people during covid. He protected the vulnerable, allowed the healthy adults to continue their lives, and Florida’s economy thrived. Florida became one of the go-to destinations for people escaping California, New York, and Massachusetts. For his success over the last four years, DeSantis was rewarded with a historical reelection result.
But if Trump is so powerful with conservatives, why didn’t his jabs hurt DeSantis?
Trump’s era has passed. Hurting the people during covid was one cause. January 6 was another. No, I don’t believe Trump instigated the riot. I’ve listened to his speech many times and he specifically told his audience to be peaceful and he didn’t mention entering the building. What they did after the speech came from them, not him. But that doesn’t mean he reacted well to the riot. He could have stopped it much sooner than he did and people instinctively know that.
Meanwhile, DeSantis is firm and reasonable and gets good results. People know that. They see the contrast. So while they still might admire Trump’s ability to make reporters apoplectic, they want DeSantis’s brand of governance. DeSantis’s overwhelming victory in Florida the other night makes that very clear.
It’s Now the Post-Trump Era
Trump will be 78 years old in 2024. If we didn’t think 78 was too old to be the president before 2020, we should know it now. Yes, Trump is robust in comparison to Biden. What will he be like when he’s 82? He wasn’t very good at organizing his administration when he was a decade younger. It’s no doubt in the back of heads that we don’t need another old man running the country next presidential term.
We need to move on. Trump needs to move on. Don’t fight with DeSantis. The country needs a sane conservative who understands the people are able to make their own decisions and who is willing to fight with Congress to fix issues that need to be fixed.
The election results are in and the Red Tsunami only really happened in Florida and Texas where the Latino vote carried the night. For a whole lot of reasons, I really wanted to see the national apple cart upset, but for some reason, despite soaring inflation and Reichstag-esque speeches by President Biden, voters opted to stay in the apple cart with the rotten fruit.
Some key takeaways –
Voters apparently really liked living in Texas, Florida, and Alaska, where Republican governors opted to remain open under Covid.
It’s probably a bad idea for the overseer of elections to oversee their own election.
Out-of-state “dark” money can buy an election.
Sometimes people need to go through truly tough times before they’re ready to admit they need a change of direction.
Polling is broken in the United States.
The media helped to obscure the details, again.
I’m going to deal with Alaska in a separate article. The vagaries of Ranked Choice Voting will require a bit of detail.
Republicans won where they had a track record
Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis and Mike Dunleavey hung tough during the covid pandemic despite predictions that they would “kill everybody”. They protected the vulnerable, kept their economies as open as possible, let local municipalities make decisions based on local conditions, and allowed adults to make adult decisions for themselves and their children. Texas and Florida had no worse outcomes than states that totally locked down and their economies thrived. Alaska is caught in a colonial economy which I’ll deal with in another article. These tough governors’ strong wins suggest people liked their libertarian style. Abbott and DeSantis not only won their own elections, but the down-ballot races swung hard for the GOP, suggesting that Latino voters have had it with Democratic pandering and are now voting for their own interests. Good for them. And good for the people of those states who didn’t have to file bankruptcy to get through a lot of poor planning by government officials. This set these three Republican governors apart as notable distinctions from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden as well as blue state governors.
It should also be noted that a lot of former Democrats and Republicans recently moved from states like California and New York made this victory in Texas and Florida. Expect more people to vote with their feet and moving pods in the coming years. Thank God we can migrate away from truly bad state governance.
Elections Oversight is an Issue
When Brian Kemp, as Georgia Attorney General, oversaw the outcome of his gubernatorial election against Stacey Abrams, Abrams was rightfully suspicious of the results and an independent panel oversaw the recount to assure she’d definitely lost the race. That she refused to concede even then reflects badly on her. Georgia fixed its problem with the election security bill passed last year causing Stacey Abrams to concede to Brian Kemp last night.
Yet, we’re still dealing with this problem in Arizona. Katie Hobbs, as Arizona Secretary of State, is the lead election official in Arizona where she is running to be the governor. Maricopa County, where 60% of Arizonans live, experienced massive election disruption yesterday when the tabulation machines couldn’t read the ballots. While the counties are responsible for the maintenance of the machines, the Division of Elections Katie Hobbs overseas printed the ballots. They claim they tested the machines, but maybe not the machines in Maricopa. Thousands were turned away from the polls yesterday. And now Katie Hobbs, who was 11 points behind Kari Lake in the polls, appears to be winning the election. If we’re going to trust election results, we need to have trustworthy elections. A good first step in that would be for officials like Katie Hobbs to recuse themselves from elections in which they are participating. This was a valid observation Democrats made in the Kemp-Abrams situation, but notice they’re making the exact opposite argument now that the election is falling in their favor.
No candidate should ever be in charge of overseeing their own election. While I don’t generally support the federal government getting involved in elections, I think this should be the subject of Congressional action. I repeat, no candidate should ever be in charge of overseeing their own election.
Democrats selected a lot of the GOP candidates
It’s no secret the Democratic Party spent $44 million on advertising across at least five states boosting the profiles of “far-right” candidates. This occurred in California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland. In Alaska, we saw a lot of odd funding shenanigans as well, though muted and convoluted by Ranked Choice Voting.
Democrats used to do something similar in the days of open primaries – cross party lines in the primary to select the weakest Republican candidates in hopes of securing a Democratic win in the general. And it worked. They spent over $100 million in the general attacking the candidates they selected to assure Democrats won.
It was Democratic advertising that assured Mehmet Oz would be the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania senator, winning over David McCormick. It should have been an easy election for any Republican to win given that Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman had a stroke days before the primary and still can’t understand what others are saying to him or form clear unambiguous sentences. However, Oz isn’t a typical Republican. A Democrat until a few years ago, Oz had previously expressed pro-gun control and transgender rights positions that didn’t set well with most Republicans. With hourly attack ads undermining his credibility and John Fetterman largely hiding from the press, it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that Oz lost the election. It does come as a surprise that people would prefer the brain-damaged guy who can’t communicate over the heart surgeon, but I get why Republicans rejected Oz. Alaska is trying to do the same thing with Lisa Murkowski.
Note to Republicans – when the Republicans give you an objectionable candidate from your own party, you don’t have to vote for the Democrat. Erik Berhardt of the Libertarian Party could at least carry on a conversation with you.
Lela Markham
This dark money influence that manipulates elections is something we as a nation need to deal with. It’s one thing when it is straight-up donations to a political candidate to get that candidate elected. It’s quite another when the money is being spent to trick voters to make the opponent more viable. It doesn’t matter which political party is doing it. It’s an unethical practice that should be stopped for the good of the country.
Misery is in Our Future
A lot of people have expressed anger over the clearly horrible policies of the Democratic Party. We had an opportunity yesterday to change the direction in DC. It looks like the House will go into Republican hands, but the Senate might be tied. So the Republicans will be able to present the other half of the Jan 6 riot and investigate Biden’s corruption. That’s good, but we should know we’re in for a lot more misery over the next two years.
Apparently, the GOP’s political class is unable to channel public outrage into positive action. They blew it. They hyped a red tsunami that didn’t happen, maybe discouraging GOP voters from going to the polls – because why go to all that hassle if your neighbors are going to secure the win for you – right?
Given Biden’s low approval ratings and a favorable generic congression ballot, the GOP should have wiped out the Democrats, but they couldn’t even beat Katie Hobbs, Gretchen Whitmer and Kathy Hochul. The average American should be outraged by the party’s performance. And while there may have been some corruption, or at least incompetence, involved in the Maricopa County debacle, I doubt there’s evidence for widespread election fraud. Unless some evidence materializes, it’s time to face an unpleasant truth. The American electorate aren’t thinking very hard these days.
The old saying goes – strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make tough times, and tough times make strong men.
Apparently, we aren’t yet miserable enough for tough times to make strong men. We’re already in tough times, but Katie-bare-the-door, we’re headed into even tougher times and they might last a good long while.
No matter what the legacy media tries to tell us, we are in a recession and inflation is already out of the control of the Fed. Four out of five Americans are unsatisfied with the economy, furious about gas prices, and deeply worried about crime. Yet we decided yesterday that those awful conditions required a tepid electoral response. We as a nation deserve what’s coming our way if half of us think the Democrats can fix the economy they broke. It was a pretty thought that a crop of new Republicans could fix it, but my hope was overturning the apple cart would create some innovative solutions from Washington. That’s not going to happen now, so I hope you’ve laid in a supply of beans and rice and firewood. You’re going to need it.
The good news is that the inevitable economic collapse will happen when a Democrat is in the White House and Democrats (probably) will control the Senate. This should be extremely entertaining if you’re not actively starving or freezing to death in the dark due to Biden’s policies. A Greater Depression on the Democratic watch should be the death knell of the party.
Which is not to say I think the Republican Party shouldn’t also go away. We need something better than what’s been on offer for decades – two parties that have brought us to the brink of national collapse.
Some of It Isn’t Our Fault, but…
Polling is broken in the United States. All the polling outfits should simply close their doors now because nobody should believe a word they say from now on. Then, instead of believing fairy tales, you’ll have to go to the polls to make your wishes known.
Elections are probably broken as well (i.e. Maricopa County) and we need to do some deep soul-searching. If we’re going to make big decisions by elections, then elections need to be secure and decentralized to prevent widespread election fraud. Whether it actually occurs or not is less important than the appearance that it can occur in a free-for-all system without election security measures. How can we trust elections if the elections aren’t trustworthy?
The legacy media is still lying to us and we are still allowing them to do so. Well, not me. My go-to news source is Real Clear Politics so I can read both sides of the news and then I supplement with some libertarian publications that provide a third perspective on the two sides. I suggest anyone who wants to be informed do something similar. Or at least tune into Timcast IRL where there is a cast of divergent perspectives conversing about the news.
In the case of the media lying to us, it is actually our fault because we allow them to do so. We believe the biased fact-checkers, we refuse to entertain alternative viewpoints, and we are the ones who choose the channel to watch or the newspaper to read.
And now we get to watch the government abuse and the economic damage grow by exponential rates. Good job, Americans! You’ll reap the devastation you sowed. It’s just too bad that those of us who knew better will go through the coming disaster with you.
I never voted for Donald Trump. I know a lot of people who did, but I wasn’t one of them. I also didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020. There is a viable third party available for presidential elections and I voted for Gary Johnson and then Jo Jorgensen — not because they were great candidates, but because they were better candidates than the major parties were giving us.
So, it’s interesting to observe the national food fight, and note how many people on the Left believe Trump tried to be a dictator. Hmm, when? Yes, he’s a bombastic blowhard which is why I’ve never voted for him, but can anyone point to a specific example where he’s oppressed the American people? I can’t find one. I can find some examples where he said totalitarian things — for example when discussing red flag laws, he said “Just get the guns and worry about due process later.” This was one of the reasons I didn’t vote for him in 2020, even though I was largely surprised by his keeping his campaign promises in his first term. That was a dictatorial comment, even though he didn’t follow through with it.
I’m not saying Trump wasn’t a potential dictator. He signed off on the massive government spying project The Intercept wrote about this week. Still, when the opportunity presented itself to violate the Constitution and step on the necks of the entire country vis-a-vis covid mandates, Trump chose to advise and let the states make that decision. Some states are clearly run by dictators and others are not. Trump still got blamed for the destruction his advice caused, but he elected not to violate the Constitution when he let states handle their pandemic response. Since the Supreme Court long ago ruled that the federal government has no public health authority, it was the constitutional way to handle the situation. It’s also a prime example of how Trump wasn’t dictatorial. Maybe Trump would have shown his totalitarian tendencies full force in a second term, but he didn’t in the one term.
Blow-hardery aside, he was a pretty decent president — the economy was doing well until covid locked everything down, he was reducing overregulation, he refused to expand wars started by previous presidents, ICE under his administration kept the border secure, energy and groceries were affordable, and he worked with Congress to reduce one of the highest tax burdens in the developed world and to eliminate the ACA mandate that was driving our medical insurance premiums through the roof. He also spent way too much money and instituted tariffs that are part of what is causing crippling inflation right now.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden — oh, yes, a dictator to the core. His first acts in office were to shut down needed energy development and increase regulation. He pushed employers to fire anyone who questioned the efficacy of the covid jabs which have since been proven to be ineffective. His continued profligate spending is exacerbating an already critical inflationary cycle. And his Reichstag-inspired speech at Constitution Hall announced open season on anyone with differing viewpoints, particularly Republicans. He’s not interested in compromising with anyone who disagrees with him. I anticipate any day now that he’ll start arresting people to round up in holding facilities until they do what he tells them to do. In that vein, he represents the people who elected him to office — many of whom would love to live in a totalitarian regime so long as they could be one of the elites that get access to all the cool stuff — like food.
And, it’s that inability to see that individuals can make choices for themselves that has, more than anything else broken this country. We used to understand that people had a right to a difference of opinion, to live a life that was different from ours. Half the country no longer believes that and they’re the ones in power right now. The best thing to do when you discover you’re married to an abusive spouse is to separate and/or divorce. I don’t see the blues ever finding common ground with the reds because abusers never look at what THEY have done to cause the strife they experience with the world around them.
National Divorce
Now that it looks like Republicans are taking over in a big way next week, they have an opportunity to relax the ties that bind us.
If the federal government shows insight and allows a federalizing of government control we might avoid a civil war. I think anyone with a brain can see that the centralization of power under the Democrats has not been a good thing for the nation. Federalization — as is occurring under the Dobbs decision — will give the states an opportunity to innovate on smaller populations, to show what really works, and what causes better results. And maybe the next election will include some sane third-party candidates who inspire new ways of thinking that don’t destroy whatever is still good about this country.
It was bound to happen. Medium is a far-left-wing writers’ platform that boosts the ad hominem attacks of leftists picking at Republicans, libertarians, Christians or the Conservative Party in England. I’ve been writing articles from a libertarian angle on a conservative publication for about a year and this last week, they suspended my account for “hate speech” and “incorrect categorization” (whatever that is). I was explaining to someone who had made a comment about what they supposed libertarians believe. They were entirely incorrect and I POLITELY explained why their ad hominem attack was incorrect. I addressed their ideas, not their persons. And the “hate speech” was addressing a biological fact — that biological women can’t compete against biological men in sports.
The truth is now hate speech. Men and women are biologically different from one another and that includes height and strength differences that affect our ability to compete against one another and these biological imperatives hold say even when we wear each other’s clothes.
With Medium, when they deem truth to be “hate speech”, there’s no appeal. You’re banned and that’s that. Go away and shut up now! But hey, we’ll allow people who routinely post incorrect statements that libertarians want to eat their neighbors and evangelical Christians are trying to create a theocracy. As long as you comply and say black is white, you’re good. Otherwise, you need to be silenced.
Welcome to the 21st Century
In our “enlightened” erra, we can’t agree to disagree. Those with “wrong think” must be silenced. Why? Because the leftists suspect their ideas won’t stand up to an honest examination and like all cultists, they must protect their faith at all costs. Since the tenets of their faith can’t stand up to close scrutiny, they have to eliminate anyone who points out their faith is as shallow as a hubcap. So platforms that support this ideology must purge writers who don’t comply with the desired zeitgeist.
Our alternative is to create our own similar writing platforms. I started this blog to promote my books and to discuss topics that matter to me. I’m returning to writing about more than writing here. I’m looking into federated blogging. In time, I hope to join a network of like-minded conservative/libertarian writers.
They can ban me off their echo chamber platform, but they aren’t going to silence me. They might just make me more determined to tell the truth.
And here’s a suggestion. Check out Amazon’s Prime Video program “Electric Dreams” and pay particular attention to the last episode of the anthology series – Kill All Others. It’s a hyperbolic representation of what might happen if our society continues in the direction we’re headed.
The Libertarian Party of American is not my party. I say I’m a libertarian (note the small “l”), but I’ve never been a member of the party or, frankly, any party. I might have become a member of the Alaska Independence Party had it lasted for any length of time, but frankly, I’m just not loyal to political parties.
The LPA has a long history of nominating nuts who can’t win for losing. Whoa, did I say that aloud? It’s true. Some of the candidates just seemed — uh, crazy might be too harsh a word, but I’ve had a hard time viewing them seriously. And the current field of Libertarian potentials is not inspiring my confidence.
The last two cycles they selected Gary Johnson as their nominee and I voted for him. He had a depth of experience as well as solid libertarian principles and he had shown them at work in New Mexico. I didn’t like his VP candidate, Weld. He was a progressive Republican who didn’t even pretend to be a libertarian. And, it made me kind of think that the LPA was finally looking for candidates who could actually win an election — not that I thought Weld was a good choice for that.
So now they’re trying to get Justin Amash to run as President as a Libertarian. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) stirred the two-party political soup when he declared “President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.” That’ll make you a darling of the left these days, and gain respectful treatment from the likes of Mark Hamill, while journalists puzzle over how an alleged former “gadfly” could suddenly seem so resistance-y. Naturally, the Libertarian Party more or less begs him to switch teams.
Amash takes his job with a seriousness that is almost non-existent in the legislative branch of the US government. He holds the modern day congressional record for most consecutive votes not missed, 4,289 over six-plus years. I doubt most members of Congress have even read the Mueller report (I’m still slogging my way through it). Their minds were made up based on partisan affiliation. Who needs facts when you’ve party unity to keep you warm at night?
Amash is that nerd who insists on reading entire bills before voting on them, then explaining every vote on social media. And as an honest-to-goodness constitutional conservative, he gets stubborn when his own team violates its stated principles, or when Congress willingly abdicates its role as a co-equal branch of government.
Amash has gone out on a limb to oppose the president in past. He condemned Trump’s initial travel ban of residents from predominantly Muslim countries, helped doom Republican efforts to repeal/replace Obamacare, opposed the president’s emergency declaration along the southern border, called Trump’s comments about murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi “repugnant,” and was one of the only Republicans on Capitol Hill to support setting up a special counsel investigation after the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey.
Despite what House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Bakersfield) claims, Amash votes more with him than with Nancy Pelosi. He has an 88 percent score from the American Conservative Union and a 100 percent score from FreedomWorks. He’s anti-abortion, more anti-interventionist than the average Democrat (which isn’t really that hard since Democrats are interventionists when it suits their purposes), and he votes no on bills that contribute to the federal government’s red ink.
In other words, Amash sounds a lot like a libertarian (some of us are anti-abortion). He has been publicly mulling a third-party run at the White House all year. Meanwhile, the Libertarian presidential field is looking nutty again, and even two years ago Amash was saying things like, “Hopefully, over time, these two parties start to fall apart.” He was speaking of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Michigan’s straight-ticket voting system, whereby voters can choose a party’s entire slate of candidates by checking just one box, has probably kept Amash from jumping the Republican ship before this, but now that he has a primary challenger, and the House Freedom Caucus he co-founded unanimously voted to condemn him, the temptation to abandon Congress entirely and run for president as a Libertarian may prove irresistible.
The Libertarians don’t pick a nominee until May 2020. And, I don’t know—the chance that he would become president is small, but he could certainly derail either the Republican or Democratic candidate since Libertarians are fiscal conservatives and social (classical) liberal. Unlike Johnson, Amash knows about the city of Aleppo, as his mother is a Syrian immigrant and his father a Palestinian immigrant. And unlike Trump, Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, Amash is not a septuagenarian, but a 39-year-old fitness enthusiast who actually grasps basic technology and market economics.
I personally haven’t found enough in the Mueller report to support impeachment, but I’m not a single issue voter. I think in these polarized time, it’s unlikely the voters would swing for a third-party candidate, but Johnson did get more than 3% of the vote in 2016, so I might vote for Amash and hope others consider it as well.
Seventy-one percent of Americans say the economy is doing well, so why doesn’t Elizabeth Warren know this? Is it possible that she is so out of touch that she doesn’t know any ordinary Americans?
Tax capital at the same rate as income and you end investment in this country, not to mention you bankrupt retirees who are living on their capital investments. Tax rates of 70% were tried in the past and they worked for a while but eventually the economy slowed to a crawl. Anyone remember the 1970s?
How do any of these people plan to pay for these unicorns they’re promising? Pell grants drive up education costs. $15 an hour minimum wage caused a lot of jobs to end in New York City.
Automatic and same day registration – wow, nothing like totally uninformed voters making important decisions based on someone promising them the moon wrapped in rainbow bows by unicorns.
Booker is right about corporate consolidation, but generally you make more money working for a corporation than you do working for a small business. So take a pause and think about the unintended consequences for what you’re proposing. He’s also apparently unaware that the reason for corporate consolidation is federal regulation that favors larger businesses because small businesses can’t afford to pay the fees required to stay in business.
Women are paid fairly in this country, if you factor for the time we spend out of the workforce to have kids and for the fact that we take jobs that don’t pay as much as the jobs men take. “What they deserve?” How do you determine what they deserve?
I still like Tulsi Gabbard, but it bothers me that she is still in the military. I agree with her on foreign intervention, but if she’s in the military, I don’t know that she’s being honest about her viewpoint.
DeBlassio needs to acknowledge how many small businesses closed because of his $15 an hour minimum wage. Did he miss that working people in America voted Republican last time?
John Delaney actually sounds like he might know a thing or two. I’d like to hear him talk more about what he wants to do. How would he fix education – for example. Putting more money in workers pockets isn’t going to create more jobs, because the workers don’t create jobs.
Inslee – communist!
Tim Ryan – General Motors got a bail out from the OBAMA administration, not the Trump administration. And his “the bottom 60% hasn’t got a raise in 40 years” is fallacious.
So this is the “hate corporations” show. Here’s a concept. Remove all the business regulations and let the competitors drag the big corporations down. This forced economy crap will not work.
Abolish private insurance – great, so we’ll all have insurance and very few of us will be able to get medical care. Great! It’s a wonderful idea — if you like slavery and a 45% higher hospital death rate.
Do these people think Medicare is free? You pay all your working life to draw from it when you’re old. In order for us to pay for it, we would all have to pay about 60% of our income in combined taxes and insurance. Can you live on 40% of your income? I know I can’t. And I would have to pay that regardless of whether I need a high level of heath care. So they would bankrupt me for something I don’t need or want.
And Elizabeth Warren wants us to exchange fighting with insurance companies over the health care we need for fighting with government bureaucrats for that health care. How is that any better? I’ve just recently dealt with some government bureaucrats and, trust me, I’ve never had so much trouble with dealing with a health insurance company because I paid them money and they know that. They know they work for me. Our government doesn’t seem to know that. I’m not saying insurance companies shouldn’t be reformed, but that the government should be the last people to reform anything since they are so inefficient, rude and insolent themselves.
So, by and large, this debate was a waste of time — too short and too many participants to actually learn anything. I’m being snarky, but the fact is except for Tulsi Gabbard (who didn’t get to say much so the jury is still out) and John Delaney (who sounds good except I suspect he suffers from a little cognitive dissonance), none of these people has any economic good sense at all. So, onward until tomorrow night.
Something you might not recognize amid the fisticuffs happening on college campuses and the front steps of conservative think-tanks is that some people think the country is getting better.
Rasmussen polls asked people if they thought the country was headed in the right direction. It’s a question they ask several times a year. This week’s poll is an improvement over last week’s poll.
42% of Likely U.S. Voters think the country is heading in the right direction
The national telephone survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports from April 16-20, 2017. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
In addition, Rasmussen Polls asked 1000 likely voters:
Have efforts by national Democrats to oppose Trump during his first 100 days in office been a success, a failure or somewhere in between the two?”
Few Democrats are pleased with their own party’s attempts to oppose Donald Trump in his first 100 days as president.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey found:
11% of Likely Democratic Voters believe efforts by the Democrats to oppose Trump during his first 100 days in office were successful.
24% of Democrats think those efforts were a failure
63% say they’re somewhere in between.
This correlates with a February poll that found the following:
Most voters agree that it’s bad for America and bad for the Democratic Party if Democrats continue to flat out oppose everything President Trump does. Even Democrats are conflicted about their party’s scorched earth policy.
Here are the questions that were asked:
The national Democratic Party has reportedly decided to engage in total opposition to President Trump and his agenda. Is it better for the country if Democrats oppose the president in every way possible, or is it better for the country if Democrats try to work with him?
Is it better for the Democratic Party if Democrats oppose the president in every way possible, or is it better for their party if they try to work with him?
The February 28 Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey found:
29% of all Likely U.S. Voters think it’s better for the country if Democrats oppose the president in every way possible.
63% say it’s better for the country if Democrats try to work with the president instead.
The findings were identical when voters are asked about the impact of the Democrats’ reported strategy on the fortunes of their own party.
29% say it’s better for the Democratic Party if Democrats oppose the president in every way possible.
63% disagree and think it’s better for the party if Democrats try to work with Trump.
44% of Democrats feel it’s better for both the country and their party if they oppose the new president as much as possible, but
46% say it’s better for America if Democrats try to work with Trump, and
45% say it’s better for their party, too.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 26-27, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Sizable majorities of Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party agree that the country and the Democratic Party are better off if Democrats try to work with the president.
Most voters in nearly every demographic category think it’s bad for the country and bad for Democrats if they totally oppose Trump and his agenda.
Most self-described politically liberal voters, however, believe it is better for America and better for the Democratic Party to fight the president in every way possible. An overwhelming majority of conservatives and most moderates disagree.
Over 90% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job the president is doing say it’s bad for the country and for Democrats to totally oppose Trump. Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s job performance, 60% say it’s better for the country and 58% think it’s better for the Democratic Party if Democrats oppose the president in every way possible.
Just after the election in November, 64% of Democrats said it is more important for their party to stand up for what it believes in rather than work with the new president. Thirty-two percent (32%) disagreed and said Democrats should work with Trump.
Because of my disdain for the two statists that were nominated by the Republicans and Democrats, I’m trying to ignore the election. But every so often, something gets said or written that cries out for analysis.
Today is one of those days. Hillary Clinton has an editorial in the New York Timesentitled “My Plan for Helping America’s Poor” and it is so filled with errors and mistakes that it requires a full fisking (i.e., a “point-by-point debunking of lies and/or idiocies”).
Donald Trump issued a revised economic plan last week, and claimed it would create 25 million new jobs over ten years, driven by 4 percent real annual growth. Real growth from 1983 through 2000 — the long period of expansion started under Ronald Reagan that many now understandably look back on with such fondness — averaged just 3.8 percent annually. Beating that over the coming decade would be remarkable, and highly unlikely, given that growth has topped 4 percent in only three of the last 61 quarters.
It should surprise no one at this point to hear Donald Trump make over-the-top promises. He’s been doing that his entire adult life, and especially over the last year.
The Status Quo Plus More Spending
Trump’s supporters say they are attracted to him because he is breaking all the normal rules, and it is certainly true that he has defied political convention in the way he has run his campaign. But with respect to policy — what he would actually do if elected — Trump invariably tells his supporters what they want to hear, whether it is true or not. That’s nothing if not typical for a presidential candidate.
Politics isn’t everything. Though everything has a political dimension, it is never the only dimension. The state, with its monopoly on coercion through physical violence, is the everyday arbiter of politics. Therefore, when people in power convince a population that every problem requires a political solution, that population is primed for authoritarianism. In other words, the population has adopted “The Dictatorship Mindset.” While political engagement is crucial to a functioning civil society, the politicization of every facet of life will eventually crush that society.
For example, Americans have a nasty habit of overstating the importance of the President. Important as the President is to signing/vetoing legislation and commanding the armed forces, he or she does not represent “who we are as a people” in any romantic sense. The media’s pathetic narrative of the President embodying our “hopes and dreams” is the modern equivalent of “Hail Caesar!” dressed up in insipid PR-speak. This is dangerous for two reasons.
Because of my disdain for 
Donald Trump issued 
aurorawatcherak 